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Pets

Puppy Love: How to tell if it’s the real thing

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You want me:

“Walking vet bill”? Say what? What’s that supposed to mean? Have you taken leave of your senses?

Indeed. You don’t want me. You want two of me!

LOL! Yes, I’m afraid these little furballs are the objects of M’hijito’s affection. Well, not these specific furballs, but their soon-to-be future siblings, expected to appear on the scene in two litters along about mid-June.

For some time, my son has been taken by a variant of the golden retriever known as an “English” golden. Basically, it’s the same breed, only the English type has a preternaturally light coat. They’re white or white with a pale, pale blond top coat. The head, especially on the male, is blockier than the golden we all know and love, and breeders claim (without, it appears, much justification) that the animal is more sound than dogs from the American line. Whatever. You have to admit that it’s a very beautiful dog. Here’s a candid of Dad, a.k.a. Cabot, surveying his domain:

Here’s a more formal portrait of the other future dad (we hope): the breeder recently imported semen from Karvin, a Finnish megachampion. Check out the “don’t you wish you could look like this” pose…

Then we have the “drop dead, you!” pose of one future mom, Tesse:

The other, Daisy, is just as elegant:

The breeder we’ve settled on, Golden Reflection, has two sets of pups due in mid-June, one by Daisy and Cabot and the other by Tesse and Karvin. We’re leaning toward the Daisy-Cabot litter, mostly because the cost will be significantly less (don’t even ask what it costs to import frozen dog sperm from Scandinavia).

Sunday evening we hired a sherpa and trekked to outer Mongoli Mesa, where this outfit resides. We wanted to meet the proprietors, inspect the premises, and see the dogs before deciding on this breeder or another, located on the far side of the Apache Trail. That Cabot character is absolutely spectacular, every bit as gorgeous as he appears in the photo. Their females are very beautiful, too, and all the dogs have calm and friendly temperaments.

But far more important than the handsome dogs is what’s behind the handsome dogs. Big dogs like this certainly can be (and often are) walking vet bills, largely because of the hereditary health issues that come with years of careless breeding: hip dysplasia, elbow dysplasia, eye problems, heart failure—those are just the big ones. Treatment for hip dysplasia, for example, entails lifelong pain medication plus, depending on how inclined you are to impoverish yourself, surgery that can go all the way up to complete hip replacements, to the tune of $2,400 to $4,500 per hip, plus the follow-up evaluations at $200 to $300 a hit. Some breeders will tell you that elbow dysplasia is even more crippling and debilitating than the hip disorder.

So. Before  you fall in love with a cute little pup, you’re well advised to look into the background of the sire, the dam, the doggy aunts and uncles and grandparents going back as far as you can find them. Thanks to the Internet, this is no longer an impossible task.

The Orthopedic Foundation of America (OFA), an organization that tracks orthopedic and genetic problems among dogs, maintains databases showing the results for dogs that have been tested for a number of major hereditary ailments. Reputable breeders have their dogs tested, usually more than once, and they should take great care in selecting a sire or dame for their planned litters.

Many breeders, however, are not reputable. Never take a breeder’s word for it that a bitch or dog has no health problems in its background. Look it up for yourself.

Case in point: during our puppy search, we encountered the other breeder I mentioned, whose pups will be ready to go in a few weeks and who is anxious to get us to buy one. Nothing will do but what we must hurry to put down a $500 deposit, “before all the males are gone.” (What will it take to get you to drive this puppy off our lot today?)

Not in any rush to jump off that cliff, I entered the person’s sire and dam into the OFA database search function. And I entered the names of the ten other breeding females this breeder showed on its web page. The simplest way to mine the database is to enter the full name of the dog in a search box. If this doesn’t bring up any data, go to the dog’s pedigree, get the OFA or registration number, and enter that.

First warning bell: many of the dogs’ ancestors had never been tested for hips, elbows, eyes, and heart at all. The most recent testing I saw was dated 2008.

That, in the lifetime of a dog, is a long time ago. Breeding dogs need to be tested more often than that.

Looking further, I noted that one of the dam’s siblings had severe hip dysplasia. Neither of these are good signs.

Enough with that!

Returning to the Golden Reflections site, I copied and pasted Tesse’s long, involved official name into the database and discovered she’d been tested in 2009, 2010, and 2011. Her hips tested good, her cardiac condition was normal, and she passed an eye test. One of her offspring, still owned by Golden Reflections, showed similar test results. Her sire had a minor eye issue that is not thought to be heritable and probably has no effect on the dog’s vision. Cabot has been tested twice in 2009 and twice in 2010. Heart is normal; hips are normal; elbows are normal; eyes show a different condition whose heritability is not known, described as “common in goldens” and “not a concern.” Daisy was tested in 2006, 2007, and 2011: heart normal, hips good, elbows normal, eyes free of problems. Among Daisy’s half-siblings and forebears, I could find only one dog with an abnormal hip test: “preliminary borderline,” which means only that the test results were ambiguous and the dog needs to be tested again later—”most dogs with this grade (over 50%),” say the OFA guidelines, “show no change in hip conformation over time and receive a normal hip rating; usually a fair hip phenotype.” A half-sibling to Daisy’s sire, born in 2000, had degenerative joint disease in one elbow. Otherwise, none of the dogs that show in these records tested positive for the classic hereditary problems.

There’s a big difference between someone who’s breeding dogs that haven’t been tested in four years—or have never been tested at all—and a breeder whose dogs’ health records are complete and recent. And there’s an even bigger difference between one whose vague testing reveals a case of “severe” hip dysplasia (that is very bad) and one whose dogs show almost no ancestral background of hip, elbow, eye, or cardiac disorders.

In the purebred puppy biz, it’s caveat emptor from the git-go. The dog breeding business is infested by clueless amateurs, careless breeders, and downright shady operators. If you want to buy a dog with a fancy pedigree, it’s up to you to educate yourself not only about the breed’s nature and temperament, but also about the individual breeder’s stock.

Here are a few resources that can help:

• Dog Breed Info Center
• Wikipedia: Look up your desired breed
• The ABC’s of Buying a Purebred Puppy
• British Columbia Golden Retriever Club on whether you really want a puppy at all
• American Kennel Club index of breeds
• AKC Breeder Referral
• AKC Breed Rescue Contacts
• Pedigree Database
• The specific pedigree database for your desired breed (Google the breed name + “pedigree database”)
• Local breed clubs (Google them or ask your veterinarian)
• Local breed rescue groups (Google, again)
• Any discussion of a breeder on a breeders’ forum for your desired breed (Google the breeder’s name or the breeder’s name + the desired breed)

A reputable breeder should guarantee the puppy’s health and be willing to take the animal back if its health fails (note that many will say they’ll do this, but few actually will do it). The breeder should show a keen interest in your reasons for wanting the dog, your experience with the type of dog in question, where the dog will live, what you intend to feed it, and even who your veterinarian is. He or she also should ask you to return the dog if you find you can’t care for it.

Be careful out there!

😉

This post was featured in the 33rd Canadian Finance Carnival at Tom Drake’s Canadian Finance Blog and in the 16th Totally Money Carnival at StupidCents.

 

Smoggy Talk! Smoggy Talk!

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Speaking of dogs (as we were indirectly in contemplating the Late Great Dog Food Question), I’ve been reading an entertaining book by psychologist Alexandra Horowitz called Inside of a Dog. In it, she proposes to help us appreciate the canine umwelt—the dog’s unique way of experiencing the world—by understanding what and how a dog sees, smells, hears, senses, and thinks. Based on what we know to date of dog physiology and psychology, she suggests we can figuratively get inside a dog’s mind.

As intellectual exercises go, it’s great fun, and the insights you gain are slightly different from Cesar Milan’s dominance-and-submission theories. She points out that though dogs probably are descended from wolves, after tens of thousands of years spent living with humans, they’re not wolves, and their mentality, intellectual capacity, and social interactions are markedly different from those of wolves. This has some amusing implications.

The book isn’t especially well written and in places it’s poorly edited, especially near the beginning. She doesn’t start to get on a roll until almost half-way through, but once she does hit her stride, her story gets pretty interesting. We’re amazed by how “smart” (human definition) dogs are about some things and how obtuse they appear to be about others…quite reasonably, on reflection, in light of what dogs and humans do to get by in the world.

At one point, Horowitz reflects on the extent to which dogs understand the meaning of human speech, specifically their skill at recognizing individual words. She suggests they respond to the prosody of speech—its patterns and musical “meaning”—but they’re not always good at recognizing individual words. Says she,

Try asking your dog on one morning to go for a walk; on the next, ask if your dog wants to snow forty locks in the same voice. If everything else remains the same, you’ll probably get the same, affirmative reaction. The very first sounds of an utterance seem to be important to dog perception, though, so changing the swallowed consonants for articulated ones and the long vowels for short ones—ma for a polk—might prompt the confusion merited by this gibberish.

Hmmm…. A challenge! To paraphrase a less than perfectly articulate robot, “I love a challenge!”

But first, what the heck is a swallowed consonant? Simon Mumford, an English instructor, tells us a “swallowed consonant” happens when a speaker elides a consonant in such a way that it can barely be heard or can’t be heard, as in “I got a cold” for I’ve got a cold. Doesn’t seem to apply in the substitution of polk for walk, but what the hey. Every writer needs an editor.

So, to try this on Cassie the Corgi:

HUMAN: arising, walking up the hall, and paraphrasing the daily liturgy with accustomed verve: Do you want to go for a smoggy talk?

DOG evinces puzzled expression.

HUMAN evinces continued verve:  C’mon! Let’s go for a smoggy talk!

DOG’s expression morphs to utter befuddlement.

HUMAN: Smoggy talk! Smoggy talk! Hurry up! Let’s go for a SMOGGY TALK!

Still appearing mystified, DOG eyes HUMAN with evident curiosity and takes a few tentative steps after it.

HUMAN: Gathers collar, leash, package of dog mound baggies, and hat.

DOG, viewing HUMAN‘s activities: Arf!

DOG dances toward front door.

HUMAN: It’s time for a smoggy talk!

DOG, whirling in circles: Arf arf arf arf ARF!

HUMAN: “Smoggy talk,” eh? {snort!} Here, hold still while I get this collar on you.

DOG and HUMAN exit, stage left.

So, alas, it does not appear that dogs deduce meaning from tone, emphasis, prosody, or brute human verve. It also appears that this particular dog can tell the difference between “doggy walk” and “smoggy talk.”

Arf, she said. Arf.

Canned Dog Food: Anyone Tried This?

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Has anyone tried Hill’s Science Diet Canine Mature Adult 7+ Savory Chicken Entrée Canned Dog Food? If so, do you know how many cans come in a case?

La Maya and La Bethulia’s aging dachshund has now lost even more of his teeth, so they’re going to be reduced to feeding canned dog food. They’re interested in ordering, since this looks like about the best price on the Web, but it’s unclear how much you get for the price. The can looks like this:

Let us know if you have a clue about the quantity!

Little Orphant Annie’s Human Found!

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So, taking a moment of rest late this morning to read news online, I checked Craig’s List for the third time, to see if anyone might have lost the Found Hound. Depressing, all these people with muttley pups and kittens from unspayed pets, trying to give them away for free…and while you’re at it, will you take the mother, too? Feeling overwhelmed, I was just about to click out of there when my eye was caught by this heading:

I have lost my dog (with a zip code right next to mine)

Click on that and find…

I lost my dog her name is Angel she is a cream colored German Shepperd and Chow mix she was not wearing a collar. She is 16yrs old and can’t hear very well and she decided to venture away from home. Please if you have seen her or have her I really miss her very much and would love for her to come home. If there is anything you know please call me at 888-765-4321 and please only call if your serious. Thank you Crystal

Holy mackerel! That fit Orphant Annie to a T! Called the number: no answer. E-mailed the Yahoo address, attaching a photo. A few hours later, phone rings. A young voice says the photo looks just like her dog. She says she was at the shelter Tuesday noon and didn’t see the dog; I said the guy showed up at my house to pick up the dog right about that time.

So she said she would try to retrieve her dog. Haven’t heard anything more from her. I hope she found her Angel/Orphant Annie and that they hadn’t put the dog down because of its extreme age.

Where she said she lived is about a mile and a half from the park, as the crow flies. But the road she lives on does not follow the crow’s route. It breaks for about a quarter mile between the canal and Central Avenue. To get to the park, the dog would have had to follow quite a circuitous route, and she would have had to cross over the canal. To get to a crossing, she would have had to go a half-mile north or south and a quarter mile west. Then she would have had to walk along and then cross over a seven-lane main drag, possibly in the middle of rush hour. She probably walked somewhere between two and three miles.

Think of that. A 16-year-old large-breed dog is about the equivalent of an 80-year-old human. Imagine your 80-year-old great-grandmother making her way across two or three miles of urban streets in 90-degree heat.

Must be one tough dog.

Update

Crystal just e-mailed to say she found Angel and now has her home with the family. So! A happy ending.

🙂

Doggy update

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No one ever called to retrieve the stray dog. One guy called to see if I’d found a basset—a pair had escaped from his friends’ yard. That was it.

Pretty clearly she was dumped in the park, probably because the humans couldn’t abide having their carpets peed on every 10 to 20 minutes. Or couldn’t afford the vet bills to treat what may very well have been diabetes.

Neither, alas, can I. Even if her problem was only (!) a urinary tract infection, at this point I can’t afford a vet bill for that, either. Nor, with a possible long-term disability coming up the pike, can I care for a large dog…I may not even be able to care for the little dog.

When I called the Humane Society to see if they could scan her for a microchip, they refused to speak to me—as it develops, they don’t deal with stray animals. There’s actually a state law that forbids the Humane Society from taking in strays! The instant I said I’d found her in the park I was transferred to County Animal Control, with no further discussion. The county pound, it develops further, is now a no-kill shelter. That’s why they have 900 animals for which they can find no homes.

The County sent a guy out to pick up the pooch. To my surprise, he didn’t act like a comic-book dogcatcher. He was very kind, and it was obvious that he loved animals. He said they would examine and treat the dog for whatever ailed her, and that the first thing they’d do is scan her for a microchip and try to find her owners.

So, at least they won’t put her down summarily.

Found Hound

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This morning in the park, Cassie and I picked up a hanger-on:

Very thirsty and very hungry, she followed us home. She has no collar and no tags, but she’s been spayed quite recently. This leads me to suspect she was just sprung from the Sunnyslope Humane Society, which microchips adopted dogs unless you tell them not to. So I figure if I take her up there, they probably can find her humans.

Or not.

It’s not a no-kill shelter, and so I hesitate to take her there. The staff can be pretty officious, and they could demand that I leave her even if all I do is go in and ask them to check if she’s been microchipped. And it’s entirely possible that the present set of humans took her to the park and dumped her: she’s not house-trained, and her idea of the loo is wherever she happens to be standing. I’ve cleaned up after her three times in the past two hours.

She’s a mellow dog, probably six or seven years old. Claws need to be clipped. She may still have stitches. And she has a spot on one ear that looks suspiciously like the mange.

Her skin is black and her hair is coyote-dust tan. Probably weighs 45 or 50 pounds. She has long, slender legs reminiscent of a coyote’s, too. In fact, when I first saw her wandering in the park looking confused and lost, I thought she was a small coyote, but then quickly saw she was all doggus domesticus. The blue tongue suggests she has a fair amount of chow in her, but her hair is not even faintly chow-like—her coat is so coarse as to be almost wire-like.

What she looks like, to my eye, is a reservation dog. She looks exactly like the mixed, mixed, and remixed mutts that roam the rez in hordes.

She’s a nice dog. Cassie’s not nuts about her—mostly ignores her except for a little competition over the dog chew toys, and except for a few moments of putting her in her place. Oddly, for a female, she’s pretty submissive and permits herself to be cowed by Cassie’s threats. Or at least, so far she has: she hasn’t growled back. Yet.

So I’m not real sure what to do with her. I’m sure the Humane Society isn’t open today. We are totally out of food. Tomorrow is the first day of the new budget cycle, and because I have to spend the entire afternoon tomorrow getting the damaged shoulder examined again, I’ll have to spend the whole morning running after groceries. I’m not comfortable with leaving her outside (although I suspect she’s been an outdoor dog all her life, given her toilet habits)—yesterday the thermometer in back read 110 degrees. It’s 94 now; supposed to be cooler today, only 104. She probably will get the gollywobbles from the human food she had, which I’d just as soon not have to clean up off the floor. It was clear from her mound that she’s been eating an inexpensive dog food. No doubt the switch from kibble to grain, veggies, and meat will give her a passing case of enteritis. In fact, I can hear her gut rumbling now. 🙄

So, I guess my choices are to lock her in a bedroom while I’m gone, so that I won’t have to search all over the house for puddles, or to leave her in the backyard and try to get home as quick as can be.

Actually, Anna’s old crate is still out in back. It’s been sitting out there rusting and collecting leaf litter for the past 10 or 12 years, so it would take some doing to clean it up. Probably not worth the effort, without knowing whether this dog will go in a crate.

Meanwhile, I’m printing up a few flyers to tack up around the park. Don’t have much hope that whoever she belongs to will respond…people dump dogs in this neighborhood all the time. They think because the place is affluent, some rich person will take the dog in and give it a good home. In fact, the rich persons just call Animal Control and have the critters hauled away.

If nobody claims her in a day or so, I guess I’ll have to take her up to the Humane Society. {sigh}