Smooch Your Pooch at PETCO Valentine’s Pet Party, Best Kiss Contest

ALTON — Nothing says “I love you” like a big slobbery kiss from your favorite furry Valentine. Pet parents can smooch their pooch, cuddle their cat or hug their hamster at PETCO’s Valentine’s Pet Party at 2 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 9.
The event, sponsored by Hill’s Science Diet, will be held at PETCO locations nationwide. Festivities will include a best pet kiss contest, where pets and their parents can show their best public display of affection (for furry friends only). The top smoochers will be awarded a bag of Science Diet Oral Care Dog or Cat Food and a tin of Yip Yap breath fresheners for dogs. Following the contest, pet parents can return the favor and decorate a heart-shaped cookie for their special friend.
At the event, attendees will pose with their pet and get a free commemorative Valentine’s Day photo frame. Pets can “personalize” a Valentine’s card with their very own paw-print “autograph” and PETCO’s groomers will treat pets to a Berry Love spritz and stylish red or pink hair ribbons.
For more information or to find a PETCO near you, visit PETCO.com.

First, let me say that I am not bashing veterinarians. The equipment and medications that go with operating a veterinarian’s office cannot be cheap. In addition, if my dog has a particular problem, I expect the vet to be aware of the latest information and treatment for that problem, just as any human would if they visited a doctor. This means a vet’s education is never ending. Another expense.

I suspect, like a gallon of gasoline or milk, the cost of providing medical care to pets is going up. Like any other business, the vet has to pass that cost on to customers.

Fortunately, I have a healthy mixed breed mutt. He usually goes once a year to the vet for his annual vaccinations, heartworm, and exam. His visits in between are very few and have been for relatively minor maladies. Nonetheless, on those occasions where I have taken the dog to the vet, I found the cost of just the office visit higher than the last one.

In retrospect, I wonder what I would have done had he been a dog with constant ear infections, diabetes or some other problem that needed constant monitoring and medication. He’s 12 years old now and, just like humans, becoming more prone to dreaded diseases like cancer. Will I be able to afford the kind of care I would like to give him? Because I lack the income someone else might have to afford longterm treatment, will I have to make the decision to put him down?

Will there come a day when a person of limited or modest income have to forgo the compansionship of a pet because of the expensive involved? Has that day already come?

In reference to the fire in Brighton that, allegedly, a dog started by knocking over a kerosene lamp: Hey, dogs are still man’s best friend. Humans are supposed to be smarter than dogs. Why was the kerosene lamp left where the dog could reach it to knock it over and start a fire? Just a reminder folks. When you have a pet that can get in trouble roaming the house alone, treat the household as if you have a toddler and pet proof it.

There is a television commercial for a rug cleaner, where a little boy hollers for his mom to “check out Toby’s new trick.” Mom is horrified because Toby is scooting his butt across the carpet. Poor Toby. Toby might be scooting because he needs his anal glands expressed. My dog has a minor problem with them and I try to get it tended to about every six months, otherwise the potential is there for the glands to become impacted. (Yuck) Some dogs have a problem with it; other dogs never have a problem. Several years ago, I asked a vet about having the glands removed. The answer I got was “Oh, you do NOT want to do that.” It seems vets in the past haven’t liked to do it unless it’s an extreme case because of the potential of nerve damage. The dog might lose control over his bowels. (Again, yuck.) Last month, I took my dog in to have his “butt squeeze” and found out that there is a totally new procedure for it that is simpler and not as scary as the old one. My dog is 12 years old now, so I’d have to weigh disadvantages, advantages, cost and his age. But for people out there who have dogs that really suffer from it and keep “doing a Toby” across the white, plush carpet, call Dr. Formea in Alton. He went to Kansas City last summer to learn this new procedure.

I was worried about the safety of pet toys long before the China scare. I would check out a stuffed dog toy for toughness, stitching, and parts that an animal could swallow like I was going to give it to a baby. Now with the fear of lead-tainted pet toys, what is one to do? I fooled around on the Internet and the most interesting Web site I found with USA (and organic) products for the whole family was ourgreenhouse.com. It may seem a bit pricey, but I’d rather pay more money for a product I had reasonable assurance was safe. And the by-product of shopping this way? It’s eco-friendly.

If you have a favorite pet organization (or other charity or school) you would like to donate to, check out GoodSearch.com. The Telegraph was tipped off to this search engine through an e-mail.

Pet lovers are always disheartened by stories of abandoned puppies or kittens. Who would do such a thing? But was the individual that abandoned them as cruel as we think?

I know of one person who found a mother cat and litter of newborn kittens in her garage one day. She tried to do the right thing and called a local shelter but was told there was no room in the “inn.” This person was in no position to take on a mother cat with kittens. She had pets of her own and just couldn’t cope with more.

My own dog was found one winter evening in a cardboard box with his sister just outside of a shelter. Some kindhearted person spied the box with the puppies inside, took them home and the rest, as they say, is history. But, I always wondered if the person who left them in the box might have tried to place them in the shelter and was turned away. The person had no option, for some reason, but to leave the pups where a shelter worker would find them.

When shelter workers do find abandoned animals at their door, like a newborn baby on the church steps, is there room for them then? Usually, the animals are taken in.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not knocking the shelters. I am sure shelter workers aren’t lying when they tell people there’s no room for another animal. Thank God we have animal shelters and volunteers willing to put their time and effort into such a cause.
It does show the tremendous need for more and bigger animal shelters with adequate staff and funding to operate them in a humane fashion.

Prevention is worth a pound of cure. If people took care of their pets and heeded the advice to spay or neuter, there wouldn’t be an unwanted litter.

In reality, I’m afraid there will always be unwanted puppies and kittens and shelters will always be full.

Anyone who has been a pet owner knows that each pet can have its own personality. Two cats from the same litter can be very different behavior from one another. Pets seem to be just like people in that they have their own little personality quirks that endear them to us (or not).
My mother had a cat, Winkie, when we lived in Maine that was an inside/outside cat. She used a litter box only when necessary and preferred to go out.
Now Maine, as I’m sure everyone is aware of, gets some ungodly snowstorms. Everybody usually hunkers down for the “good ‘n’s” and keeps their animals inside.
The day would usually dawn bright and sunny after a snowstorm and Winkie would go sit by the front door of my mother’s apartment to be let out. My mother would drop what she was doing, go open the door and hold the door open, heating all outdoors, waiting for the cat to take her leave. Winkie would get a load of the snow and freeze (no pun intended), half in and half out of the house. Slowly, she’d inch her way out onto a bare patch of front porch. Now, necessity dictated that she go farther than that bare patch of porch to do what cats do, but when one front paw barely touched snow, you’d think she just stepped on burning embers. That cat would try to shake that paw into the next universe and beat a hasty retreat into the house.
After Winkie had regained some composure by giving herself a good lick and wash, she would saunter to the back door of the house and want to be let out. I guess she thought the weather would be different at the back door than at the front.
Go through these motions for your animal enough times during the day and see what your mood is by evening.
(The above anecdote is also another example of how well our pets train us.)
Anyone want to share any of their pets’ peculiarities?

Rosie Taul died Saturday. The world lost a true champion of animals.
Everyone who knew Rosie has a story about her, but the ones I remember most are animal related because we always ended up talking cats and dogs when we saw one another.
She told me about the little dog that she had at one time, Orphan Annie. Little Annie, as I remember Rosie’s story, literally blew into her backyard one day in the middle of a bad thunderstorm. Rosie ran outside, rescued her, and took her in. Rosie said she and Annie used to sit side by side in the same livingroom chair and she knew it was time for her to lose a little weight when the chair became a tight fit for both of them.
Rosie is the one who nicknamed my dog, Jakers, a terrier-sheltie-schnauzer-who-knows mix, “Scruffybutt” for obvious reasons.
Rosie is the reason I do little Christmas card cartoons or “doo-dahs” of Jakers every year. It started out as a one-time thing and snow-balled into every Christmas and ( if I remembered) for her birthday. One year, I gave her a humorous “store-bought” birthday card, thinking maybe I had carried the cartoons far enough. After all, not everyone loves my dog like me, right? Maybe I had run the Jakers cards into the ground. Without meaning to, I think I insulted her. The next time I saw her, she kind of let me have it, “Where is my Jakers card!?” She told me often that she kept all the cards I sent her. That was Rosie. My cards were not fine art, believe me. But it was just like her to nurture and encourage the effort at something creative.
Rosie loved all creatures great and small and she certainly was all things wise and wonderful.