Blog

One of the most astounding things that Aditi told me is that all healthy street dogs have a right to life" in India. It is estimated that Mumbai is home to about a quarter million street dogs. As long as they are apparently healthy and have been sterilized and vaccinated against rabies (indicated by a notch made in one of their ears)

It's been said before, but every time I have experienced the loss of one of my dogs, or have witnessed someone else's, I think to myself: That this is the price of all that love we have for our dogs, and all the love and joy we've received from our dogs. If it seems too much to bear, well, remember that the amount of pain we are going to feel is directly related to the love. Those heart dogs" – the companions we love as much as life itself? Well

Back in my smaller town, it was sounding like the Civil War. As I hurried around, feeding and cleaning up after the foster pups, my friend's dog started going into his full-blown panic state. My friend was prepared with a veterinarian-prescribed dose of alprazolam (Xanax), and she gave him his first dose then. (The blood levels of the drug take about two hours to peak, and start to wear off in about four hours, so he needed one more dose to get through the night.) Woody was resting on the couch, obviously having experienced some relief from the procedure at the vet, and oblivious to the fireworks sounds, still audible behind the sound of the house fan and the TV.

In the July issue of WDJ, we have an article about the mixed-breed dog DNA tests that are available to dog owners for a fairly hefty price. I have ordered a few of these tests over the years, gathering information about how they work and whether they appear to be all that helpful in identifying the breeds that have gone into a given mixed-breed dog.

Otto on the day I brought him home. He was estimated to be about 7 months old. He was about 40 pounds at the time, and I thought he might not get much bigger. But he's still rocking his adult weight of 70.0 pounds.üThe view from my computer chair is dominated by a giant photo of Otto (complete with his adoption date); photos of my previous heart-dog, the darling Rupert; and a photo of my horse best friend, my companion from childhood through young adulthood. I really should have a photo of my son up there, too, shouldn't I?

This morning, I saw an obviously lost dog on the road. This isn't your standard farm or ranch dog – and in case there was any doubt at all, the fact that he was wearing a harness, to which a four-foot leash was attached, ruled out the likelihood that he was a local dog who had roamed off his property. Most likely, in my opinion, was that he was in the back of someone's truck, and rolled off when the person made the sharp turn onto or off of the nearby highway and onto or off of this bumpy farm-country road.

When I open the dog food container and all of a sudden it's incredibly low, or I'm feeding a starving mama and her nine growing puppies and going through food at an unpredictably fast rate and I've been crazy-busy putting the magazine to bed and haven't so much as taken a shower for a couple of days, being able to punch up my favorite online store and order food and have it on my porch in two days – you guys, that's a blessing. Mama is not keeping up with the demand, and I just ordered five pounds of milk-replacing formula to get us through the next couple of weeks. And the dry puppy food I like to soften in formula and feed to the growing pups is not one I can get in my very close chain store, OR my favorite independent store 30 miles away.

I imagine that everyone who works or volunteers in animal rescue, or human social services, gets overwhelmed at times with what seems to be a relentless tide of innocents in need of help. Intellectually, I know that there are FAR fewer unwanted pets being brought to animal shelters and fewer animals being in euthanized in shelters than when I was a young person, and yet at times the sheer volume of dogs I'm aware of who are in need of rescue, fostering, transportation, and medical help is just crushing.

I'm fostering a mama dog and her nine puppies. They were surrendered to my local shelter when the pups were about a week old.

which he has a lot of experience with!üIt's easier to take a blood sample from the big vein in a dog's neck than it is from a smaller vein in the leg – as long as the dog is behaving as well as Otto is. He didn't mind the restraint and didn't even blink at the insertion of the needle.üThe veterinarian examined Otto while he was on the floor

There are countless things that could go wrong at the fair: a stressed-out dog lashing out and biting a passing dog or child, a dog getting loose and running away in a panic, a dog getting heat stroke, someone stepping on a little dog (I saw it almost happen a number of times!), a dog developing a noise phobia after being forced to stay in a loud and stressful environment, some drunk person tripping on and hurting or scaring a dog. I just wouldn't ever risk it!

If Otto is on one end of a seven-foot sofa, and I (or anyone) sits on the other far end, he will give that person a sort of dirty look and leave the sofa. If I am sitting on a couch and pat the cushion next to me, and encourage Otto to come on up, he will come and stand close, and wag his tail and blink his eyes … Nance

The June issue contains an article from one of our new veterinarian contributors about how to assess and clean a wound, and also discusses tetanus. I specifically asked this author to write something for me after my young, exuberant dog Woody cut his face on rusty old barbed wire. Suddenly, I had a million questions. Do dogs get tetanus? Is tetanus one of the shots that we ever give dogs? Why do I associate rusty metal with tetanus? WHY DON'T WE GIVE DOGS TETANUS SHOTS?