Positive signs raise optimism for Cara

FALMOUTH, N.S. — There are 18 dogs in the double-blind trial at Tufts University, which is free, and the owners were told that six of the patients would be given a placebo instead of stem cells.

Steven Nelson became convinced his German shepherd, Cara, was one of them.

“After she’s had all these injections,

it’s started to swell in there and I’m thinking it’s infected, she got the placebo. Still, it’s four or five thousand dollars worth of medication, plus this world-class care. Even if she’s getting the placebo they treat her to try to keep the disease in remission,” he said.

“So I go down for the second treatment. The diarrhea is awful, she’s sick and I’m really down, really depressed, thinking it’s the placebo and she’s getting worse. You drop the dog off and go back a couple of hours later,

and the whole team comes out all happy, and they ask me how I think things are going. I said terrible, and everybody’s face just dropped. I said her rear end’s all infected, and they said that’s not infection, that’s scabs. Every one of those seven fistulas healed over in less than two weeks. So, even though they don’t know, they’re thinking she’s one of the dogs that’s gotten the stem cells.”

He won’t know for sure that’s the case until July, after two more trips to Tufts, where he said the waiting

room is nicer than in any human hospital in Nova Scotia. But Nelson is pretty confident.

“She’s just full of energy, we have to walk all the time,” he said. “Within a month, even the scars were healed. There’s only one place you can even tell she’s had the disease. So she’s clear, she’s in remission. They don’t know how long this is going to last, no one knows how stems cells really work.” Nelson doesn’t exactly look back

fondly on those drives to Boston, but he did collect some good border crossing anecdotes.

“The first time it was a woman, and she was tough, pretty much snarling,” he said.

“She sees the dog and asked what the story was. So I give her the story, and she says ‘Go ahead.’ I say, ‘Don’t you want her records or anything?’ and she says, ‘Get the hell out of here.’ I look up and she’s in tears, bawling.”