Dog Blessings

February 3, 2014

     Beau must be one of few dogs in the building in which I reside who likes to go out in the snow.  As this is, by my count, the seventh snowfall since winter began and we are only about halfway through the season, this is a good thing.  Beau has an appetite for the snow, is the best way I can describe it: he charges off into the white powder, bounding through it, seeking the deepest accumulations without so much as a nod to the cold.  While my fingertips are near frostbite, Beau happily takes in the white all around.

     I'm becoming an increasingly skeptical consumer of veterinary services.  Today I heard a story about a vet who told the owner of a Schnauzer with a slight rash on its belly that what the dog had was "Schnauzer Crud".  Looking the term up online, I see that what it is is "pimples" caused by blocked sebaceous glands, not too different from "acne" as it's called in humans.

     The teller of the anecdote is the mother-in-law of a veterinarian who scoffed when she heard the term.  The condition isn't likely to cause discomfort to the dog if he doesn't scratch it, and would only be a problem if the dog were being shown.  It is, however, something to make a dog owner anxious, which a veterinarian can offer to test for and treat: ka-ching!

     So I'm going to go to PETCO and start setting up the vaccinations for Beau there, which will cost less than $100, versus the almost $1,000 I've spent so far.  I'm told it is more difficult to be accepted to veterinary school than a medical school for homo sapiens.  Perhaps that's a sign of it's lucrativeness as a profession, I'm beginning to wonder: there's no Affordable Care Act for pets.

     Yesterday in one of Riverside Park's dog runs, I met a woman who told me she only takes her dog to a veterinarian every three years for a rabies shot.  She scoffed at the idea of vaccinating for bordetella, or "kennel cough":

     "What is 'kennel cough?" she asked rhetorically.  "It's a cold with a cough!  It sounds ugly, but it won't kill the dog.  So unless my dog were going to a kennel, I wouldn't pay for vaccinating him against it."

     Another dog owner told me she vaccinates against a bacteria found in rat droppings, because there are so many in New York.  She has the shot given at PETCO, though.

      I'm becoming a big fan of the chain, which is sort of the Macy's of pet stores: the service is good, they will always accept a return with a receipt and compared to the prices at neighborhood pet boutiques in Manhattan, they are a bargain.  While I agree with the argument for supporting your local, independent bookstore, I don't feel the same way about pet boutiques with their rhinestone collars, animal print pet beds and chi-chi dog accessories. --Or vets.

     The PETCO staff is young, and willing to share their knowledge --and their tales of dog ownership. Today the young woman who handled my return of the soft "cone" the veterinarian told me I needed to buy to keep Beau from scratching (but didn't, because the place where the rash was, was far from where Beau could reach) told me her story:

     I got a Siberian Husky five years ago, when I was eighteen.  I really didn't do my research about the breed and when he first came home, it was crazy.  He ate all my furniture and he even chewed a hole in the wall.  I said 'Why?'  Then I started walking him longer and longer and I could see he was stopping.  So he and my other Husky get two long walks a day now."  

     Meeting Angelo, a middle-aged Greek man walking his 10-month old American Staffordshire puppy, Leo, in Morningside Park, I hear him tell of his efforts to train the dog:

     When I told my mother I was getting a dog she said 'What do you want to do that for?  You work all the time.'  And I do, but I take him to 'Biscuits and Bath' and I work with a trainer and I take him out for a long walk in the morning and in the evening, and it's working.  He recognizes his name now and I'm socializing him.  I have the 'prongs' [a choke collar] on him --and I feel guilty about it, but the trainer says he needs it, especially now that he's young when he has to be trained.

     So I think that dog owners who take owning a dog seriously are all a little crazy, including me.  There must be something in a relationship with a dog that we don't find in one with humans. Then again, wasn't it Diogenes who said, The more I know of men, the more I love my dog"?