PSA: Travel to other countries

If you are planning on traveling abroad, you may want to check the CDC Traveler's Health website in addition to talking to your doctor.

PSA: Vaccines are important

School takes up a quite a bit of time, and one of the things that we keep learning about are the importance of vaccines. So, I thought I would share. They help prevent infections, and complications of infections. For example, the chickenpox vaccine is now given in order to help prevent shingles later in life and other complications of chickenpox. The whooping cough vaccine (as part of dTP) is given to adults to prevent whooping cough in infants -- which is potentially fatal or could require prolonged hospitalization.  So vaccines are important (including the old ones)! :) Additionally, as long as people keep getting vaccinated -- hopefully we can prevent some of the "old" diseases from making a come back (ex. polio, measles, etc.). Unfortunately, some of these diseases (ex. measles, polio) may now be on the rise because of decreased immunization rates.

This past week, I was introduced to this song (The vaccine song): http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u1xw0Ob5bqs which I found funny/cute. Hope you enjoy!

Public service announcement (PSA) of sorts

Last week, I took Hondo to the vet for his annual check-up/shots and heartworm test. As I no longer live near my old vet, I went to a local vet teaching hospital and was taught a little bit about how to better care for my dog during the appointment. One of the things I learned, I thought I would share since it rather surprised me...

Prohibited foods for dogs:

Grapes, Raisins, Avocados, Onions, and Garlic.

If your dog is like mine, they sometimes get bits of table food from time-to-time... so, I appreciated them taking the time to go through this list with me. I was only able to say, "no chocolate?" when asked what foods my dog should not be eating.

**********************************************************************************

Outside of that, I was given a few other pointers, that seem specific to a pug/breed with short face and lots of facial folds. I appreciated them telling me how to better care for my dog, because I do not recall anyone doing that in the past with me! :)

Identity Crisis

Lately, I have been getting a number of automated phone messages on my cell phone... and I have been immediately hanging up on the caller. I frequently get these messages from the Red Cross, etc. Well, the pesky company started to call my work number... and I took notice... it was my credit card company.

When I called the company back, I was transferred to their fraud investigation department. The department starts asking questions, like: Have you recently been buying auto parts in Equador? Do you know someone in Equador? Have you been travelling out of the country recently?

Thank goodness for such flags on the account! Evidently, someone somewhere made a copy of my card and has been using it in South America. They had made 2 transactions to date on the account, little by almost any standard (totalling $50.00 US), but the second purchase was larger than the first and there were 8 additional purchaces that had not been posted to our account (as of the time of my call). It's kind of scary that my identity and the identity of my card could be stolen, even when I shred or burn mail, and don't make many purchases online. But, thank goodness for fraud investigation departments... and their willingness to harass the customer!