Dogs Make It Better: Goldendoodle Puppies Bring Joy to Sandy Hook Survivors

The pups, who were born on the day of the tragedy, find homes with school staff.

Three weeks after the Sandy Hook Elementary School tragedy, Laura Feinstein, a teacher at the school, received a letter from a breeder in Texas. She had a litter of nine Goldendoodles. They were born Dec. 14 -- the same day as the massacre. The breeder wondered whether there were any "Sandy Hook staff, families, victims' families, first responders, or anyone in the community affected by the tragedy who might find some comfort in taking on a pup."

There were. Feinstein responded to the breeder, saying that survivors would be delighted, according to a story she wrote about the affair for WTOP.

"I just knew this was going to be a new beginning for my family," she writes. 

Photos were sent, and people picked out their dogs. Feinstein and her family chose a male pup and named him Zeus, "Protector and Ruler of the Heavens."

As the staff waited for the pups to grow up enough to be adopted, the breeder, who is unnamed in the article, sent weekly updates and photos. These offered a bright spot in a school and community under such strain. 

"Those of us on staff who had agreed to take pups were often found huddled during our lunch period sharing photos, a temporary distraction from the struggles we faced adjusting to our new location and our new lives," Feinstein writes. "Whenever I was having a bad moment, I found myself going to the camera roll on my iPhone to sneak a peek at Zeus, who was the positive association I used to overshadow negative thoughts."

On Feb. 16, when the pups were nine weeks old, they arrived at a local airport, where "the reception emotionally overwhelming. It was simply beautiful to see smiling faces and tears of joy."

"I have to say when Zeus was handed to me I smiled like I hadn't smiled in more than two months. His puppy breath and warm little body all snuggled up to you puts you in instant relaxation mode."

Watch a video of Zeus playing with Fernando, Feinstein's black Labrador Retriever:

Feinstein now cares for Zeus with her college-age daughter, and doing so has brought them closer. She ends her article by thanking the breeder for her kindness, and for reaching out: 

"We will never forget what happened on Dec. 14, but a very special person, who had a team of others to support her efforts, did a kind and generous thing for a community of people who were in tremendous pain. I will be forever grateful for that."

Via WTOP

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A Pet Store Puppy For Suri? Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, You Can Do Better Than That

Did you see the photos last week of Suri Cruise tearfully looking at puppies at a pet store? No? You didn't see them? What's wrong with you? That was a choice piece of center-cut pop culture. You got a job or something?  

Truthfully, it has us a bit worried. If Suri Cruise wants a puppy from a puppy store, then that means Suri's daddy is going to want a puppy from a puppy store, and there's not much that can stop Tom Cruise besides a well-executed escape plan and a crack legal team. 

We fear this might get more people thinking about buying puppies from pet stores instead of where they should be getting them: shelters (editor's note: or reputable breeders). Hell, we wouldn't be surprised if backyard breeders are working up a Suri breed right now (half Maltese, half Staffordshire Bull Terrier, one dab dragon's blood), or if Petland opens 15 more stores on the Eastern seaboard based on that photo alone. 

Many pet stores, of course, stock their shelves with dogs from puppy mills, and you don't want a dog from a puppy mill. You could start by reading this piece on puppy mills. For just the choice quotes, read on:

"Puppy mills are often dirty and unsanitary. You often see dogs in cages with their own filth, left out in the heat and cold, malnourished, and with skin problems.""Puppies are not hand-held from birth like most reputable breeders' are. This means they have little or no human interaction until they're sold. This can lead to aggression, anxiety, fear, indifference, and a whole host of behavioral problems. Also, living in a small cage crates a poorly adjusted dog.""Dogs are usually caged their entire breeding life.""Dogs are often bred every six months, with never a break. After their fertility ends, they are often sold or sometimes killed."Nice, huh? No, that's not nice. Tom, if you really want to go purebred, buy the Westminster Kennel Club and give it to Suri through her lawyers. Go big. 

But what we think Suri really needs is an intervention -- an indoctrination, if you will -- into the joys of getting a dog from the shelter, which costs far less money, much less than your life savings doled out piecemeal throughout the years until you're so brainwashed you think you've moved across the Bridge to Total Freedom and achieved Clear when you've really just gone utterly and completely insane thinking you're descended from aliens who died in a volcano. Ahem. 

So, Tom, Katie, legal teams on both sides, Gloria Aldridge, Martha Stewart, James Van Der Beek, or anyone else with a direct line to Tom: Consider this a public service announcement. Give Suri a shelter dog. Two if you can handle the extra food expense. You can do this. 

Just picture Suri and Katie traipsing down their Manhattan sidewalk with a shelter pup surrounded by 32 people carrying $350,000 of recording equipment and broadcasting the adorable dog's every move to TMZ and probably Tom's computer in his secret office in the closet -- um, basement. I bet Xenu himself might reveal himself in the foyer and tell the kid she did good. 

Remember: Thetans don't let thetans buy puppies from pet stores (bumper sticker?), and nor should the rest of you.

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The kindest cut: A better way to spay

May 24, 2011

In this week’s syndicated newspaper feature, Pet Connection advisory board member Dr. Timothy C. McCarthy, a board-certified surgeon in the Portland, Ore., area who has pioneered the application of many minimally invasive diagnostic and therapeutic techniques that are now becoming the standard of care, talks about “The Kindest Cut” — a better way to spay.

The first spaying I ever watched was in a small rural practice in 1958 when I was 13 — the same time I first became interested in veterinary medicine.

The surgery was performed using ether and catgut suture from a spool that had to be manually threaded onto a needle. There was no surgical cap, mask, gown or gloves, and only a postage stamp-sized surgical drape. There was no pain medication, and the ovaries were pulled up to the incision by tearing their attachment to the abdominal wall. This was the state of the art at that time.

Today, nearly all aspects of spaying have improved. We have better anesthetics that have minimal negative effects on the patient. We use individual sterile packages of suture with attached needles made using the same synthetic suture material used in human surgery, which causes minimal tissue reaction and is completely removed by the body with time.

We also use caps, masks, gloves and gowns, and use drapes of adequate size to prevent any contamination of the surgical field. We no longer need to pour antibacterial agents into the surgery site. Aggressive pain management with drug combinations is used before surgery to block pain before it starts, and the medications are continued during the post-operative period.

However, we are still using the same barbaric blind tissue-tearing technique to rip the attachment of the ovaries away from the abdominal wall. This technique does work — because we’ve been spaying dogs and cats this way for more than 50 years. But now there is a better way: laparoscopic spaying. It changes our technique from tearing tissue blindly to cutting tissue where we can see what we are doing, and it is the final step toward achieving modernization of this surgery.

Can our pets be windows into understanding human obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD)? From Dr. Marty Becker and Mikkel Becker:

“Like people can have compulsive behaviors, such as famously washing their hands until their skin is raw, animals can have similar behaviors,” veterinary behaviorist Dr. Nicholas Dodman, director of the Behavior Clinics at Tufts University’s Cummings School of Veterinary Medicine in North Grafton, Mass., told the International Association of Animal Behavior Consultants 2011 Conference in April.

“We’re on our way to proving compulsive behaviors may be genetic,” Dodman said. “If it’s true in dogs, there’s a good bet it’s true in people.”

Compulsive disorders in dogs are associated with what they were bred to do. Dogs bred to chase prey or herd are more likely to chase shadows or light. Research in Dobermans with flank sucking has shown a link between their behavior and a specific alteration on a chromosome for dogs with this disorder. Some cats, primarily Oriental breeds, such as Siamese, may compulsively suck on fabric, a behavior commonly called “wool-sucking.”

All this and more in the complete feature, here!

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