As pet lovers, we all love our pets and we will do everything to keep them safe. This holiday season will be one of the busiest time of the year for us and we may not have time to check on them as often as we usually do.

There are many pets who get sick and end up in emergency rooms because they got injured in the environment that they are moving in.

We can protect our little friends by following the tips below:

- Make sure that the wires are secured. Some dogs may chew on the wires or they may get strangled.

- Avoid feeding leftovers to your dog. As cute as they may look like, dogs can choke on bones.

- The ribbons from the unwrapped gifts may cause blockage of the intestine.

- Keep household cleaners tightly capped and place it where the dogs will not reach them.

- Make sure that the chew toys and other dog toys do not have parts that can be chewed off since this may cause choking.

- Since this is the time of the year when you have more visitors, your dog may become excited and bite. Make sure that his vaccines are updated.

- Never feed chocolate to your dog nor let them drink coffee. Alcohol must be placed away from your dog.

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Over two dozens pit bull dogs that were rescued from the dog-fighting trade will arrive at  Sacramento Animal Care Services. They will be in charge of finding a foster homes for the 28 dogs.

The rescued dogs came from St. Louis, Mo. They are part of an effort by Utah-based Best Friends Animal Society to find good homes for these animals.

According to Best Friends in a press release, many have suffered cruelty and that previously, the dogs would have been euthanized. They believe that some rescued dogs can be taken to shelters where they can have another chance in life.

Animal welfare groups that will help the dogs find foster homes are Butte Humane of Chico; New Life Family Dogs, Portland, Ore.; and New Hope Animal Foundation, Auburn.

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Titan the dog earned the title of being the world’s tallest dog. He certainly lived up to his name.

Titan is a 4-year old white Great DAne from San Diego. He is blind, deaf, epileptic and undergoes acupuncture and chiropractic adjustments every three weeks, according to owner Diana Taylor.

“Titan is magical,” she added. “He’s low-key, calm and has a wonderful demeanor about him. He gets along with all dogs, even the tiny ones.”

Titan is often mistaken by young children for a horse or cow. His official height, as measured by a vet is over 3½ feet tall from floor to shoulder.

“You could add eight inches if official measurements included the head,” Guinness spokesman Stuart Claxton said.

Titan is 190 pounds. Standing on his hind legs is not good for him but if he can, he will be aout 80-82 inches tall.

Titan succeeded the title held by Gibson who is a 7-year-old harlequin Great Dane from Grass Valley. Gibson died earlier this year from bone cancer. As a matter of fact, he is a bit shorter than Titan.

Titan was from the Middle Tennessee Great Dane Rescue when Taylor adopted him. Taylor taught him sign language when he can still see with one eye. But when he went blind, they learned to communicate through touch.

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Training Bo Obama was Dawn’s job. There was a lot of buzz when the new first dog came to the White House in April . But there have been lots of work before Bo Obama made his first appearance.

“I knew just from having him with me that he was going to be a perfect dog for the perfect family,” said Dawn Sylvia Stasiewicz. She is the founder of Merit Puppy Training, who trained Bo for several months before a top-secret meeting at the White House.

“We all sat on the floor and I introduced Bo and he took right to them and they to him,” Dawn said.

“It was just a regular weekend with the kids and I happened to be there for them to meet the dog,” Dawn recalled.

The success of Dawn started when she trained Cappy, the dog of the late Senator Ted Kennedy. This led to relationship with the Kennedys that lasted 10 years.

“Going to their house was like going to a friend’s house,”Dawn said.

Dawn said that she will continue to train all dogs like top dogs.

(photo credits: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Bo_official_portrait.jpg)

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In Australia, a man bites a dog in order to save his own dog. Phillip Lane was walking his wife Linda and their two-year old dog Buddy on Collendia beach at about 4 PM Monday when suddenly a big brown dog ran up and snatched their little dog.

“It grabbed our dog, threw him to the ground and had him by the neck,” Geelong Advertiser quoted Lane as saying Wednesday.

Lane said that he tried to force the jaw of the attacking dog with his hands which he finally did but then the dog grabbed Buddy again.

“My wife was screaming, kicking the dog and trying to get it off … but it wouldn’t release him.

Lane said: “I thought, ‘if you’re not gonna let go, I’m gonna bite your ear off’ … I ended up biting him on the ear as hard as I could.”

Lane bit the attacker at the ear as hard as he could and it stunned the attacker. The big, brown dog then released Buddy and was taken away by the owner.

Lane had multiple cuts to his hands from the attack.

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Not only do we hear about H1N1 in humans but there is also H3N8 or the dog flu among K-9. There is is new strain of the flu virus that must alert pet owners. This is also contagious, hard to detect, and deadly.

Pet owner, Angie Massey said, “I never thought of it, and I’m sure a lot of people haven’t. We want to take care of them as well as we do ourselves.”

H3N8 or the dog flu is a new virus which makes it harder to diagnose and dogs are more prone to catching it.

Because of this, the Whitworth Animal Clinic is stockpiling the vaccine. There have been more than 400 pets in the area have received a dose of the doggy vaccine in Huntsville, AL.

Veterinarian Charles Whitworth said, “We are being proactive about it because our pets have no immunity to it, we don’t want to get this in our clinic, and we don’t our pets, patients to suffer from that.”

Suffering leading to symptoms like a wet cough and even a fever. The good thing is that H3N8 cannot spread to humans or cats.

This dog flu is not seasonal and can infect dogs any time of the year.

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Petting a dog has a calming effect for both the giver and the receiver which is called the “pet effect.” Petting a dog can lower your heart rate, calm you down, improve mood, and decrease stress.

The latest today is the dog listener. According to Rachel Rodriguez in an article in CNN, “Children who are just learning to read often feel judged or intimidated by classmates and adults. But reading to a dog isn’t so scary. It won’t judge, it won’t get impatient, it won’t laugh or correct if the child makes a mistake. In a nutshell, dogs are simply excellent listeners. And for shy kids or slow readers, that can make all the difference.” Reading to a dog can help boost the child’s confidence.

There are dogs that are really trained to be therapy. But do you know that your own dog can be your child’s listener? Find them a spot together and let your child know that the dog can still hear even if his eyes are closed.

Pets also adjust to newborns. When you are bringing home a new baby, gently let your dog sniff the baby. Do not forget to give your dog quality time while the baby is there to create a positive association.

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Taipei’s dogs live it up in hotels. The hotels are complete with VIP suites and pools so that they will not be plagued by the stray dogs.

Two Taipei proprietors opened giant hotels for dogs with pools, salons, classes, and playrooms. These hotels offer pet owners the option of leaving their dogs so that someone can look after them. It is more expensive than home care but it is affordable to the average Taipei family.

“It’s just like day care for children,” said Kevin Lin, a former Wall Street employee who now owns the luxury Pet’s Dream Park hotel. “A major reason I opened this business is to ease the stray dog problem.”

Stray dogs are a common sight in less developed countries but there are also stray dogs in Taiwan’s cities.

In the 1980s, there was a boom in pets in Taiwan where people buy puppies and expect them to not grow and then when they become adults, they just abandon them.

There are rescue shelters which offer pet boarding services but with the comfort that Pet’s Dream Park and Little Treasure hotel offers, it is simply irresistible.

“I’ve seen small dogs kept in cages and wondered why if people can live in such nice surroundings dogs can’t also,” said Yao Pen-thun, owner of the Little Treasure hotel.

At Pet’s Dream Park, dogs can spend hours in an indoor pool or getting groomed at a beauty parlor. Nervous pets can have their VIP roomsat no extra cost.

Little Treasure takes its dogs for nature walks, and makes them listen to stories to help their mood, according to the website.

Some pet owners leave their pets for even a month if they are going on long business trips outside Taiwan.

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Or a better way to store dog food. Read on …

This dog foodwas stored in my range by mice - yuk!

Wow. Did I have one of those days that just keep getting, let’s say, “more interesting”!

I was cleaning the top of my stove after breakfast and I noticed these little black things that sort of looked like mouse poop by my clever brain decided to tell me they were some spices left over from a cooking party I had some time ago.

I thought to myself, “I’m sure I cleaned since then but how could a mouse possibly get on top of my range.”  By the was I have two ranges next to each other and they both had the little black spices.  Total denial…

Later that day I was vacuuming the floor and noticed this same black slivers near my stove so I move a couple containers I keep for the salt water tanks and who hoo! There was a lot of mouse poop behind my stoves.

OK ; so I move those stoves out, vacuum inside and out, bleached the floor and looked inside the oven.  There were just a couple of mouse droppings so I vacuumed that up and decided to self clean the ovens to sterilize them.  They were not dirty inside at all.

I also set a couple mouse traps with peanut butter, irresistible to mice and dogs (so be careful so block these from your dog)!

I turned them on then went into my living room to spend some “quality time” with my daughter watching a rerun of “Project Runway”.

After about twenty minutes or so my husband walks into the living room to question the amount of smoke coming out of the ovens.  I jumped up to take a look.

OH MY GOODNESS!

There were tons of smoke pouring out of the top of each of them. Enough to increase global warming!  Or  so much that the huge exhaust fan that is over the ranges couldn’t keep up.  The kitchen was half filled with smoke.

We turned off the self cleaning ovens, moved out parrots to the other room and opened as many windows as we could all the while monitoring the smoke billowing out of the ovens exhaust vents.

Then we found the fire extinguisher and decided whether or not to call the fire department.  With all that smoke something was definitely burning, however, we had shut the gas off to the ovens.

Thinking that the fire department might cause even more damage than had already happened, and not seeing any actual flames, we decided to wait it out, cell phone in hand.

Eventually the smoke subsided and we went to sleep after google-ing every combination of “smoke and self cleaning gas ovens” we could think of – no help.

After taking kids to school the next morning, (today Nov 2nd) I called an appliance repair company to come and diagnose the problem. They can’t make it here for five days. Well I’m much too curious to know what the heck is happening so I decided to take apart the stove myself.

After finding all the tools I needed, I gradually started taking layers of the appliance apart.  The top is sealed — to humans. When I got the cover off I found that some tiny little mouse had been storing my dog’s food pellets, one by one, in the fiberglass insulation around the stove top.

It was piled up in there, lots of it.

after vacuuming the first time

I’m sure as I take the range apart some more that I’m going to find more piles of the stuff in every nook and cranny of the range.

So the moral of the story is, if you live in an area with mice or in an old house with many possible mouse holes,  feed your dog, then put away the dog food dish if there is any uneaten dog food, so the mice or whatever lives in your house when you are asleep can’t get it.

I think the mice probably were getting handouts from the birds too.

You also need to keep your dog food stored in airtight (or mouse tight ) containers.  Once I had an open bag and discovered a cute little mouse feasting in there.  My daughter didn’t like it though when she reached in to grab some dog food.

Had my husband not walked into the kitchen in time a real huge fire could have started and this story might have a much worse ending.  I guess now the worst that can happen is that I’ll need to replace my stoves.

PS. I caught a mouse in one of the traps.

If you have any suggestion about how to get the smoke smell out of my house I’d sure appreciate it.  Leave a comment. Thanks.

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