Looking back on a warm, fuzzy year in the wet Willamette Valley

This time of year Spot likes to do a roundup on all things pet around the Willamette Valley, a nice little year-end wrap-up of sorts, perfectly times to help celebrate our 2009 Willamette Valley Cover Model winner. Here, join Spot’s Willamette Valley scribe, Camilla Mortensen, in an exploration of all things pet in the Willamette Valley.

The rainy season has hit with its usual cloud and chill, but around the Willamette Valley there’s been a sunny outlook for pets all year long. Businesses have sprung up and expanded, and efforts to find forever homes for pups and kitties from Cottage Grove to Albany have seen great success.

It’s been a warm, fuzzy year in the wet Willamette Valley

Willamette ValleyCamilla Mortensen - Spot MagazineNovember 1, 2009Willamette Valley, Events

Don’t Eat That! Part 2

Last month in Spot we discussed the reasons dog eat feces (click here for article), and laid out a training plan to teach your dog to “leave it” alone for good.

If you are going to have success teaching your dog to stop eating poop it’s important that you first have a prevention plan solidly in place — then train them to do what you want (leave the poop alone).

Willamette Valley, Behavior/Training, Health/WellnessJennifer Biglan, CPDTNovember 1, 2009TrainingComment

Fire Safety Fever - Catch it with Cody the Firedog

Excerpt: Le’s Talk About Fire October is National Fire Prevention Month, and Cody the Fire dog of Eugene is an expert on the subject — he’s teaching fire safety and prevention nearly every day.

Don’t Eat That!

If you are grossed out by your Cophrophagia dog, aka a dog THAT EATS FECES, read on. Most of us can deal with the fact that our beloved fido is eating the feces of other animals, however, when they turn to eating their own, it’s a lot to handle. Imagining our dogs chowing down on a pile of poo and then later licking our face — without the consideration of brushing or even rinsing — is cause for nausea.

Why do dogs eat poop? For a variety of reasons. Poor diet, boredom, instinctual habits from mother dogs eating their pups’ feces to hide them from predators, and sometimes an accidentally reinforced behavior are just a few of the possibilities. So how do we fix this natural but disgusting habit?

Willamette Valley, Health/WellnessJennifer Biglan, CPDTOctober 1, 2009Health Issues, Nutrition, TrainingComment

WAG more, reproduce less

By 8am every weekday, the lobby of the Willamette Animal Guild (WAG) Spay and Neuter Clinic starts to fill with people and their pets. “We get a range of people, old and young,” says Kathy Ford, WAG’s treasurer and one of many hands-on people keeping WAG going. People look to WAG for a low-cost fix to the problem of the thousands of unwanted cats and dogs in Lane County. “Cats can have three to four litters a year,” says Ford, “if they’re hell-bent on doing that. Two is minimal.”

Thanks to WAG, sometimes as many as 500 cats and dogs are spayed in a month. The clinic performs about 20 to 25 surgeries in a day and has spayed about seven thousand animals in its one and half years of existence, preventing tens of thousands of unwanted cats and dogs.

Willamette ValleyCamilla Mortensen - Spot MagazineSeptember 1, 2009Spay & Neuter, Willamette ValleyComment

Stay, play and learn at a little slice of heaven in Pleasant Hill

You know how happy your dog is when you get home after being gone for a week and you walk in the door and he practically does back flips for joy? How the whole room just exudes doggie delight because everything thing in his little canine world is right again now that you’re home?

That’s about how delighted Sonja Mandel is to own and operate Opportunity Barks, a doggie daycare, boarding and training facility in Pleasant Hill, OR, just outside Eugene. Mandel and her partner, Carol Rozek simply love dogs. And they love caring for them when their people are away. “This facility is everything we wanted and more,” says Mandel of their air-conditioned and heated brand-new building in view of the Cascade Mountains. “You can get into dreamland out here.”

Willamette ValleyCamilla Mortensen - Spot MagazineSeptember 1, 2009Daycare Comment