Bruno's Blog – a complete animal at work

It didn’t just rain. It chucked it down mercilessly. All the way home.

I don’t mind him getting a good soaking, but I, as a dimunuitive Jack Russell, was in danger of being swept away by the torrents. It was hell.

And on the old man’s iPod? Even I am beginning to wonder about the shuffle button. ‘Sunshine day’ by Osibisa? Followed a couple of tracks later by ‘Sunshine on Leith’ by the Proclaimers?

Mr Jobs, you are havin’ a larf, aren’t you?

All this on top of me getting savaged in the waiting room today.

It is my patch, after all, and there is a notice clearly diplayed on the door (I think) that says that all dogs entering here are likely to have their genitals and under-taily-bits inspected by me, myself, I, so they’d better be ready.

This lurcher, the poor sap, clearly couldn’t read. Nearly bit my head off.

And we lost the footie.

Bad day.

Those of you who know me well will know that the old man and I go to work on his bicycle. He cycles the busy bits while I ride in the custom made rucksack dog-carrier-thingy, then when we get to the parks, I get out and run around aimlessly while he tries to make me hurry up so that he’s not too late for work.

Well today, for those of you who declined to go out of the house all day, it poured with rain all day.

All day.

(Hang on a sec, will you, I’m just going to toss my grunting hedeghog down the stairs, then chase after it, catch it, run around the living room for a bit, alternately chewing at it and shaking it like a, well, er, grunting hedgehog, then I’m going to lie motionless with it in my mouth for a minute or two, while I go into the zone) 

Ah, that’s better. Now where was I?

We got completely soaked on the way in to work. Those of you who’ve been paying attention over the months will also know that the old man has an ipod, which he uses to listen to sad old seventies music by the Grateful Dead and the Allman Brothers interspersed with altogether more shocking stuff nicked from the Girl’s download library.

Now those of you who care about this sort of thing might also be aware that there is some controversy in conspiracy theory circles about the ’shuffle’ feature on ipods.

Some people, mostly of a paranoid bent, hold that Apple somehow are able to plug into our psyches, our listening habits, the time of day, the weather and use other ‘information’ on us to set up the so-called ‘random’ playlists that will tune in to our mindset. Ipod shuffle thereby creates a musical background that can both perfectly reflect our emotional needs but more alarmingly can go on to affect our emotional state. They fear that we might be being manipulated.

Well this morning, as we reached the peak of the downpour (just going past the Royal Geographic Society, actually), Mr Steve Jobsworths ‘its-just-a-random-shuffle-honestly-guys’ ipod starts that lazy guitar intro for Travis’ ‘Why does it always rain on me’?

Very funny, Mr Jobs, but how did you know that Fran Healey was one of the old man’s clients? Did you hack into the clinic database? How did you know we were out in the rain? Why didn’t you choose ‘Riders on the storm’ by the Doors as a follow up if you’re that clever?

We arrived dripping and cold. We got soaked again on the way home, and now he wants me to go out again for a late night constiutional. I think not.

 

Well, August 21st, actually.

It finally made onto the BBC this morning. The story is that SOME dog flea treatments can KILL cats. And that there have been hundreds of cases of cats poisoned by their owners inadvertently applying flea products containing PERMETHRIN onto their cats, with disastrous results.

Just in case you were about to ask, those lovely people at www.vetscriptions.co.uk don’t sell any flea products that could be toxic to cats, so you don’t need to worry, but in case you are are interested this is the science:

Permethrin is a chemical toxic to fleas. It can be extracted from pyrethrum flowers. Dogs absorb pyrethrin but break it down in their livers and excrete it, Cats, being different (as we have already established), can’t. Their livers do not have the enzymes to break down the pyrethrins, so levels build up in their systems until toxic levels are reached and they get sick, start to have seizures and die.

Take home message for today?

Use veterinary flea control products rather than high street ones, and READ THE SMALL PRINT.

 

Unfortunately in this case, it’s true.

This the story of Alex the parrot and the implausibly named Dr Irene Pepperberg who together became well known in the field of cognition and communication research, because under her care Alex displayed an amazing command of language and expression.

The old man first heard about him back in the dizzy days of The Big Breakfast on Channel 4 when he used to appear every day on ‘Vet the Pet’ with Melanie Sykes. This was long before she went all Des O’Connor and hair shampoo adverts of course.

He had to research a piece on African Grey parrots and up came the story of Alex the parrot. From humble beginnings (he was bought at random from a petshop), this is what the Wikipaedia have to say about him:

“Alex learnt to identify fifty different objects and recognize quantities up to six; he could distinguish seven colors and five shapes, and understand the concepts of “bigger”, “smaller”, “same”, and “different,” and was learning “over” and “under”.

Alex had a vocabulary of about 150 words but was exceptional in that he appeared to have understanding of what he said. For example, when Alex was shown an object and was asked about its shape, color, or material, he could label it correctly. If asked the difference between two objects, he also answered that, but if there was no difference between the objects, he said “none.”

When he was tired of being tested, he would say “I’m gonna go away,” and if the researcher displayed annoyance, Alex tried to defuse it with the phrase, “I’m sorry.” If he said “Wanna banana”, but was offered a nut instead, he stared in silence, asked for the banana again, or took the nut and threw it at the researcher. When asked questions in the context of research testing, he gave the correct answer approximately 80 percent of the time.”

The problem I have is that many of the humans I come into contact with seem to have less recognition and communication skills than Alex did. They don’t know even the most basic woofs, wags or snorts of derision.

Loads of talk, but most of the stories of action I hear or see on the box are about invading and killing each other in the name of world peace or entertainment.

You’re an odd lot.

Night before last was Guy Fawkes night. I’ve told you already that I hate fireworks  (I did mention that, didn’t I?). I went out for a late night stroll with old man and then got too nervous’n'jittery to concentrate on the task in hand.

Result?

No poop.

Middle of the night, erm, what to do? The old man’s fast asleep and anyway I’m far too polite to wake him, so I figured if I dropped one on the patterned bit of the persian rug, maybe no one would notice.

Wrong.

Last night, ditto, but worse because for some reason my usual bullety little nuggets came out all wrong and it was all a bit splurgy. Still on the carpet, mind you. Just managed to miss the wood floor.

The woman came down first and didn’t notice (one advantage of smoking – no sense of smell) but the old boy got it straight away. He hasn’t really said anything apart from squirting an odd-tasting gloop into my mouth.

Ho hum – small price to pay

Now you might remember the other day I was jabbering on about how many dogs had a peculiar reaction to vaccination. Or maybe not. It’s hard to tell when you’re paying attention, sometimes. No, really.

Anyway, there’s been another paper published, this time about cats.

Just to remind you, in a survey of 838,015 dogs vacccinated, 16 out of every 10,000 dogs had an adverse reaction to the vaccine, of which 2 out of every 10,000 had an anaphyllactic reaction.

Now for CATS, in a survey of 496,189 cats (where do you find that many cats for goodness’ sake? And would they ALL run away at the same time if I chased them?), after giving a total of 1,258,712 doses of vaccine, 51.6 out of every 10,000 had an ‘adverse event’.

These events were mostly lethargy, with or without fever. The likelihood of a reaction increased with the number of vaccines given at the same time.

None of these went on to produce the vaccine site tumours that everyone’s worrying about, in a 2 year follow up.

So what’s the take-home message, I hear you asking.

It all sounds a bit like the MMR scenario, doesn’t it? Split the timing of the vaccine fractions and they’re less likely to have an adverse reaction.

That sounds like what the old man’s been saying and doing for years.