More Truth about Aversive Training Methods

A University of Pennsylvania study was publixhed in Applied Animal Behavior Science recently. The study looked at such "firm" training techniques of hitting the dog, growling at the dog, and physically forcing the dog onto his or her back. They found that 25 percent of dogs subjected to these techniques responded with aggression. The techniques, far from asserting dominance over the dog, resulted in making dogs fearful, which then manifested as aggression. (Most canine aggression, by the way, is fear-based.)
The report mentions the popularity of Cesar Milan, the "dog whisperer," specifically, but also notes that this idea of "firm dominance" goes back many years, and will likely take years to wipe away. It seems we've already been trying for years!

More on Food Safety

I didn't plan on blogging again quite this soon, but an article in today's New York Times set me off - "Food Companies Are Placing the Onus for Safety on Consumers."
It seems that big agribusiness can't be bothered to guarantee that the ingredients in their products are free of contaminants, bacteria, and other things that could make us sick (or dead). So they have said it's up to the consumer to be sure that they are preparing the foods well enough to kill any bugs. Yet testing, according to the article, found that following the directions for preparing a pot pie left some of the pie below the recommended temperature while much of the crust was burned and inedible. Yummy.
I am fortunate to live in an area that offers an abundance of local foods, from meats to dairy to grains to vegetables. It is sometimes difficult to afford the added cost of buying from the farmers market rather than the supermarket, certainly, but it also certainly feels a lot better.
One positive effect of the bad economy, at least in my eyes, has been to slow the rampant development that was paving over hundreds of acres of farmland every year. A local nonprofit has been doing their best to save agricultural lands, but that is a hard fight, especially against realtor organizations from far outside our local area and with much better funding. They defeated a proposed ballot measure to help raise money to buy development rights, so that farmers could retire with a nest egg but leave their land in agricultural rather than sell it for development. They promised an "alternate solution," but of course that has not been forthcoming.
Other than fresh seafood, you have no way of knowing from whence your foodstuffs are coming. And if the source is China, it's big time buyer beware! So I am fully behind the locavore movement, and hope others out there will push to save their own local agriculture. We are still going to have to feed ourselves in the future, and I don't see how we will do that if we pave over the most productive lands.

Flashback to Pet Food Recall

This didn't make the news much, but it seems that there are still major problems with importing food ingredients from China. A brief report carried in the May issue of Petfood Industry states that hydrolyzed leather proten, known as a possible carcinogen, was found in batches of dairy products. Someone anonymously tipped authorities that manufacturers were trying yet again to boost apparent protein content of products by adding illegal substances. Leather protein is reported to be similar to melamine (one of the culprits in the major pet food recall), but harder to detect because it is actually a protein, albeit one that happens to be toxic.
When are we going to wake up and smell the roses and realize that we just can't trust products coming in from China? Shoot, we can't trust products coming from our own fields of spinach! We need much tighter inspection of any product coming in from China. If you knew how few inspectors were responsible for supposedly keeping us safe, you would have a panic attack. Fortunately, there are dog foods available that use only U.S.-grown products, certified organic products, and plenty of other safe choices.

E-Collars as "Torture"

There was a segment on one of my local news broadcasts last night about a father who is now charged with torture because he put canine shock collars on his children. According to the broadcast, he thought it was funny and got his jollies chasing his kids around and threatening to shock them or actually doing so. But this raises some important questions in my mind - is it considered torture because he wasn't training his children but just shocking them for the hell of it, or because he put the collars on humans rather than dogs?
The report even noted that "it wasn't specified if the man even owned a dog" . . . which seems to intimate that it would have been perfectly fine if he had put the collar on his dog and shocked to his heart's content.
So just what is the dividing line here? Is it acceptable to shock (or "stimulate," as the manufacturers of the e-collars like to phrase it) one species of animal but not another? (Yes, we are indeed animals.) Or is it acceptable to shock for the purposes of training but not otherwise?
Unlike a lot of positive trainers, I actually do see a (limited) place for shock collars in training. Some behaviors are so potentially unsafe that the temporary infliction of some pain seems a reasonable response to avoid worse consequences - avoiding rattlesnakes, stopping chasing of deer (for which dogs can be shot), stopping chasing of cars. Aside from the rattlesnake training, it would be less painful and just as effective to keep the dog on leash or confined in a fenced yard, but in reality this isn't going to happen a lot of the time.
What caught my attention in this news piece was the blithe assumption that the shock collar was perfectly fine for one species, but "torture" for the other. If the piece had been presented differently, emphasizing that the collar was being used solely for entertaiment of the male (it doesn't seem appropriate to call him a man or a father) and not for any even marginally legitimate purpose, it wouldn't have struck me this way. But the fact that it was presented the way that it was seems to say a lot about public opinion.
I subscribe to Gandhi's excellent quote (which I may not have word-perfect) - "A nation will be known by the way it treats its animals."

let's all be safe out there in the garden

Now that spring has finally arrived in the Northwest, I've been doing a ton of gardening. And it dawned on me that, as the "authority" on dogs and gardens, I really should say something hear about keeping it safe for your dog when working in the yard.
The biggest immediate hazard is snail and slug baits. The metaldehyde-based products unfortunately kill dozens of dogs every year. And there's no need for it any more, because there is a safe product called Sluggo that works perfectly well. Believe me, we grow our slugs BIG here in the Northwest, and Sluggo takes care of them efficiently and without any hazard to your dog, or to birds or other wildlife. So please don't use the old-style snail/slug baits.
Every year, lawns suck up tons of fertilizers, herbicides, and insecticides. None of these are particularly friendly to the environment or to your dog. There is a growing movement afoot to change the way people think about their lawns, using organic practices rather than all the chemicals. I don't get the whole "perfect lawn" thing - clover is just fine with me, and my sheep LOVE dandelions. Please take it easy on the environment, lower your dog's risk of bladder cancer (studies have linked lawn chemicals and this cancer), and go green while keeping your lawn green.
And for weeding, especially those tap-root type weeds (like the aforementioned dandelions), there is a great tool called, funnily enough, the Weed Hound, that pulls them up quite well. It's a long-handled device, so you don't even have to bend over -- just step on the appropriate part of the tool, pull the weed out of the ground, and press the plunger to release it into a bucket, your compost pile, or whatever.
Enjoy your garden, enjoy your dog, enjoy the environment.