Was it poisoning? Since it happened in New York, the New York City Police were joined by the FBI and Balistar’s governing body, the American Kennel Club, to figure out if a crime had been committed. In the following weeks, dog shows became circuses of fear.
“It’s worse than an airport,” one handler complained when asked about the tightening of security at shows. “Handlers, owners, and even the dogs are plastered in barcodes and badges. It took forever just to get in the building ‘cause they had to clear our equipment—hair dryers, combs, scissors, all the metal objects they claimed had to be checked by hand, even though those dogs didn’t die from a metal object. Just stupid. They should be looking for the person who did this!”
And spectators also complained. “The handlers are so suspicious of everyone,” one said. “They used to be so friendly and were happy to tell you all about their dogs and the breeds. Now they practically bite your hand off if you get anywhere near their dogs!”
“We’ve had so many smaller shows cancelled because they can’t afford the extra security,” lamented one breeder on the local news.
Intentional act maybe, but my fear was that it was some new disease. Was there a connection to the two earlier deaths? Obviously this was the same concern of the American Veterinary Medicine Association—the AVMA—as they moved to collect medical information from anyone who thought their dogs had died of the same thing. I knew how fast a disease could surge, how some could take forever to fully understand—human AIDS came to mind—while others were relatively fast to address. In the 1970s, parvovirus was a relatively new disease, and when it hit, it rapidly killed off large numbers of dogs, particularly puppies. But barely ten years later, local vets had a vaccine to offer pet owners. It was impressive how quickly the cause was found and a vaccine was developed, but not before thousands of animals were lost.
But the weeks went on, investigations into the Balistar show deaths were inconclusive, and no more cases were reported. I breathed easier, thinking that it might be an isolated incident, and refocused my daily scanning of news and science publications on things related to my own research. A last, short-lived current of warmer days washed over the East Coast, staving off thoughts of the coming cold and torrent of falling leaves. The media lost interest and the story faded in fickle, short-attention-span America.
DOG DAYS
ANIA PRANCED up the hill, grinning as she led the way. Sofie charged from behind to take the lead. Feet momentarily lighting on the ground, they jointly sprang forward in a rhythmic gallop. Sofie would have smiled too if it weren’t for the tennis ball in her mouth. I watched from the front window as the human love of my life, Chris, brought up the rear, paper in hand, completing the ritual that each morning bonds him and his shadows, as he calls them. The dog beat him to the house, as usual, bouncing trampoline dogs on their powerful standard poodle legs.
Chris drew his arm overhead ready to throw as Sofie bolted halfway back down the hill in her impatience, abruptly stopped, and frantically searched back and forth, while Ania stood rigid as she tracked the ball’s trajectory before vaulting towards its predicted landing. Ania trotted back with her prize raised triumphantly, dropping it at Chris’ feet. Again, she watched him intently, as Sofie barreled down the hill, turning when she heard the ball thump in the underbrush. They both dove in, only their wagging tails visible in the tall grass.
I envisioned minuscule particles of gooey tennis ball happily floating in the air until they were sucked into the dog’s nostrils, and tumbled into the labyrinth of three hundred million smell receptors in the dog’s astounding olfactory system. The exquisitely evolved scrollwork pattern on the front of their noses allowed them to draw in new particles through the center orifice, while pushing the outgoing air through the side slits, thus avoiding disruption of previously inhaled particles dancing around the receptors, and adding new data with each rapid sniff. Each nostril wiggled independently, speaking to a separate part of the brain telling which side smelled stronger, which smell was newer—clues to determine which direction the smell was heading. Both dogs knew the world through their noses. And found balls. Ania emerged triumphant once again.
The house came alive when they entered. Eight paws, two feet, like raindrops randomly spattering on the kitchen floor. The dogs’ bodies were in full-on greeting mode, squirming against my legs, snorting, presenting their muzzles to be kissed and rubbed. They panted loudly around their mouthful of toys. They filled the space and my world with life.
“Morning Claire!” Chris said as he mimicked their wiggle and tousled my hair, “Are you going with a matching your dog’s look?”
My shoulder-length, unruly spirals of mutt-brown hair was typically collected and secured with a clip, comb, stick, scrunchie, or hair tie – depending on my ever-changing connection to a particular decade. I often woke with the finger-in-the-light-socket look, this morning having made no attempt to tame the beast, I especially resembled an unkempt poodle.
“Good morning.” I half grinned, momentarily connecting when I saw his smile and felt his warmth. “I find even this do a challenge without coffee.”
“Ah,” he said as he embraced me and I lost myself in the comforting smell of his slept-in tee shirt. There is a strength he exudes, from his slender, tall build, but more from his quiet, circumspect demeanor—I found solace until the day’s demands tugged at me. Accepting the fleeting connection, Chris and his shadows retreated to the study.
The girls off to school, Chris pulled into his work on the computer, I stood in the bathroom subjected to the cruelty of a row of bright lights and three-quarter length mirror glaring at me. Slender lines had started to invade the contours of my face, and the shifting dimensions of my frame were a consequence of serving as a human incubator, twice. But I grinned, slightly, comfortable with my evolving self.
Despite the battles with my hair when I was younger, I’d grown to like it. It went well with my hazel eyes and olive skin. My Spanish conquistador look, Chris observed, as I stood firmly on the bow of his boat a lifetime ago.
I opted for my dress jeans and untucked, button down shirt instead of a casual summer dress. There’s an unpretentiousness about working in a university lab, constrained not by business norms, but by lab safety requirements, which mostly limited my choice of shoes to the practical, not fashionable. Or, as my daughter so lovingly put it, ‘fatigue-chic’.
So, not trendy or fashionable. Except for my glasses. Having been burdened with them since the sixth grade, I’ve embraced their presence, turning my collection of frame colors and styles into an expression of my mood and attitude. Feeling positive and hopeful, today was a fun turquoise cat-eye I found on a vintage frames store online.
As I biked in I thought of the poor owners of the dogs that died after the dog show a few weeks ago. If it had been one of my dogs I would have been devastated, frantic not knowing what happened, and afraid my other dog might die too. I felt their broken hearts.
While my personal time is spent in the company of dogs and my hobby is the careful breeding of dogs, my career time is spent looking at their genes and trying to figure out what might cause a seemingly normal dog to develop Addison’s disease. My company in the lab, Megan and Jamie, are my graduate students, whose lives revolve around an intensified, concentrated effort towards their own distinctive research discoveries in dog disease-related genes. We are well matched in our collective quest.
“Hey, how are the cells growing?” I asked Megan.
“Slow, painfully slow. But growing.”
“Well at least that’s in the right direction. I guess the extra serum did the trick.” I dumped my computer bag and lunch on a chair, countertops being restricted to research activities. Megan’s area was as neatly organized as an Ikea catalog. “I always find it amazing that every species’ cells need something a little different. You would think that all mammals would grow in the same media, but I guess since they need different temperatures, they can be picky about what we feed them too.�
� Megan stood up, silent, so I could peer into the microscope at the spider-like cells in their flask.
“When I was in graduate school we had a devil of a time trying to get exotic cat cells to grow,” I said as I adjusted the focus. “We found that they liked horse serum over bovine—”
And there they went. Out of the corner of my eye I could see Jamie scrolling on his computer, and Megan looking over her notes; my reluctant audience tried to look busy. I was lecturing again. They’d probably heard this one already and were hoping desperately that I’d lose interest if I didn’t get any feedback. Grad students were worse than my family. They didn’t even love me, just tolerated me because I kept them employed and bought them an occasional beer.
“Where’s Kate?” I asked.
“She called, said she would be late. She had to wait for her boyfriend to get home from the gym to take their dog to the vet. I fed the cells for her.” Megan’s competitive nature prompted her to note the extra work she did, though it wasn’t necessary, she was kick-ass talented and dedicated.
“Oh geez, is the dog okay?”
“Apparently not. The dog started throwing up last night, and won’t stop,” Megan explained.
“It’s too small to have bloat, isn’t it?”
Jamie jumped in. “Yeah, it’s a scrappy-looking mixed breed. Looks like a yappy little creature. It’s the one in the picture taped to the hood.” He gestured with his head over his shoulder. “Wouldn’t have the chest capacity to allow the stomach to twist and flip.”
Jamie was always unsympathetic to our research subjects. He wasn’t into the organism as a whole, but he was a master at the bench and he knew every disease and ailment in the domestic dog, so I couldn’t ask for much more. He was in it purely for the science. He had no pets.
“Maybe Kate’s dog has the same thing that the dogs got at the Balistar show and it’ll be put out of its misery soon,” Jamie said. “We could use it to study whatever is killing them.” I wasn’t sure he was joking.
“Okay, now you’re just being ugly. Unless the dog was in New York that weekend, I doubt it. And besides, you said it was a mixed breed. Hardly the kind that Balistar allows. And there haven’t been any more cases that we know of. I wouldn’t be surprised if some nut job poisoned them to accomplish some twisted agenda.”
“Damn, nothing cool to research with that.” Jamie feigned disappointment.
“You really have a one-track mind don’t you?” Megan piped up. “And it is not of the typical male grad student kind.”
“Oh, I have that too, Megan. I can multi-task just like you women claim to be so good at. Science and sex share equal importance in my thoughts and activities.”
“Well, at least I’m better at English! And I’m well aware of your little late-night side interests in the lab with that biochem grad student. Certainly demonstrates your priorities.” Megan quickly lifted her hands off the lab bench. “Ew.”
“Out of the gutter please,” I interrupted. “Can we get back to the task at hand? What did you guys find out with regard to the sequence variants that we saw last week in the Addison’s dog families?”
“I’m still looking at the SNPs, as there are a fair number of these small sequence differences, but I haven’t worked through all of them to see if the correlate.” Jamie said, pulling his attention from his computer. “But the microsatellite sequences are a dead end, I think. Turns out that they show up in DNA in a bunch of other related, but unaffected groups. But hey, maybe we’ll help decipher the convoluted pile of genes and alleles that make up all the poodle colors.”
“Not a chance,” I said as I turned away from his work area. “And since our grants are for studying Addison’s, let’s stick to that.” I turned to Megan, “Please tell Kate I’m fine with her staying with the dog all day.”
I headed into my office to go over my lecture notes for my Genetics and Endocrinology course. The semester had started, and after the first couple of lectures on endocrinology when a number of students who were not impressed with the subject matter—or me—dropped the class, I gave a more interesting lecture on the relevance of the field to real-life problems. Of course, since Addison’s disease is an example of how the beautiful orchestration of communication between cells can go awry, the captive students were subjected to a lecture on the target of my research.
I started with an overview on the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal, or HPA, system, more commonly referred to as the fight-or-flight response. When our brain perceives a danger or a threat, in a split second it chemically and electrically communicates with the adrenal glands, which respond by releasing over thirty different hormones, including adrenaline, causing the whole body to spring into action.
Then I gave them the fun facts. If all goes right, these hormones cause different changes in different cells. The heart starts to pound to process more oxygen and increase the metabolism for more energy. Goosebumps pop up due to skin surface muscles tensing as the rest the body’s muscles prepare to bolt. That feeling when everything seems to be moving in slow motion in a stressful situation like a car accident? It’s due to increased blood flow to the brain that intensifies concentration. Even the shiver down the spine that accompanies fear is due to an adrenal hormone that results in constriction of skin surface arteries to push blood to where it is needed more. Like a flash of lightning, the whole system is set ablaze.
Those with Addison’s disease, both humans and dogs, have at least one dysfunctional or non-functional adrenal gland, resulting in an inability to react properly to stress. Without the adrenal gland, they suffer from fatigue, muscle weakness, and countless other debilitating symptoms. Often called the “great pretender”, these symptoms are often come and go, in different combinations, presenting as a myriad of other possible diseases until an Addison’s crisis results in complete collapse, which can quickly become fatal. It’s treatable if caught in time, but so far no genetic marker has been found, and there is no cure. I walked the students through our research and how we search for genetic factors by comparing DNA from families of dogs with affected and unaffected individuals.
I didn’t need my notes, this was in my blood.
I quickly glanced at the news feed on my computer. More dogs lost at shows in New England, and a theory circulating that it was a new form of Lyme disease caused by a mutated bacterium.
I joined Jamie to look at results of DNA sequencing. “I’m not convinced this is anything important,” he said. The power of statistical significance loomed over our hopeful first-blush observations.
Jamie’s forté was data analysis. He was a stickler for strict interpretation of the data and didn’t get excited over a potential lead until he’d gnawed on it like a dog with a bone. He’d been with me for two years, coming off a few years of seeing the world after finishing his undergraduate degree. I was still floored by his ability to know when the data meant nothing or when a subtle observation would turn into a major finding. I’d learned not to question his silence or seeming lack of participation in meetings and to take notice when, after everyone else was out of ideas and he leaned forward and said, “Y’know, if we just …” He had a killer instinct when it came to knowing what was worth pursuing.
Twenty-five and uber-smart, Jamie chose the scruffy scientist look over the together metrosexual nerd, but he was anything but laid back and aloof. First impressions can be burdensome. “Are you going to the Department picnic?” I had asked him at the beginning of his first semester with me.
“No. Not my thing,” he answered. “Not a fan of people’s party personalities.” I learned quickly what he meant. No matter how he played it, he was dealt a full hand that made many desire him, while others envious.
“Is Mr. Jamie here?” The co-eds would start calling like clockwork once the semester started. As my Teaching Assistant, he was required to keep office hours for student questions. Little did they know he saw the tweets.
When the new hot guy turns out to be my TA! OMFG!!!
&nbs
p; TA’s big brown eyes, curly brown hair, and sexy crooked smile…think I need some tutoring!!!
He was uncomfortable with all the female adulation, and he was often outwardly unsettled when they peeked their heads into the lab “just to say hi.” The few women I met whom he dated seemed to be more interested in their work than him, a mutual non-commitment that seemed to suit him fine. I gathered that his respect for women came from having three sisters and a close relationship with his mom.
“Do you happen to know where’s the best place to order flowers?” he asked me one day. “My little sister broke up with her boyfriend and she’s a mess,” he said when I gave him an inquiring look.
I felt affection for him as the son I’d never had. I was old enough to be his mother—barely, mind you—and while his groan-inducing double entendre and sharp wit were so nuanced it kept me on my intellectual toes, I got why he was tucked behind his carefully crafted persona.
Curiously, he and Megan kept up a running banter, often involving sexual innuendo while cognizant of the #metoo implications. It reminded me of my graduate school days with Neil.
My cell phone buzzed, I headed to my office to answer it, and everyone scurried off to their bench areas, staked out by arrangements of reagents, supplies and equipment. Anna, my research collaborator and best friend, wanted to do lunch. She was convinced that we should apply for more funding based on our latest cohort of samples.
Anna and I met in college.
Her room was at the end of our hall. She was smart and engaging, with carefully chosen words that left you wanting to hear more. And she was stunning. Perfect, creamy skin, with auburn hair, sparkling green eyes, and a sprinkling of freckles. Long legs contributed to her five-foot nine inch arresting stature, towering over my five-foot five average everything. I was drawn to her, wanted to be in her circle. She was breezy and friendly, and entranced students buzzed around her like bees to honey. I held back to avoid getting stung.
Decoded Dog Page 2