Bob Burnell (right) instructs participants in a pet first aid class.

Insert Below: Arden Moore demonstrates how to apply a safety muzzle.

Photos provided

By Arden Moore

There is no doubt our pets love us. They listen to us and greet us like rock stars when we enter the front door. They adore us even on bad-hair days. And they depend on us to keep them safe. So, let me ask you:
    If your dog started choking, would you know what to do — and what not to do?
    If your cat suddenly collapsed and stopped breathing, would you know how to perform kitty CPR?
    I pose these tough questions on purpose. One important way to be our pet’s best health ally is to know pet first aid/CPR and safety. It can be frightening to witness your pet in pain, but learning pet first aid can replace that crippling panic with can-do knowledge.
    April is designated at Pet First Aid and Safety Awareness Month, but pet safety needs to be practiced 24/7. In Palm Beach County, we are fortunate to have one of the most knowledgeable pet first aid experts — Bob Burnell. A master certified instructor with Pet Tech and a certified professional dog trainer with Sit Means Sit, Burnell is dedicated to training people how to keep their pets safe and well-mannered. That’s a great combination.
    His inspiration to learn pet first aid and teach pet first aid came a few years ago when his former police dog, Sabre, collapsed. Burnell held his dog in the back seat while his wife, Ellen, drove to the veterinary clinic. Sabre died before they could reach the clinic.
    “The veterinarian diagnosed it as a heart tumor,” recalls Burnell. “He went quickly and I was with him. I remember thinking that I don’t want to go through this again, feeling powerless, and that I wanted to help other people. That’s when I took a Pet Tech class and found it so amazing, that I studied to become an instructor.”
    Burnell offers pet first aid classes in Palm Beach County and throughout the United States.
    These day-long classes provide hands-on training for people on how to perform CPR, stop bleeding, address choking, treat bee stings and insect bites, plus dozens of other pet first aid skills.
    In January, new guidelines for CPR, bleeding and choking management and other pet first aid topics were issued by a panel of critical care and emergency veterinarians. Burnell and others in the Pet Tech program teach the new standards.
    “It is important to keep up with the latest in pet first aid training,” says Burnell.
    His classes also focus on dental, nutritional and preventive care. One of Burnell’s favorite class activities is showing his students how to perform a snout-to-tail wellness assessment on their demo dogs. This knowledge gives them the ability to know what is healthy and normal in their own pets so that they may be able to detect any health changes and alert their veterinarians for prompt treatment.
    Burnell offers these tips:
n Know your pet’s heat tolerance. Bulldogs, pugs and other breeds with pushed-in faces cannot cope with high temperatures very well. But neither can breeds built low to the ground, such as corgis and dachshunds, because cool air cannot circulate easily under their bellies.
n Test your pet for early signs of dehydration. You should be able to grab the fur on your pet’s back, lift it up and watch the fur bounce quickly back in place. If it doesn’t, that is a sign of dehydration. “Find your pet shade and cool water, but not ice water,” says Burnell. “Ice water can shock his system. You can also wrap him in a cool, wet towel to gradually bring his body temperature down.”
    n Monitor your pet’s health by checking the health of his gums. A healthy dog or cat will display bubblegum pink gums. Using your thumb, gently press for a couple seconds against your pet’s gum just above the canine tooth. Then release. The pink color should restore in less than two seconds. Overheated pets will often display bright red gums; pets in shock often have pale gums and pets suffering from liver problems will have yellowish gums.
    Like Burnell, I’ve become a master certified pet first aid instructor and believe knowing what to do in a pet emergency — when minutes count — is one of the best ways I can show my love for my furry fab four: dogs Chipper and Cleo and cats Murphy and Zeki. I hope you take the time to learn pet first aid for your pet’s sake.  It can be a real life-saving gift.
    
Arden Moore, founder of FourLeggedLife.com, is an animal behavior consultant, editor, author, professional speaker and master certified pet first aid master instructor. She happily shares her home with two dogs, two cats and one overworked vacuum cleaner. Tune in to her Oh Behave! show on PetLifeRadio.com and learn more by visiting www.fourleggedlife.com.

Michael Mullin of Gulf Stream and Mary Windle of the Village of Golf

pose in the lobby of the Lang Realty office in Delray Beach.

Inset below: High-tech screens allow after-hours viewing

of photos and listing details from outside the office.

Photos by Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star

By Jane Smith

    When Lang Realty wanted to open a new location to serve Delray Beach and three other coastal towns, it picked East Atlantic Avenue in Delray Beach.
    That office space, decorated in hues of blue that create an upscale beachy style, sits across the street from the luxury Seagate Hotel & Spa. The location is “spectacular,” says Michael Mullin, a 23-year real estate veteran. He has two years in with Lang.
    Hotel guests walk across the street to view properties in Lang’s windows, using touch-screen technology, and can take virtual tours of homes all from outside the office.
    “I’m amazed at how many people use the touch-screen technology to do virtual tours of the properties,” says Lang agent Leanna Fruin. Her office has a window that allows her to watch the people using the touch-screen window.
Fruin, with 10 years of experience, recently joined that Lang office, which opened in July. It has a total of 60 full-time agents and two support staff members.
The brokerage wouldn’t reveal the commissions charged, but did say its 2012 sales volume was $860 million from 2,750 homes sold. Lang has 10 offices, including the Delray Beach location, that serve Palm Beach and St. Lucie counties.
Fruin also likes the app center that Lang has created, making all of its transactions online.
“Contracts can be sent (electronically) to the client and allow for online signing and then have them return it electronically,” she says.
For broker Mary Windle, with more than 20 years of experience, it’s the camaraderie of the Lang agents that make working there special. She likes the can-do attitude of her co-workers and support staff.
Lang, under President Scott Agran, kept up its print advertising in local newspapers and glossy magazines during the market downturn. It also has a strong online presence and employs three full-time staff who focus on leads.
“One thing that sets Lang apart from the competition,” Agran says, “is its strong focus on marketing and advertising.”
Its agents appreciate Lang’s role in the community.
“Delray Beach is like a small town, and everyone who lives there wants to be part of it and give back to the community,” Fruin says.
Lang sponsored the holiday party for the local Boys & Girls Club and was one of the sponsors for 2013 Delray Beach Home Tour that focused on east Delray.
    Lang Realty, 900 E. Atlantic Ave., Delray Beach; 455-3300; www.langrealty.com

The pool at 4001 North Ocean overlooks the ocean.

Inset below: Movers with the White Lion Moving unload parts

of a bedroom suite for a new owner at 4001.

Jerry Lower/The Coastal Star

By Christine Davis
    
A new 43-unit condominium, 4001 North Ocean in Gulf Stream, has just completed two furnished models and is in the process of delivering the building to unit owners.
Yes. Unit owners. You read that right.
    All that’s left for sale are seven condominium residences, including two penthouses. The four-bedroom, 4½-bath penthouses have 4,900 square feet, and the other units, with an average of 3,000 square feet, vary from two-bedroom, 2½- bath units with a den, to three bedroom, 3½-bath units. Prices range from $2.2 million to $5.1 million.
    Located on approximately 3½ acres, the six-story complex, a $70 million project — conceived after the boom — was developed by the Kolter Group, designed by Randall Stofft Architects and Roger Fry & Associates Architects, and built by Kast Construction.
    Kolter bought the land in 2009, after the old Sea Horse Bath and Tennis Club had been demolished. The property was in foreclosure.
    “Good market, bad market, there wasn’t any land like this available. It was a unique piece of property and we were intrigued by it,” said Bob Vail, president of Kolter Urban, the condominium division of Kolter. “The only other condominium developed remotely recently that I know of was 1000 Ocean in Boca Raton. Palm Beach won’t allow heights, nor will Gulf Stream. There are a lot of barriers to entry.”
    Even though they believed in the project and thought the market would improve by the time the condos were finished, it did take a certain amount of courage.
    “It’s difficult to sell high-end residential off paper and we knew that going in,” Vail said. “What we could count on, though, is once the building could be seen, that the public would appreciate the building’s design, views, quality, etc. and we are pleased at the response from those buying our product.”
    The timing turned out to be good, he noted. “In the middle of the project, our property was part of an unincorporated county pocket that was annexed by Gulf Stream. We didn’t anticipate that, although we welcomed it. The town of Gulf Stream has been tough but fair with us, and we’ve been a conscientious developer, and hope the town views us that way.”
    To that end, they aimed to build a project that would fit into the local community. “We went out of our way to keep to the Bermuda style of architecture popular in the area. We’ve been told that we have succeeded with that and we are proud about it. We are happy that we could deliver something that most of the residents in the area don’t view as a negative and view as a positive. People who live in that area are passionate about their neighborhood and that’s how it should be.”
    Just recently, Kolter has submitted plans for permits for villas on the west side of A1A, across the street from the condominiums. One building will have two villas and a second building will have three villas. “They are like single-family homes with common walls between them and will have between 3,600 and 4,000 square feet. We hope to complete construction by the end of the year,” Vail said.
    The Kolter Group, a private investment firm out of Toronto that came to Florida in the early 1990s, now has headquarters in West Palm Beach. Although 4001 North Ocean is the company’s only beachfront condominium development, the company plans to build three waterfront condominiums: Water Club North Palm Beach, Water Club Snell Isle in St. Petersburg and an unnamed development in Sarasota.

InfraSweat owner Kelly Dorsey sits in one of her shop’s six infrared sauna chambers.

Photo provided

By Paula Detwiller

There’s a new sweatshop in town.
No, not a factory where workers toil for long hours and low pay. A place where people go to sweat. For a fee.
    It’s a “sauna studio” in downtown Delray Beach called InfraSweat (tag line: Thermal solutions for body, mind and spirit). Open since December in the city’s Pineapple Grove Arts District, the shop claims to be the first of its kind in South Florida.
    As you relax inside one of InfraSweat’s six private wooden stalls, you are radiated with infrared heat — part of the sun’s invisible spectrum of light that can penetrate human tissue. Your core body temperature rises 3 or 4 degrees, and very soon you are perspiring. After a 30- to 40-minute session, you are dripping.
    If it strikes you as odd that anyone would pay money to sweat in South Florida, where you can schvitz for free most of the year, InfraSweat’s owner Kelly Dorsey can explain the attraction.
    “It’s a cellular sweat, not a skin sweat,” she says. “It’s an extra way of maintaining health. In other words, we take supplements, we go the gym, we juice — and this is one more way of detoxifying the body.”
    Dorsey says infrared heat waves can cause clusters of toxic material stored in our fat cells to vibrate and break apart, allowing them to be flushed out in sweat. In this way, she says, infrared saunas are more effective detoxifiers than traditional “hot rocks” saunas.
    While the detox theory is questioned by environmental scientists, many infrared sauna users are believers. Mike Garreaud, 42, a former Marine living in Jupiter, believes in it so much, he travels to Delray to use the InfraSweat facilities regularly.
    “I know I have a lot of toxins in my body,” Garreaud says, “from four tours with the Marine Corps in Iraq and Afghanistan.”  He was based in Camp Fallujah, Iraq, downwind from a burn pit where, he says, the military incinerated everything, including hazardous materials. He also was constantly breathing diesel fumes as part of his work in the mechanized infantry. “This helps me detox from those things,” he says.
    But that’s not the only reason people are clamoring to get clammy. Infrared therapy is said to relieve back, neck and arthritis pain; help with weight loss (a 30-minute session can burn 200-600 calories due to an increase in heart and metabolic rate); lower blood pressure with repeated use; improve circulation; and purify your skin.
    Lori Powers, a 42-year-old personal trainer from Boynton Beach, says the infrared sauna improves her sinusitis and has kept her Crohn’s disease symptoms at bay. Marisa Pruzan, 31, of Delray Beach, says she’s been getting compliments on how clear and fresh her skin looks after visiting InfraSweat. Garreaud says it helps with the osteoarthritis he’s developed after seven knee surgeries.
    Personally, I love a good sweat. And if something can ease joint pain, I’m there. So I gave InfraSweat a try — three sessions within one week, as recommended by owner Dorsey.
    It was a sensual experience: 40 minutes in a private chamber with 145-degree infrared heat radiating from behind black screens.
 Colored light beaming down (I could change the hue with a small remote control). Soft, meditative harmonies flowing from concealed speakers. At 30 minutes in, the sound of a waterfall mingled with the harmonies, refreshing my heated-up brain. Completely relaxed, pores pouring, I chuckled to myself about the T-shirt I’d seen in the lobby: Sweat is fat crying.
    Leaving the sweatshop, I carried with me a luxurious inner warmth that seemed to lubricate my joints and leave my muscles loose and happy. I felt energized and peaceful.
    If you need a therapeutic sweat — and not the kind that soaks your underclothes as you search for your car at the mall in July — this is the place.

InfraSweat is at 200 N.E.  Second Avenue, Suite 106, Delray Beach. The cost of a single session is $35, but the cost-per-sweat is lower if you buy a package or a membership. For more information, visit www.infrasweat.com.

Paula Detwiller is a freelance writer and lifelong fitness junkie. Find her at www.pdwrites.com.