Hi John,

My friend has a 13 year old Schnauzer named Sammy. Sammy has always been a rather highly strung dog. Since she moved into a new home in April of this year, Sammy’s behavior has gone from bad to unbearable. He has virtually destroyed anything and everything he can get his teeth into, even so far as getting up onto kitchen tables and getting into cupboards. She has tried unsuccessfully barricading him out of rooms and has attempted to lock him in one room during the day when she is not there. He has pulled towel racks off of walls, eaten shower curtains, comforters, rugs, you name it and he has destroyed it.

She has put him on anti-anxiety medication at the maximum dose with no response whatsoever along with a natural remedy that she puts in his drinking water also without success. She is completely at her wits end and it is breaking her heart to leave the house everyday as he is getting more and more distraught every time she has to leave him. She is seriously considering euthanasia to put him out of his misery at this point.

We would really appreciate your opinion in order to make the best and most humane decision for Sam.

Regards,

Stephana

Christmas puppy season is approaching and generally speaking I don’t have a problem with getting a puppy for the family during the holiday season. However, specifically speaking there is a problem if the prior few months haven’t been devoted to searching for the right match as far as breed and breeder. Far too much can go wrong. Trying to find a puppy a couple of weeks before Christmas is going yield the same sort of results as going grocery shopping when you’re hungry. Impulse shopping doesn’t always yield the best results. When you think about it you’re going to have your dog for a decade or more and yet many potential dog owners spend far less time in narrowing the field for quality then we do a car or other long term commitment purchases.

The dog breeding world stacks the odds against finding a quality puppy on short notice. It really takes a lot of research effort to get the best bang for your buck. In North America if you want to be a dog breeder you must write an exam. There’s only one question on the exam and rewrites are allowed. Here’s the question: Do you know the difference between a male and female dog? Even if the breeder candidate has to use their hands to get it right, no problem. “Congratulations, you’re a dog breeder!”, and then they’re unleashed upon the unsuspecting potential dog owners.

John:

We have a 13 year old female cat. She has been a great pet, always very clean and very little problems. About a year ago she started crapping in the family room down stairs on the rug. Her litter box was in the next room clean and accessible. She will pee in the litter but not poop. We took her to the vet, he said she was severely constipated with hair balls. We have pumped tubes of this laxative he gave us into her for months to no avail. He suspects she has something called mega colon. She will go outside for hours, come in and run downstairs to pass her stools. They are quite large and firm. The vet says she won’t go in the litter box because she associates it with pain and will go else where to “do her business”. Any ideas ????

JH