This 6-month-old Labrador is overweight. This puts a tremendous strain on his joints and ligaments, setting him up for injuries and osteoarthritis, not to mention a shortened life span.
A year or so ago, I was taking pictures at a “teen dog social,” which was attended by some 6-month-old dogs I had last seen a few months prior. All of the dogs were maturing into well-mannered young adults – but I worried about two of them. Most of the young dogs present were in good condition, but two were absolutely obese! How does such a young dog get so fat?
My friends know that overweight dogs are one of my pet peeves. (In fact, I very nearly lost my best friend when, shocked, I blurted, “Oh my gosh, how did Carly get so fat?!” when I hadn’t seen her dog for a long time.)
I’m overweight, myself – but it’s something I control; I am solely responsible for the negative effects that being overweight can have on my health. Our dogs, in contrast, can’t be held responsible for their weight and condition; we alone are at fault when we allow them to get fat and end up with health problems associated with obesity: an increase in cancer, high blood pressure, type II diabetes, kidney disease, osteoarthritis, and more.
Obesity in young dogs is even worse: by making dogs carry extra weight on as-yet immature joints and bones with open growth plates, it predisposes the dog to a much higher risk of painful osteoarthritis later in life. Fat young dogs are also at a higher risk of other orthopedic problems – cranial cruciate ligament (CCL) injuries, in particular.
Given the fact that both of the fat young dogs were Labradors – high-energy goofballs – I felt compelled to mention these risks in particular to their owners. (There she goes again!) This time, I didn’t blurt it out; I was tactful. But even so, both sets of owners were shocked; they knew their pets would mature to be “big” dogs and they thought the bulk was just “puppy fat.”
Here’s the clincher: In their defense, both owners said, “We just feed the suggested amount on the label!”
RECOMMENDED FEEDING GUIDELINES
You don’t have to read to the end of this piece; here’s the most important information to take away from this story: You should never feed your dog according to the product’s feeding guidelines without adjusting the amounts to suit your dog!
Dog food manufacturers are required by law to put feeding instructions on their labels, to give dog owners a starting point – an idea of approximately how much of the product should be fed to provide “complete and balanced nutrition” to dogs of varying weights. The feeding directions must state, at a minimum, “Feed (weight/unit) of product per (weight) of the dog.”
These numbers are derived through a calculation that estimates the caloric content of the food and factors it against the average, medium-size dog’s “resting energy requirements” (RER), which represents the energy requirement of a dog at rest at a controlled temperature. The accepted formula for calculating a dog’s RER is 30 times the dog’s body weight in kilograms plus 70. The calculation for a 40-pound (18.14 kg) dog would look like this: 30 x 18.14 + 70 = 614.2 calories.
That might seem helpful to know, but be advised that many factors can affect a particular dog’s RER. Is the dog neutered or spayed? If so, his or her RER will be less. Is the climate very cold? If so, the dog’s RER will be more. Inactive dogs and very large dogs have lower caloric requirements, per pound of body weight. Highly active dogs and small dogs need more calories, per pound of body weight, than the average dog.
The dog’s age also affects his RER. Did you know that puppies require more calories than adult dogs who weigh the same amount? Puppy foods usually show a more complex table for their feeding instructions, one that shows both the puppy’s weight and age. Note that the recommended feeding amount goes down as the dog gets older.
So, good feeding instructions will add something like, “Feeding rates should be adjusted based upon breed type, activity, or environmental conditions.”
The very best feeding instructions will expand even more on this point. Stella & Chewy’s label says, “The table below shows the number of measuring cups to feed each day based on a pet’s weight. Please note these are guidelines, and individual requirements can vary by +/-50% based on your pet’s activity level, metabolism, age, general health, and other factors.” Plus or minus 50%!!
The Scoop on Feeding Amounts
A measured cup of one food may not contain, by weight, the same amount of food as another measured cup. If the kibble size is very small, the spaces between the nuggets will be smaller, too, resulting in more food by weight in the same volume of space.
If you use a coffee cup to scoop and measure your dog’s food, be advised that you are likely feeding him more than “one cup” of food; most coffee cups hold more volume than one measuring cup full.
Kibble is highly nutrient-dense. Whatever cup or scooper you use, be aware that a rounded, over-full scoop will contain a lot more calories than a level scoop. (This is one of the hazards of asking kids or the most soft-hearted member of the family to feed the dog; they tend to overfill the scoops.)
Weighing your dog’s portions is more precise than using an approximate volume of food. That said, be advised that the caloric content of foods can vary widely; 8 ounces of this food might contain 280 calories, whereas 8 ounces of that food might contain as much as 500 calories. So when you change foods, check the caloric content, and adjust your dog’s portion accordingly.
GETTING PAST THE STARTING POINT
Now you know: The amounts given are just a starting place. So how should you adjust the feeding suggestions in order to give your dog an appropriate amount?
Research scientists have worked out some formulas so one could conceivably multiply any dog’s RER by factors that have calculated for activity and inactivity, cold climates, neuter status, etc. But you don’t need to be a mathematician to work this out! All you need are your eyes and hands. Look at and feel your dog!
When you look at your standing dog from above, you should be able to see a discernible waist, with an hourglass indentation between his ribs and his hips. If your dog is super fluffy, you have to feel for this indentation. If he feels like a sausage (a straight tube) or a lemon (wider in the middle than at the ends), he’s fat.
While you’ve got your hands on your dog, see if you can feel his ribs. Then, take the “knuckle test”: Make a loose fist with one hand. Run the fingers of your other hand across the back of the hand with the fist, then over the knuckles, then over the back of your fingers near the knuckles. If your dog’s ribs feel like the back of your hand, where you can barely feel the bones, your dog is likely too fat. If your dog’s ribs feel like your knuckles, he’s likely too thin. If his ribs feel similar to the backs of your fingers near your knuckles, where you can feel each rib but they are slightly padded, he’s probably at a good weight.
If you discern that your dog is overweight, reduce the amount of calories that you feed him! And, if you both are able, increase his exercise. That’s the super-short version of an article we’ll bring you in a future issue on strategies for safe weight-reduction. But if your dog is fat, don’t wait to get started: Cut his portion size now!
Foster puppies!! Everyone loves puppies, right? Well, maybe not your achy senior dog...It's only fair to make sure that your whole family, human and non-human alike, is on board with a foster dog or puppies.
It’s a rare dog lover who hasn’t at least considered fostering a dog. Woebegone canine faces in shelter and rescue appeals tug at the heartstrings. You could help save a life. And hey, surely there’s room in your house for one more dog, especially if it’s just temporary…
The recent spread of COVID-19 has animal adoption organizations pleading for even more foster homes for homeless animals. And, fortuitously perhaps, there are a lot of people stuck at home who have the time to foster.
You might think fostering would be easy. You sign up with an organization, they let you know when they have a dog who needs a foster home, you get the dog and take care of her until she’s adopted, and then you’re ready for your next foster. Easy peasy? Beware, it’s way more complicated than that.
If you’re thinking of taking the plunge – or even if you already have taken it – here are some things you will want to give serious thought to:
* Your household may experience serious disruption. Some fosters are no bother at all;they blend into the woodwork like they’ve always been there. More frequently, however, they come with lots of energy and potential for behavior challenges.
The most common reason dogs are given up to shelters (or not reclaimed) is behavior. Make sure you are ready for the impact this may have on your lifestyle and serenity and be prepared to provide a lot of management. The dog may not be house-trained – in fact, you should assume she’s not, and start treating any foster dog as if she were a young puppy. (For instructions on remedial house training, see “How to Potty Train a Dog,” WDJ July 2018.)
The dog also may search for things to eat or chew in wastepaper baskets and closets and on counters and tables. She may alarm-bark at the dropping of every leaf outside. You never know what you’re going to get!
If your own dogs don’t do well with new dogs in their home, don’t even think about fostering dogs. If you have your heart set on fostering, consider other species that your dogs will tolerate. If you have small companion animals and/or children, use extreme caution when bringing a foster dog into your home, until you know they will be safe.
Support for Fostering
Pat and Mandy in 1990
Fostering implies a limited time commitment, a temporary arrangement in which a person agrees to house and take care of the dog until a permanent home can be found. Fostering is not the same as adopting, where you agree to take ownership of the dog on a permanent basis. Of course, sometimes you do end up adopting the dog – what some call a foster failure, but I call a foster success!
My most memorable foster was Mandy, a 6-year-old tri-color Collie surrendered by her owner to the Marin Humane Society many years ago. She was overweight, matted, and had multiple urine burns on her hind legs because she suffered from spay incontinence. A Collie-lover from way back, I agree to foster her. She walked into my house, laid down in front of the fireplace like she’d lived there all her life, never put a paw wrong and never left –
a foster success if I ever saw one!
Two decades-plus ago, when I was working at the Marin Humane Society in Novato, California, foster homes were a rare commodity – usually reserved for highly adoptable animals with treatable conditions, such as a pregnant mom, a dog with a broken leg that needed to heal, a puppy with a mild respiratory infection. It wasn’t even a formal program, usually just a staff member or volunteer taking a special interest in an animal and offering to care for her at home for a while.
My, how the times have changed. Today, fostering has become its own industry. It’s the rare shelter that doesn’t have some sort of formal foster program, and the majority of rescue groups across the country rely on foster homes for virtually all their dogs. It takes a legion of caring humans to be able to provide foster care for the numbers of dogs (and cats and other companion animals) who need it.
* Environmental factors. It may be that the foster dog needs much more serious containment than your own dogs do. A yard that’s fenced by a cute little three-foot-high picket fence might be perfectly adequate for fostering small or senior dogs, but you probably shouldn’t consider a foster hound or other large dog. Before you plan to keep the dog in a crate at night, you should remember that not all dogs are comfortable in crate; he might not tolerate one without a serious counter-conditioning plan (or ever!).
Let the shelter or rescue group know what kind of dogs your home and yard is well set up for, and do your best to decline to take dogs that will push you past your own and your home’s limits.
* Family buy-in. Your entire family must be on board with the fostering project. Anger or resentment over a canine intruder can fester and damage human relationships, not to mention result in actual harm to the dog. The entire family needs to be positive about fostering before you bring a dog home.
* Financial considerations. Some shelters and rescues will pay all expenses for your foster dog. Others will pay some, while still others expect their foster providers to bear the entire financial burden of fostering. Make sure you are clear about finances before agreeing to foster – and make sure your own finances can weather the cost, if that’s the arrangement.
Also note that while some shelters or rescue groups provide food for the animals in their foster homes, the brand of food might not meet the standards for food that you give your own dogs. This puts many foster providers in the position of having to decide whether to feed their foster dogs a food that they consider to be low-quality or foot the bill for a higher-quality food.
* Legal considerations. In today’s litigious world, legal considerations must be taken seriously. Does your chosen group’s insurance cover you if your foster dog bites someone, or causes some other accident or injury? (Hint: They should.) If not, does your homeowner’s insurance cover you? Are you fostering a breed of dog that your insurance might exclude from coverage? Better to know the answers to these questions before there’s an incident, rather than find out afterward that you aren’t covered.
* Foster failures. People often use the phrase “foster failure” to jokingly refer to a dog they took on as a foster but decided to keep. But true foster failures include those where the dog doesn’t adapt well to his foster home, where the new family doesn’t have the skills or patience to work with his behavior issues, or worse, where the foster ends up not being a good candidate for adoption.
If your home is an unsuitable environment for that particular dog, perhaps there’s another foster home that’s better suited for him, and another foster dog who is better suited for yours.
An even tougher question: If it becomes evident to the organization you foster for that the dog isn’t a good adoption candidate, either for medical or behavioral reasons, can you deal with the strong emotions that are inevitable – and normal – if the organization decides that euthanasia is the appropriate outcome? Even lifetime animal protection professionals struggle with the emotional impact of euthanasia. It’s not easy, nor should it be. You should only consider fostering if you are prepared to face this possibility.
* Know your limits. We still live in a world where there are far more dogs than there are homes. You could foster every single dog in your local animal shelter today, and there would be more tomorrow. And the next day. And the next. An increasing number of horrendous hoarder cases are reported in the news weekly, often involving well-intentioned shelters, rescue groups, and foster providers who were unable to stop the impulse to take on “just one more,” even though they lacked the resources to properly care for the animals they already had. Don’t let yourself become one of these.
PARTNERING WITH AN ORGANIZATION
In order to prevent frustration, heartache, and/or financial difficulty,make sure that you carefully select the organization that you’ll be working with. Different groups have varying policies, procedures, and philosophies. Be sure that your philosophies and ethics are aligned with those of the group you choose.
There should be an interview process – where you are interviewing them every bit as much as they are interviewing you. Here are some suggested interview questions to ask your potential fostering organization:
* What is your organizational structure? Is theorganization a municipal shelter, a humane society, a breed rescue, or all-breed rescue? This will guide its policies and procedures to some degree. Is it a 501(c)3 non-profit organization (in which case your fostering expenses, including travel, are tax deductible)? If they say it is, look it up here to make sure it is legitimate: apps.irs.gov/app/eos/. If it is a non-profit, who serves on its Board of Directors?If it is municipal, what governmental body oversees it?
* What is your organizational mission/philosophy? They should be able to articulate this – and you will need to decide if it is congruent with your own beliefs. There’s no right answer here; dogs in all kinds of shelters and rescues benefit from foster programs.
* How many animals do you take in per year, and how many get euthanized? No animal welfare group likes being asked about euthanasia, but you want to work with a group that is honest, ethical, and humane, and you want to know under what circumstances they do choose to euthanize. You can then decide your own comfort level. Some fantastic foster homes are able to deal with the dissonance of loving dogs and fostering for groups that have higher euthanasia rates; others are not. In fact, some choose to work with full-service shelters because those dogs may be at greater risk for euthanasia.
I’d suggest that you ask: How many animals do you take in and how many are euthanized? What conditions or behavior might prompt euthanasia? If you’re told that none of their animals are ever euthanized, they are either lying or keeping dogs alive without consideration for quality of life. Even if they are a limited-intake group and don’t do euthanasia themselves (because they take dogs to another group or a veterinarian for the procedure), they should acknowledge that some of their dogs are euthanized. All legitimate groups euthanize sometimes, for health or behavioral reasons, even the “no-kill” groups.
This sounds morbid, but I’d also suggest asking how the group euthanizes the animals they judge to be unadoptable. You don’t need all the details, but be sure they euthanize by intravenous injection (into a vein, not directly into the heart), not by carbon monoxide or decompression chamber, shooting, or worse; these latter methods are not humane, and would indicate that the organization is seriously behind the times.
* How much disease do you encounter? This is more often an issue for shelters that house large numbers of animals at a single location than it is for rescues that have their dogs in foster care, but rescue dogs can get sick, too. Does the group vaccinate dogs on intake? This is the standard practice in the industry and the best approach to minimizing disease transmission. Upper respiratory infections are the most common, but the more serious, possibly fatal diseases such as parvovirus and distemper also occur.
Bringing foster dogs home means potentially exposing your own dogs to these germs, and risking that they may become ill – perhaps seriously so. The more illness at the shelter, the greater the risk to your dog. Are you willing to take that risk? Who pays for treatment if the foster is ill? Who pays if your dogs become ill?
Will the foster dog be treated for parasites before being sent to your home? This is highly recommended; if your home is flea-free, the last thing you want is having to treat all of your animals because a foster dog arrived covered with fleas.
* Do you do behavior assessments? Despite recent studies that question whether behavior assessments are truly predictive or their results are replicable, good shelters and rescues use some kind of evaluation procedure. This is to identify behaviors that might need to be modified (or that may identify the dog as too risky for adoption) and to improve the adoption process by helping to match dogs with appropriate homes (and appropriate foster homes).
Ask if you can observe evaluations being performed and see if you are comfortable with them. If they don’t do some kind of evaluation, consider carefully whether this is a group you want to be involved with and whether you want to take on the additional risks of fostering a dog who hasn’t been evaluated. Even with evaluations, you will inevitably discover additional behaviors when you bring the dog into your home – desirable ones as well as undesirable ones.
An estimate for diagnostics for a seriously ill foster puppy: You may be enormously attached to the pup, but can the organization you are fostering for pay this? Will they? Can you live with it if they decline to go this far for the foster pup?
* Who pays expenses? Does the organization you are interviewing provide food and veterinary care? Do they reimburse you for those? Or are they expecting you to pay for the care of your foster dog out of your own pocket? If the foster dog – dog forbid – attacks one of your animals, will the organization pay for any required veterinary care for your dog or cat?
If they put a cap on veterinary expenses, and the dog you foster needs more veterinary care, will they allow you to pay for costs above and beyond the cap?
If the dog needs to work with a training/behavior professional, will they pay for that? If you go away on vacation, will they pay for boarding, or a pet-sitter?
* Are you insured? Perhaps more to the point: Does the organization’s insurance cover you? You may think you’re not worried about this until your foster dog bites someone and you get sued. If you lose your home in a lawsuit, you won’t be able to help future foster dogs. Legitimate organizations have insurance to cover their volunteers. Get it in writing.
* What are the rules and restrictions for the foster dogs? Can you take your foster dogs with you in public? Traveling? Hiking? Camping? Can they go to dog parks? Should they go to dog parks? Are there things the dogs can or cannot do in your home? What happens if your foster dog bites someone?
* How does the adoption process work? Are you, the foster parent, allowed to be a part of that process? (The answer to this one should be “yes.”) Are potential adopters carefully screened? Do you get veto power if you think the prospective family is not appropriate for your foster? Are the dogs adopted directly from your home, or do they have to go back to a shelter or kennel?
There aren’t necessarily right or wrong answers to these questions – just answers that will help you decide if this is an organization you can work with.
BRINGING YOUR FOSTER DOG HOME
When you are ready to bring home your foster dog, take all the precautions you would if you were adopting and introducing a new dog to your family. Ideally, the introduction happened before you agreed to take the foster, but if not, neutral territory is best for introductions. Take it slow and have at least one other experienced dog person there to help if things go wrong. (See “Great Introductions,” WDJ January 2008.)
It will take some time for your foster to settle in. Be prepared for house-training accidents – even a well house-trained dog can take some time to adjust to a new schedule and new environment. Again, it’s best to treat your foster as if she were an 8-week-old puppy, with constant supervision, until you know it’s safe to relax.
Some rescues talk about a 30-day settle-in period for all fosters when you should mostly leave the dog alone. I shudder at this. If there’s one thing I’ve learned during my 40-plus years of working professionally with dogs, it’s that each one is an individual and there isn’t a cookie-cutter formula for any of them. Take each dog as she comes. If she wants attention and interaction, give it to her. If she seems to want to be left alone, honor that. If she needs a lot of management, supervision, and training, do it.
Even something as simple as mat training (with her very own mat that goes with her to her new home) can contribute significantly to adoption success (see “Mat Training Tips,” January 2020). If you and your organization agree she needs more formal training or behavior work, be sure you are working with a qualified, force-free training/behavior professional. The last thing a stressed foster dog needs is coercion and punishment.
Be sure to document everything you do with your foster dog, and everything she does with you. You can find out if she adores kids or if she’d be better off in a home with no small children. You can tell potential adopters if she’s good with cats, or maybe not so much! It’s helpful if you can pass along specific information, such as that the dog is wary of men but will warm up if they don’t push her, or that she does tend to counter-surf if you leave food on coffee tables but the kitchen counters are safe.
Finally, be ready for that happy day when your foster finds her forever humans. Since you now know your foster dog better than anyone, hopefully you will have significant input (even veto power) into the adoption match.
It would be wonderful if every foster could walk into her new home and lie down in front of the fireplace as if she’d lived there all her life, but that’s not reality. You are in a perfect position to help make sure your foster’s transition to her new home is as smooth as possible, which can significantly increase the potential for this truly being her forever home.
And when this coronavirus craziness is over, there will still be thousands of dogs in need of foster homes to help give them a second chance for a first-class life, just as there were before the pandemic.
The Kong was the first chew-resistant toy on the market that was used to contain food in such a way that required the dog to really work to get it. Depending on the filling (kibble held in place with peanut better, cream cheese, or yogurt? canned food? baby food?) or whether it's been frozen or melted a microwave, it may take a dog a lot of licking, chewing, biting, and dropping the toy to get all the food. Or the dog might decide it's not worth the effort!
There is an ever-widening variety of food-filled puzzles, food-dispensing toys, and “slow feeding” dishes for dogs on the market. Many trainers (and this publication) frequently encourage owners to employ these tools to engage doggie brains and to help dogs occupy their time, especially when home alone. However, not all food-dispensing toys are suitable for all dogs! Some, in fact, might frustrate and annoy your dog – or ratchet up his anxiety. So let’s take a closer look at these tools, in order to help you find some that your dog will unequivocally enjoy.
Be prepared, however: I’m going to discuss some common problems with food toys through the lens of behavior science; it’s going to get mildly technical. But if you don’t want to waste your money on toys that gather dust or get thrown out because you didn’t realize that your dog needed your help to learn how to interact with them successfully, or because the toys had features that made them frustrating or scary to your dog, read on!
BUILDING TOY-PLAY SKILLS
The most common problem with food toys is that the dog doesn’t have the skills to get the food and the owner doesn’t understand how to teach him.
Many food toys come with no instructions for introducing them to the naïve dog. For instance, toys that have a cavity that can be filled with food, such as Kongs, are assumed by most consumers to be easy and fun for dogs to use. The marketing materials lead them to believe this, showing dogs chewing, licking, and batting around full toys to dislodge the food and even playing with empty ones. However, if the toy is initially presented at its most difficult level, which is often what’s shown in advertising and demo videos, many dogs can’t be successful.
The “recipes” found for these toys on the internet are often elaborate and challenging, with fillings solidified by melted cheese or freezing. Special biscuits can be purchased for some toys that can’t be shaken or rolled out and require the dog to crush the whole toy or saturate the food by licking before getting anything out.
When an owner presents a challenge like this to a new puppy, or even an inexperienced, well-fed, or timid adult dog, the animal will often sniff at the toy, perhaps poke it with its nose or lick it for a while, then give up. Then the owner may say, “Well, my dog doesn’t like food toys,” and also give up.
Let’s look at what behaviors a dog needs to succeed at using one of these toys. They might include licking, chewing, pushing with the nose, picking up, carrying, dropping, shaking, batting with the paws, or securing the toy with the paws while performing some of the other behaviors. These are normal dog behaviors, but that doesn’t mean that every dog will know how to use them in a given situation. With some more difficult toys, they must be performed in a certain order.
As when training any behavior, owners need to start dogs at a level at which they can easily succeed and experience extremely attractive consequences. The dogs should be able clearly to see, hear, and/or smell the food and get some of it right away. Cavity toys can be filled loosely with small, high-value treats, so that any movement by the dog is likely to immediately produce something the dog loves. The opening can be smeared with peanut butter or meat puree to encourage licking.
The difficulty can then be increased slowly as the dog refines the physical skills to extract the food.
IS THE TOY PUNISHING YOUR DOG?
There can be problems in this area as well, when the consequence of the behavior is either not reinforcing or, worse, scary.
A dog who is used to getting kibble for free in a bowl may not be motivated to dig slightly wetted and frozen kibble out of a toy. He may have the appropriate behavioral skills, but the consequence doesn’t merit the effort. This problem is relatively easy to prevent or fix: add some higher-value morsels and start off easier, as described above.
One problem that is not so easily remedied is when an unpleasant consequence comes instead of, or along with, the food. A hard plastic toy may bang against a wall, startling a sound-sensitive dog. (Fortunately, there are a few treat-delivery balls that are made of soft plastic.)
A toy with electronics may beep or ding or move in an unexpected way. If one of these stimuli precedes the delivery of the food, it is the most immediate consequence of the dog’s behavior. If it happens regularly, it may come to serve as a conditioned reinforcer, predicting the arrival of food (like a clicker does). Or, worst case, it may scare the dog so much that he doesn’t find the food worth the risk.
Dogs who are sensitive to noises may not recover from this. Some may attempt to get the food without so much motion, and their movements will become careful and inhibited. Some will refuse the toy altogether.
One of my dogs became extremely frightened of the noise that the Manners Minder (a.k.a. the Treat & Train), a remote-controlled treat dispenser, makes when it jams. She initially loved this device and using it actually added value to any treat that was inside. But while most of the time the consequence of her nice behavior was a treat (positive reinforcement), sometimes it was a horrible grinding noise that would cause her to back away wide-eyed and then refuse to return (positive punishment). I’ve stopped using this device with her until I can take the time to counter-condition her response to that noise.
Take care in selecting toys for sensitive dogs, and experiment with them before giving them to the dog.
CONFLICTING CUES
Here’s the technical part. Remember that the smallest units of behavior we can analyze are antecedents (stimuli, events, or parts of the animal’s history that set the stage for a behavior), behaviors (anything animals do that can be measured), and consequences (stimuli or events that immediately follow a behavior and influence its future strength).
Behaviors and consequences are often easy to observe, but antecedents can be more subtle. One type of antecedent is a cue: a stimulus or condition that communicates to the animal that certain behaviors will be reinforced (or punished). Some toys accidentally present cues that are not in keeping with how they are designed to be used.
The Manners Minder (also sold under the name Treat & Train) was among the first remote-controlled treat-dispensing devices on the market. It enables a handler to deliver treats to a dog at a location that is up to 100 feet away – perfect for certain training applications. However, some dogs are afraid of the devices.
For most food toys, the cue that food-seeking behaviors will be reinforced is the presentation of a loaded toy. As the dog interacts with a kibble toy, the sound of the kibble inside the toy becomes a cue as well. Or rather a series of them: The sound of a lot of kibble rattling inside the toy correlates with kibble being delivered more frequently; it predicts a high rate of reinforcement.
As the toy empties, the sound changes, predicting a thinner reinforcement schedule. A similar process occurs with the odor of the food in the toy. When the toy is empty, no kibble is audible and we can assume the kibble odor is greatly diminished. These are cues that tell the dog that reinforcement is not available. The dog learns to stop food seeking.
But we get problems with toys that give confusing signals about when or whether the food is available.
One such toy, the Foobler, is a hard plastic ball that ejects treats when rolled. It contains six rotating food compartments and a timer. One compartment at a time is in a position to release food, and then when the timer goes off, the next compartment rotates into position. The owner can set the timer to control how frequently the compartments rotate; the interval can be as short as 15 minutes and as long as 90. Before the compartments rotate, a bell rings to signify that pushing the toy will now pay off.
However, when a compartment empties, the sound of rattling kibble is still present, even though food will not be available until after the next bell. The dog can still smell the food in the toy. With every other food toy an experienced dog has played with, these are cues to continue pushing. There is no cue to let the dog know that the food is now unavailable and that ball pushing will not be reinforced. And because the pushing has been reinforced on an intermittent schedule – meaning sometimes it took one push to eject food, sometimes a few – both with other toys and with this one, the dog will probably persist for some time.
What’s more, when the dog finally perceives that the previously reinforced behavior is no longer working, he may start to go through extinction. Extinction can be an unpleasant process, and its common side effects include frustration and an increase in the variability of behavior. The former we try to avoid when training; the latter is something we can plan for and use when shaping behavior – but that is a procedure that requires careful adjustment of criteria and observation of the dog, and should not be left up to a plastic toy.
The Foobler
Among other reasons, it could be dangerous to the toy. I introduced three dogs to the Foobler. My smallest dog switched to gnawing on it when the active food compartment emptied, and even she was able to do damage. (Another dog decided immediately that the most efficient behavior was to chew the toy apart to get all the food at once. Although she’s only medium-size herself, she could have dismembered the toy had I not been there to remove it.) These are natural responses from dogs who have learned through reinforcement of many varied behaviors that their goal with a food toy is to do whatever it takes to get all the food out.
So you’ll need to supervise your dog closely to prevent behaviors that are damaging to the Foobler, which makes it less than ideal for one of its intended purposes: spreading food-toy engagement out over the course of a workday for dogs left home alone.
You’ll also want to teach your dog how to use it. A training plan would include teaching the dog that the bell means food is available, and – a more complex task – that when the food stops coming out of the toy, he should wait, for up to 15 minutes, until the bell rings again. Although there is no “training mode” for the toy, you can turn it on and off manually to temporarily shorten the intervals between the opening of compartments and build the association of the bell with food delivery.
Such a plan could address possible frustration with the toy’s reinforcement schedule, but could not be relied upon to prevent a dedicated chewer from taking matters into his own mouth during your absence. We would do well to provide a different toy to dogs who have the ability and inclination to chew hard plastic.
Pet Tutor
The Pet Tutor is a food- or treat-dispensing tool used by many trainers. A canister holds a supply of treats, which can be dispensed via a remote control for delivering treats to a dog at a distance from the handler, or via a timer. The product’s marketing materials suggest that the timed-delivery of food can be a helpful distraction for dogs who suffer from separation anxiety or isolation distress. And it might – for some dogs. Other dogs may experience the tool in much the same manner as the Foobler: frustrating because they can still see and smell the food inside the product.
Generally, when used to dispense food to a dog who is home alone, the Pet Tutor is either placed on top of a crated dog’s wire crate or on the door of a plastic crate (so it dispenses into the crate), or up on a counter (so the dispensed food falls onto the floor).
The product is designed to resist the explorations of a dog who gets ahold of it somehow, but it won’t hold up to all-day safe-cracking efforts or attention from a really strong chewer. But even if a dog can’t get at it, they can still smell that it’s full of food. For some dogs, that’s not a big deal; for an anxious, food-obsessed dog, this likely wouldn’t be a useful tool in this application.
TOYS REQUIRE SKILLS, TRAINING, SUPERVISION
We need to be careful consumers when we select toys for our dogs. We need to provide toys that are safe and fun for each individual dog, and at times, we also may need to train the dog to use them. We need to watch for fear or undue frustration. For the dog’s safety, we need to closely observe his interactions with a toy before leaving him alone with it.
And finally, we may need to take time to teach even an experienced dog about a toy with a rule structure different from the one to which they are accustomed.
Portions of this article were first published in BARKS from the Guild, Pet Professional Guild’s official publication (10/2014).
Have you been working from home for weeks, but will be returning to a worksite soon? If so, check out these tips for preparing your dog- and especially any puppy or recently adopted dog who has never before been left home alone.
Have you been spending a lot more time with your dog, courtesy of coronavirus? As life slowly goes back to a “new normal” and you start to think about going back to work or school, you may be worried about how your dog will handle your absence. The internet is flooded with articles predicting an epidemic of dogs with separation anxiety when our canines have to become accustomed to being left home alone again. Are you ready for this?
What Is Dog Separation Anxiety?
Before we discuss whether or not you need to be concerned about this, let’s clear up some definitions. We’ve noticed that the more dogs with separation anxiety are discussed, the less precise the language surrounding the condition seems to become!
“Anxiety” is the anticipation of unknown or imagined future dangers. With separation anxiety, your dog anticipates bad things happening because you aren’t there. True canine separation anxiety presents as extremes of behavior: vocalization, destruction of household objects (especially door frames and confinement tools), self-injury, and sometimes soiling in the home by a previously well house-trained dog.
Separation anxiety is a bit of a misnomer for a lot of canine behavior that frequently gets tagged with the dreaded separation anxiety label. There are many canine behaviors that we find problematic that occur exclusively in the owner’s absence. If they do not seem to be anxiety-based and are relatively easy to manage and modify, we should call them separation-related behaviors. We’d consider true separation anxiety to be a subset of dog separation-related behaviors.
How Will Dogs React To Us Going Back To The Office
Not all dogs will erupt with separation-related behaviors if their owners suddenly go back to work. If your dog has always been comfortable being left alone, she’s likely to be just fine when you go back to work, especially if she’s reasonably confident and well-adjusted.
On the other hand, it’s possible that even if your dog never had separation-related behaviors before, she is now so accustomed to your constant proximity that your departure could trigger an unwanted response, whether it’s separation anxiety or the emergence of other separation-related behaviors. You want to start right now, addressing it sooner rather than later.
What Dogs Are At Greatest Risk For Separation Anxiety?
Puppies are at the greatest risk for separation-related behaviors when they are subjected to a sudden change to a home-alone lifestyle. While many new puppy owners take vacations or reduce their work hours in order to spend time with their new pups, we normally counsel new puppy owners to immediately begin a program of gradual separation to prevent separation anxiety. But right now, with so many new puppy owners staying home, they may have skipped this important part of a pup’s early learning. Fortunately, it’s not too late to put this program into action!
How To Identify The Behavior With today’s easy access to technology, it’s fairly simple to determine whether your dog or puppy gets upset when left alone. Set up a cellphone or laptop computer to record video – or, better yet, use an app to link a camera to your phone – so you can see what your dog does in your absence. (Note: If you already know your dog already has separation-related behaviors and you know for sure it’s separation anxiety, you don’t need to do this; proceed directly to management and modification sections below.)
Next, initiate your normal departure routine, whether this entails crating your dog, confining her in a room or section of the house, or leaving her loose with full access to the entire house. If she has full access, set up your camera where you think she’s most likely to hang out. (You can always do another trial later if you guessed wrong.)
Now leave the house, following your normal departure routine. You only have to go far enough away that your dog thinks you really left. Watch your dog on your camera (or view the recorded video after you return). If your dog wandered around, then settled on her bed (or the sofa) and dozed off, you’re probably home free – although she could wake up and get bored later.
If your dog didn’t settle in fairly quickly, watch for signs of anxiety (pacing, panting, whining, barking, howling, digging at doors or windows) or boredom (walking around with purpose, looking for things to get into or chew, such as garbage cans, shoes, pillows, table legs, etc., without any obvious signs of stress).
Keep this first “home alone” session short – separation anxiety, under 10 minutes. If you are using an app and can observe your dog via a live stream, return immediately if you can see that your dog is anxious; you don’t want to ramp up her stress levels.
If your livestream or video recording reveals that your dog is stressed about your absence, she does have some degree of separation anxiety, and you have work to do. If she’s doing inappropriate things but doesn’t really seem anxious, you also have work to do, on the easier end of the separation anxiety-related behaviors range.
How To Manage Your Dog’s Separation Anxiety
It’s much easier to use management for separation-related behaviors that are triggered by boredom or a lack of supervision than those caused by true separation anxiety. Both prognoses can improve immensely from increased enrichment and exercise. (A tired dog makes for a happy owner!)
Scent work is excellent for tiring most dogs – it’s very fulfilling and can easily be done indoors. (For more about teaching your dog games that utilize his nose, see “Everyone Nose That,” WDJ September 2019.)
Other options for indoor exercise and enrichment include playing with a flirt pole (kind of like a toy on a fishing pole), a ball pit, or snuffle mat (a textured mat with kibble or treats buried in the fabric, requiring the dog to sniff and lick to find and eat the food). Good games include round-robin recalls (where two or more people call the dog and reward her for each arrival), indoor fetch, or indoor parkour using household items such as laundry baskets to jump in and out of, broomsticks to jump over, and chairs to crawl under. (For more details, see “Winter Woes and Wags,” December 2019.)
Crating is appropriate for many anxiety-related behaviors – but not for separation anxiety. Most dogs with separation anxiety do not tolerate crating, and in fact crating can make their anxiety considerably worse. They often panic and can injure themselves badly – even die – in their desperate attempts to escape. If you hope to crate your dog at some point, you will likely need to work to resolve the separation anxiety before you can do so. If your dog displays anxious body language when you watch the video feed, the management program for your dog will likely need to include medication in addition to modification efforts.
Some veterinarians are unfamiliar with behavior-modification drugs and dosages. You can ask yours to do a phone consult with a veterinary behaviorist, or consult directly with a veterinary behaviorist yourself. You or your vet can find a list of certified veterinary behaviorists at dacvb.org/about/member-directory.
Here’s the goal: A dog who is just as relaxed and comfortable with being home alone as she is with humans in the house.
How To Help Your Dog Become Comfortable Being Home Alone
Here’s the goal: A dog who is just as relaxed and comfortable with being home alone as she is with humans in the house.
Whether you do or do not see evidence of separation anxiety during the video test, you can use the following procedure to increase the likelihood that your dog or puppy will be fine when you go back to work.
The more anxious your dog is about your departures or absence, the slower you need to take this process. If she starts to become stressed, continue working at that step until she can stay relaxed, or back up to a previous step and work there longer. Your goal is to help her be comfortable when she’s separated from you, whether or not you’re in the house.
Start with your dog resting – on a bed (tethered if necessary), in a crate, in an exercise pen, or behind a baby gate, with you standing next to her.
Tell her “wait,” count to five, feed her a treat.
Tell her “wait,” take one step away, return, feed her a treat.
Tell her “wait,” take two steps away, return, feed her a treat.
Continue increasing the number of steps. Starting at five steps away, sit down in a chair within your dog’s sight and read a book or magazine for a minute or two, increasing the duration of your minutes away with each successful repetition. Continue to increase the duration of your time away from your dog (within her sight) up to 30 minutes, until she calmly rests while you read or talk or otherwise occupy yourself.
Continue to increase the distance between you and your dog until you are able to step out of the room without a reaction from your dog. Pause briefly, then immediately return; initially, you will decrease the duration of the time you are away from your dog because you are now out of sight.
Set up your camera again. Gradually increase the distance between you and your dog and the duration of your stay away from her until your dog stays calm even when you are away for longer periods of time. Add other “leaving cues” into the process, such as opening and closing doors, putting on coats, starting the car, etc. – watching her video the whole time. If she starts acting stressed or getting into “trouble” when you leave her, back up and slow down.
As long as your dog was not displaying signs of true separation anxiety, you can also leave her with any kind of enrichment and/or food-dispensing toys to help her stay happy and busy while you are gone. (To make sure these toys help improve your dog’s behavior, rather than increase her anxiety, see “Preventing Food-Toy Fails”) Incorporate these toys into your “separate in place” protocol once you are routinely staying out of her sight for more than several seconds.
Dogs with true separation anxiety tend to lose interest in food when they are stressed, so you may not be able to use food toys with them at first until you eventually get to the point that they are truly calm and relaxed when you are out of sight.
When it’s time for you to go back to work, remember that the more you continue enrichment activities, the easier it will be for your canine pal.
Now go hug your dog (if she likes being hugged) – and stay safe and well.
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I’m incredibly fortunate to have had a career that has allowed me to work from my home for the past 25 years or so. If you are new to working from home while sheltering in place (and, perhaps, also caring for children), you may be one of the thousands of people who observed that your dog was thrilled to have you home all the time. And he or she probably got more walks, too!
But as this issue goes to press, and states are beginning to reduce the sheltering in place restrictions, you may be worrying about how your dog is going to respond when you get to (have to?) go back to work or school. If this is you, we’ve got your back. Our Training Editor, Pat Miller, explains how to make sure your dog adjusts smoothly to your absence.
Food-filled Kongs and other food-dispensing toys are frequently prescribed by trainers – and, indeed, by us, too! – for helping dogs pass the time they have to spend alone. The idea is to give them something enjoyable to do, so they are less tempted to be destructive or worried about when you might return. But you should be aware that these food-filled toys and tools are not a panacea! Eileen Anderson describes some potential hazards associated with using food dispensers as dog-sitters.
I’d like to add something to the discussion. Pandemic quarantines aside, it’s always a good time to teach your dog to be comfortable and content at home without you. This goes double for newly adopted dogs and foster dogs, and it goes triple for puppies. Teaching your dog that he can relax when you leave him is a valuable life skill, and, since most of us can’t be with our dogs all day, every day – not even me, and I always work at home! – it enhances the quality of his life. You want him to feel safe and secure when you’re gone, don’t you?
I’m aware that a lot of us feel better when we’re with our dogs than when we are without them – and that some people depend on their dogs as emotional support animals. But even those people – perhaps especially those people! – should be sensitive to the idea that cultivating a dog’s emotional dependence on being with people is unfair, maybe even cruel.
I have a number of friends whose dogs suffer from separation anxiety, and that’s exactly the correct word, “suffer.” These dogs are not just uncomfortable, they are in absolute, being-branded-by-hot-coals agony when their owners leave.Their owners have spent countless hours working through training protocols meant to s-l-o-w-l-y improve the dogs’ ability to be left home alone withouttearing themselves or their homes apart. Every dog owner should strive to prevent this traumatic disorder from developing if they possibly can.
Though many people who have been sheltering in place for weeks report being confused as to the day of the week, I have been getting confused about the date every month during a certain time of the month for the past, oh, 30 years or so. For the past 23 years, the cause of this is the monthly publishing schedule of Whole Dog Journal, and prior to that, it was the monthly publishing schedule of a variety of other monthly magazines.
You see, in late April/early May, I have just sent the June issue to the printer. Shortly after I send the June issue files to the printer, they start processing the files, printing the magazine, sorting the mailing file, and ultimately mailing off the hard (printed) copies of the magazine to our subscribers. During the same time, the staff at our publishing headquarters is downloading my files and turning the pages and art I created into the online version of the magazine. In a few weeks, usually about a week before the start of the month named on the cover, all of the work at the printer and post office and publishing headquarters is done, and the subscribers get to enjoy the issue that I finished a month prior.
Again, back in that late April/early May zone, I’ve shipped the June issue and begun work on the July issue. It’s around this time that people start commenting on or asking me about articles that were in the May issue. Problem is, by this time, I have trouble recalling what was even in the June issue, much less the May issue! And if you ask me what month it is right now, I sometimes have trouble answering!
Returning to work? Prevent separation-related behaviors.
However, I wanted to let you know about a couple of articles that will appear in the June issue, even though it won’t be in your hands for another week or two. The articles address a concern that many people are worrying about right now, as many states are loosening shelter in place guidelines and many people are going back to work: helping dogs adjust to being home alone again. Our Training Editor, Pat Miller, has written an article that discusses how to recognize and prevent separation-related behaviors (SRBs) – including separation anxiety, which is one particularly serious type of SRB.
Lots of owners rely on food-stuffed Kongs, slow-feeder bowls, snuffle mats, and other food-dispensing toys to occupy their dogs and help them fill the time when they are gone. Eileen Anderson, a more recent addition to our stable of contributors (she wrote the in-depth discussion of apps that are sold as tools for desensitizing sound-sensitive dogs which appeared in the March issue), discusses food-dispensing toys and tools in the June issue. She notes that some of these tools do more to frustrate some dogs than they do to help them fill their time in an enjoyable way. Anderson discusses ways to make sure that the tools or toys you use actually do help your dog reach the food in a way that helps them feel rewarded, not annoyed.
If you live in a state that is reopening NOW, I’m sorry you have to wait for another week or so to access these articles! We started preparing them the minute we thought of the idea.
In a world where maintaining safe social distances is going to be the new normal for a while, there are a number of dog-related transactions between people that have been altered.
Covid-19 has changed things in the world of dogs
Veterinary hospitals are sending masked and gloved assistants out to parking lots to collect and return patients, and taking credit card payments over the phone from the parking lot; no clients enter the veterinary hospitals. I’m hearing about daycare providers and groomers who are building “airlock” entrances, where clients enter a small enclosure with their dogs, closing a gate behind them, take off their dogs’ collars or harnesses, open a gate and let the dog into another small enclosure; the dog is retrieved from the other side of the second enclosure by a staff member, who uses the facility’s own slip lead on the dog. In this way, the people never come into contact with each other.
Dog-training classes have moved to Zoom and other live-streaming platforms for the time being; when classes can take place in person again, the trainers I know plan to reduce their class sizes by half in order to maintain safer distances between students. This is a tough one, because it also effectively cuts the trainer’s income in half – but trainers I know who teach indoors say it’s going to be necessary in order to keep students farther apart.
Placing a litter of puppies while maintaining social distancing
My friend fostered a litter of 10 puppies for my local shelter recently (I played a backup role). When it came time for the puppies to meet prospective adopters, the shelter made appointments with interested people. My friend and I transported the pups to the back side of the shelter and placed them in an outdoor exercise area; the shelter staff met the prospective adopters outside. It took more than two weeks to get the whole litter placed – a lot longer than just allowing people to come to the shelter and meet the whole litter, but it controlled the interactions in a safe way.
After the litter of pups had spay/neuter surgery, I kept the three girls at my house and my friend kept the boys at hers; it’s too hard for the girls’ incisions to heal nicely when they are wrestling with that many siblings. And as it turned out, given the slow pace of the adoption appointments, I had one girl for more than two weeks. She quickly got dubbed “Woody Junior,” since she looked just like his Mini-Me. Her color and markings were so similar to Woody’s. I had to keep telling people that Woody has been neutered since he was her age! He’s not the dad!
Woody and the foster pup
A very special reunion with my favorite foster puppy ever
As it turned out, a very special family saw photos of this puppy, the last to be available for adoption, on the WDJ Instagram page (rather than on the shelter website). I was contacted by the family who adopted Odin, the foster puppy from the litter of “mange puppies” I fostered a year ago. Remember Odin? He was the one who injured his eye, and eventually, had to have it removed; I had him with me for about six or seven months. I was SO happy that they contacted me directly to ask if she was available. We set up a meeting date, and they drove from a good distance to meet her – again, outdoors, safe distances, etc.
When they arrived, I got to see Odin again! I thought I would cry like a baby when I saw him – my favorite foster ever, I very nearly kept him – but he was actually too busy with greeting his buddy Woody to bother very much with me. Woody was happy to see Odin – they greeted each other with excitement – but then Woody’s attention was almost immediately drawn away from Odin by Odin’s boy, Adam, who picked up Woody’s ball and threw it. Woody is a fetch addict; once started, he’s hard to stop. And boys seem to LOVE that. Soon, the three boys (Odin, Woody and Adam) were off playing fetch together, complete with Odin occasionally stealing the ball and needing to be chased down to get it back.
Woody, Odin, and the foster pup
The rest of the family was able to meet and greet the pup while the boys romped, and after a fairly short visit, they loaded her in their car and took her home. Again, no tears; I was so happy to see them all together. They’ve done such a nice job with Odin, I know they will take good care of Woody’s little Mini-Me.
Guide Dogs of America’s drive-through puppy pick up experience
Given the slow pace of these 10 puppy placements, I laughed and laughed when I heard that one of WDJ’s contributors, Stephanie Colman, distributed 13 – THIRTEEN! – puppies to their new homes in a single afternoon. Stephanie is the puppy program coordinator for Guide Dogs of America (GDA), based in Sylmar, California.
GDA breeds, raises, and trains guide dogs for people who are blind and visually impaired, as well as PTSD dogs for military veterans, children with autism, and facility dogs. The dogs are trained through its service dog branch, Tender Loving Canines Assistance Dogs, a prison training program where carefully chosen inmates are taught how to successfully raise a puppy and teach more than 30 service dog behaviors. GDA places about 60 guide dogs per year. It costs more than $48,000 to breed, raise, and train each dog, and dogs are matched to clients throughout the U.S. and Canada at no cost to the clients.
An important part of Stephanie’s job is to recruit and “train” families who want to be puppy raisers for GDA’s guide dog program. The families receive their pups when they are about 8 weeks old, and they keep them until the pups are about 15 to 18 months old. Scheduling all those families to pick up their pups from GDA’s Sylmar campus is also part of Stephanie’s job, and it was made a little more challenging this year, given the need to maintain safe social distancing. So Stephanie conceived a “drive through puppy pick up” experience, successfully scheduling 13 different families to come to the GDA campus, where they were handed their foster puppy through the car window by a masked and gloved puppy technician. Three different local television news stations covered the event! Here is a link to one station’s coverage.
I’ll have to remember this next time I am involved with placing a large litter!
If you live in Southern California and are interested in being a puppy raising family, GDA is hosting a free, online information session on Saturday, May 16. To learn more, visit www.guidedogsofamerica.org or call the puppy department at 818-833-6447.
Old-fashioned training (the kind I grew up with) was mostly “don’t do stuff” – as in “Sit, Stay, Behave!” – where “Behave” meant “Don’t do anything.” As a force free trainer, I love that now we focus on training dogs to do rather than don’t-do. Today, for our dogs, “Behave” means “Do a behavior.” Ironic, then, that one of my most-used, and most useful cues, is “Wait!”
In my dogs’ world, “Stay” means “Stay in the exact position I left you in until I release you,” while “Wait” means “Pause for a bit.” I do still sometimes give a release with Wait, but it’s far less formal than a Stay.
I use Wait multiple times a day. It’s literally a life-saver. “Wait” when I open the car door so you don’t jump out into traffic. “Wait” at the door while I walk out – you’re not coming this time. “Wait” at the top of the stairs while I go first so you don’t trip me, causing me to fall. “Wait” while we’re hiking and you spot a deer or rabbit, so you pause and I can call you back to me and you don’t get lost chasing prey off into the woods.
With your dog sitting, facing you, hold her bowl at chest level (with food in it, topped with tasty treats!) and say “Wait.”
Lower the food bowl toward the floor two inches. If your dog stays sitting, click your clicker (or use a verbal marker) raise the bowl back up again, and feed her a treat from the bowl. If she gets up, say “Oops” and ask her to sit again. If she remains in place, lower the bowl two inches again, mark (click), raise the bowl, and treat.
Repeat this step several times until she consistently remains sitting as you lower the bowl. Mark and treat each time.
Gradually move the bowl closer to the floor with succeeding repetitions until you can place it on the floor two feet away from her and pick it back up without her getting up or trying to eat it.
Finally, place the bowl on the floor and say a release cue like “Free!” to tell her to eat.
A really helpful thing about teaching this behavior is that you have at least one built-in daily training session (possibly two, since many of us feed our dogs twice a day).
How to Teach Your Dog to Wait at the Door
When your dog is solid with Wait at her bowl, you’re ready to generalize the behavior. The next easy place to practice Wait is at the door. Start with your dog sitting or standing – whichever you prefer. (I prefer Sit.)
Say “Wait” in a cheerful tone of voice. Begin to open the door just slightly. If your dog starts to go out, say, “Oops!” and close the door (be sure she won’t get caught by the door!). Say “Wait” and try opening the door again. If she stays in place, close the door mark and release. Repeat several times.
When your dog consistently doesn’t move for a tiny crack-in-the-door opening, gradually open it wider with each trial, a little bit at a time. Mark and treat each time, but sometimes repeat another Wait without releasing.
Practice cueing your dog to Wait, and opening the door until you can open it completely and she stays in place. Once she’s able to Wait consistently with the door wide open, take one step out. Return, close the door, mark and release.
Gradually increase the time the door is open while your dog is still waiting. Sometimes step out and return, sometimes walk out and invite her to come with you, sometimes walk out and close the door leaving her inside (this will be an auto-release cue).
Practice Wait every time you head out, even if she’s going to come with you. Consistency is the key to helping your dog learn quickly!
How to Teach Your Dog to Wait on a Walk
To generalize further, practice with your dog on leash. As you’re walking, say, “Wait,” take a few more slow steps and stop. If your dog stops, mark and treat, and continue walking. If your dog continues moving after you stop, let her walk on. When she stops at the end of the leash, mark and treat, and walk on. She should quickly learn to stop when you say “Wait.”
Barbara Dobbins, my friend and frequent contributor to WDJ,
once wrote a post
for this space that described how her senior Border Collie, Daisy, had earned a
“permanent hall pass” for jumping up on the counter to help herself to any food
that had been left out. Two years into cancer treatment, Dobbins was happy that
Daisy had an appetite! She also described other dogs she knew whose owners had
decided to look the other way when the dogs did naughty things.
Otto is definitely showing some signs of aging
At 12 ½ years, my senior dog, Otto, has seemingly decided he
should get a pass, too. My husband and I are not sure whether he’s getting a
little senile, or simply emboldened by the plethora of as-yet uneducated foster
puppies that have been trampling the landscaping and chewing drip-irrigation
lines (or, alternatively, whining in a crate), or some combination of these
things. Whatever the cause, the fact is that his behavior has begun to
deteriorate just a bit.
Don’t get me wrong; he’s still a very, very good dog! But,
adolescent misadventures aside, he’s always been near perfect – like the kid
who sits in the front row and always – ALWAYS – has his hand up in class. If he
hears me telling any other dog to “sit” or “down” or “come here,” he’ll pop up
out of a dead sleep and run over to prove that he can perform those behaviors
better and faster than the other dog can. So it’s a bit of a shock to have him
completely blow me off when I call him after hearing him roar his terrible roar
at the FedEx truck that’s passing by our house, and see him go tearing down the
fence line, determined to chase the truck to the very edge of our property. How
do I know he actually heard me and decided not to leave the chase? Because I
could see him look over his shoulder and hesitate just a moment, and then
decide, “Oh forget it, she’s too far away.”
Otto’s sudden interest in playing fetch
He’s also apparently decided that enough is enough when it
comes to the relentless fetching of our younger dog, Woody – one of those dogs
who would likely fetch until his feet turn bloody or until he passes out from
heat exhaustion. If Otto is by himself, he will fetch a time or two, and then,
chase the ball or other fetch item a third time, but just as he’s about to
reach the fetch item, seemingly catch a whiff of some mystery aroma he just HAS
to check out! “Excuse me, Mom, I think there was a raccoon on our lawn four
nights ago, I should investigate.” In other words, he’s never been all that
into fetching. But suddenly, he’s started to get very competitive when Woody is
fetching.
He’s not nearly as fast or as coordinated as Woody, but he’s
started to insert himself into any session of fetch, trying to beat Woody to
any throw where that seems likely – which, because Woody never watches the
ball, but just takes off running in the most likely direction, and Otto
actually visually tracks the ball, Otto can get to more of the throws than he
ought to be able to at his age. He also will try to intercept Woody on his way
back to me with the ball and forcibly take the ball from him! Thank goodness,
even though Woody is 4 ½ years old, he is still very submissive in the face of
Otto’s “attacks.” He doesn’t quite give in, but he has not yet once tried to
retaliate, either; he either tries to outmaneuver the older dog, or will stop
and hunker down in a submissive pose, holding the ball tightly in his mouth and
squinting his eyes tightly shut as Otto bites his face, trying to get the ball.
“Sorry, man, I just can’t let go!”
Does Otto actually want to play fetch himself? Is he jealous
of the attention that Woody gets for fetching? It seems that he just wants the
ball; if he gets it, he just leaves with it! “Ha! That stupid game is over!” he
seems to say. And, yes, I’ve tried having two balls on site when we are
playing, so if Otto steals one, Woody and I can play on . . . Otto will drop
whichever one we let him have and come in pursuit of the “active” ball in the
game, so lately I’ve been putting him in the house when Woody needs a good,
long session to work off some energy. I don’t want him to get hurt trying to
overdo the fetching heroics!
It’s just weird, because he used to just watch Woody
fetching like, “Yuck! What an idiot!” And now he’s like, “I have to STOP this!”
Got the ball and the game is over…
Other changes in Otto’s behavior
Also new: For most of his life, even if he didn’t want to do
something, like, suffer through a bath in the yard with a hose, he would come
when I called him. Slowly, sadly, but he would come (and he would get thanked,
rewarded, and fussed over). Now, if he sees a hose and thinks a bath might be
in the works, he just leaves, even if I’m calling him. “Nope! Just… nope!” He
thinks – actually, he knows – I’m
just not going to make him suffer through a hose bath anymore if he doesn’t
want one.
But the biggest surprise came a few days ago, when my
husband left his dinner unattended on the coffee table for a minute, and Otto
just started helping himself to the food. WHAT?! He’s NEVER been a
counter-surfer or helped himself to food like that before, which made both my
husband and I wonder if this is a bit of dementia creeping in. He actually
looked a bit surprised when both my husband and I, shocked at the same time,
yelled “Hey!” I told my husband, we have to treat him more like a puppy again;
we can’t take it for granted anymore that he knows all the house rules and will
follow them.
While I’m happy to issue him that “permanent
hall pass,” and will likely just go ahead and let him have the rest of any
burrito he manages to steal from now on, part of me is a little sad at these
age-related behavior changes. Dogs just don’t live long enough! We’ll cherish
all the time we have together, a little more now.
The litter of 10 pups that my good friend was fostering for
our local shelter at her home had a spay/neuter surgery date, and I was
relieved. Surgeries had been cancelled for weeks, and while the pups could have been adopted out and brought
back later for surgery, the shelter director instead decided to postpone the
adoptions until a plan could be made to arrange surgery under covid-safe
conditions. (Getting folks to bring 10 puppies back to the shelter on a given
date is impossible, especially when they get adopted by families who may live
several hours from here in every direction.)
Anyway, surgery was planned for a Thursday and my friend and
I made a plan that the three girl pups would recover at my house, and she’d
keep the boy pups corralled at hers. And the following Monday, we’d release the
puppies’ portraits on the shelter’s Facebook page and the shelter would make
appointments with people who were interested in adopting. We would bring the
selected puppies to the shelter for outdoor “meet and greet” appointments and
pick them up afterward if they didn’t get adopted.
It took about two weeks to get them all adopted, given the more arduous process of emails and phone calls and appointments, but they all did get adopted. One of the girls was the last to go, so all in all, I had three, then two, then one girl puppy here with me for about two weeks. And boy, oh boy, was it an in-depth refresher course in potty training.
A simple process
I tell people ALL THE TIME that potty training is simple,
and it is. You take them outside CONSTANTLY, and you walk around with them and
you watch them. And when they pee, you praise and give them a treat. Then you
can bring them inside for about five minutes of scrutiny-free time and
breakfast. But right after breakfast, you are all outside again, walking
around, looking for that poop! And when that happens, you praise and give them
a treat, and then you can bring them inside again, for maybe 10-15 minutes of
scrutiny-free time, before you need to go out again for another pee.
You take them out after every nap. You take them out after
every meal. You take them out after every play session ends. You take them out
if it’s been more than 15 minutes since they last “went”! Simple! Not easy!
And what if they don’t “go”? Well, the smart thing to do is
to pop them into a crate, because very few puppies will potty in a crate, so
you can make sure that they don’t have a chance to “make a mistake” and pee or
poop indoors, where you don’t want them to while you are not paying attention.
Because no one can watch them every minute, even while sheltering in place! And
if they potty in the house (or in your home office), they have just effectively
been reinforced for doing so; it feels good to relieve the fullness of your
bladder! And every mistake seems to build on itself; it’s far easier to just
make darn sure a mistake doesn’t happen. In my experience, if you can get
through three days of not letting them make even ONE mistake indoors, you’re
pretty much home free with the potty training. They will want to go outdoors to
potty and get right to business when you take them outside.
What not to do
What about the old “rub their nose in it” business? It’s
poppycock. It makes them afraid of you, they don’t understand why you’ve
grabbed them and have attacked them and are being gross. It’s a terrific way to
induce a lifelong fear of humans, especially if there is poop or pee around,
and to make them want to hide from you when they do go (so they become
reluctant to go anywhere, even outdoors, near you; instead, you may find pee
spots in closets and poop under your bed).
It can be effective, if you see a puppy start to squat, to
run and grab the pup and carry them outside quickly – not in a way that scares
the puppy, just interrupts her long enough so that she has some left to finish
outside, where you can praise her. Being whisked outside isn’t all that
comfortable, and it may be a little alarming – hopefully, just enough to
interrupt her and not scare her, and what she remembers is the praise and maybe
a treat for finishing outside. Simple! Not easy!
It’s not quite as easy as it sounds
I had three pups for six days, two pups for three more days, and one pup for seven more days; call it 31 total puppy days. My record? Not good. I ended the period with three pee puddles in my office, and probably six or seven in my house. (No poops indoors, however.) My mistake, EVERY time! Going over the 15-minute limit, when I should have either taken the pup/s outside or put them in a crate. I’d start making myself a sandwich for lunch, let the puppy come in, get interrupted by a phone call and ACK! see the pup squatting on the far side of the kitchen. Again and again! It’s so hard to pay such good attention for very long! And, though this seems backward, I had more success on the three-puppy and two-puppy days than I did on the one-puppy days. You can’t take your eyes off three pups or two pups; they are just capable of way more mayhem than one, not just potty stuff but also shoes, cords, paperwork, plants in the garden, rock-chewing, you name it. But one puppy chewing a chewy on her bed is easy to forget, until you hear a trickling sound. Argh! But a look at the clock says you’ve been working on the computer for an hour straight; she was overdue!
Anyway, when people complain about potty training, I don’t
think I’m usually very sympathetic, because I feel like the whole process is
So. Very. Simple! But I forgot that paying such close attention is just NOT
easy!
There are any number of third-rail topics that occasionally electrify the conversationally unwary dog owner: Grains or grain-free? Dewclaw removal, cropped ears and tails, or leave well be? Raw or cooked? Flat collars or choke, pinch, or electronic?
But dog owners who came of age in the decades before spay/neuter practices became de riguer are sometimes shocked by the charge, increasingly popular, that sterilizing a dog is tantamount to condemning him or her to a shorter or more painful life. After all, if you are a respectable dog owner, nearly your entire adulthood may have been spent judging people with reproductively intact dogs – especially intact mixed-breed dogs – as supremely irresponsible. What gives? Why the reversal?
Veterinary practitioners have long dithered about what might be the “best” time in a dog’s life to undergo spay/neuter surgery, and some have theorized that coming to maturation without the benefit of secondary sexual hormones might possibly have deleterious effects on health. There have even been small studies looking for such. But there wasn’t any really impactful data that made the average dog owner question the wisdom of spay/neuter until a 2013 study (Torres et al) out of the University of California – Davis that found a link between neutering and the risk of certain cancers and joint disease in Golden Retrievers.
Since then, there has been a steady trickle of studies (with more on the immediate publication horizon) that examine some aspect or another of canine health and how it may be affected by spay/neuter – and the effect of this unending drip of evidence has been torture for many dog owners. We thought we were doing the right thing by sterilizing our dogs!
But is it really so bad to subject dogs to spay/neuter? Many of the studies that people cite to support their claims that the practice is unhealthy for dogs are based on statistically tiny samples, or dogs of a single breed. Extrapolating the results of highly limited studies to assert that spay/neuter is deleterious to all dogs is quite a reach.
To help you understand the modern claims that spay/neuter is bad for dogs, we’ve looked at dozens of studies examining some aspect of the possible health effects of gonadectomy – the removal of the dog’s gonads (sex organs, the testes in males and the ovaries in females). We’ll describe the evidence and discuss what it all means – but here is a little hint about our conclusions: You are still going to have to make your own choice about what’s “best” for you and your dog. And if your dog is already gonadectomized, that’s okay! The evidence is not so cut-and-dried as to support any across-the-board recommendations for all dogs.
A Note About Terminology
The term “neuter” can be used for both male and female dogs, though it is more commonly used to refer to the process of castration (removal of testicles) in male dogs. Castration is specific to males, as spay is to females.
Spay/neuter refers generally to the removal of the gonads (the male’s testes and the female’s ovaries); that is more accurately called a gonadectomy – but it should be noted that while the female’s uterus and uterine horns are not gonads, they are also removed in spay surgery. Confusingly, “spay” sometimes is used to refer to a hysterectomy – removal of only the uterus and uterine horns. Removal of the ovaries (sparing the uterus and uterine horns) is referred to as ovariectomy.
“Sterilization” is another generic term that is frequently used, but it can refer to a process that induces infertility without gonadectomy.
“Desexing” is a term that has gained popularity in research literature. It’s defined as castration or spaying an animal, but the phrase evokes strong negative connotations for many people, who may fear it refers to somehow removing the biological sex of a dog; it doesn’t!
Since alternative methods of preventing reproduction are not common yet in the United States, almost all of the research looks at dogs that have undergone spay (removal of all reproductive organs) or castration; we will use the terms “spay/neuter” and “gonadectomy” interchangeably.
There are other common terms that refer to the age of gonadectomy. “Early age” or “prepubertal” spay/neuter indicates dogs who have undergone gonadectomy prior to six months of age. “Pediatric” spay/neuter surgery is usually defined as that which occurs between 6 and 16 weeks of age.
WHAT DO GONADS DO?
Before we look at the studies that examine the effects of gonadectomy, it’s helpful to understand what functions the gonads have in addition to reproduction.
Normal male and female dogs each have a pair of gonads.
The male gonads – the testes – reside in the scrotum and produce the male reproductive cells (spermatozoa, sperm for short) as well as androgen hormones that promote male characteristics.
Sperm cells are formed in the seminiferous tubules in the testes; in between these tubules are groups of endocrine cells, called interstitial cells, which produce androgens in response to luteinizing hormone (LH, sometimes referred to as interstitial cell stimulating hormone [ICSH]) secreted from the anterior pituitary gland located in the brain.
The principal androgen produced is testosterone, which is responsible for the development of the male reproductive system and secondary male sex characteristics, such as male body shape and sexual behavior. Testosterone is a steroid hormone that has an overall anabolic effect on the body, promoting protein synthesis and growth of tissues, encouraging the growth of muscle mass and strength, increasing bone density and strength, stimulating linear growth, and supporting bone maturation – all of which results in the larger size and weight of male dogs compared to females of the same breed.
Testosterone also stimulates development of the penis at puberty, the functioning of the prostate (a male accessory sex gland), and activation of sperm formation. Testosterone reaches the highest level in male dogs around 6 to 12 months of age and then it begins to plateau. As soon as a male dog is castrated, testosterone production ceases.
The ovaries are the female gonads, producing the ova (reproductive cells) and the female hormones estrogen (a compound term for the estrus-producing hormones estradiol, estriol, and estrone) and progestin.
Estrogens are produced by the cells of the ovarian follicles and are responsible for female secondary sex characteristic development, contributing to the maturation of the reproductive organs, control of the reproductive system, and for the behavioral and physical changes that occur in preparation for breeding.
Progestins, and in particular progesterone, are produced by the corpus luteum, a mass of cells that develops from the empty follicle after ovulation; they help prepare the uterus for implantation of the fertilized egg, maintain pregnancy, and promote the development of the mammary glands.
The adult male dog’s testes produce spermatozoa and hormones continuously; in contast, adult female canines produce reproductive cells in cycles, occurring about once every six months.
The estrous cycle is controlled by follicle stimulating hormone (FSH) and luteinizing hormone (LH) from the anterior pituitary gland. Coinciding with this short period of ovulation, estrogen levels rise, followed by a rise in progesterone levels. After ovulation, progesterone levels remain high for several weeks, even if the dog has not become pregnant. When a female dog is not in estrus, her estrogen and progesterone levels are low.
In addition to these reproduction-based tasks, the dog’s hormones function as chemical messengers with far-reaching and diverse tasks in the body – and likely include some that have yet to be identified. It should not be surprising, then, that researchers studying the effects of gonadectomy on dogs keep coming up with results that require further exploration.
A brief history of spay/neuter
Early in the 20th century United States, the majority of dogs never saw a veterinarian. Very few were subjected to a procedure that would prevent them from reproducing. (If they were, spays were often performed at 3 to 6 months of age and castration as early as four weeks!)
Many pet dogs were allowed to roam and reproduce willy nilly until the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the stray dog population grew large enough to pose problems in human society, including dog bites, the fear of rabies, and the cost of public animal control agencies needed to deal with dogs and dog-related hazards to human health.
By the early ’70s, animal control agencies were impounding millions of dogs every year, and they euthanized most of them. In a 1973 survey of shelters, the Humane Society of the United States (HSUS) estimated that a staggering 13.5 million dogs and cats were euthanized nationwide by shelters. That number of euthanized animals finally sparked enough outrage for society to begin trying to solve the problem.
It was recognized from the outset that efforts to prevent dogs from reproducing would be a critically important weapon in the war on pet overpopulation, with spay/neuter surgery being the most common method of sterilization for dogs.
Prior to this time, in the uncommon event that a veterinarian recommended the procedure to a dog owner, it was presented as a convenience – a way to reduce behaviors the many owners found problematic, such as straying – as well as a way to prevent unwanted puppies. Starting in the mid 1970s, however, dog owners were encouraged to take credit for promoting the well-being of the overall canine population when their dog’s potential for contributing to the homeless dog population had been eliminated.
Over the next four decades, the practice of routine spay/neuter surgery became the societal norm in this country. An estimated 85% of companion dogs in the U.S. have undergone elective gonadectomy. According to the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA), there are currently no state or federal laws requiring gonadectomy of all dogs in the U.S., and the AVMA “does not support regulations or legislation mandating spay/neuter of privately owned, non-shelter dogs and cats.” Some states have proposed mandatory gonadectomy laws, though none have been successful. There are, however, cities and other local governments that have proposed and adopted ordinances regarding spay/neuter laws. Many municipalities require higher licensing fees for intact dogs, sterilization for dogs deemed vicious or dangerous, as well as requiring gonadectomies for all shelter animals prior to release.
Where do things stand today? No statistics are available to prove the rate of spay/neuter compliance is declining, yet conversations among dog owners today demonstrate an increased awareness of the potential detrimental effects of the procedure. No mention of spay/neuter practices can be made online or in print without commentary from owners who have been convinced by whatever critical literature they’ve encountered (or their personal experiences) that spay/neuter is unmistakably and unambiguously harmful.
We’re not that sure.
Understanding history can guide our present day decisions. No one wants to return to a world where more than 13 million dogs are being put to death in shelters annually, and we know that not all dog owners are capable of preventing their intact dogs from reproducing. As history marches on, we look forward to studies that will enable researchers to make more targeted recommendations, so that any owner can find information that will prevent her from choosing a course of action that will hurt her dog more than it helps the overall dog population.
LOOKING AT THE SPAY/NEUTER LITERATURE
The following is an overview of the major areas of concern regarding the possible adverse health effects of canine spay/neuter and findings from relevant studies. The studies mentioned in the text below (and referenced completely on page 22) are some of the most frequently cited in discussions in veterinary literature.
Lifespan
Overall it appears that spay/neuter is associated with an increased life-span. However, be aware that most of the studies that concluded this looked only at gonadectomy (as opposed to other methods of sterilization) and usually did not take into account the age of spay/neuter.
Furthermore, the occurrence of having spay/neuter performed may contribute to an increased likelihood of better husbandry and veterinary care, which theoretically has a positive effect on life expectancy.
In the retrospective study by Hoffman et al (2013), the records of more than 40,000 sterilized and intact domestic dogs listed in the Veterinary Medical Database (a collection of data from veterinary teaching hospitals) were analyzed for associations between gonadectomy and lifespans and causes of death. It was found that sterilized dogs lived on average 1.5 years longer than intact dogs and life expectancy increased by 13.8 percent in males and 26.3 percent in females.
Studies have found that intact dogs are more likely to be relinquished than those that have undergone spay or neuter.
The study also found that intact dogs were more likely to die of infectious disease, trauma, vascular disease, and degenerative disease, and sterilized dogs were more likely to die of neoplasia (including an increased likelihood of transitional cell carcinoma, osteosarcoma, lymphoma, and mast cell cancers) and immune-mediated diseases. No causal relationship was found; note that gonadectomized dogs live longer and cancer is more prevalent in older dogs.
The dataset did not include at what age a dog was spayed or neutered, or whether a dog had reproduced prior to gonadectomy.
The Hoffman study findings were supported by Banfield’s State of Pet Health 2013 Report, which looked at data from Banfield facilities across the nation and included 2.2 million dogs.
Orthopedic Concerns
The literature review by Houlihan (2017) looks at the research on musculoskeletal diseases and possible associations with spay/neuter. Several studies have found gonadectomy to be a risk factor for development of cruciate ligament disease (CLD) and hip dysplasia (HD) in both male and female dogs.
HD has a high genetic component but is recognized as a multifactorial condition. Incidence of CLD tends to occur in young, active, large breed dogs from degenerative or traumatic causes, but it has also been correlated to aging, conformational abnormalities, and immune-mediated joint issues.
One focus for recent research is the assessment of the tibial plateau angle (TPA) – the slope at the top of the tibia. The steeper the TPA, the more stress on the ligament resulting in an increase in risk for CLD. Studies have demonstrated that the TPA is steeper in dogs that undergo gonadectomy before the closure of the tibial growth plates. The risk, however, may have a breed predisposition: Hart et al (2014) found that CLD risk increased in Golden Retrievers who were gonadectomized between the ages 6 and 11 months, but the risk for Labrador Retrievers did not increase when undergoing gonadectomy at the same age.
In a study of 759 client-owned Golden Retrievers, Torres et al (2013) looked at the effects of spay/neuter on joint disorders and cancer. The authors state, “An important point to make is that the results of this study, being breed-specific, with regard to the effects of early and late neutering, cannot be extrapolated to other breeds, or dogs in general.”
It is well documented that both testosterone and estrogen play an important role in the growth and maturation of bones. A decrease in bone density in spayed Beagles has been described in one study, but these results have yet to be reproduced in subsequent studies.
One heightened concern is whether gonadectomy affects the closure of growth plates (physes). Salmeri et al (1991) found that overall growth rates appear to be unaffected by spay/neuter, although prepubertal gonadectomy has been associated with delayed closure, resulting in lengthening of associated limb bones. While this can be statistically relevant, it is not readily visible or determined to be clinically relevant.
The age at which growth plates close is dependent on breed, genetic factors and disorders, physiological conditions, disease, and nutritional conditions (unbalanced or incomplete diets can result in growth abnormalities). Certain categories of breeds, such as working, herding, and sporting breeds, show greater susceptibility to orthopedic disorders in general; specifically dogs having large stature or great substance are at a greater risk for hip and elbow dysplasia (Oberbauer et al, 2019).
Spain et al (2004) found no specific correlation between age at spay/neuter and incidence rates of arthritis or long bone fractures, including physeal fractures. This retrospective study at the Erie County (New York) SPCA looked at 1,842 dogs who underwent spay or neuter surgery between 6 weeks and 12 months of age. Dogs who had the procedure before 5.5 months of age were found to have a higher incidence (6.7%) of hip dysplasia and were diagnosed at an earlier age when compared to dogs undergoing the procedure at the age of 5.5 months or older (4.7%).
However, those dogs who had spay/neuter surgery when they were older than 5.5 months were three times more likely to be euthanized due to hip dysplasia than those who had surgery when they were younger. This suggests that early gonadectomy may be associated with a less severe form of HD.
Estrogen has a number of metabolic functions and its effect on muscle, tendons, and ligaments has become the focus of more research. Chidi-Ogbolu and Baar (2019) found that, while estrogen improves muscle mass and strength and increases the collagen content of connective tissues, it decreases stiffness in tendons and ligaments, which can directly affect performance and injury rates. (Risk of cranial cruciate ligament [CCL]injuryappears to increase with spay/neuter across the general dog population as well as in the individual breeds studied.)
Kustriz (2007) did not find any studies at that time that would implicate changes in physeal closure with subsequent asynchrony of long bone growth and abnormalities in joint formation as a cause of CCL rupture in dogs.
Study Considerations
When you read any study (or read about any study) that presents information about the benefits or hazards of spay/neuter, it’s important to try to identify and keep the limitations of the study firmly in mind. Not all study conclusions will be relevant to all dogs.
Most of the research conducted on the health effects of spay/neuter is retrospective; researchers examine past and present medical records for a given population of dogs and look for patterns and trends in order to develop hypotheses. These retrospective studies can reveal only associations; some may be confounding while others are instructive and meaningful.
It’s challenging to evaluate the effects of spay/neuter and the resultant loss of hormones on canine health. The multifactorial nature of many diseases can interfere with definitive determination of causation. In humans, for example, areas of investigation related to cancer development include such factors as age, gender, ethnicity, diet, occupation, and environment, resulting in a complex composite of potential health impacts. Rarely are factors like these taken into account in veterinary studies, but research is beginning to expand to include these considerations.
When considering a study’s conclusions, don’t forget to evaluate overall incidence rates for diseases that are of concern. If an overall rate is rare or low, and the likelihood is shown by a study to increase with spay/neuter, the overall risk is going to remain rare or low. Kustritz (2007) categorized 11 different canine conditions based on their incidence rates of rare, low, moderate, or high. Those conditions considered high (mammary neoplasia, pyometra, benign prostatic hypertrophy), along with one in the moderate category (testicular tumors), all experienced a decrease in impact when gonadectomized. The conditions rated rare (transitional cell carcinoma), low (prostatic tumors, osteosarcoma, hemangiosarcoma, cruciate ligament disease, hypothyroidism), and moderate (urinary incontinence) have all been shown to increase with spay/neuter, but even with an increase, that risk continues to be small overall.
Biases can affect the value of a research study, even if it is unintentional. Recall bias can occur with studies that ask owners to provide information; the accuracy of owners’ reports about their dogs can be highly problematic. Selection bias occurs when the selection of a group for study does not achieve proper randomization. Many studies are affected by this bias because the datasets are often obtained from records at veterinary teaching/referral hospitals. This leaves out a percentage of dogs from the general population that don’t have their diseases brought to veterinary attention (which also skews incidence rates of diseases, as they are not reported). Furthermore, dogs who are treated at these hospitals are apt to be from upper- and middle-income owners and tend to have conditions that are treatable to some extent.
Finally, often studies only include one breed of dog, resulting in a breed bias; studies of this type cannot be extrapolated to all breeds, but they sometimes provide useful information.
Behavior
Behavior is the result of a complex interaction between genetics and environment. It has been noted that spay/neuter can mitigate some behaviors – and that’s about as far as the data can take you. The few effects that have been studied and found to be statistically relevant have generally been positive.
Studies generally report that spay/neuter reduces libido and decreases the associated reproductive behaviors. Spayed females tend not to engage in any of the behaviors associated with estrus and therefore do not seek out breeding opportunities.
Neutered males tend to show a decrease in roaming, intermale aggression, mounting, and urine-marking behaviors. There is consistent evidence that the frequency of urine marking does not depend on the age at gonadectomy.
Kustritz (2007) reported that neither reproductive status nor age at the time of spay/neuter has been found to affect the trainability of working dogs.
According to Duffy and Serpell (2006), behavioral changes are difficult to measure; the parameters with which they are measured are too subjective. Breed, sex, and individual differences need to be considered when examining the manifestation of behavioral changes following spay/neuter. As a result, there is not a clear consensus on what the real effects are.
Furthermore, “interpretation of the literature related to behavioral changes is further complicated by various definitions of aggression” (Houlihan, 2017); as a result, evidence for the influence of gonadectomy on aggressive behavior is inconsistent and sometimes contradictory.
Kustritz (2007) reported that several studies showed an increase among female dogs of heightened reactivity toward humans following spay. It is hypothesized that this may be due to a decrease in estrogen and oxytocin levels. Additionally, testosterone has been shown to increase confidence; this may be useful for timid dogs, but may not be for overconfident ones.
Reproductive System
Spay surgery has been shown to have a beneficial effect on life-limiting diseases in female dogs. It not only eliminates the risk of pyometra and uterine and ovarian cancers, but also reduces the risk of mammary cancer.
Research into the influence of spaying on mammary cancer has been extensive. Dorn et al (1968) found that there is strong evidence that ovarian hormones are essential for the development of most cases of mammary cancer, so removal of the ovaries decreases this risk. Subsequent studies have continued to support the protective effect of early spay.
The greatest benefit occurs if spay takes place before the first estrus; the reported rates are .05% if before estrus, 8% if performed after the first estrus, increasing to 26% after second estrus cycle (Schneider et al, 1969). Mammary cancer rates increase greatly with age in dogs. Purebred dogs have been shown to have two times the rate of mammary cancer when compared to mixed-breed dogs of the same age. The incidence rate of mammary neoplasia is estimated to be about 3.4%, with about 50% being benign fibroadenomas and 50% malignant adenocarcinomas.
Castration eradicates the risk of testicular cancer (as the testes are removed) in males. Castration also reduces the risk of age-related prostate issues, benign prostatic hyperplasia (common but not generally life-limiting), and perianal adenomas.
Several studies that show testicular neoplasia is common in older (mean age of 10 years) intact male dogs; however, metastasis is uncommon and castration at time of diagnosis is curative. Benign prostatic hypertrophy is also common in intact male dogs (63.4% in one study). It tends to manifest in 50% of dogs aged 2-3 years, and in 75-80% by age 6. Castration results in a decrease in prostate size resulting in a reduction of clinical signs (Kustritz, 2007).
Cancer
The literature review by Urfer and Kaeberlein (2019) reports that there are many studies that provide evidence for an increase in risk for cancer in dogs of both sexes that have undergone gonadectomy. Smith (2014) summarized that male dogs were at an increased risk after castration for developing cardiac tumors, osteosarcoma, prostatic tumors, transitional cell carcinoma, and lymphoma, while the risk decreased for testicular cancer.
In female dogs, there was an increased risk post-spay of cardiac tumors, cardiac and splenic hemangiosarcoma, osteosarcoma, mast cell tumors, and lymphoma, while the risk decreased for ovarian, uterine, and mammary cancers.
Many of the studies did not take age into account – which is arguably the most important factor for tumor development. However, when the studies did take age into account, increased age was found to be a higher risk factor than spay/neuter.
It’s been said that cancer is, ultimately, the result of failed immune surveillance. It is suspected, but not yet proven, that cancer-hunting immune cells depend to some extent on signals from the sex hormones to perform this surveillance. Researchers have speculated that the cancer-hunting immune cells may be less effective at this task in gonadectomized dogs due to the lack of hormonal signalling.
In the breed-specific retrospective study by Kent et al (2018), the timing of spay/neuter was not available for most of the Golden Retrievers. While the study assessed cancer as a cause of death, the association of hormonal exposure on lifespan or the risk of death by cancer couldn’t be evaluated, nor was it part of the evaluation for the risk of cancer development. Given that Golden Retrievers are known to be at a high risk for cancer, these results cannot be extrapolated to other breeds.
The study by Cooley et al (2002) found that Rottweilers of both sexes who had undergone early spay/neuter had higher risks for bone sarcoma (1 in 4) when compared to Rottweilers who were intact throughout their lifetime. However, the study acknowledges that it is not known how hormones affect the development of osteosarcoma. Makielski et al (2019) published a comparative review of osteosarcoma risk factors in dogs and humans and included this commentary on trending current hormonal studies:
“… associations between reproductive status and development of osteosarcoma have been inconsistent. Although several reports suggest that spayed and/or neutered dogs have higher incidence of certain cancers, including osteosarcoma, the relationship between reproductive status and cancer risk may be confounded by other variables, such as the documented tendency toward increased adiposity and body condition in gonadectomized dogs.”
Obesity
In dogs, obesity is influenced by diet, breed, activity level, and age, but spay/neuter has also been reported to be a common predisposing risk factor for increased body weight. There is conflicting information as to whether gonadectomy alters metabolism (Reichler, 2009). It is speculated that gonadectomized dogs in general have lower metabolic rates (it has been estimated that they may require as much as 30% fewer calories) and tend to gain weight more than intact dogs, however, the cause and effect relationship is not well defined.
Dogs who have been spayed or neutered often have lower metabolic rates and may be predisposed to obesity.
Spain et al (2004) conducted a population study that indicated that gonadectomy of dogs before 6 months of age is associated with a lower prevalence of obesity when compared to those undergoing gonadectomy after 6 months of age.
In 2019, Bjørnvad et al published a study of dog- and owner-related risk factors for obesity in Danish companion dogs. The research found castrated male dogs were at increased risk for obesity; it is suspected that this may be due to a reduction in testosterone and a subsequent lowering of basal metabolic rate. Female dogs were found to be at risk regardless of reproductive status. They also found that there was a complex association between the owner’s weight, the dog’s weight, and feeding habits.
Urinary System
Studies place the incidence of urinary incontinence in spayed female dogs at 4% to 20%, compared to a rate of 0.4% to 8% for intact females. Spayed dogs may develop incontinence within days of surgery or more commonly years later; it is typically controlled with treatment. Large and giant breeds appear to have a higher risk. Other factors that may contribute to the condition and need further evaluation are urethral length, resting position of the urinary bladder, breed, thyroid level, allergies, and level of obesity.
Studies are contradictory when it comes to determining a correlation between age at time of spay and the likelihood of developing incontinence.Spain et al (2004) and Thrusfield et al (1998) reported an increase in urinary incontinence in females who were spayed at an early age, yet other studies have failed to support this conclusion. More research is required, but in those studies that did find a correlation, it was associated only with pediatric (6-12 weeks) gonadectomy. Females spayed at an early age have also been reported to have had a slightly higher incidence of bladder infections, but these infections were easily treated and did not become chronic.
It has been theorized that it is the lack of estrogen that causes incontinence in spayed females, but this is controversial and not fully supported by research. Increased rates of incontinence are not reported in pregnant females even though they have extremely low estrogen levels during pregnancy.
Palm and Reichler (2012) report that incontinence in spayed dogs has been successfully treated with use of gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GNRH) superagonist implants. The implants work by suppressing the release of gonadotropins.
In contrast, surgical gonadectomy increases the release of gonadotropins. This suggests that an increased risk for incontinence is not caused by the lack of sex hormones, but rather by the increased levels of gonadotropins induced by removal of the ovaries.
Male dogs who have been castrated prepubertally tend to have a smaller penis and prepuce, but their urethral diameter and function are the same as dogs neutered later and no clinical significance or condition has been associated with this difference (Salmeri et al, 1991).
Immune System
Findings from Sundberg et al (2016) suggest that spay/neuter is associated with an increased risk for certain autoimmune disorders. Six of the 11 immune diseases evaluated (atopic dermatitis, autoimmune hemolytic anemia, Addison’s disease, hypothyroidism, immune-mediated thrombocytopenia, and inflammatory bowel disease) showed an increased prevalence in gonadectomized dogs.
The study notes that even though the dataset included more than 90,000 dogs and expression of the diseases were statistically relevant, the actual incidence rate was not high and it declined over the 15-year evaluation.
Given that this was a retrospective study limited to dogs seen at a referral veterinary hospital, it may not reflect incidence rates within the population at large but rather may be biased to complex or more severe cases.
Cognitive Function
There has been limited research conducted on the risk that cognitive function may be altered as a result of spay/neuter. A comparison of the progression of cognitive dysfunction in intact and castrated male dogs was performed in the Hart study (2001) with a small sample size (6 dogs); it revealed a slowing of progression in the intact dogs.
In contrast, a 2000 study by Waters et al found that intact Beagles showed DNA damage to the neurons in the brain when compared to castrated Beagles (again, sample size was small, with only four dogs in each group). This is an area of research that is just beginning to be explored. Much more research is needed to understand the processes that influence cognitive function and how they may be changed by spay/neuter.
Anesthesia
Statistically, puppies are less likely to die under anesthesia and recover faster from gonadectomy than their adult counterparts. Complications arising from the procedure are uncommon and the rates are consistent across ages.
Doing what you think is right
Parker, handsome and sound at two
In 2018, my five-month-old, intact Border Collie began to display an abnormal outward turn to his left front leg. Parker’s orthopedic surgeon diagnosed him with an early closure of the ulnar growth plate, probably as a result of inury. The ulna ceased growing while the radius continued to lengthen. The radius began to bow as it was restricted by the nongrowing ulna, resulting in the outward splay of the leg. Ultimately, his leg was repaired within a few degrees of normal through a series of surgeries as he grew.
Knowing that my young pup faced multiple surgeries, I did not want to have to put him through an additional anesthetic for neuter surgery within the next year and opted to have his gonadectomy done during one of his orthopedic procedures.
Parker’s intact male littermate, Hero.
Some friends questioned my decision when they heard that I was going to have my young dog neutered, citing unnamed “studies” alleging that early spay/neuter can have a disastrous effect on the bones and growth plates. I researched all the studies I could find – and concluded that they were limited in scope. But I also consulted with his orthopedic surgeon (one who treats a great number of canine athletes). He related that he had not seen any negative effect of early spay/neuter in the animals he treated. I was aware that this was anecdotal evidence, but if the person working on the bones of agility dogs wasn’t seeing anything he could relate to early spay/neuter, that was good enough for me.
Two years later my boy is happy, healthy, and active with no residual orthopedic concerns. His appearance is similar to his dad (intact), mom (recently spayed), and sister (intact) from another litter, but not so much like one of his intact male littermates. Is this a result of the lack of testosterone? Or due to his own individual genetic structure and environment? Did neutering him “early” (at 6 months of age) predispose him to cancer and other health concerns? While I may wonder about these issues, I am confident that I made the best decision I could for me and my dog at that time.
Parker’s dam, Honey, was recently spayed.
Parker most resembles his intact full sister, Wynnie.
Parker’s sire, Flash, was intact throughout his lifetime.
WHAT (AND HOW) SHOULD YOU DECIDE?
Even a minimal survey of the research regarding the effects of spay/neuter reveals that the situation is extremely complex and, at times, ambiguous. There is evidence to support correlations for both beneficial and adverse effects, but even more important is that it demonstrates how much we still don’t understand about reproductive hormones and the consequences of spay/neuter.
When the time comes for you to make spay/neuter decisions for a dog that you do not want to reproduce, remember: There is no single course of action that is “best” for all dogs and all owners, and don’t let anyone make you feel bad for your decision, whatever it is – that is, as long as it doesn’t end with an accidental breeding and unwanted puppies.
Here’s the one time that we feel it makes the most sense for an owner to give more weight to published research than their own preferences: when the person owns a purebred dog of a breed that has been the subject of large, well-respected studies of the effects of spay/neuter on dogs of that specific breed, and the study found clear and significant statistical advantages to a certain course of action. In that case, we would strongly recommend reading the conclusion of those studies and discussing them with your veterinarian. Oberbauer et al (2019) determined that many canine health disorders reflect the dogs’ genetic heritage. Within breeds, there may be shared genetic susceptibility that increases risk for certain diseases within breeds and this risk may be enhanced with neutering.
However, you have to take single-breed studies with a grain of salt if your dog does not share any of the subject breed’s genes. Some of these studies are widely cited by people who think the studies should inform the decisions of all dog owners, but the findings often are contradicted when applied to another breed.
Some people strongly believe that it’s unethical to spay or neuter dogs, because the procedure irretrieveably alters the dog’s physiology and might might cause an adverse side effect, perhaps years in the future. As we have described, however, intact dogs are also prone to adverse health conditions; there simply isn’t a choice that doesn’t have consequences!
OWN YOUR DECISION – AND RESPECT OTHERS
As we’ve stated elsewhere in this article, it has become sort of politically correct today to maintain a dog in his or her intact state. But this isn’t something that everyone can manage in a responsible fashion!If there is a single weak link in a household, whether it’s a forgetful child, a distracted adult, or a less-than-super-secure fence, accidents can and will happen.
We know owners who swear their female dogs never left their sides and had zero contact with another dog, and yet – poof, a virgin pregnancy? Doubtful, and irresponsible, too.
And while some people will try to make you feel bad about it, it’s okay to admit that you do not enjoy living with an intact dog of either sex!If you have grown up in a time and place where literally all the dogs you’ve ever known were neutered, you might be quite alarmed at the personality change exhibited by your female dog when she comes into heat. You may not feel comfortable with some of the more strongly masculine attributes of an intact male dog, which may include more competitive urine-marking, humping, or overzealous sexual interest in female dogs.
Also, there are many people who are strongly committed to adopting only from shelters or rescue organizations, where spay/neuter is not only mandated but might also have been performed on very young puppies. Not only is prepubertal gonadectomy an important tool against pet overpopulation, it is likely to improve the odds that dogs will be retained by their owners. Studies have found that intact dogs are more likely to be relinquished than those that have undergone spay or neuter.
For intact dogs with homes, veterinarians and owners are challenged with making the best decision for that specific dog. An informed decision requires an evaluation reflective of our dogs and our risk tolerances. Every dog is an individual, including how they respond to gonadectomy or remaining intact. We always recommend consulting with your veterinarian to determine the best strategy for your dog based on age, body condition, breed, genetics, lifestyle, behavior, temperament, and reproduction management – and then taking responsibility for your choice.
Spay/Neuter Study References
If you’ve gotten this far, we applaud you! It’s a lot of information! But if you want to delve even more deeply into the research on the possible health effects of spay/neuter, this list is a great resource. It’s impossible to mention every study on the subject, but this list includes all the studies referenced in the foregoing article as well as other frequently cited works.
Banfield Applied Research and Knowledge Team. “Banfield Pet Hospital State of Pet Health 2013 Report, Trends of Life Spans for Dogs and Cats.” banfield.com.
Bentley A, Thalheim L. “Controversies in spaying and neutering: Effects on cancer and other conditions.” Cornell University Veterinary Specialists, Stamford, CT.
Bjørnvad CR, Gloor S, Johansen SS, et al. “Neutering increases the risk of obesity in male dogs but not in bitches: A cross-sectional study of dog- and owner-related risk factors for obesity in Danish companion dogs.” Prev Vet Med 2019; 170:104730.
Chidi-Ogbolu N, Baar K. “Effect of estrogen on musculoskeletal performance and injury risk.” Front Physiol 2019; Jan 15; 9:1834.
Cooley DM, Beranek BC, Schlittler DL, et al. “Endogenous gonadal hormone exposure and bone sarcoma risk.” Cancer Epidemiol Biomarkers Prev 2002; 11: 1434–1440.
Dorn CR, Taylor D, Schneider R, et al. “Survey of animal neoplasms in Alameda and Contra Costa Counties, California.” J Natl Cancer Inst 1968; 40:307-318.
Duffy DL, Serpell JA, Hsu Y. “Breed differences in canine aggression.” Appl Anim Behav Sci 2008; 114:441–460.
Duffy DL, Serpell JA. “Non-reproductive effects of spaying and neutering on behavior in dogs. Presentation from proceedings of the 3rd International Symposium on Non-Surgical Contraceptive Methods for Pet Population Control, 2006.” Alliance for Contraception in Cats & Dogs. naiaonline.org/uploads/WhitePapers/EarlySNAndBehaviorDuffySerpell.pdf.
Duval JM, Budsberg SC, Flo GL. “Breed, sex, and body weight as risk factors for rupture of the cranial cruciate ligament in young dogs.” J Am Vet Med Assoc 1999; 215: 811–814.
Farhoody P, Mallawaarachchi I, Tarwater PM, et al. “Aggression toward familiar people, strangers, and conspecifics in gonadectomized and intact dogs.” Frontiers in Veterinary Science 2018; 5:18.
Grumbach M. “Estrogen, bone growth and sex: a sea of change in conventional wisdom.” J Ped Endocrinol Metab 2000; 13: 1439–1455.
Hart BL, Eckstein RA. “The role of gonadal hormones in the occurrence of objectionable behaviors in dogs and cats.” Appl Anim Behav Sci 1997; 52: 331–344.
Hart BL, Hart LA, Thigpen AP, et al. “Neutering of German Shepherd Dogs: Associated joint disorders, cancers and urinary incontinence.” Vet Med Sci 2016; 2: 191–199.
Hart BL, Hart LA, Thigpen AP, Willits NH. “Long-term health effects of neutering dogs: comparison of Labrador Retrievers with Golden Retrievers.” PLoS ONE 2014; 9: e102241.
Hoffman JM, Creevy KE, Promislow DE. “Reproductive capability is associated with lifespan and cause of death in companion dogs.” PLoS ONE 2013; 8: e61082.
Houlihan KE. “A literature review on the welfare implications of gonadectomy of dogs.” J Am Vet Med Assoc 2017; 250(10):1155–1166.
Howe LM, Slater MR, Boothe HW, et al. “Long-term outcome of gonadectomy performed at an early age or traditional age in dogs.” J Am Vet Med Assoc 2001; 218: 217–221.
Howe LM. “Current perspectives on the optimal age to spay/castrate dogs and cats.” Vet Med (Auckl). 2015 May 8;6:171-180.
Howe LM. “Prepubertal gonadectomy in dogs and cats, part I.” Compend Contin Educ Pract Vet 1999; 21: 103–110.
Howe LM. Rebuttal to “Early Spay Neuter Considerations for the Canine Athlete,” 2007. semanticscholar.org/paper/Rebuttal-to-“-Early- spay/neuter-Considerations-for-Howe/f9c144ef90d398772af99856d6ec2518ae1a47a8Semantic Scholar.
Kent M, Burton J, Rebhun R. “Association of cancer-related mortality, age and gonadectomy in Golden Retriever dogs at a veterinary academic center.” (1989-2016). PLoS One 2018; 13(2): e0192578.
Kustritz MV. “Determining the optimal age for gonadectomy of dogs and cats.” J Am Vet Med Assoc 2007; 231: 1665–1675.
Kustritz MV. “Pros, cons, and techniques of pediatric neutering.” Vet Clin North Am Small Anim Pract 2014; 44: 221–223.
Makielski, K., Mill, L., Sarver, A., et al. “Risk factors for development of canine and human osteosarcoma: A comparative review.” Vet. Sci 2019, 6(2), 48.
Oberbauer A, Keller G, Fanukla T. “Long-term genetic selection reduced prevalence of hip and elbow dysplasia in 60 dog breeds.” PLoS ONE 2017 12:e0172918.
Oberbauer, AM, Belanger, JM, & Famula, TR. “A review of the impact of neuter status on expression of inherited conditions in dogs.” Frontiers in Veterinary Science 2019; 6:397
Palm J, Reichler IM. “The use of deslorelin acetate (Suprelorin®) in companion animal medicine.” Schweiz Arch Tierheilkde 2012, 154, 7-12.
Reichler IM, Hubler M, Jöchle W, et al. “The effect of GnRH analogs on urinary incontinence after ablation of the ovaries in dogs.” Theriogenology 2003; 60(7):1207–1216.
Reichler IM. “Gonadectomy in cats and dogs: a review of risks and benefits.” Reprod Domest Anim 2009; 44: 29–35.
Salmeri KR, Bloomberg MS, Scruggs SL, et al. “Gonadectomy in immature dogs: effects on skeletal, physical, and behavioral development.” J Am Vet Med Assoc 1991; 198: 1193–1203.
Salmeri KR, Olson PN, Bloomberg MS. “Elective gonadectomy in dogs: A review.” J Am Vet Med Assoc 1991; 198: 1183-1192.
Schneider R, Dorn CR, Taylor DO. “Factors influencing canine mammary cancer development and postsurgical survival.” J Natl Cancer Inst 1969; 43: 1249–1261.
Serpell J, Hsu Y. “Effects of breed, sex, and neuter status on trainability in dogs.” Anthrozoos: A Multidisciplinary Journal of The Interactions of People & Animals 2005; 18: 196-207.
Smith AN. “The role of neutering in cancer development.” Vet Clin North Am Small Anim Pract 2014; 44: 965–975.
Spain CV, Scarlett JM, Houpt KA. “Long-term risks and benefits of early-age gonadectomy in dogs.” J Am Vet Med Assoc 2004; 244: 380–387.
Sundburg CR, Belanger JM, Bannasch DL, et al. “Gonadectomy effects on the risk of immune disorders in the dog: A retrospective study.” BMC Vet Res 2016; 12: 278.
Torres de la Riva G, Hart BL, Farver TB, et al. “Neutering dogs: Effects on joint disorders and cancers in Golden Retrievers.” PLoS ONE 2013; 8: e55937.
Urfer SR, Kaeberlein, M. “Desexing Dogs: A Review of the Current Literature.” Animals 2019; 9(12):1086.
Von Pfeil DJ, DeCamp CE, Abood SK. “The epiphyseal plate: Nutritional and hormonal influences; hereditary and other disorders.” Compend Contin Educ Vet 2009; 31(8):E1–E14.
Waters DJ, Kengeri SS, Clever B, et al. “Exploring mechanisms of sex differences in longevity: Lifetime ovary exposure and exceptional longevity in dogs.” Aging Cell 2009; 8: 752–755.
Waters DJ, Shen S, Glickman LT. “Life expectancy, antagonistic pleiotropy, and the testis of dogs and men.” Prostate 2000; 43: 272–277
Zink MC, Farhoody P, Elser SE, et al. “Evaluation of the risk and age of onset of cancer and behavioral disorders in gonadectomized Vizslas.” J Am Vet Med Assoc 2014; 244: 309–319.
Barbara Dobbins, a former dog trainer, writes about dogs and studies canine ethology. She lives in the San Francisco Bay area with her dogs, Tico and Parker.
I have never owned a dog with separation anxiety, thank goodness. The condition is hard on the dog who suffers from the condition and hard on the dog’s caretakers, too, including owners, vets, groomers, pet sitters, and dog walkers. Care must be taken to prevent triggering the dog’s panic at being left alone—in severe cases, even just long enough for the person caring for the dog to use the restroom!
