Heroic Rescue of Elderly Couple by Their Half-breed Wolf Dog

Eve and Norman Fertig treat and rehabilitate injured animals at Enchanted Forest Wildlife Sanctuary located on their property in Alden, New York.  This story is about how one of the animals paid them back by saving their lives.

In 2000, Eve and Norman rescued a tiny, sick half wolf, half German Shepherd puppy from a breeder.  On October 12, 2006, Shana weighed a powerful 160 lbs.  That night a massive snowstorm with high winds hit upstate New York.

It was the routine for the 81-year-old Fertigs to feed and exercise the animals in the sanctuary around 7pm each night.  While in the building, the lights went out and they realized that something was wrong.  When they went outside to see what was going on a huge tree fell down on them, and other trees fell with it, effectively blocking their way to the other sanctuary buildings and their house, which was about 200 feet away.

The Fertigs huddled in a narrow alley between two buildings.  They were sheltered from falling trees, but not from the cold.  They could not climb over the trees, so they were trapped. "We were in big trouble. … I said to my husband, 'I think we could die out here,'" Eve said.

Shana found the Fertigs and began burrowing under the trees to reach them, and tunneling through the snow to reach the house.  This took her until about 11:30pm.  Then Shana came back, threw the 86-lb. Eve on her back, and dragged Norman, who held onto Eve’s legs.  It took her until 2am to reach the house.   

When they reached the house the Fertigs fell inside the door and Shana laid on top of them to keep them warm.  There was no electricity or heat in the house, and they laid there until the fire department found them.

For her efforts, Shana received the Citizens for Humane Animal Treatment's Hero's Award, which is generally an award given to humans. 

Eve Fertig teaches others to be wildlife rehabilitators.  She and Norman are volunteers, and pay for caring for the sanctuary animals out of their social security checks.  Donations may be sent to Mrs. Eve Fertig, Enchanted Forest Wildlife Sanctuary, 11380 Cary Road, Alden, N.Y. 14004-9547.

This summary was taken from a FOXNews story by Liza Porteus http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,234599,00.html which has many more interesting details about this amazing rescue.

“God is watching; he's watching all the time," Eve Fertig told FOXNews from her home at the Enchanted Forest Wildlife Sanctuary in Alden, N.Y.

Dogs Can Accurately Sniff out Early Stage Bowel Cancer

ScienceDaily (Feb. 1, 2011) — Dogs can sniff out bowel cancer in breath and stool samples, with a very high degree of accuracy -- even in the early stages of the disease -- reveals research published online in the journal Gut.

The findings prompt the authors to suggest that chemical compounds for specific cancers circulate throughout the body, which opens up the prospect of developing tests to pick up the disease before it has had the chance to spread elsewhere.

A specially trained Labrador retriever completed 74 sniff tests, each comprising five breath (100 to 200 ml) or stool samples (50 ml) at a time, only one of which was cancerous, over a period of several months.

The samples came from 48 people with confirmed bowel cancer and 258 volunteers with no bowel cancer or who had had cancer in the past.

Around half of the volunteer samples came from people with bowel polyps, which although benign, are considered to be a precursor of bowel cancer. And 6% of the breath samples and one in 10 of the stool samples from this group came from those with other gut problems, such as inflammatory bowel disease, ulcers, diverticulitis, and appendicitis.

The bowel cancer samples came from patients with varying stages of disease, including early stage.

The dog successfully identified which samples were cancerous, and which were not, in 33 out of 36 breath tests and in 37 out of 38 stool tests, with the highest detection rates among those samples taken from people with early stage disease.

This equates to 95% accuracy, overall, for the breath test and 98% accuracy for the stool test, compared with conventional colonoscopy -- a procedure involving a tube with a camera on the end inserted through the back passage.

Samples from smokers or from those with other types of gut problems, which might be expected to mask or interfere with other smells, did not pose a problem for the dog.

This indicates that there are specific discernible odours given off by cancer cells which circulate around the body, say the authors. And it is backed up by other research and anecdotal evidence indicating that dogs can sniff out bladder, skin, lung, breast and ovarian cancers, they add.

The authors concede that using dogs to screen for cancers is likely to be impractical and expensive, but a sensor could be developed to detect the specific compounds.

The faecal occult blood test, which picks up hidden blood in a stool sample is an effective and non-invasive method of screening for bowel cancer, say the authors, but it is only able to pick up early stage disease in one in 10 cases.

"Early detection and early treatment are critical for the successful treatment of cancer and are excellent means for reducing both the economic burden and mortality [of bowel cancer]," comment the authors.

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Story Source:

The above story is reprinted (with editorial adaptations by ScienceDaily staff) from materials provided by BMJ-British Medical Journal, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

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Journal Reference:

1. Hideto Sonoda, Shunji Kohnoe, Tetsuro Yamazato, Yuji Satoh, Gouki Morizono, Kentaro Shikata, Makoto Morita, Akihiro Watanabe, Masaru Morita, Yoshihiro Kakeji, Fumio Inoue, Yoshihiko Maehara. Colorectal cancer screening with odour material by canine scent detection. Gut, 31 January 2011 DOI: 10.1136/gut.2010.218305

Therapy Dogs Can Help Patients Anxious About Having an MRI

Patients who have an MRI often experience anxiety during it, and this can lead to poor image quality.  Patients may move, or may even end the procedure early due to their anxiety.  Currently, anti-anxiety medications are used to calm patients, but animal-assisted therapy may be a viable alternative.  An exhibit is being presented at the 2011 American Roentgen Ray Society's annual meeting.

The project was conceived by a fifteen-year-old high student. During the course of her MRI, Allison Ruchman experienced anxiety and claustrophobia. She quieted her emotions by thinking about her dog, Wally.  She believed that her experience could apply to other patients.

Allison became a certified dog therapist, and conducted the research on this project, assisting physicians who did a study at Monmouth Medical Center in Long Branch, NJ. Twenty-eight patients interacted with a certified therapy dog at various levels of intensity for fifteen minutes, approximately thirty minutes prior to their MRI. Six patients underwent no intervention for the same period of time.

"The most significant aspect of our findings was the fact that time spent with a dog (animal-assisted therapy) could substitute for pharmacologic anxiolysis (anti-anxiety medication) often needed to assist patients having an MRI," said Richard Ruchman, MD, one of the authors of the study.

"A great deal of research is currently being conducted on animal assisted therapy in the medical environment. To my knowledge, this is the first study that has particularly addressed animal-assisted therapy in the radiology department, and I believe that many applications of could flow from our findings. Current estimates are that 15% or more of patients cannot proceed with an MRI due to anxiety and a non-pharmacologic solution is noteworthy," said Dr. Ruchman.

Story Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2011/04/110430133113.htm

The above story is from materials provided by American Roentgen Ray Society, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.

Show dog knows his business, and his gluten

Hollie Scott is a University of Missouri College of Veterinary Medicine student who has celiac disease. Her dog Elias is a champion Beauceron and a gluten-detecter extraordinaire. The smallest amount of gluten, found in all kinds of food items, can trigger a painful attack in Scott.

The handsome Beauceron — from a 400-year-old breed that became almost extinct serving as messenger dogs in Europe during two world wars — regularly wows judges, though he's only two  years old. 

Indeed, he's an AKC Grand Champion (the first male Beauceron to receive that title), and just last month he received an Award of Excellence at the AKC/Eukanuba National Championship in Long Beach (which will be televised Jan. 23 on ABC).

But all that strutting of his stuff in the show ring keeps him busy for just a fraction of a year. The rest of the time, hour after hour, day after day, Elias, as he is known, is a hardworking gluten-detection service dog.

He accompanies his owner, Hollie Scott, 22, whose celiac disease is so severe that she's ill for weeks if she eats something that has merely been sliced by a knife used previously to carve something with minimal gluten content. 

The big dog is a familiar presence around the University of Missouri campus, where Scott is a first-year student in the College of Veterinary Medicine, and Elias accompanies her on social outings, to any of the rare eateries she dares frequent, and anyplace else she ventures.

Although he's nearly a 100-pounder — at the extreme end of the breed standard — Elias "curls up in an amazingly small ball" in lecture halls, on buses and trains, and on planes, Scott says. 

The dog spent weeks in Slovenia completing gluten-detection training late last year (he and Scott returned at the very end of November, then rested a couple of days before heading out for the Long Beach competition), and now he can detect and warn her away from anything containing gluten, hot or cold, in all its many manifestations.

Teaching a dog to be alert to the scent of gluten is much more complicated than most scent-detection training, because gluten comes in so many forms. A type of protein commonly found in wheat, rye and barley, gluten is widely used in products other than the obvious — cereals, breads and pizza — after being processed in various ways. 

Gluten, in fact, can be used as a filler, binder or thickener, hidden in all manner of food, including, for example, soy sauce, many salad dressings and even some toothpaste.

Scott was diagnosed with celiac disease about two years ago after having spent much of her high school years "in and out of hospitals." She's now acutely vigilant about checking labels and trying to avoid cross-contaminations.

"You can't drop your guard for even a minute," says Scott, who likens an attack to "a really extremely bad case of stomach flu" from which her body doesn't recover fully for nearly three weeks. But even hyper-vigilance isn't a 100% guarantee.

"I was never a picky eater," says Scott, but the celiac disease "brings a whole new level of stress" to the very notion of mealtime, and the extra layer of protection Elias provides is "comforting."

When it's time for him to do the sniff test for Scott, she places a cover with holes over the item, and Elias does his thing. She practices with him every day with known gluten-containing foods to augment the products she hopes are gluten-free so he doesn't lose his edge. When there's gluten, Elias tries to pull it away from her; if 

it's safe, he simply looks away.

Elias is a hard worker, but he has many outlets for doggie joy. Scott's study group includes some dog owners, so he gets to hang out with other animals. "His favorite is a little Havanese puppy," says Scott. There are also regular trips to the dog park, and, when it's not too cold, visits to the swimming hole.

He'll continue on the show circuit, too. His next competition: the Westminster Dog Show in New York City next month.

http://www.usatoday.com/yourlife/pets/dogs/2011-01-11-pettalk11_ST_N.htm, written by Sharon L. Peters, an award-winning pet journalist who lives in Colorado. You can e-mail her at pets@usatoday.com.

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