Creature Comforts: A Heathful Lifestyle for Your Pet

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ILLUSTRATION: MOTHER EARTH NEWS STAFF
Unless you've routinely practiced these precautions, however, your aged four-legged friend will probably already have more plaque than can be handled with a brush... in which case you'll need to remove it with a dentist's tooth scaler (and in some cases your pet's teeth may require a professional cleaning).

Back in No. 52, MOTHER EARTH NEWS published an article by Kansas veterinarian Randy Kidd on how to restrain a farm animal. Little did we (or Randy) know that the one piece would lead to many more… yet very few issues of MOTHER EARTH NEWS since then haven’t carried a feature by Dr. Kidd on some facet of livestock care.

Well, “MOTHER EARTH NEWS’ medicine man” has now decided to share some of his “vet’s-eye view” on pets, the very special creatures that we humans for centuries-have welcomed into our homes and hearts. We hope that our readers will find Dr. Kidd’s columns on this subject to be as informative and enlightening as have been his commonsense articles on livestock and other creature comforts.

For me, watching the process of aging is every bit as fascinating as observing the miracle of birth. The changes that occur-graying hair, a slower gait, and perhaps somewhat diminished eyesight and/or hearing remind us that life’s processes inevitably and quite naturally slow down in all of the earth’s creatures.

The only major difference, in fact, between the ways pets and people age is that-because an animal’s life span is typically much shorter than that of a human-it often appears that our creature companions age very rapidly… sometimes seemingly overnight. There’s nothing, of course, you can do to completely halt this process (and I, for one, wouldn’t want to), but there are a few steps you can take to make growing old a pleasant and comfortable period for your canine or feline buddy.

Obviously, the question of when, exactly, your four-legged friend should be considered “old” has no precise answer. Every body whether it be animal or human-is unique, with its own inherent abilities, needs, and timetables for maturing and aging. Each critter, in other words, grows old at its own pace. (In a very general sense, however, a pooch is usually regarded as “past its prime” at age seven or eight, and a cat although likely to age a mite slower-is no young at that stage, either.)

  • Published on Nov 1, 1983
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