I just want to say that this is an beautiful example of the hacker ethos being put to use. The creator got into a new field, saw a hole in information, and put together a neat, useful resource. Just perfect.
Actually, I was having this exact same issue last week, as my dog was sick and I found myself scouring google for even a semi-organized resource. Excellent job!
I don't want to be a downer, but I don't like this concept. I understand the desire to educate yourself about the medicine you need for your pet, but the best thing you can do is find a good vet that you trust to give you this advice. In fact the mechanism that you have where by you allow the user to buy said medication from Amazon makes it seem like your putting this list out as an alternative to proper medical care.
There is much more to taking care of a pet then reading the packages of some medication and then buying it from amazon.
This is terrible advice. Whether it's for your own heath or your pet's you should always educate yourself. Doctors/veterinarian are heavily influenced by drug/pet supply companies. From her first days veterinary school, my girlfriend was constantly lobbied and given perks and educational material from the industry. It's not that she's not a good vet, but the system is corrupt.
In the case of my grandfather, multiple times we caught the doctor prescribing expensive prescriptions when more effective generics were available. In the case of my dog, my local vet pushes for Purina pet food[1] and vaccines when my doc is regularly titered. She is oblivious or fails to acknowledge the risks of a Lyme Vaccine carries [2] and serious allergic reactions that her recommended flea control can cause.
The only way to guarantee the best health care for yourself and your pet, is to educate yourself.
Of course, but you can't just mix and match these medications. Some have serious side effects and can't be used repeatedly, and some have interactions with other meds.
You should just ask your vet. Vets will take into account the insects in your area, as well as your dog's coat and lifestyle.
It'd be a really bad idea to just load your dogs up on meds. The risk of these parasites varies greatly by geographical region. For example, in the pacific northwest, there's no need to protect against heartworms.
>>Is there an algorithm that would find the minimum subset of these to cover every parasite/bug?
This is the same problem we have in embedded systems diagnostics. We used to make a list of failure modes, and then a list of diagnostic tests. A given test may detect multiple different failures and I've made grids exactly like this. I always advocate for finding the minimum set of tests to detect all failures (to minimize false positives and simplify software). I was going to make the same point in this case, but parent already did.
To be clear, sometimes it's sufficient to detect failure without knowing exactly what the problem was. For specific diagnostics you may want POST to handle that, but at runtime you may only need to detect that something has failed.
Awesome. Problem found, solution created. See, you don't need to create ridiculously overfunded ( - exuse my language -) bullshit products in order to "put a dent in the universe". Just try provide a solution to a real problem. Thumbs up!
Trifexis is awesome and what I use for my active dog (and we have never had flea problems). The problem is that the pill smells very, very strongly of mold. I have to smash up the pill and mix it into peanut butter for my dog to even look at it. I also administer it outside and use gloves, because it will have your house smelling of mold for days. With a smaller dog (thus smaller dose/pill), you could force it down, but a 30+ lb dog will have too big of a pill and won't eat it normally for any reason.
Wow, It's amazing how different my experience with trifexis is. My dog eats them like they are a treat(wags her tail, chews them completely, etc). I've never really noticed the mold smell.
Does your dog throw up often when taking Trifexis? I was considering making the switch, but my parents dogs both have had a really hard time with it. Eventually they (my parents) gave up on Trifexis and went back to topical stuff because the vomiting was so bad.
To that end, I wouldn't mind maybe an accompanying table to the OP's medical list that maybe listed the negative side effects of some of these treatments. Might be a bit too much to ask though.
That's very surprising to hear. We have the 50+ lb dose, and I've never noticed a smell. My dog eats it like a treat without any coercion or disguising.
A Veterinarian with reasonable prices is greatly valued. So
valuable, with the right marketing I feel people would leave their estates to your business; I would. That's all I really have to say to
Veterinarians, but I feel a lot of you need to ask for some businees advise. I see a lot of people skipping the trips to the vet because they just can't afford the high priced boutiqe veterinarian practice. I know people are inherintly cheep, but I think most just want to be treated fair. I also
know what happens when vet hospitals offer too much for free.
(SFSPCA offered a "no kill" policy. People started to abandon their animals, and ruined a great organization.)
I will pass along-- I've always had big dogs. A Bullmastiff, and mixed breed American Bulldog/Pit. They
look sturdy, but they are fragile. The purebred Bull Mastiff was
always at the veterinarian. She had multiple problems from
huge paws that attracted Foxtails/grass seeds to Entropian.
I had a great income so going to the vet was no problem. I
now have a low income and thank goodness for the mixed breeds.
They are still fragile, but don't need to go to the vet as often. I still hear vets telling big breed dog owners about
the benefits of exercise. Yes, exercise the dog, but let them choose when and where. All my dogs were over 100lbs, and when I exercized them too much their bodies fell apart.
For the Bull Mastiff, a walk around a small lake was too much
on a summer day with a gallon of water. She just dropped half way around. I sat with her until dusk, and then we just
made it back to the car. My point is they, especially the Bulldog breeds are fragile.
I'm using NexGard(not listed - just approved in 2014) and seems to be working fine so far - but since its new there isn't much data on it. I preferred the oral over a topical so I didn't have to worry about topical applications transferring to the home, others, clothing etc.
Interesting to read this thread to see that lots of people have to medicate their dogs. Is this a regional thing? I've had my dog 8 years and apart from the required injections it has never needed any medication.
Nice! It'd be helpful if one could check the column headers for the things you need to treat, and then the list is filtered for what is effective against those :)
If the place you adopted the dog from didn't give you information, you should talk to a vet about what parasites are common in your region and what treatment options there are. --Many times vets will offer a couple of options for non-prescription treatment and prevention.
If you're in a region that doesn't have fleas and ticks, there's no reason to treat your dog for them. The same goes for many of the other parasites listed.
Very cool. Nerd question -- can you talk a bit about how you made it? Tech stack used, etc.? Always curious about that stuff, especially when on Show HN.
Nice site. Interesting to see the information clearly laid out like that. This should exist for everything as a decision making tool.
It's not an either-or. We have a vet, but we still do our research on everything they recommend to understand the decisions that are being made. It all works very well for us. We're informed, but we also have a trusted adviser.
Good first step, but you should research on your own. Vets can get kickbacks for pushing one and/or may not be up to date on all the latest studies and products.
You'd be surprised how bad vets (and doctors) can be with drugs. (Wife a pharmd.. and they drive her nuts)
Always value their professional opinion and experience, but never treat it as law
You don't need to protect from everything. Several of these issues are so rare that you're better off treating them than preventing them and your dog suffering side effects.
You should really just talk to your vet. There's way more to it than a simple chart. They know the pharmacology, effectiveness, and necessity of all these drugs.
My girlfriend is a vet, and our dogs only take Trifexis. It works for our animals, their lifestyles, and our part of the country. Her prescription might change for an animal with short fur that goes hunting a lot. It all just depends.
Not sure but some medication will interact negatively with others. Vets will usually tell you to give the heartworms medicine one day, and the flea one the next day, but not both at the same time.
My first idea was that some of the pesticides in different medications might block or interact with each other, which is the reason why you usually get conditioner and shampoo in two bottles (the chemicals in most conditioners are cationic while the ones in shampoos are anionic)
Having now looked through quite a few Wikipedia articles of the pesticides used, I can't find no such statements... Except that I learned that some of these have a vague link to CCD.
Another thing is that the application time-scale and use-cases between these drugs differs - some you give every 6 months or so as prophylaxis, some you only give when there's an actual infection.
Would be really awesome if there was some way to provide feedback on the effectiveness. My experience with cat medicine showed that what it says on the package is not to be trusted (for example all the "natural" stuff against fleas was completely useless)
In your research, did you explore other common immunizations like bordetella, parvo, rabies? (I realize these wouldn't fit into any overlapping things like you have here, I'm just curious if you might add it at some point.)
The main question is: In what area/country are the parasites resistant against those toxins. e.g. in Bremen neither advantage nor frontline works against fleas.
[+] [-] Amorymeltzer|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bl4ckcontact|11 years ago|reply
Actually, I was having this exact same issue last week, as my dog was sick and I found myself scouring google for even a semi-organized resource. Excellent job!
[+] [-] 2color|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] r1ch|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sunflower55|11 years ago|reply
Her second comment was that the matrix seemed outdated, most meds were available in oral form now.
[+] [-] feld|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dkhenry|11 years ago|reply
There is much more to taking care of a pet then reading the packages of some medication and then buying it from amazon.
[+] [-] lbenes|11 years ago|reply
In the case of my grandfather, multiple times we caught the doctor prescribing expensive prescriptions when more effective generics were available. In the case of my dog, my local vet pushes for Purina pet food[1] and vaccines when my doc is regularly titered. She is oblivious or fails to acknowledge the risks of a Lyme Vaccine carries [2] and serious allergic reactions that her recommended flea control can cause.
The only way to guarantee the best health care for yourself and your pet, is to educate yourself.
[1] http://www.aplusflintriverranch.com/define-menufoods-petfood...
[2] http://www.alldogsgym.com/health-and-nutrition/articles/heal...
[+] [-] akshaykarthik|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smt88|11 years ago|reply
You should just ask your vet. Vets will take into account the insects in your area, as well as your dog's coat and lifestyle.
[+] [-] meritt|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] morsch|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] phkahler|11 years ago|reply
This is the same problem we have in embedded systems diagnostics. We used to make a list of failure modes, and then a list of diagnostic tests. A given test may detect multiple different failures and I've made grids exactly like this. I always advocate for finding the minimum set of tests to detect all failures (to minimize false positives and simplify software). I was going to make the same point in this case, but parent already did.
To be clear, sometimes it's sufficient to detect failure without knowing exactly what the problem was. For specific diagnostics you may want POST to handle that, but at runtime you may only need to detect that something has failed.
[+] [-] imaginenore|11 years ago|reply
Revolution + Sentinel Spectrum + (Flea4X or K9 Advantix II)
[+] [-] NiklasPersson|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] zumtar|11 years ago|reply
Could you please add Advantix, Scalibor, Kiltix and Foresto for us Europeans :)
We use most of the others here also, but those I have listed above are used alongside the ones you have listed.
[+] [-] madsushi|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crisdux|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cantankerous|11 years ago|reply
To that end, I wouldn't mind maybe an accompanying table to the OP's medical list that maybe listed the negative side effects of some of these treatments. Might be a bit too much to ask though.
[+] [-] el_benhameen|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] joshu|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] marincounty|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] clumsysmurf|11 years ago|reply
http://www.simplesteps.org/greenpaws-products
I'm using NexGard(not listed - just approved in 2014) and seems to be working fine so far - but since its new there isn't much data on it. I preferred the oral over a topical so I didn't have to worry about topical applications transferring to the home, others, clothing etc.
[+] [-] throwaway5752|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] k-mcgrady|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] robwilliams|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] edmack|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tallanvor|11 years ago|reply
If you're in a region that doesn't have fleas and ticks, there's no reason to treat your dog for them. The same goes for many of the other parasites listed.
[+] [-] nlh|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unreal37|11 years ago|reply
It's not an either-or. We have a vet, but we still do our research on everything they recommend to understand the decisions that are being made. It all works very well for us. We're informed, but we also have a trusted adviser.
[+] [-] GFK_of_xmaspast|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] chrisan|11 years ago|reply
You'd be surprised how bad vets (and doctors) can be with drugs. (Wife a pharmd.. and they drive her nuts)
Always value their professional opinion and experience, but never treat it as law
[+] [-] JoshGlazebrook|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smt88|11 years ago|reply
You should really just talk to your vet. There's way more to it than a simple chart. They know the pharmacology, effectiveness, and necessity of all these drugs.
My girlfriend is a vet, and our dogs only take Trifexis. It works for our animals, their lifestyles, and our part of the country. Her prescription might change for an animal with short fur that goes hunting a lot. It all just depends.
[+] [-] laurent123456|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] a_bonobo|11 years ago|reply
Having now looked through quite a few Wikipedia articles of the pesticides used, I can't find no such statements... Except that I learned that some of these have a vague link to CCD.
Another thing is that the application time-scale and use-cases between these drugs differs - some you give every 6 months or so as prophylaxis, some you only give when there's an actual infection.
[+] [-] jakobegger|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] smt88|11 years ago|reply
Neem oil, for example, can kill your pet. You should never use neem oil anywhere near an animal.
[+] [-] jat850|11 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kephra|11 years ago|reply
And I'm missing ARDAP by Shell in this list.