“The sixth sense of pets - madison” plus 1 more |
| The sixth sense of pets - madison Posted: 17 Jan 2011 05:03 AM PST madison.com | | Posted: Monday, January 17, 2011 7:00 am LOS ANGELES — Lassie could always sense when Timmy was in trouble. Black Beauty knew the bridge was out. Now two-thirds of American pet owners say they can relate — their pets have a sixth sense about bad weather. Forty-three percent say the same about bad news, according to an Associated Press-Petside.com poll. Seventy-two percent of dog owners say they've gotten weather warnings from their pets, compared with 66 percent of cat owners. For bad news, 47 percent of dog owners and 41 percent of cat owners said they've been alerted by their pets, according to the poll conducted by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Corporate Communications. Jim Fulstone says his farm dog, a Pomeranian named Austin, gives warnings about 15 minutes before earthquakes and 45 minutes before thunderstorms. "He'll run around in circles and look at you. If you sit down, he'll sit down with you. If you are outside, he will come up to you, run around, look off, sniff your leg, just kind of be there. He's a lot more active," said Fulstone, 65, of Wellington, Nev. "For the quakes, he was very alert and started barking and doing his run-around routine." The reason? Hard to know. "A sixth sense is something we can't explain but we tend to trust. It's a matter of belief and faith," said psychologist Stephanie LaFarge, the senior director of counseling services for the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. Scientists have suggested animals sense bad weather because of changes in barometric pressure or other factors, LaFarge said, and dogs anticipate seizures, low blood sugar or other medical problems because of hormonal changes. But they haven't figured out what alerts pets to earthquakes, bad news or other events — or if it's just in the eyes of their owners. If a friend or relative comes to the door, Lady, a 4-year-old golden retriever mix, doesn't even bother to get up, said Stacey Jones, 50, of Stone Mountain, Ga. But if it's a stranger, she goes on minor alert, she said. Lady's sixth-sense tendencies are very subtle, said the Atlanta university writer and editor. But 18 years ago, when Jones was ordered to bed toward the end of her pregnancy, her dog Silver "planted herself next to me and would not leave. She knew something was going on with the baby and it was her job to take care of the baby." Anne Radley was raped and suffers from post traumatic stress syndrome. If she has an episode or panic attack, whether it lasts a few minutes or all day, she can count on her three dogs and four cats. "If I have high anxiety, I have pets all over me. All of the pets will come and try to cuddle. It gets a little crowded, but they all do it," said the 37-year-old Hiawatha, Kan., mother of two. They are led by Mickey, about 15, a mixed-breed terrier she got from a rescue 10 years ago. He can't see her pain, Radley said, because he has gone blind, so she is sure it is a sixth sense. He has always watched over her daughters and if they get sick, he will not only cuddle them, but cuddle them exactly where they hurt, she said. "He warms them up, he's a little heating pad. He's always done that." The AP-Petside.com Poll was conducted Oct. 13-20, 2010, by GfK Roper Public Affairs and Corporate Communications. It involved landline and cell phone interviews with 1,000 pet owners nationwide, and has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 4.0 percentage points. — Associated Press Deputy Director of Polling Jennifer Agiesta contributed to this report. This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
| Vets use stem cells to manage pets' pain - Lexington Herald-Leader Posted: 17 Jan 2011 04:42 AM PST at 3:00am on Jan 17, 2011 — The Gazette Modified at 8:19am on Jan 17, 2011 COLORADO SPRINGS, Colo. — Macha is one of those once-in-a-lifetime pets - a tall, lean, savvy dog who lives to hunt pheasant. Out in the field, the Labrador retriever is so focused that she shuns pats from her Woodland Park, Colo., owner, Tom Bulloch. "She doesn't want her line of vision obstructed," he explains. Macha, who can run like the wind, was named after a mythological Irish goddess who was faster than any man or beast. But four years ago Macha slowed dramatically. Stairs became difficult. After outings she was sore and had trouble getting out of her bed. "She was only 6 years old but seemed like an elderly lady," Bulloch recalls. His veterinarian diagnosed her problem as severe arthritis and suggested Macha be examined by veterinarian James Gaynor, of Peak Performance Veterinary Group in Colorado Springs, Colo. Gaynor specializes in pain management and is one of only about 300 veterinarians certified nationwide to use animals' own stem cells in treatment for a variety of ailments. "At the time I thought, 'aren't stem cells illegal or a political problem?'" Bulloch says. In fact, they can be used for treatment of animals. The procedure does not use the controversial embryonic stem cells that have not gotten FDA approval for humans. Gaynor, who taught at Colorado State University veterinary school for 14 years, notes: "The procedure is no silver bullet. But we are way ahead of use in humans." Research has shown that stem cell treatment can help an animal's range of motion and alleviate certain pain. The animal's stem cells migrate to where they are needed to repair an injury, Gaynor says. The stem cells are, in essence, anti-inflammatory, and can help regenerate tissue, bone, cartilage, liver cells, heart muscle, and some nerve cells and blood vessels. Bulloch gladly paid the $1,700 medical bill. "She loves the outdoors so much, and it was a matter of the pain and mobility." Gaynor anesthetized Macha and extracted 30 to 90cq grams of fatty tissue from behind the shoulder, where it is plentiful and where she could not later lick the incision. The tissue was sent to Vet-Stem, a pioneering company in San Diego, where the stem cells were extracted and sent back to Gaynor. He injected them into the sedated Macha's joints less than 36 hours after it all began. (It also can be administered intravenously.) Macha had to take it easy for about a month. "We could see a difference in 10 days," Bulloch says. "After recuperation, I told her 'Let's go hunting!' And it was truly miraculous to see her out there like she used to be." Some dogs need only one treatment. But Macha has never been completely structurally sound. Her arthritis is severe, and like human athletes, there has been some joint stress, Bulloch notes. She seemed pain-free for 18 months. About two years ago, she received a second treatment. This time surgery was not needed because some of the stem cells initially harvested had been banked. Macha recently was diagnosed with osteosarcoma, usually a rapidly fatal disease. Labs and other large dogs are predisposed to it. Stem cell therapy cannot be used to treat it. While such therapy does not cause cancer growth, Gaynor notes, it can contribute to it because it increases blood vessel growth. Bulloch is thankful that the therapy added so much to Macha's quality of life. Without it, she would have been incapacitated at 6 years old. "In dog years, she has had 28 additional years of being free from pain, and enjoying what she loves to do," Bulloch says. So while they could, they recently went hunting. "Macha had her game face on. I missed a few times, and she looked back at me as if to say: 'Get with it.'" Stem cell research is a hot topic because it is so promising, says Jessica Quimby, a Morris Animal Foundation fellow at Colorado State University's Veterinary Teaching Hospital. Quimby is conducting preliminary research to see how stem cells can be used to treat the chronic kidney disease that often kills elderly cats. So far, short of kidney transplants, there are no good treatments. But researchers believe stem cells can be used to counter the inflammation that leads to scarring and end-stage disease. They take stem cells from the fat of healthy young cats and inject them in other cats; the body does not reject the cells. The extraction does not hurt the young cats, she says. Last summer, the university created Frankie's Fund to support such research. Frankie was one of Quimby's patients, a Siamese cat who became ill with acute kidney failure and participated in a clinical trial in 2009. After the cat's death from other causes, the owner donated money to create the fund. Horses also are receiving stem cell therapy. Laurie Goodrich, a veterinary equine surgeon, and John Kisiday, a bioengineer, are using stem cells from the bone marrow of horses to heal injuries. A classic example is Rio, a barrel-racing horse who received stem cells for a torn knee cartilage. Rio and her owner are back barrel racing, and recently won a big competition. The cost of treatment runs about $2,400. In work with horses, stem cells are harvested and grown from bone marrow rather than fat-derived stem cells. The marrow does not have a lot of stem cells, so after extraction they are treated in a lab so they multiply. Advanced Regenerative Therapies, a Fort Collins, Colo., company, does that portion of the work. After expansion, the cells can be injected into tendons, ligaments and joints. "The field is vast. Researchers are looking at everything, including healing of spinal cord and brain injuries," Goodrich said. "For every tissue, there is a stem cell that the body utilizes to heal it." This entry passed through the Full-Text RSS service — if this is your content and you're reading it on someone else's site, please read our FAQ page at fivefilters.org/content-only/faq.php |
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