pet connection

As you know, my Borzoi, Kyrie, has been battling an infection with multi-drug resistant staph (MRSI) for the last few months. A lot of you have been asking about her in comments and email, and I promised to post an update.

Gina called me last night. “I thought you were going to post about Kyrie.”

I assured her I was working on the post at that very moment. And I was. In fact, I worked on it for around four hours yesterday, and I’ve been working on it for at least an hour this morning. Trust me, five hours on a single blog post? If all my work took me that kind of time, I’d be hard-pressed to pay my utility bill, forget about my mortgage and the dogs’ grass-fed beef.

The problem isn’t that she’s worse. The problem isn’t that I don’t know what to do. The problem is that she’s, at least at the moment, completely free of all symptoms, and has been for two weeks now. None of her previous antibiotic treatments accomplished that — the first one didn’t work at all, and while both the second and the third drugs did, the infection returned within a couple of days after the course of antibiotics was finished.

So now you’re wondering, er, Christie? What’s the problem?

What I used was medical grade honey. (more…)

Hat tip to several folks for this noticing this piece from the Times of London on how getting a kid a dog can help keep allergies from developing:

Children run less risk of being sensitive to allergens if there is a dog in the house in the early years of their lives, scientists have found.

The conclusion, based on a six-year study of 9,000 children, adds weight to the theory that growing up with a pet trains the immune system to be less sensitive to potential triggers for allergies such as asthma, eczema and hay fever.

The “hygiene theory” of allergy holds that modern life has simply become too clean, meaning that babies’ immune systems are not exposed to enough germs to develop normally.

Having a dog provides enough dirt of the right kind, the new German study suggests. …  Previous studies have suggested that exposure to pets may have a protective effect against allergies but many of these studies were based on retrospective questioning of subjects about their exposure.

The new study did not require anybody to remember anything. The children were followed from birth to the age of six. This is likely to make for more reliable results.

Ahahahaha.  We told ya so.

And now … all you pet-haters who fill the PetConnection mailbox with snotty notes like, “Dogs are filthy” and “Cats are disgusting” and “Pet freaks are nuts” … well … eat dirt. It’s good for you, proven. If you’d had a pet growing up you’d be healthier … and likely happier, too (or at least less inclined to whine at pet-care columnists, anyway).

Of course, there certainly are pet-lovers who go too far … check out Pet Connection BFF Dr. Patty Khuly’s write-up on people who insist on turning their tiny dogs into pseudo-children, with health consequences for their pets.

Poor Harper was stung by a bee this afternoon, somewhere on a hind leg. She was screaming bloody murder and running in circles trying to get it off her. I didn’t know what was wrong until I saw it fall off and then I stomped it and carried her inside, dragging Bella and Twyla behind me. I called the vet, who recommended a quarter tablet of Benadryl and a cold compress.

She’s still freaked out by it. She curled up into as small a ball as possible on the sofa and stared at me with that expression that said “How could you let that happen to me?” She wouldn’t eat dinner, and I haven’t been able to get her to go potty since. I have visions–terrible visions–that this will set back her house training. She acts so grown up most of the time that I forget what a little baby she still is.

I took her out a little while ago and we practiced heeling around the complex, my hope being that it would keep her mind off the scary stinging things that might be lurking outdoors. Still no potty action. We came back in and I opened the garage door, only to see a large black spider (the garden kind, I think, not a black widow). Naturally, Harper ran right toward it and brushed up against its web. I don’t know what I would have done if it had gotten on her since I’m an arachnophobe from way back. I guess we would have both had the heebie jeebies.

Speaking of fun words like heebie jeebies, I saw a new coinage today (new to me, anyway) in the LA Times food section. It was “dogateur,” a reference to vendors of premium hot dogs. I like it as much as my creation of barkoisie.

Well, we’re going to go outside one last time before going to bed. Wish us luck.

My column this month is on pets that have overcome disabilities. We all know what great things they’re capable of, but for some people it comes as a surprise. As usual, I gathered more stories than I could use. Cassidy’s story made it into my finished piece but was later cut, so I thought I’d share it here.

Cassidy the Rottweiler hasn’t let a missing leg stop her. She lives with Becky Buffum of Austin, Texas, who adopted her when she realized no one else would want this loving but ‘defective’ dog.

On the adoption application, one of the questions was ‘What will you allow your dog to do?’ Buffum recounts. ‘My response was ‘Anything she wants.’

Since then, Cassidy has gone to dog camp, where she excelled at agility and lure coursing. She recently clocked 19 miles an hour at a ‘fastest dog’ contest and nimbly navigates the 150 steps down to the lake from Buffum’s home. She’s learned to swim and makes frequent visits to retirement homes and schools as a therapy dog. The only thing that’s difficult for Cassidy is walking slow, Buffum says.

Cassidy is probably more agile than either of my two four-legged Rottweilers,” Buffum says. “If you say ‘Try it,’ she says ‘Okay.’

It’s not all sweetness and light living with a pet who has a disability. Younger animals usually recover from surgery and start getting around more quickly than older ones. And if you’re considering adopting an animal with a sensory or bodily deficit, take your home environment into account, says Randi Golub, a veterinary technician who adopted two special-needs cats: Cassidy, who’s missing a leg, and Jimmy, who had both eyes removed.

If we had a bunch of active kids or toddlers around, I don’t think that would be the best thing for the cats because they need a patient, stable household. Because Jimmy’s hearing is so acute, I think being in a noisy house with a lot going on might be a little overstimulating for him. With Cassidy you have to move slow because sometimes he starts to go right and then winds up going left.

Of course, I’ve found that to be true with most cats. And Golub, a serial furniture rearranger, has had to curb her tendencies since adding Jimmy to the household. On the plus side, she’s gained two great new therapy cats.

I always tell people that my biceps were never in better shape than when I was carrying a three-legged greyhound up and down the stairs. What about you? Do you have any stories about the joys and difficulties of living with a special-needs animal?

Gratuitous Cavalier blogging: We’re planning the second annual Darcy FUNDay for Saturday, May 31. We’re planning a mini agility course if we can round up some equipment, a rally course, and best costume and best trick competitions. Cardiologist Michael Lesser will be speaking as will my friend and “pet edutainer” Arden Moore, who’s going to talk about cooking for dogs. I’ve collected lots of great prizes, and we’re planning a raffle and a silent auction.

Harper is on track to become a supermodel and Thornton traveling Cavalier (travelier?). She’s going to be in a cover shoot for a dog magazine and in a couple of weeks she’s flying to Oklahoma with Jerry. In the cabin, natch. As with everything else she does, I’m sure she’ll take to it with gusto.

I’ve been very touched by the outpouring of sympathy and suggestions from everyone here after my recent update about my dog Kyrie’s struggle with a drug-resistant staph infection. But I was also feeling something nagging at me, a sputtering sense of “yes, yes, but,” and yet I couldn’t quite put my finger on what the hell the problem was. What was it about all these kind and caring comments that was making me feel a little head-explodey?

And that’s when I got it; apparently sometimes I’m a little slow. Because whenever I think about heads exploding, I think about the pet food recall, and that makes me think about the FDA, and of course, the FDA makes me think about drugs and science and medicine and food, and how the regulatory agencies designed to protect public health and safety have been downsized and small-governmented into a state of near-impotence.

Which is, my friends, why we have drug-resistant staph infections.

Because while, of course, right now my primary concern is Kyrie, and if someone else had this problem the first thing I’d be telling them is the kind of stuff a lot of you said to me — look for the underlying cause, try alternatives, read the research, etc. — there’s something else.

It’s exactly the same thing I said when my fellow-homemade diet feeders encouraged me to use the pet food recall as a platform to advocate for homemade pet diets, and I refused to do it. My belief was, and is, that no matter how people decide to feed their pets, they should be able to walk into the supermarket and buy food that doesn’t have poison in it.

And I also believe that this planet shouldn’t be riddled with mutant bacteria that came into existence largely due to the widespread abuse of powerful drugs, most of it in livestock feed, used because the way we raise commercial meat in this country promotes ill health and disease in those animals.

Then there’s the complete collapse of the nation’s health-care system, leading to hospitals that are understaffed and using outdated, hard to sterilize equipment, and are full of people without health care insurance flooding emergency rooms and being handed inappropriate prescriptions for antibiotics because it’s cheaper and easier than actually diagnosing and treating their illnesses — or their poverty.

Of course, there’s really nothing I can do about all that, so I’ll go back to the medical grade honey and expensive veterinary dermatologist and skin cultures and last-ditch antibiotics. I’ll check Kyrie’s thyroid and immune system, and wonder if I need to soak my entire house in bleach.

But let’s not forget the bigger picture, and the fact that the same guys who brought us the pet food recall are also bringing MRSA to our communities and MRSI to our pets. Don’t let them off the hook by allowing them to reduce this to a problem dealt with in our homes with antibiotics and herbs and guilt, because this problem didn’t start in our homes, even though that’s where it’s hitting us.