Special Delivery
Nina Mantione, Good Hope Animal Hospital
If you’re a pet at Nina Mantione’s house, two things are certain. One, you’re a rescue, and two, you get mail. Dr. Mantione, a vet with Mechanicsburg’s Good Hope Animal Hospital (www.goodhopeanimalhospital.com), is not afraid to spoil her pets. After all, they’ve been through a lot.
Take Zoe, a Papillon, who, according to Dr. Mantione, was “a total train wreck of a dog. Skin and bones and missing half her hair.” Doesn’t she deserve Crawfish Chew Snacks? Or see Archie, a Chihuahua-something mix who was in line to be euthanized. Wouldn’t he love a jester costume-covered bouncy ball? What about Cody, the abandoned Chihuahua from www.petfinder.com, born in a crowded trailer in West Virginia, part of a population explosion of Chihuahuas? It’s possible a Harry Barker Mardi Gras Crinkle Mask might cheer him up. And that’s just one month’s themed delivery from www.barkbox.com, something Dr. Mantione discovered through her other job at a pet insurance company.
“My husband’s like, ‘Really? Do they need this every month?’” she says, then laughs. “But look at how happy they are.” It’s not clear whether the dogs have to share these special deliveries with the household cats, but everyone, including Dr. Mantione, is excited when they arrive.
Sookie, the alpha cat who’s not afraid of the dogs, crowds around to see what’s in the box. She tends to hang out with “the big guys” and always demands her treats first. When Dr. Mantione heads for her exercise mat, she says, “Sookie’s like, ‘Oh, I’m doing yoga, I’m coming, hold on.’” Fellow domestic shorthairs Godric and Dexter are shyer, lounging by the fireplace in the dog-free basement. They’re happy waiting for Dr. Mantione’s daughters to come home from school and watch TV with them.
No Two Alike
Cody the Chihuahua, on the other hand, is obsessed with Dr. Mantione’s son. Every morning he waits until his favorite person gets on the bus, then jumps up on his second favorite person, Dr. Mantione. “If I sit at the computer for twelve hours, he’ll sit on my lap for twelve hours,” jokes the vet. She calls Cody “The Little Grumpy Guy.” He’s crabby. He doesn’t like to be moved. And he hates winter, burrowing under the covers at night.
Zoe’s more nurturing. After Dr. Mantione’s open-heart surgery this past winter, the Papillon climbed gingerly onto the vet’s lap, stared into her face, and laid a gentle paw on her cheek. Since the surgery, Zoe doesn’t like to let the vet out of her sight. She follows Dr. Mantione everywhere, including waiting on the bath mat to be sure she emerges from the shower.
The clown of the canine trio, Archie, steals things, like pens, so the family will chase him. He’s bigger on cuddling than grooming: Dr. Mantione describes him as, “scruffy, so he’s always having a bad hair day.” He’s okay with the girls in the house loving on him and carrying him around all the time. Just don’t bother him after 8:30 at night. “It’s like he hits a wall,” says Dr. Mantione, “and he’s unconscious till morning.”
Vet to the Rescue
Dr. Mantione loves them all, especially since they are rescues. As a vet, she has her choice of stray kittens, but when they wanted another cat, she took her kids to the Humane Society of Harrisburg (which doesn’t euthanize adoptable pets). “I wanted them to see the 600 cats that needed homes and to realize the value of adopting a pet,” she explains. The kids help care for their rescued pets, which Dr. Mantione feels makes them “empathetic, compassionate, and responsible.”
This busy vet is surprised when friends ask her if it’s hard to have a dog. She tells them, “I have three dogs, three cats, and four kids, and that’s not a lot of work.” Dr. Mantione finds it hard to justify going to a breeder herself “when you know there are dogs that spend their whole lives in a shelter and die there. And whether you spend thousands of dollars on a purebred or get a rescue, it’s kind of a crapshoot. There are medical issues and suitability. That’s the real question. Will this dog make a good pet for your situation?”
For her own situation, the answer is obviously yes, yes, and yes.
Inevitable Vet Pets
Jeff Steed, Manheim Pike Veterinary Hospital
There are some foregone conclusions at the Steed home. But then there have always been foregone conclusions within this family. Jeff Steed’s dad was a veterinarian, so he became a vet. His father-in-law was a vet, so Dr. Steed’s wife, Kathy, became a vet (foregone conclusions numbers one and two). Both husband and wife love animals (foregone conclusion number three). So when the whole “Will we have animals?” dilemma came up, the only questions were how many, what kind, and which wrapping paper was appropriate, because someone’s birthday or Christmas was always coming up.
So…how many is too many? “We’re about there,” says Dr. Steed, who is the owner of Manheim Pike Veterinary Hospital (www.familyvet.net), which has a Lancster office and has recently acquired Leola Veterinary Clinic as a second location. “More than three cats and two dogs is definitely too many. To tell you the truth, I never thought I’d have three dogs.”
The Domino Effect
It happened, as these things do, gradually. First a long string of rescues joined the family, an occupational hazard if ever there was one. And then there is foregone conclusion number four. Dr. Steed’s parents bred Siamese cats, so he always has to have a Siamese…or two…in his life. Not surprisingly, both current felines in the house are Siamese: Manny, adopted the day after 9/11 and named Manhattan, is a purebred blue point. Brutus, a comparative newcomer, is a seal point Himalayan cross.
Brutus was an easy sell. All this kitten did was show up at the clinic as a rescue from Furever Home in East Petersburg. All Dr. Steed did was text his picture to Kathy. All she did was look at the calendar. It was late autumn, so, you guessed it: Brutus became a Christmas gift “for the kids.”
The Steeds’ most recent canine rescue, two-year-old Archie, has one blue eye and one brown eye. To understand the rationale for Archie’s adoption, we have to backtrack. Picture longtime resident Gibson, an eleven-year-old English Lab, a stockier branch of the Labrador retriever tree.
“These dogs are kind of cooler,” says Dr. Steed, “with a great personality. Just what you think of when you think of man’s best friend.” Clearly the type of dog Dr. Steed loves. But his son? No, his son, for some reason, became fixated on French bulldogs. He loved the whole squashed face thing; the huggability, if there is such a word; and the cuteness, as in a face only a mother could love.
Thus Mabel, a sixteen-month-old “bowling ball” of a pup who believes in her heart that she was created to be a lap dog, joined the family. You guessed it, “a Christmas gift for the kids”. But it turned out that Mabel, in addition to being loveable, had bad habits. She got into stuff, was generally stubborn, and chewed everything. So Kathy decided Mabel needed a hobby…a hobby with fur. Enter Archie, an alleged gift for Mabel (must have been Mabel’s birthday).
A rescue with a sad story, Archie isn’t all that agile, because he spent the first two years of his life stuck in a cage in a garage. He can’t quite jump up on the bed yet, which means less bonding time with Mabel. He has some skin issues, but Mabel would likely overlook these minor faults if she were interested, seeing how she’s a bit funky looking herself.
But Archie, rather than falling for Mabel, prefers Gibson’s company. At this stage, though, Gibson’s what you’d call laid back. He wants to play for only a few minutes a day, which leaves a lot of unscheduled time. So Archie needs a hobby, too, and it falls to the humans to keep both French bulldogs occupied.
A New Identity
They’ve got this covered because of foregone conclusion number five. As a graduate of Ohio State, Dr. Steed thinks everyone in the household has to be a Buckeye fan. So he’s offering the dogs a new pastime: becoming Ohio State fans. So what if Mabel chews the autographed football? Or if Archie scratches so much his red “O” hat falls off? At least Gibson looks good in a team jersey. And if the two youngest aren’t busy with their new hobby, well then Christmas, or someone’s birthday, will come around again soon.
Meanwhile, Dr. Steed’s teaching the dogs the O-H-I-O paws-up-in-the-air thing á la "YMCA." Next he’ll lead them in the Buckeye battle cry, which fortunately doesn’t have a lot of complicated lyrics. In fact, it works pretty well as a howl. All together now: Oh-Oh. Oh. Oh. Oh-Oh.
By Cindy Kalinoski, Photography by Donovan Roberts Witmer
