Pawcurious Vet Blog: Pet help, stories, and information with Dr. V

Anyone out there still thinking the old alpha-rolling-your-big-Rottie-technique is a good one?

In the latest issue of Applied Animal Behavior Science, a new study reveals that aggressive training methods result in an aggressive pet. According to the study’s author, using “confrontational” methods such as the stare-down, growling at the dog, physical punishment, and alpha rolling not only do not correct the problem behavior, they can make aggression worse.

This is not news to most veterinary professionals, I would venture to say. Granted there are some old-school types out there who still use force and intimidation in their clinics, but most of them are retired due to age or, quite possibly, injury. It is a daily occurrence for me to walk into an exam room and be greeted with a growling dog trying to stare me down. Rather than stare or growl back, I simply get a muzzle (we sometimes euphemistically call it a “party hat” if the owner seems shocked at Buddy’s behavior) and tell the owner I will be using it. If they protest, which doesn’t happen all that often, they are welcome to leave.

I will never forget the vision of an owner, a man in his 40s, rolling around on the exam room floor trying to pin his Akita and thus demonstrate (unsolicited) for me his highly successful alpha-rolling technique. As they laid there nose to muzzle, I could only plead with him to stop before he lost his nose. Needless to say this did nothing to increase the dog’s docility and he was in fact a major handful. I observed one other ill-advised person attempt this on a submissive pit bull and end up with a face full of urine for his efforts.

To date, I haven’t seen anyone try any of this on a cat.

Mulan’s ashes arrived back from the pet memorial park in a very nice cedar box. I took the box inside the house, and placed it on the counter next to my keys, whereupon my 4 year old immediately honed in and asked what was in the box. “Memories,” I told her, then whisked the box out of her hands before she tried to open it.

Right now Mulan is resting on top of the TV. It is the only place where she is safe from kid-hands and misplacement. I feel badly that I haven’t picked somewhere more permanent yet, but in life Mulan liked to be there in the living room best of all, so in some ways it’s rather fitting. I’m debating what to do from here. My last dog who I had to put to sleep, Nuke, arrived from a different crematorium in a crummy floral print tin and I was in a bit of a hurry to get him somewhere more dignified, so I buried his ashes under a pepper tree in our yard. Unfortunately, we ended up moving 2 years later and I am to this day consumed with guilt about abandoning him to strangers.

I am oddly (well, not that odd, I guess) defensive about dignified comportment of a pet. To me how we treat animals in death is just another reflection of the respect we had for them in life. I’ll never forget Charlie, a little dog we saw for the first and only time last fall. The owner was debilitated, so her sons brought the dog in for euthanasia. They could have cared less and were combative about my need to examine the dog before committing to doing the euthanasia. Poor Charlie was a total disaster, obviously in the end stages of some sort of (undiagnosed, untreated) chronic disease, and I agreed at that stage euthanasia was the best option. The sons complained about the price, but paid for the euthanasia with communal cremation, and left before the deed was done.

Imagine my surprise when, two weeks later, Charlie’s ashes arrived back at the clinic. Apparently, a staff member had checked the wrong box, and Charlie was given an individual cremation. Thinking that perhaps the owner would still like to have the ashes, we attempted to call them, but they had provided a false phone number. “Well, that stinks,” said one tech, and started to take Charlie over to the trash can.

I had what could only be described as “strong words” with the tech, and within a few moments Charlie was sitting on my desk. I wasn’t quite sure what would be right or fitting, not knowing anything about the dog, but I eventually decided on a small park by my home to be as good a place as any. So after work the next day, I headed to the bank of a tiny creek at the park, and scattered his ashes. In the end, did it matter? Not really. Not to anyone but me. But that is enough.

Mulan, on the other hand, wasn’t that fond of the park. She liked to be at home. Her, I know. We went out and bought a maidenhair tree, because the little yellow leaves remind me of her ears. When we plant it, I will mix some of her ashes in the soil. It still feels like not enough, though.

My sister insists that when she dies, she wants to be turned into a Life Gem. When they first came out, you used to have to ship the whole body to the Life Gem place- augh- but now they have refined the process so you can get a diamond made out of a lock of hair, which is so much better. The thought of wearing my sister- my whole sister- and constantly living in fear of losing her down the drain is a bit creepy to me. If you have the money to spend (and it isn’t cheap), they do offer the service for pets too.

Much as the idea of wearing Mulan as a cheery yellow diamond is appealing, in these times of recession it isn’t going to happen. I kind of like these little lockets that hold a bit of ashes in them. Is that creepy? I find them appealing, actually. Keeping your pet close to your heart as they have been for so many years. I will tell you the one option I never considered: Freeze drying my pet (warning, link contains photos). As much as I love Scrubs, the fact that JD and Turk have a freeze dried dog in their house is a constant source of discomfort for me when I watch the show. Yuck. Who would do this? Really? That makes turning someone into a gem look positively dignified. Thank God my sister isn’t asking me to do that. I can picture my daughter, circa 2045 in therapy: “Well, it all started the day Auntie K came back from the freeze drying place…”

I just finished reading this story on CNN about a chimpanzee attacking and seriously injuring a friend of his owner. It’s so sad, for the victim, for Travis who is now dead, and for the owner who, in desperation, stabbed the pet she loved as a child.

I have never quite understood the appeal of primates as pets. The overwhelming memory I have from my time studying primate medicine is that of fear- they can MESS YOU UP. Don’t get me wrong- I think primates are amazing and astounding creatures. Their capacity and abilities never cease to astound me. I was fortunate enough to see Jane Goodall give a talk last year about her research, and her love of the chimpanzees was astounding. It made me want to get on a plane to Africa and set up shop in the jungle right then and there.

But Jane doesn’t keep pet chimps, does she? Or put them in laboratories to research on them? She appreciates them for their grace and intelligence as observed in their natural habitat. Moreso than other animals, primates have enough intelligence to understand and appreciate their situation in captivity, research, or as pets, and I think across the board they know that something is wrong.

About two weeks into my primate medicine rotation in school, I was talking to a resident about how interesting his work was, just trying to engage him. He kind of scoffed. “I’m getting out at the end of the year,” he said. “I can’t take it. They all go crazy.” And while I am the first to admit I am not an expert in lab animal medicine, it wasn’t very hard to appreciate the idea that while the primates in the colony setting were doing OK, those in the medical wards, separated into cages like a mini-Oz, were not. It was not pleasant. They were unhappy. They sat in their wards with nothing to do, holding little mirrors they could use to look at each other, playing with “enrichment” items here and there before going back to repetitive behaviors. When you approached the ward and looked in the door window, you’d see a row of little humanoid-looking hands extend mirrors out the cages to see who was there. They learned to recognize the vets, and since we were the ones doing things like giving shots, the reaction was less than pleasant. It never ceased to be disconcerting.

When you come face to face with a primate, there is a different connection than when you similarly encounter another kind of animal. The intelligence, the thought process, is evident. You see it in the gorilla who sighs at the zoo when some stupid kid is making faces and noises, right before he decides to pay him back by exhibiting some form of inappropriate behavior in front of the kid’s mom. You see it in the mother rhesus macaque who stares in terror when you come to sedate her so you can dress her wound; even worse so to see it in the baby who clings to her limp form, awake and terrified. You see it in the chimpanzee who sits in a cage resignedly waiting for the next phase of the stroke study. And while others obviously see something different, I see it in the chimp sitting on TV in a beanie and overalls selling me a soda.

I’m sure there are some people who enjoy a lifelong relationship with their pet primate, people with incredible devotion and understanding of the needs, but more often than not the stories we hear are these, the ones with the sad endings. It pains me to see commercials with “cutesy” primates; to see such a glorious animal demeaned in such as base way, to sell a product. Use a pug in a tutu. Just as cutesy and you know the pug lives for that kind of thing.

I wonder how many people truly think getting a pet is good practice for being the parent of a human. I know countless people who use this as an initial excuse to get a pet, but I’m talking about people who have actually gone and done both. God knows it seems like a good idea at the time, when you are young and dumb, when you have neither. Taking care of one living thing, and doing it well, should naturally be a good predictor of being caretaker to another, right?

The first clue I should have had that this really isn’t the case is my abysmal record with flora. I grew up next door to my grandmother, a transplant from the Old Country who could take clippings from your lawn mower and turn them into the Hanging Gardens with a garden hose and sheer will. To get from my house to hers, I would traverse the backyard, winding through the towering green vines of cucumbers, tiptoeing through rows of cabbages, solemnly parading past the Virgin Mary plaster statue presiding over a flowering rows of color, and arrive at her doorstep where she was invariably nursing some sort of injured bird back to health. Her vibrant green thumb and gift with all things living continued its genetic march through to my father, where it then hit a brick wall and drowned in a sea of weed eater, a precious gene lost to the world.

My lineage is more accurately traced through the maternal side, starting in Ireland where we managed to destroy an entire country’s harvest of potatoes. My Black Thumb of Death then fled the scene of the crime, parading over the pond where it co-mingled with some French Canadian lumberjacks to produce my mother, who provided for me a lovely house filled with teapots, doilies, and the finest, most beautiful silk roses money could buy. We had not a single real plant in our house growing up. Not for lack of trying, mind you. My mother left countless brown withered stalks in her wake before declaring the house a plant-free zone and telling my dad if he wanted real plants he was welcome to grow them outside.

When my husband and I purchased our first house, I cheerily mentioned my plan to buy some lovely silk ferns and I saw the blood drain from his face. No fake plants, he declared, himself the progeny of another Eliza Doolittle of all things Green, and I made a genuine attempt to keep a plant, any plant, alive in the house. I failed miserably, each and every time. Plants are hard to keep alive. They don’t meow in your face if you’re late watering them; they suffer in silence, leaving you to discover their wilted, limp remains peering accusingly up at your from their resting place on the counter. Dogs and cats are much easier; their very existence is a constant reminder that there is a need to be met. And if you forget, even for a hour, god help you.

Despite my rotten track record with plants, I surged forward into animal ownership with an underlying certainty that I would succeed in this venue, and I was right. I found that I excelled at animal care. But I was wary, wary of making any assumptions about my ability to be a human parent simply because I could mind the cat well enough. Sadly enough, I was entirely correct in my extrapolations. I am pretty sure I am a middling to fair human parent at best, my tousle-headed, sticky fingered hooligans a living, breathing testament to my mediocrity as a raiser of humans. I have a theory that while you may love plants, pets, and people, there is only one category in which you truly shine. This is a theory I just made up right this second to make myself feel better, so if you are the gardening genius who raises Champion Airedales, 10 pound heirlooms and a house full of Yale grads, just keep it to your smug little self and let me bask in the glory of my singular gift, ok?

My pets don’t have a lot of money or material things. They have themselves, and that is about it. But what they have, they give freely and without reservation.

Emmett gave me 10 kisses, a fishy burp in the face, and a bunch of fur on my new pants.

Calypso (she’s the grey one) gave me a dulcet love song at 3 in the morning (it went RAAAORWWW OOOORRRAOWR) plus a hairball she personally created, hacked up on my pillow while I was in the shower.

Apollo (the black cat) is my Don Juan. He wooed me with a chirruping sonnet whilst kneading me tenderly, to soften me up. Then he latched onto the back of my hand and attempted marital relations with my forearm.

I can only hope to repay one tenth of the love and joy these little guys bring me. Happy Valentine’s Day to all the pet lovers out there!

On Sunday, I’m meeting up with Amazing Amber (my favorite tech in the world) and shooting the first videocasts for this blog. Depending on the weather and how well I have my act together (rather grim on both accounts) we are aiming to shoot 4-6 videocasts which will then be uploaded to iTunes. I have no idea how long the post-production will take; this is kind of a learning experience for all of us.

I’m going to cover a few basic topics of interest to dog and cat owners, but I’m always open to suggestions for things people would like to see discussed or demonstrated. Depending on the response I am hoping to have this be a regular feature.