Eaton Hamilton

Dr. Barbara N. Horowitz and Kathyrn Bowers

Just a terrific book. Talks about animals and disease, moves to roargasms, into zoophoria and the drugs behind it, why animals are getting fat, animal self-injury, eating disorders, infections, adolescent parting.  A book about the intersection of human and animal medicine which could not be better done.  If you ever wanted to know more about animals, choose this as your next read.

Pg 91, on addiction: “A friendly cocker spaniel in TX once sent her owners’ lives into a tailsprin when she turned her attention to toad licking.  Lady had been the perfect pet, until one day she got a taste of the hallucinogenic toxin on the skin of a cane toad.  Soon she was obsessed with the back door, always begging to get out.  She’d beeline to the pond in the backyard and sniff out the toads.  Once she found them, she mouthed them so vigorously she sucked the pigment right out of their skin.  According to her owners, after these amphibian benders Lady would be “disoriented and withdrawn, soporifice and glassy-eyed.”  So the neighbours’ dogs weren’t allowed to come over to play, for fear that they’d pick up Lady’s habit.  As amusingly recounted in a story on NPR, one night the dog’s human mistress found herself in the backyard at four in the morning, desperately searching for a toad to give to Lady–literally enabling the addiction so the dog would finally come inside and the family could get some sleep.”