Dogged Blog

The smallest things become memories sometimes

 Last year at Christmas time, I was out with Kyrie and Rebel on a very long walk, and Kyrie hurt her foot. I didn't know what to do -- it was around 9 PM, very cold and very dark, and we were all the way down in the far end of Sigmund Stern Grove -- absolutely alone.

I'd left my cell phone at home. And there were no pay phones in the park, which, for those who don't live here, is more like a wild canyon than a regular city park.

By the time we climbed up the hill out of the park, it was obvious Kyrie wasn't going to make it home. So I looked around the quiet neighborhood, hoping to see a house that just screamed, "Non-paranoid dog lovers live here."

There was one house with its lights on, both the interior house lights and Christmas lights, with a brilliantly lit Christmas tree in the window. Even the porch light was on. And no stairs. So I took a chance and rang their doorbell.

A man answered, and I said I lived on the other side of the park. I explained my plight and asked if he could call my mom and have her come pick us up. I could hear his dogs barking, and he asked me to wait a minute, and shut the door.

He came back almost immediately. "I put the dogs in the back room," he said. "Here's my phone."

I called my mom, and she said she'd be right over. Then he asked if his children could meet Rebel and Kyrie. I said of course, and the two most adorable children came out, in plaid flannel PJs and little bathrobes with belts, one boy, one girl. And their mom. And they had dog cookies for Rebel and Kyrie, who took them carefully, as they always take things from children. Then the entire family waited with us on their lawn until my mom pulled up in her little Scion.

I got the dogs into the back of her car, and we went home.

This year, both Rebel and my mom are gone. Kyrie and I just got home from a short walk. I remembered my phone, but nothing happened.

Happy birthday to Gina! And 2009? Don ' t let the door slam you in the butt on the way out

It's exactly one minute past midnight on New Year's Eve here in California (apparently our blog is set, for reasons passing all understanding, on Mountain Time), which means it's Gina's birthday. And I'll be the first one to incur her wrath wish her every happiness of the day and in the coming year!



Gina was going to celebrate her day here with me in San Francisco, but I have managed to bang up my left leg somehow, and can't do much more than hobble. We've decided to put it off until later in the month, when I can presumably keep up with Miss FayBee on her first visit to the big city.



This is one year I'm glad to see over, and I'll bet Gina is, too. We've both lost a parent and a beloved dog, and possibly become just a tad overworked.



But I've decided to be optimistic about the coming year until proven utterly wrong, and I invite Gina and every single one of you to join me at least long enough to say Happy Birthday, Gina, and Happy New Year, everyone!

Real blogs allow comments

Is blogging journalism? Journaling? A form of online community? Or is it just software?

It's a question I'd like to pose to those pseudo-bloggers who don't allow comments on their blog posts, or who pre-screen comments -- especially those who let through only a few hand-picked remarks. (I can understand moderating comments if your blog is being hit hard by commercial spam or a deliberate troll onslaught; I'm not talking about that, but a blog's routine practices and policies.)

Pseudo-bloggers range from new media stars like Andrew Sullivan to no-kill adversaries Wayne Pacelle and Nathan Winograd. Small fry do it, and folks on the A-list do it. For them, blogging is not a form of communication nor a category of journalism, but using a hunk of publishing software.

Obviously, there are bigger things to care about, such as the entire future of publishing and journalism themselves. But I can't help but feel annoyed at those who disable commenting on their opinion pieces. Because sure, the commenter can send the blogger an email, or rant about it on his or her own blog.

But every time we've had an explosive thread on Pet Connection, for example, the commentary has deepened and enriched the original post. It's given the bloggers an opportunity to refine our arguments, to stretch the parameters of our thinking, to change our readers' minds, or even, perhaps most valuably, our own.

It can be brutal and chaotic. It can be infuriating. But in the end, we're left with a valuable record of the evolution of ideas, a pool of inspiration for future thought and exploration -- and, you know, ideas for more writing, something professional writers can't ever have too much of.

I've asked a number of pseudo-bloggers about their comment policies. One or two blame commercial spammers. To them I say: technology can protect you from most of that. Our software at Pet Connection holds all first-time commenters in moderation; that cuts out almost all commercial spam. Typepad a few years ago tightened up its pre-publishing spam controls, and that eliminated about 80 percent of the commercial messages and trackbacks being posted to this blog.

Most are concerned about being attacked or criticized, either because they simply don't want public dissent and challenge, or because they're highly controversial individuals who would naturally attract a preponderance of personal attacks if they had a commenting free-for-all on their blogs.

I understand that concern, but is the only answer to not allow any commentary at all, or to control it so strictly that only a handful of "acceptable" comments get through? Maybe they should learn a lesson from the forum and chat room communities of web 1.0, that learned that a combination of user and staff post-publishing moderation were necessary to keep a community functioning -- that's what the wild frontier known as Daily Kos does. So does Craigslist. Amazingly, they both not only function, but absolutely dominate their fields.

The last, and lamest, excuse for disabling comments is, "I don't have time to deal with assholes."

So basically, you expect your readers to have time to absorb the deathless wonder of your prose, the Socratic perfection of your monologue, but you yourself don't have time to maintain any kind of public interaction in response? Please. That's a reason, perhaps, not to respond to your readers, but to refuse to allow them to comment on a blog post?

Just how busy are you, anyway? And how on earth do you find time to blog?

And lest you think I just don't know how asshole-ish some people can be, please: Have you ever read the comments on my SFGate.com columns? I know assholes. Trust me.

I'm not just suggesting you show respect for your readers by allowing them to comment, but that you show an understanding of your medium. Without user comments and relatively light-handed moderation, blogging isn't blogging. It's just publishing. You might as well do it on ground up dead trees.

Which is fine. I contribute to the Pet Connection syndicated weekly newspaper feature, printed on the aforementioned dead trees all over the country, and our readers have to resort to snail mail or email to respond to us.

But we don't call that a blog. We call it a newspaper feature.

So if you call yourself a blogger, and what you write a blog, turn on the comments. Use technology to minimize spam and disruption. Recruit help if your readership is so large and hostile that it threatens to make your comments section implode and renders it useless. Give your community tools to moderate itself, or give trusted users moderation rights for egregiously disruptive comments.

If you really don't want to do that, fine. Just find another name for what you're doing, wouldya?

In other news, know what would make my season bright? If everyone who blogs would understand that "blog" is to "magazine" as "blog post" is to "magazine article." This thing you're reading here, the one entitled "Real blogs allow comments"? It's a blog post, not a blog.

I thank you for your prompt attention to these matters.

FDA wants to hear from you on pet food early warning recall questionnaire

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.

' Tis the season for pet emergencies: True stories from the veterinary ER

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!

Clot or not, and what the endodontist said

I spent all Sunday afternoon at the ER because I have a weird painful swelling in my lower left leg, with numbness and radiating pain to the thigh and ankle. I called the advice nurse, who said it could be a clot, and told me to come in.

I wasn't filled with confidence at the exam I got, although they did several x-rays and a physical examination. I think I saw the doctor for less than one minute. He didn't seem at all concerned about a clot, based on the fact that my leg is swollen in the front, not the back.

I don't know if I have a clot. The thing is, neither does he. I should have had an ultrasound.

So today, because my life is just awesome this way, I had to go in for round 3,576 of my root canal on a rear tooth. My endodontist said no way was she giving me lidocaine and doing the procedure if there's a chance I have a clot -- she won't finish the root canal until my physician, who I will be seeing on Jan. 5 at present, faxes her an all-clear.

My endodontist is more concerned about a possible clot than the doctor who saw me for it. So is a friend who is a doctor, who emailed me after I posted about this on Facebook, telling me to go in and get an ultrasound ASAP.

I have a column due tomorrow. It's finished, but my editor usually has revisions, and I need to be around for that. And yet, how can that be more important than, you know, my life?

What does " no-kill " mean, really?

In the news today, a story challenging whether a shelter in Florida is, as it claims, a "no-kill" facility, raised for the billionth time a question in my mind about what "no-kill" truly means.



I'm speaking only for myself here, and not for anyone else in the animal welfare movement or among the general population, even if I've written for them, interviewed them, or had dinner with them. This is just me. And this is how I see it:



"No-kill" is a policy of animal management. It is a policy that no animal who can be saved is killed. That means no killing because a pet will be difficult to re-home, nor because a pet's medical or behavioral issues will be costly or hard to treat, nor because a healthy animal became sick while in your facility, nor because your cages and kennels and adoption rooms are full.



I also believe that "no-kill" needs to be defined on a community-wide level, not that of the individual facility. The "no-kill" of which I'm an advocate is a community-wide animal management policy that does not kill homeless animals within its borders if they are healthy or treatable.



Now, that sounds clear, but I live in the real world. And in the real world, words like "treatable" or even "healthy" are not always clearly defined. After all, I know people who can't afford to treat their cat's ear mites, and people who have gotten kidney transplants for their dogs. What does it mean to say a pet is "treatable" in rural Alabama as compared to Beverly Hills?



The Asilomar Accords, which I consider to be a nice idea that went astray, call for that question to be answered as follows: The standard for determining if a pet is "treatable" at a shelter should be the same standard that exists for the community's owned pets. Athough shelters and animal control agencies may, of course, go above that standard, they may not go below it.



The problem is that, however objective that sounds, it's not. How do you even know what "the community" would do or is doing? Focus groups? Surveys of veterinarians? The Psychic Friends Network?



Besides, even when money isn't an issue, individual pet owners don't always know what is and isn't "treatable." I've seen friends who made euthanasia decisions for their much-loved pets that I considered to be based on factual errors or bad information from their veterinarians; certainly the same thing can happen at shelters.



Because the "community standards" metric is so subjective, I instead welcome a "safety net" definition of no-kill that lies under the "kill no healthy or treatable animals" definition: No-kill also means that more than 90 percent of the animals that come into your community's animal control and shelter system leave it alive. Rich communities might hit 99 percent, and poor ones 90.5, but they are both, in my personal view, "no kill."



That's a definition with which I'm comfortable, and one that I'm very sure is an achievable goal in the United States -- it has, in fact, been reached by several communities across the country.



It does have at least one flaw, though.



One of the ways communities become no-kill is by working with pet lovers to build safety nets beyond the shelter and animal control agency -- foster homes, for instance, and programs to help people retain their animals when they lose jobs or housing or become elderly or ill. And if a community does a really outstanding job of developing and implementing such a safety net, many animals won't ever enter the animal control and shelter system at all.



And those that do will always end up being the ones who are too big a challenge for individuals, and who need the resources of an institution.



I mean, does a community stop being "no-kill" when it kills 100 percent of the two animals it took into its animal control facility that year, both of whom were in painful end-stage cancer that could not be cured or even palliated?



On the other hand, won't it be a wonderful day when we're actually fighting over that question?

A New Year ' s puppy wish -- but no pressure, just hope

Time to stop fighting and start hoping -- specifically, that there is a puppy for me inside the very lovely and undeniably preggers Ch Lehigh-Darkwynd Caragh, who is standing here in some Michigan snow modeling, well... my hopeful future puppy.







I think I can see him or her in there with my x-ray vision. How about you?



Puppies expected within around a week. The breeder, my good friend Paula Pascoe of LeHigh Scottish Deerhounds, is wary of pressure, so let's just all think good thoughts for healthy, happy New Year's bairns at Lehigh!

Holidays tales from the vet ER

You may recall that I spent both Thanksgiving night and Christmas night last year in the ER with Rebel, who had a foxtail the first time and a cut foot the second. (He's gone now, and I only wish he was here to make me spend the holidays in the vet ER this year, too!)



I was talking with our own Dr. Tony Johnson about what it was like being an ER vet over the holidays, and thought I'd write a column about it for SFGate.com. And then I thought, I bet our Pet Connection readers have spent a holiday night or two at the ER with their animals! So, have ya? Anyone have a story you'd like to share for my column?



Post here, either your story or your desire to be interviewed, and I'll email you.



Oh, and I forgot to mention, telling me about this will guarantee you will not end up at the ER this year. I promise. ;)

Lipstick of my dreams

 I bought a new lipstick yesterday. I've been wearing it since then. I love it more than any lipstick in the entire history of ever.

My lips have been cracked and dry since I got back from my trip to the snow world two weeks ago. I've been wearing lip balm, but even that wasn't helping -- and I wanted to wear lipstick, but it got all mucked up and dark in the crack lines on my lips, even after I would exfoliate them and sleep in night cream. It was bad.

So I read about Cle de Peau on my favorite beauty blog, The Non-Blonde:

This Cle de Peau lipstick is one of the softest, smoothest lipsticks I've tried. It's almost like a balm, but with great coverage and excellent pigment (though some of the lighter shades are a bit more sheer). The staying power isn't as amazing as the regular lipsticks, but there's only so much you can expect from a super moisturizing lip color. I chose no. 117, which as you can see is a reddish plum, but I already see a couple of others in my future.

So I trekked down to Neiman-Marcus, the only place in San Francisco that sells the line, and tried it out. And guess what? Even better than expected. My lips are so soft and moist now. I mean, I'd be thrilled to get results like this from a lip balm. To get them from a lip color product? Awesome.

And incidentally, I also bought 117. Beautiful and an amazing amount of color in a moisturizing lip color!

One thing I feel a bit unsure of, however. I always investigate whether a product is or isn't tested on animals before I buy it. My initial investigation of Cle de Peau indicated they do not test their products on animals, and neither does their corporate owner, Shiseido.

Today, after I'd already bought the lipstick, I came across this list in Beautypedia, which indicated that while Shiseido does not, Cle de Peau's animal testing policy is "unknown." And I also saw some stuff on the web that suggested that while Shiseido doesn't test its end products on animals, some of its ingredients were. I'm not sure if that's true, and if so, if it's ongoing or in the past, and if Shiseido conducted those tests themselves or they were conducted for Shiseido, or if the ingredients were tested by someone else and Shiseido just used the same ones.

I sent an email to Cle de Peau through their website seeking clarification on this. I want nice soft lips, but not at the cost of giving my money to those who test cosmetics on animals. I mean, there is room for honest disagreement on animal testing for drugs and lifesaving medical procedures -- but eyeliner? Lipstick? Blush?

Not even close.