“All at once” – on transformative moments and sight

Corky entered my life like a sloppy clown. I was in a straight backed chair in a sunlit room and they told me to call and damned if she didn’t run full steam into my arms.

She was the clown who leaps into the seats and sits on someone’s grandfather.

She placed her front paws on my shoulders and washed my face and then, as if she knew the job would require comedy, she nibbled my nose but ever so gently like a horse who checks his owner’s hand for a peppermint.

Lovely essay by Stephen Kuusisto on Planet of the Blind

More contemplation of the olfactory instrument.

Nice piece in New Scientist, on more work by Alexandra Horowitz:

Crittervision: What a dog’s nose knows

To imagine the scent-based world of a dog, says Horowitz, look around and imagine that everything you see has its own individual scent. And not just each object – different parts of the same object may hold different types of information. Horowitz gives the example of a rose: each petal might have a different scent, telling the dog it has been visited by different insects that left telltale traces of pollen from other flowers. Besides picking up on the individual scent of humans that had touched the flower, it could even guess when they may have passed by.

Nice piece on animals and regret

I’ve heard a lot of people say that to ascribe the capacity for regret to animals is anthropomorphizing. My response is always you clearly haven’t spent much time with animals. What animals do goes way, way beyond human projections, and they have, among other things, a fully developed language for acknowledging wrongdoing and considering missed opportunities.

It’s our human words, and our ways of talking about it, that get factually sketchy – but also funny.

Here’s a nice piece in the NYT that has both the humility to look at what they actually do, and the humor to spin it through our human culture (without forgetting that they have cultures of their own):

In That Tucked Tail, Real Pangs of Regret?

Yet as new reports keep appearing — moping coyotes, rueful monkeys, tigers that cover their eyes in remorse, chimpanzees that second-guess their choices — the more I wonder if animals do indulge in a little paw-wringing.

Your dog may not share Hamlet’s dithering melancholia, but he might have something in common with Woody Allen.

 

Dogs Decoded

Great NOVA program on the science behind human relationship with dogs, the genetics of domestication, and the many ways in which dogs improve human lives.

Watch online:

Dogs Decoded

Glucosamine: going the way of echinacea (and with just as many hanging on to their belief – in spite of all evidence)

I’ve seen several pieces in the last year or so questioning the efficacy of glucosamine for arthritis treatment: the research is clear that it provides no benefit in humans, and a recent spate of study is increasing the likelihood that it’s not much use in dogs, either.

Which, understandably, can make some people who love pooches suffering from arthritis anxious and upset: NSAIDS have their own associated worries (though some of those fears may be inflated), and there aren’t any other good options.

Gilly’s gradually diminishing joint-capacities completely freak me out: I want him to be pain free and I also want him to live a long life (with happy kidneys and a functional liver) that isn’t compromised or shortened by medication side effects.

The main reason it freaks me out is because it’s visible sign of his mortality, and damn it, I don’t like that.

When a couple of different vets recommended glucosamine as being worth a try in spite of uncertainty about whether it works, I gave him solid 3 month trials on several incarnations of the stuff, from the most basic pills to the fanciest and most expensive chewies: none of them made any appreciable difference, so we stopped, which also made no appreciable difference, except to my wallet (which was hurting more than his joints by then). I’m glad we tried it, because now I won’t doubt that I left something of possible help undone.

What does seem to make some real difference is keeping him slim, muscled, good and fit but with less and less indulgence in high impact sports like ball and stick-throwing, and making sure he’s generally healthy — all that and having nice, clear, dry days.

All but that last thing I can help him to maintain.

And none of these things will make him immortal, or immune to aging. Damn it.

Skeptvet has an interesting post up about the placebo effect and why we sometimes remain committed to things that don’t work, even when the most ethical and loving thing is to let it go and do what does:

Cognitive Dissonance In Action: Glucosamine No Matter What!

From around the ‘sphere:

First, two great reads on our relationships with domesticated critters from The Thoughtful Animal:

On bonding and recognition:  Biological Evidence That Dog is Man’s Best Friend

...famous site at Ein Mallaha (Eynan, in Hebrew), in Northern Israel where an elderly human and a 4-5 month old puppy were buried together, 10- to 12-thousand years ago.

On dogs, horses, and social cues: A horse is a horse, of course of course

Don’t miss the links out in the first paragraph – good stuff.

We’ve spent a lot of time here at The Thoughtful Animal thinking about how domestication has allowed dogs to occupy a unique niche in the social lives of humans. They readily understand human communication cues such as eye-gaze and finger-pointing, and capitalize on the infant-caregiver attachment system to have their own needs met. There are several explanations for the emergence of these abilities in dogs:
(1) domestic dogs inherited these abilities from their wolf ancestors;
(2) dogs learn social communication cues by associative learning, simply by sharing physical and social space with humans; and
(3) through the process of domestication, the ability to read human social-communicative cues has emerged due to selection pressures and convergent evolution.

There is pretty solid evidence that dogs far outperform wolves in these tasks, so for now we can safely place that explanation to the side. There is evidence that various species, following intense experience with humans, display improved abilities in reading human social cues, including apes, dolphins, seals, ravens, and parrots. However, in dogs this skill emerges incredibly early in development (before there’s been the same sort of intense enculturation that other species require), and does not appear to change significantly with age (remember the thing about finding developmental signatures?) That domestication appears to be the best explanation for the emergence of these abilities in dogs suggests that other domesticated species may show similar skills.

And here’s one on how dogs have an innate habit of imitating people:

…it may be very rare in the animal kingdom for one species to almost subconsciously imitate the behavior of a completely different species.

The dog-human bond may therefore have few, if any, parallels.

Which, of course, leads to things like this:

What to feed?

Here’s an article I recommend reading before buying in to raw food diets for your dog:

Raw Meat and Bone Diets for Dogs: It’s Enough to Make You BARF

Some of the most rewarding interactions we have with our pets involve food. Most dogs respond with gratifying enthusiasm to being fed, and this activity is an important part of the human-animal bond. Providing food is also part of the parent/child dynamic that in many ways characterizes our relationships with our pets. Giving food is an expression of affection and a symbol of our duty of care to our pets.

Because of these emotional resonances, pet owners are often very concerned about giving their pets the “right” food to maintain health and, if possible, to prevent or treat disease. This has allowed the development of a large, and profitable commercial pet food industry that aggressively markets diets with health-related claims.

…One of the most popular unscientific notions sold to pet owners these days is that of feeding diets based on raw meat, typified by the BARF diet. According to the a leading proponent of this idea, Dr. Ian Billinghurst, BARF stands for Bones and Raw Foods or Biologically Appropriate Foods (though I confess other interpretations have occurred to me). Raw diets are frequently recommended by veterinarians and other who practice homeopathy, “holistic” veterinary medicine, and other forms of CAM. This is not surprising since, as you will see, the arguments and types of reasoning used to promote the BARF concept are also commonly used to defend other forms of alternative veterinary medicine. Let’s take a look at the arguments some BARF proponents make for this diet.

The article then examines some of the arguments for raw food diets: that dogs are wolves, evolved to eat raw meat, can’t digest grains, that dog food is made of euthanized dogs, etc.. It then goes on to correct some pure misinformation and look at evidence-based facts about our canine companions and their digestion and health:

Now let’s have a look at the problems with this raw dog food marketing propaganda. To begin with, the concept of “evolutionary nutrition” ignores the simple fact that taxonomy and phylogeny are not destiny, nor do they reliably predict the specific details of a species’ biology, including its nutritional needs. Sure, dogs are in the order Carnivora, but so are giant pandas, which are almost exclusively herbivorous. Functionally, dogs are omnivores or facultative carnivores, not obligate carnivores, and they are well-suited to an omnivorous diet regardless of their taxonomic classification or ancestry.

It also looks at the very serious safety issues with BARF diets:

…The risks of raw meat based diets, however, are well-documented. Homemade diets and commercial BARF diets are often demonstrable unbalanced and have severe nutritional deficiencies or excesses.^16-18 Dogs have been shown to acquire and shed parasitic organisms and potentially lethal infectious diseases associated with raw meat, including pathogenic strains of E. coli and Salmonella.^25-27 Many other pathogens have been identified in raw diets or raw meat ingredients, and these represent a risk not only to the dogs fed these diets but to their owners, particularly children and people with compromised immune systems.^29-30 The bones often included in such diets can cause fractured teeth and gastrointestinal diseases, including obstructed or perforated intestines, and the FDA recently warned pet owners against feeding bones to their canine companions.

Food for thought I thought I’d pass along to anyone facing the onslaught of marketing directed at animal owners. The proponents of the raw food diet are especially fanatical, so it’s worth thinking twice and getting medical opinions.

I do worry about the quality and safety of dry dog food, and make a point of buying Gilly good food from companies which guarantee high-quality ingredients and which have nearly universal approval from both vets and other pet owners.

My personal picks (and no, I’m not getting kickbacks from any of them for saying so): Canidae, Wellness, Artemis, or Eagle Pack brands – these are the ones I trust and Gilly likes. There are lots of good foods out there, though, many of which we haven’t tried.

Based on what I know at this point, I prefer the high quality dry food (with supplemental variety) to a wet food diet because it’s better for his teeth – a serious consideration these days because while animals used to die from other causes well before dental issues took them, they live so much longer now that the ones on Atkins-style diets are coming up with heart problems from gum disease, etc.. (More on this here.)

You can check recall lists at the FDA here, and there are tons of ‘rating’ sites out there to sift through if you like: there’s places like the Dog Food Analysis forum,  the widely-shared Rate Your Dog Food guide (not sure about the science behind this one, but it’s interesting), etc.

I also supplement Gilly’s dry food with (cooked) meat, vegetables, grains and fruit that I’m eating, because he likes and thrives on it. Oddly enough, the thing he chews more thoroughly than any other food, and with the most gleeful crunching and self-evident pleasure, is steamed green beans. Watching him eat a string bean is one of life’s great pleasures, in fact. Broccoli is also a hit, as are apples, figs, dates, rice, and many other foods I eat.

His all time favorite tastes of people food? Mac-n-cheese and blueberry pie, hands down. If they are side by side with a piece of steak, he’ll eat the pie first, then the mac-n-cheese, then the meat. Go figure.

Just as some people are fanatical about feeding only raw meat and bones, others will tell you your dog’s gonna DROP DEAD!!!! from a single piece of human food!!!!!!11111!!!!

There are human foods dogs can’t safely process, it’s true, and it’s essential to know something about common poisons.

With balanced nutrition day to day, a wide variety of treats in moderation, and with lots of exercise, Gilly’s digestion is fabulous and his figure dashing, his fur shiny and his spirits perky.

It’s working for us.

Your picks for a healthy dog diet?

“We were bored.” Animal abuse, the abuse of women and children, and the erosion of empathy

Some excerpts from a New York Times article on animal abuse and violence of other kinds.

“On a late May afternoon last year in southwest Baltimore, a 2-year-old female pit bull terrier was doused in gasoline and set alight. A young city policewoman on her regular patrol of the neighborhood of boarded-up row houses and redbrick housing developments turned her squad car onto the 1600 block of Presbury Street and saw a cloud of black smoke rising from the burning dog. She hopped out, ran past idle onlookers and managed to put out the flames with her sweater. The dog, subsequently named Phoenix, survived for four days with burns over 95 percent of her body, but soon began to succumb to kidney failure and had to be euthanized. [More on Phoenix’s case here.]

…“What I have the most trouble relating to,” Lockwood told me, “and the Phoenix kids might be indicative of this sort of thing, is the kind of cruelty that happens just out of boredom. I’ve had quite a few cases where I ask a kid, Why did you blow up that frog or set fire to that cat? and they don’t respond with answers like ‘I hate cats’ or ‘I didn’t see that as a living thing.’ Their answer is ‘We were bored.’ And then you have to ask yourself, Well, what about alternative pathways to alleviating this boredom? I have difficulty grasping what would be the payoff for setting fire to a dog.””

What’s behind this sociopathic behavior is both very complicated and not complicated at all: this NYT article does a pretty good job unpacking the relationship between human and animal abuse.

The Animal Cruelty Syndrome

“In addition to a growing sensitivity to the rights of animals, another significant reason for the increased attention to animal cruelty is a mounting body of evidence about the link between such acts and serious crimes of more narrowly human concern, including illegal firearms possession, drug trafficking, gambling, spousal and child abuse, rape and homicide. In the world of law enforcement — and in the larger world that our laws were designed to shape — animal-cruelty issues were long considered a peripheral concern and the province of local A.S.P.C.A. and Humane Society organizations; offenses as removed and distinct from the work of enforcing the human penal code as we humans have deemed ourselves to be from animals. But that illusory distinction is rapidly fading.” …

“The link between animal abuse and interpersonal violence is becoming so well established that many U.S. communities now cross-train social-service and animal-control agencies in how to recognize signs of animal abuse as possible indicators of other abusive behaviors. In Illinois and several other states, new laws mandate that veterinarians notify the police if their suspicions are aroused by the condition of the animals they treat. The state of California recently added Humane Society and animal-control officers to the list of professionals bound by law to report suspected child abuse and is now considering a bill in the State Legislature that would list animal abusers on the same type of online registry as sex offenders and arsonists.” …

“…We discovered that in homes where there was domestic violence or physical abuse of children, the incidence of animal cruelty was close to 90 percent. The most common pattern was that the abusive parent had used animal cruelty as a way of controlling the behaviors of others in the home. I’ve spent a lot of time looking at what links things like animal cruelty and child abuse and domestic violence. And one of the things is the need for power and control. Animal abuse is basically a power-and-control crime.”” …

“The dynamic of animal abuse in the context of domestic violence is a particularly insidious one. As a pet becomes an increasingly vital member of the family, the threat of violence to that pet becomes a strikingly powerful intimidating force for the abuser: an effective way for a petty potentate to keep the subjects of his perceived realm in his thrall.” …

“Whatever the particular intimidation tactics used, their effectiveness is indisputable. In an often-cited 1997 survey of 48 of the largest shelters in the United States for victims of domestic violence and child abuse, more than 85 percent of the shelters said that women who came in reported incidents of animal abuse; 63 percent of the shelters said that children who came in reported the same. In a separate study, a quarter of battered women reported that they had delayed leaving abusive relationships for the shelter out of fear for the well-being of the family pet. In response, a number of shelters across the country have developed “safe haven” programs that offer refuges for abused pets as well as people, in order that both can be freed from the cycle of intimidation and violence.” …

Watch a multi-media presentation: “Left Behind: New York’s Shelter Dogs”

“Merck has made it her mission to urge other vets to report and investigate suspected cases of animal abuse, incorporating a few cautionary tales of her own into her lectures to point up the often dire consequences of failing to do so. One involved a man from Hillsborough County in Florida who was arrested for murdering his girlfriend, her daughter and son and their German shepherd. He had previously been arrested (but not convicted) for killing cats. In another story Merck tells, one related to her by a New York City prosecutor, a woman reported coming home to find her boyfriend sexually molesting her Labrador retriever, but the case never went to trial. “My point on that one,” Merck told me, “is that no one took precautions to preserve the evidence on the dog. And once it comes down to a he-said-she-said type of situation, you’re lost. These types of cases are difficult enough even when we have all the evidence, in part because it’s very hard for investigators and prosecutors to even consider that someone would do things like this. It’s so disturbing and offensive, they don’t know what to do about it. A lot of the work I do involves not just talking to vets but reaching out to law enforcement to make them more knowledgeable on these matters, to make them understand, for example, that things like sexual assault of children and animals are linked. They are similar victims.” …

Watch a video about the ASPCA’s mobile crime lab.

By the way, I’ve made a tag to make it easier to find my previous posts about this subject.

Vets, police, people who work in battered women’s shelters or who help families dealing with violence, and animal shelter staff really need to be up on this.

Everyone should be, but those of us in positions to identify and stop abuse – and to train others how to do so – need to be particularly awake.

Animal Minds from Radiolab

With a hat tip to the coelacanthtastic Joseph C.: A wonderful episode of Radiolab called Animal Minds.

When we gaze into the eyes of a wild animal, or even a beloved pet, can we ever really know what they might be thinking? Is it naive to assume they’re experiencing something close to human emotions? Or, on the contrary, is it ridiculous to assume that they AREN’T feeling something like that? In this hour of Radiolab, we explore what science can say about what goes on in the minds of animals. Guests include: a humpback whale, Paul Theroux, a camel, Jonah Lehrer, and a bloodthirsty leopard seal.

The very end of the show is a chat with Paul Nicklen about his astonishing encounter with the leopard seal, including some discussion not included in the NatGeo or NPR interviews I’ve previously posted here.

Animals, antibiotics, and you

A few recent must-read pieces on antibiotics, farming, and the food chain.

From The New York Times:

Cows on Drugs:

… Even [30 years ago], this nontherapeutic use of antibiotics was being linked to the evolution of antibiotic resistance in bacteria that infect humans. To the leading microbiologists on the F.D.A.’s advisory committee, it was clearly a very bad idea to fatten animals with the same antibiotics used to treat people. But the American Meat Institute and its lobbyists in Washington blocked the F.D.A. proposal. …

According to the Union of Concerned Scientists, 70 percent of this use is in animals that are healthy but are vulnerable to transmissible diseases because they live in crowded and unsanitary conditions.

In testimony to Congress last summer, Joshua Sharfstein, the principal deputy commissioner of the F.D.A., estimated that 90,000 Americans die each year from bacterial infections they acquire in hospitals. About 70 percent of those infections are caused by bacteria that are resistant to at least one powerful antibiotic.

That’s why the American Medical Association, the American Academy of Pediatrics, the American Pharmacists Association, the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the American Public Health Association and the National Association of County and City Health Officials are urging Congress to phase out the nontherapeutic use in livestock of antibiotics that are important to humans.

Antibiotic resistance is an expensive problem. A person who cannot be treated with ordinary antibiotics is at risk of having a large number of bacterial infections, and of needing to be treated in the hospital for weeks or even months. The extra costs to the American health care system are as much as $26 billion a year, according to estimates by Cook County Hospital in Chicago and the Alliance for the Prudent Use of Antibiotics, a health policy advocacy group. …

From Corpus Callosum:

The Preservation of Antibiotics for Medical Treatment Act

… This sort of thing is politically unpopular, because the people who would benefit, do not have an strong lobby unified on the issue.  And the people who would have to adjust their operation, do have such a lobby.  It could cause some short-term difficulties for those who make a living by raising and selling livestock and poultry.  We need to acknowledge that some of those folk already are struggling.  But the industry would adapt and rebalance. After all, they do have a product that people want, and the people still are ready, willing, and able to buy.

The use of antibiotics in farming operations clearly leads to the development of antibiotic-resistant pathogens. This causes problems when those antibiotic-resistant pathogens get into people. …

The argument would be strengthened if we knew what fraction of that $26 billion was attributable to agricultural use of antibiotics.  That apparently is not known, and it is not obvious to me how it could be determined.  Even so, the figure does suggests that the economic benefits of of the legislation could offset, at least partially, the losses in the agricultural sector.  Furthermore, I suspect that this legislation could provide a boost to smaller agricultural operations.  This would be good.  Unfortunately, the small operators don’t have a powerful voice in Washington. …

and from Vet Blog:

Study Shows Antibiotics Used in Livestock May be Making Their Way Into Our Food in an Unexpected Fashion

… The addition of antibiotics to animal feed for no purpose other than increasing profit never sat right with me. Over use of antibiotics is bad for society in general. And I certainly am not interested in getting a dose of antibiotics every time I eat a burger.

Congress currently is considering legislation to restrict the use of non-therapeutic antibiotics in food animal production. I hope it passes. I am at odds with many food animal veterinarians as well as the American Veterinary Medical Association in this regard. Click here to read more.

But yet again without seeming to realize the irony, the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association’s March 1, 2010 issue gave ammunition to opponents of non-therapeutic antibiotic use (see yesterday’s post for more about the generally ironic nature of the March 1 JAVMA).

Page 500 contained an article entitled “Researchers study antibicrobial uptake in crops.” The subtitle says it all: “Vegetables took in some antimicrobials from antimicrobial-spiked manure”. Antimicrobials are also known as antibiotics.

Here’s the line of thought: cows are fed antibiotics in order to increase profit. Some of the antibiotics wind up in the cow’s feces, also known as manure. Manure is a leading crop fertilizer — especially for organic crops. Now some people are wondering whether the antibiotics that are fed to cows in order to increase profits are showing up in the organic salads of people who go out of their way to avoid eating those very antibiotics in the first place. The irony just goes on and on. …

On the human health level: as someone who was born allergic to Penicillin, then developed allergies to literally all other classes of antibiotics over the course of my adult life – in part, it’s likely, as a result of overexposure – I hope to see this bill pass.

Buying exclusively antibiotic-free food is not always feasible (depending on where you are), it’s hella expensive, and the truth is it may not even be possible any more.

This is not good for any of us, in terms of resistant strains of disease – and it also means that those of us who are allergic to antibiotics are continually exposed to low levels of a dangerous substance that weakens our immune systems on top of living in the extremely at-risk category of people whose medical treatment is already a medieval  “Um, don’t get sick. And stay away from hospitals.”

On the level of animal care, I can just repeat the statement from the NYT:

70 percent of [antibiotic] use is in animals that are healthy but are vulnerable to transmissible diseases because they live in crowded and unsanitary conditions. [My bolds.]

Factory farming is bad for everyone.  

Very bad.

Yes, the alternatives require adjustments from all of us. But really, there isn’t an alternative.