THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

My posts will be a bit shorter and perhaps less frequent in the next few weeks, but I couldn’t resist passing on a blog post from Bark Magazine that gave me the best laugh of the week. It’s about a reported (so yes, this is a story about a story about a story) who read that a dog sold in China for 1.5 millions dollars and reminded us that the dog, a Tibetan Mastiff, is believed to be the reincarnation of a Tibetan monk. I suspect I laughed especially loudly because, like many, I can get truly silly when I’m tired and 2) I go on and off the meditation wagon like a five-week old puppy in and out of a whelping pen (I’m currently back on it, but someone better tie me up to keep me there).

The Bark blog was written by my colleague (and co-author); here it is: Karen London’s Bark Blog.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm. Yesterday it snowed, today it is sunny and warm and tomorrow it is supposed to snow again. Ah, April in Wisconsin. Jim is up north, but this weekend I am staying  home to work and hopefully, deliver lambs. I have 3 ewes due to lamb (Spot was due Wednesday), but none of them have read that particular chapter. This morning I spent some time cleaning out the barn (still needs lots more work, so maybe it’s good the ewes are waiting for me) and went up the hill to pen up the sheep before the truck comes to fertilize the pasture (which needs to be done before a good rain if at all possible). So there we were: me, Wilie and the flock, all staring at each other in the bright sun and blue sky, and I lost my head, and yes, yes, I did it, I said “Go Away” and let Willie run around counter clockwise and gather them to me. His shoulder is doing well, we’ve done his exercises religiously, the surgery is coming up in May, and I decided that one brief moment of joy wasn’t going to hurt anything. I wish I could have taped it: watching him run in a huge circle, back lit by the sun and the sky, to gather up my girls made my heart sing, and judging by his demeanor when he came back, his too. Ooooh, I miss herding with him so much, I can barely describe it. We’ll be good again until the surgery, as good as we can be anyway, but I’m glad we had our little moment. Sometimes you just have to take care of your soul as well as your body.  Meanwhile, patience, Trisha, patience.

Here are 2 of the triplets: (And no, they don’t have blue eyes, that’s just the tapetum reflecting the flash. You can’t ‘fix’ it with the ‘red-eye’ function and I didn’t have time to mess with it, even thought it was sort of cute.)

Here’s Barbie, climbing the fence in hopes it will get her the grain I’m giving the mom with triplets. We call Barbie Explodo Ewe every year around this time. For good reason.

See the dog, not the story. This is a quote from one of your colleagues, a blog reader who sent this in as a comment about dogs in rescue. (And who I should credit, but because I’m in a time crisis, I can’t right now, but THANKS! and I will find your name when I can get more time.). I was reminded of the value of that saying by Kathy Sdao at Clicker Expo last weekend. She did a presentation on being a truly good observer of your dog, something we all know the value of, but she made it special for me by suggesting that we toss away our ‘stories’ about our dogs, and work with who we have. I truly took that to heart. I have a story about Willie, about how he was such a mess when he was young, about how he had projectile diarrhea and was pathologically afraid of other dogs and so sound sensitive I couldn’t socialize him, etc etc etc. There’s value in knowing that history, and in acknowledging how far we have come together.

But there is also value in being able to let it go, to look at who is standing or sitting right in front of you, right now. Not the dog as a container of all he or she has been, but simply who he or she is now.  I’ve been doing that with Willie these last few days, and I can’t report any clear and obvious change in our relationship, but it does feel like there is a subtle shift in my perception of him. It’s almost as though I feel a little bit lighter, in some vague, hard to describe kind of way. I think I have to mull on this a few more days to be able to articulate what I’m feeling.

And so, as I so often do, I’m reaching out to you to ask what you think of this, what “looking at the dog, not the story” might do for you. I’ll be off line quite a bit in the next 4 days, spending time with family during a difficult time, but will check when I can, and am extremely interested in what you have to say. I suspect many readers will be interested as well . . .

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: Scrambled all last night to find a house sitter so that Jim and I could leave town. I have 5 possibles on a list and all five are out of town. What are the odds? But at the last minute I found a wonderful couple to sit, and I’m simplifying things for them by bringing Willie with us. He’ll spend a lot of time in the crate in the car, no way around it. Last I checked most hospitals aren’t going to welcome him into their ICU. Another dear friend will check on Rosebud. She is the ewe due to lamb on Friday, that is if Rosebud has read the chapters on when she should deliver.

Here’s a photo, that I snapped in New York with one of those throw away cameras (having forgotten my own) on the edge of Central Park. [And here was a fun surprise: I knew lots of people in NY had dogs, but dogs were EVERYWHERE!]. But here’s a shot of one of the horse drawn carts, during a quiet moment on a sunny day.

As is often the case with all of us, my agenda for today changed after a phone call that got my attention. A reporter for CNN called, and asked what I thought about an article that just came out in Emerging Infectious Diseases (the journal of the Center for Disease Control). Titled “Zoonoses in the Bedroom,” the article by B.B. Chomel and B. Sun provides a list of anecdotes and a few studies that link sleeping with pet dogs and cats with serious diseases. The same connection is made with kissing pets, and being licked by them.  They conclude by saying that “Our review suggests that persons, especially young children or immunocompromised persons, should be discouraged from sharing their bed with their pets or regularly kissing their pets. Any area licked by a pet, especially for young children or immunocompromised persons or an open wound, should be immediately washed with soap and water.”

Before I write any more, I should mention that a 100 pound dog just finished slathering my face with her saliva as her and her owner left the office for their weekend at home together. When I return home, I will let Willie kiss my face, will kiss him back repeatedly, and will later lay down on the rug with him, cuddling like spoons, while Jim and I watch the next installment of Castle.

But I can be objective about this issue, and I’m addressing it here today because I think it’s an important one. The press is all over this new study from the CDC, (see an article in the Chicago Tribune) and I’m concerned that some parents and pet owners will over react. Most of the cases mentioned are simply stories of people who became ill and who also were licked by or who slept with their pets. That’s called a correlation, not proof of a cause. And some of the cases mentioned are, uh, a tad out of the range of common sense, like the child who came down with the plague after sleeping with a flea-infested cat in the middle of an outbreak of bubonic plague in New Mexico in 1974. Perhaps the headline should read: “Don’t sleep with a flea-infested cat in the middle of an outbreak of bubonic plague! Especially if you live in New Mexico and it’s still 1974!”

Overall, a careful reading of the study suggests that it is heavy on anecdote and a bit light on rigorous research. For example: “In 1985, a case of meningitis caused by P. multiocida in a 60-year old housewife living in the United Kingdom was reported. She admitted to regularly kissing the family dog.” Did she also admit to kissing the family husband? The family children? The gardener? (No wait, sorry, that’s a different issue.) However, there are studies in the article that do suggest that in some cases, admittedly rare, there is a link between disease and close contact with pets. it is important for pet lovers to acknowledge that there can be risks associated with living with, and loving, our companion animals.

But there is an important point to be made here, that I stressed when I spoke with a woman named Madison Parks who will be writing an article on CNN.com sometime today. And that is that that ALL social interactions with ALL animals include a host of costs and benefits. Those risks need to be understood, and then we each need to find a way to create the best balance we can, depending upon our health and our own personal needs. Dogs and cats, birds, horses, pet rats, etc etc, can bite, can cause injuries indirectly (by tripping, for example), can create health problems related to allergies (see me raising my hand here), and act as vectors for pathogens that can cause serious health problems. Companion animals, on the other hand, have been shown in rigorous studies to boost our immune system, decrease allergies in children raised with a pet in the household, increase oxytocin levels which leads to decreased heart rates, blood pressure and levels of cortisol in the body. Those physiological changes are not minor; they can act to increase health and life span in a significant way.

But as I said earlier, ALL social interactions come with risks. If I wanted to be safer, I would get rid of my dog, cat and sheep, kick Jim out of bed and live in a sterile bubble, isolated from allergens and viral particles. But then, I’d either go crazy or shoot myself, so that doesn’t really sound so safe after all. Yes, of course, those especially whose health is compromised need to be especially careful about social interactions with their pets, but didn’t we already know that? We also need to be careful about stairs, bedroom slippers (a common cause of injury), falling off ladders, and, in my case yesterday, slamming my arthritic wrist into the corner of a table while enthusiastically illustrating to my UW class the flexibility of the human shoulder joint.  I’m a tad concerned that the article, and the press about it, will cause healthy people to worry needlessly, and worse, will cause some parents to get rid of a beloved pet and take it to a shelter while their child’s heart is broken.

Okay, you know I’m going to ask: do you sleep with, cuddle with your dog? Do you let him/her kiss you?

Madison Magazine: Here’s the good news. Madison Magazine just came out with a feature story on me and … most importantly, I do NOT have to die of shame about the photo on the cover. Remember when I mentioned that I’d just finished a studio photo shoot and how uncomfortable I am in that context? Well, the photo is okay… of course I don’t look like I want to (who ever does?) but at least I am not cringing and hey, Willie looks great!  Here’s the article and cover. The article is lovely, beautifully written,  I am grateful to them for the time and attention. The only thing I’d change if I could is that Jim is never mentioned and he’s such an important part of my life. (Not to mention Willie’s. Willie worships the ground Jim walks on. I do too, but don’t ever tell him.) But I can mention Jim when I do a live web chat for Madison Magazine on February 2nd. Send in your questions before then to Katie Vaughn at kvaughn@madisonmagazine.com and I’ll get to as many as I can.

And here’s a photo of me and my two-legged guy. I call him and Willie “my guys” and “da boys” and if the two of them could ever get out of the house to play pool together, I expect they would. This is me and Jim in New Zealand, looking like cooked lobsters after being in the sun all day.

Here’s one of the photos from the Madison magazine article, taken from the web so it’s not as crisp as it should be, but I couldn’t resist. It was taken by professional photographer, Dan Bishop, who was an absolute joy to work with. He’d taken a class at Dog’s Best Friend and was unrelentingly thoughtful and courteous to Willie. I love the simplicity and clean look in this shot.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: It was 16 below this morning at 7 am when I thought to look at the thermometer. Temperature is such a relative thing: that’s cold for here, but I know that’s not news in Fairbanks, Alaska. Little white guy seemed fine, he wasn’t shivering at all, but he was a happy boy to get his grain. We won’t be doing much outside this weekend beside exercising Willie and doing the chores. I’ve a bit of a cold and the weather is a tad below my comfort zone. But Jim and I going to play with our thousands of photographs. We both just got Mac’s version of PhotoShop, Aperature. Heaven help us. I only have over 7,500 photos to organize, and Jim has as many or more. Oh my.

Like many people, I’m classically conditioned to associate “New Year’s Resolutions” with broad, generic and doomed-to-fail pronouncements, like “I’ll be healthier!”  “I’ll lose 20 pounds!”  “I’ll be an all around better person!” “I’ll kind and generous to everyone I meet!” I made my share of impossible resolutions in decades past, and like most of them, they fell apart before the end of January. However, as is often the case, learning about behavior and dog training has helped me to come up with focused and attainable goals, so now I don’t make New Year’s Resolutions, I made one or two commitments for the year to come.

We know that commitments are most often kept if 1) they are focused and specific, 2) they are attainable and 3) they are made public. Not that you have to blog about them yourself, but at least tell your friends, write them down, post the on your mirror …. do what you can to put them out into the universe in some way.

For example, I always make one related to my own nutrition. Instead of “I’ll lose X number of pounds,” or “I”ll eat healthier food,” last year I decided to eat sardines once a week. (By the way, the word “decision” originated from “decis,” or to “cut off” — as in, “cut off all other options”. Truly making a decision – truly – means selecting one option and completely eliminating all others.) Did I eat sardines 52 times last year? Nope, but pretty darn close. They aren’t my favorite food, but they are really, really good for me (and the environment, they are one of the few fishes not over harvested). I mix them with my favorite honey mustard and a tiny bit of mayonnaise and put them on crunchy yummy toast and eat them with a big salad. I’ve gotten to look forward to my sardine night, no kidding. (FYI, Willie gets one sardine, from a tin of unsalted, water packed sardines, every night.)

The year before it was “eat beans” (lentils, kidney etc) at least once a week. I aimed for twice a week, and have found it easy to do. I make lots of soup with beans in them, or buy Amy’s organic soups (I love you Amy). This year?  Continuing with what works, I’m staying focused and specific. This year it’s “eat greens 2 times a week.” (greens as in kale, chard, collard greens). They are so so good for you, and I’m developing a taste for them.

Uh, isn’t this a blog about canine behavior and dog training? Yup, and you probably already know where I’m going with this. Every year I make a commitment related to Willie too. Last year it was to start working Willie off the farm more, with thoughts of occasionally getting back into herding dog trials. As you know, we entered our first one in October, and although we weren’t perfect by any means, we did well and had fun.

This year, my commitment to Willie is to increase his comfort at working sheep with spectators and to increase his comfort at working at over 100 yards away off the farm. (I guess that’s two commitments – but you’ll see they are related.) I’ve learned over the years that Willie is profoundly affected by others watching him work. I thought that it was primarily me – that I changed when people were watching us work – and I’m still sure that is a factor. It doesn’t phase me to work dogs on a stage at a seminar, but working sheep? Ah, a different story altogether. Lordy if only others could have seen some of the work we’ve done just the two of us! But over the years I’ve realized that, more than any other dog I’ve had, Willie himself gets nervous when there are others watching us, no matter how it impacts on me. His work at the trial also made it clear that once we were over 100 yards (a pittance in a trial), with the addition of spectators, Willie listened less and worried more.

So that’s my commitment to Willie: to get him working sheep out and about as much as I can this summer, and to gradually increase the distance at which he is comfortable working off the farm. Not much I can do about it now though… too much snow to even think about working sheep. Of course, this is party for my benefit, because I love working Willie on sheep, but he loves it too, so it’s a win/win. (I just, one hour after posting, re-read this and realized how very unspecific it is! Very unlike my specific commitment re nutrition, yes? So here’s my revised commitment: work Willie off the farm once a week if weather cooperates and I’m in town. Work Willie once a month summer/fall in front of other people, trying to replicate a trial like setting. Ah, much better!)

What’s your 2011 commitment to your dog? I’d love to hear it.  . . Just make it focused, specific and attainable. Just like dog training, you need to set yourself up to win so that you get reinforced, rather than learning to fail. (I think we trainers and dog lovers often do that to ourselves: set up expectations we can meet and then feeling guilty about it.) You’ll find making a decision (cutting off other options) about the one commitment you’re going to make an interesting one in itself.

MEANWHILE, back on the farm: I’ll look forward to sitting back and reading your 2011 commitments over the New Year’s weekend. I also look forward to being home more and enjoying the birds at our feeders. We’ve had more this winter than I can ever remember, including a Sharp-Shinned Hawk (think so anyway, could have been a Cooper’s but the tail seemed more square at the tip), who was attempting to feed on the other birds themselves.

Here are a few I got snaps of yesterday:

Black-capped Chickadee. (Love their calls -  “Chick-a-dee-dee-dee”). There must be 6 or 7 at the feeders everyday, along with a mixed flock of Nuthatches, Titmice, several kinds of Woodpeckers. Chickadees are oxytocin pump birds: cute, athletic, very tame.

Here’s the White Breasted Nuthatch. Always flocks with Chickadees in winter, feeds mostly off of insects hidden in tree bark. Is able to ‘walk’ straight down a tree trunk without falling off. Call sounds like “Yank Yank.” Love ‘em.

Another one of my favorites, the Tufted Titmouse. Usually only have two or three a winter, but also flock with Chickadees and Nuthatches. Much more flighty than Chickadees though, took forever to get this photo!

A quick post today, trying to catch up before I leave for Toronto on Friday.  Sunday at the BFF conference was great, I’ll write a post soon about Pam Reid’s talks on cognition, her talk about stress, and Emily Levine’s talk on compulsive disorders in dogs.  All of them were great, very valuable. I thought this conference had the highest level of talks I’ve seen, and many others seemed to agree.

Although it’s hard to pack up and go before you have your paws on the ground, I’m very much looking forward to meeting folks in Toronto, and to traveling to Seattle to speak in mid-September. It is hard to turn around this fast when you’ve been traveling, leaving the farm and the dogs, sheep and Sushi, I won’t pretend it’s not, but I do meet such interesting people and always learn so much.

I get all the benefits later in September when I give the same talk I gave at BFF on “The Power of Pets” in Madison WI on September 23rd, a fund raiser for the Dane County Humane Society. I get to meet lots of great people in my own backyard (no airports!) and talk about a topic I love: the biology and psychology of why we love our dogs soooooo much. Please come up and say hi if you are a blog reader (and thanks for all of you who did in Pennsylvania, I LOVED meeting you and seeing real faces behind the people out there in cyberspace.) You can get tickets from DCHS for just the evening talk or, you can also come to the reception beforehand. The numbers are limited so we’ll all have enough time to talk. If you come to the  reception, PLEASE bring a photo of your pet, nothing would make me happier than to coo over your dog or cat!

Here’s a photo from BFF of all the speakers and the organizers, Dana and Carolyn. I am using the one in which we are all cracking up, because that’s pretty much what we looked like when we went to dinner together every night. I suppose this is where I should thank Suzanne Hetts and Nancy Williams for introducing me to a Peachtini. Always glad to add one more fruit serving to my nutrition for the day. (Not to mention adding about 3 pounds. My only complaint about the conference is that if you add Pia Silvani, Suzanne Hetts, Nancy Williams and Pam Reid up together, you would still barely manage a Size 2. I said I was representing the cows of Wisconsin.)

From left to right, back row: Dana Crevling, conference organizer queen who lost her soulmate dog the same day that Pia lost hers. Together they decided to do something to honor them. Next is Carolyn Barney who was a invaluable help in the  organization, Nancy Williams, Pia Silvani, Trish King, yours truly, and Vinnie Castalano. In the front is Suzanne Hetts, Pam Reid and Emily Levine. Not pictured are the legions of wonderful people from St. Hubert’s Animal Welfare Center in NJ, who did tons of work. It looks like we raised lots of money for St. Hubert’s and that felt great to all of us.

Some of the recent posts have brought up the question that many of us live with on a daily basis: how much training and attention do our dogs need every day? I get asked this a lot, and as I wrote in my essay in Tales of Two Species, I suspect that there’s another fundamental question driving it (she says, speaking from  experience.) How much exercise, training and attention do our dogs need for us not to feel guilty? Fess up, don’t you sometimes wonder if you are doing enough for your dog, and don’t you sometimes feel guilty about not doing as much as you should?

I am sure that many of the people reading this blog will say no, they don’t feel guilty, and for good reason. I know that many of you take your dog out to classes several nights a week, take long walks in the country with them twice a day, teach them new tricks on a daily basis and cuddle with them all night long.  But I suspect that many of the readers are more like me: sometimes feeling pleased about the physical and mental exercise we’re providing for our dogs, other times feeling guilty and inadequate.

For example, yesterday was not a good day for Willie. First off, he’s on exercise restrictions: leash walks only outside, no toy or ball play outside, no sheep herding, limited play inside, no running up the stairs. Secondly, I was on campus much of the day, so he spent from 11 am to 6 pm in his crate. It’s rare he’s in his crate for longer than 4-5 hours at a time, but life isn’t always the video tape I thought I rented. I would’ve felt guiltier if I’d been getting a massage and eating chocolate all day long, but still, I didn’t like it.

I was also slammed with the grant reviews I’m doing for NIH, so I spent most of the morning and part of the evening glued to my desk.  All Will got beyond times to go outside and potty was heeling to the barn and back twice (which gets him lots of treats, and he seems to love), another heeling session when I got home (I’ve tried for 5 times a day–only managed it some of the days since I committed…), a small amount of trick training in the evening, and a long cuddle time in the evening with lots of belly rubs from me or Jim. Not a great day by a long shot.

But Wednesday? Oh, happy day for Willie. A 45 minute long walk in the country (on leash, but lots of good new smells) 5 sessions of heel work with lots of treats in 3 different contexts, interactive play with 2 new toys, a car ride to his chiropractor and all morning in the office with me and Denise (who he worships), lots of trick training and cuddle time at night. I went to bed feeling happy that Will had had a great day.

All this feels especially relevant because I haven’t had just one dog in decades, and I am so aware how different it is if your dog can’t play with others or entertain themselves outside. Lassie still played with Willie twice a day up to a week before she died, and the burden of ‘entertainment’ falls completely on my shoulders now. Of course, I live in the country and  have sheep for Will to work, but none of that is relevant at the moment with him on leash restrictions (9 more days to go!)

So what DO our dogs need from us if they can’t entertain themselves? I remember growing up and letting our family dog, Fudge, out the door in the morning, when she’d pick up other canine companions and explore the neighborhood until we came home from school. The idea of entertaining or exercising our dog never entered our mind.  But that was then, and we can’t and shouldn’t go back to it. So, here’s some thoughts about what dogs need from us–I look forward to hearing your thoughts too.

PHYSICAL EXERCISE: Yes, dogs need it, but how much varies so very much depending on the dog’s nature, age, etc etc. Just like people, dogs are simply healthier if they get in a good long walk every day, or better yet, a chance to run and romp off leash. I would love to provide some formula of how much exercise a dog needs, but it varies so much there’s no way to do it helpfully. In an ideal world, my 3 1/2 year old Border Collie would get long (45 to 90 minute) off-leash walks in the country at least 6 days a week, along with a good session working sheep, but it’s rare that happens more than 2 or 3 days a week. Ideally? I’d love it if every dog could get 2 sessions of solid exercise in every day, the definition of “solid” depending on the dog.

A few thoughts about the type of exercise that I’d be interested in your reaction to: I think some types of exercise tend to hype dogs up rather than calm them down. Ideally I think all our dogs would profit from lots of long, off leash (or long line) walks in which they aren’t fetching balls or discs or obsessing about objects in some way. One of my clients has a problematic BC who didn’t seem to be calmed after ball play, but rather hyped up by it. I’m not saying we shouldn’t play ball, or that many dogs don’t adore it (it’s Will’s absolute favorite game to play, paws down) just that some types of exercise might be more relaxing than others. I always like to see dogs have time to make their own choices and just be dogs–sniffing here, sniffing there, while performing the kind of consistent, aerobic exercise that creates relaxation in humans (think runner’s high).

MENTAL EXERCISE: This need for this kind of exercise is my favorite soap box, in the belief that many pet dogs suffer from boredom and too few chances to exercise their brains. I’ve found, as have many trainers, that learning a new trick or working on problem solving can ‘tire’ out dogs as much or more than physical exercise. One dear friend just sent Willie 2 new Ottosson toys (am I feeling SO grateful to my friends right now! What would we do without them?), and one of them has Will completely baffled. He tried to work it, couldn’t figure it out even with lots of encouragement from me, and then lay down and slept like a rock for an hour. Stressed? Absolutely, but not in a bad way I don’t think, and good for him in the long run.

All the research on neuroplasticity and brain function makes it clear that “use it or lose it’ is relevant to the brain, and that a healthy brain can lead to a healthier body.  I’m reading Sharon Begley’s Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain right now–it’s another great book, and provides continuing inspiration to keep our dog’s brains busy. New tricks, new problems to solve,  reviewing old training exercises little used now–surely all of these things are as good for dogs as they are for us.

NOVELTY: This is something that I don’t think many people think about it, but I think it’s crucial to a dog’s happiness and overall health. We know that novelty engages the brain in all kinds of ways that nothing else can, and leads to new connections between neurons (usually a good thing) and enhanced enthusiasm for life in general. Here’s an example: Because Will is on leash restrictions we came into town a few days ago and went on a 30 minute walk through neighborhoods that are completely new to him. Although he couldn’t go faster than a walk, he was completely engaged in new sights, sounds and smells, and slept for hours afterward. Compare that to a dog who took the same walk, same route, every day, year after year. How stimulating would that be? I’ve noticed that Will is far less engaged in our walks in the pastures above the farm house than other dogs who come to visit, and why wouldn’t that be true? Same ol’ same ol’ for him, a potpourri of smells and excitement for the newbies.

Psychologists know that experiencing novelty is one of the keys to keeping human relationships vital and preventing partners from becoming bored with each other. Why wouldn’t the same be true for us and our dogs? The good news here, and with mental exercise as well, is that a little bit of effort can have big pay offs for our dogs. You don’t need to devote an hour every evening to teaching a new trick, which provides both mental exercise and novelty. You can take your dog to a new place for 20 minutes and get the same effect as if you’d taken an hour long walk in a place that is becoming old hat. Of course, the benefits depend on many factors: a new place that is frightening to neophobic dog isn’t going to enhance your dog’s life.

FREEDOM OF CHOICE: One the books I’ve been reading on brain plasticity mentioned increased dendritic branching (connections between neurons) when caged rats were allowed to voluntarily exercise. That’s a good thing for the brain, and can lead to all kinds of positive benefits, not only enhanced mental function but also to a better ability to handle stress, for example. But here’s the kicker: there was no effect when the rats were forced against their wheel to exercise, even if it was for the same amount of time. Forced exercise may be good for physiological health, but not necessarily for a healthy brain.

I thought of this after working with someone whose dog was never off leash, and had almost no choices about what to do or when to do it in the house. Surely that’s big price to pay for having your food and medical care guaranteed. The dog (a young, sweet, soppy Golden) had begun growling at her owner when he wiped off her paws as she entered the house. The house had wall to wall white carpeting, and the dog was only allowed to lie down on a few towels scattered about. The dog’s behavior was so carefully managed that the poor thing literally had no choice about where to lie down, when to potty, where to sniff outside, and what to play with. Granted, this example is extreme, but it’s a good reminder of the value of choice. Since our dogs, most of them, are no longer able to spend considerable periods of time outside on their own, we need to be creative to find ways to let them manage their own lives for part of the day.

Speaking of our own dogs: I need to get home and get Willie some physical and mental exercise that provides novelty and choice! I could go on and on on this topic, but I’d rather hear your thoughts….

Meanwhile, back on the farm: Jim will farm sit while I’m in DC doing grant reviews on for the Nat’l Institute of Child Health and Development in NIH and appearing on the Diane Rehm show on Monday. She is a breath of fresh air, so I’m looking forward to Monday and very interested how Tuesday and Wednesday (reviews) will go. Needless to say, I can’t say anything about the grant proposals, but I can tell you that the process is interesting, exhausting and yup, novel!

Next weekend the first lambs are due! Can’t wait. Bulbs coming up (in unnaturally warm weather, is almost weird) and lambs coming. I’ll send photos of the first lambs as soon as I get them. First ones are due a week from tomorrow, Saturday the 27th.

Here’s Will with a favorite toy.. this toy has lasted for over a  year, and is still one of his favorites. I love how the toy is in focus and Will’s is not. Good thing, cuz he looks downright crazy in this shot!

And here’s the view on the way to the farm when the snow was melting and the world was soggy with mud and melting snow and fog:

Lassie went home today.

I am thinking of the famous story about Hemingway, in which he challenged his writer friends to write the shortest story possible. All agreed that he won. Here’s what he wrote:

For Sale. Baby Shoes. Never Worn.

Since then, summarizing one’s life in six words has become something of a parlor game. I have done so for Lassie, summarizing what she means to me in six words, and I think it would bring pleasure and comfort to everyone who reads this blog if you were inspired to do the same for your own special dog, and to share them, if you would, for us all to read.

Here’s for my Lassie:

French Vanilla. Ice Cream. Summer Day.

Off you go dear Lassie, my god how I loved you.

A friend and colleague (Toni Ziegler, an internationally known primatologist) sent me an article in a journal I usually never see, Hormones and Behavior, and I was sure you’d be as interested in it as I am. The authors, M. Nagasawa et. al., found a correlation between the level of an owner’s oxytocin and how much their dog tended to gaze directly at them.

First off, you probably know that oxytocin is the “feel good” hormone that is associated with lactation and social bonding. Someone called it the “wine and candle light” hormone, because it seems to play an important role in social relationships and feelings of trust and affection. (People are more trusting of strangers if oxytocin is sprayed into their nose–leading me to speculate in For the Love of a Dog that we should all be armed with a spray bottle of the stuff). Oxytocin correlates with friendly social behavior in rats, monkey, sheep, you name it, and even has been found to calm “depressive tendencies” and anxiety in people.

The authors of the study first surveyed 55 people to evaluate the level of relationship with their dogs. (They asked: “How much are you satisfied with your dog?” and “How much do you feel you can communicate with your dog?” Of course, if I’d been asking, my questions might include “How often to you rub your dog’s belly?” and “How important is your dog in your overall happiness?” and “How many months would you say you spend more on your dog than yourself?” and “Don’t you think you should consider buying yourself a new pair of pants before you buy another dog toy?” But then, it wasn’t my study….)

Each owner/dog pair then came to the researchers, and was video taped in a room with the owner sitting in a chair. At first the owner was alone in the room for 20 minutes, then the dog was allowed in for 30 minutes. Once inside, the dog was allowed to move around the room freely, but was asked to sit on cue every 3 minutes. The owners could talk to their dogs and pet them, but not give the dogs treats. Before and after, the owner’s heart rate and blood pressure was taken, and they were asked to provide a urine sample both before and after as well.

Here are some of the results: The 55 owners sorted into 2 groups: 12 of them reported high levels of satisfaction with their dogs and ALSO had the longest duration of times that their dog’s looked (“gazed”) at them during the experiment. Those people, whose dogs looked at them the most, also had significantly higher levels of oxytocin after the experiment than the people who reported lower levels of satisfaction and whose dogs looked at them for shorter periods of time. Additionally, there was a significant correlation between the frequency of “exchange bouts” (looking, talking) initiated by a dog’s gaze and the level of oxytocin in the owner’s body. In other words, the more the dog looked at the owner, the higher the level of oxytocin IF the owner was one of the one who reported a high level of satisfaction in their dog. There was no correlation between duration of gaze and oxytocin levels in the (larger) group who reported less satisfaction and whose dogs looked at them for shorter periods of time.

What does all this mean? Well, if you put your science hat on, you know to be careful of correlations. It seems reasonable and (common sensible) to argue that IF you are strongly bonded to your dog, then you have a surge of oxytocin when he or she looks at you and you look back. (I think my oxytocin is rising right now, just thinking about Lassie’s face!). However, I’ve always wondered if some individuals inherently have lower levels of oxytocin and that makes them less affiliative with others, a bit more stand off-ish. Dogs too? Could that explain why some dogs are puddles around people and others more aloof? Levels of oxytocin do correlate in mice, for example, with less or more affiliative behavior, so it seems reasonable that it could occur in people too.

That could create another hypothesis for the results. Do people with inherently higher levels of oxytocin tend to be more bonded to their dogs? However, a good study should account for this, and indeed, there were no significant differences between oxytocin levels before the experiment between the 2 groups of people. So it looks as though it was the interaction itself, during the 30 minutes that the dog and owner were together, that increased oxytocin levels. Although none of us can accurately guage our oxytocin levels without measurements, I swear there’s a feeling I get that correlates with an oxytocin surge. It’s the way you feel when you look at a puppy, or a kitten, or a two year old child… and get what I can only describe as “goo-ey” and “warm” and just overwhelmed with loving feelings. Know what I mean? Do you thank that is part of what makes a dog a “forever” dog or a “heart dog?”

Whether we can feel  it or not, oxytocin has got to be good for us. Remember when I said that oxytocin decreases anxiety? It seems to have a positive effect on many systems: it is produced in the hypothalamus and decreases activity of what’s called the “hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis” (use that when you want to be cool, you could also just call it the stress response though!) In other words, more oxytocin, less adrenalin, less anxiety, less immune suppression, etc. We’ve always known our dogs are good for us (mostly… unless, uh, they’re not), but here’s a biological explanation for it beyond the fact that they make us feel good.

Speaking of oxytocin (with apologies for indulging myself), here’s a photograph I found last night, buried in files on my computer. I wasn’t going to use it, but it makes me all goo-ey and oxytocin-y to look at it, so I thought it was relevant. It’s of me and my Tulip long ago, several years before she passed away. Here’s hoping you have a dog right now that raises your oxytocin too.

And here’s another feel good picture, fall leaves that fell this weekend after a hard, hard freeze.

xxx

With apologies for the change in topics, I just have to respond to a comment on my last post, and to the hundreds of comments I’ve heard over the last 20 + years, about the guilt associated with putting a dog down. It is always wrenching, heart-breaking to euthanize a beloved dog, but taking a dog’s life away for a behavioral problem can be especially hard. I can’t take away the pain, no matter what the reason for the death, but here are a few things that I have found that have helped me and some of my clients.

First, for anyone who has had to euthanize a dog, I hope it helps to know that devoted owners are often wracked with guilt, no matter why the dog died. For example, I euthanized Cool Hand Luke after a long battle with kidney failure. By the time he died (he was close to death when we helped him along), I had worked extensively with five veterinarians, including specialists at the UW Vet School. He received the best that money can buy of western medicine, homeopathic medicine and chinese medicine. I cooked him a special diet every day and monitored every thing that went into his mouth. I’d go on, but you get the idea: I moved  heaven and earth for Luke, and still. . . I was wracked with guilt for a good year after his death.

Surely I had missed something? Surely there was just one more thing I could have done? One of my vets told me that Luke had an inflammation somewhere, but she couldn’t say where or what it was. I obsessed over trying to find it, and felt a crush of failure when nothing we did turned around his failing kidneys. I was consumed by the idea that IF I JUST WORK HARD ENOUGH, I could “fix” things and save Luke.

After he died, devastated by his untimely death (he was 12,  his daughter is now 15 3/4), I couldn’t get it out of my mind that somehow I should have done a better job of trying to save him.  In the cold light of day, this was, frankly, absurd. Luke had 5 of some of the best vets in the country and if they couldn’t save him, how in heaven’s name was I supposed to?

But as he always had, Luke left me with a gift. It took awhile, but I slowly began to notice how EVERYONE I talked to who loved their dog, like we all love ours, was guilty about something related to the dog’s death. It didn’t matter how or why they died: hundreds of owners, from prof’l trainers and behaviorists to the dog loving public, found something to feel guilty about. “I should have seen the symptoms sooner,” or “How could I have not known that the lock on the door was faulty and allowed my dog to run out the door?” or “Surely I could somehow have prevented the bite if I just hadn’t……”

Here’s what Luke taught me, along with the wise comments of a psychologist friend: It is easier to believe that we are always responsible (“if only I had done/not done this one thing….”) than it is to accept this painful truth: We are not in control of the world. Stuff happens. Bad stuff. As brilliant and responsible and hard working and control-freaky that we are, sometimes, bad stuff just happens. Good people die when they shouldn’t. Gorgeous dogs brimming with health, except for that tumor or those crappy kidneys, die long before their time. Dogs who are otherwise healthy but are a severe health risk to others end up being put down. It’s not fair, it’s not right, and it hurts like hell. But please please, if you’ve moved heaven and earth to save a dog and haven’t been able to… just remember:  Stuff happens. We can’t control everything. (Difficult words to dog trainers I know. . . Aren’t we all control freaks to some extent?) You didn’t fail. You tried as hard as you could. It’s okay.

To all of us: Try folding up that guilt and pain like a pile of dirty, ripped clothing, and throwing it away. Remember: Much of what we love about dogs is that they live in the present and accept what happens. That’s our job, to accept what happens sometimes, even though it’s the hardest job of all.

Secondly, there’s one more thing I want to remind everyone who has lost a beloved dog, no matter what the reason or whether there was guilt attached or not: Neurobiologist Jaak Panskepp tells us that “social distress,” or what we’d call grieving, is registered in a primitive part of the brain that is also associated with the perception of pain. I learned about this while I was writing For the Love of a Dog, and it blew me away when I discovered it. Ah Ha, I thought; no wonder we talk about the “pain of loss” and “healing” after grieving. And don’t we respond to another’s loss as if they’d been physically hurt? We take people flowers and food when they are grieving just as we do after they have a major operation.  I remember feeling physical pain when Luke died, when Tulip died, when Pippy Tay died, just as I did when my mother died. I told someone it felt like I’d had abdominal surgery. Turns out that’s exactly what my brain thought too.

And so, remember that when you lose a dog, or if you are still grieving for one you lost in the past, your body thinks you’ve been injured. It needs you to take care of yourself. It needs rest and comfort and flowers and sweet soup and gentle kisses and hugs.

As I write this, I think of my Lassie girl. Her 16th birthday party is planned for a few months from now. She’s doing amazingly well, but good grief, she’s old. Really old. It hurts to think of the future… I think tonight I’d better make some chicken soup and put it in the freezer.

Meanwhile, back at the farm: Lassie played tug with Willie this morning, oblivious as she is to calendars or human concerns about the future or the past. Willie got lots of sheep work this weekend, is a bit gimpy on his left shoulder but lordy we had fun. It’s fall in full force here: leaves turning cranberry, frost on the grass in the morning, lots of wild apples falling from the trees. Here are 2 photos from this morning, while feeding apples to some of the sheep.

Here’s Barbie impatiently waiting for me to drop apples into the feeder:

This isn’t the greatest photo in the world, but I wanted to show Martha chomping on an apple. Sheep LOVE apples, and right now Martha, Barbie and the lambs are all eating grass (from the front yard, best grass on the farm, courtesy of Will who can reliably keep them herded away from the road), a corn/oat mix, high quality alfalfa hay and lots of apples. Yum.

Not going to write much, am a bit tuckered from doing an all day seminar at Happy Tails in Portland and an evening speech at Planet Dog in Portland, Maine. Both events were hosted by great folks and had educated, informed audiences that were a joy to work with. The talk at Planet Dog was on play (appropriate for a company that makes dog toys, hey?) and reminded me how interesting play is to biologists. It’s common in many species, it’s dangerous and injurious and no one really knows what makes it worth all the risks. Especially relevant to our relationship to dogs is our mutual love of “object play,” which is not very common in most species. There are exceptions, (river otters, etc.), but few species are as obsessed as dogs and people are about balls, frisbees, etc.  I’m inspired for my next seminar in July in California–an entire morning on play. What fun.

The seminar was on dog-dog reactivity, both between unfamiliar dogs and dogs within the same household. The demo dogs were great and the audience was truly lovely to work with. I am, however, a bit droopy, and I’m committed to keeping my laptop shut for TWO ENTIRE DAYS (oh my!) and visit a dear friend in New Hampshire.  I’ll be back in the ‘world’ on Wednesday. My sincere thanks to all my hosts and helpers… you were great.

Meanwhile, back at the farm: I MISS MY DOGS! (and Jim, and Sushi, and sheep……)

Here are some photos for you:

Okay, this is a trite shot of boats in a harbor, but it sure looks different than the farm!

Here’s some of the good staff at Planet Dog in their retail store. The place makes me want to retire and do nothing but play with my dogs!

This license plate is thanks to the work of BOTH Planet Dog AND Happy Tails (and others), who worked to get a state license plate whose income goes to shelters and animal care. How cool is that?  Shouldn’t we do this in other states?

“See” you next week….

Trisha