pet connection

I feel sorry for veterinarians. It must be so difficult to be trained to save animals’ lives and then be told on a regular basis that owners can’t afford the treatment. Economic euthanasia, it’s called. Jerry still vividly recalls being at the specialty hospital with our Greyhound and watching a father have to tell his young son that they couldn’t afford to treat their dog. I would never judge anyone who’s made that decision, and I am grateful every day that I’ve never had to make it. But today, I hope that I was able to make a veterinarian’s day. I think maybe I did, a little bit anyway.

I had to take Twyla to the hospital this morning. When Jerry got up to feed the girls, he noticed that Twyla’s breathing sounded wet, and occasionally she was having a little trouble drawing breath. He didn’t think she should wait to be seen at our regular vet, so I drove her to the ER. Luckily, the timing and the traffic gods were with us, and we didn’t get stopped in rush-hour traffic and no traffic cops saw me zoom through a green light going 60 instead of 50. They took us right in–I had called ahead–and within a few minutes the veterinarian was telling me that Twyla was in congestive heart failure.

“You should know that once they reach this stage, the prognosis isn’t very good,” she said. “Do you want to proceed with treatment?”

I probably had a stunned expression on my face. “Of course.”

Later, she was giving me the estimate for two to three days of hospitalization, in something of a resigned tone of voice. I’m sure the voice in her head was thinking, “Well, now she’ll change her mind.”

She barely got the numbers out before I said “Fine.”

Then she smiled big.

Now I’m smiling, for a while, anyway, because Twyla is doing better. We might be able to take her home tomorrow.

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As you all know by now, the PetConnection that we all know and have dearly loved is moving on and metamorphosing into a new and exciting form in the coming days. It is still somewhat unclear exactly what form it will take, but word on the street is that it will be nothing short of totally flippin’ awesome. My participation in this carnival of whimsy is a still little up in the air due to some unresolved issues, but I will be somewhere online in the very near future, disseminating the same brand of misinformation and silliness that I have been doling out on a random schedule while here. The internet is a big place, and there’s plenty of room for everyone.

I do want to make it official, though –  I loved it here, and I loved the people — every one of them. I have been amazed at the level of dedication, concern and integrity on both sides of the keyboard with this place. The bonds I have made here will be hard and fast for a long time to come.

As we draw operations to a close here at PetConnection, pack up our boxes of words and say good bye to the neighbors, I wanted to share a wee observation with you. This observation has sort of crept up on me over the past two years, ever since I came on faculty at Purdue. It started, as these things often do, as a subconscious realization, similar to when you hear (or rather, sense) a far-off and nearly indistinguishable sound. The hum of a far-away lawn mower, the drone of an airplane over a distant hill, or the wing-flapping of a far-off vampire pig bat.

Over the months, it has imperceptibly grown to the point that, as I walked the hallowed halls of learning this morning, it hit me in the face like a roundhouse punch from Mike Tyson, followed by a nasty bite from his tiger.

Here’s the realization:

There is always an attractive woman sitting in exam room G. With a brown dog.

I know, I know:  Not exactly earth-shattering, but it’s all I got right now. Unrest throughout the world, the hunt for a mad and quite possibly cross-dressing tyrant rages on in the streets of Tripoli, cracks up and down the Washington Monument, holes at the North Pole spewing Mole Men into the arctic circle … and the best I can do to capture the redundant zeitgeist (which I am pretty sure is German for “jelly donut”) of our times and commemorate the curtain coming down on out little corner of the internet is this anomaly?

Yep , sorry. I was never one for depth.  To steal a line from “Wicked,” I am deeply shallow.

As the sound of that far away lawn mower gradually grew to the din of pig bats devouring a jet engine roaring overhead (or something), I started to notice that every time I walked past exam room G on the way to my office, there was an attractive young lady patiently sitting in there, waiting for the doctor (never me, alas) with an invariably brown dog at her side.

We have a quite a few exam rooms here. By my reckoning, since they go up to at least G, that would seven as a minimum. Perhaps quite a few more. I have not found exam room Z as of yet, but if they don’t kick me off the faculty any time soon for writing crazy shit on the internet, I may yet find it.

The other exam rooms usually harbor the same lineup of people that you encounter in everyday life; lumpish people, making their ungainly way through life. I am one of their number, these lumpish people, so I am not throwing stones here, even thought I do live in a heavily fortified and high-tech glass lair, high atop my secret volcano, the only way to reach it being my personal atomic zeppelin.

But exam room G is special. No lumpish people there. The first few times it happened I was willing to brush it off as either one of those things you brush off, or the early stages of tertiary syphilis, but as I strolled past time and again, the realization grew on me that something odd and magical was happening in that humble room. I sensed that magic was afoot and the goddess was alive.

I do not want to see this goddess's feet

Now, I don’t want you to get the impression that I spend my waking hours seeking out the company of attractive women. I am happily married to a tiny, sparkly princess and it would not surprise me one iota to see her sitting in exam room G with a brown dog someday –  she’s that hot. (And we have two perfectly good brown dogs at home to choose from, too). It’s just that as a student of the world, you get to noticing these things. I personally think that our brains are little pattern recognition machines, as well as little lumps of gray putty, and that things like this just stand out.

The phenomenon of the not-unattractive woman sitting patiently in exam room G with her brown dog brings up some questions:

• Is there some vast conspiracy on the part of the front desk staff to only put attractive women with brown dogs in this room?
• Is it pure coincidence? Madness? Chemtrails? Mole men? Jelly donuts?
• Are there special exam rooms for other kinds of people? Say, overweight accountants with iguanas? Near-sighted garbagemen with capybaras?

Sadly, as we are folding up shop here, the answers to these and other burning questions shall never be known. We will just have to live with that unsettling, unscratched itch feeling as we live out the rest of our days. Just watch out for the vampire pig bats –  they’re a bitch.

My work here is done.

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If you’ve noticed it has been pretty quiet here, especially in terms of posts from “The Management,” you’re on to something. The folks who’ve long been behind the PetConnection — me, Christie and Dr. Marty Becker — have been involved in a start-up, and now that it has, in fact, started up, we’re packing up the PetConnection.

Destination: Vetstreet.com.

After Aug. 31, this site will go dark. People who type in “PetConnection.com” will end up on the new site. A lot of the content is already there, and a lot of our contributors will be, too. Dr. Becker and I have been working with the Vetstreet team for months, and Christie has started with them recently in the final stages of the transition.  While not all our bloggers will go along for one reason or another, most will, and that makes the people behind Vetstreet very happy. They’ve been fans of ours for a very long time.  In a short time, I’ve become fans of theirs.

As you can well imagine,though,  I have mixed feeling about the change.

I never liked the name, “Pet Connection.” In fact, I loathed it. “Pet Connection” was already the name of the  pet column I took over the mid-’80s, when I was a young reporter and editor at The Sacramento Bee. I tried to change it then, but couldn’t come up with anything the bosses liked better. It seemed — and still seems — too lightweight  for the work I’ve always done, and that we all did as our team grew. We love pets, but we also love medicine and reporting, and our work here always tried — and usually  succeeded — to offer the best-practice work of both worlds.

When Universal Press picked the column up for national distribution, they liked the name, too. I gave up, bought the domain name and put a simple site to serve as a marketing device for the syndicated column. And that, I thought, would be that.

And then, at Christie’s urging, we added a blog.

The world changed just about then, although in fact the seeds of change had been planted years earlier.

Christie and I had been friends for several years at that point, although we almost never saw each other and rarely even talked on the phone. We’d met while working for the Pet Care Forum on America Online. PCF was owned and run by the Veterinary Information Network (VIN) at the time, and I left the newspaper to work for Dr. Paul Pion there.

Yes, everyone at the newspaper thought that was crazy.

But Christie and I were part of a culture no one had ever seen before. Our best friends were — and still are — people who live all over the world, people we used “electronic mail” and “instant messages” to connect with, starting with 600-baud dial-up modems and strange little computers — my first was a Radio Shack TRS-80 (a “rat shack” in the newspaper parlance, with 8K of memory) and my second was the original Macintosh. The Mac I’m typing on now (my first Mac in 25 years of PCs) is my 23rd computer, and it’s part of a network of four computers (a desktop and three laptops/netbooks) that use a screaming fast home wi-fi network I could never have imagined having even a decade ago.

You all pretty much know where the story goes from there.

Until the latest chapter, that is.

Up until a couple days ago, Vetstreet was mostly known as a company that helped veterinary practices communicate with their clients. But behind the scenes, something massive was being developed –  a site for pet-lovers to find accurate medical and behavior information. Dr. Becker knew the people behind Vetstreet, and they started talking with us about coming aboard.

We danced a long time, but it felt right and we all knew it. Moreover, Vetstreet had the team and the money to do many of the things I’ve always wanted to do with our website. Dr. Becker was a natural fit; I flew back to work with the team in D.C. and realized I liked the fit, too. Christie is finalizing  her relationship now, and the dancing continues with the rest of our bloggers.

I’m very happy with the decision, and I see great things ahead for Vetstreet as a place where people can go to find the best practices of journalism and medicine well-represented.

Check it out. I think you’ll agree.

In the meantime, we’ll have this site up for a few more days as we migrate the content and people over.

I can’t thank my colleagues enough for their work on their site. I’m also so grateful for my friend Jay Gavron for the site design — including the heart-and-paw logo which is now tattooed on my back! — and Mike Linville of Black Dog Studios for every tech thing, getting us through the pet-food recall, denial of service attacks and so much more.

Of course, the biggest thank-you goes to you, the readers. I promise you we won’t stop writing, as long as you keep reading.

Come on down to Vetstreet. I think you’ll like the new place just fine.

Image, lower right:  Yes, I really did it. I had the Pet Connection logo tattooed onto my upper back when I had a couple of days in Portland last May — this pic was taken immediately after it was done. No, it didn’t hurt that much. And yes, I’m happy I did it. Very, very happy.

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Housebreaking tips, anyone? Or do ya’ll have completely housebroken puppies already?

No matter how many dogs you’ve owned and no matter how good you are with dogs, there’s no replacement for socialization and going out to partake of the big world. That’s why puppy kindergarten is so important for puppy development, not to mention great photo opportunities.

After lengthy waits for puppies from responsible breeders, two of my friends each ended up with puppies who were born one week apart: Olivia, a lovely and earlicious German Shepherd dog with a wise face, and Niles, an adorable, fluffy miniature schnauzer with natural ears. Their owners decided they should go to puppy kindergarden together. The puppies met before the first class when they got into the same car (different crates).

For these two puppies, there were no less than five women with them at their first day of school. I wanted to stand at the bus stop and wave at them as they left home to go to school. I don’t think anyone cried. Oh wait, I did. It was the perfect antidote to living with a beloved geriatric.

I have never been to puppy class before because I generally adopt adult rescues, and I have to say it was just about the cutest thing I have ever seen. Seriously. Dogs of every size, color and activity level seemed to be there, all in darling, sweet, miniature baby form with puppy breath, puppy faces, and sharp little puppy teeth.

The best part of class was play time. The instructor, a lovely woman from Patricia McConnell’s Dogs’ Best Friend, said that they would break the puppies into three play groups based on their personality and activity level.

“Some dogs like to play football, and some prefer to have tea,” she said.

She also said that over the course of the class some puppies would switch back and forth between those three levels and people shouldn’t worry about it. Don’t worry, be happy…it’s puppy school!

The football players, including Olivia, went outside where there was a wading pool with water. The average-activity puppies, which constituted the largest group and included Niles, goofed around in the large sectioned-off area of the main room. The two or three puppies who preferred to have tea went to the small sectioned-off area. It took a while for the tea puppies and the average puppies to get going.

Outside, the football players were rocking. There was a Labrador, and there was a wading pool with water – need we say more? Olivia didn’t go in the pool, at least not when I was looking, but she chased the lab around and was clearly having a great time.

Niles took a moment to get into the spirit of playtime. “Really, I’m supposed to go out there without you? And do what, exactly?” He eventually did get himself into the crowd, although it also may have come to him. One of the puppies skittered across the linoleum like a wind-up toy.

The tea party had a hard time getting started, as you can imagine. It’s hard to party hearty from between mom’s legs, but the people stood close together.

The first change was a puppy who came in from the footballers to the average group, but ended up playing too hard for the average guys and thus had to play on a leash. One of the average guys went for a cuppa tea. Eventually another dog was removed from the footballers, but so late in the game that she just stayed outside standing behind her people.

Next week everyone will know what to expect, but none of the dogs will be any less enthusiastic. After all, they’re puppies!

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The incidence of dogs being stolen has gone up 49% in the past year. The American Kennel Club’s data leads to the obvious question: why? NPR‘s story suggests it has something to do with a continuing rocky economy.

“We believe the increase is due to economic times,” Lisa Peterson, a spokesperson for the nonprofit group, which has been tracking pet theft for several years, tells Weekend Edition Saturday guest host Jacki Lyden.

“You have people who want pets … but can’t afford to purchase them or pay the adoption fees, so we find that they’re just taking them for themselves or to give them as gifts,” she says. “But then on the other hand, you have the criminal element that steals dogs and tries to sell them to unsuspecting buyers.”

Peterson says the top two ways dogs are being stolen are during home invasions and out of parked cars. She cites a case in Florida where criminals took a 55-inch television set and also Boo-Boo, the Yorkshire terrier, with all of his belongings.

Large-screen televisions can be replaced. Best friends can’t. The article discusses steps pet owners can take the safeguard their pets, including microchipping.

Cats behind bars: Inmates at a jail in Nebraska have new friends: cats. Excellent stress reducer. HuffPo‘s got the story, with an accompanying video report.

Thoughts on Pacifica: Outstanding post by BadRap, one of the most consistently thoughtful pet blogs out there.

New therapy reaps benefits: A pit bull in Reading, Penn. had his paws burned by spending hours on a black roof top on a roasting hot day, but thanks to a first-of-its-kind treatment, his ruined paw pads can be repaired. The groundbreaking therapy is based on stem cell research. Details at the Reading Eagle.

Veterinary client ethics: Your veterinarian explains that an upcoming procedure entails risks of complications. All you hear is blah blah blah procedure blah blah blah surgical blah chance of improvement.  When complications arise, do you have a right to yell at your veterinarian that the treatment wasn’t perfect? Pet Connection’s BFF Dr. Patty Khuly weighs in.

Picture of the week comes from our favorite photographer of all things horse: Sarah Andrew, the wonderful presence behind Rock and Racehorses.

I always like to hear from readers, especially if you have tips, and links for interesting stories.  Give me a shout in the comments, or better yet, send me an e-mail.

Photo credit: microchip, latimes.

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