Monthly Archives: August 2021

Approximately 100,800 U.S. horses die each year, many of them being euthanized for health reasons. The most widely used euthanasia drug in the equine industry, sodium pentobarbital, however, has been linked to secondary poisoning in both wildlife and domestic animals. Its also been detected in groundwater for up to 20 years after contamination. Therefore, proper management of euthanized horses is paramount to protecting the environment and water sources.

One environmentally friendly option is carcass compostinga practice routinely used for carcass management in the swine and poultry industries. However, little evidence exists as to its efficacy and use for horses. So, a team of researchers from various universities recently performed a study to demonstrate successful equine mortality composting and document sodium pentobarbital concentrations throughout the process. University of Minnesota student Hannah Lochner, who is studying for a masters degree, presented the groups findings at the Equine Science Societys 2021 virtual symposium.

In addition to environmental concerns, the existing management options for euthanized horses are increasingly limited, Lochner explained. Rendering facilities have limited abilities; burial comes with site restrictions and is not practical during winter months in northern climates; and incineration (cremation) is costly at about $1,600 per carcass. Compostingthe natural, biological decomposition of a carcass abovegroundon the other hand, is biosecure, feasible, and eco-friendly.

To confirm this methods ability to degrade carcasses and reduce sodium pentobarbital concentrations, Lochner and her fellow researchers performed a composting trial of four horses euthanized for terminal medical reasons from September 2019 to April 2020. At a location in rural Minnesota, they constructed four compost pilesone for each horsethat included the following layers:

The team placed temperature loggers at depths of 46 and 91 centimeters to record pile temperatures every eight hours. They also turned the piles at Day 50 and concluded the trial at Day 216 (after five months of curing was complete). On these days, the team sampled three mirrored cross-sections of each pile and scored the amount of degradation from 1 (carcass discernable) to 5 (a few large bones remaining). They also analyzed sodium pentobarbital levels.

Lochner said that by Day 216, all piles received scores of 3 or 4, meaning the carcasses had degraded and only hair, hide, and large bones remained. Pentobarbital, while at low levels, was still detectable on Day 216. These concentrations were highest at the center of the pile on Day 50 and more consistent between cross-sections on Day 216.

These findings suggest mortality composting is an effective method for managing equine carcasses, said Lochner, adding that further research is needed to determine the environmental implications of composting chemically euthanized horses.

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Composting Is a Viable Method of Equine Carcass Management The Horse - TheHorse.com

SEBRINGVILLE Its the hardest decision a pet owner can make saying goodbye to a beloved companion who is part of the family.

End-of-life care and euthanasia can be extremely stressful for both humans and animals; grief, and even guilt, wash into the void left behind.

I think its about the bond, really, that unique human-animal bond that you just want to maintain all the way through the end of a pets life and beyond, and to recognize that the loss of a pet is significant, said Dr. Erica Dickie.

The Sebringville-based veterinarian runs Black Creek Mobile Veterinary Services, which focuses solely on compassionate end-of-life care for pets, including hospice and palliative care and in-home euthanasia. While she primarily deals with cats and dogs, she will see smaller companion animals like rabbits and guinea pigs as well.

Theres no brick-and-mortar clinic; instead, Dickie travels to clients throughout Perth County and western Waterloo Region in a primary radius of 40 kilometres from her home base. She frequently ventures further afield with an additional mileage fee. I go where the need is if Im available.

Dickie and her small team do their best to accommodate same-day or next-day appointments. She also works with families for several weeks or months in keeping pets comfortable through pain and symptom relief.

Animal hospice care is very similar to the philosophy in human hospice settings. Theres a huge mental shift in the physician and in the family, she said. The care is geared toward comfort, and not cure.

A relationship with Black Creek often begins with a telemedicine quality of life consultation, which touches on topics like pet comfort, medicine and nutrition, holistic supports, environmental changes, decisions around euthanasia, and whats best, ultimately, for both the pet and its owners.

Part of my job as a palliative care veterinarian is preparing them for what to expect, what to look for, and that continuing communication is ongoing with me to know when things are starting to take a turn, Dickie said.

Originally from Kitchener, Dickie completed undergraduate studies at the University of Guelph and graduated from the Ontario Veterinary College in 2011.

Her work initially took her from Southampton to Stratford. She also was a locum veterinarian, working in a relief capacity at different practices.

When it came to euthanasia, Dickie adopted the practice of pre-sedation. I believe that it creates a more gentle transition, she said. Without it, that sudden loss of consciousness, that stays with the witness.

The journey with her cat Smokey in his final months, ultimately providing palliative home care and pain management, inspired Dickie to launch Black Creek in March 2020.

Losing him really reminded me about the deep impact when you have those bonds, and how much the loss affects you, she said. I felt more could be done in veterinary medicine and this is what was calling me.

Dickie earned a certification in animal hospice and palliative care through the International Association for Animal Hospice and Palliative Care.

Black Creeks inception as the pandemic began reinforced the benefits of the in-home service, as vet appointments became hard to find and people werent allowed to accompany their pets into clinics.

Familiar surroundings reduce stress for both animals and people. Many pet owners know the pain of a long drive home after taking their companion to the vets for the final time.

Being present for a pets final moments can be incredibly important for a family; while the decision is up to parents, Dickie encourages children and even other pets to be there.

Aftercare includes resources for grief support and assistance with cremation or burial arrangements and memorial or keepsake options.

To be able to be at your home, and after everything is said and done, to just grieve, cry Its more authentic. Its really just honouring that bond.

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Mobile vet service allows pet owners to say goodbye in the comfort of home - TheRecord.com

This column is an opinion from Brian Bird, an assistant professor at the Peter A. Allard School of Law at the University of British Columbia. For more information aboutCBC's Opinion section, please see theFAQ.

Health care is a fixture of Canadian election campaigns. Wait times, bed shortages and private health care are usual topics of debate. Now we can add freedom of conscience to that list.

It has long been accepted that health-care workers in Canada have a right to distance themselves from procedures that they consider unethical. This right sustained a body blow last week when the Liberals, Conservatives and NDP said that these workers must provide referrals to other medical service providers willing to perform the procedure.

Requiring doctors to make the arrangements for procedures that they cannot perform in good conscience is far from a compromise. If you believe it is wrong to rob a bank, would you be willing to plan the robbery?

The remarks by the parties are the latest threat to conscience in Canadian health care.

In British Columbia, a private hospice that declined to provide assisted suicide lost its licence to operate. In Ontario, the highest court of that province ruled that doctors can be forced to facilitate procedures they deem immoral. In Manitoba, a university expelled a medical student with moral objections to abortion.

Hostility to conscientious health care is fuelled by the flawed belief that health care amounts to whatever a doctor, nurse or other health-care worker is lawfully permitted to do. To be a good health-care worker therefore means that you must be willing to participate in any service that is categorized by the state as health care, regardless of any ethical qualms you might have.

These ideas are dangerous.

Health care is not simply whatever the state says it is. Health care is a sphere of human activity: preserving life, healing the sick and comforting the dying. Health-care workers are not robotic technicians but, as the pandemic has dramatically reminded us, human beings with a calling.

It does not take much reflection to realize why divorcing health care from ethical considerations and reducing it to whatever is authorized by law is a risky path to follow. This prospect should alarm all of us. Finalizing this divorce will lead to disastrous consequences for individuals and society alike.

Some of us think we are already seeing and living these consequences. A decade ago, it was hard to imagine that euthanasia for the terminally ill would be legal in Canada. Only a few years ago, it was unthinkable that euthanasia would ever be afforded to persons with mental illness. But here we are.

Does anyone want a health-care system that obliges the people who work within it to disable their moral compass and unreflectively endorse whatever the state labels as health care? It is easy to say that health-care workers cannot refuse to participate in whichever services are lawful when we agree with what is lawful. But what happens when we disagree?

Health-care providers who follow their conscience are often portrayed as unprofessional, uncaring and even un-Canadian. They are scolded for bringing their personal convictions to work, but their critics lean on convictions of their own. Take the complaint that conscientious objectors abandon their patients and deny them care. It assumes but does not demonstrate that what these individuals refuse to do amounts to health care, properly understood. That matter is not a footnote; it is the heart of the debate.

Freedom of conscience in health care is not political activism. Conscientious objection rests on the view that the service in question neither promotes health nor constitutes care but instead harms patients and others.

The doctor who conscientiously refuses to participate in abortion or euthanasia does so because she considers these acts to be lethal violence against a human being. You might disagree with these beliefs, but they are not crazy. They are rationally defensible and deserve a fair hearing.

If there is any sector of our society where ample space should be granted to conscience, health care is it. Health-care professionals are, first and foremost, called to do no harm.

Many Canadians say that health-care professionals should not bring conscience to their job. But the truth is, without conscience, their job cannot be done.

Do you have a strong opinion that could add insight, illuminate an issue in the news, or change how people think about an issue? We want to hear from you. Here'show to pitch to us.

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Health care without conscience is a dangerous contradiction - CBC.ca

At the start of Louise Pennys The Madness of Crowds, Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, head of homicide for the Sret du Qubec, is assigned to oversee security for a polarizing professors lecture at a local college.

Abigail Robinson is a statistician who proposes that the government can ease socioeconomic pressures through eugenics and euthanasia. Gamache reluctantly fulfills his task shadowing her talk, during which a gunman fires (unsuccessfully) at the speaker. Can you think of anyone who might want to hurt you? the professor is asked. Well, she says, theres half of Canada, it seems. The following day, another woman, who was perhaps mistaken for Robinson, is found bludgeoned to death in the snow.

The Madness of Crowds is Ms. Pennys 17th entry in her intelligent and emotionally powerful series featuring Gamache. Once again, the author has produced a unique work twining moral issues and absorbing character studies into a challenging murder mystery. There is an abundance of deductive speculation among Gamache and his team, and the brainstorming continues even after the suspects are gathered for a final confrontation. Then, at the very last moment, the chief inspectorin a manner worthy of Aesop, Solomon, Freud or Holmespoints the finger of guilt.

Jack, the 25-year-old title character of Peter Hellers The Guide, isnt looking to save the worldjust his own sanity. Guilt-ridden by the death of his mother in a horse accident and the demise of his best friend in a river mishap, hes retreated into a solitary life centered around fishing. He leaps like a trout at the chance to work as a guide at Kingfisher Lodge, a rustic getaway for the rich and famous that promises boutique fishing at its finest. The first guest entrusted to him is Alison, a popular singer who fishes well and finds Jack charming. He asks himself: What could be better?

Well, it would be nice if the guests and staff werent under camera surveillance, and if there werent off-limits areas where the penalty for trespassing is being shot at. And if Jack didnt find evidence suggesting that his predecessor as guide was murdered. Jack and Alison both wonder: What is Kingfisher Lodge, really? When at last they learn the awful truth, Jack erupts: He wanted to bust whatever was happening here as fast as he could. . . . Barring that, he wanted to kill.

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Mysteries: Louise Pennys The Madness of Crowds Review - The Wall Street Journal

Im a 100-year-old retired RN and remember my days on the hospital childrens ward. Every winter we had many Indigenous children with respiratory problems. It seems they had poor resistance to the diseases of the white settlers.

Now can you imagine a large group of Indigenous children in a school? Everything was foreign to them the people, the lifestyle and the diet and here they were crowded together.

Colds spread like wildfire, as did other diseases as they had no resistance to our ailments. All the schools had were a few caretakers no medicine, no nurses, no medical care at all.

How did the caretakers manage the institutions, feed the children, and care for the sick without any help? Its very likely that this residential school lifestyle caused a heavy mortality rate.

Some children ran away. Did they reach safety or perish? Were there some suicides? All these questions and conditions must be considered before passing judgment on the caretakers of these institutions.

C.M. BourgeoisVictoria

Studies show that more than 40 per cent of women who have had an abortion were churchgoers when they ended their pregnancy. That means the fight for life starts right in our own churches by being a voice of hope to the ones we sit next to every Sunday.

In addition, 77 per cent of Canadians think Canada already has an abortion law, yet it is only democratic country in the world with no abortion law. You can have an abortion for any reason or no reason at all, all the way up to the moment of birth.

God is pro-life and against euthanasia. With the federal election coming up, lets remember which parties allow pro-life MPs and oppose euthanasia.

Dean ClarkLangley

David Bairds Aug. 2 review of The Chosen needs to be counterbalanced with some due skepticism.

The adulation the show has received, even when muted as is the case of the B.C. Catholic review, is in some sense troubling. The Chosen is a poetic interpretation of the Gospels that often shares more in common with daytime soap operas and late-night sitcoms than with the biblical source material.

Is this wrong? Perhaps not. We have been making art out of the Gospel narratives for a long time. But The Chosens modern twists make it feel different somehow.

It is always trying to make you feel something, which again is not wrong in and of itself, but given that the show is primarily a Protestant production, Catholics should be wary of how this reality impacts their perception of the Gospels more broadly. Catholics do not believe an evangelical conversion experience is necessary to have a relationship with Christ, and it is significant that by the end of the second season there is not a single character who does not come to Christ through any other means.

The reason the show is so compelling is the very reason we should approach it with caution: it takes significant poetic liberties with characters and events from the Gospels. Too many people are saying the show is an authentic representation of the Gospel stories, and the fact that most laymen will have a difficult time separating the historical truths from the fictions is not something we should gloss over.

Of course, watch the show. I would never presume to disagree with David Bairds careful recommendation, but dont be surprised if suddenly the Matthew in your bible becomes the Matthew from The Chosen.

Nicholas ElbersMaple Ridge

Excerpt from:

Letters: what caused the deaths of Indigenous children? - The B.C. Catholic

Watching a loved one die from a terminal illness is one of the most difficult human experiences to endure. Hospice is there to make it easier. Yet there are many misconceptions about what hospice isand isn't.

In this installment of the Sound Health series, WGLT spoke to two leaders with OSF HealthCares Hospice program: social worker Laura Baker and manager Michelle Jackson.

What hospice is, Jackson said, is simply when you've decided not to seek further treatment for a terminal illness.

Usually the doctor thinks you have 6 months or less to live, but we do have some patients who live longer. With the support of us going into the home frequently, we can help them live a good, quality life. Were not about having things go quicker than intended. We just are there to support and provide comfort during the last days, said Jackson, who is also a nurse.

Michelle Jackson, OSF HealthCare Hospice

That last part is really important, Baker said.

People equate hospice with euthanasia. And so we do a lot of educating with patients and family members in the home saying, No, we dont do that. Were here to provide support, maintain and manage symptoms, keep people comfortable, and give them as many good days as we can, Baker said.

There are other misconceptions, like that hospice is just for patients with cancer. It's not. It's for anyone with a chronic, end-stage illness.

And you don't need to be imminently dying. Actually, it's better to get connected with hospice sooner, so you can build a relationship with the team.

And Baker says there's another one: People think hospice is a place, rather than a service that comes to you, whether thats your home in the community, or an assisted-living or nursing home level of care. There is a Hospice Home within OSF in Peoria, so there is a place so to speak. But hospice overall is a service, its not a place where people go, Baker said.

Your vision of hospice may be someone on their deathbed, unable to get up.

That's part of it but not all of it. Some in hospice care like getting out into the world. Some set a goal for an out-of-state trip. Hospice is a Medicare-reimbursed program, so OSF can set up a travel contract with a hospice agency in, say, Florida.

Its helping people to accomplish a goal they want to accomplish. They want to take that last trip they havent been able to do. Sometimes its celebrating a birthday, or they want to go see a wedding, or, Oh golly, I just want to see the baby born. We had a patient who still wanted to get out and about and ride on a motorcycle. We like celebrating with them when theyre able to meet those goals, those milestones, Baker said.

As a social worker, Baker works closely with the caregivers of those who are dying. Yes, it's a lot of adult sons and daughters caring for mom or dad, but they run the gamut more than you'd expect.

We have folks that have their own young children and theyre trying to raise their family, and work, and care for mom or dad. We are encountering grandchildren caring for grandparents, Baker said. Unfortunately, we do encounter parents caring for children. Those may be infants, toddlers, grade schoolers, high schoolers. Sometimes its adult children. We do get folks that have some developmental disabilities, in addition to whatever their diagnosis that brought them to hospice.

Hospice staff are interacting with those caregivers at one of the hardest points in their life.

Oftentimes our caregivers are quite frankly very stressed. Theyre overwhelmed. Because they have so many of their own responsibilities, and then they have the care and the concerns for their loved one, Baker said. Many of them are trying to care for their loved one in their loved ones home, or theyve brought them into their own home. There are multiple challenges that come along with that.

Hospice manager Michelle Jackson said her team is there as much for the family as they are the patient.

We teach them how to take care of their loved one, because were not there 24/7. So we come in, we educate, and try to get them the support they need. If they need paid caregivers to come into the home, if there are physical limitations, we try to arrange that. Or try to use community resources that are available, or VA resources if theyre a veteran, Jackson said.

Jackson and Baker and a few dozen other colleagues care for between 70 and 100 people who are in hospice in OSF's Eastern region at any given time, including in Bloomington-Normal.

This work is very difficult, but its the most rewarding thing youve ever done, Jackson said. You just get that sense when you see patients, and you know they have a good quality of life, a good passing, and the family feels supportedthat recognition is what keeps you going to the next patient.

You can learn more about hospice on OSF's website is by calling (309) 451-5925. Hospice would set up an assessment visit to see if you or your family member are hospice-appropriate.

Excerpt from:

Sound Health: There's A Lot That You Don't Know About Hospice - WGLT

Will Coggin, managing director of PETAKillsAnimals.com, where he talked about the way PETA thinks about livestock and ranchers. "PETA would argue that the conditions that cattle are raised in our terrible and even if they were raised in a five-star hotel with massages, PETA would say you are still killing them for food and that is wrong.

PETAs Shelter Killed More Than 1,700 Pets in 2020

Despite National Surge in Pet Adoptions, PETAs Kill Mill Put Down 10% More Pets than 2019

Washington, D.C. (February 17, 2021)PETAs lone animal shelter, located at the organizations headquarters in Norfolk, Virginia, euthanized 1,759 cats, dogs, and other pets in 2020. This means that PETA euthanized nearly two in three of the animals it received over the course of 2020.

PETA only adopted out 41 pets, about 1.5% of the total number of animals it received last year. This minuscule number becomes more egregious when considering 2020 saw U.S. shelters experience record-high numbers of adoptions. The figures come from animal custody records filed by PETA with the Virginia Department of Agriculture and Consumer Services.

According to the same database, the average euthanasia rate of private animal shelters in Virginia is less than 6%more than ten times smaller than PETAs. Of all the animals killed at private animal shelters in the state, 74% were killed by PETA.

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PETA Hypocracy - AG INFORMATION NETWORK OF THE WEST - AGInfo Ag Information Network Of The West