Photo by BigKid on Flickr
The unfortunate truth is that sometimes, batches of dog food are recalled. Often, these recalls are for safety concerns, so it’s important to get the news as quickly as possible in case your dog’s food is affected.
Dog Food Advisor offers a free service for dog parents. Sign up for their email list and they will send you an email as soon as a recall is announced.
The article below is from Diamonds in the Ruff (www.diamondsintheruff.com), a website with terrific articles and tip sheets on all sorts of behavior issues.
Looming, leaning, reaching, showing teeth and staring – that’s how most humans greet dogs.
The dog at left is showing his discomfort at this child’s greeting by lowering his head, flattening his ears, licking his lips,squinting his eyes, tucking his tail and lifting a paw. These are appeasement signals, not aggressive signals, but he is clearly saying to the child, “I’m really not enjoying this.”
Too much, too fast, too close.
If the same child had turned sideways, squatted to the dog’s level and invited the dog into her own space, the dog’s response to the child would have probably been quite different.
Humans show their teeth when they are friendly! We lean forward and make direct eye contact which in dog language is a challenge. We kiss dogs on the face. How strange they must think we are!
Leaning over and looming is a threatening posture – even if you don’t mean it to be.
It causes the dog some distress which results in displays of calming signalsto diffuse your perceived aggression. Lowered head and ears, lip licking, averted squinting eyes. In dog-to-dog body language, standing over and putting paws on shoulders is a very assertive, space invasive challenge. A dog might show appeasement or a frightened or defensive dog might respond by freezing, growling, lunging, snapping or biting.
In general, most dogs don’t like hugs.
They can learn to tolerate them and even welcome them from people they know and trust – and many dogs learn to enjoy it so much they may elicit hugs from their owners. But this doesn’t mean they will welcome the same from all family members and certainly not from total strangers – any more than you would want a stranger in an elevator to crowd you into a corner and get in your face.
Wrapping your arms around a dog’s neck is dangerous, not only because it is usually viewed as an unwelcome and threatening behavior when it comes from a stranger, but because it puts your face right near the dog’s pointy teeth! Another common and dangerous behavior of children: laying on a dog, gives the dog no avenue for escape – she’s trapped by the scary thing.
“My daughter was just trying to hug the dog and it BIT her! It was totally unprovoked!” Perhaps from the child’s point of view, but certainly not the dog’s!
It’s actually a tribute to dogs that they humor us and our erratic children-and that more of them don’t use their teeth to ward away our rude human advances.
Parents should instill a “no hugging any dog” rule for their children. If you make sure the children respect all dogs’ personal space, including their own family pet’s, they will be less likely to be bitten as the dogs they interact with won’t have to correct them.
For some reason we humans have a hard time remembering that even we have rules of intimacy, whom we allow to invade our personal space and when and how. We might slap someone for being too friendly. Why is it so difficult to imagine that our dogs would feel the same?
Most bites to children occur on the face, not because dogs fly off the ground and attack kid faces, but because kid faces are attached to hug monsters.
Ouch!
This is what can happen when a dog’s subtle warnings go unheeded.
This is how a dog prefers to be greeted:
Turned sideways, body language soft and relaxed, shoulders and head slightly lowered, weight shifted away, not towards, with soft squinty eye contact. Everything is inviting and non-threatening. Once a comfortable and trusting relationship has been built, a dog may love a hug!
Soft squinty eye contact, leaning away, scratching his chest, not reaching over his head. Notice the dog is returning the squinty eyes and soft facial expression.
Cheek to Cheek!
by Nancy Tucker (“The Normal Dog” Blog – March 22, 2011)
Every single time I walk with Woody, I bring along a treat pouch with a mishmash of various goodies. Maybe some kibble, maybe some dried liver, maybe some cheese, maybe some apple chunks, or maybe some of Woody’s favorite Zukes.
Recently, someone remarked, “What? You STILL need to carry treats for your dog??”
Well, no. Of course I don’t need to. But why on earth wouldn’t I? During our walks, I can come across plenty of perfect opportunities to toss him a reward to let him know he’s done something I liked.
Like the day we came face-to-face with someone walking a dog who clearly didn’t want Woody to approach him. What did Woody do when he saw the dog? Well, in the past, he would have taken off like a bullet towards the dog, with me skidding behind him on my heels like a cartoon character. But this day, Woody paused and turned towards me. Yesssssssssss! Good boy! Here’s a treat. Here’s another! Here are three more on the ground… Find it! Find it!
By the time Woody looked up again, the other dog had passed, and we went on our merry way. In those few seconds of activity, I reinforced a behavior in my dog that originally took me a very long time to instill. It cost me precisely 5 treats. Yay for Woody! In return, I have a dog who is much more likely to repeat this behavior the next time we come across a similar situation. Yay for me!
“But isn’t he only doing it because you have treats?”… Well, no. He did it because there was the
possibility of treats. I did not promise a treat beforehand by waving it in front of Woody and saying, “Here Woody! Look what I have! This way.. this way! Woooooo-dy! Look at me! Look at me! Want some cheese? Woody? Woody? WOODY?!! Want some liver? Here Woody! Over here! Cookie? Cooooooookieeeeeeee??”… in a desperate attempt to win his attention.
Instead, because I had tossed him a treat in the past whenever another dog was in the vicinity, Woody quickly calculated the odds of getting a treat on this particular occasion. He saw the dog, then took a gamble and glanced at me. “Ding-ding-ding-ding-ding-
With a bribe, the promise of payment comes before the behavior is executed. With a reward, the behavior comes first. I waited for Woody to offer me the behavior I was looking for, and when I got it, I rewarded him.
I see nothing wrong with snatching up random opportunities like this to let your dog know he’s doing something right. I assure you, you’re not “spoiling” him. On some walks, Woody might get three treats. On others, he might get ten. And still on others, he might get none! Thanks to this unpredictable treat schedule, I’ve successfully turned Woody into a gambling addict, which in turn makes him a very well-behaved dog.
Well… most of the time…. ;)
Nancy Tucker’s blogs: http://
Nancy Tucker’s web site: http://nancytucker.ca
Photo by scribbletaylor on Flickr
We’ve all seen the funny videos and animated GIFs on the internet of dogs doing crazy things (or crazy things happening around dogs). Dogs and children. Dogs and adults. Dogs and cats. Dogs and the vacuum cleaner.
We pass these “funny” or “adorable” pictures and videos to our Facebook friends and pin them to our boards on Pinterest.
…but I’m here to encourage you to stop.
It has to do with spoons. Did you know your dog has spoons? He does, and it’s a very bad thing if he runs out of them.
If you know anyone who lives with a chronic illness (physical or mental), you are likely familiar with Spoon Theory. If not, here is the article that you’ll want to read in your spare time. It is excellent and will help you be a more compassionate friend.
The gist of Spoon Theory is this:
Each morning, a person with a chronic illness wakes up with a certain number of “spoons.” These spoons represent the number of activities or interactions that they can handle in a given day. Once they run out of spoons, they need time to relax and recharge. If they don’t, it could result in a physical or mental crisis (or a really bad day tomorrow). Depending on the day, they may have more spoons (feelin’ good!) or less (bad pain day).
Got it? Let’s move on!
As a human, you choose how you spend your spoons. If you know you’ll need energy for a presentation to your boss at 3 pm, you’ll likely skip going out to lunch with your colleagues at noon. If your arthritis is bothering you, you can avoid doing tasks that are particularly painful. If you’re feeling emotionally overwhelmed or in physical pain, you can choose to take a day off work and relax in front of cheesy daytime TV.
Dogs don’t get to choose how they spend their spoons. We do. Every day, we make decisions for our dogs. We decide which path our morning walk will take. We decide whether we want them to “meet” that new dog in the neighborhood. We decide whether the little girl next door can come over and play fetch. We decide to hug and kiss them. We decide to let the toddler use the dog for a pillow, or worse yet, a horse.
A well-socialized, happy dog may appear to have unlimited spoons. A fearful or reactive dog may start out with only a few. My fearful dog, Titania, has greatly increased her spoon collection, thanks to classes at Your Dog’s Friend and the advice of Debbie Jacobs of FearfulDogs.com. Thanks to counter-conditioning and confidence building exercises, she enjoys a lot more of life than she did just two years ago.
We remove a spoon from our dog’s collection every time we expose them to a situation that makes them uncomfortable.
This was posted to a friend’s Facebook wall:
Let’s count the stress signals this dog is showing:
In short, in the few seconds of this animated GIF, this dog is shedding spoons left and right.
What would happen if the dog was already having a bad day? Let’s say that a meeting on his morning walk resulted in getting snapped at by an unfamiliar dog. There’s construction going on next door and there are lots of loud noises and strangers in hard hats. And unbeknownst to his human, this dog ate something in the backyard and now his tummy is feeling upset.
Now what happens when the man tries his parlor trick?
Dog bites never come out of nowhere. The man in the image above probably does this “trick” to entertain his friends all the time and has never been bitten. But if his dog was having that bad day described above and had run out of spoons… well, that man could end up with a bite to the face. And it would have been 100% his fault, not the dog’s.
A dog with plenty of spoons is a happy dog!
As a dog parent, it’s your job to recognize the stress signals in your dog and keep them away from situations (or people) that cause them anxiety. For your dog, this may mean scheduling your daily walk for a time when fewer bicyclists are on the trail, or leaving your dog home instead of taking them to the pet store with you. It could mean giving your dog “me time” when they can relax in their crate with a bully stick and not be interrupted by your children.
Most importantly, it means being present with your dog and knowing when to remove them from a situation. A dog isn’t able to say, “Hey, I’ve got one spoon left and if this kid pulls my ear one more time, I’m done!!” You are your dog’s spoon-monitoring superhero, and they love you for it.
We host free workshops on various topics throughout the year, including several on fear, reactivity, and other behavior issues.
For now, we recommend this article on Dogster entitled: How are Dog Bites Like Tetris?
If you have a fearful dog, we highly recommend reading and watching anything by Debbie Jacobs of FearfulDogs.com.
As always, if you have questions, we’re happy to help. Contact us anytime.
