pet connection

It’s a little scary when you drive up to the entrance gate of the park where you’re having your event and the guy at the gate doesn’t have your name on the reservation sheet. Even more so when you’ve already been dealing with a contrary park ranger who seems bent on throwing up every possible obstacle as you try to obtain permits beforehand. Fortunately, the woman who wields the wand of power and persuasion and dogged determination–my friend Tamela–drove up right behind us and all was quickly resolved.

The third annual Darcy FUNDay took place on Saturday, September 26, which happens to be my husband’s birthday and is close to the actual founding date of the Darcy Fund three years ago. For the past five years I’ve had a pretty good run of scheduling special events for Jerry’s birthday–think full moon hanging over Ngorongoro Crater in Tanzania, for instance–so I’m going to have to go all out next year to top making him work like a, well, dog moving tables and hauling boxes and taking pictures in the hot sun and just generally being my errand boy. He did get presented with a painting of Darcy by artist Betty Turner, though, so I guess it was a fair exchange.

The Gang of Four–Tamela Klisura, Rima Gerendas, Petra Tiber and I–have been planning this event for six or eight weeks. Tamela, aka the blonde tornado, is the general, assigning tasks and following up to make sure everything is on track. She’s not afraid to crack the whip if she thinks we’re slacking off. I think she was Eisenhower in a previous life. Rima and Petra are her incredibly able colonels, hustling up amazing gift baskets from Three Dog Bakery, White Lotus Day Spa, Dawgy Style, California Fine Wine Tasting, Pet Junction, Crown Valley Animal Care Center, Romantic Style, Wild’s Animal Supplies and more. They planned the color scheme, shopped for all the decorations, organized the sign-in and silent auction sheets, and wrapped all the donated items. Pam and Mike Becker and Suzie Cordes couldn’t come because of previous commitments, but they showed up early to help set up. Now those are real friends! Our husbands are the muscle and transportation. We couldn’t do without them.

Me? I write the songs, I mean the checks, kept track of the registrations, rounded up speakers, and did my share of acquiring prizes. They included  books and magazines from publishers TFH and Bowtie; decorative Cavalier items from our good friend and breeder of Bella and Harper Joanne Nash; signed copies from D. Caroline Coile, Ph.D, of her book Cavaliers: A Complete Pet Owner’s Manual (if I couldn’t write this book, I’m glad Caroline did); the gorgeous Cavaliers in Fact and Fancy by Barbara Garnett-Wilson, generously donated every year by Barbara and her husband Roy; a fancy Private Quarters dog bed, donated by Oklahoma dog lover Ann Campbell (yes, I hit up my relatives, too); and a really large and excellent donation of food and treat gift baskets as well as samples for everyone from The Honest Kitchen. Besides being dehydrated and thus the perfect travel food for our many road trips, HK is cool because the company is switching over its chicken-based foods to use only sustainably farmed, free-range chicken from Petaluma Poultry. When it comes to pet foods that are natural and environmentally responsible, they do their best to walk the walk.

Approximately 60 people gathered for our games, speakers and potluck picnic. We’re not a typical breed club. We call ourselves the South Orange County Cavalier Companions, and we’re pet owners who started meeting informally at a Mission Viejo park about 10 years ago. Through word of mouth, we’ve grown to approximately 250, although not everyone comes to every meeting.People have moved or live an hour or more away, but usually you can find 20 or 30 of us at one of the regular meetings and 40 or more at a Darcy FUNDay. There are always a few who have been there since the beginning and knew the Darcinator in person, but everyone seems enthusiastic about the cause, or at least the good time that we have.

We don’t discriminate. Along with all the Cavaliers were a Boston Terrier, a Tibetan Spaniel, a Cocker Spaniel and a pretty little mix who might have been a Lhasapoo or a Cavachon. Someone with a Bernese Mountain Dog walked by our site. Tamela’s husband, Mike, laughed. “Look, a giant tricolor.” The more typically sized tricolor to the right is clearly in, uh, hunting mode. Also seen were a ladybug, a cheerleader and a firefighter.

Pet edu-tainer and my cocktail buddy Arden Moore made her second appearance at the event, sharing tips on petiquette in public. If Tamela was a general in a previous life, I think Arden was a bouncer in a biker bar. How else could she give such great advice on breaking up fights in dog parks and, even better, preventing them in the first place? “If you see dogs starting to look tense, use a happy voice to distract and divert them,” she says. “Change the mood by making yourself the object of attention or getting them to chase a ball.” Arden travels with her dogs even more than I do, so she also had good tips on hotel stays, dining at cafes (hint: don’t let your dog sit in a chair or lick your plate) and air travel.

On a more serious note, veterinary cardiologist Sarah Jane Miller addressed the basics of mitral valve disease, including signs and treatment, and new medications such as pimobendan (Vetmedin) and took questions from the audience about diet, exercise and lifespan. I can’t say enough good things about veterinarians like Dr. Miller who are willing to give up their Saturday morning to help educate pet owners or participate in health clinics so that people who might not otherwise have a chance to take their dogs to a specialist can have the opportunity to learn more or to get a baseline report on their dog’s condition. We hope she’ll come back sometime. I spent a lot of time worrying about Bella, concerned that she would be stressed by all the people, dogs and activity, not to mention the heat, even though the pen was in a shaded, breezy area, but she was a trooper and did just fine. I was still glad a cardiologist was there, though.

I always feel bad for my dogs during this event. I don’t think they’ve ever gotten to participate in any of the games or contests. No “fastest biscuit eater” or “race to owner” or “longest ears” or “oldest dog” or “cutest costume” for them. They’re stuck in the Cavalier corral, begging for attention from strangers while I make the rounds to ensure that all is going well or make announcements or answer questions. (I think they’re grateful that they’re not in the costume contest, though.)  Tamela’s dogs didn’t get to come, either. The English Toys stayed home, and Farley, a handsome ruby boy, was in the hospital with pneumonia, fighting for his life. Tamela had planned to bring him home yesterday afternoon, but when she got to the hospital he had taken a turn for the worse. We’re all pulling for him. He’s a sweet dog and a poster boy for Cavaliers: 9 years old and murmur-free. I just got the good news that Tamela is picking him up from the veterinary hospital. That makes me happy. He and Darcy were special friends, as seen in the photo above, and I’d hate to see anything happen to him.

Arden did a brief video of the event, so if these photos leave you wanting more, here is where to see it. We haven’t totaled the amount brought in yet, but it’s well over $1,600 so far.

When I started the Darcy Fund three years ago, I wasn’t really sure how exactly we would raise funds for it, but Tamela gave me the first FUNDay as a birthday present, and we’ve continued them ever since. I can’t thank her enough for coming up with the idea. These events have been more fun than I ever imagined, and I have been surrounded by wonderful people  who are really the ones who make it happen every year. My goal now is to see Darcy FUNDays spread to other Cavalier groups around the country or to inspire people in other breeds to start their own fund. Together we can make a difference in all our dogs’ lives.

Yesterday as we got ready to go to the dog park, I discovered that Dodger’s neoprene tag bag, a Pet Tag Silencer that holds all his legally required tags, is missing. Therefore, so is his ID tag, rabies tag, dog park permit and city license.

That means I have to replace his ID tag, his rabies tag, his dog park permit and his city license, or potentially receive an expen$ive ticket that the local authorities hand out like candy. I’m thankful the hunky park ranger who polices our dog park knows us and knows my dogs have their tags, but I still need to get them replaced.

Because Dodger had an unpleasant habit of chewing his metal tags into illegible junk metal, which sounded like nails on a chalkboard, I put his tags on the back of the harness he wears to the dog park. When he managed to chew them from the side I put them in a neoprene tag bag for a successful cessation to chewing his own tags. Sure, he moved on to Ginger’s tags, but after she wore a collar with no tags, he seems to have stopped that and she now wears her tags on her collar again. So far as I know, he has never tried to chew Dickens’ ID tag; the hissing would be intense.

It never occurred to me that he would lose his tags by rolling on his back, but now it’s a big slap upside the head. Duh. He loves the dog park, and quivers in excitement while waiting for me to open the entrance gate. He loves everything about it: running like the wind, stalking little birdies and then chasing them, sticking his head in varmint burrows and zooming down the fenceline at setter speed. There’s a reason he’s nicknamed The Blur; I’ve been thinking I should have named him Rocket Dog. This summer he has begun exhibiting his joy (or some itchiness) by rolling on his back in the grass with all of his legs stuck up in the air. His exuberance is obvious. He’s not like any other dog at the park: all the other dogs like to socialize either with dogs or with people. He doesn’t want to socialize, he just wants to run. Thanks to co-blogger and ace trainer Liz Palika’s help, he no longer humps other dogs.

But all that rolling now means spending time replacing those lost tags. The clinic is mailing another rabies tag today. I’ll go to the pet supply store and order another Red Dingo ID tag. Here’s the really annoying part: The city charges only a whopping 25 cents to replace his license, but $10 to replace the park permit. Go figure. However, while he must wear the license, he doesn’t have to wear the park permit; I can carry it so I’ll put it on my key chain where he won’t roll it off again.  His collar is embroidered with his name and our phone number, and he’s microchipped.

So let’s see: $10 for another ID tag, $10 for the park permit, and I don’t know what the charge will be from my vet to make another rabies tag. Plus, an hour gone, and at my billable rate…well, that’s an expensive roll in the grass. So much for the good things in life being free.

In the meantime, it makes me happy to see him roll on his back in the deeply green grass and look at the sky while waving his long feathered legs. It’s what summer is all about.

NPR calls them “driveway moments” — those pieces you have to hear the end of so you stay in the car even after you get home and keep listening. Usually this is because the piece is especially interesting or compelling, but in the case of the interview with the new FDA boss, I stayed in my car just hoping she’d say something, anything with some substance.

It was not to be.

The interview had been teased with a mention of the pet-food recall, which NPR characterized as having “sickened” pets, which is true only if you grant that most organisms “sicken” before, you know, actually dying, which is what thousands of pets did, NPR’s glossing over aside.

New FDA Commissioner Margaret Hamburg batted away the question about the pet-food recall’s core issue — the fraudulent substitution of melamine by foreign companies in order to game the protein readings — by acknowledging the challenges the agency faces with globalization and her intent to modernize.

To be fair, Dr. Hamburg has a good reputation and she just started the job. And of course, this is just one interview. But frankly, I would have liked to have seen a little more  determination, a little more acknowledgment that the FDA as it exists today is a shadow of the consumer-protection firebrand it once was — if not an outright servant of the industries it’s supposed to regulate — and how she was going to change that.

After all, we know tobacco kills, and that shouldn’t be news to the anyone including the FDA, which just got handed the task of regulating tobacco products. What we shouldn’t have to worry about killing us or our pets is the food we buy.

Here’s the interview.

***

Dr. Marion Nestle always stresses what we have said on this blog from the first day of the pet-food recall: This isn’t about “pet food” vs. “people food”: It’s about safe food, and it all comes from the same places.

On her “Food Politics” blog, Dr. Nestle talks about the problems with multi-nutrient supplements:

It’s hard not to think of multivitamin supplements (which also include minerals) as perfectly safe, since the amounts of specific nutrients rarely exceed recommended levels.  But according to recent reports, formulation mistakes get made and these don’t always get caught by quality controls.  Here are two examples.

According to FoodProductionDaily.com, 25% of Adverse Event Reports (AERs) sent into the FDA last year concerned multivitamin supplements. This, says one supplement trade association, should not be interpreted to mean that there is anything wrong with the supplements.  Maybe not, but how about checking?

She then puts these findings in context of the recent recalls of Nutro. More here.

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Finally and also food-related, Pet Connection BFF Dr. Patty Khuy writes about prescription pet diets on her Dolittler blog:

The concept of a “prescription only” diet has merely been a marketing success for pet food companies who label their products as such and somehow manage to have engendered a belief that a product labeled as a “Prescription Diet”… requires a prescription.

But this is NOT TRUE! There is no legal basis for requiring a prescription for a product that is NOT regulated by the FDA as a drug. Shall I repeat that or was it sufficiently clear?

Nonetheless, it IS true that any private retail establishment has the right to require a veterinarian’s say-so before you can buy ANYTHING from them. Sure, PetSmart is not about to require a written script for leashes and kitty litter, but if it wants to do business with pet food behemoths like Hills and Iams, then they’re darn well not going to tick them off by failing to follow manufacturer requirements for sale of Prescription Diets.

More here.

One morning last summer I work up and found a scared mouse trembling in my kitchen sink. I’m pretty sure we both screamed, but I couldn’t hear him over my own voice.  I gathered him up in a towel and ran him outside. He was probably back in the house before I was.

After recent near hysteria involving a decomposing mouse stuck to my bedroom floor, I realized that my kitchen drawers were full of mouse poop, which means they were also full of mouse pee. I don’t cook much and thus am not in the drawers often. I once again had a major mouse problem.

How can this happen with a varmint-obsessed dog and a cat in the house?

And now that the mice are back, how do I keep my pets and myself safe from diseases?

As a child, I had mice as pets. They’re sweet little guys, and cute as can be.  I cannot kill them. So starting a couple of years ago, I live-trapped. I would pack up a frightened little soul, put the trap in a box, chauffeur the mouse to more than a mile away (you have to go at least a mile away or they might return to your house), and release him in a field to become someone else’s house guest.

There’s a real problem with having wild mice in the house, other than the extensive damage they can cause to property; my humane cousins wouldn’t call an exterminator until mice ate through the wiring in both of their Mercedes, costing several thousand dollars to repair. Mice can cause some pretty nasty health issues for humans. According to the CDC, “In the United States, rodents can spread diseases like hantavirus pulmonary syndrome, rat-bite fever, leptospirosis, and lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus, a virus that poses a particular risk for pregnant women.” And if you poison them, they can cause some nasty health issues for your pets.

For a couple of years, I’ve been trying to handle my mouse problem by warding them off using the concept of integrated pest management rather than killing them.  Above and beyond live trapping, all food stuffs are kept in plastic canisters like Tupperware or  Buddeez (I like the ways Buddeez  accommodates a kibble bag); steel wool is placed in holes they can fit through;  fox urine granules in Shake-Away are sprinkled appropriately (hey, if you can fight fire with fire, you can fight mouse urine with urine of a predator that we cannot smell); no pet food is left in bowls, which isn’t a problem with my crew of inhalers; no food is left on the counter (if I did, Dodger would eat it); Bounce dryer sheets are strewn around the kitchen (I read somewhere it’s supposed to help); and the best natural pest control of all time, a varmint-obsessed dog and a cat. But at my house, the pets are total slackers in this regard. I once found Dickens half heartedly whapping a wee mousie around, and Dodger ran down the stairs and just watched him whap. Didn’t even blink.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) also recommends cleaning up right after you cook (and I do on the rare occasions I cook), keeping bird and squirrel feeders away from the house, and keeping the compost bin away from the house. I am going to have to drag the compost bin farther away.

Even with all this, over the past couple of years I have found kitchen drawers full of mouse poop about three times. I clean them out, disinfect, and start all over again.  I am now fed up enough that I can’t handle more drawers full of poop. I can’t bring myself to use traps that kill, but I can put out a contract on them: I called an exterminator. A friend said her mother had a similar approach of “being nice” until you could see the mice bouncing around in the utility room. I’m ready too, so no more Ms. Nice Guy.  The scope is now beyond me. Just in case, I tried a new live trap on Saturday, but no one has been wise enough to use it.

This morning the exterminator came out to set more traps in appropriate places. The exterminator was made keenly aware that I have pets and that no rodenticides or poisons are to be used. Not only will rodenticide kill rodents, but it can kill your pets if they get into the poison or eat a (dead or alive) animal that ingested it. Next week will be by far the most important step:  sealing off places where mice can enter the house.  The CDC says that “mice can squeeze through a hole the size of a nickel, and rats can squeeze through a hole the size of a half dollar!” By all means, I’m up for sealing. It’s best to have a professional wise in the ways of rodent pathways to search, but any holes you seal help.

The exterminator said the reason my pets aren’t getting the mice is the mice have contained themselves in order to avoid my pets – for the most part, the mice won’t leave the basement, attic, or the area behind the kitchen walls (aieee!).  And now that the exterminator has prowled the house, I have a new concern: bat guano in the attic. I don’t even want to talk about it.

If you are going to use traps that kill – and I totally understand that most folks have the stomach for it – use the humane ones. The snap traps are quickest and the most humane, like a guillotine, but don’t touch the body while you’re cleaning up. I think the glue traps are unbelievably cruel – terrified animals are stuck to the trap and then wait a long time to die of dehydration or panic.  I don’t think poison is a humane choice, although I understand why people choose to use it. If you choose to use poison, be sure to use an anticoagulant rodenticide because the veterinarian has an antidote to it if your dog or cat gets into it or eats a poisoned rodent.

There’s being kind to animals and there’s mouse poop in your house.  Find your acceptable line, draw it in the sand, and don’t let the mice cross it.

Need something to make hot dogs cool and cool cats lookhot? Look for our Dr. Marty Becker’s best new products on Wednesday’s (June 10) “The Morning Show with Mike & Juliet” on the Fox network.

The pet-loving folks at Fox have asked Dr. Becker to show off  the top new pet products for summer. You’ll see award-winning new toys, gee-wiz solutions to old problems and innovations to make your life easier and your pet’s life better. Many of these products were award winners from Dog Fancy’s Editor’s Choice Awards, winners from the recent Global Pet Expo, or new products that were tested on Dr. Becker’s pets and patients.