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My 9-year-old calico cat was diagnosed with mega colon three years ago. We originally brought her to the vet because she was lethargic and wouldn’t eat. She wasn’t using her cat box like normal and when she did she stayed in it a long time but was unable to go.

After the vet checked her out he determined that she had mega colon, to help relieve the cats discomfort the vet gave her an enema and had to manually remove the hardened built-up stool from her colon.

When we brought our cat back home at the end of the day she had to recuperate over night from her ordeal at the vets office. During the early afternoon of the next day she started eating her food like normal. This cat constipation happened to our cat several times since then. The vet prescribed a low-residue cat food for her that is designed to be easier for a cat in her condition to be able to pass. The low-residue comes in both wet and dry cat food so we gave our cat both. The low-residue food increased the time intervals that we had to take our cat in to the vet because she was constipated.

The vet then prescribed a medication for us to give our cat twice a day to help her move her bowels. The medication, Cisapride 5mg, was expensive at first because we had to buy it from the vet. After doing some research we were able to find a pharmacy to buy the Cisapride a lot cheaper. If you are using Cisapride now and buying it from your vet you can save a lot of money by buying it from: Monument Pharmacy, 719-481-2209 or 1-800-595-7565.

Our cat was on the medication and special food for approximately two and a half years, we had to take her to the vet at least once every six months for him to manually evacuate her bowels. Eventually she became blocked up sooner and sooner and we were taking her to the vet once every three weeks to get unblocked.

The vet decided that our cat was going downhill and it was time for her to have a portion of her colon that was bad, removed. She had the surgery in March 2009 and she is now happy and going to the bathroom on her own. The only thing I think that I would have done differently is get her the surgery sooner. The cost of the surgery was less than all of the vet visits so we would have saved money and the cat would have been happier not having to go through all of those trips to the vet.

Housebreaking a new puppy dog requires patience, persistence, and consistence on your part.  Without question, house training is one of the top priorities for dog owners. While we all expect puppies to require house training, there are many older dogs that have ongoing confusion about when and where to go to the bathroom.

One of the most frequent housebreaking challenges is when the dog seems to be house trained, but occasionally has accidents in a certain spot in the home, such as, an area of the house that may have smells of other animals. Some of the most common locations where these accidents to happen are high traffic areas where animal odors may linger, for example, formal dining rooms, guest rooms, basements, laundry rooms and hallways. No matter where your dog’s confusion spot is, you can train him to stop.

The first step in fixing this problem is to understand how a dog thinks regarding house training. Dogs are naturally clean animals generally don’t like to go to the bathroom where they live. Instinctively, even wild dogs will choose separate areas for eating, resting and eliminating.

Housebreaking your dog builds off of your dog’s natural instinct to keep his living space clean. This is why one of the first areas dogs learn to keep clean is their crate, usually followed by the rooms in your home where he spends the most time (kitchen, living room, etc.).

So why does your dog sometimes have accidents in a certain spot in the house? Usually, the accidents will happen in areas of the house where he doesn’t spend much time, such as, the formal dining room, guest room or garage. Since he doesn’t spend much time there, he may not feel like it is part of his home and think it is ok to use that area as a bathroom. In your dog’s mind, this spot is “other than where he lives” and therefore is about the same as eliminating outside. If you are housebreaking a puppy you could put wee wee pads in areas of the house where the puppy rarely goes, wee wee, or training pads will catch the dogs accidents making them easier to clean-up.

The important thing to understand about how your dog thinks is that he will tend to go to the bathroom in an area of the house that he doesn’t associate with his living area. One way to correct that in the mind of your dog is to spend lots of time in the less traveled area in your house with your pet, so your dog will feel like he does live there and will want to keep it clean.

Of course, be sure to clean the spot thoroughly with an odor neutralizer so your dog is not attracted to the spot due to old smells.

By taking steps to make your dog feel like he lives in all areas of your home, supervising him, practicing obedience and praising outdoor eliminating, you can prevent housebreaking problems so you’ll be able to trust and enjoy your pet much more.

A dog patio toilet-The Porch Potty is an easy to use, self-cleaning dog potty box. With the Porch Potty you no longer have to buy expensive wee wee pads for your dog and have to deal with throwing them away after they are used.

Whether you have a yard or not your dog will be able to go to the bathroom on the grass in the Porch Potty just like he would on a lawn without damaging the grass on an actual lawn. Just put a Porch Potty on your balcony or porch where it is close for your dog to get at and introduce the new potty to your dog.

For the purposes of training your dog to use the porch potty there is training sod that you can get to first train your dog with, since it will be real grass and smell like it your dog will naturally be attracted to it. Once you have your dog trained to use the indoor potty you can switch to a synthetic grass for permanent use. The synthetic grass is designed to last a long time so you don’t have to worry about keeping actual grass green the synthetic grass stays green and even smells like real grass.

No matter where you live, in a house or apartment you will have the convenience of not having to take your dog out at all hours, especially at night when it could be dangerous or bad weather. You simply bring the potty to your dog without having to bring the dog to the outdoors to use the bathroom.

Clean up is easy and fast with the Porch Potty, after the dog has used the “potty” just rinse the grass with a watering can to flush any doggy tinkle down the drain hose and that’s it. There is nothing to lift or carry so there is no risk of spilling anything in the house.