Speaker 1: Hello, and welcome to Creature Feature, a production of I
Speaker 1: Heart Radio. I'm your host of Many Parasites, Katie Golden.
Speaker 1: I studied psychology and evolutionary biology, but my proudest achievement
Speaker 1: is owning a dog who likes to sniff her own
Speaker 1: butt and gets mad at her own reflection. Today we're
Speaker 1: talking about pets. When did humans decide to own pets?
Speaker 1: Do we own pets or do pets own us? We're
Speaker 1: also going to go into depth on animals, coronavirus and
Speaker 1: other zoonotic diseases, and how you can protect yourself and
Speaker 1: your pet. Discover this and more as we answered the
Speaker 1: Agel question should we be making dog arcades? So joining
Speaker 1: me today to talk about dogs, cats and the people
Speaker 1: who love them are veterinarian Dr Lisa Lippman comedian Richie Redding,
Speaker 1: who are a couple but most importantly host a podcast
Speaker 1: together called We Don't Deserve Dogs. Welcome you guys for
Speaker 1: having us. Thank you. We're big fans, huge fans, such
Speaker 1: huge fans that we had you on the other week
Speaker 1: and it was one of my most favorite episodes. Yes,
Speaker 1: and you're some of your factoids I have, I've battered
Speaker 1: people with a small gatherings. That's perfect. That's I want
Speaker 1: people to assault other people with knowledge. Yeah, today we're
Speaker 1: gonna talk all about pets. I think right now people
Speaker 1: are spending a lot of time with their pets, hopefully,
Speaker 1: and I certainly am spending more time with my dog
Speaker 1: than I ever have. Our Rhodesian ridge back Chloe has
Speaker 1: been thriving in this quarantine. She just thinks it's the
Speaker 1: longest Sunday ever. Yeah. Uh yeah. And a lot of
Speaker 1: people are getting pets too, so it's another huge thing
Speaker 1: that's happening. The shelters are clearing out and people are
Speaker 1: fostering more than ever, and so it's yeah, so it's
Speaker 1: a great time. It's a boom. It is interesting because
Speaker 1: animals have had a long history of helping humans evolved
Speaker 1: to new situations. So like evolved in the sense of
Speaker 1: like our we're we're an interesting and unique animal in
Speaker 1: that our society evolves much faster than our actual bodies,
Speaker 1: and dogs and companion animals have been totally integral in
Speaker 1: helping our society evolved. So I wanted to talk a
Speaker 1: little bit about the history of pet ownership. Unfortunately, I'm
Speaker 1: really only going to cover dogs and cats because that
Speaker 1: is we have the most archaeological evidence on dogs and cats,
Speaker 1: but it is really fascinating. So dogs in particular are
Speaker 1: of great interest to geneticists, paleontologists, uh, paleogenomics, biology, archaeology,
Speaker 1: and bioarchaeology. So all of these fields are really interested
Speaker 1: in dogs because they have co evolved with us over
Speaker 1: ten thousand years, which is an incredible amount of time.
Speaker 1: So I don't know, do you guys know much about
Speaker 1: sort of the history of uh, how we came to
Speaker 1: consider dogs pets. I mean, I'm sure Lisa has a
Speaker 1: much better perspective on this, but I mean, I'm just
Speaker 1: I'm glad that we're doing this because I've always been
Speaker 1: fascinated by the evolutionary process, from what I understand, is
Speaker 1: just basically like inviting the nicest wolves in close, like
Speaker 1: close to the fire, and then and then you get
Speaker 1: to a puggle as the finished product. That to me
Speaker 1: is amazing. And are they still involving? Is my other question.
Speaker 1: That's I mean, well, we're breeding. I mean, they're making
Speaker 1: different breeds all the time. I don't really know if
Speaker 1: we can call that evolution, especially when you when you
Speaker 1: have people interfere right, because like, for example, the bulldog,
Speaker 1: the English bulldog would not that is not evolutionarily sound
Speaker 1: breeding because they wouldn't. They deliver most of their puppies
Speaker 1: by sea section, and so if they had to do themselves,
Speaker 1: they would not be able to. So it's artificial so
Speaker 1: I action, not natural selection, So I don't I'm not sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah some days, so it's it's a tough one. But
Speaker 1: back to how dogs, No, you know, I I guess
Speaker 1: with evolution, you probably know more about that than I would.
Speaker 1: So they actually did come from wolves, uh, And so
Speaker 1: the idea of like how we first domesticated them is
Speaker 1: a wolf was thinking like, hey, there's a nice fire,
Speaker 1: there's scraps by the fire. Maybe i'll be a little
Speaker 1: bold and go up there and see what's going on.
Speaker 1: And humans are like, hey, that's interesting. I've never seen
Speaker 1: a wolf just like kind of come meekly up to
Speaker 1: this fire. Let's see how this all works out. And
Speaker 1: at first we probably regarded these these wolf ancestors to
Speaker 1: dogs in terms of like what they could do for us,
Speaker 1: so they could provide us with meat, pelts and possibly work,
Speaker 1: but likely over time this relationship evolved into more of
Speaker 1: a panionships, So they became pets in that we use
Speaker 1: them not just for survival purposes but for companionship and
Speaker 1: love and in friendship. So how did they provide meat?
Speaker 1: Were they hunting with the wolves? Well you're not gonna
Speaker 1: like the answer to this, but uh, we would actually
Speaker 1: eat the wolf meat, So we would actually eat these
Speaker 1: dog ancestors. But it's it's one of those things that
Speaker 1: it's probably was kind of a fluid relationships, sorry, a
Speaker 1: fluid or relationships. So probably we would have them around.
Speaker 1: Maybe they were good at guarding us, maybe they were
Speaker 1: good at helping us hunt, but we would occasionally eat them,
Speaker 1: because when you are in these survival situations, like, hey,
Speaker 1: you have this animal that is following you around, and
Speaker 1: even if it's even if you like it, you're still
Speaker 1: going to eat it if you need need that meat.
Speaker 1: It's precarious. For the wolf, it is precarious. But you
Speaker 1: know they did. It must have not happened enough, or
Speaker 1: at least it benefited them enough that they stuck around
Speaker 1: with us long enough for us to be like, hey,
Speaker 1: you know what, maybe we should be friends instead. So
Speaker 1: they are thought to actually be the first domesticated animal
Speaker 1: from over fifteen thousand years ago, so they all evolved
Speaker 1: probably from a common wolf ancestor, which is also the
Speaker 1: ancestor of modern day wolf, So they didn't evolve from
Speaker 1: like sacy a wolf today. It's probably from a common
Speaker 1: ancestor that is now presumed to be extinct. So there
Speaker 1: is some evidence that there were multiple domestication events. One
Speaker 1: study found there being two separate linear sorry lineages of
Speaker 1: domesticated dogs from Europe and in Asia around twenty thousand
Speaker 1: years ago. But there's some debate about this because other
Speaker 1: researchers think there is like a single domestication event that
Speaker 1: started in ancient Europe or the Middle East, which then
Speaker 1: spread out to the rest of the world. And we're
Speaker 1: still trying to figure that out by sequencing this ancient
Speaker 1: dog and wolf DNA. Very cool, yeah, very cool. Were
Speaker 1: they were the ancient wolves bigger bigger than dogs, like
Speaker 1: bigger than than than current wolves, Probably not that much bigger.
Speaker 1: It's just like they, you know, we're a different species
Speaker 1: of animal. It doesn't necessarily mean that they were two
Speaker 1: morphologically different, but that their DNA has changed enough that
Speaker 1: the modern day wolves and this ancestor are different enough
Speaker 1: to be considered different special I don't know why. I
Speaker 1: just think everything that's like an ancient species was just enormous. Well,
Speaker 1: dire wolves, which were a real wolf, and it actually
Speaker 1: loves here, yeah, and it lives here in exactly lived
Speaker 1: here in North American. In fact, in the tar pits
Speaker 1: in l A. We've got a bunch of dire wolf skulls,
Speaker 1: just like a whole mess of them, because a bunch
Speaker 1: of dire wolves got stuck in these tar pits. And
Speaker 1: now we have their skulls and we put them on display.
Speaker 1: And they aren't Game of Throne style gigantic. They were
Speaker 1: a little bigger than modern day wolves in a little
Speaker 1: little like um, a little more robust in certain ways,
Speaker 1: but they weren't like giant like in Game of Thrones unfortunately.
Speaker 1: And you didn't have mind control over them necessarily. Well
Speaker 1: I didn't say that. We don't know. Maybe they did.
Speaker 1: So it's still like a not known exactly when we
Speaker 1: started domesticating wolves, but it's it's the more evidence comes in,
Speaker 1: the earlier it seems to be than we previously thought.
Speaker 1: So recently, there was a canine skull, which is thought
Speaker 1: to be one of the early ancestors of modern day
Speaker 1: dogs that was discovered in a cave in Belgium from
Speaker 1: over thirty two thousand years ago, which is evidence of
Speaker 1: an even earlier domestication than we had previously estimated. I
Speaker 1: think it speaks to the human animal bond because we've
Speaker 1: i mean, people have loved them for as long as
Speaker 1: we've known, so I think that makes a lot of
Speaker 1: sense with the caveat that they might have eaten them, yeah,
Speaker 1: snatch the probably they probably grabbed a baby or two
Speaker 1: in their day to you know, you never know exactly,
Speaker 1: you know, we eat them sometimes, maybe they eat one
Speaker 1: of our babies and then we're like, hey, you know,
Speaker 1: like let's let's let's talk about this like adult dogs
Speaker 1: and let's work this out. Call it truce. So current
Speaker 1: estimates of when the domesticated dogs started to split from
Speaker 1: its wolf like ancestor is now around twenty seven to
Speaker 1: forty thousand years ago, and there's a lot of new
Speaker 1: genetic evidence coming in their sequencing these genomes and trying
Speaker 1: to place like when it's happened. But that's currently and
Speaker 1: which is a lot it's a wide range, but that
Speaker 1: it's still an incredibly long, reallyation ship that we've had
Speaker 1: with dogs. So one thing I was curious about is
Speaker 1: like when dogs went from being a domesticated animal to
Speaker 1: a pet, Like, like that shift in our relationship with
Speaker 1: the dog, because at first it may have been kind
Speaker 1: of a practical working relationship. The the early dogs were
Speaker 1: able to get food and shelter from us. We got
Speaker 1: basically work and sometimes meat and sometimes pelts, but other
Speaker 1: practical things hunting help They helped us with hunting as well.
Speaker 1: But like when we started to actually care about them
Speaker 1: and consider them different from other animals, I think is
Speaker 1: a really interesting question. Yeah, I mean that's it's definitely
Speaker 1: an inflection point in the relationship, right when you go
Speaker 1: from wanting to seeing each other as a snack, as
Speaker 1: seeing each other as like a snack in a good way.
Speaker 1: Is it a good thing? Now you think someone's a snack? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I think on Instagram somebody's a snack. It's that's what
Speaker 1: you want. Yeah. I do wonder sometimes because like I
Speaker 1: will always tell my dog like I'm going to eat you,
Speaker 1: and chase around and like I'm going to eat you,
Speaker 1: and then she like she was she was on my
Speaker 1: hands sometimes and I wonder if there's still some of this,
Speaker 1: like latent desire to like eat each other somehow. I
Speaker 1: have strong feelings about that for sure, because Chloe will nibble,
Speaker 1: Like if Chloe gets excited to see me, or she
Speaker 1: starts like lick me, and then she gets really excited,
Speaker 1: she will nibble my mouth or my nose like she
Speaker 1: she does she was like to ch ch and then
Speaker 1: and then So I'm positive that, like if I were
Speaker 1: to pass away, that she would eat me, because that's
Speaker 1: how they say that. It starts, you know, as they
Speaker 1: like lick you, they tried it, and then they get
Speaker 1: over stimulated and then they just get like overstimulated and
Speaker 1: eat you. So I'm pretty confident. I feel like you're
Speaker 1: also all about that, like like you're living will should
Speaker 1: probably be and my carcass goes to Chloe. Yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean I think there's worse ways to go. I don't
Speaker 1: know if that's what she wants to do that time
Speaker 1: with me. Katie doesn't cookie nibble your feet, well, she
Speaker 1: bites her feet. She gets angry at her feet. I
Speaker 1: wouldn't call it a nibble, I'd call it an actual
Speaker 1: bite because she she hates different. She is angry angry
Speaker 1: at feet, so she'll she'll nip at angry and anger.
Speaker 1: I don't think she realizes that they're attached to a person.
Speaker 1: She's just like, what are these animals? And then suddenly
Speaker 1: she's she's attacking these strange creatures. But yeah, so it is.
Speaker 1: It is an interesting transition from when we maybe consider
Speaker 1: dogs as like these are these strange beasts that kind
Speaker 1: of help us around, but you know, we're just we're
Speaker 1: just cautiously using them to help us survive, to us
Speaker 1: actually loving them and doting on them. So um, it's
Speaker 1: hard to say like when we exactly made that distinction
Speaker 1: and we could have even cared about them even if
Speaker 1: we did eat them, Like there there could have been
Speaker 1: something where we loved them but occasionally had to eat
Speaker 1: them because you know, in ancient times tears. I think
Speaker 1: that's probably part of the reason that our relationship with
Speaker 1: dogs change, is that it's hard to spend so much
Speaker 1: time socializing with an animal and then make that transition
Speaker 1: to like, well, you're a burger now. So like about
Speaker 1: twelve thousand years ago, there's evidence of dog and cat
Speaker 1: burial rituals. So twelve thousand years ago, dogs and cats
Speaker 1: started to be buried with humans, and we don't really
Speaker 1: know why, Like we don't have any concrete evidence why
Speaker 1: they were buried with the humans, but it does indicate
Speaker 1: a special relationship that we had with them. And around
Speaker 1: eight thousand years ago humans started bearing dogs with special
Speaker 1: high value items, which indicates that they that we cared
Speaker 1: about how these dogs bodies were handled, and we viewed
Speaker 1: them as as special as is deserving some kind of
Speaker 1: special ritual, and we we don't know like why necessarily
Speaker 1: we felt that way. Well, that also like the fact
Speaker 1: that they buried them with some of them were buried
Speaker 1: with high, high valued items and others weren't. Like even
Speaker 1: back then, dogs could get lucky with who they who
Speaker 1: picked them or who they picked right like you could
Speaker 1: you could have be with the chief of the village
Speaker 1: or the town drunk even back then. I don't know,
Speaker 1: I think that that's I think that's definitely definitely dependent
Speaker 1: on how much somebody loves their animal. I think it's
Speaker 1: more dependent on that. I definitely have clients who don't
Speaker 1: have a ton of money but are willing to spend
Speaker 1: the money that they have on their pet, and then
Speaker 1: I have very rich clients who will complain about everything.
Speaker 1: So yeah, you don't want to be a cat belonging
Speaker 1: to an Egyptian pharaoh and then get buried alive with
Speaker 1: the pharaoh. Yeah that sucked. Yeah, well, and we've I've
Speaker 1: had some requests like that where people will put in
Speaker 1: their will that they want their pets to be euthanized
Speaker 1: and buried with them, um when they died. Yeah, oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I've seen I've seen questions vets. I mean, can they Yes,
Speaker 1: we can euthanize anything, but I have no no vet
Speaker 1: worth their salt. Who would youthan I is a perfectly
Speaker 1: healthy animal, So no, no vet's so I mean, I
Speaker 1: think what's interesting is that we not only started pampering dogs,
Speaker 1: but dogs really helped us basically build our human society.
Speaker 1: So they're kind of multiple theories about how dogs and
Speaker 1: agrarian society is kind of interacted. Um, Like some theories
Speaker 1: previously we're saying like, oh, dogs were domesticated due to farming,
Speaker 1: but obviously the new evidence suggests that we domesticated dogs
Speaker 1: way before we started farming, because we started farming like
Speaker 1: ten to twelve thousand years ago, and there is it's
Speaker 1: more likely that we already had this relationship with dogs.
Speaker 1: But as we started to farm, we are relationships with
Speaker 1: dogs started to become even deeper because dogs would help
Speaker 1: us with farming. So apparently like our habit of farming
Speaker 1: actually changed dogs DNA. So yes, so we were feeding
Speaker 1: them starchy table scraps like at least seven thousand years ago.
Speaker 1: So research into dog DNA shows that dogs started to
Speaker 1: evolve extra copies of starch digesting genes, which probably helped
Speaker 1: them digest wheat and millet and other farmed crops that
Speaker 1: they were getting fed by ancient farmers. Yeah. The habit
Speaker 1: of feeding doggies table scraps that really they shouldn't be
Speaker 1: having is very very old, the very old habit. Yeah,
Speaker 1: and that's how they evolved. Maybe that's where they became
Speaker 1: like the maybe that's where they became omnivores too, true omnivors,
Speaker 1: because they are the true omnivore. So, are you just
Speaker 1: helping Chloe evolve every time you eat? Yeah, I'm just
Speaker 1: taken it back to you know, you're helping her evolve
Speaker 1: a bigger stomach. Their metabolism and ability to digest, these
Speaker 1: things have dramatically changed from their wolf ancestors. So wolves
Speaker 1: aren't nearly as omnivorous. That's right, their carnivores, yes, carnivores.
Speaker 1: This is yeah, where we can also talk about raw
Speaker 1: diets for people who want to feed their dogs raw
Speaker 1: diets and talk about, you know, their dogs being kind
Speaker 1: of like wolf like and stuff like that. So they're
Speaker 1: not they're not wolves. They are true omnivores um and
Speaker 1: raw diets carry increased risk of equal i samonella. So
Speaker 1: it's not something that I am a big advocate of. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: Cookie is listening to me saying this, and she's like
Speaker 1: slowly approaching and going like, oh, so I can have
Speaker 1: toast then and spaghetti everything in moderation. She gets one
Speaker 1: strand of spaghetti every time we have spaghetti, and she's
Speaker 1: gotta jump for it. She's gotta like, like, I hold
Speaker 1: up the spaghetti and then she's gotta jump and and
Speaker 1: she likes loved to snatch it out of the air.
Speaker 1: She's evolved to be able to eat that spaghetti. It's
Speaker 1: a magnificent evolution from wolf to a tiny thirteen pound
Speaker 1: dog that just launches herself at spaghetti. So evidence shows
Speaker 1: that early farmers highly valued their dogs. So nine thousand
Speaker 1: years ago, farmers from the near East migrated into Europe
Speaker 1: and Asia, and they brought their dogs with them. So
Speaker 1: researchers found that the lineage of these farmers dogs replaced
Speaker 1: that of the dogs that were originally from those areas.
Speaker 1: So basically we found that farmers were like, hey, I
Speaker 1: need to take our dogs with us because they are
Speaker 1: I love them, They're are best friends, and they help
Speaker 1: us farm. And then those dogs took over these areas
Speaker 1: where the farmers migrated into. So there are many ways
Speaker 1: that dogs likely helped with agriculture. There's hurting, guarding livestock
Speaker 1: from predators or other humans, rat catching, and general cuteness.
Speaker 1: You know, Tommy rubs never heard a farm, so uh,
Speaker 1: don't worry, cat owners, I haven't forgotten you. I do
Speaker 1: want to talk a little bit about our history with cats.
Speaker 1: Even though it seems like cats have zero interest in
Speaker 1: helping us, we actually have a very mutualistic relationship with cats.
Speaker 1: So over five thousand years ago, cats were already helping
Speaker 1: farmers deal with their rodent problem. So ancient cat bones
Speaker 1: and china were examined and they were found to contain
Speaker 1: isotopes that were associated with eating rats that had eaten
Speaker 1: domesticated crops. Such as millet. Essentially, they are able to
Speaker 1: find these compounds that were unique to the farmed crops
Speaker 1: that the rats would eat, and then when a cat
Speaker 1: eats the rat, they get some of those in their
Speaker 1: fossils as well. So we were able to check that
Speaker 1: these cats ate the rats that ate our crops, which
Speaker 1: I think is really fascinating. That is wild, That is interesting.
Speaker 1: That just reminds me of a lot of people get
Speaker 1: worried because of if rats eat rats that eat rat poison,
Speaker 1: and then the cat eats the rat, so what happens? Then?
Speaker 1: The truth is it's usually a rat can't eat enough
Speaker 1: poison to poison a cat, So typically it's not a
Speaker 1: concern but something to think about. It's more about it
Speaker 1: happening on a regular basis, So especially for not necessarily
Speaker 1: for domesticated cats whose most of their diet is from
Speaker 1: food we give them, but for wildcats like bobcats and
Speaker 1: mountain lions who actually can start to get sick because
Speaker 1: all of their diet is from basically rodents or other
Speaker 1: small animals, and if they are getting a lot of poison,
Speaker 1: and say you say you have a bobcat or a
Speaker 1: mountain lion who mostly subsists on some of these rodents,
Speaker 1: and these rodents are getting a lot of poison. Then
Speaker 1: they start it's not necessarily enough to kill them, it
Speaker 1: just it will make them sick. It will compromise the
Speaker 1: immune systems, so they start getting sort of like one
Speaker 1: of the signs is like their coats start to get
Speaker 1: mange because they have their immune system is like being
Speaker 1: weakened by them, these poisoned rats and other rodents, and
Speaker 1: so it's harder for them to fight off the mange.
Speaker 1: So it's not as much, Like you said, it's probably
Speaker 1: not as much of a problem for domesticated cats, but
Speaker 1: for these wildcats, where all of their diet is is
Speaker 1: rodents and little animals, they find that's interesting. I hadn't
Speaker 1: thought of wildcats the domestic cats. Yeah, usually one rat
Speaker 1: is like not enough, but I guess if they're eating
Speaker 1: them all the time, and and then there there are
Speaker 1: other kinds of rat poison. Most of them are illegal here,
Speaker 1: but doesn't mean people don't use them. So yeah, there's
Speaker 1: bad stuff, bad bad, I mean they're all bad, but yeah,
Speaker 1: these rats are breaking bad. So basically, these cats were
Speaker 1: coming to human farms and eating the rats and a
Speaker 1: lot of these cats reached old age. So they found
Speaker 1: that the teeth of these cats that signified that they
Speaker 1: were actually quite old, which meant that they were doing
Speaker 1: very well around these farms, and farmers weren't like shooing
Speaker 1: them away or killing them. They were keeping the cats around.
Speaker 1: And it's thought that humans and cats just were like, Okay,
Speaker 1: you want to come eat these rats, that's cool with me,
Speaker 1: Like I'll put out a plate of milk for you.
Speaker 1: You're great, and the cats are like, hey, this is great,
Speaker 1: like I like eating rats, and we just it worked
Speaker 1: out for both of us. And cats are actually pretty
Speaker 1: unique amongst pets and domesticated animals, and that their DNA
Speaker 1: has barely changed from their wild cat ancestors. So domesticated
Speaker 1: animals actually often show physical signs of domestication. So like
Speaker 1: the cute little ear folds that we see on dogs
Speaker 1: and their smaller teeth is because we've when you're domesticating them,
Speaker 1: you're selecting for these behavioral traits like less aggression but
Speaker 1: at the same time less timidity, so the animal will
Speaker 1: approach you but not bite you, essentially, and that is
Speaker 1: linked to the adrenal gland development in vitro which just
Speaker 1: happens to also be tied to saying physical traits like
Speaker 1: your cartilage, coat, coloring, teeth size, So it's like you will.
Speaker 1: That's why both a goat and a pig and a
Speaker 1: dog will have these floppy ears and in like little spots.
Speaker 1: It's really interesting. But cats don't have that because they're
Speaker 1: fair a little creatures. Yeah. I don't like to have
Speaker 1: to keep talking about COVID, but I think it's an
Speaker 1: important thing, and I think it's something where it's been
Speaker 1: going on for such a long time that people are
Speaker 1: starting to get tired and fatigued. But then they're starting
Speaker 1: to think, like, oh, we don't have to worry about
Speaker 1: it anymore, and like, but it hasn't, like it hasn't
Speaker 1: gone away. So I do want to talk about We
Speaker 1: had previously talked a little bit about zoonotic diseases. This
Speaker 1: virus actually it comes from animals. It's spread from animals
Speaker 1: to humans, and it actually can spread from humans to
Speaker 1: animals again like two cats, which we talked about last time.
Speaker 1: But I wanted to get really into some more depth
Speaker 1: about it and how this virus works, how it's able
Speaker 1: to go from animal to human and human to animal
Speaker 1: and what are like why we should be concerned about it,
Speaker 1: and then other other times where people may kind of
Speaker 1: want to panic but we shouldn't panic. So I know
Speaker 1: this is very personal for you guys because you have
Speaker 1: actually been impacted by COVID in your own life. Do
Speaker 1: you want to talk a little bit about your experience. Yeah, absolutely,
Speaker 1: And I think it's a really good thing to start
Speaker 1: off with, because just like you said, people are getting anxious,
Speaker 1: people are getting antsy and sort of feeling like, oh,
Speaker 1: maybe we're at a little bit of a lull, but
Speaker 1: we're we're really not. I mean until I can tell you,
Speaker 1: until we have a vaccine or we have clear antibody testing,
Speaker 1: I'm not sure how comfortable I will be. I mean, obviously,
Speaker 1: you we go by the numbers and stuff, but I
Speaker 1: have been personally impacted, and I'm happy to talk to
Speaker 1: anybody else who has either been impacted personally or um
Speaker 1: or isn't sure because I will send you a picture
Speaker 1: of my father on the ventilator, I mean, or my mother.
Speaker 1: So basically, on March both of my parents were hospitalized
Speaker 1: for COVID nineteen and they both had severe bilateral pneumonia.
Speaker 1: My um it started actually with G I mostly g
Speaker 1: I signs, so they had like vomiting diarrhea and and
Speaker 1: the low grade fevers, and they didn't they never had
Speaker 1: any shortness of breath until my father went into a crisis.
Speaker 1: When the third ambulance arrived. We actually had to call
Speaker 1: three ambulances because the first two wouldn't take them, because
Speaker 1: that's what this virus does. You look okay, You look
Speaker 1: okay until boom, you don't. You have what's called this
Speaker 1: cyto kind storm. UM. Right, Well, there's also something called
Speaker 1: happy hypoxia now, which is basically where people will have
Speaker 1: very low blood oxygen saturation levels where you're not oxygen
Speaker 1: eating your blood well, but you don't feel it. You
Speaker 1: feel fine. And normally these are people who would not
Speaker 1: be able to function UM and so there's been some
Speaker 1: debate about how to treat them UM for example, of
Speaker 1: like high high levels of oxygen without putting them on
Speaker 1: a ventilator UM. So on March though, when the third
Speaker 1: ambulance got there, all of a sudden, my father goes,
Speaker 1: I can't breathe, and he had never complained about breathing before,
Speaker 1: and he was immediately taken um to the emergency room
Speaker 1: and intubated and put on a ventilator. UM. My mom
Speaker 1: was hospitalized also duble with bilateral pneumonia, but at that
Speaker 1: time she was they were trying to treat her with
Speaker 1: oxygen and antibiotics and UM. At that time they had
Speaker 1: treated them with the hydroxy chloroquine that at that time
Speaker 1: they remin They were really one of the first ones.
Speaker 1: So ram de severe was not available to them, covid
Speaker 1: plasma was not available to them, UM, and so my
Speaker 1: mom had started that. And what's so scary is that
Speaker 1: this disease just takes so long to really run its course.
Speaker 1: And so my mother was in the ICU and then
Speaker 1: she got out of the ICU for like literally twelve hours,
Speaker 1: and then she was back in the ICU because she
Speaker 1: was breathing at forty breaths per minute. A normal human
Speaker 1: respiratory rate is somewhere between like twelve to twenty breaths
Speaker 1: per minute, and at forty breaths per minute, I mean,
Speaker 1: you can try it. Try breathing at forty breaths per minute.
Speaker 1: It's not sustainable or compatible with life. UM. And so
Speaker 1: that's that's a sign of you're desperately trying to get
Speaker 1: oxygen in, but you can't actually get enough oxygen in
Speaker 1: with each breath or exactly exactly, and so your pul socks,
Speaker 1: your blood oxygen saturation level is going to be really low.
Speaker 1: I was going to say, you explain the pulse socks,
Speaker 1: because getting that was what made you realize that it
Speaker 1: was time to go to the hospital. And that was
Speaker 1: one of the things. So what they had had a
Speaker 1: nurse that was here for them when they were just
Speaker 1: having the g I signs, and every all of us
Speaker 1: just thought this was like a bad you know g
Speaker 1: I like upset or they ate something bad or something
Speaker 1: like that, because it was so early, and everybody kept
Speaker 1: saying stay out of the hospital. And but I asked
Speaker 1: the nurse. At that time, we were just starting to
Speaker 1: learn that there were g I signs associated with COVID,
Speaker 1: and I said, well, you know, can you grab a
Speaker 1: pulse oximeter from one of the drug stores. So a
Speaker 1: pulse oximeter is like a little device that usually you
Speaker 1: put on your finger and it's got a little red
Speaker 1: light and and it measures how much oxygen is in
Speaker 1: your bloodstream essentially, and that should be somewhere between is
Speaker 1: what's considered basically normal um, anything below ninety four, you
Speaker 1: start to kind of get concerned. And they the nurse
Speaker 1: took it and it was low. But the thing is
Speaker 1: they were totally fine. They were not complaining of shortness
Speaker 1: of breath. So I was like, oh, you know, can
Speaker 1: we trust this pulse socks. I don't know. We just
Speaker 1: we didn't know at the time. We had no idea
Speaker 1: about the happy hypoxia. But at the time that my
Speaker 1: mom started breathing at forty breaths per minute, she was
Speaker 1: also like paying bills, like she was like, I feel fine.
Speaker 1: She was fighting being intubated and ventilated. She was starting
Speaker 1: rumors about her own release. She was she was a
Speaker 1: troublemaker the whole time she was in the hospital, Like, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm going home tomorrow. Like you're breathing it forty times
Speaker 1: a minute. Yeah, this is serious. Yeah, the pulse socks,
Speaker 1: it's like forty dollars, and it is apparently the best
Speaker 1: way from home, like just as as much as your
Speaker 1: temperature to know if it's time to go to the hospital. Yeah. Absolutely,
Speaker 1: So I would definitely recommend everybody having a pulse sox. Yep,
Speaker 1: you can get it usually, like even in like grocery
Speaker 1: stores will often have it in like their drug store section.
Speaker 1: Um Amazon, I think a lot of them are sold.
Speaker 1: I don't know, but they're starting to come back, or
Speaker 1: they may just take a little longer to get to you.
Speaker 1: But if you can find a pulse ox, I would
Speaker 1: strongly recommend it. But that's where she wasn't happy hypoxy
Speaker 1: make anymore because she was breathing at forty breasts per minute,
Speaker 1: which is not sustainable. Do we have any theories on
Speaker 1: how you're having the hypoxy and not having any physical
Speaker 1: or are people having cognitive symptoms because usually with hypoxy
Speaker 1: you're you're you're cognitive functioning suffers. But like, is it
Speaker 1: how is it such a I guess invisible condition. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it's easy. I actually I'm not really sure if we
Speaker 1: know the mechanism, and and it's very rare. Apparently it
Speaker 1: does happen rarely in other diseases. But I mean, this
Speaker 1: is what was so shocking, because I was like, there's
Speaker 1: no way that you know, my dad could have a
Speaker 1: pulse ox of eighty seven and be you know, not
Speaker 1: complaining of shortness of breath or not having any coughing
Speaker 1: or breathing difficulty or cognitive impairment or anything else like that.
Speaker 1: When you talk about cognitive impairment and COVID, I mean,
Speaker 1: so we know now that COVID can cause all kinds
Speaker 1: of weird clotting abnormality. Is so strokes or sudden strokes
Speaker 1: are certainly one of the things that they see as well.
Speaker 1: But thank god that didn't that didn't happen in my parents.
Speaker 1: But I don't think we really know the mechanism by
Speaker 1: which and I'm not sure, I mean, I could be wrong,
Speaker 1: but why people have such low blood oxygen levels but
Speaker 1: um feel just fine or breathe at a normal breathing rate.
Speaker 1: And that's the happy hype poxia where they look totally normal.
Speaker 1: They feel fine in the moment, but then that can
Speaker 1: lead to a sudden crisis. So it's not not that
Speaker 1: like you can continue functioning with hypoxy and be okay,
Speaker 1: like you will eventually have a crisis where you need
Speaker 1: to be hospitals. Yes, I think what they find also
Speaker 1: the happy hypoxi, is that they mostly are able to
Speaker 1: breathe through like other areas of their lungs that are
Speaker 1: not affected. But but we but that's we don't really
Speaker 1: know why. So yes, and then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: you can have what's called the cytokine storm. Cytokines are
Speaker 1: inflammatory mediators that are part of your immune system. But
Speaker 1: what happens is when you have this massive inflammatory response
Speaker 1: is actually your body's response to the virus rather than
Speaker 1: the virus itself at that point, that is causing all
Speaker 1: that harm um to your lungs and causing this bilateral
Speaker 1: pneumonia and just like fluid and pus and infection um
Speaker 1: and inflammation to fill up your lungs and then lungs
Speaker 1: become fibrotic, which a bus bay basically like scar tissue. UM.
Speaker 1: So it's really hard to breathe through. So my dad
Speaker 1: was on the ventilator for twenty days, so he was
Speaker 1: actually intubated all twenty days, which is highly highly unusual.
Speaker 1: My mom was on the ventilator for nine days. It
Speaker 1: was the most excruciating time of my life for sure.
Speaker 1: I just all of a sudden felt like I had
Speaker 1: no parents and I mean they run a business together,
Speaker 1: and um, yeah, it was was really excruciating. But what
Speaker 1: Lisa did and what she mobilized with her network of
Speaker 1: friends and doctors that are experts, but like you know,
Speaker 1: she knew everything about the vet or learned everything about
Speaker 1: the ventilator from a veterinarian, and like, you know, there
Speaker 1: was she she just remained a step ahead of the
Speaker 1: doctors and was staying on top of them in a
Speaker 1: way that like, you know, for me, it was just
Speaker 1: nothing but a powerless situation. And um, she had the
Speaker 1: ability to talk to them, you know, in the language
Speaker 1: of medicine. That um, I mean, part of it was
Speaker 1: probably driving herself crazy because she knew so much about it,
Speaker 1: but like it was, it was able to make recommendations
Speaker 1: and to really know where they were at all times.
Speaker 1: That like, it just made me feel all the more
Speaker 1: for people whose families in this situation and doesn't have
Speaker 1: that resource, you know. And I actually had a friend,
Speaker 1: I actually had a friend who's who lost his father
Speaker 1: to it. But like Lisa was amazing in shepherding them
Speaker 1: through the process. Also, yeah, I think that's one of
Speaker 1: the scary things about this is that because it's not
Speaker 1: we don't fully understand it, it's you kind of have
Speaker 1: to be your own advocate if you're someone you love
Speaker 1: is showing symptoms of it, because especially in areas where
Speaker 1: hospitals are overwhelmed you may not get attention right away
Speaker 1: because like there's this effort to like, Okay, we need
Speaker 1: to kind of triage like who you know, we're we're
Speaker 1: giving aid to so, and like unless you really know
Speaker 1: like what is happening, it's hard to necessarily say like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: you know I have I have hypoxia, but the walking
Speaker 1: kind of hypoxia, Like you're not You're not going to
Speaker 1: know that as someone who who has it directly. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's really or to be in this situation because it
Speaker 1: happens so because the crisis happens so quickly, which is
Speaker 1: I think was the difference between I mean, I guess
Speaker 1: my mom was always a little bit more stable than
Speaker 1: my dad, and for some reason they're finding it affects
Speaker 1: men more than women. But um, but my mom was
Speaker 1: in the place where they said, you know, okay, it's
Speaker 1: time to intbate you. Let's do this before it gets
Speaker 1: to be an ultimate crisis, Like you're in crisis now.
Speaker 1: You cannot disdain like this, but let's in debate and
Speaker 1: ventilate you before becomes an absolute crisis. And so that's
Speaker 1: why you know, she was on the ventilator for nine
Speaker 1: days and he was on for twenty and for being
Speaker 1: as unlucky as humanly possible that both of her parents
Speaker 1: were on the ventilator. It is miraculous that they both
Speaker 1: got off, you know, knowing what we know and what
Speaker 1: the survivability rates are, it's it's really crazy. So so
Speaker 1: thank god. Right now, my mom is my mom. I
Speaker 1: picked her up from the hospital and she came home
Speaker 1: and she recovered. Um, she's pretty. She's recovering still, but
Speaker 1: she's I'm pretty recovering pretty uneventfully. She had like a
Speaker 1: little bit of mild vertigo, but um, you know, it
Speaker 1: took a while. She's still a little tired, but she's
Speaker 1: doing all the right things. She's eating, she's sleeping, she's
Speaker 1: playing cards online now with her friends. That's the other
Speaker 1: question is a lot of people ask me how I
Speaker 1: thought that they got it, um, and we're pretty confident
Speaker 1: that they got it from playing cards in their community.
Speaker 1: Somebody that she played cards with did test positive. Which
Speaker 1: is why I can't emphasize how important testing is, because
Speaker 1: if I knew that she had been playing cards with
Speaker 1: somebody would test it positive, but would have sent her
Speaker 1: to the hospital a lot sooner. And that day that
Speaker 1: she came into contact with it. I very strangely wound
Speaker 1: up here. I was doing shows down here in Miami,
Speaker 1: and against Lisa's doctor's orders, her mom snuck a Jewish
Speaker 1: mom kiss in on my head the day that she
Speaker 1: contracted it. So I literally said to them, I was like,
Speaker 1: you guys, I was. I was mad at Richie for coming,
Speaker 1: and I was like, you guys, stay away from each other.
Speaker 1: Don't touch each other, like really, And so I couldn't
Speaker 1: kick said, your mom kissed me on the head. And
Speaker 1: she said it to me too, She was like, I
Speaker 1: kissed Richie on the head. I was like, okay, whatever.
Speaker 1: So but he didn't get infected. And that's also the
Speaker 1: other incredible thing is or he's this asymptomatic carrier. We
Speaker 1: will we don't know right now. But so my mom's home,
Speaker 1: my dad. After forty days in the hospital, Um was
Speaker 1: transferred to a really intense rehab where he's learning to
Speaker 1: walk again. And yeah, he had a stomach. And I
Speaker 1: think that's something that people may not realize is it's
Speaker 1: not something it's not and I hate to put it
Speaker 1: this way, but it's like it's not a binary where
Speaker 1: you live or you die. Um totally, and because I
Speaker 1: think that it when you don't, when you don't see like,
Speaker 1: this is something that not only is the recovery and
Speaker 1: I'm so sorry that your dad is going through this
Speaker 1: and that your mom had to go through this, but
Speaker 1: the recovery can be very long, very difficult, and it's
Speaker 1: not it's it's it can also have like these really
Speaker 1: long term effects for some people. So it's not something
Speaker 1: where it's like, oh, well, only occasionally you either survive
Speaker 1: or or you die, and then it's only very rare
Speaker 1: that someone um dies from It's like, well no, you know,
Speaker 1: first of all, people are dying from it. But also
Speaker 1: if you survive, that's not that's not like a walk
Speaker 1: in the park, that is it. That can be extremely difficult,
Speaker 1: yeaciating and really hard. Yeah, I mean we were. I
Speaker 1: was always told, like, you know, your dad's going to rehab.
Speaker 1: Now the hard part starts, you know, So I mean,
Speaker 1: I'm I'm happy to so basically like he couldn't he
Speaker 1: couldn't pee on his own because when you have a
Speaker 1: year nary catheter in and you get so weak. He
Speaker 1: was a hundred and thirteen pounds. I mean, he lost
Speaker 1: so much weight from being so critical, and so the
Speaker 1: urinary capeter and when you're when that happens, your bladder
Speaker 1: just sort of goes to sleep and it's like, Okay,
Speaker 1: I don't need to work on my own. Plus all
Speaker 1: the weakness and the decimation. So for a month, over
Speaker 1: a month probably he couldn't urinate on his own. So
Speaker 1: he had an indwelling catheter like a catheter that just
Speaker 1: stayed put. And then when they tried to remove that,
Speaker 1: he couldn't urinate on his own. And so he was
Speaker 1: being he had a urinary catheter. For every four hours
Speaker 1: he had to be catheterized. So I mean, just disrupts
Speaker 1: your sleep cycle, your healing cycle. So every four hours
Speaker 1: he was being catheterized. Now he's being on his own,
Speaker 1: which is amazing, which were so happy about. Um. But
Speaker 1: he also had a great three bedsore, which is like excruciating.
Speaker 1: And then you have he couldn't move himself, so he
Speaker 1: had to be turned every two hours. Now he can
Speaker 1: move himself, thank god, and his bedsore is healing, um,
Speaker 1: just miraculously quickly. Um. And then um, you know he
Speaker 1: was golfing the bet he wasn't. He was a very
Speaker 1: active guy. He was golfing the best golf games of
Speaker 1: his life. And now he can't write. He can bear.
Speaker 1: He mean, he just took a hundred steps for the
Speaker 1: first time, you know, on his own. So it's definitely
Speaker 1: gonna be life changing. But you know, nothing is he's
Speaker 1: had multiple ct s m R. I think, God, he
Speaker 1: hasn't had any strokes or any of those bascular anomalies
Speaker 1: or anything else like that. He is a complete He
Speaker 1: turned seventy three years old. Um, like a couple of
Speaker 1: days after he was discharged to rehab, which was amazing. UM.
Speaker 1: If I could put in a very shameless plug that
Speaker 1: if anybody is in the mood for a good happy
Speaker 1: cry um. Just so coincidentally, we happened to be recording
Speaker 1: and uh talking about it for the first time on
Speaker 1: our podcast about because there was like two weeks where
Speaker 1: they were they were vented and we just weren't talking
Speaker 1: about it. So probably not our best podcast, but U
Speaker 1: And during this episode with marking our Territory, her mom
Speaker 1: called and Lisa was able to able to talk to
Speaker 1: her for the first time in like ten days. She
Speaker 1: was a debated. She actually called in the middle of
Speaker 1: the podect she got off the vent and I mean
Speaker 1: that was a moment just happened to catch that on. Yeah,
Speaker 1: like you don't know if you're getting I mean I would,
Speaker 1: I would definitely cry if I listened to that, and
Speaker 1: I have I'm happy to send anybody the videos. So
Speaker 1: I took a video and my dad because you know,
Speaker 1: we couldn't see him either, I couldn't be there or
Speaker 1: see him. No, that's one of the worst parts. I mean,
Speaker 1: like I don't want to say it's the worst part,
Speaker 1: because everything is the worst part. Everything is the worst,
Speaker 1: but it is just such a it's like such an
Speaker 1: awful thing that you can't you can't be with them
Speaker 1: because it is a virus. And yeah, you yeah, I
Speaker 1: just I knew if right, and I knew that as
Speaker 1: hard as it was that if I went there and
Speaker 1: I got infected, who would advocate? Who would do all
Speaker 1: the things that I was doing and making sure that
Speaker 1: you know, all of that was happening. Um, yeah, I
Speaker 1: think it's important. And it's not not just to like
Speaker 1: I don't want to just like scare people or terrify people,
Speaker 1: but like maybe be a little bit just a little
Speaker 1: more awareness that this is still going on and it's
Speaker 1: the virus didn't just like get bored and go away
Speaker 1: like after, you know, because we don't have we we
Speaker 1: have like there there's been some progress made on more ppe,
Speaker 1: like some progress made on increasing hospital capacity, but there's
Speaker 1: we have really kind of wasted a lot of time,
Speaker 1: not like we haven't really gotten like contact tracing down.
Speaker 1: We don't have uh that, Like, we haven't really improved
Speaker 1: therapies that much, like treatments that much, and we certainly
Speaker 1: are not close to a vaccine yet, like that is
Speaker 1: going to take until at least, so it's I think, yeah,
Speaker 1: it is. I am concerned that I totally understand the
Speaker 1: fatigue I'm feeling it. I miss people so much right now.
Speaker 1: I like I want nothing more than to see my
Speaker 1: friends and family and hug them. But it it's still
Speaker 1: impacting people, it is, you know, like and like think
Speaker 1: about you know, I'm so sorry that you guys have
Speaker 1: had to go through this, but I'm so happy to
Speaker 1: hear that your parents are recovering. But yeah, thank god,
Speaker 1: Like your parents had access to ventilators. And that went
Speaker 1: through my mind when we were when the doctor was saying, like,
Speaker 1: let's get her on a ventilator, was like, oh, well,
Speaker 1: if we don't do it today, then we might she
Speaker 1: might not have one tomorrow, because that was another thing
Speaker 1: like that's so it was so unbelievably scary. Um. So yeah,
Speaker 1: it's still very real, and we still have absolutely no
Speaker 1: good solutions to treatment, to tracking, to um vaccines to tracing.
Speaker 1: I mean we have We're really, I think, in no
Speaker 1: better position than we were a month. Not much, not really.
Speaker 1: It's just abstract until it's on your doorstep. Yeah, And
Speaker 1: I think it's important to hear that. It's important to
Speaker 1: hear these stories because when you go outside, just wear
Speaker 1: a mask. It's such a simple thing to do, and
Speaker 1: it protects other people. It's not a replacement for social distancing,
Speaker 1: but certainly it helps. I feel like your listeners are
Speaker 1: pretty smart and might be telling that is there anyway
Speaker 1: we can hijack like Alex Jones's feed and get this
Speaker 1: message out there. I think my listeners are a really
Speaker 1: wonderful bunch, So I hope I don't come across as
Speaker 1: like I'm lecturing you guys, but I think like it
Speaker 1: is good for those of you out there who are
Speaker 1: like talking to people and trying to get people, you know,
Speaker 1: to understand, like if you want to share this story,
Speaker 1: it's like so that you have like, look, this is
Speaker 1: what is happening. It's not abstract. Another thing I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about is there's a lot of confusion and
Speaker 1: misinformation about coronavirus and pets and animals. And Lisa, you
Speaker 1: are not only a veterinary but you you have you
Speaker 1: actually studied viruses, right, actually studied coronavirus and veterinary school.
Speaker 1: I my my research in veterinary school was coronavirus as
Speaker 1: sorry was avian coronavirus as a model for stars and
Speaker 1: people and stars is also another one of those corona
Speaker 1: respiratory coronaviruses and people that we had that outbreak of.
Speaker 1: I think though that affected like I mean not even
Speaker 1: was it eight thousand people? Eight hundred people? And it
Speaker 1: was eight hundred people actually, um, and now we've just
Speaker 1: infected over over a hundred thousands have died from coronavirus
Speaker 1: as of you know, yesterday. So um. Yeah. So So
Speaker 1: that was my research was all about coronaviruses and and
Speaker 1: every species has their own UM and it can manifest
Speaker 1: differently in avians or birds. With what I was working with,
Speaker 1: it was a respiratory virus, which is why we used
Speaker 1: it as a model for stars and people and cats.
Speaker 1: Coronavirus can mutate and turn into actually another pretty deadly
Speaker 1: like g I or systemic disease UM and in dogs
Speaker 1: also it can be like a mild g I or
Speaker 1: respiratory disease as well, but usually it's mild and we
Speaker 1: don't even worry about it. So and you know, coronavirus
Speaker 1: is also responsible for most of the colds that we have.
Speaker 1: There's just so many different versions of it, so um,
Speaker 1: each coronavirus is almost like a different virus. Really, I
Speaker 1: have a question that I never thought of. Has there
Speaker 1: ever been like an epidemic that specifically hit like dogs
Speaker 1: and cats and um, there there are usually we tend
Speaker 1: to think about that in terms of like our production animals,
Speaker 1: so food animals, so um, there are like food animal
Speaker 1: viruses that can spread throughout. So one of the concerns,
Speaker 1: one of the big concerns actually is that pigs um
Speaker 1: have the same receptors that we do, these ACE two receptors,
Speaker 1: which I think we're going to get there probably um,
Speaker 1: but but pigs, if pigs were to get infected with
Speaker 1: the stars O V to the coronavirus, the COVID nineteen
Speaker 1: that we're seeing now, that would be devastating economically and
Speaker 1: obviously to our food chain supply, and those would be
Speaker 1: are the most devastating types of viruses. But yeah, there
Speaker 1: are so just so just so people know. So like
Speaker 1: when you have for a lot of viruses, the reason
Speaker 1: of virus isn't just like universal. So like a virus
Speaker 1: that a uh, say, like a deer can get isn't
Speaker 1: necessarily one that a human can get. Is because viruses
Speaker 1: have these surface proteins that bind to surface receptors on
Speaker 1: your cells, and that basically is like a key that
Speaker 1: gets them access to your cell. So like sometimes the
Speaker 1: virus surface receptors can mutate to be able to fit
Speaker 1: onto surface receptors of a different species of animal. But
Speaker 1: in this case, we actually share the same receptors right
Speaker 1: with the and it's called the ACE receptor right yea,
Speaker 1: the ACE too receptor yep, So we have basically we
Speaker 1: have the same shape lock on the surface of ourselves.
Speaker 1: In this like the specific surface receptor the stars cove
Speaker 1: two is not new, it's evolved, it's um it's been
Speaker 1: Like I said, bats and pengulins, and then you have
Speaker 1: this what's called spill over, which is where the virus
Speaker 1: mutates from them where they may not necessarily even become
Speaker 1: sick from it, and then UM infects us and UM
Speaker 1: and that happens again because of the that like lock
Speaker 1: and key combo that you were talking about. UM. But so, yeah,
Speaker 1: the bottom line is where nobody is really sure still
Speaker 1: where I mean, some people had theorized it was from
Speaker 1: the meat markets in China. Obviously we know what originated there,
Speaker 1: but because pegulin is such a delicacy in China, that's
Speaker 1: that was one thought. So we do know that this
Speaker 1: version of coronavirus can go from a human to a feeline.
Speaker 1: So we know that the tiger is the bronx zoo
Speaker 1: got it from a zookeeper that actually had coronavirus, and
Speaker 1: where there's evidence that also like house cats can get it.
Speaker 1: So and that in this case it's not that the
Speaker 1: virus is necessarily mutating to be able to infect the cats.
Speaker 1: It's that we share the same receptor, right yep. So
Speaker 1: we've we've known since you know, we've known for a
Speaker 1: little while that cats, ferrets or minx, which are part
Speaker 1: of the same family UM. Pigs and non human primates
Speaker 1: have a high density of these ACE two receptors UM
Speaker 1: and so, but there have been reports of dogs being
Speaker 1: infected as well, but cats especially and ferrets and pigs
Speaker 1: are the ones who are definitely the most concerned about
Speaker 1: having the same receptors where UM. These viruses will attach
Speaker 1: their little surface proteins to the cells of the ACE
Speaker 1: two membrane and then inject their genetic material, which is
Speaker 1: I mean basically all viruses are are their little parasitic
Speaker 1: packages of DNA or RNA. UM coronavirus happens to be
Speaker 1: an RNA. The problem with the RNA virus is that
Speaker 1: it they're constantly mutating and changing or making mistakes in
Speaker 1: their their their sequence and so that's what makes it
Speaker 1: so hard to actually make a vaccine against UM. But anyway,
Speaker 1: so what happens is, yeah, they attached to these A
Speaker 1: S two receptors and then UM they inject their DNA
Speaker 1: or their RNA, their little genetic material and then tells
Speaker 1: the cell to make more virus. And that's where you
Speaker 1: get replication, and that's where you become emphecticist, and that's
Speaker 1: where you get disease. So yeah, so those animals for sure,
Speaker 1: we've been concerned about. Although even a few dogs we
Speaker 1: know have the A S two receptors but lower level
Speaker 1: have been infected as well. So right, So, And it's
Speaker 1: just it's kind of like a game of chance where
Speaker 1: if you have a bunch of AASE receptors, you're more
Speaker 1: likely to get the virus because it has basically it's
Speaker 1: like this little this little thing that has like a
Speaker 1: little key and it's trying all the locks, and like
Speaker 1: if you have a bunch of the locks as compatible
Speaker 1: with this the proteins that are on the on the virus,
Speaker 1: then you're more likely to get infectation. You two are
Speaker 1: doing a great job of describing this, because so far
Speaker 1: I'm following and I got nothing. I'm your for Coronavirus
Speaker 1: for Dummies. Keep it up. Can we write that book
Speaker 1: by the time Coronavirus for Dummies? Yeah, that book? But yeah,
Speaker 1: I think And then a natural question that I think
Speaker 1: a lot of people have is, well, then I could
Speaker 1: get coronavirus from like a cat. And I think this
Speaker 1: is a question that deserves a lot of nuance because
Speaker 1: I certainly don't want people to panic and like get
Speaker 1: rid of their cat. I don't think. I don't think
Speaker 1: any of my listeners would do that. I think all
Speaker 1: of my listeners are like I write or die with
Speaker 1: my cat. But you know, I think that there is.
Speaker 1: It's one of those things where we want to understand.
Speaker 1: We want to understand it fully so that we can
Speaker 1: be careful and cautious, but not given to like panic
Speaker 1: and fear. The CDC has been saying for a really
Speaker 1: long time that there has been no evidence of animal
Speaker 1: to human transition UM. There have been since very recently,
Speaker 1: very questionable reports of mink farms farmers getting it from
Speaker 1: minx on their farm in Netherland. Now, again, like I said,
Speaker 1: these are questionable reports, it's really hard to know what
Speaker 1: you have to Yeah, mink farmers, Yeah, you do have
Speaker 1: to sequence the virus from the animal and the human
Speaker 1: and see if it's like the same exact sequence. It's
Speaker 1: really hard to know to say if that's actually what
Speaker 1: happened or not. That's the only reports I've seen of
Speaker 1: potential human to animal transition trans transmission UM. But even
Speaker 1: though the CDC says that there is no UM evidence
Speaker 1: of that happening, doesn't mean that it can't happen. So
Speaker 1: far though we haven't seen it. UM. But one of
Speaker 1: the biggest things is and where I don't we don't
Speaker 1: want people to panic is obviously like it's been a
Speaker 1: very popular time for people to be adopting animals because
Speaker 1: we're home and they're foster and they're adopting UM. And
Speaker 1: the best guidance I think I can give is there's
Speaker 1: a blog I really love called Worms and Germs Blog UM.
Speaker 1: It's by a public health veterinarian in Canada, and UM
Speaker 1: he did a whole post about this actually where he said,
Speaker 1: you know, should I He's getting the same questions people saying,
Speaker 1: should I be nervous about adopting cats, you know from
Speaker 1: uh from a shelter, And the answer is he wasn't
Speaker 1: worried about it. He actually just got himself a kitten
Speaker 1: from a shelter. UM. And so the risk is extremely,
Speaker 1: extremely extremely low. There's never no risk. Again, there's been
Speaker 1: no case reports that I am aware of today, and
Speaker 1: things always change, but as of today, there are no
Speaker 1: case reports that I am aware of that say that
Speaker 1: cats or dogs have transmitted it to humans. UM. You know,
Speaker 1: it's really just about using good hygiene and UM. As
Speaker 1: long as the shelter or wherever you get your pet from,
Speaker 1: is using good hygiene, washing hands, making sure that they
Speaker 1: don't kiss you, especially if you feel sick. The people
Speaker 1: who work at the vet kissing you or the cat
Speaker 1: kissing you, um, well both. I mean you don't want
Speaker 1: like mouth to mouth contacent because the rest, because the
Speaker 1: virus is spread through respiratory secretions, if they're going to
Speaker 1: get it, that's how they're gonna So that's like, for example,
Speaker 1: what Richie was referring to when we when I got
Speaker 1: my mother out of the hospital, we still quarantined her
Speaker 1: for we isolated from her for two weeks. I would
Speaker 1: just bring her meals in like a mask and gloves. Um.
Speaker 1: But I knew, even though there was and at the
Speaker 1: time even less evidence that dogs could get it, I
Speaker 1: knew that, Like I didn't want Chloe licking my mom.
Speaker 1: If she saw my mom should probably lick her and
Speaker 1: then she'd lick my face. And if that's if there's
Speaker 1: gonna be any transmission there, even though it's so low level,
Speaker 1: I just didn't why take that chance. So as long
Speaker 1: as the shelter is using proper hygiene and precautions, kind
Speaker 1: of just like at the grocery store. Then the level
Speaker 1: the transmission is so so so low, And if Dr
Speaker 1: Scott Weis can do it, certainly anybody can do it.
Speaker 1: So definitely reading his blog is a great take on that,
Speaker 1: and so up to dating conversation also, Um so yeah,
Speaker 1: so the risk is so so so low. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: that's good news for everyone considering adopting an animal, I think.
Speaker 1: But yeah, I mean, just like I guess, use common
Speaker 1: sense in the same way that you when you go
Speaker 1: get groceries, like you're exposing yourself to a new environment,
Speaker 1: which means like an environment that could have had contact
Speaker 1: with the virus. And then just use you know, like
Speaker 1: kind of I don't mean don't spray your cat down
Speaker 1: with like alcohol or anything hand sanitizer, but yeah, I
Speaker 1: mean maybe like one thing you could do is just
Speaker 1: maybe don't give your new pet like mouth kisses for
Speaker 1: the first like week or two. Yeah, absolutely, yeah, and
Speaker 1: just make sure that before and after you have you
Speaker 1: have contact with them, you just wash your hands and
Speaker 1: use good hygiene and and um that should be it.
Speaker 1: And you know what, if instant carts started living delivering cats,
Speaker 1: also instat cats, I'll set them up. You knock them down.
Speaker 1: Come on, just getting kittens sight unseen dropped all of
Speaker 1: your door. I guess the related question would be, so,
Speaker 1: if you're already a pet owner, how can you protect
Speaker 1: your pets and yourself from coronavirus? So, like, I have
Speaker 1: a dog, and how I've been thinking about it is
Speaker 1: my dog is like another roommate who makes me scratch
Speaker 1: your butt? Yeah, totally. I I mean I think looking
Speaker 1: at them as another roommate is an incredible way to
Speaker 1: do it because you're the same rules apply as socially distancing,
Speaker 1: So you know, not letting your pets right now if
Speaker 1: you if you don't know that the other pet is
Speaker 1: healthy or that they live in a healthy household. Just
Speaker 1: social distancing six ft from other people and other pets
Speaker 1: and making sure you wash your hands before and after
Speaker 1: you touch them, you know, not letting random pets kiss
Speaker 1: your face or kiss your your pet. And then the
Speaker 1: other thing you can do is also um, you can
Speaker 1: wipe them down just like with a wet cloth or
Speaker 1: there are like doggie wipes. So don't use hand don't
Speaker 1: use hand sanitizer. Hand sanitizer probably what my hand sanitizers
Speaker 1: mostly alcohol like probably one you know it won't kill
Speaker 1: a pet. But obviously no, no skinner wipes. No, yeah, skinners,
Speaker 1: it's not what you want to do. And obviously we
Speaker 1: have to keep them clean on because they look there.
Speaker 1: They look their fur too, so anything you put on
Speaker 1: their fur, they're probably getting there. Definitely not what I
Speaker 1: would recommend it all for sure, but um, they coronavirus
Speaker 1: is very The one good thing about coronasavirus is it
Speaker 1: actually is pretty easy to kill in the environment. It
Speaker 1: has this lipid layer that is affected by That's why
Speaker 1: alcohol works. It breaks up its lipid layer and and
Speaker 1: and put polkes holes, right, yeah, and so so that's
Speaker 1: what I was gonna say. So soap even like dawn
Speaker 1: dish to churgent is great, like I would you what
Speaker 1: you can do? I mean, john is very safe. We
Speaker 1: use it a lot in like enemas even like um
Speaker 1: it's a barrier every time don gets mentioned in our household.
Speaker 1: Do you think of it as an enema? You you're
Speaker 1: just doing dishes and she's like, you know that's used
Speaker 1: in enemas, right, so like so, so not that you
Speaker 1: need to do what I do, think, um, but like
Speaker 1: Chloe rolls in like goose poop, every once in a while,
Speaker 1: and if I can't, if I don't have time to
Speaker 1: get her in a bath, I will take like some
Speaker 1: wet paper towel and and wet it down with some
Speaker 1: Don dish detergent and just like wipe her fur down
Speaker 1: and just wipe her down because it's so safe. And
Speaker 1: if it little stays on there, that's just fine. But yeah,
Speaker 1: you kind of like it up, then you water it
Speaker 1: down with a little bit of water, right, yeah, oh
Speaker 1: totally yeah, yeah, And that's because of the poop, not coronavirus.
Speaker 1: One of one of the record. We don't think there's
Speaker 1: virus on the poop. A vetinarian I knew, actually a
Speaker 1: mobile a house call vetinarian I knew actually was making
Speaker 1: um like packs because she couldn't find hand sanitizer. She
Speaker 1: was actually creating these little hands I mean essentially hand
Speaker 1: sanitizing cocks with in a zip block bag. She take
Speaker 1: like sweares of wet paper towel and put in like
Speaker 1: a little Dawn dish detergent, and then in between whatever
Speaker 1: she needed when she felt like she needed to clean
Speaker 1: her hands, she would walk white with the Don dish detergent.
Speaker 1: So yeah, it's a it's a really it is really
Speaker 1: susceptible to detergents and um and so so it's another
Speaker 1: yeah really great again ye yeah, so that is safe
Speaker 1: if you do want to give your pets a path,
Speaker 1: But any bath, any anything should just wiping them down
Speaker 1: should help. So the general is just everybody has made
Speaker 1: out of poison, so touch anybody, yeah danger. So yeah,
Speaker 1: we were just talking about staying safe from coronavirus and
Speaker 1: how we can stay safe, how we can keep our
Speaker 1: pets safe and like keep everybody safe, but also just
Speaker 1: like how to because during lockdown, it's not just necessarily
Speaker 1: coronavirus that we have to worry about. It's the change
Speaker 1: to our lives and our pets lives and how it's
Speaker 1: affecting us mentally and physically. So I wanted to ask
Speaker 1: you a few questions Lisa, as a vet about what
Speaker 1: this means for caring for our pets. So I think
Speaker 1: one thing that people may be wondering is like can
Speaker 1: I still take my pet to the vets? So, like,
Speaker 1: under what circumstances should I go take my pet to
Speaker 1: the vet? Can I still do it? And what is
Speaker 1: your advice as a veterinarian? Yeah, That's a really good
Speaker 1: question as far as specifically going to the veterinarians. So
Speaker 1: know that your veterinarians protocols have probably changed. Um. Most
Speaker 1: veterinarians that I know are now taking pets outside of
Speaker 1: the building, not allowing out owners to come in, just
Speaker 1: like a human hospital. UM, So they take their pet
Speaker 1: from outside the door. You fill out of form, or
Speaker 1: you do a triage, or you call ahead and see
Speaker 1: what your veterinarians protocols are. Usually a technician will take
Speaker 1: the animal inside and then a veterinarian will call you
Speaker 1: or FaceTime you while they're with your pets, so you
Speaker 1: can still be a part of the exam and everything
Speaker 1: and know what's going on and stuff like that. Obviously,
Speaker 1: you don't want to go for just anything right now,
Speaker 1: you know. I I am an advocate of like you know,
Speaker 1: if it's something that can be put off, it may
Speaker 1: be worth putting off. There are a lot of telehealth
Speaker 1: services that are popping up now. I'm actually doing telehealth
Speaker 1: myself UM on my website vets in the city dot com.
Speaker 1: So I've got to I've got to tell a health
Speaker 1: service where people want to know is this an emergency?
Speaker 1: Is this not an emergency, and that's really, um the
Speaker 1: biggest thing, UM that that people want to know right now,
Speaker 1: especially in a time where they may not want to
Speaker 1: leave their house. Call first and find out and I
Speaker 1: will tell You'll tell you whether you need to come in.
Speaker 1: Most veterinarians that I know are so unbelievably busy. They're
Speaker 1: totally and sung heroes. Obviously I'm not doing it. I'm
Speaker 1: here taking care of my parents, but they are completely
Speaker 1: unsung heroes to me because just just at home taking
Speaker 1: care of your really, that's all. I will help you
Speaker 1: triage though. But um, but they're so busy right now
Speaker 1: because so number one, so many people are getting pets
Speaker 1: and then they're just home all day staring at them.
Speaker 1: So I think that you know, they see things and
Speaker 1: they're able to catch things. And but yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: there is some there is some phenomenon happening now because
Speaker 1: I cannot tell you how busy all of my friends
Speaker 1: are in vetinary practices. So it's always good to call
Speaker 1: ahead and see what your particular veterinarians protocol is, UM
Speaker 1: and how that will be. But veterinarians are certainly considered
Speaker 1: essential workers and they are open now and um and working,
Speaker 1: so you can't take as an example, cookie ate a
Speaker 1: muffin wrapper that was made out of paper, and I
Speaker 1: panicked for like fifteen minutes, and then I checked out, Okay,
Speaker 1: is this actually an emergency? Do I have to take
Speaker 1: her in? And it turns out, as long as they
Speaker 1: are eating and pooping normally, paper is generally not too
Speaker 1: much of a problem. So yeah, but that's where you
Speaker 1: could have come to me too and said, you know,
Speaker 1: I would have said, like, yeah, as long as she's
Speaker 1: not vomiting and she continues usually probably the paper she
Speaker 1: would digest, And I I did ask you. I asked
Speaker 1: you because like I happened to be that was when
Speaker 1: we were recording the podcast, and I was like, like,
Speaker 1: this is okay, right, and I have a free consultation
Speaker 1: because any time for you, Katie. That's also one of
Speaker 1: those questions that Lisa will just refer to me on occasion,
Speaker 1: just to see if I've been paying attention to her
Speaker 1: for the last five and a half years. But our
Speaker 1: podcast was born out of comedians calling me to ask
Speaker 1: Lisa stupid questions of like so I think I had
Speaker 1: three weed gummy bears and I can only find one Lisa,
Speaker 1: So you're you're the fixer for people who need embarrassing
Speaker 1: pet Yeah. Yeah, and then we just put them on
Speaker 1: the air instead. So another question I have this is
Speaker 1: actually for both of you, is right now, it's like
Speaker 1: not only us that needs more stimulation, it's our dogs
Speaker 1: and cats, right because we can't take our dogs to
Speaker 1: the dog park. We you know, there's a lot less
Speaker 1: social interaction with the dogs in their home with us
Speaker 1: a lot of the time. So like, what what are
Speaker 1: you guys doing to keep Chloe entertained and like to
Speaker 1: keep yourselves entertained as well. Yeah, that's a really good question.
Speaker 1: So one of the things that I actually did do,
Speaker 1: which nobody loved because I spent too much money on it,
Speaker 1: But I'm obsessed with her weight and a lot of
Speaker 1: people talk about like the COVID nineteen you know, whatever
Speaker 1: you want to call it, um And that's true for
Speaker 1: pets because it is hard to stimulate them, and it's
Speaker 1: so important that they're stimulated both mentally and physically, especially
Speaker 1: because like she's not seeing her doggy friends now and stuff.
Speaker 1: So I actually bought her scale off Amazon because she's
Speaker 1: for most dogs, for small dogs like Cookie, you can
Speaker 1: just pick up. You can get onto a human scale,
Speaker 1: you can hold her, get off way yourself and subtract.
Speaker 1: I find that actually, so she's a seventy two point
Speaker 1: eight pound dog is like really long and really difficult
Speaker 1: to pick up. So for her that was just not
Speaker 1: an option. I needed like a large dog scale. For
Speaker 1: most dogs, that's not the case. Most dogs will like
Speaker 1: tolerate being picked up. But I don't know what was
Speaker 1: the what was the final verdict? Did she gain weight
Speaker 1: or Okay, No, she's been doing great. So you bought
Speaker 1: one scale for a dog that didn't gain any weight. No,
Speaker 1: but I need it for the rest of her life.
Speaker 1: I'm very obsessed with weighing her. What if you got
Speaker 1: like a you could get a harness and then like
Speaker 1: a luggage scale and then like hover her off the ground. Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was thinking to take her to the grocery store
Speaker 1: and put her in the produce in one of those
Speaker 1: little baskets. Yeah, she would be cute there. But I
Speaker 1: think with Chloe in particular, us being home all the
Speaker 1: time means she's awake, wait more than she's used to,
Speaker 1: and that in itself is kind of a form of stimulation. Um.
Speaker 1: But since we Thank God are out of the city
Speaker 1: and in the burbs. Like we're just doing like short
Speaker 1: bursts and like getting her to sprint a little bit.
Speaker 1: That's uh, well, we're lucky we have a like a
Speaker 1: backyard area and that she is really good off leash.
Speaker 1: So we've been running around with her in the backyard
Speaker 1: and then going for walks as well around. But I
Speaker 1: actually also just did a post on this on my Instagram,
Speaker 1: which I will plug now is Dr Liese Litman. But
Speaker 1: I actually just did a whole post about um mental
Speaker 1: and physical stimulation. So there are games you can play
Speaker 1: with your dog. Um, there are you completely dry. Um,
Speaker 1: there are treat or food puzzles that they can eat
Speaker 1: out of, which makes mental stimulations so much more fun. Um.
Speaker 1: There's all kinds of training and tricks you can do
Speaker 1: with them. Uh so yeah, there's lots of things you
Speaker 1: can do with um since you have the time in
Speaker 1: your home to keep them mentally and physically stimm. And
Speaker 1: there's always dog TV, right, true big fan of dog TV.
Speaker 1: Oh and the other thing that I am doing is
Speaker 1: UM shout out run. Yeah. We we have a whistle
Speaker 1: tracker too that tracks her, so she has a recommended
Speaker 1: amount of exercise based on her like breed and wait,
Speaker 1: it's thirty six minutes, um, and like there was one
Speaker 1: minute that she got. We were both really busy, and
Speaker 1: like she got eight minutes of exercise and we totally
Speaker 1: failed at parenting that day. But oh my god, how
Speaker 1: dare you? Yeah, it was a sleepy day for all
Speaker 1: of us. Um, But it was also thunderstorms not nonstoppable.
Speaker 1: That's true. That's true too. So that does make it
Speaker 1: hard if you didn't take your dog out for exercise
Speaker 1: and a thunders I still have guilt about it. But
Speaker 1: it really does get you moving because it's like, oh,
Speaker 1: if she needs like an extra five minutes of exercise,
Speaker 1: like we'll go out and get that extra five minutes.
Speaker 1: So I really love the whistle tracker for for that
Speaker 1: that reason. So yeah, Cookie is her own kind of
Speaker 1: self tracker because she has these little squeaky toys and
Speaker 1: every time she requires attention or more exercise, she'll get
Speaker 1: one of her squeaky toys and squeak it and start
Speaker 1: whining in pitch with the squeaky toy, and then it
Speaker 1: just becomes this ever increasing amount of squeaking from the
Speaker 1: toy and from the dog, and we have to. It's
Speaker 1: we don't have a choice. We have to pay attention
Speaker 1: and play with her going outside. So there's actually some
Speaker 1: research and this is actually research that's been done on
Speaker 1: elderly and aging humans and dogs. But I think it
Speaker 1: actually applies a lot to Lockdown right now, because one
Speaker 1: of the problems with elderly dogs and humans is that
Speaker 1: we don't get as much stimulation because of the reduced
Speaker 1: mobility and not being able to go out and do
Speaker 1: as many things anymore. So this which is something like
Speaker 1: now obviously very different from actually aging, but I think
Speaker 1: these fine things can apply to our situation. And so,
Speaker 1: first of all, I think this is kind of neat
Speaker 1: because like there is some early evidence that therapy dogs
Speaker 1: may help patients who are living with dementia, and this
Speaker 1: is like a difficult area to study because it is
Speaker 1: there's a lot of like ethical concerns where when you
Speaker 1: have a therapy that seems to help people, like having
Speaker 1: a therapy dog, and it seems to elevate their mood,
Speaker 1: it's really difficult to have a control group because then
Speaker 1: that means denying people essentially like a therapy dog and
Speaker 1: and having like a control condition in a controlled environment
Speaker 1: where you do that. It's it's just difficult to do. So, uh,
Speaker 1: this is some very like early research, but what we
Speaker 1: have found from it is it does seem to be
Speaker 1: a positive effects. So, um, the limited data shows that
Speaker 1: therapy dogs seem to be associated with increased sociality, decreased
Speaker 1: stress and aggression, and creased blood pressure and patients who
Speaker 1: are living with dementias. So I think that is really
Speaker 1: interesting that we It's like we have such a long
Speaker 1: history with dogs and like now we're finding all of
Speaker 1: these medical therapies like basically like that helps our cognitive health. Uh.
Speaker 1: By interacting with dogs and then vice versa, we can
Speaker 1: actually figure out novel ways to care for elderly dogs.
Speaker 1: So we are able to provide dogs longer and healthier
Speaker 1: lives with better nutrition and medical care. But then that
Speaker 1: means that as they get older and their minds are
Speaker 1: still sharp, like we have to figure out how to
Speaker 1: care for them as they have reduced mobility. And there's
Speaker 1: like this new research. There's this really funny study that
Speaker 1: like they made these like basically dog game consoles, like
Speaker 1: a dog arcade game. But you were serious at the
Speaker 1: beginning when you said dog arcades. Yeah, they made it.
Speaker 1: They called it. They called it Dog Computer Interaction or
Speaker 1: d c I. But it's essentially a dog arcade game
Speaker 1: and they they like to they have a touch screen
Speaker 1: that they can touch and like play these games and
Speaker 1: then get like a treat reward after playing this game.
Speaker 1: I think it's really funny that they're like looking into
Speaker 1: basically making like a dog chuck e cheese, which I
Speaker 1: would love to see. Um, but you don't really need
Speaker 1: an arcy fancy arcade set up to enrich your dog,
Speaker 1: like you were saying, Lucy, you I think we'll probably
Speaker 1: link to that in the show notes that you're post about,
Speaker 1: like games you can play with your dog, and there's
Speaker 1: some research that shows that there's a lot of benefits
Speaker 1: to um, both like keeping your dog healthy physically and mentally.
Speaker 1: So yeah, what you were talking about, Katie reminds me
Speaker 1: of I. Actually when Chloe was little, I used to
Speaker 1: play there's something called Apps for Cats and it's basically
Speaker 1: just like a screen of they're like little bugs that
Speaker 1: pop up and they just and she used to try
Speaker 1: to go after them, you know. So um that I mean,
Speaker 1: and that's sort of the concept of dog t V. Two.
Speaker 1: And then the other thing I wanted to mention also
Speaker 1: was actually for actually make this robotic dog for patients
Speaker 1: with Alzheimer's and dementia. It's like a high tech robotic dog.
Speaker 1: I think it's called the tombot. But if you just
Speaker 1: type in like robotic dog for patients without they make
Speaker 1: it like it's a stuffed animal, so like they don't
Speaker 1: actually have to care for it, but it's so incredibly lifelike.
Speaker 1: And cats too, It's like they have robotic cats that, yeah,
Speaker 1: that can really help too. So if you're a yeah,
Speaker 1: it is, it's really it's really sweet. They are these
Speaker 1: videos of elderly patients like petting these little animatronic dogs
Speaker 1: and cats, and it's just because you're older, you know,
Speaker 1: it doesn't mean that you don't still need all mental
Speaker 1: stimulation and physical contact and uh, you know, being able
Speaker 1: to live a full life. In elderly dogs. There have
Speaker 1: been these research studies on cognitive decline and how there
Speaker 1: are ways to protect against cognitive decline mind with both
Speaker 1: a healthy diet and cognitive enrichments. So they measured it's
Speaker 1: called a brain derived neurotrophic factor, which it's basically like
Speaker 1: just like a protein that it both protects existing neurons
Speaker 1: and synapses and then also promotes the growth of new
Speaker 1: neurons and synapses. But declines in this protein is associated
Speaker 1: with neurodegeneration, so basically like a cognitive decline or or
Speaker 1: your brain health. So they found that enrichment exercises and
Speaker 1: a healthy diet rich and antioxidants, which by the way,
Speaker 1: we actually just talked about last episode. What antioxidants are.
Speaker 1: It's not just a buzzword. But with this healthy diet
Speaker 1: and then these cognitive exercises, they were able to keep
Speaker 1: that protective protein from decreasing in these elderly dogs. So
Speaker 1: some of the forms of enrichment that they did was
Speaker 1: housing animals and pairs, so having a dog that has
Speaker 1: a companion dog of its own, outdoor walks, and then
Speaker 1: cognitive tests and enrichment with training and rewards like memorizing
Speaker 1: where treats are and then finding the treats, and all
Speaker 1: sorts of games. I'm sure, Lisa, you know lots of
Speaker 1: games that you can play with dogs that are fun
Speaker 1: and cognitively enriching. Yeah, a few of them are on
Speaker 1: my last post for sure. But anything anything even as
Speaker 1: simple as just like putting a treat under a cup,
Speaker 1: like three different cups and moving around the cups and
Speaker 1: making your dog like choose, or play the shell game
Speaker 1: with your dog, the shell game the shells or using
Speaker 1: shells yep, um, any kind of scent work right, And
Speaker 1: and dogs don't innately know how to use their nose.
Speaker 1: Sometimes you have to show them or train them. But yeah,
Speaker 1: there's all kinds of simple games. Ye, and you can
Speaker 1: do the same thing for cat. There's actually been a
Speaker 1: lot of enrichment studies, especially on wildcats that are kept
Speaker 1: at zoos. So are you guys familiar with the blackfooted cat,
Speaker 1: the little teeny tiny wildcat. I was afraid you weren't
Speaker 1: going to get to this. I saw this at like
Speaker 1: to thirty in the morning on net year wild and
Speaker 1: stayed up the whole time because it it I think
Speaker 1: they pitched it as uh as like the world's most
Speaker 1: effective hunter. It's one of the deadliest cats in terms
Speaker 1: of the amount of prey per unit of time it
Speaker 1: is able to catch and successfully kill. And but it
Speaker 1: looks like just an adorable to any little house cat.
Speaker 1: But it's a tinier than a house cat. Yeah, but
Speaker 1: they're vicious. Wild animals, and I also went on like
Speaker 1: I went online looking them up and there's so many
Speaker 1: posts from people like I have a blackfoot a black
Speaker 1: footed cat, and then it's a thousand people being like, no,
Speaker 1: you don't know. If you did it would it would
Speaker 1: it would scratch your face off it. They are not tame.
Speaker 1: They do not They're very very shy, and they can
Speaker 1: become very aggressive when they feel threatened. So while they
Speaker 1: can't really do much damage to a human, they certainly
Speaker 1: would not make good pets. But they one of the
Speaker 1: problems that they have in zoos is like being able
Speaker 1: to keep this extremely active cat enriched and entertained. So
Speaker 1: they did this study where they gave these blackfooted cats
Speaker 1: a Roman therapy, just cat a Roman therapy. So they
Speaker 1: introduced odors to these cats, such as nutmeg, cat nip
Speaker 1: and the body odor of prey, and they found that
Speaker 1: the cats absolutely loved it. It made them exercise more.
Speaker 1: This increase in activity, So the aroma therapy worked on
Speaker 1: these little murder cats and it made them even more
Speaker 1: excited for murder. Murder cat is a great name for them,
Speaker 1: is adorable little murder cats. But for your your domesticated cat,
Speaker 1: there are plenty of things you can do that are
Speaker 1: research tested. Uh They also your cat likes a Roman
Speaker 1: therapy too, especially in the form of cat nip. And
Speaker 1: some of the things that you can provide easily for
Speaker 1: your cat to keep them enriched is uh perchase for
Speaker 1: jumping on comfortable areas. Also like giving them choices, so
Speaker 1: if you're going to switch their food or their litter,
Speaker 1: like if you are able to kind of like set
Speaker 1: up to litter boxes side by side and say, like, okay,
Speaker 1: which litter do you like best? That choice and that
Speaker 1: like autonomy is really important to a cat. They love that.
Speaker 1: Usually we say one more litter box and you have cats.
Speaker 1: That's the general rule that that to make cats happy, yeah,
Speaker 1: if you if you want to see a very uh well,
Speaker 1: an example of some very well stimulated cats are Stevo
Speaker 1: from Jackass. His house is covered with these cat walks
Speaker 1: that are like up all around the ceiling, and so
Speaker 1: the the ultimate human daredevil has the ultimate human daredevil
Speaker 1: cats that they're like they never touched the ground, They're
Speaker 1: just all over the ceiling at all times. There's got
Speaker 1: to be happy cats and having like safe havens too,
Speaker 1: especially if you have like a how us that has
Speaker 1: a lot of like other other critters running around, whether
Speaker 1: they're people or other animals, having little areas to like
Speaker 1: hide in little nooks and crannies is really will help
Speaker 1: lower cats stress level. Having puzzle toys and toys that
Speaker 1: help them express their predatory instincts. They are little murder machines.
Speaker 1: And one of the safe things for the environment that
Speaker 1: you can do and a healthy thing for your cat
Speaker 1: is to play with them and give them things to
Speaker 1: pretend to murder. And uh and then also uh, they
Speaker 1: love to scratch things, and that's very natural. You know,
Speaker 1: if your cat is scratching your couch and it's driving
Speaker 1: you crazy, try to get them something safe that they
Speaker 1: can scratch, like a scratching post or some scratchy cardboard.
Speaker 1: Although I know it is a struggle because I had
Speaker 1: a cat and we gave her every scratchy toy on
Speaker 1: the planet, but she loved the couch most of all.
Speaker 1: It was like the forbidden thing, and she loved the forbidden,
Speaker 1: the forbidden couch. YEA, once they started sort of hard,
Speaker 1: once they start marking a territory. So I would say,
Speaker 1: get those scratching posts from the day the stretching posts
Speaker 1: from the day that they writing posts in the day
Speaker 1: that they come home. Um, and you can also like
Speaker 1: direct them towards it or put cat net on the
Speaker 1: scratching post actually to help direct them towards it. There
Speaker 1: is something called a no bowl feeder for cats where
Speaker 1: they're actually like five to ten like little mice that
Speaker 1: are in the like in little bowls, and you put
Speaker 1: the food in there and instead of feeding them like
Speaker 1: out of a bowl, you feed them in these little
Speaker 1: mice and then you put you hide them all over
Speaker 1: the house so that it actually uses their instinct to
Speaker 1: because cats actually do get they eat small they tend
Speaker 1: to eat smaller meals and get full quicker, and so
Speaker 1: it does really go to their instinct and keep them
Speaker 1: more mentally and physically happy. I just always worry about
Speaker 1: the idea of having the one that they missed just
Speaker 1: rotting in a corner somewhere, you know, where you hide them. Yeah, yeah,
Speaker 1: I feel like this circles back to what we talked
Speaker 1: about in the beginning about how like domesticated dogs like
Speaker 1: they've learned to become happy by being our companions, and
Speaker 1: cats like haven't really changed. They just they're like well,
Speaker 1: you you liked us because we're murder machines, so we're
Speaker 1: going to keep being little murder machines. So you know
Speaker 1: now that I can't get get real rats like you
Speaker 1: gotta give them fake rats for them to be happy.
Speaker 1: You change, not me, bro. Well, thank you guys so
Speaker 1: much for joining me, and especially for sharing your personal story.
Speaker 1: I think that's so important for people to hear. And
Speaker 1: I I'm so sorry that you guys have gone through that,
Speaker 1: and I'm really glad to hear that your parents are
Speaker 1: making progress. Thank you so much, Thank you so much. Yeah, thanks, yeah,
Speaker 1: thank you for having us. This is really super fun,
Speaker 1: always fun talking with you, Katie. I just wish it
Speaker 1: was more informative. Un actually I learned more. Yeah, and
Speaker 1: you guys have a podcast, right, well, I know you do.
Speaker 1: I'm it's facetious. It's aficious facetious questions because I know
Speaker 1: because you were on it and your episode was the best. Yeah,
Speaker 1: it was a great episode. It's called We Don't Deserve Dogs,
Speaker 1: available where you listen to things yeah, yeah and people.
Speaker 1: You can find more tips on animal enrichment from your
Speaker 1: instagram right and uh, just at Dr Lisa Litman d
Speaker 1: R l I essay if you put that and it
Speaker 1: usually comes up, but L I double p s and
Speaker 1: Peterman Yeah, and you guys can follow me. Everything is
Speaker 1: at Ritchie Reading and UH next week, assuming this is
Speaker 1: coming out soon, I have an album coming out or
Speaker 1: to be on pre sale. I very modestly named it
Speaker 1: number one album of the year and it was recorded
Speaker 1: on the last show before the coronavirus lockdown. It was
Speaker 1: March ten pm. And you can find us on uh
Speaker 1: Instagram at Creature feature Pod and on Twitter at Creature
Speaker 1: feet Pod. That's f e a T, not f e
Speaker 1: e T though something grower different. Uh. And you know
Speaker 1: you can find me if you're interested in my Katie thoughts.
Speaker 1: I'm at Katie Golden. Uh. It's it's just it's it's
Speaker 1: random Katie thoughts, not necessarily show related. And you can
Speaker 1: also as always find me at pro bird Rites, where
Speaker 1: I try to get everyone to recognize our overlords should
Speaker 1: be birds. UM. Thank you guys so much for listening.
Speaker 1: If you're enjoying the show, go ahead and subscribe, download
Speaker 1: Press the Stars, leave rating. I really appreciate it. It It
Speaker 1: really does help. And I read all of them, and
Speaker 1: I love you all so much uh, thank you so
Speaker 1: much to the Space Classics for their super awesome song
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