Thursday, April 16, 2009

Rules of Love



Positive training methods, getting a companion dog from the shelter, cute doggie voices giving saying insightful things - whats not to love!

The Canis Film Festival "is designed to showcase innovative, highly–communicative, short videos on animal training. These videos help educate pet owners and professionals who work with animals".

While I support clicker training it is certainly not the only good training style out there. I am a middle of the road philosophy trainer myself. Many different schools of thought have a lot to teach each other. I apprenticed for a while with Sirius Dog Training, attended Marin Humane Society's Canine Behavior Academy and SF/SPCA Academy for Dog Trainers; I came away with different lessons from each experience. I continue to read voraciously on canine behavior, history, and biology. But my best teachers remain, to this day, the dogs I watch and work with.

Trust your dogs; they can teach you the rules of love.

Tuesday, April 14, 2009

Another fun fundraiser


This is a an entertaining fundraiser where guesses are made (at $5 each) as to what breed(s) this dog is.

DNA testing will be done and the winner will get a nifty gift from NW Healthy Pets. Photographs, videos of the dog at play, and the owners comments on the dog are all up on the site to help with the educated guesses.

All proceeds go to Paws to Freedom "a non-profit all volunteer organization with 501(c)3 status...a Service Dog Team education and information organization, teaching people with disabilities to train their own service dog as well as offer service dog information within the community".

Stephen Huneck - Lending a Helping Hand


An artist that I am fond of is doing a fundraiser for a number of animal welfare related organizations. I'm not flush enough to be buying for myself just now but if this sort of art is your sort of thing, please consider lending a helping hand.

"Here's how the program works.
When you purchase anything on the Stephen Huneck Gallery website, a generous contribution will be made to your selected organization as follows: 50% of your purchases of Fine Art Giclee Prints and Original Woodcuts* and 10% of your purchases of other products will be contributed."

Monday, April 13, 2009

Please Don't Do That


Yes, there is a new dog in the White House. No, he did not come from a shelter or a rescue. While I believe it is best to lead by example (this is miss-step as I see it) there are still plenty of other opportunities to do the right thing (training, socialization, neutering, etc).

*edit* It seems that Bo is already neutered. "Stern worries that puppy mills will try to capitalize on the Obamas' dog choice and start churning out PWDs for an eager public. It's the responsibility of good Portuguese water dog breeders to try to prevent that, she said. As for Bo, he has already been neutered, Mrs. Obama's spokeswoman said."

What am I pointing a wagging finger at?
1) not adopting a dog after saying they would adopt
2) insisting that these dogs are hypoallergenic
3) LEANING OVER A DOG, STARING AT THE DOG, REACHING FOR THE DOG'S HEAD (This is the recipe for how not to greet a dog, how to get yourself bitten if the dog is so inclined. Do not put your face in the dog's face!)

How to meet a dog:
Stand tall but with loose body language, pivot sideways shoulder to the dog, make a "soft-paw" with your fingers and thumbs tucked in and your palm down, raise that "soft-paw" slightly, avert your eyes and lower them a bit, and wait for the dog to approach you. With a cautious dog, kneeling down but keeping your upper body vertical is an option.

Doggone Safe teaches how to read canine body language, how to understand what the dogs are trying to tell us before they are forced to bite.

"Despite 12,000 years of living with dogs, they remain largely misunderstood by humans. When a dog bites we interpret this in human terms. In most cases the bite is a normal dog behavior. The dog that bites is not necessarily a mean dog or a bad dog - he is just a dog. To prevent dog bites we need to understand what motivates the dog to bite and reduce risk through modification of both human and dog behavior"

HSUS tries by offering Stay Dog Bite Free and has a number of links to related products and programs for teaching children dog safety.

No More Turning Away



The range of emotions that these shelters dogs offer in these images touched me deeply. There are some very painful pictures here so proceed with caution.

To quote the poster from her words on YouTube:
"You can make a difference. Through adoption, fostering, volunteering, donations (whether it be money or something you don't need anymore that the animals will benefit from), and even just educating people about responsible pet ownership and the pet overpopulation crisis, you can help these animals. The animal shelters are not the bad guys. They are just doing what they can. Not having animal shelters would not keep animals from dying-- it would just keep them from dying humanely."

Strays in Moscow around the campfire again?



In the past several decades the study of the nearest and dearest animal to us humans has truly come into its own. Before this period scientists interested in canid species studied wild dogs such as wolves or coyotes, over looking our dog friends sharing our homes. The term Cynology is sometimes used for the study of dogs in general. Where and how dogs were domesticated is one of the top questions being addressed. National Geograph's cover article "Wolf to Woof" investigates the debate. Did humans domesticate the wolf or did wolves domesticate themselves?

Our recent knowledge of where dogs came from and what affects their behavior has come along way from "Man Meets Dog", to Scott and Fuller's 1965 "Genetics and the Social Behavior of the Dog" onto Serpell's "The Domestic Dog: Its Evolution, Behaviour and Interactions with People" and Coppinger's ground breaking "Dogs: A Startling New Understanding of Canine Origin, Behavior & Evolution". A list on dog behavior and evolution can be found at Dogwise.

In 1959 Novosibirsk, Russia a study was begun with 130 silver foxes primarily to study if "tame" responses to humans was genetic in nature. By breeding the tamest to the tamest within a surprisingly short time both behavior and physical type had changed, "The selectively bred tame foxes show behavioral patterns extremely similar to those of domestic dogs: by one month postnatal they become eager to establish human contact, whimpering to attract attention and sniffing and licking at humans, just like puppy dogs". These new foxes showed new color patterns (before unknown in their ancestors) some looking rather Border collie like and/or having floppy ears and wagging tails.

Are stray dogs re-domesticating themselves again now in Moscow? "The vast majority of homeless dogs go out of their way to avoid antagonizing people, says Mr. Vereshchagin" These strays have learned to ride the subways and act in solicitous and surprising ways to get their daily bread. "Adaptations by individual dogs have added up to a dramatic shift in canine culture. Begging is a submissive activity, so today there are fewer all-out interpack wars, which sometimes used to last for months, according to Mr. Poyarkov. Within packs there are more stable social hierarchies that allow the whole group to prosper". Here is a link to a website about these dogs.

Is this a safe and healthy environment? No.
Are there things to be learned for the study of this situation, both for animal welfare and Cynology? Yes.

(images used are from National Geographic and an International Collaborative Study of Fox Domestication at Cornell.