The Dog Blog

A constant “whoom-whoom-whoom” could be heard outside the exam room. It sounded like a racecar hurtling around a track. Slowly opening the door, I saw the yellow comet called Rocket, a four-month old Labrador, as he completed another lap. His owner, Ray Tyred looked at me with a helpless expression on his face.

“He has a lot of energy,” he explained. Ray slumped in the chair and seemed depressed. “Too much energy. Running, digging holes---I should have named him Trencher.” Rocket slowed down long enough to give his owner’s hand a quick lick and then accelerated again.
“Where did you find Rocket?”

“A guy named Joe Hunter breeds them. I heard he has the best dogs. I got pick of the litter.”

“And how did you pick Rocket?”

I was fortunate enough to attend a great pit bull education seminar given by Drayton Michaels recently. He is working on a documentary called "Judging the Innocent" that will be a wonderful resource for educating the general public about the breed. We got to see clips of some of his work in progress and it is fabulous. It made me start thinking about other breed issues I have experienced both lately and in the past.

I was working with a client recently who had done some work under another trainer. He told me this trainer said that HIS was the best breed to own. While I am always happy to hear of any owner that loves his dogs, it was somewhat disturbing that a trainer would tell any client that their breed was better than the one they are trying to help. Even if they do believe that. The owner was quite offended. (And he let me know it!) Add to that the trainers breed in question is (normally) a high energy herding breed, not suited to just any home.

Another day of modeling...not as appealing as the day at the lake but you gotta make a living. This one was for a Halloween circular for Joann Fabrics to be printed in September. I had to drive my poor Trip 2 1/2 hours each way to Columbus, OH to pose in a Halloween Pumpkin Outfit.

I thought I did. It’s the second leading cause of death among dogs, after all. I knew that a potentially fatal thing can happen when a dog’s stomach fills with gas and fluid, and that it’s often accompanied by gastric torsion—a twisting of the stomach. If the dog isn’t given emergency veterinary treatment in time, he will die. Bloat happens most often to deep-chested breeds, although the cause is still largely unknown. The warning signs include a stomach that’s bloated and hard, and dry heaving without the ability to vomit.

Certainly the hardest thing about life with dogs, is the short time we get with them. Last year I wrote a series of posts about a Great Dane named Ollie. Ollie came to a shelter I work with, the Animal Adoption Foundation in Ross Ohio, under tragic circumstances and became dangerously aggressive within weeks of being adopted out. Ollie’s adopters returned him to AAF, where – with a little guidance from me – the shelter’s amazing staff and volunteers taught him to trust and to safely be amongst people again.

Adult fleas aren’t very clever and they aren’t particularly sneaky. (In this way, they are often thought of as being similar to people—the teenagers are always much brighter than their parents.)

    If you can pass an eye test at the DMV, you should be able to see adult fleas on your pet.  Adult fleas want to spend all of their time on your tasty pet, so they aren’t hard to find.  Both male and female fleas love to drink blood, and after a good blood meal the females will lay about 40 eggs per day.  Once the feasting has ended, most fleas leave little black specks on your pet—these specks are called “flea dirt,” which is a nice term for flea poop!

It’s the longest day of the year as the summer solstice kicks in in the Northern Hemisphere; the opposite down south in places like Australia but even the shortest night of the year feels long if your biorhythm is disturbed by a not yet housetrained puppy or a dog with digestive upset or ...you get the picture.

I received a call from a lady with a dog training problem a few weeks ago. Her voice was cracking and I detected a sense of urgency. She started her story by telling me her dogs were dominant over her, and if she didn’t get them under control, they would soon take over her house. She knew they were dominant, because the two trainers that had previously assisted her told her so.
As the story continued, she told me that both trainers abandoned her when she failed to comply with their prescribed treatment plan.

In the mid-70s, when I first became a professional dog trainer, it was not unusual for breeders to observe the whelping of puppies and then “stay out of mother’s way” while she raised her pups.  Then, sometime after 6 weeks, the pups were placed into their new homes.  Not much has changed in 30 years.  The average age for pups to leave the litter is 7 weeks; and many breeders still haven’t bought in to the early socialization bit.  This needs to change.

For the first time ever, I’ve got a small dog. This means that sometimes he sits on my lap while I work at my desk. He is good at it, as a breed from the AKC’s non-sporting group it’s one of the many things he’s been bred to do, just hang out.

The other day while I was sitting at my desk looking at my calendar (with Hugo on my lap) I realized that it was Hugo’s one-year anniversary for the day he came to live with us. So I decided to take a commemorative picture using the Photo Booth program on my Mac.