pet connection

We’ve linked to stories about this fight before, but for the life of me I just don’t understand why the U.S. Department of Agriculture is putting any time into hassling the Hemingway cats … as opposed to … oh, I don’t know … puppy mills, food safety, agribiz reform, etc., etc. From the L.A. Times:

KEY WEST, Fla. — The notion that Charlie Chaplin is putting on a show as he snoozes on the Hemingway Home and Museum veranda — well, that’s enough to make a cat laugh.

But neither the fluffy feline, named for the Little Tramp because of his tuxedo-like markings, nor his 46 companions lazing around the late author’s estate are likely to be amused if the U.S. government succeeds in designating them an animal act and restricts their freedom.

Pampered cats, some of them descendants of Ernest Hemingway’s six-toed pet Snowball, have had the run of the leafy compound for generations.

They are named for the writer’s wives, fictional characters, Hollywood friends and colleagues. Zane Grey and Truman Capote often can be found napping in the flower beds between the villa and the pool. Archibald MacLeish prefers the cool tile floor of the master bathroom. Emily Dickinson seems indifferent to the camera flashes catching her in repose on a predecessor’s tombstone, rarely bestirring herself from the limelight.

Fed organic cat food, tended weekly by a visiting veterinarian, and petted, photographed and cooed at by adoring tourists, the cats have become a beloved quirk of this Key West landmark.

But the languid lifestyle of the Hemingway Home cats is threatened by proposals from the U.S. Department of Agriculture that they be treated like performers in a zoo or circus. The feds want the museum to obtain an animal exhibition license, which would require staff to “protect” the felines from contact with spectators and cage them after their daily “performance” ends when the front gate closes at 5 p.m.

Read the rest.

Two days ago my almost 11-year-old retriever, Heather, had a carnassial tooth removed. It’s an important tooth, and we really didn’t want to lose it. A root canal and crown was an option going in, but wasn’t possible — one of the roots was really a mess. So, the tooth came out, along with a little bit of her jaw that was ground down, and then everything was sutured back up.

Yipes, just writing that makes me queasy. You know that’s gotta hurt.

Fortunately for Heather, my veterinarian is very up on pain control, and my dog was well-medicated going into the procedure and has been ever since. She’s feeling no pain now, and considering what a mess that tooth was, that’s a good thing. (The picture is her resting on the couch the morning after surgery, a little out of it.) All hail good pain meds!

Pain management in veterinary medicine has come a long, long way since I started writing about pets and their care in the ’80s. Unfortunately, some veterinarians either haven’t kept up or hold to the outdated belief that pain is a good thing in recuperating pets, because it keeps them from moving around much.

Christie’s a bit of an expert when it comes to managing pain in pets, in part because of how much she had to learn in dealing with Raven’s bone cancer. It’s no surprise that veterinary oncologists know lots of pain-management techniques, and they are good at concocting drug cocktails that provide dying pets with good quality of life until the end.

Writing on the Vet Tech blog, though, Christie laments that some veterinarians are still sending patients home with a pain medication that’s less than effective. If nothing else, read the piece and use it as a way to educate yourself, so you can have an informed discussion with your veterinarian on your pet’s behalf in regards to pain-management protocols.

I’ve been with my veterinarian for a long time, and he’s first-rate. That’s why I was not at all surprised at his aggressive pain-management plan for Heather, a combination of three medications complementing each other to ease her way through a very nasty procedure.

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Other good reads can be found this weekend on Lassie Get Help and the ever-popular Dolittler. Lassie’s Luisa is a teacher, I think she mentioned, which is why she writes so much in the summer and not so much in the fall. It’s good stuff, regardless. And as for Dolitter, well, what more can we say? Dr. Khuly is just plain awesome.

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No, you can’t read it for free. You have to subscribe or buy the issue (the latter option can be done quickly, with a downloadable PDF). But the Whole Dog Journal has a extensive article in the current issue by the wonderful Mary Straus on  the many ways people prepare raw diets at home. Since the pet-food recall, there has been a lot of interest in the subject, of both raw and cooked diets for pets.

Our view here is that it’s not a good idea to “Just Do It” when it comes to home-prepared meals, whether they’re cooked, raw, have bones or are ground. But we also believe that it’s nonsense to say — as some in the pet-food industry do — that preparing meals at home for the pets is so complicated that you need the constant guidance of your veterinarian and help from a PhD veterinary nutritionist.

Hey, you manage to feed yourself and your family, don’t you? It’s not any more difficult to do so for your pets, once you understand the basics and the risks. You’ll find any number of books that can provide you with help, but this WDJ piece is a good start if you’re interested in finding out more.

All my dogs have been chowhounds, from Savanna the greyhound, who came running all the way from the back of the house at the scent of orange slices wafting from the kitchen to the current Cavaliers, who believe they are due a bite of anything we’re eating. They don’t beg, of course; that would be gauche. But if they don’t get a taste–because it’s chocolate or has onions in it or whatever–Twyla glares at me haughtily, as if to chastise me for my rudeness in not sharing. Bella just looks sad.

Even after years of living with dogs, I’m amazed at the variety of foods they’ll eat. The Cavaliers continued the citrus craze that Savanna started. Against my advice, my husband offered them grapefruit one morning. “They won’t like it,” I pronounced. They loved it. The only thing Bella won’t eat is banana. She wants it–she just won’t eat it.

I’ve heard of picky dogs, but I have trouble imagining having one. My baby brother, who has an even bigger neon sucker sign over his head than I do, came home recently with a 7-year-old Belgian Malinois. My sister-in-law e-mailed: Buffy won’t eat much. What should we do?

Heck if I knew. (Well, I did know that the very high quality food Buffy was getting was one of the only foods none of my dogs have ever cared for, so I considered that it might be a palatability issue.) But I looked around in my behavior books and suggested a Brian Kilcommons technique of making a big production of filling up the dish, presenting it to the dog, and then throwing it away at the last minute. You’re supposed to do this for three meals before actually letting the dog keep the food. Apparently it worked. Last I heard, Buffy had shown a lot more interest in her meals. I’m waiting for further updates.

So what led me to post this? Well, tonight we had Lebanese food. “Can dogs have turnips?” Jerry asked. “I guess,” I replied. “But aren’t they pickled? Do you think they’ll eat them?”

They will. But the funniest part was when they looked sideways at each other, with expressions that said “What was that?!”

People really, really don’t like dog-fighting. Decent people, that is. And they’ve sure let Vick’s business associates know it:

Nike Inc. said Friday it suspended its contract with Atlanta Falcons quarterback Michael Vick and will pull goods with his name off the shelves at stores the company owns.In a statement Friday, the company said it had not terminated the contract [...]

Other companies Vick endorses also have withdrawn their support for the quarterback. Earlier this summer, Atlanta-based AirTran did not renew its contract with Vick. Reebok said on Friday it is suspending sales of Vick jerseys.

Also, check this out on Itchmo: The notorious interview with two other NFL players, who just don’t see why there’s a big deal about all this.  Yes, the clip has been around a while, but there’s a twist to it now. Go see.

Dr. Becker and I wrote a pair of quizzes for Parade.com (Christie helped, too) that tests the intelligence of your dog or cat. Take the tests, and then come back and tell us your scores.

The test isn’t “scientific,” but is based on all the science we’ve sucked up over the years (and that’s a lot of years and a lot of science), plus our own experiences with a lot of dogs and cats. We worked really hard to make it more about innate reasoning ability, not just the ability to learn new things quickly, because people do get tired of border collies always making it to the top of the class. (OK, border collie people don’t, but the rest of us do!)

But mostly, we did it for fun. Because we all love to find out more about our pets, and brag on them, too.

Don’t feel too bad if your pet doesn’t hit the top ranks on the test. Your pet’s plenty smart, no matter what. As we point out, your pet found you, right? How dumb can he be?

And when you’re done, check your own knowledge of pets with a pair of quizzes we put together last year, for the launch of our first two books together, “Why Do Dogs Drink Out of the Toilet” (a New York Times best-seller) and “Why Do Cats Always Land on Their Feet?” The third in the series, “Why Do Horses Sleep Standing Up?,” comes out in the fall. (You can order them all in our bookstore, and more.)

The quizzes on your own pet IQ:

• University of Woof
• University of Meow