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.

Jackie, My Second: The Puppy Nobody Wanted

In 1997, we wanted a dog, one that would live well in a city-size accommodation, and in a single child family.

Sleeping Beauties: Janet and Jackie

My daughter had thought she wanted a cat, but when we met a cat-size Yorkie in the neighborhood walking with her doggie mother—the one puppy from the litter that nobody wanted to buy—we fell in love.

Jackie was her name, and she was nearing six months old. The man walking them wasn’t a professional breeder, but he knew that little Yorkies were more in demand. Jackie was too darn big for the little dog people, so we covered the cost of her medical shots and took her home.

Soon, we had nicknamed her "Jackie-B-Wacky.” She would get kind of crazy sometimes and she jumped really high for her size, even as she got older. My daughter loved her so much that she even wrote a song for her:

Jackie, Jackie be Wacky.

Jackie, why you so Wacky?

You jump as high as a tree with your tiny feet,

You lick the air with no care, your tongue is everywhere.

You let me hold you at night and when I get too tight,

You give me love, no man could ever make me feel so right.

I won’t go on about how much we loved our pet (keeping this blog short) but we still laugh at the time she ate 10 of my 18 bake sale cupcakes, and the time she stuck her nose close to the rear end of a German Shepherd and it dumped right on her head.

She developed cancer 3 years ago and we put her down at the Bideawee vet’s office in her little doggie bed, stroking her head as she passed.

We scattered her ashes around the neighborhood parks and trees, on her favorite places to pee.

Should Dogs Be Domesticated: Gary Francione's Blog

The AbolitionistApproach, a blog by Gary Francione, Board of Governors Distinguished Professor of Law at Rutgers University School of Law, makes for fascinating reading, even though I don’t always see eye-to-eye on his posts. He takes a hardline approach, albeit a hypothetical one, on animal rights, and he avidly preaches and practices veganism. (Let me first go on record that I am not a vegan, yet. Veganism is another hardline regimen that I can’t fathom committing to, while vegetarianism and pescetarianism appeal to me both morally and sociopolitically.)

But Francione’s approach to animal rights calls for the end to the domestication of dogs, which he wrote about here. Francione calls domesticated animals “neither a real nor full part of our world or of the nonhuman world. They exist forever in a netherworld of vulnerability, dependent on us for everything and at risk of harm from an environment that they do not really understand. We have bred them to be compliant and servile . . . We may make them happy in one sense, but the relationship can never be “natural” or “normal.”

HUMAN-DOG CONUNDRUM

He also notes he has five rescue dogs himself and encourages others to adopt dogs who are in dire need of homes. Even so, Francione states: “We regard the dogs who live with us as refugees of sorts, and although we enjoy caring for them, it is clear that humans have no business continuing to bring these creatures into a world in which they simply do not fit.”

My issue with Francione’s opinion on animal domestication is particularly with respect to dogs. I don’t feel that dogs have been “acted upon” by humans; rather I believe that dogs and humans have “interacted” over centuries. I think there was, and is, a two-way communication and understanding between humans and dogs that makes them our oldest and most cherished domesticated animals. They are no more trained to be compliant and servile than are our children. They are, however, trained how to behave within a social group that includes humans. They hold a place there, the same as the rest of us, and they derive benefits from it. Like humans, they understand pack (family) membership and they trust it. I won’t go as far as to say loyalty, which is an abstraction. But certainly they feel attachment.

And that is why you will see families sentimentally including photos of their dogs in their portraits. Why they are written about in literature, sung about in songs, and featured in art—including some of the oldest cave paintings known to man.

Again, I understand that Francione is talking hypothetically, and I agree on many counts. I think abusive breeders should be stopped; I don’t believe in using dogs for cosmetics testing either. But I do see the benefit in training dogs for scent testing, however, given their highly-developed sense of smell, or as guide dogs to help the blind.

REALITY CHECK

If we can move beyond the hypothetical for a moment, I’ve seen packs of feral dogs in Indonesia where I spent one summer. Likely, these were abandoned dogs that formed packs and now breed and live on their own. Many of them live in and around towns and cities and roam the streets in groups, picking through garbage, killing rats, carrying mites and mange, licking their open sores. They move about through humanity but they do not trust humans, and they steer clear and keep to themselves. Un-domesticating dogs might sound righteous to some, but practically speaking, what would urban wild dogs look like?

And if not urban, where would undomesticated dogs reside? How long would it take them to regain their full natural instincts that derive from their wolf ancestors?

One thing is for sure: Francione ends by sharing with us that his five dogs are vegan just like him. Talk about domestication …

Look anywhere in the wild: you won’t likely find wolves eating vegetables.

Seamus the Dog: My Wikipedia Changes Live

Hey readers, I made it good as a Wikipedia editor. The pay is lousy but the prestige is fine ... well, maybe.

Here's the background. About a month ago, I wrote a post on the incident of Mitt Romney and his Irish Setter, Seamus. The basic story is that Romney, then a presidential contender, was criticized for having two decades earlier put his dog, Seamus, in a dog carrier and strapped it to the top of his car for a 12-hour drive from Massachusetts to Canada. I was bothered by a few details left out of the incident's Wikipedia page, so I added two sentences to the mix in different paragraphs. One sentence (in red) When interviewed by Chris Wallace of Fox News, Romney stated that Seamus enjoyed being in the dog carrier, an "air-tight kennel", and that he was not aware of any violations of Massachusetts law,^[8] even though the state’s animal cruelty laws specifically prohibit  anyone from carrying an animal "in or upon a vehicle, or otherwise, in an unnecessarily cruel or inhuman manner.”^[ 
And the second paragraph (in red) The website Dogs Against Romney (www.dogsagainstromney.com), founded by Scott Crider in June 2007, launched an anti-Romney, pro-animal-welfare campaign, moving to Facebook in 2011 and building an audience of 96,000 followers.

This morning I checked back and, amazingly, they are both still there. However, in my source links at the bottom of the page there are red alerts that say "Missing or Empty[Title]":

Now I don't know what will eventually happen here and if my additions will ultimately survive further scrutiny. Nobody has edited the pages since June 12, when I added my comments. But fellow bloggers have let it be known that their entries in Wikipedia on various topics have been deleted. The whole process intrigued me, so I found this on Wikipedia: Criticism of Wikipedia.

Before anyone gets too agitated about being deleted from the site, they may want to read it.

In the meantime, I am especially glad that the incident on Seamus, the Irish Setter, has the added context of Romney having likely broken the law when he put the dog on the outside of the car to travel. Many dog owners can be confused, or some uncaring, when they take their dogs traveling. For some dog travel tips, Cesar Milan's post is a good start.

Cancer: Why Dogs are Critical in the Fight

There are countless stories of dogs waking their masters before a fire or an intruder causes serious harm. But there’s another way dogs are saving human lives.

In my very first blog post, I mentioned recent discoveries of dogs detecting cancer in humans. This amazing ability has been under study just in the last decade, and it’s not as mysterious as it might sound. We already know that dog’s olfactory glands have a highly developed sense of smell—some 200 million olfactory cells compared to a human being’s 5 million.

Researchers have now shown that dogs can be trained to sense the minute chemical-triggered changes in human breath and other body odors that occur once a cancer is growing inside. According to Psychology Today writer Mary Bates, the first study happened in 2004, when researchers at the Sensory Research Institute at Florida State University trained two dogs to detect melanoma tissue samples hidden on the skin of healthy volunteers.

photo: Borbala Fereczy

Since that time, there have been several more very successful studies. In 2011, GUT, a peer-reviewed research journal for gastroenterologists, published the result of a study done in Japan at St. Sugar Cancer Sniffing Dog Training Center the year earlier with a Labrador named Marine. The eight-year-old dog correctly detected colorectal cancer in more than 67 groups of people's breath and stools that scientists had collected. You can read the abstract of the study here, but basically the way it works is that the dog is rewarded when it chooses the cancerous scent in a control group of scents. Once trained, the dog will choose the cancerous scent whenever it finds it. 

Here's a question: What would you rather have, a colonoscopy or a simple breath and/or stool test? Kind of a no-brainer?

The results of the Japanese study showed that the dog was at least 95 percent as accurate as a colonoscopy when smelling breath samples, and 98 percent as accurate with stool samples. The dog’s sense of smell was also effective in detection of early-stage cancer, and could discern polyps from malignancies (which colonoscopies can’t).

But dogs are not only good at sniffing out colon and skin cancer. Canine scent tests have also been done with prostate, lung, breast, and ovarian cancers as well.

Beyond detection, dog researcher Stanley Coren, professor of psychology at the University of University of British Columbia and author of The Intelligence of Dogs, wrote in Psychology Today about some hard research done at Beth Israel Hospital in New York that confirms the value of therapy dogs in post-cancer treatment rehabilitation.

Both Bates’ and Stanley Coren’s attentiveness to these various studies make me wonder why more research is not being done to further the use of dogs in early cancer detection and post-treatment. Wouldn’t it be certainly cheaper, and potentially more effective, than psychotherapy or an MRI? Wouldn't it even further strengthen the human-dog bond?