pet connection

My oldest dog, my darling Heather,  turns 12 today, along with her brother Bogey in Iowa.

This is how Heather plans to spend most of her birthday:

And here she is, taken a few minutes ago:

In her “Your Whole Pet” column for the San Francisco Chronicle’s SFGate.com Web site, our Christie Keith takes a close look a brochure in her veterinarian’s office, and finds not a new disease but a marketing pitch:

Many disease agents,” the pamphlet informed me, “can cause Canine Enteritis Complex, a potentially deadly inflammation of the small intestine. Some common enteritis-causing pathogens in dogs are parvovirus, coronavirus, and giardia lamblia, a microscopic protozoan that can severely damage the lining of the small intestine.”

The pamphlet went on: “These pathogens are highly contagious and can be spread between dogs.” What’s more, it continued, “A published study showed a dual infection with parvo and corona was fatal in 90 percent of cases.” They also added that “Pre-existing Giardia infection can make disease from parvovirus more severe.”

After the obligatory advice to ask your veterinarian “about a vaccination program that includes protection against enteritis-causing pathogens such as parvovirus, coronavirus, and Giardia,” there were some footnotes.

I assumed that for this newly discovered trifecta of canine intestinal doom we’d have some pretty cutting-edge science backing up their claims. Well, actually no. Those footnotes cited one 19-year-old study, and another that is 25 years old. In fact, it turns out the diseases are old, the citations are old, even the vaccines being promoted are old. The only thing new is the marketing campaign, which aims to convince you to protect your dog “from Canine Enteritis Complex by vaccinating routinely against parvo, corona, and Giardia.”

The problem is that this marketing campaign is misleading.

Read on for more.

More pics from the weekend …

I love horses, and some day I’ll have one of my own. OK, someday soon because I am not getting any younger.

Because of my lifelong obsession withinterest in horses I really appreciate the Fugly Horse of the Day blog. She doesn’t pull her punches at all in educating people about bad breeding and poor ethics, and in pointing out people who are not caring for their horses well or who are putting their or other people’s children at risk with unsafe riding and horse-handling.

Fugly is one of the reasons why I could look at my friend Audrey’s 20-year-old Quarter Horse, Red, and truly appreciate his excellent health and temperament. But then of course, as the author of “Horses For Dummies” and many other wonderful horse books (including “Why Do Horses Sleep Standing Up?” and “The Ultimate Horse-Lover” with … me!), Red’s owner clearly knows how to care for a horse and cares enough to do so.

With out further ado, I give you … Red. Isn’t he stunning? Doesn’t he make you feel great to see a wonderful older horse in such glowing health? (And by the way … he’s barefoot. Audrey’s horses don’t wear shoes!)

As I mentioned before setting off on the weekend’s SoCal adventure, I was staying with my friends Randy and Audrey. Audrey is a well-known author of zillions of articles and a great many books on horses, including co-authoring the only two horse books I’ve ever done.

Audrey and Randy live in Norco, Calif., which bills itself as “Horsetown USA.” The Riverside/San Bernardino part of California is my least favorite, but Norco makes it work, with community riding arenas and trails, and horse paths in front of the houses instead of sidewalks. Audrey and Randy have just a half-acre, but because of the community amenities it’s a comfortable living for their horses, Red and Milagro.  The highlight of Saturday was us walking the horses to one of the community arenas for them to kick up their heels and blow steam. (Pictured above: Their horses. Milagro, an 8-year-old Spanish Mustang, and Red, a 20-year-old Quarter Horse.)

We also went to the biggest tack consignment shop the world has ever seen, and to a feed store — they delivered in less than an hour!

Audrey is a horse expert, but this year she jumped into chicken-keeping as well. All their chickens are banties, and since their zoning is different, they can have roosters as well. (I can’t.)

Below are the Brothers Banty. They get along because they are brothers and grew up together. The red one is the boss and the other one just goes along. They are Cochins, with beautifully feathered feet you can’t really see in the picture.

We passed one out of two tests, and now we’re just one pass away from McKenzie’s junior hunter (four passes are required). Alas, there’s not another test until February, and it may well be the case that McKenzie may be nursing puppies then.

Yep, I’m going there.

As we’ve argued here as part of the case against mandatory breeding bans, all breeders are not puppy-milling scum or clueless, careless back-yard breeders. So I will now for the first time soon be joining those who work to preserve our heritage breeds, in my case a retriever breed that remains a smart, loving and lively family member and versatile companion hunting dog.

Thirty years “in” dogs and a lifetime with them, and I will soon be catching a plane to the Midwest  with McKenzie for a three-night stand with a dog she’ll never meet again.  At least it’s not as bad as what her mother went through: My friend and McKenzie’s mom flew to Copenhagen, there to meet a top Swedish field dog whose owners brought him over on a ferry for the liaison.

McKenzie was conceived on Christmas Day 2004 in a Danish hotel room. Yes, dog people are crazydedicated.

The Midwest in winter is not a trip to Europe, but I don’t have a real winter coat, so that will be an adventure. Never driven in snow, either. Yes, I’m crazydedicated.

This week I have to get one more health clearance on McKenzie (her CERF certification; hips, elbows and patellas are already done) and then we just wait for nature to call as to when we book the flight.

***

Lot of work today … deadlines galore. So I’ll end with how strange it is to be able to travel 1,000 miles in three days, compared to how impossible that was through almost all of human existence.

Still, it’s a haul, made easier by music. For a couple hours of yesterday’s seven-hour drive, I listened again to the first album I ever bought with my own money, Simon and Garfunkle’s “A Bridge Over Troubled Water.” I saved up the baby-sitting money to get it then; I seem to remember it was $3.99 on vinyl new in 1970, when I would have been 12 years old. Cost a little more on iTunes now, but well worth it. I hadn’t listened in years, but of course I remembered every word.

They call me Baby Driver, and once upon a set of wheels hit the road an I’m go-o-o-one, what’s my number, wonder how your engine feels.

Sha na na na, it’s good to be home.

Pictured: Drew, outstanding in his field, with the hunt test gallery in the distance behind him. I can honestly report he was stunned and rather horrified to see so many wet retrievers, and he does not understand why people will sit in chairs all day to watch retrievers, uh, retrieve.

Want to get a few laughs? Bring a Sheltie to a hunt test. I bet a full two dozen people stopped to tell me that there weren’t any sheep on the grounds, as if Pretty Boy Drew would herd anything anyway. A working dog this one is not. But he’s cute, and sweet as can be.