pet connection

A dog rescued many years ago, found as an emaciated stray with baling wire wrapped around her snout, repaid my friend last week by saving her life.

Thanks to a liver transplant a couple of years ago, Linda Mawhinney is getting back to a fairly normal state of health after years of creeping towards becoming terminally ill. She uses a pump for her diabetes, and just recently began working full time again. This past August I saw Linda for the first time in years. She lives in a suburb of Vancouver. She has been too ill to travel, and I just hadn’t made it out there in a long time.

Emma, an 11-year old shepherd mix, woke Linda up around 3 a.m. to tell Linda she wanted to go out. Linda staggered out to the kitchen aiming for the room behind it, which has the door to the back yard. Emma simply stopped by the kitchen counter and refused to budge. Groggy as all get out, Linda thought Emma wanted food, but her dish was full. Emma kept looking at the kitchen counter and then at Linda, then back to the counter, then back to Linda.

I can just see Emma doing this. She is one smart cookie.

“Eventually, I realized that my vision was quite blotchy and what she was indicating was my glucometer,” said Linda in an e-mail to me. The glucometer was on the kitchen counter where Emma was staring. Linda checked her blood sugar and found it dangerously low at 25 when normal is 90 to 140 (or 1.5 from a normal range of 5.2 to 7.6).

“If it had dipped any lower I would have blacked out completely,” said Linda, whose new job is a patient advisor for diabetics. “I started eating Dex4 tablets and Emma went outside, where it was raining heavily.  Normally when it’s raining, she runs out and pees and then dashes back in the house.  Not this night.  She lay down in the grass for 15 minutes.  This is significant because I have been known, in a hypoglycemic stupor, to take a couple of Dex4 tablets and go back to bed without checking to make sure it’s coming up and have subsequently tanked.  After about 15 minutes, she came back in and again went to the counter where the glucometer was.  I tried to get her to go down the hall to the bedroom, but she wouldn’t go until I had taken my blood again and told her that it was okay.”

Linda’s pump had been sending out noisy beeping alarms, but that night both Linda and her husband John (years ago I nicknamed him St. John) slept through them. It’s impossible to know if Emma was responding to the alarm or to a scent indicating a problem, but she not only knew something needed to be done immediately, she also figured out how to do it.

It’s frightening to think that without Emma, Linda could have died from this one episode after nearly dying two years ago (she was the sickest person her transplant surgeon had ever seen who survived).  Linda’s health issues began almost 15 years ago, around the time I met her through an Internet dog list, and she is one hell of a survivor. I’ve never seen anyone that ill who had such an upbeat attitude every step of the way. In all the years I’ve known her, she’s only cried once that I know of, and not because she was sick or nearly dying: she cried because one of her dogs died in her arms while she was home alone and too sick to race the dog to the vet. Knowing that the dog wouldn’t have survived even if she’d been seen immediately never took away the pain.

At one point Emma was one of several rescued dogs in the house, but because of Linda’s health issues, Emma has been the only pet in the house for a while. Emma wasn’t there the last time I was, so this was the first time I met her. She’s an absolute doll. I took a lot of photos of them, and many of Emma, trying to show how happy she is despite the reasons for the scar around her snout. Linda and Emma have always had an emotional connection that went beyond the one she had with her other beloved dogs.  It’s no surprise to the people who know them that Emma would be the dog to save Linda from a dangerous glucose drop; it would have been Emma if there were ten dogs in the house.

Emma is clearly getting a bit stiff these days, and her gait isn’t quite what it used to be. She has been totally content for years, and is an easy-going, affectionate girl. Whoever cruelly left her to starve with wire wrapped around her snout so that she couldn’t eat will surely get what he or she deserves in this world. Thankfully, Linda and Emma have always deserved each other, and now they have saved each other.

I know you’re all jealous of my life. Don’t try to hide it. Jetting from one exotic location to another, mingling with the pretty people, entre to the most exclusive events, access to the power brokers… who wouldn’t envy me?

Perhaps anyone who could have been a fly on the wall when I had to stop an interview in mid-stream yesterday to unwind all the Borzoi hair from the base of the keys on my keyboard. Two years of accumulation meant I’d hit critical mass and lost the “S” and the shift keys.

Fortunately I was interviewing someone who is as much a dog person as they come, Marthina McClay of Our Pack, the rescue group that turned ex-Vick dog Leo into a therapy dog.

I was interviewing her for my column on SFGate.com, but she made some great comments that won’t fit into that piece, so I thought I’d share them with you here. Believe me, they make better reading than the story of how I had to use a knitting needle to untangle Borzoi hair from my keyboard.

I asked her about Michael Vick talking to at-risk youth about dog fighting on behalf of HSUS. She responded by telling me about a visit Leo made to a school for youth who have been in trouble with the law in San Jose, Calif. — some of them with dog fighting in their backgrounds:

We heard the kids going, “Oh, that’s a bad ass pit bull,” when we walked in. It’s like a cool thing to have a pit bull.

When we got into the classroom, I just took off Leo’s leash and let him walk around and do his thing. I let Leo speak for himself. He just connected with everyone, these kids. They went from hard to soft within 20 minutes.

Then the teacher said, “By the way, would you guys like to know where this dog came from?”

The kids said, “Where?”

She told them, “This dog used to belong to Michael Vick.”

You could hear a pin drop. Their mouths were open, their eyes were riveted on this dog. They said, “What?” They couldn’t believe it.

I could hear one of the kids being interviewed by a reporter from the Washington Post, and he said he’d assumed a dog like this, a Vick dog, would be aggressive and mean. Instead, he said, he’s a nice, sweet, friendly dog. “I really like him,” he said.

We’re not a farming culture anymore. We have lost our connection with animals. We almost never work hand in hand with our dogs anymore. We go to work in an office or cubicle, or we go to school, but there’s nothing to give us that feeling of how we fit into the world of animals.

So you bring a dog into the classroom and say, “Would you really want something like that to happen to this dog?” Before Leo showed up, I don’t think they cared. The Vick dogs were distant and not connected to them. But after they met Leo, all that changed. It mattered to them.

So what I’m saying is, don’t bring Vick to talk to at risk kids. Bring his dogs. His dogs will do a lot more for people who need to see the light that these are sentient, feeling, loving beings, and that it’s our job to care for them, than Vick can ever do.

By the way, Marthina told me that Leo has found his forever home… with her. As if anyone thought it would end any differently.

I could have written up my thoughts on the No More Homeless Pets Conference, with cogent analysis and provocative commentary.

I could once more dig into the pressing issues of pet food safety and how the regulatory agencies and industry are failing our animals, and us.

I could give you an overview of the interview I’ll be doing with HSUS head honcho Wayne Pacelle this evening, or my plans to liveblog his town hall here in San Francisco.

But instead, I’m going to share with you the single most important news story of the day, a critical development in the world of animal issues: My Borzoi Kyrie’s new raincoat. Enjoy.

And in case you’re wondering, I got it from HoundTogs.com and they couldn’t have been nicer and more helpful. And I’m just a regular customer — I don’t take freebies for review. (Well, I take them, but I don’t keep them after I’ve used them enough to review them.)

And that other stuff? Later. I promise.

Chicago Now blogger Stephen Markley wrote about why he hates dogs. After reading it, my conclusion is that he doesn’t hate dogs and cats, he just doesn’t like them, and in today’s pet-crazed world, that’s tantamount to the same thing. He lists many reasons he doesn’t like them.

What’s hilarious is that some commenters wrote that the reasons he dislikes pets are the very same reasons they love theirs.

While I feel sorry for Mr. Markely because he is missing out on the incredible experiences I’ve had with pets, it is a perfect reminder to those of us who spend much of our day and dreams thinking about our pets or even earning a living with them that not everyone feels this way. Just as we don’t all love football or Thai food, some people are not animal people, and they never will be. We may think of them as missing some important gene, but they are not genetically defective.

I often mention that the lives of people without pets must be terribly dull and unamusing, and I’m certain that parents of human children feel the same way about a childless person like me.

The other day I was reminded that not everyone loves dogs when a computer technician arrived. He clearly did not like dogs, and Dodger was doing his best to meet and greet, and make the technician fuss over him the way everyone else does. No such luck for my poor bouncing boy, who ended up in the back yard while the technician was here.

That guy was in direct contrast to the furnace guy who walked in and said “Wow, an English setter! I used to breed them!” and gave me “an English setter discount” (it was actually because he took so long to get here, but I loved it nonetheless).

Pet lovers, especially the hard-core among us (and you know who you are), need to be reminded once in a while that not all of our guests, service people or friends like animals. They don’t want a dog jumping on them, a cat shedding on their clothes, nor do they want to hold your gerbil or let your bird poop on their shoulder. Some folks are afraid of animals, and some simply aren’t attracted.

Even within animal lovers, not all of us like all animals. My sister’s horses are beautiful and I love feeding them treats, but after seeing my sister end up in the hospital twice after riding them there is no way I am getting ON one;  she stopped asking years ago if I wanted to ride. I like my bones where they are. Furthermore, while I love Melissa Kaplan’s hilarious photos of her huge iguana Mike, she knows darn well I don’t want to hold him, and I don’t want to touch any snake on the planet.

Feel sorry for those folks who are not animal lovers and about what they’re missing, but respect their wishes. I don’t want anyone to force me to sit down and watch a stupid football game, so I don’t force my pets on anyone. Life is all about variety and preferences; the good news is that I don’t have to spend time with those folks who just aren’t animal people.

Our two Pugs have long been like children to my husband and me. So what’s going to happen now that a real human child is on the way?

In November, a daughter will be joining our family – hopefully with fewer wrinkles and less shedding than our Pugs. And we’re taking this time to get our dogs ready for a new human family member. We want the transition to go well for them, and we want to make sure they have the right manners for interacting with a baby.

One thing we’re not doing is lavishing attention on the dogs pet during the weeks and days leading up to the birth of the baby. Whether it’s mothering hormones or just wanting to make up for the changes to come, too many parents-to-be make exactly that mistake.

And when the baby does show up, and not only the old routine but the new are out the window, it ends up making the dogs feel less secure. Instead, parents to be should give their pets the kind of attention that will be a happy “new normal” when the baby arrives.

I don’t love my dogs any less, but I’m starting to get them used to not always being on the sofa with us. I ask them to sit and wait to be invited, or let them get on a nearby chair instead. This both helps them get used to having some areas be “off limits,” as they no doubt will once the baby arrives, but prepares them to be comfortable even when they can’t be in our laps.

Although the Pugs were allowed to sleep in our bed for years, the more pregnant I got, the more I relished having extra space to accommodate restless pregnancy sleep – not to mention fitting the gigantic pregnancy pillow into our bed to support my growing belly and sore back. So, the Pugs were asked to sleep in a round, wool dog bed at the side of ours. They’re still right next to me, but in their own space.

To help the Pugs fill the time I’ll be devoting to the new baby, I’ve been giving them mind-stimulating things to do. Food bowls have been replaced with food puzzles that the dogs manipulate and work through in order to get the food out of the inside. Chew toys and rawhides are left around the house for them.

And sometimes, they get both; they love it when I put canned dog food inside a Kong toy, place a pencil rawhide chew through the middle, and then freeze the whole thing. Every time I pull a frozen Kong out of the freezer, the dogs do a spinning happy dance, making flying leaps through the air like circus dogs.

We’ve also been working on body space sensitivity. For example, when my black pug, Willy, went through a therapy dog certification program, we learned that having a good sense of appropriate body space was a vital quality in a therapy dog. That news made my family laugh, as Pugs are notorious for tromping over each other, other dogs and people like they were breathing pieces of furniture.

But an infant can’t handle a dog walking across her body the way an adult can, and we realized it was for the safety of our baby to teach our Pugs the idea of body space. If the Pugs jump up on the couch or in a lap without permission, they are given a prompt “off” cue and then are redirected to an area where they can settle down, such as their own bed.

Jumping up on people during greeting is another body space issue that has been difficult to control, especially with the rate it’s reinforced by the children living in our apartment complex. But since I don’t want my dogs knocking my daughter down when she gets to the toddling stage, I’m working on it.

When greeting the Pugs myself in the home, or when I take them out on walks around other people, I ask the Pugs to sit before being petted. If they jump up during the greeting, they are then ignored until they sit again, and then petting can resume.

Bruce and Willy both liked to alarm bark when strangers approached when we were on our walks. With the idea of stroller walks and wanting calm dogs to accompany us on walks, I began training them to be quiet when out on walks and to turn towards me when other people or dogs approach.

To do this, I had to condition them to look at me by throwing down treats each time a stranger or dog approached. After several trials, the dogs began anticipating the treats coming with an approaching person or animal and started turning towards me without the treats needing to be thrown down.

To keep their response of looking at me reliable, I treat them at random times when they look over at me when people or pets are near. Their barking has decreased 95 percent, with the 5 percent being handled by putting them in a modified time out on the walks when they are not quiet after being asked. I anticipate much quieter and easier stroller walks because of the walk preparation I’ve begun with them now.

One issue still worries me. My friend Katie had her 18 month old son, Jackson, over for a visit one day. He pulled a toy ball out of his mom’s diaper bag, like a magician pulling a rabbit out of the hat. Luckily I was right next to my ball-crazy fawn Pug, Bruce, when Jackson threw the ball, but I was barely able to grab him before he raced after the ball, averting a possible knock-down of little Jackson.

The most bothersome pregnancy pet peeve (literally) that I have encountered is other people seeing my close relationship with my Pugs, and them proceeding to tell me that when I have the baby the Pugs will not be nearly as important to me, and the baby will totally replace them. Without exaggeration, 90 percent of people, strangers, family and friends included, who see my pregnant belly accompanied by my two Velcro Pugs stuck to my side warn me of the change that will happen.

My parents and husband who are close enough to me understand my devotion to my Pug children encourage me that the arrival of a new baby will only strengthen family ties, Pugs included.

Although I haven’t had the baby yet and am not qualified to say for sure how life with my Pugs will change, I do believe that a new family member won’t take away love from anyone in the least, but rather will help expand my heart to love, both the new baby, my husband, and our cherished Pugs.