Whole Dog Journal ~ May 2008

Volume 11
Number 5
May 2008

Features
Editorial
Letters

May 2008

View the Full Issue (PDF)
Whole Dog Journal

Vestibular Disease Affect on Dogs
Aside from some stiffness and a little arthritis, Emma, a 13-year-old chocolate Labrador Retriever, had always been a happy, incredibly healthy dog, welcoming each new day with delight and bounding enthusiasm. One evening, though, things changed suddenly and scarily. “I was at a friend’s house when, after laying quietly in the corner, Emma stood up and came into the room stumbling. She was staggering, panting, and totally confused,” says her owner, Ici Schemm. Something was very wrong, and then almost as suddenly, it was over. After a visit to her veterinarian, Schemm learned that Emma suffered a bout of vestibular syndrome, a common condition in geriatric dogs stemming from inflammation in the nerves connecting the inner ear to the cerebellum, the control center for balance and spatial orientation. The duration of these incidents varies; so does the wide array of symptoms, with some dogs having relapses while others do not. Schemm describes the sudden onset as “very scary for Emma and me, too.” Emma, fortunately, has not had another episode or shown any residual signs; she could be a poster dog for the most transient and benign form of vestibular disease. Other cases, however, can be much more serious.

Train a Dog to Greet People
Recently, I switched the group class format at my Peaceable Paws Training Center to “Levels.” Instead of a progressive curriculum with new exercises introduced each week, dogs and humans learn and practice a small, fixed set of behaviors until they’re ready to progress to the next level, where they begin working on new skills. One of the Level 1 skills is “polite greeting.” Because it can be a challenging behavior to teach, it’s often the one that keeps a student in Level 1 the longest. Because it’s an important good manners social behavior, it’s also a Level 2 and Level 3 skill. The polite-greeting skill difficulty increases with each level. For Level 1, the dog must sit for greetings and not jump up in at least 8 out of 10 times as someone approaches. For Level 2, the dog sits for greetings, and the greeter pets the dog on his head or scratches under his chin without the dog jumping up at least 8 out of 10 times. In order to complete Level 3, the dog must be able to walk up to another dog and human, with dogs walking on the outside, further away from each other, human on the inside, closer together, as they approach. Both dogs stop and sit while handlers stop, greet each other, shake hands, and walk on. (This is one of the 10 tests a dog must pass in order to achieve a Canine Good Citizen certificate from the American Kennel Club.) Here is you can teach this desirable good manners behavior so your dog will know how to greet anyone politely.

Shock Wave Therapy For Dogs With Arthritis
Last June, I received this note from Debbie Efron, of Manalapan, New Jersey: "Do you know anything about shock wave therapy for dogs with arthritis? I am considering this treatment for Taylor, my almost 13-year-old Labrador Retriever, who has arthritis in her hips, spinal column, and right hock, and has just torn a ligament in her right knee. It was recommended by my vet, Dr. Charles Schenck, who is a past president of the American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association." Shock wave therapy? Is that like what they did to the Bride of Frankenstein? I had never heard of such a thing, and I was skeptical, to say the least, thinking it might be some new gimmick. But I was surprised and immensely intrigued by what I found. Shock waves have nothing to do with electric shocks. They are actually high-energy focused sound waves generated outside the body that can be focused at a specific site within the body. In human medicine, extracorporeal shock wave therapy (ESWT) been used for over 25 years to break up kidney stones and gallstones (lithotripsy) without the need for invasive surgery ("extracorporeal" means "outside the body").

Modifying Aggressive Dog Behavior
That loud buzz you hear is the sound of the dog behavior and training community discussing a controversial new approach to modifying aggressive behavior in dogs. The developers of “Constructional Aggression Treatment” (CAT) claim that the shaping-based operant protocol produces stronger and much faster results than the classical counter-conditioning process widely used by training and behavior professionals today. CAT was devised and tested by Dr. Jesús Rosales-Ruiz, a behavior analyst and associate professor of behavior analysis at the University of North Texas, and Kellie Snider, a board-certified associate behavior analyst. Snider completed her MS in Behavior Analysis at UNT in 2007 with Dr. Rosales-Ruiz as her graduate research advisor and the CAT procedure as the topic of her thesis research. Canine behavior experts frequently use classical conditioning techniques (including counter-conditioning) to help change how dogs feel about and respond to the stimuli that triggers their aggressive behavior. In other words, classical counter-conditioning changes the dog’s emotions in order to change his behavior. In contrast, CAT utilizes “operant conditioning,” where the goal is changing the dog’s behavior in a way that will likely produce a subsequent emotional change.