Cupid Is Wagging His Tail At You

February 8, 2012

            Cupid’s month is upon us and each of us is called upon to choose his or her Valentine and lavish them with affection befitting of their place in our heart.  And so we scurry about searching for last minute flowers or sweets for our honey in a pell-mell society that seems to turn happy celebrations into aggravating obligations.  If this is how it’s shaping up for you then I encourage you to gently stroke your cat or gaze deep into the eyes of your dog. 

                Why?  Well it seems that the closest thing we have to Cupid’s arrow, the dart of love that penetrates our heart and fills us with amity, is a hormone called oxytocin.  If ever there was a Love Potion Number Nine, oxytocin is it.  The natural secretion of oxytocin from the pituitary gland at the base of the brain has profound effects on our outlook and behavior.  Oxytocin was initially identified as the chemical mediator in birthing mothers that stimulates contractions of the uterus and the production of milk in the mammary glands.  In the last thirty years researchers have come to realize that oxytocin also stimulates powerful feelings of warmth and compassion toward likely recipients of our affection.  It not only compels mothers to bond with a suckling baby, but oxytocin just as powerfully influences men toward higher levels of  amorous attraction and tenderness. 

                As it turns out, nothing stimulates the release of oxytocin into our system like the affection of our pets.  Petting a cat (the magic rate here seems to be 40 strokes a minute) or even just gazing into the eyes of our dog has been shown to result in high volume release of oxytocin, resulting in feelings of well-being and compassion.  Additional benefits of chronic interaction with our pets include a bolstered immune system and enhanced recovery from serious afflictions like heart disease. 

                Children saddled with autism have impaired ability to read social cues communicated through body language, which are so important in the interactions between two people, a skill that is greatly facilitated by oxytocin.  When these children are allowed close association with pets, their oxytocin levels rise along with concomitant improvement in social cognition.  Simply put, autistics learn better how to interact with others when they have a pet. 

                Science has shown that pets are not lavish extravagances in our lives.  They enhance our sense of well being, protect us from disease and make us more compassionate toward other people.  They improve the lives of the handicapped, alleviate loneliness in the elderly and enhance family cohesiveness.  These effects are mediated through the magic hormone, oxytocin.

                Finally, here’s my little February tip to all the single guys out there:  Walk your dog in the park on a nice weekend afternoon and watch how the girls smile at you.  Cupid could do no better.  

Struggling with the Loss of a Pet

November 4, 2004

            For weeks after her death, as I worked in the yard, I expected to see Susie bound around the side of the house to greet me in her own effusive way.  It was so typical of her, as she frolicked through the fields and woods that surround our home, to interrupt her explorative sniffing to re-establish contact with me.  At these times Susie would look up from her current project and bound pell-mell across the grass, coming to a sudden halt seated at my feet.  She would fix me with her inquisitive eyes and occasionally bark out some piece of news.  Susie was a somewhat small, black and tan, shepherd-mix dog and she had entered my life at a particularly difficult time about ten years earlier.  She was a devoted companion to my daughter and a constant recipient of her affection. 

Susie died from cancer, a particularly nasty type of tumor that had insidiously invaded her vena cava, the major blood vein in her body.  For weeks afterward, when I puttered in the yard, I often seemed to catch a glimpse of her out of the corner of my eye, but when I looked up my gaze found only the quaking leaves of poplar and sassafras trees and the empty yard that seemed to miss her as much as I did.  Susie visited my dreams for some time, setting her gaze upon me, seeking affection.  These visions were so real that when I awoke I checked the floor beside my bed and found her usual spot vacant.  I just couldn’t seem to wrap my mind around the reality that I would not see her again. 

I had traversed this grief before and I reminded myself that the price of life is death, but the sense of loss would only yield to time and, for the time being, emptiness prevailed.  How many clients had I consoled during a time of difficult grief?  But the loss of a friend and beloved companion is such that empathy for the bereaved is never the same as being in their shoes.  

The loss of a pet can leave one feeling isolated, as if on an island, surrounded by a world that doesn’t understand.  Some people, especially non pet-owners, may make insensitive statements, “It’s only a dog….”  I recall that my great aunt, Dude, was visiting once when my sister’s parakeet passed away.  Honey (yes, that’s what we really call my sister to this day), nine years old at the time, was inconsolable.  Aunt Dude, witnessing my sister’s plaintive wails, remarked to my mom, her staunch, German demeanor coming to the fore, “That kid won’t cry that loud the day I’m buried.”  We loved our aunt dearly; she lived well into her nineties, and was very ready to go when her time came.  Her death was some years ago now, but I think she actually was right. 

A child forms a special bond with a pet and the loss of that pet may be their first experience with the grieving process.  Although I am not a trained child psychologist, I can state from years of experience that involving children in the pet-death process can be of great value to them, especially when euthanasia is involved.  

Euthanasia is the humane, voluntary ending of a pet’s life.  It is performed by the administration of a lethal injection.  The decision to euthanize a pet is the most difficult one an owner will ever have to make, but it need not be a solitary one.  Other family members, friends and your veterinarian can help you to reach a decision of when it is time to euthanize your pet.  I am frequently asked by clients who own older animals whose physical or mental faculties are failing, “How will I know when it’s time?”  My response is that there is no simple formula or cookbook answer.  But if your pet can no longer partake in activities he once enjoyed, or if there is more pain than pleasure in her life, then it is time to think about euthanasia.  These may be subjective assessments and a pet owner is often still in a quandary as to how to proceed. 

I assure a client faced with this dilemma that although the decision is a personal one, I will not let them make a bad decision.  If I feel, after listening to an owner and examining their pet, that there remains a high quality of life, although perhaps compromised to some extent by arthritis or some other chronic illness, I will advise them of palliative, if not curative measures that will delay the decision of euthanasia for the time being.  If, on the other hand, I see inconvertible suffering that will hardly be abated even with aggressive therapy then I tell the client so and advise euthanasia. 

            But so many situations lie in between, and the right path is just not clear.  If, after discussing the facts with my client, I find that they have put thought into their decision and still can’t see the right path clearly, I tell them something like this:

 “It is obvious to me that you have struggled with this decision.  You have, in the process, put your own feelings aside and genuinely tried to make the right choice for your pet.  The suffering you endure in your struggle is, to my view, the greatest act of love you could perform for your pet.  Whatever you decide, either euthanasia, or the continuation of palliative care, I am with you a hundred percent.  It is at these times of indecision when we sometimes feel helpless and inadequate, unable to grasp any decision that feels right.  But understand that the sacrifice you are willing to make in allowing yourself to consider all aspects of the decision, and not just those that are self serving, virtually guarantees that you will make the right decision.  However, you won’t have the luxury of knowing it at the time.”  (To anyone who has read M. Scott Peck’s book, The Road Less Traveled, the above will sound familiar.)

            It never feels good, and may not feel right, to choose to end your pet’s life.  I have watched clients attempt to escape the agony of making the decision in two different general ways.  One, faced with an implacably suffering pet with no chance of recovery may implore me, “Do everything you can, Doc.  I don’t care what it takes.  I’ll never give up.”  Whereas another, who has a pet with a relatively mild injury or illness, may say with despair, “There’s nothing that can be done, he’ll only die anyway - best just to put him to sleep now.” 

            Neither of these people is willing to suffer the discomfort of struggling with an important decision regarding their pet.  They avoid the pain involved in that struggle.  These are the most difficult for a veterinarian to counsel.  Such owners must be gently introduced to reality and at times the task is impossible. 

            Caring for a pet and taking responsibility for its welfare means not only throughout its life, but in death as well.  Taking a pet into your home is always a bittersweet proposition.  As I said earlier, death is the cost of life, both part of the same continuum.  Happiness may abound but sadness is inevitable.  We learn so much from our pets, both in life and death.  

A Dog's Life, Circa 1958

 June 20, 2004

(This article was written for a now defunct weekly publication at a time when our local municipality was debating new ordinances regarding dogs in the borough)

            My home town of the 1950’s was an eclectic mix of brick, stone and stucco homes, clapboard bungalows and the very occasional new ranch dwelling, all situated among a cross hatch of streets and sidewalks shaded by large, old, overhanging maples and elms.  Alleys dissected the large blocks of homes and these paths, seldom used by adults, were well traversed by us children, providing shortcuts all over town that we roamed on foot or on bike.  Our parents drove us nowhere – there was no need.  On endless Saturdays we could range as we pleased, far and wide in that town, crossing paths with one another and engaging in adventures from the Hill Theater on Market Street for a matinee all the way up to the park and beyond to run mad cap through the woods or track turtles in the Conodoguinet Creek.  And as these adventures unfolded, our dogs often accompanied us or ranged on their own, for they labored under even fewer constraints of authority, and so I recall on occasion while bumping my bicycle over some gravel path in a remote part of town, a fellow might call out, “Hey Mike, isn’t that your dog?”  And sure enough, leaping through a gap in a split rail fence was our squat, black, slightly plump, ageless mongrel whose lineage could be less easily traced than that of the elusive yeti, and whose breed was no more distinguishable.  We called her simply, “Puppy,” a moniker she carried from her weaning before my memory to the end of her days some twenty years later. 

            Puppy started a typical day arising from a carpeted floor to scratch at the side door and was let out to begin her route.  In a treatise drafted when I was about nine years old, entitled “Observations on Dog” I recorded her wanderings one day after surreptitiously following her.  Out our back gate, across Mr. Meck’s yard and into the alley and thereby to Mrs. Burkholder’s back porch door she ambled.  She had a knack of reaching up to pull down the simple lever handle to the screen door and thus gain entrance to the porch where Mrs. B. usually left a bit of her breakfast in a dish for her frequent visitor.  Finishing this repast, Puppy then traipsed across the alley, behind the Myers’ two story brick house, and around to their side porch.   Here she encountered a similar and no more confounding screen door which she easily solved.  A slow amble across the living room and the front hall and thence to the kitchen and, finding no one home, she devoured the remains of the Myers’ cat’s most recent meal. 

            With utter calm, for this routine had been completed countless times previously, Puppy sauntered back out through the door through which she entered to continue her morning escapades.  The next hour or so was consumed with bush sniffing, occasional bathroom breaks wherever she liked and finally a rest in the shade of a pin oak situated by a home several blocks away.  On week days, when my older brothers were in elementary school about a half mile from our house, Puppy began to get restless at 3 p.m.  Mom let her out and then she ran, on a mission, through Meck’s yard, into the back alley, across the Myers’ yard and thence 27^th Street.  Here she might cross paths with Valentine, the Keller’s English Spaniel, but if so, she paid little heed as she made a beeline the final two blocks to her designated waiting spot on the corner of the Schaeffer School playground, right by the backstop of the baseball field.  And there she situated herself until Larry and Jim made their way up from school minutes later, to greet her warmly but with little fuss, for meeting your dog was as common as saying hello to the milkman or bread man or any of the other vendors or service persons who were so ubiquitous in those days. 

            The point of this rambling is that nobody cared.  Children and dogs wandered the streets, alleys and yards of my town in the 1950s with carefree impunity.   Dogs were welcome in our own yard as long as they were friendly and treated my father’s prize rhododendrons with respect.  Growlers and diggers were shushed of with a few well-chosen epithets and a waved broom or rake.  The lesson learned, they either didn’t return or minded their manners next time around.  But nobody really cared.  There were no angry phone calls to neighbors, the police weren’t notified.  I can only imagine the incredulous expression of the police officer on duty, telephone to his ear, upon hearing a complaint from a citizen of that day that the neighbor’s dog was in their yard.  He would have been no less amazed had the caller complained that the sun was too bright or the birds’ chirping too loud.  I recall a day when Puppy had ensconced herself smack dab in the middle of the intersection of 26^th and Lincoln – the corner on which our house sat.  Officer Wally Hoag happened by in his police car.  (“Occifer Hog,” my father titled him after he gave my dad a ticket for running a stop sign late one night when the sign seemed pointless to my ever-practical father on a traffic-free, midnight street.)  He brought his already puttering cruiser to a halt in front of the dog and gave a tap of the horn, which was enough to make Puppy get up and saunter unhurriedly back to the yard.  Officer Hoag resumed his slow patrol and gave a little wave as he passed, no more concerned about the dog than he would be a rabbit scooting across his path.  Nobody cared. 

            Today, the town of Pen Argyl is embroiled in a debate over where dog owners should be allowed to walk their charges.  I’ve read the newspaper articles and shaken my head over the vehement arguments and apparent acrimony involved in the debate.  I empathize with both sides.  Dogs provide companionship, enrich families and form an important part of our social fabric.  Yet, nobody wants the neighbor’s dog pooping in his yard, or urinating on his bushes.  Each side has a valid argument and, really, I don’t know how I would solve the dilemma if it were up to me.   I suspect that Pen Argyl, PA in the 1950’s was very much like Camp Hill, PA that I described above.  What comes into focus as I study the debate is how our world has changed since then.  I don’t miss the closed-minded social thinking so ingrained in that time.  Camp Hill was lily white and steeped in prejudice in the 1950’s.  But to navigate through the 60’s race riots, the assassination of a sitting president, an endless war and a moral revolution we had to give up our innocence.  I miss that innocence.  Yes, much of it was my own but some of it, I believe, belonged to the time.  And it saddens me so, when I get lost in a reverie of those days, and ponder that my children never got to experience that time, that innocence.  And what’s more – and this is truly silly, but it’s true nonetheless - I even feel sad for my dogs.    

Why Not a Pet Monkey?

March 31, 2004

(Note:  Since I wrote this article further research has shown that the first domestic dogs arose in the area called the Levant along the western Mediterranean)

            A catch phrase that ricochets around the veterinary arena these days is “the human animal bond”.  This expression describes what some would call a mystical union between people and their pets.  Cynics discount the “human animal bond” as nothing more than a touchy-feely promotion designed to entice more dollars out of the pet-owning  community.  Promotions are second nature to marketers and one might be tempted to agree with the cynics except that there is a lot of good scientific data that lend tangibility to the connection between people and pets.  First of all, there are lots of pets!  Nearly one third of American households are home to at least one dog.  In urban areas especially, cats rival dogs as the pet to own.  Americans love their pets.  A survey conducted by the American Animal Hospital Association revealed that 34 percent of pet owners talk about their pets when conversing with others, while only 20% talk about their spouses! 

            The human animal bond is not a new thing, especially where dogs and people are concerned.  In fact, the recovery of archeological evidence, such as bones, suggests that dogs and people came together somewhere between 15,000 and 40,000 years ago, so we’ve had time to get acquainted.  Dr. Robert Wayne, a researcher at the University of California, used DNA tracking to find the origins of modern dogs.  His studies showed that dogs evolved from a species called the gray wolf in East Asia and he put a date on the event more than 100,000 years ago! 

            But why dogs?  Wouldn’t it have made more sense that a species of demonstrably higher brain wattage, like chimpanzees, would hook up with people?  Why don’t we all have a monkey running around the house?  Dr. Brian Hare, an anthropologist at Harvard University answered this question in a study published last year in Science.  He found that although monkeys possess a higher intellect, dogs are uniquely endowed with an ability to read human social cues.  In these experiments Hare hid bits of food and then offered a signal, such as pointing or gazing at the hiding place, to the experimental subject.  Dogs beat out all other species tested in finding the food.  According to Dr. Hare dogs have an uncanny ability to consider a human point of view. 

            The recognition of this trait has caused scientists to reconsider how dogs evolved.  Previously it was assumed that hunter-gatherer peoples of East Asia confiscated wolf pups and returned with them to camp, reared them and bred them for pets.  Studies suggest that this scenario is unlikely.  It is more plausible that wolves lurked close to human habitats and began social interaction, gaining as much as they gave in the bargain.  Over time, lots of time, dogs and humans “co-evolved” as partners in hunting forays, in the process forging the social connections that we today call the human animal bond. 

            Most of my clients need no scientific study to tell them that they share something special with their pet.  They know intuitively what science has revealed empirically:  pets provide love and companionship in good times and in bad.  Now science tells us that pets reduce their owners’ suffering from disease such as arthritis, they help children through their parents’ divorce, they have a calming effect on children with Attention Deficit Disorder, and improve the quality of life for many elderly, especially those suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease. 

            Most people consider their pet a part of the family.  In my twenty three years in veterinary practice I have seen the status of pet dogs in the Slate Belt enhanced greatly.  Very few are kept tied outdoors anymore, now most have access to the living room couch.  I will address the furry family member’s needs each month in this column.  I welcome your questions and hope that I can entertain and inform you.