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?

Can Your Dog Cure Your Smoking Habit?

I don't know - it sounds kind of far fetched to me, but according to this article, enlisting your dog's aid in the quest to stop smoking really can work.

Something else your dog can help you do is lose weight - if you become so guilty over your dog getting fat that you make a vow to take him or her walking every day. You know, you just can't do that unless you go walking yourself!

While you're at it, that dog can also help you regain a good perspective on life. When the two of you are walking, notice how your dog stops to explore and notice things. He's not in a huge rush to get from point A to point B. No, he wants to notice his world.

If you use the time to do the same, you might see some wonderful things, and you might let go of some of that stress that we all carry around.

Shoot - that alone might help in your efforts to quit smoking!

Like Children, Tired Dogs Just Want to go Home

Ralph likes going with my husband everywhere, but when they go to visit Terry and Freckles, he gets tired.

It has something to do with Freckles loving him so much - and wanting him to play all the time. After all, he's 8 years older than her, so isn't quite so interested in being busy every minute.

She also pesters him a lot with things like chewing on his ears or grabbing a mouth full of hair and trying to pull him around the room.

So, after a while, he makes his appeal: "Can we go home now?"

How to torture your dog at Christmas

A few days ago I wrote you about Suzie and the rawhide chews...

I finally found a USB port on my computer that would work, so was able to download the photos. Here is a portrait of a dog who should be in a state of joy - but feeling miserable because she has to stay and guard those darned chews!

When she wasn't laying beside them, she was walking around with both of them in her mouth... not a comfortable position!

Finally, to give her relief, I took them away.