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muttsmischiefacademysblog · 4 months

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We're not anti- crate

We're not anti-crate, we're pro dog welfare - if there's space for a crate there's space for a Doggy Enrichment Land! - Tasha Attwood (Do No Harm Dog Training and Behaviour Handbook, Linda Michaels MA pgs. 262-270.

Using a crate inappropriately or excessively can result in both mental and physical harm to a dog.

Inappropriate use includes keeping a dog in a crate that is too small, dirty, or uncomfortable, or using it for punishment or confinement. For example, if a dog is crated for extended periods, they can develop anxiety, boredom, and frustration, which may lead to destructive behaviour or even aggression. Additionally, if a crate is too small, the dog may not be able to stretch out, turn around, or stand up properly, leading to physical discomfort and health problems.

Excessive use of a crate can also affect your dog's welfare. A dog that spends the majority of its time in a crate may become socially isolated, emotionally withdrawn, and prone to depression. This can lead to further problems, including aggression, destructive behaviour, and reduced life expectancy.

It is important to use a crate for training and safety purposes, but it should never be used as a means of punishment or to replace human interaction. A well-trained and socialised dog that receives regular exercise and attention will not need to spend extended periods in a crate. When using a crate, it should be large enough for the dog to move around comfortably, contain soft and comfortable bedding, provide access to fresh water, have a fan in the hot months, be free from draughts in winter and allow for plenty of human interaction and playtime. With proper use, a crate can be a comfortable space for your dog to rest and a valuable tool for training and travel.

Did you know the minimum size requirement for the housing of a mouse is 250cm2 and 500cm2 for two mice? (1) My single baby mouse has 3500cm2 floor space.

Now when we consider this for a moment, consider how much larger a dog is than a mouse. The average mouse is 6.3 - 10. 2 cm in length and have a height of 3 - 5 cm. A Chihuahua for example is roughly 12.7 cm - 20.32 cm in height and 24.13 cm to 38.1 cm in length. So there's already a vast comparison between their sizes.

The small dog crate floor space is 2787.091 square centimetres and is barely double the height of my mouse housing, this means my single baby mouse has more square footage of floor space than a Chihuahua or any other small breed of dog confined to a dog crate!

This means my baby mouse has 712.909 cm2 more floor space than a small dog crate.

A rabbit must have the minimum floor space of 6m2, housing of a width of 2m and length of 3m. With an internal shelter that always has the door open. A rabbit has 60,000 sq cm of floor space whilst a dog still has only 2787.091 sq cm. That means a rabbit has 57, 212.909 sq cm more than a small dog.

I don't know about you, but this really made me pause. My housing for my baby mouse is bigger than a small dog crate.

Hopefully this example has now grabbed your interest. Now we can delve into why crates can be misused, abused and can negatively impact dog welfare and harm dog welfare and their emotions.

In the UK we have the Animal Welfare Act 2006 which states the five freedoms that animals have:

Freedom from hunger and thirst.

Freedom from discomfort

Freedom from pain, injury or disease

Freedom to express normal behaviour

Freedom from fear and distress

The crate must be big enough for them to stand, turn around and stretch out.

The temperature of the environment for a dog sleeping and confined to a crate must be between 10°C and 26°C. Free from humidity and drafts, well ventilated and away from heat sources.

They must not be left alone for more than 3 hours, they must have access to water, enrichment items, food and access to toileting.

How terribly sad, that in a country where animal welfare has a law that crates must only be big enough for this.

Let's look at the RSPCA charity standards in the UK.

Many of us don't support zoos, sea worlds and other exploitative means of animal containment. Many people probably sit their shaking their head at the Animal right exploitation videos whilst their dog is sat in a crate.

It's important to understand not only are crates far too small, but also how many hours a dog is subject to spending in a crate per day. Then consider all of these hours each day over their short life span.

References

Greenfield , R. (2022) Minimum requirements for the Ethical Housing Of Mice, Rachie’s Retirement Home. Available at: https://rachiesratirementhome.com/ethicalmousehousing

Image description: A four window grey comic panel background. The title reads: Let's talk crates.

The first image is of a crate with a sad cream and grey Wolf Dog inside. The carpet is green, the wallpaper is green with different size and shade circles. There is a wooden skirting board. The white text box reads: crates are one of the most abused tools.

The next window is of a crate with the crate door bent and a howling cream and grey Wolf Dog inside trying to get out. The carpet is green, the wallpaper is green with different size and shade circles. There is a wooden skirting board. The white text box reads: Dogs shouldn't get to this state of anxiety and fear.

The third window is of a crate with a sleeping cream and grey Wolf Dog inside but no door. The carpet is green, the wallpaper is green with different size and shade circles. There is a wooden skirting board. The white text box reads: bringing your dog to this emotional state takes time and dedication.

The fourth window is of an empty crate. The Wolfdog is at the side of the handler who is in an orange wheelchair. The dog has a relaxed happy look on their face. There is cheese and a trail of cheese to the crate. The carpet is green, the wallpaper is green with different size and shade circles. There is a wooden skirting board. The white text box reads: the first step is to commit to a plan.

The final text under all of the windows reads: We all have a duty of care to ensure we don't add to the problem by supporting videos which try to make a dog's distress look humourous

#dogs #dogtraining #dogsofinstagram #dogsofinsta #dogsoftiktok #dogstagram #dogtrainerlife #dogtrainers #crate #cratetraining #holistic dog parenting #holistic dog training

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dreadfutures · 4 months

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Loving LUMO: 2018 to Present :)

Just up in my feelings about my dog today. He's doing great! I love my dog! I just wanna talk about him. A lot. :) Like this is looooong.

I got my dog at the end of my senior year of undergrad, after I knew I got into a PhD program. I knew I couldn't make it through alone so I wanted a dog.

When I was young, I wanted a wolf! I wanted big fluffy scary looking dogs. Then I wanted a pretty, fluffy, exotic dog. But as I grew older and actually MET dogs (I didn't have a lot of them in my life before), I realized that those weren't the dog breeds for me. I wanted a dog that fit my lifestyle, but also a dog that NEEDED a home, and love. And I wanted to make an impact, rescuing a breed that was often found in overflowing shelters in the US.

Why coonhounds? **mentions of animal abuse, skip to the next section

In California, shelters are primarily full of huskies, chihuahuas, german shepherds, and pitbulls. Since I didn't know where I was going to live or what the ordinances would be, I reluctantly decided I couldn't get a pitty. Many of the chihuahuas, huskues, and GSDs in shelters have serious health problems, probably coming from puppy mills and unethical breeding situations. I knew that any dog could develop an expensive health condition (foreshadowing) but I wanted to find a breed where that was less likely to happen.

I had read that the less "pretty" working dogs are usually better bred. They're smart, learn quickly, and (many hunting dogs) are content with long lazy seasons on the couch. I also learned that hunting dogs are abused and abandoned after hunting season, especially when people get "hunting breeds" and assume all the complex training of hunting is instinctive--it's not, it must be trained. But these "Defective"/"Failed" hunting dogs are let go to freeze and starve, and shelters can't take all of them. Someone called them the chihuahua of the south lol.

“It is sad when they treat these dogs as ‘tools’ they can throw away, instead of treating them like family members.”

Whether dumped or lost, these hunting dogs end up in local shelters, if they’re lucky. Many times they end up shot, hit by cars, or die of starvation or disease.

Believe me I read up on all the downsides of adopting a rescue vs. getting a purebred puppy from a breeder. I read up on all the downsides of hunting breeds. And even so I knew this was probably going to be a good fit.

I also found Maddie on instagram, who is a gorgeous redtick coonhound and possibly the most well-trained dog in the world. I was convinced and turned to a national Coonhound Rescue that takes coonhounds from the south and moves them across the country to be loved in places where they're not so common.

Finding Lu

I originally did want a female redtick that looked like Maddie, so I put in an application for one. The rescue called me and said they had another dog in mind for me and my lifestyle, "But he has a lot of skin! That means he drools A LOT."

His name was Dallas.

Dallas is a handsome 2 year old American English Coonhound being fostered in [city]. He enjoys the simple life and loves nothing more than a warm, comfy place to sleep. He is housetrained, cratetrained and leashtrained; also good in the car. He would do well in a home with slightly older children and would make an excellent companion. This boy wants a loving and consistent family or person to show him how great his life can be. He weighs about 55 lbs and also does well with cats and other dogs.

This is the photo I was sent. :) I fell in love. This was going to be my dog! MY DOG. My first dog. Mine.

I was told he had been found on the streets, emaciated and sick, and that he had become an absolute counter surfer and couch potato in his foster home. And he could climb 10 ft fences if he saw a cat lol. They said he had "anxiety," but as I learned it was severe, severe PTSD from abuse.

I was originally going to name him Mo. For "Mopey." He had the saddest brown eyes and emo eyeliner, it seemed to fit. But "Mo" sounds a lot like "No!" and I soon realized they weren't kidding about hounds being independent and strong-willed. I still wanted "Mo" to be part of his name, but decided on LUMO as a chemistry reference since it was very relevant to my subfield I was going into. So he became "Lu."

The very first day I took him home, he had explosive diarrhea all over the car and there were no dog bathing places taking walk ins, so I had to haul his 35 pounds of skin and bones into the bath. Intense bonding experience to be sure.

He was so, so skinny. You can see in the photos how knobby his tail is, and how you can count his spine, and how all his ribs and his hips stick out. People would come up to me at restaurants and YELL at me "don't you FEED YOUR DOG?????? how can you be so cruel?" as if there wasn't a possibility that I was rescuing an emaciated and abused dog?

I thought he was skinny because of his past on the streets, and I think that was part of it for sure. But what I learned was that he wasn't just having digestive issues because he was "adjusting to his kibble" -- he's actually allergic to chicken, and he was on a chicken diet.

He was losing a lot of weight from the diarrhea, and he was SO itchy, and he had constant infections in those big, soft ears. We did a lot of elimination to figure out his allergies and he's actually allergic to a lot of things, but chicken is by far the worst.

As soon as I switched him to salmon, he started gaining weight really well, shooting up to a healthy 50 pounds. He also stopped getting constant ear infections!

The trauma

So the thing about Lu is that he isn't just "anxious." Anxious doesn't describe him:

He was terrified of blond men with sunglasses. Like just wanted to melt into the ground and phase through walls levels of terrified. My best friend and room mate was a blond man who wore sunglasses all the time. Fortunately he had grown up on an Estate with a whole bunch of working dogs and was so good at helping me get him over his fear. He was afraid of strangers in general, but none as much as blond and bald guys.

He was GREAT on leash from the start! But randomly, he would just...stop. Freeze, plant his feet, stare glassy-eyed into the distance at nothing at all. Nothing in particular triggered it. Not sounds, not anything I could identify in common. Just sometimes...he'd just freeze and shut down. I had to carry him sometimes as far as a football field to get home. Often it was right in the middle of the street. :( After ten or so minutes of staring, he would come-to, and he would sit down and look around all disoriented.

Also I had been warned about how some dogs "pull" on leash. It turns out that most people are talking about pulling...ahead. And training a dog who pulls ahead is WAY different than a dog who tries to pull backwards. Lu was so skinny that he could slip out of his harness, no matter what size of his harness. I quickly learned there was no tying him off and going into restaurants by myself, because he could EASILY chew through any leash in a few seconds, and he could slip right out of his harness and just DIP. But even on walks, during his PTSD flashback moments, he could pull back so hard his arms would come up by his head and he'd just noodle out of his harness.

He was terrified of stairs. Going up and down. My bedroom was on the second floor. The beach was down a steep flight of stairs.

He had no idea how to play with other dogs at all.

He was scared of grass. It was as if he had never stepped on grass before and thought it was lava. I'm suspicious that he might have been trapped in a concrete outdoor dog run or kennel for most of his young life.

He had persistent UTIs... and he counter surfed and ate a whole stick of butter, and went into acute pancreatic failure.

He had some sort of paw trauma. it was impossible to touch his paws, let alone clip his nails. No matter how skinny and weak he was, it took more than 5 people to hold him down long enough to clip his nails. He was terrible at the groomers. Dremels weren't any betters.

Pretty early on I had to settle for "progress" over "perfect."

We took baby steps together. From May to August, he became so much more outgoing. He fell in love with my two tall blond sunglasses guy friends. He started learning to get excited about toys. And we developed a routine so he wouldn't destroy my room when I left him alone.

I had to respect that he definitely, 100%, always knew what I wanted him to do when I gave him commands. And when he refused and said "No," there was no food, no toy, no incentive I could give him to get him to do it. At least not that time.

When I first moved to grad school that September, I had a lot of people in my cohort come over to my apartment. Lu hid under my bed the whole time and wouldn't take any treats to coax him out. We lay a whole pack of turkey in front of him and he wouldn't come out. :(

But within a few months, he had a growing circle of human friends that he was comfortable with. And honestly even by October of that year, if a new stranger came to the apartment, all they had to do was get up on the couch and offer him a Merrick toothbrush treat and he'd be in their lap.

Here he is with his companion cube in early 2019. He loved that suede couch lol.

Health issues :(

So because he ate a whole stick of butter and went into acute pancreatitis, we started monitoring his blood levels. They got better after treatment--but never back to "normal." They remained at the "hmm this looks like renal failure, Cirrhosis, or hepatopathy" levels, which was weird, because he was constantly getting happier and acting healthier every day!!

Eventually a vet suggested we see an internal medicine specialist. Turns out.... Lu's liver is like. Tiny. Like puppy sized. He has had this disease since he was a baby, which is why he's never known he was sick lol.

After about 9k of imaging and stains and biopsies, we learned:

He has copper hepatopathy, which today my new vet's jaw dropped as a like "WOW we HEARD about this in vet school but I've NEVER actually seen it! It's so rare!"

His liver is tiny, full of fibrosis, cirrhotic, tons of remodeling (in the bad way). His liver is ORANGE from how much copper is in it. The damage is completely irreversible. I have a copy of the biopsy & lab results and I can just imagine the scientist at the research institute they sent the samples off to, their voice as they wrote this report. It screams "HOW IS THIS DOG ALIVE?"

I just find it so funny, as another analytical scientist.

The other funny thing is that they prescribed him chelation therapy to help him get better (it didn't help and he doesn't get worse without it, so we have since stopped that; it was expensive). My PhD thesis is in metal chelation lolololol of Ni, Co, Cu. lololol

So that was an expensive process. He has to have a prescription low-copper diet, which has stopped most of his symptoms of this disease, and we have to do expensive blood tests to make sure he doesn't get worse.

And then he became a sock eater.

He passed the first few. Then he got sick. With the vet's help, he was able to pass it without surgery. And then the next time, it was life or death.

The vet I went to was so unethical and immoral but it was my only fucking option. I wouldn't have my dog here if my best friend at the time hadn't been wealthy enough to give me the 13k I needed on the spot, in cash, to save my dog's life with surgery.

In the hospital, the fucking awful vets:

claimed to use dissolving stitches. I don't think they did; I still feel them! 4 years later!!!

let him get a skin infection all over his body that made his paws swell up and bleed, and his paw pads fall off and bleed. It was terrifying. And cost me more money of course. It was so evil. He still has scarring all over his legs from it where fur hasn't grown back :(

He has bad teeth but according to the vet "not the worst! :)"

He expresses his glands in his sleep sometimes. UGHHHH they don't tell you that about dogs lol.

He still is terrible for claws. It's been worse and worse lately, to the point where I worry about how long his nails are and whether it will be bad for his joints. But it's the only thing he's really ever been aggressive for. :( I really worry about him. I have trained him to scratch a board of sandpaper to file them down, but they get sharp that way too lol.

Progress, not perfect. He lets me give him paw massages and check his nails and manhandle him, but just. Not clippers or dremel. :( Not there yet.

Anyway, he has been super healthy for many years now. He's got lumps and bumps and skin tags. The vet thinks he's about 9 years old, and definitely a senior. ;_; <3

Things I Love about LUMO

His ears are, I'm not kidding, the softest material in the world. And so warm. He loves it when I stick my finger in his ear and tickle his brain. He loves an armpit scratch. His tail used to be like, stuck, in such a sad position and I never thought he'd wag his tail and now it waves high all the time.

They told me he would probably never be a dog who plays. But when I got him, within a few weeks, I found the puppy inside of him. He runs like a silly rocking horse, completely uncoordinated and flopsy. He'll do fetch. He loves surgically disemboweling stuffed animals. He throws around his XTREME CHEW PLASTIC ANTLER and plays fetch with it with me.

He has several "spots" where I can get his leg thumping when I scratch him. He loves to be wrapped up in a burrito of blankets and sit in a sunbeam.

He leans on me and looks up at me with those big brown eyes and there's no fear or sadness in them anymore it's just sweetness and silliness.

He is so smart. He's attended a bunch of PhD level classes, and he's developed his own language. He's so smart. He knows how to tell me what he wants, he knows the rules and knows how to push them right up to the limit. He loves his sweaters. He will tell me what he wants by tapping on things with his paw. He knows that if I hold out my left hand it's to hold his paw and do a shake. If I hold out my right hand it means wait. He knows that the camera I have can see him and he'll knock it over so he can do mischief.

He loves his velvet chaise lounge. He loves his memory foam ultrasoft velvet bed. He loves his goose down comforter. He loves to sit on my pillow and fart. He basks in sunbeams and curls up in a tiny tiny little ball and he shrimps and sucks on his toes. He's basically a cat. He doesn't really want to go on walks, he pulls me back inside as soon as he's done his business. Except for when we have company--he loves walking with a pack of people.

When he talks to me, like just having a conversation, he sounds like a seal. Like a tortured seal. Or like a crying baby. He's never really figured out how to be a dog or sound like a real dog but we understand each other that's what matters.

He absolutely takes advantage of this to complain when I am not giving him what he wants. He'll roll over on the ground like a drama queen and wail and cry like I'm abusing him and it's because I'm across the room holding a pork chop that's just for me.

Today in the car he was WAILING like a seal, which usually means "LET ME OUT I NEED TO POOP" but after 3 or 4 tries to walk him, he made it clear that what he ACTUALLY meant was "PEDAL TO THE METAL GIRLS LET'S GO WHY AREN'T WE MOVING WHY IS THERE NO WIND ON MY FACE OR FLAPPING IN MY EARS MOOOOOOOOOVE."

For a while he was 69 pounds (NICE) but he's back to 64 lol. He stays between 63-70 pretty much depending on how active he is.

Anyway I have been reminiscing a lot because I figured it was time to add him to the "happy endings" page on the rescue website and I was going down memory lane.

Looking at the photo I took on the day I brought him home, and a photo I took last month, you can see his white face is spreading.

The defined white bit on his nose that whispers between his eyes has now spread to both his eyebrows, and his cheeks are getting quite white. But his eyes are bright and his ears are perked up and he is safe and warm and loved and stinky and soft. He gets fresh treats all the time (he loooooves celery, and pears, and sometimes carrots and sweet potatoes. and tortilla chips. and salmon oil.). He loves his prescription kibble and our routine. He has lovely friends and lovely car rides and he is just the best dog I could have asked for in my life when I got him and every day.

I've had to be so patient and calm and kind even when I was scared and angry, with his stress and his ptsd and his destructiveness and messiness. All he deserves and needs is love and he knows what's wrong and what isn't, sometimes he just can't help himself, and we move on together. He made sure I had a reason to come home and not sleep in lab during my PhD. He made sure I had a reason to get out of bed during my PhD.

And now we're just living our best lives together. :)

#personal #loving lumo #dogs of tumblr #idk if that's a thing #rescue dog #coonhound

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