The hardest part, most frustrating part of my job is making dogs fit into homes that are not appropriate for them. There is this idea that any dog can be happy in any home. This simply is not the case. What is hard for us is that we want to just LOVE away behavior problems that many times are a by-product of the pressure we put on our chosen dog.
This morning, I am sitting in my chair, watching the morning news with my coffee thinking about what I should write about. There, next to me, is the sweetest, kindest black dog you can imagine. He doesn’t beg for attention. He doesn’t try to force my hand over his head. He doesn’t lick me. He doesn’t whine at me. He sits quietly. Instead of pestering me to pet him, he is quiet and polite. How did that happen? I pay attention to the things I like from my dogs. I make the first move to adore them, to pet them, to tell them how much I like something. I don’t wait until they have done something bad to pay attention to them. I don’t encourage obnoxious, pushy behavior.
The media is doing an excellent job of making “Loving Our Dog Too Much” a completely acceptable and desirable behavior. Just yesterday, I saw an advertisement for a dog harness that had a denim dress as the top part of the harness. Cute you think? Maybe. To me, this is the epitome of loving our dog too much and turning them into our “children.” Dogs are not people. They are an extraordinary species to adore for who they are including the fact that dogs do not feel the same way we do or experience life as we do. It is an honor to have them in our homes and enjoy them for their differences. It is not honoring them to turn them into furry humans.
This is a topic most people never talk about or never think about when getting a dog. We tend to look at how cute the dog is and how much we want a dog in our lives. It’s hard to think about our dog outliving us. As a responsible dog owner, long range planning really is a part of getting a dog in the first place. When contemplating getting a new dog, there are many considerations such as how old we are, what our health is, and what our living circumstances are. We should also consider if our living circumstances are likely to change before our dog reaches her old age.
Many people have herding dogs in their lives but didn’t really understand what that meant until they spent some time living with them. Herding dogs are extremely popular here in the Wood River Valley, maybe because of the influence of the sheep herders that come through town twice a year. There is an endless stream of Border Collies and Aussies especially. We find many mixes with these breeds in the shelter and many breeders nearby. The herding dogs are also very popular among the competitive agility people, too!
I recently read an article in a national publication that caught my attention. The title was exactly the same as this title. The author boasted no last name or any credentials, just Liz. I am always curious about that. The focus of the article was the anthropomorphism (humanizing) of this dog behavior. The author called it an “expression of affection”, which is of course what we all want to believe. We think of it as kissing, which is entirely a human gesture and something so many of us want to believe of our canine loved ones. Since we have such deep affection for our dogs, we want to believe that they, too, have the same affection for us and express it in a manner that we understand – kissing.
It is of HUGE importance that puppies remain on a leash until they have a flawless recall. In puppy development, almost all puppies are pre-programmed by Mother Nature to follow the leader until they are approximately 19 weeks old. That can lure us into believing they have learned how to come when they are called. However, at this critical time of 19 weeks or so, they begin to feel confident and will start to look at you as if to flip you the paw! “I’m busy sniffing over here; I’ll come when I want to!” If our puppies have been given the freedom to be off leash when out of a confined area, this can become a life threatening situation.
Teaching puppies about a leash is critically important since puppies don’t come with the command “come” pre-programmed in their heads. Letting a young puppy run free can be life threatening particularly because of their size and the fact that we have some very serious wildlife predators throughout the valley. Some of those predators are overhead, such as eagles and owls whose strength allows them to pick up almost any puppy with great ease.
Many dogs, especially puppies, realize very quickly that they can run faster than you. They learn that it is very easy to grab something important to you like shoes or another piece of clothing and run off with it and you can’t catch them! Sometimes, dogs will even try to mouth or nip you if you try to take something away from them, or if you try to stop them from doing something they want to do. While prevention is always the best option, meaning teaching a very strong “come” command in the house, or “leave it” command early in puppyhood,
There is a false feeling that dogs off leash are safer than a dog on leash when other dogs approach. What the real issue is, is that most people do not handle a leash correctly. In fact, the appropriate handling of the leash is imperative to helping a dog stay safe. There are many components to safe leash handling, but for this discussion I am going to focus on approaching off leash dogs. If we own a dog that reacts strongly to other dogs, our first instinct is to pull our dog closer. When doing so, it just so happens that most of the time, we pull upwards.
AFTER AN EXTENDED MEDICAL LEAVE, I WILL BE RETURNING TO WORK MARCH 1st!
