Badgers? Badgers? We don' need no steenkeen' badgers!

As I'm sure you're all aware (in fact, it could hardly have escaped your notice), it's election time again. I know that you haven't been able to turn on a radio or go to a news website without reading yet more about the upcoming elections for president of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons. I'm personally so excited by the magnetic personalities on offer that it's got me in an uncharacteristically political mood.

I have been tempted to dip my toe into the tepid water of veterinary politics a few times recently; I can often be heard whinging that the RCVS never present the views of veterinary surgeons to the public, seeming to prefer to leave that sort of thing to the British Veterinary Association instead... and I'm already boring myself, let alone you. Suffice it to say that I've decided the best way to present the views of a veterinary surgeon to the public is to, y'know, present them to the public.

So, here goes. I wondered about talking about the recent much-covered horsemeat scandal, but quite honestly I struggle to find a lot interesting to discuss about it. As a vegetarian myself, I struggle to see the ethical difference between eating a horse compared with a cow, sheep, pig or chicken (or dog or cat, come to that), and almost everyone I've asked (meat-eater or not) has pretty much the same opinion. This may be a function of the circles I move in, or it may be that the media is trying to create more of a furore about the whole thing than there actually is (heaven forbid!).

Instead, I've decided to talk about badgers. I may not be eminently qualified, being neither a large-animal practitioner, farmer or ex-lead guitarist of Queen, but I'll give it a shot. I'm aware the title of the post isn't, perhaps, the most sensitive that I've ever come up with, but when I tell you that the other post I was considering was one about dog racing called 'Fifty shades of Greyhounds' then you'll begin to understand what kind of brain I'm working with here.

Right then, let's talk about tuberculosis. The bane of romantic poets everywhere, TB is a nasty, chronic bacterial disease caused by mycobacterium, a tenacious group of bugs that are particularly hard to get rid of. I don't want to make light of the disease it causes because it is, not to put too fine a point on it, a fucker. Treatable, but only with extremely long courses of antibiotics - and there are strains of it appearing that are resistant to almost everything we can throw at them - I do, however, want to have a little chat about why there's a whole load of badgers set to be killed in this country because of it (no pun intended) (okay, a little bit intended).

Before I share my thoughts with you on exactly how I feel about that, let's look at some background information. If you already know this stuff, then feel free to skip to the end (and if you don't really care what I think about it, then you're probably best just skipping the whole rest of the post, and finding one that has more jokes in it - maybe the one about the horrible kid I had in my consult room once, that's a good one - it ends with me zapping my testicles with radiation).

A cow, yesterday

Still with me? Good. TB, you see, is not just a disease that affects humans. It can affect most mammals, actually, though some seem more susceptible than others - and there are two mammals in particular that are going to concern us today. The first is the cow. Cows get TB, and this is a problem because if we drink their milk unpasteurised, or eat their meat raw, then we can get TB too. Consequently, we have control systems in place to isolate, cull and remove infected animals from the cattle population and prevent spread of the disease. I don't want to get too involved with these control measures, because they're easily found elsewhere, but the classic intradermal TB testing that make up such a large proportion of a large-animals vets time have hitherto been highly successful at dramatically dropping the incidence of TB in cattle herds. Dropping, but - crucially - not eradicating. 'Hitherto' snuck into the post a few sentences ago because, sad to say, incidence rates of TB have been on the rise in the UK since the turn of the millennium.

Why the rise? It's safe to say that no-one knows for sure - it could be a consequence of the way the TB test is carried out (for various reasons, the intradermal test is far from a simple test to either perform or to interpret), the move from many, smaller herds to fewer, larger ones, increased movement of cattle around the country, the foot and mouth crisis or, more likely, a combination of all that, as well as other things.

Speaking of other things, that brings us onto the other mammal we were going to talk about - the opposum!

Just kidding. I meant the badger. Badgers are another mammal highly susceptible to TB (something like 17% of badgers killed by cars are found to have lesions on post-mortem) and debates have long raged about whether they are part of the problem with the current increase in TB in cows or not. Again, firm evidence is hard to come by (as with so much in the veterinary world) but the work that has been done (like this, among many others) that is there strongly suggests that badgers do, indeed, spread TB to cows.

So, here's the problem. The TB testing culling programme, effective since it was introduced in the fifties, appears to be failing. TB cases in cows are rising, and the disease is spreading. Badgers, on the best evidence we have, appear to be reservoirs for the disease - and it's very, very difficult (some might say impossible) to treat a disease in one population without doing something about the reservoir of it in another population. Like, for instance, killing them.

That's the dilemma. Nobody wants to kill badgers (except the chap in the video above) but our current strategy isn't working. Vaccinating cows against TB is illegal under EU rules. Vaccinating badgers is practically difficult, expensive, and unproven. Studies - including the best known, widest and most scientific study carried out - the report by Professor John Krebs - do show that culling badgers does lower the incidence of TB in cattle herds - albeit by a potentially disappointing 16% overall.

Those are, as Joe Friday might tell you, just the facts, ma'am - I wanted to make a clear distinction between the facts of TB and my opinion on the upcoming on-again-off-again badger cull (at the time of writing, it's on again) because, to be honest, this is not a clear-cut case, and it's helpful just to think about the background itself before you come to a decision on where you stand.

Where I stand

I'm sitting, actually, but from here on in things will increasingly be coloured by opinion rather than fact, so consider yourself warned. Before I tell you exactly where I'm sitting, I'd like to frame the dilemma in slightly different terms. You see, I was working for DEFRA as a Temporary Veterinary Inspector during the foot and mouth (FMD) crisis early on in the millennium. Down in Devon, as things became increasingly desperate, the pay improved considerably. FMD paid for a fair chunk of my wedding, in fact, and I didn't feel bad, because I thought we were doing the right thing. FMD was a terrible disease, and we were eradicating it from the country.

That's how I felt until I saw the piles of burning bodies, and realised that it's possible to become numb to euthanasia. I don't want to delve too deeply into that emotional quagmire right now, but I began to question just how terrible a disease FMD was to prompt such apocalyptic action. It's not transmissible to humans, and the symptoms it causes in sheep are relatively mild. Cows suffer badly with it, but - man, that's a really big pile of burning bodies. The biggest problem with FMD is how infectious it is - it spreads like the proverbial wildfire - rather than the suffering it causes to the animals. It is, primarily, an economic disease.

Let's leave the pyres behind us, for the moment, because that's a whole different debate - but it helps to demonstrate the point I'm about to make. Back to some science. TB in cattle is caused by mycobacterium bovis. It's zoonotic - that is, humans can catch it - but, despite the massive increase in TB in cows in recent years, m. bovis makes up around 0.5-1.5% of cases of TB diagnosed in this country - so, you're about a hundred times more likely to pick up TB from another human than you are from a cow.

Of these 0.5-1.5% of cases of TB, the vast majority of cases were picked up from drinking unpasteurised milk, or eating raw meat - both of which could also catch you a number of nastier and more imminently fatal diseases than TB. In fact, from 1990 up to 2005 (the time the study above was written) there was 1 case of TB that was confirmed to have been caught directly from a cow.

One case, in fifteen years. You might be thinking that one case is 'too many', but my personal opinion is that is a somewhat naive way of looking at the world. Value judgements are, and should be, made on the basis of risk, every day. The chances of any of us catching m. bovis from a cow are, by any standards, remote.

Now let's look at the proposed solution (or a part of the proposed solution - I don't think anyone is suggesting that a cull is replacement for testing and culling) - killing at least 60% of the badger population in the proposed areas (I say killing, because, to be honest, that's what is being done, and, to be honest, culling is not the most subtle euphemism for it anyway). The science suggests this could lead to a reduction in TB of around 16%. The killing would need to go on for about 3-4 years, and would have these benefits for about 6 years afterwards. Presumably, after that, you repeat the cull, though I'm not entirely clear on this point.

16% reduction for 6 years. So that, in human terms, would equate to... um... bear with me... something in the order of 0.05 less human cases of TB in that time. That's not a percentage, that's in actually cases of TB prevented.

Don't get me wrong - TB is a terrible disease. Not least because of the enormous burdens it places on cattle farmers. The financial hardship, and the emotional strain, of having your herd yet again placed under restriction, has caused enormous unhappiness and, I suspect, its fair share of ill-health and even suicides.

We can't get complacent. We have so few cases of TB in humans because of high standards of hygiene and public health, and because of TB testing preventing infected animals getting into the food chain.

But... I keep thinking of those piles of burning bodies. If your solution to a problem is the mass killing of an indigenous species from your home, then your problem needs to be severe enough to justify such an act.

Is it? I can't believe that it is. The cull is wrong.

Soul Purpose and Past Tense

Greetings, dreamweavers, and welcome to the dark recesses of my brain, guaranteed to fear you up badly (and in case that wasn't obvious, that was a small homage to the great Garth Marenghi) and the reason I bring up Romford's greatest son is because this little post is about two of my babies.

The rights of my first two novels, Soul Purpose and Past Tense, recently reverted back to me, having been published by Immanion Press for 6 years or so. I've been having a read over my oldies, and have performed a little routine cosmetic surgery on some of the more badly-aged paragraphs (hard to believe there was no such thing as an iPhone when I scribbled down Soul Purpose; Dark times, my friend, dark times).

I was always proud of these two - the 'Conduit' novels - stories of an unhappy vet who accidentally becomes a link between our world and the spirit world. I was also very pleased to realise that I'm a much happier vet now than I was back then. It must be the catharsis of all this blog writing. Well, that or the wine.

Anyway, after some deliberation, I've decided to release their slightly nipped and tucked forms onto the Amazon Kindle web store, where I hope they'll be very happy. The only tiny issue is that I'm effectively starting again from the customer review point of view, so if you've read them before I'd really appreciate a review on the new versions - sales of books on the kindle store are strongly review-driven, as people don't have a lot else to go on. I think you may need to have bought the new version of the book to do it, so if you're willing to re-write your review let me know, and I'll gift you a copy through amazon.

If you haven't read them before, bear in mind they are now to be found at a greatly reduced price, and I still get the same amount in royalties as I ever did - which certainly helps with the wine acquisition.

If you're interested, I'd advise you to wait a few weeks before purchasing, because I'm planning have a free book giveaway of Soul Purpose in two or three weeks. If you absolutely can't wait that long (and who amongst us could blame you?) then feel free to pop 'em on your kindlebox immediately.

Many thanks, pilgrims.

Nick

Soul Purpose is here on Amazon UK and here on Amazon US
and Past Tense is here on Amazon UK and here on Amazon US

Halal Slaughter

This isn't a full-blown blog post, but my mother contacted me tonight to ask if I would consider doing a post on Halal slaughter. She's just having a little trouble explaining why Halal meat may have some welfare issues to some friends. In lieu of a blog post, I sent her an email, which I have rather lazily reproduced here in case it's of interest to anyone else.




***

Hi Mum

This website explains exactly what Halal meat is http://www.halalcateringco.com/halal_meat.asp

However it contains a number of inaccuracies and glosses over the truth a bit. The bit about 'carrion' is crucial - it means that animals cannot be stunned prior to slaughter, as technically stunning (when done properly) stops the heart, and the meat would count as dead. So animals have their throats slit consciously. From this website...

'When carried out correctly the sudden drop in blood pressure to the brain renders the animal brain dead within seconds and many researchers have found Dhabiha to be less stressful and painful to the animal than modern western methods of slaughter.'

Sadly, this sentence does not apply to either cows or goats - they are unlucky enough to have a vertebral blood supply, unlike many other mammals. The details are here... http://www.animalwelfareapproved.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/TAFS-18-Why-pre-slaughter-stunning-is-important.pdf

This is an extra blood supply that runs along the spine and supplies the neck. You can research the details if you like, but this quirk of anatomy basically means that if you slit a cow's throat (i.e. sever it's carotid arteries), instead of leading to almost instantaneous unconsciousness (as it would in humans) this extra blood supply enables the cow to remain conscious for anything from 19 seconds to 120 seconds - which I would suggest is unacceptable. Some studies have shown brain activity 680 seconds (11 minutes!) after the throat was cut.

The extreme sharpness of the blade (called a 'shechita' in Jewish ritual slaughter, but is effectively the same blade used in Halal slaughter ) is also a problem - it's so sharp, and produces such a clean cut, that the carotid arteries retract and clot in some cases, preserving blood pressure, and thus consciousness. You'll notice my quote from the first website doesn't reference the 'research' that it mentions.

This 'ballooning' occurs even in animals that don't have the verterbral circulation, such as sheep and chickens, unfortunately allowing them to experience suffering as well - some studies suggest it may happen up up to 62.5% of cases.

The wikipedia page on shecitas outlines these problems http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shechita if you need a reference.

This page http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zabiha explains the minimal differences between Jewish and Islamic slaughter. Both effectively cause the same suffering, except in one case the cow is facing Mecca when it has its throat slit.

I'm hoping that's a fairly unbiased look at ritual slaughter, but I think you can guess which side I come down upon...

Nick




***




Not a cheery blog post, but some points worth making, I felt!

Bright Eyes - 3 things to consider before getting a pet rabbit

'A robin redbreast in a cage

puts all heaven in a rage'

William Blake

This is a blog about rabbits. That may be a little hard to decipher from Mr. Blake's quote above, but the sentiment in it gets across my feelings about the all-too-common fate of the pet rabbit, which is to get stuck in a hutch at the bottom of the garden and never given a first, let alone a second, thought. I did try and modify the quote to make it a little bit more relevant, but the best I could come up with was this:

'A rabbit in a hutch at the bottom of the garden

makes God sit up and say 'What? Pardon?'

Nick Marsh

which I can't help but feel loses a little something from Blake's original. Let's leave poetry to the experts, and just get on the with blog, eh?

Now, personally, I'm not a huge rabbit person (that would be a great film, though, eh? Like a cross between King Kong and Watership Down) (and that, incidentally, is the first and last time I'm going to mention Watership Down, title aside, because if I keep thinking about it I'm going to end this blog in a blubbery pile of tears, and I think I've done quite enough blog posts like that recently) in that I haven't ever owned a rabbit. However, they are swarming to the practice in increasing numbers (which is also another idea for a film...along the lines of Dawn of the Dead, with bunnies) and are easily the third most common animal I'm called upon to see, after cats and dogs, which makes it a shame that they suffer from neglect so often.

You see, a rabbit is something of a specialised creature, with some very specific requirements, not a single one of which is served by leaving a rabbit stuck in a small wooden cage at the bottom of the garden as if it was an inmate of some kind of bunny Guantanamo bay. Just getting their diet right is about as much fun as trying to cater for a group of wheat-intolerant vegans. Now, a lot of the clients who bring rabbits in to me nowadays are smart, savvy owners who know what they are doing, so it would be easy for me to think that things have changed. Unfortunately, I also see a fair proportion of owners who aren't quite so savvy, and real suffering is caused as a result - and these are the people who think enough of their rabbits to bring them to the vets when they're sick.

So, here's my effort to try to alleviate and prevent some of that unnecessary suffering. If you're thinking about getting a pet, and thinking that a rabbit is sounding like a funky idea, please just have a quick read over some of the points below first.

1. A rabbit is really, really NOT a child's pet

I'm not sure how rabbits got a reputation for being a great 'first' pet, sort of a starter before you move on to something else, but there's a number of reasons why I don't think a rabbit should be the sole responsibility of a kid.

For starters, rabbits live a long time - six to eight years. (in fact, there's some evidence to suggest that they have the potential to live a lot longer than this, but as pets they generally don't). Six to eight years. That's, like, long enough for George R. R. Martin to write a book! And it is, sorry to say, easily long enough to for a child to get bored with their pet. It might sound cruel for me to say it, but believe me, it happens a lot, so as a parent you've got to be ready to take over when that happens.

Secondly, rabbits are prey species. As Watership Down teaches us (oops, damn it), that means that the world and his mother wants to eat them dead. As a vet, this makes rabbit diseases more challenging to diagnose than cats and dogs, because if a rabbit shows weakness in the wild, likely as not someone will come and eat it. As a pet, this means that rabbits, as a general rule, do not like all the cuddling, tickling and squeezing that usually is part of the job description of a child's pet. Don't get me wrong, some rabbits adore it, especially those that have been brought up to expect it, but a lot of them find it extremely stressful, and will attempt to escape from it or just suffer in silence, all of which adds to the risk of the child getting bored.

Thirdly, rabbits are just not as easy to look after as dogs or cats, or, for that matter, hamsters, gerbils, rats or mice, and the next section will go some way to explaining why.

2. Rabbits like fast food just as much as the rest of us

Earlier in the post, I alluded to the fact that it's fiddly to give a rabbit the correct diet. It's a pain. So, I'm about to give you a quick rundown of all the things you need to feed your rabbit to keep it healthy. Brace yourselves.

Braced? Ooookay, here we go.

1. Grass.

That's it. That's as complicated as a rabbit's diet needs to get. Grass has everything in it that a rabbit needs to live, thrive and survive. A few other plants for variety and vitamins will help, but in the main, let your rabbit eat plenty of grass, and get lots of exercise while it grazes, and you won't be going far wrong.

So why do I keep suggesting that it's hard to get a rabbit's diet right? Because a lot of rabbit owners have a yearning, aching need to feed their bunny all manner of other junk, the vast majority of which will shorten their rabbit's life.

Let's go back to basics a little bit. Grass, it turns out, is a real pain to digest. You'll know this if you have a dog which is an enthusiastic grazer, because you'll often have to help to grass out when it pokes out, completely intact, at the other end of the dog (I suppose you'll also know this if you, yourself, are an enthusiastic grazer, but that brings to mind all manner of mental images that I'd rather not dwell upon). Grass is full of cellulose, and it takes a real effort to get anything useful out of it at all. It needs to be fermented, and getting grass to ferment takes a lot of digestive effort. Cows, and other ruminants, deal with it by having a ridiculous number of stomachs (well, okay, four), and repeatedly regurgitating the semi-digested gunk for another chew (cudding).

Rabbits, like horses, take a different pathway - they ferment with their hindgut, not their stomachs, which leads to a very complicated and specific bowel set-up. I don't want to get into the complexity of it too much here (not least because I don't quite understand it myself. Ahem) but bear in mind that although it looks like a simple process for a rabbit to chew on a bit of grass and then pop out a pellet, there really is a wondrous and complicated alchemy going on inside that compact little belly (assuming that alchemy was concerned wasn't concerned so much with converting lead into gold as converting grass into rabbit poo). Here's a nice simple, and better discussion than mine on rabbit digestion for those who are interested.

This means that rabbits have a digestive system wonderfully evolved to deal with grass, and really not great at dealing with just about anything else.

The problem is, nobody seems to have mentioned this to rabbits. See, eating grass looks like hard work to me. There's an awful lot of chewing involved, it tastes like...well, like grass, and you have to be outside to do it, which is this country means getting rained on. Rabbits seem to feel much the same about this state of affairs as we would, and so, given the choice, they would rather eat pretty much anything else. So, if you give them a tray full of rabbit food that is, basically, the rabbit equivalent of a KFC party bucket, and they'll forget all about that grass.

Okay, let's take a slightly more serious look at what you should be feeding your pet rabbit.

1. Grass/Hay. 

I was a little facetious about this above, but not very. Grass or hay needs to be about 90% or your rabbits diet, and they'll get along for a very long time eating just this and nothing else. Grass (or the dried version, hay) is full of dietary fibre, and it's fibre that drives the rabbit's digestive tract. Not only that, because grass is such a pain in the arse to chew, and is gritty, it actually wears the teeth down. This is fine for rabbits - in fact, it's not just fine, it's necessary.

Rabbit's teeth, just like horses, grow continually throughout their lives, and if they aren't continually worn down by eating grass, they end up with a mouthful of teeth. Dental problems caused by a lack of grass or hay in the diet are the number one problem I see rabbits for. It's completely preventable. Feed your rabbit grass or hay. Please.

2. Other plants/fruit/vegetables.

Yes, okay. If you must. But not too much! Definitely not more than 10% of the diet. The point of this is just to add a little variety to the diet, and a few extra vitamins and minerals that aren't found so much in grass. 

To be honest, if you let your rabbit just free range around the garden, it'll get everything it needs from nibbling at other plants as it grazes. So, feel free to give a small amount of a fruit or veg as a treat. But really, not a lot.

3. 'Rabbit food'

Harrumph. Really? I know it's tempting. I know it says 'rabbit food' on the packet, probably next to a piccie of a rabbit looking extremely pleased, but really, you almost certainly don't need to feed any of this at all if you've got the first two right. Maybe if your rabbit is too thin, and you need to bulk it up, but I can't think of many other circumstances where rabbits need to eat this stuff.

If you really, really must, here's a few tips. Firstly, get pellets, like Burgess Supa Rabbit. Yes, they're boring, and look not unlike rabbit poo, but it prevents the rabbit from picking out all the really tasty bits, and leaving all the vitamins and minerals that they're supposed to be getting. Rabbits are just as bad as us as voluntarily missing out the important bits of the diet, so try not to give them too much opportunity to do it.

Secondly, this food should make up a tiny portion of your rabbits diet, unless you want a fat, unwell rabbit. My advice would be that if it's taking your rabbit more than ten minutes to eat it's pellets, then you're giving too many pellets.

Hopefully I've got my message across there. FEED GRASS! Ahem. I have been subtle, I think.

I have gone on about it at length because, as I hope you can see, although a rabbit's digestive system is complicated, it's diet really doesn't need to be. If I could forcibly restrain all rabbit owners from feeding cheap crappy rabbit food, and just get them to feed even cheaper grass instead, I would see far fewer rabbits in the practice. Yes, they can have the odd treat, just like horses - but bear in mind a horses weighs roughly two- to three-hundred times what a rabbit weighs, and so can cope with a lot more treats than a rabbit can.

3. Rabbits make great house pets

No, really, they do!

My first two points were rather negative, and coupled with me saying that I'm not a big rabbit person myself, I'm worried that I've left you with the impression that I don't think rabbits should be kept as pets at all. Not true! They can be wonderful pets, and, perhaps unexpectedly, make wonderful companions in the home. 

A couple of vets in our practice have rabbits living with them, and they are evangelical about them - they love them to bits (not literally). Yes, you need to have a think about where they can get to and what they can chew (rabbit-proofing electrical cables and such) but it's far less work than worrying about what a toddler might get up to in your house. They're very easy to house train, and (generally) get on pretty well with dogs and cats. 

So why stick them in a hutch in the garden instead? Have them in the home, like you would with your other pets (with the possible exception of horses). Yes, they need to go out to graze in the garden, but that doesn't mean they have to live their whole lives out there.

So, let's summarize, shall we? Summarizing's always fun.

1. A rabbit doesn't make a good child's pet. Parents need to pitch in and help with rabbit care too.

2. Feed grass or hay and not much else.

3. Rabbits are much more pleasurable pets when they're house pets.

There we are. I hope that's helpful if you're thinking about getting a rabbit. Feel free to send me any questions (and I'll rather lazily pass them on to my rabbit-oriented colleagues).

Now, I'd better get back to practising some poetry...

Geri

This one is a different. It is not a well-thought out blog post, with a coherent argument to make (so, in that respect, it's just like all my other posts). It's a lament for a friend. I'm not writing it for any reason that I need to write about it, so please indulge me, nod and smile. Feel free to back away if I get a little crazy.

Geri died today. It's strange to write it. I've known it has been coming for so long, and I have been on the other side of the table so many, many times, that you'd think I would understand it. But I don't. The sentence at the start of this paragraph makes no sense to me. But still, Geri died today.

It seems to be a cruel trick of the human brain that, on some level, we simply don't get death. We are aware that it happens - we can even take in the knowledge that it will, sort of probably, happen to us some day. But still, we don't get it. It doesn't make any sense. That personality that was such a vivid part of our lives, that was always there - it can't just be gone, can it? I mean, sure, we know they're dead, but... y'know... where are they? It doesn't make sense.

As I write this, it's raining outside. We buried Geri in the orchard. There's a part of my brain that is screaming at me that I've left Geri outside, alone, and it's cold, and she'll be scared. It's very, very hard to silence that part of my brain. This is what I mean. We just don't seem able to process it on some fundamental level. Maybe that's what grieving is. Geri is dead.

How can death have visited our happy little family? Its got no right. Sure, I've killed hundreds, thousands of animals myself. But Geri? It doesn't make any sense.

Geri was found as a stray in Exeter in 1997, and taken to the local RSPCA kennels. Being her naturally charming self (read: tart) she was quickly rescued and rehomed to a family in Totnes. Being far, far too clever for her own good, she quickly established dominance of the household and enjoyed a rule-free life of doggy leisure and luxury matched only by the Emperor Trajan's toy poodle in the first century AD. Her debauched lifestyle led to her being speyed at her local vets a year later, after a brief but eventful dalliance with the dog that lived upstairs. Though neither of them knew it at the time, this is where Geri met one of her future owners - a fresh-faced young vet student by the name of Kerry.

Fast forward a year, and Geri's career as Imperator of Totnes was, unbeknownst to her, drawing to  a close. Her owners, growing tired of Geri's habits of rolling in badger poo, jumping up to lick small children's faces no matter how muddy her paws were, and stealing other dog's property (they had to carry money on their walks to pay anyone whose tennis balls Geri took a fancy to, because once she grabbed it she developed acute selective deafness and galloped home to add it to her growing pile) had deemed her 'unhandleable', and were looking for an unsuspecting home upon which to land this dog with ideas above her station.

Which is where I enter the story. I graduated as a vet in 1999, and as it happened, I had just moved in to my unsuspecting practice home in Bridgwater (yes, I spelled it right; don't ask me why there's no 'e') and, having just taken on possession of the feline equivalent of Hannibal Lecter (you'll get your own blog one day, Vienna, I promise!) I had foolishly voiced the notion that I might one day 'quite like to have a dog too').

One chance encounter with Kerry and Geri's owners in Totnes later, and I soon found a brown and white lurcher being pointedly offered in my direction, complete with cow eyes, a sob story, and a heavilly edited history that skimped over Geri's more megalomaniac traits.

So, Geri moved in with me in the latter months of the second millenium (and don't go on about it not starting until 2001 - it starts whenever we said it does, okay?) and... was wonderful. 

It was a shock to both of us, at first. I didn't really feel ready for a dog, and Geri certainly wasn't pleased about the hassle of having a new subject to have to break in. Unfortunately for her, I was fresh from my animal training classes, and was keen to put the theory into practice. It was a titanic battle of wits. It quickly became apparent that Geri had more wits than I did, but fortunately, I had back up - Kerry, my then girlfriend, was still having her animal training lectures. Between us, we finally managed to iron out the most anti-social of Geri's numerous traits - at least when we were watching.

Geri was also horrified that she had to share her new house with another canid - Kerry's wonderful, but not necessarily bright, greyhound, Beattie - but eventually they settled into a relationship similar to that of Pinky and the Brain. You never did manage to take over the world, Geri, but I suspect you came close - behind my back, of course.

Geri was with me for the first few years of being a vet. Those were hard years; I was depressed, disillusioned and mostly unhappy. Geri was one of the bright spots in my life during those times. It's hard for me to write more about that, today, of all days, but... she helped a lot. She was the first dog I ever owned on my own, and she's been with my my whole career.

Three years ago, we started to notice that Geri was struggling walking up hills, especially on hot days. We realised that she had developed laryngeal paralysis, and when we took her to a referral practice, our surgeon told us that it was part of a larger neuropathy that would also gradually affect her hindlimbs, called geriatric onset laryngeal paralysis polyneuropathy (GOLPP). With this in mind, we opted against surgery to open up her larnyx, because we knew there was nothing that would help her legs. We didn't think that we'd have her for very much longer. Every month seemed a bonus, but she was dextrous, and smart, and she coped with the progressive disease. It started to rob her of her continence, but Geri was always a pikey little bugger, and didn't really mind wetting her bed once in a while. We got her dog pants, banned her from the sofa, and despaired at the occasional (eventually frequent) messes on the carpet. But she was happy.

Which brings us to yesterday, when Kerry first noticed the swelling on the side of her face. By the evening, her face was twice the normal size. I rushed to the practice to get some medication, hoping that it was just a tooth root abscess, and would start to settle by today.

This morning, the swelling was on both sides. I tried to take her for a walk, and Geri - my naughty little Geri, terror of white clothes and cat food hidden 'out of dog's reach' on tables everywhere - collapsed in the field, and looked at me.

We knew. It didn't matter what the cause of the oedema was. We knew it was time. So, after a few brief teary hours at work, we came back home, to found Geri lying in the same place we'd left her. Half an hour later our poor colleagues arrived (thank you so, so much, Emma and Leanne, and we are so sorry what we put you through) to do what needed to be done. Within an hour, we were burying her in the orchard.

We were lucky, so so lucky, to have such a wonderful dog for such a long time. She helped me through a lot, and she... well, she made it easy for us, in the end. We didn't think she would, but we knew it was time. She died with three of us tickling her. Not as many as she would have liked, because there never were enough tickles in the world for her, but I hope, perhaps, enough. It's unfair of me to feel cheated by this, when so many people have endured so many worse things, so much more unfair. Geri had a full life, and she went peacefully. I should be content.

Here's a few of the things that I'll never again experience -

Her strange wookie-like howls of pleasure when she knew it was time to walk

Her complete command of my tickling arm; she got so she only had to twitch one leg and glance in my direction to receive more cuddles

Those perfect little ears, and her grunts on pleasure when I massaged them

Her bouncing through long grass like a canine space hopper

That tiny little wet nose

Her propensity for eating seatbelts - never thought I'd miss that one!

Her swimming (only when she really had to)

Her sunbathing (even to the point of asphyxiation)

Her uncanny ability to push me off the best spot for sunbathing in the garden to steal it for herself

Her rare barks

Her honing ability to find anyone out on a walk that had treats in their pockets, and her charm to always - always - get a treat for herself

I could go on. Well, maybe that should be I should go on, but I can't. I can't piece any useful thoughts together any more. I told you this was just a lament. She was a dog, but the grief feels as real to me as anything I've ever felt. 

It's raining outside. Geri is dead.

It doesn't make any sense.

Approaching the station...

All right, I admit it, I'm running out of train-based puns for blog titles for The Express Diaries. I've still got 'off the rails' up my sleeve, but I'm hoping I don't have to use that one, to be honest. Anyway, it shouldn't be a problem, as this is a quick post to say that my latest novel, The Express Diaries, is at the printers. We've just signed off on the completed cover - want a peek? No? Tough, here it is.

Isn't it pretty? I'm so pleased with Eric's cover art. But enough ego-boosting for the artist, how about some for the poor writer, eh?

Well, as it happens, the Express Diaries has juts had it's first review over at Horrorzine, and it is, if I may use the vernacular, amazeballs.
(Am I using that word right? I feel I'm not using it right. Also, I've learned recently it really doesn't travel across the Atlantic very well. Don't worry, it's not in the book).

The review is from Dr. Kevin Hillman, and contains probably the nicest quote I've ever had in a review, which is...

'I would recommend this book to anyone, if only to show how writing should be done.' Horrozine.com

Aww. I'd better not read it again in case my head gets any bigger. Sadly it came in just a few days to late to plaster all over the cover in dayglo pink, which would have naturally have been my first choice. But don't take my word for it - head over to Horrorzine to have a peek at the full review. 

The Express Diaries can be pre-ordered from the 1st September from Innsmouth House, and we're expecting a release date of late September/early October. There'll also be an electronic version available on Amazon for all you cheapska... er... technophiles our there.

Right, that's enough from me for the time being. Veterinary blog to follow soon, I promise!

A load of BSL - Lennox, Dangerous Dogs, and Breed Specific Legislation

Okay, I admit it, I'm more of a dog person than a cat person. Now, I'm aware that immediately puts me at odds with the rest of internetdom - it seems you guys only need a quick picture of a cat doing something cute to keep you all happy. All right, you've twisted my arm - here you go.

Maybe it's that you have to look after dogs a bit more - I need to walk them, which, if not necessarily keeping me fit, at least keeps me moving. Maybe it's because my first cat was something of a psychopath. Poppet, our current feline friend, is much friendlier - she yowls for food, she rolls on her back, does all the requisite cute stuff, and a bit less pissing on the carpet than her predecessor.

With Poppet, I can see the pleasure cats bring (she still does pretty horrible things to mice, though). Anyway, the point is, I can see the appeal of cats, and furthermore I can see how dogs can be less appealing. They're smellier, and bigger, and, let's face it, some of them are pretty scary - which is a helpful segue, because scary dogs is what I've brought you all here to talk about.

Much as I like dogs, you see, I've often found myself at the pointy end of some which really didn't reciprocate my feelings. The problem with being a vet - a bit like being a postman, I suspect - is that it's one of those things that seems funny to people. 'Ho, ho, my dog bit the vet,' that sort of thing. The other problem, of course, is that I'm generally being horrible to the dog in question, which doesn't do wonders for our relationships. It might seem like a cliche, but I can't tell you the number of times people have said to me 'Well, he's never done that before!' with a suspicious look in their eye, heavily implying that the attack I have just experienced was probably my fault. When Hitler invaded Poland, I suspect that Neville Chamberlain said 'Well, he's never done that before!' with a similar expression.

So, dogs can be vicious. They can even be dangerous. Cats can too - I've got the scars to prove it - but they generally don't attack members of the public. When dogs do (as I think might have happened right before I started writing this post) it's a problem.

Lennox


If you haven't got sick of Facebook yet, you may have noticed recently there's been a lot of pictures cropping up recently of proud owners standing next to their dog/cat/lizard, and proudly proclaiming something along the lines of 'Tiddles was a wonderful Chinese water dragon for fifteen years, but today, SHE IS LENNOX'. It certainly confused the heck out of me when I first saw it, but I finally worked out what they're going on about, and it's a pretty sad tale. Lennox is, or was, a dog from Northern Island, that has become another victim of BSL - Breed Specific Legislation.

Now, I'm going to be honest here - I don't know a great deal about the Lennox case. I don't know just how aggressive, if at all, he was - he certainly hadn't attacked anyone. But I can tell you that the legislation that led to his demise and, by the looks of it, martyrdom, is a big steaming pile of doggy plop.

Breed Specific Legislation


Okay, it's probably time to talk about this BSL that I keep teasing you with. Breed Specific Legislation is exactly what it sounds like - legislation which is specific to a certain breed. In the UK, it is the Dangerous Dogs Act (1991), and it is this that is supposed to protect the public from violent dogs.

It doesn't. It can't. The basic premise is flawed. Four breeds are covered under this act (and I can still remember them, because I had to learn them for my public health exam) - the Pit Bull Terrier, the Japanese Tosa, the Dogo Argentino and the Fila Brasilero (okay, okay, I had to check the spelling of the last one. It's been twelve years, all right?). Now, it's entirely possible that you have never heard of three of those breeds. It's even possible that you might think I have got my exams confused and have started reeling of the names of dishes from a Michelin-starred restaurant, but you would be incorrect, they are actual breeds. The reason you might not have heard about them is that there haven't been any documented attacked by any of these breeds except the pit bull terrier since the act was passed. Yay! A success, tempered only by the fact that I can't find any evidence for any attacks by these breeds before  it was passed, either.

Still, don't get me wrong - all the above breeds are scary creatures, and you really would not want to meet any of them in a back alley on a dark night. You probably wouldn't want to meet them on a wide boulevard in bright sunshine, either. I once briefly encountered a pressa canary - a massive slobbery-tooth machine that was considered for inclusion in the act - and described my experiences in this blog post.

So, all the above being the case, what is my (and other people's) problem with the Dangerous Dogs Act, and similar acts around the world the like of which Lennox fell victim to?

Well, there are two pretty major flaws with legislation such as this, both of which have consequences that lead to suffering in the real world. My job is all about reducing suffering, and therefore this makes me unhappy, and has inspired me to write a blog with frequent usage of the word 'legislation' - which was never something wanted to do (and you're reading it now as well; more suffering caused by BSL, damn it!)

The first problem is, as those heroes at Monsieur Garnier's world famous laboratory might have it, 'the science bit'

The Science Bit - Breeds and Species


Let's take a step back for a moment. Forget about dogs. Let's talk about humans for a sec. You know humans, right? Funny pale ape-things. You've probably met a few around, they're fairly easy to spot, especially when it's sunny. I imagine you're pretty confident in being able to tell the difference between a human, and something that isn't human.

Here's a problem, though. I'd like you to come up with a definition for a human. Imagine I have a really, really big piece of chalk, and based upon your definition, I'm going to put everything human inside the circle, and everything inhuman - parrots, Frosties, Piers Morgan - outside it.

Easy peasy, you say. Humans reproduce with other humans, to make humans, don't they? Well, yes, they do, but there're a couple of problems with that definition. Firstly, it uses the thing you're trying to define as part of the definition, which makes things confusing. Secondly, it means that every child and infertile adult 'human' now has to stand outside the circle, in the inhuman camp.

Okay, let's try again. How about... a human is a creature that has the potential to mate with others of its kind to produce an offspring, even if it can't actually do it as an individual.
Hmm. Not great. How do you measure mating 'potential'? And also, how does this distinguish the human race from, say parrots?

Let's try a different tack. How about 'Humans are the only creatures that wear digital watches, ride motorbikes, and build atom bombs.'

Okay, we've got some merit here. I think it's fair to say that, at least on Earth, no other species has managed to construct an atom bomb, so you haven't got any non-humans sneaking into the circle. The problem is, we haven't all done that, so there's going to be a lot of humans standing outside the circle gazing in jealously at Robert Oppenheimer and his digital watch. The same applies to pretty much any technological innovation you try to use as your definition - there will always be some beings that you consider humans that get left outside, because they don't own a microwave, or can't read, or whatever.

How about genetics? There's got to be a good definition there, surely? Well, here's a basic biological fact - humans have 23 pairs of chromosomes. Shall we try that?

This time, standing outside the circle, we have everyone who has Down's syndrome, Klinefelter's syndrome, and anyone also who has a chromosomal disorder. Also, we've got a few plants that have managed to sneak into the circle due to their own chromosomal abnormalities.

Okay, at this point, let's do what any sane person would do - give up and look online. Here is the dictionary definition of 'human'

'A member of the genus homo and especially of the species homo sapiens'


Hmm. Cop-out, because now we've got to define 'homo sapiens'. Further googling and research could be done at this point, but I'll save you time... there is no line you can draw. There is no simple definition of human, and the reason is obvious when you think about it.

We have evolved, as we all know, from a common hominid ancestor - an ancestor that lived many millions of years ago (if, incidentally, you don't know this, then you really should read more; if you already know this but just don't believe it, then I'm afraid I'm going to have ask you to kindly fuck off, because we're probably not going to get along).

Now, going back to our circle of humans, let's think about that. I'm assuming that you all feel that your fathers, sons, mothers, daughters, brothers and sisters all belong in that circle, and I'm not going to argue with you (unless you're Pier's Morgan's father/son/brother/sister or mother). But think of the implications for our ancestors, slowly evolving into homo sapiens over millions of years.

At every stage along that long, long journey down through time, the hominds were able to breed with each other, and they looked and behaved, by and large, very much like each other. If you explained the circle to them, they would certainly feel the same about their fathers, sons, mothers, daughters and so on; you'd get the same opinion everywhere you went, until you reached a point where you could no longer communicate with the natives, and you'd have to observe them instead, and draw the same conclusion yourself.

The very, very laboured point I'm trying to make here is this - it may seem that the term 'species' is very, aheh, specific, and that it refers to a very definite thing, but it really doesn't. The only reason we find it so easy to tell the difference between ourselves and chimps (who happened to share a common ancestor with more recently than anything else currently alive) is because all the intermediates along the way are dead. If they were still around we would find the concept of a definite 'human' as hard to grasp as it really should be. That simple chalk line that surrounds our species is nothing of the kind - it's more of a gradation, a gradual fading away from humanity into another 'species'.

So, although we generally manage to tell the difference between apes and humans (uncomfortable encounters in nightclubs excepted), when you try and pin it down scientifically - or, more importantly - legally - you begin to realise it isn't a simple task. And we have all this trouble with species! Now try and pass a law against a particular 'breed', and you run into all manner of trouble.

I like to think that I can tell a westie from a daschund, but you could keep bringing me westies that had shorter legs, longer snouts, on and on until at some point I would just say 'Er, he's a westie cross, isn't he?' - and the point that I would say it is different from the point from anyone else. You simply cannot legally define one breed from another - no blood test will tell you, and no two vets, anatomists or breeders would agree every time for every dog.

Problem One

So, this is a major - in fact, to me, the major problem with breed specific legislation. I told you it caused real suffering, and it does. Here's what happens - in fact, this is pretty much what happened to Lennox, as far as I can tell (as I say, I don't want to go into the specifics, because I really don't know the case) - the dog warden, or member of the public, looks at your dog, which, whether it is a pit bull or not, has the misfortune of looking like a pit bull - and if this sounds unlikely, bear in mind that a lot of staffie crosses have something of a pit bull look about them. They get picked up, impounded and summarily put to sleep if the 'expert' who looks at them agrees that they are a 'pit-bull type'. If you don't want your dog to be put to sleep, you can challenge the opinion in court. Eventually your dog may be off the hook, but it will have had to spend many months if not years waiting in kennels for an opinion that is just that; an opinion. No one can possible prove that a dog is or is not a pit bull.

The problem is compounded by the fact that, because these dogs are banned, many people are not all that sure what they actually look like. It's a not-infrequent experience for us to have the police, RSPCA or dog warden turn up at our practice asking 'Is this a pit bull?'. If we answer thought that it was, and no owner was present when the dog was found, the dog would probably be put straight to sleep, however friendly/aggressive or otherwise it was (I say 'probably' because I've never had occasion to find out; I've always explained the impossibility of making such a judgement call). Experts, as mentioned about, measure the dog against fifty-seven or so different traits to see if it fits into what we class as a 'pit bull'.

So, we get to the crux of the problem - BSL is legislation that is based in appearance, not demeanour. In effect, the Dangerous Dogs Act is really the Dangerous-looking Dogs Act. The first downside of this is, as we've already discussed, that dogs that happen to look a bit like pit bulls are unnecessarily destroyed or at least put through great suffering, much to the distress of their owners.

Problem Two


Now, if you've made it this far, you've probably figured out the second problem by yourself. No one has been attacked in this country by at least three of the four dangerous dog breeds since 1991 (and, quite possibly, ever). People are, however, still getting attacked by dogs.

Here's a study from 2008 in America about the breeds most likely to bite you. It's a teeny bit dry and wordy, and studies like this are notoriously difficult to do, but cutting through the chaff, you can find the breed most likely to bite you. You know what it is?

The daschund. The loveable sausage dog. Closely followed by the chihuahua. Now, fair enough, these breeds aren't often represented in serious dog attacks, for obvious reasons - that is still reserved for the pit bull. This site has a better overview of dog attacks, referencing the original papers if you're interested in looking into it further. The point I'm trying to make is this; dog attacks still happen, and they are very frequently from breeds not considered 'dangerous' - it might seem funny to be attacked by a daschund, until your Achilles' tendon in severed by a lucky chomp when you're trying to get away from it.

The dangerous dogs act makes no provision for any of this. It certainly takes no action to stop these things happening. With an amendment in the legislation, breeds can be added to it, or even individual dogs in extreme circumstances - and these are the circumstances you'll probably read about in the paper.

So, the basic problem is this - the Dangerous Dogs Act (1991 amended 1997), along with all Breed Specific Legislation - is based on a fundamentally flawed premise. It leads to dogs being put to sleep unnecessarily, and fails to recognise that there are many dogs out there that are a danger to the public but that don't happen to look much like a pit bull terrier.

Solutions


I do enjoy my moaning - you may have noticed - but I like it do be at least productive moaning. Can anything be done to help the situation?

Here's a very obvious point - it seems absolutely crazy to me that an anatomy should be the key decision-maker into whether a dog is dangerous or not. Surely the more important characteristic is whether the dog is, y'know, dangerous. Behaviourists should be making decisions like this, not anatomists. I understand that there are certain breeds that can be more aggressive than others, but this is trying to solve the problem from a step behind. The legislation should have clear guidelines, drawn up by behaviourists, not lawyers, about the kind of traits that make a dog unacceptably antisocial in our society. If they're taken in, then they should be tested for these warning signs, with and without the owner present, and taking into account the fear and stress the animal is under.

Also, let's not be unrealistic here. We've all heard that there's no such thing as a bad dog, but a bad owner. Now, I have met a few - a very few - genuinely scary dogs that I couldn't imagine any amount of training could ever have fixed, but they are very much the exceptions to the rule above. If we allow dogs in society, then some morons are going to either ignore the warnings that they need better control over their dogs, or they're going to actively train them to attack. There will always be dog attacks (whether they are on the increase or not, is, incidentally, quite difficult to prove, despite what you may have heard in the media. See here for a quick discussion) - all I am asking for is legislation designed with the problems I have outline above in mind; legislation which isn't a rush job (the DDA of 1991 was hurried through parliament after a spate of dog attacks) and which, if at all possible, please, does the frikkin' job it is supposed to do.

Today, I am Lennox. Hope you are too.