Pets improve your health and your mood.

A pet's inherent ability to put a smile on our faces can be very helpful in combating stress or depression. I have learned from experience that things tend to go poorly when I'm having a tough time with my mood. If I'm stressed, I tend to get irritated and frustrated easily. This, of course, is not conducive to getting anything done or spending time with others. Who wants to hang out with a sourpuss?

When I'm feeling low because I've let a situation or some words get to me, I make a bee line for the closest pet. I have several pets to choose from, which is great because each different species seems to work on different stresses for me.

If I'm feeling like I'm less then I could be, inadequate, I go to see my horses. There's nothing like recognizing that I can safely and lovingly have a great time with my 1,000lb Della or even bigger Willie. That puts things into perspective, a lot. If I can handle and communicate and not get run over by a horse, no puny (in relative terms of size here) human can use their judgements against me.
These judgements may be real or perceived.

My dogs come to me for many things like food when they think it is dinner time or fresh water when the bucket needs to be refilled. They are gluttons for attention too but that is part of their charm. They also seem to have an uncanny knack at knowing when I am down emotionally. One of them usually finds her way into my space and, either by presenting me with a toy to play or darn near flopping on me to cuddle, lets me know that she thinks it's time to lift the mood.

With an improved mood whatever situation is nagging you can be approached from a different angle. Maybe you'll find a solution that was there all along but was hidden from you while you were down. When we are happy we tend to look at situations from a positive outlook and more readily find solutions. When we are unhappy we tend to look at situations as a lost cause and spend more time devaluing solutions by looking at all the reaons it won't work instead of why it will.

Perspective has a lot to do with how you shape your days and our pets can help us create and maintain a positive outlook for better stress management and problem-solving, Or in my case solution finding.

For a great book on perspective and how it affects your days:
Ask and It Is Given: Learning to Manifest Your Desires

Till next time, Heidi

With Warm Weather Comes Bugs!

Yes, I'm sure you are really looking forward to Spring. I know I am.
The "outside" animals in my life would love to have less ice around. The dogs... they love the snow. I wish I had a video recorder around when my dog Kizmet decides to dig deep into a snow bank to find a smelly something and comes up all snowy on her black face. Guess I'll have to start carrying a camera around!

More to the point: Warm weather brings bugs into our lives. If you were successful in keeping fleas and ticks at bay last year I commend you as it was a tough battle here. I tried everything! Home remedies, topicals from the vet, and lots of water but I was not quite successful until... Dun dun dah: I found Little City Dogs Flea products. They carry lots of options for the vast array of pets, both cats and dogs, and it really works. It's a pill which means less mess and you don't have to keep an eye on children so they don't poison themselves by putting their hands in their mouths after petting the dog.

There are 6 dogs in this house. Yes, 6! Three belong to my wife and I and three belong to other family members. And they all go outside and dig, play, frolic and roll. Which means we had lots of sand fleas and deer ticks lurking around. I picked us up a few boxes of Little City Dogs Flea killer and the effect was monumental. I got to sleep that night.

I'm not kidding. We tried Frontline. Twice. I heard other people tell me that it didn't do it for their dogs either. It was the general consensus that the fleas were somehow different now. That may well be the case but I'm convinced I've found our "bodyguard".

A great backstory about Little City Dogs: the people who started the company were looking for a way to help relieve the stray pets of the city (New York, I believe). They did their research and created a minimum ingredient pill that they could administer that has no know side effects to the animals. Check them out. I'm glad I did.

An important thing to point out here: you may need both the flea KILLER and the CONTROL. The killer rids your dog of all fleas that bite in 24 hours of administering the pill. The control is a fertility inhibitor so the fleas will produce only infertile fleas so the cycle of eggs will stop. Now in heavy infestations and some parts of the country flea eggs can hide in the house for up to 10 months so you have to keep at it. I can say from experience that none of my dogs have shown any signs of side effects. I can also say that peanut butter makes these pills disappear faster then a jumping flea! My dogs all love peanut butter. :)

Small Dogs and Cats:
Little City Dogs CHICKEN FLAVORED Flea Killer Capsules for Cats and Small Dogs - 2 to 25 lbs Little City Dogs once-a-month FLEA CONTROL Capsules for Cats and Small Dogs - 2 to 25 lbs

Big Dogs:
Little City Dogs BEEF FLAVORED Flea Killer Capsules for Dogs - 25 to 125 lbs
Little City Dogs once-a-month FLEA CONTROL Capsules for Dogs 35 to 80 lbs

Ciao, Heidi

Kizmet, The Wonder Dog

So here goes... A page out of the story of our life here on this hilly ridge in Vermont featuring Miss Kizmet, who at the time was only 2.

Kizmet is our second dog. Really she's "our" first dog as I had Denali before I met Sarah, my wife. We got Kizmet from my parents who had a new litter from Denali's sister, Montana. This was Montana's third litter and she routinely brought 7-8 puppies into the world in all four litters she had. Montana is now fixed and a very happy girl at 9 years old. Back to Kizmet:

When Kizmet was young it was apparent that she was fast. She can chew up mileage and spit it back out. With legs like that we knew we couldn't let her run around willy-nilly as a pup. So we leash trained her and took her for walks outside. She was alright at it but her excitement level always seem to cloud her judgement. Kizmet spent a bunch of time on a leash at my side. I'd trained Denali this way and Denali was trusted to stick around and not run off after all those things dogs can hear that people cannot. Well, then I thought I would try the next step with Kizmet. Denali has the kind of personality that is dying to please me and she knew that if she was wearing a leash that it meant she had to keep an eye on me (don't ask me where I got that, it just happened that way) she knew that she had to keep an ear out and respond at a moments notice if I called her to me. (Denali's back story is here)

In an effort to try to give this freedom to Kizmet I made the heinous mistake of letting her leash go while she was lying on the ground next to me. Beautiful fall day in November, warm, no bugs anymore, lovely.Then the dogs heard a sound and off they went. All of them (there were four at the time). I was beside myself. I couldn't believe I had let that happen. I called and called. I went out after them. Later the older dogs returned not phased at all. They had a good run and they were good and tired now. But no Kizmet. I was already praying.

I spent the next four days covering the hills around my place on foot. The leash would not have let her get very far, right? Wrong. I called every town official I knew, every contact that might be able to put the world out, all the humane societies in the area, posted her on Facebook, the local listservs, plastered posters in the grocery stores. I didn't stop. I couldn't give up. I knew she could cover some ground so I called all my friends that hunted and told them about her disappearence. I asked them to tell their hunting friends and passed out photos of her. Maybe one of them was Kizmet's angel. Whoever it was, I'm still very thankful.

I never did find out where she had gotten hung up but at 2 AM the fifth morning (many prayers later) Kizmet showed up at the back door very excited to be home. I jumped out of bed shouting to anyone who wanted to know that Kizmet was home and I was letting her in. She came into the kitchen and I looked her all over. She was so excited to see us that was she was "talking" a mile a minute. I was thrilled that she had returned and thanked every deity I could think of. She was a little skinny but whole, no injuries. She still had her collar on but had pulled a dent in the d ring where the leash had been attached. The leash was gone.

We speculated for a day or two about what had happened but in the end we figure someone had come across her in the woods, had let her off the leash to get it untangled and she didn't stick around to long. She knew where home was she just hadn't been able to get free to get there.

So now, Kizmet is still not able to go outside offline because she can cover far more ground then we own and she gets too excited to realize she might run over a porcupine or worse. The thing is, now she pulls like crazy after trying to save her own life when tangled in the woods and it's hard for anyone but me to walk her with a regular collar and leash set up. This is why I bought her a PetSafe Easy Walk Dog Harness. This harness is designed to disengage the dogs forward motion and shut down their pulling. I LOVE IT! Kizmet is a whole different dog online now. She wears the harness anytime we go outside. I suggest this harness to anyone who comes to me with pulling dog issues. The harness comes in a range of colors and sizes, includes a 6 foot leash with loop and it's not a bad price. I've had our Lime Green one for more then a year now and it's still going strong with no signs of wear. The buckles are plastic on mine (so beware of chewing dogs) but they are still intact.
Now if I could just get her to bring it to the door with her, we'd be set. :)

 PetSafe Easy Walk Dog Harness

Welcome!

Hello and welcome to The Animals Alongside.

I'm Heidi and my four legged Sidekick is Denali, a female Golden Ret./Boxer mix.
I'm excited to start this adventure in Blog writing and I hope you'll join me for the ride. I have been running (literally) a pet care services business for a little over a year now. With that and the experience points I've gained from working at horse farms, livestock operations, and my own pets (yes, the list is quite long) I feel I now have something to offer people. I'm also a bit on the opinionated side so I'll be letting you know how I feel about various pet related activities, products and possibilities. If you ever have a topic you'd like to learn more about I'd be happy to make a post about it here. Comments are always on so please feel free to join the conversation. You never know what kind of sillyness we could get into around here and sillyness is a good thing (oh, the opinions have started.). Ciao, Heidi