Recently in Dogs Category

Lucy Postins, founder of The Honest Kitchen, offers some sound advice for how to safely include your pets in your holiday feasting. Don't Forget Your Pet When Preparing Holiday Meals is a refreshing departure from the typical advice, which is to steer clear of holiday foods when it comes to your pets. It's not that abstaining from holiday feasts for pets is bad advice, it's just not that much fun. And most of us don't really follow that advice anyway, since we love including pets in our family traditions. So I was happy to see Lucy's article earlier this month about what foods are okay to feed pets during the holidays - and what to avoid - it gives us some framework to help us make decisions. Here's a short summary of Lucy's article:

Turkey, Ham, Prime Rib and other meats. Okay in small amounts / moderation and focus on meat - not fat and gristle. However, never feed any type of cooked bones - they can splinter and damage the GI tract. Too much fat and gristle can lead to pancreatitis - a very uncomfortable and dangerous condition. Stay away from meats with added sodium, nitrates and preservatives - they are bad for you and your pet.

Green Bean Casserole. Okay in very small amounts, but don't include the onion topping. Fresh raw or cooked green beans are okay to add to your dog's food any time.

Sweet Potatoes. Excellent source of beta carotene and highly nutritious. Steamed or baked sweet potatoes are ideal and easy to digest. Avoid serving your pets the traditional holiday version of sweet potato casserole that contains lots of syrup, marshmallows or candied nuts.

Cranberries. A great addition to your pet's bowl any time of year and especially during the holidays. No cranberry sauce or jelly, though, as these can be full of sugar and other things that Fido shouldn't have. Cranberries are good to help prevent urinary tract infections.

Pumpkin & Squash. These are wonderful foods to share with cats and dogs in moderate amounts. Most pets love the taste of these yummy and nutritious vegetables.

Winter Greens. Chard and kale are awesome sources of vitamins and antioxidants. Brussels sprouts and cabbage are also loaded with good nutrients, but they can cause gas in your pet's tummy. These can be added raw, lightly steemed or sauteed, but without added salt, wine, soy sauce or butter.

White Potatoes. Okay in moderate amounts. Avoid serving your pet potato dishes loaded with cream, dressings, oil or butter.

Lucy's List of Holiday Foods to Avoid

• Stuffing and corn pudding
• Desserts and cheeses
• Relishes
• Onions
• Chocolate
• Macadamia nuts
• Grapes
• Raisins
• Candies with xylitol

Lucy also explains that as with any time you change your pet's normal meal routine, it is best to make additions to your pet's bowl gradually so you can ensure your pet is able to tolerate what you are serving. Don't allow your pet to gorge. Gorging can lead to pancreatitis or bloat. If you do experience an incident where your pet over indulges due to counter surfing, or getting into the holiday trash, keep a close watch. If you notice signs of bloating, vomiting or other digestive problems such as diarrhea or constipation, Lucy says a visit to your vet's office is recommended, without delay. Happy Holidays!

We all look forward to the holiday season, and we love to include our pets in the festivities. However, the ASPCAs Holiday Safety Tips warns it is best to keep your pet's eating and exercise habits as close to normal as possible. Plus, there are certain holiday traditions you should steer clear of for the safety of your pets. Here are highlights from the ASPCA's Holiday Safety Tips...

1. Got cats? Say "NO!" to tinsel. Tinsel is the equivalent of sparkly "crack" to the kitties and can lead to obstructed digestive tracts, severe vomiting and possibly surgery. It is best to keep it away from your cats.
2. No big feasts for the Fur Kids. You know not to feed your pets chocolate or anything sweetened with xylitol, but it is also important to resist the urge to let your pets feast along with the family. One splurge can lead to pancreatitis or worse. Ensure pets are kept away from the table and unattended food. Take extra steps to secure the lids on garbage cans. The best way to include your pets in the holiday feasting festivities is to get an extra special treat that you know is safe - so they can enjoy something special while the rest of the family enjoys the holiday meal. Groovy has seasonal baked treats, yummy bones and canned meals you can serve as special treats for your pet.
3. Joy to the Toys. Considering stuffing your pet's stocking with toys? Be sure to select toys that are safe. Not sure which toys are safe? Select toys for your pets much the same way you would select a toy for a small child - no small pieces to break off or chew off. For your cat, choose a toy that you can interact while playing with your feline pal.
4. Holiday plants are dangerous for your pets! Steer clear of holly, mistletoe and certain lillies that are toxic to cats. These traditional holiday plants can cause symptoms ranging from nausea, vomiting and diarrhea up to and including kidney failure. Choose artificial plants instead.
5. No leftovers please! Fatty, spicy and certain foods enjoyed by humans during the holidays are absolute no-no's for pets. Even after the holiday feast has past, continue to keep your pets away from holiday leftovers.
6. Watch that holiday glow. Don't leave lighted candles unattended. Pets can easily burn themselves or cause a fire if they accidentally knock over a burning candle. If you leave the room, put out the candle!
7. Wired up. Keep wires, batteries and glass or plastic ornaments out of paws' reach.
8. Put meds away. Be sure your medications are locked behind secure doors, and be sure to tell your house guests to ensure all their meds are zipped up and packed away, out of pets reach too.
9. Take care with cocktails. If your celebration includes adult holiday beverages, be sure to place unattended alcohol where pets reach. If ingested, your pet could become very sick.
10. A room of their own. If you have the extra space, consider placing your pets in a quiet room where they can retreat -- complete with fresh water and a place to snuggle with their favorite blanket or toy. 

Also, read Five Holiday Pet Safety Tips written by Lucy Postins, founder of The Honest Kitchen, one of our absolute faves!

PHOTO BY INA JALIL

As we've discussed before, music can excite, agitate, or soothe and calm pets, and it's the relaxing aspect of music that most interests us: can music make your anxious dog calmer during or after the storm, or while you're away? Can the right symphony soothe kitty when too much activity or outside interference makes her skittish? Research says yes, and in fact we've discovered a whole micro-industry of sweet sounds for furry friends, including one online shop that actually sells "pet speakers" for purrfect acoustics. If you search Amazon for "relaxation music" or "calming music" for pets/cats/dogs, you'll discover you have a lot to choose from, but there's really no need to spend a lot of money on pet tunes.

Many experts recommend classical music (this article has some specific recommendations), so you could just mine your music collection for Bach, Beethoven, Vivaldi and the like for your furball's relaxed listening pleasure. This independent study [PDF] claims that solo piano with simplified arrangements at 50-70 beats per minute is optimal for calming canine anxiety, and this article says, "dogs appear to be calmed by music with slower tempos, fewer instruments and simpler melodies."

But guess what, you don't even have to bother rifling through your stash of tunes, because in the manic, magical wonderland that is the Internet, guess what I've discovered? Yep, radio stations for pets. For reals.

• Dog Radio plays very simple, classical compositions which should please skittish kitties, too. The page operates on auto-start (no controls), and worked for me in Firefox and Internet Explorer, but not Opera.
• Cat Galaxy radio says it plays only cat-approved tunes -- music that the cats of the website owners like, as well as as suggested tunes from other music-loving cats, via their owners. (Article here.) Cats apparently have way more adventurous musical tastes than dogs, according to what I've listened to on this station! :) Cat Galaxy worked for me in FF, IE, and Opera.
• Dog Cat Radio is another station for our furry friends, but it seems stuck on only one song for the moment... perhaps something to check back with later.
  

There's also an inexpensive Pet Acoustics iPhone app "music for your dog, cat or horse from your iPhone, iPod Touch or other music player" that I have not personally checked out.

I happened upon this rather gorgeous little gem of a news story from the mid-1950s while browsing some dark and dusty corridors of the online newspaper morgue.

Thus begins the story of "The Case of the Stowaway Dog: Hector Finds His Master," from an actual newspaper article that I found in archives dated May 12, 1956 (which means the recounted incident took place in the early 1920s), and printed in the "Youngstown Vindicator" newspaper, though it was originally written for The Christian Science Monitor "in collaboration with the Readers Digest."

Now, there are many heart-tugging dog tales that I take with huge grains of salt. Huge. Grains. -- usually those of the "faithful dog who never leaves the master's/mistress' graveside variety," or others than require us to believe that the dog has mastered certain abstract and/or metaphysical concepts that are so very peculiar to the human species. Now, if the dog himself had buried the master's bones, I might be more inclined to go along with some of those stories, but poochy hanging out graveside for years (or by some other marker that could never be recognized by the dog as having anything to do with the owner in actual life)... well, no, not so much.

Yet this vintage story of a dog reunited with his master through what appear to be astonishing and epic machinations and maneuvers on the part of the canine somehow has the ring of truth for me. I can imagine the ways that a dog negotiates such challenges possibly ending in such a mythic way, and, also, the recounting of the specific behavior of the dog seems so very, very familiar to me as a dog owner... and the narration is attributed to a Capt. Kenneth Dodson, instead of, say, an ambitious reporter with a vivid imagination and a deadline to meet. Also, The Christian Science Monitor has long had a reputation as an upstanding journal.

Of course, Captain Dodson may have simply been an especially observant dog lover, with a penchant for romanticizing and telling tallish tales, but I'll rely on his honor as an officer and a gentleman. :) At any rate, it's a great story, a bit challenging to read in this old scanned format, but worth it, I think.

How To Litter Box Train Your Dog is a very interesting, in-depth DIY article about something I've wondered about -- is there any reason you can't litter train a dog? Now, the limitations of such a plan are obvious... large dogs would need a bathtub sized litter box, and I don't see that happening (but read on, there may yet be a solution), and the individual dog's temperament will certainly play a major role in accepting or rejecting this option.

I could imagine this being fairly easy to train, though... especially by judiciously and humanely utilizing the "crate" method a couple of times in the beginning if more free-form persuasions don't work out. As you'll see in the photos, this is where you place the dog in a small sequestered area with only room for bedding, food, and the litter box; typically a dog will not ever go on the food or bedding, so the only other option is the litter box. I would personally would never, ever leave a dog in such a crated area for extended periods, but for training, placing him there only when he needs to go plus praise and treats when he uses it seems like a pretty good method.

But, what I really love is the ultra deluxe, built-in-plumbing version -- the showerlitter! I would absolutely build this into any new home or renovation if I had the space. That's some upscale doggydoggy doo wa right there.

Tip: I've had quick success teaching my dog where she can go potty by saturating paper toweling with her urine, then saving in a plastic baggy and putting it where I want her to go and leading her to that spot to sniff when she needs to do the necessary.

by Tom Pappalardo. I love it. I just love names and nicknames for pets, and Flossie is such a great dog name -- full of personality, cute, quaint, sweet, easy for the dog to learn and understand (sticking to one or two syllables is usually best), and doesn't sound like anything else that might confuse her (a dog named "Seth" might become confused with the "sit" command; "Noah" might get confused with "No!" etc.).

But speaking of pet names, I have to mention this: I've looked at a lot of pet name generators and pet name lists, and recently came upon a fairly unique one. Pet-o-licious Namerator is a World of Warcraft pet name generator to help gamers to name their WoW game pets.

You can find names both silly and serious (serious in a massively multiplayer online role-playing game sense, at any rate) for cats, dogs, bats, wolves, moths, wasps, crabs, "spirit beasts," "warp stalkers," "ravagers," and more. Need a silly name for a spider? The generator suggests Lollipop, Bluestar, Scuttlebutt, Waterspout, Tickle, Spinnerz, Nuzzle, and Icanhazfly. My next pet spiders are def being named Scuttlebutt and Tickle.

But I also found a great name for a cat here:  Luxray! Oh yeah. Love it. 50 Nicknames for My Imaginary Cat Luxray: Lux, Luxie, DeLux, Luxomatic, Luxolicious, Raygun, RayRay, FayWray, SprayRay, RuxLay... never mind me, I'll be at this for a while...

I'm feeling amused by a site I stumbled across this weekend (that ended up smeared all over the bottom of my shoe). The Sprinkle Brigade was apparently a group of activists/jokers/artists (take your pick or mix and match) who decided to bring attention to the problem of dog owners who don't pick up their pals' poops -- by decorating said sidewalk surprises in all manner of outlandish ways, with sprinkles (hence the name) of glitter, googly eyes, toy figures, or whatever other odd adornments their twisted little imaginations could muster.

Here's "Law and Order," for example:


The poop crew seems to be no longer active, but they had a good run. Over two or three years they managed to be featured in gallery exhibits, publish a book, travel the world by invitation, and appear on several documentaries and news clips. You can view a gallery of selected poopy images or watch some of their videos on their site.

Dog Wars app for Android is Trojanized - CNET News:

"An older version of a controversial Android app called "Dog Wars" has been modified to include a Trojan horse that takes actions without the device owner knowing it, according to security firm Symantec.

"The app sends a text message to everyone in the contact list that says, "I take pleasure in hurting small animals, just thought you should know that," and signs United States-based devices up for a text alert service operated by People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA), Irfan Asrar wrote in a post on the Symantec blog."

Gee, what a shame.

Here's a Fox News article about a newer version of the "game" that's being sold on Google's Android apps site, and here's a site where the old (hacked) version is being offered.

I'm a pretty sturdy soul, but reading about this and seeing their promotional imagery literally nauseates me. As in, I feel very sick right now.

Humans aren't the only ones who get cranky and indulge in domestic squabbles: Watch these two Siberian Huskies, Mishka and Laika, navigate an issue of differing expectations about the best way to spend their Saturday afternoon. Seem familiar at all?



These two sweethearts actually each have their very own video blogs on YouTube, where more talking and cuteness ensues: Mishka; Laika.

Have you seen this popular video of a dog "faking his death"?



It's very cute -- as long as we feel that the dog is doing this on purpose: not exactly "playing dead," but enacting an exaggerated submission response, perhaps to encourage the reluctant dog: "see? ya got me! Come on and play and you can get me again!" But some of the people commenting on Patricia McConnell's blog post about this are speculating neurological disorder, although that's just one of the many theories. One commenter says:

"In my experience owning a pet resort and seeing hundreds of dogs play day in and day out...it looks like a very brief neurologic episode to me. I have seen these several times over the years. Some dogs bounce back extremely quick. (The head raise could have been "I want to get up, but my body needs another second to recuperate".) Some dogs take longer. I had a dog who collapsed just like the one in the video, and the only part of the body that she could move voluntarily was her head. I carried her to the car and rushed to her to the vet with her seemingly paralyzed in the back of my car. After driving 20 minutes praying she would not die on the way, we got to the parking lot and she sneezed. The moment she sneezed, all other body movement returned to normal. She trotted into the vet and all tests were normal. She never had another episode like that again. I also have had dogs in grooming which seem to have a "neurologic episode" which is not a seizure, but clearly the dog loses the ability to move and then rebounds quickly. I have had two vets equate these responses to the canine equivalent of a "panic attack-like episode" due to the heighten sound, smell and touch sensory stimulation in the grooming environment."

Hm. I've heard of panic attacks in dogs, but never fainting as a symptom... though there are several conditions that can cause a dog to faint. So... a bit of a mystery here about this "dog who played dead," but if you ever witness odd fainting or "frozen spells" in your pup, best to make sure it isn't a sign of illness.