We’ve been whining lately about the dog food industry’s reluctance to embrace and use a “date of manufacture” on their product labels. There is no argument that fresher foods are better foods; with time, vitamins degrade, oils go stale and become rancid, and molds may develop, no matter what sort of preservatives are used. But the big pet food makers would rather concentrate on making their foods last as long as possible – extending shelf life with preservatives, keeping oxygen out of the food with cutting-edge technology bags, etc. – than working out a distribution system that gets their products into the bowls of consumers faster.
So we were thrilled to see a date of manufacture printed on a bag of “MMillennia,” a new formula made by Solid Gold Health Products for Pets, of El Cajon, California. When we called to ask the company about the date, a spokesperson even offered that the food ought to be opened within six months of the date of manufacture, and consumed within 90 days of opening the bag. Finally, a company that treats dog food like real food!
Another of our pet peeves has to do with the calorie content in foods; we don’t know why most food makers hide this information from dog food buyers. While MMillennia’s label does not list this information, the spokesperson had a ready answer for our question: The food contains 450 kilocalories per cup. We’re so happy!
So, there’s nothing but good news to report about this food – except perhaps that the named is spelled goofy and the foil-type bags are extremely difficult to photograph. How’s that for nitpicking? Seriously, the list of ingredients is sterling; there is nothing in here that shouldn’t be. All the grains are present in their entirety. The protein and fat sources are top-quality. This is a great food.
Is there any icing on this cake? There is. Solid Gold has recently joined the ranks of the small, select group of food makers who will take orders and ship fresh food directly to the consumer – but without the multi-level marketing hassles. So if you can’t find a distributor near you, don’t despair, just pick up the phone.
MMillennia is made by solid gold Health Products for pets, Inc., El Cajon, ca. Ph (800) 364-4863
While most dog owners are certain that “someone” is in charge of regulating the manufacture of commercial dog food in this country, very few people know who that mysterious official or agency might be. But somebody’s gotta be making sure that dog food doesn’t contain any harmful ingredients and does contain what dogs need to survive, right? The FDA? Department of Agriculture? Someone?
Unfortunately, the answer isn’t as clear-cut as a simple, “Yes, it’s all taken care of.” There are numerous government and industry agencies that oversee and purportedly regulate various aspects of pet food production, but there really is no single office that provides seamless overall supervision of the industry. So is there anyone making sure that a “lamb and rice” food really contains lamb and rice? Or testing the food to see whether it really contains a minimum of the 20 percent protein it claims in its “Guaranteed Analysis”? Maybe, but probably not. There are many opportunities for dog foods to fall between the cracks of testing and enforcement. A walk through the many halls of pet food regulation reveals why a reliance on some branch of the government to ensure a food is “nutritionally complete and balanced” is pure folly.
Top dressing
Many people assume the Federal government has some sort of control over the production of pet food. Not really. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) enforces the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act. A division of the FDA called the Center for Veterinary Medicine (CVM) is responsible for regulating animal drugs, medicated feeds, food additives and ingredients, and pet food, making sure that they conform with the Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act.
This Act requires that pet foods contain no harmful substances, and be truthfully labeled. However, only in extreme cases does the FDA or the CVM get involved in an investigation of a food maker, and generally, only as a last line of enforcement. Meaningful regulation of pet foods occurs at the state level.
Each individual state has its own regulations and its own Department of Agriculture, which oversees the production and sale of pet food within its borders. Before a new brand or a new type of dog food can be sold in a given state, the maker is required by law to register the new food in each state in which it will be sold.
The state’s feed control officials are responsible for examining the food’s label claims and the food itself. Some states have very proactive feed control officials, who aggressively examine and test new foods being sold or made within their states’ borders. Kentucky, for instance, has a reputation for thoroughness when it comes to testing pet foods. California, in contrast, has a reputation for absolute laxity. We’ve been told that unscrupulous food makers often ship products that have failed tests (or that they know will fail tests) to California for sale, with full knowledge that the California feed control officials do not test foods.
What might the states test for? Not as much as you’d think. The main area of focus is the Guaranteed Analysis (GA), which the FDA requires to be printed on every container of pet food. The states can (and most do) test for everything that is included in the GA. The only things that are required to be in the GA include the minimum percentages of crude protein and crude fat, the maximum percentages of crude fiber and moisture in the food; that’s all. Some companies include more information in their GA, adding minimum levels of certain vitamins, fatty acids, or other nutrients they believe the consumer will appreciate. This is going out on a limb for the maker, because it just about guarantees that the states – the proactive ones, anyway – will test for these items, too.
Advisory committee
Before we discuss other tests or standards a pet food might be held to, we have to introduce another organization, one that influences the states’ policies on pet food.
Many people have heard of the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO), and assume that this is the agency that polices the pet food industry. But AAFCO has no regulatory role whatsoever; it doesn’t have the power to approve or ban foods. Rather, AAFCO is a non-government, voluntary organization of feed control officials (FCOs) from each state, and its role is advisory. AAFCO exists to address issues of quality and standardization for animal and pet food, to suggest nutritional standards for pet foods, provide guidelines for food manufacture and labeling, and outline a course of action for regulators.
AAFCO influences the production of pet foods only in that many states (25) have adopted its “model” regulations, in whole or in part. AAFCO is the place where the state feed control officials can go to discuss issues of feed safety, animal health, and inter-state commerce with other people who have expertise with these issues. Then they go home and set policy for their states.
In order to obtain the best information about every imaginable aspect of pet food formulation, AAFCO invites certain experts from many different fields to join the conversation, as it were, to educate the Association in the finer details of associated specialties. Some of the liaisons come from the USDA and the FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine, but many come from the commercial pet food industry, as well as the grain and feed industries, the rendering industry, laboratories, farm co-ops, and other groups with an interest in AAFCO’s decisions. My organization, the Animal Protection Institute, has had a liaison position on the Pet Food Committee and Ingredients Definitions Committee for several years. Many of these invited experts participate in AAFCO subcommittees as members and liaisons; there are committees on botanicals and herbs, environmental issues, feed safety, ingredient definitions, state/industry regulations, and many more.
A watchdog, not a pawn
The presence of so many vested experts, all of whom would like to influence the feed control officials to benefit their own aspect of the industry, worries many animal welfare activists, and some even regard AAFCO as a sort of pawn of industry that does not have our animals’ health at heart. However, only the state feed control officials (and on some committees, the FDA and USDA representatives) are voting members of AAFCO; the liaisons are there in an advisory role only. At AAFCO meetings, which are held twice a year, the liaisons often speak on issues where they have an interest or stake in the outcome. Comments are taken under advisement by the FCOs and then the issue is voted on by the FCOs. In my experience, the FCOs are definitely not pro-industry; they take their role as industry watchdog very seriously.
As an example, a few years ago the rendering industry pushed to have the official feed term “by-products” re-named “animal proteins.” This was debated in the Ingredient Definitions Committee (IDC). The proposal was turned down, because the IDC felt it was anti-consumer, and that the new term was being requested not because of a change in the ingredient itself, but to obscure and confuse the issue for consumers.
In spite of that defeat, the renderers approached the IDC last January with another request, this time to change the name “poultry by-products” to “poultry and bone meal.” As a new liaison to that committee, I argued strongly against this change, as did representatives from two major pet food companies and others. The IDC voted unanimously against the change.
Inadequate standards?
Perhaps AAFCO’s biggest legacy to the state feed control officials has been the development of two tools for the standardization of pet food formulation. Most states have adopted these development tools.
The first standard is the AAFCO Nutrient Profiles, an effort to identify the minimum (and a few maximum) levels of “macronutrients” (protein, fat, and fiber) and the “micronutrients” (vitamins, minerals, essential amino acids) that research has shown to be necessary for maintaining the health of dogs and cats. Years ago, pet food makers manufactured foods to the nutritional standards set by the National Research Council, but feed control officials found numerous faults with the studies that produced that set of suggested nutrient levels, and, over time, AAFCO developed and adopted new, better standards.
Although the Nutrient Profile system has done a lot to standardize the business of pet food production, the system is not without criticism. There are studies that suggest some nutrient levels may be too high, and others too low. The Nutrient Profile system of formulation does not address the issue of ingredient quality whatsoever. One critic of this method of feed formulation designed a “food” that met all the AAFCO nutrient profile requirements – even though the food was primarily formulated from old shoe leather, sawdust, and motor oil, with a multi-vitamin-mineral supplement. Obviously, there would be no guarantee that any animal would eat such a food, or could digest it, even though it contained all the vitamins, minerals, protein, fat, etc., that the Nutrient Profiles required.
The second method for pet food formulation addresses those concerns – but contains some loopholes, as well. AAFCO has developed a protocol for feeding trials that can be used to determine whether a food can sustain life in a target test population. One is a six-month test for “maintenance” of adult dogs (or cats); the other is a shorter (10-week) test for young dogs (or cats) in a “growth” or “lactation” phase. The growth/lactation protocol is much shorter than the maintenance test, but requires more extensive blood tests for analysis. A food must pass the growth/lactation test in order to receive an “all life stages” clearance.
Whichever feeding trial is undertaken, the test population is fed nothing but the food in question for the requisite period. If the subjects test normal on a few minimal health parameters, the food passes.
The feeding trials method at least would help a maker demonstrate that the food is palatable and digestible enough to maintain life in the test population – something the Nutrient Profile system doesn’t do. This method is good if a feed maker has some brilliant research that indicates the levels of certain nutrients in the AAFCO nutrient profiles are inadequate for promoting maximum health, and they can formulate a food that they think is better; they can conduct feeding trials to prove their food works.
However, the feeding trials involve only eight test subjects, and require that only six finish the trial. Many nutritional deficiencies or overdoses would not appear in this short period; the feed’s true ability to maintain longevity, or reproductive or multi-generational health would not be demonstrated.
These two systems necessarily miss a lot of potential problems. A food meeting the Nutrient Profile may or may not pass a feeding trial; not all foods that have passed a feeding trial meet all specifications of the Nutrient Profiles. Clearly, it would be possible for a marginal food to pass these tests, yet fail to provide adequate nutrition in the long run, and in fact such problems are well documented. In generational studies, where animals were kept on the same food for three to five generations, researchers at the University of California at Davis found that some foods that pass feeding trials still won’t support animals over the long term. They estimated that, of 100 foods that pass AAFCO analysis criteria, 10 to 20 would not pass the feeding trials, and of those, 10 percent would not be adequate for long-term feeding. A former FDA nutritionist emphasizes, “The formulation method does not account for palatability or availability of nutrients. Yet a feeding trial can miss some chronic deficiencies or excesses.”
In the case of minimum requirements without a corresponding maximum, some foods contain significant nutrient excesses that may actually be dangerous in the long run. The Kentucky feed control official analyzed test data from all pet foods tested during 1994 and 1995, and found that certain nutrients, such as magnesium, iron, and manganese, were present in most dry dog and puppy foods at 200-400 percent or more of their AAFCO Nutrient Profile values. Their conclusion: the AAFCO profile for certain nutrients is not a reasonable indicator of the actual level present in many products. An excess of many minerals, including copper, magnesium, and iron, may produce signs of toxicity over time.
And here is a big wrench in the works: according to both of AAFCO’s methods of certification, manufacturers are allowed to test one food of a similar “family” of foods, and apply that certification to all foods in that family. There is no way for the consumer to know which foods were actually tested for the Nutrient Profiles or Feeding Trials certification.
Up to the states
If a food has met either AAFCO requirement, it may state on the label that the food is “complete and balanced.” These label statements are why many people are under the mistaken impression that AAFCO actually regulates the food industry.
But, remember, it’s the states that are in control – and they are in control of only the pet food manufacturers who try to sell food within their borders. Only the state’s feed control officials have the ability to approve or deny the right of a manufacturer to sell a particular food in their state, or to punish manufacturers for labeling infractions. And the only way they can make these decisions is to test the various foods that the makers register for sale there.
As we said above, some states test only the Guaranteed Analysis information (protein, fat, fiber, moisture). Others test individual nutrients (amino acids, vitamins, minerals) as well. California has a reputation for testing nothing. Kentucky tests nearly the entire AAFCO Nutrient Profile. Nearly every manufacturer has had one or more foods fail various tests at one time or another. Many foods fall short, usually on the stated protein levels. Even more ominous is the failure of tests for major minerals such as phosphorus or calcium. The manufacturers assert that tests on any particular batch or lot of food may not be representative of all their foods, but because such failures are so widespread, from the cheapest generic to the most specialized and expensive foods, it is a very disturbing trend.
Oddly enough, there is no way to test a food to see if it actually contains the ingredients listed. Only DNA testing of the raw ingredients – before a food is made – could determine whether the protein source was really chicken meat, for instance, and not a mixed poultry by-product. Once the food is cooked, the DNA is destroyed and testing is futile.
Failing tests
State feed control officials can and do enforce violations of their states’ regulations, but this process is not sweeping and surely not swift. Depending on the nature of a problem they discover with a food, there are numerous levels of notification and correction; in the mean time, tons of non-compliant food can be sold and consumed by our dogs. Each state compiles an annual report which lists the violations; these documents are public record. Many states publish this data; a few, like Missouri, and Indiana, post it on the Internet.
Regulation and enforcement of the pet food industry varies widely from state to state. Some states have adopted very tough legislation, and others have minimal pet food laws. Some states scrutinize foods carefully, and others hardly at all. And you can’t assume any coordination between the state’s regulatory aims and its follow-through on enforcement. California, for example, has one of the nation’s most restrictive pet food production Acts in the country, the “Pure Pet Food Act of 1969.” It prohibits 4D meat and other bad stuff in pet food. However, the Act isn’t enforced at all. Texas has adopted the AAFCO nutrient profiles, tests the Guaranteed Analysis, and enforces everything. The annual feed report from Texas averages around 100 pages (in very fine print) of violations and actions taken. There are almost 30 pages just listing Stop Sale orders of animal feed and pet food!
In reviewing the states’ reports, it’s obvious that every food fails something somewhere, some time. But the most striking trend is that the foods with the most problems tend to be locally produced and regionally marketed; there are numerous small pet food companies that make foods that are sold in one state only or across one state border only. The national manufacturers stick closer to the rules; if they ship nationally, they pretty much have to make their products to whichever state standards are the strictest.
Worrisome
If you’re like us, the more you learn about the pet food industry, the more you feel you should worry about your pets’ food! The kind of regulation and oversight that many of us assume is present over the industry as a whole really doesn’t exist. Instead, existent regulation and the vicissitudes of the market itself tends to promote the better products, and weed out the “bad actors” over time. It really is amazing that the industry is as “clean” as it is – but this isn’t, perhaps, saying much. In an ideal world, every food in the country would have to pass feeding trials and lab tests that prove sufficient (and not harmful) nutrient levels on an ongoing basis. But in this world, our dogs represent the “test dogs” and we are providing the feeding trials.
Non-dog folks turn pale at the thought. But responsible dog owners, knowing how important it is to clean up after our dogs, think nothing of reaching down and picking up a fresh, fragrant pile of Fido’s feces with our hands. Oh, not our bare hands, of course, but often with nothing more than a couple of millimeters of flimsy plastic between epidermis and excrement. No big deal. Until, that is, one of those handy plastic bags breaks. Intrepid as committed poop-pickers may be, even we will blanche at the thought of . . . well, you can imagine.
WDJ applauds dog owners who pick up after their pooches. Tired of those “No Dogs Allowed” signs at all the parks in your area? Dog owners’ failure to scoop, and the resulting accumulation of feces, is one of the primary reasons that our best friends are banned from an increasing number of public places. This is not just an aesthetic problem. Roundworms and hookworms can infect humans, with children being most susceptible, since they are most likely to experience close encounters of the turd kind. The larva of these canine parasites can migrate and infest human liver, lungs and other organs (larval migrans syndrome). Infection may leave children with permanent vision or neurologic damage. Parvo-contaminated feces can also be a source of disease transmission to other dogs, particularly young puppies and elderly dogs whose immunities are weak, or dogs with compromised immune systems.
Both to encourage responsible scooping and to protect our stalwart readers from bag-breaking nightmares, we decided to determine which poop bags are the best on the market. Ready to delve with us into the depths of defecation disposal?
There are several factors to consider when selecting a dog poop bag:
1. Sturdiness is high on the list – no explanation needed.
2. Holding Capacity. Again, self-explanatory. A Pomeranian pile is a different story from a Great Pyrenees production.
3. Cost. Pennies for poop? Or dollars for defecation?
4. Disposability. Ecology is always a consideration with our WDJ approved products. Will our landfills overflow with little bags full of doggie bowel movements? Or do the bags break down and decompose; ashes to ashes, feces to fertilizer?
5. Sealability. This is important. Once you have done the deed, can you close the container to prevent errant odors from contaminating your conversations?
6. Aesthetics. This may be more important to some dog-folk than others, but there are bags you can see through and bags you can’t. All else being equal, you might generally prefer not to be able to view the contents of the container once you have carefully captured them.
I have a 1 1/2 year old Labrador Retriever. She is very smart – and very stubborn! My husband and I have been to puppy school, obedience school and we have also worked with a personal trainer. She does the “normal” puppy things – jumping up when I come home from work and when people come to visit, etc. But one of the reasons we went to the trainer was because she seemed to be exhibiting some aggressive tendencies.
When I come home from work I always play with her. We also fenced our yard so that she could run and play freely. However, when I sit down she barks and nips at me. A few times she got really into it and jumped up as she was nipping. She is very strong and I was getting bruised where she would catch me with her mouth. She never broke the skin and I was confident that she would never hurt me, but I was afraid that if she did this to someone else they might get hurt or scared.
The training school we went to told us to walk away when she did this. The problem was that she would follow and keep nipping or just start up again when I returned. Saying “ouch!” in a high-pitched voice was also suggested and did not work. I didn’t know what to do and as she got bigger and stronger – the bruises got worse. So we contacted a personal trainer. I told him it really just happened when I sat down on the couch. If I got up to do dishes or something she would often just rest on the floor near me, but once I sat down, she started in. He suggested a Tri-Tronics collar. Now of course I was not thrilled with this idea, but since nothing else worked I tried it.
The collar worked. I did test it on myself to make sure I wasn’t putting her through a lot of pain – which I wasn’t – but I still don’t like it. She still occasionally gets into these moods and the only way I can stop her is to put the collar on. I rarely need to shock her anymore because she is “collar-wise” and knows when it is on.
Do you have any idea how I can get her to stop these nipping fits once she gets going so that I don’t have to use the collar?
-Debbie Poetsch
via email
We asked our Training Editor, Pat Miller, to handle this question. Miller, a member of the Association of Pet Dog Trainers, offers private and group dog training classes from her base in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Miller answers:
I appreciate your resistance to using the shock collar for basic training. Yes, shocking your dog can work, to a point. As you say in your letter, Guiness has become collar-wise and knows when it is on. So you really haven’t trained her not to nip; you’ve only taught her that if she nips when the collar is on, she will get hurt. Don’t kid yourself, by the way, if the collar didn’t hurt her, it wouldn’t stop the behavior.
The question is, do you want a relationship with your dog that requires the threat of pain and shock to keep her well-behaved? Obviously not, since you wrote this letter.
The school you went to gave you good advice, as far as it went. The way to make a behavior go away is to prevent the dog from being rewarded by it. Walking away from a dog who does this often works – except when the dog just follows you and continues the inappropriate behavior. When that happens, a tether can be a good solution.
Too bad, time out!
You will need a six-foot nylon-coated cable with snaps at both ends. Snap one end to an eye-bolt screwed into a wall, or loop it around the leg of a heavy piece of furniture. Put a soft dog bed at the tether location, with lots of enticing chew toys, and have a stuffed Kong handy on a nearby shelf . Hook up the tether in the same room as you, but far enough away from your chair that Guiness won’t be able to reach you. Sit in your chair. If she starts to bark at you, say “Oops, time out!” in a cheerful voice, walk her over to her tether, hook her up, and give her the Kong. Go back to your reading. Now if she barks, just ignore her.
Sooner or later she will pause in her barking, if just to catch her breath. When she does, Click! a clicker or say “Yes!” and toss her a treat. Keep rewarding her for pauses in the barking, and gradually wait for increasingly longer periods of quiet before clicking and treating. As the periods of quiet get longer, start rewarding random periods of quiet – sometimes shorter, sometimes longer – so she can’t anticipate when the next reward is due.
When you can see that her arousal level has diminished – when she is lying calmly on her bed on the tether – walk over to her and quietly release her from the cable. This part is important. She needs to know not only that barking and nipping earns her a time out, but also, that calm behavior wins your attention and her freedom. If she cranks up and starts barking and nipping again, do another “Oops, time out!” and tether her again. If she stays calm while off the tether, remember to occasionally give her attention and praise for being calm and quiet.
Remember that dogs learn through repetition. You want Guiness to learn that “not barking” gets your attention. Once she figures that out, she will “not bark” as hard as she can to get you to look at, talk to, touch, or play with her.
The tether does several things. It controls her inappropriate behavior so you don’t have to keep interacting with – and inadvertently rewarding – her for it. It allows you to repeatedly ignore her for the unwanted behavior and reward her for the acceptable behavior. It teaches her to control her own behavior, rather than relying on physical punishment or the threat of punishment that can damage your relationship with her. And it allows you to do it all without pain or anger on your part, which helps maintain a relationship of mutual trust and respect between you and your dog.
Stubbornness is not a dog trait
I do want to take issue with the description of Guiness or any other dog as “stubborn.” The term “stubborn” is pejorative, and implies a malicious intent that I don’t believe dogs are capable of. I prefer to describe them as persistent – a quality that we are likely to admire. Dogs simply do what works. Guiness has figured out that when you are up and doing dishes you are too busy to pay attention to her, but when you are sitting down your time is hers. When you try to read, she barks and nips at you to remind you that now you are supposed to be paying attention to her, not reading. Because you do respond to her when she barks, or at least did respond at some time in the past, she learned that barking and nipping works.
When we ignore a behavior that has worked in the past, dogs commonly display an “extinction burst” – that is, a very strong exhibition of the behavior that has worked in the past. They try really hard to get the previously successful behavior to work again. By putting her on a tether, you put yourself out of harm’s way, which allows you to ignore the extinction burst without getting irritated by it, and reward the first glimmerings of the desired behavior – in this case, calm and quiet.
Pat Miller, Peaceable Paws Dog Training, Chattanooga, TN. Small classes and private training using primarily positive reinforcement training methods. Ph (423) 326-0444. NOTE: You can now cyber-talk to Pat Miller, Peaceable Paws clients, and other positive dog owners and trainers on the Peaceable Paws e-mail list. Subscribe by sending a message to: peaceablepaws-subscribe@egroups.com.
Monica and Tess had an inauspicious start in life. Half Rhodesian Ridgeback and half Beagle, at age five weeks they were on display in a cardboard box at a Salinas, California, yard sale, under the ubiquitous “Free to a Good Home” sign.
They were too young to be leaving their mother and siblings, and adopting two puppies at the same time is rarely advisable, but 83-year-old Marie and her dog-loving caretaker, Eleanor, were concerned that the pups might end up in less-than-caring hands, so they scooped the pups up and took them home to their Pebble Beach estate. There, they were assured of regular meals and a secure home, and safe from deliberate cruelty or abandonment.
Unfortunately, that’s not quite everything dogs need in life to thrive in this world. The elderly Marie wasn’t physically able to work with two energetic youngsters, and Eleanor was too busy with her caretaking duties to pay them much attention. The puppies were completely unsocialized to any humans other than the two women, and not very well socialized to them!
By the age of 10 months these puppies were tightly bonded to each other to the exclusion of human relationships. They had never been collared, and would go into a total panic at a hint of restraint. Any quick movements by humans sent them scurrying into the safety of the juniper bushes. They were well past time for spaying, and Marie and Eleanor knew they had to get them to the veterinary hospital for vaccinations and surgery soon. But how, when they couldn’t be restrained or walked on a leash?
They’ve got to be taught
Dogs aren’t born full-fledged “man’s best friends.” As with all baby animals, there is a period of time in their lives when they must learn about the world in order to survive. This critical period is a window of opportunity for socialization – a time when puppies learn what is safe and good and what is not. Opinions differ as to how long the window is open, but it falls somewhere in the period between four and 20 weeks. After the window closes, anything not previously identified as safe will automatically fall into the unsafe category. Dogs must be socialized to the human world during this time, or they will forever be fearful of – or, at the very least, anxious about – new people, sights and sounds.
Dogs who are well-socialized receive lots of gentle human contact and handling from the time their eyes open on into adulthood. Guide Dogs For The Blind and other service dog organizations who must produce the calmest, most socialized dogs possible send their puppies to live with 4-H families, where the participants try to take their service puppies with them everywhere they go. As they get older (eight to 20 weeks) they are given careful exposure to other stimuli, such as visits to the vet hospital and groomer, walks in town, rides on elevators and escalators, sounds of cars, motorcycles and skateboards, people of different ages, sexes, and ethnicities, people who dress, talk and move in strange ways, people with umbrellas, crutches, and wheelchairs.
Proof positive
Have you ever marveled at the ability of service dogs to remain calm and responsive to their handlers’ requests in the midst of a noisy, bustling environment? Then you have witnessed proof that such a thorough, positive exposure to the outside world really does result in a more confident and well-adjusted dog, and one who will easily accept new stimuli, even without prior exposure to that specific experience.
Unfortunately, there are many poorly socialized dogs around us. Some of them, like Monica and Tess, are the result of benevolent neglect – dogs who were never going to go anywhere and whose owners didn’t anticipate the need for them to be socialized (such as routine or emergency medical care, or even emergency rehoming, if something happened to their caregivers).
More unsocialized dogs, however, are ordinary dogs whose owners simply never knew about or bothered with this important aspect of their dog’s care and training, such as dogs who live with elderly people and freak out and bite when the grandchildren visit, or dogs who the ones whose families raise them in the country and then move to the city, where they overreact to the bustle of urban life and the neighbors complain about their incessant barking. An unsocialized dog is a canine social misfit, and a tragic story waiting to happen.
An ounce of prevention
The easiest way to avoid this problem, as with most serious dog behavior challenges, is through prevention. While your veterinarian, concerned about diseases, may caution you against exposing your new puppy to the real world, failure to do so can result in a poorly socialized adult dog. And, in the long term, lack of socialization can be a bigger threat to your puppy’s well-being than the risk of disease.
The answer to this dilemma is to expose a properly-vaccinated (see “Current Thoughts on Shots,” in the August 1999 and September 1999 issues of WDJ) young dog to a controlled social environment. Take her to a well-run puppy class, where she can meet lots of different people and lots of healthy puppies. Invite friends of all ages and races over and have them dress up in odd clothes, hats, umbrellas, sunglasses, etc. Invite children over to play gently with her and to feed her treats.
The more positive encounters a dog experiences while her socialization window is open, the more well-adjusted, confident and gregarious she will be as an adult.
A positive pound of cure
But wait, you say: I’m the owner of an unsocialized adult dog. Don’t despair. Frequently, steps can be taken to make the world a less terrifying place for unsocialized dogs. The quality of their lives can be improved with desensitization, and with training that gives them confidence and helps them make sense of the world around them. It takes a lot of work and a patient owner, but it can be done.
It should come as no surprise that the methods used to rehabilitate an unsocialized dog must be positive ones. The poor pooch is already terrified of the world. Progress is slow in the best of circumstances, and once she starts taking tentative steps to emerge from her shell, the tiniest correction can send her scurrying back to safety. Each dog will progress at her own pace – some far more quickly than others. You must be patient. Pushing an unsocialized dog too quickly can destroy weeks, even months, of painstaking progress.
Here are the steps to take to encourage courage in an unsocialized canine:
1. Teach your dog a bridge, or reward marker. A bridge is a word or a sound that tells your dog that she has earned a reward. The clicker, a small plastic box that makes a clicking sound when pressed, is often used as the bridge in dog training. Your unsocialized dog may be sound sensitive. If so, you may want to start with a one-syllable bridge word, such as “Yes!” instead of the clicker. “Good Dog!” is not a good choice for a reward marker. It’s too long. A dog can do several behaviors during the time it takes to say two syllables. Which one is getting rewarded? Besides, we tend to say “Good dog!” to our dogs all the time just because we love them. We need a marker that only means “a reward is coming.”
To teach your Timid Tess the bridge, just say “Yes!” (or Click! the clicker if she tolerates the sound), and immediately feed her a small but very tasty treat. She doesn’t have to do anything special to get the Yes! and treat at first, but do try to avoid marking and treating if she is doing something you don’t want her to do, like jumping on you.
If Tess is unsocialized even to you and won’t come close enough to eat treats out of your hand you can toss the treats to her at a distance or scatter treats all over the ground, and Yes! or Click! every time she picks one up. Once she knows that the marker means “Treat!” you can, for the rest of her life, click! (or yes!) and treat her every time she does something good; this will reinforce that behavior and increase the likelihood that she will do it again.
2. Reward-mark her entire meal.
Let this be the only way Tess gets to eat – by being in your company and eventually, when she’s brave enough, by eating out of your hand. She needs to learn that you are the source of all good things. Reward-marking won’t work as well for a free-roaming feral dog – she will have access to other food sources and won’t have to tolerate your presence to find food. Please note – we absolutely do not advocate starving a dog in order to get her to take food from you. You will need to find an environment where Tess feels comfortable eating in your presence – if necessary a large enough room or yard that she can be fairly far away from you at first while she picks treats up off the ground and gets marked.
3. Reward-mark her for calm behavior around others. Once Tess knows that the bridge means “Treat!” you can Yes! or Click! and treat anytime she is being brave. If she is normally afraid of children and she sits quietly next to you on a park bench while a child walks by, Yes! and reward. Look for very small, rewardable behaviors. If she glances at a child and doesn’t react, Yes! and reward.
4. Make a list of her fear triggers. You probably have a good idea of what the things are that frighten Tess. These are her “fear triggers.” Make a list, and include everything you can think of. Ask other family members to help. Then prioritize your list. Now decide which trigger you want to start with in her desensitization program. Start with something achievable. For your dog’s sake and for yours, it’s important to have small successes throughout the process. You might need to take a big trigger and figure out how to break it down into smaller pieces.
For example: if her Number 1 Trigger is tall men with beards and cowboy hats, you might start with tall, clean-shaven men. Start leaving cowboy hats around the house in conspicuous places, and occasionally put one on yourself. Other family members and people who are well-liked by Tess can do the same. Once she accepts tall men, you can advance to clean-shaven tall men with cowboy hats. Meanwhile, work at desensitizing her to short men with beards. Then try tall men with beards without cowboy hats. When you have desensitized her to all the of the pieces, then you can finally put them together as tall men with beards wearing cowboy hats.
This takes time and patience. If you skip steps you may undo all of your painstaking training progress and have to start over.
5. Use counter-conditioning and desensitization. Desensitization is the process of gradually acclimating a dog to the things she is afraid of. Counter-conditioning means replacing her undesirable reaction – fear – with a more desirable one that is incompatible with fear, such as the eager anticipation of a tasty treat.
Let’s say Tess is afraid of strangers. Since we can’t control a stranger’s behavior, we need to create a stranger who will work with us. Get a friend to act as your stranger, and brief him ahead of time. Set up a system of simple hand signals so you can let him know if you want him to stay where he is, come closer, go farther away or move to the side. If your dog’s fear threshold is 30 feet – that is, if she starts acting stressed or scared when strangers are 30 feet away, start with your stranger at 35 feet.
You should be sitting comfortably, with Tess on a leash next to you in a controlled environment. You don’t want some real stranger to wander through and mess up your carefully staged training session! While your dog is calm about the stranger’s presence just beyond her threshold, feed her lots of tasty teats. Handfuls!!!! Then have your stranger gradually move closer . . . very gradually . . . a few inches at a time if necessary.
It helps if your “stranger” is talented enough to act natural, not be furtive or suspicious. Also, he should avoid making any eye contact with the dog. A direct stare is a threat in canine body language, and is especially threatening to a dog who is already stressed.
If the dog starts to get nervous at 29 feet, signal the stranger to stop. Feed Tess more treats until she relaxes, and then end the session. Have the stranger walk away (another huge reward for Tess’ good behavior). Schedule another session for the next day. (I told you this could take a long time!) During the second session you might have your stranger move laterally at a distance of 29 feet to vary the experience. If Tess continues to stay relaxed as the stranger moves around and approaches, give her lots of rewards and stop the session at a reasonable distance before she gets stressed. Don’t push it. Success in slow increments is the key. Slow success is far more important than fast progress. You want Tess to know that the presence of strangers makes good things (lots of treats) happen.
NOTE: In order for desensitization and counter conditioning to work you need to be very good at recognizing your dog’s signs of stress. The book On Talking Terms With Dogs: Calming Signals, by author Turid Rugaas, is an excellent resource for learning how to read your dog’s body language signals.
6. Reward-mark while others feed treats. If Tess is more tolerant of people than in the scenario described in Step #2, you can have other people feed her treats when you reward-mark, or they can reward-mark and treat. The ultimate goal is to have Tess believe that people are safe and good, not scary and dangerous. The more she will accept treats from others, the more she can associate them with good things, not just you.
7. Teach her to target. “Targeting” is teaching your dog to touch a target with her nose on cue. It’s easy to do, and it’s a great confidence builder for timid dogs.
To start, hold a target object – such as your hand, a pencil or a short (2-3 foot) dowel – in front of you. Use something that won’t frighten her. When she touches it with her nose, Click! or say Yes! and feed her a treat. (If she won’t touch it, rub a meaty-flavored treat on it so it smells irresistible.) When she is eagerly touching the target, add the cue-word “Touch!” as she does it. Continue to Click! and treat. In short order she will be eager to touch the target when you ask her to.
Dogs love this exercise. It’s like a treat vending machine – they push the button, they get a treat. By placing the target, which they love, near something that they are leery of, you can get them to approach the scary object. When they get clicked and treated for touching the target near the object, they soon decide that the scary thing isn’t so bad.
Don’t ‘protect’ the dog
You must avoid coddling your skittish dog through this process. As tempting as it may be, do not allow yourself to coddle and comfort your Timid Tess. You will be rewarding and reinforcing her timid behavior, not giving her confidence, like you might think. If you act concerned, she will be even more convinced that there is something to be afraid of. You’ll do better to act matter-of-fact, jolly her up and let her know there’s nothing wrong. The target stick works really well in place of coddling.
It’s important to always remember that your unsocialized dog is not acting out of spite or malice. She is truly afraid, even terrified, of the things that she reacts to. Don’t blame her. It’s not her fault. Be patient, and help her to slowly learn that the world is not such a frightening place after all.
Well worth the effort
This process really works. I know it works through numerous personal experiences – as well as from the example of Monica and Tess, the puppy sisters who were taken home from the yard sale and allowed to grow up fairly “wild” on a large estate. When their owners realized that they would never be able to get the puppies to a veterinarian’s office for shots and spaying without professional help, they began calling trainers, and eventually I heard about their plight. I worked with Monica and Tess and their owners in their home. Their progress was slow but very encouraging. At the end of two months, the sister dogs knew the “Yes! and reward” system well. They could sit and lie down on cue, were wearing collars, and were learning to accept the pressure of leash restraint. They had come to enjoy my attentions, and Marie and Eleanor had started inviting more people over, specifically to socialize the dogs. It was working, slowly. Ultimately, Monica and Tess will probably be able to live a reasonably fear-free life in their own home, and will be able to be taken to the vet without causing harm to either themselves or their handlers.
At Halo, Purely For Pets, we love WDJ and have been grateful for all the wonderful things youve written about our products, particularly Spots Stew for Dogs. In fact, we were honored to make your list of Top 20 Canned Foods in the October 2000 issue but we were surprised you inferred it was really Progresso Soup!
Spots Stew is the only pet food in the world prepared in a strictly regulated USDA kitchen and is even healthy for humans to eat! To my knowledge, theres not another pet food that can make that claim. Our healthy homemade food is better than Progresso Soup, as it contains no added sodium, fillers (such as corn, wheat or rice) or artificial preservatives whatsoever. Halo uses only human-grade ingredients, including USDA approved free-range chicken, zucchini, carrots, squash, celery, green beans, peas, garlic, and kelp.
Open a can. Youll see, smell, and taste the difference our real food makes. Every ingredient was chosen for its nutritional benefit, which can truly promote great health, as opposed to just sustaining life!
Please help us set the record straight and get everybodys tails wagging again.
-Andi Brown, Director Halo, Purely For Pets Palm Harbor, FL
Were sorry, Andi; we really thought that by comparing Spots Stew favorably to Progresso Soup, we were complimenting your product! (For a commercial product, Progresso is high-end fare, in our house!) We DID open a can of Spots Stew, and it looked and smelled good enough for us to eat although were drawing the line at tasting it. Even without a sip, we think its great stuff.
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While we have the greatest respect for your opinions and the publication as a whole, there were some important misstatements within your rating of our product, the Lupine Combo Collar in the October issue (Slip Slidin Away).The first, and most worrisome, comes in the Quality/Durability section, where you state that the material is of mid-range quality . . . Our webbing is absolutely the strongest and most durable woven nylon available. Originally designed for mountain climbing harnesses, the webbing is made for us in France using a micro-weaving process that incorporates more thread per inch than any other, with a tensile strength of 3200-3500 lbs., depending on the width.
Your impression that the lower quality nylon is stiff is incorrect. The high thread count of our webbing may contribute to its stiff feel for the first few days, but it does break in much as leather does.
I have enclosed a few more samples, including one from our TrimLine Solids collection, so that you may compare them with the one used in the article. Some of our patterns are stiffer than others when new, but a smooth, flat fit is quickly achieved with regular use, and many will offer this from day one. We offer three size ranges and 12 patterns in 3/4 and two size ranges and 10 patterns in the 1.
You also expressed concern about our use of the plastic adjustment piece (triglide). When WDJ last reviewed this type of collar, we used the same type of hardware as most other manufacturers. However, our guarantee allows us to inspect used products and enables us to track problems. We were able to see that the majority of Combo collars returned for replacement due to hardware failure were failing at the exact same point: the metal adjustment piece. After six months of testing, we came to find that the Delrin plastic triglide we now use actually outperforms metal, withstanding two to three times as much force as the previous piece. Delrin is an exceptionally strong acetal plastic which remains flexible under stress, even in a very cold environment.
The review also raises doubt about the relative strength of bar-tacking versus box-and-cross stitching. The average strength for a box-and-cross tack and for a single bar tack is the same about 600 lbs. With the exception of the tack nearest to the adjustment, where most applied force would be absorbed by the hardware, most Combos have two or three bar tacks per space, raising the relative strength substantially. I would also note that people who routinely dangle from cliffs and high rises usually outfit themselves in harnesses that are made using the same bar tacking technique we employ for our products.
Safety is an issue of great concern to us. We constantly monitor our products through consumer and retailer feedback, as well as close inspection of the large quantity of daily damaged returns (usually from chewing!). While your point about the lack of product packaging and information is well taken (and already in development prior to your review), it must be noted that any item that is placed around an animals neck represents a potential danger, whether it is a regular flat collar or a martingale, or anything else.
-Tracy McCarthy Director of Marketing, Lupine, Inc. Conway, NH
Sometimes I complain that I dont get out from behind my computer enough. So fall is my favorite season, because I get to get out of the office and onto an airplane. The annual conventions of the American Holistic Veterinary Medical Association (AHVMA) and the Association of Pet Dog Trainers (APDT) are always held at around the same time of year, and attending both meetings constitutes both vacation time and inspiration time for me.
One of the best things about going to these conferences is meeting people who are big fans of the magazine. People often introduce themselves and tell me how such and such an article pratically saved their dogs lives now that makes all those hours behind the computer monitor worthwhile!
Of course, for balance, there are those individuals who track me down to let me know in no uncertain terms how angry they are with some article or other. Maybe we bashed their dogs food, or said we disapproved of their favorite training tool, but it made them MAD! I always feel like my sensitive Border Collie when this happens; I just want to go hide under my desk!
I try not to let the praise go to my head, or let the criticism get to my tummy. Because, honestly, not even a Border Collie can make all of the people happy all of the time. We can wear our paws off trying, but it just cant be done.
Nor would this magazine be much use to you if that is all we tried to do. If we spent all of our time sitting on the fence and refusing to take positions on things like electronic training collars, or pushing a puppys nose in a puddle of pee, or artificial preservatives in food, what use would we be to anyone?
So, sometimes, we have to agree to disagree on certain subjects. Hopefully, for every article you take exception with, youll find several you heartily agree with. And when we meet in person, we can shake paws and discuss it over a bone. I promise I wont bite.
I am so glad you are presenting information about immune system problems. I myself suffer from extreme immune dysfunction and environmental illness, and it is only because I have an excellent holistic M.D. and take numerous vitamins and supplements and eat organic food that I am alive.
I appreciate your publication, as I have six dogs. I switched my four older dogs to Wysong Senior, and have seen a increase in vitality in all four. My old Ridgeback had ear problems for years, with scaling and thickening of her ear flaps. They are now normal, silky, and no longer cause her to scratch.
My male Basenji, now 10, had a reaction to a six-in-one puppy shot when he was eight weeks old. His adult teeth came in with severe enamel hypoplasia – looking like “distemper teeth” seen in the days when distemper was common. He also tends to react to vaccinations by developing hives and itching. I showed him, and have met many other Basenji owners who have similar tales of bad vaccine reactions. Perhaps a more primitive immune system, or at least, a more sensitive one, exists in this breed.
I believe our love affair with chemicals, pesticides, fragrances, etc., is causing illness in many people and their pets. My own doctor believe that vaccines are also responsible for many immune system diseases. I’m glad to see a publication alert its readers to the hazards in our environment and encourage a more healthy, holistic approach to pet care.
Regarding healthy rawhide chews (which WDJ wrote about in the August 1999 issue): We buy “American Beefhide” chews. They are made by Harper Leather Goods in Illinois, and contain no additives, preservatives, or dyes.
-Cathy Ritlaw Dolan Springs, AZ
Thanks so much for your kind words, and for your suggestion about the chews. To locate a nearby retail outlet for the chews, readers may call Harper Leather Goods at (888) 542-7737.
I was sooooooo glad to read in your Letters column in November (“Questioning Vaccines”) that other dogs have had the same problem as my dog has had. I have an oversized Toy Poodle, going on 11 years old, and equipped with three veterinarians due to her many medical problems. She had never had a seizure in her entire life until last year, when she was given her yearly combo shot. Two days after the shot, she had a full blown seizure.
This year, my local veterinarian and I decided to waive all vaccination boosters, not only because of the seizure, but because of my dog’s immune system is constantly stressed with severe allergies – which I’ve been told are the worst ever seen in the whole state of Kentucky (where I live). I was happy to see that others are realizing that we are overdoing it on vaccines. Sometimes less really is more! Many thanks and keep up the good work.
-Mrs. Anita Saylor via email
I really appreciated the articles you have in the December 1999 issue of WDJ . They were right on with the approach of using positive reinforcement. The series you’ve been running on the immune system is super.
The alternative approach is gaining acceptance across the country, and rightfully so. Two years ago, we got large Boxer named Duke, who was a rescue animal. He was supposed to be terminated due to behavioral problems and allergies. Through positive reinforcement and using some new products we have turned his life around – no more steroids or antibiotics. It’s truly amazing what superfoods can do. Duke is now four and looks and feels great.
-Robert Stewart Huntington, WV
Stay tuned for the final installment of the series on the immune system, which will discuss conventional and holistic treatments for immune system disorders and for improving immune system function. The article will be published in the March issue.
I just had to respond to the letter in the December issue from the reader thought WDJ was too biased in favor of positive training methods.
I, too, was skeptical (but intrigued) about the free issue offer. And I, too, put everything else aside to read that first (November 1999) issue. I also discovered that I did not see eye to eye on every issue and do agree with the letter writer that the “best reading and information is from a variety of sources.”
But hopefully, those sources are not only ones that confirm your own views; ones that present alternative viewpoints are very valuable. I’ve found that the best way to accomplish anything is to pull together all the information you can get from many sources and apply it the in a way that works best for you and your dog.
So, because the point of view represented in WDJ is hard to come by – and I already have ample representatives for the conventional viewpoint! – I will subscribe, and get to work ordering those back issues. Thank you for a wonderful publication.
Throughout the ages, veterinarians have developed theories to explain why dogs sometimes eat grass. Many believe that dogs are instinctively attempting to treat an upset stomach with the grass shoots; the fact that eating grass sometimes causes a dog to vomit lends some credence to this theory.
The fact is, fresh young grass shoots – like most fresh, young, green plant sprouts – taste good and are packed with nutrients. Why wouldn’t an “opportunistic omnivore” like the dog be attracted to eating grass?
Due to the environmental pollution and contaminants – not to mention the larval form of some intestinal parasites – that can be found on outdoor grass, we wouldn’t recommend allowing your dog to eat just any grass. However, you could do him a big favor by adding some healthy sprouts to his diet. There are dozens of seed and grain sprouts that are inexpensive to buy and easy to grow, as well as beneficial and easy to digest for any dog.
Sprouts are Full of Nutrition
If seeds are considered the first stage of life for a plant, sprouts are stage two, the tiniest stems of plants emerging from wet seeds. Most edible sprouts are ready to eat as soon as three days after germinating, although some are grown for as much as 10-12 days. At this stage of life, the little plants are loaded with nutrients; pound for pound, many plants contain far more digestible vitamins, minerals, protein, and enzymes in their sprout stage than they will as adult plants.
For example, by weight, alfalfa sprouts contain more vitamin A than tomatoes, green peppers, and most fruits. Thiamin (B1), riboflavin (B2) and niacin are abundant in alfalfa, wheat, rye, and sunflower sprouts. All the sprouted grains – especially wheat, oats, and rye – contain about three times as much vitamin E as in the dried grain form of the food.
The minerals in sprouts are absorbed from the water used to rinse them while growing, and are “chelated” by the plant – that is, bound to amino acids in such a way as to make them maximally bioavailable to the body. Sprouts are good sources of calcium, potassium, and iron, as well as vital trace elements.
While the plant proteins found in sprouts cannot be used to replace animal proteins in a dog’s diet (they lack the complete amino acid profile needed for canine health), they can augment diet nicely, especially if the dog already receives fresh meat in his diet.
Because they are so rich in enzymes – the catalysts that help break food into simpler, more usable forms – sprouts are considered practically “predigested.” Some people who feed vegetables to their dogs add digestive enzymes to the food to help the dog digest them; this is unnecessary with sprouts. During sprouting, much of the starch contained in a plant seed is broken down into simple sugars by amylase. The proteins are converted into amino acids and amides by protease, and fats and oils are converted into more simple fatty acids by lipase.
In addition to these well-understood nutritional benefits, sprouts contain a wealth of chlorophyll, a protein compound found in green plants. Numerous nutritionists think that some dietary chlorophyll benefits humans and other mammals and the supplement makers have responded to the opportunity; there are a number of canine nutritional supplements that include chlorophyll from various sources (blue-green algae, wheatgrass, barley grass, etc.) on the market. Chlorophyll advocates claim the substance is unrivaled in its ability to stimulate the body to repair body cells damaged by wounds or abrasions. These effects are largely unsubstantiated – but if you’re a believer, eat some sprouts! The green ones offer chlorophyll in spades.
And, finally, sprouts contain a lot of fiber and water and, therefore, are helpful in overcoming constipation in man or beast.
Will Your Dog Eat Sprouts?
Most dogs who are accustomed to eating fresh foods will readily try sprouts of different varieties, although, like people, dogs do display personal preferences. Radish sprouts have a zesty, spicy flavor that some dogs love — and sends some dogs away to a corner, licking their lips and looking at you suspiciously. Alfalfa sprouts and clover sprouts are among the mildest and easy-to-grow sprouts, and most dogs lick these up with relish, even if they are simply stirred in with the dog’s food.
Many people who feed sprouts to their dogs prepare the sprouts in a blender or grinder along with the other components of the dog’s homemade meal. Kathleen McDaniel, of Burbank, Illinois, uses sprouts of organic red clover, radish, and peas in her four dogs’ meals, preparing the raw sprouts in a food processor along with other vegetables. “I first noticed sprouts while shopping for organic vegetables for the dogs — always paying attention to their health before mine! Very sad!,” she jokes. “I figured that I would buy some as well as try to find out some information about them. After some investigation and discovering that they do pack a vitamin ‘punch’ as well as being high in saponins, I do put them on salads for myself.”
McDaniel’s dogs range from 1 1/2 to 11 years old, but they all seem to like sprouts well enough. She comments that it’s difficult to say how much she feeds to each dog, since she makes food for her entire pack at once.
“I put about one to two cups of sprouts into the veggie mix that I feed my dogs, and I divide that between four dogs,” she says. Once they are processed, a cup or two of sprouts condenses into about a half-cup of juicy pulp that McDaniel describes as a baby food consistency. For the record, McDaniel says she has never tried to grow the sprouts herself, claiming she is “terrible with green things.” She buys her sprouts ready to eat “and always organic.”
Patty Smiley, of Pine Grove, California, also feeds sprouts on a regular basis to her pack of three dogs: a 13- (or so) year-old Border Collie/Springer Spaniel rescue, a seven-year-old male Flat-Coated Retriever who is a show/performance dog, and a two-year-old female Flat-Coated Retriever, also a show/performance dog.
Smiley says she has been feeding sprouts to her dogs for about seven years. “I first learned about sprouts years ago when the health food movement began. I eat them myself, although I like them only in salads and on some sandwiches. I don’t eat them daily like the furkids do!” she says.
Smiley does grow her own sprouts, rotating between alfalfa, various clovers, broccoli, radish, and mung bean sprouts. She adds the sprouts to the dinnertime veggie mix that the dogs get with their meat-based diet. “A typical meal might include a clove or two of garlic, an organic carrot, five or six dandelion leaves, about 1/4 cup of sprouts, and maybe a small bit of fruit with some water,” she describes. “I put all the ingredients into my blender, whirl them until well pulverized and then this mixture gets divided between the three dogs. It comes out to about a tablespoon, possibly two, for each dog.”
Sprouts are Easy to Grow
I’ve eaten my share of sprouts through the years, and though I thought they were “just okay,” I never enjoyed them until I grew and sampled some. Wow! What a difference! These three-day-old sprouts were sweet, crunchy, and fresh-tasting, not “grassy” or sour like some sprouts I’ve eaten. Now that I know first-hand how easy it is to grow them and how delicious they are, sprouts are definitely going to be added to the family diet – my Border Collie included, of course!
Though all sorts of specialized sprout-growing gear exists, all you really need to grow sprouts are seeds and water. There are all sorts of trays and growing boxes that allow for perfect drainage – but jars work just fine. Experienced sprouters use wide-mouthed gallon or half-gallon jars – but easier-to-find quart jars work well, too. I would suggest using what you have at hand until you see how easy the process is and how well your dog (and you!) like the sprouts before you go looking for sprout-growing kits.
I had to call a few health food stores before I found one in my area that carried various sprouting seeds; they also carried plastic-meshed jar lids that allow the sprouts to breathe and keep insects out of the jars. I tried in vain to find the wide-mouthed gallon or half-gallon jars and ended up using quart Mason jars – ones that my new plastic lids did not fit onto. I made do by covering the jars with cheesecloth fastened with rubber bands; this worked just fine!
Every source of information I had for growing instructions seemed incomplete – until I tried the process and found it really is that simple. Basically, you soak about a tablespoon or two of the seeds you have selected for a few hours (small seeds like alfalfa and clover only require 3-4 hours; larger seeds like wheat can be soaked overnight) in a jar filled with plain water. Then, strain the water off through the cheesecloth or meshed lid; gently slosh the seeds around as you pour so that the seeds settle more or less evenly across the side of the jar. Then, set the jar on an angle so any excess water drains out. I put my jars in the dish drainer next to my sink.
About two to three times a day (more in hot weather, less in cool), runs some cool water into the jar, allowing it to fill. I found it helpful to jiggle the jar so that empty seed husks floated out. Then, drain all the water out, and replace the jar on its side. It’s important to keep the jars angled so that the seeds are not lying in a puddle of water, which can make them rancid.
Avoid draining the seeds so quickly that you bash them about the jar; damaged sprouts will stop developing and begin rotting, wreaking your crop. In retrospect, I was excessively gentle with the tiny sproutlets on days one and two. By day three and four, I realized the resulting sprouts were sturdier than I had thought. Just don’t bang them around.
You don’t need to put the sprouts in a dark place, nor should you place them in direct sunlight; the heat tends to make the jars steamier and wetter than is good for the sprouts (they decompose before they are tasty). I smelled the jars each time I rinsed the sprouting seeds, and was encouraged by the fresh, clean odor emanating from the growing seeds. If I had smelled an “off” odor, I was prepared to dump that batch, but it didn’t happen.
Taste a few sprouts every day as they mature, and “harvest” them out of the jars when they taste good. For me, this happened on day three, when the clover, alfalfa, and radish sprouts tasted perfect. I gave them a final rinse, pulled them out of the jar with a pair of tongs (I didn’t use wide-mouthed jars), and put them in a crisper in the refrigerator, where they remained quite edible for a couple of days. After three days in the refrigerator they began to taste like store-bought sprouts, and I threw the rest out; I was spoiled by fresh-grown sprouts already!
I didn’t like the taste of the wheatgrass sprouts at all, not on day three, or five, or eight, when it had grown far too tall for my little quart jars and began to decompose. I’ll try wheat again in a bigger jar and wait the recommended 12 days before I pass judgement on wheatgrass.
But it’s what your dog thinks of the taste that’s important! For his part, my Border Collie was indifferent to little piles of sprouts in his food dish, but cleaned up all four types of sprouts when I ran them through the blender along with the dressing of vegetables and cottage cheese that I’m putting on his food these days.
Sprout Buying Tips
Are you convinced you have a “black thumb?” We truly believe that even you can grow sprouts – but it’s okay if you really don’t want to. Sprouts are available at many grocery, produce, and health food stores.
When buying mung bean sprouts, (the crunchy white sprouts often used in Chinese cooking), select white, unbruised sprouts. Brownish rootlets or signs of wilt indicates that the sprouts are past their prime.
When buying sprouts that are sold pre-packaged in a plastic container, go ahead and pop open the container and have a good look at the sprouts inside. Sometimes the sprouts look fine from the outside of the container, but when you look inside, you can see saggy or soggy-looking sprouts, or fuzzy white mildew growing between the sprouts. Don’t be disappointed at home, after you’ve paid for and hauled those sprouts back to your kitchen! Go ahead and take a peek at them in the store! Pass on any sprouts that look less than perfect.
Concerns Sprouting Up?
It’s interesting that Dr. Andrew Weil, author of many books on natural health as well as an enormous website of information on complementary health care, has single-handedly caused a huge rift in the sprout-eating community; most sprout advocates are familiar with the dispute.
Several years ago, Dr. Weil began citing a study conducted in the early 1980s that involved a toxic substance called L-canavanine, a precursor of the amino acid arginine that is found in the sprouts of legumes such as alfalfa and clover. In the study, monkeys were fed L-canavanine sulfate tablets, as well as biscuits made from raw, unsprouted alfalfa and immature (not-yet green) sprouts. The diet contained amounts of L-canavanine that far exceeded amounts that any human or dog could ever obtain through eating green alfalfa sprouts, and the test subject monkeys exhibited health problems similar to lupus, an autoimmune disease. Weil extrapolated information from that study to conclude that “the canavanine in alfalfa sprouts can pose a real danger to humans who are susceptible to autoimmune disease.”
However, numerous lesser-known scientists and nutritionists have stepped forward to refute the dangers claimed by Weil. Sprout advocate Steve “Sproutman” Meyerowitz, author of the books Sprouts: The Miracle Food, and Sproutman’s Kitchen Garden Cookbook, has published an article refuting Weil’s claims. Meyerowitz cites research that shows that once alfalfa and other legume sprouts reach the green stage – about three to four days following germination – the potentially toxic L-canavanine is reduced to a trace amount. Meyerowitz claims to have queried Dr. Weil about his statements against alfalfa sprouts and was referred to Dr. Bruce Ames, a toxicologist who told Meyerowitz, “There’s nothing wrong with sprouts.”
Meyerowitz also revisited the original study cited by Weil, and came to very different conclusions. “The thrust of the research was to explore the connection between this toxin (L-canavanine) and the autoimmune disease lupus. It was not a test of alfalfa sprouts . . .” Meyerowitz writes. He also quotes a specialist on lupus who was familiar with the monkey study as saying, “I wouldn’t discourage my lupus patients from eating alfalfa sprouts.”
Considering that Weil cites only one study, and one that does not seem relevant to people (or dogs) who eat only modest amounts of green sprouts, many sprout fans are quite confident that their favorite greens are perfectly safe. As dog owner and sprout-feeder Patty Smiley says, “I admit that some of Dr. Andrew Weil’s comments about alfalfa sprouts has me somewhat concerned, but I have added a rotating variety of sprouts to the veggie mix of my dog’s raw foods diet for seven years – and the prolonged inclusion of sprouts in their daily diet has not caused any apparent harm. Sprouts are green, fresh, and young; I believe they are beneficial.”
Smiley adds, “I can’t say that I’ve seen (sprouts) work miracles, because with the raw diet, and limited exposure to vaccines and chemicals, my dogs haven’t ever had any serious health issues!”
Sprouting Resources • Sproutman Publications: Books on sprouting and sprout recipes, seeds, specialized growing equipment, etc. Ph (413) 528-5200; www.sproutman.com.
• International Sprout Growers Association: Information about nutrition, safety. Ph (413) 253-8965; www.isga-sprouts.org.
• Sprouthouse: Organic sprout seeds, sprouting trays and jars, recipe books, and books about sprouting. Ph (800)-SPROUTS; www.sprouthouse.com.
Could you publish something about hip dysplasia? We have a 14-month-old pit bull mix (with German Shepherd, we believe) who has been diagnosed with hip dysplasia. She is a very sweet, loving, active dog whom we adopted when she was seven months old.
Evelyn Goodwin Oakland, CA
We asked Phyllis Giroux, DVM, of Goldvein, VA, to answer this question. Dr. Giroux is a certified member of the American Veterinary Chiropractic Association. She and her partner also breed and train retrievers at their home, Deep Run Farm. Dr. Giroux’s response:
First, I need to make it clear that there are many types of rear end lamenesses that may end up being diagnosed as hip dysplasia, but you really can’t accept the diagnosis of hip dysplasia without hip x-rays. Hip dysplasia is a radiographic diagnosis, not a clinical diagnosis. That may be splitting hairs, but I see many dogs with conditions such as ruptured and improperly healed cruciate ligaments or lower back arthritis that have been diagnosed with hip dysplasia. Only radiographs can determine whether or not a dog has hip dysplasia.
Radiographs are not necessarily definitive, however. Sometimes what we see on the radiograph does not correlate with the dog’s clinical signs. For instance, sometimes we see dogs that exhibit severe lameness but have only minimally visible arthritic changes in their hips, and sometimes we see dogs that exhibit minimal signs of discomfort yet have severe changes showing in the radiographs. A lot of it has to do with the individual, his tolerance for pain, and his exercise level. But in the case of a dog with severe lameness whose X-rays look OK, I am really tempted to keep looking for some other cause of his pain.
Typically the diagnostic radiograph for hip dysplasia is taken with the dog lying on his back with his legs extended. This is a non-anatomic position for the dog, but it offers one of the best views of the hip joints.
What is Hip Dysplasia?
In the dog’s hind legs, the head of the femur (or thigh bone) is shaped like a ball, and it is supposed to fit tightly into the acetabulum (socket); it’s a classic ball and socket joint. Hip dysplasia is a catch-all term for a variety of problems with that ball and socket joint.
Sometimes, we can see the socket appearing shallower than normal, so that the ball can not get well seated in the socket. The ball may become flattened or become distorted. Many times we can see changes where the joint capsule attaches to the neck of the femur; there may be calcium deposits collecting there. In more advanced cases, we can actually see the arthritic deposits in the radiographs, where excess calcium has been deposited along the rim of the socket, and sometimes on the head of the ball itself.
In a classic case, you may also see a number of accompanying signs, including a bunny-hopping gait in the rear limbs, a dog shifting a large proportion of his weight to his front legs, wasting of the muscle mass in the thigh area, stiffness and soreness when the dog gets up after resting, and a reluctance to jump up – to either jump up on his hind legs, or to jump up onto a couch or into a car.
Prevention Starts Before Birth
I raise retrievers, and so I have pretty strong feelings about preventing hip dysplasia. I believe that hip dysplasia prevention starts way back when a puppy is only theoretical – when the breeder plans the mating! If you are going to buy a purebred dog, as opposed to getting a rescued dog, you should start by looking for a puppy with good, healthy, sound parents. Take the time to do some research on the parents, and to make sure you are buying puppies from OFA-certified stock. (OFA is the Orthopedic Foundation for Animals, established in 1966. It is a not-for-profit organization originally created to assist breeders in addressing hip dysplasia.) In certain popular breeds, such as Labradors, I think only those dogs with the higher ratings (OFA-Excellent, OFA-Good) should be bred. I won’t consider breeding even an OFA-Fair Labrador.
The OFA ratings are extremely helpful in selecting breeding stock, but you have to remember that the rating is not accurate forever. Hips, like all body parts, are dynamic. Many dogs who get an OFA rating at two years old, especially if it is one of the lower ratings, like OFA-Fair, will continue to show degenerative changes in those hips throughout their lives. Many dogs that will get a passing score with OFA at two years old are not able to pass when they are aged five, six, or seven.
In the best possible world, we would require recertification later in life, perhaps every 24 to 48 months. I think would give us a better handle on what we are doing. When you breed dogs at two years old, you don’t really know what is going to happen to them when they are eight.
I also suggest using dogs that have been evaluated by the University of Pennsylvania Hip Improvement Program (PennHIP). A dog that is OFA-Excellent and scored in the top 90th percentile on the PennHIP scale is a good choice for breeding stock, assuming they have all the other qualities you want! Breeders have a responsibility to get as much information as they can about their breeding stock. They should feel confident that all the dogs that are breeding will remain sound throughout their lives. And if the offspring starts showing problems that appear to have some hereditary nature, the owners should stop breeding the parents.
Good Nutrition for Good Hips
Once you get your puppy or young dog, there are a number of things you can do to reduce the likelihood that he develops dysplasia, or improves the condition in the case of a dog who already has dysplasia. Proper nutrition is the first and foremost consideration.
All puppies and dogs should be fed a good quality diet with a balanced calcium-phosphorous ratio (about 1.2:1.0). Entire books have been written about what constitutes a “good quality diet,” but since this issue of WDJ already contains an article about choosing good dry dog foods, I’ll just say that good foods are rarely inexpensive. Quality sources of protein, carbohydrates, and fat – that is, foods that are highly digestible, easily absorbed and utilized by the dog – are more costly than low quality foods; there is just no way around it.
I use a couple of dietary supplements as a matter of course, including the antioxidant vitamins C and E. I have also had success using Perna canaliculus supplementation (I use a supplement called Glyco-Flex).
Perna is a food product containing 57 nutrients, among them glucosamine precursors. Perna seems to be effective for our joints in the same way aloe is good for wounds in the skin: as a complex of nutrients for which the whole result is greater than a sum of the parts. We start all of our puppies on Perna when they start on food, at five weeks, and keep them on this supplement throughout their whole lives. The puppies receive about 20 mg. per pound of body weight crushed in their food. I continue this throughout their lives, although I may double or even triple that dosage if they show evidence of certain problems.
Research has certainly proven that dogs that are kept significantly lean during their first year of life have a reduced risk for developing hip problems later in life. All young dogs should be kept thin – I call it painfully thin. They should look skinny. People who grew up in my era, people who were children in the 1950s, tend to feel very uncomfortable looking at puppies who are that thin. In our era, babies and puppies were all supposed to be chubby. Here at our farm, we keep our young dogs thin and active, and this approach has been very successful.
Hope for Dysplastic Dogs
But the reader’s dog has already been diagnosed with hip dysplasia; the horse is already out of the barn. Don’t panic; there are many things you can do for a dysplastic dog.
Start with all the things I mentioned for preventing dysplasia. A better diet, glucosamine supplements, and supplemental antioxidants will all help this dog. So will keeping the dog thin. Do not underestimate the importance of keeping the dog thin. I owned a Labrador who was a field champion – and, later in his life, severely dysplastic. The dog lived to be 12, and what made the biggest improvement in his quality of life during his last two years was being thin. When he weighed 73 pounds, he could not get up off the floor. He would stumble and fall, and we would have to resort to giving him cortisone injections to be able to get around at all. When he was down around 65 pounds, he got around well, he was quite mobile and felt good. Joints are made to move. If they do not move, they degenerate further.
Pain Relief is Therapeutic
Speaking of anti-inflammatories and other analgesic agents: My opinion is that if a young dog requires them in order to feel more comfortable and be more active, I think he should receive them. It’s true that these drugs can cause side effects when used over a long time. But exercise will build up the dog’s muscle tone, and strong muscles help support joints, whether they are normal or weak. Dogs who are kept quiet will only get worse and feel worse. Give the dog at least enough to get him fit and comfortable, and then taper or eliminate the dosage whenever possible.
Even if they are in pain, these dogs need exercise. Swimming is a great thing for dysplastic dogs, because it is nonconcussive.
Many veterinarians will tell you to let the dog rest, but that opinion is changing. I graduated from veterinary school in 1977, and at that time, they were still teaching us that abnormal joints need rest, just like broken bones and other injuries need rest. Today, we realize that we did a lot of harm with that advice. Certainly, as a chiropractor, I know that joints have to move. For a long time, deep in my soul, I knew that resting these things was not making them better. Even if we can’t make the joints right, we need to make them functional, so that we can help the dog preserve good muscle tone, good nerve tone, and good energy flow throughout the body.
To that end, regular chiropractic care can be of huge benefit to dysplastic dogs. Certainly it helps keep the body balanced and the joints functional. Many of these dogs are also helped by acupuncture, which is very effective to alleviate pain in dysplastic dogs. Plus, acupuncture has no deleterious side effects, and can be used for as long as it provides good results. And even if a patient quits responding to acupuncture, one could explore other possibilities, such as gold bead implants at acupuncture points.
Surgical Options
There are a number of surgical procedures that are of benefit to some dogs with certain types of dysplasia. Since this in itself is a rather large topic, I’ll discuss it in the next issue.
My husband and I acquired two (temporary) canine foundlings last week. Julie is a five-month-old purebred Akita puppy that we rescued from our local shelter, where her cage card identified her as a Shepherd/Husky mix. Her prospects for adoption were dismal, given that the shelter euthanizes 85-90 percent of incoming animals.
Our second castaway, Princess, is a three-year-old Beagle mix. My husband and I were driving down a busy highway when we spotted her, hunched in the middle of the road, defecating while cars swerved around her on both sides. Princess was wearing a collar and tag, but her owners had moved, and she ended up staying at our house for several days while we tracked down their new phone number and location.
While Princess was with us, I took her out on several occasions to cruise the neighborhood where she was found, to look for her home and to tack up “Found Dog” signs. Each time we went for a walk, I was amazed by the determination with which this little 30-pound dog could pull on a leash. I work with dogs who pull all the time in my dog training business, and believe me, Princess is an Olympic-class puller.
In contrast, Julie (the shelter rescue) heels beautifully. From the moment I took her out of the shelter on a leash, she has shown no desire to pull. Her natural inclination is to stay close to me when we walk, and it was a simple matter, in one short week, to teach her to heel nicely by my side and sit every time I halt, whether she’s on or off leash.
The stark contrast between the walking styles of these two wayward woofers prompted me to ponder the whys and wherefores of leash-pulling behavior.
The gene pull
Dogs pull on their leashes for lots of reasons. Some leash-pulling is attributable, at least in part, to genetics. Scent Hounds – the category into which Beagles fall, and from which at least some of Princess’ ancestors claim heritage – tend toward pulling. They are bred to put their noses to the ground and go, ignoring the discomfort of brambles, briars, icy creeks, or the minor bother of a leash. (Indeed, I once had a Bloodhound, Otis, who was an invaluable hiking companion in California’s rugged coastal hills. When I felt my strength waning, I could put a hand on his collar and let him pull me up the steep paths.) The Arctic breeds – Huskies, Malamutes, Samoyeds and the like – were bred to haul sleds, and are also natural candidates for pulling. Akitas, on the other hand, were Japanese hunting and guarding dogs. They tend to be dignified and docile, albeit protective. Hence, Julie’s genes make her less likely to pull.
Genes aren’t the whole story, however. Genetics are responsible only for our dogs’ predisposition toward certain behaviors. The way we interact with them can influence them toward, or away from, their preprogrammed tendencies – at least to some degree. I know a couple Malamutes and Samoyeds who heel beautifully, and I’ve seen Akitas flying their owners behind them like kites.
Like most behaviors, it’s easiest to teach our dogs good leash manners if we start with blank slates – young puppies who have not yet learned to pull. All of the basic training principles we use in positive dog training apply to the leash challenge. Here’s a quick review of some of the key ones:
• All living things repeat behaviors that are rewarding to them. Behaviors that are consistently rewarded increase in frequency.
• Behaviors that are not rewarded will diminish and eventually extinguish.
• It’s easier and more effective to manage or prevent behaviors we don’t want than it is to correct them after they have become established. (This is why it’s easier to start with puppies, before they have already learned undesirable behaviors like pulling.)
• Rewards (or reward markers, such as the Click! of the clicker) must ideally occur when the behavior happens (or within one to two seconds) in order for the dog to associate the reward with the desired behavior. (See “Clicks for Tricks,” WDJ May 2000.)
• We can train more effectively if we think in terms of what we want our dog to do rather than what we want him not to do. Instead of thinking that we want our dog not to pull on the leash, think about wanting him to walk nicely by our side. Focus on the positive.
Taffy pull
Most dogs who pull do so, whatever their genetics, because we humans are relatively slow and boring. Dogs want to explore their environment, and they want to do it a lot faster than we can move. Think about it. If you take your dog for a hike off-leash, does he trudge along next to you, or does he range ahead, run circles around you, dash up hills and down vales, leaving you to eat his dust? Chances are good that unless he’s in his twilight years or physically impaired he’s still doing donuts around you even when you’re dragging your tired body back to the car at the tail end of the hike.
He also finds the environment to be infinitely rewarding. All the while he’s charging about, he’s being rewarded with great smells to sniff, deer poop to roll in and eat, squirrels to chase, ball and sticks to fetch, other dogs to romp with, ponds to swim in and puddles to splash in. We can only imagine all the spectacular sensory stimuli that thrill our dog during a good romp. It’s no wonder that a sedate walk on leash around the block is dull for him!
Dogs pull because we let them pull. More accurately, we teach them to pull. When John Q. Dog Owner brings eight-week-old Taffy home, he puts on the collar and six-foot leash and takes her out for her very-first-ever walk. A neighbor stops to admire the pup, and stands chatting with John for a few minutes. Taffy gets bored, and spots a beetle 10 feet away that catches her interest. She wanders to the end of the leash and leans into her collar. John eventually notices the pressure, and, still talking to his neighbor, moves in the direction of the Taffy pull. Taffy gets to play with her beetle, and files away a critically important bit of information in her puppy brain: “Pulling gets you where you want to go.” She’ll test this hypothesis several times, and each time it works – when she pulls on the leash to investigate something, John follows. Taffy is soon convinced that pulling on leash is very rewarding – it gets you what you want!
To make things worse, John subconsciously develops a comfort level with a tight lead. Tension on the leash lets him know where Taffy is. So even on those occasions when she is not pulling, John lifts his arm or pulls it back to keep tension in the leash. Taffy eventually accepts that a tight leash is the norm. Not a good foundation for polite leash-walking!
Pulling your own weight
Whenever you and your dog are together, one of you is training the other. The ideal arrangement is that you are the trainer and Taffy is the trainee, at least the majority of the time. From Day One, you need to make sure that Taffy gets rewarded for desirable behaviors, and that you prevent her from being rewarded by undesirable ones.
In terms of leash-walking, this means that you need to make yourself infinitely more rewarding than the environment, at least at first, in order to program “loose-leash walking is the norm” into Taffy’s puppy brain. You need to make a conscious effort to reward her for staying near you (loose leash) and not let her be rewarded when she goes too far away (tight leash). At the same time you have to avoid falling into the common trap of taking up the slack in order to keep tabs on Taffy. That’s what eyeballs are for. Let’s take another look at our friend John Q. to see how he can accomplish this:
John brings Taffy home, puts on her collar and six-foot leash, and takes her out for her very-first-ever walk. In his pocket he has a large supply of tasty treats and a clicker. He heads out the back door to practice in the back yard where he won’t be distracted by neighbors. As soon as he and Taffy reach the patio, he stops and clicks the clicker in his pocket. The sharp sound catches Taffy’s ear and she looks up at him, curious. He feeds her an irresistible treat. “Great game!” Taffy thinks, and keeps her eyes glued to John. He clicks and treats again, several times in a row.
Given this sort of interaction, Taffy has no interest in the surrounding environment – she’s enchanted by this living, breathing treat machine and the funny noise that signals to her that another treat is about to magically appear. She sits so she can watch the man’s face more easily, and the Click! happens again. Cool! She stands up to eat the treat, then sits again to watch John. Click!
A light bulb goes off in Taffy’s head. “Hey!” she thinks. “Every time I put my bottom on the ground, the Click! happens and a treat appears. This ‘bottom-on-the ground’ thing is a great gig!”
Now John starts to walk forward, making sure to keep his hand down by his side and a valley in the leash. Taffy, eager to keep the treat machine in sight, hustles to keep up with him. John clicks the clicker and feeds her a treat. He takes another step, and Taffy is right there with him. Click! and treat.
“Hey!” thinks Taffy. “There’s more than one way to get a treat! I’m stickin’ close to this guy!”
Pushing the envelope, slowly
Just then a leaf falls from a nearby tree, catching Taffy’s attention. The pup’s ears perk up, and she bounces toward the leaf. The leash tightens, and stops her forward progress. Taffy strains toward the leaf – she really wants it! John doesn’t budge. Finally, frustrated, Taffy backs up a step and sits. Click! John lets her know that a loose leash earns a reward. Taffy spins on her tail at the beloved sound and bounces back to John for the tidbit.
As soon as she eats the treat he moves forward quickly so she can reach the leaf without tightening the leash. She sniffs it briefly, decides it isn’t all that wonderful after all, and looks back up at John. He clicks and treats her for turning her attention back to him, then walks forward again, clicking and treating – every one to three steps – to teach Taffy that staying near him with the leash loose is a very rewarding behavior.
If she starts to move out in front of him, he sometimes turns around and goes the other direction. Now she’s behind him again, and he has lots more opportunities to Click! her for keeping the leash loose. He also talks to her in a happy voice, not a commanding one, so that staying near him is fun for her. If Taffy does reach the end of the leash and starts to pull, he stops again, waits for her to put slack in the lead, clicks, treats, and starts forward once more.
After five minutes of this, John stops, unhooks Taffy’s leash, and spends another 10 minutes playing “chase the squeaky” with her. Every once in a while he walks a few steps, and if she walks next to him, he clicks the clicker and feeds her a treat. Taffy starts to realize that it’s rewarding to be near John when she is free as well as when she is on leash. When she takes a time-out from play to pee in the corner, John clicks and rewards her for that as well.
“Wow,” Taffy thinks. “There are lots of things I can do to make that wonderful Click! happen and treats appear – this is very cool!”
Later that day, John decides to try Taffy on the front sidewalk, since she did so well in the back yard. As he works with her, the neighbor comes out to chat. John stops to talk, but keeps an eye on Taffy at the same time. As long as Taffy is sitting or standing quietly near him, he gives an occasional Click! and treat. He hands the neighbor a couple of treats, and tells her that when Taffy sits she can feed Taffy a goodie and pet her. Taffy has no desire to leave. After a short conversation, John politely excuses himself from the neighbor so he can return his full attention to Taffy’s training session.
John has already laid the beginnings for a very solid foundation for Taffy to grow into a well-mannered and well-educated canine companion. If he keeps it up, she will never learn to pull on her leash.
Pulling your leg
The same method that John Q. used for Taffy also works on adult dogs, but you can expect to take more time and make more of an effort to convince the adult dog that pulling isn’t going to pay off any more. The longer a dog like our foundling Beagle, Princess, has been reinforced for pulling, the greater the challenge to persuade her to stop. It can sometimes seem like pulling hen’s teeth – difficult to do and not very productive.
It can be done, however, especially with the help of the right preparation. You may need to find an arsenal of irresistible treats to compete with the known rewards of Princess’ environment. Freeze-dried liver, chicken, steak and roast beef generally rank high for most dogs. You will also need to start working with her in a very low-distraction environment, and graduate to the front sidewalk only after Princess seems to be getting the hang of it. You may also need the help of one of the many helpful no-pull products on the market.
There is a long list of products that – according to their makers – will single-handedly teach your dog not to pull. If you believe these manufacturers, I know of a lovely bridge for sale . . . In truth, no-pull products can help you control your dog while you reprogram her to adopt a more civilized walking style. Head halters (see “Head Halters, Right And Wrong,” WDJ June 2000 and “What A Drag,” WDJ July 1998), stretchy leashes, beepers, and no-pull harnesses can all offer a greater degree of immediate control. Unfortunately, they can also become a crutch – so that your dog will walk nicely while wearing the special equipment, but pull with just as much determination as ever when you take off the halter or harness.
This doesn’t mean that your no-pull equipment of choice is worthless. It can help you teach Princess to walk politely on leash – as long as you combine it with a positive reinforcement training program to teach her to walk nicely, with or without the crutch. Princess needs to decide that it is more rewarding to walk with you than to pull. Combine your favorite gentle control tool with clicks and treats, be consistent about never rewarding her for pulling by allowing her to get where she wants to go, and your Pulling Princess will, in time, be content to prance by your side instead of trying to drag you down the drive.
Our Princess didn’t learn to stop pulling during the short three days she was with us. She returned home to her family, people who love her just the way she is and don’t care if she pulls. She will be an Olympic-class puller for the rest of her life. Julie, the rescued Akita puppy, will be with us for a few more weeks, recovering from kennel cough and getting spayed before we place her in a new, carefully screened home with an owner who will continue to reinforce her good leash behavior. If you’d rather have a Gentle Julie than a Pulling Princess, get out your clicker and treats, and start your leash training program – the sooner the better.
-By Pat Miller
Pat Miller, WDJ’s Training Editor, is also a freelance author and professional dog trainer in Chattanooga, Tennessee.
There are hundreds of brands and flavors of dog food out there. You can find them everywhere, from the corner convenience store to the members-only warehouse center to the hard-to-find health food store for pets. And by golly, you’ve tried what seems like all of them! Yet you’re still not sure which are the best ones for your dog.
On the other hand, your dog seems to have a definite opinion about it, and really prefers one of the less expensive grocery store brands. That’s great, you think, he loves the food and he’s saving me money! But is he? Is your dog’s preference for a particular food a good indication of the quality of the food?
Sorry, Rover, the answer is an emphatic “No!” A food that is avidly consumed and preferred over all other offerings is more likely to be coated or infused with palatability enhancers than it is to be a truly nutritious and healthful food.
Palatability is a highly developed science in the pet food industry. Extensive resources are poured into this aspect of food production. The trade publication Pet Food Industry publishes articles about palatability in every issue, and many of the companies that place full-page, color ads in the publication produce palatability enhancers. To quote just a few:
• American Dehydrated Foods, Inc., “the quality leader in providing high-performance palatability enhancers”
• Optimizor Brand Flavors, “Raising the palatability bar faster through superior technology”
• BioProducts, Inc., “Palatability enhancers for the new millennium”
And think about pet food commercials on TV: every one features a dog tearing into a bowl of food like it’s his last meal. Pet food makers know that to appeal to us, they have to appeal to our dogs.
Palatability enhancers
The taste of a dog food depends on a variety of factors, from the quality and composition of the raw materials, how they are ground; blended and “preconditioned” (which refers to the moisture and temperature of the dough entering the extruder); the density, texture, shape, moisture content, and size of the finished product; and the application of fats and other palatability enhancers or “palatants.”
Desirable palatants improve animal acceptance while still being easy to apply, safe, inexpensive, and not aversive to the human nose. There are dozens of palatants marketed to pet food manufacturers. These fall into several broad categories: digests (chemically or enzymatically digested animal tissues that provide a meaty taste), processed meat flavors, oil-based flavors, yeast products, other “savory” flavors (garlic, cheese, bacon), and “masking” flavors which are intended to disguise unpleasant odors.
Dog food flavors must also be stable over time, and under various potential storage conditions (from a hot warehouse to a cold basement). So preservatives are considered in the palatability picture, since they defend against ingredient decay; and the oxidation of fats, which produces a rancid odor and taste, must be prevented with antioxidants. Antimicrobial agents defend the food from mold. The tendency to get stale must be overcome by adding certain emulsifiers. All of these chemicals factor into the food’s appeal from when the packaging is first opened to the bottom of the bag.
Fewer additives in canned
Speaking of packaging, canned foods usually contain a greater proportion of (and more appealing) meat or animal-based ingredients than dry food, and the moisture in canned food also appeals to dogs, so canned foods generally contain fewer palatants.
Dry foods, in contrast, are generally comprised of at least half corn or other cereal grains – not high on the typical canine list of favorites – and so palatants are important if the food is to be appetizing to dogs. A great deal of research has gone into dry dog food bags in order for them to preserve the food at an optimum level of attractiveness to the dog, resulting in innovations such as zip-lock or other resealable closures and vacuum-packed foods.
Dog food manufacturers typically perform “taste tests” for each given flavor or variety of their products on 20 or more dogs. And these are not just ordinary dogs! They have been trained to sample food from each bowl offered to them, and the testing procedures are repeatedly examined to ensure the tests are free of unintentional bias; for example, that the testers unwittingly set up the test prefer whatever is in the bowl on the right, or the presence of some other obscure cue. Three to five trials are done over several days to allow for normal fluctuations in the dogs’ physiological states.
Taste can steer a dog wrong
While wild canids like wolves and foxes are savvy about what is good for them and what isn’t, the many disguises that palatants and preservatives provide to dry food can confuse the dog’s senses. Palatants can (and do) make poor quality foods smell and taste good. One could probably spray-coat wood chips or shredded rubber with tasty, oily palatants that would have dogs wolfing them down, with little or no nutritional benefit.
Think it through: You wouldn’t give a three-year-old child sole control of her menu – given her taste and lack of nutritional knowledge, she would likely end up subsisting on a diet of Cocoa Puffs, Cheetos, and Hawaiian Punch. Neither should you trust your dog to choose his food by taste or smell. It’s up to you to do the investigation needed to assure him of good nutrition.
Oddly, in 1998, the usually reliable Consumer Reports fell into this very trap, imagining that taste is indicative of quality. In its survey of pet foods, the magazine’s reporters referred to some scientifically valid chemical analysis of various foods. But they also included a listing of food choices made by dogs and cats belonging to staff members. This article drew strong criticism from both veterinarians and pet food makers, who universally complained about the unprofessional methodology of Consumer Union’s taste tests. (The winner in the Consumer Reports taste tests? Heinz Pet Products’ Kibbles ‘N Bits, a food that is loaded with sugar, salt, digests, and other palatants, as well as artificial colors, preservatives, and emulsifiers.)
Another drawback of a really delicious food is that your dog is liable to overeat. He may eat with such gusto that you’ll treat him to an extra handful – and dry food is a very dense source of calories. Do that often enough, and he’ll start putting on the pounds. That’s not doing him any favors! Obesity is one of the most common health problems seen by veterinarians, and leads to extra stress on the joints, heart, liver, and kidneys. It’s a whole lot easier to avoid that extra fat than it is to get rid of it once it’s there – and don’t we all have experience with that?! To your pup, a little is as good as a lot, and he’ll probably be just as thrilled with a little less as a little more.
Not a selection factor
We’re certainly not advocating the purchase of foods that your dog doesn’t like. Palatants have a place in dog food production; after all, without them, dogs might not eat many of the commercial foods on the market today. Although advocates of raw food diets might consider this a good thing, it’s certainly important that a food be tasty enough to attract a dog to eat enough to provide for his basic nutritional needs. Just don’t let his preference become your main criteria.
-By Jean Hofve, DVM
Until recently, Dr. Jean Hofve had a holistic veterinary practice in Denver, Colorado. Now she gets to advocate for animals in a new way, as the Companion Animal Program Coordinator for the Animal Protection Institute, located in Sacramento, California.
I have never owned a dog with separation anxiety, thank goodness. The condition is hard on the dog who suffers from the condition and hard on the dog’s caretakers, too, including owners, vets, groomers, pet sitters, and dog walkers. Care must be taken to prevent triggering the dog’s panic at being left alone—in severe cases, even just long enough for the person caring for the dog to use the restroom!
