SAN ANTONIO, Texas (AP) — A $15 million veterinary hospital for four-legged military personnel opened Tuesday at Lackland Air Force Base, offering a long overdue facility that gives advanced medical treatment for combat-wounded dogs.

Dogs working for all branches of the military and the Transportation Safety Administration are trained at the base to find explosive devices, drugs and land mines.

Some 2,500 dogs are working with military units.

Like soldiers and Marines in combat, military dogs suffer from war wounds and routine health issues that need to be treated to ensure they can continue working.
Dogs injured in Iraq or Afghanistan get emergency medical treatment on the battlefield and are flown to Germany for care. If necessary, they’ll fly on to San Antonio for more advanced treatment — much like wounded human personnel.
“We act as the Walter Reed of the veterinary world,” said Army Col. Bob Vogelsang, hospital director, referring to the Washington military medical center that treats troops returning severely wounded from Iraq and Afghanistan.
The dogs can usually return to combat areas if they recover at the Military Working Dog Center, he said.
Before the center opened, veterinarians treated and rehabilitated dogs in a cramped building that opened in 1968, when the military trained dogs for work in Vietnam.
The hospital was already overloaded by Sept. 11, 2001, but since then, demand for military working dogs has jumped dramatically. They’re so short on dog breeds such as German shepherds, Labrador retrievers and Belgian Malinoises that Lackland officials have begun breeding puppies at the base.
Lackland is training 750 dogs, which is nearly double the number of dogs there before the Sept. 11 attacks, Vogelsang said.
To treat the trainees and injured working dogs, the new hospital has operating rooms, digital radiography, CT scanning equipment, an intensive care unit and rehab rooms with an underwater treadmill and exercise balls, among other features. A behavioral specialist has an office near the lobby.
“This investment made sense … and somehow, we were able to convince others,” said retired Col. Larry Carpenter, who first heard complaints about the poor facilities in 1994 and later helped to launch the project.
Training a military working dog takes about four months. With demand outstripping the number of dogs available, hospital and veterinary workers were trying to keep them healthy and working as long as possible, Vogelsang said.
Working dogs usually enter training at 11/2- to 3-years-old, and most can work until they’re about 10, he said.
Then, the military tries to adopt them out and “station them at Fort Living Room,” Vogelsang said.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/US/10/21/war.dogs.hospital.ap/index.html

Animals Do Feel Stress

The economy, the election, and myriad other problems are really stressing out … pets.

When humans get stressed, often their pets take on that stress, too.

“Dogs and cats are very good at picking up stress in people, as are birds,” said James Morrisey, a veterinarian at the College of Veterinary Medicine of Cornell University in New York. “I’ve worked with a parrot who lived with a woman who had a seizure disorder, and the parrot could tell when she was about to have a seizure and warn her.
”

In addition to carrying the burdens of people, animals — especially wild creatures — have plenty of their own to stress about. Animals will even seek out “comfort food” when they’re all wigged out. And stress in animals, as with humans, can be a good or a bad thing.

“In general, the more intelligent an animal is, the more psychological stress it can undergo,” Morrisey said. “The less you’re thinking about things, the less psychological stress you can potentially be under.
”

Stress factors

Animals experience stress for a variety of reasons.

A 2004 study of stress-related illness in cats found that the biggest source of stress for domestic cats is unfriendly relationships with other cats in the house.

“Although many owners of cats taking part in the study reported that a fear of strangers was the most common problem they observed, this tends to be a short-term stressor,” said researcher Danielle Gunn-Moore of the University of Edinburgh Royal (Dick) School of Veterinary Studies. “If a cat is living with another cat where there is a conflict, this is a chronic situation causing long-term stress.
”

And a 2006 study found that dogs in shelters get majorly stressed out by the excessive barking of the other dogs there.

“While employees may wear hearing protectors, dogs don’t have that option,” said Crista Coppola, an adjunct instructor in the department of veterinary medicine at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. “Excessive noise in shelters can physically stress dogs and lead to behavioral, physiological and anatomical responses.
”

Prey animals in the wild understandably fret about being eaten, and foragers worry about finding enough food.

That nervous look on a squirrel’s face? Yes, you might be anthropomorphizing. But the squirrel indeed has a lot to worry about, and the stress of it all may not be good for him.

Wild animals in captivity are often anxious about being cooped up. And the stressors of social animals can sound strikingly similar to the popularity concerns of high school girls.

Mark Wilson, a neuroscientist at Yerkes National Primate Research Center of Georgia’s Emory University, studies captive female rhesus macaque monkeys, housed in groups as they would live in the wild. The monkeys naturally form a hierarchy with some females dominating others, and subordinates enduring harassment and a general lack of control.

“Subordinate females tend to show more anxiety behaviors — things like excessive body scratching, body shakes, excessive yawning, self-grooming, pacing,” Wilson said.

Basically, the life of a subordinate female seems to be more stressful.

Overall, though, humans may win the “most neurotic animal” award.

“I think humans probably do get more stressed out because of all the things we deal with in our lives,” Wilson said in a telephone interview. “Not to be specieistic here, but animals tend to live fairly stable lives. That having been said, though, danger and stress are a part of animals’ everyday lives.
”

The ice cream cure

Whereas a human might respond to stress by curling up on the couch and eating a pint of ice cream, how do animals handle the strain?

Pretty much the same way, it turns out.

Typically, the subordinate rhesus monkeys had a lower appetite than the dominant macaques, and ate less of their usual low-fat, high-fiber diet.

“But when we gave them a diet more like the American diet, high in fat and sugar, what happens is the subordinates eat more,” Wilson told LiveScience. “It’s a comfort food. The dominant monkeys don’t eat it in excess like the subordinates.
”

Even rats, stressed out by being stuck in confining tubes for 10 minutes, prefer lard and sucrose water more than non-stressed rats.

Health effects

What’s more, the effects of stress on an animal’s body are stunningly similar to stress’s effects on humans.

In both humans and animals, stress causes the body to release adrenaline and cortisol hormones. These chemicals cause heart rate and respiration to speed up, and suppress the immune system. Stress also clamps down on the reproductive system, reducing libido and reproductive hormones, which ultimately increases the risk for cardiovascular disease.

All these all-too-human effects have also been measured in animals.

Wilson’s subordinate rhesus monkeys, for example, have disrupted reproductive cycles, are at higher risk for cardiovascular disease than dominant females, and seem to show up with higher rates of infection and illness.

“Stress is adaptive to a certain degree, but after a while it’s really maladaptive,” Wilson said. “One of the first things to be affected is the reproductive system. Yeah, it makes some evolutionary sense that you don’t want to reproduce if you’re in danger. But when your reproductive system shuts down, you have all these secondary effects, like increased cardiovascular disease risk, which are really maladaptive.
”

In animal populations, as in humans, some individuals have better coping mechanisms to deal with stress, which gives them an adaptive advantage.

By Clara Moskowitz, LiveScience Staff Writer

We are in need of some new foster homes. Everyday local area shelters are euthanizing healthy animals simply because they have no room. We save as many as we are able but our space here is limited, our lic is for 40 animals once we reach capacity we are unable to rescue another until one gets adopted leaving literally dozens upon dozens of innocent furry souls euthed weekly. Wont you please consider opening your heart and home to a homeless animal?? We provide the vetting, all you have to do is provide food, and lots of love and attention. If you live in eastern Tn or southwest Va and are interested in becoming a foster for a furbaby, please contact us at savingfurryfriends@yahoo.com for more information.Thank you for your time~Caroline

“The Love in your heart wasnt put there to stay, Love isnt Love until you give it away”

Our newest adoptables will now be featured on our blog as it is up dated more frequently than our actual website. Our adoptable page on our blog will be updated daily as needed.

CLICK HERE TO VISIT OUR NEWEST ADOPTABLES!

Texas couple sentenced after pit bull fatally attacks child

The Associated Press

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/DN-dogattack_15tex.ART.State.Edition1.4a78a3b.html

In the 1970s, something terrible happened.A new virus appeared on the scene, and it swept across the world like wildfire, killing dogs everywhere it struck. Puppies were especially hard hit, often dying within hours of the appearance of their first symptoms.

Breeders would notice the puppies were a bit lethargic, and by the time they got to the vet, some of the puppies would already be dead. Entire kennels and breeding programs were wiped out overnight.

Veterinarians were nearly helpless at first, and even when they got a grip on what was happening, still had very little to offer stricken puppies and their desperate owners. Most infected puppies required extraordinary and expensive medical care to survive, and very young puppies rarely did, as the virus infected the rapidly dividing cells of the heart.

Since the new virus, called canine parvovirus, appeared to be a mutated version of the feline panleukopenia virus, a few veterinarians began to vaccinate dogs with that cat vaccine, with some success. Soon a canine parvovirus vaccine was developed, and it was hoped that would spell the end of the worst threat of the disease, as the FPV vaccine had for cats.

Unfortunately, it turned out that CPV maternal antibodies, which prevented successful vaccination, were particularly persistent, sometimes lasting as long as 16 weeks or even more. These puppies had too much maternal antibody to be immunized, but not enough to be protected from the disease.

New vaccines, called “high titer” vaccines, were developed, in order to overcome these persistent maternal antibodies. Still, shelters and rescue groups, and some breeders, continued to have huge losses of young dogs to the virus. Treatment requires hospitalization and is expensive, with no guarantees, and few shelters or rescue groups have the funds to pay for it.

Now… cut away to a different area of veterinary medicine, halfway around the world. Scientists were interested in a bacterial disease in Nigerian cattle known as “blackleg disease,” caused by the bacteria Clostridium chauvoei.

Nomads who kept cattle in Nigeria fed them a certain plant that was found to inhibit an enzyme vital to the spread of clostridium, neuraminidase, thus preventing the disease.

Neuraminidase inhibitors were studied and developed to combat mucosal infections in humans, with varying degrees of success. One such drug is the drug Tamiflu (oseltamivir), used to treat early influenza infections in humans.

In the last year, vets in small animal practice, primarily in shelters, began to experiment with Tamiflu in the treatment of parvo in dogs and panluekopenia in cats, and reported surprising success.

While it is not believed that parvo itself relies on neuraminidase to reproduce, it may be that the bacteria that are responsible for the actual deadly symptoms of CPV do.

What do I mean by that? Canine parvovirus and its close cousin feline panleukopenia virus share more than a common ancestry.

In kittens raised in a laboratory to be bacteria-free, the panleukopenia virus doesn’t make them sick. It appears that in both diseases, it’s not so much the virus itself that kills, but the effect of the normal bacteria present in every animal.

There may be some kind of relationship between the virus and bacteria that creates the symptoms that neither alone can produce. It may simply be that the virally-damaged mucosal immune system cannot prevent bacteria from growing and reproducing to dangerous levels. It may be that neuraminidase interferes with some of the body’s own natural infection-fighting actions. Or there may be some other mechanism(s) by which inhibiting this enzyme stops the effects of certain types of infection.

Whatever the reason, vets are discovering that, given when symptoms first appear, Tamiflu seems often to stop parvo in its tracks.

While vets in private practice are still giving conventional parvo treatment along with the Tamiflu (IV fluids, antibiotics, hospitalization, etc.) to patients whose owners can afford it, these treatments were never available to the pets of people without large amounts of money to spend, nor to shelter dogs. Many dogs are being treated with Tamiflu and recovering rapidly with home care only.

Cost of this treatment? About $40 per dog.

Now, the disclaimers:

None of this has been studied. All these reports are strictly anecdotal from shelter experience and some private veterinary practice.

As far as I have been able to discover, no study or trial has yet been announced, although there are ongoing efforts to organize one or more in the near future. Many things have appeared incredibly promising at this stage and gone on to be impractical or disappointing when subjected to more complete examination.

Tamiflu is available by prescription only.

The dosages that you get for humans are not the right dosage for dogs.

Tamiflu is not approved or formulated for small animals and needs to be compounded by a compounding pharmacist or put into suspension by a veterinarian.

Once put in suspension it has a VERY short shelf life so it cannot be done in advance.

It will not reverse the disease when it is advanced and the puppies are deathly ill. At that point, there is too much tissue damage and the puppy is not likely to be helped by this treatment.

If you want to have it on hand to treat puppies you will need to work it out with your vet BEFORE you need it, as it needs to be given at the earliest possible stage of the disease to have its greatest benefit.

Your vet may not know about this drug yet. You can refer him or her to the following article:

Tamiflu

If your vet is a member of the Veterinary Information Network, they should be able to find good information on the use of Tamiflu, including dosages, there (subscription service for veterinarians only).

UPDATE: Veterinarians can contact Dr. Jack Broadhurst, a veterinarian coordinating research into Tamiflu in the treatment of canine parvovirus, kennel cough, feline distemper, and the canine flu, for information on dosages and his research. His email address is DocCat@aol.com.

http://vettechs.blogspot.com/2005/04/oseltamivir-is-there-new-treatment-for.html and
http://www.bi-mar.com/tamiflu.asp

To my dearest family,
some things I’d like to say.

But first of all, to let you know,
that I arrived okay.
I’m writing this from the Bridge.
Here I dwell with God above.
Here there’s no more tears of sadness.
Here is just eternal love.
Please do not be unhappy
just because I’m out of sight.
Remember that I am with you
every morning, noon and night.
That day I had to leave you
when my life on earth was through,
God picked me up and hugged me
and He said, “I welcome you.
It’s good to have you back again,
you were missed while you were gone.
As for your dearest family,
They’ll be here later on.”
God gave me a list of things,
that he wished for me to do.
And foremost on the list,
was to watch and care for you.
And when you lie in bed at night
the day’s chores put to flight,
God and I are closest to you…
in the middle of the night.
When you think of my life on earth,
and all those loving years,
because you are only human,
they are bound to bring you tears.
But do not be afraid to cry:
it does relieve the pain.
Remember there would be no flowers,
unless there were some rain.
I wish that I could tell you
all that God has planned.
If I were to tell you,
you wouldn’t understand.
But one thing is for certain,
though my life on earth is o’er.
I’m closer to you now,
than I ever was before.
There are rocky roads ahead of you
and many hills to climb;
But together we can do it
by taking one day at a time.
It was always my philosophy
and I’d like it for you too;
That as you give unto the world,
the world will give to you.
If you can help somebody
who’s in sorrow and pain;
Then you can say to God at night…
“My day was not in vain.”
And now I am contented…
that my life was worthwhile.
Knowing as I passed along
I made somebody smile.
God says: “If you meet somebody
who is sad and feeling low;
Just lend a hand to pick him up,
as on your way you go.
When you’re walking down the street
with me on your mind;
I’m walking in your footsteps
only half a step behind.”
“And when it’s time for you to go…
from that body to be free.
Remember you’re not going…
you’re coming here to me.”

~Author Unknown

Trouser is a small minpin/chihuahua mix. He only weighs about 6 pounds and is reddish brown and black. He has been missing from the Prices Fork area in Blacksburg for 3 weeks now so he may have traveled quite a bit. We miss him terribly and are offering a reward for his safe return. Please call if you have seen him, or if you have taken him in please return him. We just want him home safely, no questions asked! If you have seen him please contact us at savingfurryfriends@yahoo.com

Victoria Leavelle cut grass, raked and bailed hay, cared for neighbors’ horses and did other odd jobs to earn enough money to buy Jack, her sorrel quarter horse gelding.

‘He was kind of my baby,’ said Leavelle, a 21-year-old college student who lives on her parents’ farm on Foxfire Road in southwest Tuscaloosa County. ‘So we had a special relationship.’

Leavelle came home from the Alabama football game Saturday to find her horse shot dead in broad daylight during a rampage that killed two horses and a dog in the Jena community.

‘We are investigating the crime, seeing if we can locate any witnesses who might have seen anything suspicious,’ said Sgt. Andy Norris, spokesman for the Tuscaloosa County Sheriff’s Office.

Not long after Sally Leavelle, Victoria’s mother, found Jack, she discovered a neighbor’s horse dead in a pasture a short distance from her house.

‘I didn’t know anything until about noon [Saturday],’ said Gerald Burns, whose quarter horse mare, Sunshine, was shot dead in her pasture on Foxfire Road. ‘She was swollen some, so it must have happened at about the same time.’

Randy McCracken of Shiloh Road found his red border collie, Rusty, dead of a gunshot wound on the side of the road near his house Sunday. He lives a few miles from where the horses were shot.

‘We loved him,’ McCracken said. ‘It’s a senseless thing that you won’t get over overnight. It’s not like it was a dog that you didn’t care about or anything.’

Between 5 and 6 a.m. Saturday, Sally Leavelle noticed a white car on the lonesome stretch of Foxfire Road in front of the Leavelles’ house. It was ‘peeling out,’ she said, making its tires squeal. Twice she attempted to get the car’s tag number, but the car drove off each time.

At about 7 a.m., her husband, Clyde Leavelle, was returning home from an early morning farm errand when he heard a high-powered rifle shot close by. He reasoned that a neighbor might be sighting in a rifle, so he didn’t investigate.

A short time later, a relative living across Foxfire Road called to tell the Leavelles that one of their horses appeared in distress. Sally Leavelle thought it might be suffering from colic and went to help. She discovered Jack covered in blood with blood everywhere in the pasture.

The Leavelles called the Sheriff’s Office and deputies took a report. Both Jack and Sunshine were hit behind the shoulder, suggesting the shooter intended to kill the animals.

Sally Leavelle said other neighbors saw a similar white car. One neighbor told the Leavelles on Saturday that they believed they knew who was in the car. The Leavelles called the Sheriff’s Office again and were told the case would be handed over to an investigator Monday.

McCracken was having difficulty sleeping when he heard a shot at 1:18 a.m. He thought the shot was about a half mile a way so he didn’t investigate. When Rusty wasn’t at the door Saturday morning, he looked for Rusty and didn’t find him. A neighbor told McCracken he’d heard a shot, too.

McCracken spotted Rusty on the roadside in front of his house Sunday as he went to church. He said the dog was shot through the shoulder and the bullet would have been traveling in the direction of his house.

Norris said the Sheriff’s Office had no record of being contacted by anyone about a dog. But McCracken said he talked to two people from the Sheriff’s Office and had expected a visit from a deputy.

Rusty never bit anyone and people loved to pet him, McCracken said.

‘He didn’t have a bad bone in his body.’

Burns has had pleasure horses for 40 years and enjoys riding. His grandchildren particularly enjoy riding.

Victoria Leavelle bought Jack in 2001 and turned him into a valuable farm animal as well as a beloved pet. She used him to work cattle for her family and for neighbors. She said she had a relationship with Jack that can’t be built overnight.

‘He was a working animal but he was also a pet,’ she said. ‘I broke him to ride. I trained him. He was mine. That was the only horse I ever had that kind of relationship with.’

By Robert DeWitt Staff Writer
Published: Tuesday, October 7, 2008 at 3:30 a.m.
http://www.tuscaloosanews.com/article/20081007/NEWS/810060146

A 7-year-old boy broke into a popular Outback zoo, fed a string of animals to the resident crocodile and bashed several lizards to death with a rock, the zoo’s director said Friday.

The 30-minute rampage, caught on the zoo’s security camera, happened early Wednesday after the boy jumped a security fence at the Alice Springs Reptile Center in central Australia, said zoo director Rex Neindorf.

The child then went on a killing spree, bashing three lizards to death with a rock, including the zoo’s beloved, 20-year-old goanna, which he then fed to “Terry,” an 11-foot, 440-pound saltwater crocodile, said Neindorf.

The boy also fed several live animals to Terry by throwing them over the two fences surrounding the crocodile’s enclosure, at one point climbing over the outer fence to get closer to the giant reptile.

In the footage, the boy’s face remains largely blank, Neindorf said, adding: “It was like he was playing a game.
”

By the time he was done, 13 animals worth around $5,500 had been killed, including a turtle, bearded dragons and thorny devil lizards, Neindorf said. Although none were considered rare, some are difficult to replace, he said.

“We’re horrified that anyone can do this and saddened by the age of the child,” Neindorf said.

Alice Springs police said they are unable to press charges against the boy because of his age. Children under age 10 can’t be charged with criminal offenses in the Northern Territory. His name was not released because of his age.

Neindorf said he plans to sue the boy’s parents.

The boy’s small size is probably the reason he didn’t trip the zoo’s security system, which relies on sensors to detect intruders, Neindorf said.

“I just want people to learn that they can’t let their children go and run amok,” Neindorf said. “If we can’t put the blame onto the child, then someone has to accept the responsibility.
”

This reminds us of several killers who started out this way:

A Social Sentinel: Acts of Animal Cruelty Can Point to an Offender’s Potential for Violence Against Humans

——————————————————————————–

Most people are aware that animals play an important role as sentinels of disease and toxins in our environment. The proverbial canary in the coal mine is a well-known example: the sick canary served as a warning sign for impending physical danger to the miners.

Recently, more and more evidence suggests that animals can play a similar role with regards to social violence. Some of the most striking evidence for a link between animal cruelty and human violence lies in the case histories of many of the 20th century’s most infamous criminals.

Mass-murderer and cannibal Jeffrey Dahmer killed neighbors’ pets and impaled a dog’s head on a stick.

Patrick Sherril, who murdered 14 co-workers and then killed himself, stole pets, then tied them up and allowed his own dog to mutilate them.

David Berkowitz, the so-called “Son of Sam,” shot his neighbor’s labrador retriever.

Albert DeSalvo, the “Boston Strangler,” shot arrows into boxes of trapped cats and dogs.

Brenda Spencer, who fired 40 shots into a crowd of children, murdering 2 and wounding 9, had a history of setting the tails of neighborhood cats and dogs on fire.

Edmund Emil Kemper III, who murdered his mother and 7 other women, used to abuse cats and dogs.

Carol Edmund Cole, who murdered 35 people, admitted that his first violent act was strangling a puppy.

Richard Allen Davis, kidnapper and murderer, doused cats with gasoline and set them on fire.

Studies of prison inmates reveal that as many as 75% of violent offenders had early records of animal cruelty. There is also a high correlation between family violence and animal cruelty. A study in 1983 of New Jersey families referred to youth and family services for reasons of child abuse reported that 88% of cases had at least one member of the household who physically abused animals. An English researcher found that 83% of families reported for animal abuse also had children listed at high risk of abuse or neglect.

We close with the words of Immanuel Kant: “He who is cruel to animals becomes hard also in his dealings with men. We can judge the heart of a man by his treatment of animals.
”

By KRISTEN GELINEAU
Associated Press Writer

——————————————————————–