pet connection

The Fresno State Bulldogs won the College World Series, and congratulation to the hot dawgs down valley. Their win reminded me of canine college mascots. I did an article on this topic, years ago, and I’m going to try to remember all the major ones.

The best known is arguably the “other” Bulldog mascot, at the University of Georgia. Uga plays center stage at every UGA football game, and even had a pretty major presence in the book, “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.” (One of my all-time favorite reads, by the way, since I love Savannah. Or loved what Savannah used to be, before The Book put it on the map.)

So … Georgia Bulldogs. Fresno Bulldogs. Yale Bulldogs. Lots of others. Bulldogs definitely rule as canine college mascots.

The next best-known college dog mascot in the non-Bulldog division would probably be Smokey, the Bluetick Coonhound at the University of Tennessee. Close behind? Reveille, the Collie at Texas A&M. Huskies at the University of Connecticut and the University of Washington. The Boston Terrier at Boston U.

My favorite? The Salukis the University of Southern Illinois. I mean, really, a Bulldog would be great on the line, but a Saluki would be a swift wide receiver.

And hey, what’s a matter with a Labrador? Go Fighting Labs!

Cats? Don’t know of any domestic cat college mascots, but lots of Tigers and Bobcats, the first most notably Mike at the Louisiana State University.

Did I miss any of the big ones? Put ‘em in the comments.

Dogs who are taking the flea preventive drug Comfortis (spinosad) at the same time they are being given high dosages of the drug ivermectin, such as those used in the treatment of demodetic mange, are at risk of ivermectin toxicity.

The maker of the drug, Eli Lilly’s companion animal health division, does not believe that there is any risk to using the regular heartworm-prevention dose of ivermectin with Comfortis; the daily dosages used to treat some stubborn cases of demodetic mange are as much as 100 times the monthly dosage used to prevent heartworm infection. In an informational release, the company cited a supporting field study that involved hundreds of dogs (PDF file):

The administration of Comfortis and approved canine formulations of ivermectin at doses labeled for heartworm prevention has been tested and shown to be safe, including in a North American field trial involving over 450 dogs that were required to be on monthly heartworm prevention throughout the three-month study. Laboratory work has found that, even at doses of 5 times the monthly dose of spinosad combined with 10 times the monthly dose of milbemycin oxime in ivermectin-sensitive collies, there were no signs of neurotoxicity (Sherman et al., publication pending).

The FDA Center for Veterinary Medicine is advising that the two drugs not be prescribed at the same time.

Ivermectin toxicity can be fatal and requires immediate veterinary care. Early signs include vomiting, weakness, drooling, tremors and coma. Dogs also often become blind, although this is usally reversible.

With aggressive veterinary care including hospitalization with round-the-clock nursing, most dogs will recover.

High-dose use of ivermectin is considered “extra-label,” which means a use of an approved drug to treat an illness for which it has not been approved. Such use is legal under the Animal Medicinal Drug Use Clarification Act of 1996; without extra-label prescribing, half or more of the drugs used in veterinary medicine every day would be unavailable, including most antibiotics.

Common sense, cleanliness and a few preventive-care health measures for your pet. That’s really all it takes to remove most of the risk of catching anything from your pet. As we mentioned earlier, our Dr. Becker is on ABC-TV’s ‘Good Morning America’ this morning, talking about how to protect yourself:

Many owners consider their household pets family members, but just like their human counterparts, these animals can spread illnesses to people.

Pet-to-human transmission is called zoonosis, and highly publicized examples include disease that’s passed from nonhousehold animals to humans, such as mad cow disease and bird flu.

Here’s the rest, and we’ll link up to the video later if it’s posted. And don’t forget Mikkel’s post on what it’s like backstage.

In other veterinary-related news, Time has an interesting piece on stem-cell therapy. From Time:

Blue had hip dysplasia, a fairly common and sometimes crippling degenerative condition in dogs and cats. The cure — a complete hip transplant — would keep Blue in recovery for up to six months. So while Waters mulled the surgery, Blue’s regular veterinarian sent Waters to see another local vet, Kathy Mitchener, who was trained in acupuncture, to treat Blue’s pain.

But Mitchener had a better idea. She offered a cutting-edge stem-cell transplant, a therapy not yet available to humans, that would potentially help Blue’s hip repair itself. The treatment took just two days last January. Mitchener had recently become certified to perform the stem-cell treatment, pioneered by the company Vet-Stem based in San Diego. She removed some fatty tissue from the dog’s abdomen and shipped the sample to Vet-Stem’s labs, where technicians used centrifuges to extract stem cells from the tissue. The cells were shipped back the next day, and Mitchener injected them into Blue’s failing hip, where they adapted and developed into the healthy cartilage and tendon cells the animal needed. Within 36 hours, Waters says, “Blue was moving well, and you could see an ease in her gait.”

Unrelated: Sandy Robins writes about the high cost of moving a pet by air. Woody has flown twice in the last year, and Otter, the puppy I raised for a friend, flew here from Texas and back to Texas four months later. And finally, Ilario came here on a short hop from Oregon a couple months ago.

I can vouch for the price hit of air travel. While Otter’s trips were unaccompanied, Woody flew with me going out and with my friend Mary coming back. Woody’s ride in cargo was considerably more expensive than the ticket for the two-legged half of the travel team, both times. Between the worry and the cost, I’ll be loathe to ship an animal for any reason but the most urgent, that’s for sure.

In other words, Air Woody will be limited to the altitude he can gain on his own. Actually, given the state of air travel, I’m not exactly looking to fly much myself. (Pictured: Air Woody)

Summertime traveling with dogs is a fun and rewarding experience . . . but it can be a messy one as well.

Dog food bags or boxes are hard to store and can easily tip over and turn a car into a giant box of dog food in no time. Attempt to bring cans or fresh food ingredients, and you’ve got even more issues.

However, a product has hit the market that takes all the fuss and muss out of DogCar travels while also providing your pup with a meal that is fun for him to eat because it’s shaped like a bone.

It’s called WholeMeals Food for Dogs and it was developed with veterinarians who were looking for a new approach to healthy nutrition that would be easy for owners and fun for their dogs to enjoy. The bone-shaped meal is the first meal to resemble real bone, with a shape specifically designed to give your canine a bit of a challenge at meal time.

The result of WholeMeal’s bone shape is that dogs no longer have to eat from a bowl, preferring to take the bone in their forepaws and chew in a natural way to get their food. According to WholeMeals, scientific research shows that the smooth and angled edges of the bone-shaped meal gives dogs what they love best — and what is built into their DNA — the ability to pick up their meals, eat with their paws and chew longer and more thoroughly.

Available in four sizes (Toy, Small, Medium and Large), the bone-shaped meal is designed with varied surfaces to fit into different parts of the mouth. The chewy outside helps prolong mealtime because your pup has to work to longer to eat her meal. A special dual texture helps keep teeth cleaner and reduces tarter and plaque build-up.

Dr. Marty Becker, the popular veterinary contributor to ABC-TV’s “Good Morning America” and veterinary adviser to DogCars.com, is convinced that WholeMeals is a good way for dogs to eat.

“The secret behind WholeMeals food is the fact that owners appreciate the food as an entire meal with all the nutrients their dog needs,” said Becker. “The meals are about freedom; they make feeding easier for owners and more enjoyable for dogs.”

Speaking of Dr. Becker, you can see him on ABC’s Good Morning America tomorrow (June 26) as well as on XM Radio channel 155 and on ABC’s GMA NOW, which is an extended version offered to viewers through cable, broadband and cell phones. Click here for more details.

So now summertime travels with your canine crew can be less messy and more fun — for everyone!

After California State Sen. Gloria Negrete McLeod looked at the writing on the wall (and the piles of melted-down fax machines in the Legislative offices) and sensibly forced the term-limited lame duck Assemblyman Lloyd Levine (now preparing for a new job, to judge from his own news release) to accept her gutting of his California Healthy Pets Act, Pet Extinction Act, Christie and I were surprised to get tons of forwarded e-mails (with lots! of!! exclamation!!! points!!!! and CAPITAL LETTERS!!!) claiming that the new version of AB 1634 was even worse (!!!).

We could only imagine this assertion came from people who couldn’t be bothered to read the new legislation, or had some strange disease by which they were unable to keep from forwarding nonsense along to, oh, 145,832 of their closest e-mail friends. Again and again and again.

Because anyone who actually read either the new bill or the Legislative Counsel’s analysis could see that the “new and improved” AB 1634, while not a piece of legislation we supported, was in fact little more than a face-saver for Levine and his pal Judie Mancuso, whose initial bright idea — before being made to start eating changes to the bill to make puppy-millers happy — was to force the spaying or neutering of every kitten, puppy, cat and and dog in the state. This, despite the problem of putting the state in the middle of a medical decision with some degree of risk that should be discussed between an informed client and a veterinarian, and made by a pet’s owner. And this, despite the fact that forced spay-neuter has never worked, anywhere, to reduce pet overpopulation for any number of reasons we’ve laid out, oh, a million times now, and here’s but one example.

(Hey Judie, it’s nice that you took credit for “[the] coalition we have built in support of AB 1634 [being] the largest many people in California politics have ever seen,” but why be modest? The coalition of people you inspired who didn’t want you to give puppy mills a pass while taking down responsible, ethical breeders — not backyard breeders or puppy-mill scum — with your spittle-spewing misrepresentations was even larger! So congratulations!)

The biggest problem with the “new” AB 1634 — aside from being a pointless face-saver, etc., etc. — was that a pet could be forced to be altered based on even unsubstantiated claims from a cranky neighbor. Well guess what? That got fixed:

From John Myers’ Capital Notes blog:

The debate this morning before the Senate Local Government Committee attracted a large crowd of both supporters and opponents. And it focused on AB 1634’s requirement that a citation must be issued after animal control officials receive a report of a problem pet. On the third citation, a dog would have to be fixed; a cat would have to be fixed after two citations.

So what happens, asked Sen. Tom Harman (R-Orange), if the complaint made to animal control officials is “frivolous or false”? Could a dispute between neighbors over something entirely different lead to mandatory sterlization of a dog after three complaints?

After a long discussion, Assemblymember Levine — who either saw merit in the above scenario or simply decided that some bill was better than no bill — agreed to once again amend AB 1634.

Now, instead of saying a pet owner “shall be cited” when a complaint is made… the bill says a pet owner “may be cited.” And that wiggle room for local animal control officials was enough to draw the vote of Sen. Mike Machado (D-Linden), who cast the deciding vote.

Now, where are we? AB 1634 is out of committee but can still be killed. I think it should be, because it’s redundant and pointless, and because I don’t care about how much face Levine and Mancuso want to save with their donors.

But will I move out of state if it’s passed? Nope. Will I care if it’s passed? Not too much. Why? Because I’m a responsible pet-owner, duh, and, possibly, someday, a responsible, ethical breeder as well. And because my heart’s not going to break if my idiot neighbor’s neglected, fear-aggressive and uncatchable outdoor dog has to be neutered after the third time we neighbors call animal control because the dog has jumped the four-foot fence, yet again, and is heading for the busy boulevard in search of love but more likely heading for a date with a Mack truck. (Although honestly, current law more than handles this situation, if enforced, which it’s not.)

So take your exclamation points, your capital letters and your conspiracy theories somewhere else. The forces of common sense, truth and good science (thank you, California veterinarians, who forced your own association to back away from this vile thing) won this round.

Now, can we move forward together on strategies that actually do work, like shelter reform and building no-kill communities? I can’t say I’d be able to find common ground with someone like Judie Mancuso or with anyone (hello, NAIA!) who believes reputable breeders and pet-lovers must support puppy-millers and factory farmers, but I quite certain there are a whole lot of people who are very much willing to work on opening what Nathan Winograd has called “A Third Door.”