Anal Glands All dogs and cats have them

Have you ever noticed your pet scoots across the ground on their bottom?

Besides the funny comments that their owners make – your pet is actually trying to ease an irritation that it has around its anal area

As soon as most pet owners see this problem then the thought ‘worms’ comes into their minds. They then run off to the pet shop to spend a lot of money on worming tablets that are recommended and still the animal continues to rub its bottom along the ground.

This is no good – the owner thinks “must have been a bad batch of worming tablets”, OR – “the tablets that I bought must have been the wrong ones”. So they head off to another pet outlet and buy some more tablets to worm their pet.

Still, the animal continues to toboggan across the ground – “Must be something that I’m feeding the animal” the owner thinks. So they change the food, or the brand of food and still the animal has bouts of rubbing

“By crikey” they owner says to themselves as they head off to the chemist to buy the latest in ointments for the animals bottom. They invariably come home with enough ointment to treat the entire Broncos team for piles and then they start to apply this to the animals bottom on large amounts.

As fast as they rub it in – the animal licks it off. The end result is an animal with an itchy bottom and an anesthetized tounge. Also, a breath that will kill cockroaches at 30 paces from licking their anus.

As a last resort, they head off to the vet with their pet firmly in their arms. There they find out that the animal has impacted glands and in the majority of cases the animal is relieved of the irritation after the gland is expressed by the vet

There are a few tricks to expressing anal glands, and I do not encourage anyone who has not been shown how to do this job to try it. You can easily damage the gland or worse, burst it if you don’t know what you are doing.

So my advice to anyone who has their animal scooting along on their bottom for more than 24 hours, is to take you pet  to the vet and get the glands expressed properly

It can save you a lot of money and heartache in the long term