You need to investigate if your dog seems to be straining and/or staying in the “poop posture” for a long time. Constipation becomes more serious over time, so start home treatment ASAP, and don’t wait too long to seek veterinary attention if your dog hasn’t produced stool within a few days.
Constipation seems like it should be a straightforward medical problem, but this is far from the case! Constipation occurs when there is difficulty or inability to empty the bowels. Stools may be extremely firm. A dog will strain and remain in the “poop posture” for quite some time before producing a bowel movement. In some cases, only mucus will pass.
There are many possible causes, including:
Eating indigestible material or very dry material such as pork bones
Arthritis pain that makes “assuming the posture” difficult
Dehydration
Malformations of the pelvic canal (congenital or acquired)
Drugs such as opioids
Behavioral
Neurological disease leading to weakness
The normal frequency of bowel movements (BMs) can vary hugely among individual dogs. In general, one to two BMs per day is the minimum, with some dogs going much more frequently. Because the large intestine is such a stretchy organ, a dog can go several days between bowel movements without significant issue. If a dog goes an exceptionally long time without defecating (a week or longer), though, obstipation – a severe form of constipation – can result. This is when the colon is packed with extremely hard, dry feces and passing them is not possible without assistance.
Are you sure it’s constipation?
Diarrhea may be mistaken for constipation, especially if a dog usually is unsupervised at potty time. Persistent diarrhea causes inflammation of the intestines and leads to discomfort and straining, even when there is no stool in the colon. Monitoring your dog’s bathroom habits is important and should be done at least daily.
One easy thing to consider any time you are worried about constipation is a fecalith. Sometimes, especially in small dogs with very long hair, a firm fecal ball can become stuck to the hair around the anus and obstruct the outside. In dogs with dark hair, this is easy to miss! This is a quick and simple fix with a pair of scissors and gloves. Anytime you see your dog straining at home, a quick look at the perianal area can identify the cause in some cases.
Symptoms of constipation you might see at home include posturing without producing any feces, straining but producing only small amounts of stool or no stool at all, bright red blood on the outside of the stool (due to inflammation and colon trauma), and in severe cases, decreased appetite and vomiting.
If you suspect constipation, check in with your veterinarian. The symptoms of straining and frequent trips outside might indicate constipation or a urinary problem, which also can be life-threatening.
Preliminary Home Treatment
Home remedies that can help with constipation are numerous and varied in their success. Do not administer over-the-counter laxatives. Instead, you can add plain canned pumpkin to your dog’s food, anywhere from one to two tablespoons per meal. This adds fiber and bulk while increasing colon motility.
If you think dehydration is playing a role, increase your dog’s water intake by adding some canned food to his meals (mix in a little more water for greater effect), dropping a few ice cubes to his water to encourage drinking, and using a recirculating water fountain. A gentle increase in exercise can also improve bowel motility, so take your canine companion for a walk! If this doesn’t accelerate your pet’s gastrointestinal (GI) motility, it’s time to visit a veterinarian.
See Your Vet!
During the examination, your veterinarian will start with a complete history. Questions will include the diet your dog is currently eating including any treats, any medications and supplements that you give, normal frequency of BMs, and what changes you’ve noticed.
Then your veterinarian will assess every system from head to toe. Once the basic system exam is completed, your veterinarian should focus on abdominal palpation and a rectal exam. While it’s not pleasant for your dog (or for you to see!), this is very important. This digital exam can detect many abnormalities and possible causes. It allows the veterinarian to palpate the urethra where it runs underneath the colon, the sublumbar lymph nodes, the prostate (in male dogs), the anal glands, and the mucosal surface of the rectum and colon. The pelvic canal can also be felt.
As with most diseases in dogs, common causes can be ruled in or out based on the signalment (the age and breed).
Very young puppies (less than 6 weeks) with constipation should be evaluated for a congenital abnormality of the rectum and/or colon. Some breeds that may be predisposed include any with short “screw tails” like Pugs and English Bulldogs. When the tail is exceptionally short, there can be underlying spinal abnormalities that cause nerve dysfunction.
Another abnormality is atresia ani, when the anus doesn’t form, and there is nowhere for feces to exit. Puppies who are being bottle raised may also deal with constipation from the puppy milk replacer.
Other Possible Causes
In older puppies who are chewing and eating food, checking for ingestion of foreign material that might lead to fecal impaction is important. This can include sand, rocks, and bone.
Trauma to young dogs that free roam is also a possibility. It isn’t uncommon for a stray pup to be adopted from a shelter situation only to discover old, healed injuries. Pelvic fractures can be one of these types of injuries, leading to a narrow pelvic inlet, and difficulty passing feces.
As dogs age the causes of constipation often become more systemic in nature and may include organ disease such as kidney failure and diabetes mellitus leading to dehydration, neurological disease like degenerative myelopathy, and arthritis pain can all contribute. This is why a head-to-tail-tip examination is so important!
Reproductive status can also play a role. Intact male dogs develop two particular problems as they age: benign prostatic hypertrophy (BPH) and perineal hernia. Both can lead to difficulty defecating (and urinating).
In the case of BPH, the influence of testosterone causes the prostate to enlarge symmetrically. The condition is not cancerous and non-painful, but if the prostate becomes large enough, it can make defecating and urinating difficult. Treatment is removal of the testosterone source via neutering.
Perineal hernia is also caused by the influence of testosterone. The muscles surrounding the rectum (the perineal muscles) become weak with age and can separate. Abdominal organs, particularly the bladder and colon, can herniate through and lead to difficulty with urinating and defecating. The symptoms are straining and a soft, reducible bulge on one or both sides of the rectum. Again, neutering and surgical repair are the treatments of choice.
Treatment
General constipation treatment depends on the underlying cause. If the constipation is fairly recent in onset, in a young dog, the initial diagnostic testing may just include a physical exam, history, and x-rays to rule out a foreign object. Therapy can then be directed at relieving the discomfort.
Several ways to do this exist including administration of enemas with warm water (sometimes including soap or lubrication), increasing fiber in the diet by adding canned pumpkin or switching to a high fiber diet, increasing water intake, and administration of medications such as lactulose, a stool softener.
If the constipation has been ongoing for a while, and the dog is older, other tests will likely be recommended. These include bloodwork to evaluate for systemic diseases as mentioned above, and possibly an abdominal ultrasound to look for a cause of obstruction.
In severe cases, it might be necessary to manually disimpact. This should be done under heavy sedation and/or general anesthesia. It is painful and invasive, and a dog must be fully relaxed for the best outcome. Prior to disimpaction, the veterinarian may treat with intravenous (IV) fluids to rehydrate first, as well as administer an enema to allow the feces to soften as much as possible. Lactulose may also be added prior to surgery to help with removing the feces. Bloodwork will be reviewed for any electrolyte abnormalities that need correction.
It is not common in dogs, but a condition called megacolon can develop. This describes a syndrome in which there is persistent dilation and slow to no motility. It can happen as a result of long-term, unresolved constipation causing stretching and damage of the nerves. Unfortunately, this can be difficult to resolve. In some cases, the megacolon is reversible if there is a definite underlying cause (such as a pelvic fracture) that can be surgically repaired. The earlier this is done, the better the chances for a good outcome.
Is the child about to be bitten? Or does the dog adore the kid? We don’t know! This is a stock photo! The dog may be trying to avoid the child, or just turning her head . . . However, we can say that this isn’t something that you should allow your child to do with any but the most rock-solid, kid-loving dog – and if this is the only type of dog your child has experience with, you will have to make sure he doesn’t have the opportunity to try it with dogs whose kid-tolerance is unknown.
These days, it seems that every time someone posts a picture on social media of a child with a dog it is immediately followed by a spate of posts expressing horror at the anticipated savage attack likely to follow.
Granted, some of those photos do, indeed, show dogs displaying body language signals that suggest a significant amount of discomfort at the proximity of the child, and real potential for injury. But many of them also, in my opinion, depict normal, healthy interactions between dogs and young humans.
Dogs and kids have been happy buddies for centuries. While dog bites to children are nothing new (I was bitten by a stray puppy at age five, in 1956) we seem to be much more reactive to them as a culture than we used to be. When did we become a society so phobic about any dog/kid interaction? And, perhaps more important, how do we help people recognize and create safe, healthy relationships between dogs and children?
It’s Not Cute, It’s Abuse
There is a truly horrendous video on YouTube of parents encouraging their very young child to abuse their Rottweiler. The child runs over to the dog, who is lying on the floor, climbs on his back, hugs him violently – and when the dog gets up to try to move away from the abuse, the adults call him back and make him lie down for more child torture. Meanwhile the child has lost interest and walked away and the parents insist that he come back and interact with the dog more.
This time the dog is lying on his side, and for the remainder of the two-minute clip the child climbs on and violently bounces up and down on the dog’s ribcage; grabs his jowls, cheek, and nose; and puts his face directly in the dog’s face, all the while with encouragement and laughter from the parents. Through it all, the dog is giving off constant signs of stress and distress – whale eye, panting, tongue flicks, gasping for air, and more. (If you really want to see it, we made a shortcut to a copy of the original video that someone captioned with notes about the dog’s warning signs: tinyurl.com/WDJ-abuse.)
This should be prosecutable child endangerment as well as animal abuse. Someday, if the incredibly tolerant Rottweiler has finally had enough and bites the child, the parents will be aghast. “We don’t know what happened – he was always so good with little Bobby!” And if the defensive bite is serious enough, the dog is likely to lose his life as a result . Meanwhile, if the child tries this incredibly inappropriate behavior with a less tolerant dog (which would include most dogs on the planet), he’s likely to be very badly bitten, and again, the unfortunate dog might easily pay with his life. What were these parents thinking?
A commonly quoted statistic states that some 4.7 million dog bites occur in the U.S. annually, with 42% of the victims age 14 or under.
As staggering as though those numbers may be, and as sensational as the “Dog Mauls Toddler” headlines are, they are also somewhat misleading. A very large percentage of those millions of bites are relatively minor, so the situation isn’t nearly as dire as it first appears.
Still, even one preventable child-mauling incident is one too many, and many of them are, in fact, quite preventable.
Supervisor Needed
Supervision of interactions between dogs and children is, indeed, critically important, at least until it is crystal clear that the child and dog are safe together. The “You must supervise kids and dogs!” mantra has been repeated so many times I would be surprised if there’s even one parent in the Western world who hasn’t heard it.
But here’s the rub: A significant number of kids suffer from dog bites even when the parent or other caretaker is directly supervising the interaction. If “supervision” is the holy grail of dog-kid interactions, how does this happen?
It seems that, over the years, as we trainers and behaviorists have repeated “Supervise, supervise, supervise!” until we’re blue in the face, we have somehow neglected to do a thorough job of helping parents and caretakers understand exactly what they are looking for when they are supervising.
It’s not just about being present, it’s also about watching closely, preventing the child from interacting inappropriately with the dog, and watching the dog for body language signals that communicate some level of discomfort with the child’s presence and/or interactions.
Upper Level Management
Management – controlling your dog’s environment and access to unsafe or undesirable things or practices – is a vital part of any successful behavior and training program. With kids and dogs, it’s even more critical. When you aren’t able to actively supervise (no TV! no texting!), you must manage. The price for management failure is simply too high.
A DICTIONARY OF CANINE STRESS SIGNALS
Anorexia Stress causes the appetite to shut down. A dog who won’t eat moderate- to high-value treats may just be distracted or simply not hungry, but refusal to eat is a common indicator of stress. If your dog ordinarily likes treats, but won’t take them in the presence of children, she is telling you something very important: Kids stress her out!
Appeasement/Deference Signals Appeasement and deference aren’t always an indicator of stress. They are important everyday communication tools for keeping peace in social groups and are often presented in calm, stress-free interactions. They are offered in a social interaction to promote the tranquility of the group and the safety of the group’s members. When offered in conjunction with other behaviors, they can be an indicator of stress as well. Appeasement and deference signals include:
Lip Licking: Appeasing/deferent dog licks at the mouth of the more assertive/threatening/intimidating member of the social group.
Turning Head Away, Averting Eyes: Appeasing/deferent dog avoids eye contact, exposes neck.
Slow movement: Appeasing/deferent dog appears to be moving in slow-motion.
Sitting/Lying Down/Exposing Underside: Appeasing/deferent dog lowers body posture, exposing vulnerable parts.
Avoidance Dog turns away, shuts down, evades touch, and won’t take treats.
Barking In context, can be a “distance-increasing” stress signal – an attempt to make the stressor go away.
Brow Ridges Furrows or muscle ridges in the dog’s forehead and around the eyes.
Difficulty Learning Dogs (and other organisms) are unable to learn well or easily when under significant stress.
Digestive Disturbances Vomiting and diarrhea can be a sign of illness – or of stress; the digestive system reacts strongly to stress. Carsickness is often a stress reaction.
Displacement Behaviors These are behaviors performed in an effort to resolve an internal stress conflict for the dog. They may be performed in the actual presence of the stressor. They also may be observed in a dog who is stressed and in isolation – for example a dog left alone in an exam room in a veterinary hospital.
Blinking: Eyes blink at a faster-than normal rate
Nose-Licking: Dog’s tongue flicks out once or multiple times
Chattering Teeth
Scratching (as if the dog suddenly is very itchy)
Shaking off (as if wet, but dog is dry)
Yawning
Drooling May be an indication of stress – or response to the presence of food, an indication of a mouth injury, or digestive distress.
Excessive Grooming Dog may lick or chew paws, legs, flank, tail, and genital areas, even to the point of self-mutilation.
Hyperactivity Frantic behavior, pacing, sometimes misinterpreted as ignoring, “fooling around,” or “blowing off” owner.
Immune System Disorders Long-term stress weakens the immune system. Reduce dog’s overall stress to improve immune-related problems.
Lack of Attention/Focus The brain has difficulty processing information when stressed.
Leaning/Clinging The stressed dog seeks contact with human as reassurance.
Lowered Body Posture “Slinking,” acting “guilty” or “sneaky” (all misinterpretations of dog body language) can be indicators of stress.
Mouthing Willingness to use mouth on human skin – can be puppy exploration or adult poor manners, but can also be an expression of stress, ranging from gentle nibbling (flea biting) to hard taking of treats to painfully hard mouthing, snapping, or biting.
Obsessive-Compulsive Disorders These include compulsive imaginary fly-snapping behavior, light and shadow chasing, tail chasing, pica (eating non-food objects), flank-sucking, self-mutilation and more. While OCDs probably have a strong genetic component, the behavior itself is usually triggered by stress.
Panting Rapid shallow or heavy breathing – normal if the dog is warm or has been exercising, otherwise can be stress-related. Stress may be external (environment) or internal (pain, other medical issues).
Stretching To relax stress-related tension in muscles. May also occur as a non-stress behavior after sleeping or staying in one place for extended period.
Stiff Movement Tension can cause a noticeable stiffness in leg, body, and tail movements.
Sweaty Paws Damp footprints can be seen on floors, exam tables, rubber mats.
Trembling May be due to stress – or cold.
Whining High-pitched vocalization, irritating to most humans; an indication of stress. While some may interpret it as excitement, a dog who’s excited to the point of whining is also stressed.
Yawning Your dog may yawn because he’s tired – or as an appeasement signal or displacement behavior.
Whale Eye Dog rolls eyes, flashing the whites of his eyes.
Even if your dog adores children (and especially if she doesn’t!), management and supervision are vitally important elements of successful dog/baby/child-keeping. There are a staggering number of serious child-bite cases (and fatalities) where the adult left the room “just for a minute.”
That’s why dog training and behavior professionals are well-known for repeating the warning, “Never leave dogs and small children together unattended.” This means, not for a moment. Not while you take a quick bathroom break, or run to the kitchen to grab a snack. Even if the baby is sleeping! Take the dog with you if you leave the room where the baby is sleeping or the child is watching a video. Put the dog in her crate. Shut her in another room.
Training
Of course, you want to do everything you can to help your dog love children. Even if you don’t have small humans of your own, your dog is likely to encounter them at some point in her life, and things will go better for all involved if she already thinks kids are wonderful.
Ideally, every dog should be well socialized with babies and children from puppyhood. Many young adults adopt a pup at a time when children are, if anything, a distant prospect, without thinking about the fact that kids could easily arrive within the 10 to 15 years of their dog’s lifespan. Even if there will never be children in the dog’s immediate family, chances are she will encounter small humans at some point in her life. By convincing her very early on that children are wonderful, you greatly reduce the risk that she will ever feel compelled to bite one.
If an adult-dog adoption is in the works and there will be (or are) children in your world, remember this critically important caveat: Dogs who are going to be around babies and/or children must adore kids, not just tolerate them. A dog who adores children will forgive many of the inappropriate things young humans will inevitably do to dogs, despite your best efforts at supervision and management. A dog who merely tolerates them will not.
Teach Your Children
Safe child-dog interactions start with teaching children – even very young children – how to respect and interact appropriately with dogs. If a child is too young to grasp the information, then the supervising adult must physically prevent the child from being inappropriate.
Babies and toddlers often flail their hands at new or exciting stimuli – like dogs. Not surprisingly, many dogs are likely to find this quite aversive! When young children are introduced to dogs, the adult needs to hold the child’s hand(s) and guide them in appropriately using their hands to touch the dog appropriately (gently and slowly) and without any flailing.
It’s equally important to teach children that dogs are not toys to be treated roughly. Even if your family dog tolerates – or even loves – being hugged, allowing your young child to hug your dog can prompt her to hug the next dog she meets – with possibly disastrous results. Until your child is old enough to understand that some things that are okay with your dog are not okay with other dogs, you are far safer not allowing her to do those things with your dog, either.
Ideally, engage your child to assist with your dog’s training at the earliest possible age using positive reinforcement-based methods that teach your child the importance of cooperation and respect, so your child learns how to interact appropriately with other sentient creatures. At the same time, you will be strengthening the positive association between your dog and your child.
Watch that Body Talk
Any time your dog shows any sign of being uncomfortable with your child’s presence, you must separate the dog and child to protect them both. Of course, in order to do this you must understand dog body language well enough to recognize when a dog is expressing discomfort.
People often say, “If my dog could only talk…” They actually do communicate! But their mode of communication is body language – and too few humans take the time to learn that language, or “listen” to what the dog is telling us.
Above, we shared some different ways your dog may be telling you she’s uncomfortable. This is an extensive list, albeit not necessarily a complete one. Study it, and then watch your dog for any of these behaviors, both with children present and absent. Any time you observe stress signals from your dog in the presence of children (or elsewhere!) it’s wise to take immediate steps to reduce her stress.
If, while you’re managing, supervising, and training your dog around kids, you’re having trouble determining what your dog is trying to tell you with his body language communications, ask a force-free dog training professional to help you. It could save your dog’s life. And your child’s.
When Woody (my three-year-old pit bull-mix) was a tiny puppy, just another one in a litter of nine that I was fostering for my local shelter, he was always happy to receive medical attention (vaccines, deworming, and even neuter surgery!), as it came layered with happy attention from the shelter veterinary staff. He loves people, so it was all good.
Woody’s friendly, happy attitude about having a stranger greet and handle him in an intimate way survived all those visits, as well as many more visits to a regular veterinary hospital. Let’s see… there were at least one or two vaccine visits; one “dietary indiscretion” incident (he ate all the food I had set out for the 11 Great Dane foster puppies, after I had already fed him his dinner); the time he swallowed a friend’s dog’s mini-tennis ball; the staples he needed on his rear legs (slashed his wrists on something sharp in the grass, sliding for a ball); the time he tore a toenail (mostly) off; a foxtail visit or two; a weird bump on his face that required minor surgery to remove it… He’s been to the vet a lot! And until last year, he was always happy to trot into the hospital, hop onto the scale, be examined by anyone, and even go “into the back” for his staples or bandages or injection of “Let’s make you vomit!” medication.
And then he got sick with a gastrointestinal bug that left him seriously dehydrated, and I left him to be hospitalized overnight. I am certain they didn’t mistreat him in any way! But ever since I left him there that night, when I take him back to the vet now – most recently for a canine influenza vaccine – he is reluctant to enter the hospital, and he shivers and shakes in the waiting and exam rooms.
I’ve started trying to remediate this anxious response, stopping by the practice to just weigh him and feeding him tons of high-value treats in the minute or two that we are there. And, because scared and/or anxious dogs have the potential to bite, and I wouldn’t blame any veterinarian or veterinary staff member if they felt safer working on my big, muscular dog if he were wearing a muzzle, I also am going to start acclimating Woody to wearing one. I want it to be a familiar, reinforcing experience in case we ever need it, rather than an incredibly scary thing suddenly strapped to his face in a medical emergency.
But after working on the article in this issue about Fear Free veterinary practices (see page 6), I’m also going to encourage my vets to seek out Fear Free certification – and keep my eyes peeled for a Fear Free certified veterinary practice to switch to if need be. Because I think I am going to need a whole team of people to get Woody past his newfound apprehension about receiving medical care. And that is just no way to go through life – particularly if you are as accident-prone as my goofy Woody.
Odin in his new home, with Adam (in red) and his neighbor friends. They all love playing with Odin, and vice versa. Odin sleeps in Adam's bed, too.
When, back in March, I scheduled a week-long vacation for
early July, I of course had no way of knowing a huge, dog-related story was
going to erupt the week before. I also didn’t know that a great home for my
long-time foster dog was going to pop up out of the woodwork in the days before
I left. Both events left me scrambling and off-balance.
In early July, someone had commented on a video of my foster
pup, Odin, and my young dog, Woody, that I had posted on the WDJ Instagram account: “How
has he not been adopted? He has home skills, is dog social, and
couldn’t be more stinkin’ cute! Come on, people!” And I had responded, “I
haven’t been trying THAT hard to promote him. Been super busy with life stuff.
No actual adoption attempts are likely to happen in the whole month of July,
for various reasons. In the meantime, I keep visualizing the world’s most
perfect home for him. We will see.” And then, just a few days later, I received
a message from a friend: “Are you still looking for a home for Odin?”
A Perfect Family
“Maybe,” I responded. I wanted him to
find a home, but it had to be a perfect spot. Given his many months of having
to suffer many daily applications of various eye medications, he hadn’t yet
spent much time alone, and above all, I wouldn’t allow him to go to go a home
where he might end up alone for many hours a day. I wanted him to live with a
person or family who had lots of time for him, who liked to play and be active,
who might take him somewhere that he could swim, and who would let him live
indoors and sleep on the couch or beds.
The more I heard about the family that
my friend knew, the more I thought that perhaps this was it – the best place
for Odin. And yet, the very thought made me weepy. But I agreed to meet the
family. They came to my house twice, once on Friday and again on Saturday,
spent hours watching and playing with Odin, and telling me about their house
and family. It seemed like a perfect fit. I sent them to the local shelter to
fill out the adoption papers and pay the adoption fee. I was leaving town
Sunday night, and they could come pick him up Sunday afternoon to take him
home.
Odin went camping, and loved kayaking, and sleeping in the kids’ tent
It was perfect and awful, all at once.
I told them I wanted to take a picture of the whole family with him before they
left with him, but as we approached their car, I started crying and didn’t want
to make them uncomfortable or embarrass myself. Odin jumped into their car
happily, sitting on the back seat with their young son. I gave Odin a kiss on
the nose and told him to be a good dog, and turned away quickly, calling over
my shoulder, “Send me a picture when you get home!”
Time for a vacation
I had spent the days before I left town making sure that my
house was clean and organized and ready for my house-sitter/pet-sitter, and
that I had all the Kong toys I own rounded up, clean, filled with canned food,
and in the freezer. That morning, I had also rounded up Odin’s favorite toys
and chewies and bed to send home with his new owners, but I hadn’t yet packed MY
suitcase for my trip (I think this is a common dog owner thing). Fortunately,
that kept me busy, and not crying much,
all the way until the sitter, one of my son’s friends (and a young man I have
known for 23 of his 27 years) arrived at my house for a briefing about Otto and
Woody and the house. And by the time we finished with all that, it was time to
head for the airport.
By the time we were at our connecting airport, my phone had
received a number of photos of Odin and his new best friend, the young son in
the family with three kids, at their home. He and the young son both looked
perfectly happy.
Our vacation had officially started, but I was not yet done
with work I promised to do before I left town. I had also spent the previous week talking to people I know and respect
about the most recent update from the United State’s Food and Drug
Administration (FDA) concerning the connection between diet and cases of canine
dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM). I had started writing a blog post that contained
my own thoughts about the update, and I had written pages and pages, deleted
pages and pages, and wrote even more. But I kept changing what I felt was most
important to say about it. As each day passed since the FDA update was
published, more analysis was published – some that I found very good and
insightful and some that I found to be hysterical and inaccurate.
The FDA Update Is Still On My Mind
I finished the post on the second leg of our flight, and sent it to our publishing HQ to be posted on the WDJ blog site. And then I tried to turn off my brain – I didn’t want to think about saying goodbye to my little Odin, or the news about the DCM investigation, or my dogs left at home. My husband, my son, and I spent five days at my sister’s house in a tiny town in the Colorado mountains, hiking some high peaks. Then we drove back to Denver, where my son competed in a tournament for his sport, and where we met our 7-year-old grandson and his mom, and spent a day with them before taking the boy back to California to hang out with us for a few weeks.
We hiked in places like this in Colorado for days – bliss.
But the FDA update and the news coverage of it was
explosive, and as much fun as I had on vacation, I couldn’t help but peek at
the news and comments on my blog post
a few times. The issue is complex and analysis of the information in the FDA’s
update is varied. People are still confused and upset – and it doesn’t help
that the owner of practically every dog who is sick or has died in the past two
years thinks it is probably due to the fact that the dog ate grain-free food at
some point, and posts this as fact on social media. No matter that the dog had
eaten a grain-free product for a matter of days, or had a health problem that
had absolutely nothing to do with the dog’s heart.
I will be writing more about the DCM issue, and also posting
links to voices/sources that I respect (such as this
one). I am completely sympathetic with those who have lost pets to DCM and
possibly related causes, and also concerned that so much misinformation and
hysteria is being shared.
On June 27, 2019, the United States Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released an update to two previous advisories regarding dog food and dogs who had developed dilated cardiomyopathy (DCM). The release made a splash in the mainstream news – but this is all that most people seemed to get out of the news coverage: “THERE ARE 16 BRANDS OF DOG FOOD THAT ARE KILLING DOGS!”
Unfortunately, this is a wildly oversimplified take-away message. It set off a panic in the countless dog owners who feed their dogs some variety made by one of those companies, and may have inflicted serious financial damage to the companies named (as well as all the retailers who sell them) – this, despite the fact that the FDA stated at the outset of the release that the cause of the DCM cases is still unknown. “Based on the data collected and analyzed thus far, the agency believes that the potential association between diet and DCM in dogs is a complex scientific issue that may involve multiple factors.”
Further, in a “Questions and Answers” addition to the update, the agency says things like, “At this time, we are not advising dietary changes based solely on the information we have gathered so far,” and “It’s important to note that the reports include dogs that have eaten grain-free and grain-containing foods and also include vegetarian or vegan formulations. They also include all forms of diets: kibble, canned, raw and home-cooked. Therefore, we do not think these cases can be explained simply by whether or not they contain grains, or by brand or manufacturer.”
It’s a bit puzzling, then, why the agency named the brands of foods that were reportedly fed to some of the 560 dogs whose DCM cases they are investigating (and even more puzzling: why they didn’t include the varieties of foods that were implicated, just the company names). Naming the companies suggests that those companies were responsible for the dogs’ illnesses, even as the agency denied this as an explicit causation. We’re not usually conspiracy theorists, but this move undoubtedly gave a boost to these companies’ competitors.
We don’t mean to sound protective of the companies. Don’t get us wrong: If it can be proven that a company has knowingly or even inadvertently (through cost-saving measures, say) taken steps that resulted in a previously known or predictable harm to dogs, we’d be happy to help drum them out of business. The point is, the cause of these cases is STILL unknown. So why name the companies, rather than just describe the characteristics of the products that have been implicated so far?
Our guess is that so many people buy and feed products without having a clear reason for doing so, and so many fail to read the ingredients panel and guaranteed analysis – perhaps naming companies was the only way to get owners’ attention, and to alert them to check their foods, and think about their dogs’ condition. If they are feeding a product from one of the named companies, are their dogs displaying any symptoms of compromised cardiac health?
The only explicit advice that the FDA offered to owners wanting to protect their pets came at the end of the update: “If a dog is showing possible signs of DCM or other heart conditions, including decreased energy, cough, difficulty breathing and episodes of collapse, you should contact your veterinarian as soon as possible. If the symptoms are severe and your veterinarian is not available, you may need to seek emergency veterinary care.” This is sound advice – and owners would do well to follow it regardless of what diet their dogs are fed.
Information about the cases
We do believe that the agency is more concerned about protecting our health and that of our pets than protecting industry interests, though, again, naming some (not all!) of the companies was kind of a weird move. However, we very much appreciate the fact that, in an effort to give pet owners and industry insiders more information about the issue, the agency has shared much more information in this update and other linked documents than was previously released.
Between January 1, 2014 and April 30, 2019, the FDA received 524 reports of DCM; this includes some 560 dogs and 14 cats. Some of the reports include cases in which multiple pets in the same household developed DCM – which is why total affected animals (574) add up to more than the number of reports (524). The cat cases are beyond WDJ’s area of expertise and we will not discuss these.
The agency also has received many reports regarding dogs with other cardiac problems, but if a dog was not diagnosed with DCM by a veterinarian or veterinary cardiologist, his or her case was not counted in the totals above. The FDA says it will continue to collect information about these cases, as dogs may exhibit cardiac changes before they develop symptomatic DCM. For more about these changes, see “Non-DCM Cardiac Cases” in this linked addendum to the June 27 update.
Some of the detail included in the update dramatically helps illustrate the immediacy of the issue. Though earlier reports referred to DCM cases dating back to 2014, we learned from this update that there were only seven reports regarding DCM made to the FDA from 2014 through 2017: one in 2014, one in 2015, two in 2016, and three in 2017.
But in 2018, the FDA received a communication from a group veterinary cardiology practice in the northeast concerning an unusual cluster of cases of DCM. The veterinarians reported that they had seen a number of dogs with DCM who were 1) not breeds known to be at a higher inherited risk of DCM, and 2) most had been eating grain-free diets prior to diagnosis.
Veterinary cardiologists discussed this with colleagues. Soon, other practitioners realized that they, too, had seen more cases of DCM in dogs of atypical breeds for the condition – and many of them, too, were eating diets that were grain-free and/or high in legumes and/or potatoes. More and more veterinarians started submitting reports about their patients to the FDA.
The FDA released its first advisory about this issue in July 2018, in order to alert pet owners and general-practice veterinarians of the possibility for DCM to develop in dogs, especially if they had been maintained on grain-free/legume-rich diets for any significant period of time. The agency warned interested parties to be on the lookout for the symptoms of DCM: loss of appetite, pale gums, increased heart rate, coughing, difficulty breathing, periods of weakness, and fainting.
This news almost immediately triggered a spike of cases being reported to the FDA. Some 320 reports of DCM were made in 2018; so far in 2019 (through April 30, the most recent date included in the FDA advisory update), some 197 reports of DCM have been made. Of the 560 dogs discussed in these reports, 119 have died.
The FDA cannot confirm, however, whether these numbers indicate an actual increase in the population of dogs that develop or die from DCM or whether the attention brought to bear on this issue has increased awareness and hence reporting; unlike in human epidemiology, rates of disease and deaths are not kept for animals. (FDA: “Because the occurrence of different diseases in dogs and cats is not routinely tracked and there is no widespread surveillance system like the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have for human health, we do not have a measure of the typical rate of occurrence of disease apart from what is reported to the FDA.”) Because we don’t know what the rate of DCM is overall, it’s possible that many cardiac problems, diet-related or not, have gone unreported or even undetected (for example, mistakenly attributed to “old age”) until the FDA advisories and updates brought it to the attention of many dog owners.
One of the major points made in the 2018 advisory was that cardiologists were seeing the unexpected development of DCM in atypical breeds and in dogs with other atypical characteristics. DCM tends to affect dogs of certain breeds (most of which are large and giant breeds), older dogs, and more dogs who are overweight than of ideal or low weight. Veterinary cardiologists say they are seeing more cases in breeds that are not known to have a genetic predisposition to DCM, in younger dogs, and in medium and even very small dogs.
The FDA’s 2019 update confirmed that there has been, at a minimum, a shift in the makeup of the dogs involved in these 560 cases. The update contains a table that enumerates how many dogs of various breeds are represented in the 560 cases. The breed with the most cases (95) is the Golden Retriever. However, according to registration numbers of purebred dogs, it’s the third most popular breed in the U.S. Also, the FDA has speculated that there has been greater awareness and social media discussion about DCM among Golden Retriever owners (as they are prone to a taurine-responsive form of DCM), and this perhaps prompted Golden owners to bring their dogs to the vet and be diagnosed sooner, and to report their cases to the FDA.
Mixed-breed dogs are next on the list with 62 cases, then Labrador Retrievers with 47; in neither case would those dogs be expected to have a genetic predisposition to DCM. There are more mixed-breed dogs in the U.S. than any individual pure breed, and Labradors are the most numerous purebred dog in the U.S., so it may be that these dogs are represented so high on this list by virtue of their greater representation in the population. Fourth on the list, though, is a breed that is known to have a genetically higher risk of DCM: Great Danes, with 25 cases. There were 23 pit bulls, and then two more breeds known to be at higher risk of DCM: German Shepherd Dogs (with 19 cases) and Doberman Pinschers (15).
DCM tends to affect more male dogs than females, and that pattern has held, with 58.7% of the cases involving males. This, as well as the atypical age and breed distribution of the cases, had led FDA researchers to surmise that the cases that have been reported to them this far are the result of a combination of expected causes (inherited predisposition) and dietary causes.
The implicated companies
Again, it’s a little weird that the FDA named pet food companies, when the link between the foods and the cases of DCM is not yet clear. Even stranger is that they named only 16 companies – that fact seemed to make the biggest impression on the mainstream media. Headlines in publication after publication make it sound like there are just 16 companies that have been doing something wrong –making it sound as if as long as you avoid those companies when buying your dog’s food, all will be well. If only!
The 16 companies named by the FDA appear on a table presented in the update (linked again here, scroll down). The table lists the 16 companies that were named in 10 or more of the cases of canine DCM reported to the FDA since 2014. These 16 were implicated in 431 of the cases; the foods that were fed to the pets in the other 129 of the cases were not in the table – which leaves open the possibility that someone feeding a food that caused, say, nine cases, remains unaware that their dog’s food, too, may potentially contribute to their dog developing DCM. It’s a tad random.
The companies mentioned in every single one of the 560 cases are available, but not in a particularly accessible way. A link provided in the update takes the reader to a 77-page table that lists all known information about each DCM case presented to the FDA. We plan to mine that 77-page table for all this information – the companies named in fewer than 10 cases, as well as the varieties mentioned in every case – in the weeks ahead. We will share it with you when we’re done – or share a link if someone does this and posts the information before us.
Also, the update did not specify which varieties of each company’s products were implicated. While some of the companies named make only the type of products that have been implicated in the majority of reports (we will get to that in a minute), some of those 16 companies make two types of products: the type that has been implicated in the vast majority of the 560 cases, as well as products that contain grain and do not contain any of the ingredients that seem to be associated with the development of DCM. In the case of these companies, naming only the brand and not the varieties implicated in the reports was a disservice to the companies and consumers alike.
Characteristics of the implicated foods
The FDA has not yet reached any conclusions about definitive links between the foods that the 560 dogs were being fed and their development of DCM. However, if, in an abundance of caution, an owner wanted to avoid products that share the traits of these foods, it’s possible to do so. The update includes enough information about the implicated foods that could help consumers select foods that do not share the traits of the implicated foods. Just keep in mind that causation is still unknown and that the FDA’s only conclusion so far is that “DCM in dogs is a complex scientific issue that may involve multiple factors.”
The vast majority of the products that the owners were feeding to the dogs in the reports submitted to the FDA were dry dog foods: 452 of the 515 reports involved dry dog food. The thing is, 452/515 is 88%. Currently about 85 to 90 percent of owners feed dry food, so this proportion is probably equal to the proportion of healthy dogs who are fed dry diets, so (statistically speaking) is meaningless information.
Grain-free diets represented 91% of the products implicated in the reports; 93% contained peas and/or lentils. Potatoes and/or sweet potatoes were present in 42% of the products. These numbers are far more intriguing.
The inclusion of peas, lentils, chickpeas, and other legume seeds have reached some sort of critical mass in recent years with pet food manufacturers. Though they’ve been present in many pet foods for at least a decade, in recent years, the percentage of their representation in formulas has grown. We wouldn’t worry unduly about one of these ingredients appearing on an ingredients panel in a minor role – 6th or 7th or lower on the list, say. But if there is more than one of these ingredients on the list and/or one in one of the top five or so positions on the ingredients list, for now, we’d look for another product to feed our dogs.
There are a number of animal nutrition experts speculating about what might be happening with these foods and why some dogs who have been eating them have developed heart problems. We will follow up with some analysis of some of the leading theories in future posts, but for now, let’s focus on what owners can do immediately to protect their dogs, based on what is currently understood and/or suspected about the relationship between the foods named in the reports made to the FDA and the dogs’ health problems.
Our recommendations for action
1. As we stated in our response to the 2018 advisory a year ago, no matter what your dog eats, if she has any signs of DCM – including decreased energy, cough, difficulty breathing, and episodes of collapse – you should make an appointment to see your veterinarian ASAP, preferably one who can refer you to a veterinary cardiologist.
2. For now, we would strongly recommend avoiding foods that use peas – including constituent parts of peas, such as pea starch, pea protein, and pea fiber, and especially multiple iterations of peas (such as green peas, yellow peas, pea protein, etc.) as major ingredients. If any one of these appears higher than the 6th or 7th ingredient on an ingredient list, for now, we’d switch to foods that do not display this trait.
Same goes for chickpeas (may be referred to as garbanzo beans), any other type of bean, and lentils.
We’d switch away from any foods containing more than one of these ingredients (peas, beans, or lentils).
3. Also, if you read through the 77-page table that includes every one of the 515 reports received by the FDA about a pet with DCM, you will see many times over that pet owners fed whatever they had been feeding to their dogs for months or even years. The same food, day in and day out. Month in and month out. Year in and year out! We’ve said it before and we will say it again: Feeding the same food for months on end amounts to putting your dog’s life in a single company’s hands. Is there any company on earth that you would trust to provide ALL the nutrition you consume for the rest of your life?
Please switch foods frequently, and not just from one variety to a different variety made by the same company. Switch among products that are made by different companies, with different ingredients. Unless your dog has a proven allergy to a number of ingredients, switching from one food to another, as often as every time you buy a new bag of food, helps provide your dog with “balance over time,” and keeps any nutritional imbalances, overages, or deficiencies from contributing to your dog’s health problems.
4. As we have stated many times, we would feed grain-free foods ONLY to dogs with a demonstrated allergy to or intolerance of grains.
When grain-free dry dog foods were first introduced to the market, we were happy that owners of dogs who had a proven intolerance of or allergy to one or more grains could find commercial dry food options. However, as this segment of the market exploded, it became apparent that many more owners were choosing these products than dogs needed them. Somehow, the message spread among dog owners that grain-free foods were “better” – with little or no explanation offered as to why this was alleged. We based our concern about their over-popularity on the high levels of inclusion of ingredients that did not have a long history of use in dry dog foods. Potatoes and sweet potatoes worry us less than peas, chickpeas, and beans; they have been utilized in dry dog formulas for longer than the legumes.
What if your dog absolutely can’t consume ANY grain (and this has been demonstrated with a sound food allergy trial)? There are a number of companies whose grain-free foods do not appear or appear very infrequently on the 77-page table of all the DCM reports. We are aware that some dog food manufacturers add supplemental taurine to their products (and have always done so). Whether this or some other factor (ingredient sourcing, better manufacturing, better formulation, etc.) is responsible for their scarcity on that list, no one knows for sure. But if your dog absolutely can’t consume ANY grain, we’d look for products without peas or legumes (or those with perhaps ONE of these ingredients low on the ingredients list), from a manufacturer whose name is not found on the table… and to hedge your bet, we’d check to see whether they add supplemental taurine to their formulas (and go with one of their products if they do).
Not all of the dogs in these reports have been found to exhibit low taurine levels – and none of the diets implicated in the reports have been found to contain levels of the amino acids that dogs use to manufacture the taurine they need (cysteine and methionine) that fail to meet the current levels legally required for a “complete and balanced diet.” However, there are several compelling possible reasons that could result in the dogs’ failure to utilize or benefit from these amino acids. For example, some chicken meals are so low in digestibility – and often so heat-damaged – that the methionine is not present in an available form. Also, high fiber levels can interfere with some dogs’ ability to convert these amino acids into the amount of taurine they need. The main point is, there are dogs who have shown improvement after their diets have changed and supplemental taurine was prescribed.
Note: The possibility has been raised that there may be more than one mechanism at work causing all these DCM cases and cases of other cardiac problems, something to do with the cysteine /methionine/taurine issue and something else. While the vast majority of the implicated diets mentioned in the FDA’s reports are dry, grain-free foods, some food that do contain grains also have been implicated, as well as some canned, raw, etc. diets. All owners need to be alert to their dogs’ symptoms – and don’t just chalk up exercise intolerance, panting, lethargy, etc. to “old age” in previously healthy senior dogs! Make an appointment and discuss these symptoms with your veterinarian soon.
My senior dog Otto has never liked fireworks, but he’s never been a total wreck around the Independence Day holiday, either. He will pant a little bit and pace at the height of fireworks and firecracker activity, but will still eat and allow himself to be comforted.
This year was different. He’s aging, and seems to be getting increasingly neurotic and anxious about a few things. If anyone is doing laundry at my office/house, for example, he acts like most thunder-phobic dogs do in a thunderstorm. I think he can feel the shaking or vibration in the old wood-framed house, and he paces and shakes and pants, and won’t take treats. I used to be able to just stop the laundry and he would calm down. In the past year or so, he’s gotten so increasingly anxious about the possibility that there might be laundry, that I basically just don’t take him there very often anymore. He’s happier at home.
Except for this holiday. There is a casino less than a mile from where we live – as the crow flies, not on our road. And apparently, this year, the management opened up the parking lots to anyone who wanted to set off fireworks and it seems like half the county took them up on it. I got home from my office/house well before dusk and Otto was a nervous wreck.
Where my sister and her husband live, several miles out of town, there is a strict prohibition on fireworks; it’s also a high fire danger area. I didn’t hesitate to take Otto to her house to spend the night. He is happy and comfortable there, and we couldn’t hear a single snap, crackle, or pop.
Back at my house, neither Woody nor Odin minded what sounded like a war going on outside.
The next morning, I went back to my sister’s house to collect Otto. I walked into her living room, and hit a WALL of skunk scent. “I’m so sorry!” my sister said. “Otto went out the dog door at about 4 am and got skunked in the back yard!”
I was the sorry one! Their house REEKED! I guess since they had been smelling it since 4 am, they had gotten accustomed to it. I felt terrible, until my sister asked me, “Hey, would you help me look at Dinah’s butt? She keeps licking it.”
Dinah got fat!
Dinah is one of my former foster dogs. She was an anxious mama who came into my local shelter with one fat pup, and she thought it was her job to protect that pup from anyone who looked in their direction. At my shelter, that’s a death wish; nursing moms don’t get a pass just because they are mothers. If they are judged to be “aggressive,” they aren’t going to make it to the adoption row, so I had taken her and her puppy to my home to foster, about four years ago. The puppy got adopted by an acquaintance and my sister fell for Dinah. She is absolutely not aggressive, but super shy; when my sister and her husband have guests, she spends most of the time hiding under furniture. Most of their guests don’t even know she exists!
From Pam’s description, I was certain Dinah needed, at a minimum, to have her anal glands expressed, and perhaps a trip to the vet if one of the glands was infected or impacted. I pulled Dinah out from one of her hidey holes, and my sister helped me get her dressed in a harness. I said I would take care of Dinah, as my sister had to go to work.
Our first stop was at my house, to leave stinky Otto there. Then we went to Walgreens, to get every quart of hydrogen peroxide they had on the shelf, for de-skunking Otto. Next, we stopped at a local groomer; Dinah’s nails were super long and overdue for a trim. The groomer restrained Dinah enough for me to get a good look at her bottom. Sure enough, she has a sore next to the anus; she needs to go see a vet. I called the local clinic; they had no openings today, but could see her tomorrow morning. OK, I made that appointment. But is it an emergency? Should I take her to the emergency clinic in the next town?
Since I was close to the shelter, I decided to consult my friend, the veterinary technician there. She was busy with something, so I waited in the lobby for a few minutes, saying hello to my friends who are the front desk clerks there. It wasn’t even 10 am and one of them mouthed to me, “I want to go home!”
“Lots of lost dogs?” I asked, and they grimly nodded. But as one of them helped one gentleman at the front desk, when he was asked, “When did you last see your dog?” he answered, “Four days ago.” Yikes. I know I don’t have what it takes to be a receptionist at a shelter – a poker face? nerves of steel? – that’s for sure.
My friend took a peek at Dinah’s nether end and agreed that it could likely wait until tomorrow for an in-depth exam. She suggested we don’t feed her in the morning, in the likely event that she has to be sedated.
My sister just had a whopping vet bill when her other little dog got stomped by a deer in the empty lot next to her house. I feel bad that they have another bill on the way, but when it rains, it pours.
Dinah and I came home to give Otto another skunk bath – actually, his second in two weeks! When he was young, he got skunked twice in one week, and forever after, when we saw skunks, he would back away from them, licking his lips anxiously. I rejoiced and bragged that he was the only dog I knew who had “learned his lesson about skunks.” Well, all bets are off with senior dogs, from fireworks to skunks.
Next year, I think we will all go camping somewhere very remote.
Shortly after his litter's rescue and first treatment for demodectic mange (Odin is in back right corner)
“Why don’t you just keep him?”
Everyone who fosters dogs for a shelter or rescue group has heard some version of this, probably every single time they foster:
“That puppy is so happy with you! And he gets along with your dogs so well! You should keep him!”
“I can’t believe the transformation! He looks so gorgeous now, and is so well behaved! You should keep him!”
And the clincher: “That dog loves you so much! You should keep him!”
Why we can’t just keep them all
Here’s the thing: We who foster know that our foster dogs look better, feel better, are happier and healthier, and are better behaved than they were when we got them; that’s why we foster. And we are acutely aware of how much our fosters seem to love us. We, sometimes quite painfully, love them, too. But for most of us, if we keep our foster dogs, it means we can’t foster any more. So the next time for the next few years that our local shelter or rescue group calls, looking for a foster provider for another very needy but worthy dog or litter of starving puppies, we have to say, “Sorry, I can’t.”
“But what is just one more?” our friends ask. Well, when it comes to just one more mouth to feed, truthfully, it’s not that much. But every dog owner should be aware that the price of feeding a dog is just the tip of the iceberg of a dog’s total costs.
Veterinary and insurance costs add up quickly
Veterinary costs, especially for any emergencies, can completely sink a household budget. I’m a strong believer in pet health insurance, and it has saved me thousands – but there is the matter of the monthly payment and an annual deductible. As an example, I’m currently paying $60.05 a month for 3-year-old Woody’s insurance ($720.60 for the year), and $147.38 a month for 11-year-old Otto’s insurance ($1,768.56 for the year). Both have a $250 annual deductible; I pay the first $250 of veterinary expenses each year, and then the health insurance reimburses me for 90% of the rest of that year’s veterinary bills. So, my cost each year, before I qualify for any reimbursements, is $2,989.16. The cost for one more young dog’s health insurance would be at least the cost of Woody’s: $970 before the insurance would reimburse me a penny.
Such a good boy, on our first trip to the ophthalmology dept at UC Davis Veterinary Medical Teaching Hospital in December
Does that sound like a fortune? Well, it is. But it’s a monthly bill I can budget for – whereas a $6,000 bill for emergency surgery or a $10,000 bill for cancer treatments would be quite a blow. One can gamble with these things, but it’s just that, a gamble. And I don’t like gambling when my financial stability and emotional health are riding on the outcome.
Don’t forget about boarding or pet sitter costs
Then there is the cost of care if and when I travel. If I needed to board my dogs, the difference between boarding two and three is significant. My local boarding options charge anywhere from $45 a day per dog for a jail-like kennel and no extras, up to about $75 a day per dog for a nice facility that takes the dogs out several times a day. So one more dog would add $315 (for the jail) to $525 for a week of boarding.
Truthfully, I haven’t ever boarded my dogs or used a professional pet sitter (another option). I rely on friends and family for help taking care of my dogs when I travel – and in return, they can count on me to help them when they need it. Providing care for extra dogs can be time-consuming when time is at a premium, but it’s the deal we make with each other to ensure that our dogs are as safe and as secure as possible, with people they know and love, when we need to travel, whether for work or family emergencies or, every once in a blue moon, an actual vacation!
When my husband and I leave town, my senior dog Otto always goes to stay with my sister and her husband; he loves being the big dog in her pack of little dogs, and the plush life they enjoy. (On his first stay with them, he staked out the queen-sized bed in their spare bedroom as his preferred sleeping spot, even though he had access to lovely sofas and heaps of dog beds. No other dog gets that privilege! But his “Aunt” and “Uncle” love him and allow it, and I love them for it, even though he’s not allowed on my beds at home!)
I generally leave Woody at my office/house, and my tenant there feeds him and lets him outside. (I actually provide food and other supplies for his dog, so that’s a favor my tenant owes me.) Another friend, who walks dogs with me a lot and knows all about Woody’s training and proclivities and the trails where it’s safe to go, will stop by and pick up Woody to take on walks with her dog; so I owe Jessie some favors after she helps keep Woody happy when I’m gone.
It takes a village
Since I took on the ask of fostering my current foster pup Odin and his siblings back in November, I have had to call in even more favors for Odin’s care than for my own two dogs. An eye condition meant Odin needed eye medication many times daily for months and months, so when I traveled, the management and logging of all of those eyedrops fell to my friend Leonora – the one person I knew who was comfortable with administering eye medication and able to do it as many times as required.
Sleeping with “Uncle Woody” in March
Ultimately, all of our efforts failed, and Odin’s eye was finally surgically removed, but he still requires more consideration when I leave town than my own dogs do. Odin is still very much in the adolescent “Fail to give me enough stimulation and I will chew anything I please” stage, so, in the past few months when I have traveled, I have had to call in yet more favors to keep him out of trouble. Leonora picks him up from my office/house on her way home from work, and he plays and sleeps with her dogs at night and on the weekend. He has shown that he can’t quite be trusted not to chew up stuff if left at her house during the day, but he’s perfectly happy and mostly nondestructive if he hangs out with Woody at my office, so my friend drops him there on her way to work each morning. That’s a LOT of favors I owe her after each trip.
Like me, Leonora loves and enjoys Odin, too. But she also has two dogs and two pet health insurance bills each month, and her older dog needs costly medication each month. She also pays for a pet-sitter to come to her house each day to let the older dog (especially) have a mid-day potty break. She would love to adopt Odin, but, like me, is concerned about the cost of adding another dog to her household.
Foster-failure trouble
I can usually easily dismiss the “You should keep him!” comments I get from family and friends and the people I am trying to promote my foster dogs to. I know they are well-meaning, and that, sentiment aside, most people understand that the commitment of a pet can’t be taken on that lightly. But a discussion I had last night with an acquaintance who is having a very hard time with two sibling foster-failures made me decide to just put this little tirade out there, anyway.
This woman is retired, and has two elderly dogs with complicated medical needs; both are former foster dogs who needed so much care that she ended up keeping them. Recently she fostered a mama dog and her puppies for a local rescue. The mama dog and the other puppies got adopted, but she just fell in love with the last two puppies, and they seemed to play so well together that she thought, well, they can keep each other company.
Healthy and ready for his new home
But now that they are in adolescence, they are starting to aggravate each other, and are also bothering her older dogs. She has sought out help from a professional trainer, but still feels overwhelmed. My friend is both kicking herself about making the decision to adopt them, and feeling desperate and heartbroken at the idea of re-homing one or both. She is in actual, physical pain at the idea of letting one or both of these pups go – and I totally get it. When I just think about saying goodbye to Odin – when I find the perfect home for him – I start to cry. I think back to what he looked like in November: a scabby, hairless, skeleton. How could I forget our many trips to UC Davis, trying to save his eye, and the many vets and vet students he charmed and delighted there. I am going to miss his habit of burying his head in my chest and leaning in for long, sweet hugs.
Finding a forever home that’s just right
My acquaintance and I both know that these dogs can be happy elsewhere. And I think that we both know that they should live elsewhere. I can’t speak any more for her, but I know that I will be supremely happy when I can find a home for Odin where he will get more individual attention and love than he can get with me. It hasn’t happened in the past few weeks because I am being crazy-picky about who is going to get him. I want to make sure he ends up in a home with people who truly have time and space and a budget for a dog, and who will be just as touched by his cuddling and amused by his zoomies and appreciative of his gentle friendliness toward all humans as I have been.
When that happens, and I am certain he’s in the right place, and my heart recovers – then I can foster again, and try to help another little starving, mangey, and/or frightened dog or puppy get healthy and find a home. When I own just two dogs, I can afford that. But owning three dogs, in terms of time and money, puts me just over the line of what I can afford and take on responsibly. And I would like to keep giving back to more dogs, if I can.
If you’ve read this far, you probably aren’t the kind of person who will tell your friend who fosters, “You should keep him!” But if you are the kind of person who fosters, feel free to share this with your friends, so they can understand a bit more about what likely crosses your mind when they say that.
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In a 48-hour period last weekend, three dogs who are very
close to me ended up in veterinary emergency rooms. It was a very weird
aggregation of events – but each event was avoidable, and each dog’s owner has
taken responsibility for their dog’s potentially deadly accident.
Beware of Wild Animals Around Your Property
The first accident happened to Daisy, my sister’s little
15-pound Jack Russell Terrier. My sister and her husband live in a rural area,
where most of the homes are on lots of a half-acre or more. In addition, they
live at the bottom of a steep hill, on a court with just five houses on it, and
several empty lots. She sometimes allows her little dogs to potty in the empty
half-acre lot next door to her house. The lot is, like her own backyard,
studded with oak trees, but unlike her yard, is covered with tall grass, and
the little dogs enjoy sniffing and exploring the area as they take their potty
break.
On this particular day, though, what my sister failed to
notice as she let the dogs wander into the lot, was a female deer apparently lounging
at the back of the lot. She didn’t see the moment that two of her dogs
discovered the deer – or whether the deer spotted the dogs before they spotted
her. But she heard one of her dogs shrieking and as she ran in the direction of
the screams, saw a large female deer rearing up and stomping down on one of her
little dogs.
Like many of us, she was focused on getting to and
protecting her dog, and failed to appreciate the danger to herself as she ran
toward the deer. She said she was yelling, “Hey! Hey!” and about 15 feet from
the deer, fully expecting the deer to spook and run from her, when it, instead,
reared up and charged at HER. She screamed and waved her arms and dodged behind
a tree, and fortunately, little Daisy took that opportunity to bolt away from
the deer. My sister, too, turned and ran and, again, fortunately, the deer
didn’t pursue either of them. I suspect that she had a baby resting nearby or
some other reason to go on the offensive. My sister didn’t investigate further,
as Daisy was still screaming – now in pain, rather than from fear. The deer’s
hooves had made one very deep and long laceration along Daisy’s flank, and her
face was bleeding, too.
A night in the ER, x-rays, pre-anesthetic bloodwork, surgery
(under anesthesia) to close the laceration and insert a drain, antibiotics, and
pain medication: $1,600. Nope, they don’t have pet insurance.
Don’t Leave Out Food Leftovers or Dirty Dishes
Pieces of glass and tennis ball, retrieved from Nova’s tummy
The very next morning, I received a call from a friend
regarding her dog Nova, who was my favorite puppy from a litter I fostered last
fall. (I used her and Nova to model for an article in WDJ not long ago, you can
see them here.)
She said, “I just need a little support. I am at the ER with Nova and scared!”
It seems she had made barbequed ribs the night before, and had left the glass
pan, covered with baked-on sauce, on the stove top, to deal with the next day.
In the middle of the night, Nova had apparently knocked the pan onto the
kitchen floor, where it shattered into hundreds of pieces – and she spent some
time licking the sauce off of those pieces of glass! There was broken
glass – and blood – all over the kitchen
floor. My friend didn’t hesitate; she just put Nova into the car and drove
straight to the emergency clinic.
Nova: A little loopy, but no worse for wear after licking and ingesting broken glass, and having it retrieved from her stomach under anesthesia
The attending veterinarian used an endoscope (under full
anesthesia) to examine Nova’s esophagus and stomach, and removed several pieces
of glass – as well as several pieces of chewed-up tennis ball. She was
incredibly lucky; the procedure took place quickly enough that Nova hadn’t yet
vomited (which could have made the glass cause damage on the way out of the
stomach and in Nova’s throat), nor had the glass hadn’t started to move through
Nova’s intestines. The blood that her owner saw on the kitchen floor was
definitely caused by cuts the glass made on Nova’s tongue, but none of those
cuts (nor others in her esophagus) were serious enough to require surgical
repair.
Total cost: $2100. Fortunately, Nova’s owner has pet health
insurance. Since she had another vet visit earlier this year and has already
spent the $250 deductible for 2019, she will receive a reimbursement from the
insurance company for 90 percent of the most recent bill.
Nova’s owner reports: “I have learned my lesson; my counters
are the cleanest in the county and there won’t ever be a mistake made like this
again. Also, no more tennis balls for Nova.”
Another Counter-Surfing Case
The same afternoon that my friend was picking up Nova after
her procedure, I received a text from another friend! “Ricky ate Chaco’s pain
meds. We are at (a local vet clinic).”
While ALL medications should be kept in kitchen or bathroom
cabinets – never on counters that dogs can reach – this is especially true of
chewable medications. Most dogs won’t eat more than one nasty-tasting pill they
find lying around. But the chewable kind tempts many dogs into eating the whole
bottle – and that’s what Ricky did. He ate about eight Deramaxx pills, a
nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory (NSAID) that can cause liver damage if an
overdose is consumed.
The medicine Ricky ate
Again, fortunately, my friend discovered the chewed-up,
empty bottle right away, and drove immediately to a veterinary hospital, where
they administered an injection of apomorphine, which makes dogs almost
instantaneously vomit. So Ricky has (apparently) suffered no ill effects, and
the bill was a quite reasonable $170 (no insurance).
We’re All Susceptible
Lest anyone think I am judging my friends: I, too, once had
a dog eat a whole bottle of chewable medication meant for another dog (I
wrote about that in 2013!). The experience made me VERY careful about where
I put medications.
Protecting our dogs is an ongoing, complex task, and none of
us can prevent every potentially fatal accident. But all of these were
preventable – and my sister and friends
and I all hope that these stories make you just that much more alert and
able to prevent any of these accidents from befalling your dogs!
In case you want to learn about more ways to avoid a trip to
the veterinary ER, here
is a link to an article that veterinarian Catherine Ashe (who practiced
emergency veterinary medicine for nine years) wrote for us last year.
Where I live in northern California, most of the ticks that dogs pick up are these relatively large “American dog ticks” (Dermacentor variabilis). They are easy to comb out of a dog’s coat before they have latched on and easy to find once they have latched onto the dog’s body; just run your hands all over him and feel for bumps. In contrast, “deer ticks” (Ixodes scapularis), common in other parts of the country, are way smaller in every life stage, and so much more difficult to detect early.
It’s creepy enough that there are billions of these tiny insects living in the woods and fields, just waiting to latch onto your dog (or you!) and suck your blood. Bloating themselves with blood, ticks expand in size exponentially before falling off, able now to reproduce – gross! Add in the fact that a certain percentage of ticks may also infect your dog (or you!) with a disease that can cause pain and suffering for the rest of his life – that’s beyond creepy. I lack words to describe the sheer perniciousness of this insect’s survival strategy.
Most of us are aware that ticks can be infected with the spirochetes (microscopic bacterial organisms) that cause Lyme disease (for more information, see Lyme Disease in Dogs, WDJ October 2018). But, depending on what part of the country you live in, the ticks around you may carry any number of other spirochetes that cause other painful diseases, such as Rocky Mountain spotted fever, anaplasmosis, babesiosis, ehrlichiosis, and more.
Parasites in Parasites
These spirochetes are parasites of the ticks themselves! Ingeniously, they use ticks to help them move from one host to another. When a tick sucks blood from an infected mammal, bird, or reptile (common hosts include mice, chipmunks, deer, birds, and lizards) the spirochetes come aboard and set up shop inside the tick; when the infected tick bites its next host, the spirochetes slip into the new victim through the tick’s saliva. The longer the tick feeds, the longer the spirochetes have to infect the tick’s newest host.
Not all ticks carry the spirochetes that cause disease in mammals. The rate of their infection varies by geographic location, species and life-stage of the tick, and species of spirochete. Most prevalent is the species that causes Lyme disease, Borrelia burgdorferi. In southern New England – the epicenter of Lyme infection – about 20 to 30 percent of tick nymphs and 30 to 50 percent of adult ticks are infected with B. burgdorferi. In other parts of the country, B. burgdorferi may be found in fewer than five percent of ticks.
How to Protect Your Dog
To protect your family members from tick-borne disease, then, your job is two-fold: Do everything that you can to keep ticks off of your dog, and quickly find and remove any ticks that do manage to climb aboard.
We’ve discussed oral and topical pesticides that are fed to or applied to dogs to kill ticks in other articles (see Prescription Flea and Tick Medication, WDJ September 2017). But it’s clear to anyone who uses prescription or over-the-counter medications or spot-on products, tick collars, essential oils, or anything else, that no matter what you use, some ticks will manage to climb aboard and bite your dog. So let’s talk about the second tactic for protecting your dog from tick-borne disease: Getting the ticks off your dog ASAP.
How to Remove Ticks
I have heard countless methods for tick removal: Paint a tick with nail polish and it will detach from the dog to avoid being suffocated. Touch a just-extinguished match to the tick’s body so it pulls itself out. Pull while turning the tick clockwise. No – pull while turning counter-clockwise! All of these tactics are ineffective; don’t do any of them!
It’s actually quite simple: Just try to get a good grip on the tick, as close to the dog’s skin as possible, and pull it straight out.
Note that I said simple, not easy. Ticks are tiny. Your dog may be squirming. If his coat is thick, it might be hard to isolate the tick in your grip. You may end up pulling, or being impeded by, his hair, too. And if your fingers are thick, you run the risk of squishing the tick between them as you pull, which can result in squeezing the contents of the tick’s mouth and guts into your dog! Ack! That actually increases the chance of infecting your dog with any disease-carrying spirochetes that the tick might be hosting!
Tweezers can be used more effectively than your fingers, but they, too, pose the risk of squeezing the tick and squirting that potentially pathogenic-filled tick spit into your dog’s body.
Instead, use a tick pulling tool with a V-shaped slot. Slide the tool between your dog’s skin and the tick’s body, wedging the tick’s body into the tightest part of the tool’s crevice. When you feel that the tick is securely lodged in the slot, pull upward on the tool and – pop! The tick comes right out.
Tick Tool Time
There are any number of tick-pulling tools on the market. Many of them are basically tweezers. They may have longer stems or sharper points than tweezers meant for other purposes, but they all pose the risk of squeezing the tick as you grasp it hard enough to pull it out.
The superior tools for this purpose all have the V-shaped slot that you wedge the tick’s body into, effectively using its … shoulders? … as leverage for when you pull.
The best tick-pulling tools have a few specific attributes that increase their effectiveness:
They are made of a strong yet thin material. The tool has to be thin enough to slide between the tick’s body and the dog’s skin, along both sides of the tick’s … neck?
They are possessed of a V-shaped slot that is narrow enough at the bottom of the V to trap and leverage against the narrowest of tick … shoulders? (The tick’s body, basically.) If the V is not vanishingly narrow at the bottom, the tool won’t capture the tiniest ticks.
They are of a size and shape that is easy for even thick-fingered people to grasp securely and that can be slid under the tick’s body easily.
We tested several tick-removal tools with V-shaped slots, and our favorites are described below. We purchased all of these products on Amazon.com. We like to support local pet supply stores, but these products are rarely found in stores.
If you give your dog no hand signals or body-language clues when you use your verbal cue for a behavior, will she know what you want and comply? Try turning your back or putting your hands behind your back and using only your verbal cue for a “Down” – did she lie down?
Does your dog understand what behavior you wish her to perform when you use verbal cues alone, with absolutely no hand gestures or suggestive body language? In many cases, the body-language picture we present to our dogs tells them as much – or more – about what we expect them to do as our verbal cues do.
In fact, it’s pretty common for dogs to be unable to perform the behavior that their owners are sure they know upon hearing the verbal cue alone – for example, if the owner’s back is turned to the dog when he gives his dog the verbal cue.
There are many compelling reasons to strengthen our dogs’ knowledge of and response to verbal cues – not least of which is that there are actually times when it would be helpful for our dogs to perform the behaviors we want when our back is literally turned!
The stronger their understanding of and response to our verbal cues, the more likely it is for our dogs to respond to those cues in situations where we look different, such as when our hands are full, we are sitting down, we are keeping our eyes on an approaching dog and/or person, or when our dog can’t see us because he’s darting toward the delivery van pulling in the driveway.
How to Teach a Verbal Cue
By helping your dog make an association between your verbal cue, the desired behavior, and the delivery of a resulting reinforcer (such as a food treat), you teach your dog how to respond with the appropriate behavior when you ask for it. You are giving him a choice: the opportunity to be reinforced for performing a particular behavior, or not. If he chooses “not,” then your job is to figure out how to help him want to choose to do the behavior.
First, you will properly introduce the cue and help him understand what it means. While there are several different ways to do this, we’ll walk you through the process with a couple of basic behaviors using one of our favorite training techniques: the lure-reward method. The steps are:
1. Get the behavior. Encourage the dog to do the behavior by using a treat as a lure to explain to him what you want. When he does the behavior for the lure, “mark” the moment that he does the desired behavior (with the click of a clicker or a verbal marker, such as the word “Yes!”) and give him a treat. (Note: For some dogs and/or for some behaviors, you may need to lure/shape – marking and giving treats for pieces of the behavior until you build the final behavior. See “Shaping Your Dog’s Behavior,” WDJ January 2017.)
2. Add the cue. When your dog will easily offer the behavior for the lure, use your verbal cue just prior to luring the behavior. You are essentially explaining to him, “This word means the same thing as this luring motion I’ve been doing.” Continue to mark and treat as appropriate throughout the process.
Your dog training reward marker doesn’t need to “click”
A clicker is a small device that makes a consistent, distinct clicking sound. Some make a very sharp sound; some make a softer (though still consistent) clicking sound, like the sound of a ballpoint pen being retracted or extended with the press of a button. But markers don’t have to be a click; any distinctive, consistent sound, gesture, or event can work.
I sometimes use the verbal marker “Yes!” with dogs, in a distinct, consistent, bright tone of voice. I have also perfected a loud “mouth click” by suctioning my tongue to the roof of my mouth and pulling it off with a resounding “pop” – very useful when working with horses and I want both of my hands free to handle a 1,000-pound animal and related equipment. Dogs who are sound-sensitive may do better with a verbal marker than a plastic clicker.
But the marker doesn’t have to be a sound! People who train deaf dogs often use a thumbs-up gesture or a momentary flash of a small flashlight to mark the desired behavior displayed by their canine students. Any signal that is consistent and easily noticed can work as a reward marker.
3. Add a pause. After several repetitions, pause for a few seconds after you say the cue, to give his brain a chance to process the word; then lure the behavior. (“Several” will vary from dog to dog. Some dogs will get it quickly; some dogs need more repetitions to understand the process. You will come to know how many repetitions is appropriate for your dog.)
4. Vary the pause. As you proceed with cue-pause-lure, begin to vary how long you wait before you lure. Sometimes, use the lure after just a second or two; sometimes wait several seconds. Luring quickly keeps him from getting frustrated. Waiting longer before you lure gives him more time to think.
5. Reinforce offered behaviors. At this point, some dogs will begin to offer the behavior before you lure. If yours does, the first time he does it, mark, treat, and party! Tell your dog how brilliant he is, give him several treats (or a special high-value treat you’ve saved for this occasion), and give him a break before you try again. Know that just because he did it once doesn’t mean he will do it every time – you may still have to do some cue-pause-lure repetitions, but it means you are well on the way to getting the behavior “on cue.” Congratulations!
6. Fade the lure. Some dogs won’t begin to offer the behavior so easily, which means you will need to “fade” the lure. This means you will continue to cue-pause-lure, but gradually decrease the amount of luring help you give him.
For example, if you were moving the lure six inches, try moving it just four inches; if he commits to finishing the behavior, whisk the lure away, mark the completion of the behavior without the treat in front of his nose, then give him the treat.
Also, be conscious at this stage that you do not inadvertently use other body-language hints or “prompts” to help your dog do the behavior, such as moving a hand toward the floor for the “down.” If you do use these prompts, you will have to fade them later to have the behavior truly on verbal cue alone.
Continue with your repetitions, fading the treat more and more, until your dog will reliably offer the behavior without the lure. Congratulations!
Note: Notice that I do not use “air cookies” – pretending to lure but not actually having a treat in your hand. To me, this is lying to your dog, and you still have to fade the “air cookie.” You might as well just skip this extra step and move right to fading the lure.
Verbal Cue for “Sit”
Sitting is one the most basic of canine behaviors. It’s an easy behavior for most dogs to do, and a great “incompatible behavior” to ask for when you don’t want your dog doing something else, such as jumping up on people. It also can become a useful “default” behavior – the behavior you teach your dog to offer when he’s not sure what else to do, or when he’s asking for something – like, your attention or his dinner.
Jacob uses a food lure to entice Kitty into the sitting position. You may have to experiment the most effective position for your dog’s lure; if your hand is too high, she may jump up to try to reach it. If it is too close to her head, she may feel threatened and duck away.
Here’s how to teach your dog a verbal “Sit” cue using this process.
1. Get the behavior. Do not use your verbal “Sit” cue for this step. Simply use a food lure to encourage your dog to sit, by placing it at the tip of his nose and slowly lifting up a little. (If you go too fast you will “outrun” him and he will lose his connection to the lure.)
With some dogs you can move the treat back over the head a little; other dogs will find this aversive and back away from you. Experiment a little by moving the lure in different places – back a little, forward a little, up a little more, up toward your chest – until you find the place that invites him to sit.
If he doesn’t lure into a sit fairly easily, lure/shape it by marking and giving him a treat him for any upward head movement that follows the treat, and for any lowering of the hindquarters, until he is all the way in a sitting position.
2. Add the cue. When your dog will sit easily for the lure, it’s time to add the cue. Say “Sit!” in a cheerful tone of voice (remember, it’s an invitation, not a command!), and lure him into a sit position. Repeat this at least a half-dozen times. Continue to mark (with the click of a clicker or a verbal marker, such as the word “Yes!”) and give him a treat for sits throughout the process.
3. Add a pause. Now say “Sit” in a happy voice and pause a few seconds. If he sits, mark and treat and party – you have a canine genius! More likely he won’t sit for just the cue yet, so after two to three seconds, lure him to sit, then mark and treat. Repeat several times.
Cue the cues
Today’s force-free dog training professionals increasingly use the word “cue” rather than “command” to describe the communications we give to our dogs when we want them to perform a behavior. Here’s why:
The word “cue” typically refers to a signal that encourages someone to take an action. A cue informs your dog that there is an opportunity for him to receive a reinforcer (such as a yummy treat) for performing a particular behavior. Compare that to the word “command,” which means to give an authoritative or peremptory order. The implication when you give a command is, “You better do it, or else!”
The words we use are important. They inform our mental associations and physical responses. As philosophically positive as a person might be when she is training her dog, if her brain thinks “command,” she is likely to use a more forceful tone of voice and more dominating body language. She might even be tempted to physically coerce her dog into position, albeit gently, if she perceives that her dog has “disobeyed” her command.
In contrast, a trainer whose brain thinks “cue” is more likely to use a lighter tone of voice, softer body language, and to examine why her dog declined the opportunity to earn a reinforcer. Perhaps he was distracted, didn’t understand, hasn’t yet generalized the behavior to a new environment, has a prior aversive association with the cue, or has a medical issue of some kind that makes it painful when he tries to perform the behavior.
Keep in mind that it is our job, as the supposedly more intelligent species, to be able to get the dog to want to do what we want him to do, rather than just force him to do it!
4. Vary the pause. Continue to “Sit”-pause-lure, but now, start to vary how long you pause before luring to give your dog’s brain time to process the information and respond. Sometimes lure after just a one-second pause, sometimes two to three seconds, and sometimes wait as long as five or six seconds.
5. Reinforce offered behaviors. Some dogs will begin to offer sits at this stage with the longer pauses. Mark and treat and party!
Continue to repeat this step, and remember that he may still need some luring. Just because he sits in response to the cue sometimes without luring doesn’t mean he fully understands.
Repeat this step until he responds to your verbal “Sit” cue without the lure 80 to 90 percent of the time. At that point you can say he knows the cue – and you may still need to assist with your lure from time to time when he doesn’t respond due to the cue. (None of us are perfect!) It’s better to lure when needed than to repeat the cue and risk “learned irrelevance,” where the cue loses its meaning. Sometimes even very well-trained dogs need a little help to get it right!
6. Fade the lure. If you have one of those dogs who just doesn’t get it with the cue-pause-lure step, you will need to fade the lure. Give him your cheerful “Sit” cue, pause, and begin to lure. As soon as he appears to be committed to sitting, whisk the lure out of sight behind your back and let him finish the sit without the lure in front of his nose. (If you keep the treat in view, he may try to follow it!) Mark and treat. Gradually lure less and less, whisking the treat out of sight sooner in the sit sequence, until, lo and behold, you don’t have to lure at all. Mark, treat, and party!
We’re Down
We start to teach “Down” as soon as we can easily lure our dog into the sit position, even if “Sit” isn’t yet reliably on verbal cue. It can be a more challenging behavior for many dogs than the sit, but the same procedure works.
1. Get the behavior. Do not use your verbal “Down” cue for this step. Simply use your lure to encourage your dog to lie down, by placing it at the tip of his nose and slowly moving it straight down toward the floor.
First stage of luring the “down”
Some dogs will follow the treat straight to the floor and lie down the first time you lure, but most need a little lure/shaping here: move the treat down a little, mark and treat. Move it down a little more, mark and treat. Continue to lure him a little farther each time until he is all the way down.
If he stands up, you may have moved the lure too far, too fast, or moved it away from him rather than straight toward the floor and he got up to follow it. Try again, with smaller increments, and make sure the treat is moving straight toward the floor.
2. Add the cue. When your dog will lie down easily for the lure, it’s time to add the cue. Say “Down!” in a cheerful tone of voice (invitation, not command!), and lure him into a down position. Repeat this at least a half-dozen times. Continue to mark and give treats for downs throughout the process.
3. Add a pause. Now say “Down” in a happy voice and pause a few seconds. Make sure you have the treat in a neutral position at your side or behind your back. If you hold it up at your chest, you are giving your dog a body language signal to sit. Because dogs are primarily body language communicators, he will likely pay more attention to your “Sit” signal than your verbal “Down” cue.
If he lies down when you say the cue, mark and treat and party – you have a canine genius! More likely he won’t lie down for just the cue yet, so after two to three seconds, lure him to lie down, then mark and treat. Repeat several times.
4. Vary the pause. Continue to “Down”-pause-lure, but now start to vary how long you pause before luring. Sometimes lure after just a one-second pause, sometimes two to three seconds, and sometimes wait as long as five or six seconds.
5. Reinforce offered behaviors. Some dogs will begin to offer downs at this stage with the longer pauses. Mark and treat and party!
Continue to repeat this step, and remember that he may still need some luring. Just because he lies down in response to the cue without luring sometimes, doesn’t mean he fully understands. Repeat until he responds to your “Down” cue without the lure 80 to 90 percent of the time. Remember, it’s better to lure as needed than to repeat the cue and risk “learned irrelevance,” where the cue loses its meaning.
Kitty is starting to offer the “Down” after the verbal cue and before Jacob uses a lure – yay!
6. Fade the lure. If you have one of the many dogs who just doesn’t get it with the cue-pause-lure step, you will need to fade the lure.
Give him your cheerful “Down” cue, pause, and begin to lure. As soon as he appears to be committed to lying down, whisk the lure out of sight behind your back and let him finish the down without the lure in front of his nose. Mark and treat. Gradually lure less and less, whisking the treat out of sight sooner in the down sequence, until, lo and behold, you don’t have to lure at all. Mark, treat, and party!
Another Language
You can use this same process to put many different behaviors solidly on verbal cue. First get your dog to do the behavior, then add the cue, then fade the lure. It is very important to begin fading the lure as soon as he will reliably perform the behavior so that your dog and you don’t become dependent on the presence of the lure to make the behavior happen.
We are a verbal species, and while it is critically important for us to understand our dogs’ body language communications, there is something quite compelling about helping our non-verbal canines learn our language. It is very gratifying – and incredibly valuable for strengthening the dog-human bond – when your dog understands and responds to your verbal cues. Just decide what behavior you want on verbal cue, and get started!
Just like us, in
order to keep from
getting injured or
exhausted, dogs
need to be gradually
conditioned for
hiking at elevation,
on uneven ground,
or for extraordinary
distances. Similarly,
the fitter and more
accustomed to hikes
they are, the more
enjoyment you will
have together on the
trail!
I love hiking with my dogs, and one of my favorite things about living in the Pacific Northwest is the abundance of dog friendly hiking trails available to us. Over the years, I have learned a great many things about how to take a safe and enjoyable hike with dogs – some things that you really should do, and some things that you really should not do. Here are 10 tips for ensuring a great time for all involved.
Safety
Being out in nature is a great way to relax and connect with your dog, but it’s important to think about safety. With three dogs of various ages, sizes, and abilities (from 2 to 17 years old, 10 pounds to 103 pounds, and one dog with two surgically reconstructed knees), I take a lot of precautions to ensure everyone’s safety when we hit the trails.
1.All of the normal safety precautions for hiking in general apply to hiking with dogs – and then some. Tell other people where you are going and when you will be back. Monitor weather conditions. Be realistic about your own skill and fitness level. Carry trail maps; don’t just rely on your phone, as GPS signals might not work in the backcountry. Turn back early so you are back before dark. Don’t approach wild animals. Carry a cell phone (though, again, be aware you may be out of signal range). Carry water.
When you’re going with a dog, do all of the above, and carry extra water for your dog, and allow yourself give extra time for the hike.
Also, monitor weather conditions to ensure temperatures aren’t too hot for your dog to safely hike. Because (unfortunately) the general public can’t always be trusted to make good decisions for their dogs, the city of Phoenix, Arizona, piloted a program that banned dogs from hiking on trails when the weather is 100 degrees or more. People caught with dogs on the trails in those temperatures can be fined or jailed. The program took effect after multiple dogs died while hiking in the Phoenix heat.
2. Be realistic about your dog’s abilities, and aware that they can change. “The dog’s general health and athleticism should be considered before planning a hike,” says Stacey Rebello, DVM, medical director of emergency services at NorthStar Vets Veterinary Emergency Trauma & Speciality Center in New Jersey. “And the duration and length of the hike should be adjusted to ensure the pet can tolerate it.”
On your hike, watch for symptoms of tiring. Turn back before injury or exhaustion occurs. Signs that your hiking plans need adjustment include an adolescent dog who has more energy than stamina or a senior dog who has a hard time keeping up. Any dog who seems to be over-tired the next day or has difficulty recovering from the hike needs more conditioning before attempting that hike again.
I’ve found that trails rated as a good match for hiking with children work well for most dogs.
Leash Laws
Although many people like hiking in naural settings with their dogs off-leash, this is not allowed in many areas, including most state and national parks.
3. Be sure you know the regulations that govern trail use by dogs for any area you plan to hike with your dogs – and follow them! Some dog owners believe that their dogs are so well trained that they should be allowed to hike off-leash; however, leash laws exist to keep everyone safe, including the leashed dogs, other trail users (canine and human), and wildlife.
Following leash laws also helps ensure that you and your dog will be able to hike again another day. If people can’t be trusted to follow rules and keep their dogs leashed to protect wildlife and fragile vegetation, more wilderness areas will ban dogs all together.
Also, be sure to doublecheck that dogs are allowed on the trails at your planned hiking location before leaving your house. Dogs are allowed in many national parks – but are often restricted to campgrounds (not allowed on trails), and must be in the company of one of their owners at all times. When researching dog-friendly trails, I find local websites are better than hiking guide books; they are more frequently updated with information about current trail conditions or regulations.
4. In areas where dogs are permitted to be off-leash, take your dog off-leash only if he isn’t a danger to himself or others. Just because you hike in an area where dogs are allowed to be off leash doesn’t mean you should remove the leash, says Cincinatti dog trainer Nick Hof, a Board member of the Association of Professional Dog Trainers. “If your dog is off-leash in a permitted area, your dog should have excellent recall skills and be good with any other people or dogs you come across,” Hof says.
BARK Ranger Program
In 2015 the National Park Service began a new program to work with responsible dog lovers to find ways to make national parks more friendly to dogs while protecting their fragile ecosystems. The BARK Ranger program was piloted in Washington’s Olympic National Park. The program was expanded to Montezuma Castle National Monument in 2016 and is now at many national parks nationwide. The program offers structured activities like guided hikes with dogs and the opportunity to get official park gear for your dog.
BARK stands for:
Bag your dog’s waste
Always use a leash
Respect wildlife
Know where you can go
Participants in the BARK Ranger program take a pledge to follow park guidelines to be good examples and good ambassadors in the parks.
Some parks allow dogs and their owners to volunteer as BARK Ranger Ambassadors, making contact with national park visitors and their dogs to ensure everyone has a safe and enjoyable visit. The goal of the Ambassador program is to reduce the number of non-compliant dog incidents in the parks and increase awareness about park rules and training. The teams receive training on how to approach visitors, thank them for following park rules, and request that they comply if they aren’t. BARK Ambassadors also receive special vests for the dogs and t-shirts for the handlers and have scheduled volunteer shifts in the park.
To learn more about what parks near you offer BARK Ranger programs, visit nationalparkpaws.com/the-bark-ranger-program/. If your local park isn’t listed, call the park’s ranger station and let them know you would participate in a BARK Ranger Program if one were started. The National Park Service looks for interest from dog owners to decide where to expand the program next.
“Remember, when you take your dog off-leash in an unsecured area, you are betting his life that you can predict how he will handle any situation and feel confident that you all will succeed,” says Hof.
Hof advises for leashed and unleashed dogs to practice the occasional recall, reinforcing prompt responses generously. This reinforces not only the dogs’ recall but also that hiking near you is rewarding.
Trail Etiquette
If you have found an enjoyable place to hike with your dog, the odds are that other trail users appreciate the area, too. Be sure you are the trail user that others enjoy seeing – or at least, don’t notice!
5. Always be courteous to others and to nature when you and your dogs are out on the trail. Be sure to bring plenty of poop bags with you and pick up after your dog.
It can be tempting to let your dog go crashing through the underbrush, but this is disruptive to the plants and animals. Teach your dog that part of hiking is staying on the trail.
Keep in mind that not everyone likes dogs or wants to greet them on the trail. It’s not acceptable to let your dog approach another dog or person without the person’s permission or invitation.
6. Share the trail! Keep your dog close to you when hiking. Whenever possible, I put myself between my dog and other hikers to protect everyone (I’ve actually had a hiker reach out and grab my dog’s tail while doing an unsolicited “drive by pet”).
If you are on a trail that also allows horses, be sure to bring your dog close to you, giving extra space to the horses. Be aware that a dog who jumps up or barks at a horse might spook the horse – and that some some dogs may be spooked by horses! A dog who bolts away from the horses in fear may cause the horses to spook in turn, so unless you know that your dog will be calm and unafraid, put even more space between him and any equestrians.
Similarly, mountain bikes are common on many hiking trails. Ideally mountain bikers will slow or even possibly dismount before biking past you and your dog, especially if a trail is narrow. But if not, be aware that bikes may startle some dogs, so keep your dog close and put yourself between your dog and the bike.
7. Don’t impose your dog’s “issues” on others. If your dog displays aggression or reactivity toward other dogs or people, “you should either be working on those issues or have a plan in mind for how to mitigate any issues that may come from those,” Hof recommends.
One of my dogs is a former street dog and she’s very reactive to other dogs, so we seek out trails in areas where all dogs are required to be on on-leash, and that have reviews indicating they are only lightly used. If we arrive somewhere and find that the trails are crowded, or that people are breaking the leash laws, we simply leave and find somewhere else to go. It’s just not reasonable to expect other people to anticipate that your dog poses a greater than average potential for aggression to them!
Gear
Good quality, comfortable gear can make or break a hike for us, and it’s no different for our dogs.
8. When getting ready to go hiking, it’s important to make sure that your dog’s gear fits and is in good condition. No half-chewed leashes or harnesses with frayed stitching! And the trailhead is not the place to fit gear for the first time! Check the gear and adjust it for his comfort at home.
“I almost always prefer harnesses to collars for leash attachment,” Hof says. Note that harnesses have more contact with the dog and so pose a greater risk of rubbing and causing a raw, sore spot. Check your dog frequently when he’s wearing new gear, especially in sensitive places that are hard to see as you walk along – under his elbows, for example.
If you want your dog to carry a pack on your hikes, be sure to start slowly. It’s a good idea to visit to your veterinarian to ensure your dog is structurally sound enough to carry a pack. Also talk to your vet about what amount of weight would be appropriate.
Conditioning
In addition to choosing the right trails to hike with your dog, you need to condition him slowly to keep him from getting sore or injured.
Dog Scouts of America
Dog Scouts of America is a national scouting troop for dogs and their people, where dogs can earn badges for learning tricks and skills, including hiking. Kelly Ford, Leader of Dog Scout Troop 219 and a Dog Scouts of America Scoutmaster, says that there is an abundance of hiking badges and titles that can be earned by dogs and their owners. “The ‘Trails’ titles include backpacking, hiking, letterboxing, and geocaching with many achievement levels. Dog Scout badges include Backpacking and Hiking,” Ford says.
For dogs to earn the backpacking badges and titles, they must carry a pack with their own survival gear. To ensure safety, Ford says, “We stress the importance of keeping the packs lightweight, especially for our smaller Scouts.”
To earn hiking badges with Dog Scouts of America, dogs and their handlers need to complete a required number of miles and submit a log sheet. The first level of the dog hiking titles is 50 miles.
Being courteous and respectful is an important part of being a Dog Scout. “Polite trail behavior is always important in our Scouts. We also teach a ‘leave it,’ which applies to wildlife, roadkill, fish hooks, or anything on the trail that could pose a danger,” Ford explains.
“My dogs are always excited to go hiking with their Dog Scout Troop,” Ford says. “Their fellow Scouts ase are their best friends. Our Troop has learned a lot of new things and explored new places together.”
To learn how to get involved with dog scouting, see dogscouts.org.
9. Don’t force your dog to be a weekend warrior. Dr. Mandi Blackwelder, DVM, CCRP, owner of Healing Arts Animal Care in Beaverton, Oregon, cautions against taking our dogs along on infrequent and/or overambitious types of hikes. “They (and we!) are much more likely to be injured either during the hike or when we are sore afterward,” says Dr. Blackwelder. Instead, she advises that dog owners who want to start hiking begin a regular, structured exercise routine locally, long before making long drives to desinations for long hikes. “The first thing to do to prepare your dog for hiking is daily walks of increasing length, changing up terrain, and adding hills,” she says.
If you plan for your dog to wear a pack on the trails, you need to start conditioning her for that on your local walks, too. Start with an empty pack and slowly increase the weight (going no higher than what your vet advises) and length of time your dog wears the pack.
And when you do get to the trails, monitor your dog carefully. “Know your dog,” warns Dr. Blackwelder. “If she is a kamikaze hiker, be prepared to corral her before she is exhausted. If your dog is cautious, then work on some uneven terrain (rocks, gravel, bark) beforehand so you’re not forcing a march she is not ready for.”
Dr. Blackwelder offered the additional caution that it’s important to think about your dog’s specific structural or health needs. If your dog has preexisting health conditions, is overweight, or is a short-nosed breed, take additional precautions to prevent her from becoming overheated.
First Aid
Trying to prevent injuries should be foremost, but being prepared with a few essentials can be invaluable in case of an emergency on the trail.
10. Stuff happens, so prevent what you can and be prepared to deal with what you can’t. “Traumatic injuries, including abrasions, lacerations, and stick impalment are not uncommon when dogs are allowed to run through wooded areas. The risk of these types of injuries can be mitigated by keeping your dog on a leash and following an existing/established trail,” Dr. Rebello advises.
She advises that the most important thing to carry when hiking is water – to make sure dogs remain well-hydrated and to prevent overheating.
She also suggests carrying gauze and bandages. “If your pet is injured, the goal should be to get medical attention as quickly as possible. Spending exorbitant amounts of time on field first aid is less important than getting them to a veterinarian as quickly as possible,” Dr. Rebello says. “Rinse any wounds with clean water, apply firm pressure to stop bleeding, and place a temporary bandage until they can be assessed by a veterinarian.”
Dr. Rebello says “the biggest concern for owners who take their pets hiking is the risk of exposure to infectious diseases and parasites.” She advises dog guardians to ensure that their dogs’ tick preventatives are up to date before hiking, and to check their dog for ticks when they take breaks during a hike and when they get off the trail.
In addition, she warns dog owners to prevent their dogs from drinking from ponds, puddles, or streams on the trail that could be contaminated with leptospirosis; instead, bring enough clean water for you and your dog. And finally, “Owners should consider ancillary vaccinations for Lyme and leptospirosis for dogs who regularly go hiking, hunting, or live in highly wooded areas,” she says.
I’ve had a number of older owners book lessons with me lately—more than half a dozen individuals and couples in their 70s and even 80s, all wanting some training help with their new dogs or puppies.
