Facets of Our Lives

So something frightening happened to my dog. In April, I was working for a few weeks in New Hampshire, and a few days after I returned, my beloved Belgian Malinois presented with some scary symptoms. He kept falling, as if one side of his body were weaker, and he was vomiting. My first reaction was that he had suffered a stroke, and I went into a panic. I normally consider myself calm, cool, and logical when adverse situations occur, but my dog is my baby. And I could not imagine what rehab one might do for a dog who had had a stroke. We rushed him to a 24-hour animal hospital in Gilbert, AZ. He was diagnosed with "Old Dog" vestibular disease, also called idiopathic vestibular disease . It is somewhat common in older dogs (my dog is now 12 years old), and most owners react exactly the way I did. According to Dr. Jennifer Coates of website petMD :   The vestibular system is composed of portions of the brain and ear and is responsible for maintaining our sense of ba...

Our youngest dog, Buddy, aka Mouth-with-Feet, is a terrier mix of boundless energy. He goes from 0 to 60 in 2.3 seconds, is always eager to eat (his food or yours ), and is always up for attention of any kind. Needless to say, when his behavior changed, it was frightening. His attitude toward food became oh fine, if you insist , which was probably the most disturbing. After a number of standard tests, the vet couldn't find anything wrong. But we may have discovered the culprit. A scorpion . Buddy has a strong prey drive, as most terriers do -- he'll chase just about anything, dig for things, and he's even more intent if his target is smaller than he is. And when it comes to insects or arachnids, he eats them. We will frequently find him staring at something only to discover it to be a moth, a multi-legged insect, or most recently, a scorpion. Even if a scorpion doesn't manage to sting, there is still venom contained within its tail. So our guess is, he success...

No, this post about dogs. Sex is discussed on Wednesdays. We have three dogs. Two of the dogs weigh more than 50 pounds, but our third dog, the youngest at age 10, is a 15-pound terrier mix named Buddy. We adopted Buddy at age 7, and he was specifically selected by my mother because he was a senior and because of his size, which she believed would make him manageable. But Buddy has problems. As a small dog, Buddy was raised to believe that everything he did was cute - jumping, barking, creatively tearing things apart, begging for food, and he has no idea how to walk on a leash without pulling, since he could never overwhelm a human. By contrast, our larger dogs have been specifically trained not to jump, not to get into things, how to walk on a leash, etc., because they are large enough that without training, we'd have difficulty. But the problem that many dog owners do not understand is that little dogs are simply big dogs in small packages. When Buddy behaves himself, he...

Roughly 75% of the US population lives east of the Mississippi River. This portion of the country, on the whole, is wetter, greener, and at a lower elevation than the western portion of the continental states. Just like humans, our pets are susceptible to different kinds of illnesses that are specific to region. For example, when I lived in the Northeast, the population of wild deer resulted in a large population of deer ticks , and some form of preventative measure was a monthly ritual to protect the dogs. Here in the Southwest, we have deer in the higher, mountainous elevations, but not in the desert, where I live -- so this ritual became almost immediately unnecessary. One of the unique pet maladies for my region of Arizona is a condition called "Valley Fever", also called "California Disease", "Desert Rheumatism", or its official name Coccidioidomycosis . This is also one of those unique diseases that also impacts humans. It is not curable, which m...

Until recently, I worked from home. This meant that I had a lot of teleconferences and phone calls that I couldn't interrupt to give commands to my dog. I am also hearing impaired; while I do not sign in any way fluently or require it for my human interactions, it was very easy to incorporate a gestural shorthand into our dogs' training alongside of spoken commands. This has proved to have many benefits. Silent commands are subtle and often go unnoticed by other humans, so they can be used when you're on the phone, in public, even in a sleeping baby's room. Or at those times when you just don't feel like speaking. Our oldest dog was the first beneficiary of this style of training, as my brother was once an American Sign Language (ASL) interpreter. As she has aged, her hearing has deteriorated considerably. Rather than yelling or trying to find another way to express what we want from her, we've been able to rely on signing to communicate what is needed -- ...

Part of the heartbreak of having a dog or a cat is watching them get older so much faster than we do, and it seems to come on quite suddenly. Our oldest dog is 15, and in recent years, she's developed arthritis in her back, which has had the collateral effect of making her back legs weaker than they used to be. She's been through oral surgery recently, and it was while she was coming out of the anesthesia that it seemed her arthritis was at its worst. It was hard to watch -- she was clearly upset by the betrayal of her body, and her spirit is normally lively and energetic. Generally, she's fine. She takes thyroid and allergy medication, but otherwise, she does well from day-to-day. This past weekend was an exception, when her arthritis flared up enough to make virtually any position painful, her back legs weak, and a limp appear in her right front leg. She's taken to clinging to me, specifically, when she's in distress like this. I keep her wacky packmates away ...

One of the important things you should know about me if we ever meet is to leave your pets at home or in another room. Not because I don't like animals, but I tend to prefer them to humans -- and if you have a goofy, playful, crazy dog, an affectionate cat who wants me to carry him/her, or a bird that will talk to me, well -- you've lost me completely. Amusement park have a petting zoo? Leave me at the zoo with a bunch of quarters so I can buy food for the goats and I'll see you in a few hours. This is why we couldn't have just one dog. We have three, ranging in age from 15 to almost 10 (his birthday is next month). Each of their adoptions was a different set of circumstances, but all of them came from shelters. So this week, I want to talk a little about the importance of shelters and rescue organizations. It is heartbreaking how we treat animals as a society, as a country, even as a species. Some days, I really can't take it and I have to force myself to avoid...

In last week's pet post, I talked about the benefits of teaching my dog to poop on command, as it made traveling easier. Traveling with your pet, however, is a whole other topic. Dogs, in particular, like a change of scenery periodically, just as their humans do. My dogs like bodies of water and to splash, but they also just enjoy riding in the car. As I said last week, they have been from Boston to Phoenix, and to more US states and time zones than many of my friends. But this did take some doing. The map below represents all of the states where the dogs have been, either to spend the night or to "leave their mark" so to speak. :-) Scroll over the map with your mouse to learn our experiences by state. This application is created by interactive maps. You can also have your visited states map on your site. If you see this message, you need to upgrade your flash player. Make your visited states map HTML5 charts First, many hotels allow you to bring your pet...

I like to travel with my dogs. In addition to it being a stress-reliever in having them with us, the dogs enjoy the change of scenery, too. But this also means that dogs have to be well-socialized and understand a bit more clearly and specifically what is required of them at different times. When I adopted my 11-year-old Malinois, he was nine months old, and a friend of mine told me that the most valuable thing he had ever trained his dog to do was to poop on command. And he was right, in ways that might seem surprising. On long road trips when you're trying to keep to a schedule, dogs can be uncertain, nervous, and even defensive in unfamiliar surroundings. They may be able to urinate, but anything more than that might be a challenge. Once you arrive at a destination, whether for the night or longer, there may also be specific areas where dogs should relieve themselves - which is typically not the area the dog might choose for him- or herself. So, we did it - from 11 months ...

A Facets Reader asks: Do animals have a soul? Short answer #1: I don't know if I have a soul to know if animals do. Short answer #2: Some Christian dogma states that only humans have souls. Short answer #3: I had a childhood caregiver who believed her dog was the reincarnation of Julius Caesar. So. Um. Yeah. Putting all of that aside, we need a working definition of what a 'soul' is in order to discuss this in any meaningful way. So here's the definition supplied by Dictionary.com : soul [sohl] -noun the principle of life, feeling, thought, and action in humans, regarded as a distinct entity separate from the   body, and commonly held to be separable in existence from the body; the spiritual part of humans as distinct from the physical part. the spiritual part of humans regarded in its moral aspect, or as believed to survive death and be subject to happiness or misery in a life to come...

For all the great behavior my dog displays, separation anxiety is a continuing and difficult problem. The latest incident occurred just this week. Knowing it would be an issue for him to be alone, and because it was on the way, I took him to my mother's house on my way to a job fair. I stayed there for lunch and then headed on my way to AZDES, returning about 45 minutes later (the job fair was a bit of a joke, but that's another story). Apparently, despite having lived with my mother for almost two years when we moved to Arizona, and despite adoring his canine playmates, he spent nearly the entire time I was gone trying to hide... ostrich-style, shoving his face between my mother and a cabinet, for example. Eventually, he decided to hide behind the couch in the family room, and flinched whenever my mother touched him. When I returned, he was ready to go . He was panting, pacing, and bothering me to put his leash on him. He practically dragged me to the car when I was re...

I have a busy day on Thursday, so I thought I'd post this a little early. One of the errands I have is actually related to my dog, so it's sort of appropriate that everything is happening this way. My dog is an 11-year-old Belgian Malinois , and he is completely devoted to me. He also has food allergies. I was surprised, too. There have been commercials recently for some brands of dog food talking about "reading the ingredients", and there is something to that. But it turns out that dogs can suffer from food allergies just like humans, and I had to learn the hard way. Before I moved, my commute was roughly one hour from home to office, which meant my dog was alone for at least 10 hours a day. He managed this well, but when his food allergies kicked in, let's just say I had a lot of cleanup when I would return home. His first vet was a very holistic, homeopathic-oriented person, so she prescribed rice, mashed potatoes, and a spoonful of Kaopectate - but he ...