Hugo's House

I was just feeding my Standard Poodle his daily rations and thinking about dog food. Every morning and evening, I give him half a can of some kind of premium dog food, some premium dog kibble, and some human food, like chicken, beef, or tuna. I mix up the cans of food, so that he never gets the same flavor repeated twice in one day. Sometimes it’s canned lamb, other times it’s canned chicken, and other times it’s beef from a can. I mix up the human food as well, giving him some chicken meat or beef or tuna on a random basis.

When I started feeding my first dog, many years ago, I was told by everyone that I should feed her the same thing, day in and day out. So I gave her the same dried kibble, twice a day, every day. The rationale was that if I gave her something else to eat, she would have an upset stomach because she was not used to processing different kinds of food.

She seemed grateful to get the food, and I didn’t think to question the conventional wisdom that I was told.

Much later, I started to wonder about the conventional wisdom. After all, feral dogs and their wild relatives eat a huge variety of food, basically whatever they can find or catch, all without having severe diarrhea every 20 minutes.

So is it really true that dogs need to stay on the same diet?

We know that mammals (yes, us too!) have a bacterial flora in their gut that assists in the digestion and processing of food. When that bacterial flora is disrupted, we can have diarrhea. This is often why people who go to other countries come down with a case of the “turista” when they eat food containing a different mix of bacterial flora.

Maybe that happens with dogs as well, when we change them over from feeding on only one food item to a large variety of foods. Then we might have a little bit of cleanup to do for a while.

Some people have told me that the proper way to introduce a dog to some other kind of food is to put in a little bit of the new food in along with lots of the old food, and then keep adding a little bit of the new food every day until the proportion of new food outweighs the proportion of old food. This can take months.

But with us, we know that we get over the “turista” in a week or two, and then are quite happy to eat a variety of strange foods as the bacterial flora adjusts in the gut. Should dogs be any different?

I know that my Poodle enjoys eating a variety of different foods. Occasionally I will forget which can I gave him and repeat the same canned food twice in a day. He usually eats some of it, but not with the relish that he saves for a dinner that is varied from the time before.

Put yourself in his place: How would you like to have oatmeal for breakfast, and oatmeal for dinner, only to look forward to the next day and …..more oatmeal?

To go back to my question: should dogs stay on the same diet day after day? In my opinion, the answer is No, not even close.

(PS, I love oatmeal, but I don’t think that I could eat it twice a day for the rest of my life).

--Con Slobodchikoff

We have known for some time that animals such as chimpanzees, bonobos, and gorillas can be taught to communicate through using signs such as those of American Sign Language or using lexigrams on computer keyboards.  We also are becoming increasingly aware that dogs have the cognitive ability to understand human gestures such as pointing, and that dogs are keen observers of the body movements of humans. However, with dogs, this communication has often been a one-way street: We point, they respond, but we do not usually respond to their gestures. In her book, Dogs Can Sign, Too, Sean Senechal offers a step-by-step method of teaching both humans and dogs a way of communicating with one another through gestures (Senechal, Sean, 2009, Dogs Can Sign, Too: A Breakthrough Method for Teaching Your Dog to Communicate to You, Celestial Arts, Berkeley CA).

I first learned of Sean Senechal’s work from a story by Anne Fawcett in the May 27, 2011 Sydney Morning Herald, which talked about the progress we are making in communicating with animals. The story talked about my work with decoding prairie dog language, and also talked about the work that Sean Senechal was doing in devising a language that dogs can use to communicate with their people.

I was intrigued, and visited Sean at her California ranch to see her work for myself. She showed me how her horse could use the sign language to request different kinds of foods, and also how her dogs could use the language to indicate what kind of food they wanted, where things hurt on their body, and their wanting to go outside to play. I ordered her book from Amazon, and found the book to be both informative and fun to read.

There are ten chapters in this paperback book. The first chapter offers a brief statement of why dogs are a good candidate for learning a sign language that they can use to communicate with their humans. Consider, for example, all of the signs, gestures, and procedures that guide dogs have to learn in order to perform their duties for people who cannot see or cannot hear. The second chapter presents an overview of the K9Sign Language that Senechal has devised for communication, using gestures and body postures that are easy and natural for dogs. This language is rule-based with standardized moves: If a dog want to communicate “Potty,” the dog moves its hind legs out to a wide stance, while if a dog wants to communicate its desire for “Chicken” as a food item, the dog lifts its left paw up high and then lowers it down. The third chapter discusses how dog learn and some of the elements of learning theory, as an introduction to those who are not familiar with the basics, and as a reminder for those who know how other animals learn. Chapters 4 through 6 give some practical tips on what people should expect when they start to teach this language to their dogs, and how people can avoid the pitfalls and frustrations that are likely to befall them along the way. Chapter 7 gives specific information on how to teach human signs to dogs, and Chapters 8 and 9 talk about how to use and interpret the signs that dogs naturally have through their body language. Chapter 10 briefly sets out Senechal’s vision that eventually such signs can be used to communicate not only with dogs but with other animals as well, such as horses, as a way of strengthening the human-animal bond.

Throughout the book, Senechal provides photographs of the hand, arm, and face gestures that she uses with her dog Chal, and also provides extensive photographic documentation of the signs that Chal uses to communicate with Senechal. This makes it easy for a person learning K9Sign Language to learn the signs and also to learn what kinds of responses should be taught to a dog. Senechal also goes into extensive detail about the different signs, so that in addition to the visual aspect of the photographs, there is ample explanation of how to learn and teach this language.

In our attempts to communicate with other animals, Senechal’s book is a step in a good direction. Although there is increasing evidence that many animal species have sophisticated methods of communicating and language, decoding those communication methods is difficult and time-consuming. On the other hand, teaching animals a basic language that they can use to communicate with humans offers a path to increasing the well-being of both the animals and the people who otherwise have to guess what it might be that their animals want. This book is a “Must Read” for those who seriously want to communicate with their dogs.

--Con Slobodchikoff

“They named him ‘Baby’ and I just hate it. I feel so silly calling him that, but obviously I can’t change his name. He’s already three years old.” It’s not surprising that my client, a new owner of a 130-pound full-grown Hungarian Kuvasz wasn’t that crazy about the name ‘Baby.’ It’s common to adopt an adult dog with a name that doesn’t really thrill you, and many people have soldiered on for the rest of the dog’s life, stuck with a name that they just don’t feel right about.

There’s good news, though: If you don’t like your dog’s name, you can change it. Period. It’s easy to do it and it causes no harm to the dog. Dogs can have multiple names and respond to each one, as is the case in many homes where the dog is called by his actual name as well as variations by different members of the household.

Changing a dog’s name is one of the easiest parts of adopting and training a new dog. Here’s how you do it. Start by saying the new name and giving him something great like a piece of chicken, a belly rub, or a play session if he looks at you. This teaches him to love hearing his new name and responding to it. Most dogs learn a new name within a few weeks if you do this multiple times each day, and some learn it in just a couple of sessions. Progress will be faster if you avoid using the name for no reason and also refrain from associating it with anything bad.

Names like Baby, Poopsie, and Pudding are often not popular with new adopters. On other extreme, many people feel a mismatch when they adopt a dog who has been going by Killer, Spike, or Vengeance. I knew a family who adopted a dog named Spot, and chose to change it. They could not imagine why someone would give their dog this cliché of a name. A year later, they learned from the rescue group where they adopted their dog that the couple who had surrendered him had been named Dick and Jane, which made the choice of Spot for the dog’s name seem not just understandable, but almost obvious.

 --Karen London