pet connection

Why a dog learning Polish gets more attention than the disaster in Haiti: The first story today gets top billing because three different people (including Gina) passed the link along for me to include in my next update.     Last Wednesday, a story on the BBC’s website on a dog who was learning Polish received more hits than coverage of the Haitian disaster.  How is this conceivable?  The New York Times offers an answer from a psychological angle.

The watching world can’t cope with Haiti from an Enlightenment perspective, for it can’t get its “arms around the scale of the problem” (which is not a bad definition of the Kantian sublime). But thankfully it can’t cope with it from a Nietzschean perspective either, for some forms of awfulness are too much even for animals as sick as us. So we watch a dog learning Polish instead.

How have centuries of breeding altered DNA in dogs? As a followup, more or less, to an earlier post where I mentioned a cooperative study to compare the genomes of people and pets, there’s this from the Washington Post.  There’s a particular gene in a Shar-Pei that makes its skin particularly wrinkly.  Did you know that?  Neither did I.    In part due to this, the Shar-Pei is considered one of the four most genetically distinct dogs on the planet today.  Read the article to see who the other three are.

Flash the Labrador is going to the Olympics. I can’t get tickets to Vancouver for the Winter Olympics, but Flash, a former stray, can.  Then again, he can sniff out explosives, and all I can sniff out is pizza.  Flash, along with his trainer Cliff Sampson, is headed from Manitoba westward to Vancouver.

On Monday, the 70-pound pup gave visitors a friendly lick before jumping up on a York Avenue garbage disposal, sticking his long nose into openings to get a good whiff.

If Flash smells something suspicious, he alerts Samson by sitting down.

Samson found Flash after he was alerted by Hilda Hiebert, the founder of Safe Haven Pet Rescue.

She’d taken the stray dog from a pound and noticed he had a strong “play drive.”

Flash was about 18 months old when he met Samson in Steinbach on Hiebert’s lawn.

“Nobody wanted him,” said Hiebert.

Illinois shelter hands over nearly 200 pets: A not so happy saga.   According to the Chicago Tribune, a shelter in Bloomington, Illinois is surrendering a collection of 149 cats, 29 dogs, 15 doves, two guinea pigs and one rabbit to animal shelters because of ongoing allegations of neglect.  The shelter, called Pet Rescue, had been in business since 1973, but charges have been pending against Pet Rescue’s two principals since 2008.   If more comes out on this, I’ll follow up.  I’m hoping it’s the last we hear from them, though.

Major equine drug agreement reached: On a better note, the longstanding issue surrounding the dispensing of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAID) to hunter-jumpers in competition finally has a happy (or at least negotiated) ending.

It was always a matter of dosages.   Under the agreement announced at the US Equestrian Federation’s (USEF) annual meeting last weekend in Louisville, trainers can administer one NSAID in competition.  Between April 1 and the end of November 2011, anyone administering a second dose would need to file a special form with the USEF.  Starting a year from this December 1, only one dose will be allowed, period.

Vets have a fluffy new tool to train on endoscopies: Do you know how an endoscopy works?   Your doctor has to — very carefully — thread a tube into your body to examine an organ (esophagus, stomach, lung, or other various scenic points) for diagnostic purposes.  The only way to become good at it is the same way you get to Carnegie Hall: practice, practice, practice.  For veterinarians, practicing on live animals is understandably stressful.  Virtual reality simulators exist, but thy are expensive.  Now, Jennifer Fiala of the VIN News Service tells us there’s a new practice tool available.  A specially outfitted stuffed animal, named FRED ( Flexible and Rigid Endoscopic Training Device) makes practicing endoscopy easier, and could change the nature of training in veterinary medicine. (shout out to Gina for the heads up)

The notion of FRED has Dr. Brendan McKiernan, a Veterinary Information Network consultant and internal medicine specialist with Southern Oregon Veterinary Specialty Center, impressed. An inventor in his own right, McKiernan dried cadaver lungs to train his colleagues on bronchoscopy in the 1980s. He uses those same models to teach veterinarians the basics today.

“If (FRED) provides a good representation of the anatomy and a feel for scoping, it would be fantastic,” McKiernan says, noting that in the past, air-dried stomach models have been too rigid for teaching purposes. “Scoping is like learning how to drive. The purpose that the model would really serve is to teach the mechanics of the scope. Once that’s learned, it’s easy to transition to live animals.”

Got a tip?  Got a story?  Don’t keep it to yourself.  Send it to me, or give me a shout in the comments.

Photo credits:  Flash and Cliff: Ruth Bonneville/Winnipeg Free Press Archives.  Ravel:  Nancy Jaffer/Newark Star-Ledger

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