Senior Dog Stretches

Today, my brother Chubbs turned 10. I'm 12. These ages are definitely considered senior dogs. In fact, when your dog is 7 or 8, depending on the breed, it is probably considered a senior. This comes with problems that you are familiar with: disorientation, deafness, blindness, arthritis. Chubbs and I both suffer from some arthritis in our hips/lower back.

This week, my mom read an article about stretches for senior dogs, and boy am I glad she did! I don't really like to be touched. I can take some pets and all that, but I'm not super cuddley, and I hate being handled. But I loved these stretches.

The very best one was the backrub. She read to rub your dog in between the hip bones in a circular motion. She did it with a flat palm, but you can also rub down the spine with fingers on either side of the spine. Not only does this increase mobility, but it also increases spinal fluid flow, reduces anxiety and helps balance. Both Chubbs and I loved this one. We'll stand there and let this happen for several minutes.

The other stretches are rear and front leg stretches. For the rear legs, you stretch slowly straight back. For front legs, you stretch slowly straight forward, cradling the leg in your hands. These assist with freedom of movement as well as decreased arthritis pain, improved breathing capacity and increased blood flow. If your dog lies on his back, you can also stretch the front legs out slightly to open up the chest and rub the stomach i the circular motion.

There are lots of massage techniques for your dogs, but we can tell you that these are very popular around here! So spend some time rubbing your senior dog. He/she'll be very grateful! Love, Fenway

Lessons from Scott and Fuller

Now that I'm pretty much trained, my mom's training time with me just includes me helping to train other dogs, so she teaches me a lot about her training methods. So I thought I'd take time from tricking Bammie into giving me his bones and write a little note about some lessons she's learned from reading the classic dog study down by Scott and Fuller. They studied five different breeds of purebred dogs from birth and looked at lots of different traits and reactions to stimuli. Here are some interesting things we learned staying up late reading last night:

• When people seek playmates for their dogs, they often look for dogs who are similar: same age, size or breed. Scott and Fuller found that dogs are actually more likely to fight with dogs that are similar to them. They were less likely to fight with a different breed or different sex that those that were similar. We recently witnessed this in our own house with Bammie's biological sister came to stay with us for a few days. They played well together at times but often got snippy with one another. Because they had similar personalities, this could heat up quickly if Mom and Dad weren't paying attention. However, with our new dog, Winnie, she and Bammie play very well today. They are different breeds so have different play styles that actually complement each other well. So when looking for playmates, try to mix it up a little, not just for socialization but because it actually might be better for your dog!
• As we are always thinking about resource guarding in this house, teaching Bammie to be nice to the rest of us, we found some of Scott and Fuller's observations interesting. For example, they used a bone to assess hierarchies, which was very effective for some breeds, including Basenjis. However, this was not a reliable indicator in Shelties, which are bred to have a lower food drive. That doesn't mean they didn't have a hierarchy, but the hierarchy didn't become obvious until space was involved. The Shelties all guarded space instead of food! This is just a reminder to us that things that we think should be important to the dog aren't always important. And, in fact, you might not be able to tell what your dog is guarding. That doesn't mean it's "out of the blue." 
• The funniest resource guarding story was a lower-ranking dog that would wait until the higher ranking dog was distracted. He would then run over and tip over the bowl. When the food was all over the ground, the dominant dog wouldn't guard, so he could eat. This is a friendly reminder that teaching your dog not to eat off your plate does NOT teach him not to eat food that you have spilled. Dogs don't generalize. Now, you have another thing to train. :)
• The final interesting observation was that in litters of puppies, you often notice that there are dogs that approach and dogs that hang back. Those dogs that hang back are often considered to be shy or less affectionate toward people. However, when the fast approachers were removed, these "shy" dogs actually approached people quickly and LOVED them. They just weren't as dominant, which may actually make them better pets. So when you are picking out dogs, be sure to isolate the dog you want and see what happens. The dog may be great, just not brave enough to challenge the dominant dog.

We hope this observations were as interesting to you as they were to us. Happy training! Love, Chubbs