It was the calm before the storm. Ania, Sofie, and I were all up, finishing the packing, getting the car loaded. They remained hopeful that they would be joining our trip to the Eastern Shore. Forgetting to fully close the front door was all the invitation they needed, and out they bolted to claim their spot among the pillows and blankets and duffle bags in the back of the car, like ET in the closet of toys. They wouldn’t care that they wouldn’t be allowed to run the beaches in the National Seashore on the Virginia side of Assateague – they wanted only to go with us. There would be lots of stops along the way to frolic on remote stretches as we traveled through the American Indian-named towns that dot the coast. I left them with the car door open, for they would not be moved, and headed in to grab more towels for the stinky, happy wet dogs in our future. The rolling thunder that was my family tumbled down the hall, and we engaged in a flurry of activity before setting off on our journey.
The week moved slowly as we biked the park and rural roads, and took long walks on the beach. The water too cold to swim, still enticed us until our feet turned red and we retreated with the sun. We woke to rain on Thanksgiving, providing an excuse to snuggle in and watch the parade, and catch the dog show that follows, a tradition of ours since before the girls.
Like most dog shows, the event spans five days, with the first days resulting in selection of breed champions and reserves. The Thanksgiving Day televised show covered the next round—selection of a champion from the breed champions that make up each group—and culminated in the final selection of Best in Show from the seven group winners.
Commentators chattered nervously, albeit briefly, about concerns of CRFS, but concentrated on their script about each breed and vignettes about individual dogs.
“Looks like next up we have a mop on the table,” the color commentator chortled.
“Not so! Originally from Hungary; ‘compact, vigorous and alert, the Puli is a tough-as-nails herding dog, able to perform its duties across any terrain. The Puli coat is wavy or curly and naturally clumps together into wooly cords, which protects them from harsh weather. Coat colors include black, gray and white. Today’s breed champion is a white male, Puli #57, Carpathian Mystic Mountain, but he goes by the name of Bear, and is from Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. His owner says that when he’s not out on the show circuit, his favorite pastime is herding his small flock of sheep. In the winter she often finds him spread-eagle in the snow making dog snow angels. It must be a challenge to keep his cords clean and dry!”
“I wonder which ones have more hair—the Pulis or the sheep!” Diana exclaimed.
We enjoyed Thanksgiving at Bill’s Steak and Seafood, a homey local restaurant that promised turkey and all the fixings just like mom’s, a promise well delivered.
All was quiet on the CRFS front until the radio shattered the calm on the way home. Tuned to NPR, an investigative story provided interviews of owners who lost dogs to CRFS. “We were so excited. Josephine had placed best of opposite in her breed, the best she’s done at a national show. She was so proud as she pranced around the ring, now she’s clinging to life with”—sobs “whatever this is.” She was gone by nightfall. Jojo, a Maltese from the toy group, was the first report of what would be thirty-two others from the show; all within the toy, hound, and herding groups. Then the floor fell out of the dog show theory, as reports from shelters, vets, boarding kennels, and countless owners peppered the East Coast epidemiological map. No population was unaffected, and CRFS proved to be an equal opportunity killer, as it took down purebreds and mutts alike. Losses were now in the thousands.
Returning to our daily lives, we tried to focus on the home front. Tess’s science fair, and the following weekend production of the girls’ school play. But it was hard to ignore that December brought a chill with news of 146 more CRFS-related deaths.
As I walked into the lab, Jamie looked up, surprised, “Hey, did you see your friend Dr. Franklin has left Regnum?’
“Yeah, I saw the announcement in Science’s News section.” Subject closed.
I had found that curious. Just a little over one month after the big grant competition and potentially a big new research field for Regnum, Neil stepped down as CSO. I wanted to pick up the phone and ask why; was it connected to what happened with Kendal and me? But I couldn’t do it. Besides, his career would not have been influenced by one single incident, and he would have immediately pointed out that I was narcissistic thinking it had anything to do with me. If I had wanted to contact him, to start to rebuild our friendship, I would have to wait until the dust settled around him. Did he know it was my technician who spilled the beans to Kendal? Why didn’t he call me as a friend to tell me he was changing jobs? I had to admit that my over exaggerated grudge was a likely the reason.
“So what are you all working on today? Were you able to analyze that sequence from the new batch of Addison’s dogs?”
“Yes,” Megan said. “I was able to assemble the second region we talked about.”
“And I have a preliminary analysis on the other segment from last week,” Jamie added. “There seems to be variation in the 5’ region. But it looks to be similar to the one we saw back in October.”
“Another dead end?” I asked.
“I hope not, but we should know in a day or two,” Jamie said.
“When are you guys taking off?”
“I’m out of here Thursday morning. I’ll help Haley put all the cell lines to bed so nothing turns to mush over the winter break,” Jamie said.
“I’m not leaving until Friday,” Megan said, “so I can shut down everything else. I’ll shut down the water baths and clean them out. We don’t have any cells growing, but I’ll leave the incubator on. What about the sequencer?”
“Leave that on too. Even if no one is going to use it over the holidays, I don’t want to chance messing up the flow of reagents since it’s so temperamental.”
“I’ve named her Gladys,” Jamie remarked.
“One that got away?” I asked.
“One that I should have run away from, much quicker than I did,” he said, surprisingly revealing a wisp of his private life.
I turned to Megan. “I’ll probably still be in over the weekend and a few days a week, so don’t worry about getting everything; I can double check when I’m here.”
“You’re not doing lab work, are you?” Megan asked with worry in her voice, while Jamie looked panicked. Obviously I would never live down my reputation as being all thumbs last time I attempted to join in on the fun in the lab. In my defense, the new automated sequencer was complex, with instructions written in a font size only twenty-year olds can see. They were at an obvious advantage.
“No, don’t worry. I wouldn’t dare without your supervision. I want to do some extracurricular research on CRFS to see if I might find another way to study it.” Their relief was palpable.
“You’re not looking to continue with the same approach, are you? Which, by the way, there doesn’t seem to be any news on any progress in that area,” Jamie pointed out.
“I doubt she wants to follow Dr. Kovach’s progress very closely, Jamie.”
“Actually, I’ve been watching, but I’ve seen nothing. I’m beginning to wonder if it was such a good idea anyway, though truthfully, it might be too soon to expect results.”
“Really? Then what are you thinking we could do instead?” Megan asked.
“I don’t know. I’m as stumped as the rest of the dog world, but I thought if I came in a few times over the holidays and combed through published articles, news stories, available data and records, anything that I can get my hands on, maybe something will stick out. At this point it’s anybody’s guess. Maybe since I’m not doing any research in this area I might have a clear head and be open to subtleties that someone immersed in it might miss.”
“Would you like some help?” the twins echoed. They really were a solid pair.
“No, not yet. You guys enjoy your break. If I see anything, believe me you will
be hit with it the moment you return!”
“I’ll be checking my email over the break. I’m happy to come back early if you need me.”
“Me too,” Megan joined in.
The week closed with no results of interest in our research. Disappointing, but we still had a number of other potential markers to explore starting in January. Exams ended. Like ants exiting a rain-flooded hill, students retreated in all directions, heading home for the holidays. Gray and cold, the deserted campus took on a creepy post-plague movie set look. Brief glimpses of human forms scurrying between parking lots. A car darting faster than normal down the campus main drag, no longer impeded by the bravado of student pedestrians who believed they were invincible. The shortened day pulled away the muted light, leaving a campus cross-hatched by footpaths illuminated by street lights. I closed down my office and the lab, knowing that within a few days I would be back, and hoping to be inspired by the silence and solitude.
Stories I’d read online came to life in my thoughts as I drove home.
A rural vet traveled on Route 13 to 113, down the Delmarva, tending to livestock and pets. The wind blew cold off the Chesapeake Bay, but watermen still headed out for speckled trout and sea bass. A few, on the edge of insanity or maybe brilliance, dove for oysters, hand plucking the thirty-bushel limit with more precision and less potential damage to the fragile beds than the traditional claw method. The vet stopped at the Phillips farm, a small farm handed down through generations, producing melons and a variety of vegetables, the mainstay of the lower peninsula. Two ponies trotted alongside his car, separated from the road by a rundown three-board fence. Adopted in Chincoteague, they had swum in from Assateague Island in the annual pony swim that keeps the island population of wild ponies below carrying capacity, and raises money for the fire department. There were goats, a herd of twenty-two that started from two that Mrs. Phillips got to attempt to make local goat cheese, and which since spent their days frolicking and procreating to feed the growing pet pygmy goat industry. The barn was quiet, warmed and perfumed by composting manure. A tabby greeted him, weaving between his feet; though she was supposed to be a mouser, she preferred her meals supplemented by her mistress Phillips. She walked the beams of her territory inside the barn office and stalls, while other cats more feral, kept the hay barn and tack room free of rodents. Finishing his rounds, the vet returned to the farmer’s kitchen to remind her to check two of the pregnant goats, and to not overfeed the ponies or they could founder even with the green grass dying. “Where’s Easton?” he asked.
“He passed a few weeks ago, just after you was here last time. Just curled up in the barn office to die,” Mrs. Phillips said tearfully. “Found him barely breathing. Blood coming out his nose. Didn’t even know I was there. No time to call you, Doc. Mr. Phillips put him out of his misery with one clean shot. I haven’t stopped blubbering since.”
Easton had been a five-year-old golden retriever with a strong body and heart, her companion from sunup until they retired each night to their respective beds. The vet had described this and several other visits along his route to the online reporter. Nothing out of the ordinary, few of his patients needed more than a vaccination or cleaning and suturing of a wound. But four dogs had died, though he only witnessed one as he took his last breaths; he and Winston’s owners stood helpless in goodbye. Their isolation made it impossible to collect useful samples to confirm CRFS as the culprit. But Doc Meyer was convinced.
Then there was the team at the NC State veterinary school who released observations from their research, ahead of any peer-reviewed publication, in the hope that others might be able to quickly confirm and use their results. They had been seeing what they believed were cases of CRFS, and had found an increase in a protein in the blood of some of the victims, but not all. They didn’t know if the protein was a cause or an effect. They didn’t even know for sure if it was related, as it was not present in all of the victims. But it did not appear in the unaffected control population. The protein was small, and very unstable, so it could be lost during processing and preserving of some of the samples.
The Wayne County animal shelter in North Carolina was state-of-the-art, with indoor/outdoor dog runs and heated floors, quarantine rooms with separate ventilation systems, adoption testing play rooms and open spaces, and stainless-steel cages that could be easily disinfected. It took in almost any kind of domestic animal including dogs, cats, ferrets, bunnies, hamsters, guinea pigs, birds, goats, potbellied pigs, and horses. The shelter had a co-op of farms that picked up weekly and housed farm animals for holding or long-term sanctuary. But as of December fifteenth, the shelter closed down its dog adoption service, having lost 60% of the dogs in their care to CRFS during the first two weeks of December. At the first hint of the disease, affected dogs were put into the quarantine room or euthanized, but the staff modified their approach within a few days, and pulled all the healthy dogs out of the shelter to private residences willing to take them. All of those survived; none of the ones left behind did.
Then there was the story about the puppies, six of them. I pictured them emerging one by one, limp at first until life was awakened by the experienced licking of their mother. Splattered brown, white, and black, they were a mix of breeds unknown, but they were the lucky ones, as their mother was taken in by Mutt Haven Rescue, which specialized in plucking pregnant bitches from certain euthanasia at shelters across four states. Though dedicated to saving dogs, shelters simply do not have the resources to care for mothers and litters for the six weeks it takes to get them weaned. Eyes still shut, one little guy with black ears and a white splash across his face followed the scent of milk as he rooted for a teat until he latched on, and curled his tongue around to suck in life. He fell asleep still attached. Like a scene I have watched so many times with puppies I have whelped, I could see him with his eyes sealed shut, stir and rock unsteadily, wandering on shaky legs just far enough to lose direction; he cried out and was nudged back into the fold. In less than two weeks his milky brown eyes would peek through, and his world would expand to the walls of the whelping box. At three weeks he was a sponge for information, gradually noticing his feet, his tail, his littermates. He responded to human sweet talk and stumbled towards a voice with the help of his newly unsealed ears and eyes. At four weeks he was a growling, barking, biting, wrestling, wagging, full-on puppy. He should stay with his mom until ten weeks, when his immune system was fully ready to handle the onslaught of modern vaccine benefits. But resources are limited. Mutt Haven Rescue cycled in and out four to six litters a month, a dedicated few screening adoption applications in search of forever homes for each puppy and the mothers. Every successful match was an affirmation of their mission. Dogs are vaccinated before they leave for parvo and distemper. Other than a few unfortunate ones born sick or dead, few were lost. The head of the organization reported that CRFS did not surface in the foster homes, but moms in the shelters did not fare so well, and most of the shelters had been shut down.
Vet clinics in urban communities, those like Anna’s, offered a mixed bag of reports. Either they had cases that came in small groups or they had none at all. But no clinic reported total devastation like the shelters.
The information was overwhelming and astounding. I didn’t know where to begin. There were obviously many other people out there doing the same thing as I was, combing through hard data and anecdotal evidence. There were countless spreadsheets already available through the AVMA registry and reputable researchers, and a number of others from sources running the spectrum from ignorant to frightening. The largest factor still feeding the conspiracy theorists was that no cases had been reported outside of the United States. None. Not even any in Canada. Even with the international presence at dog shows, none of the dogs that travelled back to their home countries took the disease with them, and there were no credible suspected cases outside of the U.S.
I found myself reading about the Canine Crusaders and marveled at how they were advancing their
created-by-terrorists theory on social media and had even gained a few spots on twenty-four-hour news programs looking for sensational filler pieces. They focused their theory on post-market contamination of commonly used products such as shampoos and flea and tick preventatives. While they had not identified the perpetrators, they believed they were an international group hoping to disrupt the U.S. psyche, and were contaminating different products in waves so as not to be traced. Thus explained the initial cases in dog shows, followed by others. It was almost humorous how when unencumbered by facts, they were able to craft a full account of the situation. But it was also a distraction that was disturbing to the public and thus fomenting panic.
The university’s break started just when it was time to judge the high school science fair. Chris and I shared a ride and a jug of coffee on the way to the school. Tess had left earlier with her friend Sarah, a senior with a car, which allowed her to avoid any interaction with us before our public display of helicopter parenting.
The judges did our prep work in the teachers’ lounge, talking about how to judge, how to score, but mostly how to encourage and inspire. The chemistry teacher reminded us to be mindful of potential bias when talking to girls versus boys, and to kids that may be a minority in their field of interest. Having only daughters, I was confident that if I was biased, it would be the other way. That was until the teacher highlighted the results of a number of studies—girls are more often simply commended for a good idea, while boys are prompted to give more deeper thought to their conclusions and responses. In group situations, like we would have for team projects, girls are more often interrupted, and boys allowed to talk over them.
Yikes, I thought. While trying to be a role model, did having a Type A mom have the same result as gender bias? Instead of trying to serve as a model, did my assertiveness instead quash their self-expression, imagination, independence, and assertiveness, the qualities that I really want to cultivate? Interestingly, Chris was actually the one who inspired through his way of patiently listening and encouraging extended analysis, in both his daughters and his students. While I was there to judge the science fair, it ended up being a mini self-assessment session, leaving me surprisingly flustered as we entered the cafeteria.
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