Pets Share Our Environment and Our Diseases

When Janet Riordan returned home from a European vacation in January, she expected a storm of tail wagging and barking from her seven-year-old golden retriever, Reggie. The moment she saw him, she knew something was wrong. “He came to me in my arms and appeared to be sobbing. I had never seen an animal behave like that,” said Riordan, who lives in Mequon, a suburb of Milwaukee, Wisconsin.