I Spent A Night At A Dog Hotel
Cathy Alter, Washingtonian Magazine

What's it like to be the only human staying at one of the most luxurious dog exclusive resorts in the United States? Cathy Alter finagled her way into an 8 million dollar pet hotel for the night. She reveals her experience to us.

Just like we pamper ourselves, sometimes we send our pets off to a hotel for a vacation or a spa or salon treatment just for them. It may be hard to believe, but there's a hotel that's a pet resort in Rockville, Maryland, which cost 8 million dollars to build. So you know it's got to be top of the line.

Cathy Alter is a local journalist in Washington D.C. and writes for some national magazines as well. She's always looking for something fun to do and then write about. And that's exactly what she did. She went to the Old Towne Pet Resort in Rockville, Maryland, which is exclusively for animals. The Old Towne Pet Resort is a luxury pet resort. This is the third outpost that they've opened and is the most fancy.

When Cathy received a press release and read about the Presidential Suite, she wondered if she could stay there. That's how it all started.

Cathy then called the publicist and asked them if they thought the resort would let her stay in the presidential suite. Cathy states she knew the publicist and they know she'll do anything, so they said probably!

It all then happened so quickly. Cathy writes for the Washingtonian Magazine but had never written for them before. She then pitched the editor and said, "I can spend the night in a luxury hotel. Do you want me to?" She received an e-mail back in less than a minute stating, "Yes!"

The way the resort was described made it sound like the Four Seasons, but it was really a lot less money. Cathy thought that it was probably a really good deal. She has a six year old and thought a night right away from her husband and child sounded great too! So before she knew it, she had her bags packed and was sleeping among the dogs.

If Cathy hadn't told us that she stayed at a pet resort, we would think she checked into the Golden Doors or Canyon Ranch. She claims it was really nice. It had polished stone floors and an indoor saltwater swimming pool. They also have this special air filter system so you don't smell any kind of animal smell. It's super fancy and you don't realize that there's any animal staying there until you get farther into the back, according to Cathy. Even the doors to the kennels are airtight, so you really don't hear anything or see anything.

Some of the amenities they have for the animals include a beauty parlor, an exercise studio and a lap pool. They even read bedtime stories to the animals.

The resort was really quiet and relaxing and Cathy declared it was great and that she has stayed in worse places

They put Cathy in a room with a TV and they had her favorite music playing. They even hung a Colgate University banner. They did their homework and she realized that they do that for all the animals as well. They take special care in who's staying there. They treat it very seriously, although she was fooling around.

Cathy's stay started out like any dog's stay would. She was picked up in the van with the other dogs. She thought she was going to have to go in the back, because she said she wanted to do everything the dogs do. But she got to say up in the passenger seat. She also received a little pet questionnaire. They wanted to know her likes and dislikes and what kind of food she liked and whether she played nice with others.

When she arrived at the resort, she changed and went up to the exercise studio and took a "pawlates" class, which she said was really hard. The dog she did it with was like a superior athlete. This dog did not get tired. After that she took a swim, doing the dog paddle, with a Labrador retriever who was huge. Cathy was really scared of the dog so she didn't want to put her head under the water because the dog was really big and chasing stuff, so she kept her eye on him.

After swimming, she had a "pawdicure" with a cute little puppy. Then it was time for dinner. They served her spaghetti and meatballs in a dog bowl. However, they gave her utensils and then she got a bedtime story and then it was lights out.

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What It's Like to Be a Dog
Gregory Berns, Professor of Neuroeconomics at Emory University

Neuroscientist Gregory Berns managed to put several dogs into an MRI machine to scan their brains and try to understand how they think and feel. Do dogs have emotions? Do they have empathy? Do dogs have a sense of humor? You may be surprised at some of these answers, which can be found is his book, "What It's Like To Be A Dog."

Dr. Berns didn't start out studying dogs. His career had been using MRI and brain imaging technologies to actually study the human brain and how structures in the human brain give rise to various human emotions and how we process things like reward and risk and decision making.

It was many years ago when he actually began wondering whether his own dogs felt anything like the way he does towards them. He then came up with the idea of training dogs to go into an MRI, completely awake and completely unrestrained, to see what they're thinking.

The MRI that Dr. Berns used was exactly the same one used for humans. For those of you who haven't had an MRI, probably the biggest thing for humans is that it's very claustrophobic because it's a very tiny space and it's really loud. Kind of like a jackhammer.

So what he did was to build simulators of an MRI. Dr. Berns still has one in his basement. Next he started just kind of working through it piecemeal and basically made it a big game for the dogs, because the dogs don't have any preconceptions about what an MRI is. By pairing it with lots of treats and lots of praise and balls and games, he made it just a big fun machine for them.

It's probably safe to say that Dr. Berns was the first and probably the only person ever to do that.

When they started, they did very simple things like teaching the dogs hand signals. For example, one hand signal meant hotdog and another hand signal meant nothing. What that did was allow them to zero in on their reward systems to confirm that it functions basically the same as human reward systems. As the dogs got better at this, and they got more and more dogs and their people volunteering for the project, they did more complicated things like look at the relative value of food versus praise to the dogs. This was kind of a key question to Dr. Berns as to whether dogs are essentially our friends just for the food or whether they have anything like love for us. What they found was that indeed their reward systems activated to things like praise, like saying good boy good girl, as much as food. In many dogs it was even more so than food.

Dr. Berns tell us that they used a lot of retrievers in the project but that's probably largely reflecting how popular that breed is. They used lots of shelter animals too, which included lots of mixes. Kalai, who is Dr. Berns own dog and came from a shelter, was the first to volunteer.

So when we ask the question what it's like to be a dog that makes almost as much sense as asking what it's like to be a person. What they are really studying now is what makes one dog the way they are relative to another dog. There's a tremendous variation from one dog to another, which is not too surprising, since there's also big differences between people.

With regard to empathy or humor, they haven't really looked at that in dogs, because it's actually quite difficult even to study in humans, as it's obviously very subjective. But one of the things that they have studied, and this actually is an element of humor, is the result of surprise. To humans, things are funny because something is surprising in a particularly novel way. It's clear that dog's brains respond to surprising things in many of the same ways as we do. It also seems to be a key part of their reward systems as well. Dr. Berns wouldn't necessarily call that humor, but he would call that expectations and surprises being quite important to them.

One of the things that surprised Dr. Berns was an experiment he did some years ago looking at how dogs process faces. Prior to doing this, it had been known that there are parts of the human brain, and even other primates, that are dedicated to processing faces. This is not too surprising considering how social we are and how much information facial expressions carry for us. But it wasn't known whether any other animals cared about it like we do. So they set up an experiment where they showed pictures to the dogs while they were in the scanner and the pictures included dog faces, human faces as well as everyday objects. Just like in humans, they found that dogs have a dedicated part of the brain to process and faces. It's really incredible.

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Who Doesn't Like Dogs? - Dr. Debbie

I love dogs, and always have. But what happens when you discover a close friend doesn't merely not like dogs, but actually hates them?

I've been operating under the assumption that those who don't like dogs must have some evil lurking in their spirit and were destined to a life of incarceration. Just look at the statistics of criminals that abuse animals early on and who later progress to physical abuse of people, murder, or other sociopathic behaviors.

I'll admit not liking dogs is a far cry from turning one's hand to injure an animal or person, but some uncomfortable association is still there. As a full-fledged dog lover, or enthusiast of any animal for that matter, I cannot understand the psyche of an individual that is satisfied going about their life without animal companionship.

Any pet lover can spout off a list of benefits their furry one brings to their life...the steady comfort of companionship, a non-judging ear to hear out the day's tribulations, a workout or hiking buddy and a source of unconditional love at the end of a long day.

So, imagine my shock when I realized that a couple I know doesn't like dogs. Not just that they don't have dogs or misunderstand them - they actually dislike dogs.

Hint of this fact should have been apparent a long ago when they were over for dinner and they politely stood stiff as Calvary front line, when greeted by my yapping terrier mix. Or that they failed to stroke my Labrador's chin after receiving the gentle nudge of the typical canine greeting upon entering the home. The polite perfunctory smiles went un-noticed by me. "Sure, they don't have dogs," I reasoned as to why they weren't charmed by my little dog's amusing tail wagging display or by the steadfast devotion of my Labrador's greeting.

All of these sign posts I missed. I clearly misjudged all along. The couple, who I just assumed were just not yet fortunate to understand the benefits of pet companionship, were actually formidable dog dislikers.

Realization struck me during a recent conversation with this couple. I was laughingly describing the vast differences in dog breed behavior comparing my former Labradors, to that of my current Bouvier. My comments must have been mistaken as some underhanded means to convince them the right breed was out there for them. At that moment, my guest raised hands and said, "I know what I like and don't like, and I don't want dogs." Clearly they didn't like dogs - and they misunderstood my comment as some means to turn them over to the canine side against their will. Astounded, I marveled how this response was not unlike a person who is recommended a mushroom containing side dish or gourmet meal from a fine restaurant, and who declares "I can't stand mushrooms and don't want anything to do with mushrooms!"

So why didn't I catch on to these dog haters sooner? For those of us that have pets, of any type, we recognize the many joys our pets bring to our lives. There are folks that don't want to bring that companionship into their life. The cogs of their lives have clicked along just fine without a pet in their life. Somehow lots of well-educated, social and seemingly normal people can raise a family and be successful and still dislike dogs.

Maybe we should feel sorry for them. Or maybe they feel sorry for us, for all the money, heart and time we put into a pet companion who's lifespan doesn't come near to that of a humans. They probably laugh at our reckless expenditures on a being who lives just a fraction of human life. I chose not to spend time wondering how they have made it without animals in their life...rather that I have succeeded because I have been fortunate to have animals in my life.

I ask that these non-pet people save their pity for me and my pets, because I know that any one of my dogs could say they lived live fuller than most people - full with adventure, splendor at new experiences and embracing the moment. And so have I at their side. So should the question come up at the time of my next life, I'll take both a side of mushrooms...and pets on the side.

Featured veterinarian known as "Dr. Debbie" on national pet radio program, Animal Radio. Ebook author of "Yorkshire Terriers: How to Be Your Dog's Best Friend"; "Pugs: How to Be Your Dog's Best Friend"; "Mini Schnauzers: How to Be Your Dog's Best Friend"; and "Shih Tzu: How to Be Your Dog's Best Friend." Dr. Debbie's books.

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Animal Radio News - Lori Brooks

Counterfeit Flea Meds
A California man admitted in federal court that he had been selling unregistered and smuggled animal pesticides online for 15 years. The phony products were sold at pet shops in every state, but it's more than just the US that's been duped. He sold the anti-flea and tick products all over Europe, the Caribbean and Africa as well. It paid him well, providing him $2.5 million in profit. An alleged major supplier is still an international fugitive and believed to be in the Cayman Islands. Authorities say the phony products were labeled with well-known brand names, such as Frontline and Advantix, and entered the legitimate pet pharmaceutical marketplace without any detection whatsoever. The counterfeit medication even ended up in some big name chain stores.

Dog-Friendly Breweries
The website TripsWithPets.com unveiled a list of dog-friendly breweries across America. It joins their lists of dog-friendly restaurants, beaches and other attractions, along with airline and car rental policies for pets and pet friendly vacation activities. For example, did you know there are whale-watching trips, excursions mining for gems, wine tastings and apple picking activities for you and your pet? Named "Best Pet Travel Site" by Consumer Reports, TripsWithPets.com started back in 2003 but has grown by leaps and bounds, now partnering with Expedia for pet friendly hotels and lodging even some bed-and-breakfasts as well as vacation rentals.

Listen to the entire Podcast of this show (#1143)