As I enter the flower photograph season, an important time of year for me, I brace with yet another new and disturbing reality modern reality in zenophobic America.
Every time I put up a photo of a beautiful flower, one or two more people e-mail me to warn me that I might be killing Zip or Zinnia or Bud or Fate. A lot of the flowers I photograph, say the messages – almost all of the flowers I photograph – could be and are poison to dogs and cats and other animals.
Very few of the messages are hostile or meant to be cruel, but it isn’t pleasant or uplifting for me. And I’m still catching heat for refusing to let Zip in the house on cold nights.
Who wants to hear that every day?
I’ve had dogs and or cats all of my life and I’ve never lost one to a flower or a plant, although I know it is a genuine danger. But I don’t live in a city or walk my dogs on leashes. I live on a farm in the country, and my dogs run freely, as dogs should.
This is yet another new and curious evolution in the age of social media, where issuing warnings and alarms is a major and growing activity. Along with the flower warnings will come the dog in a hot car warnings, something I have always know better than to do without any kind of warning.
Now, when I mention taking a picture, people wonder of its the end of Zip and the other animals.
How, I wonder, am I suppose to deal with this new challenge to my love of animals and my growing love of flowers.
I’m not going to give up one for another, that’s for sure. Nor will be my life be shaped or dominated by life in a nation of alarmists, warners, and people who increasing admit to seeing pets as more and sometimes better children with four legs.
I don’t follow warnings from strangers on social media, nor will I pass along the alarms of people I don’t know and who don’t know me. This upsets some, but I’m just being honest.
I get my animal health advice from people who make me pay for it and who have studied animal welfare and health for six or seven years before practicing it. When it comes to health care for my dogs, I want the best, not the best equipped computers.
Nor do I follow the alarmist fund-raising machine of PETA who believe people like me are monstrous and abusive because I want to live and work with animals and believe they should live as much of their natural life as is possible. PETA is already counting the death of dogs due to warmer weather. I’d rather love them, personally. This makes me a monster, it seems.
Let me clarify and explain why I’ve decided not to turn this blog into a warning center and decline the now daily requests for me to warn people about flowers killing their pets.
I politely decline, saying I won’t want my blog to be yet another alarm machine. People can get that from the news about flowers and dogs or from their Aunt Fannie on Facebook or on Google in ten seconds. I’m not qualified or interested.
Before anyone misunderstands, I value and am grateful for the love and interest you all show towards Zip. I write about him daily, after all, it’s my doing. I receive more than just warnings about him, but the number of warnings is growing.
Many perceive my farm as a potentially dangerous place, which every home farm and garden in America is and could be. Some think I’m reckless and uncaring.
One irony of the social media culture is the more people love something, the more they worry about it. I wish hungry children got the same concern. We’re trying.
Speaking only for me, I can’t imagine telling someone with cats or dogs to keep them locked up and away from the 30-plus flowers listed as dangerous for asking people to get rid of their flowers or keep dogs from going near them. What an awful thing to do to an animal in the country, where they still have a shot at being animals, not furbabies.
We don’t have risk-free lives, and neither do my dogs and cats.
They are happy, healthy, and safe, and it’s my job to keep them that way and give them as good a life as possible for as long as I can.
In my 60 plus years of dog owning, no animal of mine has ever died from a flower. I know it’s possible, but I also know it is not likely, even on a farm in the country overrun with mushrooms and poisonous plants.
My animals travel widely and freely around the farm, and they are savvy about staying away from poisonous flowers and the many trucks flying by (a radically bigger danger to cats and dogs than flowers). Tulips, unhealthy plants, and wildflowers are all around the farm, both planted and wild, in all seasons.
Azalea, buttercups, chrysanthemums, gardenias, gladiolas, hibiscus, hyacinth, hydrangeas, mums, primroses, rhododendrons, and sweet peas are popular garden items that are poisonous to many pets, I am told whenever I post a photo of one. That’s another good reason, says one warning messenger, to keep my dogs “away from your neighbor’s award-winning flower bushes.”
She sure doesn’t live in upstate New York.
Zip is also a reason for animal lovers to send me warnings every time I take a photo of one of those flowers, which, it seems is every day now. (I even found the Calla Lily on one poison list. It could be a long summer.)
None of my dogs have ever gone near those flowers; neither has Zip. He’ prefers mice and rats and chipmunks and moles.
To be honest, I really don’t want to think of poisoning my dogs when I zero in on a beautiful flower photo.
It takes some focus and concentration to do that, believe it or not. Zip and Zinnia are almost always with me when I’m taking photos, am I settig them up for an awful sickness or death? Will eating the wrong mushroom be the end of him?
(Rose, Monochrome)
My vet says some flowers are poisonous, but in her life of working, people are more likely to have a truck run over them than lose an animal to a flower, she says. How do I reconcile that with the warnings I receive?
The American Kennel Club lists scores of trees, plants, and flowers that can be poisonous to dogs (or cats, in most cases). You’ll need some extra time to read it. I’d recommend it. This isn’t up to me, it’s up to you.
It can happen. Dogs are foragers, as are cats, sheep, and donkeys. There is no way to isolate them from every tulip (or the dozen or more popular flowers I get warned about all through Spring and Summer).
Our vet knows our farm, dogs, cats, sheep, and donkeys. She told me to keep the tulips, she loves the photos. She says she doubts it will be the end of Zinnia or Zip.
I don’t doubt that some flowers can be bad for dogs and cats. We are responsible for their care and do what we can to keep them self. But we live in a world where people and animals are always at risk, and we choose to take some risks, as everyone who lives on a farm with animals does. The farmers I know all died of heart attacks, their border collies and cattle dogs are still alive.
I’m not trying to be difficult or oblivious. I love my animals as much as the people messaging me.
I’m just preparing for a summer full of warnings as I post what is hopefully one beautiful picture after another in this increasingly gloomy and dour culture. If I wanted a life without risk, I would have stayed in New York or Boston or New Jersey, away from farms and coyotes and dangerous flowers.
It’s not going to spoil my photography or my summer. I promise not to kill Zip or our dogs our donkeys or sheep with my tulip photos.
