Latest Blog Posts

The Animal X-Files 3: Symbolic Animal Population Control

When we’re younger, it’s easy to believe that what we do to pet dogs and cats animals represents what we’ve done for ages because it reflects the most logical way to do them. Only as we get older and experienced enough to take a longer view do we realize that procedures we accepted as the norm in our youth may claim suspect and even bizarre historical roots. Another such example  of how the adoption of the human medical model affected the practice of companion animal medicine relates to the removal of reproductive organs as a function of sex. Can you guess what it is?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:54 — 6.7MB)

The Animal X-Files: Sexual Reticence

How easily could you ask your veterinarian about your dog or cat’s sexual behavior or  some concern about your pet’s penis, vulva, or vagina? How easily could your veterinarian discuss such subjects with you?  Strange as it may seem to anyone with any knowledge of biology, many physicians still maintain an almost Victorian prudishness when it comes to addressing any topic related to the nether regions.  While no veterinarian who would adopt such an attitude would last 2 minutes in a farm animal setting, it’s may be surprisingly easy for companion animal practitioners to do so—unless their clients bring the subject up.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:58 — 5.5MB)

The Animal X-Files: The Loss of Wholeness

This podcast is the first of a series of meanderings about what affect the choice of veterinary medicine to pattern itself on human medicine has had on animal health, behavior, and the human-animal bond. I named the series the Animal X-Files for two reasons that I consider valid. Can you guess what they are? I also made one grossly erroneous anatomical reference in this podcast. If you pick it up, feel free to let me know about that too.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:58 — 6.4MB)

Companion Animal Learning, Stress, and the Immune Response

Sometimes after successfully implementing the changes that eliminate their animal’s problem behavior, my clients comment that doing so ranked among the most difficult but most fulfilling work they’ve ever done. And no doubt their animals felt the same way. One possible reason why mental changes may strike us that way takes us back to that bane and blessing of reality: our perceptions. We live in a society that equates hard work with hard physical labor such as splitting and stacking wood, hiking, pumping iron, or doing anything that gets us hot and sweaty. Within this realm, making mental changes in ourselves and consistently implementing those that make it easy for our animals to do likewise seem about as challenging as contemplating one’s pudgy abdomen.

As it turns out though, learning is anything but a benign process.

Learn more here.

Behavioral Contranyms

Have no idea what contranyms, the subject of this week’s podcast, are? Here are three hints to help you:

1.  All of these words share a special property.
2. More likely than not you’re familiar with such words, but didn’t realize they rated a special name.
3. Some non-behavioral examples include second-guess, impregnate, and secrete.

Now that you know what contranyms are, can you think of any terms related to our interactions with animals that could fall into that category?

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:36 — 5.1MB)

Are We Ignoring Gifted Animals?

I suppose that some and even many might consider the subject of this podcast ludicrous. However how the quality of the learning opportunities we offer more intelligent than average animals, and especially dogs, has practical repercussions for our society today.  While we may roll our eyes at problems those animals who possess less than average mental capacity might get themselves into, these pale when compared to those of more mentally gifted ones.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:49 — 6.3MB)

Meandering With Bigfoot

Until I came across this article I never really gave the human-Bigfoot bond much thought. But one of the advantages of being an independent scholar is that I’m free to think about things that it might be imprudent to ponder in more formal settings. And when I thought about Bigfoot and what his/her DNA analysis might reveal, it reminded me the scientific community tizzy that occurred when some suggested that Neanderthals and early humans might have interbred. In that particular scenario, the conclusion seems to boil down not so much to whether they did or didn’t, but now many were involved if they did. I wonder if the polar and grizzly bears debate the reality of the polar-grizzly bear hybrid (in their own polar and grizzly bear ways) so earnestly.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 5:49 — 5.4MB)

The Bird Wars

When I read the studies regarding the effects of free-roaming cats  and the far fewer and less publicized studies regarding the effects of artificial bird food supplies, i.e. feeders, on the wild bird population, I see so many variables it makes my brain ache. Once again what we need is someone with creativity, knowledge, and expertise to see the whole picture. Until that lucky day, join me in not letting emotions generated by singular studies blind us to the bigger picture.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 7:37 — 7.0MB)

The High Cost of Motherhood

Here’s the article about gorilla surrogate moms that triggered these meanderings. Relative to what this teaches us about the way we treat the young of species we claim to cherish as members of our families… What can I say? The old saying, “Familiarity breeds contempt.” kept floating through my mind.

And in that serendipitous way things sometimes cross my desk, here’s a video of another human attempt to raise orphan domestic animals that arrived about the same time as the gorilla article. I wonder how this solution would stack up against what we typically offer orphan puppies and kittens.

Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 6:07 — 5.6MB)

The Placebo Effect and the Human-Animal Bond: When Nothing is Something

In an interesting about face, researchers increasingly turn their attention to the placebo effect. Nor do they approach the subject as science-based myth-busters seeking to prove such responses reside all in the patient’s head. Or rather, they do hope to prove this by proving that placebos can and do cause beneficial changes in the brain and, by extension, in the body. The difference now is that instead of associating those brain changes with easily duped feeble minds, they see these effects as a way to decrease and in some cases eliminate the need for more physiologically and financially costly conventional treatments.

Although I never felt comfortable admitting this in the past, I’ve always linked the human-animal bond and the placebo effect. I didn’t feel uncomfortable because I viewed any perceived bond effects as evidence of sloppy science or a phenomenon limited to the weak-minded. Quite the contrary, I saw both as long ignored concepts that play a critical role (for good or ill) in human and animal health and behavior.  Read more…