Pets continued ........

      Pet Therapy
       by Peg Willocks

 Pets - how does a Parkie live without them? Our Chinese Pug, Festus, acquired his name from his former owners. My husband had sent the three kids (all teens at the time) to find a pet dog. Our Cocker Spaniel and cat had been gone for a while, and we wanted to share our home with a new pet. Hubby, Darrell, suggested we look for a Boston Terrior. The pet stores were ridiculously overpriced, so we look in the classified and found a private home selling terriors.

On our trip to see the Boston Terrior, an ad just above the address said: "Pug for sale - Parents on Premises. Must sell." Hmmm? The address was a local community of mobile homes, so it was surmised that the owners might be willing to bargain on the pug's price. "What's a pug?" the kids all questioned.

I recanted to them that they were an unusual-appearing dog with a flat, smashed in face, pop-eyed, stocky bodies on short bowed legs, and a curled up tail. "Oh yeah, right!" they said. "Just what we need!." No use telling them they were very friendly "people" dogs; they'd just have to see.

As we arrived at the mobile home, the owners anxiously met us in the driveway after our call to visit. He explained that his wife was pregnant, and this was the final litter of one from his pair of pugs. They didn't need another mouth to feed and needed the money. Then the wife came out the door with a small ball of fawn-colored fur and underfoot were the apparent "parents" of the pug in barter. "Roscoe"  and "Lucille" charged the kids, winding around their legs and snorting and huffing like pugs do. These dogs (who resemble something between StarWars Ewocks and Yoda) received some strange looks from my teens. I could feel intuitively that they were about to reboard the car and wave "Have a nice day!" when the wife shoved the ball of fur into my hands.

All of my kids and I stood there examining this 6 inch round shape with a little black mask and short floppy ears and absolutely the saddest-looking face ever known! We passed "him" around and discovered four
pencil-thin legs, a head and neck full of wrinkles and a permanently up-curled tail. We were smitten! We then recalled how Dad was rather emphatic about having a terrior. As we pulled out the driveway, all three teens were blubbering and begging me to get the pug. We pulled back into the driveway, dickered
on price and brought him home.

The name "Festus" was our pet's birth name, so we just let it stick. Festus is now going on 12 years old (that's 84 in "dog years")! He mostly eats and sleeps now. But there's a special bond between Festus and me. Whenever I go "off," with meds not working and my rigid, slow-motion body finds refuge on the sofa or bed, my pet dog knows what to do.

Festus will get as close to me as he can when I'm having a bad time physically or emotionally. It's as though he senses bad vibes or something. He will lay down on my chest and stay there until he starts to shiver.
I will soon fall asleep and awaken refreshed and back in working order.

I was thinking how stupid this dog ability must sound when I caught a glimpse of a news story. The documentary was given on special pets that live with people suffering from serizures (as in epilepsy). These pets could sense when a seizure was about to occur and would signal its master to get in a safe position. Amazingly, the pets were always correct in predicting a seizure - even when the master didn't have any idea he was having unusual brain short circuits.

Pets are definitely therapeutic. Having a warm, living creature to share trying moments with can have tremendous potential in our well-being. And now there's a possibility that pets can be prognosticators, too!