Wikibombing and heat stress

Its a nice weekend for a bit of swimming (just try to do it at the cooler ends of the day).

We’re always busy, but SAT HQ has been extraordinarily busy this week and we’re a little belated with our Howl-o-ween posting. Yesterday was a double whammy – we hit the VetPrac sutureworkshop, which I’ll be blogging about shortly, followed by Sydney University’sWikibomb. This was a fascinating experience.

Apparently, chocolate-coated strawberries are helpful when Wikibombing.

Apart from being provided with chocolate coated strawberries and an array of goodies, we learned how to construct and edit a Wikipedia entry. And let me tell you, it ain’t simply a matter of uploading any old rubbish online (which is reassuring since this source is used so often by so many as the first point of call when seeking information). You have to set up an account, you can play in a “sandbox”, and entries are checked before being posted.

There is a little bit of coding involved (nothing that can’t be learned in a brief session) and a bit of fiddling (to ensure all appropriate reference details are provided). But in a two-hour session delegates including myself went from never having posted on Wikipedia to constructing, formatting and sending an entry live.

Down in Sydney the heat has set in so we wanted to warn our readers to take precautions to avoid heat stress in pets. I’m in the process of making little icepacks for the guinea pig enclosures to give them a bit of a coolness gradient – and they’re indoors in full shade.

For more tips on coping in the heat, check this post.

SAT reader Viv is currently travelling in Mexico and sent these photos of fabulous street art, in which animals feature. Thanks Viv!

Companion animals and the law

The NSW Young Lawyers Animal Law Committee put this guide together.

The Law Society of New South Wales Young Lawyers Animal Law Committee has put together a fantastic, plain language guide to Companion Animal Law in New South Wales.

It is great for pet owners but a nice refresher for veterinarians and veterinary students.

The Animal Law Committee has done some fantastic work and you can view their resources here.

You can also download a PDF of the guide here.

Topics covered include the legal framework in NSW as it pertains to animals, general requirements for animal ownership, buying animals, pets and apartments, assistance animals and pets and family law.

This is a really well put together, easy-to-read resource for those from a non-legal background.

Cruelty Free Festival

Detail from a vegan cupcake (from crafted3).

On the weekend we attended the Cruelty Free Festival in Alexandria. Had I known dogs were welcome, Phil would have come along (he caught a nap instead). I like the CFF as it is a gathering of like-minded people – although just as with any group there is great diversity.

It has been said before that people often express their ethics by how they eat, and nowhere is this more apparent. There were vegans, high vegans, vegetarians, pescatarians, dumpster divers and meat-eaters at the event, engaging in interesting discussion. Whatever your dietary persuasion, it is easy to perpetuate harm to animals or the environment by not asking questions about how food is sourced, prepared and processed.

The Medical Advances Without Animals stand (check out the MAWA trustees at www.mawa-trust.org)

It’s one of the few festivals were vegans are spoilt for choice, with vegan sweet and savoury snacks (including hamburgers and hot dogs), groceries, pre-prepared meals and even wine available.

Here are a few highlights from the day…

I had an interesting discussion with the Veganpet people. If any discussion polarises people (at least in veterinary circles) its the topic of putting pets on a vegan diet.

Vegan cat food is particularly controversial, as cats are "obligate carnivores". A debate I won't enter here, but I always welcome the opportunity to discuss the topic.

I'm not sure because I couldn't ask her, but I have a feeling this is Millie the greyhound (see story here)

Award-winning chef Suzy Spoon and colleague with some of the vegan and vegetarian products from "Suzy Spoon's Vegetarian Butcher" 

This little dog was hanging out below while her owner did some organic wine tasting. (I confess I did not know that many wines utilise animal products as fining agents - things like fish oil and gelatin etc. This info and wine courtesy of Macquariedale Organic Wines)

Take away and home delivery food for pets

Waiting for home delivery? 

There’s a fine line between blogging and advertising the wares and services of others, but this is something a good friend alerted me to that I found fascinating. Home-delivery of human food specifically for dogs and cats. It’s certainly an interesting development in the human-animal bond department and says a lot about the way some people relate to their pets.

www.deliveryhero.com.au is a company that connects Australians to over 3000 restaurants around the country, via its website and apps. But it isn’t just humans they are serving. The company recently launched a new service, www.doggy-bag.com.au,  which is quite the talking point. Essentially, this allows pet owners to order takeaway and a special something for their dog or cat at the same time. So SAT asked them what it was all about.

How did you come up with the idea of Doggy Bag? Do you think people were doing this on their own informally anyway?

It actually started as an April Fool’s - we came up with the fun idea of offering takeaway food for pets. But then we quickly realised that it could be more than a joke and it could actually become a great product to offer. When we started to contact some of our partner restaurants, we realised they were very excited about it so we decided to launch the Doggy Bags! And yes, I do think people were already sharing their takeaway dish with their pets, or at least feeding them with the leftovers.

Why is Doggie Bag simply better than just sharing your leftovers with the dog or cat?

The Doggy Bags are actual gourmet takeaway food. The chefs from our local participating restaurants came up with their own signature dish based on the fresh ingredients they use to cook dinner for 'humans' with. They don't use leftovers. The Doggy Bag are also specifically designed to suit dogs and cats' needs (no seasoning, etc).

[Remember that there are plenty of human foods that pets should not eat. For more info, see our post on barbie hazards here. You can also download an exceptional educational poster by Lili Chin here].

So I can promise you that Phil would pick out the vegies, but he would probably do a somersault if this was dropped at the door.

What’s on the menu?

Some examples of what is on offer are Penne in a meat sauce with chicken, zucchini, carrots, and pumpkin ($6/$8) from Micky's Cafe, Paddington; Grilled chicken kebab with rice and tomatoes ($9) from Turkish Pide and Kebabs, Erskineville and; Boiled chicken fillet with turmeric and garden vegetables ($5/$8) from Taste of India, Double Bay.

A funny story on this one is that the owner of Taste of India is a huge fan of dogs and he walked across the street to ask the Vet if Turmeric would be suitable for animal's consumption. You see, these restaurateurs have been really involved!

Is there any difference in the way the food is prepared or ingredients used?

Each dish contains proteins, carbohydrates and vegetables with the minimum seasoning to ensure they are suitable for animal consumption. The restaurateurs have been briefed with a list of ingredients to avoid (like onions that are toxic to dogs for instance).

I've also visited them to have a look at the dish itself. The key is to keep their dish fresh, but simple: meat, veggies, carbs - no need to go over the top and serve something that would sound fancy but would not be suitable to animal consumption.

What sort of pet owners do you think will use the service?

I think we will see a mix of pet owners ordering this product. Whether they are people willing to treat their pet at the same time than the family, or time-poor professionals who forgot to pop by the grocery store after work to buy pet food... the price makes it very accessible too, starting at $5 for a 440ml container.

How popular has this service been so far? If so, are dog meals or cat meals more popular?

We have launched the Doggy Bag only last week and we are planning of talking to our customers about it this week. We will then be able to assess if this is a popular service or not.

Doggy Bag is a service marketed to people whose animal is included in family dinner. Do you think that pets are increasingly being treated as part of the family?

I think that any pet owner finds themselves wanting to treat their little loved ones. The same way ordering takeaway delivered to your door might be a treat for the entire family, you want to treat your pet. There's also more and more cafes and restaurants in Sydney that become dog-friendly. People also spend a lot on treating their pets with accessories or good food. This shows that pets are definitely part of the family.

Intriguing. Of course as a vet I am obliged to say that this is not a complete diet. Just as no doctor would recommend eating take-out food every night, one wouldn’t advocate feeding take-out food to one’s dog.

In addition it is important to be careful when introducing new foods as these can cause gastrointestinal upsets. Also one should avoid these dishes in animals on elimination diets, those with pancreatitis and so forth. But I must say from a health perspective it seems better than feeding dogs the leftover human takeaway food which may contain potentially harmful ingredients. Have you ever ordered take-away or home delivery especially for your pet?

Furbabies vs human babies: what do functional MRIs say?

Do photos of human babies trigger similar responses in our brains to photos of companion animals? (NB I borrowed this human baby for the photo!)

The expression “furbaby” has crept into the common parlance, and I must confess to using it in a sentence or two as shorthand to describing the human-animal bond, at least as it is manifested in certain contexts (my own included).

The practice of adopting and caring for other species, like dogs and cats, is a common human behaviour across cultures and places. It has been referred to as “alloparenting”. Alloparenting occurs when individuals other than the biological parents of someone play a parenting role toward that someone. For example, if your grandparents raised you, they were alloparenting. Pet owners are not a homogenous group and the human-animal bond is far from homogenous, so the term “alloparenting” doesn’t apply to every human-companion animal situation.

But, aside from that, companion animals bother some scientists. What possible evolutionary benefit, they ask, is there in looking after someone else’s baby? Why invest time and energy in providing for another being? Many studies looking at the potential benefits of pet ownership are prefaced by such a concern. What’s in it for us?

Bring on the fMRI, I can feel most of my brain light up at the site of Phil.

One hypothesis that has gathered much traction is that “happy hormones” such as oxytoxin, beta-endorphin, prolactin, beta-phenylthylamine and dopamine are increased in positive interactions with pets. They’re also “bonding” hormones in people.

So are we bonding to pets the way we bond to babies?

A team of researchers from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School got together to work out if the attachment looks the same on the brain level (see the full paper here).

They compared interviews and functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) patterns in mothers viewing photographs of their own child and their own pet dog, as well as an unfamiliar child and unfamiliar dog.

The mothers were 22-45 years old, had at least one child who was 2-10 years old, had at least one dog for at least two years, and were generally healthy. A complete data set was collected from 14 participants – so we’re talking a reasonably small number here.

In interviews, mothers reported images of their own child and dog as eliciting similar levels of excitement/arousal and pleasantness (valence), although they were bigger differences in the response to own vs unfamiliar child than there were to own vs unfamiliar dog.

The pleasantness a mother felt when seeing her own dog’s photo was positively correlated to how attached she was to her own dog, which makes sense.

Viewing photographs of their own child was associated with activity in the midbrain (specifically the ventral tegmental area/substantia nigra, an area rich in dopamine, oxytocin and vasopressin). This area of the brain is thought to be critical in reward/affiliation – but it was NOT activated by images of the dog.

Viewing photographs of their own dog was associated with a more posterior cortical brain activation pattern involving fusiform gyrus (usually responsible for visual processing, social cognition). The authors speculate that maybe we find dogs harder to read so there is a lot more processing of visual cues.

The amygdala, believed to be an important region for bonding, was activated by both familiar child and familiar dog images.

So the researchers conclude that mother-child and mother-dog bonds are same-same but different: they share aspects of emotional experience and patterns of brain function (at least as apparent on fMRI), but there are also differences in the brain’s activity which might reflect differences in these relationships. It doesn't quite solve the mystery of "alloparenting" but provides another piece of information in the puzzle.

On a related note, if you’ve ever contemplated introducing a human baby where you have a pre-existing furbaby, check out this post.