Pets on Prozac People treating their pets like other humans By Karin Keefe pre-Halloween survey by the At Retail Foundation www.nrf.com) found that 11.5% of respondents were planning to put a Halloween costume on their pets, spending 200 million dollars in the process. (If you’ re curious, the most popular pet costumes were pumpkins, devils and witches.) This trend of treating animals like humans doesn’t stop at dressing up our pets for a Halloween party. We are taking them to the spa for pedicures with nail polish and hydrotherapy massage, exercising them on doggy treadmills to keep them in shape, buying them free-range organic meats and, increasingly, putting them on Prozac to fight depression and behaviour disorders. According to the website reconcile. com, 17% of dogs in America suffer from separation anxiety. The site claims that 60% of dogs with this condition go undiagnosed. Reconcile is the name of the Prozac pill that pharmaceutical company Eli Lilly markets to pet owners. Drug companies have not developed a specific pill for animals; they merely repackage the human drug; for example, Eli Lilly adds beef- flavouring to its human Prozac pill to make it more palatable for dogs. This growing trend of giving Prozac to pets is garnering more attention these days and is the subject of “Pet Pharm,” the latest documentary by Patrick Reed, director of “Shake Hands with the Devil.” In his one-hour documentary, which aired on “Doc Zone” on CBC News Network on November 5, Reed chronicles various pet owners and how they are dealing with extreme behaviour issues in their dogs and cats. One cat has become so anxious by the rambunctious behaviour of the two tomcats that live in the same house that it continually grooms itself to the point of rubbing its skin off and becoming a bloody mess. One poodle is so skittish and high-strung that its owners can’t take it outside for walks; in one scene in the documentary it became so agitated that its high pitched bark set off the car alarms in the vicinity. The dog has bitten its owners in the face and they fear it will have to be euthanized if it attacks a child. The owners of these pets are desperate and don’t know what else to do. They turn to Prozac because the alternative is unbearable to them. This pharmaceutical solution is generating some controversy among animal trainers and vets who believe that these behaviours can be trained out of the animal. Some experts also question whether this behaviour isn’t simply a matter of a dog being a dog. Passenger in Disguise boards Air Canada By Maria Asselin-Roy, Staff Reporter young Asian male successfully Awe! an Air Canada flight from ong Kong to Vancouver while disguised as an elderly Caucasian male. The young man is in his early twenty’s, and he somehow got on the aircraft with nothing more than an Aeroplan card and a ticket that claimed he was a 55 year old American passenger. The Canada Border Services Agency is calling this an “unbelievable case of concealment.” The man is still currently unnamed to the public because of investigations, but the story of this young man with a silicon mask is still making headlines around the world. Before and during the flight, many of his acts were seen as suspicious, yet most people paid little or no attention or were not curious enough to point them out to the flight attendants or security. One woman however, noticed the man seemed suspicious. The man was seen at the beginning of the flight as an elderly Caucasian male who seemed to be a little “unsure of his surroundings.” The suspecting woman noticed the elderly man seemed to have young looking hands, which is extremely unusual since a person’s hands are a clear indication of how old they are. The woman alerted the flight attendants, telling them this particular passenger’s heavily wrinkled face looked like plastic and did not match his young looking hands. The flight-attendant simply told the woman she was very observant and would look into it, but no action was taken to this. Later in the flight, the man went to the washroom while wearing the mask, but what came out of the washroom was an Asian male. One of the flight attendants noticed this, and after debating whether or not the person was under suspicion, the airline called ground control in Vancouver to have the man escorted off the aircraft. He is still being investigated, and the mask that he was wearing is one of thousands from a popular silicon mask making company that makes “realistic” masks for Halloween. Rusty Slusser is the maker of these masks, he says that “We are proud of the masks we have accomplished, but we are not proud in how our masks have been used.” Slusser also states that while his masks are realistic, up close most people should be able to tell this is a mask, especially security. Security officials are shocked as to how the man was able to board the plane, as an Aeroplan card or a plane ticket shows the date of birth. Also, security seemed to pay no attention to the fact that this man had young looking hands and did not find him suspicious at all. Canadian authorities have not said much to the public about this incident, but officials as well as the public are concerned as to what Air Canada and other airlines are planning to do about their security and safety policies. Many travellers complain about the amount of security in airports and say it’s excessive, but if someone is successfully able to walk on a plane with virtually no ID and a mask it may be time to rethink the types of security currently available. U-Pass process almost back on track By Kennedy Kierans ouglas College students will D be happy to know that the process to bring the U-Pass here is now almost back on track. In early June of this year, the provincial government announced that they were expanding the cheap transit program across the Lower Mainland. Blaine Jensen, Vice President of Educational Services for Douglas, says, “With so many of our students already taking transit, this will save them a lot of money. Five other schools are affected -VCC, BCIT, Kwantlen, Emily Carr, the Justice Institute, and the Burnaby campus of NVIT (the Nicola Valley Institute of Technology). Negotiations were difficult and prolonged, because the province had to reach an agreement with TransLink and with all six of the schools. The final issue, who would pay for fare evaders, was worked out, and a deal was announced on November 4. Says Jensen “We’re thrilled to have reached an agreement. Now it’s up to the students to decide.” Every student will pay for the U-Pass whether they take transit or not (it will be added to the fees), so there must be a referendum. The Douglas Students’ Union (DSU) has scheduled the vote for November 29 and 30, and December 1. Polling booths will be set up in the concourse (New West campus) and the A/ B atrium (David Lam campus). If the referendum passes — and it’s widely expected that it will — it will mean that monthly transit will drop to just $30 for a month, compared to the current monthly rates of $81 for a one-zone pass, $110 for a two-zone pass, and $151 for a three- zone pass. Unfortunately, because of the delay, it is unlikely the U-Pass will be available to Douglas students before spring of 2011, a full four months later than originally expected.