WLS Steve Dale Podcast: Service Dogs; Dr. Fitzgerald from Emergency Vets; Get Your Pets on Route 66

Wow! Jennifer Arnold isn’t a well known dog trainer, behaviorist or scientist. but I was so happy to spend time with her on my WLS On Demand show.

In her book,  “Through a Dog’s Eyes: Understanding Our Dogs by Understanding How They See the World,” she takes the latest science, and you can just hear hear Southern charm combined with conviction and good science to dispel so many popular myths.

And she’s right. Woven throughout is her own story, including how she created Canine Assistants. This organization trains service dogs for people with physical disabilities and epilepsy. Most fascinating is that dogs are trained to assist people once a seizure begins, but most soon learn to predict seizures. How the heck are they doing it? Of course, there are many stories in the book of lives changed…this book does require tissue.

Remember Dr. Kevin Fitzgerald from Emergency Vets on Animal Planet? Today Fitzgerald is working as still practices, works as a stand-up comic, and helps his profession. He talks about what you can do if you want to become a veterinarian.

Getting into vet school is tougher than ever, and so is paying off the school loans after veterinary school. While we have lots of veterinarians to treat cats and dogs, there’s actually a shortage of wildlife, research and farm animal veterinarians.

Bad News – and she knows, Cook County Commissioner Joan Patricia Murphy says that the economy isn’t improving yet, and foreclosure numbers will be on the rise.

That means more homeless people and homeless pets. She is an advocate for Realtors to the Rescue, who provide resources for people who lose their homes so they don’t have to also lose their pets.

Murphy, co-chair of Cook County
Partners Against Animal Cruelty and long time animal welfare supporter;
this the perfect public official to kick-off of 2nd Annual Get Your Licks on Route 66″ pet adoption tour on Friday, September 10, 11 a.m., at City Hall in Chicago Heights (1601 Chicago Road).

I will be there offering tips on travel tips, one is to microchip ALL pets. In fact, the Commissioner offers info on the mircochipping clinics she helped to develop. Learn more about North Shore Animal League America all the way from Port Washington, NY and FIDO Friendly Magazine and how they’re traveling in a 33-foot long-long pet adoption trailer
across the entire length of Route 66, from Illinois to California.
Murphy calls it a “lifesaving” tour.