Woman Has Barking Fit after Trying Beef-Flavored Dog Drink

Doctors Suspect Barking Woman Syndrome as Cause

A Seattle area woman who, as a joke, drank a beef-flavored bottled water product for dogs has begun barking and apparently has lost her human ability to speak.

Food and Drug Administration officials launched an investigation of the drink, Fido Quench, which has been on the market for about a year. The FDA is considering a recall of the $2 a bottle product, agency lawyers are looking into whether they have any legal standing to order a recall.

"It's been a nightmare. I told her not to do it," said Fred Shapiro, whose wife Lala, drank about half of one bottle before bursting into a shrill staccato bark similar to that of a Jack Russell terrier. "She's always joking around," he said. "It's just like her to pull a stunt like this."

The Shapiro family coped at home with Mrs. Shapiro's condition for two days, alternating between irritation at her behavior and joking along with it, before finally taking her to the emergency room at Sound View Merciful Medical Center.

"We kept saying, 'O.K., Mom, that's enough,'" said Rachel Shapiro, 14, blinking back tears at a news conference. "She's always being funny about things. But when it gets to where, like, if your mom runs to the door barking and whirls around several times it means she wants to go pee-pee..."

When the Shapiros turned up at Sound View Merciful's emergency room, staff members thought she was a prankster and summoned security guards, who then summoned Seattle police.

Emergency room sources, who spoke on the condition of anonymity out of fear of the new HIPPA, the new Federal medical privacy law, said it was almost an hour before Mrs. Shapiro was taken seriously. The sources said Mrs. Shapiro was nearly hustled into a police car in handcuffs and taken to Central Booking, before the head of the Emergency Medicine Department returned from a long lunch and recognized a possible medical condition.

Hospital officials will not discuss her case, except to say she is in fair condition and her treatment is progressing. The Shapiro family said she is in an isolation ward pending determination of the nature of her illness. Hospital sources, however, said she was in isolation because hospital staff and patients found Mrs. Shapiro's barking so annoying.

"She scarcely stops to take a breath, that's for sure," said Gladys Phelps, cornered by reporters when she emerged from the hospital after visiting her mother in the isolation ward. She said her mother is being treated for a severe case of scabies. "I'll tell you one thing," Phelps said. "If you try to talk to this barking woman, it's hard to get a word in edgewise."

Dr. Hobart Martinez, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School in Boston, said that Mrs. Shapiro's condition, while rare, is not unheard of. "There are several well documented cases of Barking Woman Syndrome over the years," he said. "Generally, it's a woman who has entered a disassociative state because of the pressures of her marriage and her home life. In some way that we don't yet understand, they descend into this barking state as a means to escape their daily life, to get attention from their family. It's a cry, or in this case, a bark for help."

Asked about Martinez' remarks, family members bristled.

"We're a normal family," Fred Shapiro said. "Lala and I both have jobs. Everybody shares the load. She comes home and cooks dinner. I dry the dishes and mow the lawn."

"I do my share," said Rachel Shapiro. "I pickup my room once a week and make my bed every day or so."

A spokesman for the National Organization for Women suggested one of the group's site visits. "I don't need to know any more than what you've told me," said Connie Augie. "One of our household audits will reveal an overworked, underappreciated, underloved woman who feels trapped and alone," she said. "You'd start barking, too. Any old excuse would do"

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