Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

Twas the day before Christmas
and all I can see
are images of Bubbe
spread out before me.

The stockings are hung
by the stairway with care
but his little stocking
is no longer there.

I miss his sweet face
and his loving eyes
especially in the kitchen
when I was baking a pie.

Waldo the basset
is my biggest fan,
but now on this day
I think of the Old Man.

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year to all! I'll be back on the blog after January 1, 2008.

Fritz

All, I am very sad to tell you about the passing of sweet, handsome Fritz yesterday. Here he is being snuggled by his mom Suzanne. She had discovered the blog and had written to me last week about his diagnosis of canine lymphoma three months ago. Unfortunately, Suzanne is now walking the path that many of us have already traveled.

Fritz left this earth yesterday to join his canine brother Buzz, who passed away last February. They are now happily playing at the Rainbow Bridge, waiting for their mom.

Please send your good thoughts and well wishes to Suzanne during this terrible time. Fritz, we wish you peace and a continued journey free from pain and cancer.

PetScreen outreach

So as I wrote in a previous post, I recently learned of a company called Petscreen that offers blood test to detect canine lymphoma. After signing up for their mailing list, here is the email that was sent to me:

Dear Linda

I hope this email finds you and your pets in good health. Thank you for your recent registration with Petscreen. I have now sent details of our services to your vet and if you wish to have your dog screened for lymphoma then please feel free to make an appointment from next week and take them along to the vet. If you have any questions, or would like further information, then please feel free to contact me on the number listed below, alternatively you can email me at this address.

I look forward to hearing from you in due course.

Kind regards
Renu

----------------------

Renu Tuli

Operations Manager

I think it is interesting that their outreach strategy is to send information to people's vets one at a time. Considering the thousands of vets in the US, that could take a long while before any and all vets know about it. I also wonder about the cost of the test. As we all know, canine diagnostics can get very expensive for even in-house procedures.

To Suzanne

This post is to Suzanne. I just wrote you back privately about Fritz but since I have a unique (i.e., weird) domain name, sometimes my replies end up in a SPAM folder. If you didn't get my reply, please let me know.

Petscreen / healthy cookies?

I can’t believe another week has flown by! Yay, Friday! Work has been absolutely insane and I feel like I can’t get a grip on the fact that it’s (a) winter and (b) the holiday season. I now understand why old people are always talking about how time flies and how life “used to be…”

Anyway, I have both a question and a piece of info. Folks in the UK like Graham and Lesley may have already heard of Petscreen, a company based in Nottingham. The company has developed a screening test for canine lymphoma. I don't know many details about it since I am still reading through their web site. As far as I know, Petscreen is not very well known or available in the US. Has anyone outside of the UK heard of this screening? If so, have you done it? Please leave a comment and share your thoughts/experience.

Also, I am on the hunt for a healthy dog cookie recipe. I have found countless dog cookie recipes on the web, but would like a recipe that has been tried and tested by someone I know. Upon reading the labels on dog treats, I am appalled at the number of ingredients that I can't pronounce. Right now, I feed Waldo the dried chicken breast treats or the natural dog treats from my local pet store. The cookies have less than 10 ingredients and all are naturally occurring. If you have a dog cookie that you can share, please leave a comment as well! Perhaps we can have our own version of a canine cookie swap.

New daycare / Prozac nation

Waldo completed his first full day at Gibson Kennels. He did really well and tons of doggy fun. Prior to his arrival, I had received several printed handouts from Gibson that covered everything from basic info (pickup and dropoff times) to the daily schedule(play from 9am to 12pm, nap from 12-2pm and then more play until dark) and other FAQs. I have been impressed so far regarding their written communication. They also made sure I had a copy of the policy, which I thought was great attention to detail. The cost compared Dogma is the same (about $20 per day).

When I arrived to pick him up, I got another printed handout about "how to care for sore paws" with first aids tips. The daycare yard is mulched with stone so sometimes dogs with sensitive paws come home after their first day of playing with sore feet. Again, nice touch.

As for the second part of the title of this post, I now have my first official pet that has been put on Prozac. No, not Waldo. Peanut... the neurotic cat. I won't go into the details since this blog is supposed to be about doggy stuff, but let's just say that she is quite manic. The vet suggested a few weeks of Prozac to help with her transition. We'll see how that goes....