pet connection

Dr. Paula Terifaj is a veterinarian who’s fighting against breed-specific legislation. A profile in the Orange County Register tells why, even after being bitten by a pit bull she was fostering, she will not give up on the breed:

Last fall, she started a Web site, www.roverlution.org. And she organized a “Luv-a-bully” dog march to bring attention to her fight.

She led the second annual march Oct. 28 in Brea. It attracted about 100 dog owners marching with 50 dogs along Brea Boulevard. Similar marches were held in Missouri, Colorado, Indiana and Alabama.

“I am not advocating everybody should own a pit bull,” Terifaj says. “They aren’t for everybody.”

Because the dogs have been bred to be fighters, they take special attention, socialization and training to ensure they don’t focus that aggression on people, she says. That takes a lot of time, love and patience.

“I’m only saying that the entire breed should not be destroyed because of a fear caused by a few bad owners.”

And on MSNBC.com, an update on Vivi, the show dog who escaped from her crate at Kennedy airport when headed home from the Westminster Kennel Club dog show. Is she alive? People keep seeing her, which makes her another of New York’s animal mysteries:

According to a map published Nov. 18 by The New York Times, Vivi was reported at more than 45 different locations before Aug. 7, when the sightings suddenly stopped, raising fears that she might be dead or left the area.

Richard Gentles, director of administration for Animal Care & Control of New York City, said his organization dispatched rescue teams after “five or six calls” on Vivi in the past several months, but all proved negative.

“For a dog like that to be able to survive this long would be very difficult unless somebody picked it up,” Gentles said. “I hope it’s true that somebody has the dog and doesn’t recognize it. It does happen.”

And finally, a New York Times piece on the use of human cancer drugs in veterinary medicine:

[P]et owners are enrolling their dogs in medical trials meant to benefit humans and animals alike. And some animal advocates are applauding the development.

Most of the trials, often sponsored by drug companies or medical device makers, involve pets with cancer — a leading natural cause of death in older dogs — in which the animals receive groundbreaking drugs or other treatments that are eventually meant for people.

This morning, in deference to the fact that I’ll most likely have time only for a fast potty walk for the dogs at dinnertime, I took my Scottish Deerhound, Rebel, and my Borzoi, Kyrie, for a long walk.

I live on the edge of a large urban park. It’s a beautiful day, cool and sunny and crisp, exactly the day you’d order for Thanksgiving.

We saw one other dog, a beautifully groomed little white bichon frise who thought Rebel and Kyrie were about to become his new best friends. He apparently had no idea he was the size of their heads. Gotta love small dogs.

However, as someone who has had dozens of giant dogs and a few large ones, I have a word of advice for small dog owners: Admire your little tough guy’s attitude all you want, but please don’t let him run up to two leashed giant breed dogs and jump up and bark in their faces.

Fortunately Rebel and Kyrie just stood there, and the bichon may have had a moment of sanity, because when I pulled my dogs back, he didn’t follow.

His owner thought it was cute.

It wasn’t.

Happy Thanksgiving from Rebel, Kyrie, and me!

I suppose this sort of thing is going to get worse, now that we have two veterinarians on our blogging team here (”Good Morning America” veterinarian Dr. Marty Becker, and behavior specialist Dr. Rolan Tripp). But my holiday morning started this morning as most seem to, with someone asking for veterinary advice.

The dog is throwing up! The veterinarian’s office is closed for Thanksgiving! Help me!

Since the Beckers are in Key West escaping the Idaho snow and the Tripps are in Indiana visiting grandkids (yeah, I know you’re jealous — Indiana!) I’ll handle this:

Call your veterinarian! Sure, the office is closed, but chances are the answering machine has a taped referral to an emergency clinic, or a veterinarian who’s covering emergency calls for his or her colleagues. When a dog is vomiting so much that your worry drives you to write an e-mail, he’s vomiting enough to see a veterinarian. Especially on a holiday like this one, when all the food a dog can accidentally get into — especially of the fatty variety — can trigger a painful and life-threatening bout of pancreatitis.

I know, I know: You don’t have time. You have people coming over for dinner. You don’t have money. Do I know what emergency veterinary care costs?

Oh yes, oh yes, I know, I know, on both counts. It doesn’t matter: Call your veterinarian!

Because here at the Pet Connection blog, we care about you and your pets, but we’re flat out of fairy dust for our long-distance pet-curing magic wands.

Interesting read from Stan Cox on AlterNet, about the impact of the pet-products industry:

Biologists have devised metabolic formulas that relate the body sizes of animals to their rates of energy consumption. Humans are unlike other animal species in that we have access to vast amounts of energy from sources other than food. Only one percent of the energy consumed by the average American comes from simply digesting what we eat. The other 99 percent is used in the many other activities, including agriculture, that burn fossil fuels and deplete natural resources.

It is as if our bodies were connected by invisible wires and hoses to a global resource-supply network. Based on those metabolic formulas, it has been calculated that over a 24-hour period, the average American consumes as much energy as would a 66,000-pound primate not living on that network (pdf).

And each step taken to “humanize” pets — each next-size-larger car or SUV that’s bought to accomodate the family dog, each section of a jet’s baggage compartment that’s heated and pressurized for pet transport, each spa treatment or Atlantic-salmon-with-capers dinner to which the family’s smallest member is treated — is another burden on the planet’s resources.

Weigh up all the members of one of those other big populations of domesticated, industrially supported animals — the nation’s 42 million cattle or 59 million hogs — and it would come to a lot more body mass than does the pet population. But the physical weight of increasingly humanized cats and dogs and ferrets is becoming much less important than all those invisible wires and hoses to which we’re hooking them up.

The rest of the piece is here. You can imagine how I feel, having just had these week’s test vehicle delivered, the massively luxurious Land Rover L3. Except, well, there are allll kinds of things people spend money on that use natural resources to make, transport, run and dispose of. Maybe it’s because so much of what I read is about pets, but I just don’t see people getting so judgmental about consumer electronics, or craft supplies, or collecting whats-its on eBay.

I think we could all do with a little less spending and collecting of worthless stuff, no matter what kind of junk it is. But hey, I’ve been on that kick for years. After all, I’m the person with the 30-year-old stainless steel dog dish. Buy high quality when you need to buy, take care of it, and use it almost forever. That’s true, whether you’re talking about pet supplies or anything else.

Recently, my syndicated column was about the need for designated areas for legal off-leash recreation. Not tiny fenced-in areas so overused the grass can’t even grow, but acres of open space set-asides, like the ones in Richmond, Calif., or the San Diego area:

I’d choose a dedicated off-leash open area to run my dogs in anytime. But I can’t always drive out of town, so I also drive to local places where my retrievers can swim. I go at odd hours, my dogs are friendly, trained and well-socialized, and yes, I clean up after them.

Why should we dog lovers have to skulk around like this? In terms of sheer numbers, we are a larger population than tennis, soccer or softball players, all groups whose needs are recognized and addressed by those who plan public recreation facilities. Our dogs are our chosen form of recreation, and we deserve open space as much as any other group.

Where I live there’s an astonishing river parkway, miles and miles of protected parkland along two rivers, with trails and beaches throughout. It’s illegal to have a dog off-leash on any part of it, and that’s beyond ridiculous. All the dog-lovers here ask is for a 1 percent solution: 40 or 50 acres where it would be legal to walk with our dogs off-leash and allow them to swim in the river.

As usual, any suggestion that I, as a dog-lover and tax-payer, deserve to have my recreational needs addressed brought out the anonymous dog-hating e-mailers, who filled my in-box for the better part of three days. Their points are these:

• Dogs are disgusting. They lick themselves and sniff each others’ butts.
• Dogs are not children, and only children deserve parks.

The first point is so consistently mentioned, and so bizarre, that all I can suggest is that these folks could use some therapy to help them overcome their genitalia obsession.

The second, though, is just crap. I don’t think dogs are children. I think dogs are dogs, and that’s why they need off-leash recreation. Dogs who get regular heart-thumping exercise — which you cannot get being walked on a leash — have fewer behavior and obesity-related health problems. And they’re happiest when being dogs — running, playing, following scents and enjoying the outdoors.

But I know the dog-haters don’t care about the health and happiness of my dogs, so I’m not going to make that case with them. Dog-lovers deserve open space set asides because we’re people, not because we think dogs are children. And we’re people who choose to enjoy our recreational time hiking off-leash with our dogs. As members of the community, and as tax-payers who support all common-good amenities, we deserve having our recreational choices supported by the goverments who work for us, overseeing the public lands we own in common.

Usually, I don’t answer hate mail. But one person went on so much about the butt-sniffing that I really did write back and suggest she might consider therapy. She immediately shot back out that I didn’t need a dog to exercise, and that I was a typical “dog freak” and “idiot” to think that I did.

It’s true that I don’t need a dog to exercise. People don’t need bikes, tennis rackets, soccer fields, running trails, kayaks, skiis … the list is endless, and yet people who do enjoy specific types of reaction have public facilities to play in.

That’s all I’m asking for our dogs. A small part of parklands where we can get out, hike, throw a ball and enjoy. Dog-haters, go elsewhere. This land is my land, too.