Know where the dog parks are in Asheville? Is there anyone who can scoop the poop in your yard? Do any vets offer alternative medicine? Where are the best places to hike with your dog in the Asheville/Hendersonville area? Where is there a campground that actually caters to dogs?
You'll get the answers to these questions in the new 2010 Edition of the Asheville Doggie Guide -- everything for dogs in the Asheville, Hendersonville, and Black Mountain, NC area!
This handy pocket-size guide includes adoption organizations, animal services, dog bakeries and boutiques, boarding facilities, dog-friendly campgrounds, doggie daycare, dog parks, grooming services, dog photographers, poop pick-up services, dog therapy, hiking trails, dog training, sitters, vets, and more, plus adoption information, safety tips, and pet rules and regulations for Buncombe and Henderson Counties. It has hundreds of listings -- names, addresses, phone numbers, emails, and websites -- saving hours and hours of research time! You will refer to it often. There is no other resource available like the Asheville Doggie Guide.
Pick up your copy today at Three Dog Bakery, 21 Battery Park in Asheville (a block away from the Grove Arcade). Or order the guide online via this special offer:
The publisher's list price for the Asheville Doggie Guide is $19.95, but you can get your copy of the guide for $13.95, a savings of $6! You'll get a $6 rebate when you purchase the Asheville Doggie Guide directly from the publisher! Learn about this special offer here.
If the weather's been driving you crazy, take heart. Spring is coming soon (not soon enough!). In the mean time, you can rely on an online service that will not only provide you with the local weather, but also with a page of useful information that's customized to your pet.
Go to www.weather.com/pets, enter some brief information, and get your own "PetCast" with the local weather, as well as a dog "comfort index," a report of mosquito activity in your area, tips from the "dog care clinic," a park locator, a dog walking calculator, a list of local pet events, videos, and more.
We own two wonderful dogs who are considered seniors, and we're not alone. In the U.S., about 40 percent of households with dogs have at least one that is considered a senior, aged seven or older. Senior dogs make great pets -- they tend to be laid back, know and accept the routine, and always provide unconditional love.
If you have a senior dog, you'll be interested in a new website called SeniorDogs.com. You'll find articles and resources for senior dog owners all in one place, covering medications, health insurance, nutrition, financial assistance and more. The site provides a full spectrum of pertinent information, as well as message boards where owners can find support and guidance from others who are experiencing the same challenges and joys of caring for an older dog.
To receive a free e-book entitled "A Guide to Caring for Your Aging Companion," simply send an email to: info@seniordogs.com and put in the subject line: FREE E-BOOK.
One of the most compelling and successful personalities in the dog world is Cesar Millan. Known to millions as the star of "The Dog Whisperer" on the National Geographic Channel, Millan uses a combination of psychology and calm assertive energy to "fix" even the most outrageous dog behavior problems.
What his fans may not realize, though, is Cesar Millan also gives back a huge amount to the dog welfare community through the Cesar & Illusion Millan Foundation. The foundation sponsors a national spay and neuter public service campaign, as well as numerous programs that directly help animal shelters.
You can subscribe to "Cesar's Way," Cesar's new magazine, through this blog (look for the magazine cover to the right under "Good Buys"). Read more about "Brand Cesar" this week on Brandchannel.com: http://www.brandchannel.com/features_profile.asp
If you're looking for a unique gift item for yourself or a fellow dog lover, you might consider a "custom pet portrait pillow." These quality pillows are handmade by Boni in Asheville, North Carolina. She takes any photo of one or more dogs sent to her via email and turns it into a remarkable likeness against a color background of your choice.
The pillow shown here was made for us from a photo of our Westie, Laddie, who is no longer with us. It's a wonderful remembrance of the little guy and it looks just like him, right down to the twinkle in his eye.
Allow at least two weeks for your order to be completed, especially at holiday time. For complete information, visit the "Handmade by Boni" website at either www.mybonnie.artfire.com, or www.mybonnie.etsy.com, or send an email to: handmadebyboni@yahoo.com.
The number of stray dogs that come through local animal shelters in the Carolina mountains is amazing. Where do these dogs come from? Are they all lost?
Don't let your dog be one of them. You can avoid losing your dog in the first place by using proper identification. It is best to have your dog microchipped. A tiny chip is painlessly inserted behind the dog's neck. This can be done at a shelter, at a microchip clinic, or at your vet's office. You then file contact information with the microchip provider. If your dog is found and turned in, authorities will scan the dog for a unique ID number and call the provider to match the dog up with your information. In addition to a microchip, your dog should always be wearing some form of ID. This will make it easy for anyone who finds your dog to contact you. You can choose anything from inexpensive tags to designer tags to tags connected to pet-finding services. (Carolina Mountain Dog offers original high quality ID tags from Dog Tag Art via the button on the right under "Good Buys.")
If you do lose your dog, take action right away. Often, a dog is closer to home or the point of loss than you may think, so make the rounds, call your dog, and shake a bag of treats. This might do the trick. Put the word out about your lost dog and offer a reward. Obviously, you should inform family, friends, and neighbors first.
File a lost dog report with your local shelter immediately, and keep checking back with the shelter periodically to see if your dog shows up. Make up and post signs where the dog was lost. Use email, Facebook, Twitter, or any other social media you're familiar with to publicize your dog. Check "Found" ads and place a "Lost" ad on your local Craigslist (www.craigslist.org) and on local newspaper websites.
There are other websites that could help you out as well. In Western North Carolina, there's www.LostPetsWNC.org, a free service where you can post a listing and search to see if your pet has been reported.
National sites with lost and found sections include:
www.petfinder.com
www.pets911.com
www.thefoundbin.com
www.petharbor.com
www.lostmydoggie.com
www.lostpetsos.org
www.flealess.org/lostpets
www.petchaser.com
www.fidofinder.com
www.amberpetalert.com
www.lostandfoundpetsca.com (California)
www.lostandfoundpetsnewyork.com (New York)
www.lostandfoundpetstexas.com (Texas)
(Note: There may be fees associated with some of these sites.)
For additional helpful tips, go to: http://www.aspca.org/pet-care/pet-care-tips/finding-a-lost-pet.html
Just in time for the holiday season, we're launching the Carolina Mountain Dog online store.
Here you'll find a variety of quality items, including shirts, hats, mugs, calendars, dog accessories, and more. Choose from items with great photos of dogs against a breathtaking mountain background, our signature Carolina Mountain Dog masthead, or the "Opt to Adopt!" slogan to show your commitment to saving dogs' lives. A portion of all sales from this store will be donated to shelters and animal welfare organizations in the Carolina mountains. So not only will you be getting some cool stuff, you'll be helping animals too!
See what's in store for you at: www.cafepress.com/cmdog
Let's be honest: Dogs poop. A lot. If you have one or more dogs who spend time in your yard, you may find yourself navigating your way through a poop patch.
That's why there are services that specialize in disposing of doggie waste. And at least for these folks, business is picking up. Here's a list of poop scoopers in the Carolina mountains. Feel free to leave a comment if you know of others.
At Your Bark and Call
828-275-5345
Poo Patrol Pet Waste Cleanup Service
828-551-9027
Parts of
Upstate
864-617-7197
http://doggiedoocare.com/default.aspx
It’s a Doody Job!
864-901-6357
Poopie Scoopers
864-607-0740
http://poopiescoopers.localplacement.net/
Greenville
Scoopy’s Dog Waste Removal
864-399-9185
Know where the dog parks are in Asheville? Is there anyone who can scoop the poop in your yard? Do any vets offer alternative medicine? How about a campground that actually caters to dogs?
Find it all in the new 2010 Edition of the Asheville Doggie Guide -- everything for dogs in the Asheville, Hendersonville, and Black Mountain, NC area!
This handy pocket-size guide includes adoption organizations, animal services, dog bakeries and boutiques, boarding facilities, dog-friendly campgrounds, doggie daycare, dog parks, grooming services, dog photographers, poop pick-up services, dog therapy, hiking trails that are good for dogs, training, vets, and more, plus adoption information, safety tips, and pet rules and regulations for Buncombe and Henderson Counties. It has hundreds of listings -- names, addresses, phone numbers, emails, and websites -- saving hours and hours of research time! You will refer to it often. There is no other resource available like the Asheville Doggie Guide.
Special Offer for Readers of Carolina Mountain Dog!
The publisher's list price for the Asheville Doggie Guide is $19.95, but you can get your copy of the guide for $13.95, a savings of $6! You'll get a $6 rebate when you purchase the Asheville Doggie Guide directly from the publisher!
Learn about this special offer here.
Halloween (tomorrow night) may be fun for children, but it can be traumatic for dogs. Door bells ringing, doors opening, and lots of commotion around the neighborhood can upset a dog's routine. Candy, particularly chocolate, can be toxic to dogs. And while it may seem like a good idea to take your dog trick-or-treating with the kids, the Humane Society of the United States advises you to leave your dog at home. The street noise and unfamiliar people could cause your dog to "act out of character."
To read some helpful tips for keeping your pets safe on Halloween, check out this link from the Humane Society.
It's the middle of the night and your dog is really sick. Or it's the weekend and your dog gets injured. What do you do if your vet doesn't offer emergency services?
The following facilities in the Carolina mountains offer after-hour emergency room care for dogs (night, weekend and holiday hours). If you know of others, feel free to comment and add to this list.
Asheville, NC
REACH (Regional Emergency Animal Care Hospital)
677 Brevard Road, Asheville, NC 28806
(828) 665-4399
www.reachvet.com
Flat Rock, NC
Western Carolina Regional Animal Hospital
205 N. Highland Lake Road, Flat Rock, NC 28731
(828) 697-7767
Greenville, SC
Animal Emergency Clinic
393 Woods Lake Road, Greenville, SC 29607
(864) 232-1878
www.aecgreenville.com
Spartanburg, SC
Veterinary Emergency Clinic
291 Asheville Highway
Spartanburg, SC 29303
(864) 591-1923
Many dogs in the Carolina mountains are mixed breed (affectionately known as mutts). Typically, this is a good thing -- a mixed ancestry in dogs is believed to result in a phenomenon known as "hybrid vigor." Essentially, this means mutts are found to be generally healthier than pure-bred dogs.
So, what if you're curious about what your mixed breed dog is really made of? Wouldn't you like to know what breeds are in the background of your pup? You can venture a guess or ask your vet to theorize, but you'll never be sure. This is what accounts for the current popularity of dog DNA testing. By simply collecting cells from your dog's cheek with a swab and sending them to a lab for analysis, you'll get an accurate report of your dog's ancestry.
If you're interested in dog DNA testing, take a look at this sample report produced by BioPet. Then check out the BioPet DNA Breed Identification Test, available from PetSmart via this link.
In a previous post called "Dogs Doing Good," we talked about how dogs bring joy into the lives of children at Mission Hospital in Asheville, NC. A recent New York Times article takes this a step further: Dogs, it seems, are playing a significant role in helping autistic children. One family who acquired a service dog for their 11-year old autistic son said the benefits of the dog's companionship were noticed almost immediately. "More and more changes have happened over the months as their bond has grown," the boy's mother said. "He's much calmer. He can concentrate for much longer periods of time. It's almost like a cloud has lifted." The article references the fact that the National Institutes of Health is soliciting studies on the tangible beneficial effects of the relationships between pets and children.
We have long known about the calming effect pets can have on humans. As we hear more about the increasing rate of autism, it's encouraging to know that dogs can play a therapeutic role in the lives of autistic children.
Dog lovers already know, of course, that dogs are driven by their acute sense of smell. Horowitz points out that humans have about 6 million receptor cells in their noses, while a beagle has more than 300 million. She explains what that means in terms of a dog's life -- how a particular odor conveys a message to a dog. More than that, Horowitz says, a dog's sense of smell is the means by which he categorizes and identifies things. Sniffing another dog's urine, in fact, provides a lot of information about the other animal -- "who the urinator is, how often he walks by this spot, his recent victories, and his interest in mating," says Horowitz. Dogs view objects differently too. While we know what a chair is, for example, Horowitz says a dog may see it as just an obstacle that stands in the way of a path to their food bowl in the kitchen.
Unlike their wolf ancestors, the author writes, dogs like making eye contact with humans: "...dogs seem to be predisposed to inspect our faces for information, for reassurance, for guidance."
All in all, going "Inside of a Dog" is fascinating stuff. You can read Chapter One, courtesy of The New York Times, by clicking here. If you'd like to purchase the book online, click Inside of a Dog book now.
Every so often, I'll be walking with my dogs in the NC Arboretum or in Bent Creek Forest, and there'll be an older gentleman calmly strolling along beside the largest, most magnificent animal I've ever seen.
Of course, the first time I saw this sight, I had to stop and ask the man about his unusual pet, which my two dogs observed rather warily. Turns out the animal is a wolfdog named, appropriately enough, Tom Wolf (unlike the famous author, this one is spelled without the "e"). Tom Wolf has been with his owner since he was a pup. Last time I saw him, a week or so ago, Tom Wolf was fourteen. This gentle giant is as nice and mellow as any big ol' dog could be.
Wolfdogs are not uncommon here in the mountains. We are fortunate to have a local sanctuary for these beautiful creatures, Full Moon Farm in Black Mountain, NC. Full Moon Farm says a wolfdog is a dog with recent wolf heritage -- an animal with a pure wolf ancestor within the last five generations. Interestingly, the domestic dog is thought to be a domestic variant of the gray wolf.
Wolfdogs, says Full Moon Farm, are "domestic animals with special needs." They were bred by humans and combine characteristics of both dogs and wolves. Most wolfdogs are a combination of wolf and German Shepherd, Siberian Husky, or Alaskan Malamute. They typically have a high prey drive, but they can certainly make good pets in the right household -- Tom Wolf is proof of that. However, owning a wolfdog takes a special breed of person, and these animals are not legal as pets everywhere.
For more about wolfdogs, visit Full Moon Farm's website, www.fullmoonfarm.org. Tours of the facility must be scheduled, but the next tour open to the public is Saturday, October 3 at 3 PM. Check their website or call 828-669-1818 for more information.
(Photo from www.thundafunda.com.)
Visit this Dog site: |
 |
Free Stock Photos for websites - FreeDigitalPhotos.net
