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 dog rescued many years ago, found as an emaciated stray with baling wire wrapped around her snout, repaid my friend last week by saving her life.

Thanks to a liver transplant a couple of years ago, Linda Thompson is getting back to a fairly normal state of health after years of creeping towards becoming terminally ill. She uses a pump for her diabetes, and just recently began working full time again. This past August I saw Linda for the first time in years. She lives in a suburb of Vancouver. She has been too ill to travel, and I just hadn’t made it out there in a long time.

Emma, an 11-year old shepherd mix, woke Linda up around 3 a.m. to tell Linda she wanted to go out. Linda staggered out to the kitchen aiming for the room behind it, which has the door to the back yard. Emma simply stopped by the kitchen counter and refused to budge. Groggy as all get out, Linda thought Emma wanted food, but her dish was full. Emma kept looking at the kitchen counter and then at Linda, then back to the counter, then back to Linda.

I can just see Emma doing this. She is one smart cookie.

“Eventually, I realized that my vision was quite blotchy and what she was indicating was my glucometer,” said Linda in an e-mail to me. The glucometer was on the kitchen counter where Emma was staring. Linda checked her blood sugar and found it dangerously low at 25 when normal is 90 to 140 (or 1.5 from a normal range of 5.2 to 7.6).

“If it had dipped any lower I would have blacked out completely,” said Linda, whose new job is a patient advisor for diabetics. “I started eating Dex4 tablets and Emma went outside, where it was raining heavily.  Normally when it’s raining, she runs out and pees and then dashes back in the house.  Not this night.  She lay down in the grass for 15 minutes.  This is significant because I have been known, in a hypoglycemic stupor, to take a couple of Dex4 tablets and go back to bed without checking to make sure it’s coming up and have subsequently tanked.  After about 15 minutes, she came back in and again went to the counter where the glucometer was.  I tried to get her to go down the hall to the bedroom, but she wouldn’t go until I had taken my blood again and told her that it was okay.”

Linda’s pump had been sending out noisy beeping alarms, but that night both Linda and her husband slept through them. It’s impossible to know if Emma was responding to the alarm or to a scent indicating a problem, but she not only knew something needed to be done immediately, she also figured out how to do it.

It’s frightening to think that without Emma, Linda could have died from this one episode after nearly dying two years ago (she was the sickest person her transplant surgeon had ever seen who survived).  Linda’s health issues began almost 15 years ago, around the time I met her through an Internet dog list, and she is one hell of a survivor. I’ve never seen anyone that ill who had such an upbeat attitude every step of the way. In all the years I’ve known her, she’s only cried once that I know of, and not because she was sick or nearly dying: she cried because one of her dogs died in her arms while she was home alone and too sick to race the dog to the vet. Knowing that the dog wouldn’t have survived even if she’d been seen immediately never took away the pain.

At one point Emma was one of several rescued dogs in the house, but because of Linda’s health issues, Emma has been the only pet in the house for a while. Emma wasn’t there the last time I was, so this was the first time I met her. She’s an absolute doll. I took a lot of photos of them, and many of Emma, trying to show how happy she is despite the reasons for the scar around her snout. Linda and Emma have always had an emotional connection that went beyond the one she had with her other beloved dogs.  It’s no surprise to the people who know them that Emma would be the dog to save Linda from a dangerous glucose drop; it would have been Emma if there were ten dogs in the house.

Emma is clearly getting a bit stiff these days, and her gait isn’t quite what it used to be. She has been totally content for years, and is an easy-going, affectionate girl. Whoever cruelly left her to starve with wire wrapped around her snout so that she couldn’t eat will surely get what he or she deserves in this world. Thankfully, Linda and Emma have always deserved each other, and now they have saved each other.

When Bella was an only dog, we took her to the beach fairly often, where she would chase the seagulls right into the waves. When Darcy came along, we still went occasionally, but managing two bird-crazy Cavaliers was a lot more work. With Twyla’s arrival, we still went for walks in beach neighborhoods, but in the seven years since we’ve had her, those black and tan paws have never touched sand (which you would understand completely if you had ever tried to groom her very long, thick coat). Harper has been once or twice, by herself. That all changed on Saturday. We loaded everyone up and headed to Dog Beach in Huntington Beach to watch Cleo the Miniature Poodle mix learn to surf.

Cleo found her way to Arden Moore’s house a few years ago, after deciding that her home at the time was not to her liking. Arden tracked down her people, but they didn’t want Cleo back. Arden wasn’t sure what to do with her, not having ever had a small dog before, but by that time it was too late; Cleo had wrapped herself inside Arden’s heart and clearly was not going anywhere. To this day, Arden still exclaims over Cleo’s gutsiness, despite her size, so when she had a chance to judge a dog surfing contest and get a surfing lesson for one of her dogs, there was no doubt in her mind as to which one would go out.

We’ve only seen dogs body surfing, so we went along for the spectacle of the thing. Jerry brought his camera to document the lesson, and we thought all the girls would enjoy the chance to do a little off-leash frolicking on the sand. Twyla seemed taken aback by the feel of the sand beneath her paws, but she soon got over that. She was not thrilled, however, the first time a wave washed up and got her wet.  After that she carefully avoided any part of the beach that had any chance of getting her wet. Sand didn’t seem to bother her, though. She had it encrusted all over her face, giving it the look of being frosted by snow. After doing a little exploring, she chillaxed and gnawed on a piece of seaweed.

We found a spot to sit and watch the show, which was great except for being frequently body-slammed by all the bigger dogs playing nearby. I didn’t mind so much for myself, but I spent a lot of time trying to protect poor Bella from getting run over, and Jerry had to protect his camera and lenses from too many noses and tongues.  Happily, all the dogs were friendly. Dog Beach is patrolled regularly by volunteers, and they take good behavior (and beach cleanliness) seriously.

We had to wait a while for the instructor, Brandon Scolman, to arrive, but it was well worth it.  He worked well with Cleo and she seemed to trust him from the start.  Arden had put a flotation vest on her, and it was very easy to just pick Cleo up and place her on the board.  From there the instructor carried the board (with Cleo on it) out into the surf, and swam her out over several breakers.  They did this three times with Cleo magnificently riding the board back to shore, with Arden’s other dog, Chipper, running out to meet her and make sure she was all right. Cleo wiped out at least once, but Brandon lifted her up and put her right back on the board. She always wears a stoic expression, so it’s hard to say if she was having a good time, but she was definitely a trooper.

Arden wanted to keep the lesson short since it was a bit chilly, so after half an hour, we wrapped Cleo up in a blanket I had brought and took her back to the pet-friendly Shorebreak Hotel, where they were staying. She and Chipper got baths in the very deep tub, and we took our girls on home. By the time we arrived, they showed no sign of having been on the beach. I used to make fun of breed descriptions that said the dog’s coat shed dirt and mud, but, well, it’s true.

We skipped the actual surf competition on Sunday, not wanting to fight the crowds, but Arden says it was a blast. The LA Times has a slide show of some of the competitors. We hear that Boston Terriers and Bulldogs were some of the best surfers out there. That whole low-to-the-ground thing helps a lot (I speak from my 40th-birthday-schooly experience). About 1,500 spectators came to see the canine shredders.

Cowabunga, dog!

The wild life in Laguna

On Sunday, we took Harper to Laguna for our regularly scheduled walk. It was dark by the time we headed back, along PCH instead of our usual route through the park, so we could do some window shopping at the galleries. A guy approaching from the other direction took a look at Harper and warned us about a ring of raccoons up ahead. I’m not sure if he thought they would go after Harper or vice versa. She thinks she’s tough, so we were happy to have the heads up. Sure enough, about five of the little rascals were running back and forth beneath a gate into someone’s yard, no doubt raiding the trash. I don’t believe in picking little dogs up when they’re approached by bigger dogs, but I wasn’t taking any chances with raccoons.

She got carried until we were past them.

Anyone who knows me knows how much I love to travel. If a dog or three can come along, so much the better. So when my friend Arden invited me to come check out yappy hour and help her celebrate her birthday and Chipper’s at Hotel Indigo in downtown San Diego’s Gaslamp Quarter, I was there. And so was Harper. On the way, since neither one is much of a social butterfly, we dropped off Bella and Twyla with Terry Albert so I could relax with only one dog to wrangle. The hotel is only about a block from PetCo Park–how apropos!–so Harper and I walked down there after checking in. It seems to be a popular place for downtowners to walk their dogs; we saw quite a few then and the next morning.

Hotel Indigo bills itself as being dog-friendly, and I can attest to the truthfulness of that statement–and not just because they gave us a room at a media rate and comp’d our parking. They have a mascot, Sandie, adopted from the San Diego Humane Society; they don’t charge a fee for canine (and I presume feline) guests; they don’t limit the size of canine guests, and the rooms have easy-clean laminate flooring. We know it’s easy-clean because one of the visiting dogs in Arden’s room last night splashed water out of the stainless steel dishes–provided by the hotel–onto the floor. The only thing I might suggest is that they provide extra “dog towels” for wiping that kind of thing up so you don’t have to use your bath towel. Dogs are allowed everywhere in the hotel, including the lobby and bar area. That’s unusual. Most hotels that allow dogs don’t permit them to actually congregate in the lobby. We had five or six hanging out there while we debated what to order for a late dinner.

But I’m getting ahead of myself. We were there for the hotel’s weekly canine cocktails event, held on its safely enclosed ninth-floor deck. Every Tuesday, from September through December, dogs and their people are invited to enjoy drinks and the view from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. Live music, comfortable seating and fire pits add to the ambience. Oh, and the pool for the dogs to splash in. I’m not actually sure that’s why it’s there, but certainly on Tuesday night that’s how it was used.

You might think that only cocktail-size dogs would be at such an event, carried in the purses of their cocktail-swilling owners, but you would be wrong. Every size of dog was represented, from a Chihuahua to a Great Dane. There were several Labs, including one that was a service dog, a Golden, an Australian Shepherd, two Bernese Mountain Dogs, a couple of Pibbles (hi Ginger!), any number of miniature Poodles and various terrier-type dogs, including a cute little Cairn, as well as a Beagle, a Vizsla, a Pug, a Puggle, a Havanese, two Cavaliers and more. They all got along great, a testament to their owners’ socialization skills, although Harper, for whatever reason, seemed to take exception to one Bichon. Maybe she thought he was fresh. I asked one of the managers if they’d ever had any doggie dust-ups and he said no, this was pretty typical.

The dogs were definitely having a good time. Paper cones filled with treats were freely available, and all the dogs knew exactly what they were. They’d go up to anyone they saw holding a cone and produce a nice sit and a pleading look. I could see hotels preferring this crowd to, say, the Rolling Stones in their heyday. There were no cigarette burns on the tables or furniture thrown in the pool. People there for the first time said they would definitely come back.

Besides the birthday party factor, it was a fun way for me and Harper to have some one-on-one time. We practiced our elevator manners, not barking when room service knocked on the door, and staying for longer than two seconds. We’d go back, and we might even invite Jerry and the big girls to come with. Party on!

I’ve always been a rather neurotic hand washer, even before I had non-specific hepatitis not once but twice (once idiopathic, once from a blood transfusion). I hate anything sticky on my hands, and so I wash after eating an apple or something that drips, or after cleaning the kitchen or bathroom. Knitting dries my hands. Sadly, thanks to genetics I also have fairly dry skin.

I am completely predisposed to be the ultimate neurotic hand washer (everyone has to excel at something). Every winter my hands get dry enough from the excessive hand washing to crack and bleed, no matter how many gooey bottles of creams I use.

Imagine my life with pets: I’m a walking advertisement for obsessive compulsive hand washing. But it’s my argument that when you live with pets, you should wash your hands more often than you probably do. I have never once had any health issue that resulted from handling pets or their food, not when I feed raw, pick up poop, clean litter boxes daily, get licked, or take care of cuts and scrapes.

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recommends hand washing as a preventive measure for many illnesses, and they emphasize it strongly as a preventive measure for pet owners, mostly after cleaning up feces:

• Washing hands with soap and water after handling rodents or their cages and bedding is the most important thing you can do to reduce the risk of Salmonella transmission.
• To protect yourself from cat-related diseases: Wash your hands thoroughly with soap and running water after touching cat feces (stool).
• Although birds can spread germs to people, illness caused by touching or owning birds is rare. To best protect yourself from getting sick, thoroughly wash your hands with running water and soap after contact with birds or their droppings.
• To best protect yourself from getting sick, thoroughly wash your hands with running water and soap after contact with dogs, dog saliva, or dog feces (stool).
• Although horses can pass diseases to people, you are not likely to get sick from touching or owning them. However, when you do common chores with horses, such as cleaning stalls, grooming them, and picking out their feet, you are probably touching manure without knowing it. To protect yourself from getting sick, you should thoroughly wash your hands with running water and soap after contact with horses or their manure.
• Therefore, people can also get salmonellosis if they do not wash their hands after touching the feces of animals. Reptiles (lizards, snakes, and turtles), baby chicks, and ducklings are especially likely to pass salmonellosis to people. Dogs, cats, birds (including pet birds), horses, and farm animals can also pass Salmonella in their feces.

Worried about the flu pandemic this year? Uncle Sam (CDC) wants you to wash your hands. “Wash your hands often with soap and water. If soap and water are not available, use an alcohol-based hand rub.”

Since I’m neurotic about washing my hands, I’ve made some changes in hopes of not having my hands get so dry they crack and bleed. The big change is that I switched to hand-made soap because the detergent in commercial soaps dries your hands more (in both bar and liquid), and it definitely helped. I rarely use the drying sanitizer in the kitchen. Just a couple of weeks ago I added a chlorine filter to my shower faucet so that all my skin – not just my hands – won’t get so dry.

If you don’t neurotically wash your hands, I recommend becoming at least semi-neurotic during this season of the pandemic H1N1, as beyond other considerations you can’t care well for your pets when you’re ill. (Calling it swine flu is a misnomer, as H1N1 is a triple-reassortment strain of viruses affecting humans, swine, and birds. Let’s not malign pigs.) That’s common sense for this season in particular, but it’s also always common sense for pet owners. The possibility of zoonotic transmission of diseases is lessened by washing your hands after certain tasks (or in the case of some pets, such as reptiles, after handling the pets themselves). Above and beyond the flu, be smart and protect yourself with good sanitary practices so that you never have to consider rehoming a pet because of a disease you could have prevented. Lather up!