pet connection

Book Expo America is the nation’s biggest publishing industry trade show, second largest in the world. This year it’s in Los Angeles, and it starts today. Our publisher, Health Communications, Inc./HCI, has a big booth, of course, and the focus of their efforts this year is the “Ultimate” book series, which include the three books Dr. Becker and I have been working so hard on this spring, along with our co-authors. (The publisher has a bound galley of the dog book ready for the show, along with “samplers” of the other books.)

I was planning to fly down this morning, but I am fried. (We finished the books around 6 a.m. on Tuesday.) So I’m going to spend today hanging with the pets and leisurely doing a little laundry and then pack to go.

With my flight canceled, I’m choosing to drive tomorrow instead of fly today. Maybe crazy, but I wanted to switch. I’ve logged a lot of sky time in the last couple years, and it’s ugly up there. Volkswagen gave me permission to take this week’s DogCars.com test car, the Jetta SportWagen, on the road trip. (Usually reviewers have the vehicle for a week, and are not to put more than 500 miles on it.) I’m hoping the drive will be a little mental “reset” button for my tired mind, and I’m grateful the Jetta is pretty fuel-efficient.

It’s six hours door to door, which means eight hours with traffic, probably. I’m having lunch Friday with my college buddy Russ Stanton, who’s now the editor of the Los Angeles Times. (I still have a hard time wrapping my brain around that. I mean, he was always smart, hard-working and talented, but Editor of the Los Angeles Times? Wow.) Then I have to run to the first of the book-signings in the L.A. Convention Center, one on Friday and two on Saturday.

This is just for the industry … like everyone else, we’ll be trying to impress the buyers from bookstores and from the big retailers like Target and Costco.

Signings late Saturday afternoon, and then if I have any energy left, I’m going to drive home Saturday night. More realistically, I’ll crash in the hotel room the publisher has provided and drive back early Sunday morning.

And then … I swear … no travel for a long, long time. I wanna stay home with my pets and my garden!

Pupdate: I just found out that my friend Teresa is competing all weekend at an agility competition in Pasadena (Teresa has Jazz, written about here, and also Sprint, the fastest agility dog in the world and sister to my girl McKenzie.) So … looks as if I’ll be spending Sunday morning at the park next to the Rose Bowl!

Christie’s Your Whole Pet column on the San Francisco Chronicle’s SFGate.com Web site is up, about superbugs and pets:

There’s a new and growing threat to your pets’ health, and while I wish I could tell you it’s just another Internet rumor, it’s all too real. I should know, because my dog is its latest poster child. I’m talking about something you might have thought only affected humans: drug-resistant staph infections.

We hear a lot about these types of infections in people these days, severe ones spread in hospitals and less severe ones spread in daycare centers, schools and gyms. Most human infections involve methicillin resistant Staphylococcus aureus, or MRSA. In dogs and cats, the bacteria is slightly different — methicillin-resistant staphylococcus intermedius, or MRSI — but it’s otherwise pretty much the same problem: some strains of a common bacteria found in and on most dogs, people and surfaces have evolved to resist the antibiotics we normally use to treat it.

Here’s the rest. And here, again, is the link to the transcript of Christie’s interview with veterinary dermatologist Dr. Laura Stokking.

One the earliest comments on the SFGate.com piece  insists that no skin problems occur with a raw diet. Well … not so much, considering that Kyrie hasn’t had anything but home-prepared meals in her life.

The problem with drug-resistant bacteria is system-wide, not a pet-by-pet (or person-by-person) issue.

Via the dogged Therese at PetSitUSA, the Chicago Tribune reports on a congressional investigation into the safety of imported foods:

A congressional committee is investigating whether some private U.S. laboratories were instructed to withhold samples of tainted food so that importers could get their goods into the United States.

In a May 1 letter to 10 labs, the House Committee on Energy and Commerce suggests they may have been encouraged by importing companies to discard test results that had failed Food and Drug Administration standards.

“We’re gathering information from both the FDA and private industry about the labs almost being complicit in helping importers game the system,” said Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.), chairman of the Oversight and Investigations subcommittee that is investigating the labs and food companies. “Someone told us you pay for the result you want to get from the labs.”

Like Therese and anyone else who lived through last year’s massive pet food recall, I’m shocked. Shocked, I tell you.

The investigation was launched because hearings on how well the FDA and USDA are protecting American food safety, as well as the efficacy of the current inspection and recall powers indicated there may be problems with the system. (Ya think?)

The role of food testing laboratories became an issue in February, when the CEO of one private lab, Anresco Laboratories of San Francisco, said private labs don’t always tell the FDA when tests show that imported food may be contaminated.

That executive, David Eisenberg, told the committee that the FDA “requires that we sign a laboratory director’s statement that we’re submitting all work that we’ve done on a sample.”

In reality, he said, the importers that hire the labs control where the test results go.

“If the importer tells us not to submit the information to the FDA, the FDA never sees it,” Eisenberg testified. “Sometimes they want to keep a clean record on their item with the FDA.”

In an interview, Eisenberg said that a check of his company’s records revealed that it withheld samples from the FDA at a company’s request an average of three times a month. He said the labs break no laws by withholding such information.

“We are employed by the imported-food manufacturer,” Eisenberg said. “We are not employed by the FDA, and the FDA has no authority over private labs that are generating imported-food test results, so we have to follow the advice of our customer.”

Well, we know who’s looking out for the corporations. Who’s looking out for us?

Full story here.

I love my hens! And now, they’re starting to love — or at least tolerate — each other, after the addition of three more a couple days ago.

Charlotte has decided to quit attacking Hester, and everyone’s suddenly laying like crazy. I can now ID the eggs by breed, for the most part: green and khaki from the Americunas, pinky-red from the Rhode Island Reds and rich, dark brown from everyone else.

I’ll be taking a dozen back to work to give away today. (And I’m going to find out from some expert why eggs are different colors, because I’m curious!)

But as pretty as the eggs are, the chickens are even prettier! This is Hester the Hated, a Barred Plymouth Rock.

I don’t know why the group decided she was uncool, but for the first two days it wasn’t pretty. I separated her so the rest could glare at her through the wire. Yesterday afternoon I let them all out in the garden, and last night they all roosted together in the coop. All seems well.

But at the beginning the others jumped on her and pulled feathers (you can see the scruffiness on her head).

Now I really know what a “pecking order” is all about!

P.S. To sharp-eyed readers. I’m outta coffee. Hence, typos. I think I got ‘em all.

Christie’s writing about drug-resistant staph infections in pets for her “Your Whole Pet” column for SFGate.com, the online home of the San Francisco Chronicle. That piece won’t be up until Wednesday, but you can get a preview by checking out the transcript of her extended interview with veterinary dermatologist Dr. Laura Stokking:

Dr. Stokking is a diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Dermatology, and has published several book chapters and reviews in veterinary dermatology and has lectured veterinarians at national and local conferences. She is active in educating general practitioners in San Diego County on recognizing and treating resistant staph infections in companion animals.

[...]

CHRISTIE KEITH: Are you seeing a lot of MRSI in your practice?

DR. LAURA STOKKING: I certainly am, and certainly more than I saw a year ago this time.

CHRISTIE KEITH: Do you think it’s being diagnosed more or do you think it’s more prevalent? And what do you suggest to general practitioners?

DR. LAURA STOKKING: I think it’s definitely a combination of both, being diagnosed more and also more prevalent.

I’m basically recommending to general practitioners that they do cultures if something does not respond the way we think it should. So if a pet has been on the standard antibiotics that have been working for years like cephalexin and clavamox and all those things that have worked for canine skin infections for decades, if they see a change where the pet is on those drugs and they’re not working, then a culture needs to be done so we can treat based on the culture result to know exactly what the issue is, what the organism is and what the best ways to treat that organism are.

Here’s the rest. We’ll put up the article (and the transcript link, again) when Christie’s article is up on SFGate.com.