His name is Thor, and despite the toughness of his name, he’s a marshmallow. When a fire started in Thor’s home, he barked to wake his family, and then he grabbed the bassinet where the family’s three-month old baby lay and dragged it to the front door.

“It sounds like the real hero here is the family pit bull,” said Frank Connolly, assistant executive director of the Elkhart County Red Cross. Source: WSBT-TV

If not for Thor, the family, including the baby, would have died.

But Thor didn’t make major headlines. Hardly anyone remembers him or what he did so very recently.

The nation, however, is talking about dogs (identified as Pit Bulls, but we don’t know for sure what they were yet) that mauled a two year in Concord, CA — dogs that rarely (if ever) got to sleep inside a home with the family. They were left outside or in the garage, isolated, undersocialized, nervous around strangers since they weren’t walked outside and rarely exposed to new people or new places.

Because some other dogs, somewhere else, that were never really treated as family pets killed an unsupervised child that wandered into his grandparents’ garage (a child that was almost a stranger to the undersocialized dogs, especially the dog described as most aggressive), dogs like Thor who get to sleep inside and, in their spare time, save families and babies from burning buildings, will pay a horrific price… as will their owners.

Dogs are simply dogs. It is up to the Human species to do right by them, since we have chosen to bring them into our world. Embarking on a campaign to villify creatures that are incapable of truly understanding right from wrong and completely rely on us for their housing, feeding, training, and socialization is not only wrong, it’s cruel and stupid.

The Human species needs to get its act together — and not by banning or villifying animals that aren’t as intelligent as we think we are. We need to ensure that children like Kate-Lynn logel (killed my malamutes), Kyle Holland (killed by a labrador/husky mix), Krystal Brink (killed by sled dogs), and Nicholas Faibish (killed by a Pit Bull type dog) are remembered, not because of the breeds they were killed by, but because of what they have tragically demonstrated.

Animals are animals. If we don’t do right by them, if we don’t treat them humanely, socialize them, train them, and (if need be) humanely euthanize the ones that just aren’t safe, then both species will pay the price.

We finished our second Dog Reactivity Workshop (well, four sessions total, if you want to be technical, since each was broken up into two small groups). I want to give a big round of applause to the students (both human and canine) who completed the workshops.

For those who did not attend, here are some tips to managing dog reactivity in your dog. First, try to determine why your dog is reacting to other dogs (in a way you disapprove of, we assume). Is the dog excited, wanting to play? Anxious? Fearful? Dominant? Acting out of prey drive?

If your dog is fearful, avoid harsh corrections whenever possible. Imagine that you have a phobia. Say it’s spiders or snakes or bees or enclosed spaces. Then imagine that you’re confronted with that thing you’re afraid of. The spider is crawling toward you. It’s big. It’s black. You can see its eyes and hairy ickiness. Then imagine that while you’re about to freak out, someone starts slapping and yelling at you.

Obviously, they won’t be helping your situation. The better way to deal with fear is through prolonged, slow desensization. You see a photo of a spider. Then you look at a spider from across the room. Etc. All the time, you’re working on relaxation techniques or getting positive reinforcement (dollar bills, chocolate, whatever your particular lust is). If you got a five dollar bill just for looking at a spider across the room, you might not mind looking at one so much.

That’s not to say correction isn’t appropriate at times. Let’s say your dog isn’t particularly fearful but is prey driven. The dog is acting on instinct wanting to go after an animal. It could be a squirrel or a cat or whatever. In those situations, your dog may or may not want to take a reinforcer (like a treat or even a toy). It’s focused on the smaller thing. That squirrel consumes its vision. You want to combine some desensitization work (seeing squirrels in the distance) with correction and reinforcement…but the key is to make sure the correction is approrpriate for your dog. A verbal correction such as “eh-eh” may often do for softer dogs. Once you get your dog out of the “zone” and looking at you, reward it. Give it a very tasty treat. Its favorite toy. A butt scratch. Whatever your dog really likes. Rinse and repeat.

Then work toward reinforcing your dog for choosing to look at you (rather than being prompted). Maybe you see the squirrel across the street. You’ve already practiced getting your dog out of the zone. Now see how your dog does on his or her own. Don’t say or do anything, just be a pole. Wait your dog out. At some point, your dog is probably going to get over it and look at you. The moment he or she does! Bingo! Reward! And make sure you’ve got a super duper special reward. No, I don’t mean kibble. No, not a dog biscuit. I’m talking about cooked steak or chicken. Something smelly and tasty and yummy (this assumes your dog is motivated by food or treats, and make sure he’s hungry). Even “jackpot” the dog for choosing to look at you (that means give him a handful). Bestow verbal praise. Then end on that positive note.

It takes work. It takes repetition. But soon you will likely have a dog that, when it sees another dog or a squirrel, automatically looks at you and asks, “Where’s the treat?” (or ball or…whatever).

Use correction to remind a dog that behavior isn’t tolerated and as a consequence for a dog that blows you off after it knows what is expected (and, yes, they do). Dogs are creatures of consequence. They learn that behavior equals consequences, so you want to give positive consequences for desired behavior and negative consequences for undesired behavior. A negative consequence can be as simple as not getting a treat, being ignored, or not moving forward–if that is appropriately “unpleasant” for your dog. I won’t go into correction too much in a blog, because it’s really the most misused form of dog training and benefits more from demonstrations. Otherwise, you risk doing more harm than good.

However, if you focus on trying to reward desired behavior, you can’t do a whole lot of harm, even if you mess up and reinforce the wrong behavior. It’s a lot easier to recover from wrongly reinforcing a dog than wrongly correcting a dog, especially with sensitive or soft dogs.

During the month of June, Chako’s founder will be joining two other woman on a hunger strike to protest breed-specific legislation across the United States.

Will Wong, Auburn’s Community Development Director, today released the draft dog ordinance that the city council has been pondering for months. Despite the fact that several city council members expressed their belief that all dog owners should be held equally accountable for their dog, the city is now considering an ordinance that singles out Pit Bulls.

In an email to one of our supporters (who kindly forwarded it our way), city councilmember Bill Kirby stated, “I support the spay and neuter of all dogs except licensed breeders and certified show dogs.”

City Councilmember Keith Nesbitt told the supporter, “Staff will be bringing back recommendations for a stronger ordinance. I do not believe it will be breed specific.”

When we directly asked city council member Mike Holmes whether Auburn would be considering a Pit Bull specific ordinance, his response was a succinct, “No.”

That leaves a clear majority of the city council who have said they will not support a Big Brother government by enacting breed specific legislation. So what happened? Well, apparently, a few of them flip-flopped, but we’ll find out for sure during the May 24th city council meeting.

Read the full draft ordinance via our Google Docs account.

Procter and Gamble has purchsaed Natura Pet Products, which sells the premium dog food brands Innova and Evo. Innova has been a privately held company based in Davis, CA. Procter and Gamble also sells California Natural and Karma, among other brands.
Procter and Gamble has a very spotty record when it comes to putting the health of its customer pets over its bank account. A few years ago, Proctor and Gamble lowered the recommended feeding guidelines for its Iams and Eukanuba brands in order to claim its products were cheaper to feed. Pet owners and a competing manufacturer sued Procter and Gamble. According to the Dog Food Report, “The suit claims that Iams misled consumers by lowering the portion sizes. It also refers to five independent studies testing Iams feeding instructions and statements made by the company. In all five studies, the humane officer terminated the study because of ‘significant weight loss suffered by the dogs following Iams’ feeding instructions.'”

Visit the Washington Post to read more about what Proctor and Gamble did with Iams and Eukanuba after purchasing those brands.

Another nationwide class action suit against the company filed in 2007 claimed that Proctor and Gamble and other dog food companies misled customers about the quality of its dog food, stating, “Millions of euthanized cats and dogs are ‘rendered’ and ultimately made into pet food. Drugs used in the euthanasia process have been detected in pet food because the drugs are not destroyed by heat.” You can download the complaint via our Google Docs account.