So far, she has done all the right things, especially for not really being a dog person. The first time, she stood still, was careful not to stare at the dog and backed away slowly. She yelled for help but no one came out. She ended up just going back the way she had come to get back to her house. The next time, the dog waited until she was on the road in front of his house and ambushed her, running out at her and barking. She had brought bear spray with her this time. The spray seemed to startle him and he backed off to his house but was still barking at her, so she didn’t think it disabled him any. She sprayed it from quite a distance, though (15 feet, maybe), and unfortunately sucked in some of it herself.

Other people, including children, have been threatened by the dog. Animal control has been called but they’re on the other side of Santa Fe County and by the time they get there the dog is inside and the people won’t answer the door. The dog apparently belongs to the homeowner’s live-in boyfriend. The homeowners association has been notified and has gotten a lawyer, but so far the people have ignored demands to confine the dog.

I suggested that she get an air horn to blast at the dog but am otherwise at a loss if animal control and the HOA have already been notified and even a lawyer and the threat of a lawsuit haven’t made the owners budge. I don’t want to get a call that she’s been bitten or worse, and I don’t especially like the idea of her getting a gun and blasting away at the dog (at the neighbors, maybe).  Advice?

I have come to know many of you and consider you friends. I’ve learned a lot from and been entertained by the comments to my various posts and hope that you have in turn found them useful, thought-provoking or at least entertaining. I have just finished cutting and pasting all of my PetConnection posts since I began blogging here in 2007–more than 102,000 words–and it has been a fun journey down memory lane. I had forgotten a lot, and now I’m happy to have a record of so many of the things my dogs and I did, the topics that have interested me over the past four years, and even some of the trips I’ve taken.

My colleagues here on PetConnection and on the blogroll, some of whom I’ve known and respected for more than 20 years now, have been the best anyone could hope for. Their intelligence, passion, grace and writing ability have been an inspiration.

I hope we’ll all keep in touch via Facebook or Twitter, or maybe I’ll see you over on VetStreet. Happy trails!

I had to take Twyla to the hospital this morning. When Jerry got up to feed the girls, he noticed that Twyla’s breathing sounded wet, and occasionally she was having a little trouble drawing breath. He didn’t think she should wait to be seen at our regular vet, so I drove her to the ER. Luckily, the timing and the traffic gods were with us, and we didn’t get stopped in rush-hour traffic and no traffic cops saw me zoom through a green light going 60 instead of 50. They took us right in–I had called ahead–and within a few minutes the veterinarian was telling me that Twyla was in congestive heart failure.

“You should know that once they reach this stage, the prognosis isn’t very good,” she said. “Do you want to proceed with treatment?”

I probably had a stunned expression on my face. “Of course.”

Later, she was giving me the estimate for two to three days of hospitalization, in something of a resigned tone of voice. I’m sure the voice in her head was thinking, “Well, now she’ll change her mind.”

She barely got the numbers out before I said “Fine.”

Then she smiled big.

Now I’m smiling, for a while, anyway, because Twyla is doing better. We might be able to take her home tomorrow.

I received a text message first thing in the morning about a police dog whowas being brought to the Purdue Veterinary Teaching Hospital for treatment that morning. I had few details at that point, but as I drove into the teaching hospital (I have about a 90-minute commute) I caught several news reports on what had happened the previous night. I had never before heard about one of my patients on the radio prior to meeting them. It was a strange feeling, and a bit of a portent for the media blitz that would follow.

Shadow was accompanying his handler, officer Brent Long, on an arrest warrant call. This was no usual warrant mission: along with officers of the Terre Haute Police Department, where Shadow and Long had been serving for several years, were agents of the US Marshals and several other law enforcement entities. They were looking for a very bad man, indeed, and they had found him at home.

As the day unfolded, and police surrounded the property, the man they were looking for hid in a closet and then shot both officer Long and Shadow. Long received two shots to the head, and Shadow took a bullet to the face.  The perpetrator was killed in the ensuing firefight, perhaps by Officer Long returning fire. Tragically, Officer Long died of his injuries at a nearby hospital soon afterwards.

Details on exactly what went on inside the house are still sketchy, but when the gunsmoke cleared two men were  dead or dying and a dog was critically wounded and bleeding.

Shadow was taken to a local animal hospital, where he was stabilized before being brought to the Animal Emergency Service at Purdue for definitive care. He was being accompanied by other officers of the Terre Haute PD, and had been brought on the two-hour journey in a squad car with an escort.When we got the call that Shadow was almost there, we prepared for the worst. Oxygen, gurney, bandages all were at the ready in case he should arrive in rough shape. When he walked out of the car and into the hospital under his own power, we breathed a collective sigh of relief. He looked remarkably good for having been shot in the face and having just lost his best friend and handler.

Police dogs are trained to be loyal and fierce. They exist to protect their handlers, take a bullet for them if needed, and to get the bad guy by cunning, cornering or chomping. For all their positive and potentially life-saving attributes, they are not the most cooperative of patients. We need to do things to patients that can be uncomfortable, and we are utter strangers. To a police dog, a stranger could just as easily be a bad guy out to get the handler as a well-meaning doctor out to dress their wounds. We knew we would have our work cut out for us, and we were at a disadvantage in that we didn’t have Shadow’s handler there to tell him it was OK. Luckily, officers (especially K9 officers) are a tight-knit group, and we had one of officer Long’s friends on the force there to help us with Shadow. Shadow knew and trusted him, and he was of great help in assisting us in the task of getting Shadow back together.

In the exam room, Shadow looked around warily, uncertain of the new folks in white labcoats. He had been shot on the right side of his face, and had bled into the space below his jaw, causing a pocket of blood (called a hematoma) to form. The bullet had entered just below his jaw and traveled upward. What it hit along its trajectory was anybody’s guess at this point. The fact that he had not met with the same fate as officer Long was miracle enough for us, but the possibility of serious injury was still present.

We took Shadow to the anesthesia induction room. We decided that a CT scan of his head would give us the most information about what had been damaged, and what we needed to do to fix it. The area under the jaw has some major nerves and blood vessels running through it, and the possibility that his jaw had been shattered and would require surgery meant that I had to coordinate lots of different specialists that day.  Anesthesia, dentistry, orthopedics and soft tissue surgery all had a handle in the plan. Trying to coordinate all of these doctors and services on a moment’s notice was a stressful and herculean task, but each one did their part and did the best they could to make themselves available for Shadow. Things moved with a greater than usual ease, likely because of the high degree of emotion surrounding the  case. I was also lucky enough to have one of our best interns with me that day, as well as two bright and highly capable veterinary students on “Team Shadow.” It is asking a lot for students to be thrust into the middle of a big and high-profile case (not to mention the unanticipated TV appearances that would crop up later), but they all performed admirably, and I am proud of all of them.

In order to get an animal under anesthesia, a process known as induction, an IV catheter needs to be placed. This requires close proximity to the patient, and about 5 or 10 minutes of time. For animals who are likely to bite us during this process, we will often use a muzzle. For Shadow, we felt a muzzle would not work out as his injury was exactly in the area where a muzzle would fit over his snout. This put is in the precarious position of having to handle a dog who was trained to bite, without the means to protect ourselves. This was one of the first of several technical hurdles we would have to face during Shadow’s time with us. Luckily, the anesthesiologist was able to devise a plan that involved an intramuscular injection to render Shadow unconscious, followed by placing the IV catheters and hooking up monitors soon afterwards.  There would be a short window where we would not have IV access if we needed to give drugs, but with the help of one of the officers we were able to give the injection and Shadow was safely asleep a short time afterwards.

As we were working on diagnosing the extent of his injuries, a media presence slowly built up outside the teaching hospital. The whole incident, from the tragic loss of Officer Long to the efforts to save Shadow, was becoming a major local story and we were right in the center of it all. There is always a lot at stake when an animal or person is critically injured, but the high emotional toll that the deaths had taken on all involved, coupled with the scrutiny and intrusiveness of the media, made the stress level in the hospital soar that day. We were able to keep our cool and function as a team, however, as we knew that that was the best way to ensure a good outcome for at least one member of the police team.

We are lucky enough to have a very capable and adept media handler and coordinator at Purdue, and he was able to keep the media noise down to a dull roar so we could get on with what needed to be done for Shadow. We did not allow the news crews into the hospital, but made the concession that a Purdue videographer would be there to film the events for later use by the media.

Once anesthetized, Shadow was hooked to all the whirring and beeping machines that monitor life signs. We were also then able to pull blood for lab analysis, to get a better picture of his overall health and how much blood loss had occurred. Once we were satisfied that he was stable under anesthesia, he was wheeled into the CT room for imaging of his jaw.

CT stands for computed tomography. It is sometimes called a CAT scan; it used to only be able to produce images along one plane of the axis of a patient’s body, hence the extra “A” for axial. Technology has advanced such that we can now reconstruct images at any angle we like, so the A has been dropped. CT scanning uses X-rays to produce images, known as slices, that have a far better ability to see through patients when compared to plain X-ray images. They are quick to perform, and within about 15 minutes we had lovely images of Shadow’s head, including the path of the bullet.

The news was better than we had dared hope. The bullet had entered the underside of his jaw, hit the bone at the angle of his jaw, and broken apart. There was damage to the area of his jaw just below the joint; the bone had shattered into hundreds of fragments in a small area. There were two larger bullet fragments; the rest was a constellation of little blips on the CT readout. After confirming that the authorities did not need the fragments for evidence, the decision was made to leave them in. The body would efficiently wall them off, and they were unlikely to cause future problems for Shadow. About the only levity that day was when someone reminded us that, in order to conform to Hollywood stereotype, if we did need to remove the bullet, time-honored tradition required us to drop it into a metal bowl for the requisite “ping-plunk.”

The decision of what to do with his jaw was at hand. The surgeons and radiologists amassed and pored over the images. A 3-D computer reconstruction was made of the slices from the CT scan. As I watched from the control room, a spectral image of Shadow’s head appeared on the monitor as he slept inside the gantry of the CT scanner. I could only hope that he was dreaming of getting the bad guy. The reconstruction allowed us to flip and position his skull as we liked, so we could see the damage from all angles.  After a brief consultation, it was determined that the damage was not in a load-bearing area, and was not near enough the joint to require surgery. The second wave of relief spread through everyone that day upon hearing this. It was the same feeling you get when the Space Shuttle takes off without a hitch.

After attending to his entry wound and closing one small wound inside his mouth, Shadow was fitted with a muzzle while still asleep. The muzzle would keep him from opening his mouth too far and moving the fragments, but would allow him enough room to lap up the gruel that will be his diet for the next six weeks or so as the jaw knit itself together. My suggestion of a Hello Kitty muzzle was rejected in favor of a royal blue one more befitting an officer. The irony was not lost on us that one of our original concerns was of how we would be unable to place a muzzle on Shadow so we could handle him initially, but that same muzzle was now a major component of his recuperation plan.

As he recovered in a warm and quiet spot from his anesthesia, wound care and CT scan, we pulled some follow-up lab tests to assess his progress. We found that his hemoglobin count had dipped perilously low since arrival, probably as a result of blood loss and the fluids we had placed him on during anesthesia to support his circulation.  I ordered up two units of blood from our blood bank, and he was transfused without any problems as he woke up from anesthesia. His hemoglobin count stabilized overnight. He was placed on a continuous drip of weapons-grade painkiller (fentanyl, the same drug that is sometimes used in epidurals during pregnancy) as well as antibiotics.

He turned out to be a better patient than we thought, and the nurses were able to monitor him and check his vitals without danger to life or limb. True, he had a muzzle on and couldn’t really connect if he intended to, and it is a tad hard to land a good bite with a partially broken jaw, but the most we got out of him was a low growl, as if to say “I’ve had the worst 24 hours you could possibly imagine –  are you absolutely certain you want to put that thermometer there?”

The following day was a hazy kaleidoscope of interviews, phone calls and medical documentation and organization. From the officer who brought Shadow in, I learned that Shadow would most likely be retired from the police force and live out his days by the hearth of the Long family, where he had lived prior to the incident. Shadow walked around the hospital, seemingly enjoying his star status, and hopefully blessedly insulated from the horrors that had transpired to bring him to us.

We originally planned on releasing Shadow back to the family and the force the day after he came to us, but we elected to keep him another night to make sure he wasn’t continuing to lose blood. He started eating the morning after the CT scan, and once he started getting better he never looked back. We discharged him two days after he arrived, and he was met with a parking lot full of police cars and news media. Shadow’s story was on every evening news report that night, providing the positive counterpoint to the stories about officer Long’s upcoming funeral and memorial service. Most of the news reports that night made mention of the fact that Shadow seemed to be searching for his lost partner as he left the hospital and looked out at the sea of blue uniforms waiting there to take him home.

Shadow was able to attend the memorial the next day, partly because all those working on him helped him through the dark night of his injury, but mostly because he’s made of tough materials, and is a survivor as well as a fighter. I know that if he could, he would have saluted his fallen friend, handler and colleague as the procession carrying his remains rolled by under the scorching July sun.

Rep. Jason Chaffetz, R-Utah, led the dog caucus, arguing that canines are cheaper and less invasive than body scanners. Dogs are exceptional at sensing explosives, do not require software upgrades, don’t depreciate with use and might even be able to detect bombs implanted under a person’s skin.
“The single best way to find a bomb-making device or bomb-making materials is the canine,” Chaffetz said.

And dogs are widely accepted by the public, he said.

“Who doesn’t like dogs?” chimed in Inspector William Parker, head of Amtrak’s K-9 unit.

Canines are missing one thing that body scanners have, Chaffetz said. Lobbyists.

“That’s what the problem is,” Chaffetz said. “If you look at those lobbyists who pushed through those machines, they should be ashamed of themselves, because there is a better way to do this and it’s with the canines.”

Transportation Security Administration Assistant Administrator John Sammon promised to look into feasible (and potentially more intelligent) alternatives to the scanners we endure today.

Oakland Zoo’s new veterinary hospital: In the past, any time the well-regarded Oakland Zoo needed veterinary care for its animals, they had to be shipped more than an hour north, to the world-class hospital at the University of California, Davis. Now, according to SFGate, Oakland will have their own facility.

The Oakland Zoo broke ground Wednesday on a state-of-the-art veterinary hospital to treat its 600 animals and help train veterinary students. When completed next summer, it will be the largest zoo veterinary hospital in Northern California, second statewide only to the hospital at the San Diego Zoo.

“This is a tremendous step up for us,” said the zoo’s director, Dr. Joel Parrott. “It’s the beginning of a new era for the zoo.”

It won’t come cheap. The hospital will cost $10.8 million, but it will be able to handle everything from the zoo’s smallest amphibians to their largest mammals.

The latest from Joplin: Our own Phyllis DeGioia reports for VIN News on the ongoing progress being made in Joplin, Missouri’s recovery from May 22′s devastating tornado.

Veterinary clinics are not quite back to life-as-usual, but they’re well on their way.

Dr. Jim Christman’s Parkview Animal Hospital is operating out of a trailer in the clinic’s parking lot. Early reports that the clinic would close permanently were erroneous; the clinic will re-open in mid-August.

“The entire inside was destroyed and the back wall and runs were torn apart, but as far as the structural part, it was okay. We had to replace bricks on the front,” said Rachel Schwartz, a receptionist at Parkview. “All of our boarders were okay. We lost some clients; we had several that passed away.”

Dr. Ben Leavens of Main Street Pet Care also lost a few clients to the tornado, though he has no tally of how many among his 15,000 patients were affected.

Work on his 10,000-square-foot clinic and 5,000 square-feet parking structure isn’t quite done – the roof was lost and water damage was extensive, and the HVAC system destroyed – but the business has been open since July 5. “We’re extra busy now that we’re open,” Leavens said. “All areas are up and running.” That includes grooming, boarding and day-care services.

In a little less than two months, Joplin has made tremendous progress.

News from north of the border: I was in Toronto all last week, and I brought back two great stories. One, sent in by reader Anne Ahiers, tells us about a blog you should read, called I Want a Pound Dog. Additionally, I found a refreshing column by Amberly McAteer in Toronto’s Globe and Mail about the heartwarming surprise of finding the right shelter pet.

Tortoise news: Good news/bad news stories in the hard shell world, courtesy of SchnauzerFan. First the good news: a reunion in Iowa that will make you smile. Sadly, we must bid a sad farewell to Methuselah (pictured at right, circa 1954), who passed away at one hundred thirty years of age.

“I’ve known Methuselah since I was around 3 years old, so losing him is like losing an old, good friend,” said John Brockelsby, director of public relations at Reptile Gardens. “I had a lot of daily contact with him so having to say goodbye was very sad.”

By the way, the boy riding Methuselah in the picture is Mr. Brockelsby, when he was probably around three years old.

News of the weird: Once more, I must warn you the following story is not from The Onion. It was sent to me by Susan Fox, who tirelessly scours news tickers for the strangest, most head-shaking tidbits she can find, then generously forwards them to me so I can share them with you. This story is hard to stomach and even more difficult to believe (do check out the dog’s name), but I have to have faith that SFGate didn’t make it up. Nobody’s that demented.

I always like to hear from readers, especially if you have tips, and links for interesting stories.  Give me a shout in the comments, or better yet, send me an e-mail.

Photo credit: Bomb-sniffing dog, cnn.com. John Brockelsby and Methuselah, RapidCityJournal.com

On Saturday morning I saw many of the rare French hunting breeds: the Porcelaine, the Braque d’Auvergne, the Saintangeois. That afternoon I visited the Musee de la Chasse et de la Nature, where I saw artworks depicting their ancestors. If I had been organizing the show, I would have arranged opportunities for show-goers to visit the museum and to have living dogs there posed by the art.

Unfortunately for la gloire France, the show was poorly organized. Catalogs didn’t list ring times. A screaming match in French at the secretary’s desk appeared to have something to do with the exhibitor having no idea when to show up at the ring and thus missing her class.

There was a new catalog every day, understandable for such a large show, but none of the four catalogs I have list any of the Herding breed entries, despite the fact that every time you turned around you tripped over an Australian Shepherd, Border Collie or Pyrenean Shepherd, not to mention representatives from pretty much every other herding breed.

All materials were available only in French, no other languages, strange considering the number of exhibitors and visitors from Britain and Australia as well as the Scandinavian countries and the Netherlands where English is a common second language. I don’t know if it’s typical at a World Dog Show that materials are provided only in the language of the host country, but the press corps, which included several Brits, was assured by the Austrian delegation—next year’s hosts—that materials in English would be available.

And merde! It was everywhere. I am impressed that I managed to navigate four days of the show without stepping in any piles or puddles. That was a big complaint of everyone we spoke to, as was the overall lack of organization.

But all of that was outweighed by getting to see a pack of hounds released from their kennel and running around outside under the perfect voice control of the huntsman, as well as watching the different working styles of the various herding breeds in the demo ring. I was amused by the informality: dogs would follow along behind their owners, off leash, sort of doing their own thing along the way, but always keeping an eye on where their person was in the crowd. The ringside seats were inside the ring. And dogs sat right alongside their people during the equivalent of the Group classes each day. And I got to meet Nina Ottosson, who had a booth there. I interviewed her for my book Careers With Dogs, so it was fun to get to meet her in person.

Today we’re in the Loire Valley and hope to make it to Chateau Montpoupon. No, it’s not a monument to mustard, but it has what looks like a very nice hunt museum.

Female box turtles choose spots where the dirt is the right dampness, where it’s warm enough to incubate her eggs correctly, and where the dirt is diggable. I’m sure there are other reasons why they choose certain spots, but why this female chose the middle of the path I don’t know, and she isn’t talking.

Anyway, I called the dogs back to me, asked them to stay, and went to take a look. One of the rescues I took in earlier this year was in the process of digging her hole. This is an older female who has seen some hard times. I’m kind of surprised she’s laying eggs this year as she was in pretty bad shape when I took her in. But when she got her veterinary check soon after I took her in the vet said she was just old and underweight; otherwise she was healthy.

Female box turtles dig with their back legs, scooping with one foot, bringing the dirt up and out to one side. Then they dig with the other back foot. As the hole gets deeper, they slide backwards into the hole, keeping the front end out by holding on with the front legs. When half of the body is in the hole, they stop going deeper and begin digging to the front of the hole, making a little cave.

As they lay the eggs, they use their back legs to sort of catch the eggs — break the eggs’ fall — and then position the eggs in the little cave. When the eggs are laid — they lay from two to six — the process is reversed and the hole is filled in.  Once it’s filled in, she will then scrape leaf litter, dirt, bark, and grass over the hole is it’s no longer visible.

Most of the box turtles I’ve had or rescued tend to begin the process in the late afternoon and continue into the evening. It can take up to four hours, from beginning to dig the hole until she walks away. This turtle began about 4:30pm and she walked away from her hole about 9:00pm.

Once they walk away their job is over. There is no guarding of the nest and no maternal care. The eggs and hatchlings survive on their own.

Unlike sea turtles, box turtles are not in a trance while laying their eggs. They can be disturbed and if disturbed, will just walk away. This is especially true if disturbed while digging the hole. Once they begin laying it’s a little harder to disturb them; they tend to try and continue the process. But they will leave the nest if bothered too much. So I took the dogs inside while I tried to document this old girl’s process.

To show you what they look like, once she was done and walked away I dug up three of the eggs — it looked like there were six in the nest — and placed them next to a teaspoon so you could judge their size. Then I put them back in the nest and covered it back up. In 60 days I’ll place an inverted bucket over that spot and check it daily. Box turtles eggs, depending on the ground temperature, hatch in 70 to 85 days. The babies will then break through the shell, which is leathery when laid but more brittle when the baby is ready to hatch. The hatchling will then claw its way to the surface.

When they break out of the shell, many of the babies will still have some egg yolk attached at the belly. This gives them nourishment for several days so they’re in no hurry to gain their freedom. Once they reach the surface of the ground, they are on their own.

Top: The hole is about half dug.

Middle: Eggs in the nest.

Bottom: Size comparison with a teaspoon.

All photos by Liz Palika.

What were those cute little red and white dogs? “Go get a picture of them,” I told Jerry. I stared at them. Not Cavaliers. Not Brittanys. Then I remembered where I was.

“Are those Kooikerhondjes?”

A smiling nod of the head.

I’m in Paris at the centennial World Dog Show in which more than 36,000 dogs are entered. If you know me at all, you know that I usually think dog shows are boring unless they are benched, have a Meet the Breeds section or have dog sports and other displays. The World Dog Show wins on two out of three counts. (It’s not benched.) I’ve wanted to come to it for years, ever since I learned there was such a thing. World travel! Unusual dog breeds! What more could anyone ask?

We pick up our media credentials and start wandering the hall. It’s not that full yet, but we see Cesky Terriers, which were recently granted AKC recognition; a Neapolitan Mastiff who seems literally bigger than life; an Afghan wearing a sequined snood (some things are the same the world round), and at one of the breed booths a Braque Hongroi. That’s a new one. No, wait, it’s a Vizsla.

Tomorrow (well, thanks to the joys of jet lag, which has me up after midnight writing this, today) we’ll be watching my DWAA colleague Sandy Mesmer show her Silky Terrier, and checking out a few interesting breeds, including the Mudi, a Hungarian herding breed that looks a lot like the Pyr Shep; the Pyr Sheps themselves; and various Sporting (chiens leveurs de gibier, rapporteurs et chiens d’eau) and Sighthound (levriers) breeds. If nothing else, my ability to understand written French is getting a workout; none of the materials I have are in English.

Demonstration de cavage, anyone?

As fun as they are to say, the lust for them has to exist for the recipient as much as it does for the speaker. If I am talking to a fellow doctor, a long medicalese w0rd can convey paragraphs worth of information in a just a few (admittedly unwieldy) syllables.  Even though they are long and seemingly complex words, if every one involved digs their meaning, they become a sort of shorthand and we can get down to the healing portion of the work at hand. Everyone is on the same level, and information transfer from one brain to the next is smooth.

If the person listening is a non-doctor, though, as better than 99% of the world is, these wonderful words that pack so much meaning into just a few letters strung together work the opposite magic. The listener ends up confused, ill-informed and tunes out the speaker.  The transfer of information from one brain to the next comes to a screeching halt. Not only is the information not transferred, future attempts at communication falter because the listener no longer trusts the speaker and stops caring what they have to say because they know they won’t understand it.

We have seven brand new, fresh-out-of-the-package doctors at Purdue right now. They constitute our new class of interns. They have just spent four years filling their Broca’s area with these lusty European chocolate words, and they are itchin’ to use them. They have rightly earned the privilege of acting like a doctor, and, along with the stethoscope and lab coat, the lingo is part of the costume that we wear as we play doctor.

This, on occasion, causes problems.

We live and die by clients. They bring the animals in for us to treat, they pay the bills that keep the lights on, and they need to be an active and informed part of the medical decision making. But, they are usually neurotypicals and their mother tongue is usually Normalese. If they are flummoxed by a barrage of medicalese and don’t know what is going on, the process gets that much harder. The interns all go through the same arc of learning. They confuse the first couple dozen owners with their ginormous medical lexicon, suffer through the same quizzical stares and then, gradually, learn to speak civilian.

I did the same thing. I went through the same process. I don’t hit the mark all the time (due to my love of big words, sometimes I let some slip through) but I think I have developed a pretty good ability to talk to pet owners on their level and tone down the jargon. I think it helps people see that I am human, too, (for the most part) and I can explain things without resorting to buzzwords.

What has been your experience? Have you had conversations with your MD or veterinarian that left you wondering what is going on? Have you nodded through these, thinking ‘what the hell is he talking about?’ Or, have you stopped them and said ‘what does that mean?’  Do they communicate clearly so you can understand what is going on, and what the options are, or do they leave you with a head full of questions and ears ringing?

The groomer, Holly Crawford of Sweet Valley, Pa., offered the kittens for $100; Judge Kate Ford Elliott wrote in a 19-page opinion that “metal protruded from the kittens’ small bodies, pierced through their ears and necks, and at least one of these kittens also had an elastic band tied around its tail, an attempt at docking, which is a procedure to stem the blood flow so that the tail eventually falls off.”

An investigator for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals posed as a customer and met with Ms. Crawford in 2008 and reported her to the authorities. The kittens were seized, and a jury found Ms. Crawford guilty of animal cruelty; in April of last year she was sentenced to six months of home detention and electronic monitoring, followed by probation.

Ms. Crawford, who was described in the opinion as having “several facial piercings” and being “enthusiastic about piercing,” had admitted to piercing the kittens herself without anesthetic, though she did treat them with antiseptic after the procedure.

That’s the important part of the story, but my favorite section (and yours, I’m betting) comes at the very end…

Judge Elliott wrote, “Appellant’s claims center on her premise that a person of normal intelligence would not know whether piercing a kitten’s ears or banding its tail is maiming, mutilating, torturing or disfiguring an animal.”

The judge added, “We disagree.”

Paralyzed tornado dog is walking again: Debbie and Daniel Leatherman live in Joplin, Missouri. They thought they had lost their 10 year-old cocker spaniel, Sugar, after the catastrophic tornado tore their house apart last month. Luckily, Sugar wasn’t lost. He was discovered by a stranger and brought to Joplin Humane Society, and his injuries took him to the University of Missouri Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital. Unfortunately, the diagnosis was grim: a traumatic rupture of Sugar’s spinal cord. He was paralyzed. The operative word of the last sentence is ‘was. ‘ Thanks to the veterinary staff in Columbia, Sugar is now walking again. Thanks, Phyllis.

Historic cancer breakthrough? A couple weeks back, Dr. Tony Johnson wrote a sobering post about the canine version of a heart attack, called hemoabdomens. As Dr. Tony explained, the root cause is often a ruptured mass on the spleen due to an aggressive malignancy called a hemangiosarcoma. A hemangiosarcoma is often considered a nearly universal death sentence…or is it? Research out of Oregon State University signals hope for a previously hopeless cancer.

No more goldfish in Baghdad by the Bay: San Francisco is pushing to enact some of the toughest regulations outlawing the sale of animals of any municipality in the nation. But they’re not stopping at outlawing trade in puppies and kittens. As SFGate reports, the city’s Animal Control and Welfare Commission wants guppies and goldfish to receive the same protections. Thanks to Susan Fox for the link.

Everybody’s got something to hide except me and my monkey: If you have a therapy animal, is he protected from seizure by authorities? Yes? Always? What if he’s a monkey? In certain places, not so much. And the authorities’ show of force can be a little over the top, too. Hat tip to Mary Cvetan.

The secret life of feral cats: Do you ever wonder what the lives of cats are like when they’re on their own? Where do they go? How far do they roam? Is there a difference between ferals and cats who have owners? Jeff Horn wondered, too. Jeff was a grad student at the University of Illinois. He put radio-tracking collars on forty-two cats, some owned and some unowned, and let them do what they do. The results are summarized in Science Daily:

One of the feral cats in the study, a mixed breed male, had a home range of 547 hectares (1,351 acres), the largest range of those tracked (red outline). A pet cat in the study, by contrast, stayed very close to home.
“That particular male cat was not getting food from humans, to my knowledge, but somehow it survived out there amidst coyotes and foxes,” Horn said. “It crossed every street in the area where it was trapped. (It navigated) stoplights, parking lots. We found it denning under a softball field during a game.”
The owned cats had significantly smaller territories and tended to stay close to home. The mean home range for pet cats in the study was less than two hectares (4.9 acres).
“Still, some of the cat owners were very surprised to learn that their cats were going that far,” Horn said. “That’s a lot of backyards.”
The pet cats managed this despite being asleep or in low activity 97 percent of the time. On average, they spent only 3 percent of their time engaged in highly active pursuits, such as running or stalking prey, the researchers reported. The un-owned cats were highly active 14 percent of the time.

Thanks, Ingrid.

Simon’s Cat: That’s right, it’s time once again for our favorite feline line drawing! Today, we’re in the kitchen.

I always like to hear from readers, especially if you have tips, and links for interesting stories.  Give me a shout in the comments, or better yet, send me an e-mail.

Photo credit: Piercing, a11news.com. Sugar, munews.