Dogs and happiness

I'm not here to talk about soul-fulfilling, enduring, long term happiness. That needs a lot more than a dog (or maybe, a lot less than a dog, given that it probably comes from inside of you and is at least partly a decision). I'm here to talk about that wonderful pick-me-up that you can get from spending time interacting with a dog.

No nonsense here, this is a scientifically studied phenomenon. Those same feelings you got when you are newly in love? A dog is a perpetual source of those. Simply sitting with your dog and gazing into their eyes has your body making lovely bunches of the stuff, but even better than that, your dog typically likes to move and be active, so if you have a dog, you are much more likely to move and be active ... and it's no secret that regular exercise is pretty essential to keeping a positive outlook on life. Elle from legally blonde had it right:

" Exercise gives you endorphins. Endorphins make you happy. Happy people just don't shoot their husbands, they just don't."

So, having a dog makes you happy. This is starting to sound like a "get a puppy" commercial (or an adopt a dog pamphlet, which might be even better if your main aim is a happiness provider). Might I mention that dogs reduce the risk of heart disease massively too?

Heh. Not really what I want to write about. Nor is an 'adopt a dog' message what I want to get at (dog ownership is a lot of work too, so never just impulsively get one).  What I actually want to write about is the specific things that my dogs and I get up to that makes me happy. There are three of them, physical touch, activities, and play.

1. Physical touch

My little pug, Talos, is a great source of physical touch and comfort to me. She's not a touchy-feely dog by any measure, she rarely stands still for petting and even more rarely enjoys it (a quick wrinkle rub is enjoyable, but that's about it). What she does do, though, is put herself on my lap and just stays there, napping, watching TV, or my computer screen, or just the world going by. She's done this since she was absolutely tiny.

Dis is my lap. Yoo mus go find other one.

She also cuddles while we sleep. Carding my fingers through her soft, soft fur is one of my day's great pleasures. She has a sense of when you're feeling less than wonderful too, and then, she makes extra effort to be near you.

2. Activities

Let's go do stuff! Both my dogs like getting out there and doing stuff. Be it tracking, or just a walk around the neighbourhood, they're almost always ready to go. If I'm feeling particularly low, taking them to a park with other humans and other dogs almost guarantees positive, pleasant human and canine interaction. I simply cannot feel sad while amusing children with your pets' antics (one having her belly rubbed, the other coaxing them into a game of chase or doing tricks for them). Getting your pooch and going to a class has much the same effect for me. We go, we work towards a goal with other people, and like magic your internal happiness tank is a little fuller.

Some days when I just don't want to see other people, getting out into nature makes a big difference too. If your dogs are reasonably healthy and willing to come back when you call, try a short nature hike (if their recall is less great, do the same but with a long line...). It is both really nice to just get out, and to watch your dogs just being dogs without the pressure to behave that is sometimes present around a house or in daily life. Plus, it's pretty!

So very, very pretty!

3. Play

This is the big one. Here's a challenge for you. Be sad. Very, very sad. Then look at these:

Is dere something in mah jowl?

Er mer ribbon!

No one can resist my play!

CRRRAZY EYES!

Feel better? Not yet? Have some more!





















Now? Excellent. Go play with your dog :)

Basically, one of the key parts of my happiness is my dogs. I'd bet they do the same for you, if you'd let them.

On friendship and love (and Valentine's day)

Tell me now,

happy Valentines

why all your florid praise

and erudite verses 

somehow fail to wow? 

Could it be that love 

or friendship 

is not a summer's day 

or a red, red rose 

or the cooing of a dove? 

No, to me it would seem 

love is nothing less 

or more 

than two curls mirrored 

in black and cream

Treats: Bacon, liver and cheese, oh my!

I, Talos, do not aprove of this message. I
am not getting too many treats! Outrageous!

I train with treats. Especially when we're learning new things, or practicing something in a new location, or working on short behaviours, or practicing good manners near people, or... well, I train with treats a lot. There's pretty much always a something something in my pocket.

I also have teeny, tiny little dogs. Itty bitty pooches that both of them, really, really love food.

Here we have the crux of the matter. Treats are easy. Anything your dog likes is a good treat. My list is long and varied, for the one it's mostly meat, for the other, fruits, some veggies and cheese is definitely also there.

Also easy is making your treats tiny. It's necessary to have them teeny tiny, because it's so easy to feed a small dog into rotundness.

But even so, I've noticed a distinct softness about the waistline of my pug. She's up 500 grams from where she was.

We have been training a lot, mind you. But I need to be careful! 500 grams on her is a 10 % weight gain.

So, some ideas for ways to stretch your daily treat allowance:

1. Use their food for treats.
Easier said than done, sometimes, but this is the best way to get more training bang for less calories. You can absolutely cut kibble into smaller bits. If you feed a canned food or a minced raw, it's slightly less gross if you have the food a bit frozen. If you feed prey model raw... well, I guess you could still chop it up, but that kinda defeats the purpose?

2. Pick low calorie treats.
Sometimes this is bad - paper is low calorie, but is definitely not good for you. That said, there are great low calorie treat options. Bits of fresh apple, dried lung of any animal and carrot cubes are three low calorie suggestions that most dogs will like. Putting a tiny bit of 'bad stuff' into lots of low calorie stuff also works - a tiny bit of peanut butter in apple puree makes a tempting treat for dogs who don't like apple, but do like peanut butter (it even gets my two eating cucumber, which is pretty much water in terms of calories!).

3. Use different kinds of rewards.
Throwing a ball or offering a tug is a great alternative reward, building motivation and a relationship with you also. Plus, it's exercise, which your doggy can do with more of, I promise. The downside - not all dogs are toy motivated (not all are food motivated either, but then a discussion of treats is not relevant in the first place). You can build toy drive, but it takes time. It also takes time to reward with a toy. I can feed a treat a second (or more) during some training. You cannot play a game of fetch in that amount of time. So, this is great for rewarding behaviour chains, but not so good for rewarding a quick "101 things to do with a box".

4. Cut the treats even smaller.
If you're like me, then you prefer breakable treats that you tear pieces of as you go (chicken, both boiled or dried, is just super for this!). This means your treat sizes are already pretty small. But make an effort to give smaller treats, the reward is the same for your dog, and you are less likely to stray, like me, into feeding your dog too much.

Whatever you do, remember that treats are food too, and that it's all too easy to feed a tiny dog too much. Plan your treats like you plan their meals - weigh them, and know how much you give them.

Pugs are cruelty?

You hear this one every so often - that pugs are cruel, that they (and dogs like them) should not be bred. The argument goes that it is cruel to breed these dogs, as they suffer because of their appearance. Pedigree Dogs Exposed is a big factor of what lead to this argument being as popular as it is, but the general feeling of distrust we have at the moment for our governing bodies surely cannot have left the dog world untouched, and a great many have begun criticising bodies like the UK Kennel Club, or the American Kennel Club, and a great wash of critique has also come over breeders, especially those who breed dogs that have exceptional features.

 I want to make a good, logical, dispassionate argument. But I am woefully biased. Full disclosure: there is a pug on my lap as I write this. I am smitten with my Talos, I was smitten with my Zakkie. The first pug I ever met smote me, like cupid of old, with an arrow right to the left ventrical.

Seriously, though, can you resist this face?

With that in mind, let us start looking at why people argue that it is cruel to breed pugs. The primary point that is pushed is that the physical attributes of the dog are entirely designed by humans, but that they come at a potentially enormous cost to the dog health-wise. I wish I could whip out the evidence that conclusively proves that the adorable flat face of the pug comes at no cost - but the truth is that it does make them prone to overheat, prone to breathing problems (sometimes severe enough to require surgery), prone to eye injuries, prone to wrinkle infections and it is likely that the little curly tail, and the requisite oddly-shaped backbones, relates to spinal malformations and lameness. Their small size often comes with bad knees (luxating patella - a small breed problem). Then there's pug dog encephalitis (PDE), a really nasty one that kills pugs before they are two.

 These attributes - a short muzzle, a tightly curled tail, facial wrinkles - can all be classed as exceptional doggy features. It generally seems that there is a preference for dogs that are 'moderate' in all things. A mesocephalic face (muzzle neither particularly long nor particularly short, so neither Basenji nor Boston Terrier, think Labrador Retriever here). Moderately long legs (move over Whippet! For shame, Valhund). Moderate build, neither heavy nor light (bye bye, Bulldog). In a sense, what they are after is a dog that is wolf-like in appearance. The argument goes that these dogs are the soundest dogs, the least likely to have medical problems due to their appearance - they are the least likely to suffer. Well, that is only partly true.

Dwelling on the health problems, especially in the manner that Pedigree Dogs Exposed did, makes it seem like we have a clear cut idea of what causes these problems - and that clear cause is bad breeding (or, if you will, overly selective breeding to create these more exceptional features). The argument goes that these problems are caused by genetic factors, and all we need to do to eradicate them is to not breed dogs with those genetics anymore, and they'll disappear. But of course, we people being as we supposedly are, we care more about how they look than how much they need to suffer for those looks. The truth of the matter is considerably more complicated than this. We have very little idea which genetics link up with which diseases, and we have very little way of predicting which mating will produce perfectly healthy puppies, and which will not.

This, of course, is not to say that we don't have serious health problems in far too many of our breeds. This is not limited to 'non-wolfy' dogs either, like pugs, bulldogs or shar-pei. The toy Spaniels are tragically compromised with heart problems, the Dalmatians with urinary problems, the Great Danes with their incredibly short lives, Golden Retrievers with cancer, most large breeds with hip dysplasia (but here I always think of the German Shepherds - oh, and as an added bonus, wild wolves too! They just tend to die before they get old and stiff enough for us to notice). Blindness/deafness in blue puppies of many breeds, back problems in achondroplastic dwarfs (Basset hounds, Corgis, Dachshunds), stomach problems in white dogs... the list goes on and on. Every single type of dog is affected by some or another severe ailment with some regularity. I think a lot more can be done to study and understand what causes these diseases, and a lot more can be done to help reduce the incidence in our dog population.

That said, however, a lot of these problems are inherently part of what it means to be a dog, even if that dog is extremely wolf-like in appearance and conformation.  We also need a great big helping of reality here - we get old, all of us, dogs and humans. As we age, our bodies deteriorate. The shape of our bodies (and our lifestyles) affect how this deterioration happens to an extent... this is how things work. When we started selecting dogs for certain traits, we chose to breed dogs that exhibited certain behaviours and had a certain appearance. What mattered, health wise, were things that would impede the dog from performing its job. So corgis came to be, with their short little legs, partly because it lets them turn on a dime, partly because it keeps them low enough to work with cattle, partly because we liked the appearance. Yes, they have bad hips. Yes, they are likely to have back problems in their old age. The question is - is this cruelty? The answer to this hinges on suffering. The essential question is: "Is the dog suffering?"

Let us return to pugs. Historically, their function is to be the companion of human beings. It is a fairly old breed (some saying they go back well over a thousand years) and one of a very few breeds that have never had another purpose. There's no denying it, their faces, selectively bred over many years to resemble that of a human child, tends to melt our hearts.They are lovable to a fault, cuddly, and they want companionship, human companionship, as much as they want food (pug people already know, but food is very, very high on a pug's priority list). Taking this into account - that we will find them pleasant to have around, and that they want to be around us, interacting with us, at our speed - which is downright slow by dog standards, they fulfill their bred for purpose very, very well. As well as a Bloodhound sniffs, or a Collie herds. To quote a friend, they don't just sit on laps - they SIT ON LAPS. It's the same difference between a dog that chases sheep and a dog that herds them. A pug without human companionship must suffer, as much as a Greyhound that never gets a chance to run (and then nap somewhere soft and sunny afterwards) must suffer, or a Bloodhound that is somehow forbidden from using its nose must suffer. Their purpose is bred into them as strongly as their appearance.

Does a pug suffer from its short nose? I'd say in most cases, no. Yes, it makes it more likely that they'll get heat stroke, but then, you'd get heatstroke too if you ran around in temperatures that affect pugs. Yes, it makes it that breathing is different for them than it is for other dogs - they won't ever be athletes by Husky standards... but then, neither are you. Considering that they are made to spend time with you, it seems that their physical attributes are a boon, not a hindrance.

It is absolutely a case of human preference to breed dogs that look, and act, like pugs. This is true of every kind of dog. Is a wolf like dog the healthiest type of dog? Only by one, very narrow set of measurements. A wolfy dog, for example, a Malamute, would never sit on my lap happily, curled into my elbow, as little Talos is now - it simply would not fit, or its energy levels and exercise needs would push it to want to move in stead of staying with me for hours on end as I work on my computer. A Terrier would never be content with life in our apartment, with a few short, and one longer walks a day. I can't imagine a Belgian Malinois calmly using a litter tray, like my puggy does, or subsisting on the little food that my puggy subsists on.

A more wolfy dog would suffer, and suffer badly, if put into my pug's life.

Does my dog suffer because of her appearance? If I am correct in stating that appearance and behaviour (and health) are linked with genetics, and that she is especially suited to her life given her appearance and behaviour, it seems logical that the answer must be no. In fact, because she is made for the life she is living, she flourishes.

Are pugs cruelty, then?
I'd say no.

Outsmarted

Last night we made 'lifesaver', a type of tuna noodle casserole that makes in twenty minutes, dirties only two dishes (and one is a noodle pot - hardly the most labour intensive to clean), and is super tasty to boot!

We dished up and sat down at the table. We were watching a movie on the computer screen about 2 meters away on the computer desk. After a brief period of reminding us that we never feed her and that she is starving, Talos gave up and seemed to settle down to snuffling around the house.

About two minutes into dinner, she hopped up on to the computer desk, looked at us, strolled over the keyboard, jumped off and disappeared into the background. This is not too unusual, and while she's not encouraged to do it, she's not forbidden from the top of the computer desk either. Justin sweetly got up to fix the movie that had stopped and closed due to the buttons Talos pressed as she walked along. I turned to focus on what he was doing.

We shifted our attention back to the table just in time to see the last cheesy noodle disappear into the smuggest pug you have ever laid eyes on.

I've seen Talos outsmart other dogs, distracting them to take their bones only to sneak in behind them and take it. I never realised that we might just as well be the other dog!

Who's training who?

Hi everyone on the internet!

How are you?

I'm just super.

I finally taught my human the 'pull hard when asked' command. How did I do that, you ask?

Well, to get this right, you first need to teach them to hold on to, but not take away, whatever you're offering them. This is quite hard! For some reason, they feel the need to take so many things away, and then throw them once they have them. But don't despair! This is actually a great place to start - it's always easier when you can mold natural behaviour. Just keep bringing it back at first. Don't push your human too hard, they lose interest easily.

Once they're reliable in taking things from you, the really hard bit comes in. Your part in this is to hold on to it while they put their hand on it. If you start slowly, and hold on to it a little bit longer each time, soon your human will happily hold whatever you offer them. Remember to reward them appropriately. A lick to the nose, or if it suits you better, a good sit on their laps is a great way to tell them that they did well*.

The hard part done, the next bit is to teach them to pull back when you pull. If you're a big bang in a petite package, like me, or just need some handling finesse, those graspers of theirs can really help you get that niggling thing torn apart. If you've been keeping your human fit and mentally healthy (as you should, we are responsible dogs here!) you've been playing tug with them - this is excellent for this command. It means that when you pull back slightly, your human should recognise what's going on as a type of tug game, and pull back too.

Tugging with your human should look like this.
Don't mind the taking pictures, they can't help it.

If your human is not used to tug, you'll have to take a step back and teach them that first - it's not hard, honestly. The fastest way is to wait for them to be putting on socks. Grab one just before they can put it on, but be quite slow about it, so that they have time to grab it and try to get it back from you. Don't let go! As they pull, pull back. Give them brief pauses to rest, especially at first. Later, get a good rhythm going.

So, your human is happy to tug back at whatever you've offered to them - now we just need to put it on a cue. A vocal cue is not great here, since your mouth is full at point where you would like to cue. I use a quick nod. Nod, then jerk. Nod, then jerk. Even the slowest human catches on eventually, and will learn to not only expect pulling from you after a nod, but will hopefully pull back too!

This worked so well tonight! I finally got to tear off one whole ligament off my beef Achilles heel. All that remains is to settle down and chew to my heart's content.

Remember my friends, chew on their laps - that way they are rewarded without you having to do any extra effort. Great for paws with a busy schedule.

Yours furfully,

Talos

Adventure pug, Queen of all she surveys and Human tamer extraordinaire.

*I know how tempting it is to leave them a token of your appreciation on their favourite rug. I still cannot understand why this does not seem to please them. Perhaps my tokens are too small? An inconvenient limitation - let me know if you have a different experience. Regardless, I would not recommend this as a reward. ...deep sigh...

Squeak!

Last week, I went to the pet shop to deliver some fish. Talos came with me, she likes the outing, and I like the company. It was a lovely visit, the assistant was friendly, the fish were handled professionally, and I left feeling pretty ok with the world.

About half way home, I hear it.

"Squeak!"

and again...

"Squeak squeak!"

I know the squeaks of Talos's toys pretty well. This was not a familiar squeak. But ... I didn't buy any toys either.

Turns out, Talos is now not only mangy, but a thief as well!

...shake my head...

Serves me right for taking my eyes off her!

(I went back the next day and paid for it)

Here's the little thief enjoying her spoils.

My favourite day!

Hi people in the glowy box,

It's me, Talos. I want to tell you all about my most favourite day!

My Nina-human calls it 'cleaning day'. Actually, it's code for me and her getting to fight monsters all day long. There are two main monsters. The first one is the Morbid Opressor of Pugs - or the mop, for short.

I make sure to chase it as it searches systematically for pugs to opress. It seems to move back and forth a lot, I don't think it sees too well. Probably trying to make sure it doesn't miss any potential puggy!

But, I have a secret! What you do is, you wait for your human to lift it up off the floor, then you grab the edge of the soft and moist bit underneath. If you pull hard enough, it comes right off, with a very satisfying rrrrriiiIIIIIIiiiipppp!

Make sure to kill it properly once you've ripped it apart!

The other monster is red, and roars at you as it sits there. It doesn't move as much as the mop, but it has a long arm that comes for you, runs away, and comes right back for you! I think it's trying to swallow up our whole house, so I've called it the Voracious Appetite Contraption, or vac, for short. It's very dangerous. This one is best dealt with with a death stare.

Of course, running rapidly in circles confuses it, so definitely do that too!

We always win, of course. They go into hiding until the next 'cleaning day'. I think my Nina-human has secret senses that warn her they're coming, so she prepares for them.

I also get to carry all sorts of weapons to fight these guys.
Look at the size of this club!

Then there's the soft flail.

Believe me, this black thing is harder to keep under control than you think. It's clearly only with my help that it works out. It really makes the mop run, this one!

I love cleaning day :) I run and play and fight monsters all day long.Then, I nap.

What's your favourite day?