Giving pills to dogs: a small but useful trick

You’ve found the food that works best for hiding pills and you think you’re headed for success, getting these pills into your dog. But then the rascal rolls the food-ball around in his mouth, feels the pill, and spits it out. Now he’s suspicious!

Here’s a trick that has worked for us. Make at least two treats without pills. Give one of these first, then give one with a pill in it. Strike a balance between covering the pill adequately, and making the treat so large it isn’t gulped right down. At each point, allow the dog to see that you have additional yummy bites waiting for him; he’ll be less inclined to take his time, more willing to bolt down each treat in order to get the next one. Give a treat without a pill as the last one. If your dog is really suspicious, and you have more than one pill to give, you may want to alternate: plain, pill, plain, pill, plain.

Cheese is our usual cover for pills, and the best thing we’ve found, actually, is that spray-on cheese, the new version of Cheez Wiz. Put pill in the palm of your hand, squirt on the cheese-like substance (get some under the pill too) and watch your dog go for it. Here too it helps to use plain cheese-blobs as the lead-in, and keep your dog anticipating the next one so he’s keen.

But with the method I’ve described, we have successfully pilled even suspicious dogs with pills smushed between slices of cheddar or wrapped in a piece of lunch meat.

Threshing grain at the historic farm

Here’s the old-style threshing of the grain at Hanley Historic Farm, Oregon; the beautiful golden “stooks” of gathered and bundled grain stalks appeared in an earlier post.

These stooks of hand-cut wheat, composed of bundles each tied with a stalk of wheat, sat out for weeks drying, and waiting for the Harvest Day Event on September 4, when the draft horse enthusiasts and old ag machinery collectors would join forces.

First the big placid draft horses made their way down the field, stopping to let workers with hay-rakes pitch (that’s “pitch” as in “pitchfork”) the stooks up onto the wagon, seen in the first picture. Once the wagon’s full, it heads back to the “home” end of the field.

There, the old threshing machine awaits, attended by half a dozen or more other people who will fork the grain from the wagon onto a moving belt.

But first, line up the wagon next to the working area.

Then the horses are unhitched and led away; I thought perhaps this particular team did not like the noise of the machine, which was considerable. In 1900 or whenever this machine was made, a farmer’s team would probably be accustomed to the machine after a couple of acres had been worked, and would wait–––or two wagons could be used, hitching the team to an empty wagon to continue collecting the grain while the full wagon was threshed.

The entire machine is long, with belt-driven parts to move the unthreshed grain into the whirling blades that knock the grain off the stalks. The next step separates grain from chopped straw or chaff.

It may be a machine, but it is fed one fork of grain at a time.

Streams of grain and chaff are blown through long pipes: the chaff into a pile, the grain into heavy cloth bags.

As on every farm in the history of the world, there’s work for kids old enough to know the routine.

The filled bags are hand-sewn shut.

Once these threshing machines came into use, horses provided the power for only some of the work. The thresher itself ran from a steam, or later gasoline, engine powering the main belt. This day, a more modern machine was used for the Power Take-Off (PTO) to the thresher.

Here you can see the power belt, and the chopping teeth that actually do the threshing.

Although the chaff is just being blown onto a pile in the background here, it is not a waste material, but would be used for bedding in stalls during the winter. Mucked-out straw would be used for fertilizing fields or maybe the kitchen garden area. These days, commercially produced wheat straw is used for decorative interior panels, making ethanol, soil amendment, animal feed (treated with urea, and with nutrients added, yuk), paper, and packaging. Many new uses are being examined. And of course, it’s still good for animal bedding.

Our view of early machine threshing on this day didn’t show what hard work it would have been, when many acres of grain had to be gotten in before the weather changed, when teams of horses brought a continuous supply of grain to the people feeding it to the machine, and the labor of bending to sew bags and then tote them away never stopped. But, unlike a lot of physical work in the industrial age, it was not what you did 50 weeks a year. There’s a pride in getting it done

and those too young to take part look on, eager to be old enough.

And when the belt stops moving, the old hands find a spot in the shade.

Animals encourage us to slow down

Jack the mastiff came with me today for my volunteer time at the local library’s Friends’ bookstore, in a small a-frame building by the library. He’s very good there, usually sleeps but is always listening for someone at the door, so I try to get to the door first and alert people to the presence of a large dog. So far our customers have all been fine with him being there, and his calm sweet demeanor earns him lots of pets.

He did get excited on his second visit, when he first noticed the fake cats perched on several shelves. The one with real fur (rabbit fur I think) was especially interesting to him and he approached it with a mixture of caution and curiosity that was funny to watch.

As we drove home it was a fine cool fall day, and I found myself slowing down to 30 on the rural road so that Jack could put his head out the window. At 45 or 50 mph he doesn’t like it very much, and there’s some risk from objects (insects, debris) that might hit him in the eye. So we motored home at an unusually slow rate, each appreciating the day in our way. Too much pointless hurrying in life!

Here’s Jack when we stopped to get the mail. He’s looking around for any neighbor dogs that may come out to bark at him, that is one thing he is not calm about.

Hydraulic mining scars, wildflowers, dogs, and poison oak, a short early-summer walk in the Siskiyous

We took our new English Mastiff Jack for his first off-leash walk in the woods this morning. He is a 3 1/2 year old rescue who has been with us for nearly a month now. He has settled in very well, comes when called at home even if he is barking at the UPS guy, and so we thought he was ready for an off-leash ramble. Our elderly female Rhodesian Ridgeback went too.

The nearby Gin Lin Trail is named for a Chinese mine owner and “traces the remains of a late-nineteenth-century hydraulic gold mining operation in what was known as the Palmer Creek Diggings, now a part of the Rogue River National Forest.” [more info]

Hydraulic mining used huge pressurized streams of water to turn hillsides or mountainsides into slurry that could be run through sluice boxes to trap the gold. The photo below shows a large-scale operation in action, somewhere in this area of the Oregon Siskiyous, in the latter half of the 19th century. For scale, notice the tiny figure of a man wearing a white shirt, tending the left-hand water hose.

The tremendous destruction takes geologic time, not human time, to heal. Huge clefts are made in the land, piles of big rocks and new hills of “processed” dirt are put anyplace convenient, and the subsoil brought up doesn’t support plant life as well as the now-buried topsoil did. All this is easily seen along the Gin Lin Trail.

Miners followed “pay streaks” of gold that might be only a hand’s-breadth wide, through the ground, making ditches like this.

The picture below shows a steep slope of discarded material. Both the angle of the slope, and the composition of the material itself, are hostile to plant growth. Even on the top where it is closer to level, trees and shrubs are not as numerous or healthy as in undisturbed areas.

And here’s some of the big river rocks moved as the mining went on.

The gold being sought had been deposited by watercourses running down to the river below, seen in the background of this picture.

Looking over the fence, from the same spot as the previous picture.

The dogs had a good time, and Jack stayed close and came when called, as we expected.

Because of the mining, it isn’t the best place for wildflowers, but we saw a few. This is Elegant Cat’s Ear (Calochortus elegans); the common name refers, I believe, to the fuzziness and triangular shape of the flower petals. This doesn’t show the plant’s leaves but there’s a good photo on Flickr that does.

Lupines don’t mind disturbed soil as much as many other plants do.

I think this is the Yellowleaf Iris, Iris chrysophylla.

And below, Iris bracteata, Siskiyou Iris. [caveat: I’m no expert on wildflowers so my identifications are not guaranteed! This USFS page has photos, range maps, and descriptions of the Pacific Coast iris species.] In our experience, this yellow-flowered iris is less common around here than Iris chrysophylla, the Yellowleaf Iris.

Below is my least favorite native plant around here, the glossy-leafed Poison Oak, Toxicodendron diversilobum.

In spring its leaves are usually glossy like this, and may be reddish too. On another plant it would be attractive but to me, the shiny fresh leaves are as ominous as the froth on a bodysnatcher pod.

We found it along most of the trail, flourishing as if it had been thickly planted and then fertilized and tended. If only my plants at home looked so good! Ravines were choked with it, and of course the dogs wanted to go running down into such places. I don’t think I’ve ever gotten poison oak from a dog’s coat, in all these years of living here, but there’s always a first time. I’ve often gotten it from secondary sources like clothing or even the touch of someone else’s hand. (In a post last year I described something that helps lessen the itching and make the blisters go away faster.)

The damned stuff was everywhere. Every plant visible in the photo below is poison oak.

Finally the trail ahead was overgrown with it and we gave up and headed back. The dogs ran ahead, enjoying the downhill rush, and got out of sight as we neared the small parking area, where I heard excited voices. It turned out to be the teenage park maintenance crew and their adult supervisor, cruising the areas to do things like gather up garbage strewn around by animals during the night. They were excited by the sudden appearance of a dog who outweighed most of them, and Jack had been pleased to see them but hadn’t bowled anyone over or been a pest. He’s a sweet affable guy except when defending his home turf, and even then has a good sense of proportion.

We loaded up our tired dogs, filled their water dish in the car, and headed home.

Thirsty dogs drink from the birdbath.

Happy to be drooled on

Drool is back in our lives, finally; and wisps of fur in the corners, and the need to refill the water dish every few hours. We have a new mastiff.

Our beloved English Mastiff Bart, whose picture is at the top of this blog, died in February of old age at eleven and a half, very old for a mastiff. There will never be another Bart, but we knew after only a short time with him that we wanted a mastiff in our household always. We got Bart at 8 weeks but decided this time that a mastiff puppy was more than we were ready to handle, with us being older and my husband facing knee replacement surgery next month. Enter breed rescue: programs run by devoted volunteers for each dog breed, aimed at re-homing dogs of their breed.

These folks want the dogs’ new homes to work, since the dogs have already been through at least one sad parting (and sometimes neglect or worse, as well). We filled out extensive applications, with references; and someone in our area came to meet us and check out our surroundings. Is there a fenced yard? Are there stairs to the house that would be a problem for a mastiff when he’s old? Other pets, livestock? Feeling of stability? Would-be owners’ attitudes and familiarity with the breed, and commitment required? All that stuff and more. We passed, and last weekend we travelled to visit prospective young males in foster homes. The third one we visited was the right one for us, and we drove home with our new mastiff Jack.

We weren’t looking for a dog that resembled Bart, but it turned out that way. Jack is “fawn” like Bart, but is taller and longer-bodied. He has the same steady intelligent gaze, calm manner, and affectionate nature, that Bart did. He’s a little over three, and his previous home gave him good socialization and some training––age and training were important to us: a rambunctious rowdy 150-lb dog does not mix well with recovery from knee surgery.

Our elderly Rhodesian Ridgeback Brook went along on the trip, and got to spend a couple of hours with Jack after we decided (early in our visit) that he was the one.

She went from growling at him to following him around to sniff him, and they rode home uneventfully in the back of the SUV together. We did have to convince Jack not to ride in the front seat, right at the beginning, but that was easy. He is easy-going and wants to please. Essential, in a dog his size! English Mastiffs are protective of their owners’ person and property but have been bred for a long time to have a calm and gentle temperament. A mastiff’s size and formidable appearance mean that he or she rarely needs to give more than a look or a bark, to warn off some stranger. Responsible breeders (of any dog breed) pay as much attention to temperament as to physical characteristics. You want a dog who is healthy and reliable in both regards, mens sana in copore sano.

Jack has tried out all the dog beds in the house but has not gotten up on the couch even though he sees Brook up there. Until we can clip his long bear-claw-like nails, it is just as well. He hadn’t let the foster home’s vet draw blood for a heartworm test but our vet got one easily (and it was negative), with the old Cheez Wiz method (dog is busy licking the cheese-like substance out of the nozzle, and nothing else matters!) but by the time we got to the nail clipping part he’d had enough cheese and resisted. No growls, just pulling away, and believe me he is strong. We use a dremel for dog nails so I have left it on the floor the past two evenings to introduce him to it, and have also been getting him used to me holding his paws and touching his nails. He’s making progress, but no telling if that will hold when the actual clipping/grinding occurs. He has tried to eat the sandpaper cylinder off the grinder but I can’t interpret that, except he isn’t backing away from it any more.

Jack’s original home was with a couple and their teen-age daughter. He was the husband’s dog but when the marriage broke up the husband abandoned him, then the wife had to sell the house in order to give the husband his share of the money. She had a dog of her own, and could not keep Jack, BUT she was savvy enough to know about, or find out about, a breed rescue organization with a local presence. Friends of Rescued Mastiffs is a national organization, non-profit, providing care, foster homes, and re-homing to mastiffs. They deal with dogs from situations like Jack’s, dogs found as strays or in shelters, ones seized for neglect, and from puppy mills (both young ones and breeding stock). Good rescue organizations like FORM also check out the dogs to see if they are suitable for a new home, and what the conditions might be (OK with cats? other dogs? too rambunctious to be around small children at this age? needs someone who can do extensive training?). There are other good organizations helping mastiffs, but FORM was Jack’s salvation. We count ourselves very lucky to have found Jack and he seems to be settling in very happily with us. We’ll be sending photos and a report to the regional coordinator, in hopes she can pass the word on to the woman and girl who loved Jack and had to give him up. He has obviously been well loved and cared for.

No breed of dog is “for everyone” and English Mastiffs are no exception. They occupy a lot of space; fur and drool will find their way onto your furniture, clothing, etc.; and they want to be with you all the time. That’s usual for dogs, though, they aren’t toys with an on/off switch you can pay attention to only when you feel like it.

Giant dog breeds have shorter life spans than smaller dogs, and if they need medication or surgery the bills will be big too. That’s another reason to check out breeders carefully, see the parents, ask about testing for hip/elbow/eye problems that may be inherited. Visit someone with one or more mastiffs and see how it feels to be around such big dogs. Talk about the pros and cons. Think about your situation: how much time do you have to spend with a dog (for whom you will be the center of life)? How much space, indoors and out? We have a big house and fenced area, but our newly acquired 2005 Trail Blazer seems a bit crowded now with Brook and Jack in it!

Do you have plans to move, or have a baby? Dogs and babies are not at all mutually exclusive; pit bulls were reportedly used as “nanny” dogs to watch over toddlers a hundred years ago, and an adult mastiff who has been properly socialized is gentle, tolerant, and completely reliable around children. But you may not have enough time to do justice to both a new dog and a new baby; certainly you need to see how your dog of any breed behaves around children–does he or she get excited so that body or tail could knock a child over? Is the dog able to resist “taking candy from a baby”? and so on. None of these are reasons to give away your dog before having a baby, but they are factors in getting a dog, or in planning how your dog will be able to be around your children especially when dog or child is very young.

Educate yourself before acquiring any breed of dog! Even mixed breed dogs usually have some discernible breed heritage, and shelter employees or friends who really do know a lot about dogs, can be helpful. An as example, terriers and sheepdogs have higher energy levels than many other breeds: not a good choice for a dog that will spend a lot of time alone.

Puppy Mills and Pit Bulls––is legislation the right approach?

In my state of Oregon there are two pieces of dog-related legislation currently being considered. HB 2470 is supposed to address puppy mills, HB 2852 is ostensibly aimed at increasing public safety from “dangerous dogs”.

These goals are hard to disagree with, but the details of both bills are such as to cause concern in people who know and love dogs.

HB 2470, the “Puppy Mill” Bill

The first, for example, contains a so-called “lemon law” provision giving puppy buyers legal recourse against sellers if:

Section 5 (1) (b) Within two years after the customer acquires the dog, a veterinarian states in writing that the dog has, or that the dog died as a result of, a congenital or hereditary defect adversely affecting the health of the dog or requiring hospitalization or nonelective surgical procedures.

The buyer is entitled to reimbursement for vet expenses up to 100% (or in some cases 150%) of the purchase price of the dog) in combination with returning the dog for a full refund, exchanging the dog for another, or keeping the dog.

This sounds fair and workable at first glance, but the greatest problems of illness and unsoundness come from dogs bred by backyard breeders (“Hey, my female Lab is in heat, your male looks good, let’s introduce them and sell some puppies!”) and from actual puppy mills that mass-produce dogs for profit. Neither of these is likely to pay up willingly (puppy mills sell to pet stores through nation-wide brokers, so there is some doubt about even identifying the breeder of a specific puppy). Then the dog owner has to go to court for the $350?

Reputable breeders work hard to eliminate the known genetic flaws from their breed and from the puppies they produce; often, they also have buyers sign a contract in which the buyer promises to contact the breeder at any time if unable to keep it. The breeder wants to be consulted on suitable re-homing, and to be the home of last resort if no suitable home can be found. Good breeders love their dogs; they want to keep them out of shelters and bad homes. Breed enthusiasts operate rescue programs for their breed, for the same reasons.

If a dedicated breeder has done due diligence in genetic choice of a breeding pair, had all the tests done, monitored the dogs for heritable defects, and still at age one year a puppy develops a genetic fault, shall we hold that person as liable as some for-profit breeder who has done none of those things?

My observation has been that the only way to make money from breeding dogs is to go the backyard breeder/puppy mill route: low overhead, no varying of breeding stock but using the animals at hand, dogs kept in low-rent conditions (the way dogs are housed and kept at puppy mills would make a stone weep), minimal vet care, and sell everything you breed without testing, socialization, screening buyers, or making guarantees.

HB 2852: Your dog may be labelled a “dangerous dog”

The second bill, HB 2852, is in large part what’s known as “Breed-Specific Legislation”. The Feb, 24, 2009 version actually forbade future ownership of pit bulls and lookalikes, with big fines and euthanasia as penalties, and required special permits and insurance for current owners. The revision, after great outcry, requires owners to carry $1 million in mandatory liability insurance coverage (“failure to prove compliance with order punishable by maximum fine of $720 per day”).

And other provisions would have drastic consequences for all dog breeds by broadening definitions of “dangerous dogs” which are subject to court-ordered restrictions, insurance requirements, and even euthanasia. As far as I can tell the bill still contains a provision under which “menacing” a person, off your property, for “no good reason”, can result in classification as “dangerous” and result in court-ordered insurance and enclosure requirements or even euthanasia. What constitutes “menacing”? A growl, a lunge?

This bill is opposed by the Oregon Veterinary Medical Association; they oppose all breed-specific legislation, I am told.

In brief, the objections to Breed-Specific Legislation (BSL) are:

• vagueness of identifying the breeds subject to the law
• increasing the “outlaw” cachet of some breeds which are already being abused by dogfighters, criminals, and garden-variety macho dog owners who acquire them as ego accessories
• using scarce public resources against a single breed rather than supporting the public education which is the most important element for increasing public safety with regard to dogs, as well as for reducing abuse of dogs

Vagueness of identifying the breeds subject to the law

Vagueness helps accomplish the real aim of BSL, which is to eradicate certain breeds. This bill defines “pit bull” as

(b) ‘Pit bull’ means a dog that:

(A) Is registered or otherwise listed as an American pit bull
terrier, Staffordshire bull terrier or American Staffordshire
terrier with a dog breed club or league, dog fanciers
association, breed registry or similar organization; or

(B) Has appearance and physical characteristics that
substantially conform to the breed standards of the United Kennel
Club for an American pit bull terrier or of the American Kennel
Club for a Staffordshire bull terrier or American Staffordshire
terrier, as those standards existed on January 1, 2009.
[Section 1 (b), HB 2852]

This means that shelters will euthanize any dogs that could possibly be seen as “bullish” whether they look pure-bred or are mixes. They’ll be unadoptable and potentially a legal liability. Present owners of dogs that are pit bulls, or resemble them, will be in a quandary: get expensive insurance, risk huge liability if any incident occurs (your dog accidentally knocks over a child, or bites a person teasing him), or get rid of their dogs. Some estimate that at least a dozen different recognized dog breeds could fall into the loose definition, which will be applied in individual cases by someone with no special knowledge (a judge, a policeman, your neighbor).

In the city and county of Denver, where pit bulls have been illegal since 1989, Denver’s Division of Animal Control impounded 689 pit-bull-looking dogs in 2003. “All we can do is say what they look like,” said the Director of the Division. Since enforcement got serious in 2005, 1,667 dogs have been euthanized because they appeared pit bull-like.

Increasing “outlaw” cachet and macho accessorizing

What else needs to be said about this?

Re-directing public resources and attention

It’s easy to pass feel-good legislation, much harder to do what is necessary to truly address a problem. As far as dog safety goes, the problem is not the breed but the owner. And also those breeders who produce dogs without regard for temperament or overall health (including truly evil people who breed dogs, and abuse dogs, in order to make vicious creatures).

Both of the bills described above would be expensive to enforce. When Joan’s boxer mix is impounded, she sues the county: Prove he’s a pit bull! And the “puppy mill bill”, HB 2470, sets out specific rules for how dogs are kept by individuals that breed or sell a certain number of puppies per year; that’s great, but it is meaningless without enforcement. In this economic climate, the idea of adding county staff to investigate or inspect dog breeders is laughable.

Singling out specific breeds

Pit bulls do have very strong jaws, and were bred for fighting, but also for lack of aggression to humans, since in a fighting bout, humans in the ring separate the two dogs by hand. In addition, recent decades of breeding for stable companion dogs has created pit bulls that are gentle companions. The methods of those who train dogs today for fighting are savage, including starvation combined with feeding them small live animals, beating, and electrical shocks. Would this be necessary, if the average “bullish” dog were by nature an eager fighter and savage killer?
About half of the 51 brutalized dogs seized from Michael Vick’s Bad Newz Kennels have been evaluated and placed in permanent or foster homes; some have achieved Canine Good Citizen certification and a few are working as therapy dogs. The other half were judged too dog-aggressive for adoption, and sent to a special facility where most are now judged quite safe for staff and visitors to mingle with. Some of the 51 had been used as fighters, others––less eager to fight––as “bait dogs” for the others to “practice” on. Yet of them all only one was judged irredeemable and euthanized. [For details, see long Sports Illustrated article, one-page version here, and also a Washington Post article .]
Outlawing specific breeds such as pit bulls [American pit bull terriers, Staffordshire bull terriers or American Staffordshires] or Presa Canarios would have little effect on numbers of dog bites—dog bite statistics are not very exact. The intent of breed bans is generally to reduce the number of serious and fatal dog attacks; the powerful jaws and tenacity of pit bulls, PresaCanarios, Rottweilers, and a few other breeds seem very threatening. Yet the American Animal Hospital Association has this to say on the issue:

A study performed by the American Veterinary Medical Association, the CDC, and the Humane Society of the United States, analyzed dog bite statistics from the last 20 years and found that the statistics don’t show that any breeds are inherently more dangerous than others. The study showed that the most popular large breed dogs at any one time were consistently on the list of breeds that bit fatally. There were a high number of fatal bites from Doberman pinschers in the 1970s, for example, because Dobermans were very popular at that time and there were more Dobermans around, and because Dobermans’size makes their bites more dangerous. The number of fatal bites from pit bulls rose in the 1980s for the same reason, and the number of bites from rottweilers in the 1990s. The study also noted that there are no reliable statistics for nonfatal dog bites, so there is no way to know how often smaller breeds are biting.

Whatever the breed, the role of the owner in choosing, training, supervising, and caring for the dog is in my opinion the main reason that such attacks happen. Unscrupulous or ignorant breeders, who do not screen for temperament and health problems, and do not exercise care in placing puppies, are the second greatest cause.

I would love to see some of this bill’s provisions enacted and enforced everywhere: a limit of (in the current version) 25 intact sexually mature dogs per premise––personally I think that is too many but it is a start––and rules about care, housing, exercise, and health. As long as the rules are enforced fairly, and defined with regard to the varying circumstances of breeders, it improves the care of the dogs. An example of taking into account the varying circumstances of breeders: the bill requires that anyone with 10 or more sexually intact dogs over 4 months of age must provide each dog with an enclosure meeting certain requirements. One can imagine, especially with smaller dogs, someone who might have 10 dogs that do not even have individual enclosures, but are in the house and outside in a single large run or big fenced property; the bill seems to require that the breeder be able to point to some individual kennel for each of the ten dogs.

In the next post I’ll make some suggestions for a better approach to these issues, something that we dog owners can do ourselves.

For now, if you live in Oregon, please contact your legislators about these bills. At the National Animal Interest Alliance site you can send an email to your legislator about the Puppy Mill Bill, HB 2470; they also offer more information and suggested points to mention. To oppose the Pit Bull/Dangerous Dog legislation, cite HB 2852; there’s a state form here to identify your district’s legislators and get their email addresses. This page also gives contact information for your US Senators and Congressional Representative.

For readers who live elsewhere, the NAIA site has legislative alerts for national legislation as well as in each state. Sign up for alerts; see legislation in your state (don’t click on the map, go down farther and click on the link for your state). The AKC also has a legislative-watch page. Scanning these pages shows just how active the efforts are across the country, to enact restrictive and breed-specific legislation about dogs.

Letters to local newspapers setting out the actual provisions and consequences of proposed legislation are another way to oppose these bills. If legislators feel that their constituents are fooled by the beneficial titles (“Anti-Puppy Mill” or “Control Dangerous Dogs”) they don’t dare vote against them or support amendments.

Cocoa mulch is toxic to dogs

This one’s no urban myth: the cocoa hulls sold as mulch smell good to dogs (and some cats) and are toxic––even fatal––if ingested. These are the hulls of chocolate beans and contain the same ingredients that are poisonous to dogs in chocolate: theobromine and caffeine. The hulls smell like chocolate; apparently some dogs find this very appealing and snarf it up, while others don’t bother with it, but there’s no way to tell.

Of course dog and cat owners should avoid using this mulch, indoors or out. Those who care about animals, even if they don’t have any, should do the same. But more than that, we must keep an eye on what our pets eat when we take them other places. Animals may not show any symptoms until as late as the next day and then begin with convulsions. By then treatment is too late.

Cocoa hull mulch with a quarter for size comparison. Color fades with age.
Photo: ASPCA’s very informative page on the toxicity of this material.

According to the urban-myth busters at snopes.com, who verify the internet warnings on this topic, some producers of cocoa hull mulch say that they have put the material through a process which extracts all theobromine and caffeine, but why take a chance at your own house? and as to what someone else has used, there’s no telling. I checked the webpage of one major producer, National Cocoa Shell, and there was no mention whatsoever of toxicity or extra processing to avoid toxicity.

If your pet eats even a small amount of chocolate-scented mulch it would be safer to take him or her to the vet. The ASPCA is quoted, in the snopes article, as to the toxicity of small amounts:

Cocoa beans contain the stimulants caffeine and theobromine. Dogs are highly sensitive to these chemicals, called methylxanthines. In dogs, low doses of methylxanthine can cause mild gastrointestinal upset (vomiting, diarrhea, and/or abdominal pain); higher doses can cause rapid heart rate, muscle tremors, seizures, and death.



Eaten by a 50-pound dog, about 2 ounces of cocoa bean mulch may cause gastrointestinal upset; about 4.5 ounces, increased heart rate; about 5.3 ounces, seizures; and over 9 ounces, death. (In contrast, a 50-pound dog can eat up to about 7.5 ounces of milk chocolate without gastrointestinal upset and up to about a pound of milk chocolate without increased heart rate.)

Note that milk chocolate is less toxic to dogs than dark chocolate, the kind we have all been encouraged to eat in moderation for our own health.

The toxicity of chocolate and cocoa hulls to pets underlines the point that what is healthful for humans may be fatal for our pets.

Another example: NSAIDs (Non-steroidal anti-inflammatory) pain medications such as aspirin; Tylenol (active ingredient acetaminophen, called “paracetamol” outside of North America); Advil, Motrin, etc. (ibuprofen); Aleve, Anaprox, Miranax, Naprogesic, Naprosyncan, etc. (naproxen) can be deadly to cats and harmful to dogs. They can cause intestinal perforation, internal bleeding, and other life-threatening conditions. They’re not that great for people, either, in long-term use, but we have more resistance than dogs, cats, rabbits, and ferrets.

Photo from drugfreesport.com.

To take aspirin as an example: Children’s aspirin contains 81 mg of salicylate, regular aspirin 325 mg, Pepto-Bismol 300 mg per tablet and 262 mg per 15 ml (1 tbsp.) of liquid. Numerous other products contain aspirin. The toxic doses of salicylate for dogs and cats are very low:

Dogs: 22 mg per pound per day. (A children’s aspirin could be toxic to a tiny dog, or a puppy whose immature digestive system is even more vulnerable)

Cats: 11 mg per pound per day, may see symptoms after one dose.

Don’t take these numbers as permission to calculate safe doses for your pets, if only because other factors affect toxicity, such as age and health of the individual animal. Call your vet and ask. If your vet or vet tech seems vague or not concerned, err on the side of caution for the time being and get a better opinion.

The Drs. Foster and Smith site gives more details on aspirin toxicity:

Signs (in dogs and cats) usually develop within 4-6 hours with an acute overdose. They include depression, lack of appetite, vomiting which may contain blood, abdominal pain, increased respiratory rate, acute kidney failure, weakness, coma, and death.

Chronic lower doses in dogs may lead to stomach ulcers and perforation, toxic liver inflammation, and bone marrow suppression resulting in anemia.

Immediate Action
Induce vomiting and seek veterinary attention.

Prognosis
Favorable, if treatment is started early. Poor, if symptoms are present when treatment begins.

Invest in that ounce of prevention and keep your pets safe.

Can elephants really paint?

I found a link somewhere to a YouTube video of a young Asian elephant painting quite a good outline picture showing an elephant holding a flower in its trunk. It is impressive to see, but I found it hard to believe the implication: that this elephant was creating, rather than performing a learned task. As a former zookeeper and continuing student of animal intelligence I’m well aware of how various animal species can display amazing “intelligence” and problem-solving skills. And I’m equally aware of how we can misinterpret the actions of animals: we are blind to demonstrations of the real “intelligence” that animals use in their lives, but seize upon actions that remind us of ourselves.

We must keep in mind that we are the ones defining “intelligence”: it’s very specific to human concerns, sometimes even cultural distinctions and values. We don’t even count as intelligence the mental activity displayed, say, by a social hunter like a wolf or lioness who uses its knowledge of prey behavior, local topography, and the expected reactions of its hunting partners, to set up successful hunts of prey which may be much larger, faster, and part of a distracting herd. What we like to see, what we (naturally) respond to, are actions that mimic our own activities. To impress us, the mimicry must even be culturally appropriate. If I try to teach my dog to sing and he makes sounds like a Tuvan throat-singer I probably won’t think the venture a success, but if he sounds like Caruso or Elvis, that’s a different matter.

Also, animals can appear to perform complicated volitional acts which may be done simply by rote or mimicry. You may teach a dog to perform an operatic aria, or to mimic you when you dance, but the meaning invested in the act, and the amount of creativity or self-expression involved may not be at all what you (would like to) believe it is. A few animals have become famous for applying their acute powers of observation of human gesture, stance and expression; their masters guided them without being at all aware of having done so. Clever Hans, the horse who solved arithmetic problems and tapped out the answers with his hoof, is the pre-eminent example; when his guileless owner was blocked off from view of the horse, or did not know the answer himself, then Hans could hear the questions but was completely unable to tap out any correct responses. It appears that the horse read his owner’s body language, not that the man intentionally cued him. If the owner knew that 9 hoof-taps was the answer to “What is 3 times 3?” then his body relaxed after the ninth tap and the horse reacted to that.

So when we think we see an animal performing a complex activity (such as painting representational pictures), and one which has no apparent functional place in its normal life, we need to set aside our amazement and delight and look deeper.

It appears that the elephant video was made in an elephant camp in Thailand, perhaps at ChengMai where elephants have been trained in drawing and painting for over a decade, or at a newer camp called Mateman Elephant Camp. At Chengmai, the paintings are sold or exchanged for donations which help support the elephant center. The use of elephants in Asian logging is declining, and of course truly wild habitat where elephants won’t come into conflict with humans is scarce or nonexistent there. So the financial return from tourists is probably a positive thing, and painting may provide some stimulating activity for the elephants themselves although their greatest natural need is for more active pursuits such as walking many miles daily, uprooting bushes and trees, searching for water, learning and remembering their territory, and so on.

The photo below, from a 1995 issue of the Chengmai Mail, shows elephants in front of their largest painting to that time, a 12m mural made to raise money for a children’s fund.

But what is the elephant in the video actually doing? How much direction might the elephant be getting from his keeper or mahout? The video’s close focus on the animal did not offer any view of the mahout, who might have been giving verbal cues or making gestures.

Is the elephant painting a picture which it has composed and chosen or one which it is copying or has learned? A clue to this does appear in the video: near the end after the elephant has painted the red flower, the camera draws back and we can see an attendant removing a finished painting of very similar flowers from an easel near the elephant. To me, this indicates the likelihood of rote performance. The trainer has schooled the elephant: he hands the elephant a brush with red paint on it and says “Flower now,” while someone holds up a board with flower paintings on it, and the elephant responds. Even that act shows “intelligence,” and certainly trainability, but it would not demonstrate that the elephant is making the multiple choices, conscious and subconscious, made by a human artist.

There weren’t any videos I could find of elephants just learning to paint at ChengMai, but those in US zoos who’ve been given paintbrushes have consistently turned out paintings that can definitely be called “non-representational.”

The fullest account I found of the training of the elephants to paint was at the blog Stranger in a Strange Land in the March 14, 2008 post. It indicates pretty intensive training of the elephants.

“Teaching an elephant to paint is like teaching a young child,” says Tossapol Petcharattanakool, an art instructor at Maesa and professionally trained as an elementary school art teacher. “They have a sense of form and style and can learn positioning of lines. But while the elephant IS the painter, there is definitely communication, collaboration between mahout and elephant.”

In addition, at a site that sells the elephants’ paintings, I found indications that individual elephants repeat the same work.

There’s a photo of an “elephant with flowers” painting very much like the one made on the video, but with two flowers instead of one, and underneath,

Product Information

This is the last “Self Portrait” in stock – our allotment for May/June from Elephant Artist Hong.

Thanks to Anchalee Kalmapijit, director of the Mateman Elephant Camp and now director of an new Elephant Art enclave, we were able to obtain several of these Elephant Self Portraits made famous first by the documentary made by Blink TV with Vanda Harvey – an English Artist which was featured on the BBC and then the video posted on YouTube.

According to Anchalee, now is the rainy season in northern Thailand which makes it difficult for the Elephant Artists to paint in the open. Couple that with the decision by Anchalee and Hong’s handler Noi to “relax” and paint at a pace more set by Hong’s “mood”, and one can understand the scarcity of these paintings in the elephant art market. These paintings have sold as fast as we post them so order NOW! There is NO video with this painting.

PS Check out other sites that carry self portraits by Hong – they sell for a lot more than this!

That gives me enough evidence to conclude, until I learn differently, that the elephants are “merely” reproducing movements they have been taught. The degree of consistency is so great (in these few examples I’ve seen) that the trainers may even guide the animal’s trunk in the beginning, to teach it the desired lines and curves. Later the trainer gives verbal commands indicating which set of lines to draw. The elephants are not, say, looking over at another elephant and drawing lines with a brush to depict what they see.

The more we learn about natural animal behavior the richer and more complex we see that it is. If elephants or chimpanzees are unable to paint original representational pictures, that does not diminish them. The delight we feel when animals act like people is deeply selfish: “Look, it can hold a bat and hit a ball with it!” It’s imitating a human, that pinnacle of creation! Homage to humanity from the lesser beings.

Much more interesting are the things they can do that arise from their “essence,” their way of interacting with the world. But few of us ever get to observe at length any animals that are not living in a human-designed world; our pets, our livestock, our zoo animals, all act within the limits of a man-made environment. Even in that environment we can get glimpses of essence, of dog-ness or penguin-ness, if we pay attention and are resistant to self-serving interpretations.