Frank

Frank is now in a foster to adopt home. He's really improved and his potential family has taken him home (actually they took him home over a week ago, I'm just tardy). So far he is doing well. He has almost finished all of his meds for his skin and his ataxia seems to be improving a lot. Maybe it's just building strength or there could have been some underlying health issue that we never figured out. At any rate, when he's done with his meds we will take one last look and either put him on more or go ahead and give the adoption the green light. He's a great boy. We are so happy we've found a good match for him.

cat foods?

I have some real questions about cat foods and how to get my cats on a diet that helps with allergies. I switched the cats to Blue Buffalo Sensitive Skin and my allergy cat has adjusted just fine to it but the kitten who is healthy - she's sick. She is still active and bright eyed but her stools are just soo loose. Force feeding her pet pectin is causing us some real stress (and minor injuries).  Torti's can be such bitches!  So I have tried to put her back on Avoderm and that's just a miserable fiasco trying to keep the cats from eating each other's food.

Cosmo's ears are starting to get dirty again and his acne appears gone but just barely. Maybe the blue buffalo is not the best choice but I just don't know what to do! Thank God the dog is so much easier. She eats the Avoderm and her coat is just fab.  I could kick myself for not putting her on that sooner.

WOW & home

Wow, just home from a trip to Asheville to see my brother get married.  What a lovely place! It is very very swanky. While there for the reception, they had requested a vegetarian meal for me but the head waiter noticed that I didn't eat the cheese on my appetizer and switched out my meal for a vegan meal instead. Kudos to noticing the small things, his attention to detail was just marvelous. The chef made me a nice grilled portobello mushroom with fingerling potatoes. I was really impressed and thought they overall did a very good job with everything from start to finish. The attention to detail was very nice. I'd recommend going there with a loved one for a nice tour of the grounds. I didn't ask about their fining agents and none of the meals in the bistro are vegan so maybe eat in town at one of the hippy joints : )

What I would not recommend is a three day whirlwind trip with the parents including a shared hotel stay and a total of 12 hours on the road. Streaming CNBC/Fox News in the hotel room and I'm lucky there were no sharp implements with which to slit my wrists. No murder/suicide and a day later I am almost back to sanity.

New Post

Geesh, I haven't posted in a while so thought I'd put up a nice update just in case anyone is really interested in what's going on in the world of my nutty pets.. We've figured out that at 9 years of age that Cosmo is developing allergies. That's the cause of the acne, dirty ears and the eye discharge. So when we did our vet check we took bloodwork just in case and then he got a shot of depomedrol (steroid). The improvement was dramatic. We also put him on derm caps but I'm not sure if he will stay on them long term. Cosmo has always had a bit of a sensitive stomach and I think they give him a little diarrhea. Of course it is hard to tell exactly as I switched his food too. I put both of the cats on Blue Buffalo sensitive skin formula. It had the best nutritional label I could find in petsmart and wasn't full of a lot of grains and fillers. It is mostly meat and is supposed to have the omega fatty acids that will help his allergies.

It is a much richer food than they are used to and I think it will just take a few weeks to adjust. His blood values were perfect, not one single value was off and he looks like a much younger cat. Teeth in great shape - because I only feed hard food.

I also bought them a cat tree so they could exercise a bit more and they seem to be really enjoying the climb.

AVSAB Position Statement on the Use of Dominance Theory in Behavior Modification of Animals

AVSAB Position Statement on the Use of Dominance Theory in Behavior Modification of Animals

http://www.pbrc.net/misc/avsab_ps.pdf

A good read. If you have time check it out. The benefits of positive training and the downfall of alpha rolling. Not all dogs that misbehave are doing so because they are challenging authority.

Court Rules Miami-Dade County Pit Bull Ban Unenforceable!

http://www.animallawcoalition.com/system/files/PIT+BULL+EVALUATION+FORM.doc

Court Rules Miami-Dade County Pit Bull Ban Unenforceable!

Posted Mar 19, 2009 by lauraallen

Miami-Dade County, Florida (March 19, 2009) Miami Coalition Against Breed Specific Legislation (MCABSL) and Animal Law Coalition applaud a hearing officer's ruling that the Miami Dade County Pit Bull ban is too vague, and the county cannot enforce the finding by animal control that a dog named Apollo is a pit bull that must be euthanized or removed from the county. 

The ruling came in a case challenging the finding by Miami Dade County Animal Control that a family pet named Apollo was a "pit bull" that must be removed from the county or euthanized.

In Ordinance No. 89-22, the county bans all dogs that "substantially conform" to American Kennel Club standards for   American Staffordshire Terriers or Staffordshire Bull Terriers or United Kennel Club standards for American Pit Bull Terriers. 

To determine if a dog substantially conforms to these standards, animal control uses a chart that lists 15 body parts such as "head", "neck", "lips", "chest", "eyes", "tail", "hind legs", etc. The officer places a check mark to indicate whether each characteristic conforms or not to a pit bull. If 3 or more characteristics are checked "conform", the dog is declared a pit bull. The county's pit bull evaluation form is attached at the end of this article and can be downloaded.

Rima Bardawil, the attorney for Apollo, pointed out that there is no such chart authorized by the ordinance and it is not clear what standards animal control is using in making its determinations.

Also, Dahlia Canes, executive director of MCABSL, testified that animal control is "constantly" mis-identifying the breeds of dogs. She told the court about one dog that was declared by an animal control officer to be a pit bull mix and ordered euthanized.  Canes arranged to have the dog re-evaluated and he was determined to be a mastiff mix. The dog was then adopted to a family in Miami-Dade County. 

In this case the animal control officer photographed Apollo from several feet away and then using the photo, picked 3 body parts he said he thought conformed to pit bull standards, whatever those are.

As Canes pointed out later, "Many breeds of dogs and mixes have the same or similar traits. It is impossible to determine breed this way. Seriously, you are going to say a dog is a pit bull based on 3 traits like round eyes, broad shoulders and a muscular body?  Dogs are many times genetically a mix of many different breeds. The judge agreed. This proves breed shouldn't be a factor in deciding whether a dog presents a danger."  

Go here for more on a possible legal challenge to the Miami Dade County pit bull ordinance.

                                                    ###

Miami Coalition Against Breed Specific Legislation was formed in 2008 and its members work for the repeal of the Miami Dade County pit bull ban. For more information visit, http://www.mcabsl.wildapricot.org/   

Frank's not better

Well, last week we had a little setback with Frankie poo. I think it is probably a set back from his neuter and tooth removal but it didn't pop up until he had finished his antibiotics. He got all itchy again and began getting little pimply bumps. So we went back to the vet. Another round of prednisone and a month's worth of antibiotics He's now on day 4 of the prednisone and the itch is completely gone.

His hair is not so bad looking, it's actually starting to fill in. He still has the coordination issues. That progress has pretty much come to a standstill and while he can stand and keep all four feet under him on a slick floor, he tends to drag instead of lift his feet. He's like a lazy kid wearing flip flops, scuffing along. Except that when he's really tired, he scrapes the top of his toes. A nice long walk yesterday reminds me I need to lay off the exercise on him.

Today he's outside on the porch enjoying the fresh air along with his fresh breakfast. I am going to switch his food to a limited ingredient although I am not convinced he has a food allergy. I am 90% sure he just had a tenacious skin infection and that he needed more than 14 days of antibiotics to get through it. Last night after looking at his gums (still very pale), I decided that I needed to get over my meat aversion and maybe take him raw for a little bit. So I bought about 10 pounds of ground turkey and beef, skipped the turkey necks and bought some fresh Kale. I cooked the Kale down and then blended it into a paste and I'm going to mix the paste with the pearled barley, sardines and the rest of his duck and potato canned food. That with the gound meat balls should do the trick with the weight gain issue as well as making sure he gets the right nutrition.

He's a good boy. I'm going to talk to the vet about the possibility of testing for another tick born disease (babesia) and treating his thyroid to see if those are things that would help his coordination.