[.ca] Dog Owner's Home Veterinary Handbook (ISBN 0876052014)

From Amazon.com:
Open the front cover and the first two pages you see contain the Index of Signs and Symptoms, from Abdomen (painful, swollen, distended, and tucked up) to Weight loss, Wheezing, and Whining (continual). There's a comprehensive index in back, of course, running the gamut from Abortion to Zinc-Responsive Dermatosis, which is all very useful, but when your pooch is in pain, it's great to be able to turn, with the minimum of folderol, to the page that says to relax, it's nothing a bit of extra grooming won't fix, or alternatively to hightail it over to the vet hospital. It's a wonderful reference for any dog owner, with chapters on emergencies (such as burns, dehydration, and poisoning), as well as worms, infectious diseases, skin care, and canine eyes, ears, and nose. There are chapters on the digestive, respiratory, and circulatory systems, the nervous, musculoskeletal, and urinary systems, plus dog sex, whelping, puppy pediatrics, geriatrics, and chapters on cancers and medications. In short, it covers every health dimension a dog owner might want to know more about, identifies the possible causes, helps you determine the severity of the condition, and indicates what treatments or actions to take to best insure your dog's good health. --Stephanie Gold

The first aid information is almost useless:
I was very disappointed with this book, but I suppose it serves a certain purpose. I went to several bookstores looking for a first aid guide for dogs, and this seems to be the standard offering. It includes information about first aid, but it isn't suitable for use in a first aid situation. Instead, it's more of a book for bathroom readers and do-it-yourselfers. I really don't know why the authors chose to include first aid in this book. It must have been for the sake of comprehensiveness -- they must have included it not so it would be useful, but so no one would ask why it was missing. First of all, the pictures are a joke. They're small, they're in black-and-white, and if you don't read the captions, you can't even tell what you're looking at. When you have an injured dog to take care of, you don't want to make decisions based on Rorschach blobs. Clear drawings or _very_ well done color photos are standard for presenting human first aid methods. Second, the decision flowcharts are unhelpful. After looking at several of them, I can't imagine using them in an emergency. Try to answer this question: "Is the dog in distress?" Huh? Some dogs seem to be in distress 24/7. Others will injure themselves without complaint if they think it pleases you. Can you imagine trying to translate the word "distress" into concrete terms while your dog is bleeding? The word might have a precise definition elsewhere in the book, but a good first aid guide doesn't require you to do research in the middle of an emergency. Third, I failed in ten minutes of looking to locate information on the simple injury that brought to my attention my need for such a book. My dog's paws swelled up and started to peel after our first run in summer heat. Strangely, the index didn't send me to a central place for paw injuries. It seems that you have to have a tentative diagnosis before you can find any information. I looked up "blisters" and didn't find anything. I flipped through the book trying to pick up a sense of the organization, which led me to some first aid pages but no information about paws. It turned out that his injuries were burns, a common paw injury that would deserve a place in a book a fifth the size of this one. The information must be in the book somewhere -- how could it be missing from a book that includes abortion, cancer, and geriatrics? -- but I could not diagnose the problem until I put this book down and sought information elsewhere. (By human first aid standards, the authors of this book have bungled a well-understood task, but by dog first aid standards, they might be pretty good, for all I know. All the other books I found with dog first aid information suffered from similar problems, and none were half as useful as a typical human guide. Dozens of excellent first aid guides are available for humans, ranging from useful twenty-page pamphlets produced with line drawings and basic vocabulary to professional manuals larger than this book. Why can't I find a single well done, up-to-date first aid guide for dogs? If I recall correctly, _The Home Pet Vet Guide: Dogs_ was well illustrated and well organized, but it hasn't been updated in twenty years. Another book that I haven't been able to examine, but which sounds promising, is _Dog First Aid Emergency Care for the Hunting, Working, and Outdoor Dog_.) Despite my disappointment with the first aid aspect of the book, I considered buying it anyway for the other veterinary information. I decided against it, since I already have a guide to basic care. I just couldn't imagine myself using it. It may be interesting to read about whelping, but if your dog were about to have puppies, would you really rely on this book, or would you buy a more specialized one? If your dog develops cancer, will you rely on the copy of _Dog Owner's Home Veterinary Handbook_ that's been on your bookshelf for three years, or will you seek a newer, more focused source of information? Or will you trust your vet? The truth is that while there's lots of information in this book, it mostly provides interesting but ultimately insufficient chunks of information. A whole page devoted to a rare disorder might seem like an impressive amount of detail, but it's pointless until your dog develops that disorder. Then that page becomes useful, but it also becomes absurdly inadequate. And it hardly needs to be said that a six hundred page book won't enable you to accurately diagnose your dog or second-guess your vet. A textbook for an undergraduate physiology course -- which most vets take before they enter veterinary school -- contains as much information as this guide (and much more lavish illustrations to boot). If you don't want to take your dog to the vet and are too lazy to study real vet school texts and veterinary reference books, or if you enjoy trivia, or if you want to annoy your vet with half-informed theories about your dog's maladies, then this is the book for you. If you have already have plenty on your reading list and just want a guide for basic care and emergencies, I'm sorry to say I haven't yet found the right book.

Undeniably the best:
I am continually amazed by the ability of the authors of this book to present clear and pithy, yet absolutely comprehensive, information about what seems to be the entire gamut of doggy afflictions. I have consulted it on numerous occasions and have always found answers, which were later confirmed by my vet. It's not just good science, this book is a model of how to process and present information to a reading audience. It's good stuff.

Best Home Vet Book:
this book is great, we tell the vet what our dogs have everytime we go in! I recomend it to any dog owner!

An Invaluable Reference Book:
I have found this book to be a wonderful resource! There are lots of pictures and illustrations in addition to simple, down-to-earth descriptions that give you more information about diagnoses your vet has made, common ailments your pet may have, and treatment options. There's also a handy First Aid Section, useful index, and glossary to help you better understand your dog's health. I refer to this book OFTEN.

Absolute must for every dog lover...:
Once in a while a book comes along which in the field of practical applications... is a real treasure. This is one of those books. Full of photos and easy to read text, not to mention helpful advice, "this is it"-- for the dog owner who really cares. It will not turn you completely from being independent of your vet, but it will help in determining which symptoms and cases where you would just have to run to him. For example, in the section "Intestines", it describes the most common irregularities, like diarrhea, the color, consistency, odor, frequency, condition of dog, common causes, and finally the treatment section. And it does not stop there. It will then give related problems about the intestines, from malabsorption syndromes to colitis, obstructions, constipation, voluntary retention, mechanical blockage, damaged nerves, flatulence and coprophagia (yeech!), et.al. And that is just a section, as I said, under Intestines. Whether you have one dog, or several kennels, professional breeder, backyard breeder, or no breeder at all, and just interested in the well-being of man's best friend, it will turn you from a feeling of uncertainty into a confident owner. It's the "leash" you can do. This revised and expanded edition is one of my prime sources of information regarding the health of my dogs. It will save the owner, as it has saved me from needless worries, (or make it worse, depending really on the personality of the owner), and a lot of expenses. Read it, you'll like it.