Abandoned Chihuahuas: "Someone Else Will Take Them"

It was 96 degrees today in New York City, and yet, someone abandoned three little Chihuahuas in my neighborhood park, Fort Tryon.
The dogs were found without collars in the dog run's holding pen, with a bowl of water and a note saying to call animal rescue. They were scared, huddling, and hot, as there was no shade. One of them was very young.
Let's hear it for those people who make up for the bad behavior of the "someone else will take them" people, and actually make sure these dogs got to a rescue before it got dark. Kevin Klepper is one of them. 

Thank you, Kevin.

Hey Dog Owners, Want to Share a Photo?

I started this blog seven weeks ago and already have begun to amass a nice collection of photos of dogs posing with their owners, mostly from locals in my neighborhood of Washington Heights, NYC. Those of you who read regularly might notice the change in my featured photo.

However, in keeping with the theme of my title, Do I Resemble My Dog?, I’d love to add even more. In fact, I'd like to add you and your dog’s photo to my site if you’d like to submit one. 

In the next week, I'll be exploring some research by Stanley Coren into whether owners and their dogs really do look alike. I've love to include some photos with the essay. So, send me a comment and/or email me a photo with the first names of you and your dog, and the state you live in, to doidogblog at gmail.com.

Keep in mind that the shot might have to be cropped, so the closer you and your pet are hugging, the easier the presentation. And who doesn't love to hug their pet!

Thanks for reading!

Scratch My Butt, Right There: Imagining How My Dogs Think

MALE DOG: Yaaawwnnn…stretch it out…oh yeah, scratch my butt, right there. 

Hey Human, it’s time to go outside! Let’s go! My Human is not moving. I see…oh well, what to do? What to do?  What was that? Oh, never mind, it’s just a…what’s that? Smells like those black and white blobs on the street…oh goodie, it’s the thing right there outside the window, making a coo coo. Maybe if I’m real quiet, I can sneak up on it. It’s so delicious looking! It must be dangerous. Why do its legs look skinny like that and how does it stay up in the air?

Here…we…go…shh…AAAH!! Oh no, my Human is moving. She is mad! She always yells at me when I go after donttouchthebird. Doesn’t she know I’m just keeping us safe?

Well now I’m hungry. Trot trot trot to the food bowl…yes, a handful of dry, crunchy stuff. Chomp chomp chomp. The taste isn’t bad, but dry!  My Human is cool, though, she puts some stuff, lap lap lap, in it to soften it up.

Alright! She is up! I gotta pee! Let’s go outside! Out! Out! Out! Come onnnn, let’s go!

“Sit, Ragazzo.”

Look at me, I am sitting. Look at me, I am sitting. Put the leash on, put it on!!  Okay, I can tell by your finger wagging that I am going to have to really contain my excitement.  Let me think about something really boring.  Sleeping.  I love to sleep, but it’s not very exciting (put my leash on).  Except (put my leash on) when I dream about (put my leash on) CHASING don’ttouchthebird!... which I can do now because my leash is on! 

I’m off!

FEMALE DOG: I love sunshine. Today I was relaxing in my favorite spot

behind the couch, secluded and bathed in sunlight. Who comes along but that littleone wanting to play again!  Won’t he ever stop? He was biting my leg and lunging at me, all while I was trying to rest. Well you know all that instigating really got me riled! I showed him who’s boss around here! Got him so tired, he had to go get lap lap lap. What a pup…

After putting him in his place, I decided it was time for belly scratches. I searched all over for my Human. Those hands…those wonderful hands that smell so different every time she pets me. So salty, yum yum. Once I found my Human, she wasn’t really paying attention to me, so I nudged her hands a little until she looked my way. Hey!  Look at me!  

My Human is simpleminded. All I’ve got to do is paw at her or pant a little and I can usually get my way. I let her think she is in charge—after all, she is my ticket to the outside—but the rest of us know who’s Top Dog around here.

Sometimes they lock me up when they leave, but I have none of it! Lock me up like my rambunctious male counterpart, I think not! I am more sophisticated than he.  Sometimes I run away for a little just to scare them! The other week I clawed through the screen on an open window and ran out when no one was home.

I always come back, of course. They give me extra pats and treats if they think they could have lost me.

How I Moved from Cats to Dogs, a Personal Narrative

Someone recently told me that there are more U.S. households that own dogs than cats (43 million vs. 36 millon). I guess there must be a reason why.

I was a cat person myself, once. When I was a kid, I was in love with cats. To me, they were sublime creatures. I recall one summer photographing a lot of cats on a family vacation. They captured aloofness in its finest hour. They knew how, in a pinch, to be cool, and walk away. I guess, in many ways, I felt like a cat.

That year, I was in love with a cat character in the Disney movie That Darn Cat. I pined for D.C. and wrote about him in my diary. I went to see the movie twice so I could watch him, aching for him to be my own. My brother and I weren’t allowed to have pets when we were kids, so I asked my mom to buy me a stuffed Siamese cat, and loved it as much as any kid could love a stuffed animal.

My first cat.

Apropos of a cat, however, I didn’t cuddle it tight and sleep with it. Instead, I would keep it next to me in the bed for a few moments and then put it up on the shelf, taking care to keep it groomed and in pristine condition.

It wasn’t until I left home for college that I had a chance to have a real cat—Gertie. She was white with pinkish eyes, and she was typically independent, somewhat moody, and prone to disappearing in the evening for long bouts of time.

In essence, she was like my college boyfriends.

What was it about cats and guys, I wondered, that they needed to be aloof and independent? The qualities I once admired in a cat, and even identified with, were now starting to bug me as I encountered the "commitment issue." 

Post-college, I dated a guy who was a dog lover. He had been raised with a brother, a sister, and a real (not stuffed) dog, and when he found and brought home our first dog, JoJo, his happiness was palpable and fun to watch.

Well, neither Jojo or Gertie were around very long (although the boyfriend was). Gertie went out one night and never returned. And you can read the fate of Jojo on my earlier blog. Nevertheless, I began to see the subtle differences between dogs and cats, and something began to dawn on me: dogs were better, more ardent companions.

My love of dogs decisively trumped my love of cats when I became a mother. While aloofness and independence might be cool for the single bohemian, for parents, the value of companionship and the institution of family interdependence take on more importance. For several years, we were an only-child family. When it was clear that wouldn’t change, I also thought about companionship for our daughter. I thought of a dog.

With our Yorkie, Jackie, our daughter suddenly had another little mammal in the house to love, one that jumped up and made welcome noises whenever she came home. There was another companion for her to eat with, to play ball with, to walk with, to go to the lake with, to sleep with, to take photos with, and even to dress up with at Christmas. Are these things a cat either could or would do? Probably not.

I’ve come to believe that the relationship between a person and a dog resembles that of parent and toddler, while the relationship between a person and a cat is more like two roommates. If a cat doesn’t like what’s for dinner, he’ll go out and get something else (for Gertie, birds). If he doesn’t like a visitor, he’ll disappear. And when he needs to wee, well, you better have a litter box.

I’m sure some cat owners feel passionate about their pets as a part of a family, but if for nothing else than the list of things dogs can do with humans and cats can’t, dogs are now my choice. I am officially a dog person.

But I still have my stuffed cat. For years, I have used it as a place on which to hang various and sundry mementos of those old, pre-dog romances. 

Interview with Julie Hecht, Manager of Horowitz Dog Cognition Labs, Barnard College

WHAT ATTRACTS YOU TO YOUR DOG?

Julie Hecht is the lab manager of the Horowitz Dog Cognition Lab at Barnard College and the author of Dog Spies, a blog in Scientific American. She is a doctoral student in animal behavior and comparative psychology who has been working with Dr. Alexandra Horowitz since 2010 on the study of dog behavior and cognition.

I spoke with Hecht about their study “Seeing Dogs:Human Preferences for Dog Physical Attributes,” published in the March 2015 issue of Anthrozoös. Hecht, who is interested in dog welfare, said she and Dr. Horowitz wanted to better understand what attracts people to dogs.

Q. WHAT LED YOU TO DO THIS STUDY?

We were interested in the question of how and why people anthropomorphize dogs. We anthropomorphize everything—we see the human expression all over the place. With dogs, we make incredibly grand and in some cases aggravated attributions. You read such things in the American Kennel Club descriptions of dogs. (ed. Note: AKC describes a Pekingese, for example, as “regal in manner” and a Cocker Spaniel as “soft and appealing.”) You might [also] see a dog described as “large-eyed” and other attributes attached to the way a dog looks, instead of talking about how a dog behaves. But if a dog looks regal, that’s not telling you anything.

We wanted to test whether there are particular physical attributes that people are attracted to when they look at dog’s faces. So this is probably more a human study—except that the way humans make attributions to dogs can affect the human-dog relationship.

Q.  HOW DID THE STUDY WORK?

We took 80 image pairs of adult dogs—and they were all mixed-breed dogs—and we considered 14 different physical attributions, so described in the study. There were baby-like, or paedomorphic, features: Things like bigger eyes, a larger cranium, a wider forehead, space between the eyes. We also considered some more humanlike attributes, such as a smile, colored irises, or an upturn of mouth. Some other considerations were symmetry and the presence of piebald coloration.

Then we modified each image within a very small change so the two images looked nearly the same, but were slightly different. Each image pair presentation explored only one modified attribute. And we asked our subjects to choose which of the two images they preferred.

Which do you prefer?

Q.  WHAT WAS THE OUTCOME?

Ultimately, we found that certain infantile features—not all, though—were attractive to people, as were certain human features. The subjects tended to like dogs that had slightly larger eyes, wider-set eyes, colored irises, and the upturned smile, even though such a smile might not mean the same thing behaviorally as it appears. Dogs do smile. For example, when a dog is “smiling” or pulling back its commissure, a person might say that dog is a happy dog. But if its ears are also back but it is “smiling” it is a scared dog. Or if the ears are pressing forward, these are behavioral characteristics of an angry dog.

People did not prefer dog images with an enlarged (infantile) head.

Q. WHY DOES IT MATTER HOW PEOPLE PERCEIVE A DOG’S APPEARANCE?

As I said earlier, the way a dog looks can affect the human-dog relationship. Our report states it so: “Our research could have implications for dog welfare. A recent ASPCA study found that people often adopt cats based on their behavior while dogs are often selected based on their appearance."

"Animal rescue organizations can be cognizant of this phenomenon when presenting images of adoptable dogs. In line with the current study, animal rescue groups might consider incorporating preferred, salient features into their adoptable dog pictures—a picture of a dog with colored irises and a distinct ‘smile’ could be viewed preferentially. Further research could show whether aesthetic preferences might motivate potential adopters to meet a dog.”

Q.  I ASSUME YOU HAVE OWNED DOGS. WHY HAVE YOU DECIDED TO STUDY THEM AS WELL?

Yes, I’ve been a dog owner. I got involved in ethology, the study of animal behavior, because I think I just didn’t like the idea of taking what is known about animals at face value. And I got interested in thinking about animal welfare, now a guiding theme in all of my work.

In some ways, even this study can relate to animal welfare, because in some cases we are breeding dogs with exaggerated features because people are attracted those features. But the morphology of features we are breeding—because people are buying it—are not always best for the health and well being of the dogs.

To try to put dogs on the same page with humans is an incorrect assumption. They live in a different cognitive, social, and sensory world. And yet dogs are incredibly attentive to the people that matter to them. As a species, they really do integrate much better than other species—cows, pigs, chickens—on our terms.

Interviewing Julie opened my eyes to the need for more human-dog research. The Horowitz Dog Cognition Labs have their own web page where you can follow their past, present, and future projects and where you can even sign up to have your dog involved in ongoing studies. Thanks, Julie. 

How to Make Your Owner Feel Better During a Heartache, a Guest Blog by Day-Ay the Dog

 

(Day-ay, a Yorkie-Chihuahua mixed breed, is filling in for me today.)

Humans are very serious creatures, and sometimes they lose their packs. They call this a heartache, and you’ll notice the signals right away. They will sleep more. They won’t want to take you on long walks and they will cry, that water-salt coming from their eyes.

As their fellow pack member, this is what you can do to help them feel better.

First: Calm yourself. Don’t jump around or try and play. Watch her for a while and listen for the howling, mournful sound coming from her. Go to her, look at her, and sit at her feet. If she is sitting still, jump up onto the couch next to her. Put your head on her lap and sigh.

Second: Are her eyes watering? Has she laid her head down? Lick her eyes if she’ll let you. They are salty in flavor, and they may water harder when you do this. And she might also stroke you or give you a squeeze or pull you in close. If she does, remember to make a little satisfying noise because she likes that.

Third: When she eventually gets up, follow her. Wag your tail, but not too hard. Let her take the lead and then watch her to see what she is doing. Is she going to the refrigerator? Go sit near your food bowl, and look at her. Wag your tail some more. Sometimes, with heartache, you will get extra food. Pay attention to her, and see what she is going to eat. Watch. Wag. If she leaves her food, this is a good time to steal a little and not be punished for it.

Fourth: When you see the opportunity, seize the moment to become the Alpha dog. Your human will not want to do things, but it is bad for her to stop her routine. Is she forgetting walks? Get your leash and take it to her. Put it down at her feet. Whimper. If that does not work, then bark. Just once. Maybe twice. Work to convince her to do things you want. It will benefit her to be led at this time.

Fifth: When the object of her heartache calls on the little bright rectangle, you will know it by the tone of her voice. Start to growl. Make sure she hears you and listen to see if her blah blah blahs are sad or angry. If they are either of those, then growl again to show your moral support. However, if she laughs or is happy, then it probably means her heartache is fixed. While she is busy talking, you can pretty much help yourself to the leftover fried chicken on the table. It's not good for her anyhow and, as it is heartache food, she will probably throw it out anyway.

Going on a Road Trip with Dogs

(I worked on this post with my daughter Myrrhine, who drove from Phoenix, to Albuquerque, to Denver, to Toronto, and to New York with her two dogs in the back seat.)

If you are really into your dogs and also like to see America, then the road-trip-with-dogs is a great option. This is a how to travel with a dog, or, in our case, dogs:

AT HOME:

Before you leave home, make sure you take any medical records—proof of vaccination, just in case you need it along the way. Make sure that there is identification (phone number, etc.) on the dog's collar. Take the dog’s favorite food and treats, and a few favorite things; like children, they need to be entertained, and to feel the familiar around them. Before you start, Do Not give your dogs any food for at least 2 hours before you drive. Dogs can get motion sickness; if they are going to throw up, make sure it is as little as possible. Vomit in the car is not pleasant, and if you are between exits, you can't do much about it until you stop.

One essential purchase is a dog hammock. It is a long, flat nylon sheet that snaps on to the headrests of the front seat and fans out over the back seat for them to sit (or sleep) in. It keeps the car seat clean and prevents the dog(s) from jumping up to the front. Throw a toy back there (but not a squeak toy, it will drive you nuts). I used a moose antler for my two dogs to chew on and it kept them entertained from the whole trip.

Medication does help dogs travel better. Take Pill Pockets, which are dog treats that you put a pill inside. If the dog is prone to motion sickness, give it a half of a human Dramamine. For long (all-day) rides, give your dog a half a kid’s Benedryl. Being enclosed in a car is hard for them.

ON THE ROAD

Keep a bottle of water and bowl, napkins, and doo-doo bags at hand. Keep the leashes handy, and take an extra because if you can’t easily find it, it can hold you up. Stop every 4 hours even if you don't have to because they need to relieve themselves and they need to drink water. But do not feed them during the drive. Also, don’t ever leave your dog(s) in the car for more than a quick pit stop. If you are driving alone, you'll have to do this sometime -- just leave the window cracked and do your business quick!

There are only a few hotels chains that don’t charge for pets, and that includes Red Roof Inns, Drury Inns, LaQuinta Inns, and Motel 6s. Some allow pets but charge. My preferred hotels are the Motel 6s. These hotels are cheap, and pets stay for free. Get a ground floor room because it is easier to walk the dogs. Luckily, my dogs behave in the room when I run out to get a bite to eat, but these hotels also have lots of take-out menus. Always book your hotel the morning before you arrive. That way you won't be stuck searching when you are tired, hungry, and done-in for the day.

If you know exactly where you are going, visit gopetfriendly for tips on finding restaurants, hotels, beaches, dog parks, and other pet-friendly locations to help you on your route. 

And don't try and rush or cut corners. Taking pets is more complicated than leaving them at home, but if they are part of your clan, then it's worth making the sacrifice.