[Dailydrool] sleepin dogs

[Beverly Szaton]

All the things written about sleeping with dogs and catching diseases are
TRUE TRUE TRUE. It is also true if you sleep with your pig, your pet Chimp
(even more so) or your favorite Shetland Pony.
In fairness  and playing the Debbil's Advocate here, I do not think it was
aimed at the majority of American owners (althooooooo......) but the ones
who neglect or are unaware of the condition of their "pet".
As a former grooming assistant I have to say I have seen some small dogs--
Shih Tzus and Yorkies in particular, with their longish coats, ungroomed for
months, crawling with fleas (which carry plague) and in some cases the feces
dried and packed so tightly around the anus that the dog is actually
impacted and unable to defecate. These dogs are sleeping with their
oblivious, usually quite elderly owners. The stench is unbelievable and it
is hard to understand how an owner could not notice, but they DONT. I do not
have much of a sense of smell anymore -- I have to visually check a
long-haired dog if I suspect diarrhea. Altho I do smell it, I may not in ten
years.
It isn't the dog or cat per se that passes the disease necessarily but the
parasites along for the ride.
All animals can pass along diseases if the animals are not properly cared
for, but the most dangerous are probably primates (and yes we are,) carrying
not only their own load of parasites but TB, and a host of other
*very*serious primate diseases as well.

Don't worry about sleeping with your dogs, (and I think we really knew that)
 but never sleep with your Capuchin Monkey. (Most Vets will not treat
monkies due to their list of serious zoonotic diseases.)

MomPerson to Nigel, Llewis, Conley and Cooper.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.dailydrool.org/pipermail/dailydrool-dailydrool.org/attachments/20110126/66b2f1e5/attachment-0001.htm>