Dog Blog

Contrary to what most people believe, dogs overheat more quickly than humans do. They wear their fur coat all year long and they do not sweat. They cool their bodies by panting, or blowing out heat, which is much less effective than sweating. Even if you are comfortable, your dog may be too hot!

What happens in heat stroke?

Heat stroke happens when heat gain exceeds the body’s ability to dissipate heat. High temperatures cause chemical reactions that break down body cells which lead to dehydration and blood thickening. This puts extreme strain on the heart and causes blood clotting and subsequent death to tissue. Liver, brain and intestinal cells are usually the first to be affected and this can occur quickly. Normal body temperature for a dog is about 101 F to 102 F. If his temperature reaches 106 F, he is in danger of brain damage, vital organ failure and death. Reducing body temp quickly is imperative. A dog who recovers can still have organ damage and lifelong health problems. Temperatures above 106 F are extremely dangerous.

Symptoms

Rapid, frantic panting
Wide eyes
Thick saliva
Bright red tongue
Vomiting
Staggering
Diarrhea
Coma

First Aid

Heat stroke is deadly! Heat stroke is an emergency! Cool the dog, in whatever way you can and get him to a veterinarian immediately! Hose him off, immerse him in cool (not cold) water, use fans, take him to air conditioning, or sponge the groin area, tummy area, wet his tongue, place rolled up wet towels against his head, neck, tummy, and between his legs. When his temperature drops to 104 F or 103 F, stop cooling efforts. Cooling too fast or too much can cause other problems.

Treatment

If the dog’s temperature is still high when he reaches the vet’s office, they may give a cool water enema, cool water gastric lavage (rinse the stomach), and IV fluids, and draw blood samples. The dog will be monitored for shock, kidney failure, heart abnormalities, respiratory stress, and blood clotting time. The dog may be given oxygen, dextrose, cortisone, antihistamines, anticoagulants, or antibiotics. Once he is stabilized, he may require follow up treatment.

Prevention

- Never, ever leave your dog in a parked car! Not even for a few minutes! Heat inside a parked car can build, in just a few short minutes, to as much as 40 degrees above the outside temperature. For instance, on an 80 F day, temperatures in a parked car can reach 120 F in as little as ten minutes, especially if the car is in the sun. Leaving the windows cracked helps very little and that’s only IF there’s a breeze. Factor in humidity and the dog doesn’t have a snowball’s chance!

- For outside dogs, provide shade, ventilation, wading pool, and cool drinking water. Keep in mind that shade moves as the earth rotates.
Make sure water containers are large enough to supply water at all times and secure so they cannot be turned over.

- Make sure that tied dogs cannot wind their tether around something, preventing access to water. Caution: Chains will wrap around themselves and shorten when the dog runs in circles.

- Crate only in a wire crate.

- Clip heavy coated dogs to a one inch length. Leave one inch for insulation, and protection against sunburn.

- Allow dogs unaccustomed to warm weather, several days to acclimate.

- Do not exercise your dog on hot days.

- Take precautions for at-risk dogs when the heat index reaches 75 F.The single most frequent cause for heat stroke in dogs is overheating in a parked car.

If this article accomplishes nothing else, I hope it educates readers on the importance of leaving Buddy home, not only on hot days but on warm days as well.

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Beware of Dog: Five Things You Need to Know

How in the world do we navigate the current state of dogs in our country? When did the innocent question, “How Much is that Doggie in the Window?” turn into “Do you get your dogs from puppy mills?” Once upon a time, it was perfectly acceptable to buy your precious pup at a pet store. Not anymore. And, how did we allow the number of homeless pets to jump into the millions and then decide that it was okay to euthanize them just because there was “no room at the inn.” How did we take something so simple — the joy of finding and caring for a dog — and turn it into such a mess?!

Let me be clear. Doggies rule. I’ve always been an animal lover — but a naive one. In the last eight months, since we launched our I’m Tired of Animal Cruelty campaign and began to work with our charity beneficiary, Best Friends Animal Society, I’ve learned so much and it’s quite scary out there. So, armed with my new found knowledge and the soap box to pontificate, here are five big issues facing dog lovers today.

1. 99% of puppies sold in pet stores come from puppy mills, according to the ASPCA.

Pet stores that still sell pets are notorious for getting their puppies from puppy mills. Worse yet, they are not above lying to you about it by telling you they get them from “reputable breeders.” And, they’re also not above doing whatever it takes to entice you to buy that sweet face you see in the window and all the accoutrements that go with it, even though the puppy could be seriously ill.

For those who don’t know, a puppy mill is typically a commercial dog breeding factory, complete with filthy and inhumane conditions. Adult “breeding dogs” are often kept in wire-bottomed cages to do nothing but continue to produce puppies. These poor animals have little human contact, little or no veterinary care and once their fertility is gone, they are typically killed, making way for new dogs to continue the barbaric cycle.

The puppies, themselves, are kept in similar conditions until they are sold. Thanks also to in-breeding and over-breeding, these babies often wind up with serious health or behavioral issues that may not surface until much later, like heart disease, blood disorders and respiratory illnesses. And, there are thousands of puppy mills in our country, producing about one million puppies per year. While there are laws regulating puppy mill conditions, the enforcement is marginal at best.

The bottom line: In this day and age, we can’t buy that doggie in the pet store window, no matter how precious. It perpetuates the criminal behavior of those who run these puppy mills and the pet store owners who turn around and deceitfully sell them. If pet adoption isn’t for you and you want a purebred with papers, then make sure you do your homework and get your dog a reputable breeder. If papers aren’t important, but you want a purebred, there are tons of breed-specific rescue organizations, as well.

2. There are millions of homeless dogs and millions more who are euthanized every day.

According to Best Friends, in the late 1980s, roughly 17 million dogs and cats were being euthanized in shelters every year. Today, thanks to programs like no kill shelters, pet adoptions and spay/neuter efforts, that number is down to approximately five million a year, but there is still so much more to be done. Finding these poor dogs and cats homes is further complicated by all of the puppy mills and even respectable breeders out there, churning out millions of dogs a year, and by people who impulsively get pets, without seriously thinking through what pet ownership entails, and then abandon them.

So, what can I say about this. If you truly have the time for a dog, can afford it and can be a responsible owner, then please adopt these fur kids and help the cause. If you want a purebred, find out about rescue organizations in your area for the breed you think you want. If you have pets, get them spayed or neutered, so we cut back on the vast numbers of new animals coming into the world.

3. There are criminals, who train dogs to be vicious, and fear-based vigilante attempts to ban entire breeds that are, as a result, deemed “dangerous.”

Prejudice is not just reserved for humans anymore. Now, there is a huge movement, called BSL (Breed Specific Legislation) seeking to ban specific “dangerous” dog breeds from communities, cities and even whole states. You can guess which breeds they are… Pit Bulls, Rotweillers, Doberman Pinschers and even German Shepherds… Why? It’s because irresponsible dog owners and the “lowest of the low” of our human species train their dogs to fight for entertainment and money or to serve as attack dogs, which then gives rise to irrational fear. So, it’s decided that the entire breed must be bad because of the actions of a few. Not okay in my book because we are dealing with the wrong offender. Why aren’t we bringing the criminals who are training these dogs to be dangerous to justice or taking dogs away from abusive or neglectful owners, who foster the animal’s poor behavior? Sounds a lot like racial profiling in my mind…

4. There is a conundrum between the controversies over leash laws and the lack of dog parks.

Battles rage in many cities every day over the lack of good and plentiful dog parks, so that owners have a place to let their dogs run free and play with other dogs. Some deal with it by illegally letting their doggies frolic in non-designated parks or school grounds. Others respond by taking their dogs for walks leash free.

Owning a dog is a responsibility and leash laws exist to protect your dog, other dogs and people. While I strongly advocate for more dog parks or designated dog park hours in existing community centers, unless there is a designated area for a dog to run off leash, they simply shouldn’t be allowed to do it. My dog has been attacked three times by careless owners who believe it’s okay to let their dogs off leash when they’re out in public and he has the scars from puncture wounds to prove it’s not okay.

There are also those, who aren’t involved in the dog park issue, but who let their dogs go without a leash because, in their mind, their dog is so well trained that nothing bad could ever happen. I think that, no matter how well trained your dog is, one quick distraction from a cat, for example, can cause them to bolt across the street with the risk of getting hit by a car. In my mind, the dog’s safety should always trump the need to prove how well trained he or she is.

5. The doggy health care system has gotten incredibly expensive and pet insurance seems to mirror our own human health insurance issues. (Where’s Obama when we need him?)

Veterinary healthcare has come a long way. Today, our pets can have MRI’s, radiation therapy, root canals…and even organ transplants. Along with these advances come higher costs. I can’t even take my dog to the vet for a minor issue without spending more than $100 for the office visit. On the other end of the scale, my dog has been unlucky enough to contract cancer with astronomical treatment costs. According to the American Pet Products Association (APPA), veterinary care leads the way in owner spending for their pets, predicting nearly 10% growth to $12.2 billion in spending on veterinary care alone for 2009.

Pet insurance is also projected to grow from its current $271 million level into a $500 million business by 2012, largely due to the growth in pet healthcare costs. My experience with pet insurance has not been positive after two tries, so I abandoned it. If you are considering it, make sure you do your homework to find a reputable insurer and read all the fine print. The older your dog, the higher the premiums and pay attention to deductibles. You also want to avoid things like “limited payout per condition” or no coverage for breed-specific or hereditary types of disorders. Some companies have huge lists of conditions they don’t cover. I’ve also read horror stories where an animal came in for an illness one time and when the policy was up for renewal, the insurance company excluded that illness in future coverage.

So, where is that “doggie in the window?” I want it back!

Carrie Pollare is the co-founder of the “I’m Tired of…” campaign, which was created to fight against the world’s issues that we are all tired of, like animal cruelty, discrimination, world hunger, global warming, cancer, diabetes and so many more. I’m Tired of… raises money for many charities via fashionable eco friendly bracelets, made from recycled tires and metals, (creating a fun play on the word, tired), which cost just $10, so anyone can afford them. www.ImTiredOnline.com

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You know that snarky bumper sticker that says “My dog is smarter than your Honor Student”?

Well in case you were feeling insecure about our intellectual superiority, let me reassure you: Even our human babies are smarter than that person’s dog. In fact, most normally developing babies are smarter than a dog by the time they’re 3 or 4 years old. Do you know that research has already discovered that 2-and 3-year-old babies can out-perform adult dogs at picking up on directional signaling like finger-pointing?

Oh yeah, dogs CAN do it. It’s just that toddlers can do it even when you throw in little tricks to confuse them.

It turns out that babies also “get” dogs pretty quickly. A new study finds that infants just 6 months old can correctly distinguish between the friendly yap and the angry snarl of a dog. Long before they can say much more than “gaaa gaaa” themselves, they can interpret the emotional inflection of a dog’s bark — even one they don’t know, an experiment at Brigham Young University shows. The study has just been published in the journal Developmental Psychology.

In the experiment, researchers set 6-month-old babies in front of two pictures of a dog — one in a hostile stance and one looking friendly and pettable. They played a recording in which aggressive barks and friendly barks were presented in random order, and watched to see which picture the baby gazed at while hearing the dog’s vocalizations.

The babies — even those with little to no previous exposure to dogs — got it immediately. They spent virtually all of their time in the chair looking at the dog whose stance matched the tone of the bark they were hearing.

Brigham Young University psychology professor Ross Flom, the lead author of the study, say the infants’ early attentiveness to emotional tone — even across species — underscores how quickly young humans learn to make sense of their world by interpreting emotional expressions. In an earlier study, Flom found that babies as young as 5 months old were capable of distinguishing a piece of music with a joyous tone — such as Beethoven’s Ode to Joy– from pieces of music that are gloomy. The experimental mini-subjects demonstrated their discerning ears for music by staring for a longer period of time at a photo of a person with a happy facial expression when upbeat music played and shifting to an image of a sad expression when music was played that was dirge-like and in a minor key.

That research was published in the journal Infant Behavior & Development. But you can see some pictures of the tots listening here.

Just try to get a dog to perform such a trick. It’s smarts like that that makes us the pack leaders.

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