Dogged Blog

Should you trust your veterinarian?

When your pet's veterinarian says the sky is blue, do you feel a need to run outside and check?



I'm constantly bombarded by emails from pet owners who seem to feel that way, so much so they often don't take even clearly very sick pets to the veterinarian, but instead waste time writing me 20-page missives on every symptom their pet has expressed for the previous several weeks.



When I ask why they haven't taken their dog or cat to the vet, sometimes the answer is money. But most of the time, it's a screed ranging from general distrust of the entire veterinary profession to the occasional full-blown conspiracy theory heavily tinged with paranoid delusions.



Setting aside that last group, whose problems are beyond the scope of a pet writer, it really worries me that so many people have let one or a few bad experiences with veterinarians turn them away from getting necessary care for their pets. From my column today on SFGate.com:

I've had bad experiences with veterinarians. I've also had terrible haircuts and gone to dishonest auto mechanics. Nonetheless, I keep getting my hair done and my car fixed -- and taking my pets to the veterinarian.



Good veterinarians have knowledge and experience, as well as access to diagnostic testing, that no pet owner -- and no pet writer, either -- can have. Condemning the entire profession for the unethical behavior of one or a few individuals is irrational and dangerous for your pet if it means he doesn't get necessary care.



But trust should never be given unquestioningly, simply because someone has a "DVM" or "VMD" after her name. Trust is something the veterinarian has to earn.



Obviously, once a vet has been treating your pets for years, you can trust him based on his track record. But there are plenty of times we can't rely on a vet we've had for years -- when we move, while traveling, when our vet retires, or when a pet needs immediate care and his regular vet isn't available.



I've written before about how to find a veterinarian who practices excellent veterinary medicine. Here are the tips I use to decide whether or not a veterinarian deserves my trust:



The trustworthy veterinarian knows he doesn't know everything. No one is omniscient. I have no problem with that. While I would assume any veterinarian knows a great deal more than I do about general medical issues relating to pets, I don't expect him to be an expert on every single medication, condition or obscure article in a medical journal.



But when I ask him a question he can't answer I do expect him to respond by saying, "I don't know, let me check on that." Veterinarians who try to bluff to preserve their authority, or worse, imply you're being fussy, bothersome or over-protective for asking in the first place, don't deserve your trust.



For example, my dog Rebel, who died in 2009, had a very rare genetic condition that most vets will go their whole careers without treating. I understood that even the best veterinarian was going to need to do some research to treat him.



As long as the veterinarian understood that, too, everything was fine. But the minute a vet dismissed my questions or the information I was giving him about my dog, I was gone. Not because I wanted him to replace his judgment with mine, but because he was doing so not on the basis of his greater knowledge or expertise, but arrogance or insecurity.



She keeps up with the profession. This one seems like a no-brainer, but I've met a few veterinarians who seem proud of the fact that they still practice to the standards of the year they graduated from vet school.



One veterinarian I saw in San Mateo County -- fortunately now retired -- bragged to me about how he didn't use modern anesthetic gases because he felt it was better to keep using the methods you were most familiar with.



"Even if they're more dangerous than newer, safer drugs?" I asked him in amazement.



Even so, he insisted. I guess the prospect of learning the new methods of anesthesia was just too much change for him to contemplate.



Bottom line: If you ask how the veterinarian handles anesthesia or pain management and are brushed aside with outdated information, it's time to walk.

Read the rest of my tips here.

Lessons from a sled dog massacre

In the aftermath of the horrific   massacre of 100 sled dogs in British Columbia, Marcie Moriarty, the head of animal cruelty for the B.C. SPCA went on record as saying that even had the organization known that the dogs needed help, they'd have probably ended up killing them all themselves.



Her reason? Working sled dogs are "unadoptable." As she told the Vanouver Sun:

"What people have to realize because of the way they're raised they're not highly adoptable animals. Maybe a few could have been adopted, but these dogs are on tethers 90 percent of their lives."

From my SFGate.com column today:



That sweeping generalization is easy to disprove, simply by meeting any of the thousands of working sled dogs who have successfully made the transition from tether to living room sofa.

"Two of my four sled dogs were adopted as adults from a professional dog racing kennel," said Jo Jacques of Salem, Mass., president of the International Siberian Husky Club. "One was two and the other was nine when we adopted them. Both adore meeting new people and love dogs. They can take Cheerios from babies without even leaving spit on their fingers."



One of the dogs, Viking, grew up in a mushing kennel. Around six months after Jacques had adopted him, she became very ill. "I had a difficult time walking," she said, "Viking never left my side. When I would have to move anywhere, he would paste himself against my left hip and stabilize me. If I fell, he would position himself in front of me and help me up."



Amazingly, Jacques never trained Viking to do this; it was all his idea. "Hearing the SPCA call these dogs 'unadoptable' as a group, sight unseen, without any individual evaluations infuriates me," she said. "It makes me just want to hug my 'unadoptable' sled dogs and cry all day."



Nannette Morgan of Morgan Hill adopted a sled dog named Cricket from a mushing kennel.



"The biggest problem I had with her is that she was used to being outside," Morgan told me. "The first couple of weeks it was hard to get her in the house at night. Then when she'd come in, she'd look up at the ceiling, looking for the stars."



It took only around a month, the companionship of Morgan's other dog, Binks, and what Morgan called "gentle guidance" to get Cricket adjusted to her new life.



"She's totally at home," Morgan said. "She's a princess. She has a chair she likes to sit on. She sleeps on my bed."

Both Jacques and Morgan went into detail about sled dog operations that know how to do right by their dogs, the still-developing sled dog re-homing network, and tips on helping working sled dogs make the adjustment to family pet:

Those stories, along with those of Cricket, Viking and the rest, demonstrate that people who insist sled dogs are "unadoptable" are wrong.



That alone should end the argument, but somehow, it doesn't. The bias of those like the B.C. SPCA and their unnamed "expert" is just too deep to be changed by the facts.



But if the Michael Vick case taught us anything, it's that all dogs being assessed for temperament and the ability to adapt to life as pets deserve an individual evaluation and shouldn't be dismissed as "unadoptable" because they came from a certain background. This is true of dogs like Vick's and the many lesser-known victims of dog fighting rings; it's also true of racing greyhounds and sled dogs.

I have a lot more to say, and I hope you'll read the whole article.



Thanks to Jo Jacques and Nannette Morgan for talking to me about their dogs, and sharing their beautiful photos with my readers. Seen here is Viking, courtesy of Jacques.

Anatomy of a sled dog massacre

The more I learn about the mass-killing of 100 sled dogs in British Columbia, the more the phrase "nobody's dogs" keeps going through my mind.



They were killed -- brutally -- by the man who was supposed to be caring for him, who had, in some cases, raised them from  pups.



The company that "downsized" them out of existence mostly defended itself by saying it hadn't known how the dogs were going to be killed, as if a clean death in a vet's office could somehow sanitize killing 100 healthy dogs.



And the local shelter, whose mission was supposedly to help animals in their community, to provide rescue, haven, and re-homing, was on record saying that even if they'd been aware of the dogs' plight before they were massacred, they'd probaby have killed them, too.



Didn't these dogs have anyone who gave a damn about them?



They did. Sadly, those people didn't know what was going to happen in time to stop it, but they're speaking out now. For my SFGate.com column, I spoke with a number of sled dog advocates, and learned about their dogs, and efforts to make sure all former and retired sled dogs have a happy ending when their time on the trail is done.



My editor, however, felt that my SFGate readers wouldn't have enough background, so he had me turn the column into a two-part series. Part one runs today, with a focus on the history of the slaughter in much more detail -- some of it graphic -- than I shared here on Pet Connection. Click with caution.

It was a dog-lover's worst nightmare made real. Canadian radio station CKNW obtained leaked workers-compensation documents that graphically described the brutal massacre of 100 dogs in the British Columbia town of Whistler.



A man later identified as Robert Fawcett, manager of a sled dog tour company in Whistler, had filed the claim, citing post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) caused by "having to put down a large number of dogs" under orders of his employer, Outdoor Adventures Whistler, because business had fallen off.



Fawcett, the claim states, had been with the company for many years, and knew the dogs well. He had named them. He'd raised them. He was responsible for feeding them, caring for them, and handling them. He lived with them, and was available to tend to them seven days a week. He had developed, he said, "a relationship of mutual love and trust" with them.

Read the rest here... the second part will run next week.



Photo from SFGate.com: A sled dog rests at a kennel operated by Whistler Outdoor Adventures near Whistler, British Columbia, on Saturday, Feb. 5, 2011. Darryl Dyck / AP

Should you trust your dog walker?

Ever wonder what's happening while your dog walker is out with your dog? From my column this week on SFGate.com:

The little white poodle was curled up under the wheel of a minivan parked next to San Francisco's Sigmund Stern Grove. The street was wet from recent rains, and her leash trailed out from beneath the car.



I'd just come out of the park, where I'd seen a dog walker unload six or seven dogs from that vehicle and bring them into the off-leash dog play area, leashes trailing just like hers. It was clear she was one of his charges, and he hadn't noticed or didn't care that she'd stayed behind.

Obviously he was one of the bad dog walkers. Fortunately, I have one of the best, Courtney Gunter of San Francisco's The Whole Pet. She was voted "Best Pet Sitter in the Bay Area" in Bay Woof Magazine's "Beast of the Bay" competition, and runner up as best dog trainer and best dog walker, too.





I asked her for her tips on finding a good dog walker and avoiding the bad:

"Start by asking how many dogs they walk at a time," Gunter says. "The City of San Francisco guidelines say that each person should walk no more than six dogs. Anyone who doesn't know that, or gives you a higher number, should be avoided."



Good dog walkers will have references and a contract for you to sign. They'll also have clear policies on cancellations for weather, illness or other emergencies. And they tend to get as much information as possible about your dog before signing you up as a client. In fact, they probably will have as many questions for you as you have for them.



"Knowing how to integrate different dogs into a group takes skill and experience," Gunter says. "They need to really get to know the dogs they walk together, so that everyone has a safe and enjoyable experience. If the dog walker doesn't seem to have a handle on that, I'd consider that a pretty big red flag."



Other questions to ask include how they handle first aid, how they deal with behavior problems, and how long they'll keep the dog at the park.



"Just because the dog is out for six hours doesn't mean they're at the park for six hours," Gunter says. "Is your dog just riding around in a van while they pick up 15 other dogs? That's not what you're paying for."

Read the rest of Courtney's tips here!

Helping pets makes everyone ' s holiday brighter

Over on SFGate.com, our own Dr. Marty Becker spoke with me for my column this week. Our topic: Helping pets and pet owners in need this holiday season.



It's an important topic for both of us. Speaking for myself, I'm totally done with the small but vocal camp of nasty pet-haters who predictably trot out their "If you care about pets you must hate people" crap every single time anyone writes about sharing so much as a scrap of bread with a dog or cat.



I'm equally fed up with the sanctimony of those who intone that we shouldn't help poor families or the sick, disabled or elderly keep their pets because we're just enabling them to have animals they can't care for. I'm so glad these people, however loud and obnoxious they are, are few in number, because if they ruled the world, it would be full of even more misery and woe than it already is.



Wow, how's that for holiday spirit?



So let's let Dr. Becker have his say, because he's a lot more upbeat than I am:

Dr. Marty Becker, resident veterinarian on "The Dr. Oz Show" and "Good Morning America," as well as my fellow Pet Connection blogger, also wants to make sure pets in shelters don't go wanting this holiday season. He'll be taking gifts and treats to the pets in his local shelters on Dec. 25, and is asking other pet owners to do the same.



"This is the time of year when people often look around for some way to share the blessings they have in their lives," he said. "For animal lovers, helping those pets who don't have what their own pets do -- a loving home -- is a special way to do that."



Of course, there's no better gift for a homeless pet than being adopted. But if you can't give a pet a forever home, consider something less permanent, and volunteer to foster a homeless pet for the holidays.



I can't wrap this up without a word to the people who are right this moment gearing up to unleash the obligatory "How can you care about pets when people are in need?" comments.



Whether you approve or not, this is the reality: There are people who died in the floodwaters of Hurricane Katrina rather than leave their pets behind. National disaster programs now routinely include transport and shelter plans for pets displaced by earthquakes, fires and floods, because without them, people don't comply with evacuation orders.



Programs like PAWS and Meals on Wheels began distributing pet food because they found that their clients were sharing their own meals with their pets.



People love their pets, and if a disaster the size of Katrina didn't change that, your disapproval certainly won't. And in addition to loving them, people also benefit from sharing their lives with companion animals.



Becker, author of "The Healing Power of Pets," noted that numerous studies "provide overwhelming evidence that companion animal ownership is linked to less depression, lower blood pressure, improved cardiovascular health, higher IQs, better behavior, fewer allergies and lower incidences of asthma in children, and a host of other health benefits."



He added, "Depriving the elderly, ill, poor families and the homebound of those benefits is not only mean-spirited, it costs society more in providing health services to those people."

You can read the full column here -- it includes a list of both Bay Area and national campaigns to help pets and pet owners facing homelessness, job loss, illness and other challenges. If you need those services, you can find them there, and if you don't -- count your blessings and donate a blanket, sack of pet food or a few bucks to help those who do!



And if you want to hear more about what Dr. Becker has to say on the subject of helping homeless pets during the holidays and throughout the year, please click on over here!



Photo: Two dogs snuggling on a pet bed donated by a caring pet owner through the shelter bed donation program at Kuranda.com.

Guardian, owner, dog mom, pet parent: What ' s in a name?

After my rant last week about the term "pet parent," I got to thinking about how much the language we use to describe our relationship with pets has changed just in my lifetime. And it turned into this week's column on SFGate.com:

Are you your cat's owner? Your dog's mom? Guardian? Caretaker? Pet parent?



There's been something of a revolution in how we describe the relationship between people and the dogs and cats who share their homes. The once-common term "owner" has fallen out of favor -- maybe not so much in newspapers, where it still seems to reign supreme, but in just about every other arena, including the legal one, "owner" is increasingly rare.



The trend against "owner" hit the big time in 2000 when Boulder, Colo., changed its local ordinances to use the term "guardian" instead of owner when describing pets. Boulder was soon joined by the California cities of Berkeley and West Hollywood, then towns in Arizona, Massachusetts and Wisconsin, as well as the entire state of Rhode Island. San Francisco made the switch in 2003.



The movement to call owners "guardians" has not been without controversy. Those who oppose it, notably veterinary organizations like the American Veterinary Medical Association, worry that it will lead to a rise in lawsuits, particularly in the area of malpractice. Others believe it's the first step in an animal rights campaign to elevate animals to the status of humans under the law.



Politics and philosophy aside, many pet owners simply don't like the word. I'm one of them; it sounds legalistic and patronizing. Even if it's the wave of the future for ordinances and statutes, I'm never going to run into a dog park friend whose name I don't know at the supermarket and say, "Hi there! You're Bandit's guardian, right?"

Read the rest here. And yes, the whole thing was just an excuse to use that picture of me lovin' on Lita the pitty puppy again!

Duck makes splash in backyard — and on Facebook

My editor at SFGate.com wanted me to write something about backyard poultry. Who better to interview than our own Gina Spadafori, whose adventures in urban farming are well-documented here on Pet Connection.



But when I spoke with her, the chickens took a definite backseat to Bernadette The Weather Duck®. From the column:

(F)or those whose fowl intentions are a bit out of the ordinary, ducks are making a something of a splash in backyard poultry circles.



Sacramento's Gina Spadafori, co-author of "Birds for Dummies," was an avid urban chicken-keeper when she got her first duck, Bernadette. Her chickens provided her with eggs, fertilizer for her gardens, insect-control in her vegetable patch, and endless amusement from the window of her home office.



But Bernadette was different. For one thing, says Spadafori, she has about 10 times the personality of a chicken. (And I'm not just taking Gina's word for it. I've met Bernadette, and it's true; she's a pistol.)



"I always had it in my mind to get a duck," said Spadafori. "Chickens are sort of a 'gateway drug' to other livestock, and my zoning won't let me get a goat, so a duck seemed obvious. And they're so cute." So when Bernadette's need for a home came to her attention, Spadafori said, "Sure!"



Along with Bernadette came a need for a slightly higher level of service than the chickens seemed to expect. Bernadette, it turned out, is quite picky about how she likes her meals of fresh bitter greens laid out, requiring a fanned arrangement worthy of Chez Panisse.



There were also some clean-up challenges. "Ducks are messier than chickens," said Spadafori. "Their water needs to be changed constantly, because they dip things in it, and also go to the bathroom in it."



The biggest difference between chickens and ducks, however, is the duckish love of water. Because ducks gotta swim, Bernadette has her own kiddie pool, which Spadafori freshens from a garden hose at least twice a day.



"When Bernadette sees me coming with the hose, she gets very, very excited," she said. "When the chickens see the hose, they hide. And she loves the rain, which the chickens don't."

Actually, I'd say the biggest difference is that Bernadette has her own Facebook page:

"Bernadette the duck does have quite a bit of personality," Spadafori said. "Just perhaps not quite as much as Bernadette The Weather Duck, if you know what I'm saying."



Spadafori may be the real personality behind the Facebook page, but Bernadette's several hundred fans, seem content to ignore that fact. "She has an active fan base that seems to think she not only predicts the weather, but controls it," said Spadafori. "They make requests for weather in their area, then thank her when the weather is good."



Weather isn't the only subject on which Bernadette holds forth from her social media perch. "Bernadette" writes about all the activities in Spadafori's urban poultry yard, including disparaging the "featherheads" she's forced to share it with, the chickens. And let's not even mention the dogs, who Bernadette particularly despises.

Read the rest of the article here, then go "like" Bernadette The Weather Duck®!



Photo: Bernadette enjoying her pool while one of the chickens looks on, bewildered. By Gina Spadafori.

The unexpected beauty of snakes

I was waiting for Gina to post this, as I hate to be all "go read this" about my own stuff, but she's swamped with work today, so here I am.

I'm particularly proud of my column in SFGate.com this morning, even though it probably won't be the most popular of my articles there. It's about snakes, but it's not about how to care for them, or what species make good pets, or about their diets or health or anything like that.

It's about what happens to kids, especially little girls, who get directed away from the creepy crawly things and towards kittens, bunnies, and puppies. It's about parents who shudder in horror when their child shows up with a tiny snake clutched in their hands.

And it's about how I learned to see the world in a whole new way when I first started doing editorial work for kingsnake.com, the oldest and largest reptile web site in the world, and got to know people to whom that never happened, or if it did, it didn't work:

Many of the people I met never lost that childhood wonder at the natural world. They would devote endless hours to creating habitats for animals that evolved in environments ranging from the driest deserts to tropical rainforests, sometimes having to learn by trial and error what even the experts didn't know about their snakes. They became obsessive observers of their animals, noting the slightest deviation in activity levels or appetites, their interest and their patience apparently endless.

I also became aware of how much prejudice exists against snakes and the people who keep them. Snakes in our culture have often been relegated to roles as scary monsters in horror flicks and the "ewww gross" segment on nature shows.

I spoke to a couple of local people I found through kingsnake.com: Rolf, an easy-going guy who owned boas and pythons, and defied every stereotype of the anti-social, slightly weird snake owner, and Natalie, a woman not much out of her teens who had been wandering the hills of Marin since she was a little girl, looking for snakes:

Rolf told me that he grew up all over the Northern California coast, mostly in rural areas, where, from the time he was four or five years old, he remembers always being in the middle of a forest, field, or a stream or a creek. "All children look and see things that are interesting, and I always had been involved with these little animals," he said, "You see them. They see you. They go and hide. I can see the rocks and the trees and the water, but I can't see these little bits of life that I know are there. Where are they going? What are they doing?"

[....]

Marin County's Natalie McNear fits the snake-owner stereotype a bit more. In a phone interview, she described herself as a loner, happiest when by herself in the fields and forests. But simply by being a woman who loves snakes she challenges stereotypes, too.

"I've been going outside and looking for snakes ever since I was a little kid," said the twenty-year-old, who worked at a North Bay reptile store during high school. "I would catch bugs and snakes and everything else that other girls thought were gross."

[....]

McNear's quiet observations haven't just been of her snakes; she's noticed a thing or two about how people feel about the animals as well. "(Snakes are) probably one of the most misunderstood animals that people keep as pets," she said "A lot of people are afraid of them."

I got to talk about two of the best books I've ever read about snakes and nature, and raise the larger question about why even those of us who seriously, really don't like snakes should re-consider our prejudices against those who do.

Much of what we know about snakes and other small and elusive species comes from the hard work of field biologists like Kate Jackson, the author of "Mean and Lowly Things: Snakes, Science, and Survival in the Congo." Jackson, just like Natalie McNear, was once a little girl lying on her belly in the grass, looking for snakes. Today, she's a biology professor and one of the first herpetologists to slog through the swampy forests of the Northern Congo, studying and cataloguing the reptiles and amphibians she found there.

[....]

(Cornell University Professor of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology) Harry Greene opens the final section of (his book) "Snakes" with this quotation from Sengalese conservationist Baba Dioum:

 

In the end, we will conserve only what we love, we will love only what we understand, and we will understand only what we are taught.

 

My purpose here is not to convince you to love snakes. I still don't, and even Rolf and McNear say what they feel for their snakes is more respect and fascination than love. But I think Dioum is right, that we only save what we care about, and we only care about what we learn to understand.

Every day, hundreds of parents, older sisters and babysitters respond with a shudder and "get that thing out of this house!" when a child shows up with a harmless garden snake in his or her hands. What if instead we taught ourselves to understand and respect people's interest in snakes and those other "mean and lowly" creatures? Wouldn't doing that not only help kids to retain, but us to reclaim, some of that sense of wonder at the natural world and the desire to preserve it for the future?

I hope you'll read the article, even if you don't like snakes -- in fact, especially if you don't. And let me know if it worked or not; did I get you to think about them, and the people who love them, in a new way?