pet connection

Before seeing this ad online, I had never heard of Harvey Nichols (a British luxury goods retailer). Now I’m sorry I ever did.

While it was probably meant to be light-hearted and perhaps even funny, the reality is not so much. Styleite has a great rant on the topic, and nails the best argument against Christmas puppies obtained without enough thought and planning beforehand:

Pop quiz! What is the busiest month of the year for animal shelters? Take your time, there’s no pressure! OK, actually, there is: time’s up. The answer is March. Why? Because all the adorable widdle puppies purchased as gifts over the holidays are no longer adorable widdle puppies in March. By March, they are small dogs that are still learning how to behave and as such are probably peeing in the corner and chewing your new Jimmy Choos. And all of a sudden they’re not so cute anymore. Instead, they’re annoying and they require work and responsibility and far too much effort to actually keep. And off to the shelter they go. Bye bye puppy!

Thanks to Carol for the tip.

Retail warning for collars: A short Associated Press story in the San Francisco Examiner mentions that due to the carcinogenic effects of propoxur, California retail stores who sell flea and tick collars with the nasty stuff will include warning labels. I have a better idea: How about not selling cancer producing products?

Encouraging new vets: Purdue University’s School of Veterinary Medicine (home of our very own Dr. Tony Johnson) has hit on a clever idea to build a new bumper crop of veterinarians in the next generation. They’ve produced a book for third graders called “How I Became a Scientist.” It’s part of the larger program, “Fat Dogs and Coughing Horses,” aimed at spotlighting the issues of obesity and asthma in animal populations. You can download a free copy of the activity book here.

Testifying: Last week’s profile of the UPaws success in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula wasn’t the only mention of what’s been happening in Marquette.  Our friend Shirley at YesBiscuit has a superb and creative angle.  She solicited stories from the people who were part of the success. My favorite of the three letters was written by longtime volunteer and current UPaws treasurer Joan Mulder.

When I look back at how bad it was to where we are now I can’t believe all we’ve done. AND we’ve done this as an open admission shelter. All animals are welcome at our shelter and we’ve never turned one away – from mice, dogs, cats to snakes, chickens and horses. We’ve done this with a very old and small shelter, not much of a budget and a small handful or committed board members, volunteers and staff. I’m very proud of what we’ve ALL accomplished. This could never have happened without the support of our board, staff, volunteers and the community.

Whenever we hit a hard time we’ve always kept this first and foremost,
“It’s all about the animals” nothing else matters.

That’s just the tail end of her account. You really need to read the rest. Very powerful stuff. Thanks for sharing the stories with all of us, Shirley.

Cruelty through neglect: If the previous post isn’t the best writing of recent blog posts, this one is. Our BFF Dr. Patty Khuly tackles a deadly serious topic in her Fully Vetted blog –  animals who are severely neglected by their owners.

Editorial on SickVick: Jane Velez-Mitchell of CNN’s Headline News posted an editorial opinion on Michael Vick’s stated desire to get a dog:

Sorry, Michael Vick, there are limits to redemption. Redemption isn’t giving a bank robber a job as a teller. It isn’t letting a convicted child molester run a day care center. And it isn’t handing someone convicted of driving under the influence the keys to a car and a bottle of rum. Redemption is certainly not giving a man who participated in gruesome cruelty against animals the chance to bring home a four-legged companion.

Interesting that this appeared in CNN’s International edition but not the US site.

Be Prepared: The Boy Scout motto is “Be prepared,” and to that end the always funny site The Oatmeal dispenses valuable advice. Eight ways to prepare your pets for war. Tip of the cap to Susan Fox for this story and the previous one).

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: screenshot, Harvey Nichols UK

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If you’re still toying with the idea of getting someone a puppy for Christmas, and you’ve found yourself looking at the choices in a mall pet-store, or clicking through a wide-ranging selection on a website, please read on. Because while our Dr. Becker previously noted that the old idea that getting a pet at this time of year isn’t the bad-no-no-not-ever-never matter some may tell you it is, buying from a pet store or a click-and-ship website is a horrible idea at any time of year. That’s because what you’re supporting when you do that is more than likely a puppy-mill, like the one that was the source of a  distemper outbreak that ended up with 1,200 dogs having to be killed to prevent the spread of this often-deadly disease.  From the AP:

An estimated 1,200 dogs at a Kansas kennel were euthanized after an outbreak in Wyoming of the highly contagious disease distemper was linked to the large-scale breeding operation.

Kansas Livestock Commissioner Bill Brown said the state started investigating the Beaver Creek Kennels near Oberlin in September after being contacted by Wyoming’s state veterinarian about distemper cases at a pet store in Cheyenne.

Brown said Wednesday that the Kansas Animal Health Department quarantined the kennel twice after investigators confirmed several cases of distemper in puppies that were being sold out of state. When breeder Jeff Fortin couldn’t sell dogs because of the quarantines, he ran out of money to pay staff members and take care of the animals. [...]  Brown said no shelters would take the dogs because of the outbreak, so the decision was made to euthanize them.

Here’s the rest. Wait, you say! Isn’t distemper preventable with an inexpensive vaccine? Why yes, it is.  But Mr. Fortin isn’t exactly the kind of person who seems to care about such details as providing medical care for his “livestock.”After all, as the same article reports:

Nearly three years of USDA inspection reports for Fortin’s kennels show violations for things like failure to keep adequate records, failure to adequately treat animals with health problems and allowing trash, junk and discarded kennel materials near large dog enclosures.

USDA spokesman David Sacks said Fortin was fined $8,795 in February 2006 for facility violations, and was issued a warning letter in March for facility violations and denying access to inspectors.

The State of Kansas has agreed to let him get back in business after six months, by the way.

A better way to spay: Writing for the Whole Dog Journal, Pet Connection favorite Dr. Nancy Kay (we like her so much we let her borrow our Dr. Tony Johnson for her blog when she was in the hospital!) looks at spay surgeries that remove ovaries only, instead of the entire reproductive system (hey, weren’t we talking about this the other day?). From the article:

When some savvy veterinarians took a fresh look at performing spays, a surgery we’ve been doing the exact same way for decades, they came up with a revised technique that accomplishes all of the objectives of the spay surgery with fewer complications.

[...]

What happens when we leave the uterus behind? Isn’t it subject to becoming diseased later in life? Actually, the incidence of uterine disease in dogs whose ovaries have been removed is exceptionally low. Pyometra (pus within the uterus), is the most common uterine disorder in unspayed dogs, and typically necessitates emergency surgery to remove the uterus.Without the influence of progesterone, a hormone produced by the ovaries, pyometra does not naturally occur. The incidence of uterine cancer is extremely low in dogs (0.4 percent of all canine tumors) – hardly a worry, and studies have shown that the frequency of adult onset urinary incontinence (urine leakage) is the same whether or not the uterus is removed during the spay procedure.

If you are not already convinced that the “new spay is the better way,” consider the following complications that can be mitigated or avoided all together when the uterus remains unscathed.

Go on … click over. It’s really cool stuff.

The wisdom of crowds? We have enough people trying to comment on this blog who are obviously being paid by one company or another to boost their benefactor or tear down a competitor to make me suspicious of any site that offers anonymous reviews of anything, from a restaurant to a car mechanic to a veterinarian. And frankly, I would never choose a health-care professional for me or my pets based even on reviews with actual names attached. That’s because too many times what others value does not match up with my thinking on priorities. Cheap and convenient seems to be what a lot of people are looking for in a veterinarian, but competence, cutting-edge knowledge and compassion is what I want. If I needed any more reason to ignore review sites when it comes to healthcare  — which I don’t, really  — I’d have found it on the VIN New Service.  In an article last week, VNS reported on negative reviews turning up on website regarding a veterinarian about the same time that a service offered to help her remove the negative comments — for a fee.  Everyone denies everything, but … well, read it for yourself.

And while we’re on the subject of anonymous commenters who aren’t representing themselves honestly, I’m guessing the sudden uptick in people swearing by so-called “anesthesia-free dental cleanings” has something to do with this, also reported by the VIN News Service.  We always attract a fair number of outraged “customers” who swear by the cosmetic-at-best non-alternative to what veterinarians do, but they usually turn up on one of these posts of Christie’s.

Sociopaths aren’t fixable: Did your head explode over the suggestion by HSUS alpha dog Wayne Pacelle that Michael Vick would probably one day make a fine pet-owner? You wouldn’t be alone. Nor would you be alone in noting that the focus  of one history’s  biggest and likely most expensive PR campaigns ever sees the addition of a dog as the next step in his image overhaul. Not because he, you know, gives a damn about animals. Oh, but he does think his daughters are being short-changed because they can’t have a dog. Mr. Vick, if it were up to me,  you wouldn’t be allowed near your children, either.

For the record, I do agree with Terrierman Patrick Burns’ assertion that shelters kill more pit-bulls than Michael Vick ever could have because efforts to reduce the numbers of pit-bulls to better match number of people who want and/or can care for these dogs have utterly failed. (Although I don’t agree with all his conclusions on how to change that.)

But you know, I gotta tell you: It’s not for lack of trying on Sick Vick’s part. He and his pals killed as many as they could, but he did have to take time out to play football.

Here’s the thing: I can actually think Michael Vick is unrepentent slime AND also think we have failed to protect many more pitbulls than the ones he owned. I’m good at multitasking!

Better care for animals and people in Afghanistan: One of my many veterinarian friends had two wishes growing up. She wanted to serve her county as a soldier, and she wanted to be a veterinarian. So she signed up to have her schooling paid for by the U.S. Army, and then put in a few year of active duty and a quite a few more in the reserves. She spent part of her military career caring for the Army’s K-9 soldiers, but a lot of what she did was public-health outreach in other countries. I thought of her when reading this article by Maj. Loren Adams, DVM, about his work developing rabies-control programs in the Kunar province, working with local veterinarians. If you don’t know about the important role veterinarians play in public health or the important work they do in our military, you ought to give it a read.

A whale of a tale … but it’s true: A hat-tip to regular reader Dorene for passing along a link to a BBC story about a dog who sniffs out whales for a living on the Oregon coast. Wonderful pictures, too.

Honda says it’s not so Elemental: Finally, the sad news that Honda has decided to stop production on the two-time DogCars.com Best In Show DogCar of the Year, the Honda Element. The 2011 model year will be its last. We shutter the DogCars.com website, and Honda ditches the Element. Coinkidink? Hmmmm. Notes Autoweek:

Rather than the Generation Y-ers for whom it was originally intended, the ute mainly appealed to 50-year-olds and animal lovers.

I’ll be 53 in a couple of weeks, and you know how I feel about animals. Guess it’s no surprise I love that vehicle! In fact, if you haven’t picked out a gift yet …

***

David will be back Monday. Send your tips and links to PetConnectionNews@gmail.com.

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The two-time national dock jumping champion is a rescue dog.  His story was featured in the San Jose Mercury News:

In September at the 2009 L.A. County Fair, Aries leaped 27’08″ to tie a Mixed Breed distance record. He jumped so far that he turned sideways in mid-air so he wouldn’t skid over the water and hit the concrete end of the pool.

“It was amazing, he was in the air forever,” said the judge, Vit Kruml, of Mission Viejo. “It felt like I could have left and come back and he would have still been in the air.”

Life wasn’t always fun for Aries, though. Read the story, and think about the potential of rescues. (thanks to Patti S for the tip)

The costs of ownership: In light of the discussion over last week’s column by Dr. Becker on holiday adoptions, I thought I’d point out this New York Times article. It should be especially helpful for those who haven’t owned a pet before and might not understand that the costs of pet ownership can add up faster than you realize.

Adoption drive: So, now it’s time for an alert to an adoption drive underway at the Nevada Humane Society. The story, in the Reno Gazette-Journal, highlights Mike Arms, the head of the  Helen Woodward Animal Center in Rancho Santa Fe, Calif. Arms is the driving force behind the NHS effort, and he talks about the rationale behind the drive.

“Nobody wants to think about an orphaned pet waking up behind bars on a holiday morning,” Arms said. “Knowing that more families invite pets into their homes during the holidays than any other time of year, the best thing shelters can do is help match people with a pet that best fits their lifestyle.”

In 1999, Arms organized the first holiday pet adoption drive, rallying 14 San Diego area shelters. By the end of the campaign, 2,563 dogs and cats were waking up each morning with their new families.

Word of this success spread and the next year more than 130 animal shelters in five states participated. This year, with more than 3,600 shelters on board, Arms has set the goal of 1.5 million adopted pets nationwide.

The moral of the story is that Christmas puppies can be a horribly tragic idea — or they can save a life and enhance a family.

Not a huggy idea: An outstanding post from our friend Nancy at GoodDogz Blog. Why did her head almost explode?

There I was with my 9 year old daughter sleepily picking out a few books when I opened what appeared to be a cute dog book and BAM! The very first page of Smooch your Pooch is a dog bite waiting to happen.

The book is geared for 4 and up! Four and ups! Certainly it could understood by kids as young as 2.

What were the words that made my head explode? What were the words aimed at children that could with no exaggeration result in them getting bit by a dog square in the face?

I’m not tellin’. Go read for yourself.

Philly’s creative take on poop: Words I do not say often: a very good idea in Philadelphia. (courtesy of the Philadelphia Inquirer)

Animal CSI: A terrific profile from NPR on Melinda Merck, the nation’s top forensic veterinarian. If you’re a CSI fan (and even if you’re not), you’ll love this story, and the work Dr. Merck is doing.

Her job at the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals involves helping prosecutors build court cases, and she saw there weren’t nearly enough vets and other professionals with those skills.

The 46-year-old Merck is trying to change that, co-founding a first-of-its-kind veterinary forensic science training program at the University of Florida. She and scientists from the university’s renowned human forensics lab are sharing their expertise with animal-cruelty investigators, police and veterinarians who come from around the world.

Be kind to animals — all of them: Squirrel police. Only in Greenwich Village. The New York Daily News has the details.

RIP Prince Chunk: Finally, we note the passing of extra big kitty Prince Chunk, of Blackwood, N.J. Once again, the story comes to us from the Daily News.

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: Aries, Patrick Teahan/Mercury News.

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You know the usual warnings. How can you miss them? They’re everywhere:

“Don’t give pets as gifts.” “The holidays are the worst time to get a new pet.” “Pets are for life, not just for Christmas.” “The only good pet to give as a gift is a stuffed animal.”

But I’ve found myself swimming against that tide of robotic caution. The warnings are well-intentioned, but  they’re based on assumptions that don’t always hold up. We need to look at every family individually, and help everyone make the right choice for them and for the pet they adopt.

When it comes to giving pets as gifts, it’s not always a good idea, but it’s also not always a bad idea. If you add just one word to the word “gift,” it pretty much fixes the problem. That word is “thoughtful.”And getting a pet should always be done thoughtfully, whether the pet is a gift or not.

That means never buying a puppy or kitten from a pet store or Internet site with lots of pets just a click and credit card away from shipping. And while that’s true all year, pet stores and websites that sell dogs and cats make about two-thirds of their annual revenue in the five weeks leading up to Christmas — much of that from puppy sales.

Those puppies come from puppy mills and other undesirable sources. Good breeders never place their puppies this way. Never.

With that out of the way, what about the other cautions?

Sure, the holidays can be a busy time, with lots of activities, travel and guests. But parents often have time off from work during the holidays, and the children aren’t in school. With the exact same planning a family needs to undertake at any other time of year, the greater flexibility of a holiday schedule can make both pets’ and people’s adjustment easier, not harder.

Then there’s the idea that other gifts will be so much more exciting to children that they’ll be distracted from the new pet. I’m a parent and a grandparent, and I’ll tell you one thing about children: They’re expert multi-taskers. And they don’t suddenly become less so on January 2.

If those two threats don’t scare you out of bring a pet into your home during the holidays, there’s also those holiday hazard warnings several of us here on Pet Connection have been rolling our eyes at lately — things such as tinsel (which hardly anybody uses anymore), mistletoe and poinsettias (which aren’t attractive hazards and cause only mild stomach upset), and chocolate (which a medium size dog has to eat about a pound of to experience serious problems).

Puppies and kittens are just like little kids, and they get into things. But that’s not true just at the holidays. If they aren’t getting into your Christmas decorations, they’ll be getting into your laundry basket. Part of getting a new pet is making sure the environment is safe for them, and that treasured family heirloom you inherited from your great-grandmother is locked away until the new furry family member learns the ropes. And that principle applies year-round, not just between Thanksgiving and New Year’s Day.

If the family is ready for the new addition, then all will be well. If not, it won’t — but that’s true whether you get the pet for yourself or for your spouse. And if the parents have unrealistic expectations about how much of the pet’s care will be handled by the kids and how much will fall to them, does that change if the pet isn’t given as a gift?

I also think those people who go to a local shelter to adopt a pet during the holiday season should be applauded, but some shelters have traditionally discouraged holiday-season adoptions (a trend that’s thankfully changing, like with Iams’ great “Home for the Holidays” pet adoption campaign).

Around 8 million pets end up in shelters each year, and they would love nothing more than to move from the cage at the shelter to the couch at your home. And when that happens, not only will it make the pet’s life better, but your family’s, too.

For instance, if you already have a pet, studies show that bringing a new one into the pack can make his life happier and longer. And children with pets receive a multitude of benefits including having fewer allergies, a lower rate of asthma, more empathy and even a higher IQ.

One bit of advice often given at this time of year I do agree with. Giving a gift certificate for pet supplies or pre-paying adoption fees at a shelter, and then selecting the family pet together, is the perfect compromise if travel or other reasons make the holidays a bad time to get a new pet. But that’s something else that’s true year round, not just at Christmas time.

So while springing an unwanted and unexpected pet on someone  as a gift is always a bad idea (especially for the pet), and buying from a pet-store or click-and-ship puppy website is never a good idea, the careful and well-planned gift of an appropriate pet can be just what this veterinarian ordered for making your family happier and healthier, now and at any time of the year.

It’s a great thing to have strong ideas about how pets should be cared for. I know I do. But let’s not let those ideas get so set in stone we don’t question and qualify them from time to time. The “Healing Power of Pets” is a prescription I’m comfortable giving 365 days a year, and what better gift could there be than the love and companionship of a pet?

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Usually it’s our Dr. Becker who’s on the road all the time, but lately it seems as if the travel bug has infected more of the PetConnection blog staff. Over the weekend, I think more of us were gone than were at home.

Not me, though. I traveled more in October than I think I’ve ever traveled in a given month in my life, and was all set to be on the road for a third trip over the past weekend when I came home from Trip No. 2 to find my 14-year-old Sheltie Drew in the hospital with pneumonia. I’m happy to say that he’s feeling good enough a week later to high-tail it when he thinks I’m about to “pill” him.

That’s a lot better than he was 10 days ago, but it’s going to be a while yet before he’s all better, I suspect. Pneumonia’s rough on anyone, but even harder on the elderly.

While I was disappointed to skip the last trip of the month, it wasn’t as if I didn’t have enough work to fill my days. And with David one of the folks on the road, I’m happy to do the newswrap …

Rescues that need rescuing: No news to anyone that people have been struggling the last couple of years, since the collapse of the housing market at the end of the last administration triggered the worst economic melt-down since the Great Depression. That means a lot of animals have ended up in shelters and rescues as their owners have lost their homes. But that also means a lot of these well-meaning groups have taken on more than they can handle.

In a coffeehouse in Columbus, Ohio, a couple weeks ago, I sat with three of my friends, Amy Suggars, Mary Cvetan and Heather Houlahan, all active in pet rescue, and talked about what to do with shelter and rescue groups that seem to careen from one crisis to the next with no plan to correct the situation long-term. And that’s the subject of a very thoughtful post from the blog of the German Wirehaired Pointers rescue group, whose Mary Murray is a regular commenter on this blog. She writes:

A rescue must be willing to provide services that will benefit the animal and make them more adoptable, spay/neuter, medical tests, microchipping, leash training, crate training, obedience work. The rescue must do their very best to provide a healthy pet to their adopters, and disclose any potential problems with solutions and volunteer intervention if needed if a problem does arise.

A rescue must think with their head, and not their heart….as this is difficult at times, many times I have seen the “road to hell was paved with good intentions.”

A rescue must not work within a panic mode, but a logic mode.

There’s more, and it’s well worth reading.

My friend Miz, another regular commenter here, puts her heart and soul into running a German Shepherd rescue in one of the hardest hit areas of the country. I have learned an incredible amount from her about what it takes to do this right.  Good rescuers and rescue groups have value beyond measure. The well-meaning but clueless kind? They just make things worse.

Of course, some pets don’t need rescuing: Among those are the hounds of the Iroquois Hunt, whom I visited last month in Lexington, Kentucky. When I was there, a lovely hound named Baffle was ready to pop some puppies, and she was not very happy about being left behind when the other hounds went out. The Iroquois Hunt  doesn’t breed often — about what it takes to offset the hounds they retire. (Of course, there’s the Hound Welfare Fund for the lifetime care of those hounds.)

The Houndbloggers were on the scene in a snap to see Baffle’s new babies. And also to use the new HD video camera I helped talk them into. Check it all out over at Full Cry.

This and that: If you’re in Missouri, head over to the KC Dog Blog and read about Measure B, an initiative aimed at correcting the evils of puppy mills. Except, well, it won’t. Bad legislation really is worst than no legislation at all. Give a read. And then be sure to read what animal activist Nathan Winograd, an attorney and former prosecutor, has to say on the same subject. … Pet Connection BFF Dr. Patty Khuly of Fully Vetted explains why dogs and cats — especially cats — cannot and should not be put on a vegan diet. We have said the same here: If you want a vegan pet, get a rabbit.

And finally: Halloween may be over, but the picture parade of the cutest pet costumes ever never ends. Thanks to Peggy’s Pet Place for a handful of the most darling, including this one:

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David will be back with the next newswrap later this week …

Image: Top photo is Cowboy, on of the GWP rescue dogs.

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