Try to Remember

I recently adopted three rescue llamas. Though I have had horses and sheep, llamas are a new species for me. So I am once again climbing the learning curve of how to care for, train, and enjoy these large new additions to the ranchlet. They are tons of fun to watch, especially when they neck wrestle or run laps around the pasture. But being rescued, they missed out on any early training, and are a definite handful to work with.
This has reminded me once again how easy it is to forget just how confusing and terrifying it can be when you get your very first dog. I was lucky. My dogs came in an order that made the learning curve manageable for me. I shudder to think what might have happened had the first two canine members of my family arrived in reverse order.
My actual first dog was Sundance, a Keeshond. She failed the conformation standard, having an undershot jaw. But she was gorgeous and, above all, amazingly intelligent. As I knew absolutely nothing at the time about dogs, other than that I had to have one, she was the perfect "learner dog." She had a few housetraining accidents (all my fault, of course), chewed one rung of a wooden chair as her sole puppyhood transgression, and generally taught me much of what I needed to know to become a decent pup parent. She had more grace and social bearing than I did at the time, and seemed to learn things through osmosis. She traveled many of the national parks with me, and was welcomed everywhere, as it was evident that she was a princess in dog clothing.
I remember wondering what the heck all the fuss was about, and why there were so many books about living with a dog, when it all seemed so remarkably easy.
Then along came Spirit. . .
She was in a pet shop at six weeks of age, supposedly a Cocker-Springer mix. I was still uneducated, or I wouldn't have been looking at a dog in a pet shop. And I certainly wouldn't have purchased what was obviously a puppy mill dog who had been taken from her mother too soon. But the saying goes that you get the dog you need at the time, and Spirit was responsible for nearly all of my early learning about dogs, so she contributed mightily to my current career in dogs.
I had learned enough that once we had nursed her back to health, Spirit was enrolled in classes. Of course, these were traditional classes, with choke chains and leash pops. Nothing else was available at the time, and I didn't know I should be looking for something else anyway.
All seemed to go swimmingly until one week in class, when Spirit was perhaps six months old. The trainer was going over each dog as they performed a stand (as if we were ever going to do conformation). And just before she touched Spirit, I at least had the sense to see my dog's body stiffen, hair rise. So I had one hand grasping the collar and the other holding Spirit's tail, and literally swung her out of reach as she went for the trainer.
Bite averted there, but life was never the same. Spirit appeared to hate humanity. Now I would know that she was actually AFRAID of humanity, and determined to keep all of it, other than myself, at bay. We found a trainer (whom Spirit bit the first time she met him) who would work with us in group classes, and another trainer who did private lessons with us. No one mentioned counter conditioning, desensitization, or any program specifically to attempt to change how Spirit felt about things. They all concentrated on obedience exercises to "get control" of my Spirit.
Matters only got worse when a terrier mix joined our pack and the dog fights began. Humans got bit trying to break up fights (fortunately, only family members, and none requiring professional medical treatment, so we never got reported). We lived in an uneasy world of constant vigilance.
Now I would have so many more resources available, but even with that, I try to think what it would be like to have a Spirit as a first dog. Wanting love and companionship and getting teeth and terror is a rather disorienting experience. Some appear to solve it pretty easily, by disposing of the dog through one means or another. But others stick it out, and I have a great deal of empathy for them.
So I keep writing -- about breeding for temperament as well as looks, about the importance of early socialization, about how to work with a difficult dog -- in the hopes that someone somewhere with a Spirit will find the hope they need.
I couldn't love her in the same way that I loved Sundance, but I did my best for her, and stood by her for her 16-1/2 years. Thanks for the education, Spirit. I'll always remember you for it.

Salmonella and Dry Dog Food

There was a news report this morning about an outbreak of salmonella among humans. They blamed it on the handling of dry dog food, and recommended that people wash their hands immediately after handling dog food.
Aren't they missing a rather basic point here? Why is it considered perfectly all right that the dog food is contaminated with salmonella? What about the dogs actually EATING the food?
Food safety in the U.S. is low and deteriorating. The numbers and powers of food inspectors have been seriously eroded over the last decade. We have to eat our hamburgers well done, whether we like them that way or not, or risk an E. coli infection. We can't let chicken touch a kitchen counter without having to disinfect everything in sight. Even washing our spinach and lettuce may not protect us from field contamination with fecal matter. This is all considered perfectly normal.
In my own local area, various political and real estate organizations have declared that there is no need to protect our remaining farmland. Yet these same people profess to be most concerned about terrorism. Well, if terrorists really were to launch a massive attack, wouldn't safe food and water be one of our primary concerns? With transportation likely disrupted, a local food supply would be of prime importance.
But that's my own local hot button issue. On a more national level, why do we put up with such a lack of food safety? There are some pet food manufacturers who have not been involved in the melamine recalls, not suffered a mycotoxin taint in their grain products, been able to supply a safe and healthy product. If you start investigating, you find that nearly all of them use suppliers they know and trust -- not the lowest bidder in China. Many of their products are officially certified organic, which lays a whole new layer of testing and certification on them. Yes, they are more expensive than the supermarket brands. But in my opinion, some peace of mind is worth some expense. I would be willing to pay the same for my own food, and often do, through buying at farmers markets and local grocers rather than international chains.
This is not an issue that gets even a mention during this long long campaign season. Doesn't anyone care if their food is safe?

Fatal(?) Attraction

When you decide that it's time to add a dog to your household, how do you go about deciding what you want and where you'll look?
There are three basic ways to proceed
1. decide on a breed, do your research, and contact breeders or rescue groups
2. decide on a breed, go to a pet shop or look in the local classifieds
3. don't make any decision about what sort of dog, and go to the local shelter or rescue group.
Most of the time, I fall into the third group. I did buy my Keeshond after becoming utterly besotted with the breed, and I may have one again sometime. . . or perhaps a Portuguese Water Dog or Nova Scotia Duck Tolling Retriever. But most often, when I need a dog, I simply start making the rounds of the shelters, starting with the local and moving out from there. I do have some things in mind. Last time, it was "no black dogs," as I had just lost the second of two large black dogs and wanted a change. Now I seem to have developed a preference for male dogs, though that may not hold up if the right female were to come along. There is also more of a size requirement than there used to be, as I am getting older and having some effects from my battle with cancer, and can't really handle the big guys any more. Activity level also figures in, though I have plenty of ways to give a dog lots of exercise without having to totally exhaust myself. Intelligence is important to me -- I like a dog who thinks for him or herself, even has a bit of a naughty side or a wicked sense of humor.
My last search went through three shelters and even then, I didn't think I'd found my match. My friend had to point out the little inanimate brown dog to me. He hadn't moved the whole time we were in the puppy room. He obviously hadn't had much good happen in his life, but there was still something in his eyes that said there was a good dog in there, if only someone would give him a chance. So I said yes, and then cried buckets when they said he couldn't be released until they neutered him the next morning. But he survived the night, and though it took some months for him to develop trust and a good secure bond, after that he blossomed. He is perhaps at least as smart as my Keeshond was, maybe more. I was new to dogs when I had her, didn't know about clicker training, and didn't really do much training at all. So I don't know how she would have coped with learning the concepts of "bigger/smaller," "higher/lower," though she did know "left/right."
I have contacted purebred rescue groups from time to time, with the idea of having them keep an eye out for a Keeshond mix or a Collie mix for me, but we never followed through with it. Still, I think it's a good way to go if you have a particular breed in mind. The dogs in rescue are nearly always fostered in people's homes, so they're getting regular training and socialization from dog people who care. They're rarely puppies, but a slightly older dog who's already had the kinks worked out can fit really smoothly into a household.
Of course reponsible breeders are the real watchdogs of their respective breeds. The best among them are dedicating themselves to identifying and eradicating genetic diseases, breeding for good temperament, and socializing their puppies fully. I have my problems with some things in the purebred world -- I don't like cropping ears, and I don't like some of the extremes to which various breeds have been pushed -- but I have total respect for reponsible breeders.
The same doesn't hold for backyard breeders and pet shops that sell dogs. Most of the ads for puppies in my local paper can't even manage to spell the breed correctly, so what does that say for their level of knowledge? Pug/peke crosses are advertised as "papered," 8-week-old puppies "have had all their shots," and on and on. And all this goes on while we have a serious overload in our local shelter.
The local pet shop selling puppies claims that they don't do business with puppy mills, yet a suspicious number of their puppies originate in Pennsylvania and Missouri and Arkansas, the hot beds of puppy millers. The only dog I ever acquired from a pet shop was misidentified as to breeds, too young to be there (6 weeks), dying of every parasite known to dogdom (despite a health guarantee), and turned out to be psychotic. I made the pet shop pay for her veterinary treatments to pull her through, then helped the police shut the place down.
I called this blog Fatal Attraction because too often people fall in love with the look of a dog and have no idea what the dog is like to live with. People think they want a Border Collie because they're smart - you don't, not unless you plan to invest many hours in training and entertaining that dog. Or they love the look of a Siberian Husky, but insist they will not fence or leash their dog. Bye bye, Husky. It goes on and on.
Whether you decide on a purebred or a shelter mix, please give some thought to what it's going to be like to live with that dog for the next 10 or 15 years. You'll both be better off.