Horses are magnificent creatures, but have you ever stopped to wonder how long they have been around or how many breeds their are and what each was bred for?
READ MORE and you will find out all of that and more from www.simplehorselife.com!
From “The Horse” Magazine, Nearly 73% of horse owners responding to a survey use or had used alternative therapies such as acupuncture and herbal supplements on their horses, and while 86% had sought veterinary advice about alternative therapies, 25% of them didn’t tell their veterinarian, according to a study in Vet Record. Veterinarians should be prepared to answer questions about alternative therapies and should counsel horse owners that some therapies may mask health conditions or reduce the efficacy of other treatments, study leader and veterinarian Annelies Decloedt says.
Temple Grandin, CSU’s world-renowned professor of animal sciences and autism advocate, speaks Monday, Feb., 10, at the ground breaking of the Temple Grandin Equine Center
Temple Grandin, the world-renowned professor in Colorado State University’s College of Agricultural Sciences and autism advocate, didn’t have an easy road in life.
Far from it.
“High school was a disaster for me,” she said. “I was always getting picked on.”
She recalled the day she reached her breaking point when a student called her a derogatory term. “I chucked a book at her,” Grandin said.
‘Horses saved my life’
That incident got Grandin, now in her 30th year on the Department of Animal Sciences faculty, kicked out of school, but it also opened up a completely new world for her. Her new boarding school included opportunities to ride and work with horses.
“Horses saved my life,” she said. “I loved to ride them, and working in the barns taught me how to work. I fed them, took care of them and cleaned out nine stalls every day.”
It was fitting then, on Monday, Feb. 20, that CSU broke ground on the Temple Grandin Equine Center on the Foothills Campus. The new facility, adjacent to the B.W. Pickett Arena, will be home to what may be the leading equine-assisted activities and therapy (EAAT) research program in the world. It will serve children with autism, veterans with PTSD and seniors with Alzheimer’s or other dementias.
Two-phase project
The overall project, which includes two phases, is projected to cost $10 million. Construction on the first phase of the project, approximately $5 million – a 40,000-square-foot building featuring a riding arena, classrooms, horse stalls and space for CSU’s Right Horse program – will begin this spring. CSU has raised $4.7 million to date.
James Pritchett, interim dean of the College of Agricultural Sciences, Temple Grandin, CSU President Joyce McConnell and Adam Daurio, director of the Temple Grandin Equine Center, prepare to dig in at the groundbreaking ceremony.
“Temple was our inspiration, so it’s appropriate this facility be named in her honor,” said Jerry Black, head of CSU’s Equine Sciences Program and one of the project’s original planners.
The project first was envisioned in 2014, and planning and fundraising began shortly thereafter. Grandin not only consulted on the facility’s design, she has been a donor and tireless advocate.
Two Temple Grandin centers
The Animal Health Complex at CSU’s SPUR Campus at the National Western Complex in Denver will also include programs hosted by the Temple Grandin Equine Center. Programs at that location will focus more on outreach than education and research; the facility is slated to break ground in April.
When completed, the Foothills Campus center will elevate CSU’s already renowned EAAT program. The leadership team has already invested thousands of hours in research and practical application, reviewing every known equine-assisted therapy-related study from around the world.
“We are now considered the leader in researching equine-assisted activities and therapy,” said Adam Daurio, director of the Temple Grandin Equine Center. “This will be a place where individuals with physical, emotional and developmental challenges can heal, where therapists can treat, where students can learn, where scientists can research, and where horses can be studied, cared for, and advanced. Our graduates already are the leaders in many aspects of this industry.”
Becoming the world leader
Daurio said CSU’s current EAAT programming already provides services for 70 people per week, and has successfully launched three tracks of research. Students – both undergrads and those working on advanced degrees – do the bulk of the hands-on research and partner with licensed practitioners and certified instructors to host appointments for participating children, veterans and seniors.
Several key donors attended the groundbreaking, and CSU President Joyce McConnell told the gathering how proud she was of the program and the donors who helped make the facility a reality.
“CSU is a place that dreams,” McConnell said. “It doesn’t surprise me that we will be the best in the world. We need to tell everyone else we are the best in the world because we are cutting-edge, and we are pushing the boundaries. And when we push the boundaries because of the research we do, we actually get it out into the world, so this gets to spread far and wide.”
You can donate to support the Temple Grandin Equine Center. CSU hopes to launch the next phase of the facility, which will include a second arena, advanced clinical and therapy facilities, and administration offices in 2024.
If you have ever owned or spent a lot of time riding with one particular horse, chances are good that you’ve felt some sort of special connection with them — and wondered if horses even like humans.
Maybe you’ve felt like they were actually your friend, or a small part of your family, and wanted to know if the feeling was reciprocal. Research is now confirming that that connection isn’t all in your head — and anyone who has ever had a pet before, horse or not, definitely won’t be surprised at some of these recent findings. A new study shows that horses can actually understand and remember human emotions, which is something that makes them seem even more magical than they already did.
This is not the first time scientists have discovered something like this about these animals — previous studies have found that horses can recognize expressions. This new research, though, has found that the animals can not only recognize expressions but can also remember them and link them to a specific face. In other words, horses can recognize human faces and their emotional expressions, something that they then use to discern whether the person is a threat or not.
This latest study was done by researchers at the universities of Sussex and Portsmouth and was published in the journalCurrent Biology. While it’s certainly not the first study down on horse behavior, it is the first one to find something like this.
“We know that horses are socially intelligent animals, but this is the first time any mammal has been shown to have this particular ability,” Portsmouth research Leanne Proops said. “What’s very striking is that this happened after just briefly viewing a photograph of the person with a particular emotional expression — they did not have a strongly positive or negative experience with this person.”
The researchers came to this conclusion after a series of experiments where they showed domestic horses photographs of humans with either a happy or angry facial expression. Later, they showed the horses the people in the photographs, making neutral expressions. During the real life meeting, researchers watched the eye movements of the horses. They found that the horses saw those who had been photographed with angry faces to be more threatening (previous research has shown that horses look at negative or threatening things with their left eye). It’s important to note that the humans did not know which photographs the horses had seen before, which was done to eliminate the risk of the humans behaving differently.
Karen McComb, a professor at the University of Sussex, said in a news release, “What we’ve found is that horses can not only read human facial expressions, but they can also remember a person’s previous emotional state when they meet them later that day — and, crucially, that they adapt their behavior accordingly.”
This research is incredibly interesting for so many reasons. For one thing, it proves exactly how intelligent and emotional horses really are — that connection that you might feel with one of these magnificent mammals is a real thing. For another, it’s an important step toward learning more about these important animals, and maybe even animals in general. We still know so little about what goes on in the minds of some of our favorite animals, and this is one way to understand a little bit more about at least one of them.
In fact, this is more proof that horses may have more human-like behavior than you thought. Previous research has found that horses can deal with chronic stress, experience allergies, and even get the flu. Anyone who has spent a lot of time around horses may not find this type of research particularly surprising.
An elephant at the Emmen, Netherlands, zoo stands at the edge of a ditch in 2009, a day after another elephant fell into the ditch and died.
Eleanor was the matriarch of an elephant family called the First Ladies. One day, elephant researchers in Kenya’s Samburu National Reserve saw that Eleanor was bruised and dragging her trunk on the ground. Soon, she collapsed.
Within minutes, Grace, the matriarch of another elephant family, came near. Using her trunk, she pushed Eleanor back up to a standing position. When Eleanor, greatly weakened now, thudded once again to the ground, Grace became visibly distressed: she vocalized, pushed at the body and refused to leave Eleanor’s side.
When Eleanor died, a female called Maui, from a third elephant family, hovered over her body, pulling on and rocking over it. During the next week, elephants from five different families came to the body. Some individuals seemed motivated only by curiosity. But the behavior of others, including Grace and Maui, clearly involved grief.
The breadth and depth of animal grief is the topic of my book How Animals Grieve, just published. Writing this book often moved me profoundly; through reading the science literature and conducting interviews with experienced animal caretakers, I came to understand at a new, visceral level just how extensively animals feel their lives. Elephants grieve. Great apes (think chimpanzees, bonobos) and cetaceans (such as dolphins) grieve. So do horses and rabbits, cats and dogs, even some birds.
Here at 13.7, I often write about science books. So it’s gratifying to write now about my own, especially this week when it’s the focal point of a story in Time Magazine called “The Mystery of Animal Grief.”
In my work, I define grief as some visible response to death that goes beyond curiosity or exploration to include altered daily routines plus signs of emotional distress. Horses who merely nudge or sniff at the body of a dead companion, for example, can’t be said to be grieving. Horses who stand vigil in a hushed circle, for many hours, at the fresh grave of a lost friend may well be grieving. A horse who refuses food and companionship, becomes listless and won’t follow normal routines for days when her friend dies? Why wouldn’t we see this as grief? (These examples are explained in detail in the book.)
As I’ve mentioned, it’s not only the big-brained “usual suspects” — the apes, elephants and dolphins — who grieve. In this brief video produced at The College of William and Mary (where I teach), I describe what happened when one duck named Harper, rescued by and living contentedly at Farm Sanctuary, witnesses the necessary euthanasia of his best duck friend Kohl. Emotionally, Harper simply cannot recover from his loss.
YouTube
In our own lives, when it hits hard, grief can be a wild and terrible force. In another post to come, I will outline some ways in which I think human mourning and thinking about death differs from the grief of other animals.
For now, I’ll conclude with the same words with which I close my book:
It won’t ease our deepest grief to know that animals love and grieve too. But when our mourning becomes a little less raw… may it bring genuine comfort to know how much we share with other animals? I find hope and solace in [these] stories. May you find hope and solace in them as well.
You can keep up with more of what Barbara is thinking on Twitter: @bjkingape
From: K9 Companion Dog Training
September 3, 2018 at 8:06 PM
Old dogs don’t die; they can’t.
They’ve merely run up ahead; they’re waiting for us just out of sight. Close your eyes late at night and you may smell his musky odor, or perhaps hear his snuffle from the next room. Pay attention and you may feel his nose on your hand or the back of your calf. When your final day comes, you can go on to meet him; he’s never left you and never will, and when you close your eyes for the last time, you’ll open them again to be met with his Bright eyes and wagging tail.
Old dogs don’t die, at least, not those dogs who take the biggest chunks of our hearts with them when they leave us. Those dogs are inextricably part of our souls, and they go with us wherever we are. Though we may not see them, we know they’re there because our heart is still beating; we still breathe, and those of us who have been truly touched by a good dog know our lives really started the day we met them.
Magnificent dogs don’t die. They shepherd our dreams and only allow the good ones through the gates of our consciousness. They watch over us much as they did in life, and that moment when we step just barely outside of death or disaster, it’s because they moved our feet or they stopped short in front of us as they did in life.
You see, a good dog is something only given to a few people. They are a gift from the universe and, though they’re with us only a short time, they never really leave us. They are loyalty and love perfected, and once we are graced with that sort of love we can never lose it. We merely lose sight of it for a time, and that is our fault; for how can love like that ever go away?
It can’t. It can’t, and it never will. For these brave souls trade their hearts for ours, and they beat together beyond sickness, beyond death. They are ours, and we are theirs, for every sunrise and every sunset, until the sun blazes its last and we once again join the stars.
By Leigh Hester,
K9 Companion Dog Training
Port Jervis, NY
Americans are increasingly treating their pets as members of the family, feeding them gourmet food, paying for day care and throwing them birthday parties. Family sleepwear sets sold on PajamaGram.com even include matching jammies for the dog.
So it’s not surprising that an increasing number of “pet parents,” as they are known in the pet care industry, are seeking sophisticated medical treatments for their animals.
Enter pet health insurance, marketed as a way to help defray rising veterinary expenses and avoid “economic euthanasia” — the necessity of putting a pet down because the owner can’t afford treatment. More than two million pets in the United States and Canada (most of them in the United States) were insured at the end of 2017, up about 17 percent from the year before, according to the North American Pet Health Insurance Association.
But consumer advocates say that pet owners should make sure they understand how the policies work before buying them.
More than two-thirds of households in the United States own a pet, according to the American Pet Products Association. Americans spent about $70 billion on pets in 2017, including purchases of animals, food, veterinary care, medicines and other services.
“People are much more inclined to think of their animals like children, and treat them accordingly,” said James Serpell, a professor of ethics and animal welfare at the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Veterinary Medicine.
J. Robert Hunter, director of insurance with the Consumer Federation of America, said pet owners should bring a healthy skepticism when shopping for pet insurance. Purchase of the product is “often motivated by a combination of love and fear,” he said. “So the buyer may be particularly vulnerable.”
Details vary by insurer and policy, but premiums for pet insurance typically depend on factors like the cost of veterinary care where you live and the age and breed of the pet. The average annual premium for “accident and illness” coverage was $516 per pet in 2017, while the average claim paid was $278, according to the pet health insurance association.
Jeff Blyskal, a senior writer with Consumers’ Checkbook, a nonprofit group that rates services in major urban markets, said pet owners should compare policies with a critical eye. When years of payments are taken into account, he said, buying insurance could end up being more expensive for some pet owners than going without it, if their animal doesn’t require much care.
Pet policies typically don’t cover pre-existing conditions, Mr. Blyskal said, so premiums are generally lower when your pet is young and healthy. Even if you start early, though, you may end up paying more over time, he said, because some policies raise premiums as pets get older. This can increase costs substantially, he said, and cause owners to drop their policies as the animals get older — just when they are more likely to need the coverage. Industrywide, the average pet policy is maintained for three years or less, according to an insurer regulatory filing in 2016 in Washington State.
The expenses tied to pet health coverage usually include not only a regular premium but also other out-of-pocket costs, like a deductible — an amount that you must pay before insurance begins paying. Insurance may cover less than 100 percent of costs after the deductible, so you’ll still have to pay for part of the treatment. Some policies may cap payments, so ask if there’s a limit.
Rob Jackson, chief executive of Healthy Paws Pet Insurance, said insurance could protect against budget-busting events costing thousands of dollars. (Healthy Paws said a pet’s age affects premiums at initial enrollment, and also as the pet ages.) The Healthy Paws website cites examples like Fridgey the Bengal cat, who had a $4,600 hip replacement, and Lupa the German shepherd, who needed $52,000 in treatment for tetanus exposure.
One way to pay lower premiums, and possibly get broader coverage, is to buy pet insurance through your employer. Eleven percent of employers in the United States offer pet health insurance benefits, according to a 2018 survey by the Society for Human Resource Management, up from 6 percent in 2014. Typically, companies offer pet insurance as a “voluntary” benefit. It’s uncommon for employers to contribute to the cost of premiums, as they do with human health insurance. But insurers may give employees a break on premiums, or offer better coverage, because their marketing costs are lower.
Employees at Ollie, a specialty dog food company, receive a 15 percent discount on premiums from the insurer Healthy Paws, said Gabby Slome, a co-founder of Ollie. (Ollie also offers workers benefits like “pawternity” leave when they take a new dog home.)
“We had a strong belief that pets are a part of one’s family,” she said.
Scott Liles, president and chief pet insurance officer with Nationwide, said half of Fortune 500 companies offer their employees pet insurance from his company. Nationwide’s employer-based plans now underwrite by species — canines vs. felines — but not by age or breed, Mr. Liles said. That means, he said, you won’t pay a higher premium if your pet is older, or if its breed is prone to certain illnesses, unlike policies sold in the open market.
Here are some questions and answers about pet health insurance:
Do some animals cost more to insure than others?
Cats are generally less expensive to insure than dogs. The average accident and illness premium in 2017 was about $45 a month for dogs and $28 a month for cats, according to the pet health insurance association. Because some purebred animals are prone to certain health problems, some insurers may charge higher premiums for them.
Most, but not all, insurers limit coverage to common household pets. Nationwide, Mr. Liles said, offers coverage for birds, hamsters and more exotic pets, including tarantulas and even hedgehogs.
What if I can’t afford pet insurance?
Local animal shelters may offer basic services, like rabies vaccinations or spaying and neutering operations, at a discounted rate. The Humane Society of the United States lists groups that can help owners who can’t afford medical care for their pets.
Another option is to put money away each month — perhaps the amount of the premium you would pay — into a dedicated savings account so you will have some funds available for pet care if you need it.
What if I’m unhappy with my pet insurance policy?
Insurance products are generally regulated by state governments, so you may want to contact your state insurance commissioner about your concern. The National Association of Insurance Commissioners offers information about pet insurance and links to regulatorsin each state.
Correction:
An earlier version of this article, using information supplied by Healthy Paws Pet Insurance, misstated how a pet’s age affects premiums for the company’s policies. The pet’s age affects the premium at the time of enrollment and as the pet gets older, not just at enrollment.
A lot happened in pet food this year. Sadly, mostly bad news. Here is a review of pet food for 2018.
January 2018
In early January of 2018, we learned that industry hired a representative who submitted a proposal to AAFCO hoping to weaken the legal requirements of a human grade pet food. No decision has been made by AAFCO at year’s end.
January also gave us some misleading marketing published by Purina; highlighting the serious need for pet owners to have public access to pet food ingredient definitions.
February 2018 brought news of more pentobarbital in pet food. Washington DC television station WJLA News tested 62 samples of dog food. “After months of tests and re-tests, one brand repeatedly came back positive for pentobarbital. In total, we tested 15 cans of Gravy Train. Nine cans — 60-percent of the sample — were positive for pentobarbital.” And following the news of pentobarbital in Gravy Train, a class action lawsuit was filed against manufacturer Big Heart Brands/J.M. Smucker.
In February, TruthaboutPetFood.com provided a comparison to FDA’s handling of a kibble recall to a raw recall proving absolute bias by the agency.
We provided an in-depth look into the ‘Complete and Balanced’ pet food regulations – proving existing regulations could cause nutrient deficiency in pets.
In March of 2018, a pet owner who lives across the street from a rendering facility provided us with horrific pictures of what FDA considers pet ‘food’.
The State of Ohio stepped up in a big way in March of 2018 – with Representative Laura Lanese submitting a bill requiring pet food to be free from any euthanized animal including dogs and cats used as a pet food ingredient. Ohio is the first state to do this!
We learned from a concerned veterinarian that FDA does little to require pet foods to update labels after any ingredient change is made in that pet food. FDA told this veterinarian that pet food “firms should update labels as soon as practical. The FDA does not provide a set timeframe.”
In March of 2018, TruthaboutPetFood.com explained the ‘False Friends’ of pet food labels(misleading information on pet food labels and websites due to pet owners having no public access to pet food ingredient definitions). Also, TruthaboutPetFood.com explained how FDA ignores the risk of dead bacteria on pet food ingredients (ignores the certain risk of endotoxins).
In March of 2018 we learned some good (great) news too. Dr. Karen Becker and Rodney Habib published the ground-breaking documentary The Dog Cancer Series. Here is a clip from the film:
Recalls in March 2018
Blue Ridge Beef raw pet food – Salmonella and Listeria monocytogenes.
The FDA has informed J.M. Smucker that the firm’s previous action to withdraw products from the marketplace is now reclassified as a recall. Pentobarbital.
Blue Ridge Beef raw pet food – Salmonella and Listeria monocytogenes.
April 2018A
In April of 2018 we learned just how deadly grains in pet food could be. A survey of mycotoxin risks of grain ingredients in North America found 80% of grain samples tested contained two dangerous mycotoxins.
FDA issued a Warning Letter to Darwin’s Pet Food that proved the agency enforces with a double standard – raw pet food is held to food law, all other styles of pet food are held to inferior ‘feed’ laws.
OC Raw Dog, LLC treat – fish have exceeded the FDA compliance guideline for fish larger than 5 inches.
May 2018
May of 2018 Amazon introduced their own pet food line. But – Amazon could not provide answers to basic questions of their new products. Also in May, we learned that industry events are talking about us…
That’s a picture of TruthaboutPetFood.com from a presentation at Pet Food Forum.
May 2018 introduced us to Maria – a pet owner in Australia that stands on street corners day after day trying to educate fellow pet owners to the conditions of pet food.
We also learned that Wilbur-Ellis – a pet feed ingredient supplier pleaded guilty to “substituting lower-cost ingredients for premium, more expensive chicken and turkey meal”.
Recalls in May 2018
Merrick Pet Care treat – elevated levels of a naturally-occurring beef thyroid hormone.
13 billion pounds cattle material, an equal 13 billion pounds of illegal poultry material and another 13 billion pounds of illegal pig material is also allowed to be processed into pet feed/animal feed for a grand illegal total of 40 billion pounds a year.
Radagast Pet Food raw pet food – Listeria monocytogenes and E. coli O121.
September 2018
September was full of bad news for pet owners. We learned that a licensed “dead animal hauler“ (that picks up euthanized animals) is also a pet food manufacturer.
We learned that FDA told an industry audience pentobarbital in pet food is more of a problem than they realized; “new evidence suggests that the problem may be more pervasive than originally thought.” In a later update to pet owners about the risk of pentobarbital in pet food, FDA said they just don’t have the money to enforce law; “Due to competing priorities and resource limitations, government agencies cannot act against every violation of the law.”
In September of 2018 we learned that FDA is ONLY working with Big Pet Feed to aid in the investigation of Grain-Free pet food link to canine heart disease. This website sent multiple requests to FDA on how pet owners can help – all were ignored. Scientists aiding in the investigation continue to provide misleading information to pet owners claiming “Grains have not been linked to any health problems except in the very rare situation when a pet has an allergy to a specific grain.” They ignored the certain risk of mycotoxins.
October 2018 brought devastating news to pet owners. The pet food safety laws that were written to prevent another deadly recall like the one in 2007 were simply erased from record by Congress. In November – listed below – we learned the name of the one Senator that destroyed pet food safety.
We learned that a raw pet food manufacturer was forced to close its doors due to multiple recalls. Those recalls were obtained by Ohio and Colorado Department of Agricultureignoring their own regulations on testing and obtaining pet food samples.
Colorado Department of Agriculture took samples from a pet store of frozen pet food (in July) and did not place those frozen samples in a cooler. Instead, the agency placed frozen pet food on the car seat – unprotected from the July heat.
We learned that an ingredient supplier (Wilbur-Ellis – mentioned in May above) was fined more than $7 Million for knowingly selling adulterated pet food ingredients.
In October of 2018, we asked FDA for a public meeting with pet owners. FDA didn’t respond until December stating “Over the past few months, we have received several similar requests for meetings. We are currently considering how best to accommodate all the requests we have received. ” FDA promised to provide us information on our meeting “early in the New Year“.
And in October of 2018 we learned worldwide pet food sales have dropped $2.7 billion dollars in the last two years.
And in November of 2018 we learned that it was Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky that intentionally introduced an addendum to a bill that destroyed pet food safety.
In December we received a Freedom of Information Act request that appeared to show Champion Pet Food purchased their fat ingredient from the same supplier as Gravy Train Pet Food.
What a year it has been. Here’s hoping 2019 will bring improved (and consistent) enforcement of law in pet food. Here’s hoping for more good news in 2019 than bad.
My thanks to all that support TruthaboutPetFood.com each year – year after year. Happy New Year to all.
Several key donors attended the groundbreaking, and CSU President Joyce McConnell told the gathering how proud she was of the program and the donors who helped make the facility a reality.
13 billion pounds cattle material, an equal 13 billion pounds of illegal poultry material and another 13 billion pounds of illegal pig material is also allowed to be processed into pet feed/animal feed for a grand illegal total of 40 billion pounds a year.
Recalls in June 2018
