pet connection

Tonight it’s “Dr. Marty Monday” on “The Cooper Lawrence Show.” The show airs on 115 radio stations from coast-to-coast — including Los Angeles, San Francisco, Chicago, Minneapolis/St. Paul, Boston, Phoenix and Denver.

Our own Dr. Becker will appear live at 9 p.m. ET.

Cooper Lawrence’s show combines expert talk, entertainment, pop culture, comedy and celebrity — all flavored with her unique brand of storytelling. Between Cooper and Dr. Becker, you’ll laugh while you learn on “Dr. Marty Monday.”

Veterinary critical care specialist and Pet Connection blogger Dr. Tony Johnson has seen it all… and tonight he’s going to share it with you in “Tails from the Pet ER,” at 10 p.m. ET as part of PetHobbyist.com’s 12th Annual Chat Month!

Dr. Johnson, a veterinary emergency care specialist and professor at Purdue University’s College of Veterinary Medicine, will be talking with PetHobbyist.com and Pet Connection’s Christie Keith in live streaming audio — a perfect “fit” for this particular guest event, since his “Tails” are long on humor — so long, in fact, that you’d better consider this a warning not to listen with beverages in your mouth.

You won’t just be listening, though — bring your questions! You’ll be able to type them into the chat room so Dr. Johnson can answer them.

To join the chat: Registered users of PetHobbyist.com log in here; if you’re not registered, log in as a guest here and select “Auditorium” from the drop down menu!

We’ll see you tonight!

A VERY busy week here at the Pet Connection news desk, so let’s get to it:

Defining low calorie is in the eye of the label beholder: Go to any store that sells pet food, and look for products marked low calorie, lite, light or less calorie.  Do you know what you’ll find?  A dizzying disparity in numbers, whether you’re looking at dog food or cat food, wet food or dry.  Very likely you’ll have trouble making sense of which product is best, comparing product to product, head to head. The Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine at Tufts University has illustrated your understandable confusion with a study out this month in the  Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association.  Even reading labels won’t necessarily help you.

There is so much information—and misinformation—about pet foods, it’s understandable that people are confused about what to feed their dogs and cats, said co-author Dr. Lisa Freeman, professor of nutrition at Tufts University’s Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine. To counteract these myths, people are accustomed to turning to the labels on food—but, as this study shows, packaging might not always be a reliable source of information.

The evolution of dog identity politics: Far and away the best piece of writing I’ve read all week was forwarded to me by Pet Connection colleague Kim Thornton.  New York Magazine’s John Homans, whose gorgeous dog Stella is pictured here, has written a nuanced, interesting and thoroughly worthwhile essay on the path to where we stand today in the world of dogs.  Mr. Homans covers a broad swath of the landscape, and addresses many of the issues we talk about here on a regular basis.   It’s a long article, but it’s a must read.

The remarkable life of Moscow’s stray dogs: I’ve seen five or six variations of this story, plus two referred separately by loyal readers Linda and Anne.  The Financial Times has the original, comprehensive tale, but my favorite summary is from our friends over at Dogster, and includes a sobering opening line:

Moscow is home to 35,000 stray dogs. That’s 84 dogs per square mile. It’s a hard life, especially in sub-zero winter months.

Read on.  You’ll see that in Moscow, the strays ride the subway, and have jobs.

Run with your dog, or just walk: I take Cami and Harry for frequent walks, but many dog owners like to run with their dogs.   Linda sent me this New York Times story saying, in essence, running with your dog might not be a good idea.

It’s a lesson that Michelle Powe, an English teacher in Midlothian, Tex., learned last summer when trying to run with Mookie, her 90-pound Catahoula.

“He kept trying to herd me,” she recalled. For the entire three-mile run, Mookie displayed the kind of herding behavior that is typical for the breed, throwing his weight against Ms. Powe and nipping at her legs.

Cold nose, warm toes: It started with our Dr. Marty Becker visiting Orange County Animal Care Services in Orlando, and seeing two Italian greyhounds sharing a tiny bed with a pit bull mix because that was the only place they could escape the cold, hard floor.    Dr. Becker’s idea was simple: these dogs need beds so they don’t have to sleep on the floor.  Everyone chip in a little, and we can help a lot.   Almost immediately, the idea caught fire.   We’re now over 30 beds donated, in less than a week.  Yesterday, Good Morning America’s Facebook page picked up the cause (Dr. Becker, as you know, is GMA’s resident veterinarian).  You can help, too.  Here’s the link for donations to Kuranda beds.  From all the pets who will benefit, thank you.

Cat vs. Bear — The Showdown: A bear comes to the back door, with a nose for the trash bag left on the porch.   The cat decides it’s time to protect the property.   The Huffington Post has the video.  Enjoy.  I’m betting that bear isn’t coming back for another visit, and is most likely wondering “What is that thing?”

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:  Stella: Jill Greenberg.  Crowded Dogs: Dr. Marty Becker.

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

From the L.A. Times celebrity crap I don’t care about blog:

At a suite this week run by gifting guru GBK Productions, Globe nominees and presenters are expected to receive swag including trips and electronics. They will also receive truffle salt and truffle oil. To highlight the truffly goodness, GBK has also partnered with a company called Patty’s Royal Dandie Miniature Pet Pig, which breeds tiny pet pigs, to offer the animals as yet another gift.

The pet pigs usually sell for about $5,000, the suite people tell me, but the visiting celebrities would be able to get one for free. All they’d have to do is complete a one-hour course on how to treat the li’l porkers and present a certificate of completion. The tiny pig will then be hand-delivered to the celebrity.

Here’s the rest. Yes, all the animal advocacy groups are appalled, and rightfully so.  Wouldn’t it be great if some of these fluffy headed idiots started modeling responsible behavior for a change?