THE ROLLERCOASTER REPRIEVE

We had a follow up veterinary appointment this morning for D'fer and we have had some very, very good news.  What one vet and a radiologist thought was osteosarcoma may in fact be very severe osteoarthritis.  We sought out a second opinion this week, and had a second set of radiographs (the medical term for X-Rays is Radiograph) done today, ten days after the originals were taken.  What this allowed us to do is compare what his hips looked like ten days ago and what they look like now.  By finding out what the difference is we can find out one of two things; either the rate of cancerous growth is really fast and dangerous OR that perhaps the diagnosis of osteosarcoma was wrong and the diagnosis might be something else.  There are no significant changes between one and the other which means that most likely...we are NOT dealing with osteosarcoma.  We also did chest radiographs and there are no scary shadows on the film showing us that there has not been any cancerous spread to the lungs.  Phew!  Never the less, the radiologist did think that there is cancer in the bone, so we cannot dismiss that entirely.  If this is cancer, it is growing slowly enough that D'fer won't likely drop dead at any moment, and if this is not cancer, then we may have some treatment options that we hadn't had before.  And this brings me to the roller coaster metaphore for today.



D'fer with his celebration stick.  That would be the toy you buy when you get a different diagnosis than osteosarcoma.  Still not a great diagnosis, but better than death at any moment.

The injury that led to the osteosarcoma diagnosis was that Deef had been lame for a couple of weeks, off and on.  He had a sore shoulder and then he was gimping along on his left hip and then his right front leg looked a bit off.  Then one night, just about dinner time, I took D'fer out to pee and he asked me to throw his frisbee.  Normal D'fer stuff.  I took it and gave it back to him because he had been too sore to really play frisbee.  Then he trotted around the yard and did his thing, and brought me the frisbee again.  I took it and dropped it in front of him.  He launched himself into the air (much more forcefully than he needed to mind you!) and on his way up screamed in a way I had never heard him scream before.   He landed in a heap on his left hip.  When he got himself up he wouldn't put any weight on his left hind leg.  Off to the emergency room we went and they took a radiograph.  His left hip looked like scrambled eggs.  Not good.  I asked some questions and the emergency vet thought that he had severe osteoarthritis; a degeneration of the bone in the hip and sent us home with pain meds to keep him comfortable.  That vet visit is when we got onto the rollercoaster.


The injury happened on a Saturday evening so on Monday morning I went into my regular vet who looked at the radiograph and gave me the sad news that this might be osteosarcoma; a form of fast growing bone cancer.  He sent the radiographs out to a radiologist who confirmed his diagnosis.  My world fell apart, and I wrote last week's blog about how I was going to approach treating this.  D'fer's pain has been well managed and when his pain is under control, he really is a happy dog.  He is still quite lame, but he is a happy dog.  Even so, I felt like I was falling, falling, falling.
 

With the encouragement of friends, I sought out a second opinion; the second vet disagreed with the first vet and the radiologist.  Regardless of agreeing or disagreeing, a second set of radiographs would tell us if the image on the film was growing or staying the same.  That leg of the journey has been like the rollercoaster coasting along nicely and politely.  Things don't feel quite so disrupted or discouraging.  I feel quite a bit like I got my life back when I saw the rads today; especially the chest rads that don't show any cancer in D'fer's lungs.

Radiograph number one take ten days ago.  Compare the left and right hip joints; you will notice that one is nice and even and the other looks like scrambled eggs.  Or more technically "the left hip (right on the radiograph) presents with a  moth eaten appearance.  If you know about radiographs, this is a scary looking hip.

Now compare!  Don't worry that the bones aren't in the same exact direction as they were on the first radiograph; you can see that the problem joint is basically the same.  Now if you are like me, you expand this picture and then you look at it with a magnifying lens for fun!  The important part is that the joint didn't change between the first image and the second, even though D'fer was positioned slightly differently the second time.

 

So now we coast for a bit.  Some things have changed and will stay changed; we still have the radiology report saying that the image on the film looks a lot like cancer.  It still might be.  But it hasn't changed!  The vet cautioned us that we have to remember that it might just be.  Now we have a crate in the kitchen so that if we need to we can easily care for D'fer if he is in pain from his leg.  That will stay.  We are not turning D'fer out with other dogs in the yard because it just wouldn't be a good idea for him to get to running and chasing and rough housing with his friends given the state that his hip is in.  That is a change for sure.  We use the hip helper harness (http://www.hartmanharness.com/) to help him up and down stairs and in and out of the car and over curbs when he is stiff or sore.  Likely we will be using this more and more often as he ages and we are very happy to have it.  Probably the biggest change though is that we know that there will be more diagnostics and possibly more treatments on the horizon.
 

Happy D'fer on pain meds, with his cancer beating Frisbee and his hip helper.  One of the changes we have made is to make a rule that he cannot come upstairs without the help of his hip helper harness.  So nice to see him smiling again.  Good boy! 

 

Right now, D'fer's rads are being sent to the surgeon to see if they can remove the head of the femur and alleviate his pain that way.  IF, and it is a very big if, the surgeon thinks that she can successfully remove the head of the femur, then we will consult an internal medicine specialist and see if his heart is healthy enough to undergo anesthesia.  IF it is safe to anesthetize him, then we will work out a plan involving our veterinarian, the surgeon, the internal medicine specialist or cardiologist, and likely and anesthetist to remove the head of the femur.  This is a big hill on the Reprieve Rollercoaster, because a whole bunch of factors have to fall into place in order to be able to surgically help D'fer.  Knowing it is coming is stressful, and not knowing what the hill will surprise us with is even more stressful, but we are going to go up the hill and down the other side in the company of professionals who are educated and who care deeply about D'fer.

 

There are some important lessons in this experience that are not training related but they certainly do impact training.  The first is that you really need to know a little bit about your dog in order to advocate for him.  I have known for a long time that Deef has been "off" but have not been sure what exactly might be going on with him.  Once we had an injury, I count myself lucky on a number of fronts.  I know a lot about the basic anatomy and organization of the body, and how medicine works, so when the veterinarian wants to do something like taking a radiograph of my dog, then I have a good idea what she is talking about.  Also, I knew the emergency vet really, really well.  Those three things; knowing my dog, knowing a bit about biology and health and medicine and knowing my vet have paid off HUGE dividends this past ten days.  I have been able to talk to the veterinarians, I have been able to identify exactly how D'fer is not "himself", I have been able to ask good questions and I have been able to integrate what is being said so that I can advocate on D'fer's behalf.  When faced with an illness or injury being able to advocate for your dog like this allows you to return to training quickly and effectively.  This is really important.

 

Another thing to think about is that I had really clear boundaries about what I would and would not do to my dog before I needed to pull them out of my pocket and examine them.  I know that although I might amputate a dog's leg if it was injured or if it would buy him years of time, I am not going to amputate his leg to get a tissue sample (one of the options discussed when we had the osteosarcoma diagnosis).  I know that I will not engage in radical, painful, long treatment if it is not going to get us a great deal of benefit.  That means that for my dogs, although I might allow surgery, radiation or chemotherapy to happen to alleviate pain, or to significantly prolong life, I also know that I won't put being alive ahead of having what I consider a minimum level of quality of life.  I made this decision long before I needed it and I have discussed that decision at length with my veterinarian.  In fact I have decided these things about each of the animals I have responsibility for so that I can be certain that in a crisis I am not held over a barrel to make a choice I may not be comfortable with later.  Make your choices ahead of time where possible and then discuss them with your vet.  Doing so will save you a lot of headaches later on when you are faced with the decision and you already have a plan.

 

Finally, the most important thing that I did to prepare for the Rollercoaster Reprieve, was to carefully develop and organize a support system for myself.  This network is made up of close friends and family members, of dear and cherished clients, of veterinarians and technicians, of people on the net who have never met me but who have read my blogs and my articles and been to my seminars and who have reached out through this difficult time to help me, John and D'fer.  We are not out of the woods.  We may still lose D'fer imminently; he is after all ten years old with a heart condition.  He may or may not be a candidate for surgery.  He may over do it at some point tomorrow or the next day and fracture the neck of the femur, and we may be right back to where we were last week, when I wrote "IT WILL BE ALRIGHT", but I am confident that it WILL be alright because we have the support we need, we have good diagnostics and we have all the right things happening to help us to survive the Reprieve Rollercoaster and whatever it throws at us.  Thanks everyone; I couldn't have made it through this past week without you!

 

SWIMMING IN THE DEEP END OF THE POOL

The year I was seven was the year I really learned to swim.  I LOVE to swim.  Up until that year, I had puddle ducked around the shallow end of the pool in the company of my mother, where I could touch the bottom, but the year I was seven, I learned to swim.  Swimming was an important skill from my perspective.  I am not sure why, but I was especially attracted to the deep end of the pool, where the water was over my head.  Where I could not touch the bottom.  Where the big kids got to swim.  I wanted to be just like them, able to jump off the diving board, able to swim across the pool, all by my self.

I watch a lot of reactive dogs in my classes, and I have often though that being a reactive dog can be a little bit like being seven and wanting to be able to swim in the deep end of the pool.  Many of these dogs seem to be magnetized towards the targets they are afraid of.  They want to go say hi, but when they get close, they begin to worry and get overwhelmed.  And then they get to the point where they cannot cope.  And then they bark and lunge, or freeze and bolt, or sometimes they bite.  These dogs seem to be attracted the very things that frighten them the most.

When these dogs are at home, they are often calm and easy going.  When a stranger appears, or a dog, they go on alert.  And they often walk right up to the target looking calm and confident.  They are just like I was at seven in the swimming pool.  I desperately wanted to swim in the deep end and I would start out confidently swimming where the water was not over my head.  Then I would approach that magic rope that marked off where the water got suddenly deeper.  Then I would tire and put my foot down.  For a moment, there is hope that I could rest with my foot on the bottom of the pool, and then there is that sickening realization that I cannot touch and the water is over my head.  One time I panicked and the life guard had to jump in and get me.  And still, I wanted to swim in the deep end of the pool.

When a dog approaches the target of his fear, he is quite a bit like I was.  He wants to go say hello, but when he gets there, he is overwhelmed and panics.  Dogs who panic behave fairly predictably; they usually bark and lunge, or they may scoot away as though they touched something hot.  If the target of their fear is a person who reaches out to them, they may actually bite.  A portion of the dogs will freeze and stare with a deer in the headlights sort of look to him.  All of the dogs who get into the deep end need what I got so long ago.  They need swimming lessons.

In my case, panicking and being pulled from the water by a life guard was a turning point.  I was banned from the deep end for two weeks, and during those two weeks, I spent time learning skills that would help me to be a better swimmer.  I learned to fill my lungs and make myself into a floating balloon in the water.  I learned that people in the deep end of the pool could stand on a ledge around the deep end that was not as deep as the rest of the pool.  I learned to duck my head under the water and then push up against the water and to take a breath and go down again.  I practiced swimming almost all the way across the pool and finally after two weeks of practicing I could swim all the way across the pool.  And for two weeks, I wasn’t permitted to get overwhelmed by sneaking myself up to the rope that marked off the danger zone.

Working with a dog who is reactive is very much like teaching me to swim.  They need a vacation from being overwhelmed and a chance to learn different and new skills.  They need to learn that the target of their fear is not as frightening as they thought.  They need to learn how to escape and swim to the ledge at the side of the pool.  They need confident people who can help them to succeed and who won’t just toss them in to sink or swim.  Slow careful exposure to the target helps the dog to practice the skills he is learning to be successful.   

Most of all, not drowning the dog over and over again is the foundation for success when working with reactive dogs.  For all the reactive dogs out there who are working on overcoming their fears, remembering to keep them from drowning is probably the most important part of what we do.  And to all the reactive dogs who have passed through the Good Dog program, congratulations!  You learned to swim in the deep end of the pool!

CONSIDERING AN INVISIBLE FENCE? CONSIDER THIS!

Invisible fences are becoming more and more popular and in a few cases they are a very successful method for keeping your dog on your property.  In most cases though, this can go badly wrong.

Consider for starters that you are depending upon a boundary that the dog cannot see.  Invisible fences work best when they are the back up to a visible boundary.  This is why you start out with flags.  Most people take the flags away far too soon, and the dog is not exactly clear on where that boundary is or is not, meaning that they will get shocked more often than is strictly necessary for success.  When I recommend an invisible fence, I would put it along natural boundaries that are visible to the dog, such as a flower garden, along a driveway or lane, or along a row of trees.  I would not use a sidewalk or the street as a boundary for reasons I will outline below.

Consider that you often cannot control the degree of shock that the collar delivers.  If you really want to know what your dog is experiencing, put the collar on your upper arm with the electrodes against your skin on the inside of your arm.  Walk towards the fence.  Repeat that five or six times so that you are certain about the outcome.  There is a caveat.  This will hurt and it will hurt a lot.  Electric shock is one of the most intense sorts of pain we are able to deliver, and most collars are factory set to deliver a very intense pain.  

Consider what happens when your dog sees the kids coming home from school.  If he darts out meets the kids right at the boundary line, he may learn that the kids cause pain.  I have seen four cases where this happened and in one case the dog became so aggressive towards people that we could not safely live with him.  When looking for the cause of the shocks, the dog is not going to naturally gravitate towards his behaviour as the underlying cause of the pain.  He will look for clues about when he gets shocked.  He may decide for instance that cars, kids, other dogs, the mail delivery person, or the contractor who comes to install the air conditioner is the source of his pain.  Dogs in pain are much more likely to bite than dogs who are not, and if the dog decides that the contractor is the source of his pain, then the contractor is who he will bite.

Consider that you are depending on a piece of equipment that may not remain charged and may not work all the time.  If your batteries die and you don’t notice, your dog may approach your boundary and not hear the tone he would normally associate with approaching the edge of his yard.  Not hearing the tone, he will eventually test that boundary and then discover that the fence does not currently shock him.  This leads to a gambler’s effect.  When the fence is sometimes live and sometimes not, any time your dog approaches the boundary and he doesn’t receive a shock, he in effect receives a reward.  This means that he will start to gamble to try and figure out when he can win and when he cannot.  This means that in reality you are increasing your dog’s likelihood that he will try and test the fence, even if that means that some of the time he gets shocked.  The rule for using punishment is that it must occur every time that the dog behaves in the targeted manner, and when you use shock as a punisher, this is especially important.

Consider that your dog may learn that the equipment is what causes the pain.  If you do not condition the collar properly, your dog will learn that having equipment put on is going to create pain and they may become difficult to catch and also difficult to put other collars and harnesses on, or even to bandage if they are injured or ill.

Consider that other animals can get into your yard without penalty, and if those animals (foxes, skunks, raccoons, other dogs, children, adults, cats, coyotes, bears, wolves, deer, sheep, goats and pretty much anything else with feet in your neighbourhood) are aggressive or dangerous to your dog, he cannot escape.  This means that if a person comes into your yard with the intent to harm your dog he cannot leave unless he is willing to be shocked.

Consider that most pet dogs are breeds that were intended to stay close to us, and they don’t actually like being outside alone.  They want to do stuff with their people, even if that stuff is just laying close to you while you type on the computer.  Invisible fencing makes it easy to leave the dog out of doors unattended and able to learn nuisance behaviours such as barking at the fence line and ripping the siding off the house.

Mostly...dogs just want to be with their people!

Consider that if your dog sees a squirrel, another dog or a friend across the street and he breaks through the invisible fence, he may learn that the cost of roaming where he wants is a moment of intense unpleasantness.  If he is running towards something fun, he may consider the pain worth the gain.  Coming home is another story though.  Coming home means facing angry and upset people AND experiencing shock.  Thousands of dogs every year die because they broke through an invisible fence.

Considering the eight points above, you may wonder if there is ever a place where I would recommend an invisible fence, and how I would suggest using it.  For rural properties of five acres or more where you want to contain the dog in a specific component of the property, and where there are good visual landmarks, I would consider an invisible fence.  Why five acres?  Because I want the fence to be far, far from a road.  Because I want to be able to see when people are approaching so that I can bring the dog indoors when someone comes to the house.  I want permanent visual boundaries that can be seen even after it snows (tree lines, garden beds, decorative fences, laneways or livestock fences are all possible visual barriers).  I don’t recommend only putting the collar on the dog when he goes outside; I recommend keeping it on all the time.  I suggest that your dog should be accompanying you most of the time and should be in the house when you leave the boundary area.  If you need to remove the dog from the boundary area, take the collar off and either go through a physical gate or take your dog in your vehicle to get him out.  Even then, I have to say that I am not a huge fan. 

If you live in a covenant community that does not allow fenced yards, consider treating your dog as though you lived in an apartment.  Take him out on leash to toilet.  Teach a rock solid recall and a rock solid down stay.  Keep him with you more often than not.  When I compare the number of behaviour problems I see in dogs who live with invisible fences to those who live in apartment buildings, I have to say that I see far fewer dogs who live in apartments.  That says something profound about the life style of dogs who live in apartments.  They just don’t have the opportunity to experience the problems and pain that those who live with invisible fences do.

BRAVE HORSE

Sometimes dreams come true.  I have wanted to own my own horse for my whole life, and now finally I own my own horse.  I get to go out in the middle of the night and sit in my barn, with my mare beside me, munching on her hay while I sit on a bale of straw beside her.  I can go out early in the morning and there she is.  It is kind of magic.  There is only one problem.  I am a somewhat nervous rider.  In my teens I was in a bad riding accident and since then I have lost my confidence as a rider. 

All was going well with my young (four year old) mare, Kayak, until she started trying to buck me off.  Now although I am a nervous rider, I am a fairly competent rider and in five tries she has only succeeded once.  The problem is that although I landed on my feet, and although I have sat through her shenanigans four more times, she scared the heck out of me.  In fact, she scared me enough that one night this week, I talked myself into a tizzy and had an overbearing sense of doom about riding her.  For sure I was going to fall off.  I got myself into a real state of fear.  

Never the less, I talked myself down enough to go down to the paddock and groom her to ride.  While I was grooming her she was a bit uptight and moved around a fair amount.  My sense of foreboding got worse.  I tacked her up, and strapped on my helmet and led her to the paddock gate.  I took her out of her paddock and mounted her; she stood to mount and was well behaved and walked out nicely when I asked.  I was pretty tense though.  When we got to my laneway, I asked her to turn left and very nicely, so she did.  We walked toward the road at the end of our lane, and as we approached, a robin landed in a puddle in front of us.  Kayak snorted and jigged a bit, and I said to her “don’t worry, it’s just a bird.”  I got more nervous though. 

We got to the end of the lane and turned around and passed the bird again and I said “It’s okay, Kayak, good horse, it’s just a bird” and I got more nervous again.  Kayak responded by tensing up a bit.  We approached my giant white Dogs in the Park truck and Kayak stepped to the side.  “Silly horse,” I said.  “It’s just the truck.”  And I got a tiny bit more nervous.  Kayak continued along our laneway towards the other end, and stopped suddenly beside Eco’s Frisbee and snorted again.  “It’s okay, it’s just a Frisbee, Kayak” I said.  More tension passed through the reins between me and Kayak.  She started to raise her head up high and started to look around for more things to worry about.  She stopped at a pop can crushed on the road, and tossed her head and again, I tried to reassure her; “It’s okay Kayak, it’s a pop can.”  Suddenly I realized something.  Something I tell my students every day.  Something really important. 

When I tell my horse “It’s okay” or “Don’t worry” I get tense.  I worry.  I get more nervous.  And those nerves pass themselves down the reins straight into my horse’s mind.  No, I don’t do telepathy with my horse, but she sure can tell from my posture, from how I hold the reins, from my movements, that I am tense.  When I am tense, my horse gets tense.  I have seen just the exact same thing in the dogs I work with.  When the handler anticipates that something bad will happen, they transmit that tension through the leash and the dog responds accordingly.  When the handler is tense, then the animal is going to take that information and use it; my tension translates into my animal’s vigilance.  If I am tense, and I have a good relationship with my dog or horse, they trust that I have a good reason to be tense. 

In order to undo that, I need to do something that will counteract that tension I am feeling.  What I usually tell my students to do is to tell the dog that they are brave.  “Look at that, brave dog” can go a long way to convincing me that we are going to get through the situation in one piece.  Low and behold, when I turned around at the far end of my laneway and I said to her “You are a brave horse.  We can do this together” it was like turning a mental corner together.  Suddenly, I relaxed and just as suddenly she relaxed too.  We approached the pop can and I said to her, “Brave horse, you can walk right by that can” and when we approached the truck I said “Brave horse, we can pass the great white whale of a truck together.”  We passed the Frisbee, the bird and then approached the busy road to look at the cars.  “Brave horse,” I said, “We will look at the cars together” and amazingly, we did.  Calmly and confidently.  She is a brave horse and I am a brave rider and we did it together.

Together is important when we work with animals.  When we work together, we can achieve greater things than we individually achieve alone.  Together, I can throw the ball and my dog can fetch it up.  My horse can carry me farther than I can walk, while I provide feed and shelter for her.  My dog can gather the sheep which provide us both with meat and milk.  When we do things together, we get a sense of one another.  We get an understanding of what each of us wants out of the relationship.  When the relationship is meaningful we take one another into account.  When one of us is tense, the other picks up on that and when one of us consciously relaxed, we share that between us. 

Brave horse.  Don’t be scared.  The two sentences seem to have similar meanings but they really have something different to say that is important in how we share ourselves with our animal partners.  Brave horse recognizes our triumph.  Don’t be scared is a warning of impending danger.  When we phrase our interactions in the context of impending danger, we both tense up and get frightened.  When we phrase it in terms of our joint triumph, we both win. 

What is ironic in this story is that for many years, I have been telling my students to phrase their interactions in a supportive, constructive voice, and yet, when I was nervous about my horse, I dropped right into the language that I know leads us down a dangerous path of nervousness, of fear and of reactivity, and that is exactly what I got with my horse.  When I rephrased it, I got a different response.  A response I think is much better for both of us. 

This morning I went out to ride again, but this time it was different.  I hadn’t set myself up to be afraid of my horse by thinking all night about all the things that could go wrong.  Those things could and might still happen, but they weren’t the most important thing on my mind.  A friend came over today to meet my horse, and we groomed her together.  We tacked her up, sharing ourselves with Kayak.  I was relaxed and so was Kayak and we were enjoying the company of my friend.  We took her out of the paddock and I mounted and she stood stock still for a moment once I was up.  Suddenly, she dropped her head way down low and stepped forward three steps with her front feet.  Then she leaned back and stretched herself right out, like a dog bowing in play.  She pulled herself upright and stretched out her back legs too and then walked herself back upright and stood waiting for my signal to walk on.  I was startled but not frightened when she made this very novel move, and I am left to wonder if she has a sense of humour and is stretching and laughing because I am relaxed enough to enjoy the joke.

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