Commentaries

The Feeding Frenzy

Although records of numerous food-related human-animal dilemmas now fill my files, four situations that occurred relatively early in my veterinary medical career remain fixed in my mind because of what they taught me about the connection between food and human and animal emotions. The first involved an overweight dachshund with pancreatic problems that responded well to medical and dietary changes. Even so, periodically the dog would experience sudden bouts of incapacitating pain. And always the cause was the same. Even knowing how it would affect her cherished pet, the owner would succumbed to the dog’s pleading looks and perfect

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Roses, Falling Eggheads, Placebos, and the B-Word

What do poet Gertrude Stein and our interpretation of the bond have in common? In perhaps her most memorable line she wrote, “A rose is a rose is a rose,” a deceptively simple statement that has fueled academic discussions for decades. But according to Stein herself, the line referred to the fact that merely thinking or hearing a word suffices to elicit any imagery or emotions we associate with it. In other words and in spite of all those dictionaries out there, we choose to take a Humpty Dumpty approach: “When I use a word,” Humpty Dumpty said in

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Subjective and Arbitrary Animal Rights

When you think animals worthy of rights protection, which groups of animals come to mind? For most of us, the list would include farm and laboratory animals, animals used for one form of entertainment or another, members of threatened or endangered species. Which group of animals do you think earns the least of society’s concern about animal rights? I’ll give you a hint: the answer probably will surprise you until you actually think about it. Did you answer companion animals? Or did you automatically dismiss this group as a possibility because of the magnitude of the investment so many

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High Note Behavioral Changes

For years I’ve urged clients to always set themselves and their animals up to succeed so that every foray into new improved behavior ends on a high note.  I made this recommendation based on ethological studies of a phenomenon called the Confidence Effect which can be summed up in the familiar refrain, “Winners keep winning and losers keep losing”. Admittedly few if any events ever carry a guarantee. But the concept did support the role consistency plays in establishing new behavioral pathways in the brain. And even better than the results of controlled studies, feedback from those applying the concept under

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When Words Can Kill

Authors Barbara Natterson-Horwitz, MD and Kathryn Bowers open their book,  Zoobiquity: The Astonishing Connection Between Human and Animal Health with an incident that will be familiar to many dog and cat folks. When faced with a kitten-sized emperor tamarin monkey, Dr. Horowitz immediately related to the animal as she would to a human infant by establishing eye contact and doing the baby talk routine.  However what happened next may strike some of you as bizarre and even mean. The veterinarian caring for the animal asked the physician to stop lest she throw the little creature into capture myopathy and possibly kill

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Companion Animal Learning, Stress, and the Immune Response

Sometimes after successfully implementing the changes that eliminate their animals’ problem behaviors, 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

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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

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Don’t Sell the Bond Short

What do you think of when you hear or read the words, “human-animal bond”? For many people, images of animals involved in some sort of animal-assisted therapy that improves a disabled person’s quality of life immediately come to mind. Others think of coping with the pain of pet loss, or heroic tales of animals rescuing their owners from burning homes, or search and rescue or military animals performing amazing feats within and beyond the call of duty. While all of these activities most certainly fall into the realm of the human-animal bond, they also may create the illusion that

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Giving Scientists a Helping Hand

Were you ever stuck at home because of lousy weather or an illness or injury grounded you and left you feeling utterly bored and useless? You didn’t want to watch yet another movie or play another video game; you had no desire to read another book, even one by your favorite author. You wanted to feel capable, not entertained. Fortunately help is now available for those of all ages who almost certainly will encounter this dilemma as least once in their lifetimes. Moreover it comes from a most usual source, i.e. the reduction in government funding for research on

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Reprising FRATT for the New Year

Throughout December I gave a lot of thought to what I wanted to write about in the first commentary of 2013. Ultimately I decided to resurrect a commentary I wrote back in 2008. And, no, I didn’t do this because I succumbed to a holiday-cheer induced writer’s block. Or because I was too lazy to come up with something completely new. In reality I didn’t even remember this particular commentary until after I’d pondered the concept of resolutions—and specifically those related to issues involving animal health, behavior, and the bond—as I am wont to do this time of year.

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