News Archives - Page 10 of 73 - i Still Love Dogs

Pet Dog in North Carolina Infected with Coronavirus

Until this past week, there were cases of humans, tigers and cats being affected with the coronavirus. Now, for what’s believed to be the first time in the United States, a pet dog has tested positive for COVID-19.

Winston, a 2-year-old Pug who lives in Chapel Hill, N.C., coughed frequently and lost his appetite for a day, but he’s now doing fine. His dog mom, Dr. Heather McLean, is a pediatrician at Duke Health. She and two other members of her family were also infected with COVID-19. They all had mild symptoms. The family’s other dog and a cat did not test positive.

Perhaps, like me, you’re wondering how in the world family pets were able to be tested for COVID-19 when hundreds of thousands of humans are still waiting to be tested. As it turns out, the family is participating in a Duke University study that’s researching how bodies react to infections. The study, called the Molecular and Epidemiological Study of Suspected Infection (MESSI), was launched before the pandemic. The results will hopefully lead to effective tests and treatments for infections like COVID-19.

“Everyone is a little on edge and afraid, so this just gives us the ability to feel like we have something that we can contribute to society and help patients get better,” McLean told WTVD.

On April 1, MESSI researchers came to her home to test her family. “They all came out to our house and did blood samples,” McLean told WRAL. “For the humans, they swabbed our noses as well as our mouths, and for the animals they did oral swabs for both dogs and the cat.”

If you’re concerned about your own dog getting COVID-19, McLean said you shouldn’t worry too much about it. “We’re not seeing an epidemic of household pets or them transmitting it to other humans and animals — we just happened to detect it in our dog,” she told USA TODAY.

In early March, a dog belonging to someone with the coronavirus in Hong Kong was believed to be the first pet dog in the world to get the virus from a human.

However, as the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) points out, there is still no evidence that dogs or other pets can transmit the coronavirus to people.

Protecting Your Dog from COVID-19

To help prevent your dog from being infected with COVID-19, the CDC recommends that you do the following:

Don’t let your dog interact with other people or animals outside your home.
Walk your dog on a leash and stay at least 6 feet away from other people and animals.
Even if they’re open in your area, avoid dog parks and other public places where people and dogs congregate.

If you have been infected with COVID-19:

If at all possible, have another family member or friend take care of your dog.
If you must be around your dog, wear a face mask and wash your hands frequently.
The hard part: Avoid touching, kissing, snuggling or otherwise interacting with your dog.
The most important part: Get well soon!

Photo: CBS This Morning/YouTube

Dogs May Soon Be Able to Sniff Out Coronavirus in People

Dogs are already saving human lives by using their incredible senses of smell to detect cancer, diabetes and other deadly diseases in humans.

In the not-too-distant future, will they be able to sniff out COVID-19, aka coronavirus, as well?

That’s a potential goal of Medical Detection Dogs, a nonprofit organization based in England that trains dogs to detect diseases in human urine, breath and swab samples. Medical Detection Dogs is planning to work with the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine (LSHTM) and Durham University to see if dogs can also be trained to detect COVID-19. This team previously successfully trained dogs to sniff out malaria.

“In principle, we’re sure that dogs could detect COVID-19,” Claire Guest, the founder and CEO of Medical Detection Dogs, said in a press release. “We are now looking into how we can safely catch the odor of the virus from patients and present it to the dogs.”

Once those odor samples can be obtained, it will take six weeks to train dogs “to help provide a rapid, non-invasive diagnosis towards the tail end of the epidemic,” according to the press release.

To train the dogs, they will sniff samples from people infected with COVID-19 along with those from people without the virus. They will indicate, usually by sitting down, when they smell COVID-19. Dogs are also able to detect slight changes in the temperature of human skin, so they can help determine if someone has a fever.

The trained dogs may be deployed to airports and other public places to help detect people with the coronavirus.

“The aim is that dogs will be able to screen anyone, including those who are asymptomatic, and tell us whether they need to be tested,” Guest said. “This would be fast, effective and non-invasive and make sure the limited NHS testing resources are only used where they are really needed.”

The ability of dogs to detect COVID-19 will be “profoundly impactful” in the months to come, according to James Logan, head of the department of disease control at LSHTM.

Steve Lindsay, a professor at Durham University, said having coronavirus-sniffing dogs in public places “would help prevent the re-emergence of the disease after we have brought the present epidemic under control.”

There is currently no evidence that dogs can get the coronavirus from people, or that we can get it from dogs or cats. Here are some tips for what dog owners should do if they are infected with the coronavirus.

Photo: Mark Watson/Flickr

New Study Finds 75 Percent of Dogs Have Anxiety Disorders (Mine’s One of Them)

Most dogs — nearly three-quarters of over 13,700 pets observed in Finland, at least — have some kind of anxiety disorder, according to a new study.

Among the most common disorders were fear of noise (which about 33% of the study participants and 90% of my own dogs have had), fear of heights, and fear of strangers (which my very nervous Pit Bull mix Ella definitely has, among many other fears).

The study, conducted by researchers at the University of Helsinki, was published this week in Scientific Reports. The largest study of its kind, it involved 13,715 dogs of various breeds and mixes. No dogs were subjected to any testing or otherwise harmed during the study. Their owners were simply asked to complete a questionnaire analyzing the following seven behavioral traits:

Noise sensitivity, including thunder, fireworks and gunshots
Fearfulness of humans, other dogs and unfamiliar locations
Fear of surfaces and heights
Inattention and impulsivity
Compulsive behavior
Aggressiveness
Separation anxiety

Interestingly, some breeds were more likely to have certain behavioral traits. Rough Collies, for example, had the greatest fear of surfaces and heights — so don’t expect Lassie to ever rescue Timmy from that well.

Not surprisingly, Staffordshire Bull Terriers, often considered “Pit Bulls” and subjected to unfair breed-specific legislation (BSL) that allegedly keeps people safer, are less aggressive toward strangers than many other breeds that have never been banned, like Border Collies and Miniature Schnauzers. Here’s hoping Denver Mayor Michael Hancock, who recently vetoed the city council’s decision to end BSL, takes a really good look at this study.

The study found that the age of dogs may play a part in their anxiety disorders. Older dogs become more sensitive to loud noise such as thunder. Most of the behavioral issues like tail chasing and inattention were experienced by younger dogs.

So, what does all this mean? For one thing, this could be yet another way dogs can be beneficial for humans: They could help provide a better understanding of what determines our mental health problems.

“In humans, obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD) often occurs together with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but this is the first time the same has been seen in dogs,” said the study’s first author, Milla Salonen. She told Gizmodo this correlation was possibly the study’s most surprising discovery.

The study results may also be helpful for someone wanting to adopt a purebred dog. “It is important to think about how much you will exercise and do any activities with the dog,” Salonen told Gizmodo. “If you want a dog only as a companion and will not exercise heavily or for long periods of time, it is not advisable to get a working dog, that is, a dog with high energy level.” Good advice.

Photo: That’s my Ella, trying to hide from everything that scares her.

Grateful Dog Dad Buys Super Bowl Ad Praising UW Veterinary School

You might want to take a break from watching Puppy Bowl XVI on Sunday and tune into the second quarter of that other big sports event, Super Bowl LIV.

One of the commercials will be for University of Wisconsin-Madison’s School of Veterinary Medicine. The $6 million, 30-second spot, appropriately titled “Lucky Dog,” isn’t being paid for by the school, but by WeatherTech, a manufacturing company whose founder and CEO is David MacNeil. The commercial features Scout, MacNeil’s 7-year-old Golden Retriever, who’s alive today thanks to the staff at the school’s teaching hospital, UW Veterinary Care.

Last summer, an aggressive tumor was growing on Scout’s heart. He had hemangiosarcoma, a cancer of blood vessel walls, and was given the grim prognosis of having only one month to live. Devastated because he had lost three previous dogs to cancer, MacNeil, with a referral from his veterinarian, took Scout to UW Veterinary Care in July 2019.

Specialists with the hospital’s emergency and critical care and oncology teams were able to quickly stabilize Scout. He was given chemotherapy followed by radiation therapy to zap his heart tumor. At the same time, he was given immunotherapy to boost his immune system so it could better attack cancerous cells.

While all those treatments may sound overwhelming, the main goal of the hospital staff along with MacNeil was maintaining Scout’s high quality of life during these procedures. “Scout is kind of the perfect patient in that he’s tolerated multiple modes of therapy very well,” said David Vail, professor of comparative oncology at the School of Veterinary Medicine, in a press release.

Amazingly, Scout’s heart tumor decreased in size by almost 80% after just one month of treatment. By September it had decreased another 10%. Today, it has pretty much disappeared.

Scout was one of 3,500 patients who visited UW Veterinary Care’s Oncology Service in 2019. Cancer is the No. 1 cause of death in older dogs, and UW Veterinary Care is conducting research and using innovative treatments to help save dogs’ (and cats’) lives. Since cancerous tumors in dogs often share the same characteristics as those in humans in regard to recurrence, spread and response to treatment, this research can help save people’s lives as well.

Scout, who’s the face of WeatherTech’s pet products, appeared in the company’s Super Bowl commercial last year. But this is the first time UW Veterinary Care has ever been in a commercial, and the faculty and staff are understandably excited about it.

“So much of what’s known globally today about how best to diagnose and treat devastating diseases such as cancer originated in veterinary medicine,” said Mark Markel, dean of the School of Veterinary Medicine, in the press release. “We’re thrilled to share with Super Bowl viewers how our profession benefits beloved animals like Scout and helps people, too.”

The commercial ends with a plea for viewers to donate to UW Veterinary Care so other dogs can be as lucky as Scout. You can make an online donation at weathertech.com/donate/petsmakeadifference or via the school’s website at vetmed.wisc.edu/scout/. Every dollar donated will go toward research to better diagnose, treat and prevent cancer, as well as toward the purchase of specialized equipment to help identify new cancer-fighting drugs and treatments.

In case you miss the “Lucky Dog” commercial or prefer to watch the Puppy Bowl instead of the Super Bowl (I hear ya), here it is.

Photo: uwmadison/YouTube

R.I.P. Cherry, One of the Last Surviving Vicktory Dogs

Nearly 13 years ago, Cherry was one of the 51 Pit Bulls rescued from a life of horror at Michael Vick’s Bad Newz Kennels in Virginia.

Prior to 2007, most dogs rescued from fighting operations were euthanized. Even Wayne Pacelle, president of the Humane Society of the United States at the time, said the rescued Vick dogs would never be suitable as pets and thus should all be destroyed.

But dog experts at animal welfare organizations including the Best Friends Animal Society (BFAS), Richmond Animal League and BAD RAP knew better. They took in the Vick survivors, rehabilitated them and found them loving forever homes in which these “unadoptable” survivors thrived, earning them the name “Vicktory Dogs.” Many of them became beloved therapy dogs. One of the survivors, Jonny Justice, was awarded the prestigious ASPCA Dog of the Year award in 2014.

Cherry, just a puppy in 2007, was taken in by BFAS. “Cherry arrived at Best Friends looking like he wanted to stick his head in a hole and never come out,” according to Julie Castle, CEO of BFAS, in The Best Friends Blog. “The word ‘withdrawn’ doesn’t even begin to describe it. He was living in his own world, trapped in a nightmare replaying over and over inside his head.”

Thanks to the tender, loving care he received at BFAS, Cherry eventually came out of his shell. He turned out to be a big ol’ snugglebug, wanting to cuddle with people, other dogs — and even cats.

“It was so wonderful to see Cherry become the squooshy-faced lap dog he’d always wanted to be — wonderful because it happened for him and wonderful that he’d come so far from his sad past of abuse,” Castle wrote.

Cherry was adopted by Paul and Melissa Fiaccone. He enjoyed a long, loving life in his forever home. He became a Pit Bull ambassador, helping people realize that it’s possible for dogs to be rehabilitated after experiencing such horrible trauma.

Tragically, many of the dogs at Vick’s Bad Newz Kennels never got a second chance like Cherry and his fellow Vicktory Dogs. According to the federal indictment, Vick himself killed poorly performing dogs by hanging them or repeatedly slamming them to the ground. When three dogs survived being hanged, Vick helped hold their heads underwater until they drowned.

Vick went to prison for 18 months in 2007 and was then awarded the second chance he’d deprived of all those dogs he killed. He was signed by the Philadelphia Eagles and quickly resumed his NFL career. Most recently the NFL has given him the honor of being a “legends captain” for the 2020 Pro Bowl. Over 1.4 million people have signed online petitions urging the NFL to choose a more worthy “legend.”

If anyone deserves legend status, it’s Cherry and the Vicktory Dogs. Sadly, Cherry recently had a mass growing on his spleen and had become lethargic. According to his dog dad, Paul Fiaccone, “the message was clear from him. He was tired, he was ready. Melissa and I held his paws and hugged him tightly as he crossed the Rainbow Bridge. He was extremely peaceful and we are honored to have been with him at his time of need.”

Paul wrote that during their years together, Cherry taught him a very important lesson: to live. “Life will always throw you curveballs, but live it and live it well,” he wrote. “Cherry gave life all he had and he wrung every ounce out of his time here. He just loved life and loved sharing his love with his family, friends and whomever he met.

“Today we mourn the loss of Cherry, but tomorrow we live. We live for Cherry.”

Photo: Best Friends Animal Society/YouTube