Saturday, June 26, 2010

What up, dog?

Duncan is refusing to go to the bathroom in his own yard. I have a theory about this. His urine is tainted with the smell of antibiotics. Maybe he doesn't like it, or maybe he views this as a sign of weakness and doesn't want to advertise that he is in a weakened state to the local rabbits, squirrel, and crows. If they knew, they might gang up on him and retaliate for chasing them out of his yard.

I know he can catch rabbits, I've seen him do it twice. I've never seen him catch a squirrel, but he's gotten close enough to panic them and me. I have no idea what his issue is with the crows. He chases them and barks at them. He knows about the birds that are nesting on the ground in his yard, but all he does is check the nests every day and leave them alone. That suggests that it isn't birds that he objects to, but specifically to crows. I found a very large chunk of his hair in the middle of the yard one day that could have been torn out of him by a crow. Maybe that explains it. Who knows.

The upshot of this is that I have to take him for a walk every three or four hours to get him to pee. He's got a quarter of an acre but won't use it.

I took him out this morning for a circuit around the 'hood. On the way home there was a yard full of kids. One of the girls saw Duncan and said, "Oh, look at the dog!" and they all started to come to Duncan. Duncan, of course, was very happy for the attention. All four of the kids were petting him and saying how cute and pretty and fluffy and happy he is. The smallest of them, a little boy maybe four or five years old, was at eye level with Duncan, a few inches away, running his hands down Duncan's face and jaw and saying what a nice dog he is. The oldest girl said that Colin, the little boy, had only touched one other dog in his life because he's afraid of dogs. As we walked away, I heard her running into the house, yelling to her mom that Colin had just petted a dog. Duncan seems to have this effect on people who are afraid of dogs. They just can't resist his cuteness.

A little further on along a trail outside of the neighborhood, he stopped to smell at something next to the trail. I wasn't paying much attention, but I did notice that he was very intently smelling whatever it was, not casually sniffing at it. He was taking very deep breaths and seemed a little tense. Then it hopped out from under his nose. It was a baby bird that didn't seem to be able to fly. It hopped fine, and its wings seemed fine, but it obviously couldn't fly. I couldn't catch it and I wouldn't have known what to do with it if I could have caught it. Chloe would probably have killed it. Duncan would probably have let it clean his teeth. It hopped off into some underbrush. Hopefully it will be OK, but I doubt I'll ever know for sure.

Friday, June 25, 2010

Lessons in canine first aid

Duncan got bitten by a dog at the dog park on Monday.

On Tuesday, I took him to the vet. They shaved the area, gave me antibiotics, and told me to keep the area clean and use Neosporin on it.

On Wednesday, I went to work and came home to find that he had been out all day. The shaved area was sunburned and looked terrible. I put aloe on it and some topical anesthetic on it to keep it from bothering him.

It didn't work, of course.

I woke up Thursday morning to find that he had licked the area raw, and it was infected. I sent an email to my boss telling him I was going to work from home that day, then called the vet and made an appointment. That visit resulted in a bottle of antiseptic wash, a tube of antibiotic cream, and an Elizabethan collar for Duncan. I'm working from home until I can leave Duncan without worrying about the collar or him licking his wound open again.



Duncan is a great dog. I have to clean this raw scabby area twice a day, which I know hurts him because he shakes the whole time, but he doesn't try to get away. When I hold up the cone to put it on him, he just sticks his head right in and lets me tie it to his collar. He acts like this is nothing new. It's amazing. He does get a little anxious after the wound cleaning, probably because it hurts, so I give him a Benedryl and he calms down.

Poor Duncan has a hard time navigating around the house with the collar on. He runs into things and catches the edge of it, then has to work out how to get un-caught. He has a hard time catching and picking up his toys, but he's gotten very good at flicking them at me with the edge of the collar. It's kind of sad watching him flick the collar up to put his head down and pick up a toy before the edge of the collar comes back down and blocks him. But it's kind of funny, too. I feel bad for laughing. He also can't seem to catch his toys if I toss them to him, so they just land in his cone. When I take him out, I have to put a T-shirt on him to keep dirt off the wound and keep it from getting sunburned more. I have to tie the waist of the shirt up in a little knot to keep him from peeing on it, and it makes him look like that gay guy on skates in Reno 911. He lets me put the shirt on, and he never tries to take it off. My poor doggy.



One of Duncan's favorite things to do is scratch his muzzle on my leg or the couch, and he can't do that with the cone on. I do it for him.

I'm going to rearrange my furniture in my bedroom tonight so that he can get around more easily in there. He got stuck on a bedside table last night and got a little panicky before I could get him unhooked. The last thing I want is to stress him more than he already is.

Wednesday, June 23, 2010

Renton Off-Leash Dog Park - Some dogs bite

On June 21st, 2010, at about 6:15 pm, I arrived at the Renton Off-Leash Dog Park. I entered the gate and let my dog, Duncan, off his leash. While he ran up to the group of dogs standing with the group of people, I walked over to the people. Duncan stopped in front of two dogs, an elderly Norwegian Elk Hound and some kind of a hound mix. Duncan’s posture was his normal greeting posture with a dog he didn’t know: leaning backward on his hind legs, slightly crouched to show submission, head up to show curiosity, fast wagging lowered tail, flattened ears, averting his gaze to be non-threatening. They were all sniffing each other for about 2 seconds when the Elk Hound lunged and snarled at Duncan, biting him on the side.


I was still walking toward the people and I was watching Duncan, so I saw it happen. Melissa, owner of Zoey the Black Lab, also saw it. The owner of Bruiser heard Duncan yelp but didn’t see it happen. The owner of the Elk Hound neither saw nor heard this happen. The dogs were out of his line of sight, behind him to his left, about 15 feet away. He was chatting up Jax’s owner and was totally oblivious to his dog’s behavior. Melissa turned to me with wide eyes and covered her mouth in an “oh my god, did you just see that?” kind of move. I said to Melissa, “Why is my dog limping?” She replied, “Maybe he stepped on something?” She sounded doubtful.

This entire exchange took place in about 15 seconds after letting Duncan off his leash.

Duncan’s movement, which wasn’t really a limp, was caused by the bite on his side. He was clenching in pain, but since he walked it off a few seconds later I didn’t check it out immediately.

About five minutes later, the owner of the Elk Hound commented, “sometimes he growls at other dogs, but it doesn’t mean anything.” Yes, it means something. It means his dog is aggressive. The owner is either blissfully unaware of this or he likes that his dog is aggressive and won’t address it. The ASPCA website describes his dog's behavior this way: “Dogs can display an “aggressive pucker.” They move their lips forward over their teeth and exhale air so that their lips look puffy and large. You can sometimes even hear them breathing heavily. This display is often accompanied by a wrinkled forehead. A dog who looks like this is saying, “Don’t come any closer.”” Source Duncan didn’t have time to get this signal from the dog.

Just before we left the park, Duncan was playing fetch with Mickey and Georgia’s owner. I noticed that when the man tried to scratch Duncan’s sides, he’d try to avoid being touched on that side by dancing away and curving his body to that side to shield it and showing anxiety behavior: panting, head down, ears down, and wagging his entire body back and forth. After we got out of the park, I looked over his side and found the bite mark. The vet was closed, so I cleaned up the wound with hydrogen peroxide and Neosporin.

In the morning, I made an appointment with the vet and took Duncan in to be checked out. They shaved the wound to look for punctures, then prescribed Amoxicillin and more topical Neosporin. Puncture wounds associated with dog bites are very dangerous. Canine teeth can push bacteria deep within the tissue and cause life-threatening infections. The wound clearly shows five teeth marks: the left canine made the worst part of the wound, but you can also clearly see where the four front teeth gouged his skin. The area around it is noticeably bruised. Only one canine tooth made contact, which shows that the dog came at Duncan from an angle – behind him to his right. Duncan was bitten from behind while trying to escape and he didn’t retaliate.


The next day, I went back to the dog park to talk to the owner. His reaction was predictable. He got very hostile and unreasonable. He was too busy formulating defenses to hear anything I tried to say to him. He tried to intimidate me, shouting at me. He just went on and on, making excuses, denying it, and blaming Duncan.

1. He said it didn’t happen. Clearly it happened; there are witnesses and an obvious bite wound.

2. He said his dog didn’t do it. Again, there were witnesses. Two dogs were near Duncan when this happened, the Elk Hound and the hound mix. The hound mix was on Duncan's opposite side, and also backed away when the Elk Hound lunged forward. Incidentally, both dogs belong to the same man.

3. He said he’s been coming to this park for years and never had a problem. That’s a lie, and if it was true it would be irrelevant. The park was established last year. It isn’t even two years old. Regardless of how long you’ve been frequenting a dog park, it does not justify your dog biting another. In addition, “never having a problem” does not correlate exactly with “there will never be a problem.”

4. He pointed out that I haven’t been coming to this park for very long. True, it is possible that I’ve been frequenting the park for a month or two less than him. This is also irrelevant. If it had been my first time at this dog park, it would still be irrelevant.

5. He said his dog has never bitten a child. First, this isn’t a child. Second, that’s irrelevant. He’s never bitten a lot of things. There’s a first time for everything.

6. He said his dog has never bitten another dog. How does he know that? He didn’t know his dog had bitten my dog right behind him because he wasn’t watching his dog. Maybe this has happened before and the other owner didn’t notice or chose not to mention it, knowing that this owner would be irrational about it. And again, the “first time for everything” rule applies.

7. He said Duncan must have provoked it. My dog ran up to the group of dogs and stopped to greet them, and got bitten for it. If that is enough of a provocation to his dog to get bitten, his dog clearly has an aggression issue, which should be treated with training.

8. He said that this is something that dogs “just do.” So if it is something that dogs “just do,” why hasn’t it happened more often? The answer is simple: dogs don’t just bite each other to draw blood and cause deep bruising. They might nip and snarl for whatever reasons, but biting is a big leap from no-contact demonstrations. Normally dogs signal their intention first. Duncan got enough of a signal to turn and try to escape the bite, but it wasn’t enough of a signal.

9. He said, “What am I supposed to do, stop bringing him to the park?” I never suggested any such thing. I suggested that he pay attention to his dog and try to understand and address bad behavior. (The fact that his dog snarled and bit a dog 15 feet from him and the other dog yelped in pain and he heard nothing indicates that he is not paying attention to his dog.) I believe this was a perfectly reasonable request, which he did not hear because he was too busy being defensive and angry that someone would speak to him of this. He was clearly indifferent that his dog had bitten another dog; his focus was on reducing my concern to insignificance. I did not suggest muzzling the dog, keeping the dog under control on a leash, or refraining from bringing the dog to the park – all of which would have been considerations for me if our positions had been reversed. I also did not demand a reimbursement for the vet bill, which was fully half of what remained in my checking account, the balance of which has to last me another week and a half. If my dog had bitten another dog, I would have immediately offered to pay the vet bills. I believe that is what good people do – they hold themselves accountable and accept responsibility for their actions and by extension the actions of their dogs.

I tried to point out to him that he needs to be aware of his dog’s behavior so that he knows he needs to deal with it, but he was too busy arguing with what he thought I was saying to hear or understand what I was actually saying. Here’s the reasoning:

1. You need to be aware of your dog’s behavior. If you don’t know what your dog is doing, you can’t take care of the dog properly. If your dog was “provoked” to bite another dog by being submissively greeted, you need to know this so that you can question why it happened. You’re not going to know this if you’re too busy chatting with the other people. You can watch your dog and still talk to other people.

2. You need to understand your dog’s behavior. Why would this happen? Duncan is known around this park and other parks as a very friendly, well behaved, polite dog. He doesn’t bark, he doesn’t growl, he doesn’t chase aggressively, he doesn’t fight over toys, he doesn’t jump on people. He runs to each dog and person in the park in turn and greets everyone, looking for someone to play with. A dog trainer of nearly 50 years has repeatedly told people in my presence that if their dog doesn’t get along with Duncan, it is because there is something wrong with their dog. So why would this dog bite him? It could be several things. Perhaps the dog is going blind or deaf on his left side and he’s defensive when approached from that side. Perhaps he’s in pain from arthritis. Perhaps he has an infection or wound. Perhaps (and this is my guess) the dog is simply an aggressive dog.

From the RUFF website (found at http://www.rentonoffleash.org/Dog_Park_FAQs.html), his dog qualifies as aggressive: “An "aggressive" dog, as RUFF defines it, is a dog that causes physical injury to another dog or human, or consistently threatens, bullies, or intimidates dogs or people, and whose behavior cannot be controlled by its owner.”

3. You need to address your dog’s behavior. Assuming that this is a new behavior for the Elk Hound, the owner should question what could trigger such a huge change in behavior. The best way to find out is to take him to the vet. Most health issues are treatable. Some, like deafness or blindness, are not medically treatable in all circumstances, but a dog can be conditioned to be less defensive of their weak side if the owner is aware of the problem and works with the dog.
If it isn’t a health issue, it is a training issue. Aggression can be trained out of dogs. I’ve seen it done, repeatedly and successfully. If he doesn’t know how to do it, he needs to find someone who does and get some training of his own. The first step is, of course, for him to be aware of and objective about his dog’s behavior so that he can acknowledge that there is an issue to be addressed. Blaming the other person’s dog won’t solve anything.

Even if Duncan had legitimately provoked this dog, the bite was an extreme reaction that would be addressed by a responsible dog owner. This man dismissed the incident out of hand. Dogs provoke each other all the time at the park, but they don’t get bitten for it. A friendly greeting is not a provocation. If the problem is not addressed it could happen again, and it may not turn out so well. Chances are that Duncan will be fine. What if my dog had been a smaller or slower-moving dog that couldn’t escape? A bite from an Elk Hound is a very big bite to a smaller dog. Now that this has happened one time, the owner should know that it can happen again, especially if he chooses to ignore the issue out of misplaced pride, arrogance, and machismo.

Thursday, June 17, 2010

BP, the oil spill, and the liability cap

So, I'm wondering.

The oil spill is now up to... what? About 60,000 barrels a day? Sure, they're collecting a bit of the oil, and setting fire to some of the oil, but the rest of it is ending up killing wildlife, habitats, and jobs. BP makes more money than God, so why is there a cap on their liability? Doesn't a cap just push the company to make the cheapest decision?

More to the point, what's cheaper - letting the oil spill run its course and doing the cleanup, knowing what it will cost them? Or fixing it? What if fixing it will cost more than the liability cap on the cleanup?

Considering that they've made decisions in the past that were the cheaper, not better, decisions, I'd be afraid to let them make a choice on this. (I'm sure we've all heard about the Three Little Pigs analogy and how it was used in a meeting discussing a decision they made.)

Monday, June 14, 2010

What? You again? Yeah, me again.

I was trying to log in to MapleStory today with an account that I haven't used in some time, and it wouldn't let me. I tried to reactivate the account, and it said a reactivation link had been sent to my email address. I tried to log into the email address and I couldn't remember the password. It eventually let me in, and I found an email referencing this blog. I had forgotten it.

See what happens when you have too many login IDs and passwords in your life?

Anyway, I haven't blogged in ages because I've been busy and didn't care much. Not much to say, really, and Twitter generally provides enough space for any passing thoughts I have, but it is nice to have this option. Woo, options.

Things haven't changed much since the last entry. Got my degree, still with the same company, still living where I was living. I was seeing someone for a short time before I decided that was a mistake. I got a dog, which was entirely not a mistake. I also got another cat, which was yet another not a mistake. Clearly, I do better with my relationships with animals than I do with people. Shock and surprise.

As for what's going on... well, I'm stressed out over the BP oil spill. I'm stressed out over money. I'm stressed out over my increasing migraines and sinus headaches. I'm stressed out that the kitten stresses out the older cat. I'm stressed out about my mom's health. I'm stressed out over the whole wisdom teeth debacle that took place in October 2009 and from which I have yet to recover. I can't decide if I want to change jobs. I can't decide if I want to change careers. I can't decide if I want to go back to school. I can barely motivate myself to get out and go hiking. I'm sick of hearing about the World Cup. I rarely geocache. Is geocache a verb? Should I say "I rarely go geocaching"? Whatever. So to escape, I play MapleStory and take Duncan, my fantastic dog, out for walks and to the dog park. He makes me happier.

Yeah, I think that covers things for now.