Blue Heelers Can be Sneaky

Last week I'd have given anything to have a video camera in my hand...

Pepper, Suzie, and I went out to our shop to visit with my husband and his dog Ralph, as we usually do some time during the afternoon. Ralph has a sleeping bag and next to it a food dish and a water bowl - and he was semi-dozing on the sleeping bag.

Pepper, the Blue Heeler, is a chubby little guy, always on the lookout for another little morsel, so he decided to check out Ralph's food dish.

He started across the shop floor, doing that stealthy "I'm sneaking up on them" Blue Heeler walk. All the time he was watching Ralph to see if he was noticing. The food dish was behind Ralph's head, so when Pepper got there he thought he was home free.

But... just as he was about to steal a bite, Ralph looked up.

Pepper immediately turned his back and pretended to be examining the paint cans on the shelf along the wall.

Have you ever seen a dog pretending to read paint cans? It was hilarious.

As soon as Ralph put his head back down, Pepper grabbed a bite and got out of there!

Traveling With Your Dog

Dogs can be wonderful companions on a long trip, but keeping them safe and healthy takes some advance planning.

We talked the other day about finding lodging where dogs are welcome. You probably should plan on paying a deposit in addition to your room fee. You know your dog is housebroken, but the motel managers don't!

Also, since you'll be in strange places, your dog may be nervous and upset. So keep him happy by taking along a favorite bed or blanket, and some favorite toys. Along with that, pack a good supply of the food he's used to. This is especially important if your dog is used to high-end dog food. Not all stores in all communities will carry his brand.

Next, plan to take along a good supply of water, because he may object to the taste of the water in other communities. You may have to do some searching for the right containers, but be sure to carry the water in a glass or stainless steel container. The toxins from plastic water containers aren't any better for your dog than they are for you.

If you plan to stop at rest stops, consider taking a plastic covered cable tie-out, so you can run to the rest room without danger of your dog chewing through his lead in an effort to find you. Of course you can leave him in the car, but unless you leave it running with the AC on, that can be fatal in summertime.

Taking Your Dog on Vacation

Some of us don't like to leave our dogs in kennels - and that can create a real problem when the whole family wants to go on vacation together.

We can hire a pet sitter, but that's also a bit scary. What if the dog doesn't like them, or what if they're careless about keeping the doors and/or gates securely shut? Something bad could happen to our dogs.

The alternative, of course, is to take the dogs along. That alternative requires some advance planning. Unless you're going to be staying with relatives (who also love your dogs) you'll need to find pet-friendly lodging.

Some motel chains do advertise their pet-friendliness, but finding deluxe accommodations is a bit tougher. That's why I was pleased to read about a whole community that loves dogs.

If you happen to love skiing in winter and exploring the mountains in summer, try Crested Butte, Colorado for your next vacation.

Before you have that puppy altered...

Make sure your veterinarian knows about the drug recall.

Big pharm and the FDA have chosen not to inform veterinarians that some drugs they are using are dangerous to your pets. If they had told vets to return this "bad medicine" they'd have had to issue refunds... and no pharmaceutical company wants to do that!

So before you go, print out this article and take it with you.

Sure too bad that the FDA is just a shell - with no intention of protecting the citizens.

One question - how can they call this a recall when they didn't issue a recall?

Fire Strikes Ritchie Co. Humane Society Animal Shelter (Harrisville, WV)

This just in from Nancy and the scruffafluffs in Deep River, CT
Westie, Cairn, Scottie and Scruffafluff Rescue
Fuzzy Face Rescue
fuzzyfacerescuect.petfinder.org

The cat building is gone, and we fear all the cats and kittens. It's still too dark to know if any cats escaped. Forgive me if I am missing anyone, but the dogs in there were a mama dog and her puppies, the shelter mascot Momma, Lil Dude, and Chance. I got the call from June at 3 AM, and the fire dept. was still there.

The supply rooms were also in this building. As far as we know, everything is gone: food, medicines, vaccines, transport crates, refrigerators to store medicines, cat kennel cages, ex-pens for puppies, cleaning supplies, trash bags, litter pans, litter, cat food, feeding bowls, newspapers, bedding, etc. June will try to set up a temporary area for cat-intake.

The most immediate need now is to replace the destroyed food.

PayPal is rchumane@zoominternet.net, or link thru the shelter website, http://www.petfinder.com/shelters/WV22.html

Checks can be sent to:

Ritchie County Humane Society
RR 1 BOX 3
Harrisville, WV 26362

If you have items you can donate, please call the shelter to arrange a time to bring them in, or we'll find a way to meet you part way (I'm off work Thur/Fri). The shelter phone is 304-643-4721. At this point, I'd ask you only to call to make arrangements to offer assistance during daytime hours. We'll send out emails and updates to the Petfinder site as soon as we have any information to pass along. It is still too early to know the source of the fire.

We are grateful to the rescues who took in several of the puppies & small dogs from that bldg. in two transports in the last week. And, I'm especially thankful to the rescue that begged us to transport last week when I was planning to wait another week until bad weather conditions cleared up. Those pups owe you their lives even more so now than they before.

Thanks in advance to anything you can do to help us recover from this tragedy.

Want a Dog to Protect Your Poultry?

It's too late for my dogs - now that they've been trained to remove the wild turkeys from our yard as soon as they spot them, turning them around might prove to be impossible. But that's OK - the only birds here are the wild turkeys.

But maybe you do have chickens, or want to have chickens, or ducks, or domestic turkeys.

If so, an article I just read said that certain breeds have a strong protection instinct. Among them are the Great Pyrenees, Anatolian, Mastiff, and Maremma. So first, choose the right breed.

The very best way to train a young dog to protect poultry is to let an old dog do it - they teach the young ones what to do.

Barring that, try to whelp your pups in the poultry house, where they will be corrected by the hens if they get too rambunctious. Pups raised in this way will naturally bond with the birds, just as a puppy raised with an authoritative adult cat will learn to befriend cats. Since these dogs naturally protect youngsters of any species, raising your pup around baby chicks will result in a dog who will need very little training from you.

Dogs' Valuable Sense of Smell

We all know about bloodhounds and other tracking dogs that can find people, even when the trail is not fresh. It's amazing to think that even when wearing shoes, we shed our scent on the ground as we go, but we know that dogs can find people when humans have no hope.

Dogs also find drugs when humans could not - alerting to major shipments hidden in sealed containers as well as small amounts in luggage or pockets.

Even more amazing is a dog's ability to sniff out disease and to predict when a person may have a seizure.

New tests are showing that a dog's nose is actually MORE accurate than sophisticated medical equipment By smelling a human's breath, dogs can detect lung, breast, and other cancers with an accuracy rate of 88 to 97%. In contrast, the multi-million dollar scanner your hospital might use has an accuracy rate of 85-90%.

I've seen spots on TV showing how dogs can sniff a person's body and zoom right in on the affected area, and read of dogs fussing at their owners so much over a certain body part that the person finally went to the doctor and found a cancer in time to get successful treatment.

Dogs are now being trained as seizure alert dogs, so that patients can take safety measures before an attack. In the case of epilepsy, dogs can warn up to 5 hours ahead of time.

These are such amazing creatures - and yet, we humans still mistreat them and abandon them. Kind of hard to figure out, isn't it?