Rathdrum Animal Clinic

01/14/2025

Dr. Sherman and our technicians Hayley, Dexter and Ashley literally had our hands full of adorable 7 week old miniature Australian shepherds.

01/11/2025

With the cold temperature drops and the snow falling. It’s important to know the safety tips and care precautions for your pet.

01/11/2025

Dogs come trained in loyalty, unconditional love, and friendship. It’s only the easy stuff that they need to learn. True, teaching all the other stuff can be daunting but all we need is the right advice at the right time. How does the beginning of the year sound? January is National Train Your Dog Month. It’s a time when trainers, dog owners, and canine experts come together to celebrate their love for their furry friends by sharing what they know. The internet and social media become a treasure trove of information, tips, and advice. All due to a movement started by the Association of Pet Dog Trainers many years ago.
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National Train Your Dog Month Activities

1. Teach a new trick or two
A new year calls for a new bag of tricks! Think of a simple and fun trick like rolling over, playing dead, or fetch.

2. Enjoy Furry Fridays
In January, reserve Friday evenings for your dog. Go for a walk, to a dog museum, or watch a dog movie with buttered popcorn and a special treat for your best pal!

3. Take to social media
Share your dog training accomplishments and challenges with other dog lovers through pictures and videos. Have fun and build a better dog training community.
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Why We Love National Train Your Dog Month

A. A little help goes a long way
Yes, a long way to keeping a dog inside a loving home. Hundreds of dogs are given away each year because their owners couldn’t train them and found them difficult to live with. A celebration like this one can help train and save them.

B. Trained dogs are healthy dogs
Experts say training a dog is not a luxury but imperative to his well being and health.

C. It takes a village
It always helps to hear you’re not alone. This month-long celebration connects you to others like you. Share their experiences, laughs, watch experts’ webinars or silly bloopers.

01/07/2025

01/06/2025

Rathdrum Animal Clinic had a great time together yesterday at our yearly party at Ironhorse!

Thank you Dr. Sherman for all your hard work and for bringing a wonderful group of people and making them together a family and a team. We want to also thank you the clients for also being a part of Rathdrum Animal Clinic journey!

01/01/2025

Happy New Year from everyone at Rathdrum Animal Clinic! Thank you to all who trusted us with your pets health and care in 2024. We look forward to continuing that same health and care into 2025.

12/30/2024

Closing at 3pm tomorrow for New Year’s Eve.

12/19/2024

Attention Dear Owners
Upcoming closures dates for Christmas and New Years.

- Today we will be closing at 4pm for a Christmas potluck party.

- Then from December 23rd to Christmas Day. We will be closed for the holidays. We will be back in the office on the 26th to normal business hours.

- We will also be closed New Years Day. Will be back in the clinic the next day normal business hours.

Please plan your visit accordingly when needing to pick up prescriptions or scheduling appointments. If an emergency is to occur while Rathdrum Animal Clinic is closed. Please reach out to Emergency Veterinary Hospital in Coeur d'Alene. Thank you for your understanding.

12/09/2024

Today is International Day of Veterinary Medicine

International Day of Veterinary Medicine is celebrated on December 9th each year to recognize the work of veterinary professionals and organizations. The day honors the dedication of veterinarians who work to protect the health and welfare of animals and humans.

12/08/2024

K9 Joe and Handler Scott returning from a successful training set.
*K9 Joe is sponsored by Dr. April Sherman and Rathdrum Animal Clinic*

12/08/2024

National Cat Lovers’ Month is celebrated every year in December. Use this month to shower your pet cats with love and show them your appreciation! Cats are beautiful, sassy, and fascinating creatures. Yes, they can be fiercely independent, hard to tame, and unpredictable creatures — but that’s not all. They can also be shy, loving, affectionate, outgoing, energetic, and loveable! Cats are often misunderstood and treated badly just because many people think of them as being aloof and standoffish. But the truth is that cats can be extremely playful and make for great companions! Use this month as an opportunity to show your love and support for our adorable feline friends!
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National Cat Lovers’ Month Activities

1. Show your love
Share pictures of your cat on social media and declare your love for these adorable creatures. Let others know about National Cat Lovers’ Month so they too can shower love on their pets.

2. Adopt a cat
Visit a shelter and adopt a cat so you can give it a better life. If you’re unable to adopt a cat at the moment, consider donating to help improve the quality of their lives.

3. Appreciate your pets
Take a break from your busy life and shower love and attention on your pet. Let them know they are loved. Take your cat out to the park, and get them some catnip or new toys.
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5 Mind-blowing Facts About Cats

1. Cats are digitigrade
This means that, unlike many other animals, they walk on their toes.

2. They sleep for 70% of their life
Cats sleep for 13 to 16 hours a day to save energy.

3. Purring means they’re content
Most of the time, a cat will purr when it is happy and content.

4. A large population
Approximately 400 million cats are living around the world today.

5. Cats domesticated themselves
Cats became loving domesticated companions for humans without ever changing much.
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Why We Love National Cat Lovers’ Month

A. They’re adorable
Simply put, cats are adorable. It’s hard to resist their charms, demeanor, adorable little faces, and round furry bodies. They deserve a whole month of devotion.

B. They are often mistreated
Several street cats and house cats have suffered abuse at the hands of humans. Many people consider them to be vile creatures and think of them as bad omens. It’s up to us cat lovers to help provide a better life for them.

C. There are many of them in shelters
Many cats enter shelters each day with several of them going unadopted because of their old age. National Cat Lovers’ Month promotes being kinder to these gentle creatures and spreading awareness about adoption.
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Share with us below your furry feline friends.

12/06/2024

This adorable 12 week old puppy named Cookie came in for her puppy exam with Dr. Kremer and tech Hayley in her Christmas sweater.

12/06/2024

We celebrate shelter pets on Celebrate Shelter Pets Day, which is on the first Thursday after Thanksgiving. This year, it takes place on December 5. The day brings awareness to pets such as dogs and cats that are in shelters. A lot of people often think of adopting a pet from a shelter home, but they don’t always follow through with that thought because they think there is something wrong with shelter pets. They are wrong. Most people who have adopted shelter pets can testify that shelter groups are full of great pets that provide companionship. There are, unfortunately, some pets in the shelter that are deemed unadoptable because of fear, perceived aggression, or anxiety, but even these issues can be managed if addressed properly.
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Celebrate Shelter Pets Day FAQs

1. When is National Adopt a Shelter Pet Day?
National Adopt a Shelter Pet Day is observed every year on April 30.

2. What is a dog's adoption day called?
A ‘Gocha Day’ is the anniversary of your pet’s adoption day.

3. What month is National Pet Month?
May is National Pet Month.
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Celebrate Shelter Pets Day Activities

1. Support a Shelter
Shelters often rely on donations to feed and care for their pets, and sometimes they run on a tight budget. Money, though, is not the only way to show support. You can donate supplies such as food, litter, or toys.

2. Adopt a pet from a shelter
A good way to observe Celebrate Shelter Pets Day is to adopt a pet from a shelter. Adopting a pet is a lifetime commitment that requires planning. Once you have made plans and are ready to make that pet a part of your family, don’t hesitate to go for it.

3. Spoil your pet
If you already have a pet that you adopted from a shelter then, today would be a good day to spoil them with treats. You can get them treats, a new bed or anything you think would brighten up their day.
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5 Intriguing Facts About Dogs

1. Their nose is better than ours
A dog’s sense of smell is 40 times better than a human’s.

2. Dogs run very fast
Some dogs run so fast that they could beat a cheetah.

3. Dogs don’t sweat like humans
Dogs don’t sweat like us; they instead produce an oily substance undetectable to the naked eye.

4. Dogs have a dominant paw
A dog could be left-pawed or right-pawed.

5. Their hearing is very sensitive
A dog can hear sounds at higher frequencies than humans.
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Why We Love Celebrate Shelter Pets Day

A. We love animals
A day dedicated to celebrating animals is a day to love. Animals are our companions, and even though they can’t talk, a lot of people would be lonely without them.

B. It focuses on pets in shelter
Shelter pets are more popular now than they ever were, but they still need all the publicity that they can get. Celebrate Shelter Pets Day focuses on and increases awareness about these special animals.

C. Increases adoption rate of shelter pets
The more popular shelter pets get, the higher their rate of adoption. Most people are reluctant to adopt shelter pets because they think something is wrong with the pets there, but this holiday will serve to reduce the stigma associated with shelter pets.
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Where can you adopt a pet?
- Companions Animal Center in Hayden, ID
https://www.companionsanimalcenter.org/
- Scraps in Spokane Valley, WA
https://www.spokanecounty.org
- SpokAnimal in Spokane, WA
https://spokanimal.org/
- Spokane Humane Society in Spokane, WA
https://spokanehumanesociety.org/
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Share with us below a pet you rescued from a shelter that has been such a huge blessing and joy to your life!

12/06/2024

World Wildlife Conservation Day and we’re so excited to spread awareness about preserving Earth’s endangered wildlife.
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How to Observe World Wildlife Conservation Day

1. Spread the word
The greatest and noblest thing you can do today is to educate those around you. Spread awareness about the importance of wildlife conservation to your friends and family.

2. Take a pledge
Take the wildlife pledge. Join millions of other individuals in protecting our planet’s most endangered species and acting against illegal poaching or anything that negatively impacts the wildlife

3. Donate to the cause
You can make a charitable donation to the World Wildlife Fund (W.W.F.). All of the donations you make go directly towards training and equipping wildlife protectors.
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5 Astonishing Facts About Wildlife That Might Surprise You

1. The howler monkey is the loudest land animal. Its calls can be heard from 3 miles (5 km) away.
At its peak, the howler monkey can produce sounds that reach 140 decibels. That’s as noisy as a jet engine, on take off!

2. Polar bears have jet black skin under their white fur coats.
It helps them absorb heat to keep warm, while the white fur helps provides camouflage in the snowy and icy environment they live.

3. Giant anteaters consume up to 35,000 ants and termites in a single day.
They use their long sticky tongues to slurp up hundreds of ants per minute. Interestingly, anteaters purposefully never destroy an ant nest, preferring to leave some ants alive to rebuild, so it can return and feed again in the future.

4. Great white sharks can detect a drop of blood in 25 gallons (100 litres) of water and can even sense tiny amounts of blood from 3 miles (5 km) away.
They use their acute sense of smell to detect blood using an organ called the ‘olfactory bulb’.

5. A Rhinoceros‘s horns are made of ‘keratin’, the same type of protein that makes up hair and fingernails.
Some species of Rhinos have two horns, while others just have a single horn.
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Why World Wildlife Conservation Day is Important

A. It is a day to make a difference
World Wildlife Conservation Day is not just a day to learn about wildlife and endangered species. It is a day in which we can actually make a difference by protecting and preserving our wildlife.

B. It brings people together
The love for nature and wildlife is something that most people have in common. By spreading awareness and doing your part to preserve wildlife, you can meet a lot of people who share the same interest as you.

C. Wildlife conservation is an important lesson
Although mankind is responsible for the endangerment and extinction of several species, the fact that good-hearted humans can work together to protect our wildlife is a lesson that everyone needs to learn. Today is the day to do so!
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Activities you can do to celebrate wild animals.

1. Visit a state or national park
- Farragut State Park
- Tubbs Hill
And many others to do some hiking, birdwatching, photography and observing wildlife from a safe and respectful distance.

2. Visit a zoo or aquarium
There are three locations you can visit with your family.
Big Red's Barn in Coeur d'Alene, ID https://bigredsbarn.com/
Cat Tales Wildlife Center in Mead, WA https://www.cattales.org/
Blue Zoo Aquarium in Spokane, WA https://bluezoo.us/

3. Donate to wildlife rehabs or organizations
- Palouse Wildlife Rescue and Rehabilitation https://www.palousewildlife.org/
- Birds of Prey Northwest
https://www.birdsofpreynorthwest.org/
- Idaho Fish and Game
https://idfg.idaho.gov/wildlife/funding
- Idaho Fish and Wildlife Foundation
https://ifwf.org/our-foundation/donate/
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Share with us below what your favorite wild animal is!

12/06/2024

Should My Pet Be Vaccinated?
Vaccination is a crucial and cost-effective method to protect your pet’s and the public’s health. Many diseases that affect our pets can spread via wildlife or unvaccinated pets, and several can also affect people. Veterinarians recommend that all pets receive core vaccines—those deemed medically or legally necessary to meet minimum health standards—along with additional vaccines based on lifestyle.

Pet vaccinations protect against potentially devastating diseases, such as parvo, rabies, distemper, and panleukopenia, that spread easily among unvaccinated animals, including puppies, kittens, and stray or feral populations. Wildlife can also carry diseases transmissible to pets, which means these disease threats can never be eliminated.

Additionally, vaccinations play a key role in protecting human health. Rabies, which takes the lives of at least 59,000 people worldwide each year according to the World Health Organization (WHO), is the best example. Fortunately, only a few of these deaths occur in the United States, because of extensive rabies prevention funding and laws that require and strictly regulate vaccination.
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Determining pet vaccine needs
Veterinarians determine vaccine needs by assessing each pet’s lifestyle. Certain vaccines are recommended for all pets in a particular life stage or geographic area, while others are considered optional. Factors that affect vaccine recommendations include:

Age — Puppies and kittens require repeated vaccine boosters as the immunity acquired from their mother’s milk wears off. The immune system is more stable in adulthood, so they need less frequent boosters.
Geography — Exposure risk for certain diseases varies according to region and local factors, such as weather patterns and pest populations.
Lifestyle — Whether a pet lives exclusively indoors or outdoors, interacts with other pets, travels frequently, or visits grooming and boarding facilities greatly affects their disease risks.
Health status — Veterinarians may recommend fewer vaccines for pets with underlying health issues, particularly autoimmune disorders. Vaccination is not recommended when pets are actively sick.
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Core and lifestyle vaccines for dogs
Core vaccines are those recommended for all dogs, regardless of lifestyle.
(DAPP Vaccine)
- Canine distemper — An often fatal virus affecting the respiratory and nervous systems
- Canine adenovirus — Causes respiratory infection and acute or chronic liver inflammation or failure
- Parvovirus — Causes severe vomiting, diarrhea, dehydration, and life-threatening sepsis, often in puppies
- Parainfluenza virus — Causes respiratory infections in dogs—the vaccine may be combined with Bordetella as part of a kennel cough vaccination

- Rabies — Transmitted through animal bites and causes progressive neurologic decline and death

Additional vaccinations are available for dogs with certain risk factors. Depending on where you live and your dog’s lifestyle, some of the following vaccines may be considered equally important to the core vaccines listed above:

- Leptospirosis — Spreads through contaminated urine from infected animals and causes liver and kidney failure—the vaccine is recommended for most dogs in urban and rural environments
(This vaccine can be combined with the DAPP vaccine DAPPL)
- Bordetella — One possible cause of kennel cough, a common and highly contagious respiratory infection
- Canine influenza — The influenza virus causes respiratory infection that may lead to pneumonia
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Core and lifestyle vaccines for cats
Core vaccines recommended for all cats—indoor or outdoor—include:
(FVRCP Vaccine)
- Feline herpesvirus-1/feline viral rhinotracheitis — Causes infectious respiratory disease and eye ulcers—vaccination does not eliminate the lifelong infection but helps prevent recurrence
- Calicivirus — Causes respiratory disease, often characterized by oral ulcers
- Panleukopenia — Similar to parvovirus in dogs, and causes life-threatening vomiting, diarrhea, dehydration, and immune suppression
(Leukemia can be combined with FVRCP vaccine FVRCPL)
- Feline leukemia virus — Causes lifelong immune system suppression and increases susceptibility to cancer, infection, and autoimmune inflammation—a core vaccine for kittens, but optional for adults.

- Rabies — As in dogs, causes progressive neurologic decline and death after exposure through an animal bite
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Pet vaccination risks
No medication or vaccine is completely without risks, although the benefits of vaccination typically greatly outweigh the risks. Some pets are sensitive to vaccine components, which can cause varying degrees of allergic reactions—however, the worst, called anaphylaxis, is rare. Allergic reactions usually cause hives, facial swelling, vomiting, and diarrhea, which can progress to collapse or shock in rare cases.

Serious vaccine reactions are uncommon. Most vaccine side effects are mild and include swelling or pain at the injection site, mild lethargy, or a low-grade fever. The likelihood of a dangerous vaccine reaction is low compared with your pet’s risk of contracting a deadly disease from normal daily exposure, such as a visit to the park.

Tumor development at the injection site is another uncommon risk that the development of modern vaccines has reduced. This occurs mostly in cats, but feline-specific vaccines have helped to reduce the risk even more.

Pet vaccinations present a low-risk, high-reward method for pet owners to protect their furry pal’s health. Veterinarians use only the safest and most effective vaccines and tailor vaccination protocols to your pet’s health history and lifestyle. Speak to a veterinary professional if you have questions about your pet’s vaccines.

https://www.aaha.org/resources/pet-vaccination/
_______________________________________________________________________Rathdrum Animal Clinic wants your pet to be protected from these deadly virus and diseases. Ask our veterinarians about getting your dog or cat up to date on their vaccinations or allow us to help set up a vaccination schedule to set up a plan going forward to get your pet vaccinated.

12/03/2024

Dr. Sherman had double the amount of cuteness today with these two little aussies. Meet Ginger and Pepper here for their final puppy visit.