pet connection

The fact that Christie and I schedule our trips so one of us is always available to blog is a good thing, I suppose, although it strikes me as perhaps a tad obsessive, I don’t know.

But the fact is she’s now on a plane for somewhere exciting and the scheduling was so perfect that my house-sitter could have left here, driven the couple hours down Highway 80 to Christie’s and arrived just in time to wave Christie good-bye as she left for the airport.

Christie hasn’t left us in the lurch, though. Her column for the San Francisco Chronicle’s SFGate.com Web site posted this morning, although I was too exhausted from a weekend of hard (but fun) labor on the Texas ranch to read it until now.

It’s on Halloween. Holidays are great for columns when you really can’t think of anything else to write about, by the way. Bonus: People need the information!

From the column:

Ah, the holiday season! We mark its arrival by giving young children massive quantities of candy and putting little fireman outfits on our Dalmatians.Then on to a celebration of thanks that can send us into a postprandial coma and our dogs to the ER with pancreatitis. We then move into Hanukkah, Christmas or another winter holiday of choice that brings joy to the hearts of the young and young-at-heart everywhere, at least until the cats jump up and knock candles over, potentially setting the house on fire, or get tangled in discarded gift ribbons.

It all finishes up with New Year’s Eve, which admittedly is the one holiday that probably does more damage to us than to our pets.

I don’t have any suggestions for what you can do about your waistline, your budget, or how to fit all the holiday shopping and parties in, but I can give you some ideas on how to keep your dogs and cats safe (and keep your house from burning down) through the whole holiday season, starting with Halloween.

Dr. Marty Becker and I have to turn in our syndicated newspaper columns three-four weeks in advance of run date, so our Halloween column (it’s here) is so far out of my memory now that all I can remember is that the pictures were cute. (But those cute pictures are not on the syndicate’s Web site since only our newspaper clients get the full-page feature. Still, I have special powers, so here’s one of the pictures, by the Pet Connection’s wonderful Director of Photography, Morgan Ong. )

Cool news, by the way, on the Pet Connection column front: We’ll soon be moving to the Pet Connection site a complete and searchable archive of Dr. Becker columns, my columns, and our columns since we became writing partners officially at the beginning of this year. That’s, like, hundreds and hundreds of columns, covering all aspects of pet care.

We’re putting the Black Dog gang on the job and hoping for it all to be in place before the year is out. Yay!

On the nightmare front: Regulars readers know I’m a tormented horse-racing fan. I love watching the heart, beauty and determination of a great thoroughbred racehorse, but the injuries and deaths make me feel like puking my guts out and never watching again.

Breeders Cup day is the one big day of the racing year to real fans (not Derby Day, which is for casual followers). Since I wasn’t going to be in town over the weekend, I set my TiVo to catch all the races.

But George Washington, England’s beloved “Gorgeous George,” broke his leg horribly in the final Breeders Cup race — the Classic — and had to be humanely euthanized, behind a screen erected just in front of the grandstand, mere yards from where the owners of the winning horse, Curlin, were celebrating his big race.

Tonight, I erased all that TiVo had saved for me without watching a minute of the coverage. Sorry, I haven’t the stomach for it.

My friend the young and upcoming racing photographer Sarah Andrew has a beautiful picture of Gorgeous George from a few days ago. It’s here.

Share & Enjoy

Facebook	Twitter	Google Buzz	Digg
Technorati	StumbleUpon	Delicious	Email