Dog’s name and age: Finnegan, 8 years

Adoption story: I had lost my other Beagle, I really missed her and the house was set up for a pup.
I made a visit to the local pound and there was this guy smiling at me from his kennel. He’d gotten lost and was found wandering in subzero weather 4 months prior. It was as if he was waiting for me to find him. We had a meet and greet, he was very interested in the toys and brought me several to show. In the process I bent down, he lifted up and bumped my chin. Causing me to bite my lip—I was smitten from the start. Seven years later my life is remarkably better because of this hound!

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Cheetahs’ rarity and elusiveness poses a problem for conservationists. To conserve the species, we need to know where they still persist, and whether their numbers are increasing or decreasing. But how can we quickly and cheaply estimate their abundance?

Over more than two decades of studying and conserving cheetahs, I have tried many ways of counting them. I have tried simply looking for cheetahs and individually identifying them. This works well. But it requires cheetahs that don’t flee from vehicles, an open habitat – and a lot of time and patience. In short, this approach only works on the Serengeti plains and has been key to our long-term Serengeti Cheetah Project which has gathered information on individually known cheetah for decades.

I have tried counting spoor – cheetah footprints left in the dust of dirt roads. Even in the Serengeti, where cheetah densities are at their highest, I had to drive an average of 50km to find just a single spoor. At least 30 such observations are needed for a reliable density estimate.

Remote camera traps can also work in some circumstances and citizen science in tourist areas. But none of these methods work across different habitats, and all need substantial infrastructure and considerable investment in time.

Could the answer to finding cheetah lie with another animal? Dogs have some of the world’s most sensitive snouts. We put these to the test in a remote corner of Zambia.

The importance of poop

One of the things dogs can sniff out very successfully – as any canine’s owner will know – is poop.

But poop has important properties beside smell. Food, as it passes through the digestive tract and rectum, accumulates DNA from the intestinal and rectal walls, which becomes embedded within the poop. This DNA is a unique genetic signature of individuals. Therefore if you can find cheetah scat, you can extract DNA and identify the genotype of that individual.

Cheetahs defecate at least once a day, hence cheetah scat should occur across a landscape more frequently than the cheetah themselves. It follows that, if you can find enough scat and extract DNA from it, you may be able to estimate the numbers of individual cheetah in the population. Finding scat, rather than cheetah, has the added advantage in that scat doesn’t run away.

So far, so good. But there is a flaw in this plan. Cheetahs, who are largely non territorial, don’t defecate in nice, easy to find, prominent locations. As a result, their scat is extremely difficult to detect.

Harnessing the power of the canine snout

This is where the poop-detecting power of the canine snout comes into play. Domestic dogs are increasingly playing an important role in conservation. Organisations such as Working Dogs for Conservation, and Green Dogs specialise in training domestic dogs for conservation work. They harness the dogs’ natural poop detection ability, by training them to find poop of a particular species, signal their trainer when they have found it, and, above all, resist the temptation to eat any poop they find.

Could domestic dogs be the key to counting cheetah? Together with my colleagues from the Zambian Carnivore Programme and the Zambia Department of National Parks and Wildlife, we teamed up with Working Dogs for Conservation and Green Dogs to put domestic dogs to the test. This is what brought a team of large carnivore conservationists, two dogs (Faust and Pepin) and their trainers to a remote corner of western Zambia, where a low density, but unknown, population of cheetah still survives in and around the Liuwa Plain National Park.

Disappearing poop

At first, the dogs struggled to find scat on our pre-designated dog walking transects. This was when we started to notice the conspicuous absence of the dogs’ poop around our camp. On closer inspection, we were alarmed to discover that, no sooner had a new deposition of poop been made, a small army of dung beetles appeared and started rolling it away in large bundles.

A large healthy pile of steaming dog poop could disappear completely in a matter of hours. Having been an observer of cheetah poop in the Serengeti over many years, this was a first for me, and it caused me a substantial amount of anxiety.

Fortunately, as the dogs moved south, they started to find cheetah scat laden with bone and hair. This, presumably, was much less appealing to a passing dung beetle.

In fact, the dogs turned out to be very successful at finding cheetah scat. In all, they found 27 scats over a survey area of 2,400km2. Humans, on similar transects looking for spoor, found none. This neatly demonstrated the superiority of the canine snout over the human eye when it came to detecting the presence of cheetah.

Estimating population size

These scats were combined with a number of opportunistically collected scat. The DNA extracted from the scat samples were of poor quality, and so interpreting the genotypes wasn’t always easy.

However, we were able to generate an estimate of between 17-19 cheetah in the area, with a density of 6-7 individuals per 1000km2. The preliminary estimate of genetic effective population size was low, at just 8-14 individuals, and requires further investigation.

Many areas where cheetah still survive are remote and difficult to access. Prior to this study, there were no viable methods for obtaining reliable information on cheetah abundance in most of these areas. The beauty of using detection dogs was that surveys could be conducted on foot, and the whole survey took not much more than three weeks, although genetic work could take substantially more time.

Our study, therefore, provides an important step forward in our ability to detect cheetahs across large landscapes, monitor them and assess population trends. Such information is critical for mobilising conservation action and resources to halt the global decline of this elusive and secretive big cat.

The post Cheetah Detection Dogs: Overcoming the Challenges of Tracking Cheetahs appeared first on My Doggy Blog.

Dogs can learn to detect chemicals in a man’s urine that may signal a higher risk of having aggressive prostate cancer, according to a new study.

Prostate cancer is the second leading cause of cancer death in men in the developed world. Clinicians have sought accurate and reliable noninvasive diagnostic tools to differentiate early stage, less dangerous, and more treatable stages of the disease from the aggressive, high-grade, and likely-to-spread forms.

Standard blood tests for early detection, such as the prostate specific antigen (PSA) test, often miss cancers in men whose PSA levels are within normal levels or overdiagnose men with clinically insignificant tumors or no cancer at all.

In a small study in PLOS ONE, researchers had two dogs sniff samples of urine from men diagnosed with high-grade prostate cancer and from men without cancer.

The researchers had trained the animals, Florin, a 4-year-old female Labrador, and Midas, a 7-year-old female wirehaired Hungarian vizsla, to respond to cancer-related chemicals—known as volatile organic compounds (VOCs)—added to urine samples and not respond to ones without them.

“Besides PSA, other methods to detect prostate cancer make use of a molecular analyzer called a gas chromatography-mass spectrometer [GC-MS] to find specific VOCs or profiling bacterial population in a urine sample looking for species associated with cancer, but these have limitations,” says Alan Partin, urologist-in-chief at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

“We wondered if having the dogs detect the chemicals, combined with analysis by GC-MS, bacterial profiling, and an artificial intelligence (AI) neural network trained to emulate the canine cancer detection ability, could significantly improve the diagnosis of high-grade prostate cancer.”

Adding the AI analysis, helped the researchers filter the more than 1,000 VOCs present in a typical urine sample down to those most beneficial for cancer diagnosis, Partin says.

The dogs performed their cancer detection roles well, Partin says. Both Florin and Midas identified five of seven urine samples from men with cancer, or 71.4% accuracy. Florin correctly identified 16 of the 21 non-aggressive or no cancer samples (76.2%), and Midas picked out 14 (66.7%).

When researchers combined the canine olfactory (smell) results with GC-MS, bacterial profiling and AI analysis, the multisystem approach proved a more sensitive and more specific means of detecting lethal prostate cancer than any of the methods alone.

A long history of “biobanking” valuable patient samples made the recent study, and other prostate cancer research at Johns Hopkins Medicine, possible, Partin says, adding that “larger sample pools will be the key enabler of statistically powered, multi-institutional future studies seeking to fully integrate VOC and microbiota profiling.”

Additional coauthors are from Medical Detection Dogs in the UK, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Prostate Cancer Foundation, and the Cambridge Polymer Group.

The post Prostate Cancer Detection Dogs appeared first on My Doggy Blog.

People have a remarkable ability to remember and recall events from the past, even when those events didn’t hold any particular importance at the time they occurred. Recognizing what we ate yesterday for breakfast or remembering who we talked to the week before is something that comes naturally to us humans; it’s called episodic memory. But pet parents often wonder, do dogs think about the past like I do?

Researchers in 2016 investigated this idea with a study on the topic of canine memory. In the journal Current Biology, the group published a report showing that dogs have that kind of “episodic memory” too.

The study found that dogs can recall a person’s complex actions even when they don’t expect to have their memory tested. “The results of our study can be considered as a further step to break down artificially erected barriers between non-human animals and humans,” says Claudia Fugazza of MTA-ELTE Comparative Ethology Research Group in Budapest, Hungary. “Dogs are among the few species that people consider ‘clever,’ and yet we are still surprised whenever a study reveals that dogs and their owners may share some mental abilities despite our distant evolutionary relationship.”

Evidence that non-human animals use episodic-like memory has been hard to come by because you can’t just ask a dog what it remembers.

In 2015, Marc Bekoff, an evolutionary biologist from the University of Colorado, reflected on the subject of canine memory when he saw an essay called “Dogs Don’t Remember,” published by Dr. Ira Hyman. He disagreed, saying, “So, all in all, unless others and I are missing something, dogs do remember yesterday…There are many examples of dogs and other animals “remembering yesterday.” Think of dogs and other animals who have been severely abused. Think of dogs who remember where they and others peed and pooped, dogs who remember where their friends and foes live, dogs who change their behavior based on what they learned, and dogs who remember where they’re fed and where they’ve cached food and other objects. The list goes on and on.”

In the study led by Fugazza, the researchers took advantage of a training method called “Do as I Do.” Dogs trained to “Do as I Do” can watch a person complete an action and then do the action themselves. For example, if their owner jumps in the air and then gives the “Do it!” command, the dog would jump in the air too.

The fact that dogs can be trained in this way alone wasn’t enough to prove episodic memory. That’s because it needed to be shown that dogs remember what they just saw a person do even when they weren’t expecting to be asked or rewarded.

The researchers first trained 17 dogs to imitate human actions with the “Do as I Do” training method to get around this problem. Next, they did another round of training in which the researchers trained dogs to lie down after watching the human action, no matter what it was.

After the dogs had learned to lie down reliably, the researchers surprised them by saying, “Do It,” and the dogs did. In other words, the dogs recalled what they’d seen the person do even though they had no particular reason to think they’d need to remember. They showed episodic-like memory.

Dogs were tested in that way after one minute and after one hour. The results show they were able to recall the demonstrated actions after both short and long time intervals. However, their memory faded somewhat over time.

The researchers say that the same approach can most likely be used and adapted in a wide range of animal species to understand better how animals’ minds process their actions and that of others around them.

“From a broad evolutionary perspective, this implies that episodic-like memory is not unique and did not evolve only in primates but is a more widespread skill in the animal kingdom,” Fugazza says. “We suggest that dogs may provide a good model to study the complexity of episodic-like memory in a natural setting, especially because this species has the evolutionary and developmental advantage to live in human social groups.”

For all those dog owners out there: your dogs are paying attention and they’ll remember.

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All in the family: The modern ‘multispecies’ household meshes pet/people dynamics

After generations of evolving from large agrarian families to nuclear families and then morphing into single-parent families and no-parent families (married or unmarried), behold the modern “multispecies” family.

The current status of our beloved dogs and cats has ushered in a new type of household unit comprised of tightly-knit human and nonhuman members. We see evidence of this in legislation allowing divorce courts to consider custody of the family pet and millennial home buyers with pets who pass on a home unsuitable for their dog. Community demands that rescue missions for pets occur before the demolition of a home or neighborhood touched by tragedy.

The key reason we drifted toward the modern multispecies family is that households, over the generations, could concentrate less on surviving and more on thriving and self-happiness — and our pets came along for the ride. This state has begot “Dog Moms” and “parents” with furry, four-legged “children” — each with clearly defined roles as “family members.”

By 2018, almost 61% of U.S. households owned pets, with dogs and cats topping the popularity list. Research from The American Veterinary Medical Association confirms our boundless bonds: 85% of dog owners and 76% of cat owners include their furry companions in the family fold. And, in the midst of a global pandemic, American spending on these family members in 2020 topped $103 billion – a $6 billion increase over spending in 2019.

But it isn’t just statistics and anecdotal news stories that support the idea that American pet owners are transforming what we think of when we think of family.

I am an SMU Dallas sociologist studying the evolving multispecies family. My recent book, Just Like Family: How the Companion Animal Joined the Household, examines how the multispecies family has arisen in the United States as a unique family structure since the Industrial Revolution.

Following 100 hours of observations in a veterinary clinic, 35 interviews of pet owners, and an analysis of almost 90 print advertisements, it’s no stretch to conclude pets are more than generic “family members.” In my discipline, researchers talk of identities that we each hold, positions in society that are defined by our culture, and that require particular kinds of behavior. For the family, these might be “mom,” “dad,” “grandmother,” “brother,” or “sister.” The presence of these kinds of identities, together with the expected behaviors, tells us we are witnessing a real, culturally accepted family in action.

For almost all of the pet-owning people that I’ve met, some variation of these very specific familial identities was present. Of course, what identities were present depended on the kind of family being researched. For people who choose not to have human children, stories about the dog and cat often sounded like what you might hear from a parent discussing their child in the U.S. “I don’t spend enough time with my dog, so I am trying to change my schedule so that she has that time with me.” Similar for people who are unable to have human children – “Reading a story to my dog is something that she looks forward to every night!” And “grandparents” get in on the action too – with activities like “baby” sitting, financial support for expensive veterinary procedures, and sharing pictures of the grand cat with friends.

People with children under 18 referenced dogs and cats as “babies,” took very good care of their animals, and clearly thought of the dog and cat as family members – supporting all of the statistics and news stories above. But specific familial identities related to the companion animal ultimately rested with the kids. “Siblings” and “best friends” rose to the top in my data. From the “only” child growing up alone who needed a sibling to play with to the hesitant reader who read books out loud to his dog, parents confirmed these family members played indispensable roles in the lives of their children.

How did we get here? Other sociologists have argued that having the dog and cat move from worker for the family in the 1800s to entertaining pet in the 1900s to family members in the 21st century was a combination of things. Societal guilt over the ill-treatment of animals throughout the Industrial Revolution was part of this. Doting over the family cat made us feel better about our past. Scholars have also argued that the 1970’s realization that animals, dogs, and cats especially, had personalities and feelings caused Americans to elevate them to members of the family.

I argue that a crucial and overlooked element for the evolution of the American multispecies family had to do with the societal movement from survival to a focus on self-happiness. Before the industrial revolution, people were focused on staying alive – married parents had children to help provide for the family. But the industrial revolution brought higher standards of living for people, lower death rates and longer lives, and the need for fewer children. By the 1970s, the focus had changed to self-happiness, and greater diversity in types of the family arose. Childfree families, single-parent families, declining marriage rates, and increasing divorce rates became more prominent.

The multispecies family is part and parcel of this increasing family diversity in the United States. Childfree families, a family type that has grown dramatically in the past fifty years, the question of whether or not a human child might make them happy has been asked and answered. For many, dogs and cats have instead stepped into the role of “nurtured.” Grandparents, for their part, might shift over to spoiling the grand cat as their daughters and sons choose instead to pursue lucrative careers. And parents with human children today recognize that happiness and self-esteem are both paramount in raising healthy, happy adults – the sibling dog is a perfect relationship for fostering these goals.

So, where do we go from here? Does the multispecies family continue evolving in the U.S.? Is anchoring the cats in a seatbelt and placing the dog for a walk in a stroller just a societal phase? All indicators point to a resounding “No.” When changes in who can be treated as a child, sibling, or grandchild, for example, occur across enough families, the broader cultural and institutional landscapes gradually shift to accommodate those new ideas.

The evidence is all around us. Advertisements that depict dog owners as concerned parents. Legislation that ensures first responders remove pets right alongside owners during a natural disaster. COVID-19 is a fantastic example of how we know the multispecies family will only strengthen going forward. Faced with the post-pandemic return to work and school, people are increasingly worried about how their absence will impact furry family members who have spent the past 15 months basking in their humans’ attention. Gen Zers and Millennials in particular are poised to leave their jobs out of concern for their multispecies family. And, increasingly, employers who are struggling to retain and recruit employees are listening by offering more flexibility to work-from-home or bring pets into the office. The push for recognition of the unique needs of this family structure is mounting across a variety of institutions.

The multispecies family is here to stay.

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Dog’s name and age: Summit, 1 year

Nicknames: Summy

Adoption Story: We went to the local SPCA to inquire about puppies and found Summit, who had been abandoned along with his seven siblings. Upon meeting this 3-month-old puppy, we knew we had found our newest family member. Two days later, we brought him home!

I completed chemotherapy, and it felt like I had climbed the “summit” of a lifetime. This notion stuck with me until we looked at the small puppy, and I thought Summit would be the perfect name. He came when I needed a companion, and I knew he would love me in return without judgment. Summit is my first dog, and I feel absolutely spoiled.

The post Meet Summit appeared first on My Doggy Blog.

If you have never heard of Sergio, the wee little Chihuahua, who lives in Westchester, you will now. This little guy, who is very fit at 6 pounds, was rescued several years ago by Jeanmarie Daly. Of course everyone thinks their dogs, especially Chihuahua owners, are the absolute best of the breeds, but there’s something rather different and extra special about Sergio.

He attends French classes. “Oui” you read that right, French classes!

Sergio’s neighbor who lives in the same apartment building is a French teacher at Ardsley Middle School for 7th grade 11 and 12-year-old students. However, all of that changed during the pandemic when classes became virtual. Evidently, Monsieur spoke to his students about this special little pooch, and the students wrote stories about Sergio, who had then become a legend in their minds. Well, the best surprise, or shall I say, surprendre was the day Sergio actually popped into the class via laptop and viewed the students. Sergio was fascinated and sat quietly to observe all of the excited faces.

After Sergio’s first appearance, he was asked to join again and again. Monsieur was only too happy to allow Sergio to attend class since he had all of the students smiling and showing extra excitement about their new classmate. It was obvious that Sergio the little Chihuahua had become the class mascot and one of the best things that happened for this class during the pandemic. It appears that Sergio can also tell time as he knew exactly when to scratch at his door to run down the hallway to Monsieur’s apartment. Sergio is never late for class!

At the end of the year, the students bought Sergio a donut squeak toy which he loves. When school was back in session, and the students returned to the classrooms, Sergio went on sabbatical. However, he will surely make a visit in the Fall when next year’s students hear of this special little Frenchman!

As Sergio would say, “Au revoir”!!

The post A Little Frenchman Named “Sergio” appeared first on My Doggy Blog.

We looked at the UK veterinary records more than 33,320 Labrador Retrievers through the VetCompass program. We then extracted data on death and disease from a random sample of 2,074 (6.2%) of these dogs.

Read more: Is your dog happy? Ten common misconceptions about dog behaviour

Some diseases were far more prevalent in chocolate dogs. The prevalence of pyo-traumatic dermatitis (sometimes called wet eczema or hot-spot) in black dogs was 1.1%, in yellow dogs it was 1.6% of but rose to 4% in chocolate dogs. Meanwhile, otitis externa (ear infection) was found in 12.8% of black dogs, 17.0% of yellow dogs and 23.4% of chocolate dogs.

Research in humans has suggested a link between inflammation and shorter life expectancy and lower quality of life. It’s possible that, by a similar process, repetitive inflammatory skin and ear infections in chocolate dogs create an immunological burden that effectively shortens their lives.

Breeding for colour, not health

Colour might not seem linked to health at first glance, but some connections between coat colour and disease in dogs are well established. The Piebald or “S” gene variants can increase the amount of white in a dog’s coat and lighten its eyes to blue, but also cause high rates of deafness in one or both ears.

Read more: Are you walking your dog enough?

In another example, the Merle or “M” gene variant gives dogs a pale speckled coat and often blue eyes, but has been also linked with high rates of blindness and deafness. Rarer examples include cyclic neutropaenia (“Grey Collie Syndrome”) and colour dilution alopecia.

Even when the coat colour genes themselves are not themselves bad for dogs’ health, problems can still arise when an unusual colour becomes popular. The genes for some colours may be quite rare in the population or else hidden inside a parent of a different colour, meaning breeders may be tempted to overuse dogs they know for sure either show or hide the rare gene.

Read more: Animal emotions stare us in the face — are our pets happy?

This is the case for our chocolate Labradors: chocolate is a recessive trait, which means both parents must carry it. Breeding chocolate puppies from this shallower gene pool carries with it additional risks of ill health and disease.

And it’s not only physical health with has surprising links to coat colour – behaviour has been linked to coat colour too. For example, there appears to be an association between coat colour and aggression in self-coloured (golden and black as distinct from roan) cocker spaniels.

While it is not clear whether coat colour affects the widely prized personality of the Labrador, chocolate Labradors have different retinas to their yellow and black counterparts and retinal differences in various other breeds are thought to account for some behavioural differences in other breeds (for example in the chasing behaviour of so-called sighthounds, such as whippets, greyhounds and Afghan hounds).

The power of preference

Surprisingly, even if it turns out that the colour of Labradors doesn’t affect how they behave around us, there is some evidence that it may affect how we humans behave towards them. One study found people who look at photos of yellow and black dogs rate the yellow dogs significantly higher in agreeableness, conscientiousness and emotional stability.

Similarly, a study found pedestrians perceived pale-coloured dogs as being friendlier than dark-coloured dogs. Indeed, black dogs have been maligned by no less a figure than Winston Churchill, who referred to his own depression as a black dog. It is even possible that breeders may have selected the tan eyebrows of breeds such as Rottweilers and Kelpies because the contrast on their expressive eyebrows make their faces easier to read.

Read more: Do dogs have feelings?

But whatever our first impressions of a dog in a photograph, a dog on the street, or the new puppy we’ve just brought home, any dog owner can tell you that our relationships with our canine companions matter far more than appearances.

There are estimates that over 43,000 dogs are euthanased in shelters and pounds annually in Australia and evidence that 65% of owners report a behavioural reason for surrendering their dogs, often because the dogs have been poorly socialised, trained and managed. It is safe to say these dogs were not sent to shelters because of their colour.

Read more: Animal emotions stare us in the face — are our pets happy?

With every generation in a breeding program, one can make only a certain number of strides. Since breeders have to take into account the many detailed traits specified in breed standards, there’s limited opportunity to also breed for traits that boost welfare and adaptability to urban environments.

Breeders could focus more on selecting for good temperament and health, but only if less attention were paid to superficial traits. After all, a dog can never be the “wrong” colour.

The post Chocolate Labradors Die Earlier Than Yellow or Black, and Have More Disease appeared first on My Doggy Blog.

A key part of fostering is the idea that warm, nurturing relationships with foster families can help to change the developmental course of children who have suffered inadequate early care.

But by the time they enter foster care, many children have already deeply internalised early experiences of neglect. This frequently means that they bring negative expectations, fear, anxiety, and resistance into potential new relationships, making the development of closeness and security with foster parents extremely challenging.

In a recent study, we explored how relationships with animals can help children navigate the challenges of settling into new long-term foster homes. Animal relationships have been shown to support psychological well-being across a range of social groups, including individuals with disabilities, older people, and psychiatric patients. They may be also be particularly helpful to children who have lost faith in adult love.

Our study involved the in-depth investigation of eight neglected, maltreated children (aged ten to 16) in the foster care system, all of whom had recently been placed with families that had pet dogs. The children had histories of severe abuse and neglect. They had been in foster care for between four and seven years, and had moved foster homes between seven and ten times. Childhood histories like theirs severely impede the development of a sense of safety, security, and trust in adult caregivers.

The first thing we noticed was the extent to which children mistrusted and felt suspicious of their foster parents. They felt foster parents were simply colluding with a world that they had come to believe was inherently threatening and painful. Family dogs, however, were frequently identified as a “safer” source of closeness.

One child, Jake, aged ten, said of his relationship with his foster parent, Trudi:

I can still find it hard being really close with Trudi ‘cos everyone in the past has been horrible to me and got rid of me. I guess there’s still a chance Trudi might do that so I don’t feel totally safe with her.

Asked about his feelings towards Trudi’s pet dog, Zak, however, he said:

I don’t mind being really close with Zak ‘cos he won’t get rid of me, so I feel really safe with him. He’s my friend because he wants to be – and not just because he has to be.

One of the most significant ways in which the children related to family dogs was to rely upon them in times of emotional distress (when the dogs were often preferred to foster caregivers). This often involved “contact comfort”. Close skin-to-skin contact was a significant part of how animal connections helped to alleviate powerful feelings of fear, sadness, or anger.

Jane, aged 11, told us:

I felt embarrassed crying in front of [my foster parent] Sheila but I could cry and feel safe with the dog on my bed. When I cry he wriggles into my neck and I rest my face against his belly. Then I cry more, but I feel better after I cry. Like the tears help get the worry out my head. I feel safe with him there beside me. Like he wants to help me and stop my bad thoughts.

It was also apparent that the animals offered children a bridge through which they could begin to believe in foster parents as trustworthy and loving. If they were kind to their pets, maybe they would be kind to the children too.

Feeling at home

Jake, who we heard from before, said later on:

[Trudi] took real good care of Zak [the dog] all the time, and never got angry or fed up. She was really nice to him and always made sure that he was okay. I like Zak so much. I think I was wrong about Trudi because actually she seems nice too. Zak must love her and I know he wouldn’t do that if Trudi wasn’t really nice.

Pete, ten, also grew to trust his foster mother by observing her relationship with the dog:

She was always nice to him [the dog], so I knew that she’d be nice to me too. Even when he’s bad, like barking or biting things, she doesn’t hate him, or get rid of him. I liked her because she was dead kind to him all the time.

Pete’s foster mother described how he would constantly scrutinise her interactions with the dog: “I felt judged. He was like a shadow for the dog. When I was with the dog he watched my every move.”

We did not set out in our study to suggest that animals should be a universal part of the fostering process. Clearly, some children are frightened of animals, not all children respond positively to animals, and some children and caregivers have a history of animal abuse.

However, it is critical that children who have lost faith in adult love find their way back to human relationships that support and nurture them towards psychological health. In order to allow the development of a secure base with children, foster parents must begin to “feel” friendly, caring, and approachable for children, and offer them a safe, non-threatening environment.

Animal relationships aren’t a substitute for parental connection. But they can provide vital, non-threatening emotional comfort. Comfort that “holds” children while they come to terms with the anxieties and anger that can cloud their relationships with adults.

The post Dogs Can Help Children Accept the Challenges of Foster Care appeared first on My Doggy Blog.

Takeaways

What do you do if your dog is bitten by a rattlesnake?
•Recognize it immediately as a life-threatening emergency that requires professional help.
•Keep your dog calm to slow the venom’s spread through the blood and organs.
•Don’t touch the wound, apply a tourniquet or (for god’s sake) try to suck it out.
•Call the closest emergency vet, tell them you’re coming in with a rattlesnake bite, and confirm they have enough antivenin in stock for your dog’s weight.
•Get there as quickly as you safely can; minutes matter.

It happens in an instant. We stop the van on a remote forest road and let the dogs out to stretch their legs. Nose-to-the-ground hound dog Scooby investigates every rock and clump of grass near the van, then meanders over to a thickly coiled rope a dozen feet from our tires. The rope fires off a sharp warning rattle. Scooby recoils, terrified. Good dog, Scooby.

Unfortunately, innocent Greenland street dog Molly (she’d never seen a tree until she was three, let alone a reptile) gaily hurries over, tail wagging, to investigate. BAM! Molly yelps, backpedaling frantically. Blood drips from two deep punctures in her muzzle.

In that moment, I could hardly believe what had just happened. My husband Eric and I are wildlife biologists who study polar bears. We spend months every year working in dangerous conditions on the sea ice above the Arctic

Jet fuel deposited a year ahead of time? Check. Spare helicopter pilot lined up? Check. Satellite phone, rifle, morphine? Check, check, check. We expect the Arctic to be dangerous. Here, now, intent on a respite from the grind of urban life in a pandemic, we are taken totally by surprise.

But fortunately, we’re not helpless. We have, as I later learn from venomous snake expert Stephen Spear, the two most important first-aid items necessary when someone (or somedog) is bitten by a venomous snake: car keys and a cell phone.

I rummage hastily for the Ziplock bag I’d labeled DOG ER. Would two Benadryl at least sedate Molly, prevent a histamine response or buy us time? I hope so. Now we frantically scoop both dogs and our gear into the van and begin the bone-juddering, 70-minute, pedal-to-the-metal drive down a bumpy forest road to the nearest vet.

West of the Cascades, Eric and I live in a pleasant outdoor world of non-extremes. No heatwaves, hurricanes, grizzly bears or disease-carrying ticks. Our biggest complaint? Too many cloudy days. But travel 100 miles east to the drier parts of the state where many Washingtonians go to camp, fish and hike, and we’re in rattlesnake country.

As increasing numbers of people and their pets escape the city during Covid-19 and head east, being aware of rattlesnakes and where you’re likely to run across one, and knowing what to do if you encounter one, could save your dog’s life. Or your own.

Rattlesnakes are marvels of natural engineering. They hunt rodents and other small prey using sight, scent, vibrations and specialized heat-sensing organs located in holes in their faces called pits (as in, “pit vipers”). Scary reputation notwithstanding, most rattlers are of defensive temperament.

They prefer to avoid bigger animals, including us, and, with their unmistakable percussive rattle, offer interlopers ample time to back off. When a nosy dog gets too close, well, it’s not the fault of the snake, who’s just trying to do what it does best: survive.

Rattlesnakes live throughout central and eastern Washington. Identification is easy because we only have one kind: the Northern Pacific rattlesnake (Crotalus oreganus oreganus), a subspecies of the Western rattlesnake. Color and markings may vary, but if it has a rattle on its tail, it’s a rattlesnake (worth noting: there are look-alikes, but without rattles). The genus name, Crotalus, means “little bell” in Greek.

Northern Pacific rattlesnakes favor warm, south-facing slopes within a few kilometers of the rocky areas where they den, sometimes by the hundreds. They are generally found at low elevations and are active between April and September. (If you really want to nerd out, check this analysis of the distribution of rattlesnakes on Washington’s Columbia River plateau.)

Eric and I are members of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature’s Polar Bear Specialist Group, one of many groups of experts around the world who focus on a single species, or group of species. So, when I decided to nerd out myself, I called an expert from the Viper Specialist Group.

Venomous-snake biologist Stephen Spear has been fascinated by venomous snakes his whole life. Our specialty, polar bears, are iconic, charismatic predators and we usually take people’s interest in them for granted. But why snakes, I asked? “I’ve always had a soft spot for the underdog,” Steve says. As a kid, when other children crowded around the lion enclosure, he officially “adopted” the copperhead at the local zoo.

I email Steve a photo I’d hastily snapped of Molly’s nemesis. “That’s a nice-sized snake,” he observes dryly. Indeed. From the scientific literature, I’d learned that you can estimate the size of a snake by measuring the inter-fang distance. Or, in Molly’s case, the distance between the fang-holes in her face.

This made sense to me, as I’d once determined that a polar bear had been tusked in the head by a walrus using a similar metric. The inter-fang distance of 25 mm on Molly’s muzzle suggested a very large Northern Pacific rattlesnake. They can grow up to five feet in length.

It’s a myth, Spear tells me, that small or juvenile snakes are more deadly, or are less able to meter their venom release. The larger the snake, the greater the venom capacity. Hence the inter-fang metric, which was partly developed for the medical community treating snake bites. The eastern diamondback rattlesnake in the southeastern U.S. is the largest rattler in the world, and its bite is extremely dangerous primarily because of its size and venom capacity.

The way snake venom acts depends on the species. The venom of many rattlesnake species is necrotizing; it digests the flesh around the bites (and later, inside the body). Cobra venom, in contrast, acts on the nervous system as a paralytic, shutting down breathing. However, some rattlesnakes have evolved to have venom like a cobra because they prey on fast-moving lizards.

Snakes don’t waste their venom—it takes energy to make it, and time to restock it—so some defensive rattlesnake bites are “dry.” Molly’s was not. Her face swelled up within 30 minutes, despite my Hail Mary application of Benadryl.

But Molly is relatively young and healthy and, thanks to our cell phone (calling in advance to make sure they had the antivenin in stock) and Eric’s ace ambulance driving, we got her to the emergency vet in Yakima in one hour. That she’d been bitten on the face was a good thing, the vet tells us; legs are good, too (relatively speaking). The tongue and torso are much worse places to be bitten because they have greater blood flow.

Molly was hospitalized overnight and administered antivenin (also called antivenom) through an IV. Within 24 hours, she was headed home with us, in pain, swollen, sick and shaky—but alive. We were lucky.

What should the public know about rattlesnakes, I asked Dr. Spear, other than that they may bite? Well, he said, the chances of running across one are low. Even scientists looking for them have a hard time finding them.

A warming climate could change this, however. As elevated temperatures become more common, rattlesnakes are expected to spend more months out of their den and be active for longer periods during the day.

Finally, he said, “It’s a hard life, being a rattlesnake. We should have some empathy. They are extraordinarily patient—sitting in a coil waiting for something to come by, for hours and even days.”

Molly’s face has returned to normal and she’s generally back to her frisky self. But let the bedroom fan rattle and she’s quivering under the bed in a flash. Will this new fear translate to a healthy aversion to snakes? Let’s hope so.

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