Family Pet Research Articles

Persistent Bordetella bronchiseptica infection in a child with cystic fibrosis: Relationship to bacterial phenotype

Bordetella bronchiseptica is an opportunistic bacteria infecting the respiratory tract of patients with cystic fibrosis. We present a case of B. bronchiseptica chronic pulmonary infection and documentation of some phenotypic attributes of the clinical isolates allowing the microorganism to induce progressive respiratory degradation and chronic sputum colonization. We recommend implementing adequate treatment aiming eradication from the first isolation of this bacterium. We advise for practices that minimize opportunities for zoonotic transmission of B. bronchiseptica from family pets.

Memento Mori

Memento Mori Diane Seuss (bio) All my life I’ve been writing of it but not from it, directing a bare light bulb at its profile so I may outline its silhouette on tracing paper. Its gifts have been delivered to my door in an unattributable basket, food nameless but nourishing, cook anonymous, recipe untranscribed. I saw my father carried from the couch into the waiting ambulance, which wailed like my mother could not, like I did not, as wailing is an art, its permissions learned. The rotating red emergency light swept across his face like a rash, a red tide. I was not there when he died. I was at school, learning equations, trying not to pee my pants because peeing them meant getting my wet bottom slapped by teacher and carrying the soaked underpants home in a paper bag. Even if I’d been there, if I’d shut down his eyes with my fingers dirty from recess, I’d know nothing more of it than I do now. He was so young, and death froze him in time. If I knew him now I’d be his elder. I could tell him to pick up after himself. To shut the door against the heat or cold. His illness made me conscious of the veins beneath the skin, the blue of a bruise and its gold aura, the bones that rise up through the skin when one has been sick for a long time, unable to wear a suit and tie anymore, wrapped only in a blue robe belted at the waist, and a back brace. He’d take short walks up and down the sidewalk in front of our house, pacing, [End Page 67] my mother called it, a word I contemplated, as I did the word “throb,” until they became part of my consciousness, just as I imagine he contemplated the thing inside him, the thing he was inside, or soon to be, like a man walking the gangplank contemplates the sublime blackness of the sea. Once, I ran from the school bus and leaped into his arms as he paced, like a girl in a movie. Knocked his chin with my skull, made him bite his tongue. He stuck it out to show me the blood my performance had cost him. Blood type O negative, which later I’d seek in other men, his disease, histiocytosis X, which together made tic tac toe. We played it sometimes in the hospital room, but our hearts weren’t in it. Is anyone’s heart in tic tac toe? It’s a game built for hospital rooms. His abdomen was interestingly swollen. His hands strangely cold. My face oddly ugly as I cried looking into a hand mirror. My consciousness growing adverbs, distended with them. Anyway, the transformation was incremental; he’d been sick my whole life, six years, then seven, so what I knew of Father was a body in constant progression, though toward what end I could not imagine. The closest I can come to empathy for that destination is when I was put under for surgery. Ten, nine, eight, gone. No comfort, no embrace, only absent, an empty desk at school, an empty coat hook, a locker resonant with its own hollowness. On the day he died I walked alone up Fulkerson Road to my Brownie meeting, pressed my forehead to the screen door before opening it and heard the girls inside praying for me. Absent but present. Present to my absence. Is this death? For a while I thought it belonged only to my father and family pets. It was months before I understood my mother too would someday die, any time she left the house she could die, like when she went on a three-day bender with her brother and was spotted all over town, flipping burgers [End Page 68] at the Four Square, laughing or crying and dancing at the cemetery, and I lay awake at my grandmother’s house, in the bat-filled dark, waiting for word of my mother’s demise, drunk and hit by a train at the unmarked railroad crossing by the underground house. Even at home...

Treating a 17 year old with Moderate to Severe Anxiety Disorder

This case presents the treatment of a seventeen-year-old male for anxiety disorder. The treatment focused on cognitive exposure therapy and in-vivo exposure for family and school-based concerns. Since the completion of treatment, the client has had success at a traditional boarding school and has had not been limited by anxiety. Background Information Jack arrived at WayPoint Academy at the age of 17 years and 6 months. He grew up as the only child of single mother, Mary. His biological father had a brief relationship with his mother but they never married. Jack’s interaction with his father was intermittent and sporadic, as his father lived in a different state. There were times that Jack had no contact with his father for years. During the pregnancy, Mary reported her first episode with Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD), which was evident primarily in contamination fears. Convinced the world around her was contaminated, Mary was propelled into a host of compulsive rituals. She thought the public water supply was contaminated and hence she purchased “pure” water in one-gallon bottles. The “pure” water usage ranged from personal hygiene (showers, brushing teeth) to washing dishes and drinking water for the family and the family pet. The cost of the “pure” water prevented the family members from taking regular showers and the timely washing of clothing and bedding, which, paradoxically contributed to the decline in overall hygiene of the home. Mary’s contamination fear morphed into related obsessions. The “contaminated” outside air “forced” the family to stay indoors for long periods of time. Shopping trips were followed with elaborate “cleansing” rituals. Because of the rarity of outside shopping trips, the “pure” water supply was limited and dirty dishes, pots, and pans were found throughout the apartment. The same was true for items of clothing.

The “Family Film” as Amateur Production Genre: Frank Marshall's Comic Narratives

The “Family Film” as Amateur Production GenreFrank Marshall’s Comic Narratives Ryan Shand (bio) [End Page 1] Frank Marshall (1896–1979) was one of the most well-known figures in postwar Scottish amateur film culture. He was involved in developing the remarkable infrastructure that amateur cinema enjoyed in Scotland as the first chairman of the Scottish Association of Amateur Cinematographers (SAAC) when it was formed in 1949 and as a member of the board of the Scottish Film Council until 1972. Tom Clark, former secretary of the SAAC, compared Marshall’s central role within amateur filmmaking in Scotland to the influence that John Grierson exerted on the professional industry.1 Furthermore, Frank Marshall was one of the most active participants in postwar Scottish amateur film culture, responsible for making approximately seventy-seven short films. One recurring preoccupation within this vast body of work was what then was known to its practitioners as family films, a category featuring family members, close friends, and/or pets, which tend to be shot either at the filmmaker’s home, in his or her garden, or on vacation. Family films can be either fiction or nonfiction. Marshall’s family films, in particular, expand moments captured in private cine recordings into planned linear comic narratives. These films provide an opportunity to examine the intersection between the domestic focus of the family as subject and the aesthetic expectations for the genre that prevailed at amateur cine contests. I will show that the family film was championed as a hybrid form that could be celebrated as the emblematic genre of amateur cinema. Examples of family films, in particular, those of Marshall, were recurrently employed by the movement’s champions and critics to illustrate the distinctive nature of the sector to wider audiences. Marshall’s reputation in turn encouraged other amateur filmmakers to attempt their own variations on the genre as it became a formalized category in amateur film competitions, both in Scotland and internationally. This case study demonstrates that some aspects of methodologies that have been developed to analyze commercially released feature films may also be applied to the creative works of nonprofessional filmmakers. Marshall’s amateur films raise questions of authorship, genre, and pragmatic analysis—approaches that have been well rehearsed in studies of feature films. Dana Polan reminds us that studies of authorship require critical engagement with archival resources to provide historical context: A related aspect of auteurism today has to do not simply with the reincarnation of older auteurist methods but their refinement or even transformation. . . . New advances in historiography (for example, the potentials that gritty archival work offers) have led, in contrast, to a greater concreteness and detail in the examination of just what the work of the director involves.2 [End Page 2] Frank Marshall, accordingly, may be studied as an example of an amateur auteur—that is, as a director who exhibits stylistic continuity but is also significant because he or she influenced a particular genre of film.3 In both the amateur film press and in later archival cataloging, a film “in the Frank Marshall style” is shorthand indicating peculiar personal idiosyncrasies and certain generic qualities that other filmmakers sought to replicate and refine.4 Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Frame enlargement from ARP: A Reminder for Peacetime (Frank Marshall, 1940). The Marshall family from left to right: Muriel, Chrissie, Nairn, and Frank. From the collection of the Scottish Screen Archive at National Library of Scotland copyright NLS. Marshall’s films are often centered on his immediate family: his wife, Chrissie, daughter Muriel, son Nairn, and, later, his grandchildren.5 Most of his films are variations on a few familiar themes that give them a distinct authorial signature. The comic narratives that incorporate these domestic preserves are slight tales spun around small incidents that disrupt the tranquility of home life in Whitecraigs (a suburb on the south side of Glasgow) before equilibrium is happily restored. The mode of production specific to amateur cinema meant that “cinedads,” as George Wain called them, could integrate family members into their films as a pragmatic way to recruit and retain actors.6 Children are readily available and often can be...

‘I don’t think I ever had food poisoning’. A practice-based approach to understanding foodborne disease that originates in the home

Food stored, prepared, cooked and eaten at home contributes to foodborne disease which, globally, presents a significant public health burden. The aim of the study reported here was to investigate, analyse and interpret domestic kitchen practices in order to provide fresh insight about how the domestic setting might influence food safety. Using current theories of practice meant the research, which drew on qualitative and ethnographic methods, could investigate people and material things in the domestic kitchen setting whilst taking account of people's actions, values, experiences and beliefs. Data from 20 UK households revealed the extent to which kitchens are used for a range of non-food related activities and the ways that foodwork extends beyond the boundaries of the kitchen. The youngest children, the oldest adults and the family pets all had agency in the kitchen, which has implications for preventing foodborne disease. What was observed, filmed and photographed was not a single practice but a series of entangled encounters and actions embedded and repeated, often inconsistently, by the individuals involved. Households derived logics and principles about foodwork that represented rules of thumb about ‘how things are done’ that included using the senses and experiential knowledge when judging whether food is safe to eat. Overall, food safety was subsumed within the practice of ‘being’ a household and living everyday life in the kitchen. Current theories of practice are an effective way of understanding foodborne disease and offer a novel approach to exploring food safety in the home.

Antioxidant foods consumption and childhood asthma and other allergic diseases: The Greek cohorts of the ISAAC II survey

BackgroundAntioxidant intake changes have been implicated with the increase in asthma and allergies outcomes, but no clear association has been revealed. In this cross sectional study, the overall effect of antioxidants on asthma and allergic diseases was studied. MethodsData from the cohorts of the phase II ISAAC survey (2023 children 9–10 years old) in two metropolitan Greek cities were analysed. Using a semi-quantitative food frequency questionnaire, an Antioxidant Eating Index (AEI, range 0–6) was created with the pro-antioxidant (vegetables, fruits, fresh juice, fish) and the non-antioxidant (meat, burgers) food intake and was evaluated with allergic diseases. Higher values of the score suggest closer to an “antioxidant” and lesser to a “saturated fatty” diet. ResultsPrevalence of lifetime and current asthma, current rhinitis and sensitisation were higher in Thessaloniki compared to Athens. The AEI score of the entire cohort was 4.2±1.2 (median 4.0) and was higher in Athens compared to Thessaloniki (4.3±1.2 vs. 4.0±1.2, p=0.001) and in girls than boys (4.3±1.1 vs. 4.0±1.2, p=0.001). AEI was inversely associated with lifetime asthma (OR: 0.87, 95%CI 0.77, 0.99) in either cities independently of other cofounders such as family history, sensitisation, exercise, house smoking, breast feeding, pet or dampness in houses. No association with other allergic disease or sensitisation was detected. ConclusionAntioxidant foods seem to be a non-pharmacological, protective dietary pattern for asthma development in children irrespectively of atopy or heredity; AEI was a rough indicator and the role of antioxidants in allergic diseases is still under consideration.

Where I end, where you begin Mindwise How We Understand What Others Think, Believe, Feel, and Want Nicholas Epley Alfred A. Knopf, 2014. 265 pp.

![Figure][1] Nicolas Epley begins Mindwise outside a courthouse in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Epley (a social psychologist at the University of Chicago) and his wife have just legally adopted two Ethiopian children. Epley is both perplexed and anxious before first meeting their biological father, who has agreed to have them adopted. What did this man think, believe, feel, and want for his children? This opening vignette is the first of many examples taken from the author's personal life, news headlines, and empirical science that drive this fast-moving and highly readable book. Epley's central concern is articulating the ways in which we both understand and, very often, misunderstand other people, even those close to us. Epley delivers the good news that we all have a sixth sense, an ability to read minds. The bad news is that we are not very good at it. However, there is hope. In the book, Epley draws on a wealth of empirical social psychological research to help make sense of how humans understand and misunderstand one another. Moreover, his experiments show how people, even couples, overestimate how well they think they know others. Not only do the participants in his studies misunderstand one another, they are also largely unaware of their mistakes. ![Figure][1] PHOTO: PASIEKA/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/CORBIS Some of the shortcomings of our mindreading ability stem from how we engage and disengage it at inappropriate times. Epley reveals how we dehumanize other people. That is, how we fail to attribute minds to other people, such as the homeless or terrorists, when it is advantageous or even necessary to do so. Conversely, humans also anthropomorphize; we attribute minds to nonhumans such as gods, family pets, and technological objects like robots and even alarm clocks that force us out of bed in the morning. According to the author, these evolutionarily ingrained intuitions are only half of the reason why people converse with gods in the sky while ignoring homeless people who ask for spare change. The book covers a variety of ways by which we try to read others' minds: We often project our own thoughts, wants, feelings, or beliefs onto the minds of others—assuming that they think what we think. We stereotype groups and consequently fail to see how individuals might be like us. We often incorrectly make inferences about others' mindsets based on our observations of their behaviors. (Most people who stayed in New Orleans despite the warnings about Hurricane Katrina were not irresponsible or stupid. They simply had no means to leave or nowhere else to go.) These mind-reading tools allow us to make sense of complex social interactions to a degree better than chance. However, their faults indicate they could be improved, and Epley ends Mindwise by suggesting ways to do so. The secret lies in perspective getting rather than perspective taking. According to Epley, the latter, egocentric strategy at best reinforces—and at worst amplifies—stereotypical and incomplete understandings of others. He espouses the more direct strategy of opening the lines of communication and getting someone else's perspective as a potential solution to understanding the mind of the other. It worked for Kennedy and Khrushchev in resolving the Cuban Missile Crisis. It can also work for us in our relationships with colleagues, friends, family, and significant others. [1]: pending:yes

Ask the Expert: Psychotherapy: New Evidence and New Approaches

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Clinical SynthesisFull AccessAsk the Expert: Psychotherapy: New Evidence and New ApproachesMary S. Ahn, M.D.Mary S. AhnSearch for more papers by this author, M.D.Published Online:1 Jul 2014https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.focus.12.3.309AboutSectionsView articleView PDFView EPUB ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack Citations ShareShare onFacebookTwitterLinked InEmail View articleI’m considering moving my psychotherapy office into my home. What are the particular issues that I should be concerned about?Reply from Mary S. Ahn, M.D.Opening a home office to practice psychotherapy (with or without medication management) offers unique advantages for both the psychiatrist and the client. Despite the potential benefits, the psychiatrist should carefully consider the clinical and ethical issues before making the decision to move to a home office.1. Potential Benefits for Psychiatrists •. A home office allows easier time management to transition between professional and personal life. There is no need to commute and no parking constraints. Working close to one’s family and community facilitates attending personal events such as kids’ activities and volunteering. •. There are potential financial benefits. For example, there is no need to pay additional rent and sometimes utilities can be packaged into the residential services. There are also possible additional shared tax deductions involved in the expenses of maintaining an office in a residence.2. Potential Benefits for Clients •. Many clients prefer the cozy feeling that a residential space may offer versus going to an office that is based in a hospital, clinic, or commercial office space. •. Some clients, especially youth, feel less anxious about meeting a new psychiatrist in a home office setting. They may feel that a home office is less self-stigmatizing. •. In many cases, the home office is located in a less dense population area, giving more privacy for clients.3. Clinical and Ethical Risks •. There is an unavoidable boundary crossing of self-disclosure in having a home office. At the very least, disclosure of the hometown and residential dwelling will be known by the client. •. There may be unintentional intrusions including family members, friends, or pets. Privacy and confidentiality may be more difficult to maintain for both the psychiatrist and client. •. Safety concerns may arise for clients with unanticipated threatening or violent behaviors. •. For clients, it may be more difficult to discriminate between the psychiatrist’s professional life and personal life and to maintain appropriate boundaries.The following guidelines may help in the decision-making process of opening a home office:•. Home office practices may have different connotations regarding the physical space. At the very minimum, a home office should have a physically separate entrance, waiting area, restroom, and office from the rest of the residence.•. Minimize opportunities for clients and family members/pets to intersect. Advise family members and household employees of the separate home office space and offer specific advice and guidelines to maintain the client’s privacy.•. Initiate and maintain a strict set of boundaries to maintain the frame of psychotherapy for clients. Anticipate that clients may bring up personal questions more frequently in such a setting and be prepared to respond.•. Carefully screen potential clients before setting up an initial meeting. For my home office, I conduct a detailed phone interview before agreeing to accept a client for consultation and possible ongoing treatment. Some factors include screening out clients with a history of violence or active safety concerns, clients with major boundary issues, or those who are complex and may not benefit from a solo practice.•. Always try to remain cognizant of what is communicated to clients nonverbally by a home office. For example, the size of the home, neighborhood choice, and unanticipated encounters with family members.•. Participate in a peer consultation group or at the very least consult with someone who can offer ongoing supervision of issues that arise with a home office.Psychiatrists should continue to actively weigh the clinical implications of doing psychotherapy out of a home office when working with any client.Address correspondence to: Mary S. Ahn; email: Mary.[email protected]eduAuthor Information and DisclosureMary S. Ahn, M.D., Assistant Professor, Department of Psychiatry, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MADr. Ahn reports no competing interests.BibliographyGutheil TG, Gabbard GO: The concept of boundaries in clinical practice: theoretical and risk-management dimensions. Am J Psychiatry 1993; 150:188–196Crossref, Google ScholarOfer Z: Boundaries in Psychotherapy: Ethical and Clinical Explorations. Arlington, VA, American Psychological Association, 2007Google Scholar FiguresReferencesCited byDetailsCited ByNone Volume 12Issue 3 Summer 2014Pages 309-310Psychotherapy: New Evidence and New Approaches

‘Mum cleaned it and I just played with it’: Children’s perceptions of their roles and responsibilities in the care of family pets

Understanding how best to nurture children’s respect for, and care of, other living beings is a concern within education and animal welfare science. Relationships with individual animals are often seen as a ‘bridge’ to caring about the broader environment (of people, animals and ecosystems). However, little is known about children’s actual care of the animals they know best. Focus groups explored 7- to 13-year-olds’ caring activities and sense of responsibility to care for family pets, with findings highlighting the strong influence of parental roles and restrictions, the significance of play as a form of care and reluctance to take responsibility.

Top Medical Director Has Caring Heart, Clear Vision

Top Medical Director Has Caring Heart, Clear Vision

Empathic veterinarians score cattle pain higher

The treatment of cattle pain often relies upon veterinarians. The aim of this study was to qualify the influence of veterinarians skills, attitudes, and empathy on cattle pain assesment and consequently disbudding pain management. A web-based questionnaire was sent to Finnish veterinary students in either the preclinical or clinical stage, and also to production-animal practice oriented veterinarians. The questionnaire recorded demographics, statements of opinions, pain scoring of cattle conditions and procedures. Empathy towards humans (Interpersonal Reactivity Index, IRI) and reworded IRI to measure empathy towards animals were also covered.The overall response rate was approximately 40%. The association between pain and empathy scores were analyzed by Pearsońs correlation, and the factors affecting pain scores and empathy towards animals analyzed using linear models. The need for pain medication of calves during disbudding was well recognized and the intention to treat such pain was very common. Higher mean scores for cattle pain were associated with greater empathy towards humans. On average, respondents’ empathy towards animals was greater than towards humans, and was associated with respondents’ empathy towards humans, family size and attachment to family pet.

“As Flies to Wanton Boys”: Dilemmas and Dodging in the Field of Nonhuman Animal Ethics

On a daily basis, one of us (MA) drives around the Australian state of Tasmania where the “roadkill” bodies of native animals can be found everywhere, adding up to hundreds of thousands every year. Clearly, if these were humans, there would be an outcry! Initially, one may be saddened and even outraged to witness such public and unnatural deaths, but this tends to subside, becoming accepted as “unavoidable” and so invisible in plain sight, only to be revisited by anger, sorrow, and powerlessness again from time to time. On the other side of the world, one of us (LER) dreams regularly of her childhood dog. Rather than buoyed by happy memories, she often awakens dismayed, not merely because the family pet has long since departed this world but because she regrets selfish decisions made in youth that today seem inexplicable. She’s not sure why she relocated the dog’s bed to the hallway after years of sharing a room or where she was when the dog was sprayed by a skunk and had to endure a traumatic tomato juice “shower” to mitigate the stench or how she could be absent when it was time to put the family friend “to sleep.” There were, of course, many years of walks and tug-o’-war with toys and other ways of taking responsibility and showing care, but the dreams are a haunting reminder of the moral duty to “be better,” to live a more virtuous and contemplative life even with regard to nonhumans. Many of us live uneasily with animal suffering and death. Some of us are vegetarians and vegans, some advocate for research and products not tested on animals, some join environmental and animal rescue organizations. But for others this is just “collateral damage” on what is seen as the “dominant” human journey—a callous, hierarchical relationship akin to what Shakespeare wrote in King Lear to remind us of our own insignificant place: “As flies to wanton boys are we to th’ gods./They kill us for their sport” (IV.i.36–37). In this special issue of the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry, we revisit the area of “Nonhuman Animal Ethics” and what it means—morally—to be human in an interconnected, species-diverse world. How do we derive and sustain animal rights and improve, monitor, and regulate our Bioethical Inquiry (2013) 10:429–433 DOI 10.1007/s11673-013-9490-3

Family Pet Visitation

In Brief Creating a protocol in support of patient-centered care. How one hospital instituted a pet visitation program to help patients feel more comforted and supported.

ART, cognitive science, and technology transfer.

Three computational examples illustrate how cognitive science can introduce new approaches to the analysis of large datasets. The first example addresses the question: how can a neural system learning from one example at a time absorb information that is inconsistent but correct, as when a family pet is called Spot and dog and animal, while rejecting similar incorrect information, as when the same pet is called wolf? How does this system transform such scattered information into the knowledge that dogs are animals, but not conversely? The second example asks: how can a real-time system, initially trained with a few labeled examples and a limited feature set, continue to learn from experience when confronted with oceans of additional information, without eroding reliable early memories? How can such individual systems adapt to their unique application contexts? The third example asks: how can a neural system that has made an error refocus attention on environmental features that it had initially ignored? Three models that address these questions, each based on the distributed adaptive resonance theory (dART) neural network, are applied to a spatial testbed created from multimodal remotely sensed data. The article summarizes key design elements of ART models, and provides links to open-source code for each system and the testbed dataset. WIREs Cogn Sci 2013, 4:707-719. doi: 10.1002/wcs.1260 CONFLICT OF INTEREST: The author has declared no conflicts of interest for this article. For further resources related to this article, please visit the WIREs website.

Help consumers hear what you say

In this regard, veterinarians can plan a key role in the communications process because, in general, consumers trust veterinarians, mostly because they are familiar with the care their local veterinarian gives their family pet. Because of this trust, consumers will listen to what veterinarians have to say. By practicing the use of the right communications tools, veterinarians can help consumers have a more positive perception of agricultural practices that will lead to a more favorable climate for all food industry stakeholders.

The Emotional Extravagance of Victorian Pet-Keeping

The Emotional Extravagance of Victorian Pet-Keeping Ivan Kreilkamp (bio) The household pet poses boundary problems. If little Bandit, Buster, Patches, or Shadow are, no question about it, biologically animal, the positioning within cultural categories of these creatures who share our homes—and sometimes our beds and dinner plates—is less simple. Are pets animals, humans, or things—or some combination of these categories? Claude Lévi-Strauss, in The Savage Mind, influentially defined pet dogs as instances of “metonymical human beings,” possessing a partial or incomplete personhood. “Having no social life of their own, [dogs] form part of ours” (207). The pet’s location in the family circle, subsumed in our “life,” can seem to offer proof of its falsity to its wild nature, its shift from a natural state to a human culture, where it does not belong. Pets are often associated with sentimentality precisely because they can appear pre-eminent figures of excessive, or otherwise improper, sentiment. In A Thousand Plateaus, for instance, Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari denigrate pets as sentimentalized possessions, describing “the family animal or pet” as “the Oedipalized [End Page 71] animal as psychoanalysis sees it, as the image of the father, etc.” They prefer to see animals as embodiments of wildness, vitality, and “becoming,” all qualities antithetical to those associated with pets: “Ahab’s Moby-Dick is not like the little cat or dog owned by an elderly woman who honors and cherishes it. Lawrence’s becoming-tortoise has nothing to do with a sentimental or domestic relation” (244). But “there is always a possibility that a given animal, a louse, a cheetah or an elephant, will be treated as a pet” (241); after all, they imply, there are a lot of sentimental old ladies out there. Deleuze and Guattari’s scorn is directed at those who would domesticate animals and transform them into pets: domestic, feminized, Oedipalized, “cherishe[d],” and confined to the home. If the proper destiny of the animal lies in a dynamic “becoming” within a state of wildness, in this view, it finds a lifeless stasis and enclosure in front of the family hearth. In its celebration of the laws of packs and swarms, A Thousand Plateaus elevates the modern or postmodern wild animal, satisfyingly “other” to human culture, at the expense of what clearly seems the sentimental, pre-modern or nineteenth-century domestic pet. And, indeed, Victorian British culture did, in fact, raise pet-loving to new heights and played a fundamental role in the construction of the modern family pet—along with Christmas, the Angel in the House, and the realist novel, among other inventions—as a cherished object of sentiment. As Harriet Ritvo points out, “By the middle of the nineteenth century what has been called the Victorian cult of pets was firmly established. Punch frequently satirized the foolishness of dog lovers who fed their pets from the table, dressed them in elaborate outfits, and allowed them to inconvenience human members of the household” (86). For Deleuze and Guattari, and others who follow their lead in theorizing animals and animality as offering possibilities of otherness beyond the human, the Victorian cult of pets is problematic precisely because it so foundationally emblematizes the link between pets and a sentimentalized home. What we might call the post-humanist critique of the sentimentality of pet-keeping is not, however, so much wrong as it is too limited in the conclusions it draws. The anti-sentimentalist position on pets accurately recognizes the link between pets and a highly affective vision of the home, but it fails to recognize a deeper point: that this very way of understanding domesticity, one invented or at least mass-produced in the Victorian period, relied in the first place on the existence of pets in the home and on the page. That is, the Victorian cult of domesticity and family life does not retroactively sentimentalize the animal as pet; that very vision of domestic space and domestic writing is partially constituted by the pet, which operates as a defining supplement of extravagant affect to the home. That a home permits the luxury of love for an animal proves its domesticity. In some...

Do You Know Your Patient?: Knowing Individuals with Dementia Combined with Evidence-Based Care Promotes Function and Satisfaction in Hospitalized Older Adults

Do you know your patient? More than 20 years ago Dr. Afaf Meleis wrote about the importance of knowing your patient and the unique opportunity for nurses to use this knowledge to improve care (Schumacher, Jones, & Meleis, 1999). “Knowing your patient” can mean different things to different nurses depending on how you define knowing and where one practices. In this editorial, we present one practical case exemplar and evidence to support this approach.

Anxiety and depression in care homes in Malta and Australia: part 2

This cross-sectional comparative study, conducted in two phases, assessed the levels of and factors contributing to anxiety and depression in older people in residential homes in Malta and Australia. Part 1 presented the methodology of this cross-sectional study and presented the quantitative findings; this constituted phase 1. Part 2 presents the qualitative findings on the contributing factors to anxiety and depression and discusses the overall findings. Maltese residents were recruited from four church homes in Malta and Australia and two state residences in Malta; there was a high response rate in phase 2 of 89.4% (n=42, mean age 71.9 years). The residents were all mobile Roman Catholics who had lived in the homes for a minimum of 6 months. Data was collected using audiotaped focus groups. The qualitative data generated three contributing factors: physical functional abilities, adaptation to institutionalisation, and personal outlook towards the future. Mobility was found to foster an active life, which appeared to help residents to control their anxiety and depression. Rehabilitation programmes and facilitation of strategies were recommended to strengthen relationships with family members, room mates, health professionals and pets to help residents live meaningfully. Further cross-cultural longitudinal research would identify the role of other influencing variables such as culture, spirituality and caring relationships.

Coercive Control and Abused Women’s Decisions About Their Pets When Seeking Shelter

The importance of pets in families, especially during major life stressors, is well documented. Research suggests links between pet ownership and intimate partner violence (IPV). This study explored abused women's decisions about pets when seeking help from a shelter. Interviews were conducted with 19 women who were pet owners. Using grounded theory methods, two patterns emerged surrounding abusers' treatment of pets, bonds to pets, women's decisions about pets upon seeking shelter, and future plans for pets. The presence of coercive control was central to these patterns. Women also discussed their experiences with and needs from shelter professionals and veterinarians with implications for practice.

The New Solitude: Melancholy Anthropomorphism and the Molecular Gaze

THE ANTHROPOMORPHIZATION of Agency Anthropomorphism, as it is usually understood, is a matter of identity. To anthropomorphize is to project a human identity onto something nonhuman. Originally, anthropomorphism referred to the Ascription of a human form and attributes to the Deity. Now it means the Ascription of a human attribute or personality to anything impersonal or irrational (Anthropomorphism). If anthropomorphism often strikes us as a type of logical error, this is because we see the identity it produces--say, God in human form with flowing white beard--as a mistaken or metaphorical identity. In this sense, anthropomorphism presumes the relative stability and apriority of human and non-human identity. We say it is wrong to ascribe human form to God because we presume God's identity to be non-human. While anthropomorphism seems more mistaken as a strategy for understanding God, it seems less mistaken as a strategy for understanding non-human animals, especially in a post-Darwinian world. As Wendy Doniger notes, and zoomorphism are two different attempts to reduce the otherness between humans and animals, to see the sameness beneath the difference (34). But what happens to the idea of anthropomorphism when one assumes the separation of human and animal to be absolute? This is a question that arises out of John Berger's highly influential analysis of the global animal in his 1977 article Look at Animals? In this essay, Berger writes: Until the 19th century ... anthropomorphism was integral to the relation between man and animal and was an expression of their proximity. Anthropomorphism was the residue of the continuous use of animal metaphor. In the last two centuries, animals have gradually disappeared. Today we live without them. And in this new solitude, anthropomorphism makes us doubly uneasy. (21) For Berger, the process of industrialization begun in Western Europe and North America in the nineteenth century has broken every tradition that previously mediated between humans and nature, including anthropomorphism. Why does Berger say that anthropomorphism makes us doubly uneasy in the postindustrial age? It makes us uneasy in the first place because, having separated ourselves from other animals through the processes of industrialization and capitalization, it no longer strikes us as a natural mode of comparison. It is unsettling in the second place because it has become something that we humans do to non-human animals. A significant, although implicit and unacknowledged, rhetorical move Berger makes in Look at Animals? is to shift anthropomorphism from being a matter of identity to being a matter of action. For Berger, the pet owner anthropomorphizes his or her pet by radically changing the material conditions of the animal. small family unit lacks space, he writes, earth, other animals, seasons, natural temperatures, and so on. The pet is either sterilized or sexually isolated, extremely limited in its exercise, deprived of almost all other animal contact, and fed with artificial foods (24). The problem here is not simply that pet owners anthropomorphically see themselves in their pets. (This is the perspective of traditional anthropomorphism.) It is also that they change the physical environment of the pets to such an extent that these animals stop being animals and become denatured: sterilized, sexually and socially isolated, unfit and badly fed. Berger's claim in Look at Animals? is a radically materialist one: namely, that the physical marginalization of animals in Western society results in their cultural marginalization. Along with that of the family pet, he appeals to the example of the zoo animal to illustrate the now-irreparable separation of the human species from the rest of the animal kingdom. While the public purpose of zoos is to allow visitors the chance to look at animals, Berger writes, nowhere in a zoo can a stranger encounter the look of an animal. …