Ask Roxie

Words of Advice from an ‘09 Petwe move on. First thing, they want to pet the dog. And my first question to them is: 'Do you have a pet?' and they'll bring out their phone. We just have a conversation!” Bella and Bonnie are a volunteer team with Pups n' Planes, where “comfort” dogs and their owners offer distressed travelers a little sugar. “People are waiting, their flight has been canceled, or they may have a four-hour wait, and they are upset.” “One time, two little girls stopped to pet the dog, and I looked up, and the mother was crying. Her husband was being deployed. I spent probably a half-hour with them, and the dad thanked me so many times because it got them thinking about other things,” Bonnie says. Airport staffers implemented the idea after learning how well it worked at the Los Angeles International Airport. Pups n' Planes has been reducing blood pressure and turning frowns upside down for six years. “In the car, she knows that we are almost at the airport. She gets so excited! Her job is to make people smile. She does that job.” And if you saw Bella, you would smile, too. The girl team also spends time at the airport USO, softening the loneliness and longing of our troops, so familiar to military life. While Bella offers kisses, Canine Explosive Detection Supervisor Sgt. Andres Lopez, and his police dog Keyno, provide safety and security. “We are there to make sure that the traveling public is safe, the dog makes that any threats associated with aviation there aren’t real threats,” says the airport K9 police officer. Lopez and Keyno “nose around," sniffing out threats that could come from a parked car, a suitcase, or a person. “Dogs are about as mobile as you can get,” says Lopez. He means the nose is mobile.

Bella is a volunteer with Pups n' Planes, the airport greeting committee. She wears her little pink coat, cheering up tired travelers at the San Antonio International Airport. ODD COUPLES! Why a dog might befriend a tortoise Workin' BY BERIT MASON for a Living! Dogs with Jobs Traditionally, dogs chased cats, and cats hated dogs.

No way were the two going to cuddle up together for a nice BY BERIT MASON afternoon nap!

But now, odd couples are all over the internet, dogs and cats napping, dogs and turtles playing football, deer and dogs The San Antonio International Airport is HUGE! romping together in the backyard.

It recently broke a record, flying some 15,000 people A DAY, So, what gives with all of this newfound love? for a total of 10.36 million passengers in 2019. Passengers most certainly frequent the airport, but pups do too. Meet Bella. Bella is a petite dog with light, wavy hair, offering everyone she meets the sweetest smile. Several hours a week, Bella and owner Bonnie Gioiello roam the airport, searching out the tired, the weary, and the bored. “If they look up and smile, they are a dog lover. If they don't, The owner of Broadway Oaks Animal Hospital, Dr. Pat Richardson, says that as more people adopt animals, more pets live under one roof, so they have to get along. “I just had a client come in with a puppy that they introduced to their cat who had previously been introduced to a dachshund, and they didn’t get along at all. But now this puppy has come in and won’t leave that cat alone. The cat has reconciled this and has decided that this is the way it’s going to be.” These new pets pairings are because people are also adopting parrots or turtles or mice! Yikes! People are fostering animals, and they are rescuing and caring for injured wildlife, so many more kinds of animals are joining families. “I had a guy that brought in a 120-pound tortoise, and it was sick and had to stay in the hospital for a long time. He said that every cat and dog in his house (they had quite a menagerie) was depressed until the tortoise came back,” says Richardson. Awwww! No one ever intended for an iguana to be best friends with a dog, but I see it in this practice all of the time, and it is amazing.” “Cross-species relationships” are well-documented.

Airport therapy dogs help soothe people who may be upset because of a long wait, delayed or cancelled flight.

The PBS Nature documentary, ”Animal Odd Couples” quoted zoologists who noted that: “Endearing interactions between a cheetah and a retriever, a lion and a coyote, a dog and a deer, a goat and a horse, and even a tortoise and a goose offer captivating glimpses of supportive connections in the animal world.”

They observed that in the animal kingdom, there exists compassion, and compassion exists because it brings creatures together to support one another’s survival.

“Each interspecies pair challenges the conventional wisdom that humans are the only species capable of feeling compassion and forming long-lasting friendships,” said the zoologists.

Richardson says this compassion is evident among animals, for example, when chimps assist each other with babysitting and grooming.

I saw a documentary where a mother tiger still hunted to feed her two teenage sons, though they were as big and strong as she was!

So, complex emotions belong to other mammals, and not just humans.

Richardson adds that many animals also enjoy playing together, batting about balls, or roughhousing.

“I saw a show with an icebreaking ship down in Antarctica. A seal jumped into the water and swam to the boat. Some guys threw a ball, and the seal swam to it, retrieved it, and threw it back to them. All it wanted to do was interact and play, even though it probably had never even seen a human before. This has to be innate.”

“We live in a time when we realize how important animals are to our physical and mental well-being,” says Richardson.

And those odd animal couples also seem to realize how important that they are to each other.

Until next month!

Woof, woof,

Roxie

Serving San Antonio since 1889

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