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In seems a raccoon on the loose in South Yorkshire is passing on a fatal disease to dogs. Already it seems at least two, possibly three dogs, have died.

According to The Guardian, the story started when a local vet practice put down a dog with symptoms of paralysis similar to those reported to be caused by bites or saliva from a raccoon. Racoons are a North American mammal, which a few people do keep as pets in the UK.

The dog´s owners, from the Barnsley area, had reported seeing a raccoon being walked on a lead near where they exercised their seven-year-old Lhasa apso, according to a letter about the case in the Veterinary Record.

Its author, Pip Boydell, said a similar case had been reported in the Barnsley area, although that dog had been put down before any detailed investigation. There may have been a third case in the area, although signs were less specific.

Now he is trying to discover whether the animals were suffering from coonhound paralysis after possible contact with a raccoon.
Pip Boydell works for Animal Medical Centre Referral Services, a specialist veterinary practice.

His letter concedes that the symptoms of the dog, which needed a ventilator to help it breathe during part of the treatment, may also be linked to botulin intoxication, tick paralysis or have other origins, including an auto-immune reaction. But the dog was said not to have been exposed to anything edible on walks. "Tick paralysis has not been reported in the UK. In North America association with raccoons has been recognised as a cause of polyradiculomyelopathy, although the mechanism remains uncertain."

Pip Boydell´s letter adds: "A raccoon in the same locality is likely to be a coincidence, but, without wishing to scaremonger or jump at possible red herrings, we would be very interested to hear from veterinary surgeons in the South Yorkshire area."

(So he realises this could all be a load of baloney!- Ed)

The dog´s owner, Christine Smith, told how her beloved dog had fallen ill after returning from a walk in the village of Havercroft, near Barnsley, one morning in May. Cassie and Smith´s other dog, an 18-month-old shih-tzu, had remained on leads throughout the walk.

"She was limping," said Smith. "I took her up on the breakfast table to bathe her paw because I thought she had cut it. But when I put her back on the floor, she still could not stand up, limped on a bit but then collapsed and fell on her side. I thought it was some sort of stroke."

Her local vet advised taking Cassie to Rotherham for investigation, and Boydell took the dog back to Manchester, where she was put on a drip because she was not eating. After two weeks there Cassie returned home, still unable to walk. A week later, she was put down because her condition was worsening.

"A week after I had her euthanised, my son Robert saw a raccoon over the other side of a sports field in the village. A lady had it on the lead," said Smith. "I don´t think Cassie can have come into contact with it … We didn´t go into the field that morning. There is nothing one dog did the other didn´t. I don´t know how Cassie picked it up."

She did not know whether the raccoon had ever been where her dogs had been walked or whether such an animal was responsible for Cassie´s illness. "I have gone round the village seeing if there was a racooon in the area but no-one knows," she said. "I don´t know if it was with a person visiting. There was a cricket match on.

The whole story seems to be a bit of a mystery. What actually killed the dog has not been established and the idea that it was a disease passed on by a raccoon may be false? Maybe other PetStreet members have a view on this - but I am pretty sceptical about the raccoon connection. However if there is a nasty dog disease out there let´s hope the vets can establish the facts asap.

Photo: Michael Scheltgen

The RSPCA has just come out in firm support of a dog license.

They say that an annual dog licence fee of as little as £21.501 could help reduce the number of strays and help tackle irresponsible dog breeding. Owners would face a cost of less than 42p a week per dog – less than the price of an average chocolate bar – in order to provide huge improvements to dog welfare and dog control services.

This is all based on a report by Reading University, commissioned by the RSPCA.

It makes three recommendations in its conclusion:

· The government should establish a dog health and welfare strategy underpinned and funded by a dog licence scheme. This would fund resources to tackle the issues, such as strays, injuries caused by dog bites and the prevention of disease, as covered in the report.
· The scheme could be set at £20-£30 per dog annually, with discounts for selected dogs (e.g. assistance dogs, neutered dogs) and people (e.g. pensioners).
· Microchips would be used to identify the dogs, with details entered on a national database, improving dog ownership and reducing numbers of unwanted dogs.

The RSPCA believe that a dog license would raise money for dog welfare, increase the numbers of responsible dog owners by getting people to think before they get a dog and start to reverse the surplus of dogs on the market by providing incentives such as reduced fees for neutering dogs.

However Dogs Trust have come out against this idea. They say:- “Dogs Trust is adamant that a return to the dog licence would provide no welfare benefit to dogs. Dog licensing is little more than a punitive tax on responsible dog owners who already contribute estimated £451 million to the public purse through dog related tax resources.*

The dog licence is still a requirement in Northern Ireland yet only an estimated one-third of all dog owners currently have their dogs licensed. Despite this Northern Ireland still has the highest number of stray dogs per head of population of any part of the UK. The number of dogs put to sleep in the region represents a staggering 34% of the total UK figure.

Dogs Trust recommends that a system of compulsory microchipping, linking dog to owner is effective in returning stray and stolen dogs to their owners and which would improve the traceability of battery farmed dogs.”

So where do you stand on this?

At the weekend in Dundee a ten-year-old girl suffered horrific injuries after she was dragged from her bike and mauled by three rottweilers.

Rhianna Kidd´s jaw was broken and her body was covered in deep wounds when she was attacked as she cycled to her grandmother´s house. The schoolgirl was only a few yards from safety when the animals pounced, pinning her to the ground and began biting her.

Her horrified grandmother, Irene Grady, 56, was watching for Rhianna from the window of her home and later said: ´I can still hear her screams. She´s in an awful mess. She´s got bites at the back of her ears and will have to have her jaw wired. Her clothes were shredded and had to be cut off her. She has a bite under her chin and I´m just thankful they never got her throat or things could have been a lot worse. ´Those were not dogs, they were machines.´

The three dogs are due to be destroyed. Owner Derek Adam, 37, said: ´They have always been fine with my kids, but something´s happened to them. ´That poor girl was just out on her bike. She never did anything wrong. I can´t apologise enough.´

Mr Adam´s partner, Sarah Kerr, 33, has been charged in connection with the incident. A Tayside Police spokesman said: ´A woman has been charged under the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 for failing to keep the dogs under control.´

Now there will inevitably be a media backlash - with people calling for the rottweiler to be banned. Of course I´d be very interested to know what exactly happened here and why it happened, but we all know banning any specific breed simply does not work.

Instead let´s concentrate on:-
1. Where the dogs come from ie responsible breeders and not greedy BYB´s.

2. Who is owning them - responsible educated owners or idiots. (When I say educated I don´t mean 10 GCSE´s but educated in the ways of the responsible dog ownership).

3. The most important question of all:- is the dog a responsible member of society or simply a friggin´ nuisance?

PetStreet´s Sarah-Jayne Wright has a very moving story to tell about how her tiny Pomeranian, Dexy, saved her life.

She says;- Dexy really did save my life. My partner had left me after I found out that he had cheated on me and had a baby with his ex. He had lied to me for months and completely shattered my world.

I took it very very badly, ended up taking overdoses and cutting my wrists and my weight plummented to just over 7stone. Then Dexy found me. Since then having her in my life has enabled me to see the light at the end of the tunnel, and have purpose. She saved my life in that way. Without her I was heading towards a life in an institution, but she´s everything I need. She loves me unconditionally and needs me. I feel exactly the same about her, and there´s not a moment I dont look at her and think how lucky I am to have her.

As much as i love all my cats, Dexy has shown me the friendship and love I needed more than anything else in the world.

SJ x

Have any other members stories where their pets helped them through tough times?

A wierd new calendar has come out that uses pets to spoof the rich and famous.

The similarities of many of the pets to the human celeb are amazing in a few cases, but dont forget how much photo shop was used!

The calendar, by design company Takkoda, is available all over the place.

Description

When we were planning our summer holiday this year my husband and I hit a problem. The friends who usually look after our tropical fish and our hamster were going to be away at the same time as us!

We had once tried feeding our fish one of those holiday blocks commonly available in pet shops that is supposed to dissolve slowly and release food into the tank over several days. It was a really bad idea. We returned home to find the plaster block had hardly melted at all, the tank water was green and the gravel and tank décor were covered in a thick layer of green algae! It took a lot of scrubbing and several weeks of large water changes to clean up the tank.

This summer a neighbour offered to care for our pets while we were away but he was worried about over-feeding the fish. My husband came up with a neat solution. He bought a packet of small envelopes, wrote on them days of the week we were going to be away and put a daily amount of food inside each one. All our neighbour had to do to was to empty one envelope of food into the tank each day.

Our neighbour’s daughter, who has a hamster of her own, was horrified that we planned to leave our hamster Ted in our house on his own while we were away. She decided that just would not do; she would take Ted home with her and look after him herself.

So we went on our holiday knowing that our fish would be looked after and Ted would be treated like royalty!

In fact my hamster Ted often causes raised eyebrows when I tell people about him – ‘He’s a what? A long-haired hamster? Never heard of one of those.’ He is, in fact, a black long-haired Syrian.

When I first saw him in our local pet shop he was just a ball of black fluff with a pink nose. He’s grown into a very handsome lad. His face is black, with a little white patch under his chin. His fur is longest round his ears and on his back legs and fades to grey at the edges. Not at all like regular hamster fur, it’s very soft and fluffy like cotton wool. It tangles easily so I keep him on paper bedding that doesn’t catch in his fur. So it doesn’t get knots in it, his fur needs trimming now and then. My husband has become a skilled hamster hairdresser!

Ted’s favourite treat is monkey nuts. He loves to demolish the shell to get at the nuts. He knows there’s supposed be two nuts inside. If he reaches the bottom of the shell and there’s only one nut, he checks carefully inside what’s left of the shell, then chucks it away and goes hunting around his cage looking for the other nut, making a little ‘tutting’ noise that he does when he’s annoyed!

Denise D´Souza

Hello everyone. I hope you and your animals are all well and happy.

Daisy, the alpaca cria is now a week old and doing brilliantly. She is in a small herd of three with her mum, Crystal, and Sapphire, a year old female who´s mum died when she was just five months old and Crystal took over the task of looking after her. I was a bit worried she might not like Daisy usurping her in Crystal´s affections but she is very fond of the new baby and they race around the field together. Sapphire has never had another youngster to play with before so it´s lovely to see her have someone at last.

I´ve begun to teach them all to lead on a headcollar and they are all being very co-operative.

I´d like to introduce to to two other of my farm animals, my Kune Kune pigs.

We used to breed Gloucester Old Spot and Tamworth pigs and rear them for the freezer, but I hated sending them off for slaughter. Pigs have such an intellegent, almost human, look in their eyes and in the way that they look you straight back in yours. I always struggled with my conscience - ridiculous I know for a meat eater and lover of sausages and bacon sandwiches but we all have our foibles!!!!

Pet pigs seemed the solution to this problem but full size pigs are rather expensive and destructive pets demanding quite a lot of space (although I do still have one huge sow left who is now a pet. She´s called Queenie).

I have to admit that I was never tempted, even in the height of their fashionalbe status, by Pot Bellied pigs, although I´m sure they are delightful, but Kune Kunies are another matter entirely! They don´t grow very large so to anyone with a fair size garden who is not a keen gardener they could be an option as a pet.

They do rotivate the garden or field but not as extensively as full size pigs and they are very clean without that pungent and unmistakeable ´Eau De Pig´ which highlights pig farms from miles away!! They are also easier to fence in and tend not to tunnel under the fences, Colditz style, as larger pigs have a habit of doing.

I have two sisters, Snuffles and Truffles, and they are very intellegent, very friendly and amiable with people, other animals and each other, and very little trouble. They have to weight watch constantly so don´t cost much to feed and find plenty of their own food in the little orchard they share. They are right next to the garden fence and chat away to you and keep you company while you´re gardening, plus they act as instant weed and waste vegetable disposers, always ready for anything lobbed over their fence!

If I had the time they would be very up for clicker training and learning tricks but they are also quite happy to spend their days together, snuffling and rumaging around the orchard and cuddling up close together for their frequent naps in their cosy shelter. Nice work if you can get it!!!

A farmer friend of mine is so taken with them he text me the other day to say it was a bit chilly so please could I put some coats on the piggies for him!!!!!!!!

Helen Whitaker

Did you realise the street pigeon was one of the most succesful birds in the world? They have spread everywhere - few towns and cities are without them.

One of the reasons is city-scapes resemble their natural habitat - cliff faces. They also have a neat trick when it comes to feeding their chicks. They convert burgers, chips and any other rubbish they find, into a type of milk.

In many places their numbers have become excessive and in Barcelona they have been testing the latest gadget to help rid the city of an explosion in pigeon numbers. They employ a sort of catapulted net which they fire over a group of pigeons they have just lured in with food. (Sneaky or what?)

It seems they can catch hundreds of birds each time and the city is trying to catch 65,000 of the birds, roughly 25% of the pigeon population, over the next year and a half.

Of course they are wasting their time doing this. The only way to get rid of street pigeons is to keep the city clean - if there´s no food they will have to go elsewhere.

As we all know the small print on our pet insurance policies can be very confusing. There´s nothing worse than thinking you are covered and then discovering you´re not.

This can happen to anyone including one of the UK´s leading lawyers - a specialist in getting round rules and regulations of speeding and parking issues. ´Mr Loophole´ Nick Freeman failed to read his own pet insurance small-print and is £5,000 out of pocket.

Mr Freeman and his family were at their holiday home in the South of France when their Staffordshire bull terrier, Rocco, collapsed.

Initially it seemed like a simple case of heat exhaustion, but the five-year-old dog failed to improve and ended up in a private animal hospital undergoing tests. Mr Freeman had the comfort of believing the vet’s bill would be covered by his pet insurance – that is until his wife Stephanie rang the company and experienced the sinking feeling familiar to many of us. Whilst their policy was up to date, they had failed to spot small print requiring them to inform their insurer before taking the pet abroad and pay an extra £100 premium for the cover.

Vets eventually diagnosed Rocco with a suspected parasite which was causing his red blood cells to attack one another, and he spent ten days at the hospital undergoing two blood transfusions.

Mr Freeman returned home to Cheshire yesterday with Rocco feeling much better. But he is likely to have to foot a total bill of around £5,000 – although he is taking some comfort in the fact that his policy would have paid out a maximum of £900 in any case. Some insurance policies cap foreign treatment at as little as £150 per trip, and so the lesson is - please check carefully if you plan to take your pet abroad. You may not have the cover you think you do.

Rocco’s illness caps an accident-prone summer for Mr Freeman’s pets – his other Staffordshire bull terrier, 13-year-old Pippa, had to stay in England after being clipped by his car as she lay on the drive.

OK - he´s a multimillionaire, so can easily afford the bill, but it just goes to show how the small print can catch out anyone.