Unusual pet fanciers

Pig, horses and women, dachshunds, pet cemeteries, pigeons

Author

By Various Authors

Publish Date

Aug. 5, 2016

Nowhere do I have any scribbled account that mentions rooting. And now, with half the linoleum gone from our kitchen, it seems it might have been an important point to note. (Sandy Huffaker, Jr.)

If I Had a Sledgehammer for a Nose, What Havoc Would I Wreak?

I bought a pig because I wasn't ready for children. I wanted something small and helpless but something that wouldn't require college or "quality time." I figured if the pig didn't work out, we could always have dinner. That's not an option with children.

By Jennifer Ball, July 3, 1997 | Read full article

Marriage is Temporary, Dogs are Forever

Love-loss and dog loss.

Terry Wilson has won five Emmys for his television directing, producing, and on-camera hosting; he’s been a national martial arts champion; and his 1998 article on the Marine dogs of World War II won best-short prize in a national contest held by the Ralston Purina Company. If he has been a big winner, he says, it’s because he has learned. Everything in life worth learning, he adds, he learned from dogs.

Horses and Their Women

Diane carries halters and coffee and bridles and chaps. She looks like someone waiting to hear if her family has survived a plane crash. She looks as if she expects they have not. She’s 43 and she’s ridden in shows off and on since she was 13 years old. She hates this and she loves it. She hates it.

To be a show horse is like being a beauty contestant.

By Laura McNeal, March 7, 2002 | Read full article

Entry at Hallo-Weiner Dachshund Picnic, October 26. Newsday gossip columnist Liz Smith’s dogs are dressed up like clowns with the face ruff. (Sandy Huffaker, Jr.)

Low to the ground

Dachshunds and the people who love them.

“One afternoon in the park I said it would be fun to run one of those free classified advertisements in the Reader and see who shows up with their dachshunds. We decided on a date, Noodle’s birthday, and a rendezvous point, the large fig tree behind the National History Museum. We ran the ad, and we showed up the tree at the appointed date and time not knowing if anything besides immediate friends and their dogs would be there. To our surprise, around 35 people arrived with their dachshunds."

By Judith Moore, October 21, 1996 | Read full article

“We have ‘Kitty Haven’ — that section is just for cats. Most of the time, the cats and dogs are buried together. They don’t fight after they have gone." (Jim Coit)

A Tale of Animal Rites

Death of the loving companion.

"People come in and they want their pets put to sleep. They’ve gone to other vets who won’t do it, because the vets say the pets aren’t that sick. I think,’ he said, ‘that the people who own the animals have a right to say when those animals should be put to sleep. Vets don’t have a right to tell them they can’t do that, if that’s what they want.”

By Judith Moore and Abe Opincar, Sept. 15, 1988 | Read full article

When we went to the Del Mar Fair, I was feeling guilty. I had decided not to tell my brother right away that Chocolate was a goner.

Ascension to Pigeon Heaven

If you are looking at the sky hoping to see your pigeon return, you are more attentive to the shape and grace of bird bodies, the way they coast or dive or fly in funny little flocks like the bushtits. Or you're taken by the Greco-Roman lines of the cedar waxwings. You fear the stealth fighters, the streamlined Cooper's hawks; you notice how the seagulls fly back toward the sea each night. You laugh at the mourning dove who makes squeaky noises when it takes off, as if it had the rusted joints of the Tin Man; and you can even identify the fat-bodied, heavy-winged sound of your own pigeon as it wends its way into the roost. Pigeons are distinct as pets, they are mediaries between the tame and the wild. Different from dogs or cats, who finally become half human, pigeons remain in their birdness.

By Susan Luzzaro, Oct. 21, 1999 | Read full article