Living Large In Our Little House

Congratulations to Bonnie, who won the copy of “The Last Place You’d Look.” Congratulations to Bonnie and thanks to every­one who entered and thanks to Carole Moore for pro­vid­ing the copy of the book for the con­test! ___________________________________________________________________________________

Molly and Dale

In search­ing for mate­r­ial for a pet col­umn I pen every other week, I found this story about a Maltese named Jake who lived with his own­ers in a sub­ur­ban Washington state home.

They returned from work one night to find his decap­i­tated body under their deck. Jake had access to the out­doors through a doggy door, a con­ve­nience many work­ing pet par­ents have for their four legged fam­ily members.

Jake’s fam­ily home backed up to woods, accord­ing to news arti­cles and although Jake’s own­ers first thought it was a human who had entered their yard and killed their dog, vet­eri­nar­i­ans who exam­ined Jake’s body said it was coyotes.

Although I know coy­otes will kill small pets, I had no idea that dur­ing mat­ing sea­son, they will kill ani­mals they feel are rivals, tak­ing the heads of their prey and bury­ing them elsewhere.

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Molly, giv­ing Dale one of her famous kissies

The tell tale signs were all there: The cough­ing, heav­ing, wheezing.

I tried to ignore them. After hav­ing pets all of my life, I knew deep down that it wasn’t aller­gies or a cold.

Last week, our (approx­i­mately) 8-year-old red Dachshund, Molly, was diag­nosed with an enlarged heart.

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