pet connection

From the San Francisco Chronicle, a piece on a new veterinary center for integrative/alternative/holistic care, featuring Dr. Cheryl Schwartz (”Four Paws Five Directions: A Guide to Chinese Medicine for Cats and Dogs“), a superstar in the world of Chinese vetmed:

The three rooms dedicated to consultations and treatments also are painted in colors more likely to be seen in a massage studio or in Architectural Digest.

“A lot of people don’t consider the environment as part of the healing process,” said Schwartz, who has studied the impact of color on animals for 25 years and was a consultant on the renovation.

Even though pets are mostly color-blind, Schwartz said, the frequency of the vibrations in each color resonates with them.

She said the pink room will help those that are cold — for example, a pet with hypothyroidism. The yellow room will energize dogs and cats that are lethargic, while the blue room will calm those that are restless or aggressive [...].

In the Chicago Sun-Times, a piece on breed profiling by insurance companies:

Rescue groups are having a hard time placing dogs such as [pit bulls] because prospective owners are struggling to find an insurance company willing to provide coverage for a home inhabited by a dog the industry has deemed dangerous.

”Some people don’t want to go through the hassle of adopting a dog if they had to change insurance companies,” said [Beth] DeLaForest [of the A Rotta Love Plus rescue group in Minneapolis].

Of the 30 applications A Rotta Love receives every month, about five drop out because of insurance problems.

Ever since a woman was mauled to death by Presa Canarios five years ago, in a case that drew national attention, insurance companies have been increasingly denying or restricting coverage to homeowners with certain breeds of dogs.

The top targets: Rottweilers, pit bulls, Doberman pinschers and German shepherds. Insurers, who pay a steep price each year settling dog-bite claims, view these dogs as more likely to attack.

And finally, from Reuters, a piece on the Brazilian fascination with a litter of puppies seemingly born to a cat:

Geneticist Adil Pacheco took blood samples on Friday from three puppies in a poor neighborhood in Passo Fundo in southern Brazil to settle a dispute over a claim they were born from a cat.

“It’s rather simple really. If the puppies prove to have 78 chromosomes, they are dogs. If they have 38, they are cats,” said Pacheco, director of the Institute of Biological Sciences of the University of Passo Fundo.

“But I seriously doubt they are feline. Every characteristic about them is canine.”

Yeah, well, let’s not let science get in the way of a good story.