Trouble for a Mail-Order Dog

Topic

Noble Beasts

Thursday, Oct 20, 2011 8:00 PM Eastern Daylight Time

The trouble with a mail-order dog

I'm a dog lover but would I buy one over the Internet? Maybe

Topics:Noble Beasts

Anybody who knows me knows that I’m a fool for a dog. Not every dog that ever lived; rodent-size yappers leave me cold. However, to my wife and me, a house without tooth-marked chair legs and tumbleweeds of hair in the corners barely qualifies as a home.

That pungent odor that makes fastidious visitors wrinkle their noses on rainy days? That’s the smell of unconditional love.

Some years back, I phoned my veterinarian pal Randy about a newspaper article reporting that academic psychologists had decided that dogs feel emotions. I asked if he that found newsworthy. Never one to mince words, he said “A [bleeping] dog is emotions with a nose.”

Google “dogs greeting soldiers” and watch a few online videos of deliriously happy animals greeting their masters returning from Iraq and Afghanistan. Anybody who remains dry-eyed must never have experienced canine devotion.

Almost as puzzling as dog haters are people who keep pets but have no earthly idea how the animals think and feel. Cesar Milan has made a handsome living off dog owners whose cluelessness makes “The Dog Whisperer” one of the funniest things on TV.

In real life, however, not every story has a happy ending. Consider the sorrowful experience of “Emmi,” a 5-year-old German shepherd who spent a terrible few days in a crate flying cross-country between a dope in New York who bought her and a doofus in Washington state who sold her, then resisted taking her back as if she were an out-of-warranty used car.

The story, reported in the New York Times, invites disbelief. One Jason Dubin, of Port Chester, N.Y.,contracted over the Internet with Kraftwerk K9, a Washington state outfit that imports, breeds and trains German shepherd protection dogs, to buy Emmi sight-unseen for $7,500.

Actually not totally unseen. There’s a video of the very beautiful animal on the firm’s website responding flawlessly to her trainer’s commands—heeling, sitting, staying and retrieving a dumbbell with impressive zeal.

If anything, Emmi’s a bit over-trained. Throughout the video, she’s obsessively fixated on the trainer’s hands, from whence, no doubt, hot dog pieces came. I prefer a canine companion to a veritable slave, a dog that registers its surroundings and goes about its doggy business. What Emmi’s like when she’s off-duty, there’s no telling.

“Emmi was portrayed to us as an obedient, well-trained, even-tempered dog,” Durbin told a reporter. “But within a week, I soon realized that Emmi was an aggressive dog who posed a great danger to my family.”

Specifically, Emmi stands accused of “terrorizing” the cat (horrors!), biting another dog under unspecified circumstances, and attempting to bite the Dubin’s 8-year-old son. Concluding he couldn’t control her, he informed Kraftwerk K9 that he was putting Emmi in her crate and shipping her back to Seattle.

Kraftwerk K9’s owner Wayne Curry, in maybe the worst marketing decision since the New Coke, announced that as the firm’s 72-hour returns policy had expired, he wouldn’t collect Emmi at the airport. Still crated, the poor, confused and no doubt despondent animal eventually spent overnight in a Seattle kennel, before Curry relented and sent somebody to retrieve her.

Still bickering over money, both men pronounced themselves glad that Emmi hadn’t ended up being euthanized at the city pound.

As the saying goes, you wouldn’t treat a dog like that. Anyway, where to start? First, nobody as clueless as Durbin needs a protection dog. Ninety-nine percent of a big dog’s protective value is its bark. Otherwise, an amateur’s just asking for trouble.

Second, $7,500 for a middle-aged animal? Why was Emmi still available?

Buying a dog on the Internet is like marrying a Russian mail-order bride. Unpleasant surprises are all but guaranteed. If Durbin needed a designer dog to brag about, he could have bought one from a respected local breeder at a fraction of the price. That way, he could have evaluated the dog’s temperament—canine personalities vary almost as much as human ones—or even asked a knowledgeable friend’s help.

Then he could have donated the remaining $7,000 to the Humane Society.

In defense of poor Emmi, even the best-trained dog is not a DVD player. They don’t take orders from strangers. German shepherds in particular form strong emotional bonds with their masters; they need time and patient handling to adapt to changed circumstances.

Gradually introduced to her new family, Emmi would probably have learned to leave the cat be. She’d also probably had little or no contact with children. Durbin’s concern is understandable, but if the dog meant to bite his son, she wouldn’t have missed. The dog felt overwhelmed, and snapped a warning.

Maybe Emmi’s a canine head-case, they definitely exist. More likely, she’s a victim of human folly. All Durbin ever really needed was a golden retriever or a mutt from the shelter.

That said, I’d try Emmi out in a heartbeat.

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Arkansas Democrat-Gazette columnist Gene Lyons is a National Magazine Award winner and co-author of "The Hunting of the President" (St. Martin's Press, 2000). You can e-mail Lyons at eugenelyons2@yahoo.com. More Gene Lyons

Ideas for Defraying High Veterinary Costs for Pets

TRAVELS WITH MY DOG

OBSERVATIONS ON THE GLOBAL SCENE

Ideas for Defraying High Veterinary Costs for Pets

Posted by Raja on October 3rd, 2011 — Posted in Health

Tags: pet clinical trials, Raja the World Traveler, Travel Dog Books, Veterinary care costs

Working hard looking for answers.

We promised we would research what pet owners can do in case of high costs and low funds for veterinary care. There is no magic solution, we discover. BUT there are lots of options and you must persist and follow through.

Small Charities: There are hundreds of small charities that offer grants for pet owners. If your pet is a pure breed dog or a service dog, there are charities associated with those specific categories and online research reveals your options pretty easily. But bear in mind, charities are not bottomless. Apply at the end of the fiscal year and you are scraping bottom. And applications take time.

Charitable Vets: Sometimes vets can discount care and even trade care for work such as cleaning facilities, walking dogs or doing painting and repairs. Do not feel shy to ask the primary vet in a businesslike and professional way. We keep in mind that each veterinary office is, at root, a business and vets need to pay lots of bills to keep the doors open; to negotiate work for care is not a right, but a wonderful blessing when it happens. Not all vets have the wiggle room to commit to care for work structures. If you get lucky, please follow through on all commitments so this kind of good faith can continue between some vets and some patients. If you have been seeing the same vet for years, the relationship should be well enough established that your vet can meet your request at some level.

Animal Shelters are always assisted by charitable vets. Your local shelter’s administrator may share the list. Most communities have several local shelters, civic and private.

Veterinary Schools: Some veterinary schools offer discounted care. Your pet’s care is always overseen by a supervisor who is an experienced vet. Your pet is not a lab animal, but a true patient in these situations. To find out if a veterinary college is near you, use an online search engine looking up veterinary programs by state. Contact information is often at the bottom of the home page. Call the program’s main number; ask to be connected to the specialist who can tell you about discounted veterinary care by supervised learners. If this situation works out for you, remember you are still the consumer and you still have rights and agency regarding your pet’s care. Assist the program by bringing copies of all previous medical records and list of current meds.

Clinical Trials: Eligible pets with a variety of conditions can participate in Clinical Drug and Treatment Trials, especially when existing treatment has been ineffective. The ACI, Animal Clinical Investigation, LLC in Washington, DC at http://www.animalci.com/about is a good resource to investigate opportunities.

Meds: If your pet’s prescriptions are too expensive, ask your vet to consider another manufacturer or a generic. You may also look on the box, read the name of the manufacturer, search engine the main office, and call to ask to whom you should speak to see if there are any donated meds for hardship cases. It never hurts to ask and veterinary medicine manufacturers indeed do donate thousands of prescriptions yearly for free. The skill here is to keep asking until you reach the administrator who can handle your request. Do not accept “no” from the receptionist ever!

Loans: Yes, your bank can issue small loans for veterinary care. Loans of 10,000 and under are not too difficult to negotiate if you have any collateral or credit at all. Getting a grant is much nicer, but getting a loan happens much more easily, and sometimes you do not have time to wait.

Save up: If your vet warns you that cataracts or kidney stones or liver trouble are on the horizon, now is the time to begin to scrimp and set cash aside. Every vet visit is an opportunity to hear the early warning and plan.

This post was not as cheerful as I hoped it would be. Our research reveals that being professional, proactive and persistent will help in your quest for easement of high vet costs.

Here’s wishing all of you health and happiness every day!