An Unlikely Place for Free Dog Products

A few years back I was 'between jobs' and took a commission job in a perfume and cosmetics store. My boss, Janel was stunningly beautiful and a part -time fashion model. Her personal clientele in the store were rich and often famous. So you can imagine my shock to learn that she got a lot of pet products for her four rescue dogs by...dumpster diving. She belonged to a group of dumpster divers called the Dumpster Dogs (seriously)and they went around town to the different pet stores and dove into their dumpsters looking for discards ( I should mention they also went to high end clothing stores). One night after closing the store, Janel invited me to participate in a dive at a nearby pet store at the mall. We sat in the parking lot and watched the pet store employees bring out shopping carts full of beds, leashes,collars, brushes, all kinds of stuff! I watched but didn't participate as I have a thing about rats and mice even though Janel said she had never seen one in a store dumpster.
The stores rip the packaging or use sharpies to mark product so that no one will dive for it and bring it back in the store for a cash refund. But if your dog doesn't care that his bed has a sharpie mark on it, it might be something to consider. To tell you the truth, I don't know if dumpster diving is considered legal but I believe that it is... I recently checked a couple of different pet stores, and yes, they still throw away perfectly good stuff...

Dog Dies at Groomers of Heat Stroke

Fox News posted this story today about a young childs Poodle who was put in a drying cage and left to die of heat prostration. http://ow.ly/k0iF.

I get so mad when I hear of such stories. The woman reponsible should be convicted as there is no excuse for what she did to that dog...in fact there is no excuse for ANY grooming establishment to EVER put a dog in danger under hot dryers because if the groomer was doing your dog correctly, the dog would be hand dryed on a grooming table.

When choosing a groomer, look for one who advertises that all dogs are hand dryed. Oh, and groomers don't give me that we hand dry long-coated dogs and only cage dry the short coats, because I can tell you that even the short coats look better when PROPERLY hand dryed.

There is a trick to making a short coat lay properly to give it the most sheen and if you have a short- coated dog that you take to a salon for bathing then grill your groomer about it. I never, ever, ever cage dryed a dog as a groomer and the ones who do are just being lazy.

I have walked into the back of too many groom shops and seen cages stacked with dogs under fryers, I mean dryers, and the groomers so often lay towels over the door and cage vents to speed the drying process. People, this is so dangerous it should be illegal!

Some of the larger pet store chains with in- store grooming salons now have dryers with timers on them that shut down after ten minutes. These stores do this in an effort to prevent heat prostration deaths. I have no doubt that some deaths have been prevented by these timers but a dog with anxiety issues or a bracycephalic breed like a Peke, Jap Chin, Pug or Boxer can easily die within that ten minutes.

The only real way to prevent these unnecessary deaths is to groom properly and dry by hand. Groomers think they are saving time cage drying but they aren't....I hand dryed and got out plenty of dogs in one day. Yes, sometimes my assistants/friends Monte and Stacy hand dryed for me when I had a lot of dogs to groom but the dogs were dryed by hand nonetheless. If you want them to be safe, you dry them by hand, if you want them to look their best, you dry them by hand,anything else is a disservice to the dog and the customer.

If you take your dog to a groomer you should demand hand-drying. Don't put your dog at risk, they have enough unpleasantries to deal with at the average groom shop ( like clipper burn because groomers won't buy enough blades).

And if for whatever reason your dog shows signs of heat stroke, rapid cooling down is imperative, but remember this important point...do not use ice water to cool down the dog as it makes the blood flow away from important organs, like the brain. Use cool, not cold water.

Should You Spend Money on a Dog DNA Test?

I have said in previous posts that it is important to know the genetic make-up of your mixed breed dog because it provides clues into your dogs behavior. For example, Labs, like all retrievers are mouth oriented because they are bred to do a certain job...retrieving. And so you have an explanation as to why your Lab mix chews on everything he gets his mouth on...it isn't displacement behavior, it is his genetic make-up. But if your Peke/Pug mix is chewing up everything, then something is wrong and you better get to the bottom of it fast before the behavorial issue becomes a habit.

It has become increasingly popular lately to have your dog's DNA tested to identify the dogs genetic background. And I applaud that. But I also wonder just how accurate these tests are.

Yes, I have read the manufacturers claims as to accuracy. I have also noticed that some of the manufacturers do not have the ability to read genetic markers of all the pure breeds.So if your dog is 50% Greater Swiss Mountain Dog and the DNA Test isn't able to recognize that breed, then how accurate is it?

The dog pictured above is a case in point....the dog group that rescued him swabbed his mouth, sent it off and the response was that he is mostly Doberman and Yorkie...yep, that is what I said....Doberman and Yorkie, wow I would have liked to have seen that liason....perhaps the Yorkie used a ladder.

So let's break this down...now I am not a geneticist, but having bred champions and studied canine genetics for most of my life here is my take on this dog...

The dog's color is red background with black brindle. How many Yorkies do you know who are brindle? None! Yorkies do not carry a brindle gene...they do carry a black and tan gene. As do Papillons.The dog also had a tiny percentage of supposedly Papillon in him.

Now, as I already stated, the Yorkies are silver/blue and tan...this is a dilution of the standard black and tan gene. Yorkie pups are born black and tan, then as they mature the dilution gene fades the black color to steel blue or in some cases silver. (Dilution genes occur in a variety of breeds and produce a lot of different color effects. One you may be more familiar with is a black Poodle who will often times become silver upon maturity.)

Dobermans also carry a black and tan gene. (In red Dobes, the color becomes red and tan, in blue Dobes it is blue tan ( from a dilution gene) and in white (albino) Dobes there is a masking gene,(not a dilution gene) which prevents any color from manifesting, but genetically the dog is still masked color with masked tan markings. So, here we have a brindle dog who genetically is primarily made up of two breeds with highly dominant black and tan genes, and secondarily one who also can carry a black and tan gene (and a parti-color gene but we won't go there ). Doesn't make sense does it? Normally when you combine black and tan genes with brindle genes you get a dog whose tan markings are brindle but the rest of the color pattern is normal... we also have the unlikely liason of a 70 pound Doberman and a 5 pound Yorkie...that doesn't make sense either. And nothing in the supposed background of this dog has a brindle gene yet here is a brindle dog. We do have 3 breeds of dogs that all carry black and tan genes. Remember,two of which, the Dobe and Yorkie breeds, carry them dominantly.

Then there is the dogs conformation. The red arrow points to an arch over the dogs loin. An arched loin is not a conformation feature that you will commonly find in Dobes, Yorkies or even the Papillon. The blue arrow points to the stop, yep, that is the name of the area pointed to on this dogs head, and his stop is extreme, while a Dobes would be only slight. And the muzzle is too long to be influenced by Yorkie or Papillon genes.(Pictured here is a typey Doberman head notice the slight stop...) The brindle dog's head is what we call cheeky. In addition, he has no fill in the front of his chest. The set of the dogs stifle does not reflect any Doberman/Yorkie influence either. These are some of the things that make me think the brindle dog has no Doberman or Yorkie or Papillon in him at all but is a Rhodesian Ridgeback /Whippet mix. A liason much more likely.

I applaud the group who rescued this dog and cared enough to have him DNA tested but if the test is wrong and it certainly appears to be...then this dog's temperment will be highly different from what you would expect from a Dobe or Yorkie and the dog rescue group will have wasted their money. That being said, I have seen a number of dogs tested with the Heritage DNA test and all the dogs exhibited breed characteristics in line with their test results so I don't want it to appear that all at home DNA testing manufacturers are suspect. For obvious reasons I do not divulge the name of the company who made this test. I welcome feedback from breeders and from owners of rescued dogs on this hot button issue as we really need at home DNA tests that we can count on....

(purebred photos from AKC)

http://www.akc.org/index.cfm?nav_area=homepage

..also check out this you tube video, the Am Staff in the video is of the highest quality,and the DNA test she used is NOT the brand used on the brindle dog in this post...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4a4CDvK868w

What Can Your Dog Reach From his Crate?

I saw this pic this a.m. on Twitpics and I was immediately drawn to the electrical cords...
People please, when you crate a dog be sure that there is NO WAY that they can reach out and get an electrical cord to chew on.You would be surprised what dogs and puppies can reach through the crate bars. Not only do I keep crates away from cords, if they are near outlets I use outlet covers to keep toes and tongues away.

What a cute puppy this is, but he wouldn't be if his mouth was burned from biting an electrical cord. Just a reminder to check your crates and make sure everythingis safe.

Unsung Dog Rescue Heros

Not having had the best weekend,( I put my Ipod in the washer and fell face first into poison ivy) this morning found me out very early enroute to the store. As I was driving, I noticed over on a grassy knoll, just off of Interstate 65, was a woman sitting in the damp grass, kissing a Brittany Spaniel on the cheek, both arms around him, she began to whisper in his ear.
I wondered if she had a vehicle breakdown and was waiting for assistance, but then I saw her van, with the door up and loaded with dog crates...I did a U-turn as I realized why she was there.
''Hi'', I said,'' is this a rescue dog in transit?
He was indeed. He was called Jake.This lovely red and white purebred was found wandering in Oklahoma. His owner was never located and no one at animal control adopted him. He was pulled from the High Kill facility and arrangements were made to locate a person willing to foster him.Finally a forever foster was found....in Delaware. A show breeder was willing to foster him until a permanent home could be found, if no one wanted him, then he would be at the foster forever, hence the name, forever foster home.
The woman I met had driven Jake all the way from Oklahoma to Nashville and she sat on the grassy knoll waiting for someone who was traveling from Florida to pick him up and transport him to Delaware. Just a month ago I met a woman on the same grassy knoll with a gorgeous Bassett Hound. She was there waiting for another person to pick the Bassett up and transport it to Rhode Island. In all, the Bassett Hound would transfer rides five times to get to her new home.
These women ( and some men) are truly unsung heros in the dog rescue network. They are all over the U.S. networking, through various means, (Craigslist is a big contact )and spending their own money, time,and wear and tear on their vehicles to make sure these dogs get to caring homes.
No one gives them money, the dollars we donate don't get to them.
They do it because it has to be done....
Jake would have been euthanized without this transport network...and so would so many other dogs.These women are the REAL weekend warriors, fighting for the lives of homeless dogs who can't get placed locally. And what was she whispering in Jakes' ear? That he was safe and had a happy life ahead of him.I think he understood....