coming up on Take pause. We'll learn about the importance of having lab work
done for your pet. We'll check out a training
class for the youngest of our canine pals,
and we'll hang out with a photographer who gets that picture Perfect shot
every time. So stick around and
I'm sure you'll decide to take pause.
Hello and welcome to another episode of Take Pause. Our show is
all about caring for the health and happiness of the animals that make us
happy. I'm the host of Cake Pause Mike Moscatiello, and
this fantastic feline is named Sprite. Sprite
is looking for a new home, a loving home,
a good home like yours when you adopt a pet,
visiting your veterinarian is going to be important for your pets. Health and
your vet will most likely want order Some labs to be done usually
tests on blood or some bodily function.
The information labs provide. The doctor could be essential to the health of
your pet and even save his life.
Always follow the advice of your vet.
Yeah, good kid,
Why do we do laboratory testing In animals?
As in humans, the laboratory testing is extremely important.
Laboratory testing gives. The doctor brought
information about the well being off the animal lab.
Work tells the doctor Howard the kidneys working.
How is the liver function if the patient is dehydrated,
if the patient has any problems inside the
organs that we cannot see from outside?
Also, because the pets can no tell us what is wrong with
them. Laboratory comes up and give us
that information. A good example is an your night
talk infection. Yes, the patient has an infection, but
what kind of a urinary infection is is a
bacterial. It's a fungal. So if the doctor gave
one antibiotic, maybe the treatment is
not the correct one because it's a fungal. Let's think
OK is bacterial, but is the bacteria
resistant to the antibiotic that the doctor is prescribing?
So in this case, your analysis is the most important tool
for the doctor. He might be prescribing the wrong
antibiotic, and then the owner is thinking why my
pet is not getting any better. Well, that's
when that special urine testing comes
handy, because that is going to tell the doctor. Okay,
is thes bacteria you know that one that is causing the
problem and We just need this particular antibiotic
to treat your pet.
The laboratory testing in animals is as
important asset is in humans. It gave us a
lot of information about the well being off the pet.
It gives the doctor a lot of information that the pet
cannot tell us because they don't talk. You can tell
us if there's kidney damage. If it is liver failure,
tell us if the patient is dehydrated old days that the
patient from outside cannot tell us
in laboratory. There's an endless list
off things that we can do way can dio what we
call chemistries chemistries. Review the
internal organs. Give us information about the
lever, the kidney, How
the Het is doing with the
gases. Oxygenation way can
also do what we call a CBC, which is a cell
count. Tell us information about the red
cells. White cells tell us about the
hydration status ostentation. We can also do
urine can do fi calls and also
cytology. These special stay Ning's way
can also do testing for regulation.
Tell us if the patient is having the
appropriate clotting time. If the patient is
gonna heal or if he's going out bleed to death. That's
basically what regulation past help, but there's many
kinds off test depends on what the
doctor is looking for in patient.
The job off the laboratory, person
or commission goes from
taking the blood in the patient to
processing the whole summer. It's what we call
the floodwater me choosing the right needle,
the right syringe, the appropriate blood tubing
and also to do the
chemistries and everything in the lab
way have a machine that
runs the chemistry's. We have a different ashamed to
do the complete cell count way. Have
microscopes to do these psychologies
and to check for pickles. Your analyses
and also way have a specific
ashamed to do a coagulation casting. So
each laboratory has a different
setting, depending on what the
doctors are looking for in the hospital.
Preferences way also
do laboratory tests, saying for a large number
off medical problems like heat strokes,
pancreatitis, quite relation disorders.
Um, think born diseases
we are check animals that have toxicities is
very common, like pets that go
into the drug cabinets or they go in the trash can after
the Fourth of July. We also passed
for foreign diseases when the pets are
traveling. There's many different
laboratory testing for all kind of.
When you go to your veterinarian, please listen to your doctor. When is
recommending laboratory testing because is going to help
you and your pet tremendously.
So when is the best time to train the young pup you've adopted now?
No, I mean it right now. Don't wait to train your new
pup. The good news is it's never too late to begin. But
the sooner you start, the happier you and your puppy pal will be
one of the keys to training your puppies patients. It can get frustrating
when your precious pooch just doesn't seem to get it. But he
will. Pets don't speak the same languages we do, so it
could take them a little more time to understand what we want. And
sometimes what we want goes against normal patterns
of canine behavior. The good news is that your pet loves
you and wants to please you. You can show them you love
them back by taking the time to learn the best and most positive way
you possibly can to communicate with them.
Some of the issues that people contact the dog Training Academy of
South Florida for it would be potty training. The puppy puppy is
biting on things in the households or furniture there. Shoes
fighting. The kids are feet as we're passing
by and, um, jumping up on people jumping up on
the furniture, just regular animal doggy
related things. But they want the dog toe have better
manners in the household. So generally we do get people coming
in for obedience, but with a puppy, it's usually my puffy's
parking and my pop used doing this using that,
so we have to deal with all that stuff. First. It
is very important to spend time training your puppy when he's young. He's like a little
sponge, and he's absorbing everything good and bad. And we
really need to work on their socialization skills when they're young like that,
because this is where they're very open, learning about new
things and investigating new things about that scary aspect
to it. So we try to get people in here is early as possible with
their puppy. As long as they have a set of vaccinations, they're coming to a
private facility, and they get to work on those skills sets in a very
controlled environment with instructors that know what they're doing and know what they're
looking for. And if we see an issue owned that, we can go ahead and help you
through that issue, the amount of time you
need to spend training a puppy is pretty much
every moment that you're with him. He's learning something, Whether it's good or bad, it's gonna
be up Teoh. Now, when we teach formal obedience, I only
recommend teaching them for a few minutes at a time. As many times a day
is, you want Teoh, But when you're with the puppy and you not training
him in an actual session, you just want to make sure that you're not letting him do
things that you normally wouldn't want him doing. And what I suggest people do
is when you see the puppy doing something that you like, like he's just
laying down, hanging out, shooting on his bone, let him know he's
doing an excellent job doing that, because if he keeps getting a lot of attention for that
stuff and he's going to keep doing it more and that's
training right there, you you might not be sitting down and officially training the
dog at that moment. But it's a moment that they're learning. So so
you want to make sure you keep up with that?
Well, the Dog Training Academy of South Florida. We are a positive
training facility, and we do recommend that people use
whatever motivates their dog, and every dog is going to be
different. Some puppies love food, so we might say, Hey, use their puppy
food for training or Houston treats for training. Some puppies
love toys like group toys or balls, and we can use that to train them and
said, And some puppies just like petting and praise. So you really have
to look at each dog as an individual and find out what
motivates that dog. If your dog loves playing with another
dog, that's motivator. He can do something for you
before he gets to play with the other dog. If he loves going for a walk, we'll
just walking out the doors, a motivator so you can do something for you
before you get to go out the door. Now, if the puppy was doing something we
don't like him doing like maybe barking out the
window then we would just remove him from the
situation. If he waas pulling on the leash,
trying to get to another dog, we just wouldn't follow him. We wouldn't let him get
reinforce for pulling on the leash it that if you decided something that you don't
want him doing so with positive training. We do a lot of
management and will use things like Time outs
as a correction tool. But you really want to focus on all
the good things your puppy is actually doing. And you want to
figure out what motivates your puppy, and you want to make sure you're having your puppy work.
For that, we choose as
trainers to use positive training techniques, especially when
we're working with young puppies, because they're in a very critical
socialization period, and you really don't want to scare them
during that time and cause them to shut down. So with
positive based training techniques, we encourage the dog. Teoh, you know,
explore their options. If we like something, we re enforce it. If we
don't like something we don't and the dogs are very, very good at
learning what works for them and what does then in the soul maintain their
personalities, and they still have a lot of fun. And in the
future it makes it really fun to teach him things like agility and trick
training and doing all of that fun stuff that you'd want them.
Teoh he motivated to dio and have fun doing
here at the Dog Training Academy of South Florida. We usually have about 8 to
10 puppies in a class, and we like having a larger
class like that when we're training the puppies because it gives us a lot more options for
socialization with the other puppies. We confined puppies that match each other
personality wise a little bit better. Is that all puppies like
each other right away? And then on top of that, we do a lot of people
socialization to So everybody has a puppy in class, and now we have 8 to
10 people. Maybe they brought family members with some friends with
thumbs, and now we get to work on social skills with a variety of other people as
well. And that's one of the other benefits to coming in doing a group training
class. And then on top of that, you're working your puppy around
distractions right from the beginning. So you're teaching them. You know, it's
cool to look at that stuff, but it's better to pay attention and work with me as
well. So if you start training like bad early on, you
really shouldn't have an issue with them later as adults being able to focus and pay
attention to you. I
love training puppies because one, they're adorable, who
doesn't like a puppy and their arms and working with them.
And they're just so open toe learning. And I love
watching an animal that hasn't been trained
before. Formally, I love watching them learn. And then when my
clients come in and they're working with them, it's amazing to because they
just thought their puppy something. And that's communication. So you're working on
communicating with your dog. And what's better than that?
If you're like me, you get a kick out of looking at those funny pictures of pets
posted or reposted by friends online. You may
not want to admit it, but come on, we all know the truth.
We love looking at those great pet pics. They make a smile,
and if you think those photos air Good. You should see what a professional
photographer could do now. Not all photographers are willing to work with
pets, but the ones who are could get results that you'd be
hard pressed to capture with a regular over the counter camera
or even the camera on your phone. Seeing
is believing
more and more people today or treating pets like family. Thankfully,
and because they are family, we want to be able to represent them the same way that we
would represent our human family members. And so choosing a pet
photographer and someone who specializes in photographing pets, bringing out the
best and who they are. I'm and showcasing that for for
you to be ableto decorate your home with or even just have images for
you to look at is important and, you know, it just it's a
It's a skill in a talent that you know, I think more and more people want to bring
into their into their homes and into their lives.
There are lots of different challenges associated with pet photography. Obviously,
many pets are not well trained, and so getting them to sit or stay
before the camera is a challenge in itself. But even dogs who are
very well trained sometimes if they're doing their sits
in there stays. They don't look really animated or excited about the process, and they look
kind of bored. So getting that balance from them, being able to get
clean expressions from them, get genuine expressions from them. My
own one of my own dogs will give you what you know, an eye roll looking expression
every time you put her in front of the camera, and it's kind of just, you know, trying to
get through that and get an expression on your pet that is really going to be something that
remind you of who they are. I think the
most common mistakes that people make when they're trying to photograph their own pets are
a not filling the frame so that the subject is way too small and
pretty much lost in the frame itself and then not paying attention to where
the lighting is coming from. They're just that they don't
think about what direction is coming from, whether or not the light is really flattering or
even enhancing what they're shooting so that they just it ends up being a really
dark image. The other thing is that they're not patient enough to wait for
focus. And so you end up with very, very
blurry images. Or if the dog is not lit properly, then it's not
focusing because the cameras having a hard time finding the subject.
I use several different types of setups, depending on location, so I often will
do. Some studio in is in a home studio type thing with a
backdrop, and I like to shoot dogs in their own homes,
often whenever possible. Not every client's home is suitable
for being photographed, but if I can, I like she dogs in their homes because they're most
comfortable in that environment, and that is where you're gonna get them looking
like who they are on then. I like to also shoot dogs
outdoors. You get a very whimsical and a different look from them
when they're outdoors, enjoying, you know, sunshine in
the world around them. The equipment
that I use when I'm photographing pets is I will use a high India
SLR camera, um, full frame as opposed to a crop
sensor, which won't make sense to a lot of people. But it makes a big difference when it
comes to quality of your images. The quality of your lenses
also plays a huge, huge difference in what you're a graphic. So that
obviously helps. I used off camera lighting
studio flash when I can strobes, but often when I'm shooting on
location or in clients homes, I just use an off camera flash
on a tripod using either soft or
umbrellas, and um
and that's really it. That's pretty much all use.
I offer several different product options for clients once I do. Once I
shoot their pets or their families first, I offer what I call a
folio box, which is a collection of images so that they could get the most out
of their shoot, have as many images as they want from that, Um, and those
are basically five by seven images in a pi 10 matt
in a beautiful box for them to have at home so they could keep
those and look through them whenever they want. Teoh, uh, the other things we offer
our canvas wall art. So I used Kim for
that's one other option. I also offer what I call a trip Tik, which is
framed in three images in a frame. There's
also what I call accordion albums, which are small, like brag
books that they come in sets of three, and you can use them for
having your own images to carry with you. Show them to family and friends
and have them in your purse or in your pocket. And they're great for sharing with
grand parents and aunts and uncles and things like that, too.
I loved to photograph pets because I think it's amazing to capture
those souls behind those little those little bodies in those little
faces, and I think that that's absolutely phenomenal. I am a professional
trainer, so I worked with a lot of dogs. You know, obviously I came to pet
photography through photographing my own pets, and I love to
see images of them on walls and celebrating our
pets as family, and not just as
animals that happen to share space with us.
So if you're interested in having beautiful images of your pets, I
highly recommend you go out and seek out a professional photographer who
specializes in pet photography. Not every photographer does
not Every photographer has patients to work with pets. So make sure you find one
who does. And then you take the opportunity to really
enjoy having images of those pets for the rest of your lives because your
lives are definitely longer than there.
Well, that's all for this episode of Take pause. I sure hope you learned something new today
about caring for your pet. And don't forget to spay and
neuter. Visit volunteer and please be the
hero and adopt a new best friend from your local shelter.
When you do, you save the life of your new pet and the life of a
pet. You've made an opening for at the shelter for take
pause. I might. Moscatiello, you're heavier
than you look. Oh, my gosh. You got some sharp little
claws. What happened to your paw? Would you do to
your little plot down there, huh? You're gonna go back and create so
fast you don't want No,
wait. Just hold these little guys like babies. They turn
into little babies. Don't! Oh, my gosh! You're heavy.
Who? I should have worn a sweatband today.
Wow. Wow! You're gonna You're gonna go climbing?
No, no climbing. Let go!
One more time. One more time. Oh, my gosh.
You're so heavy from my
arms locked up. Okay, here we