So Long to My Happy Halipuppy

My sweet old dog died a couple of days ago, and I’m finding it more or less impossible to think about anything else, so this week we are going to talk dogs.

Let me tell you a bit about mine: Her name was Emma, and she was a 14-year-old yellow Labrador Retriever. She liked cheese, squeaky toys, and licking out the almost-empty peanut butter jar.

We’d had her since she was only eight weeks old. She was a very friendly dog, in the way that Labs are. She never heard a child’s voice without an eager “whap” of her tail. She never met a person or a food group that she didn’t like (although, like most of us, she could take or leave salespeople and brussels sprouts).

She spent her entire life in Halifax, except for those first 8 weeks down in Nictaux Falls, and I’m glad she was able to live her life in such a dog-friendly city.

Halifax, when you think about it, is a pretty great place to raise a dog. I look at cities like New York and Toronto, where green spaces and rugged wooded areas are really hard to find, and I compare them to Halifax, where there are just so many beautiful places for a dog and her people to go and get their ya-ya’s out.

What would dog owners do, for example, without Point Pleasant Park? Emma and I must have covered every inch of that park, hundreds of times over. Having the freedom to let Emma run around off-leash was both a blessing and a curse (especially during her disobedient puppy years), but it was really one of the keys to her long and happy life.

Long Lake was another favourite place for us. I loved the scenic wooded trails and the sense of quiet remoteness, and she – without question – loved the lake. She was a swimmer, and a retriever, and in her prime she would obsessively chase sticks, balls, Frisbees, or anything floatable that was thrown out into the water for her.

We also explored the wooded off-leash trails in Shubie Park and Hemlock Ravine on occasion. And when she was younger, before she tore a ligament in her knee, Emma was Queen of the Graceful and Athletic Frisbee catchers on Conrose Field, off Jubilee Road.

But this isn’t even scratching the surface of Halifax’s dog-friendly spaces. There are so many other beautiful parks and trails. If you’re new to town and aren’t quite sure where to take your pooch, there’s a full list of off-leash parks and sports fields available on the HRM website at
http://www.halifax.ca/realpropertyplanning/OLPS/olps_maps.html

You can also find information about the numerous walking trails around HRM here: http://www.halifax.ca/rec/TrailsHrm.html

Pet owners in Halifax have got it pretty good. Being responsible enough to pick up a bit of poop is a small price to pay for living in a city where you can easily raise a happy, healthy companion to a ripe old age.

We already miss Emma terribly, but she certainly lived the good life here with us. Happy trails to my gorgeous old girl.

(Ir)Responsible Pet Ownership

Oh sure, she looks innocent enough.


My message today is about responsible pet ownership, although I’m probably not qualified to speak on this subject anymore because, as I type this, I’m nursing a fairly significant cat bite on my right forearm.

It was my own cat, Annie, who bit me, and I guess it was my fault, since I was silly enough to reach in front of her to grab the TV remote. So I more or less got what I deserved, from her perspective, anyway.

But thanks to a deep puncture wound and several signs of obvious infection, I’ve had to endure a rather painful tetanus shot and a week-long round of nauseating antibiotics.

Despite that, I’m trying to not hold a grudge against her, or against cats in general, because I really want to make a point about what lovely pets kitty-cats are. And they truly are lovely, except when they’re not, which, thankfully, is rare.

By now you can see why I could never hold a job in sales (sorry about that lousy summer, Electrolux). Perhaps you’ll just trust me when I say (1) Cats are Great, and (2) Cat Ownership Must Be Taken Seriously.

This is partly top of mind for me because the Spring newsletter recently came out from the Bide Awhile animal shelter in Dartmouth, and, unfortunately, according to Executive Director Darrold Gould, Spring is “kitten season.”

That’s when all the unneutered and unspayed cats, who have been sticking fairly close to home throughout the dreary winter months, suddenly have the undeniable urge to go out and get their frisk on, much like college students, or bonobos, or the neighbours who used to live upstairs from me.

And that means that shelters like Gould’s, which are always busy, are now exceptionally busy.

It’s a problem that could be solved, in part, says Gould, if people just thought ahead a bit before jumping on the “free kitten” bandwagon.

“If you went on Kijiji today, you'd find in excess of five thousand animals being given away,” he observes. “But one of the things we hear a lot is that people who get free animals then can't afford to have them spayed or neutered.”

He says those neutering costs could be reduced significantly by simply adopting a shelter cat. “For a very nominal cost - $125, compared to paying the whole cost themselves – people get an animal that's been blood tested, vaccinated, de-wormed and spayed or neutered. And that's normal for most shelters. The whole idea is to help the community reduce the population, and not create more of a problem.”

It’s win/win, really. And speaking of winning, the other reason Bide Awhile is top of mind for me this week is this: a photo of my dog and cat relaxing together has been selected as a “Pet of the Month” for the 2011 Bide Awhile calendar.

Last December, my nephew made a donation to Bide Awhile as his Christmas gift to me. The donation included his submission of said photo, which was to appear on my birthday as “Pet of the Day.”

This week, he got a call from Bide Awhile telling him that this photo had made it into the highly coveted “Pet of the Month” category.

So I guess having a pin-up cat makes up for some of the grief. And if my joyful tale of pet ownership has you now chomping at the bit for your own kitty (perhaps that’s a poor choice of words), please see point (2) above, and try to be part of the solution.