INFORMATION FOR YOUR VET AFTER ADOPTION
When you adopt from Humane Indiana, your adopted pet is set-up for healthy living in its new home. Learn more about how OUR PETS’ HEALTH MATTERS. We also provide adopters with a full medical record and history so that you may share it with your pet’s veterinarian.
Shelter Medicine
Shelter medicine focuses on an entire population and infectious disease management versus an individual customized care plan. Shelter medicine does not aim to diagnose illnesses and instead focuses on preventing them. Humane Indiana does not have many of the same diagnostic tools that a full service clinic would as a result of this.
Vaccinations
Vaccination is an essential component of any shelter’s overall population health management. The likelihood of exposure to disease in a shelter is usually very high, and the consequences of infection can be severe for both the affected animal and the shelter population. A well-designed vaccine protocol can be a life-saving tool to keep shelter animals healthy. Some vaccines provide protection within a few days or even a few hours after administration, and can drastically reduce the frequency and severity of disease within the shelter and after adoption.
At Humane Indiana, vaccines must be administered within 15 minutes of arrival to the shelter. Puppies and kittens receive their first vaccines (DA2PP/RCP) at 4 weeks of age. Puppies and kittens will receive vaccines every two weeks until 18-20 weeks of age. When adult dogs and cats come to the shelter, if they have no record of vaccine history, they are vaccinated upon intake and get boosters two weeks later. Due to unknown past vaccine history, it is Humane Indiana shelter protocol to booster all adult dogs and cats.
Spay and Neuter
WE SPAY/NEYTER ALL, WE ALSO DO PEDIATRIC SPAY/NEUTER . . . With the risk of a potential disease within a shelter, it is best to get the animals spayed/neutered as quickly as possible so they have a lesser chance of getting sick. Spay and neuter in a shelter setting is done at the age of 6 weeks for puppies and 8 weeks, or 2 pounds, for kittens. In shelters, we want to get the animals into homes as quickly as possible because the risk of infectious disease is high. The longer a puppy or kitten stays in the shelter, the bigger of a chance they can get sick as they are exposed to shelter pathogens for a greater amount of time.
Preventative Medicine
Many animals arrive at the shelter with little to no medical history. Preventive medicine aims to prevent sickness before it happens. At Humane Indiana during intake, a full exam is performed to determine the condition of the animal (healthy or unhealthy). All animals receive vaccines, deworming, flea and tick prevention and heartworm prevention (if of age and heartworm negative) at the time of intake.
At the shelter, we do not wait to get a fecal before deworming because sometimes they are not in our care long enough to obtain a fecal sample and it is best practice to deworm all animals upon entrance to the shelter. We also don’t wait to do a fecal test as we know that fecal samples are not always reliable. The fecal sample tested on that particular day may not have parasitic eggs in it, but that does not mean that the animal is free of parasites completely, it just means that particular sample taken on that particular day had no signs of parasites. Therefore, deworming every animal on intake is the best way to prevent intestinal parasites from spreading through the kennel. Puppies and kittens can begin their deworming at the age of 2 weeks. Puppies and kittens will be dewormed every 2 weeks until they are 18-20 weeks old. Adult dogs and cats get dewormed the day of intake and two weeks later. The dewormer used by our shelter is Pyrantel pamoate. Pyrantel helps remove roundworms and hookworm species from the body.
Combo Testing
We do not routinely test incoming cats for FIV/FeLV because we have found through various studies that the risk of transmission is incredibly low and the disease itself is rare. FIV is only transmitted if an infected cat bites and punctures the skin of another cat. Because cats don’t often resort to aggression to solve conflict, transmission risk is low. The risk of transmission for FeLV is also low. FeLV infection is found worldwide in approximately 1-2% of the cat population. A cat with FeLV sheds virus in bodily fluids such as saliva, urine and feces. FeLV virus cannot survive longer than a few hours in the environment outside of the cat. Transmission requires a prolonged period of close contact between infected and susceptible cats, including bites. Susceptible cats are kittens and adult cats with weakened immune systems. Because these diseases are not common and transmission is low and often require further testing to confirm diagnosis, we do not routinely test shelter cats. We also do NOT test cats under 6 months old at all as they can often give false positives.
Behavior Medicine
Humane Indiana utilizes behavioral drug therapy when an animal is regularly experiencing signs of fear, anxiety or arousal such that it is significantly impacting the animal’s quality of life and/or impairing the animal’s ability to learn/ cope with the environment. Humane Indiana will also consider behavior medicine when an animal’s physiological responses to specific events or stimuli are so intense as to make learning (without the help of medications) difficult or impossible. Behavior medicine helps to provide relief from mental anguish and suffering, as in the case of anxiety and panic disorders, helps properly regulate an animal’s internal, physiological state, so that learning can take place, helps provide the ability to bridge the gap from one stressful situation till they have had time to decompressing in a more natural setting (adopted home) where the need for medication may be discussed with the adopter’s own vet.
Examples of Symptoms we look for before considering Behavioral medications
Anxiety/Fear
If an animal is continuing to show signs of fear/anxiety even with strategic housing and additional enrichment techniques are being provided and foster homes are unavailable, drug therapy is recommended to better help the animal cope with the environment. We will also address the concerns with our Behavior Department and create treatment plans but as a shelter we are limited in our ability to manage the animal’s stressors or even modify the behavior since a shelter environment is always changing and unpredictable.
Compulsive behaviors
These behaviors are known to be: repetitive, sustained, and behaviors out of context. These behaviors can be genetic disorders or brought on by frustration from prolonged periods of confinement. This is when drug therapy must be executed quickly to avoid the animals from furthering their mental decline
Humane Indiana’s Shelter and Adoption Center is located at 421 45th Avenue, Munster, IN 46321.