pet connection

Just finally catching up with all of dad’s appearances. He’s hard to keep track of, that’s for sure!

Thought you’d like to know that his segment on foods to beware of is now up on the ABCNews Web site. The piece was shot when he was in New York recently for a “Good Morning America” appearance.

What are the foods to look out for? Avocados and macadamia nuts, to start with. Check out the segment for the rest, and for tips on keeping your pet safe from these hazards.

There have been times in my life when, if it hadn’t been for my dogs making me get up and walk or feed them, I might have spent the day in bed. Truth be told, although it was many years ago, a bout of depression once hit me so hard that walking and feeding them was all I could do.

But pets can do more than nudge us into getting out of bed; some of them can detect deadly diseases like cancer, seizure disorders, or sepsis. From Pet Connection’s own Kim Campbell Thornton over on MSNBC.com:

(B)esides being man’s best friend, some canines also have a lifesaving sixth sense. Dogs’ keen ability to differentiate smells enables some of them to know we’re sick long before we might ourselves. Combine that with their 24/7 observation of us and some pets have proven to be skilled diagnosticians, even if we’re not always sure what they’re trying to tell us.

In the past few years, studies have shown that dogs can sniff out both early and late stage lung and breast cancers. The Pine Street Foundation, a non-profit cancer education and research organization, in San Anselmo, Calif., is even training dogs to recognize ovarian cancer.

Some dogs have also been shown capable of detecting skin cancer.

Riker, a 9-year-old Australian Shepherd who lives with Liz and Paul Palika in Oceanside, Calif., poked insistently at Liz’s father’s chest. “Dad, did you leave some of your dinner on your shirt?” Liz teased him. But Riker wouldn’t stop. To satisfy him, Liz and her mother took a closer look. There was a lump on her father’s chest. A trip to the doctor revealed a melanoma that had spread beneath the skin.

Other dogs have been taught to catch when diabetics’ blood sugar levels drop. And for about the past 20 years, “seizure dogs” have been used to alert their owners to a pending seizure and assist them to a safe place until it’s over.

The full story is here.

You know the old saying, “You catch more flies with honey than with vinegar”? I’ve been thinking about it lately, as I research an article I’m writing on how the foreclosure and economic crisis is affecting pets.

I’m amazed, for instance, at how many people who are horrified by collar jerks and scruff grabs in dog training keep doing the same thing to pet owners.

I mean that mostly metaphorically, of course. I’m not aware of an epidemic of shelter workers and volunteers actually throttling pet owners. But there’s one thing I’ve noticed while working on this story: not much click and treat, lots of punishment.

I’ve read a lot of news stories about shelters from coast to coast and from north to south that are facing larger than usual numbers of pets being surrendered, an increase that’s being attributed to economic hard times and difficulties finding housing. And many of the people interviewed in these stories keep complaining that people aren’t adopting pets right now.

At the same time, many of those same people are ranting and raving about greedy breeders and mandatory spay/neuter being needed, and the horrors of pet store, internet, and puppy mill sales of pets, and screeching “don’t breed and buy while shelter dogs die,” and saying that “every time you buy a puppy, a shelter dog dies,” and really, I just have to ask:

Does this work? Do you think it works? Would you modify a dog’s behavior this way?

Rich Avanzino of Maddie’s Fund has analyzed shelter and pet population statistics and concluded that a very minor boost — from 21 to 24 percent annually — of how many pets are obtained from shelters vs. other sources would put every dog and cat in America’s shelters in a home. So I’m trying to understand why it is that so many animal advocates, from the intake volunteer at the shelter desk to the adoption counselors to the shelter directors, are making it so difficult for people to feel good about shelters.

What if instead of telling pet owners how much they suck, they told them how wonderful they are when they make the tiniest move in the right direction? What if they did all the things Nathan Winograd talks about, like having convenient hours and making shelters friendly, welcoming places for adoptors and volunteers? What if they swore off for, say, one year, telling people what not to do, and saying how terrible breeders and pet stores are, and instead devoted themselves to telling people how great shelter pets are, and how rewarding it is to give a new life to a rescued pet?

There’s positive reinforcement available by the boatload to anyone who adopts a rescued or sheltered animal. And yo, shelters: doling it out is free.

Attacking your competitors — because let’s face it, breeders and pet stores and the guy down the street with the litter of lab mixes are your competitors for pet homes — is a negative tactic that will, after a while, backfire. Ask any politician: relentless negative campaigning turns people off.

And while you talk a lot about pet overpopulation, the reality is, there are lots of people every year buying or being given dogs and cats. Why shouldn’t they get them from you?

Sure, you can’t compete on selection and instant gratification, but you have something to offer pet stores don’t: a warm fuzzy feeling inside from saving a life. Why are so many of you wasting it?

Heather is (or rather, soon will be) fine.

Completely and utterly fine. More than fine, really, according to the radiologist. Her radiographs are bee-you-tee-ful, appearing much younger than she is.

The Big C? Not today. Not today.

Hooray for (almost) 12-year-old retrievers! She lives to swim another day … many a day, I hope, after she’s back on all four legs again after her soft tissue injury — a/k/a “a really bad sprain” — resolves itself.

Thank you all! Your support means so much to me.

(Pictured: My Beautiful Heatherette, photo taken earlier this summer, after her “old dog summer buzz ‘do”.)

There’s a lot to be said about where allergies come from (hello, genetics and lots of insults to the canine immune system from stupid and unscientific vaccination protocols), but once you have a dog with allergies, the “where” question comes in a distant second to the “what now” question.

While pets can be allergic to many things in their environment, one of the most difficult and perplexing — and hard to diagnose — problems is the food allergy. While a dog can be allergic to only one ingredient in a food or their diet, dermatologists have told me that they’re seeing mostly dogs with multiple food allergies now. And it can be very difficult to pinpoint those allergies and to eliminate those allergens.

There are blood tests for food allergies, and they’ve improved in recent years, but the gold standard remains the elimination diet. And vets often use commercial foods for such diets, even multi-ingredient foods, largely because most owners don’t want to prepare a homemade diet, even for a few months or weeks for diagnostic reasons.

But even so-called “hydrolized protein” allergy diets can contain substances to which your pet can react. They work by breaking proteins down into particles, called hydrolysates, that the immune system isn’t supposed to react to. But many dogs do react to them, which means the information you get from doing a food trial with such a food is useless, and they’re also useless as a therapeutic diet, at least, for those dogs. Furthermore, the process of hydrolizing proteins can in and of itself release biologically active peptides, to which the dog may also be or become allergic.

Just ask all the moms and pediatricians who’ve become skeptical of the use of hydrolized milk for babies and kids with cow’s milk allergies.

And if the “allergy diet” is a dry food, there’s also that pesky little critter known as the food storage mite. These mites can be present in all kinds of cereals, not just pet food, but they’re a potent allergen for some dogs — and so are their feces. (They can also be present in cheese, and any food that can grow mold.) One study found nine of out ten bags of dry pet food contained food storage mites.

Homemade, grain-free diets still sounding crazy to you, allergies or not?