Jill Bowen

Jill Bowen has practiced veterinary medicine in England and Texas and has taught at Texas A&M. She lives with her veterinarian husband and two cats in Blacksburg. If you have a question, please write to her in care of The Roanoke Times, P.O. Box 540, Christiansburg, VA 24068, or send an e-mail to mjbowen@radford.edu

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I have a 4-year-old cat that loves to eat hard-boiled eggs. I chop one up for him to eat nearly every day. He eats Purina Chicken & Rice Formula dry food and about a tablespoon of Fancy Feast wet food each day. Should I limit the number of eggs he gets a week or is this a good source of protein for him?

While eggs are a very good source of protein for your cat, an egg a day is probably too much, especially in combination with the other food that you are feeding. A veterinary nutrition expert I consulted thought that a hard-boiled egg every other day or every third day would be ideal.

An average-size cat needs about 400 calories a day and the egg will provide approximately 80 to 100 calories. Cats are carnivores and as such need diets high in protein.

Most 4-year-old cats should weigh about 10 pounds. If your cat weighs considerably more (unless he is one of the larger cat breeds such as Maine coon), you should consider gradually reducing the amount of dry food so that he does not become overweight. Cats need to be introduced to a diet very gradually. A sudden reduction of food can cause them to suffer from a fatty liver.

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We have a large Labrador/shepherd mixed. She suffered a broken leg in October. She was overweight, and we switched from can food to dry dog food. However, the only way she will eat it is with milk. I use skim milk, but is it harmful to give a dog milk? She eats twice a day, 1¹₂ cups of dry food each time. Is this too much to feed her? She still weighs close to 120 pounds. She has recovered from the injury.

Many dogs love milk and provided that they are not lactose intolerant, a symptom of which is diarrhea, skim milk is fine.

Have you tried using a gravy mixture to wet the dry food? Water from cooked vegetables or even a little grated cheese sprinkled on the dry food and then wetted with warm water are all things that have been used to make dry food more palatable.

The calcium in the skim milk is helpful in the healing of the broken bone, but I think your dog is still somewhat overweight. While I like to feed big dogs twice daily, perhaps you could gradually cut back on the amount of food until she reaches a more optimum weight. Cutting the food back by 10 percent a week is a good ballpark figure.

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I have an Old English sheepdog. Is it OK to have him shaved for the summer? Also, he seems to get very dirty, but bathing him is quite a chore.

Some Old English sheepdogs grow a very dense undercoat in the summer, and it is important to groom it out. The topcoat of longer hairs acts as an insulating coat, helping keep the dog cool. To keep the undercoat under control, regular grooming is needed -- daily or at least several times a week -- especially in the problem areas around the chest, neck and behind the ears. The legs, too, can become tangled with dead hair. Do not shave your dog, because you will remove all the insulating capacity of the coarse topcoat.

It is permissible to scissor the coat down to a more manageable length. Try to avoid bathing, because this will make it even more difficult to remove knots, matting and dead coat. Most coats will come clean with a good brushing especially if a little dry shampoo is also used.