Dice and Cody have an adventure

The following story occurred the other night - in the rain, and the cold, and at ten at night. 

What the dogs refer to as a kitty, was not, as they soon discovered, a kitty.

I will let them tell their story.

Dice, the Border-collie-in-charge

So, the other night, Dice, the border-collie-in-charge was on patrol and discovered an invader in the yard. It was a black and white kitty! Dice knew that this could not stand, and so he ran at the black and white kitty to tell it that he was the border-collie-in-charge, and black and white kitties are not welcome!

The black and white kitty did not run from Dice. Rather it lifted its tail and peed on him! Dice was shocked! He jumped back. the stench! This was a very bad black and white kitty indeed!

Dice elected to stand back from the stink-spraying black and white kitty and bark angrily at it until it left.

This did not work well. The kitty did not leave, and Dice could not get closer, since the kitty had no manners and peed stinky stuff on border-collies-in-charge. He barked and barked, hoping that maybe Ketchum or the back-up border collie would come and help out. 

Ketchum stayed on the porch and thought that black and white kitties should be left in peace. She too had tried to chase a black and white kitty, and she too had been peed on, and now in her job as elder statesdog she saw no reason to get kitty pee on herself.

Ketchum, the elder statesdog

Dice got assistance when the backup border collie, Cody was accidentally let out by the house human who armed with a flashlight and a tone of annoyance stepped out of the house to the sound in incessant barking and the stench of the black and white kitty. Dice heard her call his name, and assumed that she was yelling encouragement, so he kept barking, hoping the back up border collie was on the way.

Cody, the backup border collie

Cody, the back up border collie arrived like a shot, and quickly decided on a plan. Ignoring Dice's warning about kitty spray, she leapt at the kitty to tell it what for - bad kitty!!

The kitty peed on her too! It was terrible! It stung her eyes, and it assaulted her nostrils. She decided that the kitty had crossed a line of common decency. The kitty must die!!

The kitty sprayed her again and again, but she no longer cared. And finally with the shouts of the house human and Dice cheering her on she stepped back triumphantly. The black and white kitty would pee no more!

Apparently the house human was not shouting encouragement, she was angry, not at the criminally insane and now departed black and white kitty but at the border-collie-in-charge, and the back-up border collie!

She saw the scene, and immediately yelled at both collies to go home. It was raining and she was wet, and she had just tramped through cactus and boulders to reach the scene of The battle.

Still high on the success of her victory, Cody raced for the house. Dice was a little more subdued, uncertain, should he have dispatched the black and white kitty himself, or kept Cody back? The house human was annoyed, which made him uncertain. Also he was finding it hard to think with the kitty pee still scalding his nostrils.

When the house human caught up she did not let Cody into the house! Instead, Cody got to spend the night outside, so did the border-collie-in-charge. Cody felt so grown up and in-charge!! She had earned the right to sleep outside, where she could bark freely at the neighbor's dogs. Such fun!

The next day, and the day after that, the house human tried to drown her with a garden hose and fizzy sweet-smelling water!! It was pretty horrible. The good news was that the fizzy water did nothing to hide the still pungent - almost overwhelming stench of the black and white kitty!!  Every time Cody inhaled it she recalled again her breathtaking victory!!!

The ethics of 'No Kill'

I live in a town with a huge pit bull problem. Tucson is the source for most of Michael Vic's fighting dogs. Tucson's animal shelters are filled to overflowing with unaltered pits found wandering the streets, because it appears that pit owners have not discovered how to neuter or spay their dogs.

Pits, are by and large nice dogs, but they are hard as Hell to place.

Rescues try to alleviate pressure on our shelter by pulling dogs out and placing them into foster. The ultimate goal of this effort, is of course, adopting these dogs into permanent homes. In this manner, rescues are effectively raising the carrying capacity of the local shelters. Whether the rescue specializes in pits or poodles, every dog pulled from the shelter provides a stay of execution for those remaining in the shelter. This is simple math.

Simple math would also dictate that there are only so many foster homes available to take in these dogs.

This means that the more dogs that find homes, the more spaces available to pull dogs from the shelter.

In Tucson, as in most other communities, I assume, the rescue folks are a hodgepodge of individuals  and groups with differing goals and agendas.

Here is where things get muddy.

Years ago I wanted to adopt (for $1000, which means buy) a PMU horse from a local horse rescue. PMU horses are the horses up in Canada used to create the drug Premarin. The drug is made from pregnant mare urine, and the mares used are often large draft mares who produce more urine. The mares are often bred to quarter horses or thoroughbreds, producing mutt foals that could be useful for some limited sports. The foals are often sold (or were, I am not up to date on current policies) in large lots, making the purchase of these foals impossible for normal folks, so killers ended up with the bulk of these foals. This is where rescue stepped in. Rescues would buy these bulk foal lots and divvy the foals out to rescues across the country.

Several ended up down here in southern Arizona, and one on a website looked promising as a dressage prospect. So I called the woman who ran the rescue and asked if I could see the horse in question.

She seemed disturbed that I did not wish to buy the horse outright and that I would not drop $1000 on a horse until I saw it move and it proved sound. She did not understand that I had a specific use in mind for the horse and that if it did not fit that use, that I would not buy the horse. She kept repeating, "but it is a rescue".

I kept wanting to reply, no, it is a horse, an animal which will live 20 years, will cost me $1000 today and countless tens of thousands of dollars over its lifetime. I did not want a thousand pound lawn ornament, and this fact offended the rescuer.

She told me that the horse was 'bonded' to another horse, and that they could not go individually.

I walked away, and a horse that could've had a home sat in 'rescue' while up north foals that could've taken its place were sent to killers. I ultimately bought a thoroughbred off the racetrack with nice movement and a long future of dressage. The horse landed in a good home and lived to be 22 years old.

Years ago there was a no kill group that worked closely with a veterinary hospital I managed. I considered the lot of them to be nutters, because they chose the most unadoptable nightmare chow-mix things to pull from the shelter, and while many of these maladjusted nightmares lingered in never-never foster land, litters of perfectly healthy puppies died at the local shelter.

They adopted out a wacked out chow mix to a family, and when I saw the dog it was wearing a muzzle and giving me the hairy eyeball. It growled when I stepped within two feet of it. The gentleman who brought the dog in had adopted the dog from this group five days prior. In the past five days the dog had bitten his wife and cornered a child in the kitchen. The dog trapped the owner's other dog under a bed and refused to let it out until the owner lassoed it with a leash and pulled it from the scene.

He was at the vet's office not to (logically) have the dog euthanized, but rather to have it vaccinated, because the rescue refused to take back the dog until he had boostered the DA2PPC(!?!?!)

I spoke to the man, and by all accounts the dog was friendly as long as the world worked on his terms, but the second things didn't go his way he became aggressive. Had he not been wearing a muzzle this dog would've eaten me - and all I was doing was standing in it's personal space (which apparently extended out about two feet).

Now, I am not here to tell you that all aggressive dogs should be euthanized, or that all cases of aggression are the dog's fault. What I am here to say is that this dog, for whatever reason, was aggressive, and it was homeless, and the idiots to which this poor man was about to return this dog (according to contract) were going to rehome the thing again!

I do not care if a dog is aggressive because it is frightened, because it is traumatized or because it stayed up late and saw a scary movie, when that dog has no home, and the people who are fostering it have done nothing to address the issue, but are adhering to a strict and unrealistic 'no kill' policy, then no good will come of it.

I told the man kindly that he should disregard the contract and have the dog euthanized. Why pass this nightmare onto some other unsuspecting family?

Again, while this nightmare was clogging up the system, perfectly happy, healthy dogs were dying at animal control.

I work with a rescue. They are not 'no-kill' and they temperament test every dog that comes into their foster care system. If a dog is not appropriate for rehoming due to temperament, they leave it where it is.

This does not mean they won't take dogs that are work. I fostered a dog for them that was a shadow chaser who had bitten a kid. The dog was otherwise kind and willing, she was young and had too much drive for her situation. This is the kind of information one gathers when doing due diligence. They worked with me to ensure that she got the care and guidance she needed. And since I foster failed her and ended up with her, everything turned out ok.

Only now I have five dogs and have no room at the inn to foster more. This is a reality that all rescues must face. There are only a finite number of homes and fosters available, and every dog in the system is another dog that cannot be helped.

I suspect that the PMU horse rescue lady was subsidizing her horse collection with tax-free dollars. I suspect that people who pull nightmare unadoptable dogs from the shelter are trying to 'rescue' more than a dog, and are in fact wrestling with deeper issues.

We cannot save them all, no matter how hard we try, and as much as it seems hard hearted, we choose who lives and who dies when we walk through a shelter past adoptable dogs to pull a specific dog. We hope those other dogs find homes, but we know that many will not. So, if we are truly 'no kill' we must understand that we are killing dogs that we do not take in, and that the faster we are able to move our dogs through our foster system (with due diligence paid to temperament testing and remedial training and assessment) the more of these we will in fact, ultimately save.

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Divvying up the adventures

Ketchum and Cassidy waiting for me to get the ATV started 

I have no idea how people can have half a dozen kids! I have (nearly) half a dozen dogs, and finding one-on-one time for each of them can be a challenge! I'm sure everyone handles their own multi-dog households differently, and it always astonishes me when I meet someone with a whole pack of well-behaved dogs, because I know that that doesn't happen by accident!

Here in Arizona we have the luxury of no snow days, and I'm rural which means I can cheat and take all of my dogs out simultaneously without worrying about leashing the whole lot. It gets hot here in the summer, which does sometimes constrain our out-and-about options to half an hour or so in the morning and maybe a repeat in the evening, but usually there are few days when the dogs don't get a run in.

In the morning I lock up Dice and Cody so that I can let the chickens out. I sit with the chickens while they eat free food for an hour. I try to let them out several times a day, but if it's hot, and we get no afternoon cloud cover, then they'll have to make do with an hour.

The chickens come first because they are locked up, and they're happier if they're let out for some period. Because of predation I sit with them until they are put away.

After the chickens I take all of the dogs out with the ATV. If it is cool we can go for 4-5 miles; if it's getting hot then they may have to make do with a mile or two. Dogs trot at 7 mph, and so Kate and Cassidy trot along at that speed. Ketchum and Cody can sprint along at upwards of 25 mph (any faster and I chicken out!) so sometimes, especially on the flats and when we return home, I let them race the ATV, for a couple of tenths to a quarter mile at a time. Then we stop and wait for Dice who is younger than Cassidy and Kate, but has no intrinsic need to race the gals, and Cassidy and Kate to catch up.

There are usually some lizard and squirrel chases to liven up the morning run, and Cassidy will try to hang with the younguns before she slips off the back. Kate has lost all desire in her elderstateslady capacity to act like the foolish kids and trots along contentedly at 7 mph.

Dice loves the runs, but has no desire to chase Ketchum or Cody. He wants to sniff and pee on things and that is about it. He trots and canters along, but I don't think he has ever felt the need to drop the hammer and sprint all-out.

After our run, everyone returns home and if it's warm out they take turns laying in the pool. I usually spend some time outside if its not stupid hot, either weeding or doing poultry-related chores, and the dogs lounge in the shadows.

Later on, when I go back down to the coop, Cody and Dice go into the kennel, and Ketchum comes down and hangs out with me. This is her one-on-one time. There is no training involved, she's eight and knows everything she cares to know. She sits by my chair and gets petted while she keeps an eye on the poultry and looks for coyotes. Sometimes she wanders off to sample some chicken droppings or to enquire on the whereabouts of a particularly irksome lizard, but usually she just lounges and accepts belly rubs.

Kate has been the Official Camp Dog at the 24 Hours in the Old Pueblo Mountain Bike Race for nearly a decade

Cassidy finds indoor life dull and prefers to be outside keeping an eye on the vulture situation. Because she is an elderstateslady she spends much of her day sprawled out in various shady spots. Her nights are spent on patrol for interlopers. She follows Ketchum partway to the coop with me and then lies down in the driveway and keeps an eye out for criminal activity. Cassidy is somewhat aloof and wants attention on her terms, so I make an effort at least once a day to carve out time just for her (usually brushing because being a German Shepherd she is somehow capable of shedding out her entire hair coat weekly and never going bald).

Kate lives inside and gets attention at every turn. She has recently gone deaf, and that coupled with her overall fearful worldview has lead to an increased effort to include her on dog-related adventures outside with the pack. For reasons known only to her she sometimes goes into hiding and effort is required to bring her outside with the other pups.

Cody hiking on Mount Lemmon

She wonders why we're so slow!

Cody spends much of her days indoors because she is incapable of relaxing outside, there is just too much to do. So she spends her day following me from room to room. Usually at some point she gets 15 minutes of training. She goes to training for half an hour on Thursdays (agility). She is also in the adventure rotation pool.

Dice likes to keep a watch on the yard from the front porch. He cannot seem to relax inside, so for him, one-on-one time is more important than for Cody who gets it all the time. He comes in at least once a day for 15 minutes of training and goes to dog training class (manners and just getting out in the world) on Wednesdays. He is also in rotation in the adventure pool.

Dice waiting for us on a run

It was warm, he chose to wait in the shade

The adventure pool includes the two younger dogs, though Kate gets to go on longer adventures out of town, and Ketchum sometimes goes on runs with me, though she is not in the official rotation. The official rotation is between Cody and Dice - both young dogs requiring additional socializing and exercise. I run with friends usually one evening a week, go to dog training twice a week, and run with my running partner on longer (8+ mile) runs or bike rides on weekends.

Any of these adventures that are dog-safe and in a dog-legal area can involve either Cody or Dice. They get to go out, meet new people and explore new places, while they get to run along for 4 or more miles. On longer runs I bring water and a bowl for the dogs and on a 12 miler I brought snacks.

I feel that the hardest part of owning a pack of dogs is providing for everyone's needs including that much coveted one-on-one time with me. Some dogs require more of it while others need less. If Cassidy thinks a quick swoop by for petting on her way to other adventures is good enough for her, then it is certainly good enough for me.

Why dogs do what they do

I often find it surprising how many people think their dog's behavior is abnormal when in fact it is dogs being dogs. Dogs chase (and will kill) small squeaky animals, they will bark at strangers, they will jump up on people, they will dig holes, and left to their own devices they may eat your couch. The issues that many dog owners have with these behaviors is knowing how to take what their dog's instincts demand that they do and curtail it or redirect it so that they can live in our non-doggy society.

Lets start with small squeaky creatures. Your poodle was once a wolf, certainly not recently, but recent enough ago that hunting and prey drive remains an active part of your dog's behavior. Some breeds have actually had their prey drive refined until they are as predatory if not more so than a wolf (most wolves will not hunt when full, no terrier, no matter how fat will stop chasing its desired prey.)

Terriers, hounds and herding breeds stand out as having been bred to retain predatory behavior. Terriers were bred to kill or chase the animal that usually shows up in its name (rat, fox, bull). These dogs are hard wired to chase things that flee, and to continue chasing until she can chase no more.

Border collies have lots of prey drive. Cody would very much like to eat my geese!

This does not mean that terriers cannot live with small squeaky things (children, hamsters, cats, etc...) it simply means that we, the humans need to establish parameters, and in dogs (as opposed to cats) these boundaries are usually fairly easy to establish. Terriers may have been bred to kill things like rats, but they often lived on farms, where getting over enthusiastic and eating the entire flock of chickens could lead to a very permanent and unhappy result, so they are just as hardwired to accept a list of can chase and cannot chase, and to know the difference.

Where we get into trouble is when we think we understand the list one way and where the dog understands it another. For example, your terrier may get along fine with your cat. That does not mean that your terrier is safe around all cats.

My border collies know that the rules of chasing are: chickens: no, everything else on earth: yes. If a raven which happens to be black and bird shaped takes refuge down among the chickens, accidents could happen. It is my responsibility to watch my dogs and keep my chickens safe from their natural predatory behavior.

Additionally undoing a behavior is harder than establishing it in the first place, especially if the rewards outweigh the risks. Kate has had the opportunity to sample chicken on the hoof so to speak, and apparently it was yummy. Now that I have chickens again, not only do they live in Ft. Knox, but Kate is not permitted to venture even close to the coop.

Kate misread the BARF diet as standing for Bones and Raw Feathers and ate a dozen chickens

Barking causes all sorts of stress for pet owners because incessant barking can make a dog a miserable neighbor. First know that occasional barking at real and perceived (within reason) threats is normal. My dogs, for example have largely agreed that human intruders are fine, but ravens, vultures and coyotes are not. All three of these animals 'respond' to my dogs by fleeing (in the case of ravens and vultures of course they are probably completely unaware of the ruckus their flyby has caused, but they had no intentions of lingering and so, the dogs have effectively defended the property from them.)

The problem arises when dogs are bored and they have few outlets and thus they bark out of frustration and to amuse themselves, the fact that everything they bark at (like the ravens and vultures mentioned above) usually leaves, only encourages the behavior.

A bored dog will take any normal behavior and amplify it. Yards are boring. Being outside, or inside alone is boring.

Kitty was a very active dog even into her teens, she would have been difficult to keep happy in a yard without a lot of outlets for her energy!

As a rule of thumb, all dogs should be allowed to bark an 'alert'. This is one or two barks that tells you, "intruder!" Your job is to then take over. For example when it comes tp ravens and vultures, my dogs bark "invaders from the sky!!!" I ignore them and the invader disappears. If the raven decides to alight, and my dogs continue to alert, then I step outside to make threats to all involved parties. My dogs know that I have been made aware of the situation (attack raven on premises) and I have elected to call them all back to the house. All is well in the world.

I never yell at my dogs for telling me that something is there. I want them to tell me something is there. What I do not want them to do is to continue to tell me something is there. Usually after a few barks I intervene by saying the barking dog's name. They aren't in trouble, they have simply been acknowledged, and usually they will ignore the criminal bird.

In the event something more legitimate is outside then I investigate. Again, I have asked my dogs (and they have thousands of generations of genetic engineering backing my request) to be on the lookout for intruders. That they have chosen ravens and vultures as intruders is up to them. I have few legitimate intruders so they will have to make do.

I have had senior dogs who were losing their hearing begin to bark randomly, and since they cannot hear me, I had to track them down and assure them that all was well in the world. Right now, Cassidy who is deaf as a post barks randomly at inexplicable threats. At first she would not stop barking until I found her and touched her to snap her out of it. Now she barks an alert and then stops. If no other dogs join her, then I know that there is no real concern.

When I lived in town, my special ed dog, Oakley, was a committed barker. She was young and rowdy, and hated my car to the point where taking her out on runs in the desert was a nightmare, so she wore a bark collar. The bark collar she wore allowed her three barks in a row (arf, arf, arf.) the normal warning number. At four, she got a beep. at five she got a tingle, if she kept going, the collar kept increasing the negative reinforcement. There can be no better example of cause and effect than a bark collar. She wore it for a month, and years later as a senior when she forgot how to stop barking (she always knew how to start barking, but for her momentum seemed to prevent stopping) all I needed to do was yell out her name to interrupt the behavior.

Poor Oakley was just a strange hound. She was happy in her peculiar little world.

I find dogs who jump on people to be annoying. I think it's like being bear hugged by a stranger. I find the familiarity unsettling and rude. Dogs jump on people because they are a) allowed to, and b) that's where the action is.

I greet every dog on the ground. I never punish a dog for jumping on me, I simply place it on all fours and pet it there. My own dogs do not jump on me or strangers. I do sometimes allow my dogs to jump up, but only on command, and only on me.

If I have a young enthusiastic jumper at my house (I currently have two) I ask people to please put them back on the ground and pet them there when they jump up. It's as simple as that. The dog wants attention, they get it on the ground.

Digging is what dogs do. They do it to find a cool spot to lie, to make a comfy bed to curl up, to find a yummy rodent and out of boredom. Before you can begin to address the behavior, it helps to know what is causing it.

Personally, I allow my dogs to dig. I have plenty of space for them to dig in, and its hot here in Arizona, they especially like to excavate under my cars and in a pomegranate tree well. Oakley, my special ed dog was an inveterate digger. She would take it upon herself to randomly unearth a potted rose one week, then take a six month hiatus and then dig up all of my peppers, leaving them to die alone in the scorching sun. Threats of euthanasia not withstanding, you cannot punish a dog for doing these things because you will almost never catch them in the act, and even if you do, all they will learn is that digging in front of the humans is bad, digging in privacy is good.

Some study eventually informed me that Oakley's seemingly random assaults were not always entirely random. She loved soft new dirt, especially cow manure smelling dirt. I learned that to protect my innocent plants from her murderous rampages I had to stay one step ahead.  I either put the plots out of reach, or placed huge rocks in places where I did not wish her to dig. Eventually she had no other choice but to dig in places where it was easiest and where I had no vested interest. She did have occasional flashbacks but they were rare.

I wish I could tell you that there was a simple way to stop your dog digging, but there is none. A tired dog is less likely to dig. A dog who is otherwise engaged is less likely to dig. In the end your plants may end up living in little prison camps.

What I will say is that by providing a place (like a plant well) where your dogs can dig goes a long way towards alleviating, and in most cases solving the digging issue altogether. I have five dogs, and no one digs up my plants or creates random holes in my yard.

One day I heard this peculiar noise. It was a raspy, weird grinding sound that sounded like it was coming directly from the house itself. I set off in search of the confounding sound and found my 8 year old, schutzhund-trained German Shepherd, Dax calmly eating my front porch step. I said his name, he got up and walked over to me. I scratched his ears and walked over to the step that he had found so suddenly tasty. I could find no evidence that it had recently dipped in pot roast or bathed in cat food.  I walked five feet past the step and picked up a bone and held it out to him, and he took it, acted coy and elaborately swooped off with it hoping that I would chase him. He never attempted to eat the house again.

Dax ate a porch step, but seems unconcerned

The point of this story is to illustrate the hardwiring in a dog that compels him to chew. Chewing releases endorphins in dogs and relaxes them. A dog has an innate need to chew, and in a perfect world I would tell you that if you provide your dog with the right number and type of chew toys they will never chew up things that you care about. We do not live in a perfect world.

My property is littered with what looks like the remains of a cow blown into very small fragments. This is the remains of all the raw marrow bones that I have given the dogs through the years. There are also a few Kong toys, a tennis ball, and whole hoard of trees dropping any number of sticks. Through the years my dogs have found that these items alone do not satisfy. Kitty once ate my wisteria plant to the roots, a rose bush, and she brought home and seemed to happily enjoy chewing on an ocotillo stem (these are essentially sticks with thorns). Dax chewed the front porch step. Oakley became briefly obsessed with unearthing and bringing home aging PVC pipe. Ketchum loudly flings chunks of fire wood on my deck until I am forced to chuck it off into the desert.

I do not trust my dogs in the house without my eyes on them. Kate is the exception because she has zero desire to chew. I have cow rugs on the floor (rawhide), saddles (salt covered rawhide), and boots (chicken and goose poop covered rawhide). Likewise, nothing can be left outside without the understanding that it may get eaten. Dogs love work gloves (salty rawhide), and Ketchum once climbed onto a table to eat a hole in a mallet filled with some sort of black mystery sand.

I am not saying that you have to live in a house filled with holy furniture and a yard filled with ruined drip irrigation. What I am saying is that dogs really are sometimes just being dogs, and that we have to take the good with the bad. Of course redirect when you see them chewing on things that they should not, but also be aware that in many cases your dog has no idea that something is off-limits until you tell him and it's a big world out there. It never occurred to me that I would have to tell my dogs not to eat the house.

Many dog behaviors are just that dog behaviors. They are part of the hardwiring that comes with every dog. Some dogs will never dig a hole or chase the neighbor's cats. Others will ingest your entire chicken flock and eat your house. Perfection is unattainable in both humans and dogs. We can certainly make every effort to redirect our dog's behavior when it is inappropriate, but we must also be willing to live in a world where anything is possible.

Snake aversion training

I have noticed recently that there is a great deal of hesitancy on the part of some dog owners regarding snake aversion training. For those of you who do not live in an area of the country brimming with rattlesnakes, snake aversion training is the most commonly recommended technique to keep dogs safe in the event that they encounter a rattler.

Snake aversion training involves the use of one or more live rattlesnakes. The snakes are alive, and for the pet's safety sometimes their mouths are taped shut. The dog is affixed with a shock collar in a separate location from the snakes, and either a handler or better yet the owner approaches the snake with their dog. When the dog 'keys in' on the snake, he or she gets an electric shock, and the handler or owner does and abrupt about face and runs away from the scary snake, praising the dog for doing likewise.

First, is this cruel to the dog? Perhaps I'm old fashioned, but the way you learn not to drop bricks on your toes as a child is by dropping bricks on your toes. Likewise the way that we learn that bees sting is to get stung. Pain is not cruelty, especially if it is purposeful, brief, and associated with an action. Grab the bee, get stung, don't grab bees. Your dog has probably learned this very lesson with bees.

Snakes are not bees. Snake bites can be fatal. They are always dangerous, always expensive, always serious, and always extremely painful.

Does snake aversion training sometimes fail? Yes. When I was a kid my neighbor had a pit bull who sat down at the horse corral and swallowed so many bees and wasps that she had to be hospitalized because of swelling in her throat. Did she learn from this experience to not eat wasps and bees? Not especially. Terriers have been bred for hundreds of generations to kill and attack in the face of pain or even injury. These dogs can be difficult if not impossible to snake aversion train.

Because it sometimes fails is the whole idea to cruel to attempt? No. Snake bites kill dogs. Hiking in snake country is never a sure thing. I've seen dogs bitten in 'snake proofed' yards, and at the end of a 6' lead when it stuck its nose into a bush. The only safe way for your dog to be around venomous snakes is to be scared of them, and it is my contention that in the absence of complex language skills, pain is the most effective way that we have to get our point across.

Do I aversion train my own dogs? Yes, every one. As soon as a dog enters my yard its future will involve snake aversion training. My dogs live in the desert, they run with me, they run dirt roads, Hell, I've had rattlers on my deck (four this year!). Have I ever had a dog bitten by a rattler? No (fingers crossed - I don't think Cody 'got' her training, she seems blissfully ignorant of snakes - she will be retrained in the fall). I have had my dogs alert me to snakes on both the front and back porch. I have had them alert only on rattlers, or on anything that is vaguely snake-shaped. I recommend it to every client, and every veterinarian has recommended it without hesitation.

When you see what snake bites can do to a dog, there is no reason to do anything but teach dogs to avoid them in the first place. Veterinarians are in the same boat as parents trying to tell a teenager to avoid heroin. I cannot think of any intelligent person trying to point out all the good things that will happen to you if you avoid heroin without ever pointing out that you can die if you touch the stuff! We cannot live in a dangerous world and promise our pets only rainbows and kittens forevermore, that is just ridiculous.

Is it cruel to the snakes? How do I put this? I don't care if a snake snatched out of someone's yard has a frightening few hours. I like snakes, I do, and I certainly avoid killing them, even on my own property. But, really? Wearing a tape muzzle for a few hours? That isn't cruel - annoying perhaps, frustrating maybe - I certainly cannot speak for the intellectual depths of a snake, but regardless of their momentary discomfiture, I believe whole heartedly in snake aversion training.

Is there some positive non-aggressive way to snake aversion train a dog? I have heard that people have tried it. I have no idea if it successful, and honestly, I wouldn't risk my dog's life over a rigid, untried philosophy.

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Understanding pack behavior in dogs

In the past few years there has been an increasing trend to justify our actions and our dog's behavior on pack dynamics. This started largely with Ceasar Milan and his understanding of wolf behavior and alpha behavior (being a leader). Research quickly debunked much of this philosophy, however, we still see our dogs as members of our 'pack' and act accordingly based on what our understanding of what a wolf pack is.


Leaving aside the fact that your bichon frise hasn't been a wolf for 5,000-10,000 generations, lets take a look at what a real wolf pack is and is not.

Initial studies of wolf pack behavior and dynamics were carried out on captive wolf packs in zoos in the late 40's. These early papers saw interactions between wolf members that indicated that there was a hierarchy that was achieved and remained stable through wolf-on-wolf aggression and dominance. This idea was later codified in the book, Wolf: The Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species, by David Mech in 1970 (it is a highly popular book to this day).1.

This is the vision that many people have of a wolf pack, a 'leader' who rises through the ranks through  sheer willpower and leads the pack like a general.

Many people now know that this is not the truth. Researchers have been able to study wolves in the wild now for decades, and the old paradigm is wrong, so wrong that one of the researchers, David Mech has stated that his earlier works were in error.1

If you listen to Ceasar Milan speak you will see that though he still tells people that they need to exert some level of control over their dogs, he sees the solution as a strong, solid leadership style as opposed to brute force. In this new pack dynamic leaders lead because they are followed. A leader is chosen by the pack rather than by fiat. This sounds much more democratic and makes many people happy.

It isn't true however. The leaders of a wolf pack become leaders the same way that humans become heads of household; they have babies. A pack is a family unit, not a random assortment of strangers. Packs are made up of mom and dad and all the kiddies. And just like us, when the kiddies grow up they leave the pack and head off to start new lives of their own. Packs of wolves are nothing more than family units made up of parents and children (some packs are slightly more complicated in their makeup than this, but the general theme runs true.)

The 'alpha' male and female aren't leaders because they are bullies, or because they have mastered the art of speaking, rather they are leaders because they are surrounded by children. When the children start knowing enough to lead, they don't 'depose' their parents in some medieval coup, they simply pack up their gear and head out of town.

If a pack's territory is invaded by a neighboring pack's kids they do the wolf equivalent of calling the cops, by either driving out or killing the interloper.

So, let's return to your bichon, the long lost cousin to wolves. We have little way of knowing if dogs see us as fellow dogs other than by watching their behavior. Are we, in fact, members of their wolf pack and subject to the same rules and regulations as that pack?

The simple answer, from the gut, is no. Dogs do not see humans as dogs, otherwise we wouldn't have dog aggressive and human aggressive dogs. There could be no distinction. Dogs are not idiots, after all, they know that there are dog rules and behaviors and human rules and behaviors. We bare our teeth all the time, and our dogs do not act threatened as they would if another dog did the same.

So, where does all this 'members of the pack' stuff leave us? it leaves us with an understanding that when it comes to human-dog interaction there are probably no correlations in wolf behavior to help us. Dogs probably come to the table of human interaction with no expectations. We satisfy no intrinsic canine need by letting them sleep on the bed, just as we deny them none by allowing them to sleep on the porch.

Wolves expect their pack members to grow up and leave them at some point, which implies that there is no lifelong bond intrinsic to the nature of wolves (outside of the bonded breeding pair). A pet living in different homes is unlikely to be 'traumatized' by having lived in several households.

If anything, in the past 5000-10,000 canine generations we have made dogs more adaptable rather than less so. Dogs do not form wolf-like familial packs, even when they are feral. Dogs do not form life-long pair bonds with the opposite sex. Dogs are routinely removed from their first 'family' at 8-10 weeks and can live in harmony with strange non-familial dogs in numerous contexts.1

Dogs are not wolves, and in the case of the mythical 'alpha' wolf, neither are wolves. It is important, when studying the 'norms' of human-dog interaction that we understand that those norms are what we ourselves make them. Livestock guardian dogs are no more or less adapted to living outside with their stock rather than indoors with their humans than are poodles; we have made these lives for our dogs, and as much as we may want to define the rules of these encounters as "living with the pack' the facts fail to stand up.

Knowing what's real

When it comes to our pet's health the answers we seek are often muddied by 'experts' who write articles claiming that they know the answers. Their readers and followers read their articles and post on forums and 'help' out with advice they gleaned from those articles - experts themselves now. How does a common sense pet owner know where to turn for correct medical advice?

Well, duh, your veterinarian. But I too dabble in the world of Dr. Google. I know that we, A) want to save money, B) don't want to waste our vet's time on something idiotic, And C) Google everything anyway, even if we have the facts, because we want MORE facts, or better facts. I get that. So, barring your veterinarian, lets take a look at how we can tell fact from fiction in the articles shared by our friends, and turned up in our searches.

Cited studies: I'm going to tell you that anyone can claim to be an expert, but not everyone takes the time to find out if the snake oil that they're selling will work. Studies help separate the wheat from the chaff. Any article that tells you 'facts' but doesn't cite studies and the literature is providing hearsay and opinion. It could be learned opinion, or it could be junk. Without studies you are in the dark.

Are all studies created equal? No. Can studies be manipulated or twisted? of course, but, if a study is cited, then you can go look and see for yourself. If no study is cited you need to find your facts elsewhere.

This dog's cancer was cured by science

Sometimes articles will cite studies, but the studies and the article just muddy the facts. What are some signs to look for that can help you know that an article isn't medically sound?

Food solves all: There is only two conditions scientifically proven to be cured by a food change, and those are malnutrition and food allergies. That's all. Food does not cause cancer, and food will not cure cancer. There are no 'good' foods and there are no 'bad' foods, there are only adequate foods and inadequate foods. An inadequate food will not provide for your pet's nutritional needs and will lead to malnutrition. Want to know what the number one feeding regimen cited for vitamin and mineral malnutrition in pets is in the US? Raw and homemade diets, 1,2,3.

There are some diets that may help with some medical conditions. There is some anecdotal evidence that a higher quality, limited ingredient food may help with some pets suffering from allergic dermatitis or other forms of allergies (see how wishy washy that sentence was? punctuated with 'maybe's' and 'some's'? That's what science sounds like; uncertain in the face of limited facts).

Hills, Science Diet has a diet formulated for cats that stands in for medication in the event of hyperthyroidism. It limits iodine which is necessary for the functional tumor responsible for hyperthyroidism to produce excessive thyroid hormones. This food actually can be used to treat disease, and is unique for doing so.  1.

Unless your pet is too skinny or too fat, or allergic to beef, food ain't gonna cure what ails him.

Grain isn't evil. It's just grain

Cure-alls: We're back to the land of snake oil on this one. And while food, and feeding a raw or home-cooked diet is the snake oil du jour, it isn't alone. Essential fatty acids, various vitamins, garlic, etc... have all been touted as cures for everything from cancer to allergies (notice nothing cures things that need hard evidence that a cure has occurred, like deafness or a broken limb).

Nothing cures everything. Nothing. Sorry. And to my knowledge there is zero evidence linking any of the magic cures to an actual cure for anything at all.

The flip side of the cure-all equation is no side-effects. I will tell you right now that there is no drug, no chemical that is strong enough to affect an animal's body that is not, a) going to have unintended, unwanted, or unanticipated effects beyond those that we are seeking to treat, and b) dose dependent.

Here's an example from the real world. Aspirin was initially compounded from a naturally derived chemical found in the bark of willow plants. It has an analgesic (pain killer) effect in small doses. It can also thin blood, cause GI bleeding and ulceration, cause rashes, nausea, and drowsiness, in some children it can cause a fatal disease called Reyes Syndrome, and oddly, it can cause headache. Take too much aspirin and you can anticipate, vomiting, dizziness, confusion, hallucinations, rapid breathing, seizures or coma.  1,2.

A study of willow bark and the active ingredient found in aspirin found that even in same-species, same location trees the amount of drug ranged from 0.8%-12.6%. This is a huge variance (and why we shouldn't trust herbal 'remedies') Dose dependency is why we have Bayer and why we don't all have our own willow tree in our yard and strip off the bark on an as-needed basis. 1.

A row of Chinese herbs that were used freely in conjunction with 'conventional' medicine.

Anecdotal: Anectdotal means that someone told us that it worked. Its the old, "cod liver oil cured my cold" story (all colds are eventually cured, most in 24-48 hours, therefore, anything cures a cold after a day or two). Anecdotal evidence is weak at best, stupid and dangerous at worst.

You want to try XYZ food because your Aunt May's Golden Retriever had fewer ticks when she ate it? sure be my guest. You want to ignore a rattle snake bite because the rancher's dog down the road did fine with no treatment? You're an idiot.

Anectdotal evidence keeps the diet, erectile dysfunction, and baldness cure people in business. It is also driving tigers and rhinos to extinction, so it is no innocent thing to dump our money into stories of cures where none exist.

The difference between anecdote and science is numerical. Few cures are 100% effective, while because of the placebo effect, some cures will 'work' on just a few people. For instance, I believe that sitting in the spa 'cooks' disease germs and chases away colds. Now, there is a little bit of evidence that supports this (an elevated body temperature does kill viruses - hence our body's defense mechanism - fever) but to call it a cure sounds a little unlikely.

To test my anecdotal evidence we would need to eliminate the anecdotal aspect as well as the placebo aspect (after all, I believe it works). Lets say we took 1000 people with a cold and divided them into two groups. We do a placebo treatment on one (we need a placebo group to keep people from thinking it's working and feeling better -placebo is a very real thing) and my hot tub cure on the other. Now using the placebo group as the baseline, the percentage of people above the placebo group 'cured' by my hot tub experiment is the real effect of hot tub cures.

This is the difference between science and anecdote, and these are the things we need to think about every time we see something that attempts to tell us about our pet's health (or our own, or the planet's for that matter).

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Walking your dogs

I once listened to an entire lecture at an American Veterinary Medical Association Conference on the merits of walking dogs. The speaker was advocating for veterinarians to recommend that people stop taking about yard size (which rarely matters) and instead to recommend walking dogs to combat boredom, poor social skills, obesity and even improve motility and normalize stool (who knew?)

So, I did, I came back and began discussing the importance of walking dogs. I wrote articles about it and became a huge advocate of not just parking pets in yards and houses, but actually taking them out into the world to sniff bushes and meet the neighbors.

I still advocate that. But, recently, I observed the limitations of walking our dogs.

I fostered (and, ok, adopted) a young border collie. When I got her, she was a wreck; 10 months old and filled with manic obsessions. She couldn't be outside for more than a few seconds before becoming intensely focused on shadows (it was shadow chasing that got her ejected from her previous home.) She was reactive to everything, barking maniacally at other dogs and kids. She found random items terrifying (pinecones and a bronze horse, for example). When the world became too much to handle she ducked her head under the furniture and 'checked out'. I imagined, if I let her she could shadow chase or check out for hours.

Of course, the first question anyone would ask with a dog like this, is how much exercise is she receiving?

According to the previous owner, this little maniac went on a two mile walk every morning and then had a large yard to play (but in reality obsess) in. She had an Australian Shepherd friend to keep her company.

Two miles.

For many people a two mile walk is a huge feat. It is probably further than most people walk in a week. However, as I began running this little girl on the ATV, I saw her race my older border collie at well over 25 mph. I saw her charge off into the desert to chase lizards and the shadows of passing birds. Two miles is the starting point for our runs, but most often they are closer to four. The speed is 7 mph (a trot), though the dogs are off-leash and can choose whatever speed they desire. The terrain is uneven and has a 480' elevation loss and gain in the first .8 miles.

A two mile walk to a healthy dog is nothing. Imagine if every day you took your young five year old child out on a leash. They cannot run, they cannot play on the monkey bars, and they cannot swing on the swings. You walk them for 40 minutes (20 minute miles are about the norm for a moderate walk). Then you do nothing with them for the rest of the day. Oh, they have toys, and a playmate, and a flat dirt yard, but you spend no time teaching them anything, no time challenging their curious and devious minds, and they are provided no further outlet for their young brains and muscles.

A walk isn't going to cut it folks. Dogs, especially puppies, need to explore a world that has contours and different speeds. They need to walk on uneven terrain to educate their body about movement. Other dogs are useful for this, but so are hikes in the woods, runs off the bike, and off leash play in safe places.

Yes, off-leash. There are risks to off-leash, I understand that, and I am certainly not advocating it for crowded suburbs or places where strange dogs lurk. Almost all puppies are far more interested in being safe and at your side than off being eaten by wildlife. Nature helps us out here. Yes, diseases lurk in the soil, but we can be smart and mitigate as much of the danger that we can.

Why are we mitigating danger rather than simply removing it altogether? Because puppies deserve to learn to be puppies. They should be allowed to make mistakes and play and fall and explore. Life is too short to be afraid of all of the 'what-if's'.

I work in the veterinary field. I have seen all the 'what-if's' and I will tell you what experience has taught me: Most pets get injured falling off of golf carts, at the end of flexileads, in their homes and in their back yards than they do having fun out in the wilds. Here in Arizona, where rattlesnakes abound, I will see more dogs who were bitten on leashes and in their own yards than out hunting or running off-lead.

Do all dogs need to be off-leash? Of course not! Do all dogs benefit from off-leash fun? Yes. Does that off-leash fun have to take place out in the wilds? No, of course not. I had a great frisbee dog who could have been happy never leaving the back yard if there were a steady supply of frisbee throwers to amuse her. I am not advocating that every dog needs to run after ATVs and hike in the mountains to be happy. What I am saying is that few dogs will be unhappy if you add some more dimensions to their lives.

Cody, my little border collie bit a kid at ten months of age. This is a serious issue, and according to her former owners she did it because she was so focused on chasing a shadow that when the kid walked into the scene she bit him. The kid was uninjured, and so Cody got a second chance in rescue.

Cody now runs 2-5 miles a day with her co-dogs. She runs up and down steep rocks chasing varmints. She comes inside and falls to sleep and can sleep for hours, hardly stirring. In the afternoon she gets 15-20 minutes of training. Weekly she goes out into the big bad world and has more structured training. She accompanies me on outside chores (except when the chickens are out) and is able to go days without even seeing a shadow.

Puppies have both muscles and brains, and both of these systems must be exercised and challenged. Adult dogs too seem happier when their world is full of adventure - it's hard to imagine why anyone would even have to say this out loud.

I have owned a total of 18 dogs spanning from my childhood onward. All but the first dog was largely off-leash their entire lives. I lost zero dogs to wildlife, accident and snake bite. I lost zero dogs to arthritis or weight-related issues. I lost almost every single dog to cancer and old age.

We're all off-leash, and we're all always in some danger in life. Car accidents claim millions of lives, but no one would recommend not ever going anywhere because of the danger. Life is brief, it is wonderful, it is dangerous and it is thrilling, we should offer that life to ourselves and our dogs, and if that means a little bit of risk so be it.

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Why we need "no" in our toolbox

The other day I experienced the worst plane trip of my life. I was seated in front of Damien the Hellspawn who screamed non-stop for two full hours. Was Damien the Hellspawn a wee little baby unable to clear his ears? No. Damien the Hellspawn was a child whose parents had no tools to tell him to shut the hell up!

They were desperate (the parents) to shut this little hellion up, I could tell because they kept attempting to negotiate with him, "do you want a cracker?", "Do you want to sit with mommy?" to which Damien, in between Hell-shrieks would gasp out the word, "No".

These parents had no tools. They had been told that to tell their little Hellspawn "no", or to enforce the "no" with something more than references of future losses (they actually threatened to not take him on vacation anymore! Vacation! What need or understanding has a 4 year old of vacation?!?). They were trapped in a parenting hell created to minimized negative reinforcement in child-rearing. I, of course, would have hauled the child into the bathroom and threatened him with physical harm, which may be one of the reasons I do not have children.

This got me to thinking about what we do to our dogs when we take away our tools for negative reinforcement.  These parents may have deeply desired euthanizing, or at minimum, dumping at the nearest shelter their Hellspawn, but luckily for Damien there is parental attachment, and barring that, laws, to prevent them from simply dumping him and getting a better child. No such safety net exists for our dogs.

I am not going to tell anyone that the way that they choose to train their dog is wrong (unless they're flat-out unfair and abusive), and I know that there are people capable of training creatures like Damien the Hellspawn without the use of violence whether implied or real. Good for them, the world is no doubt a better place for the lessons they can teach us all.

However, the shaming of people who do not adhere to the positive-only crowd is a problem and it is something that needs to be exorcised from training discussions as being unproductive and dangerous. Positive-only sounds wonderful. It sounds happy and fluffy and friendly. Who doesn't want to be happy and fluffy and friendly with their dogs? After all, aren't our dogs our companions?

I love my dogs, they are wonderful members of my family, and much of their training is positive; not due to any philosophical adherence, but because dogs instinctively want to please and it's easy. I am no dog trainer, but I have a deeply rooted understanding of animal psychology and cause and effect from years of training horses and working in veterinary hospitals. I can tell you with absolute authority that your dog will only listen to you for as long as there is something in it for them. If you want to test that sentence out try calling your dog off a squirrel sometime. I'm sure that there are excellent positive-only folks who can call a high drive dog off a rabbit, but I can't, nor can most people.

Most people, by the way, are the people who own dogs and give up dogs to shelters and who get sucked into fuzzy sounding ideas like positive-only. These are the people who are hearing that telling your dog "no!"  is tantamount to animal abuse, and that you should never ever use physical force on a dog, and you should never use anything but a flat collar on a dog, and you should never, never, NEVER!!!

And so they never, because they were told they should never, but they're not dog trainers, they're just people, and their dog isn't easy, and their timing isn't good, and one thing leads to another and the dog ends up at the shelter; the people get a new puppy, and the whole sad episode repeats. The good news, of course, is that their dog was trained using positive reinforcement only. yay!!

Well, I do. My dogs know "no!" and if they put their teeth on me when I'm pulling a sticker out of their paw they get a little thump on the nose with my fingers. If they are down at the chicken coop and begin acting like barbarians they are told to go home, and that is reinforced with hand waving and thrown dirt if necessary. There are positive-only folks who would paint these actions as dog abuse, and that is where I have a real issue.

You want to try training your dogs a different way? Be my guest. I came out of the equine world where no two trainers ever had the same solutions to a problem. If you're smart about that, you find out that there are different solutions and as long as they are all fair and respectful of the horse, then good on you! Keep trying until you get it right, was my mantra. I rode a lot of different horses, and what worked on one didn't work on another. Every time I spoke with another trainer I listened for their solutions and I gave myself more tools.

Tools solve problems. No two animals are the same. No one ever told me that I could only use half my tools; that I had to accomplish the same tasks with one hand behind my back. That is what we're doing, not to trainers, who will do what they want regardless of public opinion, but to everyday pet owners.  That's unfair.

We need to provide pet owners with more, not fewer, tools, to help them retain relationships with their dogs. We need to allow pet owners to know that they have options in dog training and that those options are different, not abuse. We need to stop taking tools away from people and instead provide people with lots of different tools that are all fair to their dogs, and fair to the owners. Because, while positive-only is fair to dogs; in the hands of a lot of every day people it is not fair to them, and these people end up with dysfunctional dogs who cannot move to the next apartment with them, or don't like the new baby, or one of a thousand different excuses to "we just didn't get along."

If you can train your dog using positive reinforcement only, I commend you, but don't pretend that you have all the answers, because you can't. None of us does.

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Safety

We all want our pets to be safe. I work hard to ensure that my dogs don't end up injured or sick when it can be avoided, as do most people who own pets. As a member of the veterinary community I am forever advocating those things which are the most conservative, safest course of action.

That being said, I also believe that dogs and cats, horses and goats are still animals, and as such they deserve a life that is as full as we, their caretakers can possibly make it. Herein lies the contradiction. A cat that lives outdoors has a full and glorious life, for an average of about 4 years. An indoor cat may have a lazier, less excitement filled life, but will live upwards of 20 years.

The stakes are even higher for horses. Horses seem to spend their lives in pursuit of disabling injury or gruesome death. While they do not appear to be safe anywhere, we know that the least safe place is a pasture, however, a horse in pasture is also a happy horse.

So, where do we strike the balance? The simplest answer would be that any action that provides an animal a safe environment yet denies them the ability to pursue basic functions of their species is fundamentally unfair.

It is a simple sentence to write, and a much harder sentence to act upon. Cats are hunters. They stalk, catch, terrorize and eat prey. They cannot do this very well in most homes. Cat owners can, through interactive play, mimic the feel of most of these actions for their cats, and those cats may do fine living an indoor only life. I suspect, however, that most cats do not receive stimulating play that mimics hunting or stalking behaviors on a regular basis. These cats lie around their homes like pillows and are generally overweight and bored.

I'm not attacking cat owners here, nor am I making a judgment call. Being bored and fat describes many Americans and most teenagers, we certainly wouldn't recommend chucking them into the wild and telling them that they'll have a better life if they are permitted to chase wild animals with a knife.

What I am saying is that in a society increasingly risk-averse, and in a society that is increasingly seeing pets as furry people, we run the danger of failing to provide the basic needs of the very pets we seek to keep safe.

We also run the very real risk of judging people who we feel are being unnecessary blasé' about the health of their animals. Horses once lived in barbed wired fences. Horses in large pastures still do. Tell a backyard horse owner that your horse is in a barbed wire pasture and you may as well tell them that you trained them using a baseball bat. Barn cats are going extinct, for good or ill, largely because as a society the idea of a cat outside in the barn (a self-contradictory statement if there ever were one) is akin to animal abuse.

We all like to use the phrase, "I would never..." to express our disgust at whatever it is that has offended us. "I would never..." leaves a great deal to be desired when it comes to reasoned discourse. Obviously all of us know that there are many things that "no sane person would ever.." and these we have agreed upon as a society, but when we start off from our limited perspective, we limit the conversation.

We need to realize that animal abuse is an overt act that causes pain in an animal. It is not a husbandry choice that causes inconvenience. Cats have lived in barns for millennia, dogs have slept on porches since there were porches to sleep in, before that they slept around the campfire, as
we all did, and just because you would never, doesn't mean that no one should.

Common sense pets

There is a mania gripping this country regarding pets. It is being driven by people who love animals, who work with rescues, who share horror stories of abuse on social media, and it runs the risk of placing those of us who care about our animals, but who do not call them 'babies', who do not think clicker training can solve all problems, who think that horses should have jobs and no harm will come to most dogs if they sleep outside, on the margins of the pet-owning world.

Long gone are the days of socially acceptable barn cats breeding generations of inbred unvaccinated kittens, or people who shoot the family dog because it ate the chickens being permitted to say so in normal company. These people and these situations still exist, but they have been moved to the fringes, their actions border and in some cases cross the line into abuse and actionable intervention by legal authorities. The world is a better place because of this.

However, we are in danger of swinging past the middle ground where barn cats - spayed and vaccinated - can still exist, and a dog that eats chickens can be re-homed without recrimination. We are fast approaching a world where government driven by public opinion, not science, or fact will dictate when it is too hot or cold for pets to spend time outdoors, where horses who do not wear blankets or live in barns are considered 'neglected' or where hunters are cursed as murderers by people who eat meat and wear leather.

We are collectively losing our minds where animals are concerned, and it is my contention that there needs to be a voice of reason for those of us who believe that animals are not babies, those mewling helpless infant humans who cannot feed themselves, but are independent beings who have urges and needs that are both real and often underserved, and who need advocates who respect that fact.

I am a certified veterinary technician. I believe in excellent veterinary care for pets and find it abhorant when people choose price over quality for veterinary care. I believe in spaying and neutering, I believe that pets from the pound can be wonderful, and purebred pets from backyard breeders and puppy mills can be costly, heartbreaking disasters.

I worked for several decades in the equine industry. I hate unfair training practices, am not a fan of Tennessee Walkers and suffer from a strong love/hate relationship with horse racing. I think too many horse breeds have been damaged by judges who have lost touch with performance, and I think that even my beloved dressage sometimes rewards horses with forced, ugly but rhythmic movement over beautiful and flowing but slightly uneven tests.

I was a vegetarian for 8 years, and I still cringe whenever I think of factory farming. I try to find ways to eat from better sources, but sometimes I fail. I have never tasted veal, and never will. I have eaten a bison killed by my own father and found it very tasty. I feel that an animal that lives happy and free and has one very bad day is better off than an animal forced into cramped, unsanitary and unnatural housing for the length of it's entire brief life and then is systematically killed. I think we would all be better people if we were forced into fields with guns and had to choose the cow that would feed our family for the coming year.

I believe that everyone who loves and cares for animals and pets is at some points a hypocrite. We will be horrified at a photo of a dead giraffe killed by a hunter, yet we will laugh with forks full of chicken killed for us by proxy in the millions. We will find the actions of others always worse than that of our own.

I believe that we as animal lovers, and advocates must own our hypocrisy. We have to own the reality that we are not dealing with rational forces on the fringes of the debate in which we are engaged. We must let science and reality and common sense dictate our stances, and when our stances diverge (as they must - since we're all hypocrites) we have to be watchful that we do not devolve into name calling and accusation, but rather enter (as best we can) into reasoned debate, and be prepared to find that we are wrong.

Also we have to be prepared to understand that many of these debates are opinions, the facts such as they are, are muddy at best. We are entitled to hold those opinions, and entitled to explain how we formed them in an ongoing and rational debate, but when reasoned opinions are overtaken by dogma we all fall into the trap of losing credibility. Animals demand our care and our support, they demand lives that are respectful of what their lives mean to them, not how we perceive them or how we would wish them to be. This should be the underlying goal of all animal lovers, and when we lose sight of this we endanger the very lives we seek to protect.

Healthy vs Natural

Thee is a growing trend in the US to look for what we call 'natural', we attempt to mimic what we were meant to eat in nature how we were supposed to move in nature, etc.. and then we extrapolate that to our pets.  We ask ourselves, what does natural dog care look like? What does natural veterinary care look like?

I absolutely understand this. I write this sitting outside in nature listening to my chickens who will hopefully begin delivering me absolutely natural eggs. Many of the advances that we have made towards feeding the many have caused an unnatural balance to evolve in our diets, and have affected the quality of the food we eat. I am all for natural.

The question that we must of course balance is, what is natural vs what is healthy. My chickens are eating free range foods that are healthy and natural, and should create healthy eggs for me to eat. Leaving them outside with the coyotes to eat is also natural, but it benefits neither them nor me, so at night, they are unnaturally locked up. Domesticating them in the first place is distinctly unnatural, however, foraging for puny little quail eggs will not keep me fed. I must balance the natural with the unnatural to keep me and my animals safe and healthy.

We all want what is healthiest for ourselves and for our pets. However, even knowing what is 'natural' is fraught with debate. Are grains natural for dogs? They've been eating our scraps for tens of thousands of years, how long does it take before what we have chosen to feed them becomes "natural"?  Are grains natural for humans even, we've only been cultivating grain for about 10,000 years.

Before we humans began to cultivate grain we were hunter gatherers, we lived 'naturally' off the land, and had enough to just get by, we were smaller, suffered from malnutrition, and lost babies by the score to disease and malnutrition. in bad years we died naturally of starvation and parasite infestation. With the advent of grain we starved less often, but began to live 'unnaturally'. With the advent of grain we were able to begin cultivating livestock, including my chickens, which in turn fed us, providing superior unnatural nutrition and protein.

Feeding our dogs and cats bagged food is inherently unnatural. Feeding our dogs and cats our overly fat, corn fed, antibiotic riddled livestock can hardly be deemed more natural. My dogs eat horse manure and grasshoppers, they eat grass and if I let them, my chickens, that is natural, but will grasshoppers and manure be enough? What is a dog's optimal nutrition? 

What to know about 'natural' is that it is neither a panacea nor a curse. It is something that like everything else in our lives must be weighed carefully. Should we as a rule pursue eating natural foods? By all means, should those natural foods include raw meats and unpasteurized dairy? Not if health is our goal. If pursuing 'natural' for the sake of health is the goal, then choosing unpasteurized milk and eating raw meat will lead to a whole slew of natural diseases and possibly a very natural premature death,

With our pets we must balance these same issues. Is whole raw meat natural for an animal that has been fed left overs and scraps for 30,000 years? Who knows? Will feeding in this manner convey better health? Possibly, there is no way of really knowing. We obsess over natural food when the things that truly affect our health and the health have very little to do with the essential fatty acids in the eggs I eat.

People in third world countries, and their pets and livestock, live naturally. They drink water from rivers, and eat what comes to hand. They have no worries about chemicals in their environment, nor whether or not their beef was grass fed. They are living naturally, and dying young and often of diseases long since gone here. They may have the benefit of a natural diet, but they are dying because they lack our very unnatural Western Medicine. The much maligned curse of people who worship natural above all things is the one glaring difference between dying in infancy and living long enough to worry about pasture raised eggs.

Western Medicine is not natural. Western Medicine has eschewed herbal remedies and witch doctors for chemicals and drugs. It ignores stories and leans heavily on facts. Western Medicine doesn't care at all about natural.

We must remember that naturally wolves live to be about 7 and we live to be about 35-40. Dying young and dying often are natural. Western medicine has decided that in the face of death and disease natural has no place.

It is trendy in certain circles to point to our modern unnatural world and say, "Look at all the cancer, the dementia, the autoimmune diseases! Western Medicine is unnatural and causes these things." To that I must admit that I absolutely agree!

Western Medicine does cause cancer. It causes cancer for the same reason it also causes dementia, Alzheimer's, and other illnesses that come with age. Vaccines and modern medicine have allowed us and our pets to live long enough to encounter diseases that affect the old. Cancer being the number one cause of death in pets is just as unnatural as many of our pets seeing their teen years. It is unnatural that modern medicine has conquered so many of the diseases that used to make old age a rarified thing.

I'll take unnatural in that case. Natural has its place, but when it is pursued blindly in the face of logic it becomes ludicrous. I will try to buy grass fed beef, and I will allow my dogs to supplement their diet with whatever vile thing they can dig up, but once a year we will all trek to our various doctors and veterinarians, and we will pursue a long and unnatural old age.