Innehållsförteckning för March - April 2018 från All Creatures

MY BELOVED GOLDEN RETRIEVER, Millie, who died a couple of years ago at the all-too-young age of eight, had a best friend, Winky, who preceded her over the rainbow bridge. If you ever doubted that dogs, or any sensate animals, were capable of deep and complex emotions or a rich interior life, you need only to have observed their friendship. In fact, if you don’t believe that animals have these qualities, then I wonder why you’re bothering to read this at all. I had a friend who used to crow at me, “Find me a dog that understands differential equations!” To which I’d reply, “Find me a human who can sense when a loved one is 100 miles away and heading to them.” Science has confirmed that this prescience exists…

MY HUSBAND, GARTH, and I fell in love with Old English sheepdogs in 1972, after seeing two of them playing in their yard. We decided to get our own, named him Puff, and never looked back. By 2007, we had owned 13 Old English sheepdogs and I wanted to commemorate them in a unique way. Charm bracelets were trendy, but I knew one bracelet wouldn’t hold enough charms for all our dogs. I had a friend who makes jewelry create a silver necklace and found flat dog bone charms that I had engraved with each dog’s name. I now have 19 charms on the necklace to honor the 18 Old English sheepdogs (14 were rescues) and one cocker spaniel that have been a part of our lives. These memorial charms…

IT WAS A MYSTERY how the newborn squirrel had gotten into our backyard. There were no tree nests in the area, and it was certainly too young to have come there by itself. My wife, Shirley, helped me feed it milk from a formula we had used previously on two baby raccoons—and then we wondered, what should we do with it? A check with the county wildlife office revealed that the nature center no longer cared for orphaned animals. “But some inmates at the prison care for them; perhaps they will help you,” we were told. An hour later we handed over our squealing baby squirrel to a soft-spoken young man named Jim. He accepted our present in the prison lobby, then invited us to see the animals he was…

We worry about the weather out here in Oklahoma, maybe more than most folks, especially in spring, when vicious thunderstorms and tornadoes can gather deadly strength in the course of an afternoon. One minute the sun is shining, and the next you’re running to the basement for shelter. But that particular spring, there was little that could dampen my happiness. Just months earlier I’d given birth to twin girls, Emerson and Preslee. And Harley, our dalmatian, had a litter of 12 pups. One was very special. We called her Muff because her brown ears made it look as if she were wearing tiny earmuffs. Dalmatian puppies are usually all white—the spots come later—but with her solid brown ears, Muff stood out. We gave away the other puppies but kept Muff…

FAMILY AND FRIENDS came from near and far that February day to a church in the piney hills of Humboldt Valley, California. We were there to say goodbye to my older brother, Daniel, who had died of a heart attack a month earlier. Daniel and I weren’t close growing up. I was a planner, a goal setter. He embraced the free and easy hippie lifestyle. We didn’t agree on much, but we loved each other. Ever since his death, I’d felt a hollowness in my heart. I’d find myself praying for him, as I always did, then remember with a pang that he was gone. At one point I glanced out the church window and saw a huge bird swooping through the pines. An eagle? Daniel loved eagles. Pictures of…

Surfing sounds challenging, doesn’t it? Balancing on a slippery board, dealing with the unpredictable ocean, waves crashing around you. Can you imagine a cat—a one-eyed cat, no less—out there, riding the tide? Meet Kuli, the surfing kitty. He’s a sweet little orange-and-white tabby who calls Oahu, the most populous of the Hawaiian islands, home. Kuli is living the good life now, but things didn’t start out that way for him. He was found on the street on the island’s west shore when he was just three months old, suffering from neglect, malnutrition and a severe eye infection. Meanwhile, Alexandra Gomez-Young and Krista Littleton, special education teachers and roommates in Honolulu, on Oahu’s south shore, were looking to adopt a cat. They made their way to CatFriends rescue, where the scrawny…

Labradors are good bird dogs, but Fred takes it to another level. When he and his owner, Jerry Goldmith, stumbled upon an orphaned duckling, the four-year-old dog licked the baby clean. Dennis the duck has followed Fred around ever since. They eat, sleep and swim together. The pair lives at England’s Mountfitchet Castle. It’s home to hundreds of rescue animals, including other ducks, but Dennis would rather hang with his very first friend.…

AT 11:10 P.M. on October 8, 2017, Roland Hendel saw flames across the valley. The wind kicked up. The wildfires ravaging Northern California were advancing on his family’s Santa Rosa farm. They needed to evacuate immediately. They loaded up their cats and dogs, except Odin, their Great Pyrenees. Odin’s job on the farm was to watch over the eight bottle-raised rescue goats, and he wouldn’t leave them. Time was running out. Hendel made the difficult decision to leave Odin behind. “We got out with our lives and what was in our pockets,” he wrote on Facebook. The family cried for Odin and their goats, convinced that the animals had perished in the fire. A couple of days later, the Hendels returned to the farm. All the buildings were destroyed and…

REMEMBER THAT cuddly ball of golden fur you met in the last issue, the pup embarking on therapy-dog training? Well, did you blink? He’s now an adolescent. At six months old, Petey is outgoing, curious…and a bit willful and independent. (If you’ve lived with a tween or a teen, you know what I mean!) This is the age at which most puppies are returned to shelters, not because the dogs are bad but because pet parents are often ill-prepared to deal with this challenging stage. Initially, our training focus was on socialization. Petey did great, but he’s not done yet. Older puppies still need to meet new people and other friendly dogs or they could become desocialized. If you recall, Petey bounded into puppy school, tripping over his big paws.…

Come spring, honeybees swarm out of successful colonies to start new ones. Though swarming may look intense, the bees are full of honey and incredibly docile. In the fall, brown bears can eat as much as 90 pounds of food a day to prepare for hibernation. They may lose half their body weight by spring. While river otters give birth to their pups in the spring, sea otter pups are born in the winter so they can dive for kelp in warmer weather, when their fur has become less buoyant. Baby goats, or kids, develop accents based on their social environment. They bleat like the ones they grow up with; kids raised separately sound different. Robins aren’t the only animals that vocally signal spring. Spring peepers, a type of chorus…

Pets and grandchildren—you love them both, and for good reason: They’re adorable! But putting the two together requires attention and understanding. When our granddaughters, ages three and one, visit, they get so excited by our puppy, Petey, that they run around the house, laughing and squealing. Petey follows, jumping and tugging at their pant cuffs. I regularly remind the girls to stay calm and move slowly when they’re around Petey and our senior golden retriever, Ernest. I’m always careful with any interaction between our granddaughters and our dogs. Even the most docile pet can be unpredictable in the presence of young children. And some kids may unintentionally stress or injure your pet. Here are some tips for introducing your grandchildren—or any child that visits your home often—to your pet and…

Q My rescue dog, Reilly, doesn’t react to people when we’re walking outside but is very aggressive when anyone comes to my door. What should I do? —Lauren Lang, Catawissa, Pennsylvania A Guarding their humans’ homes is deeply built into most dogs’ DNA. One of the most popular theories of how wolves evolved into dogs describes an ancient unwritten contract: Wolves alerted humans to predators approaching their camps and chased them away in return for scraps of food. Because it’s so deeply ingrained, alert barking can be extremely difficult to eliminate. But it can be lessened to some extent. The first goal is to make sure Reilly gets enough exercise and socialization with other dogs. “A tired dog is a good dog,” the saying goes; it takes energy…

For two years, I’d wanted to raise chickens. I read books about them. I did research on the internet. I pored longingly over Pinter-est pictures. I prayed to have my own flock one day. When Jacob and I married and settled into our new home in the country, I was ready to finally become a “chicken lady.” The problem was, we didn’t have chicken accommodations and it was too close to winter. All my research told me that winter was not the time to buy chicks. That didn’t stop me from dreaming. And dropping hints about what I wanted for my birthday, in November. “First things first,” Jacob patiently reminded me. “Wait for spring chickens.” I was determined. I took my case to the Lord again. Only this time I…

Hard times had forced me to downsize and leave the place that I’d called home for 17 years. I’d moved less than a mile, but my new place—a small brick house on a hill—felt as if it was a world away. I missed the tall grass brushing against my jeans. I missed the sound of the wind in the silver poplars. I missed the feeling of being embraced by the thick stand of established trees, sheltered from the high desert of northwest Colorado. “Lord,” I found myself whispering, “I miss all the history I had at my old house.” I WASN’T THE ONLY ONE. My three dogs and my donkey were slowly settling in on this one-acre property that had little grass and no trees. But my cat, Monica, refused…

THE SECOND I WALKED into my kitchen I saw it. A cricket sitting right in the middle of the tile floor. I hated crickets. How would I get any sleep with him chirp, chirp, chirping all night? And I needed sleep desperately. My whole body ached. I felt tired, light-headed and nauseated, worse than I could ever remember feeling. That was saying a lot. I’d lived with fibromyalgia, a musculoskeletal pain disorder, and other health issues for years. Sometimes I was able to push through my fatigue and pain. This week, though, I couldn’t even seem to get up in the morning. The day before, I’d done the laundry. I had felt so weak taking clothes out of the dryer that I had to sit on the ground and toss…