Tag Archives: dogs

Help your dog recover from trauma

Coping with calamity

Dogs, for the most part, live in the moment. If they’re happy and comfortable now, yesterday might as well never have happened. If yesterday was traumatic, the best thing you can do is make today normal.

Picture of a one-eyed French Bulldog to illustrate dog recover from trauma

We are, sadly, all too familiar with life-disrupting awfulness. If you’ve been following us for a while, you know that Torque, Hope’s nine-year-old French Bulldog, had to have emergency surgery to remove his eye last New Year’s Eve. There’s not a whole lot that gets the adrenaline pumping faster than a medical emergency on a holiday.

You would think there was time to breathe once Torque was in the hands of the veterinary ophthalmologist. There wasn’t. Four hours later, he was back home, drugged to the sky. The other dogs knew something was happening and they were restless and upset.

What now?

We did the absolute best thing we could think of. As soon as everyone was back home, we set the regular Sunday evening routine in motion. There may have been an extra adult beverage for the humans. But the dogs went out on schedule, played training games when they usually do, ate on schedule, and settled in for their regular evening cuddles.

There is nothing more comforting to dogs than knowing what’s going on. When everyone is where they should be and the established routine is in effect. Dogs can cope with just about anything when surrounded by the familiar.

Don’t make it special

A woman we know is coping with the sudden, unexpected loss of her young male dog. His death was unexpected and sudden. Her older, female dog is also coping with the loss of her buddy.

This person was lost and the hole in her life needed to be filled. Within a month, she took her girl and hit the road to pick up her new little “brother.”

The new dog isn’t a puppy. It is the same breed, and a boy, like the dog they lost. But other than that, everything is different.

The wise move would have been, as soon as they got home, to restart familiar schedules, patterns, and routines. They had regular, weekly Rally Obedience training sessions with Fran. Getting back on track would settle the older girl and let her know the new normal is still okay.

Instead, this person is taking time off, thinking that more time will help the dogs adjust. That thinking applies better to people than dogs.

Get back to the grind

The best thing you can do to help your dog recover from either physical or emotional trauma is pretend everything’s okay. Return to a normal schedule, do the things you regularly did. Don’t let your dog know you’re as traumatized as they are. You have to be the steadying presence for your dog, even if you’re not feeling it. In the words of a prophet – fake it ‘til you make it.

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Keys to taking great dog pictures

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Now that everyone always has a good camera on hand, taking great dog pictures is easy. Even if you have a black dog. There are four key things to keep in mind to get that great dog picture.

Get down there

Even if you’re short, you’re still way taller than your dog. There may be times when the picture you want is looking straight down into those gorgeous puppy dog eyes. That’s easy – just have your dog sit in front of you and wiggle a treat or make funny sounds. If you’re good at weird sounds, you may even get the adorable head tilt shot. Or you may get jumped on, but that could be a cute picture, too.

Picture of a woman's hands holding a smart phone taking picture to illustrate taking great dog pictures.

For the best dog portraits, showing what your dog really looks like, you have to get down even with their face. If you have a really little dog, and you have to lie on the ground to get low enough, do it. There are fantastic pictures to be had if you’re down at ground level shooting your dog running toward you through the grass. If your dog doesn’t have a “Stay!” get someone to hold the leash, but be sure they’re not in the picture.

Keep shooting

In the olden days, when there was film you had to buy and developing/printing you had to pay for, it was smart to be frugal with your shutter finger. That’s not the case anymore. Keep shooting! If you take 50 pictures, there’s bound to be a keeper in there. Even when we’re taking pictures of humans who are posing and understand “Smile!” we still take multiple shots. Someone’s eyes are closed, or they’re in mid-word, or glancing the other direction.

It does take a little time to go through the pictures to find the “money shot,” but it’s in there somewhere. Delete the duds right away. It’s a chore if you leave it until later, not a big deal in the moment.

Lighting matters

It’s always easier to take pictures outside in natural light. It’s not as important now with the sophistication of most phone cameras. But it does make a difference. It’s usually a good shot if you’re in shadow and your dog’s in the sun.

But if you’re also in the sun, pay particular attention to your shadow. It can make for an interesting effect. But it could also ruin an otherwise good picture.

Overcast days are ideal for even lighting. There are lots of different natural light effects you’ll see at different times of the day. Dawn and dusk are interesting times for taking pictures. Mid-day tends to be harsher light, especially in the summer.

See everything around

Editing out the streetlamp coming out of the top of someone’s head is easier now. But it’s even better to not take the “oops” shot in the first place. A quick survey of everything you see through the lens is easy. And moving just a short distance to the side may change the picture from okay to great.

The attention to background is particularly important if you are getting low to get pictures of your dog head-on. We don’t normally see the world from our dogs’ perspective, and it is different. Things that you never notice from above become more prominent at dog level.

Never enough

If you’re like most of the dog owners we know, your phone is jammed with pictures of your dog. That’s okay. Take more anyway. There are never enough.

Every stage of your dog’s life is worth remembering. There are certainly never enough puppy pictures, ever. We’ve always meant to do a series taking a picture of a dog in the same position on the same day of every month. Maybe today is a good day to start.

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Beware internet vet advice

Hive mind strengths

That being said – the Facebook group for local dogs, or for your breed, or your breed in your city, isn’t any kind of substitute.

Once you have a diagnosis of what’s going on with your dog, by all means ask if other people have experience and what worked/didn’t work for them and their dogs. If you’re pursuing a second opinion, or even looking for a good veterinarian, it’s a great idea to ask people with similar situations for their recommendations.

But don’t rely on other dog owners for a diagnosis of whatever oozing’s going on. And please stop posting pictures of it!

When you know what’s going on

The hive mind of the internet is great for finding answers to specific needs – like when you’re looking for a chiropractor in Chicago, a dentist in Detroit, or a neurologist in New York. It can’t help when you think your dog has acid reflux, and, tragically, is diagnosed with an abdomen filled with cancerous tumors. That happened to a friend of ours this past week.

Internet vet advice is no substitute for a veterinarian

She did everything right. When her dog was having trouble keeping food down, she made an appointment with her vet and got an initial diagnosis of GERD ( Gastroesophageal reflux disease). With that in hand, she asked her network of dog-owning friends if anyone had dealt with the condition, and what worked and didn’t work for them and their dogs.

She was also sent for further testing, and an MRI revealed the sad truth. Her six-year-old dog is now on palliative care – whatever she wants, she gets. For however long our friend is able to keep her dog happy, she will.

Don’t scare yourself

We’re sure you’ve seen it, too. People post a picture of some red bump on their dog and ask for internet vet advice. Opinions range from warts to cancer. We wish we could all get accurate diagnoses from photos, but we can’t. So the non-experts’ opinions are worthless. People are falsely reassured and do nothing. Or panic and worry until they’re able to find out what’s really going on.

By all means let the people who care about you and your dog know what’s going on. “Fido’s bump has changed and we’re seeing the vet on Monday,” is a good post. It lets people know you’re not having a good weekend, and that Fido’s getting extra treats. And on Monday, after the vet visit, it’s good to post a follow-up so your friends and family know what’s going on.

The internet is a vital lifeline – it lets us stay in touch with our friends, family, and community when we can’t all be together physically. But take social media advice with a few grains of salt. A little seasoning makes everything better.

3 Biggest Mistakes Dog Owners Make

Mistakes dog owners make #1

Rushing. Chances are, in the course of a day, you have a schedule. It may be a weird one, since this is still 2020, but you still have stuff to do, places to go, errands to run. You want to get things done!

Your dog doesn’t have a timetable. Dogs live in the moment. They are where they are. And when we interact with our dogs, we need to be there, too. What’s wrong with playing fetch an extra few minutes? Or letting your dog sniff that fire hydrant and get all the latest “pee mail?”

If you’re a listmaker, make “spend time with the dog” a list item. And give it more time than you think you should. No one really cares if the housework gets put off. You’ll remember how good it felt to cuddle your dog, how much fun you had together, not how immaculate your house is.

And for the people who got a “pandemic puppy,” no dog is potty trained at three months old. And they shouldn’t be. We remember when our peers bragged about how young their children were when they were toilet trained. Nobody cares. It doesn’t matter. None of those kids was wearing diapers in college. It takes how long it takes.

Relax. Enjoy where you are.

Mistakes dog owners make #2

Catering. More dogs are turned into finicky eaters by their people than for any other reason. Dogs don’t care if they eat the same thing every meal, every day. People like variety. Dogs don’t care.

No healthy dog will purposely starve to death. If your dog doesn’t eat because he’s “holding out for something better,” be strong. There is nothing better. Hopefully you’ve researched dog foods, selected the optimum for your dog and your circumstances. That’s what your dog gets.

We do modify as we learn our dogs personalities. Hope’s French Bulldog Torque loves sweet things and doesn’t much care for fish. She figured this out because he eagerly dove into his bowl when beets or carrots were part of a meal, and took his time when there was fish. She didn’t dump out all the fish meals, but no longer includes it when making food. And there may be a few more beets and carrots in the mix.

People also cater to their dogs outside of meal time. It’s not okay that your dog barks at people wearing hats, or tall men, or children, or women carrying bags. He/she doesn’t have to love them. He just has to learn to ignore them. Dogs don’t make the rules, we do. And every member of the family, including the dogs, have to live by them.

Mistakes dog owners make #3

Helping. This is more for people who continue to have fun training their dogs, but applies to all dogs. Caring people tend to want to “help” when someone, or some dog, has a problem. Given the chance to figure stuff out on their own, most dogs are geniuses!

A dog training mentor of ours has a favorite saying “the more you help, the more helpless they become.” And it’s true. Hope’s Teddy may not have been the brightest bulb in the chandelier, and he was so darn cute that Hope pretty much “fixed” things for him all the time. One day he trapped himself into a tight area of the yard. And yelled for help when he thought he was stuck. Hope consciously decided not to help him – he’d gotten in there and there was a way back. She encouraged him, and he kept trying until he figured it out. He was incredibly proud of himself, and learned how to navigate that problem forever.

It’s the Taoist saying come to life: “Give a man a fish and you feed him for a day. Teach him how to fish and you feed him for a lifetime.”

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