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9/10/12

Examining and Medicating the Ears of a Dog


This information is not meant to be a substitute for veterinary care. Always follow the instructions provided by your veterinarian. 


In the photographs below, unless otherwise noted, the dog is facing with her nose pointing to your right.


Variations on these instructions exist.
Ear cleaning and medicating can be messy so cover good clothes and work on a surface that is easy to clean.

Most dogs do not like having their ears cleaned. Some dogs will happily sit in your lap or on a table while you clean or medicate their ears but many require some form of restraint.

One method to restrain the dog is to place her/him on a table. Stand on the side of the table opposite to the ear you are medicating; in the photograph the right ear is being medicated.

Drape your right arm over the dog's shoulders. Wrap your left arm around the head and neck and use the finger tips of the left hand to push the ear flap back and up to expose the inner surface of the ear.

If the dog tries to stand, lean your upper body over his/her shoulders to prevent him/her from rising.

If your dog is too wiggly, try laying him/her on his/her side. Reach over his/her neck with your left arm and firmly grasp the elbow of the leg closest to the table. Always hold the leg close to the elbow, NOT close to the toes.

Keep your left elbow on his/her neck to prevent him/her from picking up his/her head. Use the fingers of your right hand to pull back the ear flap to expose the inner side of the ear. If the ear flaps are long, you can tuck the ear flap under your left elbow.

Holding the medication bottle in your right hand, place the prescribed number of drops of medication into the ear canal.

It is easier to perform this procedure if you have a helper. See the section on restraining a dog for some additional suggestions.

Anatomy of the normal dog ear

The ear has 3 major parts:
  1. outer ear
  2. middle ear
  3. inner ear
The outer ear consists of the ear flap (also called the pinna) which can be upright (a prick ear) or floppy. The ear flap funnels sound into the ear canal. Unlike humans that have a very short ear canal, dogs have a long narrow ear canal that makes almost a 90 degree bend as it travels to the deeper parts of the ear.

The outer ear cannel is separated from the middle ear by a thin membrane called the eardrum or tympanic membrane. The ear drum is very fragile and can be damaged by ear disease or during ear cleaning. The middle ear consists of 3 small bones, an air filled cavity called the bulla and a thin tube (the eustachian tube) leading from the bulla to the back of the mouth.

The inner ear connects to the brain and contains nerves and centers for balance and hearing. The following picture shows a diagram of the right ear as it appears if you are looking at the dog's head from the front. A CT scan of the head is pictured on the right.

Dogs have many more ear problems than cats. Dogs with heavy floppy ears have the most problems with ear infections. Some breeds have lots of hair in and around the ear canal which causes them to develop ear infections. Dogs that spend lots of time in the water also are prone to developing ear infections.

Dogs with skin allergies may have ear problems as part of the allergy.
Additional Anatomy


The outer ear flap is usually covered with fur.

If the ear is itchy, scratching may result in hair loss on the ear flap or at the base of the ear. Severe scratching may also lead to tears at the edges of the ear. Ear damage may lead to bleeding between the skin and cartilage of the ear flap; a hematoma. The ear flap is swollen, warm and painful.

The inner side of the ear should be a healthy pink color. A small amount of black discharge may be observed.

Ear infections may result in:
redness
discharge
odor
head shaking
ear scratching
rubbing ears on the floor or other surfaces


 
Ear cleaning can be accomplished with the following supplies:
ear wash solution
cotton balls
a tweezers or hemostat to pluck hair
q tips may be used if used properly


Ear cleaning solutions contain various chemicals and may contain drying agents. Check with your veterinarian regarding which product to use and how often to use it. Excessive ear cleaning can be damaging to the ear.

If the "non-furred", inner side of the ear flap contains lots of fur at the opening to the ear canal, a few hairs at a time can be plucked. Lots of hair at the opening to the ear canal reduces air flow into the ear. Good air flow is important to maintaining a healthy ear.
The ear wash solution is squeezed into the ear canal. A few drops of ear wash should be applied to the inside of the ear flap and then the tip of the ear wash bottle should be inserted a few millimeters into the ear canal, to place some of the wash solution down the ear canal. Be careful not to tightly force the tip of the bottle into the ear canal as forceful squeezing of the bottle with the bottle wedged into the ear canal could rupture the ear drum.

The dog will usually shake its head as soon as the wash is inserted into the ear, shaking out much of the solution.

Massage the base of the ear to distribute the wash solution throughout the ear canal. Dogs usually like this part.


Use cotton balls to remove discharge from the inner side of the ear flap.

You can also use q tips to clean the inner side of the ear flap

BUT...
... DON'T stick q tips into the ear any further than you can see.

Deep placement of a q tip can rupture the ear drum or can pack wax and other debris further into the ear canal, preventing medications from getting to the deeper parts of the ear canal.

Ear medications may contain several different drugs and may be ointments (pictured on the left and in insert) or drops (pictured on the right).

Ear medications are most effective when placed in a clear ear. If they are placed on top of ear wax or other debris they will not be as effective. Your veterinarian will give you instructions, if cleaning is needed before ear medications are given.

Sometimes your veterinarian will recommend a thorough ear exam under sedation or anesthesia if:
the dog will not allow cleaning awake
it is suspected that a foreign body such as plant material is inside the ear canal
the veterinarian needs to collect samples from the ear for cytology or culture


If you would like to see an overview of ear cleaning under anesthesia please visit the following web site:


Whether using ointments or drops, place a small amount of medication on the inside of the ear flap and the prescribed number of drops into the ear canal. The tip of the ointment tube or dropper should be placed a few millimeters into the ear canal to assure that the medication goes into the ear canal. If the ear is stretched away from the head, the bend in the ear canal will straighten so that the medication can be deposited over the entire ear canal.

DO NOT place the long neck of the ointment tube as far as it will go down the ear canal as you could puncture the ear drum with it.




Massage the base of the ear to help distribute the medication into the ear canal.



Dogs with chronic ear infections will benefit from anything that increases air flow into the ear canal. Ear flow can be improved by:
plucking hairs from around the opening of the ear canal
tying or taping ears together on top of the head
pictured is a stretchy tubular fabric with holes cut for exposure of the ear canals. A regular sock can be used for smaller dogs. The ears may need to be taped together under the sock.


If the infection is severe or involves the middle and inner ear, oral medications may also be prescribed. Surgery is sometimes necessary if the infection is in the middle ear.

Dog Poems: A Dogs Best Friend


OLord, don't let me once forget
How I love my trusty pet-
Help me learn to disregard
canine craters in my yard
Show me how to be a buddy
even when my sofa's muddy,
Don't allow my pooch to munch
postal carriers for lunch,
Shield my neighbor's cat from view,
guide my steps around the doo,
Train me not to curse and scowl,
when it's puppy's night to howl,
Grant I shan't awake in fear
with a cold nose in my ear,
Give me patience without end-
Help me be "A DOG'S BEST FRIEND."

Dog Poems : Alone Again



I wish someone could tell me
What it is that I've done wrong.
Why I have to stay chained up
And left alone so long.


They seemed so glad to have me
When I came here as a pup.
There were so many things we'd do
While I was growing up.


They couldn't wait to train me
As companion and as friend.
They told me I would never fear
Being left alone again.


The children said they'd feed me,
Said they'd brush me every day.
They'd play with me and walk me,
If only I could stay.


But now the family hasn't time.
They often say I shed.
They wont allow me in the house,
Not even to be fed.


The children never walk me.
They always say, "Not Now!"
I wish that I could please them,
Won't someone tell me how?


All I have is love, you see,
I wish they would explain,
Why they said they wanted me,
Then left me on a chain.

Dog Poems : A Dogs Prayer


Treat me kindly, my beloved master, for no heart in the world
is more grateful for kindness than my loving heart.


Do not break my spirit with a stick, for though I would lick your hand between blows, your patience and understanding will more quickly teach me the things you would have me do.


Speak to me often, for your voice is the world¹s sweetest music,
as you must know by the fierce wagging of my tail
when your footstep falls upon my waiting ear.


When it is cold and wet, please take me inside, for I am now
a domestic animal and no longer used to bitter elements.
I ask no greater glory than the privilege of
sitting at your feet beside the hearth.



Though you had no home, I would rather follow you through ice and snow than rest upon the softest pillow, for you are my god and I am your devoted worshiper.


Keep my pan filled with fresh water for, although I would not reproach you were it dry, I cannot tell you when I suffer thirst.


Feed me clean food that I may stay well to romp and play and do your biding, walk by your side and stand ready, willing and able to protect you with my life should yours be in danger.


And, beloved master, should the Great Master see fit to take my health or sight, do not turn me away from you.

Rather, hold me gently in your arms as skilled hands grant me the merciful boon of eternal rest and I will leave you knowing with the last breath I draw that my fate was ever safe in your hands.

Dog Poems and Verse for You To Enjoy

These 36 dog poems, about our relationship with our dogs, will help you grieve a loss, or celebrate a friendship.
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My Shelter Days are numbered ten.
Ten more days until my end.

My Shelter Days are numbered eight.
Please adopt me. Change my fate.

My Shelter Days are numbered six.
Adopt a pet week, still no one's pick.

My Shelter Days are numbered four.
Four more days and then no more.

My Shelter Days are numbered two.
Someone will take me, I just don't know who.

My Shelter Days are numbered none.
I know I'm finished, then you come.

My Shelter Days are over, done,
Because you, my master, took me home.

Courtney Bailey, The Final Countdown

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9/9/12

Recognizing the Emotions of Dogs

Few who have lived with dogs would deny that dogs have feelings. Taking a cue from his great friend Darwin, who spoke of conscience in the dog, George Romanes wrote that "the emotional life of the dog is highly developed--more highly, indeed, than that of any other animal." (He did not include the human animal, though perhaps he should have done so.) Of course dogs have feelings, and we have no trouble acknowledging most of them. Joy, for example. Can anything be as joyous as a dog? Bounding ahead, crashing into the bushes while out on a walk, happy, happy, happy. Conversely, can anything be as disappointed as a dog when you say, "No, we are not going for a walk"? Down he flops onto the floor, his ears fall, he looks up, showing the whites of his eyes, with a look of utter dejection. Pure joy, pure disappointment.

But are this joy and disappointment identical to what humans mean when we use these words? What dogs do, the way they behave, even the sounds they make, seem instantaneously translatable into human emotional terms. When a dog is rolling in fresh-cut grass, the pleasure on her face is unmistakable. No one could be wrong in saying that what she is feeling is akin to what any of us (though less often, perhaps) may feel. The words used to describe the emotion may be wrong, our vocabulary imprecise, the analogy imperfect, but there is also some deep similarity that escapes nobody. My dog may appear to feel joy and sorrow much the way I do, and the appearance here is critical: We often have no more to go on when it comes to our fellow humans.



All dog caretakers (just another word for companion and friend) have marveled at the exuberant greeting their dogs give them after a brief absence. Sasha twirls around in delight, squealing and making extraordinary sounds. What accounts for this display of unbounded pleasure in our return? We tend to explain it by assuming a kind of stupidity: The dog thought I was gone forever. Dogs, we say, have no sense of time. As Robert Kirk of the Cornell Veterinary School once put it to me, dogs don't watch the clock. Every minute is forever. Everything is for good. Out means gone. In other words, when dogs do not behave as we do, we assume it to be irrational behavior. Yet a lover is entranced to see the beloved again after even a brief absence--and dogs are all about love. (For a fuller discussion on dogs and love, see Chapter 3.)
Another explanation for dogs' delight in our return may be found in the way in which puppies greet their mother. As soon as the mother appears, the puppies crowd around her, eager to nurse or expecting her to vomit food for them. Wolves have a greeting ceremony during which they wag their tales, lick one another, and bite the muzzles of other wolves. The pleasure of the puppies may be a vestige of this ceremony, as John Paul Scott and J. L. Fuller suggest.

Soon after she joined the family, Sasha was sitting next to me one evening as I worked on an early draft of this chapter. I had been alone all day, working. There were just the two of us sitting in the living room, and it was very quiet. I looked over at Sasha and noticed that she was looking at me. Suddenly I was overwhelmed with the thought: There is another being in this room, another consciousness. There is somebody here besides me. What, though, was Sasha thinking? Why did she suddenly glance up at me? Was she just checking to make sure I was still there, that I had nothing else in mind? Or was it a more complicated thought, one that was imbued (as many thoughts are) with feelings--affection, for example, or perhaps anxiety? She looked so peaceful, lying there. Was she feeling something like tranquillity? For certain Hindu philosophers, tranquillity is the master emotion, the one that underlies all others--it has been so fascinating to me that it was the subject of my Ph.D. thesis at Harvard. Perhaps I was merely projecting my own feelings on to Sasha. It is hard to know.

As Sasha sat quietly next to me, looking contented, every so often sighing with what appeared to be contentment, I wondered what she was actually feeling. How I would love to be her for just one moment, to feel what she was feeling. I have had this desire, more than once, with people, too. Does one ever know what another human being is actually feeling? It may be no harder to find out the truth about feelings in dogs than it is in people.

The question of how we know what we feel, let alone what somebody else feels, is beset with difficulties. Speaking to other people, we often use shorthand: "I feel sad" or "I feel happy." But more often than not what we feel is an emotional state for which there are no precise verbal equivalents. Think of how we restrict ourselves with language. "I'm depressed," we say. Yet that is only the vaguest hint of a more complex set of feelings. It is probably the same for dogs; their joy is at least as complicated (in the sense that we are not always certain of its components; perhaps memory of earlier pleasure plays a role and perhaps it is entirely bound to the moment) and hard to define.
While it is clear that we can learn a great deal about dogs from observing their behavior in terms of purely external actions, I think it is time to recognize that we could understand much more from observing how dogs feel. Moreover, we could learn something about our own feelings as well. For in the realm of feelings we can have no sense of superiority. After a lifetime of affectionate regard for dogs and many years of close observation and reflection, I have reached the conclusion that dogs feel more than I do (I am not prepared to speak for other people). They feel more, and they feel more purely and more intensely. By comparison the human emotional landscape seems murky with subterfuge and ambivalence and emotional deception, intentional or not. In searching for why we are so inhibited compared with dogs, perhaps we can learn to be as direct, as honest, as straightforward, and especially as intense in our feelings as dogs are.

Freud remarked on the fact that"dogs love their friends and bite their enemies, quite unlike people, who are incapable of pure love and always have to mix love and hate in their object relations." In other words, dogs are without the ambivalence with which humans seem cursed. We love, we hate, often the same person, on the same day, maybe even at the same time. This is unthinkable in dogs, whether because, as some people believe, they lack the complexity or, as I believe, they are less confused about what they feel. It is as if once a dog loves you, he loves you always, no matter what you do, no matter what happens, no matter how much time goes by. Dogs have a prodigious memory for people they have known. Perhaps this is because they associate people with the love they felt for them, and they derive pleasure from remembering this love.
Sasha is possessed by my two small kittens, Raj and Saj. The minute she sees these two tiny fur dots, she goes into hyper-alert mode. She begins to whine and to moan and to groan. She looks at me with a pleading look, as if I hold the key to helping her get what she so badly wants. She sniffs them. She follows them from room to room, whining piteously. The first night they were here, Sasha never slept at all. She lay on the floor next to their cage, crossed her feet daintily, and observed them all through the night. When I let them out, she gently put her paw on them. The cats were a little dumbfounded by the whole thing, and especially at what Sasha took to doing by the second week: She would pick one up in her mighty jaws, taking great care not to harm him, carry him into another room, deposit him somewhere, and then head off to find the other one to do the same. Seeing her carrying these little orange dots from room to room was as puzzling for me as it was evidently for the cats. Soon, however, they wanted to play. One of the cats rolled over and reached out with his little paw. Yet their interest in Sasha is mild compared to hers in them. There can be no mistaking the intensity of her interest in these kittens. The nature of this interest is another matter.

What does she want? Could it be that a maternal instinct has been awakened and Sasha wants to act as a mother to the kittens? Does she really think they are her puppies, and want to bring them into a den? Or is her interest predatory, in that she wants to eat them and is torn between her desire to listen to me ("Do not eat the kittens!") and her instincts as a predator telling her that a kitten makes a good meal? Is she merely curious, wondering if these small beings are some odd kind of puppy? Maybe she is just herding them; she is after all a shepherd.

None of these explanations is entirely satisfactory. If it were a mothering instinct at work, she would behave similarly to rabbits, say, or geese, moaning when she sees them (instead of chasing them). Moreover, Sasha has had no pups. I doubt that she wants to eat them; I can barely persuade her to eat a piece of steak. Nor is she stupid; she knows the difference between a dog and a cat. If she were herding the kittens, she would not pick them up in her mouth, nor moan and groan with some inexpressible need or feeling. The truth is that I don't know why she's so drawn to them, and nobody else knows either. It would be so much simpler if only we could ask, "Sasha, why are you so interested in these small fur balls?" "Simple, just look at how adorable they are!" Or "They look so small and helpless, I want to protect them." Or even "Beats me." Whatever the behavior means, it is clear that Sasha is filled with feeling for these little kittens. It is clear because she moans and groans and follows them from room to room, and cocks her head and looks puzzled and intrigued. That is why I say she is possessed. She wants something from them, she feels something for them, and she seems to want to express those feelings.

It is hard to empathize with her because humans generally do not walk behind kittens sighing and groaning. There does not seem to be an equivalent for us. Perhaps, then, Sasha is demonstrating to me one of my "pet theories": As well as the emotions animals and humans have in common, animals can also access emotions that humans do not share, ones different from those we know, because animals are other; they are not the same as human beings. Their senses, their experiences, open them to a totally different (or new) set of feelings of which we know little or nothing. That a whole world of canine feelings remains closed to us is an intriguing notion. Some of these feelings could be based on the dog's sensory capacities. According to one early authority, a dog can smell 100 million times better than we do (I will return to the topic in Chapter 5). But even if the true figure is significantly less, the fact remains that when Sasha puts her nose to the ground, she becomes aware of a world about which I can only make guesses. Similarly, when Sasha cocks her ears, she hears sounds of which I am altogether unaware.

In the case of Sasha's interest in the kittens, we are dealing not with a question of superior (or inferior) sensory capacities but something else, something social. We like to assume that dogs and humans are social in very similar ways, and that therefore humans are uniquely qualified to understand whatever emotions a dog may have based on belonging (like us) to a pack. We, too, have deep interests in one another's social lives and the web of interrelations interdependence creates. We assume this is why dogs are able to understand us so well, and appear to empathize with humans from their own direct experience.

Perhaps they are so often right about human emotions because their social world is similar to ours. We are not similar to cats in the same way, and cats are not all that good at understanding us. We do not expect the same kind of sympathy from our cat as we do from our dog. A cat the size of a lion would be an animal we would approach with some hesitation. No matter what size, however, most of us would accept a reliable dog as being reliable. The German ethologist P. Leyhausen, an expert on the cat family, makes the point that nobody chose to domesticate the cat; it chose domestication itself, while nevertheless maintaining its independent nature. He believes that the cat is domestic, but not domesticated.

The German scholar Eberhard Trumler suggests that it was not wolves who joined the human fold but the opposite. He pointed out that wolves, phylogenetically older than us and superbly equipped for hunting, had no need of human help. Men, on the other hand, derive from plant-eating ancestors and are not nearly as well equipped for hunting as are wolves. In order to eat, wolves scarcely need us at all, but we could benefit from the help of wolves. It may well be that human groups followed wolf packs, waited until they had brought down a kill, then chased the wolves away. Indian wolves are often chased away from their kills by wild pigs, and the same could have been true of early humans and wolves.

The naturalist and writer Jared Diamond points out that the large mammals were all domesticated between 8000 and 2500 B.C. Domestication began with the dog, then moved to sheep, goats, and pigs, and ended with Arabian and Bactrian camels and water buffalos. He believes that since 2500 B.C. there have been no significant additions. Why this is so is a question that has never been answered.

Although other animals have been domesticated--primarily the cat, the horse, certain birds, rabbits, cattle--no other animal (wild, tame, or domesticated) carries such meaning for humans as the dog. We feel strongly about such nondomesticated animals as wolves, elephants, and dolphins (all of which can be tamed but over whose reproductive life we exercise little control), but our direct interactions with them are much more restricted. By raising all these domesticated animals over centuries, we have altered their genetic makeup to make them conform to our desires. We control their reproductive functions and breed them to suit our needs, just as we control their territory and food supply. Juliet Clutton-Brock, an expert on domestication, believes, as Darwin did, that only humans benefit from the association. She quotes Darwin to the effect that "as the will of man thus comes into play we can understand how it is that domestic races of animals and cultivated races of plants often exhibit an abnormal character, as compared with natural species; they have been modified not for their own benefit, but for that of man."

Michael Fox, a dog expert and Humane Society vice president (in charge of bioethics and farm animal protection), points out that rapid maturation, disease resistance, high fertility, and longevity, all of which we foster in domesticated animals, would in nature produce overabundance of certain species, which would cause a shift in the ecological balance (and possibly the extinction of other species). Many of these domesticated animals, even when they appear to be semi-wild, are dependent on humans and require considerable attention. Even hardy hill sheep still need to be dipped, wormed, and given supplementary winter feed.

Even among domesticated animals, the dog stands out as perhaps the only fully domesticated species. Goats are domesticated, and can be tame, but they rarely make intimate companions. Pigs probably could, if given half a chance. H. Hediger, the director of the Zoological Gardens of Zurich, writes that the dog, basically a domesticated wolf, was the first creature with which humans formed intimate bonds that were intense on both sides. According to Hediger, no other animal stands in such intimate psychological union with us; only the dog seems capable of reading our thoughts and "reacting to our faintest changes of expression or mood." German dog trainers use the term Gefuhlsinn (a feeling for feelings) to talk about the fact that a dog can sense our moods.

Voltaire, who knew about the emotions of dogs, used the example of a lost dog to refute the thesis of Descartes that dogs are merely machines, incapable of any kind of suffering. He responded to Descartes in his Dictionnaire philosophique with:

  • Judge this dog who has lost his master, who has searched for him with mournful cries in every path, who comes home agitated, restless, who runs up and down the stairs, who goes from room to room, who at last finds his beloved master in his study, and shows him his joy by the tenderness of cries, by his leaps, by his caresses. Barbarians seize this dog who so prodigiously surpasses man in friendship. They nail him to a table and dissect him alive to show you the mesenteric veins. You discover in him all the same organs of feeling that you possess. Answer me, mechanist, has nature arranged all the springs of feeling in this animal in order that he should not feel? Does he have nerves to be impassive?

It is one of the main themes of this book that the reason why humans and dogs have such an intense relationship is that there is a mutual ability to understand one another's emotional responses. The joie de vivre of a dog may be greater than our own, but it is immediately recognizable as a feeling that we humans enjoy as well. The closeness between dogs and people is taken for granted and, at the same time, seen as something immensely mysterious. Naturally I feel close to my dogs, but who are these dogs? They are Sima, Sasha, and Rani, of course, that much is simple and obvious. Yet I will often look at them lying in my study as I work on this book and be overwhelmed with a sense of otherness. Just who are these beings lying here, so close to me, and yet also so remote? They are easily grasped, and they are unfathomable. I know them as well as I know my closest friend, and yet I have no idea who they are.

This ambiguity, which includes a certain ambivalence as well, has been memorialized in our speech, in our sayings, and in our tributes to and about dogs. Sir John Davies, in his epigram In Cineam (written in 1594), observed:

Thou sayest thou art as weary as a dog,
As angry, sick, and hungry as a dog,
As dull and melancholy as a dog,
As lazy, sleepy, idle as a dog.
But why dost thou compare thee to a dog?
In that for which all men despise a dog,
I will compare thee better to a dog.
Thou art as fair and comely as a dog,
Thou art as true and honest as a dog,
Thou art as kind and liberal as a dog,
Thou art as wise and valiant as a dog.

Ever since Madame Roland said in the eighteenth century "Plus je vois les hommes, plus j'admire les chiens" (The more I see of men, the more I admire dogs), generally what has been written about dogs tends to be positive. Sometimes it is even wonderful, as in William James's statement "Marvelous as may be the power of my dog to understand my moods, deathless as is his affection and fidelity, his mental state is as unsolved a mystery to me as it was to my remotest ancestor." Or it may be delicious, like Ambrose Bierce's definition in his Devil's Dictionary, "Dog, n. A kind of additional or subsidiary Deity designed to catch the overflow and surplus of the world's worship." Samuel Coleridge, in Table-Talk (May 2, 1830), was one of the first to note that "the best friend a man has in the world may turn against him and become his enemy. His son or daughter ... may prove ungrateful. Those who are nearest and dearest to him ... may become traitors to their faith.... The one absolutely unselfish friend that man can have in this selfish world, the one that never deserts him, the one that never proves ungrateful or treacherous, is his dog."

When it comes to our sayings and our language, the use to which the word dog has been put shows a darker side. We speak of "going to the dogs" when we mean utter ruination. When men say of a woman that she is a dog, they mean nothing kind. Even used of a man, it suggests that he is contemptible. "To put on the dog" is to be a phony. "A dog's death" is the most miserable and shameful of ends. As long ago as the eighteenth century, "the black dog" on a man's back referred to depression. We criticize our own society when we speak of a "dog-eat-dog world," though this phrase may derive from its Latin opposite: Canis caninam non est, a dog does not eat another dog. One of the most evocative phrases of the English language was quoted by John Lyly in 1519 as being already an old saying: "The dogs may bark; the caravan goes on."

I take my dogs on five walks each day. People who know about us say that these dogs are living the perfect dog's life. Maybe we need to revamp our vocabulary so that leading a dog's life is what we want and going to the dogs is where we wish to go.

Joel Savishinsky, in an article on "Pet Ideas," notes the ambiguity in our language about dogs:

  • A winning individual is top dog; a handicapped or underrated person an underdog. Pathetic individuals lead a dog's life in a dog-eat-dog world. They suffer through the dog days of August, and when they confuse their priorities or do things in an inverted way, we think of it as the tail wagging the dog. A person who hogs resources which he himself cannot use is a dog in the manger. A damaged book is dog-eared, lousy poetry is doggerel, and a pathetic look is a hang-dog expression. The best we can say about a dutiful but uninspired worker is that he is dogged.

Nobody has written about this better than James Thurber in a piece that deserves full quotation:

  • Dogs may be Man's best friend, but Man is often Dog's severest critic, in spite of his historic protestations of affection and admiration.... He observes, cloudily, that this misfortune or that shouldn't happen to a dog, as if most slings and arrows should, and he describes anybody he can't stand as a dirty dog. He notoriously takes the names of the female dog and her male offspring in vain, to denounce blackly members of his own race. In all this disdain and contempt there is a curious streak of envy, akin to what the psychiatrists know as sibling rivalry. Man is troubled by what might be called the Dog Wish, a strange and involved compulsion to be as happy and carefree as a dog.

It is possible that we begrudge the dog his freedom to be exactly what he was meant to be: a dog. So often I will see Sasha or Rani or Sima roll over and over in thick green grass, with a look of sheer delight on their faces, and I will think they are doing exactly what a dog was meant to do. How much harder to say of ourselves that we are doing what a human was meant to do, especially as nobody knows what that is.

Setting aside what we think dogs are, what--or who--do dogs think we are? If we knew how we were represented in the dreams of dogs (for they do dream about us--see Chapter 10), we would have an answer. But we do not, and so we must use our knowledge of dog society to extrapolate. The general observation has always been: Dogs form packs; the leader of the pack is the strongest, wisest, and largest individual; a human being among dogs fits that description; ergo we are the leader of any dog pack. But there are a number of problems with this view. First, we really don't know all that much about hierarchy in dogs, although we think we do. We assume that dominance is a simple matter, but it is not, and we can never be certain what factors are involved, or even exactly what dominance is among dogs. Secondly, dogs are not stupid, and they certainly know that we are not dogs, or even superdogs. I do not believe (contrary to what some vets say) that a dog thinks a cat is a small dog. How they categorize them, I do not know, but I am confident they know they are not dogs.

Frances and Richard Lockridge find it easy to believe that a dog would like to be a man, in the same way as a man would like to cast himself in the image of God. In their book, Cats and People, they write that the ambition of a well-brought-up dog is to please his friend before himself: "He is demonstrative in displays of affection as many people are, and as almost all people would like others to be toward them; the dog leaves you no doubt where you stand and when he gives his devotion, as he does readily, he is apt to give it fulsomely, so that for a little while the meanest human can see himself godlike in the dog's beaming eyes."

Do dogs think of us as gods, powerful beings who cannot entirely be read? I think not, because the idea of a "god" comes from the way humans create gods: in our own image, only more powerful. Gods grant us wishes and decide our fate. It is true that dogs are entirely dependent on us when they are with us. We decide where to go, how long to stay, when to leave, what they can and cannot do.

Some people compare dogs with slaves. But does the fact that we have created an almost complete dependency in dogs make them similar to slaves? We should remember that dogs have no choice in the matter. The Stockholm syndrome, where the kidnapped fall in love with their jailers (sometimes well beyond the limits of their confinement), may well apply here. To a certain extent, we are the jailers of dogs, since any freedom they achieve must be acquired by wheedling it out of us. This is one good reason they learn to read us so well. Survival dictates that dogs learn about us and learn to play us to some extent. Dogs must learn to negotiate whatever freedom they achieve within the confines we assign them. They seem to accept this control we exercise over them as the way things are. Dogs who rebel we call problem dogs. Perhaps they are merely independent thinkers, wondering why they should accept the status quo.

Given the fascination almost all dogs feel for small children (it is mutual), what do dogs think small children are? Do they think, "Aha, this is more like it, they are like us"? Do they see the dependency? Is that what they see as the similarity? Is it the size? Or is it just part of neoteny; since they are like children to us, do they have a desire to be with "other" children?

One reason dogs play havoc with so many of our theories is that dogs do not have feelings toward all humans, only some. So a dog can be extremely aggressive toward some human beings and very gentle toward others. The famous protectiveness of the dog speaks for the distinctions dogs make: stranger/friend, master/enemy, etc. We must not forget that a dog is really a wolf, and thus is in much of its makeup and behavior a wild animal, albeit one that has allowed us to become a part of its world. This is something no other wild animal would ever do, even when they seem in some ways to respect humans.

For animals in the wild, humans are usually something dangerous and to be avoided. But not always. Killer whales, for example, seem to have an almost superstitious interest in us: There are no documented cases of killer whales killing a human without provocation, although they could easily do so. After all, they eat just about anything that moves in the ocean, even polar bears, so why not us? They seem to recognize some affinity.

That affinity may have to do with living as social beings in well-defined groups. In this way dogs, whales, and humans share much in common--although whales never show a desire to spend time with us over spending time with other whales. We could never become part of a killer-whale pod (which is one reason so little is known about killer whales). In fact, no other species has ever indicated that it regularly prefers the company of a human to that of members of its own species, with the single exception of the dog. While we have domesticated many animals, only the dog has domesticated us. The dog chooses us, not because it is confused about our identity, not because dogs think we are the marvel of creation, but merely because dogs love us. It is such an amazing fact, and so counterintuitive (so profoundly unlovable do we think we are) that almost nobody can accept it as fact. Dogs love us not only because we feed them, or walk them, or groom them, or protect them, but because we are fun. How astonishing!

BODY OF A DOG


Dogs grow to various sizes. The Irish wolfhound, for example, stands about 32 inches high at the withers, or top of the shoulders. The chihuahua, however, stands about five inches.

The color of a dog's coat, or hair cover, also ranges widely, even within a breed. Some dogs are all black. Others are all white. Some have light markings on portions of their bodies and darker coloration elsewhere. Or, they may have a solid color other than black. All dogs have some hair cover, even the so-called hairless ones.

The shape of a dog is determined by three major structures--the head, the body, and the legs. The size and form of these structures vary greatly as do, for example, coloration and hair characteristics.


The Head
There are two basic head shapes--a narrow skull with a long face and a wide skull with a short face--plus several intermediate head shapes. Long-faced dogs, such as the German shepherd and the cocker spaniel, may have jaws eight inches long. By contrast, the nose of small-faced dogs, such as the Pekingese and the pug, may be less than an inch from the eyes.

Dogs have 42 teeth. Six pairs of sharp incisor teeth are in front of the mouth, flanked by two pairs of large canine ("dog") teeth. The other teeth are premolars and molars. The incisors and the canines are very important because the dog bites and tears at its food with these teeth.

Air breathed in through the dog's nose passes on its way to the lungs through the two nasal cavities behind the nose. These cavities are lined by a mucous membrane containing many nerve endings stimulated by odors. Smell is the dog's most acute sense. A dog continually sniffs the air, the ground, and nearby objects to learn what is happening around it. The indentation in the dog's forehead just above eye level is called the stop. The stop in some dogs is deeper than that in others.

The fairly thin tongue of the dog is used mainly for guiding food to the throat, for licking the coat clean, and for perspiration. When a dog is overheated, it cools off by hanging its tongue out and panting. As it pants, the evaporation of perspiration from its tongue cools the animal. The dog also sweats through the pads on its paws and--slightly--through its skin.

A dog's ears either stick up or hang down. The earliest dogs probably had erect ears, but the ears began to droop in smaller, later breeds because of excessive ear skin. Dogs have a fine sense of hearing. They can hear sounds at frequencies too high for people to hear. This is why dogs can respond to "silent" whistles.

Each eye of a dog has three eyelids, the main upper and lower lids and a third lid hidden between them in the inner corner of the eye. The third eyelid can sweep across the transparent cornea of the eye and clean it like a windshield wiper.

The head and body of a dog are connected by its neck. The neck may be long or short, depending on the size of the seven bones that support it. The length of the vocal cords in the neck is a factor influencing the pitch and loudness of a dog's voice--its barks, grunts, and howls.

The Body
The body of a dog contains most of its vital organs. The heart, lungs, stomach, and intestines are located there. So too are its sex organs, kidneys, and bladder. The 13 ribs of the dog's chest wrap around the heart and lungs. Since these organs influence the animal's speed and stamina, chest size can be an indication of these traits.

All dogs have 27 bones from the skull to the point where the tail begins. The number of tailbones, however, and therefore the length of the tail, varies from breed to breed.

The body may be covered with straight or with wavy hair. Hair shafts emerge from tiny follicles in the skin. The shafts are connected to tiny muscles that cause the dog's hair to stand up, or bristle, when they contract.

During times of stress, a dog raises its hackles--the hair along the neck and spine. Special sensory hairs called whiskers are near the nose, but their usefulness is doubtful because a dog rarely relies on the sense of touch.

The Legs
The front legs and back legs of a dog are also called the forelimbs and hind limbs. A dog uses its legs for movement, for scratching, and, in some breeds, for digging.

Each of the forelimbs is connected to the body by a long, narrow scapula, or shoulder blade. Its lower part, in turn, forms a shoulder joint with the humerus, the upper forelimb bone. The lower forelimb bones, the radius and the ulna, are fused at two points and act as a single bone.

The foot, or paw, has five toes. One of them--the dewclaw--is too high to be of any use. It is a vestigial part and is often surgically removed from puppies. The toes of the foot are composed of a number of bones. A toenail, or claw, emerges from the end of each toe. The foot also has cushiony pads for each toe and two larger pads farther up the paw. Dogs perspire through their pads.

Each of the two hind limbs is connected to the body at the pelvic bone. The upper portion of the femur, or thighbone, fits into a socket in the pelvic bone to form the hip joint. The tibia and the fibula are beneath. They make up the lower thigh. The joint where their upper portions link with the femur is called the stifle. The joint where their lower portions link with the foot bones of the hind limbs is called the hock. Like the forefeet, the hind feet have pads and four functional toes, although a dewclaw is sometimes present.

9/8/12

Dog's Sense of Smell

A dog's nose not only dominates her face, but her brain, as well. In fact, a dog relies on her sense of smell to interpret her world, in much the same way as people depend on their sight. Although this contrasting world view may be hard to imagine, know that your dog interprets as much information as you do. However, she does much of this by smelling an object or animal, not by staring at it.

Born to sniff

To gain more respect for your dog's olfactory ability, compare it to a person's nose. Inside the nose of both species are bony scroll-shaped plates, called turbinates, over which air passes. A microscopic view of this organ reveals a thick, spongy membrane that contains most of the scent-detecting cells, as well as the nerves that transport information to the brain. In humans, the area containing these odor analyzers is about one square inch, or the size of a postage stamp. If you could unfold this area in a dog, on the other hand, it may be as large as 60 square inches, or just under the size of a piece of typing paper.

Though the size of this surface varies with the size and length of the dog's nose, even flat-nosed breeds can detect smells far better than people. The following table shows the number of scent receptors in people and several dog breeds.

A dog's brain is also specialized for identifying scents. The percentage of the dog's brain that is devoted to analyzing smells is actually 40 times larger than that of a human! It's been estimated that dogs can identify smells somewhere between 1,000 to 10,000 times better than nasally challenged humans can.

Table: Scent-Detecting Cells in People and Dog Breeds
Species
Number of Scent Receptors
Humans
5 million
Dachshund
125 million
Fox Terrier
147 million
Beagle
225 million
German Shepherd
225 million
Bloodhound
300 million

Your dog's unique nose
Your dog's nose has a pattern of ridges and dimples that, in combination with the outline of its nostril openings, make up a nose print believed to be as individual and unique as a human being's fingerprints. Companies even register nose prints as a way of identifying and helping to locate lost or stolen dogs, a system that is now being used by kennel clubs around the world.

If you want to take a nose print from your dog just for fun, it's quite simple: Wipe your dog's nose with a towel to dry its surface. Pour food coloring onto a paper towel and lightly coat your pet's nose with it. Then hold a pad of paper to her nose, making sure to let the pad's sides curve around to pick up impressions from the sides of the nose, as well. You may have to try a couple of times until you get the right amount of food coloring and the right amount of pressure to produce a print in which the little patterns on the nose are clear.

The food coloring is nontoxic and is easily removed. Never use ink or paint, or you may have to explain to your friends why your dog has a green or blue nose.

dog's nose is dry?


Question: My dog's nose is dry. Is he sick?

Learning to observe what is normal and and what is not in patients that can't talk is the first step to observant pet care. A warm or dry nose is often seen as a sign of illness in dogs and cats, but is it? The purpose of this FAQ is to serve as a basic guideline to know when to consult your vet to see if an examination is in order.

Answer:


The "warm nose myth" has many pet owners feeling that their pet has a fever (or otherwise sick) if the nose is warm and dry. A dog's (or cat's) nose may be very wet and cool one moment then be warmer and not-so-moist the next. All in the course of a day. All perfectly normal.
Changes in texture (crusty, flaky) and color (loss of pigmentation) of a pet's nose should be looked at by your veterinarian. A prolonged dry, cracked nose, particularly with loss of pigmentation, scabs or open sores should be examined by your veterinarian sooner rather than later.

An ill animal will often have a warm, dry nose in addition to other symptoms, such as: lethargy, decreased or absent appetite, vomiting, diarrhea and so on. In the absence of other physical signs, there are a host of dermatological (skin) problems that can be seen in this area, such as Pemphigus Foliaceus.

Other nose conditions to be aware of
  • Contact sensitivity
Allergies and sensitivities to plastics and dyes may also manifest as changes on the nose and muzzle area on pets fed from plastic dishes. I recommend using stainless steel bowls to eliminate this potential problem. Glass or ceramic bowls are also acceptable, provided that they are sturdy and on a solid surface to prevent breakage.
  • Nasal discharge
Anytime your pet shows signs of a "runny nose" -- one that has discharge coming from the nostrils -- should be examined by your veterinarian. Coughing, sneezing and difficulty breathing can be signs of anything from a respiratory infection to a nasal foreign body to a tumor in the nasal passages. Animals that show these signs (more than an occasional cough or sneeze) should be seen by your veterinarian.
  • Black spots
Owners of orange or calico cats often note black spots on their cat's nose and lips as the cat ages. This is called lentigo simplex, and is a normal change seen commonly in orange tabby and calico cats.
  • Sunburn
Dogs, cats, horses, and other species are prone to sunburn (also known as "solar dermatitis") and subsequent skin cancer on noses, ear tips, and around eyes. Light coated, pink-nosed animals are at greatest risk. Check with your veterinarian about providing sun protection for your pet if they are in this category of risk.

dog wagging tail?

Blakeslee writes a review (PDF here) of work by Vallortigara et al (PDF here) on emotional asymmetric tail wagging by dogs that is a further reflection of lateralized functions of the brain. Some edited clips from her article:

In most animals, including birds, fish and frogs, the left brain specializes in behaviors involving what the scientists call approach and energy enrichment. In humans, that means the left brain is associated with positive feelings, like love, a sense of attachment, a feeling of safety and calm. It is also associated with physiological markers, like a slow heart rate.

At a fundamental level, the right brain specializes in behaviors involving withdrawal and energy expenditure. In humans, these behaviors, like fleeing, are associated with feelings like fear and depression. Physiological signals include a rapid heart rate and the shutdown of the digestive system.

Because the left brain controls the right side of the body and the right brain controls the left side of the body, such asymmetries are usually manifest in opposite sides of the body. Thus many birds seek food with their right eye (left brain/nourishment) and watch for predators with their left eye (right brain/danger).

In humans, the muscles on the right side of the face tend to reflect happiness (left brain) whereas muscles on the left side of the face reflect unhappiness (right brain).

Dog tails are interesting...because they are in the midline of the dog’s body, neither left nor right. So do they show emotional asymmetry, or not?

Vallortigara et al show that when dogs were attracted to something, including a benign, approachable cat, their tails wagged right, and when they were fearful, their tails went left. It suggests that the muscles in the right side of the tail reflect positive emotions while the muscles in the left side express negative ones.

Brain asymmetry for approach and withdrawal seems to be an ancient trait..Thus it must confer some sort of survival advantage on organisms.

Animals that can do two important things at the same time, like eat and watch for predators, might be better off. And animals with two brain hemispheres could avoid duplication of function, making maximal use of neural tissue.

The asymmetry may also arise from how major nerves in the body connect up to the brain... Nerves that carry information from the skin, heart, liver, lungs and other internal organs are inherently asymmetrical, he said. Thus information from the body that prompts an animal to slow down, eat, relax and restore itself is biased toward the left brain. Information from the body that tells an animal to run, fight, breathe faster and look out for danger is biased toward the right brain.
dog
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