pet connection

I’m here at the Cat Writers Association conference, and David Frei is speaking on pet-assisted therapy. I apologize in advance for any typos or missing info. I’m typing as fast as I can. I have misspelled Teigh’s name throughout, I see; it’s Teigh, not Tighe.

What they bring to us every single day is something very special.

Right now David is showing us a fabulous DVD of dogs, including James and Uno, visiting children at hospitals.

The images say it all, David says. You walk into the room with the animal and the energy changes immediately. We visit at the Women’s HEalth Unit at Sloan Kettering every week; we visit the ROnald McDonald House; the reaction is the same. The parents will say to us, ‘that’s the first time she’s smiled since she’s been here.’

Telling about visiting a man with dementia, an angry man who feels dumped by his family. As often happens with a boy and his dog, i’m an experimental case to see if we can make something happen. This guy looked up and he looked angry, and then he saw Belle, and he lights up and starts slapping his knee and says “Come here, you knucklehead,” and Belle goes and breaks the rules and jumps in his lap. I’m fighting back tears and the administrator is fighting back tears. Turns out the man had had Brittanys all his life and thought Belle was his dog.

When we’re dealing with kids, we say when a child is sick, the parents are sick too. when you’re making that child smile, you look over and see mom and dad and they’re smiling too.

You can walk into that room with a dog and talk to them about their dog at home or just get them to smile.

Tells about a girl with a spinal tumor who asks to walk Belle; she was fired up and ready to go. THe physical therapist told me, you just got her to do something I’ve been trying to get her to do for weeks.

David telling about his wife just starting to volunteer with their Brittany Tighe and how she decided to get a master’s in theology instead of an MBA and wrote her thesis on animal-assisted therapy and is now director of spiritual care for Ronald McDonald House. Our dogs were the first dogs ever allowed into bone marrow stem cell transplant center. When they start letting dogs in there it’s because they’ve pretty much decided they’re not going to make it. David is choking up telling a story about a girl they visited there who passed away. Her friends came over and told us that she loved the dogs and they loved the dogs for what they had done for her. I like working in the dog so nobody can see when I tear up.

Ron McD house gives us an adventure every week. there’s a kid who’s been there five years from Australia. He came there after his parents had been told he had only six months to live.

Telling about two young men at Mt. Sinai who see them with the dogs on a visit and one of them whistles at Tighe. Tighe rolls over for one of them. I think there’s a little food motivation going on there, David says, because the boys are being fed. The other one drops his arm off the chair and Tighe runs over and gives him five. By this time, they’re all crying and laughing, and Tighe thinks he’s the greatest thing ever.

I’m not changing the world; I’m just the guy on the other end of the leash. Now is telling about a woman who is paraplegic and gets a visit from Tighe. He gets up on her bed and lays there like a rock for 20 minutes–this is a dog who runs crazy in Central Park and chases squirrels, other crazy behavior, etc.

What we go through is nothing compared to what these kids go through every day. here’s another thing we often don’t talk about is the staff, what they go through. The staff breaks out from what they’re doing and they’re smiling to when they have an opportunity to interact with a dog.

Delta certifies rabbits. Rabbits are good for working in burn units, David says.

I think anybody who has a pet knows intuitively that when you go home and interact with them you feel better.

Now the science is starting to show it: your blood pressure goes down, your heart rate goes down; we need to do more research, but the medical profession is saying that this is good for patients.

Now I’m trying not to cry as he tells a touching story about the death of Belle and the relationship he had developed with a homeless veteran because of her.

We created Angel on a Leash as a charitable entity for the WKC four years ago and now it is a separate organization. We’re in 12 different facilities around the county…

Uno’s been a wonderful dog for us and I know many of you are dog writers as well and are familiar with Uno. Getting ready to show us another DVD. Telling us about Uno visiting Walter Reed after going to the White House. Uno met a double amputee marine there, who is now on the board of Angel on a Leash. We’re seeing Uno and this young man, Joshua Bleill, interact with kids at the Ronald McDonald House.

Just like when I saw this 18 months ago, people are blowing their noses, wiping away tears. Amy Shojai is pointing out that show cats would be good at this because they’re used to being handled.

Time to break for lunch; David is heading home to deal with a dog problem. Uh, oh!

Cavalier laugh for the day: I have a Mardi Gras mask, one of those half masks on a stick with feathers on it. I picked it up the other day to put it away–it had been out for Halloween–and on a whim I put it up to my face and turned toward Harper. Imagine a happy dog face immediately changing to horrified. Then she started barking at me. Too funny!

A cable news host, who shall remain nameless here since I don’t believe in giving people unwarranted publicity, claimed on his radio show on Wednesday that the health care bill includes pet insurance for dogs. Now, much as some of us might like that, it’s simply not true, and fortunately Politifact was there to debunk it. According to Politifact, there is “no public option for Rex, no death panels for Fido.”

What the bill does include, apparently, is the creation of a Public Health Workforce Corps to provide scholarships and education loan repayment assistance for public health professionals, including veterinarians.

So why do we have public health veterinarians? I’m so glad you asked. I’ve been working on a book about animal-related careers and, of course, one of them is public health veterinarian. Public health veterinarians work as epidemiologists in city, county, state and federal agencies, investigating animal and human disease outbreaks. They help protect human health as it relates to zoonoses, diseases that can be transmitted between animals and people through direct contact or consumption of animal products–diseases like swine flu, avian flu, mad cow disease and West Nile virus. They’re also involved in food and water safety and helping communities–people and animals–recover after natural disasters. There’s a shortage of public health veterinarians, which is one of the reasons they’re included in the legislation.

One of the things that I hope will make my book different and interesting is that I’ve woven in profiles of people in the various fields. For this one, I spoke to Katherine Feldman, public health vet for the state of Maryland. She spends her days doing everything from writing policy on rabies prevention and control to meeting with summer-camp directors to discuss ways they can help prevent campers from developing Lyme disease or being exposed to rabies through interactions with wildlife.

My role as state public health veterinarian is to look after the health of Maryland citizens wherever animals might be involved in disease risks or transmission. Issues that are common for me to deal with are things like exposure or potential exposure to rabies or other zoonotic disease issues.

So if you hear this rumor going around, set the record straight.

Post it notes. They’re everywhere. Lots of little stuff that just isn’t worth an entire entry but that has gotta be noted nonetheless ….

First, and I’m almost done with Zenyatta blogging (really!), but I gotta say this picture by Mighty Bob Mayberry is my favorite shot of the entire weekend – and it doesn’t even have a horse in it! Check out the reaction shot of Charles Pravata, all-around cool guy and awesome racing photographer, when his girlie Zenyatta showed her pretty, pretty heels to the boys she left eating the rubber racing surface behind her.  Some of Charles’ own pictures of her are on his Flickr.com photostream. One thing all cub reporters learn from Day One (if they’re smart): There are no cooler people on God’s green earth than photojournalists. I’m smart: I learned this and have never forgotten.

OK, now … in no real order …

• Kudos to Cardinal pet products for taking their manufacturing facility in Southern California off the grid.  Two cool things about this: 1) Solar; and 2) American.  Details here.
• Check out DrawTheDog.com. Nothing else out there like it. Nothing. A dog cartoon a day, inspired by stories shared by dog-lovers. Serious contender for the highly coveted blogroll here, I gotta say.
• My friend Darryl Young snapped a picture of Bo eying a hydrant.  First Dog has paparazzi. Ruff life, that.  D and I were trying to figure out the other day how long we have known each other, and in the end we decided we have known each other for so long that we are not telling how long. That’s a long time.
• The next time I think my day job sucks, I will pull out a copy of the current issue of the University of California, Davis, vet school newsletter and be grateful I don’t have to write headlines such as, “Carcass Disposal Conference Increases Preparedness” and stories to go with same.  The bigger, sadder news from the same issue is the closing of the country’s very first pet-loss support hotline, a fixture of the UCD vet school for years, and a great training ground for a great many veterinary students. The reason? Budget cuts. Download the newsletter.

More coming … must eat something first.

We promised you details about Thursday’s edition of “The Dr. Oz Show,” and here they are. Check your local listings for channel and time.

Our Dr. Marty Becker is a member of Core Team Oz, and on Thursday America’s Veterinarian  and Dr. Oz are sharing information about the diseases your pet has that you can get. They’ll let you know who is most at risk  — the very young or very old, along with the immunosuppressed.

Rather than just talk about the scary stuff that could happen, they’ll offer  preventive solutions that go beyond washing your hands and using a pooper scooper. Did you know that MRSA (methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus) is eight times more likely to occur in homes with cats, and that it can ping-pong back and forth between pets and people? They’ll talk about why that happens. They’ll also provide information about why you shouldn’t let your pet lick you in the mouth (no matter how much fun it is for both of you), why parasite control for the four-footers benefits our health, and skin infections (ringworm anyone?).

And for those of us who forget to do poop patrol at least every other day (we know who we are) Dr. Becker will remind us why that’s important.

Both doctors have a simple solution: Get rid of the risk and keep the pet! We know that the health benefits of having a pet far outweigh the risks.

On Dec. 3, Dr. Becker will be back for another visit to Oz, taping a segment on what to do in a pet health emergency. Pet Connection blogger and Purdue U  vet school emergency and critical care expert Dr. Tony Johnson provided the background to make sure only the latest and greatest information is offered.

We’ll let you know when the next can’t-miss segment will air!

Chicago Now blogger Stephen Markley wrote about why he hates dogs. After reading it, my conclusion is that he doesn’t hate dogs and cats, he just doesn’t like them, and in today’s pet-crazed world, that’s tantamount to the same thing. He lists many reasons he doesn’t like them.

What’s hilarious is that some commenters wrote that the reasons he dislikes pets are the very same reasons they love theirs.

While I feel sorry for Mr. Markely because he is missing out on the incredible experiences I’ve had with pets, it is a perfect reminder to those of us who spend much of our day and dreams thinking about our pets or even earning a living with them that not everyone feels this way. Just as we don’t all love football or Thai food, some people are not animal people, and they never will be. We may think of them as missing some important gene, but they are not genetically defective.

I often mention that the lives of people without pets must be terribly dull and unamusing, and I’m certain that parents of human children feel the same way about a childless person like me.

The other day I was reminded that not everyone loves dogs when a computer technician arrived. He clearly did not like dogs, and Dodger was doing his best to meet and greet, and make the technician fuss over him the way everyone else does. No such luck for my poor bouncing boy, who ended up in the back yard while the technician was here.

That guy was in direct contrast to the furnace guy who walked in and said “Wow, an English setter! I used to breed them!” and gave me “an English setter discount” (it was actually because he took so long to get here, but I loved it nonetheless).

Pet lovers, especially the hard-core among us (and you know who you are), need to be reminded once in a while that not all of our guests, service people or friends like animals. They don’t want a dog jumping on them, a cat shedding on their clothes, nor do they want to hold your gerbil or let your bird poop on their shoulder. Some folks are afraid of animals, and some simply aren’t attracted.

Even within animal lovers, not all of us like all animals. My sister’s horses are beautiful and I love feeding them treats, but after seeing my sister end up in the hospital twice after riding them there is no way I am getting ON one;  she stopped asking years ago if I wanted to ride. I like my bones where they are. Furthermore, while I love Melissa Kaplan’s hilarious photos of her huge iguana Mike, she knows darn well I don’t want to hold him, and I don’t want to touch any snake on the planet.

Feel sorry for those folks who are not animal lovers and about what they’re missing, but respect their wishes. I don’t want anyone to force me to sit down and watch a stupid football game, so I don’t force my pets on anyone. Life is all about variety and preferences; the good news is that I don’t have to spend time with those folks who just aren’t animal people.