Season 6 Episode 1: Teen Cannabis Use, Tail Wagging, and Golden Retriever Cancer

Embark on an enlightening journey as we unravel the mysteries of cannabis use among teens and the language of canine tail wags!

We'll tackle the tough questions about THC potency, addiction, and mental health in young people, armed with fresh research that's bound to challenge your preconceptions.

This season, we're delighted to welcome Dr. Kelly Diehl to our show, providing a deep dive into the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study.

Her expertise illuminates the complex relationship between our furry friends' health and environmental factors, drawing invaluable parallels with landmark human studies.

Wrap up with a dose of warmth and wit, celebrating the profound connections we share with our animal companions. We're here to foster that bond through stories that stir the soul, backed by the science that explains their world.

Don't miss out on these groundbreaking insights and adorable anecdotes.

Tune in for a season packed with discovery, where every episode promises to leave you better informed and more in tune with the pets that grace our lives.

Golden Retriever Lifetime Study Website



Bunsen and Beaker Links:

30% off the first month at Zencastr - use the code in the show!
https://zen.ai/3LXIX2UYb1RLXwtWHHjryXAutdr3HS5EpVHMW80BOKg

Save 10% at Bark and Beyond with the coupon code BUNSEN!

The 2024 Bunsen and Beaker Calendar is ready to order!

The Ginger Stuffie is on presale so check the link here!

Join The Paw Pack to Support The Show!

https://bunsenbernerbmd.com/pages/paw-pack-plus-community

Our Website!

The Bunsen and Beaker Website has adorable merch with hundreds of different combinations of designs and apparel- all with Printful- one of the highest quality companies we could find!

www.bunsenbernerbmd.com

Sign up for our Weekly Newsletter!

Bunsen and Beaker on Twitter:

Bunsen and Beaker on TikTok:

Bunsen and Beaker on Facebook

Transcript

Speaker 1: 0:08

Hello science enthusiasts. My name is Jason Zekowski. I'm a high school chemistry teacher and a science communicator, but I'm also the dog dad of Bunsen and Beaker, the science dogs on social media. If you love science and you love pets, you've come to the right place. Put on your lab coat, put on your safety glasses and hold onto your tail. This is the Science Podcast. Oh, my goodness, we're back. Happy 2024, everybody. We hope you're happy and healthy out there. Yes, the January and end of December break is over. For myself, it's great to take that break, but as the days were ticking down towards February, I was itching to get back to it. So that's. But that's how you know. You've taken the right amount of time off. We have so many wonderful guests I've already recorded for this season and we've had huge successes with our live show, multicasting it to every platform that we're on, literally. So we'll probably be talking about that. This is still going to be our flagship show. It's going to be the show where we break down science articles and we break down pet articles and there's an interview and, of course, the family section. So if you've loved the Standard Science Podcast episode, don't worry, we're going to be producing those once a week, barring any kind of like other things that pop up during the year. For as long as you know, as long as we do this, okay, well, what's on the show this week In science news?

Speaker 1: 1:36

We're going to break down a study that looked at how cannabis marijuana affects kids. In pet science we're going to be looking at tailwagging. It's a great, great little study. Our guest and ask an expert is Dr Kelly Deal, who is heavily involved with the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study. This is near and dear to my heart In parts. This was hard for me. My heart dog Kellen died of cancer and it's something that we talk about in the study. Just why our Golden Retrievers? Why not all? Why are many Golden Retrievers maybe dying a little bit earlier than other breeds? But it is a really good discussion about what this enormous, enormous study found and I hope it's interesting and powerful to you as well. Okay, the bad joke why do dog walkers always have the most amazing stories? Well, they always have tales to tell. All right one with season six. There's no time like science time.

Speaker 1: 2:49

This week in science news we're going to look at an article that had some important things to say about cannabis use and children or marijuana. A big, a big change that's happened in my lifetime is in Canada is legal if you're above the age of 18. When it was legalized in Canada, I swear every mini mall had a cannabis store pop up. It was so weird. I don't judge people who smoke marijuana. I don't judge people who use cannabis products. I don't. I don't use them myself and I never have, and that's okay for me. But it was really weird seeing them pop up everywhere.

Speaker 1: 3:34

And one of the things that you know people who were against legalizing and said is like all of a sudden, all the kids are going to start smoking marijuana and that's not the case at all. Just because there was a whole bunch of people trying to make a buck selling cannabis legally, you still had to provide government ID to get it. Maybe some of those places sold to those kids under the table, but we didn't see like a massive, huge increase of kids smoking marijuana, unlike we did with vaping. But this study was looking at maybe some of the misconceptions and how cannabis affects people who are still developing more than adults, and it seems like a lot of kids have a misconception of how much harm there is that they could have from marijuana. Only 35% of the kids a surveyed in the national survey on drug use said there was a risk of harm smoking marijuana once or twice a week and it's it's similar in parents or adults. It's higher, of course, but not near as high as smoking. One of the things that the study actually mentioned is that the pot that the hippie dippies like my parents maybe would have smoked way back when wasn't near as strong as the marijuana today, that the THC potency is most of the time 20% or more in most marijuana products and that's compared to 4% in 1995. And there are really concentrated cannabis products like wax, and that brings the THC potency up to 95%.

Speaker 1: 5:09

We all know that as teens become adults their brains are still developing and THC is the psychoactive chemical in cannabis and many studies have shown that it negatively impacts brain chemistry and it interferes with how the brain signals. It of course does that to adults, but when a brain is developing and things are not quite solid and basically its shape function, cannabis can mess that up a bit. How does it mess it up? Does it turn their brain to Swiss cheese? No, but cannabis use, even for recreational purposes, puts them at risk for mental health issues like depression and suicide.

Speaker 1: 5:54

People use drugs as a coping mechanism and they found that teens are using cannabis as a coping mechanism, generally have more anxiety as the drug wears off and that leads to a cycle of use. So a misconception is that marijuana is not addictive like cigarettes. But if you are using it to avoid anxiety and the only time that anxiety goes away is when you're on it perhaps that is considered addictive. The study found that starting cannabis use as a teen is more likely to lead to dependence than starting as an adult. Adolescence becomes susceptible to dependence. Within a year. There's a whole bunch of negative outcomes linked to daily cannabis use. So these are like teens that are using cannabis every single day. There's higher incidences of using other drugs and, of course, their grades and their high school completion is way, way lower than kids that don't. Also, cannabis addiction. So once kids are addicted to cannabis there is now they are now in have an increased risk for developing schizophrenia.

Speaker 1: 6:59

So what should be done? Well, I believe in most countries you can't be 12 and smoke pot. In Canada you have to be 18, at least in Alberta, I believe. In other provinces it might be one or two years higher than that. So when you can buy cigarettes legally, that's when you can buy marijuana legally. There's some there's some evidence in some other studies that that maybe should be pushed to 21. The best thing that you can do yourself is have conversations with your kids and grandkids and nieces and nephews about this and say hey, there are some consequences to having or using marijuana. When you're young, those consequences seem to go away or they lessen as your brain develops and you become an adult. Now, of course, teens have to listen to you and take your advice. Most teenagers who are maybe smoking marijuana are probably in the same Venn diagram of not really carrying what parents say. Another one is that if you yourself are using cannabis, probably not a great idea to use it in front of kids. It sends a mixed message and it's really hard to discourage them from using it when they see you using it as well, and that's a tough thing. One of the biggest predictors of if a teen is going to smoke is if their parents smoke, why they see smoking done all the time as normal and part of daily life. And two, it's pretty easy to steal a couple of parents' cigarettes. So something to think about and the recommendations are is, if you're going to use marijuana, maybe wait until you're 18 or older. That's science news for this week.

Speaker 1: 8:41

This weekend, pet Science we're going to look at dog wagging. Super wholesome Bunsen has this big, bushy tail and when he's so happy, his tail just gets going. But for anybody that has a big dog with a big tail and anything that's low, like a little coffee tables, that tail just whips everything onto the floor. So every time I think about waggling of a tail, I think of Bunsen's big tail. Now, beaker wags her tail, but she also wiggles. She does, like the golden retriever, wiggle where her whole body wags. So her tail isn't quite as disastrous as Bunsen's.

Speaker 1: 9:24

Okay, this study that we're going to look at is trying to understand the various aspects of tail wagging in dogs. It is pretty well known that dogs do use their tails for communication with other dogs and humans, but most of that behavior is mysterious. Some of it is still unclear. So if all, just Sylvia Lynetti and colleagues looked at a review of scientific literature to identify what's known and what's still a mystery. So we're going to go through this together. What do all the papers say At least all the papers that would be considered robust enough to include in this meta analysis? And what? What do we not know? So a few papers propose something that's kind of interesting. What is it?

Speaker 1: 10:09

The origins of tail wagging is probably due to it fulfilling a human need. Now, what human need is that? It's the human need for rhythm. So dogs that had rhythmic wag movement of their tails were more likely to be selected. It's something innate in most of the humans. Do love patterns, we love patterns and we love the patterns within sound and movement. That's why dancing and music is ubiquitous across all cultures.

Speaker 1: 10:39

Okay, or it's a genetic trait linked to the domestication of dogs. We've talked about this before. Like beaker and bunsen have floppy ears, wolves don't. Why do some dogs have floppy ears? The prevailing theory is that it was a genetic mutation that came with some of the traits folks wanted. For the other traits they wanted in the domestication of dogs they go oh, we want this dog to be not so bitey, and all of the not so bitey dogs had floppy ears. And they actually found that with the Siberian foxes when they started to breed the Siberian foxes for captivity, the Siberian foxes ears got a little floppy floppy.

Speaker 1: 11:21

Now tail wagging is also a form of communication for dogs and there's in studies they've actually found out what the direction and height of the wag may mean. So a wag to the right indicates interest or a desire to approach something so good, and a wag to the left may be an uncertainty or a wished word the dog to go away. So righty good, lefty not so good, I don't know. I'm gonna have to watch bunsen and beaker, for that beaker is just gonna be wagging your tail to the to the right all the time. Okay, so what are some of the things we don't know? What are the unknown questions?

Speaker 1: 12:02

In the studies it seems to be that dogs just wag their tails more than other canines. And if wolves do wag their tails, how come dogs wag their tails more? We don't know. In fact, only a few papers concluded that wagging a tail more is due to our intrinsic need for rhythm. Other papers called that out and we're extremely skeptical of that idea. And science hasn't found the dog wagging gene. They're like when a dog has this gene and wags its tail and when this dog doesn't have a gene as much as it doesn't wag his tail. It's not a thing. In this meta analysis, one of the findings is while we do know a little bit about the fact that dogs wag their tails more than wolves. Domestication of dogs increases the chance of waggy waggy and when they looked at dog behaviors in different studies, the the, the way dogs wag their tail seems to be a communication of their dogs. What about what's going on in the dog's brain when they're wagging their tail? Is there any kind of like signal to their tail due to parts of their brain firing? Remember we've been starting to study the canine brain and figure out. It's kind of similar to our brain. So if we're really happy and we had a tail, would we be wagging our tail? I don't know, I think it would ruin a lot of our pants.

Speaker 1: 13:17

That's Pet Science for this week. Hello everybody, here's some ways you can keep the science podcast free, number one in our show notes sign up to be a member of our Pawpack Plus community. It's an amazing community of folks who love pets and folks who love science. We have tons of bonus Bunsen and Beaker content there and we have live streams every Sunday with our community. It's tons of fun. Also, think about checking out our merch store. We've got the Bunsen stuffy, the Beaker stuffy and now the Ginger stuffy. That's right, ginger, the Science Cat has a little replica. It's adorable. It's so soft, with the giant fluffy tail, safety glasses and a lab coat. And number three, if you're listening to the podcast on any place that rates podcasts, give us a great rating and tell your family and friends to listen to. Okay, on with the show. Back to the interviews. It's time for Ask an Expert on the Science Podcast and I am delighted to have Dr Kelly Deal with us today to talk about the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study. Doc, welcome to the program.

Speaker 3: 14:25

Oh, it's great to be here. Jason, Thanks for having me on.

Speaker 1: 14:28

Kelly, where are you in the world, though? Where are you calling into the show from?

Speaker 3: 14:32

I am here in beautiful Denver, Colorado.

Speaker 1: 14:36

Have you lived in Colorado for your life or have you had to move around a bit?

Speaker 3: 14:41

I've moved around a bit and I think as we talk or talk, you will get to know that I am actually from New Jersey and I was born and raised there. But I came out west to do my residency in small animal internal medicine up at Colorado State University, thought it was going to be, you know, kind of a short term. Isn't this going to be fun sort of experiment? And I have now been here 34 years.

Speaker 1: 15:12

Wow. So the guy you are a, you're a veterinarian doctor. Yes, Were you. Is that something? When you were little, you were like the kid that that was their dream, Like I'm going to be a vet, I'm going to do the thing, or did that come to you later?

Speaker 3: 15:27

No, from the get go, and if you talk to like my family they were like they'll roll their eyes and go oh my gosh. From the time I was tiny, I wanted to be a veterinarian as soon as I could. Before I could even pronounce the word right veterinarian, I wanted to be a veterinarian so pretty much my entire life. Yeah, for sure.

Speaker 1: 15:50

All of the folks that listened to this show. We hold such a special place in our heart for the veterinarian doctors that guard our animals health. So before we get into the interview, I just want to say thank you for the work that you do with the animals that we all love so much.

Speaker 3: 16:07

Oh, thanks so much. It's really. I'm so privileged to be able to do this job. I never thought of anything else and even though I don't practice anymore since I moved to more Sanimal Foundation, I use my veterinary knowledge all the time to continue to help animals, but just in a really different way.

Speaker 1: 16:32

Well, can we start to talk about that different way, because it's super cool.

Speaker 3: 16:36

Yeah, absolutely.

Speaker 1: 16:38

So there is this thing that you are involved with called the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study, and this hits me right in the feels, like you would not believe, because our heart dog before Bunsen was a Golden Retriever and Beaker our Golden Retriever, we have a Golden Retriever right now. Could you tell us a little bit about what it is? What is this Golden? This was this study.

Speaker 3: 17:06

Yes, absolutely, and I have to go back a little bit. So the foundation I work for has been around a long time, right, and basically our job is raise money, give grants, and we've been around 75 years. I actually knew about the Morris Animal Foundation because when I was in practice I donated, like if I had a patient die I would donate to Morris Animal Foundation. I was actually a Morris Animal Foundation grant recipient. But this project is really different for the foundation and it was conceived of as a cancer risk factor study.

Speaker 3: 17:42

Probably about gosh 14 years ago was like that first kernel of an idea and it was the brainchild of a couple different people. I have to give them credit for that. One was Dr Patty Olson, who was the president and CEO of the foundation at the time. One is Betty Morris, and if that name sounds familiar it is because Betty is a member of the Morris family and was really concerned about cancer and dogs. And the third person who was really critical it was Dr Rod Page, who is an oncologist.

Speaker 3: 18:19

A lot of people know he has been around a bit but he recently retired from the oncology the Flint Animal Cancer Center at Colorado State University and that's a massive right. Just a huge cancer center for animals, and the three of them decided you know what? We need a study that really tries to get at why dogs get cancer. Do we understand anything about the risk factors, and can we find out what the risk factors for cancer are? And then can we do something? Right, do something about it. And so they are the ones who started this study. Do you want me to keep going, jason, because it's a lot.

Speaker 1: 19:07

I am fascinated. I am fascinated by this. People who follow Bunsen and Beaker know Callan, our golden retriever. She did die of cancer. She died of cancer at nine. She was almost 10.

Speaker 3: 19:20

Right and that is, if people have goldens out there, they're going to know that right and that was part of the reason.

Speaker 3: 19:27

That's why it's called the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study and Knock the Boxer or Bernie's Mountain Dog All dogs that have high rates of cancer.

Speaker 3: 19:35

But we know that golden retrievers based on some data it's getting a little old now but from the 1990s 2000s that they have a high incidence of cancer or seem to right compared to other dogs, and so they were selected as the breed that the foundation would study. And the idea behind doing this is, if you're familiar or have ever heard of the Framingham Heart Study, I believe Framingham was started in 1948. And basically there's a place in Massachusetts called Framingham and these researchers went in and they said people of Framingham live your lives, but they periodically did physical exams on these folks. They did blood work on these folks and they followed them through their lifetime and the idea was to get risk factors for heart disease. And what Framingham has uncovered and they're in their like fifth generation of people now were things that we take for granted, for example, this association between smoking and heart disease, cholesterol and heart disease. People had an idea that was happening, but they didn't really know it till Framingham and what we said out. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 20:49

Like smoking. Smoking that was like the silver bullet.

Speaker 3: 20:53

One of the things right that they said. You know we think smoking is, but now we have a much clearer picture right, all because of framing him and what Dr Olson, dr Page and Betty Morris one to do is. They're like, let's do framing him for dogs, but we want to do dog cancer and we will select golden retrievers again. They have a high rate of cancer. They're super popular dogs, right, and we knew that we needed at least 3000 in the study to make it what's called adequately powered right, enough enough animals in it that we can make some conclusions.

Speaker 1: 21:27

The retrievers were chosen because they were of their popularity and incidents of cancer.

Speaker 3: 21:34

so you're you're hedging your bet you would get enough dogs Rather than obscure breed or a less popular breed, like the Bernice mountain dog right, exactly because we know there are a lot of breeds out there that have high incidence of cancer. But but combined right, we knew golden had a lot of cancer, but they're really popular. The other thing is we wanted enough dogs because they had to be between six months and two years of age when they enrolled and we were happy, as we started enrollment, to get at least one dog from every one of the forty eight lower United States and we have a pretty even distribution when you look at the map between, like Rocky Mountain region, pacific, you know, pacific Coast.

Speaker 1: 22:25

So environmental factors potentially if they're spread out.

Speaker 3: 22:29

Yes, bingo, and though we couldn't. So what's interesting about a longitudinal study where you just come on in, get animals in their requirements, where I told you the age they had to have, at least, as could be discovered at that age, no diseases that would shorten their lifespan, okay, artificially. For example, we had a dog that came in and it was discovered, as they were going through the screening process, that had hemophilia, which is not common, right in golden retrievers. But that dog can come in right, because that that could be life writing. That was really rare, right. All these guys are really healthy looking, coming in, coming in, and they had to have a pedigree that was, at least at that time, several generations back, right, they had to prove I'm a golden and I got this pedigree and To, was it limited to like purebred paper dogs.

Speaker 3: 23:27

Yes, so well. I wouldn't say that they had to be members of the AKC. They just had to have the pedigrees right. They had to be able to show those to us, so they didn't have to be registered. But they had to be purebred goldens right with the pedigree. And then we're often running right no intervention, we don't tell people what to do, we just start collecting data and can I ask what the data is, is that is that. Oh yeah, absolutely, because it's fast. It's really fascinating.

Speaker 1: 24:02

Okay, so what data are you collecting? That's probably the most general question.

Speaker 3: 24:06

Yeah, so every year these guys go in and they get to go to their vet and they get blood drawn, poop collected, hair nails, urine, and in the beginning we actually took some of the blood sample and saved it for DNA analysis. Okay, and so all that's done and then the owners and the veterinarians so the owners fill out this huge questionnaire well over 100 questions on very, very detailed At there's detailed diet questions I always like to use. This example is one of the questions would be does your dog get fresh vegetables? If you answer yes, drop down menu right comes up which fresh vegetables do they get, you know how often? And we even say, if they go, yes, I feed my dog bell peppers. Another drop down menu comes and said what color are they? Super like, super, super detailed stuff, right. And they, for example, we ask do you, does your dog swim, like how often? What temperature is the water? Is it a pond ocean, ocean? I, you know, what flooring do you have in your house? How are they exposed to it? Because all of these are exposures, right, and so very detailed.

Speaker 3: 25:29

And the veterinarians also fill out basically pretty extensive form, not quite as much as the owners, but what they are looking at is actually data. You know, like, yeah, the dog came in and gave it a vaccine, right, here's the vaccination. I prescribed these medications. I saw this prop, you know dog had a ear problem this year the only and so they do that on a yearly basis.

Speaker 3: 25:57

Then there's some triggering events which are a cancer diagnosis and if that happens and it has to be, really we're not really interested in benign right, benign growths, were interested in Malina Malignansis then they get triggered to have all those samples I just mentioned, get collected again At the time of diagnosis if possible, and again they fill out more forms, you know, fill out more questionnaires and then when the dog passes away we have encouraged people to have a post mortem done more samples are collected at the time of death, if, if possible, and those are also banked. So we have all this information and then they fill out like that last sort of cause of death, right, the veterinarian Makes some judgments as far as what the cause of death is. So we have all that data on the dogs.

Speaker 1: 26:57

And this has been going long enough that you've had. The early dogs have now passed away, I would imagine.

Speaker 3: 27:03

Yes, we are almost at a thousand deceased dogs. So a lot, yeah, a lot. Our dogs average age is nine years of age and, as you mentioned with your dog right, that's an age where Goldens get cancer we're seeing cancer is the number one cause of death now in our cohort.

Speaker 1: 27:23

Wow, yeah, what type of cancer? Any cancer, specific cancers.

Speaker 3: 27:30

Yes, the cancer that we were a little surprised to see, we expected. Just, I'm going to have to back up for a minute and just let people know, sorry, oh, no, no, no, jason, what I forgot to say at the beginning is we you know it's a cancer risk study, but what we, what we were interested in was for primary cancers.

Speaker 1: 27:53

Oh OK.

Speaker 3: 27:54

Those cancers of interest were Hemangiosarcoma, lymphoma, osteosarcoma and high grade mast cell tumors all very important cancers of dogs, all cancers that are common in Goldens. If we look at dog cancer in general and you read any kind of literature, they're going to say lymphoma is the most common cancer of dogs. It's also most common cancer in cats. What we were surprised to find is that Hemangiosarcoma, by a two to one margin, is the most common cancer we're seeing in our cohort.

Speaker 1: 28:33

And what? What type of cancer is that for people I am not familiar?

Speaker 3: 28:37

Sorry, no, no, no, this is, it's interesting. So hemangous sarcoma is a cancer that we has been reported in other canids. Okay, so, coyotes, wolves. It is really rare in other animals. Okay, so it's really a dog cancer. There's not a great human analogous cancer other than something called angiosarcoma, Again, not a supercoma cancer in people.

Speaker 3: 29:08

However, hemangous sarcoma in dogs, we now know probably arises in the bone marrow, most likely from cells that are related to blood vessel formation, and that will give you a clue where this goes. It tends to grow in very blood-rich organs such as the spleen. The heart and the liver would be the three places that we can see it in others, and the problem with hemangous sarcoma is super aggressive, grows fast and these things are, they like, can rupture and so all of a sudden, if it's a spleen, it'll burst. Many, many people have absolutely no clue that their dog is affected. As you can imagine, this is an emergency. A dog can bleed to death very quickly. If it's in the heart, it is really bad, right, they're horrible to treat. You can take them out, but most of the time they've spread. 90% of dogs are dead within one year, even with surgery and chemotherapy, and almost 100% at two years.

Speaker 3: 30:16

We have very, very, very few dogs that survive hemangous sarcoma. So it is a bad, bad cancer. I mean, we've known about it for years. It was first described in 1960s. We know it's bad in Goldens but we were really surprised in some, in many ways, that it was going to be such a huge problem in our cohort. And it is like I said, two to one over lymphoma.

Speaker 1: 30:42

That's the cancer that Callan died of. It was on her spleen.

Speaker 3: 30:46

Then there, yeah, it's super common, unfortunately, jason, and we have seen it in more cases than we had expected and, like I said, it's the I want to say 70%, 75% of our cancer deaths are hemangous sarcoma.

Speaker 1: 31:04

Yeah, that's you know. It's sad, but this is education for all of us that have retrievers. Can I ask some more questions? Yeah, please, jason. Yeah. So, this is. This is potentially. The sad part is that the Goldens are affected. It's this terrible aggressive cancer, two to one. Has the study found any treatment correlations to environments? Is there? What has the study found? Some, I guess, like lights, like rays of sunshine? Or our dogs.

Speaker 3: 31:42

Not yet. What so? What this prompted us to do? Because we were surprised we were losing some angiosome hemangous sarcoma and about a year ago we decided to launch a big fundraising campaign just around hemangous sarcoma. We're hoping to do multi-year, multi-million dollars. We just gave away 1.2 million to five, six studies that people are looking at all kinds of things from early diagnostics, right, is there a way of picking this up before it becomes this giant gnarly growth? Right, are there new treatments? And we've actually been funding new treatment stuff for a while, independent of the Golden Retriever Lifetime Study. So, new treatments, early diagnostics, and also do can we find like a cancer risk gene, right, like I mean, we're all familiar with Breck 1, breck 2, and women, right, breck cancer and you'll hear about, right, triple negative and all this breast cancer. Those are all looking at biomarkers, right, genetic markers of disease, and we people have looked a little bit in the past right, and tried to find this.

Speaker 3: 32:58

But technology has changed so fast and costs have come down so much. We can look to genetic analysis today for a fraction right of what it would have cost even five years ago. And we have some researchers all part of this big Hemangelo Sarcoma initiative that we're doing, that are looking for risk factor genes, because, I mentioned at the beginning, we have DNA from all these dogs, right. So we're looking at, we're comparing. We also have an unusual side project where we collected DNA through blood samples from. We recruited dogs 12 years and older. They didn't have to be in the study, right? We just got a lot of people who watched the study and they're got goldens. We said, hey, we want 12-year-old or older goldens that have never had cancer. Do you mind giving us a blood sample so we can look at the DNA, figuring that after 12 years of age probably not going to get Hemangelo Sarcoma at that point, because it tends to be more middle-aged dogs and so they became our control population and so we have researchers working right now to look at that.

Speaker 3: 34:10

So the research is ongoing. We started it now and this is going to sound a little weird and it's not meant to be offensive to people, but we had to have enough dogs die, if that makes sense to have enough samples to compare, right? So if we find something, we can say aha, this is important because we have 300 dogs that we looked at that died of Hemangelo Sarcoma and we compared it to our old dog sample and we found some really strong correlations between dogs that had Hemangelo Sarcoma and didn't. You can't make that on 10 dogs, right? You can't make that kind of assumption. So we actually had to have enough diagnoses to actually be able to start farming these samples out and for researchers to say, yeah, you've got enough that we're interested.

Speaker 1: 35:03

So I get where this is going, and you just need more time, potentially finding a gene that predisposes dogs to this cancer. Would that be something you would tell breeders? For example, you would genetically test the mum or the dad and if they have it, they're like guess what? Those aren't a great candidate to have puppies.

Speaker 3: 35:23

Right, or develop the test so people can use it right, where you would say, okay, we found these genes, some of our researchers, they could patent this stuff. Right, they can develop a genetic test and the foundation has done that before. We've actually sponsored diagnostic test development that people were able to do at different universities or whatever, and some of those tests are in use now and that's what we're hoping for. We don't do any in-house research right. We just try to facilitate by having samples or having money right, or samples and money and giving it to people. So, yeah, we're running the study, but we are hoping we have a group and Utrecht, which is the Netherlands, that is looking at hematoma and sarcoma and they're actually doing a little bit of work looking at European goldens versus American goldens, because there's some suggestion that fewer European golden retrievers have cancer and they're trying to look at that right.

Speaker 3: 36:26

Okay, well, do we see something here? We have a couple of people in the United States doing it. We have a couple of early diagnostic tests. We've done some research on alternative treatments and new therapies for a while in hematoma and sarcoma. So is there light? Yeah, I think the first time prognosis for hematoma and sarcoma hasn't changed in 30 years. I mean that's pretty depressing, right. It's a pretty depressing finding and we're hoping we're on the cusp of finally budging that needle someplace.

Speaker 1: 36:59

Any budge is better than a rock.

Speaker 3: 37:01

Sure, the other thing that we have is you know what's predisposing. We talked about risk factors and one interesting, and I'm going to tease this out, but we haven't looked at it as much as we should. That has been we hear from breeders all the time and they want to know about spaying and neutering right.

Speaker 2: 37:21

I've heard this before yeah, what's the effect?

Speaker 3: 37:27

right on health outcomes, behavior and cancer in particular. I think everybody understands and agrees in many ways that if you spay a dog early the incidence of memory cancer or breast cancer goes way down. That's been known for decades, right, we have that. We know if we neuter male dogs it doesn't prevent prostate cancer. But prostate cancer is super rare, right, in dogs. So we don't see that. So we know this link between memory cancer okay, fine, and you know pet overpopulation is a problem. So I think we all know that there was a big push to spay and neuter individuals. But now we're starting to question that practice.

Speaker 3: 38:11

Right, one is in orthopedic injuries, right, like you know, it's easier to tear your ACL if you're a big breed dog and you were spayed earlier or neutered earlier. That was something that has been around for a while. We confirmed, we saw that in our cohort. That was a paper we wrote several years ago, right, because that's a young dog paper. So we had plenty of young dogs when everybody aged out over three years of age. We wrote the paper and looked at it. And now we're doing the same thing.

Speaker 3: 38:39

We published a paper that we wrote with an Australian veterinary group that looks at. That's their data crunchers and they found maybe it didn't matter for boy dogs but for girl dogs, staying intact might have been protective for homangiosarcoma. The problem is we didn't look at when they were spayed or neutered, right, like, does it matter if you're spayed at six months or a year, or you know? Some of these dogs in our study were breeding dogs, right? Their breeders joined the study, so they were maybe spayed after they had a few liters of pup. So we are trying to get someone to look deeper at that, but it was a really intriguing finding. It's something that people have talked about for a long time. But that's a modifiable risk factor, right, because what we would really like to find too, is what our modifiable risk factor, something the people can do that would decrease their dog's risk of cancer, because that's a question we get a lot right. What can I do? What can I do to? Oh, what did I do wrong? I think that's a common question we get.

Speaker 1: 39:49

Oh yeah, I asked, we did soul searching after the death of our golden. I looked back and like we just we did the best we could, right we?

Speaker 3: 40:01

Right.

Speaker 1: 40:02

But you can always, if you know you use that information in the future.

Speaker 3: 40:09

Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely so. Another group that's looking, taking a slightly different tack, and they're looking at toxin and heavy metal exposure, but they're looking specifically at lymphoma, which has been tied to heavy metal exposure in people. So they're looking at our cohort. I mean, we just talked a lot about Hominjus Tacoma and sure that's a really big cancer, but we have a lot of lymphoma cases too which we totally expected, and so we have someone looking at that. There was an early paper looking at you talked about, you know, we talked about those spread of the dogs, right, and we had someone who just number crunched, right. They looked at here's the dogs with lymphoma, here's where they live. Do we see any patterns? Right, because they're G, we know where they live and there are these maps right With there's a super fun site, right, or this is a toxic waste dump, or you're fine, you live over here, or were you exposed to wildfire smoke, right? There's all these factors that we are looking at. But the heavy metal is in progress with Arlenfoma dogs and we're going to look at that exposure.

Speaker 3: 41:20

Sometimes that's hard to modify, right, lead is everywhere and it's not easy to get out of the environment. But still, let's say and I'm just spitballing here. Let's say some kind of flooring right, which we know. Some flooring's off gas for years, maybe because the dogs are down there, the floor right, they're lying on the floor. They might be looking their feet. Does that have any any thing? You know correlation We've been looking at a little bit. If you ask a lot of oncologists they'll tell you to be wary of pesticides and herbicides. I think we know that from people and maybe that especially with lymphoma again. But there was a study done many years ago in Scotty dogs and Scotty's and herbicide exposure, you know slash, pesticide and bladder cancer development. You know it needs to be repeated, but that's another thing that we are looking at with our cohort.

Speaker 1: 42:24

That's so interesting. You just think about all the different factors. Like as a human you're like, well, I know that if I choose to smoke or drink, there's negative health outcomes for me, probably.

Speaker 3: 42:40

Right right.

Speaker 1: 42:41

Your dog can't choose any of that. You choose so much of the dog's life for it.

Speaker 3: 42:46

Right, and there are definitely people who recommend oncologists who tell people to like second-hand smoke in your dog, right, Exposure is probably not great, right? We've been saying that probably for almost 20 years now. I don't. That'll be something we'll look at. We got that data right. I just told you how detailed our questionnaires are. We have all of that data sitting waiting for people to look at. But, again, you have to have enough dogs, have the disease right, To start making some feel secure, right, Feel really secure about. Yeah, we think this correlation is important and one of the things that the study may do, and has always been designed to do, is to raise, like hey, this the question, right? So I'm going to give an example.

Speaker 3: 43:39

Going back to Framingham, I think we all know, and the cholesterol story, right, it's always evolving, right, With heart disease, it was like, oh, it's cholesterol. Then it was like, oh, there's good cholesterol and bad cholesterol, and you know what I mean. It's complicated, but, like, Framingham was one of the first studies that said maybe there's something about this cholesterol and heart disease, Like they're looking at everybody. There was something we take for granted, right? So what we're hoping is maybe the same thing will happen.

Speaker 3: 44:06

We'll find like some correlation that we're like huh well, that's interesting, we didn't know about that. And then you can start doing those more detailed kind of experiments, like a placebo, controlled trial right or a right you can tell. Let's take a deeper dive in this. You know what the heck is going on here, so we can try to explain it. And that is one of the big powers of a longitudinal study like ours because you don't intervene. That's the big key no intervention, you don't tell people anything to do. We have to be very careful in our communications because we don't want people to alter their behavior because they're in a study.

Speaker 1: 44:45

That's right, so interesting man. So the question our listeners probably have right now is can they get involved? Are you still looking for dogs? Where can people find out more information about this? This study.

Speaker 3: 45:02

Right, yeah, well, we closed enrollment in 2015. So we are not taking any more dogs in. But I'm going to just tease this out there. We, we? A couple of years ago, we started to think like what's next? Right? Golden Retriever Lifetime Study was estimated to end in 2024. We're actually going to go beyond that, but we're getting close, right, we're getting close to. We're going to try to keep going as long as the dogs are all alive. But you know, three, four years from now they're probably not going to be anymore.

Speaker 3: 45:36

And our next project is going to be a bit different. We're not going to do necessarily a sample collection study, but we're going to do a citizen science project. It's called Citizen Pet. We are rolling it out. We're going to do a test version with our Golden Retriever Lifetime Study. Folks, because they're, they know us, they've tested other software for us in the past and we're going to do a couple, um, kind of proof of concept studies. But Citizen Pet, probably within the next year. Uh, so people who should be looking at it will go live and that is a way for people to participate. Twofold One is you sign up and we will probably have questionnaires, right, activities for folks, some information and also it is a recruiting platform for researchers who are like I need 50 boxers right Of this age or whatever. We're hoping that we can help recruit via Citizen Pet. But it's also going to be a data collection for different studies. Um, for example, I think the first study your, your listeners, are the first to hear it I think one of the first studies we're going to do is about uh and Jason, you may know this black spots on Golden Retriever tongues.

Speaker 3: 46:46

Remember, they sometimes get black spots and for years people are like why is my dog at black spots? And we used to go oh, they must have chow in them, which is totally wrong. I'm just denying that right now. But we thought it would be fun to do a little genetic study and get samples from dogs with black spotted tongues. So we're going to trial it with our we're going to trial it with our Golden Retriever study folks. And then we're going to go bigger, maybe not with black spots, but to get the idea, like we may ask people to monitor. We want people to come, researchers to come to us and help out. Let us help them collect data to answer questions. So that's coming up citizen pet next year and that's one way to get involved. But I would tell people, go to our website too and just like, poke around and see what. So we see what we got.

Speaker 1: 47:39

Now, this is the Golden Retriever lifetime study at Morris animal foundation. That's the. That's what you're mentioning.

Speaker 3: 47:45

Yeah, if you go to Morris animal foundation, uh, just search us up you can find out some of the stuff that we're doing. Like I said, citizen pet is next and then I don't know what else, but that's our next big project and it doesn't have to be golden. We're actually going to do, um, I'll breed the dogs.

Speaker 1: 48:01

I'm just thinking of beaker. She's upstairs just chilling on the couch Probably. I love that dog so much, I just love her so much. And you know, studies like this that can prolong the life of our the, the creatures we love so much, are just so important.

Speaker 3: 48:23

Yeah, I'm, I'm hopeful. I have a Labrador Retriever. She's getting up there and she's right here next to me snoring, which guys probably can't hear me. Oh, she just growled like she didn't growl, she went. Where are her? So she knows we're talking about her. But anything, you know, we always say, well, the study may help, golden's right. But then if we think of it in a bigger circle, like that's the donut in the middle of the circle, right At the donut hole, and then bigger circle is, well, it could apply to all dogs. And then the bigger circle is animals, right, like lots of different species of animals, and then ultimately maybe even people, right, because I said, hemangous sarcoma is not like a lot of human cancers, but lymphoma sure is. If you know, our dogs get what's kind of looks like non-Hodgkins.

Speaker 1: 49:09

Yes.

Speaker 3: 49:10

Which is common. Um, though, there are a lot of different types of lymphoma and osteosarcoma, which is a bone cancer. It typically affects kids. Um, it's the. It's bad bad news, and dogs are a great model for it. Yeah.

Speaker 1: 49:26

Yeah, we've covered that before on the podcast, that the there's some diseases and dogs that have very close analogs in humans. Right, exactly.

Speaker 3: 49:35

And and they're better. They're just better models, right? They're not rodent models, they're more like us, they share our environment, which is what's really important. And they get spontaneous disease, which means you're not giving them something that they wouldn't normally get, and, um, that's really really important. They get heart disease. I mean, they get cognitive declines that look like Alzheimer's. We have, uh, one subset of our golden retriever lifetime study. We're collecting the sounds so weird, but we're collecting brains, um, because we have, we have data on their cognition and we're comparing. We're working with the Mayo Clinic, so a human clinic that is looking at the brains of dogs as a model for Alzheimer's.

Speaker 1: 50:20

I don't think it's weird at all. I think if I could go back in time when Calendide and somehow help out some scientific study with like whatever, I think we would be totally okay with that. Um, because ultimately it's the next generation. The next generation, you're hopeful people just have a better go they. Everything gets a little better.

Speaker 3: 50:44

So yeah, yeah, that's what I'm we're hoping for.

Speaker 1: 50:49

Dr Deal, thank you so much for chatting with us about the golden retriever lifetime study. It's fascinating and we will have links right in the show notes, people, so you can click that to head over and poke around. As Kelly mentioned, we have some standard questions on the podcast we asked our guests about, and one is a pet story from their life, something memorable or something that comes to mind.

Speaker 3: 51:12

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 51:13

Do you have one for us, kelly?

Speaker 3: 51:15

Yeah, you know, I was thinking about it, I think what we mentioned at the beginning. I always wanted to be a vet, which meant we grew up with lots of different animals and one of my first kitties that we got when I was eight she was born to another cat. That was our first cat was six. So we get this cat's born when I'm eight years old. Her name was catnip and she was my cat. She was my cat, right, she was my special girlfriend and I remember she was a little skittish and I remember one time very, very distinctly and it became a famous story in my family because she would run right If people came over.

Speaker 3: 51:57

But one time I was sick and I was home sick and my mom had to go out somewhere and my grandma came over, and every time my grandma came over that cat would run right.

Speaker 3: 52:08

But I was sick, I was laying on our couch and my grandmother was there like patting my back and you know the old witch, hazel or alcohol, whatever. Yeah, I had a fever I'm like maybe 10 years old, right and that cat came over while my grandmother was sitting next to me and she had her hands on me and the cat came up and put her paw on my grandmother's hand, as if to say like, first of all, the fact that she came out and came up there with my grandma there who loved animals, but you know again, and that she put her paw on my grandma's hand like this is my girl and you need to take care of her, and it was so striking to my grandma. I remember it. But I know my grandmother was like. It was like she was communicating to me Again. She overcame all her fear and whatever to just make sure I was okay. That's my favorite catnip story. She was a great cat.

Speaker 1: 53:13

That is a cool story. We you know we don't give cats enough credit, do we Like? I think that's a. It's changing that we see them as these, like aloof, mysterious creatures. But they have big brains. They make bonds with people.

Speaker 3: 53:28

Oh for sure, and I want to admit, you know, even though we talked about dogs a whole bunch, I have to say I grew up as in a cat family because we lived in a very small house and we had cats right. That was just kind of an easy, easy thing for us and we had cats and cats and cats and I have always, like I can't hardly remember a time when I didn't have that cat and I have two, two siblings now.

Speaker 3: 53:56

So, yeah, I'm, I'm there with you. I have dogs. I've had dogs for a long time. Since I was in vet school, I always had a dog, but yeah, I have cats too.

Speaker 1: 54:06

Love it. We've talked before on the podcast people who follow us. We we got a cat a year ago, rescue cat Ginger. She's become a darling on social media because she's so. She's a female orange cat that runs the show at her house and is unafraid of the two dogs. So and I didn't grow up with cats. The other question we asked our guests to share is a super fact. It's something that you know, you. When you tell people, it kind of blows their mind a bit. Do you have a super fact for us?

Speaker 3: 54:38

You know what? I was thinking really hard on this and I I don't know if you ever like have a story stuck, a recent story from the foundation, stuck in my mind. So I think everybody knows that seahorses right, the dads raised the babies. Right, the dads actually carry the babies right, give birth Seedragons, which are those like crazy things that look like floating kelp yes, they also, they're. They're related to seahorses and the dads do all the work on them. Yep, the women, the females, come, they lay some eggs on the males and males carry the babies. So they are another dad that take care, they take care of the babies. I did not know that till recently and it's just stuck in my head.

Speaker 1: 55:25

I didn't know that either. I knew that about seahorses, but not about sea dragons.

Speaker 3: 55:29

I did not know it. So I learned that about seadragons and I thought they're. They're so cool looking and I thought, well, that's pretty cool, the males. The males are, um, yeah, the males do the work on that in that species.

Speaker 1: 55:43

I, I didn't know that a seadragon was a thing. My family was lucky enough to go to Kona in Hawaii and they had a. We went to a seahorse like facility or something. It was wild, but they had some sea dragons and a million seahorses everywhere and they yeah the sea dragons look like seaweed, like you can't even really see that they're alive. They look like they're seaweed.

Speaker 3: 56:08

I know they're crazy, they're. They're well adopted, right, they're a fantastically adapted species with their appearance, but they're, they're really cool, they're really cool.

Speaker 1: 56:19

Yes, it would be like if our Bernice Mountain dog was hiding in a bunch of giant s'mores. He would put it in. That is the only camouflage that our big boy has is if everybody was a s'more, a giant, perfectly toasted camping. Okay, maybe people never had a s'more before. But there you go, it's the try.

Speaker 3: 56:44

That's pretty funny. I don't think I've ever heard of a Bernice Mountain dog as being kind of be able to hide in s'mores, but yeah, I see it.

Speaker 1: 56:55

Doc, we're at the end of our interview. First off, thank you for giving up your busy schedule time to talk to us. Are you yourself personally on social media anywhere?

Speaker 3: 57:07

I'm not. But I am now diving into TikTok, but only through the foundation. But you can see me live or not live, but you can see me on TikTok now. But no, sorry, I am not on social media personally.

Speaker 1: 57:23

The foundation is on TikTok. Is that what you're saying?

Speaker 3: 57:25

Yeah, the foundation is on TikTok, so we're getting that. I have to get my kids to help me make TikTok videos, but I am there.

Speaker 1: 57:33

It's a whole thing. It's a whole thing. Tiktok videos are a whole thing.

Speaker 3: 57:36

Yeah.

Speaker 1: 57:38

It was a treat talking to you. Thank you so much for talking to us about the Golden Retriever. Long you know the Long Toodle Study.

Speaker 3: 57:45

Oh, absolutely, absolutely, I am. It's a privilege to be able to use my veterinary knowledge and be out there talking about what we're doing and doing this work which is so important for all of our pets. I mean, you can own pets. I've lost a dog to lymphoma, I've lost a cat to lymphoma and various other cancers and so, yeah, I'm hopeful. I'm hopeful we can find something to stop that.

Speaker 4: 58:19

Okay, it's time for Storytime with me, adam. If you don't know what Storytime is, storytime is when we talk about stories that have happened within the past one or two weeks. I will start. We have a catio for Ginger. She goes in there to get a taste of the outside world, while not being an outside cat, because being an outside cat is dangerous for cats, and we like having her inside because we don't want to have dangerous with our cat, and so we put her out there for a little bit.

Speaker 4: 58:52

And today, when Annalise and I, when we got home because we get home around the same time we decided to put her in the catio and we completely forgot about her. And then I'm like uh-oh, I completely forgot about Ginger. She's been in the catio for like an hour and a half and it's not super cold outside, but it's a little chilly and I was a little worried about her. And I go out there and then I hear meow and I look and she's in there and nothing unfazed, unfazed, perfectly fine, she's happy, she's happier than usual. And then I try to let her out and she doesn't want to get out, and then I sort of like nudge her to get out and then she tries to run away from me. She tries to run away from me out of the catio and then I pick her up and she's a squirmy worm until I get inside and I put her down.

Speaker 4: 59:45

I put her down inside and when I close the door and walk away, she's at the door meowing. She wants to go outside again. She wanted to go outside so bad. She wanted to stay outside. So Ginger, ginger just loves being outside. I don't know why. I don't know why she just like, really, really likes being outside. When she can watch the birds from inside and want to kill them, because that's what she does, she'll park herself right next to the window and we have bird feeders and she'll just watch the birds and plot their demise. Anyway, that's my story. Dad, do you have a story?

Speaker 1: 1:00:23

I do. We have had extremely bizarre January weather. Early January we had record breaking cold temperatures and the last I don't know what do you think, adam Week, it has been like 10 above, 12 above. It's been hot.

Speaker 4: 1:00:40

Like yeah, like it was, it was negative 40. And then it went to like 10 degrees.

Speaker 1: 1:00:46

And all of the snow is melting and or melted. So we did have quite a bit of snow around Christmas time and then in early January, but it's melted and the wild thing is the creek has started to run. The snow melt has happened and the creek has melted and it's running. So that's two little stories here in one. Today, when I took the dogs for the walk, I was shocked to see the creek running, because it's February 2nd and normally the creek doesn't melt until, I don't know, end of March, early April. So it was a little perplexing. Beaker loved it. She was playing in the creek.

Speaker 1: 1:01:24

But Bunsen refused to cross the creek. Maybe he was upset, I don't know. So he he. Normally we cross the creek and we go on the north side. He just followed us on the other side of the creek, ref refusing to cross. He kind of like shadowed us down in the creek as we walked along. The creek is refused to jump or get wet. I'm not sure what his deal was, it wasn't really that deep.

Speaker 1: 1:01:46

But the other development because it's melted is Norbert is having to work. Over time we got some just amazing footage of him before the melt happened, of him going back down into his little ice hole so he ate out of the ice and then went up to do whatever beavers do and then went down back below and then over the last two days I was going to the footage. I have like a half an hour of Norbert footage of him slowly having an existential crisis as the creek melts from solid ice to running water and he's working overtime. So, like today down in the creek he must have knocked down about 10 trees and was furiously trying to like shore up his dam. So, poor Norbert, he's just having a rough go, but his main dam is holding. Like the water level is really really high and I think if he works for another couple days he's going to be able to stop. He'll be able to dam it up like he's doing a good job. So, anyways, that's my story.

Speaker 4: 1:02:47

The creek with the beaver dam just gets so wide and then the creek just becomes like a marsh.

Speaker 1: 1:02:52

Oh, it's going to be a. It's going to be a pond at him. You should see it down there. It's already starting to back up and we haven't even like there's still tons of snow to melt, Mom do you have a story?

Speaker 2: 1:03:03

I sure do. My story, I think, has to do with Bunsen and Beaker loving the snow outside, and one of my favorite videos that Jason made this week is when he was throwing snow at the dogs. And he's throwing snow and Beaker loses it Like she's trying to play fetch with the snow, and then she's playing and Bunsen was playing and Bunsen was like, hey, I want to play fetch, which he doesn't play fetch, he's not a fetch player. But Jason added freak off Bunsen, freak off Bunsen, with her cute little voice and I just think that's so funny. But I don't know if Jason talked about it, but the weather is getting warmer and the snow is definitely melting, so Bunsen is going to be a sad, sad boy. So I hope that at least we have a few more days of it where he can enjoy playing in the snow, because he lives for the snow and that's my story.

Speaker 4: 1:04:01

Thank you so much for listening to my section of the podcast and thank you for listening all the way through to the end. If you listen closely, you'll hear Bunsen crying in the background because he decided to sit super far away and wants me to go over there and pet him, even though I've asked him to come over here very nicely. I hope to see you all on the next podcast episode. Yeah, bye, bye.

Speaker 1: 1:04:24

That's it for this week's show. Thanks for supporting the science podcast through the first five seasons. It's hard to believe that we're on season six. Special thanks to Dr Kelly Deal, who talked to us about the Golden Retriever lifetime study, and a shout out to our top tier patrons, the Top Dogs on the Pop Pack Plus. We'd love your support there. Check our show notes for more information. Let's hear about the Top Dogs. Chris, take it away.

Speaker 2: 1:04:48

Bianca Hyde, mary Ryder, tracy Domingu, susan Wagner, andrew Lynn, helen Chin, Tracy Halberg, amy C, jennifer Smathers, laura Stephenson, holly Birch, brenda Clark, Anne Yuchita, peggy McKeel, terry Adam, debbie Anderson, sandy Brimer, tracy Linebaugh, mary Ann McNally, Fun Lisa, shelley Smith, julie Smith, diane Allen, breanne Haas, linda Sherry, carol McDonald, Catherine Jordan, courtney Proven, donna Craig, wendy, diane Mason and Luke Liz Button, Kathy Zercher and Ben Rathart for Science, Empathy and Cuteness.