The dogs are celebrating a birthday today. They spent the day on their favorite chair, which is to say, my favorite chair.

The cocker spaniel is really a year older today. He’s now 6, and still acts like a mischievous puppy who’s more than a little too smart for his own good. In fact, he waits for just the right moment, then goes into action.

The golden retriever mix — a Heinz 57 — is being declared 8 today, but since I adopted her from a shelter, there’s no way to know when her birthday really is. Since I adopted her years ago, she has really come out of her shell and has a great personality. She even mothers the cocker spaniel, and he rarely complains.

The younger “kid” is starting to have a few gray hairs around his muzzle and eyes. That always bothers me, because I don’t like to think about the dogs getting older. The older one shows no such signs of age, and that doesn’t bother me at all.

I bought them their yearly birthday treat of mini-cupcakes, which they love, but I’m not having any. (Damn diet.) They’ll somehow have to suffer through my share over the next few days. I think they’ll manage.

In fact, when I gave them their first cupcakes, I don’t think they even tasted them. They almost swallowed them whole. I advised them about the importance of actually chewing their food appropriately, since I didn’t want the added chore of cleaning up an unexpected mess, and their second cupcake went down a whole half-second slower.

What’s that they say about teaching new tricks to old dogs?

I’m on Dean Koontz’s mailing list because he’s my favorite author. A few times a year, I receive a newsletter from him that mentions his upcoming releases, like The Darkest Evening of the Year, which came out today.

As is often his custom, he includes photos of Trixie, his beloved Golden Retriever that he adopted years ago. Trixie was to have been a service dog, but had a joint problem that required surgery; once a dog has joint surgery, it is no longer eligible to be a service dog, so Trixie was “retired” from the service, and that’s how Dean and his wife, Gerda, were able to adopt her.

The cover of this latest newsletter had a collection of eight photos of Trixie in various poses. There was one with a big smile — the kind only an ever-happy Golden Retriever can give, Trixie in a Santa hat, Trixie wearing Easter bunny ears, and Trixie wearing Sunglasses and doing her best at looking glamorous.

At the top of the page in bold letters, it read, simply, “Trixie Koontz.” The first time I looked at it, my eyes immediately went to the photos of this beautiful dog. It took me a moment to notice the second line:

5 October 1995–30 June 2007

When it comes to animals, particularly those of the canine persuasion, I’m a sap. The biggest sap in the world, in fact. I suppose that not many people would admit that. So to say the least, that line didn’t exactly raise my spirits.

It turns out that Trixie had developed an agressive form of cancer, and facing a painful death as the illness progressed, the Koontzes decided to put her down.  At his website, he describes how Trixie loved to have her head held in his hands while he rubbed her cheeks; Dean and Gerda were holding her when she passed.  And that’s when they learned firsthand how devastating the loss of a dog can be:

“That Saturday was the hardest day of our lives. The pain is more intense than any we have known before. The house seems empty without her, and we feel lost.”

Koontz had made Trixie one of his most popular marketers.  She would write messages to her master’s readers that would be crafted in a style that a dog might use, if a dog could actually write:

“Is big week for me because I am dog. Every week is big when you’re a dog. Every week is full of joy, kibble, plush toys, tennis balls, cookies, tummy rubs, wriggling in grass, and more, when you are dog. Dad doesn’t get kibble or plush toys (don’t know why, except maybe he hasn’t been good boy, good), and he is too embarrassed to wriggle on back in grass, so only fun he gets is having new book in stores.”

He has written a new message from Trixie in which she talks about waiting for her human parents at  Rainbow Bridge.  (If you’ve never heard of it, follow that link at your own risk; I can never get through it without tearing up.)

One of my uncles had owned dogs for years.  But they were outside dogs.  And while he fed them and took care of them, they didn’t spend much time indoors, and there wasn’t a great deal of one-on-one contact.  That changed years ago when he got a poodle mix that he named Petey.  Petey was an inside dog who followed my uncle everywhere.  My uncle suddenly realized that there’s something special about dogs.  Unfortunately, Petey was hit by a car and killed.  When the accident happened, my uncle grabbed him and sat in his living room cradling the dog in a daze.  His son called my parents and asked them to come over quickly, thinking that my uncle might actually die from the shock of the loss.

If you can’t imagine experiencing a loss like this, I genuinely feel sorry for you, because it must mean that you have never allowed yourself to get close to a dog.  Man’s relationship with these wonderful creatures dates all the way back to the caveman days according to early cave drawings.  Though cavemen never had dictionaries, encyclopedias or the internet, they were at least smart enough to recognize that these four-legged mammals were indeed friends.  And all these centuries later, there”s still nothing quite like a good dog.

Comedian George Carlin once said that every cute little puppy should come with a sign that reads, “Warning: This will end badly.”

And yet those of us who love dogs keep walking into that situation, because we’d rather have those precious years with our pets than live without them.  Dogs like Trixie ask for so little, and give so much.

That’s what makes them so special.

Talk show host Ellen DeGeneres, an animal lover, decided she wanted to adopt a dog back in September. She she went to a private animal rescue service and adopted a black Brussels Griffon terrier mix named Iggy.

She spent $3,000, she says, getting the dog neutered — something most pet adoption agencies have already done before a dog is ever allowed to be adopted — and getting it trained so that it would get along with her cats. Apparently, the training didn’t work and the dogs and cats just couldn’t get along.

She then proceeded to give the dog to her hairdresser, who has two small children who fell in love with Iggy.

When the rescue group called to check on the dog they had placed, as rescue groups are prone to do, DeGeneres says she fessed up, admitting that the dog didn’t work out and that she had given it to another family. Honesty is the best policy, as she implied as she tearfully told the story on her show. However, that action happened to be in violation of the agreement the rescue group required DeGeneres and her partner to sign, and to make a long story short, the rescue group took the dog from the family.

On her show this past Monday, she sobbed — literally sobbed — as she described the situation.

She begged the rescue group to have a heart and return the dog to the loving family.

She apologized for doing the wrong thing and said that the family shouldn’t be punished for her mistake.

She did a nice job of vilifying an agency that is designed to do good things for animals and for people who follow specific rules they have in place.

She did the wrong thing. Twice. Continue reading “Ellen’s Doggie Saga”

Del Monte has now announced a voluntary recall for some of its dog treat products:

“The Company took this voluntary recall action immediately after learning this morning from the FDA that wheat gluten supplied to Del Monte Pet Products from a specific manufacturing facility in China contained melamine. Melamine is a substance not approved for use in food. The FDA made this finding as part of its ongoing investigation into the recent pet food recall.”

Affected Del Monte products include Jerky Treats, Gravy Train Beef Strips, and Pounce Meaty Morsels. There are also other private label brands involved, including certain varieties of the Wal*Mart brand, Ol’ Roy. Visit Del Monte’s website for their complete list.

So how many people are now thinking that table scraps might be better after all?

When a commercial can touch people through emotion, you often — not always but often — have a successful advertisement. The Pedigree dog food brand tapped actor David Duchovny to voice spots for an image campaign to promote the company’s donations to animal shelters.

Here is one of the original commercials you’ve probably seen:

One of the dogs featured in some of the spots, and particularly some shorter :15 versions, was what appeared to be a Jack Russell Terrior mix named “Oliver.” A brand new spot strikes another emotional chord with animal lovers:

Whether you have pets or not, and whether you buy Pedigree or not, I hope you’ll consider making a donation to an animal shelter near you. There are far more animals than homes available, and these hard working people are doing everything they can to take care of unwanted animals that may never be as lucky as Oliver.

The Menu Foods pet food recall that originally seemed to include only Iams brands actually includes more than forty brands!

Here is the complete list of brands, lifted from CBSNews.com:

Cat Food

• Americas Choice, Preferred Pets
• Authority
• Best Choice
• Companion
• Compliments
• Demoulas Market Basket
• Eukanuba
• Fine Feline Cat
• Food Lion
• Foodtown
• Giant Companion
• Hannaford
• Hill Country Fare
• Hy-Vee
• Iams
• Laura Lynn
• Li’l Red
• Loving Meals
• Meijer’s Main Choice
• Nutriplan
• Nutro Max Gourmet Classics
• Nutro Natural Choice
• Paws
• Pet Pride
• Presidents Choice
• Price Chopper
• Priority
• Save-A-Lot
• Schnucks
• Science Diet Feline Savory Cuts Cans
• Sophistacat
• Special Kitty Canada
• Special Kitty US
• Springfield Prize
• Sprout
• Total Pet
• Wegmans
• Western Family
• White Rose
• Winn Dixie

Dog Food

• Americas Choice, Preferred Pets
• Authority
• Award
• Best Choice
• Big Bet
• Big Red
• Bloom
• Bruiser
• Cadillac
• Companion
• Demoulas Market Basket
• Eukanuba
• Food Lion
• Giant Companion
• Great Choice
• Hannaford
• Hill Country Fare
• Hy-Vee
• Iams
• Laura Lynn
• Loving Meals
• Meijers Main Choice
• Mighty Dog Pouch
• Mixables
• Nutriplan
• Nutro Max
• Nutro Natural Choice
• Nutro Ultra
• Nutro
• Ol’Roy Canada
• Ol’Roy US
• Paws
• Pet Essentials
• Pet Pride - Good n Meaty
• Presidents Choice
• Price Chopper
• Priority
• Publix
• Roche Bros
• Save-A-Lot
• Schnucks
• Shep Dog
• Springsfield Prize
• Sprout
• Stater Bros
• Total Pet
• Western Family
• White Rose
• Winn Dixie
• Your Pet

If a brand you use is there, you can find a link to the manufacturer’s site on the CBS News link. From there, you can click on the brand and see the specific flavors, sizes and expiration dates you need to confirm whether your pet’s food might be covered by the recall.

It has all the makings of a nightmare.

Stormtroopers invade neighborhood after neighborhood, making noise in the night, luring family pets to bark, alerting their owners to potential danger. Except that the only danger is to the dogs themselves, who are tracked down by their bark and slaughtered in front of their horrified owners.

Tragically, it’s no Orwellian short story: it has happened in China, where 50,000 dogs have been killed in one of the world’s most outrageous over-reactions in history. Granted, China had the second-highest number of rabies deaths last year — 2,375, according to the Chinese Health Ministry — and only a 3% immunization rate among rural families.

But you can’t rid yourself of rabies by wiping out the dog population: you have to vaccinate. Dogs are far from the only animals that can contract the disease, and you can’t wipe out all wildlife, no matter how hard you try. Wild animals can get protected by food laced with the vaccine that can be left in lures. Dogs can be vaccinated even easier, and if they are indoor pets, their chances of contracting rabies are fairly remote.

Given a choice, I’m sure most residents would rather spend the money for the vaccine, or would bring their pets to be vaccinated if the government would provide it at a reduced cost. Unfortunately, the only choice families seem to have is whether they kill their own pets or whether their government comes in and does it for them. If they kill their own dog, they get a whopping 63¢ for their effort. If the government does it, they’ll club the animal to death, far from a humane treatment. (CBS and ABC both have photos showing a dog lying prone on a street as officials club it, so I am not linking to either of those sites. The NBC site I linked to above contains a link to a second story in which the same picture also appears, so be warned.)

I assume that there are no animal cruelty laws in China, because I can’t think of a more cruel way to treat an animal than to take it from a loving family and beat it to death. If there are animal cruelty laws there, the government needs to lock itself up until it comes to its senses.

There are many people who don’t “get” dog ownership. They don’t understand the bond that people form with their dogs (or cats, for that matter). Some of them, unfortunately, are parents who think that they’re better than people who aren’t parents, who know more about everything, and because they are parents, experience the greatest emotional bond one can have: the bond between parent and child. I’ll give them that last one, but not the other two. But for people who don’t have children, their relationship with their pets is similar. Not the same, of course, but as close as a childless person can get. There’s nothing wrong with that, no intent to slight parenthood implied in that sentiment. It’s just reality.

Dogs don’t hold grudges; they’re always happy to see you, whether you’ve been gone for an eight-hour workday or a ten-minute trip to the grocery store. They, unlike people, don’t put conditions on loving their owners. They aren’t petty. They don’t look for arguments. In short, they’re better than most people.

If this government ever gets some hairbrained idea about ridding itself of rabies by exterminating dogs, I’ll take my vaccinated pets and move somewhere else.

There most definitely is a better way.

Why, amidst all the human suffering that is happening because of a major hurricane and the failure of levees, would anyone care about animals?

Some people wonder.

For me, I have always been an animal lover. I think the way people treat animals can be a good indication of how those same people treat each other. Animal rights activists have pointed for years to research that many violent offenders in our prisons began their criminal career by abusing animals, not people.

There is story after story coming from the Katrina-ravaged Gulf Coast about animals now facing starvation after being abandoned by their owners. In many cases, those who did evacuate on buses were not allowed to take their animals with them. But like the rest of the country, these people, forced to make a life or death decision for themselves and, likely, their pets, are now shown not to have had a plan on dealing with disaster in their households.

Would I leave my pets behind? No. Hurricanes scare the hell out of me. I don’t understand why anyone wants to live on the coast; I have enough anxiety in my life as it is, thank you. Every hurricane season, I’d be a nervous wreck…at least more so than I am the rest of the time! When a category five storm was headed my way, you can bet I’d get the hell out of dodge…in my car…with my dogs.

What about the people who didn’t have cars…those people too poor to afford basic transportation? Here’s a question no one is asking so I’ll toss it out there: the average cost of owning a pet, assuming you do feed it and get it at least occasional veterinary care (including those mandatory vaccines) can run into the hundreds of dollars a year. So how are these poor people able to feed pets when they apparently barely have enough to pay for their own food?

When there isn’t a major disaster, any judge worth his robes will lock you up for letting an animal go without food, water, or clean conditions for an extended period of time. It’s called animal cruelty and it’s against the law.

Yet when a disaster strikes, we’re supposed to pretend that there’s no such thing? And even worse, those who are ordering people to evacuate are requiring evacuees to commit what would otherwise be a crime??

Many have complained that the handling of this crisis shows that there is a class system at play in this country. Of course we have a class system: that’s how phrases “middle class” came to be! Some are trying to force the issue of race into this, ignoring the fact that there are poor white, asian and hispanics who are trapped together in the area.

Should the notion that some people seem to be less of a “priority” than others surprise anyone? It doesn’t surprise animal lovers like me: once we start presuming to make value judgments about who should have a chance to live based solely on species, just as the authorities who refused to let victims who’d lost everything else evacuate with their pets had done, the next obvious step is to then start deciding who is and isn’t worth it within the “right” species: humans.

“The elderly probably don’t have much time, anyway…the sick might infect the healthy…the poor aren’t productive enough and will bring down the rest…”

It sounds like an old episode of “The Twilight Zone” that portrayed a futuristic world in which those who didn’t measure up were liquidated in the spirit of keeping “the state” thriving. The program was called “The Obsolete Man.”

None of the victims in this tragedy should have been considered obsolete…and that goes for people and their pets.

I’m not saying that this is really what’s happening there; I don’t believe that the government is saying that the people who stayed behind aren’t worth rescuing. I believe that there are epic failures on display here, but I think the main reason behind them is a lot of bureaucratic red tape and nonsense rather than any targeted prioritizing.

On the other hand, when I see all of the heartbreaking photos of dogs and cats desperate for food and few people doing anything to help them, I wonder what gives anyone the right to say that one living thing is meaningless, and another should get all of our attention right this minute.

You’d think we own the universe.

(Noah’s Wish is currently in the area trying to rescue pets and reunite them with their owners. For more information on this group, visit their website, here.)