Credit: Kate Allen Toronto Star
Maddie is getting on in years. She has arthritis. Her once sprightly gait has been reduced to a shuffle, and her neck is stiff. She can no longer make it up to the second floor of her home.
So on a June afternoon she’s splayed out on a mat while skilled hands massage her vertebrae. The osteopathy session, an alternative therapy in which the body is manipulated to help itself heal, will take the better part of 40 minutes and cost $65. Maddie’s caretaker, Rossi Ayres, says it’s worth every penny.
“A lot of people say, ‘Well, she’s 11 years old.’ But you know what? She’s my best friend. She deserves the best.”
Stitches, a Dogo Argentino, works out in an aquatherapy tub after suffering the canine equivalent of an ACL tear
Maddie is a golden retriever. Like a growing number of dogs in North America, she is undergoing canine rehabilitation therapy, an up-and-coming veterinary field that has spawned at least three new clinics in the GTA since 2004.
Just last June, the University of Guelph’s Ontario Veterinary College inaugurated their new Hill’s Pet Nutrition Primary Healthcare Centre, a teaching clinic that includes an aquatherapy pool and will school upper-year students the basics of pet rehab.
“Interest in alternative therapies has grown across the health spectrum,” says Martin Fischer of the College of Veterinarians of Ontario, which in 2009 introduced new rules making it easier for clinics to offer rehabilitation and alternative medicine. “(There’s) no reason to expect pets to be different.”
Maddie’s session at the Canine Wellness Centre in Toronto’s east end begins with muscle strengthening exercises. Canine rehabilitation practitioner Tania Costa drags a length of inflatable tubes to the clinic floor and coaxes Maddie across the challenging terrain with treats.
Costa chooses different therapies depending on the dog and the disorder. In the session before Maddie’s, Molly, a 7-year-old Labrador diagnosed with fused vertebrae and a degenerative joint disease, had her back legs rubbed with a laser light wand. Then the dog jumped into the pool for a run on the underwater treadmill.
Costa is also trained in canine massage and acupressure therapy, among other exercises, and has developed a series of core-strengthening exercises for the stability ball that are gamely demonstrated by her two miniature Australian shepherds, Maisie and Otis. Since opening the clinic in 2004, she’s seen demand quadruple to 13 appointments a day this year.
Across town, in Yorkville’s Animal Rehabilitation Centre, practitioner Tracy McKenzie has witnessed the same trend. That clinic’s client base tripled from their first year, in 2005, to their second year. (The clinic is currently closed and is not accepting patients while it undergoes restructuring.)
“There’s definitely an increase in demand,” McKenzie says.
Check out the full story:
Doggy Rehab Invigorating and Fun
FRIDAY, July 15 (HealthDay News) — To anyone who is familiar with the eerily human-like qualities of man’s best friend, the news that dogs can read your mind shouldn’t come as any surprise.
The latest research adds to growing evidence that dogs can interpret both human body language and general behavior, and use it to their advantage.
“Dogs and [human-raised] wolves are capable of distinguishing between a person looking at them, someone who’s paying attention and someone who’s not,” said Monique A.R. Udell, lead author of a study published recently in the journal Learning & Behavior. “They’re more likely to beg [for food] from someone paying attention to them.”
Researchers have been learning more and more about the surprising capabilities and intelligence of Canis lupus familiaris, better known as the domestic dog.
One recent study found that dogs have the developmental abilities of a human 2-year-old, with the average dog capable of learning the meanings of 165 words.
“Over the last five years or so, we’ve been trying to understand how dogs and relatives of dogs such as wolves respond to social companions,” explained Udell, who was a researcher at the University of Florida in Gainesville when the study was conducted.
Check out the full story:
Dogs Adept at Reading People’s Minds
By Morieka Johnson, Mother Nature Network: CNN Living
During their daily walks in St. Louis, Kelly Jackson and her pint-sized Shih tzu, Meeko, used to run into plenty of pet lovers. But as soon as the conversation turned to Meeko’s age, it was Jackson who got feisty.
“I’d give his age and they go, ‘Awww,’” Jackson says. “I don’t want sympathy. Meeko may be 12.5, but he’s a force to be reckoned with.”
After years of anchoring a morning news show, Jackson decided to follow a different path and launched AARFF.com to help people identify and prevent health issues that can shorten a pet’s life span. Meeko died earlier this year, but Jackson’s beloved pooch serves as inspiration for stories, photo galleries and even adoption information featuring older pets.
“People who parent senior pets don’t realize that their pets are seniors — or they don’t want to admit and accept that their pets are seniors,” she says. “I was even that way with Meeko when he was 8 or 9, which is considered a senior for a small breed. Once they do get into the senior stage, you really should start taking measures to address issues early on.”
Preventative measures include scheduling veterinary exams that may involve additional blood work to check for potential age-related problems. Dr. Arhonda Johnson, owner of The Ark Animal Hospital in Atlanta, offers clients a senior package that emphasizes dental care and blood work.
However, the first step in providing preventative care involves understanding specifically when your pet is considered a senior. Dogs that weigh less than 20 pounds reach their senior years around 7 to 9 years old, Johnson says. Giant breeds like Great Danes reach their golden years around 6 or 7 years old.
“All dogs are geriatric when they reach the double-digits,” Johnson says, “but we start having the senior dog conversation at 7 for large-breed dogs.”
Check out the full story:
Does my old dog really need expensive tests
For those that want to remember that special pet in your life you may want to consider a glass urn as a great keepsake.
I had the chance to interview Michelle Kapturto owner of www.soulbursts.com and you can read our interview below:
How long did it take to bring your idea to market?
Many years (20 maybe).
How did you come up with the idea?
I knew some glassblowers who had a friend die and they actually put all of his ashes into a large glass furnace with all the ingredients to make glass and melted it all together. They blew vessels for all the family and friends out of the whole melt. About 15 years ago a friend’s dad had died and he asked me to figure out something to do with the ashes. I didn’t want a whole pot of glass with ashes in it so I started experimenting with just putting in a small amount of ashes to glass. It worked out quite well. I was also a painter and had created, for a client, a portrait of her two Australian Shepard’s. They were young and beautiful and she loved her painting. She went on to become involved with the Humane Society of Central Oregon. Her dogs aged and died and she asked me, since I had painted them when they were young, if I could now put their ashes into glass. Kind of an artistic beginning and ending. Well that really got the ball rolling as other people wanted them when they lost their pets. Finally I bit the bullet and learned about how to make a web page and after some fits and starts I launched Soulbursts.com in 1994. My mom had died and I knew firsthand how helpful it was to be able to see her ashes in a beautiful way, have her close, and be able to spread the rest of her ashes. My whole family has a Soulburst with mom’s ashes. I still work closely with the Humane Society of Central Oregon as well as several other pet crematoriums and veterinarians offices. As well I work with funeral homes and families.
I find the work is still healing for me and I really enjoy making these things of beauty that mean so much to the people who receive them. If you look at my other glass work
you will see some beautiful things. People buy these and put them in there homes and love them. BUT nobody cries when they get one. It is the emotional connection and the ability to give that to someone that makes the Soulbursts a really special part of my work as an artist. I know how sad and daunting it is to get that plastic box back from the crematorium. It often sits like an elephant in the room. My work helps to make those ashes visually and tactilely appealing. It is a way for me to help people celebrate the gift of relationship that they shared with their diseased.
What makes your product unique?
What makes my product unique is that I put all of my training and experience as an artist, and as someone who has experienced the grief of loss, into it. The other thing that make each Soulburst unique is the ash of your loved one. There have been more and more people offering glass with ashes in them on the internet in the last few years as the economy has made it harder to sell art glass. I am not doing this to just keep the furnace hot. I truly love making each Soulburst and am honored that people trust me with all that is left of someone very important to them.
Are you planning any enhancements/improvements to the product?
I am working on a new small piece that will fit in the palm of your hand like a worry or touch stone. I will be taking my gold leaf pendant off the market because all glass pendants are fragile if they hang by a glass loop. I feel terrible when someone says that their pendant got knocked of a counter and broke. There is plenty of cremation ash jewelry out there so I am going to replace that with a touch stone. I will also be adding a new shape to the web page soon that is a hallow shape that can have up to 1/2 cup of ashes (more if you asked for a larger piece) put inside of it and sealed in. Unlike all of my other works it will be translucent/opaque with surface adornment so you will not see the ashes. A factor in many of the custom orders I do is making it so you can’t see the ashes.
What is your professional background?
Background: I graduated from the Pacific NW College of Art with a Bachelor of Fine Art Degree in 1975. I was very fortunate to walk into one of the 2 glass blowing studios in Oregon at that time. I was immediately head of heals in love with glass. I was the second woman in Oregon to blow glass. I finally amassed the knowledge and funds to start my own studio, Glass Dancing in 1990. I spent 10 years prior to that painting which really gave me time to put together all the design stuff I learned in college. The painting helped make my glass MY glass. I was able to start using the the glass skills I had learned over the years to start saying something with my glass. I learned a lot about color in the painting years and color is now a very important aspect of my glass.
Throughout the entire inventive/manufacturing process what was the hardest obstacle you faced?
The hardest part of being an artist and of making the Soulbursts is always marketing. I am an artist full time and have no other jobs. Learning that I had to be a business person as well as an artist in order to make was challenging. There are many hats to wear. In addition to being creative there is bookkeeping, marketing, sometimes an employee, lots of things that have little to do with creating. Marketing has pushed me to learn about web sites and social media, customer service, accurate bookkeeping, data bases, Photo Shop, photographing glass….. It has been a rewarding challenge.
What type of pets do you own?
I currently own only one pet. My best friend Sara. She is a rescue / Border Collie and the smartest dog I have ever had. What a joy to work with. She has taught me so much about training. She has made me a believer in reward based training and the clicker. In the past I had a sled dog team of 9 Siberian Huskies. I had a great Arabian horse that I used in the Three Sisters Wilderness as a Wilderness Ranger for some years during my painting phase. He was another great animal friend.
Is there anything else you’d like readers to know about you?
Animals have taught me so much about being human. They have help to ground me, to be patient and fair, to listen by watching, to identify each individuals talent and facilitate it through training, to create confidence and a safe environment. All these thing have helped me in my life and work place. I would not be who I am without the love, loyalty and opportunity to grow that all my animal relationships have provided me.
Free Pet Ecards is now in beta: http://www.FreePetEcards.com Check out these quality pet cards & yes they are absolutely FREE! More cards added soon!
By Veronica Nett
The Charleston Gazette
GASSAWAY, W.Va. — When Dr. Ross Young’s 13-year-old Australian Blue Heeler, Si, appeared one afternoon at his cattle pen about a mile from his home in Braxton County, he couldn’t believe it. Less than a month earlier, Si could barely walk.
About four weeks after Si underwent a new stem cell procedure at the Central West Virginia Animal Hospital in Gassaway, the 52-pound dog was again running and chasing cattle on his home farm, relatively pain-free.
Photo Credit: Chip Ellis
Dr. Ross Young, a veterinarian at the Central West Virginia Animal Hospital in Gassaway, checks the X-ray of Roscoe, a 10-year-old German shepherd mix, before harvesting and injecting stem cells into the dog’s knee joint to treat a longstanding injury.
photo credit: Chip Ellis
Si suffers from multiple joint issues, including arthritis in his knees and spine, said Young, a veterinarian who performed the new procedure on his longtime companion.
Young chose Si as his first patient for a trial of the new technology, developed by MediVet America, an animal health company. Si is one of only a handful of dogs in West Virginia to undergo the stem cell procedure. Earlier this year, Cheat Lake Animal Hospital in Morgantown became the first clinic in the state to offer it.
“I am a testimonial that it works,” Young said.
Following the successful results in Si, Young performed his second procedure last week on Roscoe, a 10-year-old German shepherd mix.
Roscoe has been suffering from a longstanding knee injury, and his only other option was an invasive reconstructive bone surgery, said his owner, Donnie Coltrane, of Thomasville, N.C.
Coltrane, who is a Young family friend, drove in from North Carolina on Tuesday for the procedure.
“He’s my son, and I want him to live out his remaining days healthy and pain free,” Coltrane said of Roscoe.
Ideal candidates for the procedure are elderly dogs, cats or horses that have arthritis or osteoarthritis, degenerative joint disease or ligament problems, but that are otherwise mostly healthy, Young said.
“The idea is to give these animals some pain relief and function in their final days,” Young said.
Check out the full story:
Stem cells: New tricks for old dogs
Jennifer Aniston has joined the ranks of the inked by getting her first tattoo.
The “Horrible Bosses” star strolled through New York City in sandals on Friday, revealing a tattoo on the inside of her right foot that has a special significance.
PLAY IT NOW: Jennifer Aniston Talks ‘Horrible Bosses’ & Visiting ‘Inside The Actors Studio’
The tattoo reads, “Norman,” in memory of her beloved Welsh corgi/terrier mix who passed away in May at the age of 15, a rep for the actress told People.
As previously reported on AccessHollywood.com, Jennifer appeared emotional while speaking about her departed dog at a taping for “Inside the Actors Studio” in New York City on Thursday.
When asked by host James Lipton to reveal her “favorite word,” Jennifer said, “Norman,” with a tear in her eye.
Check out the full story: Jennifer Aniston’s Tattoo
Everyone likes to think his/her pets are adorable, Unfortunately, there come animals that, no matter how much one loves them, there is simply no way to call them ‘cute.’ However, rather than have a pity party for one’s pet, every year, owners of ugly dogs come together to celebrate hideousness in the World’s Ugliest Dog Contest.
And the judges have chosen a winner.
Credit: Getty Images
This year’s champion: Yoda, a 14-year old (that’s 98 in dog years), half Chinese Crested and Chihuahua little dog that is, according to the judges, very big on ugly.
Check out the full story: World’s Ugliest Dog
Video: Good Morning America
Dog House Air Conditioner and Heater
