Consider this a holiday podcast of the more challenging ilk. The two articles that triggered these meanderings are the “Caregiver placebo effect for dogs with lameness from arthritis” by Micheal G. Conzemus, DVM, PhD, DACVS and Richard B. Evans, PhD (Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association, Vol. 241, No. 10, November 15, 2012) and a discussion of Winfried Hauser’s review of nocebo effects here.
Faith is another of those words that often crops up during the holiday season. And it’s a word that we often bandy about relative to our relationships with animals without regard to the full range of its potential. We want to have faith in our animals and we want them to have faith in us. We want to have faith in the animal-care professionals from whom we seek assistance, and we want them to have faith in us and our animals. But sometimes that’s a lot easier said than done. Someone says something about our animal or shows us a test result or our animal does something unexpected and suddenly we feel like our world has turned upside down. Suddenly we’re not sure who or what we can trust.
In the end I think a key to faith is communication. Without a willingness to engage in that, sometimes it’s difficult to know which end is up.
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