Oakland Veterinary Referral Services Blog

Treats are an important part of rewarding your dog or cat. In moderation, cat and dog treats are great. They offer motivation during house training and basic commands, offer appeasement during times of stress, let you to bond with your pet, and are just generally tasty. But food-based rewards can also lead to obesity and health problems. 

Your team at Oakland Veterinary Referral Services understands the importance of pet treats. This blog is to give you insights into pet treats and suggest forms of reward that are healthy alternatives to treats.

Preparing your pet for surgery can be stressful. There are many things to consider and you may be dealing with a companion that is injured or feeling under the weather. Being prepared prior to surgery will give your pet the best odds of a swift, safe, and successful recovery. 

Oakland Veterinary Referral Services has a team of board-certified surgeons and surgical staff. They perform many advanced surgeries to help, treat, and cure our beloved fur friends. Here are a few tips to help you in preparing for the big day.

Can you feel it? The frazzle with the dazzle that comes this time of year. Chances are, if you are feeling a little overwhelmed by the holidays, your pet may be feeling it too. Stress during the holidays is common, and you may have found ways to cope with it, like meditation and yoga. But what about your pet? 

Oakland Veterinary Referral Services aims to give you our suggestions for keeping the chaos from causing issues with your pet. Here are some of our favorites for giving your pet a stress-free holiday.

When the days are short and the nights longer, it’s easy for most of us — including our dogs — to get bored and restless. Add the cold and busyness of the holiday season, and those long winter months can lead to boredom, behavior problems, and general lethargy. Our pets need daily exercise and enrichment to stay at their best, but winter can throw a wrench in those activities. 

We’ve written about fun cold-weather activities and indoor enrichment. The team at Oakland Veterinary Referral Services is back with eight more suggestions to help keep your dog active in winter. With a little bit of creativity and effort, your furry friend won’t be bored through the cold months.

Wondering how to choose the right cat for you? Looking for a new best furry feline is an exciting time. Whether you already have a lovable cat at home and want to add another, or this is your first time adopting a cat, you are in luck. Cats make wonderful companions with their curiosity, warmth, antics, and unconditional love. Cats have varied personalities and activity levels. A kitten, an adult cat and a senior cat are very different. Here’s how to choose the right cat for you.

Choosing a cat is a big decision. Choosing your new cat from a shelter is an especially loving act. Many shelters and rescues are overtaxed with the number of animals they must care for. The team at Oakland Veterinary Referral Services wants to help you find your perfect meowy friend for a match made in heaven.

What steps should you take to address behavior problems in your dog? In a perfect world, our beloved pooches would be wonderful in every way. They would always respond to our commands and never cause trouble. The reality, though, is that most dogs do have a few behavior issues. You can easily address some behaviors with basic training and socialization, but sometimes that isn’t enough. What steps do we take in addressing more serious behavior problems in dogs?  

The team at Oakland Veterinary Referral Services is here to address behavior problems in dogs and offer some helpful solutions.

Adopting a new pet is an exciting time, especially when you’re also doing good by choosing a shelter dog or cat. Adoption helps free up rescues and shelters, provides love, housing, and care to homeless pets, and creates an awareness of the importance of adopting versus buying pets. Some of our most loving and loved pets have come from shelters or rescues, but these pets can also come with challenges.

The team at Oakland Veterinary Referral Services wants to cover a few common challenges with shelter pets or rescues, in order to better prepare you for a successful and informed adoption process.

Sports involving pets–that usually brings to mind hunting dogs and agility. But we are combining our love of both recreational exercise and pets in new and interesting ways. Doga, or yoga with dogs, is one form of exercise that combines them. It doesn’t stop there. When you, Fido or Frisky is ready to skip the normal exercise routine or wants something more challenging than a game of Fetch, it may be time to try one of these five unusual sports involving pets. 

How did we end up with so many dog breeds? Man domesticated dogs roughly 15,000 years ago and they have been man (and woman’s) best friend since. Dogs roamed with us as protectors and to ward off other wildlife and would-be intruders. They also kept rodents and other pests away. Of course, they quickly became our companions, tried and true.

What about the many dog breeds we see today; why do we have so many and why were some of them bred to do certain “jobs”? The team at Oakland Veterinary Referral Services is glad you asked. 

Giving pills to dogs or cats is a big challenge for most pet owners and ranks up there with giving them a bath. They can hear you open the cabinet to get the bottle, then they are nowhere to be found. When you finally find them and get them in front of you, they refuse to open their mouths. When they do…they can smell or detect the most cleverly-disguised pill and it ends up on the floor.  

If you have tried everything to give your dog or cat a pill, we can help! We have suggestions ranging from simple to no fail. We administer pills to dogs and cats every day. The team at Oakland Veterinary Referral Services can teach you the tricks for successfully giving pills to a dog or cat.