National Football League’s first dog park in a stadium

The Jacksonville Jaguars are building the first-ever dog park in a National Football League stadium. The Jaguars will be debut their new Pet Paradise Park on August ninth, when the New Orleans Saints come to town. Pet Paradise Park will be located on the south end zone patio of TIAA Bank Field. It will feature artificial turf grass and a 5,000-gallon bone-shaped swimming pool along with plenty of fans and misters to keep all the visitors cool. There will even be a veterinarian available if needed. The park will host about 250 dogs this season. Fans will have a chance to obtain tickets to Pet Paradise Park by entering a sweepstakes.

Former president gets service dog

Former President George H. W. Bush is welcoming a new member into his family: A yellow Labrador retriever named Sully who’ll be his first service dog. The 94-year-old and his new companion got acquainted Monday at the Bush family compound on the coast of Maine, and the two hit it off. Sully can open doors, pick up items, and summon help, but “more than anything else, the dog will be a wonderful companion,” said aide Evan Sisley. The nation’s 41st president uses a wheelchair and an electric scooter for mobility since developing a form of Parkinson’s disease. Bush is recovering from a recent hospitalization. Sully was trained by America’s VetDogs, a nonprofit that trains and places service dogs.

Pet meds could help humans

Medicines given to household pets to kill fleas and ticks might be effective for preventing outbreaks of malaria, Zika fever, and other dangerous insect-borne diseases that infect millions of people worldwide, according to a new study led by scientists at Calibr, a nonprofit drug discovery institute. The researchers found that a class of drugs called isoxazolines, sold in veterinary products such as fluralaner and afoxolaner to protect pets from fleas and ticks, also kills species of disease-carrying mosquitoes that feed on human blood. The researchers determined, via experimental studies on mosquitoes and computer modeling, that giving isoxazoline drugs to less than a third of the population in areas prone to seasonal outbreaks of insect-borne diseases could prevent up to 97% of all cases of infection.

Evidence of the world’s oldest dental veterinary care discovered

More than 3,000 years ago on the open steppes of Mongolia and eastern Eurasia, nomadic herders were experimenting with equine dentistry. However, the practice did a lot more than just alleviate horses’ pain—in fact, researchers argue it was then that horses were transformed into a tool that drove globalization. A new study carried out by the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History has found that the world’s oldest known evidence of horse veterinary dental care was carried out by the Deer Stone-Khirigsuur Complex, a culture that existed between 1300 and 700 BCE.

Ohio State University veterinary school to open $9.3 million surgery simulation lab

Ohio State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine is set to open a lab in August that will let students simulate operations and exams on their animal patients. “This will be a teaching space for our students, so we can give more hands-on [experiences] before they graduate,” said veterinary school spokesperson Toni Hare. “This is one more way we produce graduates who are effective and ready to practice in the real world.” The project has a price tag of about $9.3 million. Included in the lab will be different operating systems to simulate surgery or exams, a 3D printing office, and animal-specific models that students and clinicians use as they practice surgeries. Hare said this kind of technology helps students get a better view of what is going on outside their college environment, and make it more realistic for working life once they graduate. If veterinary students only spent time in their textbooks, they wouldn't know what being a real veterinarian is like, she said.