XL Bully owners warned as government's rule updates implemented today
XL Bully owners warned as government's rule updates implemented today
There have been some updates and amendments to the exemptions for owning XL Bully dogs, marking a number of changes to the legislation that was only implemented in February. The update includes new information about third party public liability insurance which owners are encouraged to familiarise themselves with.
Owners no longer need to send proof of their insurance renewal each year to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra). However, Defra can ask for proof of third party public liability insurance and owners will need to supply this proof within 5 days. If they are unable to provide this proof in time, the Certificate of Exemption that allows them to own an XL Bully despite the ban will become invalid, according to the new update.
Their insurance also still has to extend for the lifetime of their dog. In February, the government made it a criminal offence to own, sell, abandon, give away or breed XL Bully dogs. Additionally, it was also made illegal to have an XL Bully in public without a lead and muzzle. These new laws left owners across the country furious but having a valid Certificate of Exemption allowed them to keep their animals.
Applications for Certificates of Exemption have closed and now the only way to obtain one if by contacting your local police force and can only be authorised by a court order. Owners with Certificates of Exemption must adhere to a variety of rules and regulations for the entirety of their dog's life. This includes having third party public liability insurance for their dog, keeping the dog muzzled and on a lead in public, with the lead being held by someone aged 16 or older.
XL Bully owners can also be stopped and questioned by police constables or authorised local authority officers. In this situation, if requested, the owners must provide access to the dog and their microchip, third party liability insurance information and their Certificate of Exemption.
Lost ‘Woolly Dog’ Genetics Highlight Indigenous Science
Lost ‘Woolly Dog’ Genetics Highlight Indigenous Science
“Woolly dogs” that were kept by the Coast Salish peoples are now extinct, but researchers were able to see their importance written in the genome of the only known pelt
Full-body forensic reconstruction of a woolly dog based on a 160-year-old pelt in the Smithsonian’s collection as well as archaeological remains. The reconstructed woolly dog stands against a stylized background of a Coast Salish weaving motif from a historic dog-wool blanket. The portrayal of the weaving motif was designed under advisement of the study’s Coast Salish advisory group.
For millennia before Europeans colonized what is now called the Pacific Northwest, small, fluffy, white “woolly dogs,” known as sqwemá:y in one language of the Coast Salish peoples, roamed the coast. The animals were unlike any dog living today. Their hair was so luxurious that Coast Salish individuals used it to make functionally and ceremonially important blankets.
Only one known woolly dog pelt exists today. By analyzing its genes, scientists have now shown just how different these shaggy creatures were from the Yorkshire terriers and Newfoundland dogs that gallivant around modern neighborhoods. The woolly dog “wasn’t a dog as we know it,” says Debra qwasen Sparrow, a master weaver of the Musqueam First Nation. “And DNA has proved that.”
Sparrow is a co-author of new research published December 14 in Science that analyzes the fur of a woolly dog named Mutton, which is currently kept by the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. Mutton died in 1859, around the time when the tradition of tending woolly dogs was crumbling in the face of the Coast Salish peoples’ forced assimilation and decimation by European diseases. By the early 20th century, the animals had disappeared.
For part of the research, Sparrow shared recollections from her grandfather, who saw some of the last of the sqwemá:y as a young child. “My grandfather would tease a little bit and say it was kind of like they were our sheep,” Sparrow says. “We would herd them—they stayed in packs; we didn’t want them integrating with the other wild animals.”
The 160-year-old pelt of the woolly dog Mutton in the collection of the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History. Credit: Brittany M. Hance/Smithsonian
The Coast Salish peoples often combined the dogs’ woolly undercoat with mountain goat hair and plant fiber to form a thick yarn that weavers then used to craft patterned blankets. They used the blankets in ceremonies and to stay warm, making the sqwemá:y a central part of society. “The relationship to those little dogs was a gift,” Sparrow says.
And the attention with which Coast Salish peoples tended to these animals is inscribed in Mutton’s genome, says Audrey Lin, a paleogeneticist at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History and a co-author of the new research. “Dog breeds are inbred in order to maintain a very specific phenotype,” Lin says. “There were signatures of that in his genome, which reinforced what we know culturally—that these dogs were kept by the Coast Salish and very carefully maintained for a very long period of time.”
The scientists’ analyses confirmed that Mutton’s lineage goes back about 4,800 years, Lin says. Although Mutton himself seems to have had a great-grandparent that was a European dog breed, the rest of his genome is distinct and includes several mutations affecting skin and hair that could help produce spinnable fur. “These gene variants, we didn’t see them in any other dogs that we had looked at,” Lin says. Intriguingly, some of these genes cause hair-related diseases or “woolly” hair in humans.
Mutton’s distinctive heritage, retained even as Europeans were encroaching on the Pacific Northwest, is particularly striking. “It just shows how devastating colonialism is,” Lin says. “This ancient tradition of keeping woolly dogs for possibly up to 5,000 years was just gone within a couple of generations.”
With the sqwemá:y now extinct, the Coast Salish relationship with them has become a mere memory. “Settler colonialism has impacted every human and nonhuman being and the relationships between those human and nonhuman beings,” says Kelsey Dayle John, a social scientist at the University of Arizona, who focuses on Indigenous studies and was not involved in the new research.
Sparrow hopes to renew that relationship, looking to create the first traditional blanket in more than a century. Without the sqwemá:y, she’ll have to find another dog whose hair she can spin. She’ll also need to retrace her ancestors’ steps in harvesting mountain goat hair and stripping stinging nettles, which will form the core of her yarn.
After spinning the mixture together, she’ll dye it with diatomaceous earth, a crumbly sedimentary rock made of fossilized algae that keeps insects away. Sparrow says she also needs to build a new loom to weave the final blanket that can accommodate a yarn that behaves so differently from her usual wool.
“It’s leading me back to that place of wanting to get as close as I can to the originals,” Sparrow says of seeing science dig into the sqwemá:y and their importance to Coast Salish peoples. “What I want society to understand is the intelligence behind these women who were scientifically putting blankets together.”
This is how to prevent and treat thrush in horses Story by David Rutherford MRCVS
This is how to prevent and treat thrush in horses
Thrush in horses is characterised by a black, foul-smelling discharge from the hooves and urgent treatment is required. In my experience it is usually (but not always) the result of poor hoof care and/or the horse being kept in wet ground conditions, which makes maintaining good hoof hygiene very difficult.
Thrush is an infection of the hoof’s frog, frog grooves and heel region. It is caused by a variety of bacteria and fungi, with one particularly aggressive species of bacteria called Fusobacterium necrophorum being commonly involved.
It may affect one or multiple feet and one or more of the three clefts of frog — medial, lateral and central — may be affected. Thrush is more commonly found in the hind feet, especially if your horse has deep narrow frog clefts.
How to tell if it’s thrush
Thrush is usually quite easy to spot, but occasionally it only becomes apparent when a hoof pick is advanced deep into the affected cleft.
A horse with thrush may well be lame with a foul smelling, slimy, dark discharge around the frog. Pressing on the frog with your thumb often causes pain.
The frog itself may be growing abnormally with loose rubbery flaps. The infection causes degeneration of the frog tissue and the frog tissue may be under-run (separated). In severe cases, the bacteria may have eaten away at the frog to cause open sores into the deeper sensitive tissues.
Luckily most cases of thrush are superficial and limited to the frog tissue. In more severe cases, the infection may extend to the digital cushion, hoof wall and heel bulb regions, resulting in a lame horse and the need for treatment.
Occasionally, swelling extends up the lower part of the leg to the knee or hock. Thrush is usually recognised by your vet or farrier on signs alone, but biopsies can be taken of the frog tissue to confirm it.
How to prevent thrush in horses
Thrush causes the hoof and frog to become soft and crumbly, allowing the bacteria and fungi to penetrate and establish themselves leading to infection.
Wet and muddy fields or soiled damp bedding are particular culprits with deep litter style bedding being amongst the worst. For this reason, thrush is much more common in winter than summer.
Prevention is of course better than getting to the stage where it requires treatment, so picking out your horse’s feet properly twice a day and maintaining clean dry bedding is essential.
It can be difficult during the wetter months but avoiding having your horse standing in a badly poached field for long periods is important.
In addition, regular trimming of hooves and frog by a farrier is important to maintain good hoof conformation and frog health.
Intermittent use of a disinfectant such as iodine to scrub out the hooves about once a month would also be a good idea.
I have known thrush to develop in horses shod with pads between the shoe and the hoof, especially when moisture and dirt become trapped underneath the pad.
It can be difficult to adequately clean the frog and clefts under and around bar shoes and impossible under sole pads. This puts horses who wear these shoes for other foot problems, such as bruising of the sole, at increased risk of suffering from thrush.
Occasionally, though, thrush develops even when the horse’s management and foot care is exemplary, and owners often find this difficult to accept. In such patients, foot conformation and sheared heels are likely contributory factors, but some horses just develop thrush for no apparent reason.
How to treat thrush
Without treatment, a thrush infection will progress and may affect the deeper structures within the horse’s foot causing serious distortion of the frog and ongoing lameness.
The first treatment step is to look at the horse’s environment and management. Avoid deep litter beds and use an absorbent bedding with soiled areas removed twice a day.
Doing the following is also good practice:
- If the horse lives out in a wet or muddy field, bringing them in will give the feet a chance to dry.
- Hooves, including the clefts of frog, should be picked out twice a day.
- Your farrier should attend as soon as possible to trim the feet and remove overgrown horn, frog and under-run tissue.
- This opens the area to fresh air and helps to reduce the anaerobic environment. If there is heel instability in a barefoot horse, shoeing may be recommended.
- Bar shoes and pads should be removed and the frog, its grooves and the sole trimmed and paired back to visually healthy tissue by a vet or farrier allowing air to reach the affected tissue.
- The foot should then be picked out carefully twice daily before scrubbing the frog and sole with dilute iodine solution. Once washed the horse should be stood on a clean dry concrete area for about an hour to allow it to dry.
- In terms of medical management and treatment of thrush, the foot and frog tissue should first be cleaned using a stiff brush and Hibiscrub (chlorhexidine) solution.
- After this a topical treatment may be applied, such as oxytetracycline spray, iodine, copper sulphate or 10% formalin, to name but a few.
Treatment length
It is very important that the horse is kept in a clean, dry stable where immaculate hygiene is maintained during the treatment period for thrush.
Painkillers may be given by mouth if the horse is lame, but antibiotic powders are rarely required. Tetanus cover must be given to an unvaccinated horse.
The management regime explained above should be maintained until the feet are back to normal and no longer showing signs of thrush. That’s probably going to take around two to three weeks, but sometimes longer.
There is no one-size-fits-all treatment for thrush, and I find that different vets and farriers will recommend different treatments.
Exercising your horse in a clean, dry environment is also important to strengthen the foot and facilitate natural cleaning of the foot.
The post This is how to prevent and treat thrush in horses appeared first on Your Horse.
Vampire bats have a really strange way of getting energy, scientists discover after putting them on treadmills
Vampire bats have a really strange way of getting energy, scientists discover after putting them on treadmills
ampire bats rely on blood-derived amino acids to fuel their activity, scientists have discovered after making the animals work out on tiny treadmills.
Most mammals, including humans, rely on carbohydrates and fats from their complex diets to fuel physical activity. However, vampire bats exclusively consume blood, which is very low in carbohydrates and fats but high in protein. This raises the question of whether vampire bats instead obtain most of their energy from the protein they consume — similar to bloodsucking insects.
"Whereas most mammals, like us, rely on carbohydrates and lipids to fuel our activity, these fuels are not abundant in the vampire bat diet, suggesting they might not rely on those fuels like us," study lead author Kenneth Welch, an associate professor of biology at the University of Toronto, told Live Science in an email.
There are three vampire bat species: the common vampire bat (Desmodus rotundus), the hairy-legged vampire bat (Diphylla ecaudata) and the white-winged vampire bat (Diaemus youngi). All are found in warm regions of the Americas, including Mexico, South America and Trinidad, according to the San Diego Zoo. They live in colonies of 20 to 100 individuals and are the only mammals that are obligate blood feeders.
The common vampire bat is the only vampire bat species that's capable of running; it uses a unique bounding gait to move quickly on the ground. Much like gorillas, they use their front limbs to propel themselves in short bursts so they can move quickly toward their prey.
In the new study, published Nov. 6 in the journal Biology Letters, scientists captured 24 adult common vampire bats along known flight paths in the tropical forests of Belize. The bats were held for up to 18 hours to make sure their last meal was fully digested. The vampire bats were fed with cow's blood enriched with one of two labeled amino acids — glycine or leucine. Each bat was then placed into a treadmill chamber so scientists could measure the ratio of oxygen to carbon dioxide (CO2) and calculate the rate of metabolic activity at different running speeds.
To determine if the amino acids were being used for energy, the researchers used a specialized machine with infrared lasers to detect the presence of certain carbon isotopes in the exhaled carbon dioxide.
The results revealed that the ratio of oxygen to carbon dioxide remained consistent across all treadmill speeds. This indicated that the vampire bats were using amino acids as their primary fuel source, the researchers said. In other mammals, the ratio increases with the intensity of exercise, mirroring the shift from burning lipids to burning carbohydrates.
The scientists also found that the vampire bats rapidly absorbed the free amino acids within just 10 minutes of consuming their meal.
"What was impressive was how quickly that labeled CO2 showed up, and how abundant it was from these bats," Welch said. "The rapid appearance of their labeled break-down product indicated the bats were oxidizing ("burning") those amino acids in their muscles while walking/running."
Although this method of energy generation is rare among mammals, previous studies of bloodsucking invertebrates like tsetse flies (Glossina) and female mosquitoes of the species Aedes aegypti found that they, too, obtain their energy from the breakdown of amino acids.
"What we have shown in this study is that running vampire bats show a similar pattern of reliance on blood-meal amino acids to fuel their intense exercise as do these [bloodsucking] insects," Welch said.
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