pet connection

Four voices on lessons learned: Opinions abound on what happened in Sea World last week, but I want to highlight four responses to the death of Dawn Brancheau, not from armchair pundits but from thoughtful voices of considerable experience.   First, Dr. Mehmet Oz’s editorial in The Huffington Post, “A Requiem for the Pursuit of Knowledge”, which contains a kind tip of the cap to our own Dr. Marty Becker, and an important point.

This world is too precious not to take an active role in understanding its other tenants.  While killer whales will always remain wild animals and command respect and reverence, gifted animal trainers like Dawn Blancheau and Julie Scardina devote their lives to furthering the boundaries of relationships humans can have with them. Dawn gave her life in the name of science and discovery, and her efforts brought enlightenment to thousands of people.

Second, consider Jean-Michel Cousteau’s compelling, eloquent YouTube commentary.   Next, a response from widely respected training guru Karen Pryor’s clickertraining.com blog.  Finally, our friend Heather’s sharply acerbic rant the day of the tragedy in the most wonderful RaisedByWolves.

Drive or walk — not both: The weird story of the week comes to us from the London Guardian.   A 23-year old man in County Durham had his license revoked after he was caught walking his dog — from his CAR.

Sharon Lowrie, prosecuting, said a cyclist alerted police that two men were dragging a dog along from a car. She said: “The driver was hanging on to the dog’s lead through the driver window, approaching a blind summit.” [...]

Paul Donoghue, defending, said Railton had pleaded guilty at the earliest opportunity. “He accepts it was a silly thing to do and there was an element of laziness. He does not usually drive in a such a manner,” Donoghue said.

“Not usually”?  Why does that not make me feel better?

The problem with bad breeders: One more example of FAIL, courtesy of trusty reader/researcher Susan and the fabulousness of YesBiscuit…we take you to Greenville, South Carolina.  A pit bull breeder had entirely too many dogs of the wrong color.   Well, he can’t dump them with his pickup, right?  So he drops them off at the Greenville Animal Shelter in a U-Haul.

Shelter manager Shelly Simmons says it’s evidence of a growing problem…. “We’ve never had a U-Haul before,” she said.  Simmons said the owners were trying to breed “blue” pit bulls because they sell for higher prices. Instead, they got 17 puppies in every color except blue.”You have amateur breeders who try to have puppies for the wrong reason and when they do that they end up over their heads,” Simmons said.

This isn’t funny.  The Greenville facility where the puppies were dumped is a kill shelter.   I won’t get into the whole fallacy of the color issue.  It’s bad enough as it is.

Beautiful and amazingly creative furnishings: Another tip from YesBiscuit….if you have a cat, need a new coffee table and have the money to spend, you have got to check this out.  A seriously gorgeous table with an integrated cat hammock.  You read that right: cat hammock.

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 email.

Photo credits:  Trainer with whale, KCPT. Cat table, O VALOR DO DESIGN, via bookofjoe.com.

When Dr. Becker posted yesterday about kidney disease and a cat named Puff who beat the odds to live into his second decade, my first thoughts turned to Samson, a senior kitty I adopted when he was 15.

When I took him to the veterinarian for his first check-up, she was pessimistic. He had “ten years of deferred dental work,” needed all his teeth extracted, and was in renal failure. “He has maybe a year,” she said.

Samson lived to be 18 and a half, healthy, active and loved for all of it. Even three days before he finally breathed his last, he was still purring, playing and eating.

But then a second, darker memory came to mind.

My dog Bran was 4 years old, and had never been sick a day in his life, when he was diagnosed with kidney failure.

It didn’t seem too terrible at first. He got finicky about eating one day, but the next day he was fine. The day after that he was finicky again, and then he started to vomit, so we headed for the vet. She drew some blood, gave him some fluids and medication for his stomach and sent us home until the test results came back. He didn’t seem very sick.

The test results indicated kidney failure, so we took him to a specialist in another town. He still didn’t seem very sick, but his kidney values were so bad that the specialist was extremely concerned. We hospitalized him. We did more tests. We treated what we thought he had (letpospirosis), until that was ruled out by the tests.

We dug deeper. We did more tests. He was getting sicker. I took time off from work. I slept at the vet hospital, or in my car, or in a hotel room. I tried to hand-feed him, but he just vomited, so we gave him intravenous nutrition.

He got even sicker. His kidneys got worse. We still had no diagnosis. My vet bill at that moment was over $4,000. I cashed in my savings and paid it.

My vet suggested I take him to UC Davis. I hesitated. They wouldn’t let me stay with him at the hospital, and I was at a state-of-the-art specialty practice already. I asked her, “What can they do there that you can’t do here?”

“Dialysis,” she answered bluntly.

I went. And on the way, I called my credit card company and negotiated my credit limit upward, to cover the cost of dialysis. Fortunately, the person I spoke to was a dog lover, and he put the credit increase through on the spot.

At Davis, they were not optimistic, but did offer me a little hope. Some of the worst possibilities had been ruled out, and a few of his symptoms had actually improved, even though his kidneys were clearly worse. If this was a bacterial infection of some kind, the vets told me, dialysis might keep him alive while the antibiotics cured the infection, and he might recover. It wasn’t impossible.

He was only 4 years old. I’d held him in my hands when he was born. So I told them to go ahead. They put in the dialysis catheter and took a kidney tissue sample while he was anesthetized. I borrowed $2,000 from my mother.

The next day, he went into respiratory failure, and we put him to sleep.

I’d made the last 10 days of his life miserable with tests, tubes and hospitalization. I’d spent over $10,000, more than half of it borrowed. I’d let my professional and personal lives go completely to hell while I sat next to my dog on the hospital floor, stroking his head and hoping for a miracle. If I’d known how it would end, I’d have put him to sleep the first day.

The problem is we never do know how it will end. From necessity, we do a kind of emotional and financial triage without the single most important piece of information: Will it be worth it?

For people with little or no money in the budget for veterinary care, that triage might be painful but simple. There’s no point in debating the merits of a diagnostic procedure or treatment that you can’t afford. But even if finances aren’t tight, the incredible array of technologies available in veterinary practice today can burn through the most generous pet care budget in days, and can be bewildering to pet owners.

Surgeries that were once unheard-of in veterinary medicine — such as organ transplants — are now being done on pets. Chemotherapy, arthroscopic and laser surgeries, hip replacements, MRIs and nearly every form of sophisticated medical treatment or diagnostic procedure known to human medicine is available in animal practice, too.

And while people with insurance find a big chunk of their own medical bills doesn’t come out of their own pocket, very few people have veterinary insurance for their pets. Those who do rarely find it covers intensive diagnostics or the most expensive therapies.

I wrote about this for my SFGate.com column a few years ago, and interviewed leading veterinary cardiologist Dr. Paul Pion, president and co-founder of the Veterinary Information Network.

He agreed that veterinary medicine today offers choices that can overwhelm pet owners, particularly in the area of diagnostic testing. “We can do a much better job of diagnosing things than we ever could,” he said. “Today’s veterinarian is a different vet from James Herriot, whose diagnostic methods were things like the laying on of hands, and smelling.”

But Pion doesn’t see technology as being the main source of veterinary medical miracles. “Things are being diagnosed earlier. Owners are watching them more. They’re bringing them in when something can be done. And veterinarians are detecting more. It’s not just the technology, it’s having the relationship with the vet.”

Unfortunately, as with my dog, no matter how many diagnostic tests you run, you don’t always get the answers you’re looking for. Not even on necropsy (the animal equivalent of a human autopsy) did the vets at UC Davis discover what destroyed my dog’s kidneys. When faced with uncertainty, Pion recommends that pet owners “look the vet in the eye and ask, ‘Do you believe this will make a difference? If this were your dog, what would you do?’”

Ultimately, the decision of how far to take the search for answers — and for miracles — is a personal one. Some people go too far, putting their pets through needless stress to chase a cure that is, at best, unlikely. Others give up too soon, or resist digging a little deeper for money to pay for even routine care. Most people, though, just try to walk the difficult line between the extremes and make rational, caring decisions based on their animal’s needs as well as their own.

Experienced professionals can help you evaluate the odds. Only you can decide how much you’re going to bet, or how long you’re going to play.

Photos: Christie Keith

Pet killing debate now high profile issue in Illinois: This November, Illinois voters will be going to the polls to select a new governor.  You remember the whole Rod Blagojevic mess?  Well, he was replaced by Lt. Governor Pat Quinn.  Quinn (a Democrat) is now running for election in his own right, and last week came out with a statement about who his prospective running mate might be:

“I think it’s important for our lieutenant governor to be someone who loves dogs,” Quinn said.

That might sound a little odd for a governor’s race, but The Huffington Post tells us the remark has its roots in an ongoing debate over the use of the carbon monoxide gas chamber to kill shelter pets in multiples.

In 2009, the Illinois legislature passed a bill banning the use of carbon monoxide gas chambers for the mass [killing] of dogs. At the time, Sen. [Bill] Brady voted against the bill. And recently, just days after the Feb. 2 primary [for the GOP nomination]  he introduced a new bill to re-legalize the practice.

Brady took considerable flak over the proposed legislation from the Humane Society [of the United States] and the story garnered a good deal of media coverage.

According to the Chicago Sun-Times, Brady was pretty quick to back off this porcupine:

Brady  gutted the legislation Wednesday and turned it over to another sponsor after the Humane Society of the United States condemned the measure and characterized the procedure as cruel.

“A constituent asked me to do it, and I have an obligation to represent my constituents,” Brady said.

“I was never for it, but I thought it was a subject that deserved discussion. But the politics surrounding me being the nominee created an environment that’s more attack mode than discussion mode, so we shelled the bill.”

The Sun-Times reports the “constituent” was an animal-control facility in Brady’s district, apparently one with management that believes killing pets in a cruel and terrifying way is preferable to, you know, just plain old killing them. Someone, please, get those people information on building a no-kill community. Or better yet, replace them with people who at least live in this century.

Oly the Olympic puppy: You may have seen something about a bunch of winter sports taking place in and near Vancouver over the last couple weeks.  Jordan Malone is an American short-track skater. He didn’t have a great Olympics, but he did have a best friend who got him through it all.

Uncanny canine carousel carvings: You may know Tim Racer as one of the co-founders of BADRAP. However, you might not know about Tim’s phenomenal talent in creating drop-dead gorgeous canine carousel sculptures.   Tim takes up to 700 hours getting these works of art exactly right, and has been known to fly across the country to meet his models, using the opportunity to take precise measurements with calipers.   Thanks to Susan and Gina for tipping me off to this SFGate article.

So what does “Cami Missy Diva Piglet Punky Girl” mean? I’m a sucker for psychological discussions that try to analyze tidbits about me and use those little factoids to draw broad-brush conclusions.    This one from Forbes Magazine is perfect, then.  What you name your pet gives clues as to your personality.

Your dog’s name says a lot about who you are. “The name of a dog reflects the personality and sense of humor of the owner,” says Lisa Peterson, spokeswoman for the American Kennel Club. “For example if you name your toy poodle ‘Brutus,’ that shows a sense of irony.”

Ok, so maybe I won’t learn as much as I hoped, but you should still check it out.

Funny things that veterinary clients say: PetConnection BFF Dr. Patty Khuly has a funny piece on Dolittler about great stuff uttered by her clients.  The comments yield even more, so be sure to read them too.

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 email.

Image:  Ruff weekend on the campaign for state Sen. Bill Brady (HuffPo image).

Thank you from the bottom of my heart to all of you who have been praying for, and thinking of, my granddaughter Reagan and our family.

Reagan, who just turned 16 weeks old, has been diagnosed with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) that has caused bronchiolitis (inflammation at the very end of the bronchial tree, where oxygen transfer takes place), making it difficult for her to breathe without supplemental oxygen. RSV is usually mild in children, but can be very serious in infants.

The good news is that Reagan is improving, and doctors expect her to be well enough to go home in a day or two. Teresa and I are on our way home to Bonners Ferry now.

We are still worried about Reagan, but it looks like she’s out of the woods now. It’s time to turn our prayers to those all over the globe who are facing such terrible natural disasters.

And it’s also time to turn our focus at Pet Connection back to the incredible bond between animals and humans, the bond that has brought us all together.

Time for my 86-year-old mother Virginia to go back to training class with her newly adopted dog Sugar. Time for us to cheer on our friends in Collier County, Florida, who are having a community event today to assemble the beds that were donated in their shelter bed raising — we can’t wait to see the photos from that!

I wrote a book called “The Healing Power of Pets,” and soon Reagan will be home getting some of that healing love from her Pug brothers, one on each side of her, keeping her safe and warm. But there’s also a lot of healing power in pet lovers like all of you, too, and with your prayers and concern, and her parents’ love — and her grandparents’ too, of course! — we know that Reagan will be just fine.

You are all in my heart. Now, let’s talk pets again!

Image: Mikkel Becker Shannon and Reagan Avelle Shannon. Photo by dad, Pat Shannon

The decision has been made, and it’s official: This little guy is going to be my puppy.

His name will be Farallon — Lehigh Farallon of Caber Feidh, to be exact. His breeder, Paula Pascoe, describes his personality this way:

(He’s) the very sweetest, most cooperative and happy puppy in the litter. Since the time they were just days old and I started doing the early neurological stimulation exercises on them, he has been the one to accept being turned upside down and so on, no fussing, just gazing sweetly at me…. He accepts anything with aplomb, and is relentlessly cheerful. He’s playful with the other dogs and affectionate with us.

Which Kyrie translated thus:

He will worship me. Good.

He is 8 weeks old now, and will arrive when he’s around 11 or 12 weeks old, in the second half of March, exact date to be determined.

And here’s the part where I get a little emotional, so if you were just here for a dose of puppy breath, you might want to stop reading now.

I lost my last Deerhound, Rebel, in August. The next month I lost my mother, who was the person who got me into Deerhounds in the first place. We owned and raised many dogs together, and Deerhounds and my mom will always be inextricably linked in my mind.

Being without both of them has shaken my life in so many ways I barely know who I am anymore. But since a short time after her death, I’ve known one thing for sure: I wanted a Deerhound.

I adore Miss Kyrie Borzoi. I have loved all my mutts and rescues, and I know I will have them in my life in years to come. But right now, there is a Deerhound-shaped hole in my heart, and I am so grateful to Paula for helping me find the right hound to fill it.

And so the countdown to Puppy Day begins!