THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

A recent comment motivated this post. It was from a veterinarian who tries her hardest to alert clients to current and potential behavioral problems, and is a tad frustrated on occasion by how few of them seem to take her cautions seriously. I am sure that other vets, dog trainers and behaviorists are all sighing in sympathy as they read this. I sure am. It is such a common problem that I thought it might be worthwhile for us all to have a brain storming session about how to handle it. All of the pro’s reading this blog know what I mean: a 3 month old puppy in puppy class who plays well with others, but growls at you as you approach. Growling at a person at 12 weeks of age? ALARM BELLS! RED FLAGS! DIVE DIVE (the submarine)!!!

So, here’s the question. If you are a pro, how do you handle it when you see signs of impending (or current) problems? If you are not in the business, how would you want someone to tell you that they saw something that concerned them?

Here are some things I have learned that seem to help, but just like everyone else, the more ideas I have the better, so I’d love to hear yours:

1. Make analogies to human behavior. This is where being anthropomorphic can actually help our dogs. I’ll say something like “Right now your adolescent dog is like a teenage son who has drugs hidden under his bed, and is hanging out with guys named Rat Sniffer and the Dude from Hell. He’s a good kid, your son, but he could go either way. He needs you to benevolently intervene so that he ends up living a wonderful life, instead of making license plates in a federal prison.” I’ll adapt the story, depending on the people… making guesses about what will best resonate with them.

2. Don’t exaggerate, and don’t bring it up until you have established a connection. They must believe that you are on their side and that you want nothing but the best for you and your dog. If something happens the instant they walk in the door, keep your mouth shut until you’ve worked with them for awhile, made gooey over their dog (as best you can) and made it clear that you want to be their helper, not someone who judges them or their dog. If you don’t feel as though you are getting through, it is always a good idea to ‘mirror’ their behavior, which means speaking slowly if they speak slowly, leaning forward if they lean forward, crossing your legs if they cross their legs.. etc. Whenever I do it I am sure that someone will notice and think I’m making fun of them, but so far no one ever has. (Until now….. when I meet one of you and you ask me at a break in a seminar what to do about your 7 fighting dogs and I can tell you don’t like my answer. Sigh. Oh well, if you notice, then you’ll know I’m desperately trying to tell you something!)

3. Talk about it from the dog’s point of view. This is hugely important in most cases. It’s how you let people know that you are on their side, but that part of your job is to try to be an advocate for their dog. Again, make analogies and use the good side of anthropomorphism: (”And how would you respond if a strange man walked up to you on the street, grabbed your head and pressed his lips onto yours?”)

4. At the same time, although this might sound contradictory, we also need to be adept at explaining how dogs are different from people. (”Well, your dog probably greets you at the door with head and tail down, licking her lips and groveling because she is using what’s called ‘appeasement’ behavior (give an example from humans), not because she “feels guilty. If you grab her collar and drag her over to the puddle on the carpet she won’t understand why and respond as if she has to defend herself.”

5. Use visuals: Have posters (like the ones from Dream Dog Productions) on your office walls that show visual signals of stress or social discomfort in dogs. Have “before and after” photos of fearful puppies hiding from visitors at 3 months, and and “after” version showing their teeth at two years.

This is a short list, and if I had more time I’d add more to it, but it’s a conversation starter… I’d love to hear your ideas.

Meanwhile, back at the farm: Finally, as of this morning, all sheep butts are red! Yeah, Redford did his job. Took 2 weeks for all of them to come in. That’s longer than I’d like (it’s nice when lambing comes to have the lambs come closer together when you have a flock as small as mine), but at least I know when everyone if due and when they are bred. (They are all due now in late March and early April. You’ll be the first to see lamb photos.)

Here was Will last week, helping me keep the flock safely away from the road.

Well, I guess I could’ve picked a more subtle title, but it does sum up my topic and attached video pretty nicely. If you are interested in behavior, and doing good ethological style observations, here’s a video for you. I had just introduced Redford the Ram (so called because he is handsome and talented but shorter than expected, like Robert Redford) to the ewe flock.

Before I go any further, don’t worry about his bright red chest, he’s not bleeding. It may look like a slasher movie, but the red stuff on his chest is “breeding paint.” You mix a powder with vegetable oil (I passed on my expensive Olive Oil and used the more moderate Canola oil, but don’t tell him) and smear it on the ram’s chest so that you’ll know who gets bred and when. Any ewe with a red butt has been bred. It’s sort of fun… every morning Willie and I run out to the barn and look for a new red butt…. (5 so far!). In this video, some of the paint has been smeared on the ewes, but he hasn’t bred anyone when it starts. We put them together, herded them into a small pen, smeared his chest and then let him out, so this is his first time back with his ewes since early summer.

The video shows him investigating the ewes to determine who is cycling, including doing “Flehmen,” a behavior in which the male sniffs around a ewe, often smelling her urine, and then raises his head and upper lip. (Lots of male hoofed animals do it, horses included) This posture apparently allows them to more easily pass the large molecules associated with oestrous into their Vomeronasal organ, a sensory device housed in the upper palate.

Redford does find a ewe in heat, and then illustrates his version of courtship behavior, which I’d categorize as something akin to “Nerdy guy performs appallingly lame foreplay.” Most rams do what’s called a “fore leg stab” in which they raise one front leg and push it into the belly of the ewe. If she stands still and doesn’t move forward, she’s ready and it’s worth using the energy to try to mount her. Redford replaces a fore leg stab with a chest pump that seems designed to put off any but the most desperate of females.

But you can see it works. What I find most interesting about the video is the behavior of the ewe in question, Lady Godiva. (She’s all brown, black face, chocolate colored… watch for her early on trying to get his attention). When I watched the video the second time, I paid more attention to her and realized how active she was in the process. She is no shrinking violet. As a matter of fact it looks like she had to work to get Redford’s attention at one point. Notice how she urinates in a place that he can’t miss, and how often she ‘wags’ her tail (and is the only female doing that–the only other time you see sheep ‘wagging’ their tail is when they are nursing, unless they are slapping off flies.)

And yes, that huge white sack hanging at the back of his belly is exactly what you think it is. No wonder Lady Godiva stood still.

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4 pm: Well, the plan was to do some research on muzzle punches (and pokes, and jabs), tooth clacking and air snaps, and then write another post about them . . . but then, the sun came out after days and days of cold, windy rain. Right now it’s gorgeous and breezy and 4 o’clock and if I don’t go out now and work sheep and walk the dogs it’ll be dark before I know it. I just can’t stop myself, it’ll be cold and dark most of the day soon enough.

4:50 pm: I just got back from outside, Will and I had a ball. My ewe flock was a riot to work; one of them was on a tear (Truffles). For reasons unknown to me, she ran around bashing into other ewes as if out of a National Geographic Special on fighting mountain goats in rutting season. That sent the entire flock tearing around the pasture like deer, and Willie and I had a ball trying to keep up with them. (Is this about the ewes going into heat? The ram comes back home on November 3rd, and this time of year the ewes are definitely cycling. I can hardly wait for Redford to return, because I love watching the ewes interact with a new ram (they practically simper). Could Truffles be feeling a bit, uh, tropical and thus combative re who’s who in the ovine hierarchy?

I suspect this question will never be answered, but here’s a question you can a help me with. We’ve been tweaking the website, adding tabs to each product description to clarify things (see Family Friendly Dog Training for example) but we’re also going to change the home page. I’d be truly grateful if any of you could take a minute to look at the home page as it is now and tell us what you like, what you think would be more helpful. Right now, there are things I like about the page, and things I don’t, but I’m not saying til you do!

Just for fun, here are a few photos that I took this morning, trying to get a photo of Will and the Wubba Toy. Not easy to toss a toy in one hand and photograph it and Willie in the other! (Did I mention how fun it is to have the testing of dog toys as part of one’s job?!)

Well, I can’t tell you that last night went smoothly, but my Willie boy tried his best and ended up learning a lot about working sheep last night. (We went to a good friends, Peg, who has a lot more sheep and a lot more land than I do and is extremely generous with her time.) First, Will and I drove a flock of about 35 sheep into a pen at the end of a long field, and then turned and walked 40 yards in the other direction, where Peg had brought out a group of 5 or 6 ewes about 250 yards away. I waited until I was sure Willie had seen them, and then sent him “Come Bye” (clockwise). He began correctly, but then stopped part way there and looked back at the flock he had just worked (who were behind him and me both). I said Come Bye again, and he started right but again slowed and looked back. Eventually  he ended up driving directly toward the flock he was supposed to run to the back of, and actually drove them away from me at one point. I whistled stop, lie down, come bye, etc etc, all to no avail. It was abundantly clear to me that he was completely confused, so I stopped trying to signal him and went to help him.

As I started to walk toward him he got around the sheep and brought them toward me, or more accurately, he ran behind the sheep who were now charging in my direction toward the larger flock behind me. The group he was trying to work ended up smack dab against the pen’s fence, with a few thin boards separating the small and the larger flocks. That was Willie’s next challenge–pulling the small flock away from the large one, and he just couldn’t manage it. He needed to force himself between the fence (and most relevant, the larger flock) and push the small flock away, and he just couldn’t do it. He kept looking at the sheep inside the fence, and as an excessively strong-eyed dog, he simply couldn’t detach himself from wanting to work them too. I suspect it was partly a confidence issue, Willie being a dog full of fears, but the draw of the other sheep was clearly a huge factor as well. I went over and helped and we got it done, but when we tried it again he still had trouble. We’ve worked a bit at this at home, but what we’ve done is new enough that it didn’t transfer to a new context.

Peg and I switched directions to make it easier for Will, but now the sheep were on the upside of a pasture with two hills and big dip in the middle. Will lost sight of the sheep halfway through his outrun and began to run flat (toward the sheep rather than around). He tried to fix it when he got the sheep back in sight, but by then he was too close, and struggled to get control of them once he got around them. He brought them to me eventually, but it wasn’t very pretty. I was sure he had just never been in this situation, (losing sight of the sheep on such a long outrun) so I sent him one more time, and damn if he didn’t run a perfect outrun, take control of the sheep much more effectively (not perfectly, but not bad either) and bring them spot-on to me at a perfect pace. Whew. Good boy, good boy.

Of course, by now he and the sheep were a bit tired (Will over heats pathetically fast, so between runs 2 and 3 he had taken a rest in the shade, drunk water and had water poured on his paws), so that partially explains the quiet pace, but nonetheless, it was a good place to end and I was pleased he had clearly learned from experience. We’ll try again next week if we can fit it in before we go to Africa, but meanwhile I’ll work on the issue of shedding the sheep off of a fence with a flock right behind at home.

Meanwhile, back at the farm: Besides walks with dogs and working with sheep (and scrubbing water tanks and grinding nails… all the boring stuff we all do to maintain life), lots of time at home is being spent of preparation for Africa. Oh my, hard to believe that in 2 weeks I’ll be with a pack of animal lovers watching hippos in an underwater viewing area in Tsavo National Park.  I won’t be able to send posts from there, so I’m going to write articles before I go, to be posted throughout the time I’m gone. Who knows, maybe I will have internet access in some places.. that would be great fun to write you all from there!

Closer to home, here’s Will and flowers, two of my favorite things:

I took Will to a friend’s to work him on different sheep in a new environment. I’m getting to the point where he and I don’t have too much more we can do at home. My small flock is so tame that Will has to be within a few feet of them to move them, unless I split out a few and force them away from the main flock. Then they are flightier (and more challenging), and I’ll do that more and more, but don’t like to stress the ewes and lambs too much when the lambs are young. Either way, it’s still the same sheep in the same place, and Will needs to learn how to work lots of different types of sheep in different places. (So do I!) We are used to working in first gear, when most sheep work in done in 4th.

I wish I could show you a video of how he did. We were at a gorgeous farm where Will has never worked, and three things happened that made me so happy I could have carried him home myself, all thirty miles.

1) I sent him on a long outrun, two to three times as far as he’s ever gone (perhaps 250 yards? I’m guessing). He did a perfect outrun, and I don’t have the words for what it feels like to watch your dog get smaller and smaller as he runs away from you, curving out at just the right time to go around the flock and not disturb them until he gets to the back. As I think about it, I should  NOT qualify it as a “perfect” outrun, because no one was holding the sheep in place, and they were moving long before he got there and were close to the edge of the field. So, was his ‘lift’ perfect? (That’s when the dog gets around to ‘twelve o’clock’ and first makes contact with the sheep.) I can’t say, because the sheep were moving long before he got there (not because he was too close), he got them stopped once he got around them, he turned on balance and brought them straight to me. We’ve never worked on such a huge field and it makes my heart full to work in a place that open and free.

2) He’s got his flanking whistles down. Down pat. What’a boy, I’m so pleased. Here’s a synopsis of the process:

a) We work on his flank whistles for 2+ weeks, looks like he has them nailed.

b) Week three everything falls apart, I realize that once I thought he “had” them I tested him by asking him to change directions a lot. I begin to suspect he thought that both whistles meant “change direction.”

c) For 2 sessions, I go back to the first steps, having him run around and around, clockwise or counter clockwise as I repeat his whistle over and over, using the movement of the sheep and visual signals to keep Willie moving. I tested him a few times in a different context, and it seemed he wasn’t making any progress on which whistle meant what.

d) The next time we worked I send him on an outrun and he runs around to twelve o’clock and keeps going. And going and going. He runs an entire 360 degrees around the sheep, ignoring my signals to stop. It takes me a second outrun to realize he had interpreted Step C not as whistle training, but as training to run in mindless circles around the sheep.

e) After realizing this, I sat down and laugh out loud in the wet grass and asked Willie for a kiss. Willie obliged, then peed on a bush, then looked for sheep poop to eat.

f) I stop using his flank whistles for a few days (used verbal), then gradually added them in on occasion, no longer having ‘flank whistle training sessions,’ just using them when I know he wants to go that way anyway. Gradually I start asking for them when he’d prefer the other direction, and with very few corrections (a verbal no), Willie starts getting them right.

g) I take him to Peg’s (where Redford is) and he gets his flank whistles about 19/20 times.

h) Willie not only took his flank whistles every single time at our last outing, he listen beautifully, even at 200 yards. Bless him.

3) Willie came to me as a puppy pathologically afraid of other dogs but was great in the field with a guard Pyrenees (more on Willie and other dogs in other posts, and probably and eventually a book.) We’ve worked on it for three years, and he’s been improving leaps and bounds. My friend’s sheep were guarded by a working Great Pyrenees, described as a “big galoof” who loves all dogs, but still, I was thrilled that Will and he had two perfectly reasonable greeting encounters. At one point Will would have run away in terror, at another he would’ve attacked. This time Will briefly greeted him before going to work the sheep, and then left my side the instant I said “that’ll do” after working sheep and ran to sniff the other dog some more. I won’t say there wasn’t a bit of tension there, but nothing serious and easy to manage. Just being able to have Will around unfamiliar dogs is a joy, especially a big, guarding male.  More to come on that score, as I said, but back to herding for a moment:

Mind you, Wilie and I couldn’t score well in a trial now if our life depended on it. He behaves completely differently if anyone, anyone at all is watching (I know, I know, is it me, or is it Willie?) and he is easily intimidated by sheep. He’ll lose contact with them, take the pressure off when he shouldn’t, get rattled if there’s any stress and if he is confused, but lordy he’s trying incredibly hard and I love him to pieces. And me? Oh dear. I have no ability at the moment to work fast moving sheep… I simply can’t make decisions fast enough to get flighty sheep to stay on a perfect straight line on a drive, but then, I’m trying hard, too. Willie seems to forgive me for it, or at least, he can’t talk and tell me what he thinks…

Lassie terrifies Trisha: Yesterday morning I woke up mildly surprised. In five minutes I was in terror. It was 6:15, and Lassie always, always ALWAYS wakes me up between 5 am (sigh) and 5:45 because she has to go outside to pee. In general, I haven’t set an alarm since we stopped taping Calling All Pets over a year ago (when I had to get up at 4:30 on Wednesdays). But now, it’s 6:15 and Lassie is sound asleep. No worries, I pad over to her doggy bed and gently touch her shoulder. “Lassie,” I say quietly, because she often startles when awoken because her hearing is so bad. Nothing. Lassie is soft and warm, but immobile.  “Lassie” I say, and press with my hand a little harder, shaking her shoulder back and forth. Nothing, and no sign of her chest rising and falling either. This time I push forcefully into her, saying LASSIE now with real fear in my voice. I’m so loud and clearly scared that Jim peeks over the bed, worried himself. Nothing. Not a twitch.

It’s amazing the thoughts that run through your head when you’re in crisis. I remember, very clearly, thinking that “she must have died recently, because she’s still warm and there’s no rigor mortis” and “how sweet that she died in her sleep and presumably didn’t suffer.” These were cognitive thoughts, generated by my cortex, when my amygdala and hippocampus was screaming OH MY GOD LASSIE IS DEAD. I remember the thoughts and the emotions of terror and panic as being parallel, but completely separate from one another.

The panicked part of me shook Lassie one more time, this time shaking her hard and yelling her name with pure terror in my voice, and as I did she slowly raised her head and licked my face. I burst into tears and sobbed like a child, kissing her muzzle and saying her name over and over again. This morning she woke us up around 5:30, and at first I thought, “Oh Lassie, just a few more minutes!” and then…. was overwhelmed with gratitude that she’s there to wake us up at all.

Meanwhile, back at the farm, during the sweetest spring weekend you can imagine. Here is a picture of the yard that Jim took yesterday:

In this next picture, I love the different postures of Will and Sushi: Will is chewing on his Sunday bone, Sushi is practicing her “lion on the hunt” look.

And here’s why Sushi is now stuck inside for the next few days: This baby robin flew/fell out of the nest on top of the porch light this morning, along with two others. There are also Chipping Sparrows in the bush by the living room window, wrens nesting in the exhaust vent from the bathroom (which no longer works, although for years when you turned on the bathroom fan you’d  hear cheep cheep cheep cheep… now it doesen’t work at all and I’ve just given it away to the wrens), a PeeWee nesting on top of a down spout by the porch and barn swallows nesting in the garage. [added note 6/10: an alert reader suggested it was not a PeeWee and she was absolutely correct! I watched carefully the next day and saw the typical tail flick of the Phoebee and heard their typical song. A PeeWee is nesting close by because I hear it often, but not on the house.} That’s four nests attached to the house…. and all with babies about to fledge. Sorry, Sushi!

I wondered if you have seen this — an automatic ‘dog washing machine,’ in which you put your dog into a metal box, streams of water and soap engulf him or her, then presumably the dog is dried with blasts of hot air.  Here’s a link to the Dog-O-Matic (sent to me by an alert UW student). I’m relieved to say it’s only in France so far, but honestly, keep your eyes peeled for it to show up in your area (and be ready to stop it!). Poor poor dogs!

Speaking of animal welfare, thanks to everyone who wrote interesting and informed comments about my last blog, basically a rant on the problems associated with horse racing. If you are interested in the topic you might want to read the comments, there are some very good ones. Thanks to everyone who wrote in, and keep up the conversation.

Meanwhile, back at the farm, I promised I’d tell you what happened to Redford the Ram (and Willie). It was one of the accidents that come out of nowhere, in which everything is going according to plan, and then, surprise!  Redford had been split off from the flock, along with a neutered five month-old ram lamb to keep  him company. I needed to ensure that my ewes didn’t get bred early and deliver lambs in the depth of winter (like last year) so Redford and friend were moved out of the main flock, and into the orchard pasture up the hill from the house. We call it the orchard pasture because of the wild apple trees that used to punctuate the grass in spring with a flurry of white blossoms, and it is my favorite place on the entire farm. The sheep seem to like it too (that’s where the photo from the last blog was taken.)

I went up to practice Willie’s flanking whistles on Redford and lamb, knowing that they’d be a bit more flighty than the main flock because they were split off from them. The main flock is slow and pokey, so a bit more speed is good practice for me and Will.  But, Redford and friend weren’t a ‘bit more flighty.’  They were an ovine version of hysterical.  I sent Will to take them out of a corner, something we’d all done–sheep, dog and human–a gazillion times. However, rather than moving away from Willie and out of the corner, as usual, the ram lamb panicked when Will was a good 40 yards away, and turned and smashed his head into the fence to try to get out. Oh my… I love my sheep and hate seeing them frightened or hurt, so I immediately said “LIE DOWN”  to Will, and bless  him, he did. The lamb settled down and moved away from the fence a few feet, so presuming we were back to relative normal, I flanked Will and asked him to go around the sheep to move them out of the corner.

My mistake, because apparently the sheep weren’t as settled as I had thought.  Redford turned and, true to his name, rammed full speed into Willie, who stood up for himself without biting, bless him. It gets blurry from there… imagine two white shapes and a smaller black and white one, moving left, right, up and down at high speed for a few seconds. Somewhere in there, Redford took a tumble, and ended up with a bruised shoulder. He limped quite badly a few hours later, and I fussed all night worrying about him. I’m quite fond of him, and he’s valuable besides, so it felt important that he recover.

Good news, after two days Redford is as good as new. He’s going to some dear friends on Saturday morning, to live with their ram for the summer, and then we’ll both use him for breeding. I’ll let you know how the transfer and ram introduction goes. Unfamiliar rams can be very aggressive to each other.. think National Geographic and Mountain Goats.. and in some cases can even kill each other. Peg and I have no intention of that happening, I’ll tell you more about what we’ll do to prevent that in a subsequent blog. Meanwhile, here is one of Redford’s daughters, a lovely little ewe lamb from the good ewe Martha 2.0 (her face is behind the lamb). Martha is my oldest ewe and is beginning to breath in a labored fashion, so I’m waiting for a visit from the vet for her. She was born by emergency Caesarian section when her mother, the original Martha, died in delivery. Thus the name, Martha 2.0. Cross your hooves that it’s nothing serious…

zxx

Please don’t run Rachel Alexandra in the Belmont. If you don’t follow horse racing, that request if meaningless. If you do, you know that the Belmont is the third race in the Triple Crown, the be-all and-end of American Thoroughbred horse racing. You also know that “fillies” rarely win horse races (could we call her a mare, please?) and that Rachel’s win yesterday in the 2nd leg of the Triple Crown was historic.

What you may or may not know is the depth of controversies that currently runs rampant (pun intended) in the world of horse racing about the welfare of the horses involved. My knowledge of the arguments for and against horse racing have recently been enriched by the term papers written in the class I teach at UW- Madison.  Each student has to write two papers about the biological and philosophical aspects of a current controversy regarding our relationships with animals. (Which would you have chosen?  Pick from: 1)Horse Racing, 2) De-Listing or Not De-Listing  Wolves from the Endangered Species Act, 3) Gestation and Farrowing Crates for Hogs, 4) Wind Turbines (”green energy” which some say kills large numbers of bats and hawks) and 5) Purpose-Bred Injurious Mutations in Rodents in Bio-medical research)???

One of the many great things about the class is that I get to learn so much. One of the unfortunate things about the class is that I get to learn so much. Two years ago one of the topics was a comparison of farm-raised versus wild-caught shrimp. Now I don’t eat either kind, after learning about the ecological devastation of both methods. And I did love shrimp, truly I did.

I loved horse racing too. While other little girls had dolls, I painstakingly cut out tiny pieces of leather to create bridles and saddles for the plastic horses that sat on my dresser. I drew horses in my sleep, and sobbed for hours when Tim Tam broke a sesamoid bone and lost the Triple Crown. And so I couldn’t resist watching the Preakness. Sexist colors flying, I cheered so passionately for Rachel to win the race that Jim and Willie ran into the house, frowns of worry on their faces, to see what was wrong.

I cheered for Rachel knowing that thousands of horses who don’t make the grade are sent to unregulated slaughter houses in Mexico. That the use of steroids and bizarre cocktails of drugs have been used for decades to mask injuries or pump up muscle where muscle shouldn’t be. (The big tracks have finally banned steroid the use of steroids.) Perhaps worst of all, the driving force behind racing is no longer breeding and training horses that win a lot of money. Rather, the money is in the stud fees (at $25,000 to $200,000 a pop, a mature stallion can ‘cover’ at least a mare a day .. you do the math). So if you want to make a lot of money in horse racing, you breed horses who have muscles like weight-lifters and legs as light and thin as a glass icicle. That makes them really, really fast, and some argue, really, really fragile. Decades ago owners wanted sound horses who could win a lot of races, who brought in a lot of money from the purses. Now the focus is on winning a couple of big races, pulling their valuable merchandise off the track, letting boys be boys and collecting their money.

Is the focus on too much muscle the reason that the brilliant mare, Eight Belles, died last year, in front of god and gazillion people, when her forelegs exploded after the Kentucky Derby?  Is that why more and more “fillies” are leaving the gate as large and muscled up as the boys? No one knows, but there are plenty of people in the industry who are just as concerned as animal rights activists are about the welfare of race horses. (My student’s papers advocated banning horse racing completely by a two to one margin. Industry take note.)

So, please don’t run Rachel in three weeks. She ran a huge race three weeks ago in the Kentucky Oaks (she won by 20 lengths). She ran a huge race yesterday on a sloppy, difficult track (her own jockey said she was struggling). Three big races only three weeks apart each is too much for any horse. People are calling Rachel Alexandra one of the greatest horses of the year. Of the decade. I don’t care how she is rated years from now. I just couldn’t stand to watch her legs explode.

If she runs, I don’t think I’ll watch.

Meanwhile, back at the farm: In some ways, spring holds the same mix of emotions for me as horse racing. I love it and dread it. It’s gorgeous here dear readers, breathtakingly gorgeous. The lilac bush is in full bloom, the emerald green grass looks lit from within and the warblers flit like crazed jewels in the tiny, new leaves unfurling above our heads. And the high pasture needs fertiziling by hand, the flower beds are rife with weeds, the brush pile needs burning, the flock needs worming, the water tanks need cleaning out…. etc.  I won’t bore you. Spring is an astoundingly busy time on a farm, even a little one like mine. I’m behind at work, I’m behind on campus and I’m behind in just about anything else you can imagine.

Oh. I guess I’d better get to work then, hey?  I’ll tell you next time about Willie and Redford and the January lamb. We had a bit of an adventure earlier. Willie is okay, the lamb is okay, the fence is okay, but Redford has a bad bruise on his head and a cut on his shoulder. I’m hoping it’s minor, but he’s lying down now and he’s not chewing his cud. Cross your paws. More soon.

Here’s Redford on the left under the tree, relaxing after a hard morning eating grass…

A comment from a reader inspired this post, about “alternative” medicine for dogs (see the comments for April 15th). In her comment, she expressed great disappointment that I bought into “…wackadoo absolutely scientifically unsupported claptrap.” This is not the first time I’ve been told that my interest in Chinese medicine, acupuncture, chiropracty and natural foods is a kind of a betrayal to my scientific background. And yet, it is exactly my background in science and research that causes me to make the choices that I do for my own health and for that of my dogs.

One of the things that one learns when getting a Ph.D. is that “science” is a fluid creature, moving this way and that, depending on the state of our knowledge (and the culture) at the time. You also learn that there is a profound amount that we don’t know, that many of the things that we think we do know turn out to be wrong a few years down the road. In addition, it becomes stunningly clear that, at any given time, science may acknowledge a particular observation or result, but not understand the mechanism to explain it. It was my experience in graduate school that helped me see the difference between result and  mechanism: not understanding why or how something works is not a good reason to argue that it doesn’t work. That said, I have tremendous respect for Western medicine, and there is absolutely nowhere in the world I would rather be if I was in a serious car accident, or had a dog who needed surgery. I have a James Herriot kind of regular veterinarian, perhaps one of the kindest and most wonderful vets you can imagine. He has never once rolled his eyes when I talked about the “alternative” medicine I was planning to add to my dog’s health care, and has joined with me in changing our practices as we learn more through the years. (He feeds his dog a lot of table scraps now, after researching and thinking about my contention that it couldn’t be good for otherwise healthy dogs to eat nothing but the same processed food, day after day.)

I also am of the firm belief that there are many products out on the market that are of no use in human or canine health, and that we all need to be very careful about not jumping on this or that band wagon of the supplement/medicine/food-du-jour. (That is true of all fields, including western medicine, I would humbly suggest.)

That said, here’s the health care I use regularly: Besides my regular vet (John Dally of Spring Green Animal Hospital), my “sports medicine” vet is Dr. David Ettinger of Veterinary Specialty & Emergency Care in Madison. He and I are in conversation about Willie’s shoulder… final decisions about surgery awaiting more time to see if Willie will respond to Chinese medicine by summertime. I have spent many a day at the University of Wisconsin Vet Clinic, seeing specialists too numerous to name for various and sundry medical crisis. Once a month, Lassie and Willie go to a chiropractor board certified in animal chiropracty, Dr. Mark McCann through Middleton Veterinary Hospital. The difference it makes, especially with old Lassie, is obvious and observable as she walks out of the clinic. (Many years ago a chiropractor saved me after five months of abject misery due to a serious whip lash accident. I had been to three physicians, including a neurologist who said that if I didn’t have 3 cervical vertebrae fused I would lose the use of my right arm. I wanted to avoid surgery and a permanent disability, and was referred by a friend to a chiropractor. After one treatment I was 85% improved and got the first relief I had had in months. I have a lot of back trouble, and can’t imagine living without a good chiropractor. Of course, a bad one can cause all kinds of trouble, and I’ve been to a few, but that’s no different than any other doctor. As a pharmacist told me once “If it has the power to do good, it probably has the power to do harm.”)

My dogs also see Dr. Jody Bearman through AnShen Vet once month. Dr. Bearman is a DVM who has spent years studying Chinese medicine. Chinese medicine is indeed based on a completely different paradigm than western medicine, and I won’t pretend that when I was first listening to chinese doctors talk about it my eyes weren’t spinning around like a cartoon character’s. I’m actually not sure that I buy the ‘energy flow’ explanations for why certain types of acupuncture work, neither do I have a certainty that certain forms of protein are better for some dogs than others. However, there is a growing body of solid (’western’) science showing that acupuncture is indeed effective for relieving certain conditions, just as there is overwhelming evidence that chiropractic medicine is significantly more effective than “traditional medicine” at curing certain problems (back pain for one.)

I read one study not too long ago (sorry, don’t remember where… Sci Am Mind?) that compared 1) acupuncture needles placed in areas as prescribed by chinese medicine practioners, 2) acupuncture needles placed randomly around the body, and 3) sham acupuncture with no needles actually penetrating the skin. In this study, needles placed anywhere into the body were successful at alleviating pain, while the sham treatment was not. The western medicine explanation is that the needles stimulated the body to produce hormones that act to inhibit the sensation of pain, not that Chi or energy flow was being released, as explained by chinese medicine. (That relates to what I said earlier that often we don’t understand the mechanism until many years after we discover the action of a substance or a procedure.) I am not convinced that anyone knows the exact mechanism of why acupuncture is so successful, but there is no question in my mind that it is a legitimate medical therapy.

The fact is, what used to be considered “alternative” medicine is now called “complementary” medicine by most progressive physicians, hospitals and research institutions. The UW Vet clinic here does acupuncture. Here at UW and at Harvard there are centers for the study of “Integrative Medicine,” as it is becoming increasingly clear that health is more than a collection of happy cells and nerve fibers. I took “Mindfulness Meditation” through the UW Hospitals and Clinics, one of the many places that is doing research showing that meditation increases immune function, decreases pain and increases focus and overall reports of “positive affect” (the rest of us just call that being ‘happy!’).

Right now, Lassie and Will receive acupuncture, chinese herbal medicine and I take Dr. Bearman’s advice about what protein to use for the both. I truly don’t know if feeding them both duck, fish, beef and eggs, and avoiding chicken and lamb, really does help them, but because they are getting a good, varied diet, I can’t imagine it hurting. I can tell you that Lassie is not just 15.5 years old, she is spunky and playful and doing astounding well, even after being diagnosed almost two years ago with “Stage 2 Kidney Failure.”  Do I know that the chinese medicine helps?  No, not directly, but I tried to cut back on some of her meds awhile ago, giving her fewer of her “Body Sore” pills that are supposed to alleviate arthritis. A few days later her forelegs began to take on the salmon-colored glow of fur that’s been licked a lot….so she’s back on her usual dose. I should add that she also takes a 1/2 tab of Tramadol that also makes a big difference in her pain level, as well as a Omega-3 tablet and a homeopathic medicine I’ll talk about in another post.

One last thing about these two practices, chiropracty and chinese medicine. What is important to me is that I see real experts in those fields, not people who have degrees in other practices and have learned to dabble in another one. My dog’s chiropractor is not just a degreed doctor of chiropractic medicine, he is board certified to work on my dogs. My chinese medicine vet is a DVM veterinarian, and has extensive training in both perspectives. The biggest harm that I have seen is from people who don’t take the complimentary medicine seriously, take a weekend clinic on it, and then add it to their practice without enough training or experiene. Again, if something has the power to do good, it probably has the power to do harm.

One more comment, about a response to my post that I add Probiotics to Willie’s meals. Just to be clear for those of you who aren’t familiar with them, Probiotics have long been accepted by physicians, nutritionists, etc etc. as an important addition to the diet of individuals who are “digestively challenged,” as Willie was when he was a young pup. (If giving Willie sheep manure that I had to pre-digest myself would’ve stopped his projectile diarrhea I would have done it. There is just so much cleaning of poop off of walls, floors, crates, carpets and one’s own jeans if you happened to be standing at the wrong place at the wrong time that a girl can take. Seriously.) Several nutritionists argue that everyone should be taking prio-biotics (which replace the natural, healthy bacteria in our guts that facilitate the absorption of nutrients), because so many of our foods are nutrition poor. In Willie’s case, the addition of Pro-biotics was essential for the first year of his life. I’ve found I can skip them for a night or two now that he’s older, but if I add anything out of his usual menu he needs the Pro-biotics to keep his stool healthy.

If I haven’t lost you already in the land of “claptrap,” it gets worse. If you really want to hear how Dr. McConnell has gone “wackadoo” (I am becoming quite fond of that word), follow along for another post soon to come, about my reliance on Arnica, Traumeel and Zeel, homeopathic medicines which, to my mind, shouldn’t work at all, based on their proponents description of how they work. Except they do. Go figure.

Meanwhile, back at the farm. The main flock is now out on grass, sparse though it may be, and they are loving it. We had a few interesting moments when Barbie, my most protectively aggressive ewe, chased Willie a good fifty feet across the front yard, but things are settling down. Here’s they are on their first day up the hill with their young lambs:

Here they are waiting for their grain in the evening by the barn. They love to sleep outside, but close to the barn. I am still nervous about the coyotes, but so far, so good.

And here’s another spring ephemeral, Bloodroot, as it is closing up for the night. It’s called Bloodroot because the sap is a reddish orange. It’s a gorgeous early flower, and it is spreading up the hill behind the house. Makes me so happy…

Ahhh spring.  Finally the weather is mild enough to let the dogs lie outside and chew on bones. I just love watching my dogs chew on real, fresh bones. Of course, I would never give my dogs cooked bones (I know most of you know already that cooked bones are brittle and tend to splinter. Don’t ever give them to your dog.), but I love giving them the kind of fresh, raw bones that are safe–the large joint bones or large long bones from beef are my preference.

The first time I watched dogs chew on real bones I was astounded. Okay, that sounds pretty strong, but I had not anticipated how much exercise and skill it takes to chew on a bone.  All of the parts of a dog’s mouth, including the jaw muscles and different types of teeth are engaged in tearing, pulling, grinding and chewing. It was an epiphany watching them work out over a bone… “Oh! That’s what all those different kinds of teeth are for!” Chewing on large bones not only provides exercise, it must be so wonderful for dogs to be able to do it. Talk about doing things that you are good at and that you enjoy! Bones satisfy both of those criteria for dogs, and it is a joy for me to watch them do it. I spent a couple of minutes yesterday watching Lassie go to it.. I suspect she was in the state of flow that Csikszentmihalyi talks about as a route to true happiness. (I was taught to pronounce it “chick sent me high”!.. and I’m missing some accent marks, don’t know how to add them in the blog!)

I realize that there are lots of strong feelings about feeding bones, not feeding bones, canine nutrition, etc. It’s interesting how much things have changed since I got my first Border Collie, who was fed Purina Dog chow from the supermarket and lived 15.5 years.  Now my dogs get lots of fresh real food, high quality canned food, organic vegetables. Sometimes I have to stop myself from feeling guilty that I’m not feeding them well enough, and these are dogs who get custom made dinners every night (along with meat and vegetables, Lassie gets Steel-cut organic oats, Willie gets a sardine added to every dinner, etc). How to feed a dog is certainly is a hot topic: sometimes discussions about food get as heated as ones about politics. I try to avoid arguments about food, and keep my perspective relatively simple: I feed varied, high quality food, giving each dog the protein source I think is best for them.  It’s not all raw and it’s not all cooked. I’ll write more about feeding dogs if you are all interested, but for now…

here’s Lassie flowing in bone bliss:

And here are some photos new lambs: I got to watch Rosebud give birth last night (I have photos but they are pretty graphic, not sure that squeamish viewers would want to see!).

Here she’s licking off her first lamb, about 2 minutes after its birth. She swallows the sac, which provides nutrition, helps to dry off the lamb and prevent hypothermia and stimulate the lamb to get up and look for milk.

This next photo shows her licking off her second lamb, born about 2 minutes before the photo was taken. The first lamb was born about 10 minutes before, and is making her first attempt to stand.  I’m happy to say that all are doing well, last I checked–full, fat bellies and warm, toasty mouths, all signs of happy, healthy lambs.

As you probably know, we don’t offer a lot of books by other authors on our website, but we’ve just put up Dr. Nancy Kay’s book, Speaking for Spot: Be the Advocate Your Dog Needs to Live a Happy, Healthy, Longer Life. There’s just so much good about this book, and it is such an important resource for those of us who consider our dogs to be family. I love Nancy’s thoughtful and compassionate voice, and couldn’t agree more with her encouragement to all of us to be active advocates for our pets’ veterinary care.  I will admit that there are times I’ve longed for the “good old days” when medical decisions were simpler–it seems most of my dogs develop complicated, confusing ailments that elicit completely different recommendations from vets, and create tremendous angst when it comes time to decide what to do. However, in the long run it is so much better to work with health care professionals who acknowledge that this is OUR animal, that medicine is both a science and an art, and that we all need to be involved as equals in health care decisions.

Nancy sounds exactly like the kind of vet I’d like to have (and do, lucky me!). I especially love her chapters on important questions to ask your vet, cancer (an entire chapter on cancer, yeah! It is such a complicated and loaded issue), when and how to say goodbye, and her section on vaccines.  Vaccines are so controversial, and you may not agree with everything she says, but I love her careful and balanced approach (vaccines save lives, pure and simple; vaccines can be overused and cause terrible problems, including death).  Certainly an entire book could be written on vaccines and more detail could have been provided (Lepto once a year not enough? How often if a dog lives around livestock and wild animals?), but in general she provides a good introduction to the pro’s and con’s of vaccinations.

Personally, l would love to have seen more on alternative medicine and nutrition, but that’s just me, and besides, any single book can’t address every issue. I think the book is essential for everyone who owns a dog, and will re-read her chapter on important questions to ask your vet before my next discussion about Willie’s shoulder or Lassie kidney disease.

One additional note from me about making the most of a vet visit: I’ve found that no matter how ready I am with a written list of questions, I’ll think of more questions as I drive away from the clinic.  That’s because it takes a while to process the new information I got during the visit–questions I couldn’t have anticipated until the first discussion took place. So I always set up a time for a ‘follow up’ set of questions by asking “Can I call you tomorrow when I have had time to digest what we’ve talked about, or would you like me to come back in for an office visit?” (Okay, me and my vets prefer the phone call, but I’m trying to be respectful here. Not long ago I had 2 half-hour long phone conversations with Dr. David Ettinger, Willie’s sport medicine vet, and was so grateful for the time and patience he took discussing Willie’s shoulder that I insisted on sending in payment for an office visit. There are only so many half-hours in a day after all, and how nice for me to not have to drive all the way into Madison. It was well worth it, and surely it’s important to reinforce our vets for being so dedicated, yes?)

Speaking of reinforcement, I’ll reinforce Dr. Kay if and when I see her at a conference–she deserves it for a useful and compassionate book. (Who could not love a vet who says: Thou shalt push thy veterinarian off her pedestal! Page 66: Speaking for Spot!

Meanwhile, back at the farm: Jim spent most of  Saturday morning building lambing pens in the barn. We had 6 ewes all due Sat and Sunday, and since Barbie likes to steal the lambs of others and Snickers and Truffles don’t gently push the lambs of others way–they back up and attempt to kill them with ramming moves suitable for a Nat’l Geographic special–we wanted to separate out the ewes as much as possible.  Well, animals just don’t read the books, do they?  Saturday afternoon: nothing.  Saturday evening: nothing. Late Saturday night: nothing. Sunday morning (for sure there’d be lambs! Dororthy and Barbie are already several days late): Nothing. Etc. etc. Nothing nothing nothing. And of course, we stayed home all Saturday and Sunday just waiting for little bleating, soggy sacks of life-affirming spring time. Nothing. Darn (though it did give me time to bake baguettes and make a rhubarb, blueberry and raspberry pie from local fruit I stashed in the freezer last summer!)

Finally, this morning (Monday) old Martha delivered 2 healthy ewe lambs. Yeah Martha. Martha is very old and lost 1/2 of her udder to mastitis 2 years ago, but I couldn’t bear to say good bye, so our good friend Donna came out and took home one of the lambs so that Martha only had to raise one. Donna raised dairy goats for years, and has some young kids and plenty of goat milk. That little lamb will do well, and Martha will only have one lamb to nurse, which given her age and udder is perfect. The remaining lamb was a bit slow about finding the milk source, but after some encouragement she discovered it early this afternoon, and had a lovely, round belly last I went to check.

Here’s some spring time photos… every year spring means flowers, lambs, and adorable young children to come visit the lambs.  All equally welcome and cherished.