By Dr. Sarah Mitchell, DVM — Reviewed by The Veterinarian’s Bag Editorial Board Professional dental cleaning dramatically reduces plaque and tartar. Ask most owners what a gut supplement is for, and they will describe digestion, stool quality, perhaps immunity. Rarely will they mention the mouth — and that omission is the point. Periodontal disease is…
By Dr. Sarah Mitchell, DVM — Reviewed by The Veterinarian’s Bag Editorial Board Active dogs benefit from consistent gut-health support. Few comparisons come up more often in a veterinary consultation than this one: FortiFlora, Proviable, or one of the newer postbiotic formulas? The first two are the most veterinarian-recommended probiotic brands in North America. The…
By Dr. Sarah Mitchell, DVM — Reviewed by The Veterinarian’s Bag Editorial Board Routine vaccination at a veterinary clinic. Few areas of companion-animal nutrition generate as much clinical confusion as the “biotics” family. Owners arrive at the examination room having read that probiotics are essential, that postbiotics are the future, that synbiotics are superior, and…
By Dr. Sarah Mitchell, DVM — Reviewed by The Veterinarian’s Bag Editorial Board A visual dental check before brushing. Canine oral disease is nearly ubiquitous: the majority of dogs show some degree of periodontal pathology by three years of age, and the downstream consequences — chronic pain, tooth loss, and the well-documented association between periodontal…
By Dr. Sarah Mitchell, DVM — Reviewed by The Veterinarian’s Bag Editorial Board Daily supplementation is easiest when built into feeding. When a veterinarian reaches for a gut-health product, three approaches dominate the conversation: Purina’s FortiFlora, Nutramax’s Proviable-DC, and — increasingly — postbiotic formulations. Owners who have been handed a FortiFlora prescription or a Proviable…
By Dr. Sarah Mitchell, DVM — Reviewed by The Veterinarian’s Bag Editorial Board A healthy dog — the goal of evidence-based supplementation. The dog supplement aisle is organized by symptom: a joint chew, a skin chew, a calming chew, a dental chew, a gut chew. Each product promises to fix one thing. This single-target logic…
By Dr. Sarah Mitchell, DVM — Reviewed by The Veterinarian’s Bag Editorial Board Ear examination during a canine wellness check. There is a deep intuition in the supplement world that “live is better.” A probiotic, the reasoning goes, must be alive to work — alive to colonize, alive to compete, alive to confer benefit. Heat…
The canine gut-health supplement market is vast, confusing, and largely unregulated in the way owners imagine. Faced with a wall of products promising digestive wellness, immune support, and microbiome balance, most owners — and many clinicians — lack a systematic way to separate credible products from marketing. This checklist provides one. It distills the principles…
Antibiotic-associated diarrhea (AAD) is one of the most common iatrogenic problems in small animal practice. A dog presents for an unrelated infection, receives an appropriate antibiotic, and within days develops soft stools or diarrhea that resolves only after the course ends. The mechanism is usually not a drug allergy or direct toxicity — it’s collateral…
Few diagnostic questions in small animal gastroenterology generate as much confusion as the distinction between inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and adverse food reactions. The confusion is understandable: the two conditions present with overlapping — often identical — clinical signs, they share pathophysiological features, and they can coexist in the same patient. Yet the distinction matters,…