A reader asks: My dog’s eye is red and bloodshot. I know that she has seasonal allergies; is that all it is? How do I know whether it is something serious?
While itchy, red, and irritated eyes can definitely be a symptom of seasonal allergies in our dogs (as well as in ourselves!), the key that something more is going on is that only one eye is affected. This is a good reason to get it checked out by a vet.
Eyes are delicate — and very important — so don’t take chances here. It can be allergies, a cold, or a minor irritation, but it could be something much more serious.
In this case, the dog, Hannah, had scratched her cornea badly. The vet put in some drops that showed the scratch in vivid green. Hannah went home with eye drops. She was an amazingly cooperative patient (I’ve had otherwise sweet-tempered, you-can-do-anything-to-them dogs threaten to rip my arm off if I came near them with that eyedropper again). Medication seemed to help at first, but ultimately, Hannah needed surgery, but she’s recovering. It’s a good thing she’s nice about the eye drops, though, because she needs several types of drops and ointments during her long, uncomfortable recovery.
A scratched cornea is not the only thing that can cause a single red eye. The most common cause is an irritant — a piece of dirt, dust, or plant matter or a spray, such as a skunk’s spray or a household aerosol. But bleeding in the eye or clear discomfort (the dog is pawing at her eyes) can signal a serious health problem like glaucoma or a tumor. These are rare, but the only way to be sure is to get the eye examined.
“She’s such a mama’s girl,” Deni said of Cali the other day. “If we get too far ahead, she looks back and wants to stop and wait for you.”
“Nah,” I said. “She knows that I have her precious tennis ball, and she’s worried that she won’t have it when she gets to the park.”
I may be a bit too cynical, and I do know that Cali and I have a close bond, but … when it comes to morning play, I really am just the tennis-ball carrier and tennis-ball thrower.
We tested our competing theories the next morning. As Deni, Cali and Alberta set off at a brisk pace, leaving Jana and me plodding at 12-year-old-golden speed, Cali glanced back once, then marched off, tail wagging. A key difference from the previous morning: Deni was wearing the all-important black backpack with Cali’s filthy, spit-coated, utterly disgusting tennis ball — the only one that Cali wants to play with.
Soon they were out of sight. When I got to the park with Jana, I asked Deni what had happened.
“Well,” she said. “Cali did look back twice, but she did not want to stop or even slow down.”
In fact, Cali is my best balanced-life coach, nudging me at regular intervals to gently point out that it is time to take a break from this horrid computer, go outside, and play with her. And that darned tennis ball.
Cali knows what dogs have known for thousands of years and what has contributed significantly to the human-canine partnership: People and dogs play well together. Play makes all of our lives better. And playing with ours dogs makes our relationships with them better. According to a recent study by dog expert John Bradshaw, dogs who have frequent, positive play sessions with their owners (no scolding!) are more obedient and more engaged with their humans.
So, what are you waiting for? Get out there and throw that (disgusting) tennis ball!
Poor Ziggy. Summer in Kansas is a never-ending cycle of thunderstorms and frenetic lawn-mowing. To make matters worse, his neighbors seem to tag-team each other. No sooner does one mower stop its terrifying buzz than another starts up. When all the lawns are neatly groomed … the thunder clouds roll in.
Ziggy cannot click his heels together, murmur “there’s no place like home,” and wind up back in thundercloud-free Southern California, where he grew up. He wouldn’t even need to worry about lawnmowers there; lawns are practically illegal in California these days. There’s no place like home indeed.
So what’s a poor thunder- and mower-phobic dog to do?
Rescue Remedy did not live up to its name; hiding under the sofa failed to quell his fears, and even the trusty closet let him down, seeing as it has an external wall. His mom’s planning to turn his kennel into a man-cave in the hall, the only place without windows or outside walls, but meanwhile, well, it’s raining. Again. And rain means thunder. When the rain stops, the neighbors fire up their mowers. Again. The cycle continues.
In Ziggy’s case, the ThunderShirt™ does the trick. Donning his trusty gray garment, Ziggy, a.k.a. Thunderboy®, acquires the superpower he needs to survive the back-to-back threats of local lawnmowers and ubiquitous thunderstorms.
Ziggy’s hardly alone in his quandary. And thunder and lawnmowers are not the only anxiety triggers of summer. The suggestions here can help dogs deal with Fourth of July fireworks as well.
Not all dogs are lucky enough to gain superpowers by putting on a ThunderShirt. Other forms of wraps work for some anxious dogs — Jana favors hot pink elastic bandages, for example, when her nerves are on edge. Some dogs opt for a ThunderCap™, but Ziggy prefers to confront his fears with eyes wide open.
Some dogs just need a cuddle. Or a lot of cuddles. In the bed with you. Or on top of you. Others dogs are happier in their own secure fortresses — under or behind furniture or in a secure crate. Closed-sided crates or wire crates draped with towels or blankets work best. Pheromone sprays, collars, and plug-in diffusers work for some anxious dogs, while others can be distracted by music (or TV, for the couch potatoes) or games. A food toy (who doesn’t feel better with a nosh at hand — er, paw?), such as a stuffed Kong, inside the crate could work wonders for your pup’s nerves, if not his waistline.
A warning — dogs with extreme noise phobias might bolt during especially loud thunderstorms or fireworks. Make sure your dog is secured inside your home; a dog who escapes could cover a large distance trying to outrun his fear.
For many dogs, the issues is not the noise, it’s the air pressure and other changes they can feel when a thunderstorm is approaching. Some dogs’ anxiety can kick into high gear well before the first raindrops fall or thunder rumbles. If there’s no escape and no distracting him, medication might be necessary. In extreme cases, a Valium can pacify your perturbed pooch.
If even that fails? Dip into his Valium yourself … one little tablet (or a nice glass of Cabernet) and those anxieties will soon slide into the background.
Jet-setting working dogs, along with small traveling pets, have reason to rejoice! They are on their way to potty parity.
A recent trip took me through several large airports, and I noticed something new in Detroit: A service dog and traveling pet relief area insidethe secure area. Update: A new relief area was opened at O’Hare airport in October! From the pictures, it looks a lot like the Detroit one.
Now, according to the law, this should not be a novel find. Air carriers are required to ensure that all traveling service dogs, whether departing, arriving or connecting, have access to appropriate facilities. The relevant law, 14 CFR Part 382 (Nondiscrimination on the Basis of Disability in Air Travel) Subpart D, 382.51(a)(5) states: “In cooperation with the airport operator and in consultation with local service animal training organization(s), [air carriers] must provide animal relief areas for service animals that accompany passengers departing, connecting, or arriving at an airport on your flights.”
Sadly for all those dogs running between flights with their legs tightly crossed, if these facilities exist at all, they are most often outsidethe terminal — meaning that they are on the wrong side of security if you are transferring to a connecting flight. Solutions have included teaching dogs to use pee pads, then taking them into the family restrooms that are commonly found in airports to squat alongside their human partners; running them outside — then trekking back through security; or asking airline personnel for an escort to the tarmac, where many a service dog is too distracted by the unusual scents and sounds to, uh, deliver the goods. A tight connection can make either of the last two options impractical. The outdoor pet relief area might be at the very far end of a terminal — or even a few terminals away, making for a very long trek.
The situation is finally improving, though, with a few airports now providing potty facilities insidethe terminal.
Unacceptable!
The first one I discovered was in Seattle; I found it — and I am being very generous — rather disappointing. When I was there, a few years ago, it offered essentially a large litter box, some pee pads, a dirty concrete floor and a trash can. A dog I was traveling with turned up his nose and decided to hold on until we reached our destination where, he hoped, some grass — or even a patch of dirt — might be available.
Detroit’s offering elevates indoor canine commodes to a new level. I hadn’t been through the Detroit airport in a while, and the new facilities, in the center of the main Delta concourse, were quite a pleasant surprise.
First of all, the service dog relief area contains two stalls, each offering the dignified or shy dog a reasonable degree of privacy. A shared hand-washing area, presumably for the humans’ use, divides the stalls. Each stall offers a small fire-hydrant-shaped urinal (female dogs might find these distasteful, but we must all adjust to this dawning era of non-gendered relief facilities, mustn’t we?). The hydrant occupies the center of a smallish patch of fake, very green, grass. Bags and trash cans are also provided. The nicest touch, however, was the built-in sprinkler system. With the push of a button, cleanup is accomplished, leaving the stall fresh and green for the next working dog in need of a restroom.
Let’s hope this becomes the new standard for powder rooms for peripatetic pooches.
I got a copy of Virginia Morell’s Animal Wise soon after it came out in paperback … then let it sit on my shelf for ages. I finally picked it up after hearing an NPR broadcast of a talk she gave in March 2015. She was wonderful! And so were her animal stories!
Animal Wise talks about many species of animals. She does save the best for last, though. The final chapter, on dogs and wolves, includes interviews with and visits to the labs of nearly all of my dog-cognition-research heroes (Adam Miklosi, Vilmos Csanyi, Jozsef TopolPeter Pongracz … she reveals why Hungary is the center of the dog cognition universe, too … but Juliane Kaminski, Julia Fischer and Brian Hare also get their due).
Morell does a fantastic job of grabbing readers’ interest with great storytelling. Who can resist reading about rats who laugh or ants who teach — and evaluate their students? I sure couldn’t.
She then describes the science behind these discoveries in laymen’s terms and explains why these discoveries matter. And best of all, her discussion of the research is not All About How Great It Is for Humans. In fact, her epilogue eloquently puts to rest (thank goodness) the idea that the only reason to study animal minds is to compare them unfavorably with humans’ minds and to keep on isolating the qualities that make humans superior. “Instead,” she writes, “given that we now know that we live in a world of sentient beings, not one of stimulus-response machines, we need to ask, how should we treat these other emotional, thinking creatures?”
While this is not light reading — heavy on the science — it’s well worth the effort and is, actually, a very friendly way to learn a lot about animal cognition science.
