Tuesday, December 31, 2013
Wednesday, December 25, 2013
Monday, December 23, 2013
Great article from Jim Burwell's PETIQUETTE Blog
How Dog Training Can Keep Your Dog Safe And Happy During Christmas
December 20, 2010 by · Leave a Comment
Sunday, December 22, 2013
Poinsettias are not Dangerous -From Just Labs Magazine
December 2013
Poinsettias are not Dangerous
The dashing plant so commonly found in homes this time of year is not, as was published in our email blast earlier this week, "one of the most dangerous plants found around the holidays."
The dashing plant so commonly found in homes this time of year is not, as was published in our email blast earlier this week, "one of the most dangerous plants found around the holidays."
The mistake was caught by one of our subscribers, who raises Labs and is a horticulturist expert who grows these plants in her greenhouse. I've commonly heard about poinsettias being particularly poisionous for our pets, but there has been plenty of research showing that this is not the case. I thought I'd share what I found with you as it was quite an education for me.
The Pet Poison Helpline categorizes poinsettias as a "minimal" threat and explains: "While poinsettias are commonly 'hyped' as poisonous plants, they rarely are, and the poisoning is greatly exaggerated." Penn State Extension agrees, as noted in a newsletter for master gardeners, "While they are not meant to be eaten by humans, pets or livestock, ingesting poinsettias would probably cause some stomach upset, as would eating most any houseplant. However, poinsettias have undergone extensive testing and there is no evidence that they are toxic or unsafe to have in the house."
That's not to say that poinsettias are the friendliest plant. After all, they are not meant to be eaten. If a Lab were to ingest the leaves and bracts, it could possibly lead to a stomach ache, drooling, or vomiting, but nothing life threatening. The potential harm would occur only if the bracts or other parts were consumed in very large amounts - a quantity that greatly exceeds what would be available at home during the holidays. A study by Ohio State University in 1971 showed how rats did not suffer any adverse effects after consuming high doses of the plant, as noted in this fact sheet fromColorado State University.
We apologize for perpetuating the myth that these beautiful plants are extremely dangerous for our Labs. We can also say, what a relief it is to know that they aren't! And a special thanks to our subsciber who brought it to our attention.
Friday, December 20, 2013
Wednesday, December 4, 2013
Monday, November 11, 2013
Sergeant Stubby
Sergeant Stubby (1916 or 1917 – April 4, 1926), was the most decorated war dog of World War I
and the only dog to be
promoted to sergeant through combat. America's first war dog,
Stubby served for 18 months
and Sergeant Stubby participated in seventeen battles on the Western Front.
He was just another stray
dog before he found his way into an area near Yale University
where the 102nd infantry,
Yankee Division was training for World War I. Private J. Robert Conroy found
the puppy there in 1917 and named him. He was smart and boosted morale.
He learned the bugle calls,
the drills and even a modified salute where he put his right paw on his right
eyebrow.
Stubby became a lifetime
member of the American Legion and later became Georgetown University's mascot.
Much thanks to Nitro Foundation HB 70 Law in Ohio for this posting
Sunday, November 10, 2013
Cleo’s Pumpkin Dog Biscuits
I found this recipe for pumpkin dog biscuts on facebook. It looks delicious and easy to make. I am going to give it a try and thought I'd share it with you -
Stop giving your dogs crap
from China that is killing our dogs!! Here is a Pumpkin Recipe that is healthy
for them, Cleo’s Pumpkin Dog Biscuits:
2 eggs
1/2 cup canned pumpkin
2 tablespoons dry milk
1/4 teaspoon sea salt
2 1/2 cups brown rice
flour *
1 teaspoon dried parsley
(optional)
Preheat oven to 350.
In large bowl, whisk
together eggs and pumpkin to smooth. Stir in dry milk, sea salt, and dried
parsley (if using, optional). Add brown rice flour gradually, combining with
spatula or hands to form a stiff, dry dough. Turn out onto lightly floured
surface (can use the brown rice flour) and if dough is still rough, briefly
knead and press to combine.
Roll dough between 1/4 –
1/2″ – depending on your dog’s chew preferences, – and use biscuit
or other shape cutter to punch shapes, gathering and re-rolling scraps as you
go. Place shapes on cookie sheet, no greasing or paper necessary. If desired,
press fork pattern on biscuits before baking, a quick up-and-down movement with
fork, lightly pressing down halfway through dough. Bake 20 minutes. Remove from
oven and carefully turn biscuits over, then bake additional 20 minutes. Allow
to cool completely on rack before feeding to dog.
* Brown rice flour gives
the biscuits crunch and promotes better dog digestion. Many dogs have touchy
stomachs or allergies, and do not, like many people I know, tolerate wheat.
Makes up to 75 small (1″)
biscuits or 50 medium biscuits
join here for more Juanita's Skinny
Answer!!
Monday, November 4, 2013
Thursday, October 31, 2013
Wednesday, October 30, 2013
Friday, October 25, 2013
Saturday, August 17, 2013
How to Safely Break Up a Dog Fight
How to Safely Break Up a Dog Fight
capable of a dangerous fight when provoked.
During a scuffle, a dog owner’s first instinct is to reach into the middle of the fight and try to grab their dog by the collar. This technique is not only ineffective, but also very dangerous. The odds of you being badly injured
or bitten while reaching for a fighting dog’s collar are very high. Two furious animals in the middle of a serious fight are normally in survival mode. If they spot you at all, they likely won’t recognize you as the loving owner they are cognizant of. The moment you charge in and reach for their collars, they may respond out of a fight reflex and then bite, or they might perceive you as another threat or attacker.
While there are always dangers associated with breaking up fighting dogs, there is a way to do it that minimizes your own risk of injury.
Breaking Up a Dog Fight with Another Person
1. Each of you shall grab the back legs of the fighting dogs, and then pick them up like wheelbarrow. With the dogs’ legs up, they are pulled apart and kept from each other.
2. Do this by circling behind one pooch, grabbing his back legs, and then raising them up into the air. Without the use of his back legs, the dog will be forced to stand on his front legs and will not be able to continue fighting.
3. Separate the dogs as you back away slowly. Just hold their feet or legs continually as you carefully move in a smooth backward arc. That way, your pet won’t be able to reach around and bite you. Because the dog will only be using his front legs, he’d be kept from maneuvering with any agility.
4. The moment you have reached a safe distance, at least about 20 feet away, try holding the dog securely until he calms down. Turn him away so he doesn’t see the other dog, and try to change his state of mind using distraction.
Splitting up a Dog Fight While Alone
1. It’s extremely dangerous to pull two aggressive dogs apart when you’re all by yourself. However, if the situation asks for it, move forward carefully with the plan below.
2. Get a leash if you don’t have one with you. The dogs will surely continue on fighting as you look for a restraint, but you have to take the necessary steps to guarantee your own safety.
3. Try approaching one of the dogs, especially the aggressor, if you can determine which dog this is, and the moment you’re close enough, loop the leash around the dog’s belly, just in front of his back legs. Try slipping the free end of the leash through its looped handle, and then pull it taut. Immediately back away, as you pull the dog, till you get to something you can fasten and secure the pooch to, perhaps a fence post or a telephone pole.
4. After this, move towards the second pooch from behind, grab him by the hind legs, and then pull him away using the same method above. Drag the dog using the wheelbarrow method at least 20 feet away from his opponent, and find a way to restrain him until help arrives.
Remember that breaking up a dog fight is very, very dangerous, and should only be done using the method above. Before reaching into a dog fight, always try other methodsfirst, like distracting the dogs or making a loud, sharp noise to get their attention. Do not panic or scream, as this could simply agitate the fighting dogs further.
Wednesday, August 7, 2013
Tuesday, July 30, 2013
Sunday, July 21, 2013
AKC Canine Myth Buster
From AKC canine myth busters.
Myth: I have to shave my dog’s coat because he looks so hot.
Fact: Many double-coated breeds have weatherproof coats that not only keep them warm in the winter, but also serve as insulators in the summer. A dog’s coat protects him from heat, sunburn, and even skin cancer. Shaving removes their protective layer, putting the dog’s skin at the mercy of the elements. Think of a heavy coat as your dog’s sun umbrella. Also, because dogs don’t sweat the way humans do, shaving the hair coat doesn’t actually help facilitate the thermoregulating process. Keeping a double coat in good condition with regular brushing is the best way to help a dog stay cool in summer.
Myth: I have to shave my dog’s coat because he looks so hot.
Fact: Many double-coated breeds have weatherproof coats that not only keep them warm in the winter, but also serve as insulators in the summer. A dog’s coat protects him from heat, sunburn, and even skin cancer. Shaving removes their protective layer, putting the dog’s skin at the mercy of the elements. Think of a heavy coat as your dog’s sun umbrella. Also, because dogs don’t sweat the way humans do, shaving the hair coat doesn’t actually help facilitate the thermoregulating process. Keeping a double coat in good condition with regular brushing is the best way to help a dog stay cool in summer.
Saturday, July 20, 2013
Friday, July 19, 2013
Tuesday, July 16, 2013
D.N.A. Backs Lore on Pre-Columbian Dogs
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| Peony, a Carolina dog. Some of the breed’s rare traits include a fishhook tail, a pointed, somewhat lupine face and the habit of digging snout pits. |
D.N.A. Backs Lore on Pre-Columbian Dogs
By JACK HITT
BISHOPVILLE, S.C. — Inside a fenced acre on the swampy Lynches River flood plain in central South Carolina, seven of Don Anderson’s primitive dogs spring into high alert at approaching strangers. Medium-sized, they fan out amid his junkyard of improvised habitat: a few large barrels to dig under, an abandoned camper shell from a pickup, segments of black plastic water pipe and backhoed dirt mounds overgrown with waist-high ragweed.
These are Carolina dogs, and though they are friendly, one can instantly sense they are different from other dogs. Several rush to the gate, their whole bodies wagging eagerly. Others sprint off and take position — their jackal ears fully erect, their fishhook tails twitching like flags in a stiff wind. A black pup scrabbles away in crablike submission that eventually takes her into an underground den, dug deep enough that she is not seen again.
Walking into the pen is dangerous for only one reason: one of the dogs’ defining habits is digging snout pits, or gallon-size holes in the ground, perhaps to root for grubs or munch the soil for nutrients.
“It’s like a lunar landscape,” Mr. Anderson warns as we tread carefully into the underbrush.
Some Carolina dogs still live in the wild, and local people have long thought they were one of the few breeds that predated the European arrival in the Americas: “Our native dog,” as Michael Ruano, another enthusiast who often works with Mr. Anderson, put it. “America’s natural dog.”
Now, a new study of canine DNA backs up the folklore. A team led by Peter Savolainen at the Royal Institute of Technology in Sweden has reported that several dog breeds in the Americas — among them the Peruvian hairless, the Chihuahua and the Carolina dog — are without some genetic markers indicative of European origin, suggesting they arrived in an earlier migration from Asia.
The study also reawakens the long debate about where and how dogs were domesticated. Current theory speculates that they are descended from wolves that somehow became attached to humans perhaps 12,000 to 33,000 years ago — an early amity that has an extensive pedigree in human folklore. (Think Romulus and Remus.)
But where that may have happened is not entirely settled. Some say the earliest dogs emerged in the Middle East. Others point to an area south of the Yangtze River in China. Dr. Savolainen’s study provides more evidence for the China hypothesis and, as a result, lends support to the idea that the earliest domesticated dogs crossed the Ice Age land bridge known as Beringia some 12,000 years ago.
Carolina dogs, then, could be camp followers that wandered off from their Paleo-Indian masters and took up residence in swampy areas where they can easily hide out from their own natural predators.
Encounter With a Puppy
Mr. Anderson, 79, is a Virginian who moved to South Carolina in 1961. He’s a garrulous man dressed in comfortable blue stretch pants, a pair of Crocs on his feet, and a headband to hold back shoulder-length hair that stubbornly retains some glints of blond.
He remembers the day, back in the Nixon administration, when he had his first encounter with these wild dogs. Down by a nearby water hole on his land, he spied a mother and three pups, and they immediately bolted.
“Two of the puppies went east, and one puppy tried to get out west and he got stuck,” he explained. He took the pup home and named him Tadpole.
Not long afterward a stranger saw the dog and offered Mr. Anderson $300 for what his neighbors called a “Lynches River wild dog.” He refused the deal, thinking, he says now, “if he’s worth $300 to you, then he’s worth $300 to me.”
Mr. Anderson soon learned that others called them Carolina dogs, a name given to them by I. Lehr Brisbin, a biologist with the Savannah River nuclear power plant, near Aiken, and the man most responsible for the current interest in the breed. In the early 1970s, Dr. Brisbin was employed checking out the wildlife on the periphery of the plant and often came upon these wild dogs in the swampier parts of his domain. He took a few in and today maintains an 18-acre enclosure where he has his own pack.
Dr. Brisbin got the Carolina dog recognized by the United Kennel Club and was the first to describe some of the breed’s rare traits, including the fishhook tail, the pointed, somewhat lupine face and the habit of digging snout pits. The dogs cooperate as a pack when they hunt a field mouse or a rabbit, possibly using their white hindquarters as signals.
“That white fishhook can be hoisted like a white-tailed deer’s and can flash back and forth,” Dr. Brisbin explained. “I saw them do it, and I saw the rest of the pack honor it.”
Carolina dogs typically go into heat once a year, like wolves, instead of twice, like domesticated dogs. They cover up their scat by pushing dirt over it with their noses, not by using their hindquarters to scratch the ground.
Still, determining just what is and is not a Carolina dog requires a kind of gut instinct. To Mr. Anderson, it’s a matter of “I know it when I see it”; Dr. Brisbin is more blunt.
“The Carolina dog is a breed created by Brisbin,” he said, referring to himself in the third person, “by picking dogs he likes, the type that he thinks typify the ancient dog.”
This is not to say the Carolina dog is more mythic than real. But the problem is that some of the wilder dogs have mated with other breeds — local dogs and even coyotes. Determining just what is a Carolina dog means becoming more finely tuned to the sense that anyone feels stepping into Don Anderson’s enclosed acre. Experiential knowledge is crucial, being able to sense the entirety of the animal and in that way recognize which dog is almost purely Carolina and which is more of a mix.
Most Carolina dogs are ginger-colored, like Australian dingoes, but they can also be black and piebald. Most, but not all, are short-haired.
Some have tiny patches, right above their distinctive almond eyes, that look like a spare set of eyes, what Mr. Anderson calls “spirit eyes.” Some have an unusual white stripe at the shoulder. There are the noticeable ears and the tail, but also the athletic tucked-in stomach (like a Doberman). DNA studies may soon make it easier to assert the Carolina’s distinctions from other dogs.
Early Sightings
Awareness of this unusual dog has its own history. According to Mark Eden, another enthusiast working with Mr. Anderson, the journals of the 16th-century Spanish explorer Hernando de Soto include possible references to Carolina dogs.
In the essential narrative of early American natural history, William Bartram’s 1791 book “Bartram’s Travels,” the author runs across a Seminole Indian maintaining some horses and writes: “One occurrence, remarkable here, was a troop of horse under the control and care of a single black dog, which seemed to differ in no respect from the wolf of Florida, except his being able to bark as the common dog.”
In his journal for Feb. 16, 1806, Meriwether Lewis writes of an “Indian dog” that is “party coloured; black white brown and brindle” with “ears erect and pointed like those of the wolf” and used by American Indians to hunt elk.
In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the dog’s wildness and its ginger coat — and probably its use by the poor as a hunting dog — led to the name “yaller dog,” typically spelled that way except by the kind of manor-born people who say “chitterlings.”
And that may have given rise to the term “yellow dog Democrat” to describe the anti-Republican die-hard in the South, as in the 1920s slogan “I’d vote for a yellow dog if he ran on the Democratic ticket.”
The occasional revival of interest in the Carolina dog happens this time just as enthusiasts make the case for its inclusion among the ancient dogs the world over. Dr. Brisbin also suggests that the Carolina dog fits in the niche of “pariah dogs,” dingo-like and appearing to survive in difficult habitats, like Don Anderson’s swamps, typically on the outskirts of ancient human migration routes.
There are many of these older dogs: the Canaan dog of Israel, the Santal hound of India, the Jindo of Korea, the Telomian of Malaysia, the New Guinea singing dog, the Kintamani dog of Bali, the African basenji — and the images that pop up in a Web search are oddly similar to those of the Carolina dog.
Continents and millenniums aside, they possess many of the qualities Dr. Brisbin and Mr. Anderson describe. These primitive dogs started living near people tens of thousands of years ago, finding a place just out of sight of human encampments — where, if the current studies hold up, they steadfastly remain.
Saturday, July 13, 2013
Jim Buck NYTimes Obit
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Jim Buck, near Central Park in 1964, is considered the first professional dog walker in New York City. He ran a business in which he and two dozen assistants walked more than 150 dogs a day.
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