Dogs and Cats: Tales that Strike Terror in the Hearts of Owners

I just returned from the #veterinarian with Maddie, my eight-year-old #schnauzer with valley fever. She's on a half dose of her meds, and we're seeing if this has any positive or negative influence on the course of the #disease. Valley fever is a plague in the Southwest, especially Arizona, and it's one of the crazier #fungal diseases out there. For instance, Maddie never showed any #discernible symptoms but when I chanced to test her for the disease, she showed a high titre. So either the test was really wrong-----about three times in a row--or else Maddie's immune system is so good that it's #clobbering the disease but not ridding the body of it.

This is a long way of stating the obvious. Although dogs like Maddie as well as cats, miniature horses and even  bunnies are regularly being used as #therapy animals at nursing homes, hospitals, schools, and all kinds of venues, they also are capable of traumatizing people or just plain breaking their heart.

Wait a second--did she just say that pets are somehow bad for you? That can't be right. She must be losing it!

Well, let me supply you with my #rationale: Most of the time pets are great little practical nurses. They sniff out cancer, they help kids read, they curl up with sick or senior patients, they track down lost kids, the list goes on and on, and if you want proof, contact The Delta Society in Washington state. But although I wouldn't spend a day without my six dogs and two cats, I can tell you there have been times when their high jinx have #scared the willies out of me, sending my blood #pressure into the stratosphere along with my anxiety level. Let me count the ways.

1. As a first-time dog owner, I was ignorant of most everything #doggie. This I blame on my parents, who refused my repeated requests for a puppy when I was a child. So the first time I physically had a dog was when my husband and I moved from our apartment to our first home. My little "Maude" came from a reputable breeder, which should have eased my worries, but somehow I managed to ramp up my #fears to a #ferocious level. About three hours after the pup was dropped off at our house,  I stationed him in our empty living room with food and water. (I had run out during my school lunch break and bought all the basics such as dishes, toys and a collar.) We had papered the floor with newsprint so we weren't concerned about his urinary output damaging our hardwood floors. And as #puppies do, he whizzed a lot, and this is where everything went wrong.

I noticed that wherever he peed, there were red blotches. Click went my #nervous brain, and I was immediately on high alert.  "It's blood," I screamed to my husband, who also lacked for canine experience. I was convinced that somehow Maude had a #urinary infection that was causing her to bleed. So naturally I did the normal hysterical thing: I called the breeder.  She listened to my tale of woe without saying a word, which of course was to her credit. However  I interpreted this as proof positive that my four-month-old #dog was dying.

When the #breeder did speak, she said, "Janice, get a cup, fill it with water, and drip a little on the newspaper." I did what she said even though I thought her answer bizarre at the very least. "What do you see?"

What do I see, I repeated to myself. By now I thought the breeder was beyond eccentric and halfway to crazy. But I humored her and walked back to the corner where I had dribbled water.

As I stared down at the newsprint. I felt like the biggest jerk alive. I also felt relieved. Evidently chemistry was the enemy and not some rare puppy virus. When wet, the colors of the newspaper changed to a reddish hue. My "blood diagnosis" was about as far afield as you could get.

This would not be, however, the first time an animal activity would cause a profound (though short-lived) effect on my physiological being. 2. Fast forward about a dozen years and now I'm a relatively experienced dog owner. #Cloistered in my office tapping out an article on my computer, I heard a deafening silence, which did not bode well with three dogs. Something was awry and it took me only a quick look to reveal the source of my growing panic. The #quartz chess set I had bought in Mexico was scattered all over the living room carpet. Okay, I #surmised, the kids were playing with what struck them as a new toy.

Not until I recovered all the pieces and noticed a rook (a castle) was missing did I learn that I had a big problem. I rightly concluded that one of my pets--at the time I had a collie, two schnauzers and a nine-month-old lab-- had swallowed the missing chess piece. But I didn't know who. About then I started to hyperventilate and think about fainting. But fear also triggers action. Although I was tempted to call 9-1-1 and declare a red code alert, I called my family vet, who said to bring the dog over.

 "But I don't know which dog to bring," I #wailed. "Then bring them all," he said. I eventually had to bring the "Tres Amigos" and we discovered that the culprit was the puppy lab. Fortunately the vet was able to calm me when he agreed that #expensive surgery wasn't necessary and he intended to get the pooch to barf up the piece, which, according to the x-ray, was in two easy-to-upchuck pieces in his stomach. The vet was better at his job than I was at my dog sitting, and within minutes the rook was tossed up.  This heart-stopping caper was heretofore known as "The Crook Who Took the Rook."
3. One summer we took the dogs and cats to San Diego to cool off from the Arizona heat. Everything was going smoothly in our rented apartment, and I was relaxing in the den watching TV when a tail went by.  #Outside.  In the yard. Near the gate. It was a tail--of the hairy kind. #Serendipity at just that very moment had prompted me to glance over to the pair of windows adjacent to the door. It took only a few seconds for the sight of a furry tail to register as "not normal." I then gave a yelp and opened the door to see my tri-colored tabby debating whether to jump over the fence or stay put and explore the yard. Somehow the cat had pushed in the screen in the room where I had located her and escaped without my hearing anything. 4. Next anxiety-provoking event came when the same tri-colored feline pulled a fast one on me in the laundry room . I was transferring wet clothes from the washing machine to the dryer, tossing them in while thinking of 1,001 other things. Upon completion of my task, I turned on the dryer and was rewarded by several loud thumps. I figured the machine was on the fritz. But no! By mistake the cat had crawled into the dryer and had never exited. My pulse soared and my stomach did flip flops as I extricated the now-dazed kitty from his amusement park ride. Although I agonized over possible  long-term health repercussions from her roller coaster ride, the cat seemed to come through it without a hitch. I, on the other hand, took a xanax and retreated to the couch. 5.This time my tri-colored collie, Clara, was responsible for rendering me speechless and stupefied. In the bad old days I used to thaw meat in my kitchen sink. (Ssssh, don't tell anyone) I had never had a problem except for one time when I came home to find an empty styrofoam plate and some plastic wrap on the floor. With her long elegant nose that she used for poking other dogs to do her bidding, Clara had somehow lifted up the package of raw chicken and deposited it onto the floor where she #guzzled the pieces down, probably with two or three healthy swallows. Fortunately I did know that raw meat generally agreed with dogs-- they weren't vulnerable to salmonella like people--so I didn't worry about #diarrhea and other digestive problems. But still, there was the factor of bones. Clara could choke or the bones could splinter and do internal damage.  Except I remembered--only after an agonizing five minutes of #mental torture--that these were chicken filets, deboned and therefore safe. Except for the problem of what we would eat for dinner, the situation had resolved itself successfully.

So there you have it. The flip side to how therapy dogs and companion animals bring health and well being to owners and patients. For a worrisome soul like me, these incidents had the potential to evoke massive depression, but as it turned out, the worst never happened.