pet connection

The retriever litter I planned for years and finally bred last year is now 10 months old, at that point beyond cute puppy and nowhere near good dog. They are loved and they are learning, but they are collectively a pain in the ass for their collective owners right now.

Barring any disastrous  change of family circumstances — job loss, death, etc. — I’m not expecting any of these puppies to need rehoming, not now and not ever.  (Although of course I would be there should they need me, always.) They are all with long-time, experienced and successful owners of field-bred hunting retrievers. In fact, four of the six of us owners had puppies from the same litter before, more than 13 years ago.  My late Heather’s brother Bogey is the last of that litter, and his mom owns the former Blaze Orange Boy (BOB) puppy, now named Dooley, a/k/a The Big D.

The “D” does NOT stand for Dumbass.

My friend Alyce, who along with her husband owns two hunting retrievers besides Bogey and Dooley, is a music teacher, which means she has to find ways to keep a 10-month-old retriever puppy busy while she’s giving lessons.

Yesterday, she filled a Kong up with biscuit bits and canned cheese, and trusted that combination would keep Dooley busy for a while.

It didn’t, and soon she was hearing strange hissing sounds that were not coming from her student’s flute. Into the kitchen she went, where she discovered Dooley had taken the cheese can off the counter and quickly figured out how to work the nozzle to dispense the cheese. Most of it he got in his own mouth, but not without a certain amount of messy experimentation over every exposed surface in the general vicinity, including on one of the other retrievers, Sam.

As I said, all of the people who have Dooley and his sibs are very experienced. Alyce immediately noted that the mess was not Dooley’s fault, but hers. “I shouldn’t have left the can on the counter,” she said.

Funny thing: When it comes to living with and training working retrievers, I’m really the least accomplished of the bunch, by far. But I cope as best I can. Some 2,000 miles away, the One Who Chose Me, Dooley’s sister Faith, a/k/a FayBee, has earned herself three days at the doggie daycare center a week, to preserve my sanity while I work on the next book. The people at my day job think doggie daycare is a laughable extravagance, but I do not.

FayBee, a/k/a HellPuppy, runs for eight hours straight there, playing and body-slamming other high-energy dogs the whole time, and falls asleep on the ride home. A little training and food puzzles before dinner — I love those Nino Ottosson toys our Liz Palika first wrote about for this blog — and then my own 10-month-old PIA eats fast and crashes hard, becoming the most adorable 65-pound snuggle-bug for the night.

Field-bred retrievers, like work-bred terriers, are not for everyone, no matter how sweet (retrievers) or cute (terriers) people think they are. I am so, so grateful to have had my long-time friends Mary (who bred my McMommy dog, the darling McKenzie) and Katie (who owns the daddy, Zin) fly out here from TX and MN respectively eight months ago to evaluate the puppies and match them with experienced homes coast to coast.

I was grateful then, but I’m more grateful now. Because everyone loves a puppy, but it takes a crazyspecial person to love an adolescent canine athlete with brains, drive and determination, and a short attention span for anything of interest to a human, not a dog.

Fortunately, Jack, Parker, Dooley, Keen and Maya each have just that kind of crazyspecial person looking out for them. And so does Faith, even if I have to draw on a lot of my own faith to believe what I know in my heart:  that she’s going to be one hell of a great dog when she grows up.

And it shouldn’t take more than a few years to get there.

Images:

Top: Faith in motion, which is the norm. Mud and water are just a wonderful bonus.

Bottom: The best part of doggie daycare is an exhausted puppy. FayBee falls asleep in the car while I go pay the bill with gratitude.  iPhone photo, not the best, but you get the point.

The Pet Connection team has a notable presence in the new issue of The Bark magazine.

Christie on the realities of no-kill today: Yes, our very own Christie Keith has a feature article in the current issue on the no-kill movement, which is both the hottest, most controversial  issue in sheltering today and the most promising. Since the magazine’s articles are not available on Teh Interwebs, you’ll just have to go to your newsstand and pick up a copy, or better yet, do what I’m doing: Get yourself a subscription!  To whet your appetite, I’ll give you a snippet of Christie’s piece:

For decades, the dream of a no-kill nation was considered exactly that: a dream. Yet today, communities across the country are closing in on the promise of saving all their healthy and treatable dogs and cats. Almost all organizations involved in tracking shelter data, including the Humane Society of the United States and Maddie’s Fund, estimate that the number of animals killed annually in shelters has plummeted from more than 25 million in the 1970s to around four million today. The United States has never been closer to becoming a no-kill nation than it is at this moment. But will we ever get there?

Best, brightest … and here: But wait, there’s more.  Our own Gina Spadafori gets a mention in this issue, as well.  She has been named one of the 100 best and brightest figures in the dog world, as well as Pet Connection’s Dr. Narda Robinson, of Colorado State University.  Now how totally cool is that?  Brava Christie, Dr. Narda and Gina!  Other names on the list most likely to be familiar to Pet Connection readers include:

• Nathan Winograd, no-kill movement trailblazer
• Dr. Kate Hurley, shelter medicine pioneer
• Dr. Robin Downing, pain medicine expert
• Dr. Nancy Kay, internal medicine specialist and author of the  Speaking for Spot blog
• Dr. Paul Pion, world-famous veterinary cardiologist and founder of the Veterinary Information Network and the  VIN News Service
• Dr. Donald Strombeck, who wrote the book on home-prepared diets
• Dr. Marion Nestle, truth-teller, food industry expert and author of the Food Politics blog
• Dave Duffield, founder of Maddie’s Fund
• Richard Avanzino of Maddie’s Fund
• Wayne Pacelle of the  HSUS

It’s not the first time Dr. Pion and Gina Spadafori have been on a magazine’s “Best of” list, by the way: Cat Fancy magazine named their book “Cats For Dummies” as one of the top 100 events of the 20th century for cats.

The pet beats the honey: If you’ve walked past any card store, flower store or jewelry store in the past week, you know that Valentine’s Day will soon be upon us.  I’m not a big fan of the “holiday” for my own reasons, but MSNBC.com warmed my heart with the assertion that one in every five adults would rather spend Feburary 14 with their pet.

The survey of 24,000 people in 23 countries found 21 percent of adults would rather spend February 14 with their pet than their spouse, although the French were least likely to choose a furry friend over a human, with only 10 percent taking that option.

Bayer allows Advantage and K-9 Advantix to be  sold via retail: Edie Lau at the VIN News Service says we can expect to see wider retail sale of some flea-and-tick products from here on in.    Although you’ve been able to buy Bayer’s Advantage and K-9 Advantix through some online vendors and feed stores (which use legitimate but murky “gray market channels”), far more retail and internet outlets have been kept out of the selling of these products.  Some veterinarians aren’t pleased with the development.

Expressing a resentment shared by others, Dr. Carl Darby, a practitioner in Seneca Falls, N.Y., wrote in an online discussion on the Veterinary Information Network (VIN): “I hope that Bayer understands that losing their highly educated, motivated and dedicated free sales force may have long-term impacts on their business, and it may be difficult for them to regain the trust of the profession.”

It’ll be interesting to see if other companies follow Bayer’s lead.

Teen kidnaps puppy to save it: Bronson Stewart is 19 years old and lives in New Zealand.  His puppy was hit by a car and badly injured.  When the family couldn’t pay for the surgery, they elected for euthanasia to end the dog’s suffering.  Bronson wouldn’t accept that.

“I just knew I had to get my dog back. He’s like my brother,” Stewart told TV One’s “Closeup” program Wednesday.

“They can’t just kill him because I haven’t got any money.”

Stewart went to the veterinary clinic last Friday and asked to see Buck, grabbed the little dog and ran home.

Things got dicey after that, but it has a happy ending, promise.  Go read.

Note: This is where I usually remind you to send links or tips for stories to me, but I’ll be out of town for a few days, and Gina will be pitching in for Monday’s column, so send tips and links to petconnection@gmail.com.  See you next week.

Photo credit: Millie, thebark.com.

Point of fact: I have always hated Barbie.

I hated that you couldn’t do anything with her but stand her up to look pretty, and that playing make-believe with her was about as interesting as playing with a pointy-headed stick. (Which may actually be all that Barbie really is, anyway.) And that was before I got old enough to figure out that she didn’t look like anyone ever has or could without bulimia and plastic surgery. Or before I got older still, and realized that the standard set for large, high and surgically augmented racks on women young and old and the accompanying fetish for the kinds of shoes that would be considered abuse if forced on us by law meant that there are a whole lot of women looking — or trying to look — like idiotsBarbies instead of, you know, women.

No, the Barbie or two that came my way was ignored (but at least not tortured, which still creeps me out). For me, Breyer horses, all the way. Before you could buy accessories for them, I made my own: String halters, tissue-paper blankets and felt saddles, all lovingly preserved by my mother. (OK, honestly: Tossed in a box and forgotten for decades until my mom  told me  in no uncertain terms that I needed to get my stupid plastic horses and other childhood debris out of her garage.)

When my niece went through her very brief Barbie stage at age 8 or so, her parents dutifully threw her a Barbie-themed birthday party. I was chided and considered a Bad Sport for refusing to support that crap, and brought her a Breyer, which I continued to do pretty routinely for the next decade.

It worked.

My smart and beautiful niece is an equine studies major now, a witty three-sport athlete who can lift hay bales and saddles, back a horse-trailer into a parking space sized for a compact car and is more than woman enough to wear  a strapless short sundress and drag the eyes of a couple hundred men off the finish line at the Del Mar race track with a flip of her hair. She rode her horse to pick up her high school diploma, the day after graduation ceremonies.

She is an action figure, not a Barbie.

So what does this have to do with pets? Turns out my Barbie hate and my intense dislike for the Paris Hilton tiny-puppy-mill-dog-as-fashion-accessory craze have dovetailed neatly, if rather depressingly, into a Barbie that comes complete not only with the standard Barbie idiocy, but also with fashion accessory plastic puppies.

No, they didn’t name it Puppy Mill Barbie, which would have been far more accurate, of course.  The model is Barbie® Potty Training Pups^TM, yours for around $20 in your nearest big-box China crap retail outlet.

Puppy Mill Barbie comes with three purse-sized puppy mill dogs, toys, dishes and “papers” for “potty-training” — although the word on the street is that the puppies leak from the wrong places, probably from some puppy-mill caused illness.

For anyone tempted to get a toddler indoctrinated into the cult of idiocyBarbie early, please note that Puppy Mill Barbie is not suitable for girls under 3, because the small parts may be a “choking hazard.”

I can attest to that. I’ve been choking on the vomit in my mouth from the very second I laid eyes on the thing.

The amazing story of Druse the Dachshund: Although I have two longhaired dachshunds, I am not the type to proclaim them the best of all possible breeds.  Every dog is unique, just like us.  However, loyal reader  Snoopy’s Friend found a story from Der Spiegel Online (easier than flying to Germany, right?) about Druse the previously-lost Dachshund.  Druse didn’t just find her way home, oh no.  Those tales appear in the news every week.  Druse presented herself to her local lost and found center.   I don’t even know how that’s possible, but I do have to admit Cami’s and Harry’s wits are forever surprising me.  Great, now I learn they can probably read….

Ketamine recall:   The Teva Pharmaceuticals story is only getting worse, and of course we’re on it.   Nobody is doing a better job of keeping on top of the unfolding saga than our own Christie Keith.  Her most recent Pet Connection post on the case, in case you missed it, should be bookmarked (until the next one).    In that post is a link to her fuller SFGate column, which, if you haven’t seen it, is required reading.

This void of information, from the highest corporate levels of Big Pharma, to the halls of government, right down to the plight of a sick dog and his worried owner, does as much damage to public health as tainted food and drugs.

It does it by destroying trust. People lose faith in their doctors, pet owners lose faith in their veterinarians, and veterinarians and doctors as well as average citizens lose faith in agencies like the FDA, ostensibly tasked with protecting both human and animal health.

“The domino effect applies,” observed Fiala. “Everybody falls.”

It bears repeating: if your pet is going to be facing surgery, make sure both you and your veterinarian are fully up to speed on what is and is not considered safe right now (and be aware that today’s list might not be tomorrow’s).

Paying tribute to Zak the Police Dog: My eldest niece (I say “eldest” like she’s 80.  Leigh is in her 20’s) lives in Connecticut and was struck by the tribute to Zak, a German Shepherd who, by all reports, was a tremendous public servant.  Zak passed away suddenly on December 12, and all of Stratford’s official community came out to pay tribute, plus more.

Police from towns and cities across Connecticut and even New York, including 44 K-9 teams, plus a number of Stratford firefighters and town residents, attended Friday’s service for Zak to pay their respects.

The dogs’ barking mingled with the mournful wail of bagpipes in tribute to their fallen comrade, and some handlers and people in the audience brushed away tears during the ceremony.

If you’re up to it, a slideshow of Zak’s memorial service is here.   Thank you for your faithful service, Zak.  You were a very, very good dog.

Rescue dogs heading for Haiti: The nation of Haiti has been devastated by a massive earthquake. The country was environmentally damaged and crippled with poverty and corruption even before the powerful 7.0 quake destroyed what some estimate as half its buildings.

Haitian rescue organizations are overwhelmed, and many citizens are either dead or trapped under rubble. A number of nations, including France and the United States, are sending aid and other forms of assistance, including dogs specially trained to search for survivors in the aftermath of earthquakes.

From USA Today:

The United States and other nations began organizing aid efforts, alerting search teams and gathering supplies that will be badly needed in the Western Hemisphere’s poorest country. The International Federation of the Red Cross and other aid groups announced plans for major relief operations.

The U.S. Agency for International Development was dispatching a disaster response team and deploying search and rescue teams from Fairfax County, Va., and Los Angeles. The search teams include six sniffer dogs that can search for people trapped in wreckage.

The National Disaster Search Dog Foundation, “a non-profit organization whose mission is to strengthen America’s emergency response network by producing the most highly-trained canine-firefighter disaster search teams in the nation,” is also on its way to Haiti:

National Disaster Search Dog Foundation, a non-profit, non-governmental organization dedicated to recruiting rescued dogs and partnering them with firefighters to find people buried alive in the wreckage of disasters, today announced six Canine Search Teams are en route to Haiti to assist with search and rescue efforts in response to the powerful 7.0 earthquake that struck the island on January 12. The State Department, the U.S. Agency for International Development and the Office of Foreign Disaster Assistance are working in conjunction with California Task Force 2 (CA-TF2), a FEMA urban search and rescue task force based in Los Angeles County.

CA-TF2, which is sponsored by the Los Angeles County Fire Department, is one of two U.S. Task Forces charged with responding to international natural or man-made disasters. All six teams deploying with CA-TF2 were trained by the National Disaster Search Dog Foundation to find people buried alive under the wreckage of disasters.

“The Haitian government has requested assistance from the U.S. in responding to the most devastating earthquake to hit the island in 200 years,” said Debra Tosch, Executive Director of Search Dog Foundation. “We know that the first few hours after a major disaster has occurred are critical in saving lives and the search and recovery teams are in place now.”

Hope you caught that — these are rescue and shelter dogs on their way to help people in need. All of us at Pet Connection hope their mission is a successful one for the people of Haiti and these brave dogs and their handlers.

Got a tip?  Got a story?  Don’t keep it to yourself.  Send it to me, or give me a shout in the comments.

Photo credit: Doxie in field: DPA

Brava Betsy Saul! I always love it when worthy people are not only recognized for their great work, but get wealthy in the process.   Woman’s Day magazine released their list of 50 Women who are changing the world.  The names include Oprah, Angelina Jolie and Billie Jean King.  Best of all, Betsy Saul!  Betsy’s the founder of petfinder.com, and of course, their work has been an unparalleled success over the years.   The wealthy part?  When Petfinder was bought by Animal Planet three years ago for $35 million.   Further proof that you can do well by doing good! (thanks to Gina for the heads up on this)

Pets helping people: the genetics edition. The Boston Globe tipped me off to work underway to use the genomes of dogs to find cures for human conditions such as obsessive compulsive disorder.  The groundbreaking study, which is a partnership between the Broad Institute, the Cummings Veterinary School at Tufts University, and UMass Medical School, is analyzing dobermans with OCD issues, then looking for analogous “hotspots” in human and canine genetic maps.

“This is exactly where we were hoping to get to,’’ said Elinor Karlsson, a postdoctoral fellow at the Broad Institute, a genetics research center in Cambridge, and coauthor of a paper on the subject. “This is taking a disease that people have had a lot of trouble working with in humans, that seems to be a multigenic and complex psychiatric disease, and using a dog breed to look at something completely new about that disease – something we wouldn’t be able to find in any other species.’’

This is a powerhouse alliance.  When and if results are announced, I’ll report them here.

Fee waivers boost cat adoptions: Makes sense, right?  If you make it more economically attractive to adopt a pet, more pets should get adopted.  Guess what?  It works.   USA Today spotlights the trend, with examples from Maine to Walnut Creek, and Charleston to Salt Lake.  Always reassuring to see common sense approaches triumphant.

Melamine in Chinese milk – again! I know, right?  Just when you thought you’d read the last of melamine showing up in a food-related story out of China, Christie tipped me to a post from Dr. Marion Nestle, which includes a link to the New York Times story.  Melamine was found in pet food out of China in 2007, artificially boosting protein levels.   The next year, it showed up in infant formula in China. Now, a Chinese dairy which was previously implicated in 2008 has been shut down because of contaminated milk powder, found to have high traces of — yes, melamine.   Optimism for long-term improvement may not be warranted yet, as Dr. Nestle points out.

Why?  Maybe Chinese adulterators are getting a double message.  Here are a couple of items I picked up off Chinese news sources on the Internet (Google the names to find the sites):

• Li Changjiang, the director of the inspection agency that failed to deal with the melamine problem, was forced to resign from the agency. He has overcome his disgrace, more or less.  He was just appointed deputy head of a major anti-pornography group.

• Zhao Lianhai organized the parents of victims of the infant formula adulteration to try to get compensation.  He was put under house arrest in November and formally arrested in December.

Sorry, but I’m afraid this problem isn’t going away quickly, and neither are controversies over a lack of government control related to it.   Expect this to reappear in the future, somewhere.

A boy’s best friend, especially against cougars: In British Columbia, a cougar (the big cat, not um, you know) attacked an 11 year old boy.   The family’s golden retriever Angel stepped in, distracted the cougar, and in fact took the brunt of the assault.  And lived!  Loyal reader (and my lead volunteer researcher) Snoopy’s Friend sent me a great link to a heart rending, but ultimately positive story.

The officer fired two rounds into the cougar’s rear end, but the cougar continued its attack.

The officer closed in to within five feet and shot the cougar again, killing it.

Even after it was killed, the cougar’s jaws were clenched on Angel’s face, Forman said.

Angel was silent for a few moments but then took in a big gasp of air and got up.

Best Friends weighs in on TNR for homeless cats:   TNR (trap/neuter/release) might be one of the two or three most contentious pet-related public policy issues  today.    On the heels of a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge’s ruling that bars the city from nominally supporting a TNR policy (and therefore encourages more cats to be killed), Best Friends Animal Society weighed in with a press release, saying TNR helps bird as well as cat populations.  Interim CEO Mike Castle slammed the judge’s decision, saying

“Best Friends believes that the needs of free-roaming community cats and the requirement that municipalities help care for them are best encapsulated in the term ‘community cats,’” asserts Castle.

“The effort to eradicate homeless cats is not only an inhumane, costly approach, it also is futile,” Castle continues. “If killing community cats were the solution, free-roaming cats would be eliminated by now. In fact, catching and killing one group of community cats simply opens that niche for another group of cats.”

Personally, I’m all in favor of an adult discussion on the issue. That’s not to say I’m optimistic it will happen, but it would be nice to give it a shot, right?

Have something to share? Drop it in the comments, or send me an e-mail.

Photo credits: Betsy Saul – Women’s Day.