Best Friend

It wasn't by accident that advertising for the company �RCA� once featured a dog cocking his head in front of a speaker horn. There's something about this position that most people find utterly adorable. Dogs know it, too, which is why they do it, even when they aren't trying to hear anything in particular. We give them a positive response, and they remember that. Also, dogs tilt their heads for very practical reasons as well. Tilting the head to the side puts one of the ears up and forward. By turning an ear in the direction of fuzzy or inaudible sounds, dogs are able to hear a little more clearly.

We often forget how confusing human speech is for dogs. Even though dogs understand some of what we're saying, most of our conversation is just a blur of sound to them. Usually, they just ignore it. They can tell from our body language and eye movements when we're saying things that concern them. Once something attracts their interest, they'll often perk up their ears and tilt their heads slightly in order to figure out what's going on.

Dogs rarely cock their heads when sounds are coming from the sides, since their ears are
already in prime hearing position. They mainly do it when people are in front of them, since the sound waves aren't traveling directly toward the ears. You'll see this more in puppies than older dogs. It's not that puppies have more trouble hearing. They just haven't been around us long enough to figure out what's important and what isn't. So they respond to almost any sound with a little head-cock, especially when we're looking at them at the same time. They know something interesting is happening, and they don't want to miss a thing. They often cock their heads to make sense out of the babble of noise. The movement allows them to capture every bit of sound.

The way a dog's ears are designed may play some role in how much he cocks his head.
Pricked-up ears may be slightly more efficient than other ear shapes, since sound waves are able to go right in. Floppy ears present a problem. The sound waves have to pass through a big, heavy ear flap before reaching the eardrum. This probably doesn't make a big difference, but dogs with heavy, hanging ears may have to work a little harder in order to hear what's being said. The inside of a dog's ear is shaped like a cup. This design allows the ears to scoop in sound waves - but only when the opening is unencumbered.

Last month at my cooking class hosted by Sizzleworks in Seattle (see pics here) we talked about things that people give to their dogs for chewing treats.  Bones of course should be provided with caution because they can crack teeth and cause obstructions when large pieces are ingested. Another favorite used by many of the students at the class is ice cubes.  That made me cringe a bit because ice too can crack teeth depending on how cold and hard the ice is frozen.  I suggested that ice might be a great way to help a hot dog cool down if we included items like berries, shredded carrots or diced apple.  Since these items are porous they compromise the structure of the ice and make it much easier for dogs to chomp through.


Our taste testers at home loved this treat, especially since I made it with homemade (onion-free) chicken stock.  Just chop, pour a couple of cups of your preferred liquid and freeze for 4-6 hours.  This is a treat best provided outside while your dogs is sunning himself.

Another cool idea is a just providing frozen carrots or green beans.  Your dog will wag with appreciation.

For at least four decades puppy mills have been one of the most shameful embarrassments of the dog world. Many AKC critics are particularly voiced that the organization hasn't done more to attack the problem, arguably one of the most cruel and pervasive examples of animal abuse in the nation's history � yet the average pet shopping consumer does not realize this.

By Humane Society estimates, puppy mills are almost the exclusive suppliers of the approximately half-million puppies sold annually through America's pet stores. There are an estimated 5000 puppy mills in the country. They are concentrated mostly in six midwestern states - Kansas, Missouri, Nebraska, Iowa, Oklahoma, and Arkansas - referred to as "the puppy mill archipelago" by the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (ASPCA). California is cracking down on puppy mills. Kansas, on the other hand, has made it a felony to sneak into a puppy mill and photograph or otherwise document its activities.

Pet store operators will tell you their dogs don't come from puppy mills. The ASPCA estimates that only about ten percent of all pet store dogs are non-puppy-mill animals. Numerous investigations have documented the often barbaric conditions of these operations. Puppy mill dogs are found being raised on wire, like chickens, or in cramped quarters, like veal. Dams and sires live their entire lives in cages and are bred nonstop from the time they are six months old until five or six years of age. When females have mothered themselves to exhaustion and their litter sizes drop, they are often killed. ASPCA reports that the mothers' bodies are sometimes fed to the surviving puppy mill dogs. American Humane, another animal-welfare organization, reports that one puppy mill breeder fed dogs "the heads of slaughtered animals." There are puppy millers who breed hundreds and even thousands of puppies a year.

Puppies born in these operations are often shipped during infancy - at four weeks of age - in containers so tightly packed that suffocation is not uncommon; they are frequently poorly nourished and rarely given appropriate veterinary care. It is estimated that about a half-million puppy mill pups perish each year before they reach the pet store. Forget about such niceties as socialization and breeding away from hereditary disease. A May 1990 study by the California Assembly concluded that forty-eight percent of the puppies sold in the state's pet stores were ill or carrying disease at the time they were purchased. The study also found that puppies imported from puppy mills outside California were three times more likely to have problems than puppies raised locally.

PC 169 K. Welsh (L) Pc 347 D. Moore (R) Leicester City Police. 1960s

Many people believe that dogs learn by dominance and/or submission. This is an interesting theory that appeals to our sense of logic and the way nature appears to be ordered from the point of view of the human ego. Supposedly, dogs can learn to respect another individual through dominance. This presupposes that they can perceive another being's point of view. Humans can indeed entertain others' points of view, yet we know that no one learns to work effectively through the dominance/submissive model.

No matter how much employees respect their boss or how submissive they may act around him, they expect to be paid fairly. Not enough pay and the attraction turns to resentment and a poor working attitude. Since humans reject and resist such an approach whenever they experience it, how can we expect the dog, with his more limited view, to work on this basis?

Not only does dominating a dog make him resistant to cooperation, but dominance has nothing to do with the smooth operation of wolf society. While it may appear that the leader is the most dominant in a pack of wolves, and that the inferiors have a profound respect for this "alpha" wolf because he is so dominant, that is a surface misreading of their lives.

Supposedly, this dominant individual teaches the other members of the pack what their lesser stations are, bringing order and stability into the group. However, the reason this individual is superior is because, within the group mood, he is endowed with the most uninhibited temperament and perceives order when the others sense disorder.

This produces an emotional balance, a self-confidence level that makes him active and direct in his behavior when the others are reactive and indirect. This confidence is then broadcast through his body language and probably through an internal chemistry revealed when he eliminates.

Given the pack leader's internal balance, he will experience the least amount of stress when passing on to less familiar ground, as negatives are smaller in his sense of order. In addition, the pack leader will feel the strongest compulsion to be first on any path that leads outward to the hunt as he acts in the most straightforward manner.

The inferiors will depend on the pack leader's enthusiasm to draw them across a threshold that may have a stronger inhibiting effect on them. An individual doesn't become superior by being dominant; the leader, to feel complete, needs the group behind him. Only by guiding the hunt does one becomes a leader.

Experts estimate that dogs can catch a whiff of something that's one million times less concentrated than what humans can detect. With so much sniff power, it's hardly surprising that they stick their heads out car windows. They could care less about the scenery. What they're after are smells. If you're driving through town at 30 miles an hour and your dog has his nose out the window, he knows where the bakery is, where the butcher shop is, which street leads to the local McDonald's, and maybe even what the mayor had for breakfast.

Dogs assume a characteristic expression when they put their faces into the wind: Their upper
lips curl, their noses wrinkle, their eyes partly close, and their ears fold back. It looks as though they're experiencing a moment of ecstasy (which they probably are) but mainly they're concentrating. It's as though they're closing down all the rest of their senses to focus on this one.

There's a world of fascinating scents outside the car. This dog loves to hang her head out the window and sample every one of them. All dogs, from huge Great Danes to tiny terriers, have extraordinarily acute senses of smell. Their scenting ability is enhanced when they are moving quickly, which is one reason that they take advantage of open car windows.

Smells are so important to dogs that they have two separate systems for detecting them. One is the nose system. It consists of a huge amount of tissue called olfactory epithelium, which is loaded with scent receptors. This area takes up about 1/2 square inch in humans, but up to 20 square inches in some dog breeds. As air moves over the tissue, odor molecules settle in millions of scent receptors. The more air flow there is, the more scents dogs detect. A Dog's sense of smell is enhanced when they're moving quickly. In the evolutionary scheme of things, this probably made them better hunters because they could load up on scents while chasing prey.

Dogs have a second smelling system that's headquartered in their mouths. Near the upper
incisors is a tiny duct that leads to a specialized gland called Jacobson's organ. It's designed to capture and interpret the most primitive types of smells. Dogs depend on it to identify other
dogs, choose a mate, and smell prey. When dogs scrunch up their faces in the wind, it looks like they're catching flies, but what they're really doing is catching scents.

Ancient dogs survived on whatever they could find or catch. If they managed to get more than they could eat in a sitting, they had to make sure it would be there when they came back to it later. "They stored spare food by burying it," says Benjamin Hart, D.V.M., Ph.D., professor of physiology and behavior at the University of California School of Veterinary Medicine at Davis. "It was a pretty resourceful way of keeping leftovers." Dirt may be gritty and hard on the teeth, but it is also protective.

The temperature in the ground is cooler than it is in the air, so burying food helped it stay fresh longer. Buried food did not roast in the sun. It did not immediately get covered with flies and insect. All in all, burying food and juicy bones was a very good solution.

Dogs do not need to bury their food anymore. But when they have an excess of rations, they feel that old urge coming on. So they look for a secluded spot, dig a quick hole, and put some goodies away for a rainy day.

On my way home from work yesterday, with the window down and a pleasant breeze coming through the truck, I decided I’d take Sensi out for a little romp in the yard.
We don’t have a fence, so I thought it would be nice to put him on the 30-foot training lead I bought a few years back. That way, he wouldn’t be tied to my side and could at least move around with a little freedom.
If you haven’t read my blog entry, The wonderful, magical Halti, please do. It was how I first discovered that yes, I could walk my dog without him pulling me to the moon and back.
But Sensi’s not exactly a spring chicken any more.
As he’s aged, he tends to stay by my side more and more regardless of whether he’s wearing the Halti. If anything, I have to tug and pull at him to get him to stop grazing on the grass and walk with me.
Though I use the Halti for any walks, I was only planning to hang out in the yard last night. I didn’t even consider using the Halti.
Sensi was excited to see the long lead — it’s been a while since he was last out on it.
We walked outside and I lead us around the side of the house, heading toward the backyard. There’s a small mowed path that runs along the house’s side. It’s on a rather steep downward angle, and to the side of it, there’s a large gully where the grass grows tall.
As I started heading down the hill, Sensi stayed behind me, chomping on the tall grass like a cow would.
As the length on the lead began running out, I called for Sensi to come. He jogged up to me, and then kept on going. And he picked up speed. He picked up a lot of speed.
I was about half-way down the hill at this point, and I barely had time to realize that he wasn’t stopping.
I didn’t see the chipmunk in the tree at the bottom of the hill until the very last second, right before the slack on the lead ran out.
My arm jerked forward, and like usual, I was determined not to let go. I have always had this unrealistic belief that I could hold on.
So I went flying. Literally — flying. With my hand still clinging to loop on the lead, my feet picked up off the ground and my body jolted forward.
About four-feet later, I landed squarely on my hip. The lead had finally been pulled out of my hand, but it landed just a few more feet in front of me.
As my husband later noted, it probably would’ve quite comedic to watch my little mishap — my body being flung forward and then landing clumsily, picking my head up to see my dog scratching at the tree.
But no one was around to see. And just as I began picking myself up and reaching for the lead, that darn chipmunk exited the tree.
He disappeared into the long grass, in the direction of the swamp, and off my dog went after him.
A bad situation, I thought, was about to get a lot worse. I’ve not only been yanked off my feet, but now my dog’s running off too.
“Sensi!” I yelled. “Come!”
The old boy stopped dead in his tracks and returned to me. And wouldn’t you know it, he walked right up to the hip I landed on, sniffed it and gave me a quick lick.
Yeah, like that’s going to make it OK.
We went back inside, and I after I’d gotten my wits about me, I grabbed the Halti and we went back out in the yard. This time, Sensi was an angel.
But incidents like that remind me, even good dogs can have bad moments.

UK Police Dog History
Specialist Search Dogs