Haloween is here (almost)

What will your pooch be for Halloween?
While Bruno is terrified of the holiday- due to the amount of little children (the scariest things on earth!) and the multitude of scare-crows and lawn-ornaments, we still think he doesn't mind playing dress up once in a while....

This is our first Halloween with him (we will have him a whole year on November 9th!) and he will be a Horse with a Jockey on his back! Its a great costume I picked up at Target for only $10. Winnie will be a Lobster again!

Prepare your dogs for July Fourth.

The Fourth of July may be an exciting holiday for humans, but our canine counterparts dread the flashing lights and banging noises that they can never understand.

Because dogs can hear at a range of  40 Hz to 60,000 Hz (while humans can only hear 12 Hz to 20,000 Hz, the noises of fireworks and thunder are very terrifying for them.

These frightening sights and sounds drive many dogs from their homes or owners in search of a safe place to hide. When they eventually end up at the local shelter, they displace many dogs that are already there.

In 2009, Salt Lake County Animal Services- 
which usually takes in 5 dogs a day- took in 73 dogs in the days after July 4th.

                                                                                                           

Sometimes the consequences can be worse than a night's stay at the shelter. A few years ago, my boyfriend and I were in the Thousand Islands for July Fourth when a family member's elderly Wheaten terrier named Caramel was let out at dusk to do her business. When no one could find her a little later, no one was concerned because the house we were at was surrounded by water and Caramel wasn't very mobile at this point in her life. Blind and somewhat deaf, she usually bumped into things and stood in corners for long periods of time because they were safer.

Later that night, after the fireworks, we feared that she had gotten lost in the woods nearby and went searching with flashlights. Unable to find her we waited till sunlight.

The next morning, family members circled the islands in boats and climbed through the woods. Finally, a neighbor on a neighboring island said she heard barking. We ran to the reeds where the water met a portion of the wooded island and found her in the water, clinging to some brush. She had yelped not 15 minutes earlier so we jumped in, pulled her out and carried her back to the house where we laid her out in the sun.

Somehow, despite her arthritis and age, she was able to swim to a safe spot and tread water all night, only to die when we got to her. She was bleeding from her nose from exerting so much effort, so we knew she had just recently passed. It was an extremely difficult sight to witness for Caramel's family- whose children had grown up with her.

Later that day we buried her among the wild lilacs, knowing that her time was coming soon but sad that she passed with such stress and anxiety. Other stories include a dog who had a siezure and died during the fireworks, and another who tore up the whole house in panic-causing himself to bleed. (Read here.)


To prevent these kinds of tragedies and the unfortunate influx of family pets to already crowded shelters- please keep your dog somewhere safe and quiet on Monday night.

First of all- do NOT take your pet to the fire works display. It is NOT fun for him or her- trust me, your pet wants to be at home, in the dark- in their crate or under a blanket. My parents' Wheaten terrier even tries to climb into the refrigerator to hide when fireworks or storms are rumbling outside.

DO NOT leave them outside, especially without identification.

DO NOT wait to go to the shelter if your dog is lost. With the large influx of animals, some shelters may not wait as long as it takes you to find your family member.

For more tips on keeping your dog safe, click here.

Thanks for reading---Good luck and enjoy the holiday weekend!

Winnie loves the water- this seems like a pretty safe depth to me!

Canine Anxiety

We have had Bruno now for six months (YAY! Half a year with a stable happy home :)) and have been working on his anxiety issues. When he goes out for walks, he wears a backpack and a gentle-leader and we bring treats mostly to distract him from people in the elevator who stare at him. He doesn't bark at anyone unless they stare at him- usually smiling, or make a sudden movement or noise. We try to preempt this by placing him in the corner close to us, sitting, and focus him on our faces, so he doesn't get scared.

While walking, his backpack helps him focus on his job- and we have trained him to walk closely by our side and sit whenever we stop walking. He usually doesn't have any trouble on this part of the walk- even though he used to jump and bark whenever someone ran by or children shouted. The gentle leader really helps get his attention quickly because it raises his muzzle towards our faces.

However, while we feel that this helps Bruno feel calmer on his walk and definitely scares our neighbors less, we still feel like walks and new experiences make him super nervous and anxious and that anxiety is always ready to bubble up from under the surface if someone startles him.

 

(Bruno at ACC-Manhattan)

When we brought him to Petco to have his portrait taken, he did not enjoy being kept on-leash in a small enclosed area with us ordering him around for a half hour. He actually broke out in hives on the backs of his ears and elbows and his eyes began running with tears as he barked incessantly. My mother suggested that this was high-blood pressure caused by stress, and I agree. I've started to notice he tears-up whenever he is in a new situation. Even when we walk him a few blocks away from his usual route, he gets very anxious and begins tearing up, whining, fidgeting, tugging and acting up. Unfortunately- he also scratches his ears until they bleed- something we think is tied to the anxiety.

Children of a certain age scare him with their spontaneous nature and someday I want him to be comfortable around our own kids. (Luckily babies don't scare him at all- he even licked a girl's bare foot in a stroller in the elevator once.) Usually he doesn't mind when we leave him in the kitchen during the day- he doesn't seem to whine or have separation anxiety. I think he feels comfortable there because it is dark and quiet and no one bothers him. His fear of sleeping alone has really improved and now we can kick him out of bed at night without him peeing on the floor out of fear.

I'm sure if he was left out in a large area, he would be very destructive when left alone- but having the kitchen to himself really seems to be the answer. He is comfortable with strangers after the second time he meets them (one time he barked at a friend every time he saw him for a whole weekend- one time even peeing himself out of fear- but the next weekend when he saw him, he wasn't scared at all.)

The only thing we need to fix is how Bruno experiences new things. want to be able to sooth him and help him enjoy new experiences and places and people. Today he got upset when a security guard outside out building clicked his pen a few times. Bruno barked at him, and proceeded to bark at everyone on the way inside. In other words- something sets off his anxiety and he can't stop.

Since we saw the hives, tears and bleeding ears, we have been thinking about bringing him to the vet to have him put on anxiety medication. We have used non-medical techniques to manage his anxiety and keep him calm and happy and for the most park they have worked- but we don't know how to help this. Apparently, they are meat flavored versions of human anti-depressants. I know if I felt the way he does about the world- I would never want to leave the house, and I don't want him to live like this. With children, you can explain loud noises and scary people- but dogs can't really learn and understand that these things won't hurt them- especially if they have hurt them in the past.

Does anyone know about this or have any suggestions?

Save Our Breed

I hate the fact that a dog born as a pit bull has been born into a life of prejudice, fear, and abuse. People are so scared of Bruno- which makes him scared of them. He lives his life in fear of people because he knows they can and have hurt him. We have recently stopped allowing him to sleep in the bed with us (he is a big boy now)- but he still sits by the bed and whimpers for human contact- to snuggle under the covers and keep us warm.

These dogs have so much loyalty, bravery, love and forgiveness for humans that they should be heroes- they have the potential other breeds may not to do search and rescue, bomb sniffing, to save people, to comfort people, to change lives. They have a spark of life and a gift of strength and loyalty that a lot of breeds lack. Unfortunately, they are also the most likely breed of dog to endure animal abuse and the number one breed killed in animal shelters.

This first video is hard to watch but it really helps show how abused this breed really is- how these dogs didn't ask to be born scary and used for sport- they were born soft and cuddly like any dog. They deserve so much more from the people that bring them into this world.

Pit-bull ownership is not easy- having a dog that looks anything like pitty means you often can't rent an apartment (more on this later) or get home-owners' insurance or can't even live in certain jurisdictions- see the varying and ridiculous definitions here. (When else does a "I know it when I see it" description really hold up legally?)

But it is worth it-I would never abandon my dogs so that I could live in a specific place- they are a part of my family now and all I want for them is to be accepted enough that they don't have to be scared of strangers.



Looking forward to this Documentary:

House guests

On Wednesday night I had two of my very best friends from High-School over for drinks and a night of catching up. They had met Winnie before- always a charmer- but had never met Bruno.

We don't have guests (other than family) often enough to train the dogs adequately so they tend to rush up to guests and jump on them a little. They tend to not jump on us much when we come in- but strangers and guests affect them completely differently--

Winnie-ever the anxty teenager--thinks they are potentially going to rescue her from her suuuper annoying family and goes to greet them wild with happiness.

Bruno thinks they are perhaps going to hurt him so he barks and wags intermittantly, waiting for them to extend a friendly hand so he can calm down. So we have to explain that it will just take them a few minutes to adjust.

The hard thing for guests that I have come to realize is that Bruno looks like a killer--

rawrrrrr

...so it is hard for them to be freindly to him at first- which is the only thing that will calm him down (This is probably how Bruno developed this complex- he is scary looking- so people are frightened of him- so he is frightened back and the process if self-fulfilling unfortunately.)

Luckily we have two rooms- and gave Bruno some time to adjust (all he needed was 5 minutes) and when he came back and saw everyone sitting calmly, he was able to greet them more appropriately. I really appreciated how much of a chance my friends gave him- they really trusted me when I told them he wouldn't hurt them and confidently allowed him to get used to their presence. They petted him and scratched him and eventually I think he won them over.

After a few drinks, one of my friends remarked that we could make a lot of money having him play a scary dog in movies because of his scary look and giant head:

Of course, this is hard for me to imagine because I see him as a big cuddly teddy bear who saves me money on heating bills:

What do you all think? How do you deal with your pit bulls' appearence with strangers, friends and family-members?

Panic in the Elevator

"HELP ME! HELP ME!" These were the screaming words of a woman in our building when she found herself sharing the elevator with me and my two pit bulls...

Normally, my boyfriend and I try not to walk our dogs unless there is a one-to-one ratio- we have found that in our neighborhood it can be difficult for each of us to handle both dogs at once unless it is late at night and no one is around.

Bruno gets very anxious around certain people and when one person can focus on him exclusively, he can be calmed down much more easily. However, if I have both Winnie and Bruno on leash, in the unlikely event that they both get anxious around a certain dog or person, they are not very hard to control per-say, but hard to keep quiet.

Still, once in a while we will walk them both out on the way somewhere and one of us will leave (go to work or elsewhere) and one person will take them both back upstairs.

This is just what happened yesterday- my boyfriend was leaving to work for a few hours yesterday afternoon. We walked the dogs, he left me in the lobby with the dogs, and he left for work. I brought them in to the elevator, which was empty and pressed the button for our floor.


Around the corner, our neighbors' nanny came rushing. They were leaving on a trip and must have forgotten something. I held the elevator for her.

I was wary because we had just seen them on our floor- the whole family with two nannies, two kids, and lots of luggage. The mother had chosen that as a time to tell us how afraid of our dogs she was and we decided to stay back and take the next elevator. While waiting, Winnie jumped gingerly, tail wagging, on the nanny, who replied with a disdainful "Are you serious?" to my boyfriend. (I had been waiting around the corner with Bruno, because I didn't want him to bark).

They had asked how the dogs were with children and dogs and were surprised to learn that Winnie loved children and they were both comfortable around dogs. They entered the elevator and the next time we saw them was loading the car downstairs. Thinking these skeptics were no longer an obstacle, I entered the lobby, said goodbye to my boyfriend and was looking forward to spending the rest of President's Day on the couch.

That's when the Nanny entered the elevator.

Bruno began barking at her instantly. He can sense when someone doesn't like him. People who are dog friendly never bother him- he can ride quietly in the elevator with a whole crowd as long as people don't ignore him or stare at him strangely. Once a person is afraid however, he barks. He could sense the Nanny's hurriedness and barked at her before she even entered the elevator. Knowing her fear of dogs, I was surprised she came in with us.

When she leaned over to press her floor (mine, which was already lit) she began to freak out- Bruno appeared to want to escape his gentle-leader and began squirming behind me.

She yelled "HOLD THE DOGS," to which I replied, I have them, sorry he is barking!" At no point did Bruno get closer than 4 feet away from her, but his barking and wriggling obviously threw her into a panic.
She began screaming at full-volume and crying hysterically and banging at the elevator door, yelling "HELP ME! HELP ME! HOLD THE DOGS" (as if I was going to let them go at her!)

Finally, when the door opened, she ran out, arms flailing down the hall, yelling bloody murder. I have never heard someone scream so loudly in my life- nor have I been around anyone who truly believed they were going to die.

I understood that Bruno was scary- he scared me the first time I met him when he barked at me. I felt horrible that I made her feel so unsafe. I cried most of the day on the couch and was sure the family would complain to the door man and building management.

The more I thought about it, the more I realized- my dog never touched her, there was never a possibility of him touching her as I had him secure on the leash near me in the corner of the elevator. He was only guilty of barking at her- and of course he was just as terrified of this screaming maniac as she was of him. He slept the rest of the day and I worried that he would now be traumatized by strangers and elevators.

I also noticed that the more times I retold my story to friends and co-workers, the funnier it became- everyone laughed at how crazy this woman was. It still really affected me and I am going to be much much more careful with Bruno from now on to make sure he feels safe all the time, but I am hoping that it doesn't have a lasting impact on me. I just look forward to the day when I can have a big yard and not as many neighbors so Bruno can enjoy himself and run around like a crazy puppy.

Has anyone else had to deal with this kind of person, experience or prejudice? I'd love to hear any stories you have and how you dealt with it.