Driving back from a holiday visit with my sister in La Jolla California I was tempted to write a post about dogs of the rich and famous.
We took a long oceanside walk every day to offset the huge increase in holiday calories and we saw many, many pampered pets. Some sported designer outfits and all looked like they were quite accustomed to a life of luxury. I would imagine that a few were depressed about declining stock portfolios, but most seemed happy.
The long drive home provided better grist for our blog in the form of a couple of radio interviews on Fresh Air by the best interviewer in the business; Terry Gross. She interviewed Dr. Nick Trout, a veterinary surgeon at Angel Memorial Hospital in Boston. The second interview was with Dr. Irene Pepperberg on the death of a special parrot she had worked with for over thirty years.
Dr. Trout has written a memoir on his work with animals in the great tradition of James Heriott. It takes place over one day in his life as a vet. The book starts with a 2 AM wake up call for an 
emergency abdominal surgery on a dog and ends at 10 PM that night with a follow up on the same patient. In between he recounts numerous amusing and heartfelt encounters with pets and their people.
Terry asked him a great question about the human animal bond and the tremendous advances in veterinary medicine. Specifically she asked whether it was appropriate for people to spend so much money on their pets for procedures like MRI's, hip replacement or even brain surgery. His reply was well considered. He asks himself what he would do if it was his own dog and he makes his recommendation based on that analysis. (I wish he had talked about pet health insurance!)
I haven't read the book yet but the reviews on Amazon are favorable and I plan to purchase it soon. If Terry Gross liked it, it has to be good.
The second interview with Dr. Pepperberg on her work with a very smart African Gray Parrot named Alex was kind of bittersweet. He was truly an amazing bird and proved over his life that animal brains are more highly developed and nuanced than most people realize.
Dr. Pepperberg used novel training methods to teach Alex words, count and sort objects and even to differentiate between colors. Alex had a vocabulary of over 100 words and even made up his own one liners.
Alex was working right up to the end and in a moving tribute Dr. Pepperberg recalled the last thing Alex said as she put him in his cage for the night last week. "You be good, see you tomorrow, I love you". Too sad.
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