Furry Matters LLC

07/25/2024

03/19/2024

02/06/2024

01/21/2024

I feel like my pics are....complete disaster. Luckily these guys of pups don't care and they enjoyed their kong thanks to my wonderful assistant Brigitte.

12/28/2023

Grazing is yum. Turkey is yum. We work for yum.

10/03/2023

Boys and the lady.

04/01/2023

Woof gang bakery has a sale going on this whole month! This is the only kibble I'll buy for grazing my dogs, as a raw feeder. Ocean food is my favorite!

03/28/2023

https://www.newyorker.com/science/elements/the-myth-of-the-alpha-wolf

03/01/2023

Yes and yes.

02/21/2023

You can take a test as well. 😃

In this section we’re going to develop our Dog Aware Skills on Body Language by becoming Doggie Detectives®! Learning about dog body language is a lot like being a detective – you have to gather a lot of clues and then look at them altogether to get the whole picture. Dog are always communicati...

02/09/2023

Under the collar.

01/31/2023

If I can't see them ribs on long coats, I better be feeling them. 😉🫳🤌

While risk factors like genetics, breed and age are out of our control, we can control the amount of food our pets eat. We can also control how much they exercise, which is undeniably good for us too!

01/26/2023

🤌😊

If we learn to read our dogs and understand them, we can not only let them make choices but also help them make the right choices.
Choice gives your dog agency
- this means it helps them to feel safe and builds their confidence as they have some control over their life

Old fashioned training methods that rely on force suppresses a dogs emotions and behaviour, knocks their confidence and means we are not listening to them or meeting their emotional needs.

Some suggestions of where you can give your dog choices would be ;
Let your dog choose the pace and direction of their walk.
Let them sniff as long as they want to
Let them decide if they don’t want to go out for a walk - don’t force them
Use consent petting and consent grooming
techniques. Learn to read your dog and understand when they say ‘no - I don’t want to be petted right now or in that way’
Give choice in diet - variety of flavours, textures, cooked, raw, fruit, veg, meat. Can you imagine being given brown biscuits to eat all your life?
Give them access to several different types of water bowl - see what they prefer
I also have a bucket of rain water outside that my dog likes
Give a choice of resting places in different locations.

The days of forcing animals to comply with humans is long gone (for most of us who are enlightened!) our dogs are family . Let’s make sure we treat them as such
©Victoria Cooper

01/26/2023

Dogs judge us and are much more patient with incompetent humans than they are with mean ones, a study has suggested.The research is the latest to explore whether canines are capable of understanding human intentions.The results suggest that dogs can indeed distinguish between somebody who would like...

01/25/2023

The dangers of shake cans, “pet correctors” and other “distant” punishers

I had really hoped to move on from the subject of aversives for a while, because monitoring the responses to these posts tends to take up a huge amount of time and I wanted to hopefully focus on more positive topics for a while!

However, sadly over the last few days I have seen and heard some really shocking (excuse the pun) situations involving "e-collars" that really made me despair over what we are doing to dogs, in most cases without the faintest clue that we could be doing any harm.

Just last night I read a post that I kept telling myself must be a joke (but sadly wasn't), where a dog had "suddenly" started attacking other people and dogs in the home and there in the accompanying photo, sits this poor dog with a great big shock collar around his neck. I have now encountered two situations in my own neighbourhood with dogs who were serial escapees being fitted with shock collars and developing severe aggression issues. In one case the owner admitted repeatedly pressing the remote when she had lost the dog (the reasoning behind this is unclear) while the dog was in fact standing in a public place among a group of small children. Thank goodness she was out of range for the signal to go through, because the consequences of the dog being shocked in that situation don't bear thinking about.

How easily accessible these tools are to the public is just sickening. Aside from the welfare concerns, the danger posed by this kind of aversive stimulation to other people and animals who encounter a dog subjected to this kind of random punishment is truly frightening. For this reason I am posting an article I wrote quite a few years ago to address the concerns around the use of "distant punishers".

For those living in South Africa, I would like to add one thing: I have discussed shock collars with the SPCA and the inspector informed me that they WILL prosecute over the use of shock collars IF photo or video evidence can be supplied. However, it takes us having the courage of our convictions to actually get involved.

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Distant punishers (aversive stimuli like shake cans, spray bottles, pet correctors and shock collars) that are intended to stop unwanted behaviour while being dissociated from the owner are often very popular with dog owners and uneducated trainers, because they are perceived as being more ethical and less damaging than having the owner directly punishing a dog by hitting, kicking or hanging him. However, this is a false and dangerous perception.

Recently I visited a client whose dog had developed various noise phobias which were starting to generalise to other things in the dog’s life, such as people or situations associated with the noises. It turned out that several years previously, the owner had (with the best intentions) consulted a self-proclaimed, but unqualified “behaviourist” who had thrown a shake can (tin with ball bearings in it) at the dog after offering the dog food.

The supposed motivation was to teach the dog to back off from something when it heard the shake can which would then be used to dissuade the dog from lunging at other dogs when on the lead. No thought was given to the dog’s history or the underlying reason for the dog’s behaviour towards other dogs, The dog had in fact been bullied and traumatised repeatedly by other dogs and was using an aggressive display to try and ward them off.

Instead of taking this into account and drawing up a plan to desensitize and counter-condition the dog to the presence of other dogs (actually changing the underlying emotional response so that the dog felt better about other dogs and had no need to react with defensive behaviour) this “behaviourist” chose to simply try and suppress the behaviour through punishment. Because she did not hit or kick the dog, she furthermore claimed that what she was doing was not abusive.

The dog’s subsequent behaviour and the development of multiple phobias (all centred on sudden noises and objects landing near her) tells a very different story however. In fact this poor dog was so traumatised by what this “behaviourist” had done that when I took food out to help the owner with a simple training exercise she was trying to work on, the dog saw the food, ran away and subsequently became terrified of me. The owner explained me that this was the exact scenario in which the previous “behaviourist” had thrown the shake can at her and even though I was visiting 4 years later, the association was still just as strong.

In fact, the owner had a light-bulb moment, when she realised that while she had been trying to get people to feed her dog treats to build her trust in others, the offering of food had in this case made the poor dog feel terribly conflicted, because while she wanted to approach the person and take the food (which in a dog that had not been traumatised in this way could have created positive associations and improved her attitude towards people - and yes, I know this in itself is not necessarily the best course of action), she associated the situation with the shake can being thrown at her and so became fearful. This type of approach/avoidance conflict is incredibly stressful for dogs and can easily lead them into situations where they may bite to defend themselves.

This is just one case that clearly demonstrated the massive and permanent fallout from the use of shake cans and other distant punishers, but it is by no means the only one that I and my colleagues have dealt with and will continue to deal with on a regular basis while such “tools” are seen to be acceptable, by those who know no better, when it comes to modifying dog behaviour.
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Sadly many vets and shops sell the “Pet Corrector” spray - compressed air in a can that makes a loud “ssht!” noise when activated. Manufacturers of these sorts of products encourage owners to spray their dogs with the device if they jump up at visitors or bark at other dogs. But one has to look at what the dog is actually learning from the use of such a device. The reality is that it is unlikely that the dog will associate his own behaviour with the unpleasant noise or the blast of air in his face. He will far more likely associate it with the visitors he is jumping at or the dogs he is barking at or the owner wielding the spray can. This means that he is associating something NEGATIVE and SCARY with people visiting the home or other dogs or his owner. When dogs are confronted with something they have negative associations with or are scared of, their fight/flight response is likely to be triggered. So this literally means that dogs may avoid (flight) or become aggressive towards (fight) people visiting the home, other dogs or the owner, in the examples that I have given.

And now there is a new device “Ssscat Animal repellent” - basically an automated pet corrector equipped with sensors which trigger the “sssht!” and sq**rt of air when the animal is within 1 metre of it. The idea is to set it up near the bin to stop your dog from scavenging in it or in the door of the baby’s room to stop the cat from going in there. Again, what are the practical implications? Well, it could easily happen that one of your dogs happens to go near the bin while another is passing by. The dog closest to the bin gets a huge fright (that is the purpose of the device, let’s be honest - otherwise it wouldn’t chase the dog away, which is the idea), but does it associate it with the bin or with the intention of scavenging in the bin (perhaps it just happened to be passing by quite innocently)? What about associating it with the presence of the other dog or your 2 year-old child that has just walked into the kitchen? How do you think that dog is going to feel about the other dog or your toddler after that? Who are you going to blame if your dog develops a fight/flight response when the other dog or toddler appears in the future? Let’s go back to the repellent set up in the baby’s room? What if you have a dog as well as a cat and he wanders near the baby’s room and gets a huge fright every-time he does so? How will he feel about the baby? I won’t even go into the likely reaction of the cat that is exposed to such a device (cats are flight animals and don’t stick around unpleasant things - the cat may simply leave home - permanently!).

Pet owners are often unfortunately impatient and want quick fixes. However, quick fixes are seldom lasting ones. They usually involve causing an aversive emotional state in an animal which can lead to far more severe and dangerous problem behaviours in the long run. A very good example of how dangerous it can be when negative associations are unintentionally created through punishment is the study that showed that 5 severe attacks on people by 5 different dogs (3 of them Golden Retrievers, a breed renowned for being “placid”) were a direct result of electronic boundaries used to prevent dogs from leaving the property in the absence of proper fencing (Polsky, R. 2000). These dogs had all triggered the shock collar by approaching the trip wire in an attempt to greet people walking past outside. They associated the shock they received with the presence of the people, their flight/fight system was triggered and they attacked.

While you might think that there is a huge difference between a shock and a spray of air or sudden noise, the fact is that they are all aversive stimuli designed to cause fear and avoidance. While the physical damage may be less in the case of the latter two, the psychological damage is the same. Please be aware of this before you reach for the latest “tool” on the market. Say NO to ALL aversive conditioning!

Polsky, R. 2000. Can aggression in dogs be elicited through the use of electronic pet containment systems? Journal of Applied Animal Welfare Science 3, 345-358.

01/23/2023

Replying to no shade at all! Simple an important conversation and point of education about +r training.

01/22/2023

I'm a raw feeder but I'll let my puppers graze for kibble, and I'll also use it for training. I've stumbled on Essence ocean food and I love it.
Tammy beats Chewy's prices and I love that she's local.

01/11/2023

Test your knowledge😃

How much do you know about behavior problems in dogs? Here’s a short quiz to test your knowledge!

12/26/2022

Resource guarding. Test your knowledge!

Take this quiz and find out how much you know about resource guarding! Want to learn more? Take a look at the Fenzi Dog Sports Academy On Demand Video LS220: Stop Resource Guarding in Dogs: How to Prevent & Treat It!

12/26/2022

Test your knowledge.

Take this survey powered by surveymonkey.com. Create your own surveys for free.

12/07/2022

Keep the local business open.
If you go there for grooming, buy a small bag of treats.

08/11/2022

04/14/2022

SO JUST HOW LONG DO YOUR PET’S SHOTS LAST?

Definitely longer than a year!

According to the top pet immunologist (aka vaccine expert) in the world, Dr. Ronald Schultz, Ph.D. – “ Annual revaccination provides no benefit and may increase the risk for adverse reactions.”

What the heck are adverse reactions (or side effects)?

Well according to the other rock star pet immunologist Dr. Jean Dodds:

“Side effects from dog vaccinations can occur anywhere from instantly up to several weeks or months later. Vaccines can even cause susceptibility to chronic diseases that appear much later in a dog’s life (Dodd, 2001).

Severe and fatal adverse reactions include:

•Susceptibility to infections.

•Neurological disorders and encephalitis.

•Aberrant behavior, including unprovoked aggression.

•Vaccines are linked to seizures. Distemper, parvovirus, rabies and, presumably, other vaccines have been linked with poly neuropathy, a nerve disease that involves inflammation of several nerves. (Dodds,2001)”

SO HOW LONG EXACTLY DOES YOUR PET’S VACCINE LAST?

According to the recommendations of the American Animal Hospital Association (AAHA), (basically the dudes who set the standards for the vets): “Among healthy dogs, all commercially available [core] vaccines are expected to induce a sustained protective immune response lasting at least 5 yr. thereafter”

Here’s the breakdown of the core vaccines from Dr. Ronald Schultz:

Minimum Duration of Immunity for Canine Vaccines:

Distemper- 7 years by challenge
Parvovirus – 7 years by challenge
Adenovirus – 7 years by challenge
Canine rabies – 3 years by challenge

The moral of the story here, if you have no idea when your pet is due or has been vaccinated, then just run a titer test and this will confirm if you are due, rather than over-vaccinate your poor pet, setting the stage for future problems!

What’s a titer test?

A titer test (pronounced tight-errr) is a laboratory or in-house veterinary test measuring the existence and level of antibodies (necessary to fight off disease) in your pet’s blood. Basically, it’s a test that will tell you whether or not you actually need to vaccinate your pet.

It’s also super useful when making a decision about vaccinating a pet with an unknown vaccination history, or for determining if pets have received immunity from vaccination.

Vaccinating your pet is super important so don’t lose the overall message here: VACCINATE, JUST DON’T OVER-VACCINATE!

According to Dr. Dodds:

“Vaccines have achieved many important benefits for companion animals, and has saved more animals' lives than any other medical advance.”

Want more on titer testing? Check it out:

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10153271303942028&set=pb.509362027.-2207520000.1461100680.&type=3&theater

Rodney Habib

"An educated, informed and well-researched community of pet owners can only put more pressure on the pet food industry to be better! When pet owners know better, they will only do better!"

01/24/2022

💛

01/19/2022

If one of my clients reads this, please subscribe to this wave of knowledge!

The Dog Training Secrets Summit features 13+ World Leading Dog Trainers and Behavior Experts Who Will Share How to Raise a Well-Trained and Obedient Dog.

01/07/2022

Training needs to be fun! The animals willingness to participate should be non-negotiable!