Dr. Cathy Alinovi DVM

11/07/2025

Can I feed my cat tuna??? Everything You Need to Know About Tuna:

Is it dangerous? How much can I feed? I heard it is high in mercury? What about salt in it? Can I feed the tuna in oil? . This is just a list of some of the questions I’ve received about tuna. Especially when feeding tuna to cats. It’s crazy isn’t it? Because look […]

10/31/2025

I mean, do you want to take care of things yourself at home? Or do you want to rely on the western medical system?

And you do know that the way prices have been set, has been determined by economics? The majority of people can afford to pay a certain amount. So the emergency room makes an outrageous amount of money.

Here are the questions I’ve received this weekend:
A cat pooped blood.
A dog stepped on a bee.
A dog ate an entire package of blue cheese.
A dog stole freeze dried treats off the counter and bit into a desiccant pack.

Each one of these, both AI and Dr. Google recommended going to the emergency room (you do know why, right? Who do you think writes this “common wisdom“? That’s right. Emergency room veterinarians.)

OK, so what happened with the four emergencies that I helped with this weekend? Read the rest in the comment below:

10/22/2025

GRAIN IS NOT AUTOMATICALLY BAD.

I want to invite you to read my latest monthly article at Happy Healthy Dog. (LINK BELOW.)

Happy Healthy Dog is a new free online resource focused on helping you find peace of mind, education and solutions for your dog's physical, mental and behavioral health.

I was very honored to be invited to be a Happy Healthy Dog featured expert!

My latest article is focused on GRAIN... which people might be SURPRISED to learn I DON'T always recommend against.
Read it here:

By Dr Cathy Alinovi, DVM. Grains aren’t automatically harmful. Really, not always. And there’s quite a bit of controversy about grain vs grain-free – I’m not going down the rabbit hole that says gr

10/16/2025

HITTING A WALL GETTING YOUR PET'S MEDICAL RECORD? GETTING THE RUN AROUND? THIS IS A MUST READ:

I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve been told by a client that their standard veterinarian wouldn’t release records directly to the client. The official “ruling” was that the office would only send the records to another veterinarian. Crazy right?? . I’ve also been told the veterin...

10/14/2025

If you've read many of my posts you MIGHT think I hate grain. I don't. (Not always anyway.) Here's proof:

Not always, anyways. . Anybody who has read my rice post (My Beef with Rice) probably thinks I hate all grain. It’s not totally true. . If you reread my rice post, you’ll see that what I’m talking about in that post relates to when your dog is sick, and you are not sure why. […]

09/30/2025

DO CATS NEED WATER FOUNTAINS?

What’s the idea behind a water fountain?

We’ve been told that if water is moving, cats are more likely to drink it. And it’s probably because cats find it entertaining to watch the water move. (Especially after eating catnip.)

The bubbling water also introduces some air, so it may change the flavor a little bit.

And most of these little fountains actually have a filter. So it’s highly filtered water.

So there are lots of reasons fountains make water taste better for a cat…But let’s talk about the real issue here.

The issue is about cats needing water.

And how much water they need.

Cats who eat dry cat food need excessive amounts of water because dry cat food is:well first, dry of course and second, loaded with salt to convince the cat to drink extra water. It’s a double whammy.

And anybody who has had cats for a period of time understands that kidney failure is a very common issue in cats. A lot of it’s because they don’t drink enough water. So the water fountain manufacturers found an opportunity to sell more fountains to cat owners. That’s great. But ultimately the problem goes back to the food. Cats should not be eating dry food. There is absolutely no reason. Period.

Cats eat dry food because it’s convenient for us humans. Because the kibble companies make a ton of money recycling garbage and calling it cat food. And ultimately these cats get hooked on junk food and it’s next to impossible to get cats to eat healthy food once they’ve been addicted to kibble.

So if you feel like your cat doesn’t drink enough water. Or maybe you’ve been told that your cat needs water because the kidney numbers are slightly elevated in the bloodwork. Let’s look at the basis. Is it because your cat doesn’t have a water fountain? Or is it because your cat is eating kibble and should be eating real meat? (Cooked or raw, doesn’t matter to me – needs to be real food – ‘cuz cats are our kids and they shouldn’t eat garbage.)

This post is not about what that meat-based diet should look like. This post is about water fountains.

Still seeing patients in Tampa, Clearwater, and virtually.

09/19/2025

How Many Times A Day Should I Feed My Puppy or Kitten?

Common guidance says three times a day.

There’s even some guidance for the really tiny little teacup type dogs that they need to be fed every two hours.

Let’s really look at this. And let’s also look at when we should stop feeding our puppies like puppies and feed them like adults.

First thing to look at is why do we recommend multiple meals a day?

Certainly when puppies and kittens are born, they nurse every couple of hours. But by the time they’re weaned, their mom is not spending all day every day with them so they don’t get the nurse every two hours anymore. By the time they are weaned, they’re lucky if their mom feeds them three or four times a day. Which suggests that new owners should feed no more than three or four times a day.

On the other hand, look at how the breeder feeds puppies and kittens: they leave a smorgasbord of food available 24/7. Can you say buffet?

Yet nobody does this with their human babies. Maybe they shouldn’t. Maybe they do. Maybe human babies always have a bucket of cereal to chew on these days. My analogy might be failing!

But maybe you see my point. If these “babies” constantly have cereal available, they’re constantly carb loading. Which actually makes their body dependent on constant intake of sugar for energy. So if they go the least amount of time without eating, their blood sugar drops. Limp puppy syndrome. The problem is more pronounced in very little dogs.

I don’t think it’s because they are little. I think it’s because we baby them. And because we baby them, we don’t encourage their bodies to move and develop muscle, unlike a bigger dog.

I love having my little 4 pound mini dog. But she has muscle! She has metabolism. She only eats twice a day.

Proper nutrition, a meat-based diet for these carnivores, is how their bodies properly regulate blood sugar. (Meat is NOT 100% protein. Meat also has fat – we like fat – fat provides calories/energy and helps developing brains. There’s also quite a bit of water and nutrients in meat.)

By six months old, dogs and cats should be down to two meals a day. If you really want to baby them and insist on three. I’m OK with that. But let’s make sure baby isn’t getting fat.

Certainly by the time they are a year old, there’s no need to be feeding more than two times a day. It becomes a matter of the owner’s wanting to feed extra meals.

Again, I’m not going to disparage your desire to pamper your babies. But understand it’s not a requirement for their health to eat more than twice a day.
And certainly by a year old, there’s no need (except emotionally).

Still seeing patients in Tampa, Clearwater, and virtually.

09/11/2025

VITAMIN D, PETS & THE SUN

It’s good common knowledge in humans that exposure to the sun helps our bodies make vitamin D. Vitamin D is needed for proper calcium metabolism, thus bone density and bone growth. Hormone production and fights depression. May fight cancer.

There’s a good long list, easily available, and even fairly accurate, on the Internet of the benefits of vitamin D in the human body.

Well, dogs and cats need vitamin D also. Within the last decade so, a few laboratories have begun testing vitamin D levels in pets.

Some animals with chronic disease, chronic inflammation, will have low vitamin D. Cancer patients might have low vitamin D.

I’ve had some pet parents tell me that that’s the reason they put their dog out in the sun.

And it’s a very loving thought on the part of the pet owner.

But that’s not how vitamin D works and dogs and cats!

Look at them.

Except for Chinese Crested, Sphinx, and a couple of other rare breeds, cats and dogs are covered in fur.

They do not make vitamin D from sitting in the sun!

They get vitamin D from food. Conventional pet food has to supplement with synthetic vitamin D. Fresh pet food often uses fish oil to provide vitamin vitamin D. Egg yolks are another good source. And there are some kinds of mushrooms that are grown under the sun and they can have quite high levels of vitamin D.

So it’s a great test to check: blood vitamin D levels. Catching low levels early might head off or slow down inflammatory disease.
It’s nice to supplement with whole foods.

And please be aware you can swing too far the other direction and give too much vitamin D! In fact, there have been multiple errors in formulation in the kibble industry, and even canned pet food, such the animals were given too much vitamin D and the opposite happened. Toxicity.

Signs of too much vitamin D include:
vomiting
lethargy
diarrhea
kidney disease
heart dysfunction
death

As long as they have shade and water available, I think it’s great to share sunshine with your pets. It’s not going to change their vitamin D content in their body.

Want to read more about Vitamin D toxicity? See the links on our post in the comments.

09/05/2025

You know what a hotspot looks like right? It’s red, and probably wet because your dog has been chewing at it. And if you put your hand on it, it’s warm.

Thus, it’s called a hotspot.

But if you go to the regular Veterinarian, they’re going to say “oh my gosh there’s infection! Oh my goodness, we have to do antibiotics in the whole body, we have to do antibiotics on the spot, blah, blah blah!”

Note they hardly ever wonder, “Well, why is there a hotspot in the first place?”

These days they might give some of those medicines that stop itching, either an injection of c5t0p0in5 or a prescription of ap4q63l, or better both. (Can you say cha-ching?)

So, let’s first talk about what to do at the site of the hotspot. Then let’s figure out what could possibly have been causing it so you can get to the bottom of the scenario and hopefully avoid it in the future.

First, your vet is not 100% wrong when they say that there’s infection. It’s just that putting an antibiotic in the entire body when you have a little 3 in. area that is infected is excessive. Hot spots are typically a minimized, localized, and superficial infection.

And why is it infected? Because somebody has these tiny little nibbler teeth and gets a little itchy and goes nibble nibble nibble nibble nibble nibble, and they break open the skin. Think of a little kid with a really itchy mosquito bite. They can’t leave it alone. They self mutilate because pain is less annoying than itchiness.

And in all of that nibbling and scratching, we have broken open the blood vessels in the outer part of the skin. And there’s a tiny little bit of blood, with a big inflammatory reaction. This is how the body heals. It can heal itself, believe it or not.

So if your precious baby has a hotspot somewhere on the body, let’s clip the hair in the area. Wash it! Seriously, wash it with soap and water! “The solution to pollution (infection) is the dilution (soap and lots of water).”

If there’s a little local infection, wash it. Multiple times a day. Imagine if your two legged child fell down on the sidewalk and got a little bit of road rash. What would you do? You would wash it. Dry it. Then you might put a little bit of topical antibiotic ointment on it. Perfect.

Let’s put that on your dog.

Sure, you can use aloe, you can use coconut oil, you can use those antibiotic ointments that are made for humans that are totally safe for dogs as well. In most cases, it’s more a matter of keeping it clean and dry.

Sometimes you have to do something terrible like use a doughnut or a lampshade around your dog’s neck so he can’t get at it and itch it.

And this really does tend to be a dog thing. Very rarely do cats get hotspots. This is a dog thing.

In some cases, if you need it to dry out faster, you can do apply a powder of bentonite clay after washing. It’s actually sold as a face mask for women, but be sure the only ingredient is that: bentonite clay.

Like magic, most of these hot spots go away in a couple of days. Still, even with my approach, you’ll see that all we’ve done is treat the symptoms here. We haven’t done anything to figure out the cause.

There’s a list of things that could contribute and this is where I help people get to the bottom of ANY condition. For hotspots:
It could be pollen. Which means we need to be giving frequent baths. And if you’re worried about bathing frequency, I wrote a post about that.

It could actually be arthritis. So look at where the hotspot is. Is it over a hip joint? Or knee?

Could it be a bug bite or a bee sting? Dogs get those. They step on bugs. They find fleas.

Sometimes it’s a food problem. Usually it’s a kibble allergy. I would expect ear issues in most cases to go along with that.
Some dogs are quite easy. Fixing the diet and frequent bathing can go a long way to help with this situation.

OK, so there’s your overview of what a hotspot looks like, why your dog creates it and how to address it at home without spending literally hundreds of dollars at the veterinarian covering up symptoms. And a few things to think about that maybe underlying causes.

Still seeing patients in Tampa, Clearwater, and virtually.

08/22/2025

HAVE YOU EVER CONSIDERED RUNNING "TITERS" ON YOUR PUP? here are the nuts and bolts of that decision: https://happyhealthydog.org/2025/08/06/so-you-want-to-run-titers/

I love being a Happy Healthy Dog magazine regular contributor. Happy Healthy Dog is a new free online resource focused on helping you find peace of mind, education and solutions for your dog's physical, mental and behavioral health. Read my latest column here:

By Dr Cathy Alinovi, DVM. Awesome—sounds like you’ve been diving into some research. You’ve likely come across the idea that a blood test—called a titer—can measure your dog’s antibody levels, sho

08/13/2025

ELEVATED BOWLS FOR YOUR DOG? Answers here: https://healthypawsibilities.com/should-i-buy-an-elevated-dish-for-my-dog/

07/21/2025

How often should you get blood work done on your pet? The answers you did NOT expect... HERE:

This is a trick question! And to answer it, there are several other questions you should ask yourself first. Let’s start with the purpose of blood work. If you’re trying to identify problems before they happen, bloodwork actually is not the way to do it. Bloodwork is looking for pathology, which...