Tag Archives: dogs

Puppy mills outsourced

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U.S. puppy mills are bad enough. Now we have people smuggling sick, poorly bred puppies in from Mexico:

Huddled together in car trunks, glove compartments, and underneath seats, thousands of unhealthy puppies each year are being smuggled into the United States from Mexico, animal control officers say.

Usually only a few weeks old, the tiny pups are sold for up to a thousand dollars each in shopping center parking lots and on street corners throughout California.

Stop it, people. Stop buying them.

Pitbulls & Profiling

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In a New Yorker article, Malcolm Gladwell examines how municipalities deal with the problem of aggressive dogs. Interestingly, he draws on what we’ve learned about policing of humans (what New York City has done, for example, reduce its crime rate) to make the case that banning a specific breed is the wrong way to reduce the incidence of dog bite.

The article surveys the data about what breeds of dog have been involved in fatal dog bites, and concludes that the reason pitbulls have made the news so often in the past few years is that more people own them:

The kinds of dogs that kill people change over time, because the popularity of certain breeds changes over time. The one thing that doesn’t change is the total number of the people killed by dogs. When we have more problems with pit bulls, it’s not necessarily a sign that pit bulls are more dangerous than other dogs. It could just be a sign that pit bulls have become more numerous.

But who owns these dogs? Here we get to the real crux of the issue. The strongest predictor of viciousness in a dog has far less to do with the dog, and an awful lot to do with the owner:

In about a quarter of fatal dog-bite cases, the dog owners were previously involved in illegal fighting. The dogs that bite people are, in many cases, socially isolated because their owners are socially isolated, and they are vicious because they have owners who want a vicious dog. The junk-yard German shepherd’s which looks as if it would rip your throat out and the German-shepherd guide dog are the same breed. But they are not the same dog, because they have owners with different intentions.

When I was doing research for my novel Loose Dogs — the protagonist is an animal control officer who breaks up a dog fighting ring — I was given a tour of the kennels that Rochester Animal Services use to hold stray dogs they’ve picked up. It’s not unusual for over half of these dogs to be pit bulls, or pit bull mixes.

You know what else? If these dogs — the pit bulls — aren’t claimed, they are put down — the city won’t offer a pit bull for adoption. I can’t say as I blame them. They don’t want to be in the business of offering the type of dog that attracts the wrong type of owner.

But it still breaks my heart.

Another reason to eat your kibble.

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Dog and Kennel Magazine has published a special report on nutrigenomics — foods designed to influence the way genetic tendencies express in dogs’ bodies.

The report says that the most successful application of this idea, so far, is in treating arthritis (partly because researchers have made solid progress in understanding the genetics of arthritis in dogs). By tweaking the levels of certain proteins and fats in their products, dog food manufacturers believe they can influence biochemical activity at the cellular level, cutting short the progression of the disease.

A twist on the story is that although these foods contain only natural ingredients — no drugs, nothing from a test tube — they are only available, right now, through veterinarians, as explained here by Dan Carey, DVM, “a trained veterinarian who now works as a scientist at Iams,” and Dr. Dru Forrester, scientific spokesperson for Hills Pet Nutrition:

“We want veterinarians to confirm that your dog has the body type and size so he’ll benefit from this diet.” Even more, Carey says, “We want to encourage people to work with veterinarians so they continue to get good general advice about their dog’s health.” Forrester also wants people to go through a veterinarian to prevent the rise of inferior imitations. “Everything in these foods is the result of detailed work. We don’s want to see nutrigenomic foods being copied and sold in grocery stores, where there are fewer controls on the contents.”

Translation: we plan to charge an arm and a leg for this stuff, and we don’t want people to get the idea that they can mix it up more cheaply in their own kitchens.

The article also asks why we can’t do something similar for people.

The answer is that we can exert more control over our dogs’ diets — and dogs are more willing to eat uniform (i.e. boring) food: “For nutrigenomics to work, you must eat the specific foods that have been developed for you, and do it faithfully.”

Faithfully as a dog, must be :-)

That said, the piece predicts this work will influence trends in human nutritional science, which is a good thing.

I didn’t train THAT!

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It took my little Corgi only three or four car rides before she’d taught herself a trick, not that I realized it was a trick at first. I’d put her crate in the car and had led her out on her leash. I bent over to pick her up, and at the same time, she jumped up. I wasn’t ready. I got a mouthful of dog fur. Fortunately, I didn’t drop her.

On subsequent occasions I did better, and came to admire her little move. The “cue” is partially contextual (crate in the car) and partly my body language: my bending over is her signal to jump. She gives a little leap and I’ve got a Corgi in my arms.

Her best untaught “tricks,” of course, are those involving food. My parents free-feed their four cats from dishes on their kitchen floor. So naturally, my dog dashes for that part of the kitchen the second she enters my parents’ house. Sometimes one of us remembers to pick up the dishes before I let her loose. Sometimes we forget.

Fortunately my dog hasn’t learned to take the shortest route to the dishes. This is probably due to sheer excitement: she runs straight into the house, her momentum propelling her into the living room, then doubles back via the dining room into the kitchen.

I, meanwhile, have suddenly remembered the cat food, and take a shortcut to head Laykey off. So about 5 feet from her prize, she finds me blocking the way, and has to throw on all four brakes to prevent a collision. She doesn’t seem particularly bothered, however. There are usually a few crumbs of dry food on the floor, and plenty of flavor left in any empty cat dishes lying around.

The cat food on the cellar steps is a different matter. Laykey is a timid dog — “reactive” in the current parlance — and until recently never dared venture into any basement. We humans, diabolical creatures that we are, have turned this to our advantage: we move the full cat food dishes onto the cellar steps, beyond the dog’s reach, and partially close the door. Other than having to step over cats sometimes when we need to go down the stairs, this has worked out pretty well, from the humans’ perspective.

It’s a source of torment for my dog.

She stands at the top of the stairs, stretching her nose as far as she dares through the opening of the door. If there were a talk bubble over her head, it would read “If only I were a brave enough little doggy to go into the cellar!”

I suppose it was inevitable that, sooner or later, she’d work up the courage to try.

Cat food is, after all, delectable.

Only it worked out badly. The steps are narrow, and even under ideal circumstances Corgis aren’t shaped right for using stairs. Their bodies are long, their legs are short. They have to ascend and descend at a diagonal. Plus the cat dishes were in the way.

I was in the other room when I heard the crash. I sprang to the kitchen just in time to see my poor sausage-shaped little dog, rolling down the steps in a cascade of cat kibble and plastic dishes.

She wasn’t hurt. I carried her upstairs and put her in her crate, where she promptly threw up. Yes, she’d managed to gulp down two or three mouthfuls of cat food before the disaster.

Which means that, by some measures, the venture was a success. So now the unanswered question is: will she try this new trick again . . .