Separation Anxiety - More common than you think

Waiting for you to come home

In a pilot study in Great Britain, 40 randomly picket dog were filmed by hidden cameras from the time the owners were getting ready to go, until they owners came back. In addition the stress hormone cortisol was measured in the dogs' saliva, in samples taken prior to and after the dogs had been left alone.
According to the footage, 25 of the dogs appeared to just relax when their owners left. But cortisol levels in the saliva told a completely different story.

It turned out that only 6 of the 40 dogs were unaffected by their owners leaving them. As the footage had show, this did not mean that the other 34 were barking and howling until the owners got back. Many of them appeared to be fine, just lying down waiting for the owner.

Depending upon their behavior combined with cortisol levels they dogs were put into different categories:

• 6 of the dogs, that appeared calm and had low cortisol levels, were labeled "Relaxed".
• 19 of the dogs were labeled "inactive anxious", that meant that from just observing the dogs, you couldn't tell that the dogs were anxious at all. Their cortisol levels showed a completely different picture. They had just as high levels of cortisol as the "active anxious" dogs, i.e. the dogs that were pacing, howling, barking, defecating in the house, chewing the interior of the house etc.
• 15 of the dogs were categorized as "Active anxious". These were then further divided into two groups. The first group of dogs, 5 of the 15, had owners that were aware that the dog had separation issues. The second group, 10 of the 15 dogs, had owners that said they were completely unaware that their dog had a problem. 

These are intriguing numbers. It is horrifying to think about all the dogs that are really anxious of being left alone, but the owners have no idea. This was 29 of the dogs! 19 of which was impossible to tell they had a problem at all! When you have a dog that shows you that it is uncomfortable with you leaving, at least you have a chance to help and train the dog to better cope with it. But if you are unaware, how are you ever going to know your dog needs help? It really breaks my heart.

This is how relaxed your dog should be when you leave it at home.

 In Sweden they have recently passed a law stating that you aren't allowed to leave your dog for more than 4 hours. While I think it's a stupid law since it keeps potentially good dog owners from getting a dog, in light of this study I must say that the law has its merits. But on the other hand, the dogs in the study showed that they were equally stressed about being left alone, if they were left for just a short while, or for a couple of hours. They started stressing the second the owner left.

 If you have a dog that has separation anxiety, you might find my next blog post useful. It will be about prevention and treatment of separation anxiety, Separation Anxiety - Prevention and Treatment.
Never hesitate to contact a dog trainer in your area if your dog has issues. In most cases the problems can be solved by training. And if only training doesn't work, your vet can help you get anti-anxiety medication for your dog that you can give it to get better results from the training.

Source:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kd5ikAcUQGE

Dogs and Allergies

Allergies are becoming more and more common in the human population in industrialized countries, and the same is sadly true for our four legged companions. Dogs can just like us develop allergies to pollen, dust mites and even certain protein sources in food, among many other things. While there are no certain answers to why there's such an increase in allergy prevalence, at least more and more effective treatments for allergies are found.

Symptoms to look for in your dog if you suspect it might be allergic. 

Picture borrowed from http://www.drsfostersmith.com/pic/article.cfm?aid=75

Just like in humans, where antihistamines and cortisone can be used to alleviate the symptoms of allergy, it doesn't remove the allergy itself. The only way to get rid of the allergy, or at least make the individual less sensitive to a certain allergen (substance that can cause an allergic reaction) is a process called hyposensibilization. That used to imply going to the doctor, or veterinarian in the case of dogs, to get an injection of the substance you/the dog were allergic to with certain intervals (usually every 14 days). This is often both time consuming and quite often unsuccessful in treating the allergy in question. Not to mention the fact that some people and dogs (yes dogs too) are actually scared of needles. What is worse, some extra sensitive individuals can actually get a very severe allergic reaction to the injection. Thankfully a new method of hyposensibilization for dogs  have been found and was presented this summer: Oral drops. They are simply dropped under the tongue twice a day. It has show to be comparable to injections in effectiveness but without the risk of strong allergic reactions. In some cases where allergy shots haven't worked, the oral drops did, so it appears to have a different mode of action. The treatment still has to be supervised by a veterinarian, but it is a good alternative to allergy shots. The drops also apparently taste good, so the dog won't mind taking them. Which I can tell you from personal experience is a very good thing.. I've seldom been as exhausted and sweaty at work as after I've tried to medicate a dog with pills it doesn't want..

I for one hope that more research will be done in this area for the sake of allergic people and dogs alike. Hopefully some time in the future we will find a treatment for allergy that is both more effective and safe. But maybe we should start in the other end, to find out why we and our dogs get allergic in the first place.

Source: 

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/07/120724144429.htm

The dog's exceptional smelling ability helps researchers

The dogs sense of smell is ranging from one hundred thousand to one million times more sensitive than ours, this together with the ease with which they cooperate with us humans make them the perfect tool, or as I prefer to view it, coworker, for the scientists doing everything from medical research to wildlife population estimations and everything in between.

When most people hear about dogs used in science or for scientific purposes, they think of beagles in a lab that has tubes inserted in different places and get injected with different chemicals. The role of the dog in science has evolved however, and we find more and more uses for our four-legged companions, mostly in ways that doesn't harm them one bit, but rather harness the awesome capacities hidden inside the nose and central nervous system of the dog; its sens of smell.
Unlike the human brain where a large part is concerned with dealing with interpretation of visual input, the dogs brain is dominated by its olfactory cortex, that is the area of the brain concerned with the sense of smell. In a way you could say that they see the world through smells, or at least experience it through smells. The olfactory bulb (where the receptors for smell are located) of the dog is forty times bigger than that of a human.
Due to this and their will to cooperate with humans on an unprecedented level in the animal kingdom, dogs are now used in many fields of research, from detecting cancer to locating owls and even finding killer whales! (Click on the links below to read more about it.) There seems to be no limits to what dogs can detect with their noses, the limiting factor is the human imagination.

"Is that a whale I smell?" A picture from one of the walks with the Siberian huskies this summer, Vida tried to smell things under water..

Sources:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/health-14557224

http://www.bendbulletin.com/article/20120902/NEWS0107/209020364/

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/08/120815174906.htm

Shelter Dog vs. Dog from a Breeder

Why don't you go to the animal shelter and get a dog, instead of buying one from a breeder?

Sigrid, a friend of mine asked me this the other day. She lives in South Africa and is the proud owner of a shelter dog called Shadow. I live in Norway and here we don't have shelters. There is an organization here called "dyrebeskyttelsen" (translates to something like "animal protection organization") and they re-home dogs, but they only have the ad for the dog on their website and the dogs are still in there old homes while waiting to get adopted. The reason why we don't have shelters is that we don't have stray dogs in Norway. And we don't have dogs roaming around, not that dogs are roaming around everywhere in South Africa or United States either, but in Norway there are NO stray dogs at all. Neither do we have many unwanted puppies born every year. There are of course some (irresponsible) "breeders" of mix and pure breed dogs that breed their dogs without thinking about finding them good homes. These dogs are usually sold cheap, some are in no doubt put down, and many of them sadly get re-homed many times during their life. The re-homing of dogs in Norway is a "private affair". The ad for the dog is put online by the owner, the owner (hopefully) gets some replies, the old owner and the new owner meet and the dog is handed over. There are no shelters involved.

Shadow as a puppy. Photo: Sigrid

So then you can ask me: Why don't I adopt one of those dogs in need of a home?
Well, that is more tricky.. My first thought is that I don't want to support the irresponsible breeders by taking in one of those dogs, and thus enabling these breeders to keep on what they are doing. But of course it isn't the dogs fault that the breeder is irresponsible. And also, unforeseen things can happen. A lot of dogs are re-homed for reasons like illness in the family or allergies. One of those dogs surely are OK to adopt, many even come from good breeders and homes. I guess I would only adopt a dog like that if it was the breeder that tried to find the dog a new home. That is a sure sign that the breeder is serious and really wants what is best for the dog. You seldom, if ever, see this happen for mix breed dogs. The breeders of those dogs usually didn't think it through before letting their dog have puppies, and they certainly have no intention to take responsibility for the puppies once they have left for their new homes.

Shadow in the pool. Photo: Sigrid

I think if I lived in a country like the United States or South Africa, where I know that no one benefits from me taking in a shelter dog (except the rescue organization and of course the dog), I would definitely adopt one. But here in Norway, where I know some people make a lucrative business of irresponsible breeding, I don't want a mix breed dog or a dog that is re-homed several times, since they likely come from such a breeder. It is a bit like buying a puppy from a "puppy mill" in the United States. No one questions that that is a bad idea, right?

Shadow on the couch.

And then we have another reason: I want an 8-9 weeks old puppy. Not a adult or adolescent dog. The reason for this is that the sooner you get the little critter the easier it is to shape it into the kind of dog you want. There is a thin window for socialization when the puppy is between 8-12 weeks old (or 16 weeks, depending on the source, the truth is probably that this varies for different dogs), and the things it experiences during this time is what it will view as "normal". If you get the dog after this age, it is much more likely to develop problematic behaviors and might have a harder time acclimatizing to your way of living, of course depending on what experiences it has made before you got it. But as I said in the blog post about socialization [link] it is never too late, it will just take more time. Thing is, I don't want to make it harder than it has to be for myself, not at this point in my life. And dogs that are re-homed in Norway are always older than 12 weeks, before that you basically buy them directly from the breeder, and I've already been through the problem of supporting irresponsible breeders.

Shadow as a puppy. Photo: Sigrid

So I'm just gonna keep on waiting for "my" puppy to be born at the Danish Swedish farmdog breeder in Sweden. I definitely feel good about supporting a breeder as serious as she is, that informed me about hereditary diseases in the breed (and yes, there are hereditary diseases in all dog breeds) and told me what to keep in mind when looking at dogs from different blood lines within the breed. For I have all intentions of becoming a serious breeder myself, that knows what the genetic history of my dogs are and that only breed from animals that are healthy. And almost more important than that, I will take responsibility for all pups born under my care and find them good homes.

Below is a link to a documentary about shelter dogs in the United States, we are lucky there are so many people with big hearts in the world.

Documentary about rescue dogs in the United States.

Diseases, genes, dog breeds and humans

Dogs are a gold mine when it comes to studying hereditary diseases. This is due to the relatively small gene pool within each breed, which makes it comparatively easy to pinpoint the gene(s) that increases the risk of developing the disease. The small gene pool is unfortunately also what makes diseases so common in pure bred dogs.

Documentary about what research in dogs can do for our understanding of hereditary diseases.

Documentary about what the small gene pool does to the dogs themselves.

Just recently, the gene for hereditary epilepsy was identified in Belgian shepherd dogs. Dogs that was homozygous (dogs that has the same gene on both chromosomes) for the particular gene had a 7-fold increase in risk of developing epilepsy. The gene is however also found to be homozygous in 1/5 of healthy Belgian shepherd dogs, so more research needs to be done. Epilepsy is very common in some breeds and in this particular breed, as many as 20% of the dogs have epilepsy. This can be compared to 1-5% of the human population. It is therefore quite clear that in order to save this breed, a reliable gene test needs to be developed.

One of the four Belgian Shepherd dogs, the Terveren. Photo from Wikipedia.

Source:

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2012/03/120323205337.htm

Socialization - Social training or Trusting the pack leader?

There are two main views of what it takes to get your dog to be able to handle challenges, such as meeting other animals, dogs of all shapes, ages and both sexes, babies, children, cars, etc. One is simply that if your dog trusts you, it will not get scared unless you get scared, since you are the pack-leader and the dog believes you can handle anything. The other view is that the dog needs to get used to different animals, dogs, cars etc, while still young and if the dog has good experiences with of all of the things mentioned above, none of them will be a problem when the dog is grown up.
Well what do I think.. well, non of them are wrong. If your dog trusts you it will do everything you ask of it. But isn't socialization of the puppy exactly that, that you show the puppy that no matter what situation you're in or no matter who/what you meet you remain calm and happy. So I guess the views are just two different ways to describe the same thing.
What about you being the "pack-leader"? Some people have left this way of thinking altogether, they claim that being a "pack-leader" means that you train your dog with corrections instead of rewards. I don't agree, and I think the term "pack leader" has a much deeper meaning. It all comes down to trust. If you act calm and like you can handle everything, you act like a pack leader. If you on the other hand seem insecure or even afraid of something, the dog will not view you as a reliable protector and will either be scared itself or try to take on the role of protector, or pack leader. Does this mean that it "wants to take over and be boss"? No, definitely not! It just tried to do what it thought you wanted it to do! But back to the subject of socialization. 
I once read an article about a guy that had a Laponian herder, he claimed that socialization was just nonsense, that the dog just had to trust him in order to handle new and challenging situations. The way he had gotten his dog to trust him was putting the dog in a number of different situations and showed the dog that it could always count on his support and that he himself always remained calm. Which is just another way of describing socialization... He did have one point though, the dog did not have to have experienced exactly every situation it could ever happen to experience, during its training/socialization, in order for it to be able to handle it. Just like we can, a dog can learn to generalize, meaning it can learn that similar (but not identical) situations can be handled the same way. To take one simplified example, it is enough for the dog to learn that when a car comes passing by,  it should stay by your side. It doesn't have to learn that it has to stay by your side for every type of car, red/blue/grey.., sedan/station wagon/SUV and so on. It can generalize from having seen a few examples.


Effects of lacking socialization
I read in another article, about problem behaviors in dogs, that the typical dog that was referred to dog psychologists was male, 1-1,5years old, castrated and had been bought from breeder (or re-homed) after 12 weeks of age.  So why is this the archetype of problematic dog? Well, to start with the gender, males are more difficult to handle simply because they are in general tougher and because of testosterone also more prone to aggressive behavior.
Castrated then? Shouldn't castration take away the testosterone and hence the problematic behavior caused by it? Well I guess that was the point of the castration, but the procedure was most likely done too late to affect the problematic behavior. You see, dogs learn behavior. And when a behavior is learned, such as "when I see a dog, I bark at it", it won't matter what caused this to begin with (testosterone/territorial behavior). If removed from home territory or castrated, the dog will still bark whenever it sees another dog.
Then to the age of the dog. Sometime when the dog is between 6 months and 1 year old it will hit adolescence. This means that the sex-hormone concentration in the body will increase, altering behavior and physical development. As going to the dog psychologist probably isn't the first thing the dog owner tried (castration...) there is a slight time lag between initiation of problem behavior and first counseling at the dog psychologist. It is also possible that the delay is caused by the fact that the dog isn't at it's strongest when adolescence start, so it is easier to handle it in the beginning, as the dog grows it becomes increasingly harder to handle it.
And then the part that brings us back to socialization. The age at which the dog left the breeder to go to its new (and hopefylly last) family. What is it about the time between 8-12 weeks old that makes it so important to get the puppy at this age? Well, this is the time in the puppy's life when it learns what is "normal". For example, if you live in an apartment where people are walking up and down the stairs outside of your door all day, and you get the puppy when it is 8 weeks old, it will learn that this is normal and stop caring about it (if you show it that you don't care about the noise and ignore the dog or even correct it when it barks/growl at the noise). If you on the other hand get the dog when it is 3 months old (approximately 12 weeks old) or older, and it used to live in a house on the countryside, these noises will affect it and you will have a much harder time getting the dog to ignore it. The same goes for everything else that will be "normal" for the rest of the dogs life.
So, does this mean that a dog will not be trainable after 12 weeks of age? Of course it doesn't mean that! It will only be harder, but far from impossible. You just have to be aware that you might have to put some extra energy and time into it.

So what should you do to prevent the problems? Below is a series of pictures to illustrate some of the things you should try to expose your dog to before 12 weeks of age, or if you start later, maybe the dog has to be exposed to it more times before it stops being stressed about it. And remember, the training never stops, a dog will only be good at doing stuff it does every day, or at least often.

Meeting different animals, and walking on roads with cars, there is a lot to learn here for the two 4-months old Siberian husky puppies.

It is important for all dogs, and especially dogs that will be around children, to meet children of different ages. Scott, 2 years old, is not very used to kids, but handles it a lot better now than he did a year ago.

Meeting smaller and bigger dogs than yourself is important, Scott 2 years old Danish Swedish Farmdog, and Vida 4 months old Siberian husky.

Playing with other dogs is good socialization, but only if it doesn't get out of hand, it is important that the dog learns to be calm around other dogs too. Here are 3 young dachshunds at a dogshow in Tromsø June 2011.

Learning to greet each other and interact with the opposite sex is also important, here two Labrador retrievers at a dogshow in Tromsø June 2011.

For fully grown male dogs to be able to interact and play like Scott (2 years old) and Casper (1,5 years old, Basset Artésien Normand) does here, they need to be very good at communication between dogs. This is something all dogs need to work on!

Colors of the Wolf

A wolf at Prague Zoo.

In most parts of the world, wolves have the color and pattern seen in the picture above, but for some reason in North America, wolves have a larger spectrum of colors, from almost white to pitch black. Researchers have recently found that the reason for this is that the North American population of wolves has been mixed with domesticated dogs. The gene for black fur in wolves is the same one found in dogs, and since black wolves are found all over North America, the mixing must have happened a long time ago. It must therefore be mixing with the dogs of the native Americans, rather than the dogs of the Europeans, that is the reason for this variation in color in the North American wolf.
According to some sources, the mixing of dogs with wolves was encouraged by some native American people who believed that they would get stronger dogs from it. But since all (examined) dog breeds of today are more closely related to the middle eastern wolves than to, in this case, the American population of wolves, it seems that the puppies born in wolf-dog mix litters were unfit to live with people, and only the ones born to a wild mother and incorporated in the society of the wolves lived on to get offspring. This is quite expected as the same text that gave me this information (see the sources below) also stated that the dogs of the native Americans were easily trained and good with children and people. Something that wolf-dog-hybrids aren't exactly known for.

A "wolf-colored" dog, Siberian husky, that in spite of it's appearance isn't more closely related to wolves than any other spitz-type dog. See the blogpost about the origin of dog breeds for more info on that [link].

Sources:

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/biologists-solve-mystery-about-80301.aspx

http://doglawreporter.blogspot.com/2012/01/dogs-of-great-plains-nations.html

Origin of the dog

I have previously written a little bit about the origin of the dog in THIS post. There I write about bones of dogs that are 33 000 years old and found in Siberia and Belgium. I've since read a lot more about the origin of the dog and of different species of dogs. The picture below shows the genetic relationship between different species of dogs and wolves.

Picture borrowed from http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/dogs-likely-originated-in-the-155101.aspx

Apparently most breeds of dogs (except for a few ancient Asian dog breeds) are most closely related to the middle eastern population of wolves. The reason, the researchers think, for the ancient Asian breeds to be different is that they have at a later point been mixed with Asian wolves. What baffled the researchers is that the different types of dog, i.e. herding dogs, retriever dogs etc., were also genetically close within the groups. It was previously thought that breeds that had similar traits might just be the result of selective breeding towards the same goals at different geographical locations, but this seems not to be the case. This means that rather than taking what dog you have and turning it, through selective breeding, into the type of dog you want, dogs have been bred within its own groups to increase certain characteristics. One exception however, is the many miniature variants of breeds. These have often been accomplished by mixing the standard variety with miniature breeds. So that group is very genetically diverse.

So why am I making another dog origin blogpost? Well in part simply to be able to say, "I told you so". If all breeds that exist today seems to originate from the same population of wolves in the middle east, then the theory that the dog was domesticated many times (in order for them to have been at two separate geographical locations 33 000 years ago) is simply not true. The scientists behind that study thought that the reason why we don't see that kind of genetic variety that multiple domestication processes would show in the dog breeds of today, is that these dogs were extinct. I still don't think that is the case, I still think that the dog was domesticated at least 40 000 years ago, probably even earlier. They have yet to prove me wrong.


Sources:
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/05/0520_040520_dogbreeds.html

http://newsroom.ucla.edu/portal/ucla/dogs-likely-originated-in-the-155101.aspx

http://uanews.org/node/44227

Dogs, walks, weight and health

Researchers at the University of Liverpool have in a study found that pregnant women owning a dog is 50% more likely than women without dogs to achieve the recommended 30 minutes of exercise a day. Failing to achieve this increases the risk of  gaining too much weight during the pregnancy, which in turn increases the risk of complications during both pregnancy and child birth, and the risk for the child to be over-weight or obese itself will be higher if the mother is or becomes over-weight during the pregnancy. Being obese or over weight is itself a risk as this increases the risk of different diseases, like for example diabetes. Another rather alarming realization gained from this study was that some pregnant women don't walk their dog at all. Which brings us to the second part of this post.



What about the weight and health of the dog itself? Another study, also at the University of Liverpool showed that obese dogs that lost weight had an increased quality of life. Obesity is in dogs just as in humans, a serious condition that can lead to many health disorders including diabetes, heart disease and arthritis. The increased quality of life however that the dogs experienced after losing weight was only in part due to these direct health benefits. Other effects were reduction of pain and emotional disturbances and increased vitality. Methods of keeping the dog lean and healthy, or losing weight if necessary, include portion control, increased exercise and diets specifically formulated for overweight pets.


So what to do? Walk your dog! Both you and your beloved pet will be healthier and happier!

Me on a mountain walk with Siberian huskies Birk and Tessa, july 2011.

Sources:


http://m.liv.ac.uk/research/index.php#owning-a-dog-encourages-exercise-in-pregnant-women


https://news.liv.ac.uk/2012/02/20/quality-of-life-of-obese-dogs-improves-when-they-lose-weight/