Tag: research

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Melody of Memories

In times of tragic loss, several people reach out for their friends and family for comfort, while others keep to themselves. Teejay Raj writes a letter to his most loved Pixie to express his love and share the bereavement.

My heart throb Pixie, It’s been only a month since you left us and crossed over the rainbow bridge. I am writing this letter to try and let you go. For some reason, I am unable to find peace. Sometimes it feels like a dream, but I don’t know what kind, good or bad. Half the time it’s like I’m in the middle of a nightmare, but maybe I’ll wake up and see you on my bed. Or maybe I’ll look over right now and see you lying by my chair where you’d always be when I am home.

Sometimes it’s like you were just my imagination. I want to fall asleep again and hope that I re-start that same dream. Was it really nine years ago that I first saw you? We were supposed to have another two or three or even five years to hang out and go on walks, talk, travel, or play, or was that all just a happy dream?

I wept when you passed away, I still cry everyday although I loved you deeply, I couldn’t make you stay. A golden heart stopped beating, Tiny little paws at rest. God broke my heart to only prove he takes the best. You came to my life when I was struggling with a shocking discovery of a lifelong disease with no cure in medical science. This hit me hard. It was difficult for me to come to terms with the unwanted developments. What was more dreadful was the fact that I cannot lead a normal healthy life anymore. My dependency on medicines, constant vigilance on day-to-day simple activities, brought fear and insecurity which gradually led to massive bouts of depression and suicidal tendencies.

During the whole process, I didn’t even realise when I isolated myself from the world. Eventually it led me to attract strong tendencies to hurt myself.

I still remember the feeling when I first saw you as a teenee weenie pup at the adoption centre in Delhi. With you, the conversations were magical – someday I might have to leave this world without getting a chance to tell you goodbye so I just want you to know that all my happiest memories are with you. Promise me, you will never forget all the time we spend together and promise me no one will ever take my place in your heart ever.

The day I adopted you, I found my missing piece – you completed me and made a better person out of me. Thank you for coming into my life and making me happy and content every single day. Maybe I wasn’t the perfect father for you- but I did everything in my power to make you happy.

In a world where everyone is overexposed- you have always taught me to enjoy life in private. If I could give you one thing in life, I would give you the ability to see yourself through my eyes, only then would you realise how special you were to me. Time has made me realise, choosing you was one of the best decisions of my life. You made me believe in myself when everyone gave up on me. You taught me compassion, love without condition or boundaries and caring and sharing. Maybe someday, somewhere we will meet again.

But for now, I will keep you safe in my thoughts like a gem well-kept in a treasure. I will always see you as long as my heart beats. When I walk around the house, I feel like something is missing. You aren’t there to greet me, No tail wagging, no tongue lolling. Life will never be the same. It is a quiet empty home- my tiny little girl now sleeps peacefully. And it hits me at random throughout the day. I went over to the terrace of our block last Tuesday to look for something, and my dear girl, I was thinking of you. I had to sit down and gather myself before I could get back to looking. There’s something I wanted to talk to you about, thank you for the nine years of being the best girl. It was a joy to grow up with you and it still breaks my heart that I won’t be seeing you anymore.

I want to read you the best quote I have ever heard, “You don’t know what you have, until it’s gone.” Truth, is you know exactly what you have but you just never thought, you would lose it. You have given me all your love and for staying as long as you possibly could. I never thought it was possible to love someone so deeply and so selflessly. You’ve taught us so many things without saying a word. You’ve changed me into a completely different human being. and now that you’re gone, I feel so lost and confused about my very own existence.

As far as I can see, grief will never truly end, it may become less shearing over time. Some days the pain does feel sharp. Grief will last as long as love does forever simply the way your absence pains my heart. A deep longing, along with deeper love…..someday the heavy rains lash and the next day the tide may recede. It will be an ebb and flow, the constant dance of pain, sorrow and sweet love.

I don’t often ask for help; I handle my own healing. When I do need someone that’s when you know it’s bad and I am literally struggling emotionally and mentally. You were so little when we got you and I was so young. Your passing symbolizes the end of an era, the end of very sweet memories. I love you Pixie, may you find happiness and lots of time to run and play on the rainbow. I miss you so much already. I am hoping this last letter to you gets rid of my heartache but it’s not working. Hopefully, I will find you in my dreams and thoughts and heal from this loss. You will always be “Daddy’s Little Girl”. I promise to see you on the other side when the time is right.

Unexpected Goodbye Forever in My Heart my baby.

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Dogs Know When They Don’t Know

You may not always be able to teach an old dog new tricks but they’re smart enough to know that, according to a new study

Munich, October 11, 2019: Researchers at the DogStudies lab at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History have found that dogs, like humans and chimps, are clever enough to know that sometimes they don’t have enough knowledge to solve a problem and will go out of their way to find information to help them.

The study, titled “Metacognition in dogs: Do dogs know they could be wrong?”, observed 48 dogs without the presence of their owners. The dogs ranged in the breed, age, and whether or not they had prior obedience training. Researchers, from the Max Planck Institute, then placed a reward behind one of two fences and tasked the dogs to find it. One of the major findings was that the dogs involved in the study checked more often when they did not know where the reward was hidden. This act of checking indicates that dogs are aware that they don’t know enough and need to explore more before making a choice. “We know that smell is very important for dogs and we could see that they were using it,” states co-author Juliane Bräuer. Researchers are aware, though, that more exploration is needed to definitively say whether dogs are aware of their intellectual strengths or weaknesses.

Some researchers argue that some animals, such as dogs, may only look for extra information when searching as a routinized, instinctual behavior, and not as a result of a metacognitive process. To control for this, Bräuer and Belger tested whether dogs show the so-called passport effect,” originally described by researcher Joseph Call. When humans are looking for something very important, for example, a passport, they will engage in more active searching and will check for it more often than if they are looking for something less important or generic. Great apes display this same behavior — they will search more for a high-value food.

Thus, Bräuer and Belger varied whether the dogs were looking for high- or low-value food, in order to test whether dogs also had the searching flexibility displayed in the passport effect. In another variation, they tested whether it made a difference to the dog when they had to search for a toy or for food. The dogs “checked” more often when they did not know where the reward was hidden. “These results show that dogs do tend to actively seek extra information when they have not seen where a reward is hidden,” explains Belger. “The fact that dogs checked more when they had no knowledge of the reward’s location could suggest that dogs show metacognitive abilities, as they meet one of the assumptions of knowing about knowing.” Additionally, the dogs did check more often for the toy than for the food in the first variation, suggesting that they do show flexibility in their searching and are not just engaging in a routine behavior. However, they did not check more often for the high-value food in the second variation, although they did look for it more quickly. Overall, the researchers concluded that the dogs, while showing some degree of searching flexibility, are not as flexible as primates.

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Dogs Do Smile at Us, Says Recent Research

Hormones play vital role in social bonding in canines.

London, May 20, 2019: Whenever you see your dog’s mouth wide open, her lips pull up at the corners, and her tongue lolls out, without the second thought you can consider she is grinning at you. Do dogs use this expression in the same way as people, to convey their joy, pleasure or contentedness? Well in that case if a research is to be believed it does happens.

The answer has roots in our 30,000-year history of keeping dogs as domesticated animals. Thanks to that history, humans and dogs have developed a unique bond, which has also made dogs very useful subjects for the study of communication. “Studying dogs is a really unique opportunity to look at social communication between species,” said Alex Benjamin, an associate lecturer in psychology, who studies dog cognition at the University of York in the United Kingdom.

Most of this research also reinforces the idea that the communicative bond we share with dogs is unique. For instance, researchers have found that dogs embrace the human gaze and use eye contact in a way that few other animals do.

A study published in the journal Current Biology tested how wolves and dogs would respond to the impossible task of opening a container to get at some meat they knew was within. The researchers found that while the wolves would simply stalk off when they discovered they couldn’t open it, dogs would turn around and give humans a long, inquiring gaze, suggesting that these animals knew a person could help them complete the task.

Another study, published in the journal Science, found that both dogs and humans experience an increase in levels of oxytocin, a hormone that plays a role in social bonding — when they lock eyes with one another. Even more intriguing, dogs that sniffed oxytocin would then spend more time staring at humans.

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Beware if Your Dog Licks Your Lips

Both you and your pet could be struck down with illness.

London, May 5, 2019: It is hard to resist when your cuddly mutt shows affection, especially when it licks your face and lips. But no matter what, you must not let your dog reach your face, nor if a recent research is to be believed.

According to a recent finding licky dog can actually spread a great deal of antibiotic-resistant bacteria to your mouth, and that’s never good news. Dogs don’t brush their teeth everyday, and so their mouths harbor a lot of bacteria, much of it harmful to humans. Hence letting your dog kiss you on the lips could be really bad for your health.

Scientists at Glasgow Caledonian University discovered that allowing dogs to kiss or lick your face or eat from your plate increases the chance of spreading ¬antibiotic-resistant bugs between species.Both you and your pet could be struck down with illnesses that can’t be treated with antibiotics, as the rise in antibiotic resistant bacteria leads to more and more superbugs in the UK.Health psychologist Dr Adele Dickson, who led the research, said to media “This close contact could potentially put adults, children and the pets themselves at risk of transferring bugs that are resistant to antibiotics through saliva.

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Service Dogs May Help Army Veterans Struggling with PTSD

Having a service dog was also associated with less anger, less anxiety and better sleep

New York, April 30, 2019: After serving the nation for so many years in army veterans often succumb to post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). If a research is to be believed, in such circumstances, service dogs might be able to offer both behavioral and physiological benefits to help counter some of those symptoms, according to research that is being led by the Purdue College of Veterinary Medicine, Indiana.

The research led by Maggie O’Haire, assistant professor of human-animal interaction in the College of Veterinary Medicine is on the verge of figuring out how service dogs help veterans with PTSD. The latest findings have indicated that veterans may benefit physiologically from having a service dog — the first published research to use a physiological marker to show the effects of service dogs.

A preliminary study that took place in 2015-16 showed that overall symptoms of PTSD were lower among war veterans with service dogs. The pilot study was co-funded by the Human Animal Bond Research Institute (HABRI) and Bayer Animal Health. The study examined 141 veterans with 76 of them having a service dog and 66 being on a waiting list for a dog.
O’Haire led that study with the help of K9s for Warriors an accredited nonprofit organization that provides veterans with service dogs. The pilot research project provided scientific evidence of mental health benefits experienced by veterans with PTSD who have service dogs. The findings during that study also went beyond behavioral benefits and assessed cortisol levels because it is a biomarker in the stress response system, O’Haire said to media.Research has also revealed that for veterans, having a service dog was also associated with less anger, less anxiety and better sleep.

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Owners Trying to Make their Pets Vegan, Says Recent Research

International survey involved more than 3,670 dog and cat owners.

Dogs and Cats may be carnivorous but that hasn’t stopped a surprising number of pet owners from wistfully wishing they could switch their furry friends to a plant-based diet – or even already doing so.

A survey of more than 3,670 dog and cat owners from around the world found that 35 per cent are interested in putting their pets on a vegan diet while 27 per cent of respondents who follow a vegan diet themselves have already done so. Around 55 per cent said that certain measures would need to be met in order for them to commit to changing their pet’s diets, such as gaining veterinarian approval and ensuring their animal’s nutritional needs are met.

As reported by media, study’s lead author, Dr. Sarah Dodd of the veterinary college at the University of Guelph, Canada,  which conducted the study said, she was surprised at how many pet-owners were already feeding their animals exclusively vegan food. “That percentage, 27 per cent, might sound like a small number, but when you think of the actual numbers of pets involved, that’s huge, and much higher than we expected.” Dodd also stated that study suggests the interest surrounding vegan pet diets may increase in the coming years.

“People have been hearing about how vegan diets are linked to lowered risks of cancer and other health benefits in humans. There is also growing concern about the environmental impact of animal agriculture. So, while only a small proportion of pet-owners are currently feeding plant-based diets to their pets, it is safe to say that interest in the diets is likely to grow.”

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