ohmidog!

You’d think, scientific technology being what it is, that the Food and Drug Administration would have determined by now what it is about chicken jerky treats from China that seems to be continually sickening, and sometimes killing, dogs.

But after more than four years, the FDA still has not found a contaminant in the jerky products, or established a clear link between them and reported illnesses.

Nor has it taken steps to have any of the 15 companies selling them issue recalls.

A lot of customers, following the story, have stopped using them, including me — not that I bought them in the first place.

Instead, it was a neighbor and one of Ace’s admirers who bought a big bag of them from a discount store to dispense when Ace dropped by. And, boy, did Ace love them — by which I mean both the treats and the neighbor. The mere sight of the jerky treats, though, made my dog act like an addict in dire need of a fix.

Ace became ill in the month that followed, with what seemed to be a stomach ailment. I have no idea if the treats were the cause, and the vet diagnosed nothing in particular, but my neighbor and I — both having read of growing suspicions about the treats, and he having checked the label to find they were from China – declared a moratorium on them.

(Al still dispenses Ace the occasional treat, including the slice of pizza he brought home for himself the other day, but fed to Ace before he got out of his car — possibly so that Ace, who can sense a pizza a mile away, would let him out of his car.)

Concerns about the treats go back at least to 2007. The FDA has run numerous tests on them, all of which were inconclusive. (There’s an in-depth piece recounting all this in Food Safety News.)

So far the only step the FDA has taken has been to caution consumers. The latest FDA notice, last November, warned dog owners who purchased chicken jerky to monitor their pets for decreased appetite, decreased activity, vomiting, diarrhea, increased urination or increased water consumption, and to take their dog to a vet if any of those symptoms lasted more than 24 hours.

Since then, Food Safety News says, the FDA has received more than 600 reports from dog owners who say their pets have fallen ill because of chicken jerky products from China, and that calls for a recall are gaining momentum.

In February, Ohio’s Sen. Sherrod Brown brought the issue to the Senate floor, and later held a press conference, urging the FDA to accelerate its investigation into the chicken jerky treats.

Also last month, a Facebook group called “Animal Parents Against Pet Treats Made in China!” started up, quickly growing to about 2,500 members. And a petition demanding the ban of jerky treats from China has acquired more than 3,000 signatures.

Blogger Mollie Morrissette, who has been following the chicken jerky issue on her website, Poisoned Pets, says she continues to hear horror stories from readers.

“I get letters every day from broken-hearted pet parents — people who had to put down their beloved family dog or five month-old puppy,” she said. “They all fed their dogs chicken jerky.”

(Photo courtesy of Food Safety News: Sarge, a seven year-old chow-corgi mix who fell ill after eating a single chicken jerky dog treat. After nearly two weeks of treatment, Sarge was put down.)

When “Pedigree Dogs Exposed” aired in 2008, highlighting many of the health problems that inbreeding has led to in purebred dogs, it was a watershed moment — at least in Great Britain.

The RSPCA and The Dogs’ Trust withdrew their support of Crufts. The BBC refused to broadcast the competition. And Pedigree, the pet food company, canceled its sponsorship of the event after more than 40 years.

(Pedigree — coincidentally? — was excused this year as a sponsor of the Westminster Dog Show, also after 40 years.)

After the documentary aired in the UK, the Kennel Club began taking some steps to revise the physical standards, used in judging, that  many argued were leading to issues like cancer, epilepsy and breathing problems in certain breeds.

But how much did things actually change? Three years later — during which time, public indignation never seemed to fully drift onto U.S. shores — the answer seems to be not substantially and not quickly enough

That’s one conclusion of  ”Pedigree Dogs Exposed: Three Years On,” which airs on BBC tonight, and is likely to trigger a new firestorm — and just in times for Crufts, the prestigious purebred dog show that runs from March 8 through March 11.

The new documentary was making news even before it aired.

In one interview in the program, Gerhard Oechtering, a veterinary professor at Germany’s Leipzig University, called for pugs and bulldogs to be banned, saying it’s unethical to keep producing members of a breed that can’t breathe properly. Dr. Oechtering called for flat-nosed breeds to be mated with long-nosed ones so that new generations do not suffer from blocked airways, reported the Daily Mail.

Another expert, in a call bound to distress many purebred breeders, goes so far as to urge the public to turn to mutts. “The best solution overall would be to popularize mixed breed dogs as pets because they are much less likely to be afflicted with the genetic diseases that are associated with pedigree dog breeding,” Cambridge University’s Nick Jeffery is quoted as saying in the Telegraph. 

Jemima Harrison, producer of both the original and the sequel, said in an interview with the Sunday Express that there have been many positive changes in the three years that have passed.

In the aftermath of the documentary, bans were imposed on mating mothers with sons; fathers with daughters and brothers with sisters. The Kennel Club reviewed breed standards for over 200 breeds and made changes to 78.

The Kennel Club now permits Dalmatian cross breeding in order to normalize the breed’s uric acid genes. Currently, high levels caused by inbreeding can cause stones that make some dogs unable to urinate, leading to bursting bladders.

Still, in the eyes of Harrison, some of the changes in standards have been only minor, like changing the preference for a pug’s muzzle from “short” to “relatively short.”

“The Kennel Club is just tweaking; it is fiddling while Rome burns. We have still the problem of dogs being bred within very small gene pools. You can still mate a grandfather and a granddaughter… They are still being bred to win in the show-ring and the show-ring still has no health criteria. It’s the prettiest dogs that win and it’s at considerable cost to the dogs.”

Harrison is particularly pessimistic about the fate of the bulldog, whose breeders, she says, are “adamant that there’s no need for change”– even though the breed’s shape has become such that mating often requires “mating cradles” or human manipulation, and 80 percent give birth by caesarean section.

“Pedigree dogs are heritage breeds and something to be proud of, but too often their health and welfare are compromised. Fundamental reform is needed before we can be proud of the pedigree dogs we produce in this country,” she said.

An eccentric Czech scientist says a single-celled parasite that can be passed on through contact with cat feces can lead people to behave in strange and destructive ways.

And Jaroslav Flegr has more than studies to back up his theory. He has the parasite — Toxoplasma gondii (or Toxo for short).

Flegr and his work are profiled in a fascinating (and scary) article this month in The Atlantic, which describes the 63-year-old evolutionary biologist as a “sloppy dresser … with the contemplative air of someone habitually lost in thought” and “frizzy red hair that encircles his head like a ring of fire.”

Flegr, the article says, has pursued his theory for decades in relative obscurity — partly because he’s not much of a conversationalist and rarely goes to scientific conferences, partly, he says, because people just don’t want to hear it.

“There is strong psychological resistance to the possibility that human behavior can be influenced by some stupid parasite,” he says. “Nobody likes to feel like a puppet.”

His theory is gaining credence, though, The Atlantic reports.

That parasites can be passed on through cat feces is nothing new, as the article notes:

Since the 1920s, doctors have recognized that a woman who becomes infected during pregnancy can transmit the disease to the fetus, in some cases resulting in severe brain damage or death … (It’s) the reason pregnant women are told to avoid cats’ litter boxes. T. gondii is also a major threat to people with weakened immunity: in the early days of the AIDS epidemic, before good antiretroviral drugs were developed, it was to blame for the dementia that afflicted many patients at the disease’s end stage. Healthy children and adults, however, usually experience nothing worse than brief flu-like symptoms before quickly fighting off the protozoan, which thereafter lies dormant inside brain cells—or at least that’s the standard medical wisdom.

Flegr thinks that, even in its latent stage, the parasite may be messing with the connections between our neurons, affecting our response to frightening situations, our outgoingness, our trust of others and our preference for certain scents.

He thinks the organism is a factor in car crashes, suicides, and mental disorders such as schizophrenia. All tolled, he says, it might be, in an indirect kind of way, killing a million people a year.

Flegr had long wondered about his own behavior. Sometimes, he didn’t move out of the way of oncoming traffic, and exhibited other behaviors that might be described as self-destructive. He began to suspect that a single-celled parasite in the protozoan family was manipulating his personality.

In 1990, he joined the biology faculty of Charles University, which was a leader in documenting the health effects of T. gondii and in developing methods for detecting the parasite.

Colleagues searching for infected individuals on whom to test their improved diagnostic kits asked him to volunteer, and that’s when he confirmed he had the parasite.

Read more »

A bull mastiff named Bean is recovering from surgery last month after wolfing down a hunk of brie, and a three-inch cheese knife.

Sean Burte said he put the brie and knife on a coffee table in his home in Roslindale, Mass., and walked away briefly.

That’s when Bean, a 118-pound female, seized the opportunity, jumped on the table and swallowed both.

Burte rushed his dog to Angell Animal Medical Center, where veterinarians confirmed the dog had the knife in her stomach, CBS in Boston reported.

Bean swallowed the knife handle-first, so she suffered no cuts to her throat or stomach.

“Bean is a very lucky dog because her size, and the position the knife was in when she swallowed it, minimized further damage to her throat and stomach,” said Dr. Mike Pavletic, head of Angell’s surgery department. “She did very well throughout the surgery and we’re glad to see her recuperating at home.”

Pet stores would be held accountable for the health of the animals they sell, and animal abusers could be forced to pay for the care their victims require under bills proposed in Maryland.

Republican Del. Nicholaus Kipke, of Anne Arundel County, is the lead sponsor of House Bill 131, which would require pet stores to post information on cages about where the animals were born.

In addition,the law would require pet stores to provide a warranty for consumers who buy puppies who become ill. A pet store could be required to reimburse veterinary fees up to three times the purchase price of the dog.

Some pet store owners say that could put them out of business. Some animal advocates wish the proposed law was stronger — and would ban pet stores from selling dogs from breeders entirely.

“A lot of the the pet shops say they only buy from registered USDA breeders, but it doesn’t take anything to become a registered breeder,”  Jen Swanson, the Baltimore Humane Society’s executive director, told Patch.com. “The rules set forth by USDA are not enforced.”

The only way to stop the “cycle of abuse” is to shun pet stores that sell animals from breeders, she said.

“Quality pet stores and quality breeders are the norm, and not the exception,” said Michael Maddox, general counsel for the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council, which represents pet retailers. “They abhor the substandard breeders as much as anyone else; it gives them a bad name. We want these bad folks out of business.”

Maddox said his organization supports the concept of the proposed bill, and said many pet stores already post information about animals they’re selling.

Senate Bill 203, meanwhile, will allow judges to order people convicted of animal cruelty to pay the costs of caring for the animals during the trial. 

Animal welfare advocates say shelters are often stuck with the bill — both when it comes to veterinary care and for housing the pet until the trial takes place.

If you’re interested in learning more about the bills, Maryland Votes for Animals, along with the HSUS and ASPCA , are sponsoring a 2012 Maryland Humane Lobby Day in Annapolis. It’s Thursday, February 23, from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., in Room 142 of the House of Delegates Office Building, 6 Bladen Street.

When a police dispatcher in Michigan got a call from the frantic owner of a choking dog, she offered a quick lesson in the Heimlich maneuver, and it worked.

A 10-pound dachshund had chewed on a present and swallowed either a piece of the gift or its wrapping, blocking her airway, according to the The Oakland Press.

The woman called 911 at 9:46 a.m on Christmas morning:

“I am so sorry to call you but I’ve got a dog that’s choking on a piece of Christmas present she opened,” the woman said between sobs. “She’s choking to death.”

Royal Oak police dispatcher Stacey Sheldon told the caller to open the dog’s mouth to see if the obstruction was visible.

When it wasn’t, she told the woman to perform the Heimlich maneuver in the manner generally recommended for small children.

Have a listen:

dispatcher 12.25.11 by Bruce MacLeod

The dispatcher told the woman to hold the dog in her arms, find the place where the dog’s ribs meet, and push in and up with force. The caller relayed the directions to a man.

Near the end of the recording, the caller can be heard saying, “She just coughed it up. I’m so happy.”

“I’m happy too,” Sheldon said. “Take her to the vet to make sure she didn’t hurt anything in her throat. Merry Christmas.”

“The dispatcher did a great job of walking her through the correct procedure of where to apply pressure to dislodge the object,” Police Chief Corrigan O’Donohue said. “I just learned about it from a thank-you note from the family. I listened to the call and the dispatcher did such a great job. She was compassionate but firm and patient.”

(Photo: Oakland Press)

Elena Zakharova says her dog Umka deserves to be compensated like a human for her pain and suffering.

And the lawsuit she’s filed in a New York court seeks just that.

Zakharova says an upper East Side pet store sold her a Brussels Griffon with bad knees and hips, which she believes are a result of a congenital disorder.

She’s seeking, in addition to payment for Umka’s suffering, compensation for her vet bills, expected to soon amount to $8,000, according to the New York Daily News.

She and her lawyer contend that even though state law defines pets as ”property,” they are more than that,  and they should be compensated accordingly.

“Pets must be recognized as living souls, not inanimate property,” said Zakharova’s lawyer, Susan Chana Lask. “Umka feels love and pain like any human being whose pain and suffering would be recognized in a court.”

Umka is not covered by New York State’s “Puppy Lemon Law,” which allows buyers to return a sick animal in 14 days. Umka’s problems didn’t surface for six months — not until she was nearly eight months old.

Umka was two-months old when Zakharova purchased her for $1,650.

Despite extensive surgery, vets have told Zakharova the dog will never walk or run properly.

“Umka suffers a disorder causing her pain, her legs hurt, she cries when she is in pain, she drags herself with her front paws, she cannot run like other puppies,” the lawsuit says.

The store Umka came from, Raising Rover in Carnegie Hill was among those a Humane Society investigation last year revealed was buying animals from puppy mills.

It is now under new management. “I know nothing about the sale. The prior owner has all the records. We are very careful about where we get our puppies,” said owner Ben Logan.

“Bred for looks, born to suffer.”

That’s the slogan of a new RSPCA campaign aimed at shifting the emphasis when it comes to breeding purebred dogs — from looks to health.

The campaign launched yesterday, with this ad — featuring a pug as the poster child — in the Daily Mail.

It’s directed mostly at breeders, who the RSCPA asserts often seek to meet dog show breed standards that place appearance above canine health.

But it’s also meant to change the thinking of consumers, who help create the demand and often aren’t aware of the genetic health problems many purebreds face.

“Everyone needs to be aware of the serious health and welfare problems affecting pedigree dogs and that dogs bred for looks are born to suffer,” RSPCA senior scientist Claire Calder said.

“A cute-looking puppy or dog can be hard to resist, but the result of not looking beyond this can be thousands of pounds spent on vets’ bills and a pet with long-lasting health and welfare problems. This is one of the biggest challenges facing dog welfare in the UK today.”

As we’ve written before — here and elsewhere — it’s one of the biggest challenges in the U.S., too, even though it rarely seems to rise to the forefront.

One major exception came last month, with an in-depth article in the New York Times magazine about the plight of the purebred bulldog.

But, by and large, the UK is leading the debate, which, while long-lurking in the shadows, was retriggered by Jemima Harrison’s documentary for the BBC, “Pedigree Dogs Exposed.”

Between its impact, and the efforts of the RSPCA, there have been some changes, mostly in kennel club’s breed standards that seemed to place appearance above health.

The RSPCA website elaborates on some of the problems those standards have led to:

“According to scientific studies some of the UK’s favourite breeds of dogs have been bred to such extremes that they can no longer breathe or walk normally. For example, dogs with short, flat faces often have narrow nostrils and abnormally developed windpipes. They can often suffer severe breathing difficulties and may have difficulty enjoying a walk or playing.

Dogs with folded or wrinkled skin are prone to itchy and painful skin complaints, and dogs with bulging or sunken eyes are prone to injury, pain or discomfort. These are only a few examples and a recent study showed that all of the 50 most popular breeds have some aspect of their body which can cause suffering

Recent research by the RSPCA shows the public is prone to thinking buying a purebred dog ensures that dog will be healthy. But dogs “bred for their looks,” the RSPCA says, ”are vulnerable to unnecessary disease, disability, pain or behavioural problems.”

Among those quoted in an RSPCA press release is Victoria Stilwell, dog trainer from the TV show “It’s Me Or The Dog.”

“I have nothing against dog showing and nothing against responsible breeders, she said. “But what I do have something against is breeding animals just for the way we want them to look, even though that animal is compromised both physically and, a lot of the time, mentally. So we have to change. Why are we destroying these animals just because we like the way they look?”

Unlike in the U.S., where interest seems to rise and fizzle, the issue isn’t likely to go away anytime soon in the UK.

Harrison is now working on a sequel to “Pedigree Dogs Exposed,” which promises to be just as hard hitting, or maybe harder hitting, than the first. You can keep up with those developments on her Pedigree Dogs Exposed blog.

In Ace’s younger days, before DNA breed identification tests were invented, it was always fun to guess what he might have in him.

Was he part German shepherd, as most people guessed? Maybe some mastiff, or Great Dane, to account for his size?  Some thought they detected retriever, or ridgeback, Catahoula or coonhound. It was a true whodunit – who exactly got together to produce such a beast? What made him so big? Where’d that curly tail come from?

It was an enjoyable mystery, unlike the kind of guessing game that becomes more common as a dog ages.

Then it becomes not what he’s got in him, but what he’s got. (I know that’s bad grammar, but I like it better, and I’m in control, at least of the words on this page.)

It’s amazing, and depressing, all the things that can go wrong with dogs, not to mention us. And the path to figuring out which one has – even when you do have medical insurance — can be torturous.

Breed determination tests require just a simple swabbing of the inside of the cheek (or a blood test), but determining what’s wrong with your dog will likely take numerous even more expensive ones that may or may not yield an answer, or even a general category into which his ailment falls.

Is it orthopedic, neurologic, digestive, cognitive? Or could it be, instead of a purebred disease or disorder, some sort of mix?

But first things first, or at least now. Ace seems back to normal. Unlike the previous two days, when he was a mix of clingy and anxious and, while he would sit, refused to lay down – an American Clinganxious Setter, maybe? – he’s himself again, and seems to have no complaints.

He’s back on the futon as I write this — one of the areas he has avoided for the past two days – back in the role of muse, as opposed to object of my fretting. He’s laying — or is it lying — down at will. He’s eating, drinking, pooping, peeing, playing and breathing normally.

A visit to the vet — and yes, I still want to marry a veterinarian — brought no definite answers. A battery of blood tests showed that liver, kidneys and pancreas were all clear, and that he had an only slightly elevated white blood cell count.

He was dispensed some anti-inflammatory pills, which may or may not account for his improvement. Still, upon the vet’s recommendation, I will engage in the also-not-fun, though highly challenging, game of catching one’s dog’s pee in a cup, and will tote a urine sample to their office this week.

Then, depending on what the pee reveals, and depending on whether he  shows any more symptoms or strangeness, more tests are a  possibility — X-rays of his stomach to ensure no parasites or other foreign objects are lurking there, neurological tests because of his earlier problems, and a day-long test for Cushing’s Disease, which the vet mentioned was also a possibility.

Or, given what appears at least today as an apparent recovery, was it nothing at all? For all I know it could have been the full moon, a ghost, a sound he was hearing that I wasn’t, or an extended blonde moment, even though he’s more auburn.

Adding to the uncertainty, when your dog appears to be ailing, there’s always the question you ask of yourself, or at least I ask of myself: Am I under-reacting, or over-reacting? The answer of course is that, in circumstances like these, over-reacting is preferable, if not good for the bank account.

For you newcomers who haven’t memorized Ace’s breeds, I won’t repeat them here. You’ll have to look it up, just in case I ever move to one of those backward towns that enforces or is instituting breed bans — though I probably wouldn’t — but in the event of which Ace is a collie.

Let’s just say, of those breeds that showed up in the three DNA tests he has had in the past two years, one is Japanese, one is Chinese, one is German (but not a shepherd) and one is an overused and misunderstood catch-all that’s not really a breed at all.

As for all those friends and readers who have offered their opinions, I do appreciate the input, the sharing of your own experiences, and the support.

As for Ace, once he wakes up, I think he’s due for a not-too-strenuous hike.

It’s always good to work a little sunshine into the mix.

SWM  ISO  SFDVM … for LTR.

Better yet, I’ll spell it out: Single White Male in search of Single Female Doctor of Veterinary Medicine, and by LTR I mean not just long term relationship, but marriage.

I might be willing to give the institution another try, but only with a veterinarian.

This decision is based not only on certain financial realities with which I am confronted, not solely on being a journalist without a real job, but on my belief that anyone who has devoted her life to dogs — as long as they are not all self-righteous about it, or hoarding them — is going to be a good person.

So, yes, I plan to marry, and live happily ever after with, a yet-to-be-chosen veterinarian.

(The unidentified one in the photo above, which I found by Googling, would be fine, but I’m not sure if she’s a veterinarian or a model, or, since her left hand is hidden behind the dog’s ear, whether she’s spoken for.)

In the interest of being totally frank, even though my name is John — nice to meet you, do you come here often? – I will reiterate that at least part of this life choice is based on practical, in addition to any romantic, interests.

Ace is nearly 7, beginning to get up there for a big dog. I am 58 (though, by making it a point to take poor care of myself, I can manage to still pass for 60). I’m feeling quite fine today, but Ace is showing signs of another ailment.

He has taken to acting like a cow, but only at night.

While seeming otherwise fine, he has been exhibiting two unusual behaviors. The first is standing like a cow, declining both offers and orders to lay down. When he does finally consent to joining me on the couch, or bed, he insists on putting the front third of his body on top of me.

None of his appendages seem to be bothering him, and I’ve manipulated them all to no end. No other spot I press on seems to cause him any pain. His symptoms are not like those back-related ones he was experiencing a few months ago. He acts mostly normal during the day, but once night falls, he becomes a cow.

He’s eating regularly, his bowel movements are on schedule and his stool seems fine. (Mine, too, in case any potential suitors are wondering.)

I have Googled myself silly trying to figure it out. At one point, I was convinced it was carbon monoxide poisoning, because he was standing by the door a lot, as if to say we must leave the premises at once. When he went out, though, he did nothing, except stand like a cow some more. I went out and bought a carbon monoxide detector. It hasn’t gone off.

Last night, I began suspecting bloat, even though what’s going in, food-wise, seems to be coming out, and he doesn’t seem inflated.

I’ve even asked myself if his ailment might be something other than physical — a cognitive disorder, though it seems to early, stemming from his advancing years. But then I forget that I’ve asked myself that.

Each day he seems fine, recovered, running, playing and happy, and I cancel my plan to take him to the veterinarian. Then at night he becomes an unmoving cow again, but, unlike a cow, seems anxious about something.

So he’s going back to his vet, who’s not an option when it comes to my plan to return to wedlock with a DVM, as he is a he and he is married.

But how wonderful would it be, now and moreso in the future,  to have someone right in the same house who could observe Ace’s behavior and — contrary to my uneducated guesswork — come up with an immediate diagnosis and treatment plan?

To spare me from the anguish — and, despite any jest herein, it is anguish — that comes with knowing something is bothering your dog and not being able to figure it out?

And perhaps, even though her background is in dog health, to detect any excessive panting, or drooling, or other warning signs, that I might be exhibiting myself?

Til death do us part.

What I haven’t mentioned yet — because it’s a small thing, which has only a slight bearing on my love for veterinarians — is neither Ace nor I have health insurance, and we’re both getting to an age where that might be handy.

If I married a kindly, female, financially secure, unattached veterinarian, I can only assume Ace would get free medical care — given that Ace would become her dog, unless we parted ways, in which case, as spelled out in a pre-nuptial agreement, full custody of Ace would revert to me.

And if, in addition to making a good living from being a veterinarian, one of those rare careers that actually has a future, she had her own human medical insurance — the kind that covered spouses — that would be some highly appreciated icing on the cake. That would just make our bond even stronger.

I think we would be very happy together.

Yes, I kind of like time and space to myself. Yes, I probably work too much, definitely too much for a person who’s unemployed. True, I can’t shower you with luxurious or expensive things, but I do occasionally shower. I’m probably not “a catch.” As I’ve already stated, I will be 60 in a couple of years.

Nevertheless – and I”m going down on one knee now — I ask you, female veterinarian, will you marry me?

And, whatever your answer, can you help me back up?

(Photo: From Topcollegesonline)