Tick-tock your way to dreamland

Losing sleep to a young pup who whines and barks in her crate? Here’s an idea: Put a ticking clock under a blanket in the crate — maybe even a blanket or T-shirt that smells like you. Apparently, this is something rescue folks do with orphaned pups to simulate the comforting sound of a heartbeat. I can’t guarantee the strategy works, but it’s got poetry and logic going for it.

Advice for flying canines

A writer-friend of mine, Susan, recently adopted a retired service dog, Joplin, from an organization in Toronto. Another friend, Harriet, who writes about airports for a living, agreed to collect the dog — and in the process, check out at least three airports. It turned into a 24-hour planes-trains-and-automobiles epic, which I won’t relate here since I’m guessing at least one of them will squib about it somewhere, but I did glean a fairly excellent bit of flying-your-dog advice from a kennel north of the border.

When you load up your dog, include a bowl in which the water has been frozen, so that it melts during the flight and is less likely to slosh around during the early loading phases. Also, create a bedding of shredded paper on top of a rubber mat: It’s soft, absorbent and disposable. One other thing, and I hope I’m not giving too much away here, be sure you’ve got a regulation travel crate held together with metal fasteners!

Check out Harriet’s blog: Stuck at the Airport.

Fording streams with dogs

In response to a post about my Hiking with Dogs presentation at Trailsfest on Saturday, one commenter said she lost her unleashed dog when she forded a stream during a backcountry trip. And only yesterday, another serious outdoorsman told me the story of friends whose Golden Retriever disappeared forever in a fast-flowing current. All of which reminded me of a section on fording rivers in the original draft of Dog Park Wisdom that ended up slashed by a zealous editor. Here’s the rough cut — and some food for thought for folks hiking near rivers with their dogs.

River crossings can be a challenge with a dog, even a strong swimmer. Jim Greenway, an avid hiker and top dog at the Traildogs group on Yahoo, provided these strategies for fording rivers, streams and swamps with your dog.

• Get your dog comfortable wading and swimming before leaving for the big trip.

• If your dog doesn’t like water, stream fords are going to be a challenge. That’s particularly true if the crossing involves hip-deep water in which the dog has no other choice than to swim for it. I would omit the previous sentence as being patently obvious if it weren’t for the fact that I ran into at least one hiking party that was stuck with carrying a dog because he wouldn’t swim. Try that in places such as north Georgia’s Jacks River Trail, with almost three-dozen river crossings, and you won’t soon forget it.

• Carrying a dog isn’t a viable option. Most river crossings involve riverbeds with slick rocks. It may be difficult enough to keep your footing with only a pack. Carrying a dog raises your body’s center of gravity and makes it harder to balance on the rocks. A slip and fall could injure both of you and frighten the dog so much that he or she doesn’t want to be carried again. If carrying is a must, consider leaving your pack and taking your dog across first. Leash the dog to a tree, and then make a return trip to retrieve your pack.

• Learn to appreciate the power and hazards in water. Hikers often lack any experience with gauging a river’s hazards. They look upriver to see the current, without realizing it’s what’s downriver that can really hurt them. What only looks like a fallen tree in the river may also be a deadly “strainer.” Many people don’t realize that river current tends to suck dogs (and hikers) down and into the strainer, rather than over or around them. Large rocks are both a collision hazard as well as a danger for “undercuts,” or pockets of recirculating current that can trap dogs. Dogs and most people tend to try to swim away from hydraulics at the surface. It’s difficult enough to even figure out where the surface is. The best escape route is to try to swim out of the bottom of the hydraulic. It’s tough explaining that to the dog.

• How close to keep your dog? This is a toss-up, especially if it’s just you and the dog. A panicked dog may try to climb onto your back. That’s a bad move. The only preventative is to get your dog comfortable in swimming before the trip. Don’t tie on the dog. If he gets into trouble, he may pull you down with him.

• Look for the calmest spot to cross. That may or may not be the prescribed crossing. It may also mean that you both have to swim because the river is deep there.

• Gauge the current. Remember, most land managers select river crossings with the idea that humans are walking across. Current has a relatively minor effect on that. Your dog, however, is probably going to float downstream—and fast. Launching your dog from the prescribed crossing point may mean that your dog will be pushed downstream to a bank or cliff that’s too steep for an exit. Once a dog misses a safe exit point, he may be washed downstream for some distance. If he panics at missing the exit point, the dog may become so exhausted he can’t escape the water.

• Throw in a stick and watch how fast it moves downstream. Use your experience with your dog’s swimming speed to figure out where you must launch your dog upstream in order for him to swim to a safe exit point downstream. Trust your gut. If a crossing looks “iffy,” don’t try it

• Remove the dense stuff from the dog backpack. A dog pack can provide a lot of flotation and take some of the work out of the swim. An overstuffed can create resistance.

• Beware gators in swamp crossings. There are areas, such as the Florida Trail, where big sections are waded or forded. These areas usually have alligators. Alligators eat dogs. I’d be very reluctant to let a dog swim in those areas. This might be the only instance when I recommend carrying the dog over the shoulders and around the neck.

While Greenway says a leash may cause trouble for humans in a crossing, other hikers told me a leash is a necessity. A Portland-based packer uses harnesses on her dogs and leads them across with a long line tied to her horses. “The dog can slip out of a collar from the drag of the water,” she warns. Also, Justin Lichter rarely keeps Yoni’s pack on for a tough crossing. With more than 20,000 trail miles under his belt, he removes her backpack and attaches it to his, then holds her leash and collar with his downstream hand, and walks with her close to him.

We’ll continue the conversation about dogs in streams and on trails tomorrow at 2 p.m. at the Outdoor Classroom at Rattlesnake Lake near North Bend, Washington. Maybe I’ll see you there.

Tick patrol

Oh, tick season. While I don’t live in the tick heartland anymore, reports of bulging bloodsuckers from Georgia to Maine have inspired PTSD-memories of my years in tick-infested Westchester. I provided one tick removal strategy in Dog Park Wisdom, but some others have surfaced since then. I like the suggestion below, which came to me via Cindy Trimble Kelly, an interior designer in Georgia and a contributor of countless pet-friendly-design brainstorms for my book. Cindy learned this tick-removal recipe from a friend who got it from a nurse (quoted below) who got it from a pediatrician — good advice travels fast.

Apply a glob of liquid soap to a cotton ball. Cover the tick with the soap-soaked cotton ball and let it stay on the repulsive insect for a few seconds (15-20), after which the tick will come out on its own and be stuck to the cotton ball when you lift it away. This technique has worked every time I’ve used it (and that was frequently), and it’s much less traumatic for the patient and easier for me.

This is great, because it works in those places where it’s sometimes difficult to get to with tweezers — between toes, in the middle of a head full of dark hair, etc. I even had my doctor’s wife call me for advice because she had one stuck to her back and she couldn’t reach it with tweezers. She used this method and immediately called me back to say, “It worked!”

While this is a suggestion for humans, I’m all over trying it on my dog. Also, check out this blurb on “tick sticks.”

Dog-proof blinds and more

I’m just back from Boulder, Colorado, where I signed copies of Dog Park Wisdom at PC’s Pantry – a truly wonderful pet supply shop. During my visit, I spent some time in Arvada with my brother, Michael, my sister-in-law, Linda, and their adorable dogs, a Bijon-Cocker-mix named Reggie and a Golden Retriever named Mabel. Lifelong dog lovers, Michael and Linda slipped a couple dog-savvy ideas into the tour of their beautiful, newly renovated home.

Michael pointed out a pair of French doors with the blinds built in – sealed between two panes of glass. They operate pretty much like regular blinds, only these can’t become tangled or torn by the paws of an anxious pup. (They also won’t collect dust.) How perfect is that?

Linda shared her secret for quick and easy backyard poop patrol: latex gloves. For multiple pickups, these are more manageable and sanitary than a plastic bag fashioned into a mitt. They are also inexpensive. (Less than $6 for 100 from Costco.)

D-I-Y plastic bag dispenser

When she’s not hiking with her Catahoula leopard dog, Beau, Amanda Tikkanen is probably going all MacGyver on some forgotten nylon remnant. With a passion for trails and dogs and the self-reliance of a pioneer, Amanda generously shares her insights and perspectives at UberPest’s Journal. She’s not a daily blogger by any stretch, but her archives and do-it-yourself instructions could keep a motivated, tree-hugging, dog guardian busy repurposing everyday objects for a long while. A March 2008 entry on converting a plastic, gallon jug into a waste bag dispenser is just the sort of practical wisdom we can all use in these belt-tightening times. (Extra points for using a pet-stain removal jug for poop bags!)

Agility garden?

I love the idea of adapting your garden to your dogs, rather than constantly struggling to keep your dog out of the garden. So how about incorporating agility training into your planting plan? Dog Park Wisdom photographer Bev Sparks suggested growing corn as weave poles in the backyard. Robin Haglund, owner of Garden Mentors in Seattle, thinks mammoth sunflowers might be a sturdier–and probably prettier–option. “They tend to have really strong stalks when they get going — so strong that I have to let them rot over the winter in order to get them out of the ground,” she says. She also suggests using inexpensive bamboo pools planted with climbing beans. (The photo is of Robin’s dog Shiloh, who has inspired many landscaping workarounds.)

Cookie sheets — a counter offensive

We adopted a new dog, Renzo, in January. One afternoon, while I was at a neighbor’s house, he filched some avocado peels and a pit off a cutting board. (This reveals something about my housekeeping that I’m hoping we can just skim over.) Our other dog, Lulu, has never scavenged in this way. So I was shocked. Unable to locate the pit, I raced my furry bandit down to the veterinarian, who gave Renzo a shot to induce vomiting. In the waiting area, a vet tech read the scary details of toxic avocado pits to me and kept saying, “I’ve never seen anything like this.”

When no avocado evidence surfaced, I called my husband at home and asked him to scour the house for the missing pit — which he found buried in a green-slimed couch cushion.

So now I’m a member of a new fraternity of people living with kitchen-counter thieves, and I regret not including in my book a strategy I’d heard for this particular problem. It’s simple: Leave cookie sheets on the counter hanging slightly over the edge. When a dog on kitchen recon tips the sheet, the crash is said to go a long way to breaking the habit.

I’ve also heard of hiding mouse traps under pie tins on countertops or in other no-go zones — which, when distrubed triggers nerve-jangling noise. But I think I’d be too afraid of paws getting snipped to try that one.

Greening the grass roots

I love the paws-on initiative behind Pets for the Environment, a Web-based awareness campaign spearheaded by a shaggy dog named Eddie. Galvanized by the death of Feathers (the family parrot inhaled lethal chemicals from a non-stick cooking pan), Eddie is on a mission to clean up the world he shares with a cat and his people. His practical suggestions for reducing your pets’ exposure to nasty chemicals offer simple ways to become engaged this Earth Day. From taking a pass on stain-proof treatments for couches, carpets and car upholstery (loaded with toxic PFCs) to avoiding strip-mined kitty litter for cats, making environmental and healthy choices for our animals is sure to generate triple-up benefits. Happy Earth Day.

D-I-Y dog blanket-coat

When I was working on my book, I wondered why dog people were so willing to be generous with their time, energy and dollars, especially for anything related to dogs. Are they nicer than, say, cat people? Or people without pets? Obviously, I don’t know. But there are a lot of dog-loving humans out there with great ideas and a desire to share them.

Take Chris C., who lives with a five-year-old German Shepherd named Abby K-9 in Virginia. When she’s not clicker-training, hiking or adventuring with Abby, Chris channels her ample supply of good sense and enthusiasm into a blog loaded with smart, free advice about life with her dog. (Abby, by the way, gives Rin Tin Tin a run for the money: A former shelter dog, she’s earned her CGC and HIT titles, and served as an Army recruiting mascot and a therapy dog.) Chris’s recent detailed post on dog backpacks answers many of the questions new hikers have about hitting the trail with a canine sidekick. But one of my favorite posts is her pattern/instructions for creating a dog coat from a blanket. (The photo above is from Abby K-9’s blog and shows the finished product.) Chris is also committed to the cause of responsible breeding and created this video about the plight of German Shepherds — and, by extensions, all dogs — in shelters (tissues required).