The Smart Dog U Blog

Protect Yourself and Your Dog from an Off Leash Dog

Do you let your dog run off-leash in public? Maybe on a deserted trail? Or in a big field? Or maybe in your yard while you’re gardening? If your answer is yes, realize that you are putting your dog in danger, as well as those people who are walking nearby. Think I’m crazy? Think your dog is so friendly that he wouldn’t harm a fly? Think his recall is 100% reliable?

 

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Related articles

I'm Social. My Dog Isn't.

Dog Training: Ask the Trainer - When Can I Get Rid of the Crate?

 

Puppy Talos loves his crate!

Crating is a skill that your dog may need for the rest of his life. Dogs being treated for an illness or injury are very often on crate rest for long periods of time. If you've let your dog's crating skills diminish over time, it's going to be a tough recovery for them. Tough because of the physical issues, but even tougher because now they have to learn how to crate in addition to recuperate from the illness or injury. That's a tough combination for a dog. I'd rather have the crate already be a familiar and welcome place for the dog to be -- he's likely to actually seek out the crate for rest and recuperation instead of fighting it.

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Part 2: Dog Body Language: How to Tell if a Dog is Happy, Frustrated, Scared, Annoyed

Imagine that from the minute you wake in the morning until you lay your head down at night, that someone is bugging you. You've got someone tugging on you, someone talking to you, you can't get a moment to yourself. Not one second to yourself. 

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Making Puppy Socialization Safer

You hear it all the time: socialization is important for your puppy! Socialize, socialize, socialize!

It IS true: socialization before your pup is 16 weeks old is crazy-important if you want a well-adjusted, easy-going, can-handle-anything dog later in life. 

But.

You gotta be smart about it. You can't recklessly expose the pup to potential germs and disease. 

I was outside teaching class last night in downtown Frederick. I saw a tiny 11-week old puppy walking on Carroll Creek and meandering through the grass where every other dog on the Creek had done it's business.

The Creek itself is a terrific location for the pup to be exposed to all kinds of things: joggers, noisy kids on bikes, barking dogs, ducks, the list goes on. 

The trouble with that is that hundreds of other dogs have been through there, too. Leaving behind poop and pee -- the carriers of disease. You don't want your puppy needlessly exposed to all that. Who knows if those dogs:

• have had their vaccinations
• are healthy
• are carrying diseases

It's much safer for the pup to be carried through very public areas until he's completed his puppy series of vaccinations. Walking a pup through your yard or even your neighborhood is probably safe, but you don't want your pups paws hitting the ground in the dog park or anywhere where there are potentially unvaccinated dogs running through the same grass as your pup. 

A Scary Moment on Our Morning Walk

Alternate Title: WHY I HATE UNDERGROUND ELECTRIC FENCES.

We walked every day in Europe. We walked a long time. A long way. It was really fun. I wanted to keep up that habit when I returned home. So this morning, I leashed up the three dogs and we went for a nice neighborhood stroll. As I walked out the door, I dismissed the idea of bringing my cell phone (the battery was really low). And I'd never ever needed the DirectStop. Ever. So it stayed behind, too.

The walk was nice - Lily (the dog who's reactive to other dogs when she's on-leash) did a great job dealing with the maniac dog who rushes his electric fence barking like he's going to kill us if we get close enough. (This alone is enough reason for me to hate underground electric fences. But wait, there's more. Keep reading.) She started to go into her frenzy but then turned and looked at me when I called her name and very quickly was back under conrol. Nice work, Lil!

We continued our walk, loving this beautiful morning. Around the next bend was a 90-pound dog, safely (so I thought) contained by his invisible electric fence. Thing is, he looked WAY too close to the road. Generally, he stays about 30 feet away from the road.

Uh oh.

He took a step closer. By this time, my dogs (Lily, especially) noticed this big guy who is very stiffly staring at us. Stiff is never something you want to see in an unfamilar dog - it usually means trouble. I yelled at him (I can sound pretty tough) to get away, but he's laser-locked on my dogs, taking very deliberate and slow steps toward them.

By this time, my guys are pretty fired up. I was unable to get Lily's attention, so she's in full-blown bark mode and now, with Tango (my yellow Lab) and Nemo (the hound/Dane mix) as back-up, she's in rare form. When Tango and Lily are together, even Tango (who ususally uses his brain and is reasonable) gets a little haywire.

The neighbor dog wasn't stopping. I had some decisions to make. And quickly. I wasn't going to get in the way of him. I hoped he'd notice that it was going to be three against one and would reconsider. Unfortunately, that didn't happen, he kept taking those slow, deliberate paces straight toward us.

I decided against trying to pull the dogs away: (a) I'm not strong enough (I was outweighed) and (b) tension on leashes, especially in a situation like this, is never a good idea. My next thought: give my dogs as good a chance as possible if this big dog decided to have a go at them. So I dropped Nemo's leash -- he's the least likely to fight and would try to escape if possible.

By this time, the big dog is squarely in the middle of my dogs. I'm still yelling (like an idiot) and thankfully Lily begins to calm down. (I don't think it was because of my yelling - more about that in a minute.) Things are still awfully stiff among the dogs, there's a lot of posturing and I'm still not sure how this whole thing is going to turn out.

I decided to drop Lily's leash as well - she's the smallest and if there was going to be a disagreement, I wanted her to be able to get out of there, too. Finally, I walked between Tango and the big dog, calling my dogs as I did it.

They looked up (!) and I began to walk away. The big guy decided he'd like to follow, so I turned, made myself as large as I could (hard to do for a 5' 1" person) and bellowed "GO HOME." He didn't necessarily listen, but I think the bass of my voice took him by surprise. He looked up at me and at least stopped moving forward.

My dogs got lots, and lots, and lots of food (I always carry food with me) and we extricated ourselves from the situation.

Remember the yelling I was doing as the dog was approaching? If I could do it all over again, I'd try to get myself under control first - yelling was ineffective at best. It could have helped encourage a fight. I was panicked, however, at the thought of a fight, blood, and the fact that I had neither my phone or any way to get an injured dog back to my house.

Things I will never leave behind again: Cell phone and DirectStop.

If you have an underground electric fence: PLEASE LEAVE YOUR COLLARS ON YOUR DOGS ALL THE TIME. The dogs really DO know when the collar isn't on. DON'T leave your dog unattended. And when they start to bark like maniacs at the boundary, call them back! All that frustration is not a good thing for your dog. And having them cross that barrier to get to my dogs isn't good for me. Or my dogs.

Independence Day

Here in the Mid-Atlantic, it's hot, hot, hot! Too hot to be outside, too hot to do anything inside. So just a quickie blog post today to celebrate Independence Day.

These pictures are of Rocky (service dog #1) and Lily (service dog #2) on 4th of July in 2002. They were rockin' the red, white, and blue for a neighborhood parade.

We're fortunate to have the opportunity to visit with Rocky from time-to-time. He's visiting here with us right now, as his family vacations. It's wonderful to be able to keep in touch with the dogs we've raised. It's special to have them back in the house, just for a visit.

Little Lily never went back to the service dog agency: she was dismissed because she didn't enjoy working in public, and she was somewhat reactive (barky) at other dogs. She's a terrific pet dog and we're happy to have her as part of our permanent family.

Enjoy this 4th of July with your four-legged friends. Remember:  the big booms of firework celebrations can be mighty frightening for our dogs. Please, please leave them at home with the radio or television on to help mask the thunderous booms from fireworks tonight!

Kids and Dogs: How to Keep 'Em Both Safe

Kids are the most frequent victims of dog bites. Specifically, young boys tend to receive more dogs bites than anyone! If you have a dog, do you know how to tell if you're dog's had enough of kid-time? If you have kids, have you taught them how to interact with dogs so they're safe even when they're not playing with YOUR dog?

Lots of families have great dogs - dogs that let the kids climb on them, dress them up, and use them as toys. Unfortunately, most dogs don't like that kind of interaction. If that's the way your kids learned to interact with dogs, you're setting them up for a dog bite when they do that to someone else's dog. So even if your dog is tolerant, please teach your kids how to properly and safely interact with other dogs. 

I wrote about our neighborhood kids climbing onto our fence to say hi to our dogs and the potential dangers. Then I ran across this article by dog behaviorists -- complete with videos from You Tube -- and posted the link on my Facebook page. Not long after, one of the videos from that article showed up on some of my friend's pages. They thought the video was cute (which it is) and couldn't understand why I was getting "so serious" about a little bit of play between a baby and a dog. 

If you have a dog and/or a child, please take a moment to educate yourself on doggie body language. I'd hate to get a call from you because your dog "bit without warning." It's so easy to prevent a bite! Here are some more really good resources to check out (also with lots of really good video): Doggone Safe and Dogs and Storks.