While this post is not related to pets/animals, I wanted to
share in case some of my readers missed this message from Amazon.
Companies rarely advocate for the destruction of their
products, but given that some of Amazon’s hoverboards are spontaneously
combusting (and destroying themselves), all bets are off. Now, after already
pulling the product from both United States and United Kingdom sites earlier
this week, Amazon is telling customers to throw away unsafe hoverboards.
“We regret the inconvenience this may cause you but trust
you will understand that your safety and satisfaction is our highest priority,”
Amazon wrote in an email to customers. Those with boards featuring
“non-compliant U.K. plugs” should proceed immediately to a certified recycling
center, and will be refunded for their purchase within three days.
Despite the initial popularity of the gadgets (especially
with the upcoming holiday season), a closer inspection of the futuristic
devices made it clear that there were some very serious safety hazards
associated with their use. Earlier this month, the U.K.’s Trading Standards
seized 15,000 unsafe hoverboards after the London Fire Brigade reported three
house fires within 10 days, all traced back to those trendy wheels.
Bo Obama is a perfectly well-behaved Portuguese Water Dog.
He’s had top notch breeding and training. In fact, his professional trainer
said that Bo was an attentive student who never had an accident. He’s certainly
a presidential pup. Sunny Obama, Bo’s furry sister, is a bit of a punk.
First Lady Michelle Obama admitted that Sunny, the younger
of the First Family’s two dogs, can be a little naughty. The pup will sometimes
sneak out of the kitchen and go poop at the other end of the White House. Sunny
didn’t get the expert training that Bo did, apparently, and she wasn’t potty
trained when the Obama family got her in 2013.
Sunny has a history of rowdy behavior. She once knocked
over a toddler at a White House holiday event, though she apologized by licking
the little one’s face. It’s nice to know that her high status in society hasn’t
affected Sunny’s ability to throw decorum to the wind. Even the President has
to deal with dogs pooping in the house.
There are essentially three types of people in horse
racing. There are the crooks who dangerously drug or otherwise abuse their
horses, or who countenance such conduct from their agents, and who then dare
the industry to come catch them. Then there are the dupes who labor under the
fantasy that the sport is broadly fair and honest. And there are those masses
in the middle—neither naive nor cheaters but rather honorable souls—who know
the industry is more crooked than it ought to be but who still don't do all
they can to fix the problem.
The first category, the cheaters, are a small, feral
minority still large enough to stain the integrity of the sport for everyone
else. The second category, the innocents, also a small group, are more or less hopeless—if
they haven't figured out by now they are being wronged they likely never will.
So it is from the third category of horsemen and horsewomen, the far-too-silent
majority, the good people who see wrong but won't give their all to right it,
where serious reform must come if the sport is to survive and thrive.
And that's why exposés about the abuse of racehorses, like
the one posted last week by Joe Drape in The New York Times, are so important.
They don't aim to offer salvation to the unholy or to rouse the ignorant from
their slumber. They speak directly instead to the many good and honest people
in horse racing whose consciences are still in play. And they say to those
respectable people, in essence, "You are fooling only yourself if you think
the whole world isn't aware of and repulsed by what nasty business you allow to
go on inside your sport."
Little turtles are popular pet substitutes for families
whose children are allergic to cats and dogs. The Centers for Disease Control
and Prevention (CDC), however, warns the public that the animals can cause
salmonella
In 2006, health officials recorded the first multistate
salmonella outbreak in the US, which included four cases. From that year until
2011, authorities investigated four more outbreaks, which entailed 394 cases.
One of the outbreaks was said to have claimed the life of a 3.5-week-old baby,
who was exposed to a tiny turtle
Numbers Linking Salmonella Outbreaks and Turtle Exposure
For the current research, the scientists studied eight
outbreaks of salmonella related to small turtles from 2011 to 2014. The total
number of cases was 473 and it included those from Puerto Rico and the District
of Columbia.
The findings showed that children aged below 18, below 5, and
below 1 made up 74 percent, 55 percent, and 23 percent of all cases
respectively.
For race and ethnicity, Hispanics made up 45 percent of the
cases.
Out of the patients who got infected, 28 percent required
hospitalization, which commonly ran for three days.
The results of a turtle exposure questionnaire for 102
cases revealed that 80 percent had turtles at home. Almost two-thirds of the
patients in this category had direct exposure to a turtle or in its habitat
within the week of symptoms onset. About one-third of infants and children aged
below 5 also exhibited the same findings.
How Turtles Are Associated with Salmonella
CDC warned that the bacteria may be present even if it's
not seen. Salmonella can be found naturally in the gut of turtles and even if
the bacteria are there, the animals do not necessarily exhibit signs and
symptoms of infection. Aside from that, turtles do not shed the bacteria all
the time hence, even if a turtle tested negative in diagnostic investigations,
it does not confirm an infection-free state.
In homes, salmonella may be detected in surfaces and waters
that turtle have had contact with. In one of the cases encountered by the
researchers, a baby was infected with salmonella because feeding bottles were
washed in a sink where a pet turtle habitat was also cleaned.
"All turtles - healthy and sick, big and small - can
carry Salmonella," said lead author Dr. Maroya Walters from CDC.
Experts Advise Against Having Turtles as Family Pets
The researchers acknowledged that they were not able to
track all turtles for sale because it is often illegally sold in unregulated
locations such as street events and flea markets. Despite this, Dr. Elizabeth
Barnett, from Boston University School of Medicine who wasn't involved in the
study, believed that the authors were able to convey the importance of
deviating from the idea of having turtles as pets.
"Turtles and other reptiles shouldn't be kept at home
or school or any other facilities where there are children under the age of 5,"
said Walters.
Government Ban on Pet Turtles
Since the 1970s, the U.S. government has banned selling
turtles with shells that measure less than 4 inches. Although the ban and risks
information were widely advocated, salmonella outbreaks continued to increase.
As flu season approaches, people who get sick may not
realize they can pass the flu not only to other humans, but possibly to other
animals, including pets such as cats, dogs and ferrets.
This concept, called “reverse zoonosis,” is still poorly
understood but has raised concern among some scientists and veterinarians, who
want to raise awareness and prevent further flu transmission to pets. About
80-100 million households in the United States have a cat or dog.
It’s well known that new strains of influenza can evolve
from animal populations such as pigs and birds and ultimately move into human
populations, including the most recent influenza pandemic strain, H1N1. It’s
less appreciated, experts say, that humans appear to have passed the H1N1 flu
to cats and other animals, some of which have died of respiratory illness.
There are only a handful of known cases of this phenomenon
and the public health implications of reverse zoonosis of flu remain to be
determined. But as a concern for veterinarians, it has raised troubling
questions and so far, few answers.
Veterinary researchers at Oregon State University and Iowa
State University are working to find more cases of this type of disease
transmission and better understand any risks they pose to people and pets.
“We worry a lot about zoonoses, the transmission of
diseases from animals to people,” said Christiane Loehr, an associate professor
in the OSU College of Veterinary Medicine. “But most people don’t realize that
humans can also pass diseases to animals, and this raises questions and
concerns about mutations, new viral forms and evolving diseases that may
potentially be zoonotic. And, of course, there is concern about the health of
the animals.”
The researchers are surveying flu transmission to household
cat and dog populations, and suggest that people with influenza-like illness
distance themselves from their pets. If a pet experiences respiratory disease
or other illness following household exposure to someone with the
influenza-like illness, the scientists encourage them to take the pet to a
veterinarian for testing and treatment.
The first recorded, probable case of fatal human-to-cat
transmission of the pandemic H1N1 flu virus occurred in Oregon in 2009, Loehr
said. Details were published in Veterinary Pathology, a professional journal.
In that instance, a pet owner became severely ill with the flu and had to be
hospitalized. While she was still in the hospital, her cat – an indoor cat with
no exposure to other sick people, homes or wildlife – also died of pneumonia
caused by an H1N1 infection.
Since then, researchers have identified a total of 13 cats
and one dog with pandemic H1N1 infection in 2011 and 2012 that appeared to have
come from humans. Pet ferrets have also been shown to be infected, and some
died. All of the animals’ symptoms were similar to that of humans - they
rapidly develop severe respiratory disease, stop eating and some die.
Serological studies suggest there is far more exposure to flu virus in cats and
dogs than previously known.
“It’s reasonable to assume there are many more cases of
this than we know about, and we want to learn more,” Loehr said. “Any time you
have infection of a virus into a new species, it’s a concern, a black box of uncertainty.
We don’t know for sure what the implications might be, but we do think this
deserves more attention.”
Natural and experimental transmission of the H3N2 influenza
virus from dogs to cats in South Korea showed the potential for flu viruses to
be transmitted among various animal species, Loehr said. It’s unknown if an
infected cat or other pet could pass influenza back to humans.
The primary concern in “reverse zoonosis,” as in evolving
flu viruses in more traditional hosts such as birds and swine, is that in any
new movement of a virus from one species to another, the virus might mutate
into a more virulent, harmful or easily transmissible form.
“All viruses can mutate, but the influenza virus raises
special concern because it can change whole segments of its viral sequence
fairly easily,” Loehr said. “In terms of hosts and mutations, who’s to say that
the cat couldn’t be the new pig? We’d just like to know more about this.”
Veterinarians who encounter possible cases of this
phenomenon can obtain more information from Loehr or Jessie Trujillo at Iowa
State University. They are doing ongoing research to predict, prevent or
curtail emergent events.
Covington, Louisiana - An unsuspecting police officer was
in for a hoot on Christmas Eve.
Covington police officer Lance Benjamin was riding alone
Thursday with his windows down, patrolling the quiet streets of a Louisiana subdivision,
when he felt something hard hit the side of his face.
At first Benjamin thought he was struck by a football, he
told WVUE.
“And then I felt some scratching on the back of my head and
some pecking,” he said.
An owl had flown into the driver’s side window and started
attacking the officer with its wings, talons and beak.
During the mayhem, the officer temporarily lost control of
his patrol car and drove it into a ditch, according to the Covington Police
Department.
“I tried to keep control of my car, went into a ditch,
avoided some trees. Finally was able to stop the car put it in park get out.
And there he was, just chilling out in the car,” he said.
Benjamin waited about 45 minutes for the owl to finally fly
out of the car and into the darkness.
Chief of Police Tim Lentz, said he woke up to a text
message early Christmas morning about an officer crashing a vehicle because of
an owl. At first he thought it was a prank.
After reviewing Benjamin’s body camera footage, it was
clear the altercation was real.
Fortunately, it’s going to be “owl” right for the officer.
Benjamin only suffered minor scratches and was given a tetanus shot and
antibiotics after the surreal encounter.
His fellow officers wanted to memorialize the event and
presented Benjamin with a plush owl to accompany him during his late night
rides.
After Benjamin was treated for his scratches, he finished
the rest of his shift. The owl is still at large.
A beloved dog missing for six years has been found and
reunited with his family in Las Vegas just in time for the holidays.
David Marks told ABC News today that he and his wife,
Alison Marks, were "overjoyed" and "grateful" to be
spending Christmas again with Willie, their Shetland sheepdog, now 11 years
old.
The couple hadn't seen the Sheltie since he went missing in
April of 2009 while they were all vacationing in the Pioche Hills, a mountain
range in southeastern Nevada.
"While we were up in the mountains, Willie and his
brother picked up on a rabbit or something and took off," David Marks
explained. "Willie's brother Waylon came back, but he did not. We searched
all weekend in a snowstorm in the mountains of Nevada, but we never saw any
evidence that Willie was anywhere around."
David Marks said he and his wife put up fliers and asked
around the area, but they "never heard back" from anyone -- until
now.
"About two weeks ago, we got a call from an animal
shelter in Elko, Nevada, and they said they picked up a stray, checked his microchip
and found us," he said. "I couldn't believe it. It was an absolute
surprise, and the perfect Christmas gift."
David Marks added that Willie "recognized us right
away" and that he "immediately came right over, wagging his
tail."
After a local TV station ran their story, the Marks heard
from a family in Elko that apparently had been caring for him for the past six
years before he recently ran off again.
"The individual caring for him said that Willie
somehow got to Eureka, Nevada, which is over 300 miles from Las Vegas,"
David Marks said.
"The sheriff over there picked him after they found
him in bad shape. He took care of Willie and nursed him back to health, so he
gave him to a lady in Jackpot, Nevada, and then she moved to Elko, and he
recently ran off."
David Marks joked that he's sure Willie told his Sheltie
brother the whole story of his adventures the past six years and that he and
his wife are curious to learn what happened.
The family said that since Willie has been home, everything
feels "complete again."
"We've been introducing him again to everybody,” David
Marks said, “but it's just like he never left.”
