I’ve never owned a dog who HAD to exercise at a fenced dog park, but I’ve fostered a number of them. I’ve been able to train all of my dogs to perform a solid recall, even when faced with tempting distractions (deer, rabbits, other hikers with dogs, etc.), and have always lived in places where I had access to off-leash trails. But when I’ve fostered wayward adolescent dogs, there have been times when I thought the dog would benefit greatly from a long period of exercising hard, but I needed the security of a fenced area, because we hadn’t yet had enough time together to build a solid recall. At those times, I’ve turned to a dog park – but only with extreme caution, because I think the hazards and risks of dog parks, in very many cases, outweigh the benefits.

The most extreme risk is also the most common at dog parks: that of other dogs hurting (either physically or by intimidation) or even killing your dog.

I’m writing this today because I just read this chilling, very abbreviated account of a completely avoidable dog park fatality. A woman was at the park with her small, middle-aged dog. This particular park doesn’t have a separate area for small dogs, so in my mind, that’s strike one. I would never take a small dog to a big park where there are big dogs running around! Even if they don’t get attacked or harassed by bigger dogs, small dogs can be seriously injured or killed if they accidentally collide with a big dog who is running fast.

Plus, a few-seconds-long video clip of the dog playfully rolling around on the grass was enough to show me that this was not a dog who *needed* to be exercised at an off-leash park! She looked like her exercise needs could easily have been met on a long line in any small open space. This little dog was attacked by two large dogs who were at the park with a dog walker who had been hired through a popular app – in other words, someone who didn’t necessarily know the dogs, and (probably) did not have the experience or education to know that the dogs were dangerous to other dogs.

I don’t ever go to a dog park blindly. I won’t take a dog with me the first time I go to ANY dog park; I want to see it first, walk its fence line, locate any potential hazards or things that might be dangerous or challenging for my dog. I’ll never forget the time I was at Point Isabel, a famous open-space off-leash area in Richmond, California (near Berkeley, on the east side of the San Francisco Bay), and there were a number of people trying to help a woman capture her dog, who was swimming in the bay, and kept swimming farther and farther from shore in pursuit of seagulls and other birds he saw. She was sobbing and kept crying out, “I didn’t know they could just get in the water! I thought there was a fence! I didn’t KNOW!” She apparently had never been to the shoreline park, but had taken her water-loving dog there and unclipped his leash anyway. Oops.

It also helps to know the best time to visit any given park. Perhaps it doesn’t matter so much if you have a big, super gregarious, playful dog, who loves all other dogs and doesn’t mind being bossed around by more assertive individuals, but if you have a dog whose social grace depends on NOT having other dogs in his face, you might want to figure out when very few other people and dogs are at that particular park. If there is literally no time when the park is empty, I would find a non-dog-park fenced space where no other dogs are present to exercise that dog off-leash. I just wouldn’t risk worsening that dog’s social skills by setting him up to fail!

In my opinion, very few of the dogs who are taken to dog parks need that sort of space; most of the dogs who are there really shouldn’t be there. Even if they are in no way aggressive, dogs who don’t enjoy other dogs shouldn’t be there, because they WILL be approached by other dogs; that’s a given. For example, my 10-year-old dog Otto can get along with any other dog – as long as they pretty much leave him alone. He doesn’t want to play with other dogs, he doesn’t want to go sniff them, and he certainly isn’t going to put up with any other dogs sniffing HIS butt. So there is no earthly reason to take him to a dog park, where he will undoubtedly be forced to suffer all sorts of fools approaching him and trying to smell him. In no time at all, he’d snap at some dog, and some younger, bigger dog may just take offense and – ugh, I can’t even think about it.

Puppies and young adolescent dogs certainly benefit from the opportunity to run, socialize, and play with other playful dogs. But taking an inexperienced adolescent to a dog park is something else I would never recommend. There are too many playground bullies at dog parks – dogs who get a little charge out of creaming “new kids” at the park. Think about it: You do your pup no favors to take him to a place where, in the middle of the most fun he can have, he’s going to get violently assaulted and/or pee-his-pants scared. It might work if there is a separate area where he can play with the small dogs – and poses no risk to the small dogs himself. Otherwise, I’d suggest sticking with organized puppy socials offered by your trainer or private play dates set up with other local puppy owners.

Same goes for timid dogs. I would never bring a socially fearful dog to any dog park. Period.

Private dog parks are a concept with a lot of promise. You’d pay for the safety and cleanliness of the park, and because all the park-goers would be pre-screened for friendliness. Park attendants would enforce the rules and educate users about appropriate and inappropriate dog behavior.

But public dog parks? I’d avoid them unless you HAD to use them, and then, only with extreme caution.

Have you seen this video – the one where the guy was in a hospital for five weeks and is now home, and his dog doesn’t recognize him at first? The dog is released from somewhere off camera, and there are enough voices that you can tell that there are a number of people gathered, so it’s understandable when the dog comes running toward the group and is barking and a little alarmed. The man remains sitting, and talks to the dog a little, and the dog, spooked, approaches slowly and suspiciously, and carefully reaches his nose toward the man for a sniff – and the SECOND he smells the man, his face LIGHTS up and his body explodes with joy. “IT’S MY OWNER!” Everyone laughs as the dog goes crazy with happiness, rolling around in the man’s arms.

I can’t tell you how many times I have watched this video, because my two-year-old dog Woody has done the same thing to me and some of my friends – in fact, a number of times. I’ve even seen him put up his hackles and growl, approaching someone he knows well, looking spooked, and the MOMENT he sniffs them, he transforms instantaneously, seemingly overwhelmed with delight. “My FRIEND! OMG IT’S SO GOOD TO SEE YOU!”

Do dogs have really poor vision? Is there such a thing as an eye chart or a vision test for dogs? What is up with this?

Has this ever happened to you?

Last September, I had a little brush with mortality. I had a routine colonoscopy, which found a mass that the surgeon said had to come out as quickly as possible. It turned out to be benign, but the whole event (including waiting for weeks for results of CT scans and biopsies) was pretty scary.

One of the things I told myself while mentally reviewing my life and health was that I really ought to take more vacations. It’s something my husband and I rarely do ­ – but to get things off on the right foot, from my hospital bed post-surgery, I booked a trip to Maui for the following February. I thought, “Well, the issue in which we publish the dry dog food review will be behind me, and I can take a little time off.”

That was before my husband and I decided to start looking for a new house, one on a couple of acres outside the town we live in. Thanksgiving week, a perfect property (for us) came on the market and after some lightning-speed negotiations and a relatively quick escrow, we found ourselves with two mortgages, the dry dog food review to do, a move, and a lot of work to do to prepare our house in town for sale. I ignored as much as possible about the impending move as I could while working on the dry dog food review, and the day it shipped to the printer in early January, I started moving us. Even though we were moving only about four miles, it took pretty much all of January to move, and the first few weeks of February to clean and paint our soon-to-be-former home.

My husband and I found ourselves lamenting the fact that we had a vacation in Maui coming up. Oy! In the last two days before our trip, I was sweeping and scraping moss off the roof, and walking around touching up the paint inside the house, and my husband was repairing the sprinkler system that we hadn’t used for a couple of years, and doing some intensive gardening.

And of course, the night before we got on the plane I felt my throat tightening and my nose starting to run. I’m writing this post from Maui, where I am absolutely miserable with a cold (and probably making the rest of the family miserable with all my coughing and sniffing).

Well, I had intended to write a blog post for this week BEFORE I left and I never was able to, so I will use this space to update you on the dog-related aspects of our move:

I mentioned here that my 10-year-old dog Otto initially was not enjoying our new house one bit. It has tile and hardwood floors – both of which he regards as too slippery for safety. For the first few weeks in the house, he would walk with the utmost delicacy, panting with concentration and stress, and every so often, just stall out and freeze, like he just got to the end of an ice floe and had no more good options. He’s long had issues with slippery floors – or, I should say, floors he regards as slippery (most of them aren’t all that slippery; it’s in his head!).  In our old house, we had to keep carpet runners in the long, narrow hall, which had Pergo floors. I put the runners to good use, making paths through the house for Otto to enter, eat, drink, and get to the sofa.

I also bought some sticky foot spray (which he didn’t mind but it didn’t change how he walked at all) and some of those balloon-style booties, which he minded so much it made things worse. I was also giving him lots of treat and happy talk for all his bravest attempts in navigation. I was getting around to ordering some of Dr. Buzby’s Toe Grips, which we’ve featured in the magazine before, but thankfully, after about three weeks, he pretty much started walking like a normal dog in the areas where the carpet runners were. One by one, I removed the runners and voila! He’s managed to adjust, and can now walk around the house more or less normally – a little more carefully than Woody, but without the shaking and panting of the first week.

Otto was also traumatized in the early days by the security system in the house, which makes a beep every time a door or window is opened. No friend of electronic beeps, at first Otto panted every time he heard the beep. We haven’t yet tracked down the former owners to learn the security code that would allow us to discontinue the beeps, but again, fortunately, Otto adjusted. He realized that the beep signaled someone coming in or going out of doors, so now when the beep happens, he jumps up and runs to the door to see what’s up, and whether he can go outside.

Two-year-old Woody is the one who is THRILLED with the house. Every morning when I get up and let the dogs outside, he takes off at a swift gallop into the two-acre-field behind the house, running, it seems, for the sheer joy of running. Within the first minute, he will stop and pee, and then run over to a tree in the field that has a hollow trunk. He sniffs around its base, and stands on his hind legs to sniff the inside. There must be SOME animal living in there, or going in there on a regular basis.

He also has discovered gopher holes. We didn’t have gophers in town  – like, NONE. But on this property, there are fresh mounds of dirt pushed up on the front lawn and in the back field daily. He is quick to spot the new ones, and will run over to give the mounds a couple of swift digs with his front paws, and SHOVE his nose down into the hole. He hasn’t seen a gopher yet, but I’m hopeful that he might be enlisted into some gopher control at some point.

Interestingly, Otto has zero interest in Woody’s excavations. He will take a casual sniff, and then step back, wagging his tail and looking like, “This kid is nuts!” He all but rolls his eyes when Woody starts digging.

Also interesting: The first year that I adopted Otto, he got skunked twice. The first was a direct hit that had Otto (and me!) gagging and coughing and pawing at his face. The next time he saw a skunk, he apparently approached it with more caution, because he received a light misting only of skunk spray. After that, I would sometimes hear him bark in the front (fenced) yard at night, and see a skunk family walking down the sidewalk – but he wouldn’t go anywhere NEAR the skunks. I was so proud! He was the only dog I’ve even known who seemed to learn his lesson about skunks!

Perhaps you noticed: “Was.”

About two weeks ago, I woke up one morning to a couple of puddles of vomit in the house. Both dogs seemed cheerful and wanted breakfast, and I was mystified as to who it was who might not have been feeling well. So, the next night, when Otto came (shakily) into my bedroom at about 3 am, whining to go outside, I thought, “Oh! It must have been Otto who isn’t feeling good!” I jumped up and scurried to let the dogs out. Woody did what he always does now, taking off into the back field for his usual fast lap. And Otto went, too, which is more unusual. After a minute, I whistled for the dogs. Woody came blasting up to me immediately, but Otto did not! I pride myself on Otto’s quick recall, and this was odd. I called into the black night: “Otto, HERE!” (our emergency recall cue).

The distinctive skunk odor arrived before Otto did, rubbing his face with his paws and sneezing. A direct hit, then – and no peroxide (a vital ingredient in the anti-skunk spray) was in the house. I was beside myself.  What happened to my dog who knew better??

I didn’t want to let him into the house, nor the car, and my fences weren’t complete yet. So I locked him into a crate on the back deck, and drove to a 24-hour supermarket for several quarts of hydrogen peroxide. (The formula is a quart of 2% hydrogen peroxide to a quarter-cup of baking soda, with a squirt of dish soap stirred in to help the formula stick to the dog’s coat. You have to mix it fresh, in a bowl or bucket (because it fizzes, you can’t put it in a jar), and sponge or pour all over the dog, taking care not to get it into his eyes or nose (it stings).  After he was covered with the formula and the odor knocked down, I took him into the shower for a bath, and then had to clean the bathroom given all the hair that flew around. It was about five am by the time I was done; I never did go back to bed.

So I’m being a lot more careful about letting the dogs out at night: no more fast laps of the back field, or disappearing into the dark. If you need to pee or even puke, I tell them, do it where I can see you!

Last update: My fences are going in while I’m sniffing and sneezing here in Hawaii. My sister, who is dog-sitting Otto while I’m gone, has been giving me daily reports about the progress. I will be so happy to allow Woody (especially) to stay outdoors for as long as he wants to dig up gophers or run laps around the field, without me having to watch him every moment, in case he follows a bird or squirrel onto the road. That might be the best part of this trip: Coming home to a (finally) secure private dog park, of sorts. That is, if I survive this cold! Wah!

Many people are surprised when they learn that there is NO single, correct way to vaccinate a puppy. (If you didn’t know that: seriously, there isn’t.)

For humans in the United States, there is a more-or-less universally accepted vaccination “schedule.” Published by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), it’s adopted and used by most pediatricians, unless the baby/child has a health condition that requires some modification of the vaccine protocol or the parents ask for modifications.

For dogs (and cats), it’s less universal. True, the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) has some vaccination guidelines that it promotes, based on the work and recommendations of the American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA). The AAHA vaccination guidelines are the closest thing there is to a universally accepted canine vaccination protocol.

One reason for some of the variation in protocols is something that veterinarians might have in common with pediatricians – something I call the “old doctor” syndrome – the doctor who hasn’t changed his or her vaccination protocol since he or she graduated medical school and doesn’t see any reason to change it.  This person might not be aware that AAHA has refined and reduced the number of “core” vaccines (distemper, parvovirus, adenovirus, parainfluenza, and a bit later, rabies) that puppies should receive, and is very specific about the conditions under which pups should receive non-core vaccines such as bordetella, leptospira, Borrelia burgdorferi (Lyme), and canine influenza (H3N8). 

Younger veterinarians will surely be more aware that in recent years, many studies have indicated that puppies can be fully immunized with fewer vaccinations.

But another reason for some of the variability in puppy vaccinating protocols doesn’t generally arise when vaccinating human babies. It has to do with walk-in vaccination clinics and the availability of “do it yourself” vaccines sold in some pet supply stores. I’ve been present at clinics being held in pet supply stores where owners were being pressured to buy more vaccines than their puppies needed, and it made my stomach turn. People would ask, “Does my puppy really need this?” and the clinic technician would say something like,” Well, leptospirosis is a really bad disease…” without asking any sort of lifestyle questions, such as where the person and its owner live or what sort of areas they frequent on walks. Many small-breed dogs who live in apartments, as just one example, might never be in an environment where lepto is most commonly transmitted.

Another time, I was with my sister when she brought one of her small dogs to a vet clinic for a lameness exam. The veterinary technician who first came into the room asked my sister about the dog’s medical history, including vaccinations. She then proceeded to attempt to pressure my sister into giving the dog a number of core vaccinations that day, saying they were “due” (because the five year old dog had not been vaccinated in the past three years) and making a sales pitch for the rattlesnake venom “vaccine.” When my sister asked, “Is that really necessary?” the technician said, “Well, does the dog go into your yard?” In that case, I intervened and said firmly, “No vaccines today, thanks! We are just here for the lameness exam!”

Also, I don’t think ANY of the owners were told that they could ask for a vaccine titer test a couple of weeks after the last recommended “puppy shot.” Vaccine titer tests can confirm that the pups’ vaccinations had done what they were supposed to:  cause the puppies’ immune system to develop its own antibodies to the diseases for which they were vaccinated, conferring as much protection from disease is possible to gain (without actually getting sick from and surviving the disease – a tactic which leaves the dog with higher levels of antibodies than those typically triggered by vaccination, but, of course, also risks the dog’s life!).

Vaccines shouldn’t be a matter of sales; in our opinion, owners should be fully educated about what is truly needed to protect their pets, and no more! 

Articles about puppy vaccines:

1. The Deal with Puppy Shots

2. Time to Vaccinate the Dog?

3. Why Your Puppy Needs So Many Shots

Articles about vaccine titer testing:

4. Vaccine Titer Tests for Dogs

5. JAVMA: “To titer or to revaccinate?”