DoggyMom.com

Grounds for dismissal?

Posted on February 9, 2014 | 7 comments

Royston Grimstead, owner of an Aston Martin and a Border Collie cross named Luce, came home last week to find that she had chewed the wheel arch of the £80,000 car.

photo by SWNS

Some people found this story funny, with Grimstead saying that he felt the dog acted out of spite when she heard that he wanted to re-home her. He then reported that the had re-homed Luce without telling her new owners about the destructive chewing incident (although with the coverage this story had in worldwide media, they probably have heard by now).

In my opinion, dogs don’t act out of spite. They do act out of boredom and Border Collies are particularly known for their high intelligence and need of a job (plus other enrichment activities). Luce was likely bored and found the texture and shine of the fibreglass appealing.

Luce, photo by SWNS

I don’t agree with the media coverage of this story for two reasons:

It reinforces the myth that dogs act from spite
It spreads the idea that is okay to give away a dog when you don’t want to work with them on behavioural issues

What do you think?

7 Comments

Posted in dog ownership, Dogs

Tagged Aston Martin, Border Collie, chewing, Luce, re-homing, Royston Grimstead

The leader of the pack

Posted on February 9, 2014 | Leave a comment

Dogs’ paths during group walks could be used to determine leadership roles and through that their social ranks and personality traits, say researchers from Oxford University, Eötvös University, Budapest and the Hungarian Academy of Sciences.

The research team tracked the movements of six Vizsla dogs and their owner using high-resolution GPS harnesses during fourteen 30-40 minute walks off the lead.

Photo credit: Zsuzsa Ákos

The dogs’ movements were measurably influenced by underlying social hierarchies and personality differences.

‘On individual walks it is hard to identify one permanent leader, but over longer timescales it soon becomes clear that some dogs are followed by peers more often than others. Overall, the collective motion of the pack is strongly influenced by an underlying social network.’ said study author Dr Máté Nagy of Oxford University’s Department of Zoology.

Dogs that consistently took the lead were more responsive to training, more controllable, older and more aggressive than the dogs that tended to follow. Dogs that led more often had higher dominance ranks in everyday situations, assessed by a dominance questionnaire.

One possible use of the technology would be to assess search and rescue dogs to see which dogs work best together. The results have been published in the journal PLOS Computational Biology.

Source: University of Oxford media release

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Posted in research

Tagged Eötvös University, GPS tracking, Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungarian Vizsla, leadership, Oxford University, personality traits, University of Oxford, Vizsla, Vizsla dogs, walking

Caught on camera

Posted on February 7, 2014 | Leave a comment

Sometimes when the house goes really quiet, it pays to investigate.

This morning, I found Daisy in the kitchen rubbish bin….

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Posted in Humor/humour

Tagged Daisy, dogs, rubbish bin, trash can

Identification tags for Disability Assist Dogs

Posted on February 6, 2014 | 2 comments

In the aftermath of the Christchurch 2011 earthquake, officials had difficulty identifying the status of dogs at civil defence centers. If you were the owner of a disability assistance dog, this made things more difficult in what was already a stressful time.

In December 2013, the Minister of Civil Defence, the Hon Nikki Kaye, announce the production of a Disability Assist Dog tag that will be officially recognised throughout New Zealand. The tags will be entered into the National Dog Database and provide unique identification for each dog, linking it to its owner/handler and the organisation that certified the dog. These tags will be help match lost dogs and owners much faster and ensure that handlers and their dogs are allowed entry to official civil defence centers.

(Dogs are also micro-chipped in New Zealand; this is compulsory)

Seven organisations are authorised under the Dog Control Act 1996 to train and certify disability assist dogs. Only dogs certified through these organisations will qualify to wear the official identification tag:

Hearing Dogs for Deaf People NZ
Mobility Assistance Dogs Trust
New Zealand Epilepsy Assist Dogs Trust
Royal NZ Foundation for the Blind
Top Dog Companion Trust (not currently operating)
Assistance Dogs New Zealand Trust
Perfect Partners Assistance Dogs Trust

What programs are in place in your country to support owners/handlers and their assistance dogs?

2 Comments

Posted in animal welfare, special dogs and awards

Tagged assistance dogs, assistance dogs New Zealand, Civil Defence, disability assist dogs, disability assistance dog, Dogs Trust, epilipsy assist dogs, hearing dogs, Ministry of Civil Defence, mobility assistance dogs, New Zealand, Nikki Kaye, perfect partners assistance dogs trust, Royal New Zealand Foundation for the Blind

If Sochi’s dogs are biological trash, then I’m not watching the Olympics

Posted on February 5, 2014 | 3 comments

Officials in Sochi have hired a private extermination company, Basya Service, to cull stray dogs from the streets in preparation for the Winter Olympics.

For months, animal welfare groups have been protesting against the poisoning of the dogs in the city, which has a large stray dog population. There were promises that the practice would stop, but it appears Russian officials have decided that if they can’t poison the dogs, they’ll simply kill them another way.

The manager of Basya Service, Alexei Sorokin, has told the Associated Press that the dogs are ‘biological trash.’ Justifying the mass killing, he says that it would reflect badly on Russia if someone where attacked or bitten by a stray dog.

Clearly killing dogs is something that he doesn’t think will reflect badly on the country!

Well, if dogs are biological trash then this is one person who won’t be watching or supporting the Olympic Games, which open on Friday. Join me in doing this and don’t support any products that are made or sourced in Russia.

3 Comments

Posted in animal welfare

Tagged Alexei Sorokin, Basya Service, dog cull, dogs in the city, Olympics, Russia, Sochi, stray dog, Winter Olympics

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Wordless Wednesday, part 20

1 Comment

Posted on February 5, 2014 in Dogs

Tagged Pit Bull, tea party

Is your polar bear pregnant? Ask Elvis

Posted on February 2, 2014 | Leave a comment

Elvis is a very special beagle. He’s been trained to sniff the feces of polar bears to determine if they are pregnant and his success rate is 97%.

Photo by Cincinnati Zoo

Traditional pregnancy detection methods like hormone monitoring and ultrasounds don’t perform well when testing polar bears for pregnancy. Scientists at Cincinnati’s Center for Conservation & Research of Endangered Wildlife decided to try the beagle training since beagles perform so well as detector dogs in other settings.

Elvis is only 2 years old and so he hopefully has a long life ahead of him helping zoos in the United States determine if their polar bears are pregnant.

Climate change is causing a decrease in the amount of sea ice, which is affecting the polar bear population because it reduces their hunting season. There have also been reports of drowned polar bears being found in the Arctic Ocean; the bears have become exhausted when swimming because of the increased times it is taking for them to reach the safety of ice again.

Polar bears have been listed as a Threatened Species under the Endangered Species Act. The number of Polar Bears in the wild is expected to decline primarily due to starvation and decreased reproduction.

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Posted in special dogs and awards

Tagged beagle, Center for Conservation & Research of Endangered Wildlife, Cincinnati, Cincinnati Zoo, Elvis, polar bear population, polar bears, pregnancy

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