Sommaire pour November - December 2018 de All Creatures

IF YOU READ MY BOOK, Always By My Side, you know how deeply Julee and I loved our late golden retriever Millie. She was the world to us. But even if it were within my reach, would I pay up to $100,000 to create a clone of her? Would you be willing to take advantage of modern genetic technologies to replace a beloved pet? The fact is, people are and it’s becoming big business. There are ethical questions that we don’t have time to go into here, apart from saying that it often takes dozens of artificially fertilized embryos to produce a single successful birth and often the canine surrogate moms are pumped full of hormones that can compromise their health. Unlike human surrogates, dog surrogate moms have no…

IT WAS THE BIG day: the therapy dog certification test. Sitting in a metal folding chair, awaiting our turn, I got the butterflies. During the last class, Petey broke his “down”—he got up and came to me when he was supposed to be lying down and staying put. Tonight that would be an automatic fail. “You can do it, Petey,” I whispered. The test began. We knew we’d be asked to heel, sit, stay, greet people and, of course, down and stay, among other tasks. The first task was heeling through a course of cones, with volunteers milling around, to simulate mingling in a crowd. A piece of cake, right? We marched up to the volunteers. No problem. But as we passed the other dogs waiting along the side, Petey…

THEY’RE TINY. Fluffy. Big-eyed. And they can fly, kind of. Where can you find Japanese dwarf and Siberian flying squirrels? In the forests of northern Europe and northern Asia. These five- to eight-ounce creatures are mainly nocturnal (those big eyes let in light) and nest in tree cavities and old woodpecker holes. Though they don’t hibernate, the squirrels can sleep for several days in a row in winter. They don’t actually fly. A furry membrane between their front and rear legs allows them to glide from tree to tree, escaping predators. Pretty cool. But the real reason we love them is, who can resist this cuteness?…

December 21. Winter solstice. The longest night of the year, when some churches hold a service for those who are grieving or hurting. Sadness tinged with hope…I knew that feeling well. It was part of the reason I was having one of my big bonfires—to celebrate the changing of the seasons and to honor the loss that led me to these 20 acres in northwestern Oregon that I’ve turned into a home for rescued farm animals. The animals here at Enchanted Farm Sanctuary love the bonfires. I don’t know if it’s the sight and sound of me stacking wood in the firepit or the light and heat of the flames that draw them, but they all come from the barn or the fields and gather around. I read them stories,…

For cats living on the streets of a major city, life can be hard and dangerous. Finding food and shelter from the elements is often a struggle. Even if they are lucky enough to be adopted, many of these feral cats—used to defending themselves and surviving on their own—won’t adapt well to being family pets. That’s why for the past 10 years the Humane Rescue Alliance (HRA) in Washington, D.C., has been taking care of the city’s community cat colonies, which are protected by law, by trapping, neutering and releasing feral cats—placing them in homes only if they’re adoption candidates. In 2015 the HRA started mapping out a program to address the needs of cats that couldn’t be returned to their outdoor homes after neutering but that were also not…

WHEN MY domestic shorthair, Gypsy, gave birth to a litter of six, I kept one of her kittens and found homes for the others. I’ve always had cats in my life, and watching Gypsy develop a bond with her little one, whom I named Satchmo, gave me great joy. They were both social cats, following me everywhere and cozying up to my friends and boyfriends over the years. I had to put Gypsy down almost three years ago. Satch clung to me, which helped both of us cope with the loss. We grew so close, he would always respond with some sort of sound when I talked to him. We understood each other. He had battled lymphoma for years, but I took him off chemotherapy in 2016 to give him…

Q My hamster, Oliver, gets bored with his chew toys, but I know they’re good for his teeth. He also cut his left back toe on his water bottle and his nail is growing out of the unhealed wound. What should I do? —Rachel Keith , Franklin, Tennessee A A hamster’s front teeth grow continuously throughout its life, so it needs to chew on things to keep them worn down. Wild hamsters have plenty of rough forage to nosh on, but pet hamsters must be provided with toys and tools for this purpose. Pet hamsters also need mental stimulation so they don’t get bored. There are commercially available hard wooden toys for hamsters to chew on. They can also gnaw on applewood sticks (from pet stores) and other soft…

A COUPLE OF ISSUES BACK, we asked you to tell us why you’re grateful for your pets. Here are some of the heartwarming stories we received about your animal companions. Mittens I would have never imagined myself a “cat person,” but Mittens has been a constant comfort in my life for the past 13 years. She reminds me that life can be simple and that we should always show love to those that mean the most to us. —Gina McCaffery, Union City, New Jersey Shirley The loss of our dogs, Max and Patches, within a three-month period was too much to bear. But less than a year later, we fostered an American bulldog mix, Shirley, and knew we couldn’t let her go. Our house is alive with laughter again. She…

IF IT WEREN’T FOR MAX, a 17-year-old blue heeler, young Aurora Kyle might not be alive. Around 3:00 P.M. on a rainy autumn Friday last April, the three-year-old girl was reported missing in Queensland, Australia. Rescuers searched until after dark but found no trace of her in the rural area surrounding her home. They feared she’d fallen into a nearby dam. On Saturday morning, after more than 100 volunteers from all over the Southern Downs region resumed the search, Aurora’s grandmother, Leisa Bennett, heard a faint voice crying for help. Somehow Aurora had made it to the top of a mountain more than a mile from home. “When I heard her yell ‘Grammy,’ I knew it was her,” Bennett told ABC Australia. “I shot up the mountain, and when I…

This was my last hope. My only hope. For two years I’d battled the nightmares, the panic attacks, the crushing fear that kept me hostage in my own home. I’d tried everything to get my life back. Meds. Therapy. Prayer. Nothing helped. When I came across the website for Tom Tackett, a Vietnam veteran who trained service dogs for people with PTSD, and he turned out to have a potential match for me, it seemed like an answer from God at long last, an answer I’d desperately prayed for. That’s why I’d white-knuckled it all the way from Louisiana to Tom’s place in California. I was here to meet a service dog in training—Beaux, an almost-two-year-old 70-pound German Rottweiler. If he and I clicked, Tom would spend the next four…

I PULLED THE RED STOCKINGS from a box of decorations. They were worn in places, their white trim dulled by all the Christmases they’d hung on our mantel. But the names still glittered. Patti, mine . . . Bill, my husband . . . Chrissy, our daughter . . . and the smaller stocking the kids had made for our cat, Salem. Then I got to Bob’s. I froze. Salem stared up at me from his food dish, his yellow eyes seeming to understand. I shoved the stockings back into the box, slammed down the lid and scanned the room. Not a decoration to be seen. I’ll never put them up again, I vowed. Not without our son. Captain Robert A. Bager, U.S. Army. He’d returned from his first tour…