pet connection

Since early this year, there’s been an e-mail floating around about two Labradors named Cookie and Coco who desperately need a home because the family lost their home to foreclosure. It began as “we’ve lost our home and need to move in two weeks” and grew to “we’re moving overseas in two weeks.” It ended with “Please, please forward these pics to all your friends.”

Yes, it’s true, Cookie and Coco needed a home. But they were placed months ago, according to Snopes, and yet the e-mail is still floating around with a frightening frequency, rending hearts wherever it goes with its heartfelt plea.

I received it two weeks ago from a friend…and this morning I received it from a rescue group. I can’t even count how many times I’ve received this post this year.

So let’s remind ourselves, in a day and age when everyone is busy and overburdened with e-mails and texts and phone calls, not to forward anything unless we’re sure it’s true. This kind of blind forwarding just wastes our time, and overall takes away some limited time that should go to pets who still need homes. Let’s help the rescue folks do their job.

“I just saw something on the road that looked bad. We’d better turn around,” said my friend Jennifer. She was driving us home from our Italian class. I hadn’t noticed whatever it was because I wasn’t staring at the road, and it was dark.

She stopped the car in the center of the lane with her headlights on what we were afraid was an animal, and put on her hazard lights. I hopped out to discover it was an orange cat.

Last summer one of Jennifer’s beloved cats, Niblet, was found dead on a street.

There was a lot of blood on the pavement. I nudged him to see if there was a reaction; he was dead but still warm on a cold fall night. I panicked, wondering how I could possibly get this bloody cat out of the middle of the road where he would be run over repeatedly. I went back to the car, which now had a few cars behind it, to see if there was anything I could use to move the cat without actually touching him because that idea made me feel ill. While I was dithering, Jennifer was explaining to the cars behind us that there was a dead animal in the road. A minute later, with no other options and a growing line of traffic behind us, I gently took his back legs and pulled him to the side of the road.

He had no collar, no tags.

We didn’t know what to do. If we called the city to remove him, the owner would never know what happened to him. The shelter doesn’t pick up dead animals. I still don’t know if that was the right decision, but we left him there in the hopes his owner would find him. For me, a pet never showing up again is far worse than not knowing what happened.

I kept thinking about a day over a decade ago when I was driving in a lane adjacent to a grassy center island in which there was a completely still cat, and a woman was running towards him. I will never forget the look on her face. I kept thinking about that woman and the warm cat I pulled to the side of the road, and I trembled. Jennifer and I hugged each other and tried not to cry.

When Jennifer’s cat Niblet was found last summer, he was found by a neighbor who knew Niblet. I don’t remember if he had a collar and tags on. But this cat we found last night had no identification tag. He might have been microchipped, but that wouldn’t have helped in this situation.

Cats lose collars all too easily –  most are meant to break away if pulled too tight to prevent choking. That means that sometimes a collar is lost and not replaced immediately. It’s one of those things we mean to do that can just get lost in the shuffle of a busy life. I’ll get the new collar and tag tomorrow. Oops, forgot it, I’ll get it this weekend. Boy, I meant to get that new tag.

From now on, I’m going to have extra collars around the house, and extra ID tags for all of my pets. You just never know when you’re going to benefit from them, or how.

I’ve always been a rather neurotic hand washer, even before I had non-specific hepatitis not once but twice (once idiopathic, once from a blood transfusion). I hate anything sticky on my hands, and so I wash after eating an apple or something that drips, or after cleaning the kitchen or bathroom. Knitting dries my hands. Sadly, thanks to genetics I also have fairly dry skin.

I am completely predisposed to be the ultimate neurotic hand washer (everyone has to excel at something). Every winter my hands get dry enough from the excessive hand washing to crack and bleed, no matter how many gooey bottles of creams I use.

Imagine my life with pets: I’m a walking advertisement for obsessive compulsive hand washing. But it’s my argument that when you live with pets, you should wash your hands more often than you probably do. I have never once had any health issue that resulted from handling pets or their food, not when I feed raw, pick up poop, clean litter boxes daily, get licked, or take care of cuts and scrapes.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends hand washing as a preventive measure for many illnesses, and they emphasize it strongly as a preventive measure for pet owners, mostly after cleaning up feces:

• Washing hands with soap and water after handling rodents or their cages and bedding is the most important thing you can do to reduce the risk of Salmonella transmission.
• To protect yourself from cat-related diseases: Wash your hands thoroughly with soap and running water after touching cat feces (stool).
• Although birds can spread germs to people, illness caused by touching or owning birds is rare. To best protect yourself from getting sick, thoroughly wash your hands with running water and soap after contact with birds or their droppings.
• To best protect yourself from getting sick, thoroughly wash your hands with running water and soap after contact with dogs, dog saliva, or dog feces (stool).
• Although horses can pass diseases to people, you are not likely to get sick from touching or owning them. However, when you do common chores with horses, such as cleaning stalls, grooming them, and picking out their feet, you are probably touching manure without knowing it. To protect yourself from getting sick, you should thoroughly wash your hands with running water and soap after contact with horses or their manure.
• Therefore, people can also get salmonellosis if they do not wash their hands after touching the feces of animals. Reptiles (lizards, snakes, and turtles), baby chicks, and ducklings are especially likely to pass salmonellosis to people. Dogs, cats, birds (including pet birds), horses, and farm animals can also pass Salmonella in their feces.

Worried about the flu pandemic this year? Uncle Sam (CDC) wants you to wash your hands. “Wash your hands often with soap and water. If soap and water are not available, use an alcohol-based hand rub.”

Since I’m neurotic about washing my hands, I’ve made some changes in hopes of not having my hands get so dry they crack and bleed. The big change is that I switched to hand-made soap because the detergent in commercial soaps dries your hands more (in both bar and liquid), and it definitely helped. I rarely use the drying sanitizer in the kitchen. Just a couple of weeks ago I added a chlorine filter to my shower faucet so that all my skin – not just my hands – won’t get so dry.

If you don’t neurotically wash your hands, I recommend becoming at least semi-neurotic during this season of the pandemic H1N1, as beyond other considerations you can’t care well for your pets when you’re ill. (Calling it swine flu is a misnomer, as H1N1 is a triple-reassortment strain of viruses affecting humans, swine, and birds. Let’s not malign pigs.) That’s common sense for this season in particular, but it’s also always common sense for pet owners. The possibility of zoonotic transmission of diseases is lessened by washing your hands after certain tasks (or in the case of some pets, such as reptiles, after handling the pets themselves). Above and beyond the flu, be smart and protect yourself with good sanitary practices so that you never have to consider rehoming a pet because of a disease you could have prevented. Lather up!

I love dogs and knitting, so knitting dog sweaters is a natural inclination – far more natural for me to knit sweaters  than it is for some dogs to wear sweaters. However, toy dogs, low body fat dogs (greyhounds and whippets) and elderly or ill dogs can all benefit from a little help keeping warm this winter. If you know how to knit, or want to learn, try to knit or crochet a dog sweater.

My friend Chris O’Rear’s elderly basenji, Kissy, benefited from an Icelandic yoke sweater I made for her. Basenjis like warmth: They’re kind of like heat-seeking missiles, and this sweater helped keep Kissy snuggly warm in her last year. Knitting for elderly dogs is a similar but somewhat opposite feeling from knitting a human baby sweater, but still a good feeling.

I’m not talking about insane little costumes with froo froo touches, or leopard skin patterns, all of which make me gag. I’m talking about keeping dogs warm in winter. Sweaters get a bad reputation because people associate them with toy dogs carried around in purses. Toy dogs have to wear sweaters in cold weather, but they don’t have to look like one of Paris Hilton’s woebegone fashion accessories. Knitting sweaters for dogs is not insane. That said, I have not spent the time to make one for my Great Dane friend Jack no matter how many times his mom asks. Jack is just too dang big.

I think I have every book on the market about knitting for dogs, from the classic (and my personal favorite, where I found the pattern for Kissy’s sweater and Ginger’s plain one) “Dogs in Knits” to “Puppy Knits” to Vogue Knitting’s “Knit for Pets” and even “Men Who Knit and the Dogs Who Love Them.” There’s a really cute baby sweater with paw prints in “The Gift Knitter: Knitting Chunky for Babies with Four Legs and Two,” and I have made several baby gifts with that pattern.  Ginger has a solid burgundy sweater, although she’s never been fond of getting it off or on. There’s also “Top Dog Knits,” “Knitting for Dogs,” “Doggy Knits,” “Stylish Knits for Dogs” and so on. Many yarn manufacturers, such as Lion Brand and Patons Yarn, and online magazines such as www.knitty.com provide free patterns on the Web (although I would never, ever ask a dog to wear Lion Brand’s King of the Beasts Lion sweater. Get real. Lion Brand patterns give dog sweaters a bad name).

When my dog Fred was treated for anal sac cancer, he lost almost all his hair from chemo and had a baboon butt from radiation; he absolutely had to wear something outside in Wisconsin in February. Almost every dog in the lobby at the vet school in winter had sweaters or jackets covering up huge shaved areas. I knit a sweater for Fred, but it was too difficult to put it on because of his treatment, so he wore a fleece jacket most of the time. I was upset when some jerk in the vet school’s parking lot said “aww, mom, let me wear my birthday suit.” That guy had no idea Fred had lost his coat from his legs, face, throat, belly and most of his back. He also had no idea how exhausted, tired and cold Fred was.

Not to mention: Knitting a sweater for Fred was something I could do for him when I was feeling helpless.

Practically speaking, the problem with sweaters is that most of them have to go over the head, which most dogs don’t like.  Many dogs dislike sleeves. Also, the sweater can get snagged. However, unlike most jackets and coats, the sweater covers the belly and keeps it free of ice. Nonetheless, knitting a dog sweater is a labor of love, and Ginger always gets compliments on her plain burgundy sweater. I beam with pride the few times a year she wears it.

Pet: Sit, stay, be healthy. Pet owner: Learn, laugh, be edutained!

You’ll love the new “Dr. Marty Mondays” on “The Cooper Lawrence Show,” which airs on 115 radio stations from coast-to-coast –  including Los Angeles, San Francisco,  Chicago, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Boston, Phoenix and  Denver.

Our own Dr. Becker will appear live at 9 p.m. ET tonight — and then the first month of the month thereafter.

Cooper Lawrence’s show combines expert talk, entertainment, pop culture, comedy  and celebrity — all flavored with her unique brand of storytelling.  Between Cooper and Dr. Marty, you’ll laugh while you learn on “Dr. Marty Mondays!”