dna testing of shelter dogs to find dangerous breeds

When people ask me what breed Penny is, I just say she's a mutt. I've had lots of fun wondering what genetic heritage she has and I was mildly interested, as I blogged on 7 October, to discover that it is possible to test dogs' genetic heritage and work out what breeds are in their ancestry.

However, I have just read an opinion piece in seattle pi.com about the possibility of insurance companies demanding that household insurance policies specify the genetic heritage of dogs living in the home.It seems like science fiction, but who, twenty years ago, would have foreseen the technologies that we take for granted today?

The writer, Dee Carlson, suggests that it could be required as part of home insurance for you to analyse the breed of a shelter dog before you take it into your home.

On reading the 'comments' section of the article, I found that one person accuses Dee Carlson of having a hidden agenda because she breeds akitas. I did a Google search on her and found an article she has written for akita owners about the dangers of letting these dogs interact with children or other dogs. I guess if you follow the recommendations set out by ARMAC (Akita Rescue Mid-Atlantic) you can be sure your dog does not get into trouble, but it seemed to me you would have to have a special love of this breed to keep one.

It was the list at the bottom of the akita rescue site that astonished me. It is a list of the breeds that have been declared 'dangerous' in different parts of the US. There are seventy-five breeds! Amongst them are labrador retrievers and airedales!

I was so taken aback by this huge list that I searched for more information and came across a book called Fatal Dog Attacks. The write-up of the book says, in part:

There seems to be an ever growing expectation of a "behaviorally homogenized" dog - "Benji" in the shape of a Rottweiler. Breeds of dogs with greater protection instincts or an elevated prey-drive are often unfairly viewed as "aggressive or dangerous". No breed of dog is inherently vicious, as all breeds of dogs were created and are maintained exclusively to serve and co-exist with humans. The problem exists not within the breed of dog, but rather within the owners that fail to control, supervise, maintain and properly train the breed of dog they choose to keep.

Any dog, regardless of breed, is only as dangerous as his/her owner allows it to be.

The Kennel Club in the UK also discusses the issue in a page titled The Kennel Club Proposes Alternative To Dangerous Dog Amnesties Here's a quote from that document:

Research shows that this is influenced most by the dog’s owner, the environment it lives in and the training it is given. In the wrong hands, any breed of dog can be dangerous - the number of dog attacks by breeds other than those on the dangerous dogs list illustrates this. Similarly, any dog that has been trained by its owner appropriately and sufficiently should not be outlawed or destroyed based on its breed alone.

dog personalities rated by their owners

Johann the Dog, whose prolific blog I visit regularly (because it covers such a wide range of topics - and because Johann is so gorgeous-looking) has an item about an online study in which owners assess the personality traits of their pets.

I followed the link to Quirkology and completed the survey, which is very simple and takes about a minute. It is an ongoing study and you can arrange to follow the results. Johann also has a link to the Telegraph, a UK newpaper that has a report on the Quirkology study. People report that the longer they live with their pet, the more the pet seems to resemble them. Well, I guess it stands to reason that it pleases us to think our pets are like us. And I guess when humans see themselves in their pet the more likely they are to continue the relationship. No one's asked the pets what they make of it all, of course.

I must say, I'll be going back to Quirkology to check out the other strange things they have investigated. One experiment asked people to write in and say whether they thought their career had been affected by whether their surname began with a letter in the first part of the alphabet or one at the end of the alphabet. The results were interesting... Read about it for yourself and have a think before you name your next puppy. After all, if it works for people maybe it's an issue for dogs. :-)

free dog agility equipment reposted

The post I wrote on Sunday 11th November about our home-made agility equipment lost all its pictures and I haven't been able to figure out why, so I've reposted it and the pictures are there now. It's still pretty weird, as the little boxes for the original pictures are dotted around and there are strange spaces between the blocks of text. But after days of trying to fix the problem I'm only too glad to see the pictures at all! It's down the list a bit now, as it is still dated 11 November.

a dog sees her first snake

Penny noticed her first snake the day before yesterday. We were walking along the creek and when we came to the spot where I saw a snake last May I thought she should go on lead because I assumed the snake lives in that area. Sure enough, as we walked along the narrow path, Penny stopped to look at something in the undergrowth. I looked too and there it was, sliding gracefully towards the water. I thought its belly was light green but when I visited a site about tiger snakes I read that the belly is usually pale yellow, white or grey.

I called Penny's attention back to myself and was pleasantly surprised that she showed no interest in investigating further.

Coming towards us were a woman and a girl with a black labrador and I called to them that they might like to put the dog on leash as there was a snake living in this spot and we had just seen it. Her response put things in perspective. 'Oh, yes,' she said. 'That's a good precaution. After all, we are walking through his home.'

Jabari's mum pointed out to me that snakes are not likely to bite unless provoked and that they need to protect themselves if people (or dogs) come close, because their bodily structure is so delicate that we can fatally injure them even if we mean no harm.

Raw food or cooked food for dogs?

Penny gets most of her diet through raw food and, because we prepare her food in our kitchen, I prefer to use human-grade ingredients. However, I'm a great believer in compromise, so we do feed a variety of cooked foods as well, including the best of the pre-packaged pet foods.

In the debate about raw versus cooked pet foods people seem to dig in to a position and see no truth in the arguments of the opposite faction, so it was a pleasant surprise to see a link to a measured discussion of the topic - and by a vet - at ePetsDirect Insider.

28 things about dogs - some of which I already knew

Found an interesting list of 28 Dog Facts That Might Surprise You

Here are a few:
Number 4 - dogs prefer playing 'keepings-off' rather than 'fetch'. No surprises there for me! Penny LOVES that.

Number 11 did surprise me - it says that body harnesses encourage dogs to pull.

Number 23. Some dogs lick their paws and then rub their paws on their head to clean themselves, much like a cat! Yess!! I've seen Penny doing this and I thought I was imagining things...

dog finds mammoth bone

Noticed an amusing story about a small dog who found an enormous bone on the beach in Britain. I'd have thought that a bone that is about two million years old wouldn't have any bone-smell about it. I wonder if the dog thought it looked like a bone, or if it did actually have a teensy tiny aroma? Seems impossible, though...

In part, the article, which was in the Daily Mail, says:

"Remains like this are quite common in the area, but it was a wonderful achievement for a little dog to find it. She may have thought it looked quite appetising and there may well be a very small percentage of amino acids still left in it.

"Chewing on the bone might help to clean her teeth, but she would not be able to extract any goodness or nutrition from it.

"It would certainly have been very tasty a couple of million years ago, when it would have had bits of fat attached to it - but it is now heavily mineralised with iron oxide."