Midnight links: rabies/vaccines/titers

Austin - stream of bats at sundown. Photo by Wordyeti on Flickr. "A single little brown bat can eat up to 1,000 mosquito-sized insects in a single hour, while a pregnant or lactating female bat typically eats the equivalent of her entire body weight in insects each night." [Source: Bat Conservation International.]

It all started when the most excellent Julie Zickefoose rescued a young bat. And then another bat. Julie has forgotten more about nature and about wildlife than most of us will ever know, and she took all the standard precautions and figured the rabies risk was smaller than negligible.

Then things got complicated. There are bat strains of rabies as well as canine strains, and scientists don't know much about the bat strains. "Certainly these kinds of viruses, under the right conditions, can establish very persistent latent infections. I personally don't agree that we know that an asymptomatic bat cannot transmit the disease."

Good news: the bat turned out not to be rabid. Sad news: in order to test the bat for rabies the little creature had to be killed. Super-helpful news: Julie was thoughtful enough to share all kinds of bat and rabies information with her readers. A good thing, since I'd like to sign up for this.


Vaccines are a special area of interest and concern for dog people, and on Thursday Pet Connection's Kim Campbell Thornton reported on the latest vaccine news from the Rabies Challenge fundraiser in San Diego.

In light of which, I'll quote Julie Z:

The deal with the [rabies pre-exposure] shots is you get your titer checked every two years (about $40), and if the rabies antibodies are still high, you're OK. One woman I know says hers has held for 15 years and counting.

15 years! Nice to know, if you're interested in safely extending the required interval for canine rabies boosters [and I am]. Thanks to Julie for the great blog posts, and may her pre-exposure vaccinations not hurt a bit.

I am thankful for Chet Baker

Puppy Chet wears his lucky [GIMPshopped] Lady of Guadalupe sock. Get your own pair here.

So I spent most of my Thanksgiving vacation with a 103F fever, wondering whether I would diiiiiieee, but actually I was more worried about Chet Baker. I worry about Chet a lot, partly because I'm a worry-wart border collie person but mainly because Chet Baker is the most terrific, handsome, charming, gentlemanly and doggish Boston Terrier in the history of the planet. [I rest my case. It doesn't hurt that his human is the most excellent writer/artist/photographer/birder/blogger Julie Zickefoose.] Chet Baker is, as Julie would say, totally ossum. Who wouldn't worry if he fell off a cliff or some such terrifying thing?

Chet, like your faithful blogger, was born on December 12 — a miraculous date any way you look at it, and I'm not even going to touch that impressive risen-from-the-dead business. Just let me say that I couldn't love and worry about Chet more if he were my very own, and here is proof, or at any rate proof of what certain border collie people mean by love: a tangentially related abstract from PubMed. I also worry something awful about coyotes, which snatch innocent Boston Terriers off porches; and when Julie didn't post a word for two days after his fall and recovery, I was curled up in knots [the fever didn't help], sure that Something Had Gone Terribly Wrong.

It hadn't. Chet is fine. And Julie loves him exactly the way she should. In fact, speaking of dog people who love dogs the way they should, here's a link to the best dog story ever written. [There's some white-man's-burden stuff in there, but dog people will push it off to the side for the story's sake. Also: Garm is what people today would call a pit bull.]

In a few weeks I'll be driving to San Juan Bautista for the Shepherd's Play performed in the old mission. It's wonderful. I will light candles in the mission church for Chet and for Lily who belongs to my sis and for all the dogs I love now and have loved over the years, and I'll think about how wonderful it is to have a great dog [several, in fact] waiting for me at home. Happy Late Thanksgiving and Happy Early Birthday, Chet Baker! May you have many more, and may each be happier than the last. And Chet? Watch out for coyotes, shorty. Also, did I mention you have more faithful admirers than you'll ever know? Because you do. You totally, totally do.

Introduction: What they looked for in a breeder

I'd like to write a couple posts on what I look for in a dog breeder, and what I think other people ought to look for in a breeder, and to get things rolling, I'm going to delegate. Here are two links to posts written by Smart People with Really Nice Dogs.

Henry Chappell is a writer and outdoorsman who wanted a good "meat, hide, and stock dog," and found what he was looking for in a pup named Cate, a Mountain Cur. Read the first post about Cate here.

Julie Zickefoose has been in my sidebar since this blog was born. She's an artist and writer and NPR commentator, and I'm in love with her Boston Terrier. His name is Chet Baker, and he is too cool for school. [It doesn't hurt that Julie is a fine photographer and Chet, of course, is a great subject.] Here is A Brief History of Chet: Part 1, and here is Part 2, with possibly the cutest puppy photo in the history of the universe.

Finally, to add to the mix, here is the oft-quoted/oft-linked Reputable Breeder vs. the Backyard Breeder.

All food for thought. I'll write more tomorrow.