Dogs

Dogs of CU

Anonymous — Fri, 02 Jul 2021 06:00:00 +0000

Dogs of CU Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 07/02/2021 - 00:00

Though Ralphie holds a special place in the hearts of so many Forever Buffs, most would list their loyal pup when it comes to choosing a favorite furry friend. Until Folsom Field is once again filled with a roaring crowd decked out in CU gear, canine Buffs are showing off their school spirit to keep alumni and fans inspired. If only CU could enter a team in the Puppy Bowl!

Submit feedback to the editor

Photos by Glenn Asakawa/University of Colorado; @run.ralphie.run; @nicole.kirk; @stefaniequinnr; @pearl_mabel_and_me; @haleykurlfink

Furry friends cheering on the Buffs.

Off

Traditional

White

The Hardest Day

Anonymous — Wed, 22 Jan 2020 20:33:46 +0000

The Hardest Day Anonymous (not verified) Wed, 01/22/2020 - 13:33

Sarah Kuta

Photojournalist Ross Taylor captured the final moments between pet owners and their companions. The work has gone viral.

The photographs are heartbreaking.

As they watch their beloved pets take a final breath, the families photographed by Ross Taylor cover their mouths in despair, wipe tears on the backs of their arms and wail in agony. They cradle their companions in their arms and kiss them goodbye.

With his “Last Moments” photo series and forthcoming documentary, The Hardest Day, Taylor captured the visceral emotions of dog and cat owners as they euthanized their pets at home. His work resonated with people worldwide — millions have viewed his photos online.

For Taylor, assistant professor of journalism at ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ, the project was a chance to highlight the connection between humans and animals. He also hopes to comfort grieving pet owners by showing they’re not alone.

“We should not minimize the intensity of the human-animal bond,” said Taylor, whose other work has earned numerous awards, including a 2012 Pulitzer Prize nomination. “If somebody is going through a difficult moment with the loss of a pet, we should stop and move with greater care toward each other.”

Taylor was inspired for the project by a friend who opted for a home euthanasia procedure for her dog in 2016. After researching the practice, he spent several weeks in Tampa, Florida, the next summer shadowing staff members at Lap of Love, a national network of veterinarians who offer hospice and in-home euthanasia services. He also followed veterinarians with the organization Caring Pathways in Denver.

My dogs are there for me no matter what — on my darkest days, on my best days.”

He photographed the final moments of pet owners like Wendy Lehr, whose dog, Mimosa, was euthanized in August 2017 after the nine-year-old South African Boerboel was diagnosed with liver cancer.

Though the photographs of Mimosa were painful to view, Lehr said they helped soothe and validate her grief.

“A lot of people look down on pet owners as if we’re being ridiculous — ‘It’s just a dog,’ or ‘I can’t believe you’re acting this way,’” said Lehr, who lives in Odessa, Florida. “They don’t understand the kind of bond that a human can form with a dog. My dogs are there for me no matter what — on my darkest days, on my best days.”

Taylor and co-filmmaker Luke Rafferty are entering the 53-minute Hardest Day documentary into festivals and plan to make it available in late 2020. The film offers a window into the challenging work veterinarians perform on a daily basis — caring for pets, but also offering compassion and support to their humans.

“It’s not enough to love animals,” said Dr. Dani McVety, Lap of Love’s founder. “Everybody loves animals, but you have to love the people who love the animals. And that’s what we do. When they’re crying, you just look at them and you say, ‘I know.’”

“Last Moments” offers teaching moments for Taylor’s CU classes. For instance, the project exemplifies a modern digital phenomenon: going viral. His work was seen in The Washington Post, Daily Mail and People. When posted on Buzzfeed, the photos were viewed more than 1.5 million times in one week alone.

“Whenever you do any type of journalism, it’s really crucial to make sure your motives are sound,” Taylor said.

Taylor learned photography in his father’s darkroom in Mint Hill, North Carolina, before studying journalism at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and Syracuse University, where he earned a master’s degree. Though Taylor’s seen a lot during his career — he’s photographed conflict zones, trauma hospitals and the aftermath of natural disasters — he was moved by the pain he witnessed as families said goodbye to their pets.

“You don’t show emotion in the moment, but you absolutely feel it and your heart breaks for people every single time,” said Taylor. “I definitely get emotional talking about it, and when I edited the film, I cried a thousand times.”

Photos by Ross Taylor

Hardest Day Collection

Photojournalist Ross Taylor captured the final moments between pet owners and their companions. The work has gone viral.

Traditional

Winter 2020

White

Stress Relief

Anonymous — Thu, 01 Dec 2016 23:10:00 +0000

Stress Relief Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 12/01/2016 - 16:10

Christie Sounart

Saurabh Sood (MCompSci’17) is excited for the end of the semester. Not for the grueling pressure of finals, but for the opportunity to lounge with friendly dogs at ��ý�Ļ��Ʒ’s libraries.

He adores the animals — adult therapy dogs trained to be calm and approachable.

Sood has attended 10 CU therapy dog events since arriving from Delhi, India, in fall 2015. Petting the dogs brings him instant relief from the demands of his computer science major.

“It’s the best thing,” said Sood, an aspiring software engineer. “These sessions helped me realize that I need to get a dog.”

Campus therapy dog visits began in 2012 at the request of the law school’s then-circulation manager, Robyn Copeland, who wanted to offer students a distraction from finals. Students loved being with the animals so much that five other campus libraries — business, music, Earth sciences, engineering and Norlin — began hosting therapy dog events, too.

Now, during the final weeks of the spring and fall semesters, the libraries bring in dogs for two hours at a time. The usual favorites come — golden retrievers, huskies and labradors — plus more obscure breeds, such as Belgian tervurens.

Numerous peer-reviewed studies have discovered that petting animals helps lower blood pressure, regulate the heart and reduce anxiety. Columbia University, UC Berkeley, Kent State University and other schools also have introduced therapy dogs in recent years.

Sood, who enjoys telling his parents and twin brother in India about his therapy dog sessions, plans to adopt a rescue dog after he graduates. For now, he favors one pup in particular: Jane Collier’s (A&S’69) 4-year-old yellow lab, Cooper.

[video:https://youtu.be/kTRFif5mwL4]

Collier is a coordinator with Therapy Dogs of Boulder County (TDBC), a volunteer group that arranges free therapy dog visits at organizations and companies. She and Wendy Shefte — owner of therapy dogs Pepper, a Portuguese water dog, and Stella, a goldendoodle — coordinate the dog events at CU.

Said Collier, “There’s not a human being in the world that will make you feel as welcome and loved as a dog does.”

Cooper is serious about his vocation as a therapy animal. In one- to two-hour increments, he allows humans to pet, grasp, hug and cuddle him without complaint.

Sometimes he comforts the seriously ill. Once, after sitting on the right side of a stroke victim, the patient placed her hand on his fuzzy head and beamed.

“They said it was the first time she had used her right hand since her stroke,” said Collier.

Of all the places the pair visits, CU is a favorite, she said. “Sometimes Cooper may have 10 sets of hands on him at one time,” she said. “[Students] tell me over and over how much this has helped them decompress, breathe and clear their mind.”

Therapy dogs are not service animals, which do work demanding focus, such as leading a blind person, said Daryl Holle, TDBC’s website director. Therapy dogs are all about distraction.

“A therapy dog is a love muffin,” he said, adding that a dog can become a therapy animal after testing by an accredited organization. “They are supposed to be petted and are dedicated to others.”

At CU, as many as 40 TDBC therapy dogs visit with students each semester. Hundreds of people interact with them, and it’s not uncommon to see faculty and staff crouched with the animals also.

“I’ve seen people who drop their bags and everything they’re holding and just run up to the dogs,” said Grace Haynes of the music library.

Haynes once saw a seemingly overwhelmed student sit with a dog and finish her homework on the ground.

“She left in a much calmer state and was more at peace with what she had coming up,” she said.

The work is exhausting for the animals: Cooper often falls asleep afterward, said Collier. But they’re good at what they do.

“All dogs are emotional support for us,” said Collier. “They teach us how to live in the moment.”

Photo by Casey A. Cass

If it's finals week, it's time to let the dogs out.

Off

Traditional

White

Puppy Love and Perseverance

Anonymous — Tue, 01 Sep 2015 18:15:00 +0000

Puppy Love and Perseverance Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 09/01/2015 - 12:15

Christie Sounart

After overcoming personal tragedy and business failure, Heidi Ganahl founded a small daycare for dogs that’s now the world’s largest pet care franchise.

It was early November 2000 when Patrick Haight (Geog’95) called his big sister, Heidi Ganahl (Mktg’88), with a business proposition.

“Do you still have any interest in starting Camp Bow Wow?” he asked.

Ganahl, then a 34-year-old single mother working as a pharmaceutical rep in Parker, Colo., pondered the plan for a dog day care she’d developed years earlier with her husband and fellow animal lover, Bion Flammang. When he was killed in a 1994 stunt plane accident, she set the plan aside.

Ganahl went numb after the crash. The couple’s two large mutts, Winnie and Mick, helped her cope, forcing her out of bed each day despite her grief.

In the following years, Ganahl married again, then divorced. She founded two other small businesses, but neither thrived.

She was not a quitter.

By the time her brother called, she was ready again for risk and reinvention.

“Bion and I created the business plan together,” says Ganahl, now 49. “I wanted it to come true for him to honor him and to honor our entrepreneurial spirit. It just felt like it was supposed to happen.”

In 2000, Ganahl and Haight launched Camp Bow Wow in Denver with $83,000, the remainder of a $1 million insurance settlement from Flammang’s death.

Since then, Camp Bow Wow has blossomed into a $90 million enterprise with 128 locations in the U.S. and Canada and dozens of others in development, making it the largest pet care franchise in the world. When pet healthcare giant VCA acquired Camp Bow Wow last year, Ganahl agreed to stay on as chief executive.

“It’s taken a lot of perseverance on her part,” Haight says. “Heidi took something that was bad in her life and made it good. I know Bion would be proud of her.”

The original idea for Camp Bow Wow came from personal experience: Ganahl and Flammang couldn’t find a boarding facility they felt suitable for their dogs. They envisioned a facility that focused on dog behavior and offered day care, grooming and training.

Ganahl knew the dog day care business would bring her more joy than her previous business ventures. When her brother called that fall, she seized the moment.

The next day she came with the old plan and a bunch of new stuff she had added that night,” says Haight, who was then 28 and, as founder of a flooring company, also an entrepreneur.

The pair searched Denver for a location and found only one landlord who was willing to support their idea. They paid $2,000 a month to rent a former metal workshop on South Broadway’s antique row.

“Doggie day care was just coming on the scene, and we were trying to create a really fun, upscale experience,” Ganahl says. “Once I saw the dogs and how much fun they had, there was no way it wasn’t going to work.”

Ganahl, who was still working her day job in pharmaceuticals, spent afternoons and weekends in city parks passing out free Milk Bones and Camp Bow Wow flyers made at Kinkos, her 5-year-old daughter, Tori, by her side. She convinced people that their dogs would be safe with others in a camp environment. Camp Bow Wow had sales of $100,000 its first year.

The two-person company hired staff, ramped up marketing, partnered with dog charities and veterinarians and held concerts at outside venues to attract more clients. Soon, Camp Bow Wow moved into a larger space and began hosting dogs overnight. Ganahl quit her sales job.

Dogs are fun, relaxing and chill — they take it down a notch.

With word about Camp Bow Wow spreading and business growing, she opened a second Denver location in 2002.

“She always had the big picture in mind,” says Haight, now a sound engineer in California.

Ganahl saw potential for Camp Bow Wow to expand on a large scale and settled on a way to do it: In 2003, the company became the first pet care franchise.

“There was such a huge demand — I was getting calls daily from folks wanting to open one themselves,” she says. “I didn’t have a lot of cash to open more locations on my own, so franchising was a good way for me to help others, and help the brand grow.”

Ganahl worked hard to make sure each camp would look and feel the same, forging a national identity.

Each location’s mountain lodge theme, indoor and outdoor play areas, private cabins and enthusiastic staff impart an inviting atmosphere for pooches and owners alike.

Every lobby is identical. Bone-shaped kiddie pools dot vast outdoor areas. Inside, rows of individual cabins spread over 10,000 square feet. There are special spaces for the uber-trendy “teacup pups” — miniature versions of small-breed dogs such as Pomeranians or Chihuahuas. Webcams in the play areas and lobbies allow clients to check on their pets from a personal computer anywhere.

Today Camp Bow Wow operates in 40 states. Ganahl sold the company last August to generate capital for faster growth. Within three years, the company is expected to add 75 locations.

“She’s still very involved with the business, but she has stepped away from the day-to-day and into that true CEO role,” says Renuka Salinger, Camp Bow Wow’s vice president of development.

Still, Camp Bow Wow is never far from Ganahl’s thoughts, and she’s never far from a Camp Bow Wow.

“When I’m traveling, if I’m in a town where there is a Camp Bow Wow, I stop in and meet the staff and go hang out with the dogs,” says Ganahl. “And I don’t ever go to a camp without going into the play yards. That’s what makes me happy.”

Until he died this summer, she often brought her 14-year-old black lab named Raider to her Broomfield, Colo., office to join the 15-20 other dogs that go to work with their owners at Camp Bow Wow’s corporate headquarters.

“Dogs are fun, relaxing and chill — they take it down a notch,” she says.

Ganahl takes care of her employees too. She encourages regular team-building through weekly “Yappy Hours” for everyone to socialize — two legs or four.

“My number-one rule in business is to just put yourself in the other person’s position and figure out how they’d want to be treated,” she says. “You’ll usually be OK.”

These days Ganahl spends more time with her four children — three under the age of five — and husband Jason, a champion competitive barbecue cook. She also focuses on her charity work, which includes two nonprofits she started.

The first, the Bow Wow Buddies Foundation, has raised more than $100,000 for canine cancer research and given homes to more than 10,000 dogs. She also started Moms Fight Back, which helps mothers address tough social issues such as bullying, sexual assault and school safety.

“It’s really cool to be able to help these moms figure out how to network, how to raise money, how to put together a proposal and how to lobby,” Ganahl says. “By helping moms, I’m really helping kids.”

An avid Buffs fan and football season ticket holder, Ganahl also serves her alma mater by serving on the board of the CU Foundation.

In times of loss and times of plenty, she says, she’s tried to follow her heart. It’s led her to opportunity.

“You’ve really got to hone in on what mark you want to leave on the world,” Ganahl says. “Once you figure that out, everything else falls into place and every day is fun, it’s not work. That will get you through the tough times.”

Photography by Glenn Asakawa

After overcoming personal tragedy and business failure, Heidi Ganahl founded a small daycare for dogs that’s now the world’s largest pet care franchise.

Off

Traditional

White

My Dog Always Eats First

Anonymous — Sat, 01 Dec 2012 07:00:00 +0000

My Dog Always Eats First Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 12/01/2012 - 00:00

Clay Evans

Chester and his dog, Pinto, have moved into housing since associate professor Leslie Irvine did her research on the homeless and their pets. Irvine’s books include If You Tame Me: Understanding Our Connection with Animals andFilling the Ark: Animal Welfare in Disasters (Temple University Press, 2004 and 2009 respectively).

For many homeless people, owning a pet doesn’t just mean companionship. It can spur transformative behavioral changes that can save their lives.

On a cold December day, Trish stood on a median just off 28th Street in Boulder “flying a sign,” which is street language for panhandling while holding a piece of cardboard neatly lettered with the words, “Sober. Doing the best I can. Please help.”

Bundled up next to her on a dog bed was Pixel, her 8-year-old Jack Russell terrier. When he was a puppy she had nursed him from the often-fatal parvovirus after a pet-store owner declared him unsellable.

Once a nomadic free spirit who followed the Grateful Dead, Trish was homeless with a felony conviction for heroin possession on her record. She had seen her share of dark times. But just as she’d saved Pixel, he was now saving her.

“I was totally at rock bottom,” Trish says. “I just wanted to die. But I couldn’t give up because I had something else to take care of besides myself. So he kept me alive.”

Trish’s story is just one of dozens recounted in My Dog Always Eats First: Homeless People and Their Animalsforthcoming in February 2013(Lynne Rienner Publishers) by CU-Boulder’s Leslie Irvine, associate professor of sociology. Irvine discovered through her research that animals play powerful roles beyond companionship. They give homeless people a sense of meaning in a world where they have lost almost everything — jobs, homes, families, security.

Like many “domiciled” Americans, Irvine once believed that homeless people should not have pets — and she wasn’t shy about telling them so.

“I remember going up to one guy about 10 years ago and saying, ‘You shouldn’t have a pet. What do you think you’re doing?’ ” she recalls.

And why not? If you can’t keep a roof over your own head and are forever scrambling to find enough to eat, Irvine couldn’t understand how you could take proper care of a companion animal.

This homeless woman never goes anywhere without her dogs in San Francisco where associate professor Leslie Irvine did some of her research on homeless people and their pets.

But that was before Irvine interviewed 75 homeless pet guardians on the street and at vet clinics for the homeless in five cities — Boulder, Miami, San Francisco, Sacramento and Berkeley, Calif.

The experience, she says, was humbling. Almost all of the pet-people partnerships she encountered were loving and mutually supportive. As the book’s title suggests, many homeless guardians put the well-being of their pets ahead of their own, sharing food and seeking out such resources as free veterinary clinics.

Irvine’s fieldwork shattered her assumption that homeless people are less capable of providing for their nonhuman companions than people with more resources.

“Animal control officers in San Francisco (and Boulder) get far more complaints about cruelty and improper care by people who have houses than people who are homeless,” she says.

There are, of course, incidents of animal abuse by homeless people, such as a Boulder case in the fall in which a man was arrested for allegedly kicking and dragging a puppy. But, says Bridget Chesne, director of shelter services at the Humane Society of Boulder Valley, the media tend to distort the frequency of homeless animal abuse, in part because it occurs in public, as opposed to abuse in homes that is less visible.

“It’s unfortunate when these stories get so much attention,” says Chesne, who traveled with Irvine on a rescue mission to New Orleans in 2005 following the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. “Most of the homeless population we see in our community will provide for their pets before themselves.”

What’s more, Irvine found, beyond the obvious benefit of companionship, caring for a pet can actually catalyze behavioral changes that improve a homeless person’s life.

Take Donna, 53, whom Irvine met at a street vet clinic in the poor and crime-battered Bayview-Hunter’s Point area of San Francisco. From age 15, when she was kicked out of her home, until her early 40s, Donna slid miserably through abusive relationships, prostitution and severe heroin, cocaine and alcohol addiction. Along the way, she “got the virus” — HIV.

Then she met Athena, a German shepherd-Labrador retriever mix whom a friend had rescued from death row at a shelter, and her life was transformed. In the 10 years since, Donna has always put the dog’s well-being first, which has transformed her own life.

“She got me out of an abusive relationship. And it was either the dog or him,” Donna says. “I realized that Athena meant everything to me . . . I said to myself, ‘My dog comes first in my life.

A homeless San Franciscan and his dog wait for a veterinary examination in San Francisco.

‘Would I rather use drugs, or feed my dog?’ And I fell in love with Athena, so I gave up the needle. Gave up the pipe. I gave up liquor. Everything.”

Caring for a companion animal gives many people a sense of doing something positive, even as they often endure cries of “Scum!” and “Get a job!” It also “works to build a moral identity among people who have few other resources with which to do so,” Irvine says.

“The activities of providing food, sharing half a sandwich, going out of the way to make sure there is a dry place for the two of you to sleep . . . casts the person as essentially good,” she says.

Some homeless even come to see themselves as better pet owners than people in shiny cars zooming past who leave their companions home for eight or 12 hours a day.

“They can give (their pets) 24/7 attention and a real bond,” says Ilana Strubel, a veterinarian who works with Vet SOS — a program of the San Francisco Community Clinic Consortium that provides veterinary services to pets belonging to the homeless — and who worked with Irvine.

That bond is no less powerful for the homeless than for people with resources. Irvine was working as a volunteer at the Humane Society of Boulder Valley years ago when a hulking, filthy “mountain man” named Joe arrived at the shelter looking for his beloved dog, Spirit, who had wandered from his squatter’s camp in the forests west of Boulder. He descended the mountain and walked to the shelter on foot in search of his lost companion, never letting up for four years.

“He came in in tears every day and put signs up all over town,” Irvine recalls.

During that time, animal control brought in a stray purebred Basenji puppy. The shelter contacted the owner through information contained in the dog’s implanted microchip.

“He never showed up,” Chesne says. “Here we were, handing his expensive puppy back on a silver platter . . . Yet here is Joe, for whom nothing comes easily, bloodying his feet to try and recover his relationship with his dog.”

“Now,” Irvine says, “who is the better guardian? It’s easy to think that there are many homeless people who shouldn’t have animals. But many domiciled people shouldn’t either.”

Photos courtesy of Mark Rogers Photography

For many homeless people, owning a pet doesn’t just mean companionship. It can spur transformative behavioral changes that can save their lives.

Off

Traditional

White

Dogs

Dogs of CU

Off

The Hardest Day

Hardest Day Collection

Related Articles

Stress Relief

Off

Puppy Love and Perseverance

Off

My Dog Always Eats First

Off