If you display a live tree, anchor it solidly so it doesn’t tip over on your pets.  Some even recommend anchoring it to the ceiling with string!  And be aware that pine needles can be dangerous for pets that may eat them.  The needles can puncture your pet’s intestines, so keep your tree watered well and pick up fallen needles as soon as possible.

Be sure to prevent your pet from drinking the tree water, as it can often be contaminated with fertilizers that can be harmful to your pet.  Check the labels on any preservatives you intend to add to the water, as well as artificial snow, as those can be toxic to pets.  And don’t put aspirin in the water (some people believe this helps the tree or other plants stay healthy longer) – your pet’s health or life can be at stake if it drinks the aspirin-laced water. Some people use attractive fireplace screens around the tree to keep their curious pets out of harm’s way…and to keep innocent presents out of harm’s way from their pets!

Tinsel, Ornaments, and Gift Wrapping

Keep tinsel and ornaments on higher tree branches, and make sure to pick them up off the floor quickly if they fall.  Pets who swallow those intriguing “toys” can end up with blockages in their intestines, and may require surgery to remove those blockages.  This applies to strings of confetti during New Year’s celebrations, also.  Glass from broken ornaments can cause obvious problems, and even ornaments made from dried food can lead to sickness.

After gifts are exchanged and opened, clean up paper, bows and things such as plastic wrap and Styrofoam as quickly as possible.  Make sure small toys are not left within your pet’s reach, and be on the lookout for small pieces of plastic and other materials that may have broken off of toys or packaging.

Electrical Wires and Batteries

Electrical wires and batteries can be potentially harmful to our pets.  Wires can cause potentially lethal electrical shocks, and punctured batteries can cause burns in the mouth and esophagus if chewed on by your pet.  Tape down or cover cords to keep your pet from chewing on them, and unplug lights when you are not at home.

Plants

Most people are aware that poinsettias are poisonous to our pets, but did you know that holly can cause nausea, vomiting and diarrhea if ingested?  Mistletoe can cause similar symptoms, as well as cardiovascular problems.  And many varieties of lilies can cause kidney failure in cats if ingested.  Choose instead artificial plants made from plastic or silk, which can be just as beautiful and appear very realistic.

Candles

It goes without saying that you should place candles high away from where pets can reach them, and never leave candles unattended.  Not only could pets burn themselves, but a fire could be started in the house should one be knocked over.

Tasty (and Forbidden!) Treats

Make sure to keep your pets away from the table and unattended plates of food!  You probably already know not to give your pets anything with chocolate in it, or anything containing xylitol as a sweetener, but don’t underestimate the lengths to which a furry friend will go to score a yummy holiday treat!  Don’t allow guests to feed your pets human food…many holiday foods, especially fatty foods, can cause not only vomiting and diarrhea, but also more serious toxic reactions and even pancreatitis, a potentially fatal illness (see my post “Pancreatitis and the Holidays – It’s the Thought That Counts”).  Ribbons, candy wrappers, and shiny little pieces of foil can choke pets.  And don’t forget to keep them away from the garbage.

Alcohol

Make sure you and your guests place unattended alcoholic drinks where your pets can’t reach them.  If ingested, alcohol can cause your pet to become ill and weak, and may result in a coma or even death from respiratory failure.

Activity and Excitement

Holiday guests and other activity around the holidays can be very stressful for your pets.  Make sure they have a quiet place they can retreat to, and don’t force them to interact with guests if they appear to want to be left alone.  Some pets drink more when they are stressed (dogs tend to pant more in response to stress, for example), so make sure they have plenty of fresh water available.  And be sure they are wearing collars with ID tags and are microchipped, if possible, in case they escape the house in the excitement of guests coming and going.

In an Emergency

If you suspect that your pet has eaten something toxic, call your veterinarian and/or the ASPCA Animal Poison Control Center’s 24-hour emergency hotline at 1-888-4-ANI-HELP.  You can also use the Animal Hospital Locator found online at http://www.healthypet.com/hospital_search.aspx

In the meantime, you can try giving your dog supplemental fiber such as whole wheat or other high-fiber bread, canned pumpkin or Metamucil, any of which can help bulk up the stools the help the foreign material pass through your pet’s digestive system.  Dosages depend on the size of your pet.  For Metamusil, try a teaspoon for a small dog or cat, and a tablespoon for a big dog.  For pumpkin, feed from one-quarter to two-thirds of a cup.

Happy Holidays from the Dog Listener of Southern California!

CINCINNATI, OH December 6, 2011 – The Procter & Gamble Company (P&G) has voluntarily retrieved a single production lot of dry dog food due to aflatoxin  levels that were detected above the acceptable limit. This product has already been retrieved from store  shelves. No illnesses have been reported in association with this production lot to date, and no other  Iams pet food products are involved.

Product affected by this announcement:

The affected product lot was distributed to a limited  number of retailers located in the eastern United States (AL, CT, DE, FL, GA, LA, MD, ME, MS, NC, NH, NJ, NY, PA, SC, VA).  These retailers have already removed this product from store shelves. No other dry dog food,  dry cat food, dog or cat canned food, biscuits/treats or supplements are affected by this  announcement.

While no health effects related to this product have  been reported, P&G retrieved this product as a precautionary measure. Consumers who purchased the product listed should  stop using the product and discard it and contact Iams at the number below for a replacement  voucher. Aflatoxin is a naturally occurring by-product from the growth of Aspergillus flavus and can be  harmful to pets if consumed in significant quantities. Pets which have consumed this product and  exhibit symptoms of illness including sluggishness or lethargy combined with a reluctance to eat, vomiting,  yellowish tint to the eyes or gums, or diarrhea should be seen by a veterinarian.

For further information or a product replacement or  refund contact P&G toll-free at 866-908-1569 (Monday – Friday, 9:00 AM to 6:00 PM EST) or www.iams.com.
]]> http://doglistenerofsocal.wordpress.com/2011/12/06/tainted-puppy-food-recalled/feed/ 0 dlofsocal http://doglistenerofsocal.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/shaky-limbs-captive-wolves-and-alpha-dogs/ http://doglistenerofsocal.wordpress.com/2011/11/07/shaky-limbs-captive-wolves-and-alpha-dogs/#comments Tue, 08 Nov 2011 00:08:45 +0000 Dog Listener of Southern California http://doglistenerofsocal.wordpress.com/?p=259 ]]> I’m going to go out on a very long, shaky limb with a hugely controversial question in this post.  Before that, however, I’ll give you some background as to what prompts my question.

There seems to be a backlash nowadays against the idea that communication similarities between dogs and wolves still exist, and especially that these similarities should inform our own communication and interactions with our dogs.  Much of that backlash seems to be in response to new(-ish) concepts regarding the structure
of wolf packs, especially the terminology used in relation to our old concepts.

As you can read in the previous post on this blog, our traditional way of looking at the structure of wolf packs has been based largely on research done by Rudolph Schenkel in the 1940s.  Schenkel’s research depended on the observations of unrelated wolves brought to live together in captivity, a situation that was completely unnatural for the wolves, we now realize.  Observing the wolves in that conformation, Schenkel found that competition would break out between the wolves, and this competition would eventually result in a dominance hierarchy.  He labeled the animals at the “top” of that hierarchy as the “alpha pair,” or alpha male and alpha female.  His observations also laid the groundwork for our misinterpretation of wolves as necessarily competitive creatures who will all vie for the alpha position as though compelled to do so by biology.

We are now being presented with a much different picture, thanks to research done by L. David Mech and others.  Mech offers us a new picture of the wolf pack that is strikingly similar to our own human families.  What was formerly termed the “alpha pair,” Mech now calls the “breeding pair,” or even the “parents.”  In general, the pack – or “family,” if you prefer – is rounded out with offspring of various ages.  Unlike in captivity, where the unrelated wolves compete with each other for higher “status,” or the “alpha” position, in a naturally-formed wolf pack, the offspring don’t compete with the parents for higher “status.”  When a wolf finds itself ready to breed, it leaves the family unit and creates its own new pack.  (This is a very simplistic description of the newly understood structure of a wolf pack, and there are exceptions and variations to that structure (more than one breeding female present, an outside wolf adopted into the family, etc.), but this description will suffice for the purpose of this post.)

During some of my recent readings I’ve come across various opinions on the relationship dynamic between dogs and their human guardians.  Some people subscribe to the older model of the wolf pack (perhaps we could call it the “captive” model), and believe that we humans have to be very strict and ever on-guard lest we give our dogs the idea that they are “alpha” to us, while some people at the other end of the spectrum take a newer family-oriented, non-competitive approach (perhaps we could call this the “naturally-structured” model), and don’t believe that our dogs are interested in competing with us for “higher status” in any way at any
time.

Before I move on in subsequent posts to some personal musings regarding the many similarities between canine families and human families, and some opinions I hold regarding canine/human interaction and
communication, I’ll issue my controversial query: Although it may be more appealing to view the relationship we have with our dogs as being similar to the “naturally structured” model of a wolf pack, would it be more appropriate to view our inter-species dynamic more along the lines of the “captive” model?  Or perhaps somewhere along the continuum between the two?  Let me know what you think.

The word alpha applied to wolves has had a long history. For many years books and articles about wolves have mentioned the alpha male and alpha female or the alpha pair. In much popular writing the term is still in use today. However, keen observers may have noticed that during the past few years the trend has begun to wane. For example, 19 prominent wolf biologists from both Europe and North America never mentioned the term alpha in a long article on breeding pairs of wolves. The article, titled “The Effects of Breeder Loss on Wolves,” was published in a 2008 issue of the Journal of Wildlife Management. In the 448-page, 2003 book Wolves: Behavior, Ecology, and Conservation, edited by Luigi Boitani and myself and written by 23 authors, alpha is mentioned in only six places and then only to explain why the term is outdated. What gives?

This change in terminology reflects an important shift in our thinking about wolf social behavior. Rather than viewing a wolf pack as a group of animals organized with a “top dog” that fought its way to the top, or a male-female pair of such aggressive wolves, science has come to understand that most wolf packs are merely family groups formed exactly the same way as human families are formed. That is, maturing male and female wolves from different packs disperse, travel around until they find each other and an area vacant of other wolves but with adequate prey, court, mate, and produce their own litter of pups. Sometimes this process involves merely a maturing male courting a maturing female in a neighboring pack and then the pair settling down in a territory next to one of the original packs. In more saturated populations, this may mean wolves moving many miles to the very edge of wolf range and finding mates there that have similarly dispersed. This is the process that helps a growing wolf population expand its range. A good example is the ever-increasing wolf population in Wisconsin. There, not only is the main population in the northern part of the state continuing to fill the north with more and more pack territories, but wolves have managed to form a separate population in the central part of the state through this dispersal and proliferation of packs. Currently about 18 packs live in central Wisconsin.

But now back to the family. As the original, new pairing wolves raise their pups, they feed and care for them just like any other animals care for their young. As the pups grow and develop, their parents naturally guide their activities, and the pups naturally follow. During fall when the pups begin to accompany their parents away from the den or rendezvous site and circulate nomadically around the territory, the pups follow the adults and learn their way around. The parents then automatically fall into the leadership role in the pack as they guide the pups throughout their territory. This leadership role, however, does not involve anyone fighting to the top of the group, because just like in a human family, the youngsters naturally follow their parents’ lead.

Certainly as the pups further develop, they begin to gain some independence, and individuals might temporarily stray from the group, exploring this and that along the pack’s travels. However, the parents continue to guide the group as they hunt prey, scent-mark the territory, fend off scavengers from their kills, or protect the group from neighboring wolf packs they might encounter. As the pups continue to develop and reach 1 year of age, their parents produce a second litter of pups, which become the younger siblings of the first litter. Again, the parents continue to guide and lead the new litter along with the older litter and remain the pack’s leaders. The yearlings naturally dominate the new pups just as older brothers and sisters in a human family might guide the younger siblings, but still there is no general battle to try to gain pack leadership; that just naturally stays with the original parents. Some of the older siblings will disperse between the ages of 1and 2 in some populations, and in others they may remain with the pack through about 3 years of age. However, eventually almost all of them will disperse, try to find mates, and start their own packs. Given this natural history of wolf packs, there is no more reason to refer to the parent wolves as alphas than there would be to refer to the parents of a human family as the ”alpha” pair. Thus we now refer to these animals as the male breeder and female breeder and as the breeding pair or simply the parents.

So how did science get so far off track for so long and refer to the parent wolves as alphas? The answer is an interesting story that nicely illustrates how science progresses. Several decades ago, before there were many studies of wolves under natural conditions, scientists interested in animal social behavior thought the wolf pack was a random assemblage of wolves that came together as winter approached in order to better hunt their large prey. Thus to study wolves in the only way they knew how, these folks gathered individual wolves from various zoos and placed them together in their own captive colony.

When one puts a random group of any species together artificially, these animals will naturally compete with each other and eventually form a type of dominance hierarchy. This is like the classical pecking order originally described in chickens. In such cases, it is appropriate to refer to the top-ranking individuals as alphas, implying that they competed and fought to gain their position. And so too it was with wolves when placed together artificially. Thus, the main behaviorist who studied wolves in captivity, Rudolph Schenkel, published a famous monograph describing how wolves interact with each other in such a group, asserting then that there is a top-ranking male and a top-ranking female in packs and referring to them as the alphas. This classical monograph was the main piece of literature on wolf social behavior available when I crafted my book The Wolf: Ecology and Behavior of an Endangered Species in the late 1960s.

This book was a synthesis of available wolf information at the time, so I included much reference to Schenkel’s study. The book was timely because no other synthesis about the wolf had been written since 1944, so The Wolf sold well. It was originally published in 1970 and republished in paperback in 1981 and is still in print. Over 120,000 copies are now in circulation. Most other general wolf books have relied considerably on The Wolf for information, thus spreading the misinformation about alpha wolves far and wide.

Finally in the late 1990s, after I had lived with a wild wolf pack on Ellesmere Island near the North Pole for many summers witnessing first-hand the interactions among parent wolves and their offspring, I decided to correct this misinformation. By then, however, both the lay public and most biologists had fully adopted the alpha concept and terminology. It seemed no one could speak about a wolf pack without mentioning the alphas. Many people would ask me what made an alpha wolf an alpha and what kind of fighting and competition did it take to gain that position. Thus, in 1999 I published the article “Alpha Status, Dominance, and Division of Labor in Wolf Packs” in the Canadian Journal of Zoologyformally correcting the misinformation in the scientific literature. I followed that up in 2000 with the article “Leadership in Wolf, Canis lupus, Packs” in the Canadian Field Naturalist, further elaborating on the role of the parent wolves in the pack’s social order.

However, it has been said that it generally takes about 20 years for new science to fully seep down to general acceptance, including even new medical breakthroughs. Such seems to be proving true with the alpha-wolf concept. Several of my wolf biologist colleagues have accepted the update, but others suddenly correct themselves in the middle of their conversations with me; still others seem totally oblivious to the whole issue. It is heartening indeed to see newly published papers such as the one I cited above in the introduction to this article that have adopted the proper terminology.

The issue is not merely one of semantics or political correctness. It is one of biological correctness such that the term we use for breeding wolves accurately captures the biological and social role of the animals rather than perpetuate a faulty view. One place where this issue becomes particularly confusing is Yellowstone National Park, where great numbers of the public spend much time observing wolves right along with wolf biologists and naturalists. Because the Yellowstone wolf population was newly restored and enjoys a great surplus of prey (6,000 to 12,000 elk, 4,000 bison, and hundreds of deer, pronghorn, bighorn sheep, moose and other prey), the pack structure of its population is more complex than in most wolf populations. There, young wolves disperse at a later age, when 2 to 3 years old instead of 1 to 2, thus making packs larger and containing more mature individuals than most packs do elsewhere. In these packs where both the mother and some of her daughters mature, all sometimes get bred during the same year, the daughters usually by outside males.

When more than one female breeds in a pack, the females may become more competitive, so it is probably appropriate to refer to the original matriarch as the alpha female and to her daughters as “betas.” The Yellowstone observers commonly use this phraseology, but too often it becomes loosely applied to all the breeding wolves, even in packs where there are only single breeders. While it is not incorrect to use alpha when applied to packs of multiple breeders, it would be possible and even desirable to use less loaded terminology. For example, the top-ranking female could be called the dominant female or the matriarch, and her breeding daughters, the subordinates. Or individually if the females actually show a dominance order, the second- and third-ranking individuals could be called simply that. This approach would further reform wolf terminology and add to both science’s and the public’s more accurate perception of the wolf.

Hopefully it will take fewer than 20 years for the media and the public to fully adopt the correct terminology and thus to once and for all end the outmoded view of the wolf pack as an aggressive assortment of wolves consistently competing with each other to take over the pack.

L. David Mech is a senior research scientist for the U.S. Geological Survey and founder and vice chair of the International Wolf Center. He has studied wolves for 50 years and published several books and many articles about them.

The pancreas is the organ that produces insulin as well as enzymes required for food digestion. Overindulgence in rich or fatty foods can cause inflammation of the pancreas, known as pancreatitis. If pancreatitis becomes long-lasting or particularly severe, the functions of the pancreas can become compromised or may even shut down. This can result in diabetes and the need for insulin shots for the rest of your dog’s life. It can also result in an insufficiency of digestive enzymes, which would require enzyme replacement therapy for the remainder of your dog’s life.

Common symptoms of pancreatitis include vomiting and abdominal pain as well as decreased appetite and activity levels. The most straight-forward way to definitively diagnose pancreatitis is by performing a pancreatic biopsy, which is an invasive and risky procedure. Diagnosing pancreatitis using non-invasive methods takes time, and is more difficult due to false-negative and false-positive results that can occur when running multiple tests, as well as a possibly unknown dietary or overall health history if your dog is a rescue.

There is no cure for pancreatitis; the inflammation must resolve on its own. This involves a hospital stay to monitor the possibilities of kidney failure, bleeding disorders, respiratory distress, and heart rhythm abnormalities. A blood test and/or an ultrasound must be performed to confirm that the inflammation has finally calmed down.

If your dog recovers without any complications, long-term treatment typically involves feeding a low-fat or fat-free diet. How can you prevent pancreatitis from developing in the first place? Obviously, not feeding holiday leftovers to your dog altogether is the best way to avoid developing pancreatitis. If you’re determined to share bits of your holiday meals with your dog, however, don’t feed her side dishes laden with butter and other fats! Sharing a small morsel of turkey or some other lower-fat meat will make your dog just as happy as feeding her a whole handful. It’s the thought that counts.

Honey

Please check out the latest addition to my links of favorite dog blogs!  Pamela of “Something Wagging This Way Comes” has a wonderful ability for connecting the lessons we learn from our dogs with ways we could use those lessons to enhance our own lives.  Take a look…you’ll be glad you did!  And check back in periodically as I highlight posts about Pamela and her dog, Honey, that I find particularly poignant.

http://www.somethingwagging.com/

Halloween Safety Tips for Pets

Keep your pets indoors – sadly, animals can be the target of pranks on Halloween (especially black cats), so for their safety (and sanity), bring them inside.

Keep your pet safely away from the front door – you don’t want him to dart out there unintentionally!  One reader recommends using a baby gate at the front door…keeps the dogs in and the goblins out!  If your pet is particularly nervous, however, keeping him or her in a room away from the scary action (ideally with a calm member of the family) would undoubtedly be appreciated by your four-legged friend.

Just in case your dog does escape the safety of your home, make sure she has an ID tag on and is micro-chipped.  If she’s not yet micro-chipped, now’s the perfect time, right before the holidays with people coming and going!

Candles, jack-o’-lanterns and other shiny things – make sure that candles are well out of reach of wagging tails and curious paws.  This could save both a trip to the emergency vet and an unpleasant visit from your local fire department!

Do a Candy-Sweep of the yard before letting your dog outside – you will often find stray candy and wrappers that can be very enticing to your pets.  Not only can chocolate and raisins be harmful to dogs, the artificial sweeteners found in gum and many sugarless candies, such as xylitol, are also toxic to dogs.

Pumpkins- be aware that there’s a difference between the canned (cooked and pureed) ”pie” pumpkin many people feed their dogs and raw, decorative pumpkins.  In addition, many decorative pumpkins are also coated with materials that can be toxic to your pet, such as glue and shellac.  And don’t let your dogs eat the seeds of pumpkins, either!

                 Have a Happy and Safe Halloween,                                                                from the Dog Listener of Southern California!