The Bucket

Once upon a time there was a tap that dripped and underneath the tap was a big bucket.  Every day, drip, drip, drip, water leaked out of the tap, and every day, drip by drip, the bucket began to fill.  The song birds in the garden would sometimes stop by, and perch on the rim of the bucket, and dip their beaks into the bucket and take a drip or a drop out of the bucket, but bit by bit, the bucket began to fill.  Once a fox happened along and took a big drink from the bucket and dropped the level down quite a bit, but overall, the bucket continued to fill. 

One day, the water reached to top of the bucket, and in turn, the bucket began to drip over the edge.  At first, the soil below became damp and a few plants began to grow there, but day by day, drip by drip, the soil became saturated and the soil became muddy and nothing was able to grow there.  As the season went on, the rains came, and the dripping bucket was eventually surrounded by a puddle.  The birds came and bathed in the puddle, and insects visited, but the puddle got bigger and bigger and bigger, and the yard became muddier and muddier and muddier. 

In the house attached to the tap lived a little boy who loved to play in the yard, and who particularly loved to play in the mud by the puddle around the bucket.  His mother was less enamoured of the little boy’s favourite practice-and she stopped allowing him to play in the yard.  This resulted in the little boy spending more time in front of the television, eating snacks and staying clean while he became less and less healthy every day.

Eventually, the water bill came in and the mother noticed that she was using a lot more water than she thought that she ought to be using so she called the utility company to come out and investigate.  Of course the plumber they sent noticed the bucket right away, tipped it over, looked at the tap and recommended that a new washer be installed in the tap in order to stop the leak.  The washer was installed, the tap stopped dripping and the bucket went along to a new career as a goal on the ground for a random version of basket ball that the little boy and his best friend to play with in the now dry yard.  The little boy sat still less often, the tv was turned off and everyone lived happily ever after. 

And what does this have to do with dog training?  A lot.

When I have a veterinarian refer a client to me for puppy class because the pup is tremendously fearful, and the client decides not to attend, then the family misses out on the support they need to help that puppy overcome his fears.  When the pup is six months old, and he begins to have big problems with anxiety, this is a dripping bucket.  The fears add up, drip by drip.  And then...they tip over to become a bigger problem.  When that same dog doesn’t get help, drip by drip the anxiety he had becomes overwhelming until he just cannot cope and bites someone.  Drip by drip.  Behaviour problems don’t usually appear over night.  They appear drip by drip until the people who live with the dog with the problem finds themselves in the middle of a giant muddy puddle. 

When this same dog ends up at the shelter, and someone there takes a shine to him, he might be placed in foster.  Let’s just say that he is placed into a foster with a family who doesn’t have the skills to recognize the problem.  Maybe this is a family who has never lived with a dog and they don’t recognize that the dog is afraid.  Drip by drip, the dog settles into the family, and is afraid, but the family doesn’t know enough to prevent the dog from being exposed to the things that frighten the dog.  One day, the fearful dog tips over into anxiety, and then tips again into aggression.  The dog is sent back to the shelter, and the staffer who took a shine to the dog protects the dog and places the dog in another family on a permanent basis.  Drip.  Drip.  Drip.

The first family, the foster family, is now turned off dogs.  The drip of fostering this dog is that they now don’t want to foster dogs, they don’t want to adopt a dog, they don’t want a puppy, and when a family member gets a service dog, they won’t visit that family member.  Drip.  Drip.  Drip.  One drip at a time, the effect of a fearful puppy who didn’t go to puppy class builds.  Now he has passed through the family of origin, to a foster family and both families suffer because of the fear that he lives with day in and day out.

The next stop on this poor dog’s journey is the family that took him on a permanent basis.  If this family is any more savvy than the foster family, they will avoid some of the things that frighten him.  But drip by drip, this effect changes the family in ways they had never anticipated.  Drip by drip, the family stops having visitors-the dog is too afraid to meet.  Drip by drip, this means that the kids cannot have friends over any more.  Drip by drip, this means that mom cannot invite her friends over for coffee.  Drip.  Drip.  Drip.  The dog has to be put away when contractors come in to work in the home.  Drip.  And still the dog lives in fear and anxiety, all day, every day.

Eventually, the inevitable happens and the dog bites again.  And this time, the family decides to euthanize the dog.  DRIP.  And the family gets another dog, but their middle child, the victim of the bite, is afraid of dogs for the rest of her life.  Drip.  Drip.  Drip.  The dog has three known bites on record, the family of origin is traumatized and the foster family is traumatized and lost to the world of rescue, the family of destination is also traumatized and one person in that family will never trust dogs again.  Drip, drip, drip.  And in the end, the dog pays.  Drip.

Rescues are full of dogs like the one I describe; an amalgamation of three dogs on my case load in the past year.  The problems are sometimes resolvable.  They are often avoidable.  And when a dog like this comes into rescue, there are other dogs in the shelter who don’t have behaviour problems.  Here is another small problem-a drip.  When this dog is placed in foster a behaviourally healthy dog looses the chance to be placed.  Drip.  And when the fearful dog comes back into the shelter, that is another behaviourally healthy dog that looses a chance.  Drip.  And when the fearful dog is eventually killed because he has bitten a member of the destination family, several behaviourally healthy dogs lose their chances to live in that family.  Drip.  Drip.  Drip.

Dogs are interesting.  They co evolved with us around about the time we started living in villages.  They hang out.  They eat our leavings.  And in some cases they live closely with us.  They are frighteningly similar to us.  They have similar social behaviours, and similar developmental schedules.  Some of them live successfully and without significant stress on the periphery of our societies.  Some of them live happily and contentedly as working dogs who accompany us as guides, as searchers, as sentries.  Others live in our homes as pets.  No one way to live is the “right” way to live; dogs are able to fill all these many niches within our various social spheres.  The net effect is that when we breed and capture dogs, we create situations where the drip effect begins to hit our joint destiny.

When we indiscriminately breed dogs predisposed to behaviour problems of any kind, the drip effect results in pups like the one described above.  When we spay and neuter indiscriminately and we lose valuable genetic material, and more drips happen.  When we fail to properly socialize pups, the bucket drips over.  When we place dogs in families who are not prepared for fearful or aggressive dogs, more drips happen.  When dogs who have behaviour problems are accepted into rescues and shelters, more drips occur.  When dogs with behaviour problems are fostered out, then more drips happen.  When these dogs are placed in families, more drips occur.  When dogs are stolen off the streets and beaches and a tourist takes one such dog home, another drip falls out of the bucket that is the problem we face with dog populations today. 

I see one hope for the dogs who are currently sitting in rescues and fosters and shelters.  It is time for someone to come along and replace the washer in the tap.  That someone, or those people in fact are the consumers of pets-we don’t eat them, but we do purchase them and adopt them and take them in.  It is time for a consumer revolution that will stop the need for rescue.  When families begin to choose dogs based not on needing to help the dog, but on making a good match for both the dog and the family, we will have put a washer on the dripping tap.  This means that we as a society have to begin to make better choices about who our furry family members will be.  We need to do this on a system wide basis, but like the green movement, we have to make small local choices that will have big global effects. 

Imagine

Imagine for a moment that every litter of puppies born was the result of a planned breeding of two healthy, stable dogs, and that the breeder had found appropriate, committed families for every puppy.  What would the impact be on the pet population situation?  What would this look like?

To begin with it would mean that every bitch bred out there would be healthy and a good representative of her type.  There is a difference between a purebred dog and a purpose bred dog.  A purebred dog has to have two parents who are also purebreds of that breed.  Thus, a Golden Retriever has both a Golden Retriever dam and a Golden Retriever sire.  A Shi Tzu has a Shi Tzu dam and a Shi Tzu sire.  To be a purebred dog, you don’t have to have healthy parents; you just have to be the offspring of two purebred dogs of the same breed.

A purpose bred dog is a healthy dog who has two healthy parents.  Suppose for a moment that you were a dairy farmer and you had a farm dog who brought in the cattle.  And suppose that this dog was female, and very talented and healthy.  You could make a great argument for finding an appropriate sire and breeding your bitch to produce more nice puppies, provided that you have homes for the pups you don’t want to keep.  Introducing more genetic variation in this way can sometimes help to keep a population healthy.  Provided that your dog is healthy and does the work you want her to do, you can often produce really nice puppies this way, who will grow into really nice adult dogs. 

An outcross like this is much more likely to produce healthy, desired adult dogs than might a breeding of two dogs who are unhealthy, even if they are of the same breed.  So if you have a German Shepherd but she is very nervous, and limps sometimes, then you don’t want to breed her at all, even if her parents are champions, and even if you really like her.  If she is not an outstanding example of her breed, she should not be bred.  Then consider what happens when a dog like this is bred to a sire who is aggressive and who also has some structural problems.  The puppies are much more likely to have behaviour and structure problems, and even if you have found homes for all of them, they are much less likely to stay in those homes for their entire lives.  You can breed nice dogs, or you can breed not nice dogs, and which you choose to do will have big impacts on the pet population as a whole.

Friday is a Purebred, Purpose Bred dog with a commited family who will be there for her for her whole life.  Every dog deserves this!

Purpose bred dogs MIGHT be purebreds, but they are not necessarily purebreds; they are bred intentionally dogs who are healthy and who have homes to go to.  So purebreds can be purpose breds, but purpose bred dogs don’t have to be purebreds.  In order to address the issue of the effect of indiscriminate breeding, every litter needs to be purpose bred, regardless of if it is a litter of purebreds, of mixed breeds, or of unknown heritage bred dogs.  Every litter that is indiscriminately bred contributes to the problem, and every litter of purpose bred dogs addresses it.

So let’s just imagine a perfect world where every dog was the product of a careful, well thought out breeding program.  Each person breeding a litter would also have dedicated puppy parents who were waiting to get their carefully bred dog at an age that is appropriate; about 7 to 8 weeks of age.  Each puppy family would go to a good puppy class, and each family would have reasonable expectations for their pups.  In the event of some crisis the breeder would be willing to take the purpose bred dog back.  How many of these dogs would end up in a shelter?  Probably not very many. 

This is what we should be striving for when we consider how we are going to resolve the pet population situation in North America.  At the moment in North America we are faced with some interesting situations.  In some areas, such as the one I live in, there are very few stray and unwanted dogs.  There are former research dogs looking for homes.  There are some “free to a good home” ads.  But there aren’t stray dogs living in our streets.  For the most part, in Guelph, Ontario, we don’t have a pet overpopulation problem.  In fact, we import dogs from all over the world, especially from the Southern United States and from Northern Ontario to fill our needs for rescued dogs. 

On the other hand, I hear from colleagues in the mid west and western United States that they still have many unwanted dogs who live off the land and who breed and produce pups who grow up to live in the dumpsters, or on the fringes of towns or farms.  These dogs are unvaccinated so they are a sink for diseases and they are often a nuisance to those who live close by.  These dogs are often trapped, poisoned and shot in an effort to control the population.  Some of these dogs end up in shelters and then are either killed or shipped elsewhere to meet the growing demand for “rescued” dogs.  It is important to understand that these dogs are usually very healthy, because if they weren’t, they wouldn’t be able to survive.  It would not be hard to argue that some of these dogs should be permitted to live out their lives on the fringe against the day when purebred indiscriminately bred dogs need the genetic variation they could provide. 

There is a strong presence on the internet supporting rescuing dogs ahead of purchasing a purpose bred dog.  The problem is that these dogs have to come from somewhere.  Locally, it is more popular to rescue than to purchase a dog.  So we have a supply and demand problem.  In Guelph, I have met dogs who have been rescued off the beaches in the Caribbean, who have been rescued in Korea and Taiwan and Indonesia and who have been brought here to live.  Not all of these dogs do well.  In fact, many of them don’t do well at all.  And as long as rescuing is considered the better option, there needs to be a supply of these dogs. 

I would love to see rescues cease to need to exist.  I recognize that in various parts of North America there is a genuine pet overpopulation crisis.  This is not the case everywhere though.  In selected pockets, we are beating back the problem and now we have to come up with another solution.  The most common solution is to import, but that brings on its own problems too. 

We see a similar population problem when pesticides are used.  Consider a wheat field.  If you take all the grasshoppers out of the wheat field, after the toxins have washed away, you now have a wheat field that is ripe for an invasion of more plant eating insects.  In some cases, this results in a worse infestation than was originally there.  When we import dogs from other areas, we create a hole for another dog to fill, in the environment of origin.  Ultimately, this contributes to further population issues where the dog comes from because the solution doesn’t actually address the issue.

Similarly, we see local issues cropping up.  In a town half an hour north of Guelph there is a man who “rescues” two litter of puppies each year.  There is a bitch who lives in the ravine behind his house, and he feeds her and when she has a litter of puppies, he harvests the pups at about five weeks and sells them under the guise of rescuing them.  He sells the puppies to unsuspecting people, telling them that he has “rescued” the litter.  The fact that he is feeding the dam, but not providing any veterinary care is not discussed.  The fact that the pups didn’t get the early socialization that they should have had doesn’t get discussed either.  By providing food, and a whelping shelter that he has lured this dog into, he has set himself up as an empty wheat field.  When this dog eventually dies, it is quite likely that another will appear in her place, filling the niche.

Spaying and neutering isn’t addressing the issue adequately-we are still seeing dogs being indiscriminately bred.  Spay/neuter and release programs hold promise of keeping active niches full so that new dogs don’t enter them and produce even more unwanted puppies.  Limiting access to resources such as food and shelter is another effective method of population control that is not nearly often enough thought of; if food and shelter are limited, pups won’t be produced.  Coming back to my imaginary scenario, it is easy to see that if every pup was purposefully bred, was carefully placed and if every family getting a dog was realistic and dedicated, we wouldn’t have a pet overpopulation problem anywhere.  And it is time we started to peck away at that problem.

BEWARE OF MEMES

It is thought by some that the spate of high school shootings in the late nineties and early 2000’s was a meme.  A meme is a piece of social information that is passed along and continued.  So when the tragedy in Littleton Colorado made the news, millions of people watched it, including a very small population of people who were entranced instead of appalled by it.  That small population,actually, that collection of isolated populations of one or occasionally two observed the acts of two disturbed young men and then, sometime in the future, copied the spirit of the action, and attacked their own schools.

We see memes all the time; one of the earliest recorded memes was a trend in the 1700’s for young men to wear yellow pants, a blue jacket and a open necked shirt.  Why would this be notable?  Because some of these young men went on to finish off their romantic losses by shooting themselves.  And why would they do that?  Because of a novel called “The Sorrows of Young Werther” who had the habit of dressing in yellow pants, a blue jacket and an open shirt, who fell in love with a married woman named Charlotte and when it didn’t work out offed himself with a pistol.  This was enough of a problem that the book was banned in the 1780’s and in many places burned.

Memes can be benign.  They can be as simple as the tendency for parents to purchase a particular toy for their kid, or as complex as a trend within an industry to support something such as rescue of dogs in need.  They can be good, such as the trend for people to support the victims of the Red River Flood in the nineties in Manitoba.  Or they can be terrible, such as the above mentioned high school shootings. 

I try and live mindfully.  I try and be aware of when a meme is occurring, and I try and choose when I participate and when I do not.  I also try and be aware of the effects of my behaviour.  There is an interesting meme occurring all over North America these days, having to do with dogs.  I am not going to be popular with this statement, but I oppose rescue.  I don’t oppose dogs in need; and there is a difference.  I oppose rescue.  Why?  Because rescue itself is starting to be part of the problem.  The number of dogs who are being rescued now, would appear to exceed the number of dogs that were being rescued in years past.  It is hard to tell because not all rescues keep stats.  What I can tell for sure is that in the twenty five years I have been involved with dog training, we have gone from the humane society here in town to the humane society and at least two dozen rescues that I know of.  And it has been twenty years since I have seen a dog living out of dumpsters in Guelph. 

In Guelph, when we talk about a stray dog what we mean is a dog who has strayed from his home, but who has a home.  A dog who has strayed out of his yard, but who is owned and cared for.  I am fairly sure that we don’t even have dogs at our dump.  But there is a meme in Guelph.  It is the “a saved dog is a more worthy dog” meme. 

There is another disturbing meme on the go too; that is the meme where disfigured and abused dogs, dogs who have suffered greatly are being photographed and posted by caring people around the world who want to bring awareness of the need for support for these animals to other caring people.  The problem is that amongst the healthy caring population who is appalled by the images that cross their screens, there are a small minority population whose desperate loathing has lead them to get off on this sort of image.  Right now, tonight, there is someone who is downloading those images and adding them to their collection of images of abused animals on their computers.  There are people out there who are masturbating to the images, who are fulfilling some evil part of their being by looking at the wounds that these dogs have suffered.  And amidst that small population; not many, but maybe even just one person, someone, will use an image that is being posted in the effort to bring an end to the suffering of dogs as the image that prompts him or more rarely her to go out and maim, injure or torture another animal. 

So what else could a kind hearted person do to stop violence towards badly abused animals?  How about starting with education?  Educate the young about the needs and emotions of dogs and other animals.  Share your understanding of how to treat others with respect.  Give a free lecture in your community every month (I do!) and share what you know about dogs, dog behaviour and training.  Buy a bag of dog food for a dog living with someone who is less fortunate than you are.  Help someone to take better care of their dogs.  Throw out your need to redeem your sins on the back of a dog in need and start to help those who are giving these dogs up to rescues in the first place.  Think locally and help someone who is thinking of giving up their dog to keep that dog in his home of origin.  Help to prevent the need for unwanted pets, because rescuing is now an industry and every dog taken out of it is a dog who once had an owner of origin.  Pay to  micro-chip a puppy so that every owner of origin can remain in touch with lost or missing pets.  Let’s keep those owners of origin and their pets together.

Beware of memes.  And stop posting images that will incite violence towards dogs, pets and those who are vulnerable. 

A couple of things I read and thought about while writing this blog:

http://psycnet.apa.org/journals/cri/22/4/137/

http://www.urbananimalalliance.org/index.php