Dogs
oracknows | April 18, 2017If there's one thing about antivaxers, it's that they're single-minded beyond belief. No matter what the chronic health problem, it's always about the vaccines. To them, vaccines are always the cause. Autism? Vaccines must be the cause. Asthma? vaccines. Diabetes? Obviously vaccines. Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS)? What else could it be but the vaccines? (Never mind that there's plenty of evidence suggesting that vaccinated children have a lower risk of SIDS.) That's how antivaxers think. Monomania doesn't even begin to describe it.
I was reminded of this yesterday when I came across yet…
gregladen | February 7, 2014It should have been a concern the day after Sochi won its bid for the Winter Olympic Games several years ago.
It is reported that authorities or private contractors are taking the street dogs off the streets in Sochi, in preparation for the Olympics, which start tonight. A friend of mine was living in Athens for the weeks before the Summer Olympics there, and she told me that authorities did the same, and that included summary executions, of the dogs, where they were found.
This has sparked outrage, of course.
I do have to wonder why the decision is made to remove these dogs, and in…
dr. dolittle | July 3, 2013I am currently watching a re-run of the NOVA special called Dogs Decoded. If you have not already seen it, you should check it out! It was actually the subjects of a prior blog that you can read here.
tsmith | June 20, 2013Student guest post by Kyle Malter
In many areas of the country there is a vile blood sucker that lurks in our forests, our parks and even our backyards. What concerns us is not what this creature takes but rather what it leaves in our body after it bites us: corkscrew shaped bacteria called spirochetes and with the name Borrelia burgdorferi. When the bacteria invade our bodies and cause problems along the way we call it Lyme disease.
It is Lyme, not “Lymes” disease, and here’s how it got that name. In the early 1970’s a large number of cases emerged involving children with a “bulls-eye”…
tsmith | June 17, 2013Student guest post by Naomi Kirschenbaum
Although we can never know, there are estimates in the range of 15,000 displaced pets in the wake of 2005 Hurricane Katrina. Many of the dogs found their way to shelters and homes in our community around the Monterey Bay in California. As a local veterinarian the most notable observation I saw was how it “seemed” that so many were heartworm positive. Six years later we have a published study finding a 48.8% prevalence of heartworm in these dogs.
This story is an example of a few important lessons. First, how things seemed to me, in my clinical…
esiegel | December 23, 2012"Dogs are our link to paradise. They don't know evil or jealousy or discontent. To sit with a dog on a hillside on a glorious afternoon is to be back in Eden, where doing nothing was not boring -- it was peace." -Milan Kundera
It's the holiday season, and for most of us, that means spending time with loved ones, having some type of feast-day, and in many cases, giving and sharing gifts with one another. To spread a little holiday cheer, I present to you my all-time favorite Christmas song, Run-DMC's classic,
Christmas In Hollis.
Those of you who've been following Starts With A Bang since the…
esiegel | December 9, 2012"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous he will not bite you. This is the principal difference between a dog and man." -Mark Twain
While it's hard to imagine for me now that I have one, there are plenty of people out there who have never known the rewards and joys that come with rescuing an animal. This week, I present to you a song by six future Soundgarden-and-Pearl Jam members back when they were part of the band Temple of the Dog,
Call Me a Dog.
And while there are many internet jokes out there about dogs driving cars...
Image credit: Kathy of http://www.petswelcome.com…
tsmith | September 28, 2012Rabies is a disease without a public relations firm. In developed countries, human disease is incredibly rare--we see typically one or two deaths from rabies each year. In contrast, lightning is responsible for about 60 deaths each year. However, worldwide, rabies is another matter. Today is World Rabies Day, a reminder that 55,000 people still succumb to this virus every year--most of them in impoverished regions of Africa and Asia. While cases in the U.S. are typically due to wildlife exposure (rabid bats or even beavers or rabid kitten), infected dogs remain the main vector of infection in…
tsmith | June 14, 2012This is the second of 16 student posts, guest-authored by Eileen Ball.
The beauty of dogs and cats as companions is that we don’t have to raise them to go out into the world and be successful. As pet parents we can set the household “rules” according to what works for us and get on with enjoying our pets; hopefully for many years. According 2011-2012 APPA National Pet Owners Survey cats have now surpassed dogs as the most common household pets in the United States. Despite this fact the same survey reports that in 2010 only 30% of US veterinary patients were cats. As a companion animal…
mikethemadbiologist | July 4, 2011By way of Lambert, I came across this awesome video of Loukanikos, a stray dog in Athens, Greece, who apparently has a history of not liking riot police (the action kicks in at about the 1:10 mark):
I guessing Louk isn't upset about the EU forcing contractionary policies on an economy with already sky-high unemployment (I could be wrong though!). Probably, it's a combination of a riot policeman at some point taking a swing at him along with demonstrators feeding him.
Which means he's as sophisticated about politics as many humans.
FREEDOM!
mikethemadbiologist | May 15, 2011A while ago, I discussed how dogs have evolved to live with humans: being around humans is part of their environment, and they have undergone specific adaptations to live in that--our--environment. At this point, their 'natural' environment should contain people. Which brings me to this funny comment by Amanda Marcotte in response to the language police editors of the Journal of Animal Ethics (italics mine):
...this is the stupidest shit I've ever read. Also, self-contradictory---you can't say "animal", but you can say "companion animal"? As I joked on Twitter, I'm all for retiring the…
mikethemadbiologist | March 14, 2011On what was essentially a party line vote (one Democrat and one Republican each crossed the aisle), the Republicans in the Missouri Senate voted to strip out most of the legislation passed in a referendum that would have regulated Missouri's dog breeding facilities. Missouri has been known as the 'puppy mill capitol' because of its lack of regulation regarding dog breeding: thirty percent of puppies raised in puppy mills hail from Missouri.
So what is the Missouri GOP removing from the Puppy Mill Cruelty Prevention Act, in the service of liberty and freedom? Well:
Apparently determined to…
mikethemadbiologist | January 22, 2011I sound like this:
I have no idea what's going through this dog's mind. Likes singing, I guess.
sa smith | December 3, 2010The Plan for Arnie, since Day 1, was for him to be a therapy dog. I love volunteering for hospitals/hospice/retirement homes, I live right next to a VA/childrens/regular hospitals, and Arnie is an incredibly happy, social dog. Its a natural fit.
But when Arnie was a puppy, it became clear that he wasnt just social. He is SOCIAAAAAAALLLLAAAAAHHHHH!!!
He didnt want to play. He wants to PLAAAAAAAAAAAYAAAAAAYAAAAAAYAAAAAAAYPLAAYPLAYPLAY!!!!
He didnt just like and appreciate some attention from people. He was more like, LUUUUUUUVIES!!! PEEEEEOPLE!!!! I LOVE YOU PEOPLE!!!! I LOVE YOU PEOPLE…
sa smith | September 11, 2010PARADE magazine has published a series of articles on pit bulls recently:
Michael Vick's Pit Bulls: Where Are They Now?Can You Teach a Bad Dog New Tricks?Top 5 Myths about Pit Bulls
Hehehehe. Amazing how many pit owners have the same "HE/SHE DESTROYED AN ENTIRE SOFA!!!" story. PRO-TIP-- Pits that get walkies every morning and every evening dont eat sofas. Thats why rain makes me nervous... Arnie + Cabin Fever = Something getting destroyed, LOL!!
Remember, folks-- The Humane Society of the United States wanted each and every one of those dogs killed. They want all pits killed. Just like…
mikethemadbiologist | September 11, 2010I found this video of an elephant and her dog. Or is it a dog and her elephant?
Does anyone have any idea how these two might view each other? I don't think they view each other as conspecifics. Do they view each other as equals, or does one feel responsible for the other?
Either way, I want a pet elephant.
An aside: On a day wherein bigoted idiots are burning religious books, I think doggies and olophaunts are about all I can handle.
sa smith | August 10, 2010The worst part of visiting my parents is driving home.
Yes, I will miss Moms cooking/baking. Yes, I will miss having real food (weird how the totally not organic food we get from local farmers is still good). Yes, Focus on the Family and AFA make a long drive longer (today they passive-aggressively ignored the Prop8 ruling, and instead focused on only talking about traditional marriage and gender roles. did you know that treating men and women as equals is why we have the homo gay in the first place? also, Obama is a secret Muslim, pronounced moo-slim.)
The worst part is breaking up Arnie…
mikethemadbiologist | July 22, 2010
In a good post about puppy mills, Amanda Marcotte made a good point about domesticated versus undomesticated pets (italics mine):
This would probably mean that people couldn't get exotic pets, and that isn't really the sort of thing that would keep me up at night, either. I understand the urge to have something like a pet ferret, but like with smoking, it's an understandable urge that probably is best not indulged. Cats and dogs evolved to be our pets and want nothing more than to be our pets, thus they are the best choices for pets. They may not love every second of being a pet---going…
sa smith | June 16, 2010Our partners at NatGeo currently have a special episode of 'The Dog Whisperer' up on Hulu*-- The Most Aggressive Breeds.
45 minutes and 59 seconds of me bawwwing.
There are no bad dogs. Just bad owners. Reminded me of the UFC pitbull vs rottie/germie fight I had in my apartment this time last year (weenie dog ring girl):
* Episodes rotate, so this link will only be good for a week, I think.
jgoldman | June 16, 2010Dogs are particularly good at tasks that involve communicating or cooperating with humans, which has led some researchers to speculate that they are really good at solving social tasks, more generally. For example, dogs can figure out where a human's attention is, are really good at picking up on eye-gaze and finger pointing cues, distinguish among different individual humans (by contrast, humans are really bad at distinguishing among different individual monkeys, for example), and at least in one outstanding case, are capable of "fast mapping."
Relative to non-human primates, domestic dogs…