WDJ Training Editor Pat Miller wrote an article for the June issue of WDJ about unconventional or unintentional cues – things that people taught their dogs that are far from the ordinary sit, down, stay-sort of behaviors. In the article, she and other trainers describe how they taught their dogs things such as locating a pile of poop that needs to be picked up, standing in a certain place and a certain pose that’s convenient for grooming, and coming when it’s time to take a daily medication. My favorite was, “You’re not going!” – which is what Pat taught her Kelpie, Kai, to indicate he shouldn’t get excited about going for a car ride, because he’s not invited on that impending trip.

Pat asked readers to send in descriptions of the unconventional cues and behaviors they had taught their dogs. I’m going to post some over the next couple of weeks; we’re getting a lot, thanks! You guys are an unconventional bunch, apparently! And Pat will be selecting one – perhaps by random, because there are so many great ones to choose from! – to win a prize.

I’m going to share my own secret cue – which is a behavior many people teach their dogs, but is particularly useful to me. Many trainers teach their dogs “Look at me” so their dogs will watch them for the next cue. I use “Look here” with my dog, Otto, when I need him to look at me so I can get a good photo for the magazine!

Here are the first few submissions from readers:

Diana Liebich:

While reading WDJ in bed before going to sleep, my two dogs think this is a good time for pets and cuddling.  I tell them, “Shhhh,” and they curl up and settle down.

I have a special spot in my heart for that one!

Julie Thomaa:

I just read the article on Unconventional or Unintentional Cues and would like to share a few I’ve used for my dogs.

1. I often teach my dogs, “Out!” after I had unintentionally gotten them to leave the room by yelling out. Now I teach it and generalize it to mean leave the room we are in at the moment. It’s very useful in the kitchen when they get under foot while I’m cooking. It’s especially useful when a glass breaks on the floor. I know they’ll leave immediately and don’t have to worry about paws stepping in glass.

2. When my Sheltie was recovering from a broken elbow- which couldn’t be casted, I had a lot of trouble with him anticipating being picked up. After a scary incident with the dog walker when he anticipated and jumped before she was ready, I put a command to it – “Up!”  He learned over time to turn his rear toward me & wait for the “Up!” command to lift up for my arms. 

I also use “out!” with my dogs at home. It’s also great for keeping a clean floor temporarily clean.

Candace Liddy:

Here are some words and phrases we use:

1) We live in the country and have a very large fenced area for the dogs but dirt, mud, and grass are normal after romps. However during the winter or when it rains, they can get pretty grungy. I have arthritis so cleaning up large dogs each time they come in was a chore. I laid several soft mats in the front hall and when the dogs come in dirty or wet we say “Muddy Dog ” and they promptly go lay on the mats. They stay on them until they are dry. We taught this by asking the dog to lay on the mats and giving them a treat. If they leave before they should we just put them back with no treat but still give the cue. Doesn’t take them long to figure it out. The time spent on the mat was lengthened until they can stay  there indefinitely.  

2) Our driveway is close to 300 feet long and the daily newspaper is tossed at the end in a plastic bag. Going up each day, in bad weather or winter was not fun, so we taught our latest dog to “Get the Paper.” We started with a newspaper in the plastic bag and rewarded him each time he put his nose on it. Then we went to actually having him hold it  and finally tossing it on the floor with the cue. Eventually we could throw it far away and he would get it. Now he roars up the drive and roars back with the paper and loves his “job.”

3) When we leave the house and everyone is excited to possibly go along we say “Sorry” and they know this is not their trip and relax. 

4) We also taught them to run to the front door and bark if we ask “Who’s here?”

 
5) Several of our dogs learned to bring groceries into the house after we had shopped. It started with their curiosity about what we had purchased and they would greet us at the car door and check out the bags. We started giving them something simple like a can or box and told them to “Take it in the kitchen.” They would follow us in and were asked to drop it on the floor and then we would go out and repeat with other items until all the groceries were inside. Now we just hand our dog an item and he runs right in and comes back for more. One of our past dogs, Zeke, was so terrific at this, we experimented with the kinds of things he would take in. He could grab a plastic gallon of milk by the handle very gently so as not to puncture it and take that in. Five-pound bags of potatoes, loaves of bread, and, yes, even meat packages were safely carried in!

 
We also use “enough” and “go lie down” all the time so it was fun to see others use those words too!

I may have to put “Who’s there?” into place at home, especially when I see solicitors approaching the door!

Jim Dilda:

Bessy, our first Bernese Mountain Dog, lived with us in an apartment at Ramstein Air Base, Germany.  The woman in the end unit took meticulous care of the yard immediately adjacent to the building. Even if we “bagged” meticulously, we were alerted by our neighbors not to dare allow Bessy to poop anywhere near the building.

 Sometimes it required a mad dash, but we taught her that she couldn’t stop until we had gone “All the way” to the edge of the yard, near the woods.

That cue stuck with us through moves to California and North Carolina, even when Bessy was off leash in her own backyard.  If we said, “All the way,” she kept moving until she reached a safe area and we gave her the cue, “Find a spot,” at which time she took care of business.

Our current dog, Sadie, is the third Berner we have taught that cue. It’s especially helpful if we’re out in public – with or without a plastic bag – and need her to hold off until we can find someplace discreet. 

Love it! Does anyone know if service-dog trainers teach some sort of cue for “you may not pee or poop now”?  Or is that behavior just expected? I like the cue for “not here, not now, but over there is ok!”

We’ll be posting a lot more of these in the coming days. Remember, you have until June 15 to send us your description of a useful or fun unconventional or unintentional cue and behavior. Send to WDJEDitor@gmail.com.

We’re well into foxtail season in California. “Foxtails” are what people call any number of grasses that have bushy spikelets that look like a fox’s tail, but the most common culprit in my home state is Hordeum murinum. This grass is a ubiquitous volunteer in the rainy months, springing up anywhere and everywhere, including cracks in sidewalks, the edges of roads, alongside trails, and in pastures. It could even be called pretty, especially as it develops its distinctive, thick foxtail spikelets, and these turn a sun-brushed tan color as warm weather dries the grass and the state turns summer brown.

Even one single “foxtail” contains enough material to make a whole kennel full of dogs miserable. Each “tail” is made up of dozens of hard, pointed seeds, each trailing an individual filament that is studded from tip to tail with microscopic barbs set in the same direction. Anything touched by the filament pushes the filament in the direction of its pointed seed. Even when the grass is green and you pick a tender foxtail, you can feel the microscopic barbs; it’s like rubbing a rasp – your finger can slide along their length in only one direction. If you try to stroke them in the opposite direction, the filament catches, bends, and breaks. And when the plant dries out, the barbs become even stiffer and more resistant, and the “foxtail” starts to come apart, with every seed in the “tail” springing away if the plant is touched.

If you walk through dried foxtail grass wearing sneakers, you will quickly experience the problem; the sharp seeds get lodged in the fabric, and every step you take pushes the seed head deeper, through the fabric of your shoe, then your sock, and into your flesh (if you are able to ignore it and keep walking).

Dogs don’t wear sneakers, but they are prone to getting the seeds in their noses, ears, eyes, between their toes, in their vaginas, urethras – anywhere there is an opening. If the dog’s coat is matted or curly, the foxtails will enter the mat or curl, and then start to dig into the skin.  The seed heads are so hard, they resist bacterial breakdown, even if they have managed to get imbedded under the dog’s skin. They can travel great distances in the dog’s body; you hear about foxtails that went into the skin between the dog’s toes, and weeks or months later, caused a pulmonary embolism when they emerged into a lung. But it doesn’t take weeks or even days to know when your dog has gotten one lodged in his eye, ear, or nose. The results are dramatic.

I pull up, by hand, as many of the plants on my property as I can, but there are far more than I can get each year. My husband and I also use a mower with a bag that catches most of the mowed grass, and that helps to reduce the number of dried foxtails that my dogs will have the opportunity to sniff up or sit on or roll around on.  My husband didn’t always appreciate my near-hysterical objection to the use of his preferred tool, the weed-eater, but, with enough time, he observed the result – essentially, helping the foxtails broadcast themselves over a wider area. If I could, I’d take a flamethrower to each plant I see, but the only practical way to reduce their numbers is to carefully pull the plants up by hand, capturing each and every “foxtail,” and disposing of them (we have green waste cans that get hauled off by the city; people say they can resist composting, and I wouldn’t even try it). 

My son spent a couple nights in town last week, before leaving his coonhound Cole to stay with me for a few days while he traveled with his team over the long weekend for his sport. On his second day in town, as we were standing in front of my house and I was introducing him to a friend who had stopped by, Cole managed to sniff a foxtail into his nose. Right in front of us. Within about three seconds of walking out the front door and sniffing. You generally know exactly when it happens; the dog sneezes repeatedly, violently, and then pauses, with his nose all twitching and crimpled on one side, or he starts rubbing it violently with a paw or front leg. Cole did all that.

I bid my friend a hasty farewell and called my vet; the clinic was jammed and I couldn’t get an appointment until the next day. So we ended up taking Cole to the urgent care clinic a town away. Time is of the essence with foxtails in the nose. Sometimes the seed can go in the nose, but travel just the right way so that it ends up being swallowed, no major harm done. That is, I HEAR that can happen; it’s never happened to a dog of mine! You also hear that the seed can travel in such a way as to enter the dog’s brain and kill him. Thankfully, that’s never happened to a dog of mine, either, because I rush them all to the vet when I hear that distinctive, violent sneezing.

While you can sometimes remove a foxtail from a dog’s ear or other body part with tactful restraint, noses are too sensitive and the “nasal turbinates” too complex to visualize simply. The vets administer a sedative, so the dog is completely unconscious before they try to insert a long otoscope into the dog’s nose.  When they see the filament of a foxtail, they use forceps to grab and remove it. It can be tricky, because the “foxtail” can come apart and the vet may have to go in several times to get all the pieces. After the foxtail is removed, a reversal drug is given to the dog, and he can go home generally within an hour. The charge for Cole’s nasal foxtail removal: $400.

We were lucky. While we waited for our turn in the waiting area, another black dog came in with her owner, who said he was also there for a foxtail in his dog’s nose . . . for the third time in two weeks. Ouch.

Once in the exam room, the vet confirmed that she has seen practically nothing BUT dogs with foxtails for the past few weeks. Something about the heavy rain we got after years of drought, maybe.

This seems like the perfect time to remind people about the only thing I’m aware of that can keep foxtails out of a dog’s nose, ears, and eyes: the Outfox Field Guard – essentially a mesh bag that the dog wears over his head on walks or when out in his yard during the height of the foxtail season. Despite the funny look of the thing, dogs don’t seem to mind wearing them, and they can see, breathe, pant, drink, and even carry toys while wearing them. They can’t take treats, though, and the dog’s paws (and other body parts) are still vulnerable. But the grass awns can get into the most common and very sensitive parts of the dog’s body. See outfoxfordogs.com for purchasing info. Scenthounds like Cole may be best off rocking one all summer!

Wish us luck in getting through this summer with no further grass attacks.

As I mentioned last week, I’m fostering a very skinny Great Dane mama dog and her 11 puppies. After this litter is healthy and ready for spay/neuter and adoption, I’m going to take a little break from fostering for a while, even if I have to block the phone number of my local shelter. This is a lot more work than anything I’ve taken on before.

(I’m kidding about blocking the shelter’s number, of course. I couldn’t be more grateful for the very hard work they do for the animals in this community, year-round, whether they are exhausted or not, broke or not. The hard-working employees don’t slack off because they are tired of the animals’ needs, or because the animals have cost them a lot lately. I have a choice, and I feel privileged to be trusted and able to help when I can.)

This mama was picked up as a stray by a county animal control officer on a Monday. It was obvious mama had puppies somewhere, but where? On Friday, the shelter got a call from the person with all the puppies whose mother was missing. He saw her photo on the shelter website, and called to say that the shelter had his dog, but he didn’t want her OR the puppies, who were now – obviously – in a lot of distress. This is not out of the ordinary behavior, in my area. When I moved here, in the upper Sacramento Valley, about 10 years ago, it felt like I had moved back to the 1960s, at least in terms of typical dog-keeping practices. Spay/neuter rates are low, lots of dogs live outdoors (some on chains) 24/7, wandering/loose dogs are super common – and lots of people seemingly never think to go look for or recover their dogs from the shelter.

Anyway, the first week I had the mom and her puppies, she LOST five pounds, despite the fact that I had a high-quality kibble in front of her all day and night, and was feeding her about four cans of food a day, and letting her drink any puppy formula that I made that the puppies didn’t drink. And some of the puppies were doing way better than some of the other puppies. Two in particular refused to try any supplemental food of any kind, and weighed more than a pound less than their littermates. So I separated the six fat ones from the five skinny ones, and put the skinny ones with mama. She was far more able to feed five than 11, and has since gained back those five pounds and a few more.

One of the fat pups started to drop weight in the pen when he was cut off from Mama, so he went back to the skinny group. There is another puppy that is the fattest of the skinny ones, who I tried in the fat pup group, but he, too, started to sink, so now Mama is nursing six and still holding her own.

The fattest five are doing well and seem stable, so this week, I’m going to send them to a friend’s house. My good friend Leonora, who took on a litter of six tiny Chihuahua/terrier-mixes in November (and foster-failed the littlest one), and took half of the litter of the nine Cattle Dog/pit-mix puppies that I fostered in February, is going to take on the fat group for a few weeks. That will help immensely. Keeping not one but TWO puppy environments clean, and feeding two groups with very different appetites, is, as I said before, a lot of work. It would be one thing if I had a purpose-built environment for doing this – and maybe someday I will! – but my efforts are centered around exercise pens and a portable kennel and a lot of shavings; it’s not perfect by any means. But it’s not a damp concrete pen surrounded by barking dogs at the shelter, either.

It may sound nutty, but this week, the addition of one more dog lessens my stress, rather than adds to it. Cole, my grand-dog, is staying with me for a week while my son travels across the country for his sport. Cole has grown into such a lovely young adult dog, gentle and well-mannered – AND still young enough that he is willing to play with Woody, my now-six-month-old puppy. Neither of my eight-year-old dogs will play with Woody for even a minute, so Cole’s playfulness is a valued commodity. Plus, Cole is already teaching Woody when enough is enough, a terribly important thing for adolescent dogs who are going to mature into big, strong dogs to know and accept. He’s worth his weight in gold to me right now.

By the way, thanks for all your comments and discussion on the last blog, about pediatric spay/neuter and shelter adoption. As more than one person said, there is no single right answer to the pet overpopulation problem; I hope that the combined and different efforts of the people who care about such things and are working to help dogs will keep the tide turning until no so-called adoptable dogs are euthanized anywhere in this country, ever.

On April 1, I was at the shelter, dealing with some paperwork aftermath of a bat encounter with my cat, when one of the front desk people asked me, “Are you going to take the puppies we got yesterday?” Keep in mind, the last of the nine cattle dog/pit-mix puppies I had fostered from about three weeks of age to 12 weeks had just gotten adopted. So I was like, “Naw, I think I’m going to take a little break.” But then of course I asked, “What kind are they?”

So I went to look at them, back in the isolation section of the shelter. It’s such a misnomer. It’s the most crowded, loud, stinky part of the shelter, because it’s where all the dogs from the unincorporated areas in my county are initially held when they are picked up as stray, or brought in as purported stray, or surrendered by their owners. Also held here are dogs from my town in identical situations, and dogs from two outlying Native American reservations. If they go some days (sometimes weeks) without being claimed, and they are judged as adoptable, and they have recovered from the inevitable kennel cough that is always present at the facility, in waxing and waning amounts, the lucky ones get moved into a second part of the building, the adoption kennels.

One look and of course I said I’d take the puppies: seven pups, about four weeks of age, that looked like German Shepherd/hound mixes, with maybe an Akita thrown in for good measure. Two had fluffy coats – a disaster in a shelter pen, where dogs and especially puppies are going to be wet for a good part of every day; there is no way to keep a crowded concrete kennel clean without hoses, and with seven pups in one pen, a certain amount of walking through each other’s poop and pee is expected.

We had some ups and downs. For the first week, the pups were really missing their mom, and didn’t want to eat anything I had to offer, and I offered them EVERYTHING: puppy formula of course, but also various types of canned food, soaked dry food, rehydrated dehydrated food, and tons of things from the fridge. My sister roasted a chicken and brought broth, and then rice she made with the broth, and the chicken itself. It took a while, and a lot of incredulous looks from my crew of dogs, who enjoyed a lot of rejected puppy food, but eventually they all started eating, and finally gaining weight, strength, and health. And they went back to the shelter, and were altered. Five were adopted within days – two to two different friends of a person who adopted one of my six foster pups from LAST summer!! – but I held two back from shelter placement, hoping to find homes for them with someone I knew personally.

I fell in love with these two, and had prospective homes for them: one with a friend who has a four-year-old daughter, and one with my trainer friend Sarah Richardson, who has an excellent training business (The Canine Connection) in the next town over from me.

As it turned out, neither home worked out, and both puppies found perfect homes anyway. My friend’s daughter, though she talks a lot about dogs, seemed indifferent to both the puppies and to my own friendly dogs. She meowed a lot, though; Dad, I think she’s trying to tell you something! And Sarah decided that now is not the time for a puppy.  This past year, she’s lost two of her senior dogs, but felt an addition to her pack now is not right. Instead, she endorsed the puppies on her Facebook page, and within days, had found them both really amazing, perfect homes with former clients.

But her photos and discussion of the pups initiated one comment that jolted me – just as it has jolted me every time I’ve mentioned in this blog the pups that I’ve been fostering, pretty much nonstop since November. When I’ve discussed raising the pups until they are big enough and strong enough to return to the shelter for spay/neuter surgery, so they can be adopted, someone ALWAYS says, “What a shame they have to be altered so early, it’s so bad for their health.” Sometimes, the person adds, “Shame on WDJ for promoting this.”

Occasionally, I explain that this page is a blog post: a place where I can have personal discussions and ask for personal reflections and opinions from other dog owners. It’s not a Whole Dog Journal “article,” which would offer facts about practices like the pros and cons of pediatric spay/neuter. We did that article in the magazine in 2013: “Risks and Benefits to Spaying/Neutering Your Dog“.

My personal opinion is this: Yes, it’s absolutely healthier for any individual animal to be intact, not altered, particularly at such an early age. It’s not ideal. But neither is the fact that my shelter ends up with so many damn puppies in the first place. But state law (here in California, anyway) requires that all dogs and cats that are adopted from a shelter are altered. While some rescues might have the means to foster puppies until they are far older, my shelter is not. I am sort of it for my shelter’s ability to handle large litters of puppies (without losing any) at all.

People who have lost a dog to a certain cancer, or lost time/money/health to certain conditions that may be related to early spay/neuter, such as joint disease, or a CCL rupture, may well feel strongly that dogs not be altered early, or perhaps not at all. I sympathize with that stance. But as long as the incoming tide of puppies and dogs into my shelter is bigger and more relentless than the outgoing tide of adopted dogs and puppies, I will always adopt altered animals, and encourage anyone who isn’t in the market for a purpose-bred dog from a responsible breeder to save an altered shelter dog, instead.

Literally the day after my last foster pup’s adoption was finalized, I had a text from my shelter’s veterinary technician. “We have a starved Great Dane mom and her 11 puppies. Can you help?”

Of course. But dammit.