CatDogBlog

The question comes from a woman has a large dog who often sleeps on the floor, the medium dog occasionally sleeps on the bed and one cat does sleep with us most nights for most of the night. She has two dog pillows on the floor, but would like some ideas for alternative pet solutions.

Toni Berry who works at Marie Antoinette Custom Home Interiors replies: “I too have a dog and a cat indoors. There is nothing healthier for the soul than sharing our homes with our pets. I recently watched an episode of Martha Stewart and she, too, has a herd of dogs living in her home. She even keeps a bowl of water by the kitchen door where the dogs enter and she washes their feet in it. Then she dries their feet and lets them loose in the house.

I’m not quite that diligent but I do let my basset hound have the run of the place on a regular basis. And our cat is a reigning queen. I’m not sure you really need alternatives, but here are some tips on making your home look more presentable with pets living there.

Dog and cat beds come in a variety of sizes, shapes and fabric colors. Try to coordinate the fabric on the dog bed with the rest of the fabrics being used in the room. For example, our family room is decorated in a rustic theme. I have pine woods and the upholstery is camel, red and dark blue. I have covered my dog’s bed with a plaid blanket in the same colors.

Also to make it easy on me, this blanket just lies on top of his bed, so I can pick it up and throw it in the wash weekly. That’s a lot easier than unzipping and unstuffing and then stuffing (a dog bed) again.

I have repeated the same idea in our living room using a more formal fabric, one that blends in with the floor so it doesn’t stand out. The cat bed on my living room couch also coordinates with the couch upholstery and at a glance just looks like another throw pillow.

The idea here is to include the dog and cat beds as design elements and give them the same importance and consideration that you would any other object in the room. Your pets’ eating and drinking bowls, if in the kitchen, can also be themed after the design of the rest of family’s china. After all, pets are family.”

I found this interesting. A lady has a 1-year-old German shepherd who tears their mobile home apart, and hurts himself in the process, when she leaves in order to get back with his owner.

Dr. Sandeman of the QC Times responds: “I would be concerned that you are dealing with both a behavioral issue and a physical problem with your friend. Your dog’s intense desire to be with you may be due to separation anxiety and will still be there when his leg heals.

Dogs with separation anxiety manifest such a strong attachment to their owners that they can seriously destroy property when left alone and cause physical damage to themselves — some pets have been known to jump through glass windows to be with their owners.

Behavioral therapy and sometimes medication is necessary to solve this difficult problem. Make sure you inform your veterinarian that this might be a possibility when you have your dog’s leg checked.

Injuries to the paw including the nails, pads and the “wrist,” or forearm, are all likely with intense digging and clawing. Your veterinarian will want to closely exam these areas for cuts and abrasions. Rest or splinting might be required for more severe injuries along with some form of pain medication.

In the meantime, you may need to consider some other arrangements or better confinement if it’s necessary to leave your dog alone in the motorhome.”

A dog who has collected 3,000 balls at his local golf club has been rewarded for his efforts with lifelong membership at the place. I wonder if that’s for his benefit or the golfball owners?

Mongrel terrier Deuce and his owner Jim often take a sunset stroll at Pontnewydd Golf Club and the pet can’t resist going looking for lost balls.

The balls he collects are handed out to the Monmouthshire club’s young players. Deuce gets lots of treats, but his reward won’t stretch to one thing… the club house is humans only!

Deuce’s owner, Jim, explained his pet’s talent: “He enjoys it when he gets going and he really comes into his own when the grass is longer and the ferns have grown,” said Jim.

More than 200 dogs have been rescued from a garden shed where they had been left crammed in ‘horrific’ conditions. The Yorkshire terriers were discovered after their 73-year-old owner, a dog breeder from West Sussex, died.

The 204 dogs were stuffed into tiny carrier boxes in a 40 feet shed with no windows - six puppies were found dead. Animal Welfare Rescuer Billy Elliott said: “I’ve seen some awful things in my time but that was by far the worst. I will never forget it.”

A number of the dogs have now been rescued and microchipped and will now be house trained before new owners are found for them. People from as far afield as Canada and America have already offered to rehouse the dogs.

A number of wild cats were also found in the shed but their condition was reported not to have been as bad as the dogs.

A woman accused of helping a convicted murderer escape from prison in a dog crate had smuggled him a cell phone that he used to help plan his breakout, prosecutors said Friday. The pair were captured February 24 in East Tennessee.

Toby Young, 48, of Kansas City, Kan., is already charged with aiding an escape and harboring a felon. Prosecutors added a new charge of introducing contraband into a prison.

Young ran the Safe Harbor Prison Dog Program, where inmates trained dogs to be pets. John Manard, 27, serving life for a 1996 murder, was one of the trainers.

Lansing Correctional Facility officials say Manard escaped February 12 after being placed in a dog crate and loaded into a Safe Harbor van that Young drove through the prison gates.

Blogitorium has an interview about the good the Toby Young’s Safe Harbor Prison Dog Program has achieved the past year and a half.

An American yoga trainer says that joint sessions for people and dogs helps the people. Colette Barry, who operates Barry’s Health and Wellness Center in Westlake, told the Cleveland Plain-Dealer that dogs do not need yoga.

“They live and breathe it every day,” she said. “People are the ones who need to develop the long-lost art of feeling connected with our Earth and the beauty it embodies inwardly and outwardly.”

At Barry’s joint owner-pet sessions on Saturday morning she keeps people close to the floor so they will be near their dogs. The classes begin with owners massaging the dogs, which she believes increases their circulation and strengthens their immune systems.

“Dog yoga is to help the owner experience their yoga session in a deeper spiritual way,” Barry said.

Honey, a 7-year-old cat, started life as the runt of her litter. Now she has grown so large that she can no longer squeeze through an ordinary cat flap. She has to use a bigger hole cut in the door that would be more suitable for a sizeable dog.

The white and tortoiseshell cat weighs an astonishing 3 stones (19 kilos/42 pounds) and her owner, Linda Morano, believes that she must be the heaviest in the country. The previous record holder was believed to be a cat called Sam, which weighed 2st 8lb (18 kilos/39 pounds) before he was put on a strict diet.

Despite her size, Honey’s heart is in good shape, her vet says. Mrs Morano’s 22-year-old daughter, Ashley, said: “Honey does not eat a lot. She shares a tin of cat food a day with our other cat, Penny, yet she is twice the size of her. “She is not being fed by neighbours or anything like that because she hardly goes out. She is just a big cat.”

Miss Morano added: “She soon started to grow and grow and grow. It just happened over a period of time. We never really noticed. “By the time she reached adulthood it was obvious she was going to be a big cat. “We take her to the vet’s for regular check-ups and he has looked at her heart and everything else and he said she is absolutely fine. It is a bit of a mystery.”

Miss Morano said she had recently weighed herself and the cat on her scales. She then weighed herself without the pet and the difference was 3 stones (19 kilos/42 pounds). The Moranos, who live in Bournemouth, said their cat was bigger than all the others that featured on Englands Channel 4’s Fat Pets programme.

Mrs Morano said: “I think I must have a largest cat in Britain. The other cats on the programme had nothing on mine.” The heaviest cat ever recorded, from Minnesota, in the United States, was double Honey’s size at 6 stones (38 kilos/84 pounds).

To give you a scope of overweight pets in other countries: Over 25% of America’s dogs and cats are significantly overweight, a condition which can lead to a host of health problems including diabetes, hip and back trouble, respiratory and cardiovascular diseases, and cancer. So it would be nice if more people would try and prevent these conditions by feeding their pets well, but too much.

A Jack Russell Terrier that went missing from his front garden has turned up safe and well - under his owners’ car bonnet (that’s Brittish for hood). For two weeks Tom Whitney feared the worst, thinking Duke had been dognapped after he vanished without a trace.

Mr Whitney drove for 500 miles around Kidderminster in search of his missing pooch, but finally discovered Duke when his clutch stopped working last Monday. A quick check revealed the hungry dog had been trapped under the bonnet, and had chewed through the clutch cable.

Although munching on the cable may not have stopped Duke feeling hungry, the action probably saved his life. Mr Whitney said: “As I lifted the bonnet up so the little dog came up onto the engine just like the Phoenix coming out of the fire.” Apart from being hungry and thirsty Duke was declared fit and well.

After two weeks stuck behind a brick wall in a 19th century building, the bashful 11-month-old feline was rescued from her plight Friday night by a volunteer who found her wedged in a crawl space between bricks and a piece of sheet metal.

At the end of the ordeal, the black cat emerged from the building lying in a metal cage, calm and docile as cameras flashed and onlookers cooed. “I think you’ll all agree that she is in great shape,” said Peter Myers, who owns the delicatessen housed in the building and kept Molly in his store to catch mice.

Her first meal? Nibbles of roasted pork, sardines in oil and water, Myers said. Hearty fare, but perhaps not surprising for a feline who spends her time in Myers of Keswick, a deli specializing in meat pies, clotted cream and other British food specialties.

Molly’s ordeal became international news this week as reporters and onlookers gathered to hear her distressed meows. Rescuers drilled and hammered out bricks in the cellar of the 157-year-old building and tried everything from special cameras to traps to get her out.

They even tried using kittens as bait to appeal to Molly’s maternal side. A pet psychic and self-described “cat therapist” offered their aid. But it appeared that good, old-fashioned elbow grease ended up doing the job.

Resuers drilled a hole in the wall from inside the store, cutting through three layers of brick to get to Molly, said Mike Pastore, field director for Animal Care & Control, a private organization with a city contract to handle lost, injured and unwanted animals.

She was finally retrieved by Kevin Clifford, a tunnel worker who was working on a project nearby and has been volunteering for the rescue effort. “We were using one of the drills we had at work and went brick by brick,” Clifford said. “I grabbed her by her legs and slid her down from where she was stuck and pulled her out.”

A cat in Germany saved the life of a newborn baby abandoned on the doorstep of a Cologne house in the middle of the night by meowing loudly until someone woke up, a police spokesman said Saturday.

“The cat is a hero,” Cologne police spokesman Uwe Beier said. “Its loud meowing got the attention of the homeowner and saved the baby from suffering life-threatening hypothermia. The homeowner opened door to see why the cat was making so much noise and discovered the newborn.”

Beier said the boy was taken to hospital at 5 a.m. on Thursday, when overnight temperatures fell toward zero, and had suffered only mild hypothermia. He said there was no indication of what happened to the boy’s mother.