It’s a terrible time when many, many people are losing their homes to foreclosure. I cannot imagine the discouragement and frustration of losing our home because we were unable to pay the mortgage.

So can you imagine the horror of being a dog or cat who suddenly finds itself abandoned because its family lost their home and simply abandoned it??

A few months ago some people living in the country near out city did exactly that. They trashed the house, drove away, and left more than 20 cats to fend for themselves. Happily, a neighbor living a couple of miles away discovered the situation and at his own expense purchased bags of cat food, took the food and some water dishes to the house, and fed and cared for the cats for several weeks. After several weeks of this, with regular updates on the local TV news, the county and city finally worked a way around the various bureaucracies involved to rescue the cats.

But more horrifying are the endings where those who lose their homes simply walk away from their pets, leaving them to starve or die at the hands of mean people, harsh weather, or predatory animals. It’s a horrible, horrible tale nationwide.

I urge you to be alert in your town, city, or countryside — do you see more stray cats or dogs than usual? Do you know people or areas of your community hit hard by foreclosures? If you do and if you possibly can, please think of the pets who may suffer from neglect or abandonment and do what you are able to help them.

It’s terrible when a family faces foreclosure. It only compounds the awfulness of the situation if they visit their hardship on helpless animals.

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Here’s a woman who certainly has found a clever way to market pet paintings, but she seems to have missed the essence of real pets: Her pets are life-like paintings, but they aren’t REAL pets.

Admittedly, her pet paintings might be fun to have around. She apparently thinks her slogan about her “painted pets” will amuse pet lovers: ” She calls them Perfect Pets because nothing goes in, and as a happy result, nothing comes out — not to mention none of those pesky allergy symptoms cats and dogs are wont to trigger.” Those are the reporter’s words, not hers, but they sum up part of the appeal of painted pets. Such “pets” are pretty low maintenance and won’t hold any allergy problems.

So take a look at the story. It’s interesting, just not all that interesting for “real” pet lovers, I would say.

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My son’s girlfriend is a veterinarian. After talking with her and getting to know something about her career over the last couple of years, I would be willing to bet that I can tell you the Number One most distressing problem faced by veterinarians, at least by small animal vets like her: Too many people are too cheap and/or too stupid to own pets.

Because of the carelessness, stupidity, and sometimes just plain poverty of many pet owners, Doc (as I call her) ends up seeing wonderful cats, dogs, and other animals suffer and die needlessly.

She works in an emergency vet clinic, so the pets she treats, sadly, are often very sick or very injured and she’s unable to save many of them. But what really hurts her is to see a pet that was injured and/or became seriously ill when it could have been helped if only the owners had treated it sooner. Not only could she have saved some such pets — the pet owners would’ve spent less of their worry, tears, time, and MONEY if they had gotten the animal treatment sooner.

I could go into more detail about the sad cases of pets who have died on her operating table. I could tell of the pets brought in and abandoned. I could tell of the multiple cats and dogs starting to overtax her and her home simply because she can’t find other homes for them.

But I won’t do all that. I’ll simply say this: If you own a pet, or if you’re thinking of becoming a pet owner, please love and care for your pet(s). If you can’t, then find someone who can — or simply don’t get a pet(s).

My son, my wife, Doc, and I all thank you.

Technorati Tags: pet care, veterinary care, pet stories, for pets and pet lovers

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Our neighbors own a Rhodesian Ridgeback hound. Old Ray — the dog, not the neighbor — is a fearsome looking dog, with a heart that melts at the least bit of attention. He has quite a bark, but never bites.

Unfortunately, Ray is a clever hound and does his best to stay one ahead of Matt — the neighbor, not the dog — when it comes to breaking out of their back yard. Frequently. Also unfortunately, Ray has a little bit of a reputation in the neighborhood. Namely, he’s such a large dog with an awesome bark that many in the neighborhood fear his bite. But Ray, as I said, has never bitten anyone.

I know the sad stories that start with something like, “Officer, I don’t understand what happened. I’m telling you this lovable dog has NEVER bitten …,” and end with an injured child and a dog being put to sleep. So far, this has not been one of those stories.

We value having Ray (and his black Lab companion, Ebbie) as neighbors — along with Matt and Samantha, the “human neighbors.” I’m convinced we have less likelihood of prowlers in the neighborhood with Ray and Ebbie on the job. But the problem is Ray’s adventuresome nature. He loves to find ways out of the yard and to roam the immediate neighborhood.

Try as he might, Matt has been unable to seal all of Ray’s “hidey holes,” the hound’s always been able to find a way to get out. Just awhile ago, he was sitting calmly on his front porch — Ray the dog, not Matt the neighbor — wagging happily to see me as we drove up to our house. Shirley — my wife, who’s neither the neighbor nor one of the neighbor’s dogs — noticed him and remarked, “Looks like Matt missed another hole.” Matt had just been working his way slowly around the backyard fence doing patch work and putting up various barricades as we were leaving for the store a few hours earlier.

Rhodesian Ridgebacks are beautiful dogs. They seem to be genial and loving, they certainly make striking neighbors. Good luck with that fence, Matt. It would be a loss to us all for Ray to get out and lose him to a car wreck or the dog pound.

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Ferrets can be wonderful pets and show as much expression of love and friendship as a cat. But if you’ve never had ferrets before, you should be aware of some of the challenges they pose.

We have some friends with pet ferrets, and the most noticeable difference between their pet ferrets and their pet cats is the amount of mischievous the ferrets can get into. They are, in a sense, more “wild” or unpredictable in their behavior than are cats, generally. So they may need more tending, especially when they are young, or when they are first getting acquainted with your home as a habitat.

Ferret curiosity is well known, and it probably does exceed that of cats. They are real explorers and will crawl into holes and under things. For their safety, you need to be aware of this trait.

Ferrets make good pets for children, but probably not for very young children. Babies and ferrets don’t mix well, as they often have misunderstandings and the ferret’s nip can be harmful.

Likewise, the little critters are very “fearless” when they feel threatened or when they are on the attack. For probably 2,500 years, ferrets have been used as hunting animals, going after rabbits and possibly even snakes in some parts of the world. To “ferret out” something was an expression well founded when you watch ferrets chase each other or crawl in and out of tunnels — even attics — in their hunting mode.

If you have a pet ferret, do your research on their special dietary and habitat needs. Take good care of them and they’ll provide you with hours of companionship and fun.

Also, If you have a pet ferret, I invite you to leave a comment and share their fun with all of us.

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(EDITOR’S NOTE: My wife, Shirley, recently wrote this combined memoir, tribute to our wonderful old cat, Merlin. She asked me to share it with all of you. I thought it would be fitting to make this the first content post since our return from the webhost server crash. Enjoy:)

Merlin was 8 years old when he came to us. He was a large black cat, part Siamese. He came complete with litter box, dish, brush, prescription tranquilizers and a reputation of a cat with attitude. He quickly lived up to his reputation.

For the first few days we scarcely saw him, but as he became accustomed to his new surroundings he became more visible and eventually made friends with us. However, he had apparently never been around children. Our two children were young (daughter 8; son 10) and intimidated by this black creature that stood in doorways and hissed at them.

Finally we suggested to our son that he might try hissing back. So, the next time it happened he bent down and hissed at the cat. It worked and they developed a close friendship. The boy and his cat played tag, explored, climbed trees and soaked up the sun together.

When we took Merlin to the vet for shots the first time they expected from past experience to need several people to hold him down, but they weren’t needed. We never needed those tranquilizers either. Merlin had learned to share our love and to behave around strangers.

Merlin graced our lives for many years. He grew up with our two children and was a wonderful part of their lives. Merline lived to the age of 21, and it was sad to see him leave. (To this day, our son lovingly insists that all the neighborhood cats show up in our backyard from time to time to roam around and stop by his grave to pay tribute to Merlin the Great!)

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Welcome back to “For Pets and Pet Lovers.” We’ve been gone for awhile following a serious webhosting server crash. My webhost — FORMER webhost, I should say — worked hard to get everything back up and running. Unfortunately, they lost all the data on the server which crashed, and I had failed to keep good backups.

So I’m in the process of rebuilding 30 blog and affiliate marketing websites.

If you’ve been here in the past, welcome back. If this is your first time, welcome and I hope you’ll return. My purpose is to provide a way we can all share pet stories, pet tips, even some pet photos, and certainly some pet “tales” and care ideas. As a lifetime pet lover and current “Daddy” to an aging tabby cat named Tigra, I hope we can enjoy some pet fun and ideas together.

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