Love stories from former shelter pets and their adopters

Lola Hawkins + Bellatrix 

At 10 years old, Lola Hawkins has already experienced love at first sight. She was browsing the Iowa City Animal Care and Adoption Center website this November when she came upon a tan and black tabby kitten with a half-pink, half-black nose.

“I saw her picture online and I said, ‘That’s the one. I need her,” the self-described “crazy cat lady” said. “I knew she would be my perfect match.”

Lola’s mom Susan issued her daughter a challenge: finish an egg roll during one of their dinners at Thai Spice, and she could adopt the cat of her dreams.

“But I could only eat half,” Lola lamented. “I didn’t finish it in time, so I spent the night crying and crying. But we went to the shelter anyway to meet her, and I found out after we left that my mom had put in an application.”

Later that week, they took the new kitten home to North Liberty. Lola called her Bellatrix after the vicious and cunning Harry Potter villain.

“I was going to name her Ginny Weasley, but look at her.” Lola flicks a feather toy through the air, and Bellatrix springs to claw after it. “Does she look like a Ginny?”

Despite the kitten’s frisky nature, Lola said she initially bonded with Bellatrix over their mutual shyness. It wasn’t long before they became “best friends forever,” Lola said. She even lets Bellatrix plant kisses directly on her mouth. “It feels weird to have her sandpapery tongue on my lips. But it’s love.”

Caring for cats is nothing new to Lola, an active participant in the Iowa City Animal Center’s Read to the Paw program. The Van Allen Elementary student visits the shelter every Thursday to plop on a donated dog bed in one of the cat rooms and read Shel Silverstein, J.K. Rowling and Roald Dahl books to the residents. Hearing human voices works to calm and socialize shelter animals.

“They always open up to me,” Lola said. “I will hold the books up to the glass wall so they can see the pictures. Sometimes I feel like they’re laughing at the jokes.”

Lola plans to keep up with Read to the Paw until she’s old enough to be a full volunteer at 14. Someday, she wants to adopt an all-black cat named Sirius — “hopefully Bellatrix doesn’t kill him!” — and open a cat rescue. Or be an architect. For now, she’s enjoying life as a cat mom.

“Bellatrix definitely is my cutie patootie,” Lola said. “This is her forever home and I want her to love it forever.”

Tammy Bloomhuff + Wally 

On any given day, Tammy Bloomhuff can be found walking with more than 400 pounds worth of dogs.

“I’ve been knocked down, dragged, had my eyes clawed,” Bloomhuff said. “It happens with big dogs.”

Bloomhuff is currently mother to Stella, a part-Pyrenees Mountain dog whose thick white coat makes even single-digit temperatures comfortable; bull mastiff/lab mix Maybelle, nicknamed “Lump the Destroyer”; and the newest super-sized rescue, Wallace, nicknamed Wally.

Bloomhuff has rescued dogs and cats from California to Iowa — from shelters, a Dollar General parking lot or families dropping them off at her Muscatine home.

“It just kind of snowballed,” she said. “People know you’re a sucker and they’ll bring them by. You start seeing the need. When you hear some of the reasons people give them up — they shed, they’re not housebroken, he loves me too much — that’s probably the craziest one I’ve heard. It’s just common sense: if you don’t want him, don’t take him home.”

Wally, called Parsons during his stay at the Iowa City Animal Center, is a yellow lab mix with glowing yellow-green eyes. He and several other dogs were seized from a farm outside of Iowa City in March 2017, where they were kept on short outdoor leashes and had little to no interaction with humans. Bloomhuff adopted Wally in May 2017.

“The first time I brought him home he hid in the cupboard. Everything scared him,” she said.

Today, Wally loves to romp with his canine siblings in the field behind their house, go for a swim or take a ride in the tailgate of Bloomhuff’s truck. He’s still shy in public, but clings to his adopter’s side.

“He’s really smart; it’s a little scary,” Bloomhuff said.

When she’s not caring for her own pets, Bloomhuff works to liberate puppy mills with the organization Iowa Voters for Companion Animals Against Puppy Mills. Nine Iowa puppy dealers were named in the Humane Society’s 2017 “Horrible Hundred,” an annual report of the most problematic dog breeding and selling facilities in the U.S. Bloomhuff said she and other activists have been working tirelessly to shut down even one mill.

“You can’t get anywhere,” she said. “But you just have to keep trying. It’s time.”

Though she works harder than the average pet owner, Bloomhuff sees no downsides to pet ownership — save one.

“The only bad thing is they don’t outlive ya,” she said, rubbing Wally’s head.

Doug Ongie + Seymour and Peabody

In a crisply restored, 1920s house on Governor Street, a white and ginger cat named Seymour rests at the top of a cat tower next to a potted avocado tree. Hearing a crinkle from his treat bag, Seymour flings himself from the tower, sending it wobbling. Doug Ongie tosses treats into the kitchen and dining room, one by one. Seymour knows this game — he darts between rooms before the next treat is tossed.

“He’s just a good cat,” Doug says simply. “He’s part of the family.”

Seymour was a former Solon farm cat, then Iowa City Animal Center resident. Doug and his wife Sheila went to the shelter in 2012 with the intention to adopt a kitten, “but they were so spastic,” Doug said. “I looked over and saw Seymour. He had his paw up on the cage, and he wasn’t getting as much attention as the others. We thought we could give that to him.”

The Ongies kept Seymour’s shelter name. Doug is now fully familiar with his quirks, such as a tendency to run to the door when he or Sheila gets home and flop over for a belly rub, like a dog.

“He’s a funny cat. He’s very earnest,” Doug said. “He’ll move his tail when I’m talking to him.”

Seymour has a soft spot for Doug as well: He tends to curl up with Doug at night, while Peabody prefers Sheila.

Peabody was once a stray cat in the Ongies’ neighborhood, his long brown hair full of matts. The couple gave him shelter one night during a thunderstorm, and he’s been their cat ever since. It wasn’t exactly “happily ever after” — health problems had the Ongies rushing Peabody to the emergency room and syringe-feeding the cat five to seven times a day for months. Years later, Doug said Peabody’s happy and healthy.

“He doesn’t know how to meow properly,” Doug noted. “He just goes mmmm.”

The Ongies’ decision to adopt cats was precipitated by a trip to Monterrey, where they stayed in an AirBnB housing a three-legged dog named Zeus.

“Strangely, after that we came home wanting a pet,” Doug said. “We’re cat people, though. It fits our personality best.”

Kenzie Gann + Duncan

On April 18, 2015, Kenzie Gann’s 9-year-old cavalier king Spaniel, Tobi, suddenly and tragically passed away.

“What happened next was a fast downward spiral of my mental health,” said Gann, a Cedar Rapids resident. “I was diagnosed as traumatized.”

Not long after, a coworker at Lucky Pawz, the dog daycare at which Gann worked, tentatively recommended she meet an Iowa City Animal Center dog. It was an Australian shepherd mix named Calgary, who Gann would later call Duncan.

“He sat so nicely and put his head down when I pet him. I played with him that day and two more times before pulling the trigger,” Gann said. “Fate would have it that exactly three months after losing Tobi, Duncan would come home with me. It gives me chills to this day to think about.”

Gann said it was clear Duncan had experienced abuse and neglect in his past. He trusted her, but would hide from strangers, flee from other dogs and cower at loud noises. When Gann was out, Duncan would confine himself to his kennel so as to avoid her roommates.

That is, until Gann started taking the pup to work with her at Lucky Pawz.

“He went from screaming and running when a dog wanted to play to being the running pup who splashed in pools and jumped onto the playground,” Gann said. “He needed to trust that he was safe around people, which means not forcing them on him. Once he knows you, he’s the biggest dog I’ve ever met who actually likes being held.”

“I’m not sure why he latched onto me so fast — we laugh that I’m his emotional support human.”

Gann said she owes her happiness to the Iowa City Animal Center — and the second love of her life.

“[I’m] a girl who saved a pup who really saved her.”

Emma McClatchey is celebrating Valentine’s Day with her love, a former shelter cat named Ludwig. This article was originally published in Little Village issue 236.

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Genetic Testing Might Have Just Explained Why Huskies’ Eyes Can Be Blue

In doing so, it helped show why dogs might be a better target for direct-to-consumer genetic testing than humans.

In an era when direct-to-consumer genome sequencing has been marred by ethical concerns,  rightful skepticism, and Nazis’ fixation with using it to trace their ancestry (many have been disappointed by what they found), a new study may help salvage the field by turning to a previously untapped pool of subjects: dogs.

The research is the first of its kind to be conducted in nonhumans. It drew on data from more than 6,000 customer dogs in an effort to identify the genetic mutation responsible for blue eyes, a striking trait that’s relatively common in Siberian huskies but rare among other breeds in which it sometimes appears, like border collies and corgis. This meant sifting through the genomes of the dogs who did have blue eyes versus those who didn’t to see if any mutations were common to the former group and (mostly) absent from the latter. Owners conducted DNA tests from Embark and completed online surveys detailing their dogs’ breed and appearance, which included uploading “profile photos” for their pups; the scientists, from Embark and Cornell University, took care of the rest.

 The data allowed them to identify a novel association: An allele on chromosome 18, carried by just 10 percent of dogs in the data set overall, was present in 100 percent of blue-eyed Siberian huskies and may be responsible for blue eyes in the breed. It seems likely that a duplication upstream of the gene ALX4, involved in mammalian eye development, is responsible—if so, breeders who can check for the variant in their dogs’ DNA will be better able to select for the trait.

Prospective blue-eyed puppies aside, the success of this first study, now in preprint, speaks to the approach’s potential: Being able to crowdsource genotypic and phenotypic information can lead to key discoveries regarding not just eye color but also more complex traits, behaviors, and overall health. Artificial selection in the form of careful breeding has also left dogs particularly well suited to this kind of analysis—from German shepherds to Chihuahuas, there’s a huge diversity of phenotypes on display, but genomewide divergence is pretty moderate except at the alleles underlying those differences, which is what this kind of testing can help identify.

There’s another reason this small study is exciting. Giving up our own data for such studies is something people are understandably wary of, but the stakes are considerably lower for our pets. And direct-to-consumer DNA studies in other animals could yield worthwhile results—for both them and us. A 2005 paper published in Briefings in Functional Genomics described dogs as “an unrivalled model for the study of human disease,” and regions of the canine genome have already been causally linked to more than 70 Mendelian diseases—heritable disorders caused by a single mutation as opposed to a more complex combination of genes—many of which have human analogues. And since there’s less sequence divergence between humans and dogs than humans and mice (and they’ve cohabitated with us since the hunter-gatherer days), their genomes may be able to reveal things that the murine model can’t. A recent study found that mice first colonized human settlements about 15,000 years ago, but our relationship with dogs may go back more than twice as far. Having shared our environment for so long—and seen us through some key transitions in the process—might put dogs in a unique position to tell us about ourselves.

That’s not to say you should take a genetic testing company’s claims about what your dog’s genes mean for his health without a grain (or more than a grain) of salt. Even if a region of the genome is associated with heritable diseases, that doesn’t necessarily mean a dog or its offspring are guaranteed to have it—we just don’t know enough yet to justify the sweeping, context-less claims many kits are notorious for making. If anything, the benefit of individual testing is that it provides the data for the larger-scale studies that can begin to lay the groundwork for meaningful genome analysis. If you want to sequence your dog’s genome, just remember the result will probably be more meaningful to science than to your ability to care for your pet.

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Why Do Dogs and Cats Eat Grass?

Nobody is really quite sure why our furry friends eat grass.

If you're a dog owner like me, you're used to seeing your dog eat just about anything. My Loretta Lou is a chocolate Lab. Once, when she was 2, she ate an entire jar of cranberry pills — extra strength. How she got the top off is still a mystery. I rushed her to the vet, who gave her medicine to make her vomit. One dose. Two doses. Nothing. Little Lou never threw up, nor did she have diarrhea. All she wanted to do afterward was catch a Frisbee. My vet looked puzzled.

Loretta also eats grass every spring and summer, which is no surprise. Dogs often eat grass. But unlike her daycare buddies, Loretta never throws up. One grass blade. Two grass blades. Three or four. Nothing. Not even a hack or a cough. Loretta has a cast iron stomach.

I'm not sure why Loretta, and by extension most other dogs, eats grass. No one is. Most people believe dogs eat it because they are lacking something in their diets, or because they are ill. That simply isn't the case.

In 2008 researchers at the University of California at Davis tried to cut through the weeds and shed some light on the mystery. They sent out surveys to 25 veterinary dog-owning students. All reported their canines ate grass. None said they observed any signs of illness before their dogs chowed down. Eight percent said their dogs hurled afterward.

Those same researchers also surveyed 47 dog owners who took their pets to the university's teaching hospital for outpatient care. Seventy-nine percent said they saw their pets eating plants, mostly grass. Four dogs were ill beforehand. Only six dogs vomited afterward.

Scientists then opened the survey up to 3,000 people who answered a series of online questions (researchers ultimately pared the useable surveys down to 1,571). Sixty-eight percent saw their dogs eating plants (mostly grass) on a daily or weekly basis. Only 8 percent showed signs of sickness beforehand. Twenty-two percent watched as their dogs vomited afterward.

"Contrary to the common perception that grass eating is associated with observable signs of illness and vomiting, we found that grass eating is a common behavior in normal dogs unrelated to illness and that dogs do not regularly vomit afterward. Vomiting seems to be incidental to, rather than caused by, plant eating," writes Dr. Benjamin Hart, one of the authors of the study, which was published in the journal Applied Animal Behavior Science.

Dr. Cailin Heinze, a nutritionist at the Cummings Veterinary Medical Center at Tufts University, who was not involved in the study, shakes her head when asked to explain why dogs eat grass in general, and why some dogs vomit while others do not. "Lots of them do it, we don't know why," she said in an email. "Sometimes it is associated with nausea/vomiting, and sometimes it isn't. It doesn't seem to be associated with diet."

Perhaps Loretta and other dogs just like the taste of grass. Maybe they like the texture. Who can say for sure.

As for cats? Researchers in the same study found that grass-eating is also common in cats, and has nothing to do with upset stomachs or other illnesses. Most cats, like dogs, do not vomit afterward.

Whether they eat grass or not, my cats hurl all the time. Hairball? Hurl! Eat too much wet food? Hurl! Get chased by Loretta? Hurl some more! Find a mouse at night? Kill it, rat it and then hurl its mangled body on the carpet so I can step on it in the dark of morning.

Vomit on the carpet; vomit on the bed; vomit on the dining room table. Even in my sneaker.

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Be Kind to Animals Week

The annual blessing of the animals took place at Cheyenne Animal Shelter on Wednesday. The Ceremony was part of Be Kind To Animals Week, which started on Sunday.

Be Kind To Animals Week has taken place in the United States for 100 years, and Chaplain Dave with Cheyenne Regional Medical Center has been blessing the animals at Cheyenne Animal Shelter for a few years.

According to a press release from the animal shelter, you can sign a pledge in honor of “Be Kind to Animals Week” May 2nd- 7th. The poster is located in the Shelter lobby.

Laramie County K-5th grade students can also participate in the “Be Kind to Animals Week” poster contest. Deadline for poster submissions is Friday, May 06 by noon.

For more information on Be Kind To Animals Week visit the Cheyenne Animal Shelter Website.

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Boxer Dog

Boxers are a bright, energetic and playful breed and tend to be very good with children. They are active dogs and require adequate exercise to prevent boredom-associated behaviors such as chewing or digging.

Boxers have earned a slight reputation of being headstrong, which can be related to inappropriate obedience training. Owing to their intelligence and working breed characteristics, training based on corrections often has limited usefulness.

Boxers, like other animals, respond much better to positive reinforcement techniques such as clicker training, which affords the dog an opportunity to think independently and to problem-solve.

Boxers were originally a docked and cropped breed, and this tradition is still maintained in some countries. However, due to pressure from veterinary associations, animal rights groups and the general public, both cropping of the ears and docking of the tail have been prohibited in many countries around the world.

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6 of the First Domesticated Animals

Humans have long used animals to make their lives a little easier. Since the time of the hunter-gatherers, men taught animals to help them with work, as well as guard and protect them and their food. Below are the first few animals that we had domesticated over the past thousands of years.

Dogs

Dogs have stayed by our side for more than 10,000 years. They stared out like wolves, wild and free, but humans started to befriend them and domesticated them. Archaeologist can set domesticated canines apart from wild wolves though certain features, like smaller teeth and "Sagittal crest". Different dig sites across the world confirmed that canine domestication is a worldwide phenomenon

Cows

There are a number of wild cattle that were domesticated in different places and times. thetaurine, which is the most common early domesticated cattle, is said to have been domesticated around 8,000 years ago in the Fertile Crescent. They are also the most common domesticated cattle used in trading. The zebu, which originated in the area around Pakistan, was domesticated 7,000 years ago. While the capeletti, which was common in the African and Egyptian areas, were used by humans as early as 9,000 years ago.

Goats and Sheep

We can’t forget the other common heard animals. Humans are said to have herded goats and sheep in about the same time as they domesticated dogs. Goats and sheep are mainly used as livestock, for food, milk, fur and their skin. Sheep are more common in colder areas since people needed their wool to create fabrics. 

Horses

The strongest animal that humans have ever domesticated, horses are used in agriculture, trade, constructions of empires, and even to war. These huge beasts have definitely made our lives much easier, especially when it comes to listing heavy load. There are still a few wild horses in certain parts of the world. However some wild horses are actually feral horses like the mustangs in the United States and the brumby in Australia.

Cats

Cats became our companions at around 7000 years ago when we started to grow our own food instead of gathering or hunting. As humans stored and collected grain, cats became very useful to help keep mice away. The ancient Egyptians are said to be the first people who domesticated these animals, not just to help them keep the mice away, but for religious and cultural purposes as well. they worshiped a cat-goddess and treated their cats will the highest respect. They even mummified them when they passed away.

Snails

This might sound shocking, but snails are actually one of the first animals we domesticated. Our ancestors kept them mainly for food since snails are packed with nutrients and they’re easy to take care of. Many Paleolithic digs have also found large numbers of snail shells, taking their domestication back to earlier than 12,000 years ago. Since they’re very close to containing all the nutrients we need, they’re also very famous with traders, pilgrims and even those who went in campaigns.

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Dogue De Bordeaux

The Dogue has an even temperament, and is extremely loyal and devoted to his master and family. Dogue de Bordeaux is gifted for guarding, which he assumes with vigilance and great courage but without aggressiveness.

He is a very good companion, being attached to and affectionate toward his master and family. He is calm and balanced with a high stimulus threshold.

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American Coonhound

American Coonhound is a large breed of domestic Dog that is native to North America. The American Coonhound is thought to have been developed by tribesmen in the mountains in the 1700s, who required a large Dog for both protection and to help with hunting.

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Australian Shepherd

The Aussie breed is an energetic dog that requires exercise and mental stimulation to be happy and to avoid becoming destructive. They need a minimum of 20 min hard running twice per day. Aussies love working, whether it is herding livestock, performing tricks, competing in dog agility, or any other canine sport. They do exceptionally well in frisbee catching competition, and they love to retrieve items from water.

 Aussies want to accompany their favorite humans and see and do whatever you are doing. After sufficient exercise they enjoy being couch potatoes. It is usually a sweet and affectionate dog which is faithful to its owners and great with children if raised with them. They typcially are friendly with the owner's friends and family that they see often but protective when strangers are around. Socialization from puppyhood is necessary to get the very best from them.

Most Australian Shepherds make wonderful family dogs, provided there is a human pack leader to guide them. They generally get along with other dogs and are not quarrelsome.

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Akita

Akita History and Domestication
The Akita is a medium sized domestic Dog breed, first bred in Japan in the 1600s. The Akita originates from the Akita Prefecture in the north-east of Japan, hence it's name. The exact reason for their initial creation is still disagreed upon, as to whether or not they were first bred as hunting or as fighting Dogs. Despite this, many favour the theory that this large breed was bred to aid local people with the hunting of Deer and Wild Boar and to possibly protect them from large carnivores like Wolves and Bears, with the fighting of them becoming popular, before people began to fortunately lose interest in the sport. Today, they are mainly used to assist their owners when hunting and are also a popular foreign breed in western households.

Akita Physical Characteristics
Like a number of other Japanese working breeds, the Akita has a plush double-coat of fur, consisting of a medium length top layer and a soft undercoat to keep them warm. This double-coat of fur can vary in colour, and is actually also water-resistant, preventing the Akita from developing hypothermia. The Akita has a strong, muscular body that is longer than it is tall. They have a heavy triangular head, with dark, triangular eyes that are deeply set into the Dog's face. The thick, strong limbs of the Akita allow it to move with vigorous precision particularly when hunting, and it's slightly webbed paws make this Dog an excellent swimmer. The most distinctive features of the Akita are their small, pointed ears and curved, upturned tail which almost sits on the Dog's back.

Akita Behaviour and Temperament
Due to the fact that the Akita has been historically bred as both a hunting and a fighting Dog, they are naturally aggressive and very dominant animals. Akitas have changed very little since they were first produced, with household individuals still having strong hunting instincts today. They are therefore, not for the inexperienced owner as they require firm and consistent training with lots of positive reinforcement. The Akita is also known to respond badly to harsh treatment. They are incredibly intelligent and loyal Dogs though, and are loving, devoted and gentle towards their master and family. The Akita is also known to be a good guard Dog as it is very suspicious of any person or animal that it doesn't know.

Akita Breeding
Like many other domestic breeds, today the Akita can be found in a variety of colours and with a milder temperament than it's ancestors. They are however, still bred as working and hunting Dogs in their native Japan, assisting their master in catching food, as well as being an increasingly popular choice of guard Dog in the west. There are few health problems however, that are associated with this breed including hyperthyroid, hip and knee problems, which are all common ailments of larger Dogs particularly. They generally live for between 9 and 15 years, and females can have anywhere from three to twelve puppies per litter.

Akita Interesting Facts and Features
In the 1930s, the Akita was so rare in Japan due to the increasing popularity of non-native breeds, that only the very rich could apparently afford one. They were declared as a "national treasure" in Japan in an attempt to conserve the country's native breeds, and having an Akita in a household is said to symbolise good health, good fortune and prosperity. Due to their long, thick coat, Akitas shed heavily twice a year, for about 2 weeks at a time, meaning that they must be brushed every day to prevent their fur from matting. Possibly due to their natural hunting nature, household Dogs are known to enjoy carrying objects in their mouths.

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Scary Dog Costumes

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Here's Some Pictures Of Animal Memes

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