Pets on the go … making travel easier

By Gina Spadafori

July 30, 2008

Over on our DogCars.com site, editor Keith Turner had earlier mentioned a media release touting hotels that put out the welcome mat for pets. Pet travel expert Marjorie Darby took issue with some of the hotels, in an extended comment that offers some additional suggestions. It’s well worth a read if you’re planning to head out with your pet on a trip any time soon.

Watch this space: Adding notables from here and there … the Massachusetts state Legislature voted unanimously to outlaw “pet rentals,” and may other states follow suit. (If you want a part-time pet, how about volunteering at a shelter or fostering?) … California legalized pet trusts, although it’s still better to count on friends and family, not the law, to protect your pet if you die. … Factory farm interests pour big money into defeating the most basic anti-cruelty measures for food animals.

Reading Pet Food Labels

Introducing Nat Geo Dogs!

We know you think your dog is the cat’s meow, so why not let everyone else know! NGC is excited to introduce a new way for you to show off your furry friends. Check out Nat Geo Dogs: a new interactive, online community for dogs and their people.

Watch full-length video clips, share your personal puppy stories and upload pictures and a profile of your pooch to your own virtual canine brag book. Use the forums to trade training and grooming tips, find the best vet, or scout out those organic, gluten-free, non-fat dog treats!

Remember, our dogs create friendships and build communities. They help us meet our neighbors and patrol our streets. They enter our lives and become more than a pet – they’re our babies. Our family. They make us laugh out loud and break our hearts. They fascinate and frustrate us. And everyone has a dog tale to tell.

So come sit, stay and explore. And most of all, enjoy your time in this ever-growing community. More

My Life on the Dog List

In America, most people are experts at giving affection. While we reward people for jobs well done and hand out Emmys and Oscars for achievements in entertainment, we give dogs affection for just being dogs.

Dogs in this country get more affection than anywhere else in the world. Unfortunately, affection is often the only part of the equation that American dogs are getting consistently. When we meet a dog for the first time, our first instinct is to pet the dog before he has done anything to earn it. But it is important to recognize that affection that has not been earned can be detrimental to a dog, especially when that affection is nurturing an unbalanced state such as territorialism, fear, anxiety, aggression, and even excitement.

My fulfillment formula consists of three parts: Exercise, Discipline, and Affection, in that order. A dog must be exercised. In actress and comedienne Kathy Griffin’s case, Chance and Pom Pom weren’t getting the exercise they need. Of course, they have a yard and a hill they can run up and down, but that is not exercise. I found out that she has a wonderful exercise room that her dogs can use too! So while Kathy works out, her dogs run alongside her on the treadmill. And when she’s out of town, her assistants help her maintain this exercise and discipline routine her dogs need. As far as dogs go, a balanced life is the best award they can get! More

Getting my deerhound fix

By Christie Keith

July 23, 2008

I’m heading out this morning for the Scottish Deerhound Club of America National Specialty in Lompoc, CA. It’s just a little north of Santa Barbara. You know, near the federal penitentiary. Don’t say we don’t fly high in the SDCA.

As most of you know, a specialty is a dog show of only one breed of dog. It’s an opportunity for breeders to exhibit their best dogs, for spectators to learn more about a breed in which they have an interest, and for fanciers to focus on health, behavior, training, and genetic information about the breed. And it’s a chance for a judge, carefully chosen by the Club itself, to select the single dog she or he believes is the best in the ring at that show. It is an honor greater than any all-breed Best in Show, greater than winning Westminster, to go Best in Show at the National Specialty.

The SDCA has its National in a different location each year, and every third year it’s on the West Coast. There aren’t that many deerhounds in the country to begin with, and they’re concentrated in the Midwest and on the East Coast, so numbers at the western shows are usually low. Given the fact that flying with dogs is iffy at best, and flying with giant breed dogs is a nightmare, most of us drive to the National, no matter where it is. I suspect this year’s sky-high gas prices — hovering around five bucks a gallon and more here in San Francisco — will drive numbers even lower than normal. Still, I expect to see around a hundred dogs, which is around five percent of all the deerhounds in North America, and 99 more than I currently share my life with. What’s more, I’ll get to see them led into the ring by a kilted bagpiper — a sight I never, ever get tired of seeing.

In addition to seeing dogs of all ages and all breeding from all over the U.S. and Canada, and seeing friends I only see once a year, the highlight of the event this year for me is the health seminar. Dr. Jeffery Phillips, Assistant Professor of Medical Genetics and Oncology from the University of Tennessee College of Veterinary Medicine, will be doing a presentation on osteosarcoma, the vicious bone cancer that claimed the life of my deerhound Raven, the sister of my dog Rebel.

Dr. Phillips, who has a deerhound himself, is conducting a genetic research project on the disease, and the Club has been supporting this research. I gave him DNA samples from Raven as well as from other unaffected deerhounds, and am extremely anxious to hear his presentation, because its goal is something every deerhound owner and lover in the world devoutly wants and desparately needs: a genetic screening test for osteosarcoma in our dogs. With such a test, we can guarantee that no deerhound will ever have to go through what Raven suffered. I’ve long said I’ll never breed again until that test is a reality; this research may bring that day much closer.

I may possibly also be going to hug and cuddle some deerhound pups. It’s been a long, long time since I had a puppy. Maybe too long.

Sir Walter Scott, who owned a few deerhounds in his day, described the breed this way in his novel “The Talisman”:

A most perfect creature of heaven … of the noblest northern breed … deep in the chest, strong in the stern, black colour, and brindled on chest and legs, not spotted with white, but just shaded into grey - strength to pull down a bull - swiftness to catch an antelope.

So keep Gina company while I’m hanging out with the most perfect creatures of heaven, and when I get back, I suspect you’ll be hearing about bone cancer research. Let’s hope I have big, good news. More

An old dog gets her (water) wings: Heather swims again

By Gina Spadafori

July 19, 2008

When Heather was young, she could swim forever. When we lived for a few months in a beach house on the Gulf of Mexico, Heather was wet or damp pretty much all the time. (Pictured: Young Heather and Ben (now at the Bridge) on the beach at Alligator Point, Fla., in January of 2001.)

But last summer, at the age of 10, she got out a little farther than was safe for an old dog and almost got herself into the kind of trouble that could have led to her drowning. It was a very close call, and I couldn’t bear the thought of standing helplessly by while she slipped under the water for good. This summer, at the age of 11, Heather has been left out of the river runs. She’d sink sadly into her bed and look away while I whistled up the two younger dogs and took off for the beach.

It was breaking both of our hearts.

But my friend Alyce, who owns Heather’s brother Bogey, had the brilliant idea to get Bogey a life vest. She said Bogey quickly figured out that he could just sort of bob in the water with the vest to hold him up, and paddle to get where he wanted. It was a complete success, so I ordered the same model from Cabela’s for Heather, too.

It’s the best $50 I have ever spent on any pet-related item. Like her brother, Heather soon figured out that the jacket would keep her on the top of the water, allowing her to swim with little effort, and to rest when she needed to. Her joy at being back in the water, and at being able to swim without getting quickly exhausted, was obvious and contagious. My friend Don, who with his dogs always meets us for these river runs, could not get over the change in Heather.

A buzz cut and a life jacket, and she’s a new dog.

There’s nothing like a happy old dog. Check it out for yourself and see if her grin doesn’t make you grin, too: More

Gratuitous dog blogging: River run edition

By Gina Spadafori

July 12, 2008

The heat has broken here, but the smoke means that because of my asthma, I have to go out in the morning and then stay inside for the duration. This is not how the retrievers like their lives.

So … I’m up early and out the door. River run. Posts later, after the ‘trievies are ready to dry off and settle down.

Potty bags. Check.

Leashes. Check.

Tennis balls. Check.

Tennis ball flinger. Check.

Kool Kong. Check.

Camera. Check.

Picking up the wrong keys, locking myself out of the house and having to crawl in through a window to get the right set while the cats laugh. Check.

Later …

Update: Heather says, “Who’ll be 12 in November? Not me! Why, I don’t feel a day over 10.”

Jack in Exile

It’s very important that your dog understand your rules, boundaries, and limitations, especially when you have to protect yourself. In the animal world, claiming space is a very basic concept, but even the simplest movements can give your dog the upper hand.

Claiming space is the act of using your calm-assertive energy, mind and body, to “own” whatever it is you want control over, and to establish the bubble of space around you that only you can say who enters and who doesn’t. Once you have asserted yourself and the area you’ve claimed as yours, the dog will respond to the behavioral rules that you set there.

Consider how sheepdogs do it: They stand firm and upright, with confidence, and move toward and around the sheep, maintaining eye contact and telling the sheep where to go. You can do the same. The inner dialogue is important, because what you are communicating in your mind will show through in your posture and movement. In essence you are saying “This is my space; you go over there.” More

* Gratuitous dog-blogging: Summer buzzcut edition

By Gina Spadafori

July 7, 2008

What a nice break we had here. I got some books to read from the library, spent time with friends and family and caught up on some housework. Mostly, though, I relaxed.

My old girl Heather got a buzzcut this weekend (here she was last fall, for comparison). Usually, dogs are better left with their coats on in the summer. But as Heather has aged, her wooly undercoat has become so dense that it takes hours for her to dry after swimming. So for the last three-four years, she has sported a “Lab look” for the summer. She is clearly more comfortable without her coat, and drying more quickly means more swimming!

Heather turned 11 last November. She’s doing great, but she’s slowing down. I ordered her a life vest (just like her brother Bogey’s) so I won’t worry so much when she swims that she’ll run out of energy away from the shore.

***

I did spend a little time at the computer over the weekend, and found a really great blog. Worms and Germs is about zoonoses; that is, diseases that can be passed from animals to people. I tripped over it looking for something else, and was very impressed. It’s now on the blogroll, so check it out.

The pits of Sick Vick: Challenging conventional wisdom

By Gina Spadafori

July 7, 2008

Sometimes I think there has never been a more exciting time to be writing about pets. Many things most of us have long accepted as true have been challenged, from the need to kill animals for population control to the idea of trusting government and industry with providing a safe food supply to the belief that any dog seized in a fighting raid is irredeemable and must be killed.

Asking questions can be hard going, but it’s the only way to get new ideas for making things better.

For good Monday reading, the Washington Post’s Brigid Schulte has put together a well-reported piece on the dogs taken from the illegal fighting operation of dirtbag Michael Vick:

Headlines described the nameless dogs as “menacing.” Some animal rights groups called for the “ticking time bombs” to be euthanized as soon as Vick’s case was closed and they were no longer valuable as evidence. That’s what typically happens after a dogfighting bust. Instead, the court gave Vick’s dogs a second chance.

[...]

Of the 47 surviving dogs, 25 were placed directly in foster homes, and a handful have been or are being adopted. Twenty-two were deemed potentially aggressive toward other dogs and were sent to an animal sanctuary in Utah. Some, after intensive retraining, are expected to move on to foster care and eventual adoption.

[...]

How can this be? Reports of gruesome pit bull maulings make international news. Pit bulls are one of the few canine breeds thought to be so dangerous that they are banned in some places.

The answer, says Frank McMillan, a veterinarian who is studying the recovery of some of the Vick dogs, is that we don’t know. “We’ve assumed all pits are the same, and we’ve never let this many fighting dogs live long enough to find out. There are hardly ever studies, because these animals don’t survive,” he said.

Yeah, it’s amazing what we can find out when we ask the questions and try something new.

Read the rest. Love this part:

“Every thoroughbred is not a great racehorse. Every pit bull, even if it’s of fighting stock, is not an aggressive dogfighter,” said Steve Zawistowski, an animal behaviorist with the ASPCA who helped assess the Vick dogs. “There are no simple answers.”

There are no simple answers. A good take-away to start the week.

And by the way, having Sick Vick educated towards reform by PETA is worst example of conventional wisdom ever. Ingrid Newkirk has said she would like to see an end to all pits. Conventional wisdom, simple answers and yet another reason to send your donations somewhere else.

When confronted with conventional wisdom, be like a kid: Just say, “why?”

Pictured: Former Vick dog Hector with Andrew Yori, his new dad, story at BAD RAP. Find out more about Hector’s new home here.

AB 1634: Neutered, defanged, declawed, renamed … and out of committee

By Gina Spadafori

June 25, 2008

After California State Sen. Gloria Negrete McLeod looked at the writing on the wall (and the piles of melted-down fax machines in the Legislative offices) and sensibly forced the term-limited lame duck Assemblyman Lloyd Levine (now preparing for a new job, to judge from his own news release) to accept her gutting of his California Healthy Pets Act, Pet Extinction Act, Christie and I were surprised to get tons of forwarded e-mails (with lots! of!! exclamation!!! points!!!! and CAPITAL LETTERS!!!) claiming that the new version of AB 1634 was even worse (!!!).

We could only imagine this assertion came from people who couldn’t be bothered to read the new legislation, or had some strange disease by which they were unable to keep from forwarding nonsense along to, oh, 145,832 of their closest e-mail friends. Again and again and again.

Because anyone who actually read either the new bill or the Legislative Counsel’s analysis could see that the “new and improved” AB 1634, while not a piece of legislation we supported, was in fact little more than a face-saver for Levine and his pal Judie Mancuso, whose initial bright idea — before being made to start eating changes to the bill to make puppy-millers happy — was to force the spaying or neutering of every kitten, puppy, cat and and dog in the state. This, despite the problem of putting the state in the middle of a medical decision with some degree of risk that should be discussed between an informed client and a veterinarian, and made by a pet’s owner. And this, despite the fact that forced spay-neuter has never worked, anywhere, to reduce pet overpopulation for any number of reasons we’ve laid out, oh, a million times now, and here’s but one example.

(Hey Judie, it’s nice that you took credit for “[the] coalition we have built in support of AB 1634 [being] the largest many people in California politics have ever seen,” but why be modest? The coalition of people you inspired who didn’t want you to give puppy mills a pass while taking down responsible, ethical breeders — not backyard breeders or puppy-mill scum — with your spittle-spewing misrepresentations was even larger! So congratulations!)

The biggest problem with the “new” AB 1634 — aside from being a pointless face-saver, etc., etc. — was that a pet could be forced to be altered based on even unsubstantiated claims from a cranky neighbor. Well guess what? That got fixed: More

* ‘Good Morning America’: Dr. Becker on pets and disease

By Gina Spadafori

Common sense, cleanliness and a few preventive-care health measures for your pet. That’s really all it takes to remove most of the risk of catching anything from your pet. As we mentioned earlier, our Dr. Becker is on ABC-TV’s ‘Good Morning America’ this morning, talking about how to protect yourself:

Many owners consider their household pets family members, but just like their human counterparts, these animals can spread illnesses to people.

Pet-to-human transmission is called zoonosis, and highly publicized examples include disease that’s passed from nonhousehold animals to humans, such as mad cow disease and bird flu.

Here’s the rest, and we’ll link up to the video later if it’s posted. And don’t forget Mikkel’s post on what it’s like backstage.

In other veterinary-related news, Time has an interesting piece on stem-cell therapy. From Time:

Blue had hip dysplasia, a fairly common and sometimes crippling degenerative condition in dogs and cats. The cure — a complete hip transplant — would keep Blue in recovery for up to six months. So while Waters mulled the surgery, Blue’s regular veterinarian sent Waters to see another local vet, Kathy Mitchener, who was trained in acupuncture, to treat Blue’s pain.

But Mitchener had a better idea. She offered a cutting-edge stem-cell transplant, a therapy not yet available to humans, that would potentially help Blue’s hip repair itself. The treatment took just two days last January. Mitchener had recently become certified to perform the stem-cell treatment, pioneered by the company Vet-Stem based in San Diego. She removed some fatty tissue from the dog’s abdomen and shipped the sample to Vet-Stem’s labs, where technicians used centrifuges to extract stem cells from the tissue. The cells were shipped back the next day, and Mitchener injected them into Blue’s failing hip, where they adapted and developed into the healthy cartilage and tendon cells the animal needed. Within 36 hours, Waters says, “Blue was moving well, and you could see an ease in her gait.”

Unrelated: Sandy Robins writes about the high cost of moving a pet by air. Woody has flown twice in the last year, and Otter, the puppy I raised for a friend, flew here from Texas and back to Texas four months later. And finally, Ilario came here on a short hop from Oregon a couple months ago.

I can vouch for the price hit of air travel. While Otter’s trips were unaccompanied, Woody flew with me going out and with my friend Mary coming back. Woody’s ride in cargo was considerably more expensive than the ticket for the two-legged half of the travel team, both times. Between the worry and the cost, I’ll be loathe to ship an animal for any reason but the most urgent, that’s for sure.

In other words, Air Woody will be limited to the altitude he can gain on his own. Actually, given the state of air travel, I’m not exactly looking to fly much myself. (Pictured: Air Wood)

* Red, white and not-so-blue: We’re outta here

By Gina Spadafori

Happy Fourth of July! Our blogging crew is taking the three-day weekend off to do … whatever the heck we want to do. For me, it will almost certainly involve wet retrievers.

The little retriever below isn’t mine. His name is Ghillie, and this picture from his first Fourth of July is one of my all-time favorites. Ghillie lives in Michigan, and here’s what he looks like now.

We’ll be back Monday, but don’t let that stop you from adding anything worth reading to the comments. We’ll be checking in on the comments now and then.

Also: If you haven’t signed up for our free e-mail newsletter, don’t forget to do so. The July edition is going out on Tuesday, and of course being a subscriber will automatically make you eligible for our monthly giveaway of $1,000 in pet-care gear. This month, the cool stuff is all coming from Petmate.

* The Gold Rush is on as Helmsley billions come into play … maybe

By Gina Spadafori

July 3, 2008

The news that a judge had trimmed the amount put into trust to care for the dog of the late billionaire Leona Helmsley from $12 million to paltry $2 million was immediately overshadowed by a little tidbit that immediately got every big non-profit animal-advocacy group in the country salivating in their conference rooms:

The bulk of the Helmsley estate is to go to the dogs. Well, maybe. From the New York Times:

Her instructions, specified in a two-page “mission statement,” are that the entire trust, valued at $5 billion to $8 billion and amounting to virtually all her estate, be used for the care and welfare of dogs, according to two people who have seen the document and who described it on condition of anonymity.

It is by no means clear, however, that all the money will go to dogs. Another provision of the mission statement says Mrs. Helmsley’s trustees may use their discretion in distributing the money, and some lawyers say the statement may not mean much anyway, given that its directions were not incorporated into Mrs. Helmsley’s will or the trust documents. More

How funny is this? (Not)

By Gina Spadafori

July 1, 2008

I think I have food poisoning. In LolCats language, srsly. Here I’ve been eating mostly at home for months, sourcing all my food from local, known producers and suppliers.

Yesterday I eat out at a greasy spoon for breakfast with my parents for my mom’s 75th birthday (restaurant of their choice, ugh), followed by dinner out with my brother (to complain about the breakfast). Not sure of the culprit, but oh, am I sick.

This, too, shall pass (if it hasn’t already). The details I will spare you. Christie will come in with something good to post. I’m going back to bed to contemplate the impending collapse of our public food safety system.

I think Ive lost my ability to digest garbage with all the healthy eating I’ve been doing.

Update from Christie, at 11 AM: Unknown to Gina when she wrote this, I spent the weekend eating at restaurants and vendors at San Francisco’s Pride celebration and I, too, have the squirty horrors… I was up all freaking night.

I’m actually feeling semi-human right now so as soon as I get the dogs walked and fed and take a shower, I’ll try to come back and be informative and amusing and all the other reasons you read this blog.

Unless you’re all here to learn more about Gina’s and my intestinal health. In which case, carry on.

* Poop in food: What’s up with that?

By Christie Keith

July 2, 2008

This should be a post about a new antibiotic, but it’s not. Do you know why?

Because my power has been off for the last three hours. That’s right; Pacific Gas and Electric either doesn’t know or doesn’t care that I lost all yesterday to some vicious food-borne pathogen and did not have three hours to sacrifice to their putrid mismanagement of the power needs of the people of (large parts of) California.

So you’ll have to wait until tomorrow for the antibiotic article, and instead be satisfied with this small rant, inspired by the Great Pet Connection Food Poisoning Incident of 2008.

For the last 22 and a half years, I have fed raw foods to my dogs and cats. During that time, I’ve been told by dozens of vets that my pets are therefore at risk of dying a horrible death due to malnutrition and the jellification of their skeletal structure. This has not happened, and in fact, most of my raw-fed dogs have outlived their kibble-fed parents and littermates, and I have never had a dog or cat become ill or suffer any kind of symptoms related to a food-borne illness or disease of nutritional deficiency or excess.

So I was somewhat amused when I went to the Western Veterinary Conference in February and heard one of the conference speakers, who worked for one of the big pet food companies, address her fellow veterinarians on the subject of raw diets.

She wasn’t really against them, she said. It’s just that it’s impossible to really prepare a nutritionally adequate dog diet in a home kitchen, because apparently dogs have such highly specialized digestive requirements that you need a degree in biology and a commercial laboratory to formulate their diets.

That’s why we never had any dogs prior to the invention of pet food a hundred or so years ago.

And she didn’t really have a problem with raw diets, either, except for the fact that they’re dangerous.

Now, my little weekend adventure has served to confirm for me that food safety in this country is a huge issue. I already knew that, of course, given the pet food recall and the stellar work being done by the FDA and USDA on the recent salmonella outbreak. But given my track record feeding dozens of dogs and cats of all ages and states of health (carefully chosen and handled) raw diets, I have to guess that the risks of doing so are grossly exaggerated.

If I’d been sitting in that audience — okay, I was, but if I were a veterinarian with no experience feeding raw diets and who knew only what the pet food companies had taught me in vet school — I’d have been quite horrified to learn that raw meat is so completely filthy and contaminated that it’s literally impossible to safely handle it in a home kitchen.

Even when you wash the dishes used to prepare your dog’s raw dinner in a dishwasher set on sanitize, even if you wash them in bleach and hot, soapy water, they still have measurable levels of bacterial contamination on them after washing. Even the glass or stainless steel dishes.

So I was listening to this, and watching the hundreds of vets in attendance nodding their heads and taking notes, and I wanted to stand up and say, “Does the dish somehow know that raw meat is destined for my dog’s stomach and not my oven? Because what about the bowl I used to mix my meatloaf? What about whipping up eggs in a bowl before I scramble them? What about marinating chicken breasts? How am I supposed to make my own dinner, if what you’re saying is true?”

And then I thought a little more, and wanted to additionally ask, “If this is true, then tell me, oh room full of veterinarians: Why aren’t you all getting up out of your folding chairs and marching down the hall to the large animal veterinary seminars and asking your colleagues in agriculture exactly why this nation’s meat supply is full of feces?”

I didn’t want to embarrass Pet Connection, so of course I didn’t ask. But it does make you wonder. Why is food safety always framed as a home kitchen problem, when most outbreaks of food-borne illness are institutional — restaurants, nursing homes, that kind of thing?

Why are we constantly being cautioned that our food supply is so contaminated with fecal bacteria that we don’t dare give our dogs a scrap of trim from the Sunday roast, and large veterinary conferences tell us we literally cannot safely sanitize dishes used to prepare meat, for us or our pets?

Why do we pass laws that meat has to be sold with lengthy “safe handling” labels, instead of laws that there shouldn’t be crap in my food in the first place?