DEAR DR. FOX: In your recent column, I read the story of a cat that continued to do a "fandango" at the foot of her owners' bed after she passed. We have a similar story.

Our Great Dane, Miley, lived to be 11 years old. Three days after her 11th birthday, it was necessary to end her life. She had developed a mass in her abdomen several months prior, and it became apparent that she was ready to move on. Our vet came to the house, and in the most dignified and humane way, allowed our girl to go to sleep peacefully.

Miley was a brindle weighing in at about 120 pounds with quite a nice set of jowls and some rather large floppy ears. After a nap, she would rise, do a "dog down" stretch with her front legs and then stretch her back legs individually. Then to get her ears and jowls JUST RIGHT, she would shake her head violently, making the most unique sound: flap, flap, flap, flap.

The day she died, my husband and I sobbed nonstop from noon until 8 p.m. We finally went into our silent kitchen, me sitting on a stool at the counter and he standing against a wall. Neither of us spoke. It was as quiet as a tomb. Then out of nowhere, we heard FLAP, FLAP, FLAP, FLAP. We looked at each other and each said, "Did you hear that?" My husband and I are both well-educated professionals who don't delve into hocus-pocus nonsense, but we do acknowledge facts when we hear them.

Miley has now been gone two years, and she has only paid us the one visit. There will never be another Miley. She truly was our best friend. -- D.M., Bonita Springs, Florida

DEAR DR. FOX: This is in response to one of your recent columns: I had a similar experience with our precious cat, Gracie. She was with my wife and me for a little over 18 years. We rescued her as a kitten from the middle of a heavily trafficked street.

We loved her dearly, and she returned that love many times over. My wife said she had chosen me, and I guess she was right, since Gracie chose to be with me wherever I was in the house. When she passed away last November, our hearts were broken.

For days after that, I could be in my recliner and feel her jumping on the arm of the chair. The most interesting thing was at night when I was in bed: I could feel her jump on the bed, as she would do in life, and walk over to curl up between my feet for the night. This happened several nights before it stopped.

I have no answer for this. Perhaps it's just in our minds because we don't want to let go, but we were comforted by her several visits. I'm sure God knows how much any pet is missed, and this helps with the pain of loss. -- W.S., Archdale, North Carolina

DEAR D.M. AND W.S.: Many readers will appreciate you sharing these after-life experiences with your animal companions. D.M., the fact that there was a second witness in your case, namely your husband, helps debunk the notion that grief can cause semi-hallucinatory states and trigger conditioned memories of the deceased.

Over the many years that I have been writing this column, I have received many accounts of after-life manifestations of companion animals. Even living animals who shared the home with the deceased pet have responded to such visitations, as documented in my books "Dog Body, Dog Mind" and "Cat Body, Cat Mind."

With hearts and minds more open to animals and the world around us, we may indeed experience the miraculous and discover the power of love. This is evident in the many animals who know when their owners are coming home and engage in remote sensing.

All things in our lives change, but there is one illuminating thread connecting everything: This is love, in all its myriad manifestations -- from the molecular to the emergence of consciousness, to empathy and beyond. As my friend the late Father Thomas Berry famously asserted, "The universe is a communion of subjects, not a collection of objects."

(Send all mail to animaldocfox@gmail.com or to Dr. Michael Fox in care of Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106. The volume of mail received prohibits personal replies, but questions and comments of general interest will be discussed in future columns.

Visit Dr. Fox’s website at DrFoxOneHealth.com.)

DEAR READERS: In June, France's President Emmanuel Macron held a Summit for a New Global Financial Pact in Paris. The event aimed to find financial solutions to interlinked global crises such as climate change and poverty. The summit brought together more than 50 heads of state, along with world finance officials and activists.

These crises would undoubtedly benefit from curtailing population growth through more effective family planning -- a topic I was stunned that Macron made no mention of, in his June 25 interview with CNN's Fareed Zakaria. The expanding human and farmed animal biomass is a major contributor to climate change, poverty and loss of biodiversity. Clearly, for political and other reasons, discussing the overpopulation of people and farmed animals is off the agenda. But it should not be.

All should look at the numbers:

-- The United Nations has projected that the world population, 8 billion as of 2023, would peak at about 10.4 billion around the year 2086.

-- Globally, an estimated 70 billion farm animals are reared for food each year, and about two-thirds of them are reared on factory farms.

-- There are some 900 million dogs across the world, almost 85% being free-range.

-- As of 2021, the number of owned cats in the world was estimated to be 220 million, while the number of stray cats was estimated to be 480 million.

-- Monitored populations of vertebrates (mammals, birds, amphibians, reptiles and fish) have seen a devastating 69% drop on average since 1970, according to World Wildlife Fund's Living Planet Report 2022.

Larger families and expanding communities need more livestock and land for grazing and for food and cash crops, further harming wildlife and reducing biodiversity, now all imperiled by climate change. Decades before the burning of fossil fuels became a major factor in climate change, I witnessed the devastating ecological consequences of livestock overgrazing, corporate plantations and deforestation for firewood in Kenya, Tanzania and India.

Scientists have documented five prior mass extinctions of life on planet Earth, and are ringing alarm bells about the sixth extinction event, which is now gaining momentum. This is not alarmist eco-panic, but reality -- one being reported worldwide and experienced by communities in the form of increasingly severe and frequent extreme climatic events.

For more details and potential short- and long-term solutions, see my post: drfoxonehealth.com/post/the-anthropocene-extinction-crisis.

Whatever political will can be mustered internationally should give equal priority to social justice, economic justice, animal rights and environmental justice. The courts must recognize crimes against nature as they do crimes against humanity.

Economist and environmental activist Paul Hawken opined: "At present we are stealing the future, selling it in the present, and calling it gross domestic product. We can just as easily have an economy that is based on healing the future instead of stealing it. We can either create assets for the future or take the assets of the future. One is called restoration and the other exploitation. And whenever we exploit the Earth, we exploit people and cause untold suffering. Working for the Earth is not a way to get rich, it is a way to be rich."

The fundamentally spiritual and ethical roots of this existential crisis need to be recognized. Until we have respect for all life and apply the golden rule to all our relationships, human and nonhuman, chaos and suffering will continue and intensify.

LEARNING MORE ABOUT THE GLOBAL ONE HEALTH INITIATIVE

DEAR DR. FOX: Some of your readers, especially veterinarians, health care professionals, environmentalists and conservationists, will be interested in a piece appearing in the June edition of the World Medical Journal, the official journal of The World Medical Association, Inc.

"One Medicine-One Health: An Historic Perspective" begins on page 18 of the document (wma.net/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/WMJ_2023_02_final.pdf). -- Bruce Kaplan, DVM; Sarasota, Florida; content manager/editor, OneHealthInitiative.com

DEAR B.K.: Many thanks for giving us these educational and inspiring connections to this global movement. It must become part of public policy for every nation.

(Send all mail to animaldocfox@gmail.com or to Dr. Michael Fox in care of Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106. The volume of mail received prohibits personal replies, but questions and comments of general interest will be discussed in future columns.

Visit Dr. Fox’s website at DrFoxOneHealth.com.)

DEAR DR. FOX: I enjoyed your article about how tourism disturbs wildlife, which is a serious issue that needs more attention. You and your readers will enjoy a recent article by professor Emily Wakild of Boise State University, parts of which I am sending to you. -- D.G., West Palm Beach, Florida

Excerpt from "U.S. National Parks Are Crowded" by Emily Wakild, TheConversation.com, June 20:

"Outdoor recreation is on track for another record-setting year. In 2022, U.S. national parks logged more than 300 million visits -- and that means a lot more people on roads and trails. While research shows that spending time outside is good for physical and mental health, long lines and gridlocked roads can make the experience a lot less fun. Crowding also makes it harder for park staff to protect wildlife and fragile lands and respond to emergencies. To manage the crowds, some parks are experimenting with timed-entry vehicle reservation systems and permits for popular trails.

"For all their popularity, national parks are just one subset of U.S. public lands. Across the nation, the federal government owns more than 640 million acres (2.6 million square kilometers) of land. Depending on each site's mission, its uses may include logging, livestock grazing, mining, oil and gas production, wildlife habitat or recreation -- often, several of these at once. In contrast, national parks exist solely to protect some of the most important places for public enjoyment. ...

"Outdoor recreation is a powerful economic engine: In 2021, it contributed an estimated $454 billion to the nation's economy -- more than auto manufacturing and air transport combined. But embracing recreational tourism can lead local communities into the amenity trap -- the paradox of loving a place to death. Recreation economies that fail to manage growth, or that neglect investments in areas like housing and infrastructure, risk compromising the sense of place that draws visitors. But planning can proactively shape growth to maintain community character and quality of life."

DEAR D.G.: I hope all nature lovers, and those who find renewal outdoors, will take note. I have witnessed how visitors can unintentionally disturb wildlife; this is a major problem with ecotourism in protected wildlife areas around the world.

DOGS BITE MORE FREQUENTLY ON HOT, SMOGGY DAYS

Dogs may be more likely to bite on days that are hot, sunny and smoggy than on cooler days with low levels of pollution, according to researchers who compared dog bite data with data on daily weather and air pollution in eight U.S. cities. "We conclude that dogs, or the interactions between humans and dogs, are more hostile on hot, sunny and smoggy days, indicating that the societal burden of extreme heat and air pollution also includes the costs of animal aggression," researchers wrote in Scientific Reports (doi.org/10.1038/s41598-023-35115-6).

Perhaps our dogs are telling us something that connects with the increased human violence evident in society today.

We are experiencing an anthropogenic, climatic apocalypse with extreme weather events of greater frequency and intensity across the U.S. and around the world. Not only dogs suffer, but all creatures, wild and captive -- especially those in factory farms. It is also disturbing that scientists are documenting the risks of long-term exposure to various environmental pollutants -- including toxic chemicals, harmful microparticles, electropollution and noise -- to the health and brain development of children. I know of no other animal that fouls its nest, and the habitats of other species, like we do.

(Send all mail to animaldocfox@gmail.com or to Dr. Michael Fox in care of Andrews McMeel Syndication, 1130 Walnut St., Kansas City, MO 64106. The volume of mail received prohibits personal replies, but questions and comments of general interest will be discussed in future columns.

Visit Dr. Fox’s website at DrFoxOneHealth.com.)