Category: Pets
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Tegan’s Turn?
As you may remember from before we shut down for the pandemic two years ago, my dogs and I volunteer at a local hospital as Pet Therapy teams. We had to pause through the worst of the Covid onslaught, of course, but we started back up again last spring. The dogs remembered what to do…
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Dog Hugs
Did you know dogs can hug? I don’t mean when they jump up an put their forelegs on you — but emotionally? It doesn’t look like what you’d expect. A dog gives you a hug when they squint their eyes at you, with their mouths open and relaxed. And it doesn’t last long — just…
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Zoe, the Pet Therapy Dog
After training (Zoe the Corgi’s First Day of Pet Therapy) and an initial evaluation, Zoe and I went to our final Pet Therapy evaluation today. Considering that Zoe is my third dog in the program (Dog as God’s Messenger), I was surprisingly nervous. I worried that I might forget something or that rules might have…
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Zoe the Corgi’s First Day of Pet Therapy
Zoe turned two yesterday, and so we were able to visit the hospital as a pet therapy team for the first time today. I’m often asked what it takes for a dog to be a pet therapy dog. Requirements vary from program to program, but here’s the minimum for the pet therapy program at Lutheran…
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Zoe the Corgi Snores
Zoe is a small dog — I think she is the smallest dog we’ve ever had — just about 20 pounds. She is small enough to pass under Tegan, who is not a tall dog. For a corgi, Zoe has a pointy little fox nose. When she sleeps, she likes to tuck her…
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A little corgi dropped in and wanted to stay.
It was hard to lose our corgi, Darwin, but it was time. Still, we all missed him greatly. (The Gift Of the Dying Dog) Then we got a call from our veterinary clinic, asking if we were ready to adopt another corgi. A relative of one of the staff at the clinic is going through…
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The Gift Of the Dying Dog
Hemingway said that all true stories end in death. This, then, is a true story… Autumn, 2011 My son wanted a dog of his own. We said no. We already had two dogs. He only had two years before he went off to college. There was no point in getting him a dog that he…
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What Friends Do
We got Darwin, the pure bred, championship-quality Pembroke Welsh Corgi, as a freebie from our vet. Why? Darwin was born with an incurable heart problem that was supposed to kill him within his first few months. With a new medication, and great care from the vet, Darwin’s made it to six years old – far…
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What went into this mutt?
We’ve been having a lot of fun with Tegan, the new puppy. We play with her constantly. And between ourselves, we try to guess what breeds of dogs her parents were. She is long and low. The gene for short-leggedness in dogs is their version of dwarfism. It is found in only a few breeds,…
Amy Law, Science Geek 