Max here with some news! Not that I’m going to move to Provincetown, MA anytime soon, but I noticed that Dog Fancy magazine will be naming their top 40 most dog-friendly cities in the US in September, and they teased us with the top ten. Provincetown, MA is numero uno.
Why 40? Because Dog Fancy magazine is celebrating its 40th anniversary. Congratulations, Dog Fancy! And congratulations to all the winners. (I’m betting my city is somewhere in that top 40. I love where I live!)
What Makes These Cities the Best?
The criteria used to select the winning city include lots of dog-friendly open spaces and dog parks, events celebrating dogs and their people, sufficient veterinary care, plenty of pet supply and other services, and municipal laws that support and protect all pets.
The next nine cities in the top ten are:
* Carmel, Calif.
* Madison, Wis.
* Benicia, Calif.
* Fort Bragg, Calif.
* Lincoln City, Ore.
* San Diego, Calif.
* Virginia Beach, Va.
* Sioux Falls, S.D.
* Salem, Ore.
I think every city in America should do whatever it takes to win this competition next year!
Yippee! We celebrated the first day of summer on Monday, and you know what that means? It’s time to hit the road and travel. My Mom and Dad love to hike and do anything outdoors, so it’s a cinch for me and Mittens to tag along. But a lot of pets don’t have it that easy. Their vacation is spent in a boarding facility.
Now, don’t get me wrong, boarding is necessary because there are lots of places that we can’t go and that’s the best option. But if your family is planning a trip across town or across the country, you’ll be glad to know that there are plenty of hotels and motels that will make you feel at home.
Whether going away for a day trip or a week-long getaway, we’ve always found it helpful to plan our route using a couple of websites that identify pet-friendly hotels along the way. Saves a bunch of time and research because all the information is right there. Many of them even list attractions and events we might want to check out while we’re there. Some useful website are:
Dog Friendly.com – http://www.dogfriendly.com/
Pets Welcome.com – http://www.petswelcome.com/
Dog Travel Club – http://www.dogtravelcompany.net/Home.php
You’d be surprised at the number of major chains, bed and breakfast spots and cottage rentals there are out there that welcome domestic animals–even the big dogs can find their place in the sun! With all of this information right at your fingertips, now, when your family plans a vacation…the WHOLE family can go.
Now I gotta tell you, I’m so impressed with this little Beagle named Belle. Of course, I think all dogs are great, but this one has really made me proud. Now, I don’t normally buy gifts for dogs, but in this case, I’ll have to make an exception.
Most dogs are able to run and get help, drag an owner to safety or something heroic like that, but I’ve never heard of a dog being able to make a phone call! But, that’s exactly what she did.
Seeing her owner Kevin Weaver of Indianapolis, IN lying unconscious on the kitchen floor from a diabetic seizure, she immediately fetched the cellphone and bit down on the number 9. It had been pre-programmed to call emergency services. Belle repeatedly barked into the phone at the emergency dispatchers, who immediately sent help. When paramedics arrived, they found that Weaver had suffered severe hypoglycemic shock and had collapsed on the floor. As they rushed him to the hospital, Belle rode along in the ambulance to make sure her “patient” would be okay.
How’d she get so smart?
It seems that Weaver has had type 1 diabetes most of his life, but when the seizures became more frequent a year ago, he enlisted the aid of his faithful friend, Belle, and trained her to become a diabetes alert dog. It took about nine months, but as you can see, the specialized training paid off.
Impressive? But that’s not all!
As if being one of the first dogs to actually dial a cell phone in an emergency wasn’t impressive enough, she can also help monitor Weaver’s blood-sugar levels. With a keen sense of smell, she is able to detect when levels are abnormal. The dog periodically licks Weaver’s nose to take her own reading of his blood-sugar level. If something seems off to her, she will paw and whine at him.
“Every time she paws at me like that I grab my meter and test myself,” Weaver said. “She’s never been wrong.”
Every good dog has its day!
Her good deeds haven’t gone unnoticed. She is the first non-human to receive the VITA Wireless Samaritan Award. The Cellular Telecommunications and Internet Association awards the VITA award to individuals who “demonstrate the courage and instinct to think of their wireless phones as a life-saving device during demanding emergency situations.” The name VITA (which is Latin for “Life”) is so appropriate since that’s what she gave her owner a second chance at.
Long story short: Sadly, the long-fescue sod is losing. We desperately needed to renovate our backyard, which had become a large expanse of dirt sloping toward our recessed patio. When it rained, the mud poured onto the patio and into our home via many muddy paws. The inside of our house is a disaster area which we’re determined to renovate and paint this summer, but we first had to stop the tide of mud entering the house, so the backyard had to be our first project. You’ll have no problem recognizing which photos are before and after . We were thrilled…for about two days.
At the moment, we have three German Shepherds—two of our own and a foster. Those giant paws running rapidly from one end of the yard to the other several times a day are tearing it up slowly. But that’s not the big problem…
Hindsight Is 20-20
I’m still working on training all threeto relieve themselves in the far-back part of the yard, which is mostly brush and trees. Not happening as quickly as we’d like. After a few days, the yellow spots began to appear, followed by big patches of dead grass and dirt.
About that same time, I noticed an ad for a product that neutralized the high nitrogen content and high ph in dog urine to prevent this problem.I hit the dog-supplies trail and purchased two products—one for the dogs and another to spray on the yellow spots and neutralize everything at the point of contact (which, of course, means I have to watch them while they’re in the yard to see where they go and run outside with the spray bottle, hoping I’ll remember the exact spot where the stream landed. Easier said than done.) So, right now, it’s hard to tell if it’s working. We wish we’d started them on the edible prevention well before the sod went down.
It’s Not Too Late For YOU!
If you have dogs and you’re planning to install new sod, the easiest protection may be to simply train your dogs to do their business in one spot specially designed for them, filled with either river pebble or Astroturf for easy clean-up. But just in case, you should know about the different kinds of urine neutralizers. There are products on the market for both dogs and lawns. Ingestible urine neutralizers are available as chewables or liquids/sprays for their food or water. And you can choose from a number of lawn treatments on the market. I’m off to do some research on repairing my lawn before the problem gets any worse. Meanwhile, our beloved dogs are enjoying the heck out of their new backyard “digs.”
Hi, friends! Max here! You know, flower and vegetable-garden season is upon us, and I’d be willing to bet there are multitudes of loving dog owners who plant backyard beds, only to discover their dogs are garden-fresh food lovers, too.
Not that we precious pups are alone in our passion for home-grown peas, potatoes and petunias—rabbits, deer and other critters will also invite themselves to dinner at your expense. A fenced yard can help keep the feral feeders to a minimum, but what about us four-legged fur kids?
No matter how many dog treats you give us, we’re still going to be tempted by the rows of delightful choices (veggies, flowers and shrubs) you nurture diligently over the summer months. (My exception is lima beans. You can plant acres of them, and you won’t have to worry about me eating even one. They’re all yours.) For us, it’s like a trip to the grocery store. At the risk of disappointing all my buds (no pun intended) out there, I thought I’d give you some help, especially because my buds and I might ingest something we shouldn’t (like lima beans,) so it’s important to all of us. We learned these great tips for designing a dog-friendly garden from Judi Gerber at Care2.com, a blog that’s all about green living. Here they are…
When planning your garden, create some dog-friendly elements so that your garden isn’t a more attractive place than his or her own area. Include designated paths that your pooch knows where it’s okay to roam.
Usually a dog uses the same path over and over. (You should see the trails I’ve mapped out in Mom and Dad’s backyard!) Use pavers or some other kind of hardscape to clearly delineate the paths, Don’t use something loose, like gravel, mulch or bark—that’s an open invitation to dig and bury things.
Eliminate any bare dirt areas with some pet-friendly plants, grasses and ground cover to deter not only your dog, but bothersome weeds, too.
Design a separate spot for your dog to dig and play in. If you consistently play with your pooch in that area and leave some favorite toys in there, he or she will come to recognize it as his/her “turf.”
Create raised beds and fencing. Looks nice. Dogs stay out.
If you don’t have room to fence off a separate area, use tomato cages around tomatoes and other small, tender plants. Trellises and tepees will keep dogs off the plants, and so will growing the plants close together, because it’s easier for dogs to go around clumps of plants.
Playful, unstoppable pup? Put your most delicate plants in containers, hanging baskets or window boxes.
Most important—avoid planting things in your garden that are toxic or harmful to your furry babies. Check aspca.org/toxicplants for a complete list.
Consider your dog before growing spiny or thorny plants, which can grow at a level that can cause serious eye injuries to dogs. And take care of those overgrown weeds with foxtails or seedhead that are sharp—bad news if your dog swallows or inhales them.
If you must, ALWAYS USE NON-TOXIC fertilizers, herbicides and insecticides.
Thanks to Judi and YOU for protecting us pups from our own curiosity. On behalf of my buds and me, Way to Grow!
Well, it took a minute for humans to finally figure out that all growls aren’t the same. There’s a growl that says “Back off! I’m protecting my owner” and a very different growl that let’s the owner know that the dog collar is too tight. Much like a baby’s cry, each sound has a different meaning and identifies a different need. Not to be outdone by the horse whisperer, a bunch of dogs in Hungary were able to shed some light on the messages in the growls. Since dogs don’t speak Hungarian, you might be wondering how they were able to communicate that to the researchers. Well, here’s what happened.
According to new research described in Discovery News, Peter Pongracz, a behavioral biologist at Eotvos Lorand University in Hungary, recorded growls from 20 pet dogs while engaging in three different activities:
Watching a threatening stranger approach
Playing tug-of-war with their owners
Facing off with another dog for a bone
Not really detecting much audible difference between the more aggressive growls, he played the recordings to other dogs as they chewed on meaty calf bones to see if they would detect a difference. Reportedly, the dogs that heard tapes of the bone-guarding dogs backed away from their bone in direct response to the threatening growls. Recognizing the difference between the sounds, the dogs that heard the playful growls kept on chewing.
Upon further investigation, Pongracz and his team analyzed the growls with a computer and found some notable consistencies. The playful growls were typically shorter and higher pitched than the threatening growls, according to Discovery News reports. But, even as technologically advanced as computer are, they’re no match for dog ears because the computers still couldn’t detect the difference between the two threatening growls based on pitch, volume, etc. (Go dogs!)
Chalk it up to our super-sonic hearing and the ability to say–er–growl what we mean.
I, for one, I’m thrilled the US is not an environmentally correct “paperless” society–at least, not just yet. Many of us still use snail mail to communicate with friends, mail in bill payments, send out wedding and other invitations and fill up our mailboxes with advertising materials. The more letters, the better!
That’s because the US Postal Service just launched their Animal Rescue: Adopt a Shelter Pet commemorative postage stamps as part of their Stamps to the Rescue promotional campaign.
Animal advocate Ellen DeGeneres announced the program on her show April 30, when the stamps went on sale nationwide. The loving pets you see in on the stamps are actual shelter pets photographed by veteran stamp photographer Sally Andersen-Bruce. She chose five cats and five dogs, and I’m happy to announce all ten animals were adopted from a shelter in New Milford, CT.
Postmaster General John E. Potter said, “This campaign will increase public awareness about sheltered pets, and our hope is that it will encourage pet adoption and promote humane and responsible pet care.”
Amen. Every year 6 to 8 million cats and dogs end up in animal shelters and, of that number, nearly half are euthanized. If everyone who wants a furry, four-legged companion chooses to adopt a shelter pet and spays/neuters their pet, we’d move toward eliminating not only a horrible end for these poor, sweet, defenseless animals, but we’d also help put unconscionable puppy mills out of business.
You can order the stamps from the postal service at StampsToTheRescue.com or by calling 1-800-STAMP24 (1-800-782-6724.) If you’re like me, you believe there’s nothing as wonderful as a beloved pet licking your face. Well, here’s your chance to lick back–and give another sweet pet the chance to love and be loved.
Thank you, US Postal Service, for caring so much, and thanks to every one of you who adopts your pets from shelters and animal rescue organizations. We have two incredibly loving rescued pets at home, and we simply can’t imagine life without them.
The Good Samaritan. You know the story. A man who had been beaten and robbed was left by the side of the road to die. Several people passed by, but no one help. Finally, a man–the Good Samaritan–stopped to help the man and get him to a place where he could stay.
Well, if there was ever a “Good Samaritan” in the animal world, this dog would be it. Amazed at the video, I just had to share. We often see trained animals step in to help someone and even pets do great things to save their families. Yet, rarely do you see a dog leap into action, based purely on instinct, to help another dog. But, that’s exactly what happened. Seeing another dog who had been struck and fatally injured on a busy highway, this pooch protector crosses THREE lanes of rushing traffic to pull the pup to safety and out of harms way. Take a look at this heartwarming video.
Doesn’t that make you just want to put a paw to your chest?! Here’s to the nameless hero who makes us all proud. If there was a dog who deserved a lifetime of dog treats it is this one. The care and concern this dog demonstrated for a complete stranger is amazing. I tell you, people could learn a lot from this dog!
Greetings, everyone! Max here with some exciting news! But first…
Admit it! Sometimes you cringe when a dog (or any dog, for that matter) gives you those big, sloppy, wet kisses on your face, don’t you? It’s not that you don’t love us like crazy. You just might find it a little icky from time. My mom and dad call it “getting slimed.” Well, the next time you get slimed, think about this…
FOX news reports researchers have found that the DNA on my tongue might be the key to new treatments for rare cancers in both humans and dogs.
According to FOX news, “The Translational Genomics Research Institute (TGen) and the Van Andel Research Institute (VARI), developed the Canine Hereditary Cancer Consortium, to understand why people and their pets get sick. The study used saliva, blood and tumor samples of dogs volunteered by private pet owners for testing in hopes that by studying canine cancer, oncologists can determine the cause of human cancers.”
A
Why Dogs Matter!
“Rare diseases in humans also show up in dogs. By studying the DNA of canines, we expect to more quickly discover the genomic causes of disease and more quickly find ways to better treat dogs, and people,” said Dr. Mark Neff, director of the new TGen-VARI Program for Canine Health and Performance.
The testing, approved by the American Kennel Club and Morris Animal Foundation, will be animal-safe, and funding will be supported by private donors, along with a $4.3 million dollar federal stimulus grant.
They said cancer is the cause of death for nearly 50 percent of all dogs older than 10-years-old. Pretty scary, but I think I speak for all my canine comrades when I say we’re glad we can help change that for the better. Since my mom and dad found out about this, they let me slime them to my heart’s content!
Hearing someone say “When pigs fly”, you just know you’re never going to see whatever it is happen in your lifetime. You might have even heard someone scoff at the idea of a tax deduction for your pets. Well, honey, things are a changing!
Maybe not so much for those pigs flying, but if you’ve got one as a pet, there just might be a tax deduction on the way.
People have been trying to get tax deductions for their pets for years. And with legislation introduced by Rep. Thaddeus McCotter, R-Mich, pet owners may be able to deduct up to $3,500 per year for pet supplies, medical and pet care expenses, if it gets through Congress.
It’s called the HAPPY Act, which stands for Humanity and Pets Partnered Through the Years, and you can learn more about it at http://www.opencongress.org/bill/111-h3501/show.
Sounds like a great idea to us! Since we’re the only “kids” our parents have, we don’t see why they can’t get that tax credit. They love us just like they would human kids–even more so, I think! But until that happens, the only tax deductions you can currently get for your pets are for guide dogs, service dogs or animals directly related to your business.
With any luck, maybe when April 15th rolls around next year, we all can take advantage of this new bill. Just think, our Mom and Dad would not only get the benefit of having us around providing constant love and affection, but they’d also get the tax benefit, as well. It’s a win-win for everyone!
Max here with some news! Not that I’m going to move to Provincetown, MA anytime soon, but I noticed that Dog Fancy magazine will be naming their top 40 most dog-friendly cities in the US in September, and they teased us with the top ten. Provincetown, MA is numero uno.
The criteria used to select the winning city include lots of dog-friendly open spaces and dog parks, events celebrating dogs and their people, sufficient veterinary care, plenty of pet supply and other services, and municipal laws that support and protect all pets.
Yippee! We celebrated the first day of summer on Monday, and you know what that means? It’s time to hit the road and travel. My Mom and Dad love to hike and do anything outdoors, so it’s a cinch for me and Mittens to tag along. But a lot of pets don’t have it that easy. Their vacation is spent in a boarding facility.
Dog Friendly.com – http://www.dogfriendly.com/
Now I gotta tell you, I’m so impressed with this little Beagle named Belle. Of course, I think all dogs are great, but this one has really made me proud. Now, I don’t normally buy 
Long story short: Sadly, the long-fescue sod is losing. We desperately needed to renovate our backyard, which had become a large expanse of dirt sloping toward our recessed patio. When it rained, the 
mud poured onto the patio and into our home via many muddy paws. The inside of our house is a disaster area which we’re determined to renovate and paint this summer, but we first had to stop the tide of mud entering the house, so the backyard had to be our first project. You’ll have no problem recognizing which photos are before and after . We were thrilled…for about two days.
I’m still working on training all three to relieve themselves in the far-back part of the yard, which is mostly brush and trees. Not happening as quickly as we’d like. After a few days, the yellow spots began to appear, followed by big patches of dead grass and dirt.
Hi, friends! Max here! You know, flower and vegetable-garden season is upon us, and I’d be willing to bet there are multitudes of loving dog owners who plant backyard beds, only to discover their dogs are garden-fresh food lovers, too.
Design a separate spot for your dog to dig and play in. If you consistently play with your pooch in that area and leave some favorite toys in there, he or she will come to recognize it as his/her “turf.”
Well, it took a minute for humans to finally figure out that all growls aren’t the same. There’s a growl that says “Back off! I’m protecting my owner” and a very different growl that let’s the owner know that the 
Upon further investigation, Pongracz and his team analyzed the growls with a computer and found some notable consistencies. The playful growls were typically shorter and higher pitched than the threatening growls, according to Discovery News reports. But, even as technologically advanced as computer are, they’re no match for dog ears because the computers still couldn’t detect the difference between the two threatening growls based on pitch, volume, etc. (Go dogs!)
I, for one, I’m thrilled the US is not an environmentally correct “paperless” society–at least, not just yet. Many of us still use snail mail to communicate with friends, mail in bill payments, send out wedding and other invitations and fill up our mailboxes with advertising materials. The more letters, the better!
Postmaster General John E. Potter said, “This campaign will increase public awareness about sheltered pets, and our hope is that it will encourage pet adoption and promote humane and responsible pet care.”
pet, we’d move toward eliminating not only a horrible end for these poor, sweet, defenseless animals, but we’d also help put unconscionable puppy mills out of business.
Greetings, everyone! Max here with some exciting news! But first…
Why Dogs Matter!
Hearing someone say “When pigs fly”, you just know you’re never going to see whatever it is happen in your lifetime. You might have even heard someone scoff at the idea of a tax deduction for your pets. Well, honey, things are a changing!
