Well over halfway through my second pregnancy, I am currently inundated with comments from clients, mostly positive, and it has added a bit of humour and lively conversation to my otherwise increasingly tiring days. ‘Do you know if it’s a boy or a girl?’ ‘How do you think your toddler is going to react to the new baby?’ ‘Are you going to come back to work after two children?’ But one question I wasn’t expecting came from a woman with a lovely ginger tom – ‘Are you sure you’re OK to examine my cat if you’re pregnant?’ I laughed and assured her that despite my expanding waistline I could still reach the table and her cat would be fine. But after a slightly confused and very embarrassed smile, she explained that she had recently been told by a friend that she would have to give up her beloved cat once she became pregnant because it wasn’t safe for pregnant women to be around cats. It had been a while since I had heard that myth and was saddened to hear it again, but I wasn’t terribly surprised. We spent most of the rest of the consultation discussing the real facts about toxoplasmosis, the disease in question, and she left very much relieved that her feline friend was not going to have to be evicted should she ever decide to have a baby, and determined to speak to her GP if she had any further concerns.

What causes toxoplasmosis?

Toxoplasma gondii, the protozoal parasite responsible for causing the disease known as toxoplasmosis, is a tiny single-celled organism that can infect many different species from mice to sheep to humans. Cats, however, are the only hosts in which the parasite can reproduce…..

Here’s a paradox: the biggest cause of suffering in pet dogs may be people who believe that they love their pets the most. What am I talking about? Overfeeding and its consequence: obesity.
Over a third of dogs in the UK (2.9million) are overweight or obese while 25 per cent of cats (3 million) suffer the same problem. These animals have a serious risk of developing diabetes, heart disease and arthritis, and have a lower life expectancy than pets with a healthy weight.
Arthritis is probably the most common issue that causes physical suffering. As a vet, whenever I treat an older dog for sore joints, I write out a check list of the treatment plan. And the top of the list, in nearly every case, is “weight loss”. For many animals, this is more effective than any medication.
The people at Battersea Dogs and Cats Home will be discussing this problem in tonight’s episode of Paul O’Grady: For The Love of Dogs on ITV1 at 8pm. Prevention of obesity seems simple in theory, but for some reason, many pet owners find it difficult. Again, part of the problem may be that we see pets like little humans, and we feed them accordingly.
The Battersea team have put together some simple tips that may help owners understand how to keep their pets slim and trim.
The first aspect is to work out the amount that a pet needs to eat: this depends on its breed, age and size, but as a rough indication, a small dog only needs about 350 calories a day while for a cat, it’s around 280 calories. So a slice of toast is equal to a third of the dog’s daily calories, equivalent to a human eating half a loaf of white bread. Other useful comparisons include a 3cm cube of cheese (equal to a whole cup of molten fondue cheese), one custard cream (half a pack of custard creams), and half a tin of tuna (a large cod n’ chips from the local chippie)…………..

Like everyone I know, I was glued to the Olympics – great job Team GB, especially our first Dressage and Show Jumping medals for a long time!
However, I wonder how many people think about the infrastructure and planning that go into keeping the horses fit, safe and healthy when they compete?
I’ve been a treating vet at a lot of competitions over the years, including Endurance events, local, regional and National Championship Pony Club events (where the standard is often as high as at many BE competitions!) and the International Show Jumping at Sheffield Hallam Arena. I was also on the vet team as a student at Badminton back when they still had roads and tracks before the cross country.

The vets that people most often seen are those on the Ground Jury at competitions – the notorious “Trot Up” before the competition starts, and again (in eventing) before the horses go forwards to the show jumping phase. At Badminton and most other big events, there are two vets – one on the Ground Jury, along with two or three other worthies – and one in the Hold Box. If there is a question over a horse’s fitness to compete, they get sent to the hold box, where the second vet examines them to see if there is a medical problem rendering the horse unfit. This is a very contentious area – I’ve never yet been at an event where the Ground Jury and the vets didn’t come in for a barrage of criticism over their decisions. However, it’s important to realise that they have to balance several factors:

Firstly, if a horse is unlevel on the trot up, it may be truly lame, or it may have a “mechanical lameness” – in other words, an abnormal gait………………..