Hector

Sounds like you and Rosie are off a great start. Hope to see pictures soon! I betcha she's a real cutie.

On a scale of 1 to 10, with 10 being terrified of thunder, we have one dog that is an 8, another that is a 6, and a Border Kitty that is a 4. When there is a thunderstorm, my preferred routine is to go to the finished basement, sit in an easy chair and read a good book. The animals will follow me down there and the dogs lie on the floor at my feet. The kitty will ususally sit on my lap -- his preferred place to nap anyway. If the thunder is close by it is useful to have the TV going because that tends to block out the noise of the thunder. The hardest time to deal with a thunderstorm is in the middle of the night. By the time I wake up the animals are usually quite agitated, and I don't really much want to get out of bed. But I do what I have to do to get them calmed down.

Thank you for all your replies; I have learned some useful things. I have put ICE entries in my cell phone. And I have determined that my cell phone does have GPS capability so I could be located if I ever place a 911 call from it. Since I am regularly taking 25 mile solo bike rides in rural country, that 911 GPS could be very beneficial in an emergency. The replies generally confirm my opinion that frequent check-in calls are worthwhile so that the travelers location is known to a relative or friend. Yes, it may seem like a bother to do that, but if a situation ever arises where authorities must be notified of a missing person then it would be highly useful to be able to narrow down the person's location. So thanks again, I appreciate your opinions and input. Hector

This is all hypothetical. Suppose I am taking a trip by car from my home in northern Maryland to Miami, Florida. That is 1125 miles. The trip will require about 19 hours of actual driving time and I plan to do it over two days. Before I begin the trip I tell my daughter about it. She lives in San Francisco. I am starting the trip on August 24, and expect to arrive in Miami on the evening of August 25th. But then for some reason I don?t ever make it to Miami. Something has happened to me. I don?t check in with my daughter at the end of the trip. Two days later, on the morning of August 27th, daughter is concerned as to my whereabouts. She wants to alert the authorities and file a missing person report. I will describe two possible scenarios. #1. I didn?t check in at all during the trip. All she knows is that I left Maryland early on the morning of August 24th and I didn?t arrive at my destination. She doesn?t know whether I made it 25 miles, 550 miles, or 1100 miles. All she knows is that I didn?t arrive. Under this scenario, who would she notify? And what information could she give them? She doesn?t know which of six states I might be in. She cannot say anything more about my possible location other than it is somewhere along the 1125 mile drive. #2. I check in by cell phone every two hours as I make the trip. Each time I check in I give the date, time, and my exact location. A failure to check in every two hours means my last known location was within two hours of my last check-in point. Based on this, my daughter can narrow my location down to one or two states, and my location will be known to be in a 120 mile stretch of roadway. She cold notify the state police in either one or two states and tell them that my location is somewhere on a 120 segment of roadway. My question is this: would it be paranoid for me to operate under scenario #2 in which I check in every two hours? Is it completely reasonable for me to operate under scenario #1, with no check-ins, so that my daughter has no knowledge of the progress I have made on my trip? What are your thoughts about this? Which scenario do you operate under when you take an 1100 mile car trip?

About the time I first joined this BB I changed fom dial-up to cable Internet. Then about 18 months ago we moved to a new house and I changed the Internet to a DSL setup. Back when I was doing dial-up the ISP (Earthlink) was costing me $20 a month. And we didn't want to have the only phone line unavailable when we were on the Internet so we had a second phone line into the house. That was about $28 a month for a bare-bones line. When cable Internet became available in our area, it only cost about $35 a month. So my total monthly cost dropped from $48 a month (dial-up with dedicated phone line) to $35 a month when we switched over to cable Internet. The cable was much faster and it always worked great. The type of problems that people have with dial-up were simply gone once we went to cable. So the moral to this story is that if DSL or cable Internet service is available at your home, it is highly likely that your performance will be much better (and very much faster) if you upgrade and ditch the dial-up.

One time I was working on changing a behavior in my dog. My human friend was observing the entire process. He chimed in with the following wisdom: Dogs and their ancestors, the wolves, have been around for about 30 million years. The dogs have only had human supervision for something like 15,000 years. So obviously the wolves must have figured out how to live and survive without human help. In view of that fact you should try to not get too caught up with your importance in supervising your dog because she doesn't really need you. I couldn't really argue with that logic. Maybe that logic applies in the situation where the dog is eating poo-poo. As gross as it seems, maybe there is a reason for it that we humans simply can't understand.

Interesting and disturbing: Study Finds That a Type of Cancer in Dogs Is Contagious

Update -- I treated the two dogs with Frontline but since the Border Kitty is indoors only I didn't treat him. One of the dogs spends a lot of time outside, the other dog is mostly a house dog. So I will see how this works. Based on some posts it doesn't sound like I need to treat the kitty now.

Okay, thanks for the advice. I will treat the three animals this evening with Frontline, which I already have on hand.

When my wife woke up this morning she had three small bites on her skin, of the type that could be from fleas. We have two dogs and one cat and they are not on any flea prevention medication. None of those animals is scratching or showing any signs of having fleas. But I am wondering, at what point does it make sense to treat all three animals with Frontline? Should I do that now based on the bites my wife had, or would that be over-reacting? We have lived in this house for 18 months now and have not had any flea problems here. But I have had flea episodes in past houses, and it seems like it might be better to agressively go after the problem in the early stages rather than waiting until a full-blown flea problem develops.

Thanks, I got a good laugh out of that sign!

Susan Butcher's passing is sad and my heart goes out to her family. She fought hard to regain her health but it just was not to be. There is a good article about Susan in The Anchorage Daily News. See the next post for a link to where that article can be found.

Thank you so much for the information. Sadie is not vomiting and isn't acting sick. She is stable enough to wait til tomorrow and then we will take her to the regular vet. We are getting some PediaLite (sp?) to feed her until tomorrow to help with any dehydration. Thanks again, I feel better about her status now.

Our Sadie is a Sheltie-X, rescued off the street when she was about 1 year old. Now she is about 12 years old. She has diarrhea, and has had it for about four days now. She is a house dog and only goes outside to potty and then comes right back in. I think she may have got the diarrhea problem from eating kitty litter. That stuff must appeal to her (YUKKK!) because I have caught her eating it on several occasions. Our other dog Bailey (BC-X) got the diarrhea about four days prior to Saddie getting it. With both dogs, I did the following (which is what our vet told me to do when the dog has diarrhea). 1. Immodium pill by mouth (1/2 pill for Sadie) 2. No food for 24 hours 3. Then feed multiple small meals per day consisting of boiled hamburger and cooked white rice. 4. After 3 days of hamburger and rice, start mixing in some of the dog's dried kibble. 5. By 7 days after the initial problem started the dog should be back on the kibble diet. That has worked just fine for Bailey. But it isn't working that well for Sadie. She still has a very loose stool even after the second day on the hamburger and rice. Plus there is blood in her stool. I don't know what to do next. Any advice please?

A slow-running computer can be really annoying. The first place to start to fix this is to make sure you don't have spyware running on your computer. I recommend running Windows Defender (free from Microsoft ), and optionally I like to run Ad-Aware Personal (free from LavaSoft). You should install these products and run them regularly to keep your computer free from Spyware. Then if it still runs slow, you should consider whether you have enough memory (RAM). A lot of computers have been sold with 256MB (or less) of memory and that is not enough for Windows XP. I just upgraded my RAM from 256MB to 768MB and the performance increase is amazing. It was the best $60 I ever spent.

Sounds like you and Rune are making great progress with the socialization training.

Glad to hear that Maggie has arrived. She is a very pretty girl. You are both lucky to have found each other! I hope she works out as well as our Border Kitty has.

Deleting duplicate post.

I had a lab/elkhound-X that I took running as I rode my mountain bike. That was on city streets. In the summer I only took the dog out early in the morning when the pavement was cool from the night. If I ever had any question about whether the pavement was too hot for the dog's feet, I tested it by putting the palm of my hand on the pavement and holding it there for about 20 seconds. If I had any discomfort at all from the heat on my hand then that meant it was too hot for the dog to be walking or running on that pavement. Mid-afternoon on a hot summer's day is definitely too hot for the dog's feet, so I am glad you were offered some good advice.

That's great news Nancy. We have really enjoyed our border kitty Skiziks, now about 5 months old. They are so much fun and so entertaining to watch. ------------------------ bcfriend -- How do you catch a cat named Unique? Answer: Unique up on him!!! LOL. (Oh that's an awful joke! But that's what we have to do to catch Skiziks if he doesn't want to be caught! )

My attitude on issues like this is to wait a few days and see what happens. If Zoe has an "active" problem then the bumps would likely increase in size. But often times small problems just take care of themselves and disappear in a few days. Of course if it is distressing you then a vet visit is likely worthwhile just to relieve you from worry. Good luck!

Debbie, RE: the Dyson on hardwood floors -- the vacuum has an on-off switch for the brush roller bar that is located near the lower front of the vacuum. The switch is designed to be activated with your foot so you don't have to bend over to get to it. You turn off the brush roller bar when you are vacuuming bare floors. I haven't actually tried that yet, as we have very limited bare floors. The sales person at Sears said that turning off the brush is necessary on bare floors because if left on it scatters the dirt before the suction can pick it up. That sounds like a good design although, as I mentioned, I haven't yet tried it. With the powerful suction I expect that the vacuum will pick up stuff off bare floors quite well. Hector

This post is a follow-up to a recent thread dealing with vacuum cleaners in a household with pets. In that thread some posters said they owned the Dyson brand and really liked them. That prompted me to re-visit the vacuum question. My current Bissell bagless does a reasonable cleaning job, however it requires cleaning the primary filter after every use. From my investigation of various bagless vacuum models, it appears that all bagless vacuums except the Dyson have the same filter cleaning problem. The filter is in direct contact with the dirt that is vacuumed in, and that dirt soon clogs the filter which impairs the air flow and that reduces suction power. If you don't mind the routine cleaning of the filter (about a ninety second job the way I do it) then that is no issue. But if you get tired of having to clean the filter every time you use the vacuum then that becomes an important consideration. From reading vacuum reviews by Dyson owners on the Internet, it seems like about 90% of owners really like their Dyson. They rave about the suction power and what a great job of vacuuming it does. A few owners criticize the construction quality and say that they have had problems with plastic parts breaking. Based in the positive reviews by Dyson owners I decided to look at Dyson vacuums. I made two different trips to Sears and talked to a different vacuum sales person each time. I was specifically looking at the Dyson DC14 Animal model. Both the sales people said they own the Dyson and really like it. Sears sells four models of the DC14, and the base unit for each model is identical, except for color. The difference between the models is the included accessories. The "Animal" model is purple and it has accessories specifically designed to get pet fur out from under low furniture and off upholstery (chairs, sofa, etc.). The Animal also has a carpet cleaning kit that has a sprinkle-in carpet cleaner, a spray-can of spot remover, and a hose-end attachment for use with the sprinkle product. This carpet cleaning kit is for use in heavy traffic areas where the carpet is really dirty. I was impressed enough with the Dyson Animal to buy one at Sears. I also purchased a five-year extended maintenance plan. The design and layout of the Dyson is really intelligent. It is very easy to empty the container where the dirt is collected. And best of all, there is no filter in the dirt area that requires frequent cleaning. There is one filter that is not in contact with the dirt and the recommended cleaning interval for that filter is once per six months. I can live with that! There are two easily removable small sections of pipe that can be removed and cleaned out in the event of a clog. Access to the main rotating brush bar is easy and that will require cleaning if animal fur gets stuck in the brushes. I can see having to do that cleaning about once a month, but that will depend on the type of animal fur that the vacuum encounters. My Dyson is quiet, easy to push, and the suction really is powerful. I vacuumed the entire main floor yesterday and I am happy with the vacuum. It wasn?t cheap ($550 + the maintenance agreement), but I think I am going to enjoy using it.

That sounds like a lot of fun. You will do just fine. But work on staying calm and collected because Jackson will pick up on your mood and attitude. Your being confident will help him be the same.

My dog went with me on a ski tour one time. There were moles under the snow, and she started digging for them and eating them. She probably got three of them. The next day she had a really nasty cough and sore throat. I took her to the vet, who gave her an antibiotic. So the mole eating cost me $110. That was the LAST TIME she got to do that!