ALDF (Animal Legal Defense Fund) recently complied a report showing where the US states and territories rank based on their animal protection laws including the top and bottom five states.  It’s quite an eye opener as it details specific strengths and weaknesses.  It’s broken down into tiers; top, middle and bottom.  Where does your state [...]

The following  is the fourth in a series of essays on my personal blog devoted to things in my world for which I’m grateful this year.  The Pet Connection staff was kind enough to allow me to cross post here.  You can read the other “Thankful list” posts here, here and here if you like, though none are at all pet-related.

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Tangled puppies in a small bed.

There never was a plan to have two dogs.  We were looking for a female dog only because that was what my wife wanted.  I wanted a furry buddy, and I wasn’t picky about the gender.   While P was examining the girl, I distracted her brother, with no intention whatsoever of keeping him.  This little 4 pound puppy with the soulful eyes had other ideas.  He snuggled into my down jacket on that cold December afternoon in 2001 and gave a contented little sigh.  I was a goner.  We decided to get both.   I looked into his eyes and knew his name should be Harry.   I don’t know why.  The face said ‘Harry’.   “Potter Dachshund Greene” followed naturally after that.

Harry Potter Dachshund Greene

As for the girl, she was always going to be named Camilla, pronounced Ca-MEE-ya, as if you had a wicked New England accent, saying “come here.”   We figured out immediately that of the two, she was the handful, with the personality that extended far beyond her little body.   The rest of her name became nothing more than natural descriptors of who she was:  Camilla Missy Diva Piglet Punky Girl.   ‘Piglet’ replaced ‘Princess’ when it was clear she had the voracious appetite of a Labrador retriever, and Punky Girl came from her ceaselessly getting herself into trouble, often while her brother sat nearby, saying “hey, don’t look at me.  I’m merely sitting here watching.”

Cami at a year and a half

I didn’t even want a dachshund. Truth be told, I’d always coveted golden retrievers or other big dogs I could play football with, and never had one of my very own.  I didn’t mind lapdogs a bit, but Dachshunds were too yippy, not especially friendly, and not nearly cute enough. The traditional smooth hair dachshund looked vaguely alien to me.   I never had much use for the doxies I’d met, but P saw a longhaired dachshund trotting along near its owner (without a leash) in a store near where we lived in Boston and was immediately smitten.  I researched the breed online.  Damn, this variant was gorgeous.  The coat is beautiful.  I’ve come to describe them jokingly as resembling Irish Setters with their legs cut off (and about 100 IQ points smarter).  Research indicated that the longhaired variety had some advantages over the traditional smooth haired dachshund.   They tend to have gentler temperaments and are considered by some to be more trainable (a little less of the classic dachshund stubbornness).  What we found in reality: gentler, for the most part yes.  Trainable, sure.   Reduced stubbornness, not so much.

Although Harry is very laid back, flawlessly obedient and endlessly accommodating, his sister’s a different story.  When she wants to be, Cami can be as willful as my mom’s late West Highland Terrier.    She’s much sweeter than that Westie was, though, and that’s worth a lot.  And then there was something I had never encountered before.  In all my years of dog ownership, I’d never had a true alpha, until Cami.  If she were a human being, I’m not entirely sure we’d be friends, but her overriding sweetness renders her utterly irresistible.  She MUST be in charge at all times, and seems to enjoy dominating, well, any other dog who even looks at her funny.  She’s has backed down German Shepherds, Bernese Mountain Dogs and more Labs than I care to count.  However, I have to acknowledge that dogs create their own socialized pecking orders, and Cami fits in to her “pack” just fine.

My favorite picture of Cami

While I don’t dispute people who say a dog is only as good as his owner, there is such a thing as a truly great dog.   P and I have two of them.  Dr. Marty Becker put it best in a recent conversation. “There’s only one greatest pet in the world…and every family has it.”  He’s right, we do.  They’re the happiest dogs I’ve ever had, and combined with their ridiculous smarts, it makes for a priceless combination.

Cami (l) and Harry (r) with Roz when they were puppies

Nobody told me beforehand or prepared me for how smart dachshunds are.  We have to spell entirely too many words, or worse, become excessively wordy.   I cannot, for instance, casually mention to P that I’m going for a walk, if it’s not going to involve the children.  Instead, I will ‘engage in an out of doors perambulation.’  Thank God I have a good vocabulary.  In addition, their problem-solving skills are better than those of some people I know.  The word “manipulative” doesn’t even begin to describe what they’re capable of.  Like a Border Collie, you can almost see the wheels turning when they have their minds set on a goal.  I feel strongly that someone should have clued us into that beforehand.

Nevertheless, when I’m away from home on business, I miss them the most.  I can (and do) speak to my wife multiple times a day.  We also text each other.  I can’t talk to Cami and Harry when I’m away.  They don’t know where I am or why I’m not home.  Daddy’s just inexplicably gone.   Coming home, whether it’s after a few hours or a couple weeks, well, it’s priceless.

I’ve always felt badly for people who have never had pets, who have never felt the furry, cuddling body, or known the joy of your best buddy doing the full-body wag upon your return home, or witnessed the adoring eyes saying “I love you, daddy.”   They’re priceless souls who add far more to our world than I’ll ever be able to express.  Being known as Cami and Harry’s daddy is a wonderful feeling, and someday I hope I can be the man my dogs think I am.

For me, apparently, it’s about $100. Twice. In three days.

It’s hard not to be paranoid when you spent the first 11 years of your career reading letters from readers about their dogs’ freak accidents, poisonings, injuries and range of health problems and the next 13 years writing about those same things. I’ve gotten better about not rushing my dogs to the vet for the least little thing–better safe than sorry is usually my motto–but the girls have been in pretty good shape since Darcy’s death three years ago, knock on wood.

But in the dusty back corners of my mind, I’m always waiting for that Hush Puppy to drop. So when Harper woke me up in the middle of the night a week or two ago, pacing and panting and trying to climb onto my head, I was worried. Her behavior was completely out of character. My girls eat hearty and sleep hard. They’re vigilant during the day, but when that bedroom door closes, they’re out for the night. I took her out to potty. Didn’t help. Jerry took her out to potty. She performed both times, but she didn’t have diarrhea and she was still frantic. What to do? Had she eaten something poisonous? They’re always snatching crap up off the ground and snarfing it down before I can grab it–and sometimes I don’t want to grab it. I called our vet’s night line and asked if anyone was on call. They were, but I was informed that the call had gone to voice mail. What good was that?! What to do? Surely she was too young for pyometra. What if I waited and it was something that should have been treated immediately? The vet still hadn’t called back (the office is still trying to find out why the call didn’t go through).

So, off we went to the ER. Naturally, by the time we got there, Harper was fine. No pacing, no panting, no freaking out. I figured I might as well have her checked out. What else were we going to do at 3 in the morning? “I can’t find anything wrong with her,” the vet said. “I could do some diagnostic tests, but that would just run your bill up.”

Yeah, let’s not go there. We went back home and damn if she didn’t start acting weird again as soon as we walked in the door. I began wondering if an earthquake was in the offing or if she’d just had a bad dream about cats. Maybe we had a carbon monoxide leak or she was trying to alert us to some health problem. Nah. I went back to bed. She broke Jerry, though. He went to sleep on the sofa where she curled up next to him, right by his head. We had a little talk the next night before bedtime about not doing that again and the message seems to have gotten through.

A couple of nights later, it was Bella’s turn. Despite being on a diuretic, she usually sleeps through the night, but this time she woke up and vomited. Then she went back to sleep, so that was okay. I cleaned it up and didn’t worry too much. At least, not until Jerry woke me up to report that she hadn’t eaten breakfast. She was clearly on her deathbed. I had her in to see Dr. Hamil a few hours later.

She was fine. At least as far as he could tell without doing anything invasive. He gave her a shot of anti-nausea meds and a couple of pills to follow up. I didn’t even bother giving her those. She ate dinner with her usual voracious appetite, and it hasn’t slackened since.

I’m persuaded that they’re just messing with my head. “How much can we get her to spend on us, and how often?”

Maybe I should start reading them bedtime stories. We can start with The Boy Who Cried Wolf.

The FDA is looking for citizen/consumer input on a proposed early warning system for pet food recalls.

Think you might have something to say about that?

I thought so.

Get yourselves over to this government docket information page and try to decode its secret instructions, and tell them what you think. Or, in a nutshell:

You can submit written or electronic comments by January 29, 2010.

Electronic comments are submitted at http://www.regulations.gov/search/Regs/home.html#submitComment?R=0900006480a741c2, and written comments go to:

Division of Dockets Management (HFA-305)
Food and Drug Administration
5630 Fishers Lane, rm. 1061
Rockville, MD 20852.

Docket number must be included and is:

Docket No. FDA-2008-N-0546

Confoozled? You can try contacting point person Denver Presley Jr. in the Office of Information Management at 301-796-3793.

What do they want from you?

Review the proposed reporting document at this link, and tell them what you think. Don’t just tell them you want the system; take the time to see what they’re considering and give feedback on that.

But it’s not a bad idea to also remind them that pet owners need to know before all the stones are turned if there is a risk to our pets’ health, and FDA’s job is to protect us and our animals, not the pet food or any other industry.

Be gracious.

I asked if any of our Pet Connection readers had spent a holiday night in the ER with a pet, and boy howdy, had you ever! So had our own Dr. Tony Johnson, albeit on the other side of the stethoscope during his years as a critical care specialist in private practice.

It’s hard to say which story is the most heartwarming, but any one of them could be the perfect antidote for hard times and winter storms. From the column:

It was Christmas Eve, and a UPS driver arrived with a package from (Rori) Saxl’s sister just as she was going out the door. She threw it inside and headed out for a fast pre-holiday trip to the grocery store.

When she got home, the box had been ripped open. It contents were missing, but the wrappers told the tale: One pound of dark chocolate Frango mints, and nine bars of scented soap.

Her four-year-old dog, Sissy, a beagle/terrier mix, and her two-year-old German shepherd/Rottweiler mix, Jack, both smelled of mint and perfume. Saxl searched the house and yard, but couldn’t find any sign of either soap or candy — and it was the candy that really worried her.

Although it takes a lot of chocolate to kill a big dog like Jack, Saxl had lost her Chesapeake Bay retriever, Katie, to what her vets had suspected was chocolate poisoning only a few months before.

“The vets who tried to save Katie were the ones who got me to adopt Jack,” Saxl told me. “They’d taken him from the local shelter to be a blood donor for other dogs in their hospital, and the whole staff had fallen in love with him and wanted to find him a really great home.”

Knowing she’d just lost Katie, the vet clinic staff lobbied Saxl to adopt Jack. And now she was bringing him in for overdosing on the very thing they thought had killed Katie. “I was so embarrassed,” she said. “They trusted me with Jack.”

You’ll have to read the column to see how everything turned out, and of course, to get the full effect of Jack’s projectile vomiting.

Pet Connection reader Katie Bruesewitz shares the story of her Flat-coated Retriever, Kody, and a difficult Christmas holiday when he was diagnosed with hemangiosarcoma during emergency surgery:

Bruesewitz and her husband were supposed to be at his family’s house for Christmas dinner while Kody was in surgery. Instead, they stopped off to borrow their minivan so they could transport Kody to an overnight critical care facility.

“I sat on the floor of the van holding his poor groggy head up on the drive to the emergency clinic,” said Brueswitz. “He was in really rough shape. Knowing that he had a horrible cancer lurking inside probably made it seem much worse.”

The next day, however, the clinic told them he could go home. “The thumping of his tail wagging like crazy against the counter as he waited for us to get him was like music to our ears,” she said. “It felt like some corny TV movie about a Christmas miracle.”

And finally, Dr. Tony, who shares his insight throughout the piece, wraps it up with the story of Cupid, a kitten shot through with an arrow who came into his ER one Christmas Eve (and by the way, was still sitting on his lap all these years later, while I interviewed him):

“When I was an intern in Sacramento in 1997, the local animal control officers brought in a kitten on Christmas Eve,” he told me. “She had been shot clear through with an arrow — it went in her neck and came out her thigh.”

The kitten couldn’t move, but she was alive, and Johnson and a colleague made the decision to save her.

“We anesthetized her and cut the arrow at one end and pulled it out,” he said. “We figured she’d bleed out or get a collapsed lung, but she did fine.” So fine, in fact, that he took her home. “The local news picked it up, and called her a Christmas miracle,” Johnson said.

It’s all here… I hope you enjoy it, even with the projectile vomiting — which my editor wanted to cut and I had to beg for, so be sure to leave a comment there that it was your favorite part!

It’s another New Year, and another chance to do something good for the world’s animals. From Dr. Marty Becker and Gina Spadafori in this week’s Pet Connection newspaper feature:

Are pets on your list of New Year’s resolutions? They should be, along with plans for making the world a little bit better not only for your own animals, but also for others in need. With this in mind, we’re again sharing some of the best ideas of our readers.

Although problems can seem overwhelming, especially when it comes to animal cruelty or homeless pets, the fact is that every little bit helps. After all, if every one of us animal lovers did one small thing a couple of times a year, the total effort would be grand indeed.

Check out Dr. Becker’s and Gina’s suggestions for making the world a better place for animals here.

From Dr. Marty Becker and Mikkel Shannon Becker, some straight talk on the truth about canine aggression:

An owner’s influence rather than a dog’s breeding largely determines whether or not a pet will be aggressive. A study published in the Journal of Animal and Veterinary Advances found that external, modifiable and owner-dependent factors influence a dog’s aggression to a greater degree than a dog’s breed, contradicting widespread beliefs that dogs such as pit bulls or Rottweilers are hard-wired for aggression. The researchers found that factors leading to aggression include first-time ownership; failure to provide obedience training; spoiling or pampering the dog; buying a dog as a present, a guard dog or on an impulse; spaying female dogs; leaving the dog with a constant supply of food; or spending little time with the dog in general or on its walks. More than a third of dominance aggression in dogs stems from a lack of obedience training or for doing only the minimum amount of training. The study also found that male dogs are more likely to be aggressive; however, dog-related factors are minimal compared to the factors that owners can control.

Want more? Read the entire Pet Connection for this week, or download the PDF file here to see it just as we submit it to our client newspapers!

Some people might think training dogs is difficult as it would require a huge amount of patience and commitment from the trainer. But making them learn tricks is as rewarding as having to see your kid make his first walk. Here are five top tips on how to successfully train your dogs.

Over the course of the past few years, we’ve become more aware of the fact that people aren’t the only ones with allergies. Our dogs can get them, too. A lot of problems that look like misbehavior or other health issues can actually turn out to be related to what your pet eats.

Your cute and cuddly golden retriever puppy will benefit a lot from a good housetraining program when you take it home for the first time. Using a crate to get your golden housetrained will not only give you peace of mind, but can also provide your puppy a safe haven.

A pedicure for dogs is just how it sounds. It is very similar to a pedicure for humans, although the techniques used to give a dog a pedicure is somewhat different from the ones used on humans, for many reasons. To give a dog a pedicure, there are different tools used because of the shape of the dogs toenails as well as the thickness and other characteristics.