Dog Blog

Forest Service workers in Southern Oregon discovered a dachshund out in the woods who had been mauled by animals. The dog gratefully accepted their help, and he was rushed to the local animal hospital. Thankfully, this dog story has a nice ending. Read about Stitch in the Mail Tribune.

Meanwhile, a company in California is now trying to sell flavored water for dogs - will people really buy “Toilet Water” for their spoiled pooch? I kind of hope not, but you never know.

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The love of dogs - Is it in the genes? 

Have you ever noticed that some people seem to be born dog lovers, and other people really can’t understand what all the fuss is about? I have a theory, (which may be completely nuts, of course), that an affinity towards dogs and other animals has a genetic component.

Have you ever known a feral cat who hisses and spits before he’s old enough to open his eyes, and never feels comfortable in the company of people? I adopted one once, when I lived in Spokane. His mother was an abandoned Siamese who was found in a neighbor’s basement, and the father was probably a wild cat - there were hundreds of them in the area.

You could say quite honestly that my cat was not a “people person,” and no amount of spoiling ever turned him around.

When he grew older he could tolerate me if I was sitting down, but when I stood up he raced for the kitty door in terror, as though he had never seen me before. However, he was madly in love with my Miniature Schnauzer.

Some dogs are bred on purpose to like humans, but only a little. If a dog is running through the woods after a fox or coon, he won’t be worth much if he keeps turning around to see if his favorite human approves of him. A Border Collie would make a lousy coon dog.

Yet most dogs and cats love humans from the moment they’re born, just as some children are immediately drawn to puppies and kittens. So, if dogs and cats can be genetically inclined to love and adore humans, (or not), why couldn’t it be the same for us?

Did we end up being dog lovers because it’s in our genes, or because that’s how we were raised? Or both?

I recently saw an ad for an adult Cavalier King Charles Spaniel that was being sold for $250, when the only Cavalier puppies available in the area that week were being sold for $800 to $1200.

Can you imagine a farmer selling a full-grown cow for a third of the price he charges for 2-week old calves? It’s a silly idea - but most puppies often bring much higher prices than older dogs. The exceptions are dogs that have been raised and trained for a specific purpose, such as the specialized hunting dogs, sniffer dogs, and search and rescue dogs.

Most dogs in the United States have only one purpose: To be pets. And for some reason, other people’s pets lose value the longer they live with those other people.

When most dog owners need to sell their adult dogs, you can bet they won’t get the price they paid for them as puppies.

Lab and pit bull owners who need to “re-home” their pets have to beg folks to take them, or the dogs end up in the pound.

I’m going to bring the discussion back to those specially-trained dogs for a moment. I suspect that the reason a mature working dog sells for big money and mature pets do not, is that Americans assume that other people’s pets have been “damaged” somehow, through bad training or permissive ownership.

Any dog that needs a new home, we believe, is “somebody else’s problem.” Why would anyone pay extra for a dog who has been getting away with murder? (And we assume he has been, or he wouldn’t be looking for a new home).

Maybe if we had a dog training class in every high school, and we all learned how to raise civilized dogs, we would begin to assume that other people’s dogs learn good habits as they mature.

Then it would be easier to believe someone when she tells us that her “active” dog needs a new home (with a strong fence and no small children) because the owner has to move and can’t take the dog with her. Perhaps older dogs, in other words, would begin to get the respect they deserve.

Last Tuesday our local paper ran a story about bad dogs - including a snappy Chihuahua, who were turned around by good dog trainers. The story reminded me that we all love our dogs, and we want them to be loved by our friends and neighbors, too. But sometimes things can turn ugly.

Even little dogs can do some damage to your ankles if they become aggressive, and can’t be controlled.

One of the few dog breeds for which I have a strong dislike are dachshunds. I don’t care that they’re cute, that they like to sleep under the covers, that their owners all love them to pieces. I was subjected to an untrained doxie when I was a kid, and that one dog’s bad behavior turned me against them. I know better now, but it doesn’t help.

A recent conversation on the Portland Craigslist started because a woman tried to adopt an adult doxie from a dachshund rescue group, but her offer was rejected, and it hurt her feelings. The rejection was based on the fact that the person wanting the doxie already had two small children. The rescue group said one reason the adoption wouldn’t work has to due with the very expensive back surgery that many of these elongated dogs need after kids pick them up or roughhouse with them.

But the other reason was that doxies can’t really be trusted around kids - they were originally bred as hunters, they said, and they tend to chase anything that moves.

The dachshund I experienced as a child would hide under our couch, which had legs just long enough to give him a good hiding place. When a child sat on the couch with bare feet, the dog would “hunt” our toes. Sharp teeth. Not fun.

I honestly don’t know if all older doxies need to be adopted by families with no small children - I suspect that there are many examples of when it turned out just fine. But I would tend to pay attention if a rescue group was discouraging me from taking one of their animals - they know their dogs, and don’t want to see them rejected by another family. And they have a right to choose who their dogs go to - it’s their passion, after all, or they wou’dn’t be doing it.

That brings up another point - can a good dog trainer change a dog’s inbred behaviors, if those behaviors don’t fit the family it lives with? And how do you know if it’s just a badly trained dog (like my mother’s dachshund, perhaps), or a dog with a built-in bad temperament? Will a good trainer help in either case? Or should you resort to muzzles, t-shirts, and double leashes so you can keep a dog with a bad attitude, as one dog owner-turned-trainer who was interviewed for the newspaper article?

A coworker has a 5 month old Ausie who is starting to guard her bed from her 7 year old child. (It was kind of “cute” when the pup guarded her from her husband, but now it’s getting out of hand.) Is it “just natural” for Ausies to be overly protective, or can a good dog trainer change the owner’s behavior enough to save the dog? In the next month or so, we’ll find out.

If you have any comments on training, dog behavior, dog adoptions, or any other issue that is related to dogs, please feel free to submit an article to this blog. This is a new blog, which I created to make it easier to add articles of interest to my older-dog.com website. Your participation is encouraged - if you love dogs, we’d love to hear from you!