Pet Health

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.

Last week we offered some advice to Jo about precautions she could take to prevent her new dog becoming lost.  This week we want to talk about what to do if the worst case scenario happens and your dog comes up missing.  First, panic!  Then get over that and start working. There are many steps you can take to locate your missing dog.

Several years ago, (when I was young(er) and foolish(er) I got a beagle puppy. I named her Randy and she was a great dog. But after only about six months she ran off and although I tried really hard, I could never find her. I felt terrible and stupid and vowed to never make that mistake again.

I was out shopping a few days ago with my granddaughters who are nuts (in a good way) about animals. So, on a whim really, I took them into a pet store to see the puppies for sale. I would never actually buy a puppy from a pet store because I know about the problem of puppy mills, but I thought it would be fun for them. Boy, was I wrong!