Pet Health

I was in the library the other day and there was another patron there with a dog that was wearing a little vest that said therapy dog on it. I thought it was really cute and said hello to the dog and the woman snapped at me and told me not to talk to her dog. What’s with that?

The Fourth of July is coming up, our quintessential American celebration and the official start to summer. But remember this, pets don’t have calendars. For them a human party is just one more opportunity to meet new people and beg for food. While they are fiercely loyal to you, they don’t have a patriotic bone in their body. So please, play it safe and try to make the holiday just another fun summer day for your pets.

I am planning on adopting a new kitten. How do I go about litter training her? 1. Put litter in a litter pan and put it somewhere that the kitten can find it. Period. End of story.

I took my cat, Sylvester, in for his shots the other day and my vet said he needed to have a rabies shot. Excuse me . . . Sylvester doesn’t go outside, why should I expose him to the risk of a rabies shot if he is not in any danger?

My neighbor has a dog that he keeps tied out behind his house. I can barely see into his back yard, but as far as I can tell the dog spends most of its time out there and there is never any food or water for it. Is it OK if I just go over there and feed and water the dog myself when he is not home?

A couple of weeks ago, you wrote about removing ticks and mentioned that, among other things, the little buggers can transmit Lyme disease. What were you thinking??? I have enough things to worry about, without that added to my list. My dog, Bubba, has had ticks. Not a lot, but some. Is it possible that he has the disease?

I was wasting time on the internet the other day. I was supposed to be researching an article. But you know how one thing leads to another and somehow I ended up looking at the Oswego County Humane Society’s adoptable cats. They have a lot of really beautiful cats, but I did notice that many of their older cats are black or mostly black. Why is that? Are there a lot of black cats in our area?

Yesterday, I was talking to my brother about my new adopted dog, Enola, a black lab mix and I told him that she always appears to be smiling and that I thought she was very happy in her new home. You have to know that my brother is sort of a scientific know it all and he started to lecture me about anthropomorphism and how dogs don’t feel human emotions like happiness, blah, blah, blah.

I was petting my dog Scooby last night and felt this odd little lump thing on his neck. When I took a closer look, oh gross, it was a tick. I had never seen one on him before. I didn’t think they even started before the summer. So I tried putting alcohol on the little bugger to make him back out and that didn’t work at all.