01/24/14

How safe are dog car travel harnesses?

Last year, we heard that 100% of dog car harnesses were failing safety tests. The Center for Pet Safety is quoted as saying,”We tested them to the child safety restraint standard and we experienced a 100-percent failure rate to protect either the consumer or the dog”.

It’s a concerning claim. Many pet owners put their dogs on a harness because they want them to be safe during an accident, and yet it seems that harnesses won’t achieve these aims. So what’s a pet owner to do?

Golden retriever puppy in back seat of car.

Center of Pet Safety Study

Firstly, have a look at the CPS’s study. A complete summary of CPS’s investigation can be read on this PDF, but the research methods are best summarised by this flowchart:

Click to see PDF source.

So, firstly, they only tested harnesses that claimed to be tested, or claimed to offer crash protection.

Then, they did ‘quasi static testing’, which is basically they pulled on the harness attachment really hard for a sustained period to see if the harness survived or not. (Watch a video of the quasi static test.)

The following products did not pass the quasi static testing:

USA K-9 Outfitters; Champion.
In the Company of Animals; Clix.
Coastal; EZ-Rider.
Snoozer; Pet Safety Harness and Adapter.

It is only if the product passed both of those initial stages that they proceeded to crash testing.

In the same PDF, a nifty little flow chart is displayed – and ultimately it lists the harness, from left to right, as best to worst (of those tested).

So, basically, the testing concluded that the ‘best’ harness (of those tested) was the Sleepypod Clickit Utility.

A complete analysis is available on page 10 of the results.

You can find out more about the Sleepypod Clickit harness from the Sleepypod website.

NRMA Insurance Test

From my research, the only other test I can find was performed by NRMA Insurance, and yielded not dissimilar results: The Sleepypod Clickit Harness was rated on the top, and the Purina Roadie Harness was second. NRMA Insurance tested 25 harnesses, and only the above two passed. That is, 92% of harnesses failed. You can read NRMA’s brief press release: Paws and Secure Your Puppy

But harnesses are still better than nothing…

I would like to warn against ‘giving up’ on harnesses, because most of the harnesses do stop dogs become a projectile, and injuring people in the car. Little comfort, but please do restrain your pets.

Screen shot 2014-01-15 at 8.46.34 AM

My choice

Personally, I have had trouble with harnesses in the car. Any of my dogs that I have tried them on walk around and around in circles, twisting up their limbs in their harness, and looking miserable and uncomfortable.

After reading the two studies above, I am glad I made the choice to crate my dogs in the car. The crates are secured in my car with tie downs to anchor points. I am very happy with my choice, and feel that it is probably the safest option for car travel, especially in light of this study.

Our next blog post will look into ways you can advocate for better harnesses.

Further reading: Pet Auto Safety Blog

01/22/14

The Week In Tweets – 22nd January 2014

This is our (almost) weekly segment where we review the content posted on our Twitter over the course of the week. It’s a long post! So make sure you grab a coffee and prepare yourself for some serious reading.

But first, here’s a picture of a koala that stopped by my place this past week. We had five days in a row over 40C (104F), and the animals, such as this koala, suffered. Koalas aren’t ‘cute and cuddly’ – they have big claws and do bite! I cautiously gave this guy a drink… He took water from me and didn’t run away, showing how dehydrated he really was!

Koala in bushes

We had a cool change and koala climbed up a tree and then disappeared, so we can only assume that he has recovered from the hot spell.

Tweet of the Week

You know I’m pretty into dog science, so I’m going to ask you to complete this quick survey which will hopefully help dog adoption in the future. It’s only short, a few simple questions, and you can do it again and again (with a different picture). Thanks for helping dog science!

Shelters and Sheltering

Time 4 Dogs: Irreconcilable Differences…. INDEED (critical analysis of Nathan Winograd’s convictions).

“Busting the overpopulation myth with fact” and “Facebook vs PetRescue – which tool is right for you?” from PetRescue.com.au.

Two from SavingPets this week: “Every dog is an individual. Every dog should matter.” and “A disaster unfolds in Brisbane“.

Evolving from YesBiscuit!.

Dog Training and Behaviour

My dog sleeps on my bed… And other confessions of a dog trainer from Robin K Bennett.

Training the behavioural interrupter from K9Pro.

The importance of food in dog training – a scientific approach from Companion Animal Psychology.

What type of training schedule works best for dogs? from the Canine Corner on Psychology Today.

Guessing at the mechanisms of dog aggression from DogZombie.

Breeds and Breding

How backcrossing works from Retrieverman.

Without a tail to sit on from Border Wars.

Danish-Swedish Farm Dogs from Piper the Basenji.

Kennel Club vs The English Bulldog – an illustrated guide.

Other Dog Things

Opinion: We support pet-friendly rental properties.

Glass Lillies – lifelike glass dog figurines.

Dog Mom – a story on supervising dogs and kids.

Carolina dogs, “Ancient Dogs”, and Bathroom Behaviour.

Preventing dog bites in children: An evaluation of the Blue Dog Project’s influence on parents.

Compilation of Cats Stealing Dog Beds.

Other Animal Things (and disturbing content)

Polycephaly – Two-Headed Animals.

Animal rape and animal brothels.

Instagram

Koala visitor this morning. Bandit alerted me to its presence.

My koala visitor.

Bandit with Kong.

01/20/14

Cindy is an old dog that can run really fast

Elderly jack russell terrier.

Imagine you’ve recently taken a 12 year 8 month old dog into your home. She’s lazy, mostly moving from bed to bed to sleep. She comes when she’s called, goes out when she’s asked, and gets heaps excited about food. Happy and sociable with people and dogs. A joy to live with.

I hope, in doing so, you can forgive my negligence as a guest arrived. As Cindy nipped through the open door, I naturally assumed that this sociable dog would just say hi to the guest, and follow them inside. However, Cindy started sniffing a plant in the front yard. I called her, and she ignored me, and as I took a step towards her, she dashed away, stopping at the letterbox to continue sniffing. Naively, I assumed that there was just a nice smell around. As I headed towards her again, she gave me a look that could best be described as “Hahaha”, and started running, fast, away from me – and towards a busy road.

There was no chance I was going to chase her, as I am very aware that I am not as fast as a dog (they have four legs, I have two, come’n) and I did not want her to get closer to the busy road. Immediately, I thought that I could use Bandit, a dog friend she had made in foster care. If I wasn’t good enough to come back to, maybe Bandit would be.

So, hurriedly, I ran inside, threw a lead on Bandit, and took him out. Bandit was perplexed why there was a walk happening, at night, with such little fan-fare, but nonetheless was happy with the arrangement.

As I came out of the house, Cindy was nowhere to be seen. My heart was racing and I was terrified of where she had got to. Immediately, my thoughts were thinking about how she didn’t have my tag on, but she did have her surrendering owner’s tag on still, and how bad would that look if she was to get called? What if she got hit by a car? What vets are open at this time of night? Do I call the council now? Why is the husband away tonight?

Bandit and I headed towards where I last saw Cindy. Briskly walking, I hear a bush rustle and Cindy emerged. Phew! She hadn’t got to the busy road! Cindy then kept running towards the busy road – seemingly Bandit and I disturbed her bush-investigation, and now the running thing was back on. So my Bandit trick failed.

There’s no way I could catch Cindy with Bandit in toe, so back I go home, putting Bandit inside.

As I came back out, I hurriedly called a friend from Adelaide All Breed Dog Rescue Inc., “Hi. Can you come help me catch Cindy? She got out.” The friend was on her way. Phew!

So now finding Cindy again. I took a wide berth, on the other side of the road from when I last saw her, with the only intention of cutting her off from heading closer to the main road. Once my friend got there, my plan was that I could then get them to get food in my house, or open up the carport door and we could herd Cindy into the secure area. Regardless, I had decided I couldn’t do much more than keep an eye on Cindy for the time being.

My plan mostly worked. She decided to run away from me, back towards my house, and away from the busy road. Excellent. She would stop and snuffle in bushes, and I would stand like a lurker in the half-light in other people’s front yards, watching.

If Cindy looked at heading towards the busy road, I’d shuffle into the path to try to prevent her. This mostly worked. But then there was this one moment, she came towards me (and the busy road), and as I puffed myself up to block her path, she ran faster and within a metre of me. I’m pretty sure I heard her say, “Hahaha, you can’t catch me!”.

Back to square one, I once again did a big loop to block her off.

My heart was in my throat as I realised she was in the yard of the house on the corner of my street and the busy road. Every car that whizzed by I held my breath.

I could hear her in the bushes, so knew where she was, and I just hoped that when she came out I could once again drive her back up the street. It was tense.

And the little white dog came out of the bush, and looked at me. Through my head, a word that rhymed with ‘duck’ was repeating over and over. She was going to do it again – she was going to run past, in a joy run, straight onto the busy road. Duck duck duck.

But she looked at me for a moment too long, and she wagged her stumpy tail, and seemed to say, “Okay, I’m done now.”

Hardly believing my luck, I used my best gravelly voice to firmly say, “Cindy! Stay!” as I reached out my hand…

I’ll stop for a moment as I realise I forgot to tell you something about Cindy. All the stuff about her being a joy to own? That’s true, except that if she doesn’t get her own way, she bites. Cindy bites.

So here I was in the dark, reaching my hand towards a white-shape of a dog that I know bites.

And I was saying to myself, “If she bites, don’t let go“.

I can still remember that as my hand wrapped around the collar, and I felt my fingers touch my palm. I instantly thought, “I got her!” and then, immediately after, “If she bites, don’t let go!”.

I took the lead I was carrying around my neck (carrying in anticipation of such a moment), and clipped it onto her collar.

And I think that’s when I started breathing again. I became very conscious of the adrenaline pulsing through my body, now that I didn’t need it anymore.

That’s when my phone buzzed in my pocket, and I saw the headlights up the road of where my friend had pulled up in front of my house. Imperfect timing.

Cindy happily walked on lead back home, wagging her stump and panting heavily from her joy run.

Oh, did I mention: Cindy’s available for adoption!

If you are interested in a dog that bites and runs away, Cindy’s the dog for you!

Cindy was surrendered to us because he owner experienced unfortunate circumstances and became homeless. Cindy and the past owner lived in a car together for a few weeks, but it just wasn’t working for everyone involved, so the difficult decision was made to surrender her into care.

I was concerned about Cindy’s health initially, as she was very quiet. We had full blood works done, and a full body x-ray, and she’s in perfect health! Her teeth are in great condition, and it’s like Cindy was waiting for the vet to tell her she was A-OK too, because she became a bit of rat bag after that. As the story above shows.

Cindy loves going for walks, and barks angrily at you when you haven’t got her lead on or opened the door quite according to her schedule. “Hurry up, human!” Or maybe it’s resentment towards being leashed in itself, given her joy in running fast, away from you.

As mentioned, Cindy made a friend in Bandit while she has been in care. Bandit and Cindy are available for adoption either individually or to the same home. They’re very different to each other, but instantly took a strong liking to one another. They have an understanding.

In case you didn’t guess, Cindy is all terrier! She’s okay with other dogs, but she’s not one for pocket pets, or birds, or cats.

Cindy’s ideal home would be an older person or couple who just want to go for a short walk once or twice a day, and want a well behaved companion the rest of the time. Cindy is a nice cuddler, and will hop on your lap for pats – but very much when she wants them. She is independent, and doesn’t mind being left alone, especially if being left alone comes with some type of food.

Cindy is now with a foster carer (with instructions: never, ever let her off lead and never leave gates or doors open) and doing well, but we would love to see her in her forever home.

For more details about Cindy and her adoption, see her PetRescue profile.

01/17/14

Pets as Gifts – Evidence not Anecdotes

Pets aren’t gifts. We all know that.

If a pet is given as a gift, the recipient might not be prepared for the financial commitment. The pet might be unsuitable to their lifestyle, or the recipieint may be uncommitted. And this means the pet is more likely to be relinquished.

But are you willing to be wrong about that?

This pretty shar pei has found her home through Adelaide All Breed Dog Rescue Inc.

“Studies of dog and cat relinquishment to shelters, however, show that the relinquishment of dogs and cats received as gifts is lower than from other sources,” says Weiss et al. in their 2013 paper. While this blog post will concentrate on this article, it’s important to note that this study builds on the research of others. For example (as summarised by Weiss et al.),

This article looked at 2600 dogs and 2300 cats, and found “Relinquished dogs infrequently came from pet shops, as gifts and from veterinarians. The study found the odds of dog relinquishment were higher when acquiring an animal from a shelter, friend, as a stray, and from a pet shop compared to receiving an animal as a gift”. Cats had similar trends.
This article “identified 71 reasons for pet relinquishment” and unwanted gift made up only 0.3% of dog surrenders and 0.4% of cat surrenders.
And this one found that being received as a gift was a protective factor, with dogs and cats received as gifts being “at [a] significantly decreased risk of being relinquished”.

Simply, there is no evidence that pets being given as gifts leads to relinquishment. It is an unfounded myth.

This study even says, “the myth that dogs and cats should not be given as gifts still persists“.

How was this study conducted?

A large telephone survey of 1006 adults was conducted, with 222 people saying they received a dog or cat as a pet in the last 10 years.

If an individual identified them self as a pet-gift-receipient, they were asked further questions. Were they involved in selecting the pet? How attached are they to their pet? Do they still own the pet?

And what did they find?

Some of the gifted-pets were rehomed – 21 out of the 215 pets. That is, 9.7%.

It didn’t seem to matter if the gift was a surprise or not – it wasn’t associated with people rehoming their pet, or being more or less attached to it.

“These results suggest that there is no increased risk of relinquishment for dogs and cats received as a gift.”

On a side note, this study is different, because it looked at owner retention, instead of shelter relinquishment data. This means that the statistic of 9.7% rehomed is probably higher than shelter surrender intake (as many pets would be rehomed privately instead of through shelter facilities).

How does this relate to shelters?

Weiss et al. express their concern about shelters who prohibit adoptions when they know that the animal is going to be given as a gift. Weiss et al. says, not allowing pets to go as gifts may “impede the overarching goal of increasing adoptions of pets from our nations’ shelter system”.

Significantly, they say (emphasis my own):

“These findings may help animal welfare organisations open options for those interested in obtaining dogs and cats for their family and friends. It is important to note that animals obtained from a shelter are more at risk than those obtained as gifts. Allowing adoptions of dogs and cats to those obtaining the pet as a gift may decrease the risk of return or relinquishment for that dog or cat. Furthermore, it would allow for more animals from shelters to find homes.”

The next thing

Briefly, the article suggests that the next area for study is research and planning, and how that relates to pet retention. Current evidence suggests that ‘spur of the moment’ type acquisitions made with little or no research or planning are not associated with higher rates of relinquishment.

So have you ever received a pet as a gift? And did you keep that pet for its life?

Reference:

Weiss, E, Dolan, ED, Garrison, L, Hong, J & Slater, M (2013). Should dogs and cats be given as gifts? Animals, 3 (4) DOI: 10.3390/ani3040995

01/15/14

The Week in Tweets – 15th January 2014

But first, here’s a video of Clover swimming in a friend’s dam. She loves swimming and is pretty good at it, too!

On with the tweets!

Tweet of the Week

I saw this and it gave me so many ideas on ‘things to do’ with my puppies. As many of my blog readers know, I do a lot of work with my puppies before they go (see Puppies 2012 series) and so new activities for young puppies is always on my radar. So have a look at Avidog’s adventure box (Oh, what fun!).

Breeds and Breeding

Rock Bottom from Time 4 Dogs.

The two principles for a new dog fancy from Retrieverman.

Stop brachycephalism, now!

Structure in action: An interview with Pat Hastings from K9Pro.

The Missing Part of a Cairn Terrier from TerrierMan.

A video of a bitch with Eclampsia (seizuring from lack of calcium, often due to lactation).

Dog Training

A review of an Obedience Seminar with Kamal Fernandez.

Science: Friend or Foe? from Denise Fenzi.

A few from Hound and the Found: ‘Tinkering with the robot‘, ‘10 dynamite tips for your new search puppy‘, and ‘How scent and airflow works‘.

The Dominance Controversy from Dr Sophia Yin.

“Do I need to see a dog behaviourist?” from K9Pro.

K9DIY: Make a hard core, square-braid tug from Team Unruly (put here because a good tug is a good training tool).

Monday pets: why do dogs push their food bowls around?

Canine behavior and acoustics in shelters and kennels from Patricia McConnell.

7 Common Training Errors; Cautionary Tales from Eileen and Dogs.

Shelters, Rescue and Lost Pets

The RSPCA SA says, “Pets can be for Christmas“. Amazing! I didn’t think the RSPCA SA would ever come close to a tweet of the week – and this week they almost got it!

How one Facebook message change my life forever (yes, this belongs in this category).

Plea to help hounds in need of a home from Adelaide Now.

This is another one close to tweet of the week: Sheltering pets from domestic violence.

Beloved pet fast tracked to kill room at Hillsborough Co Pound from YesBiscuit!.

Rutherford RSPCA kills family’s dog.

Video: family dog back in the fold – after going missing for three years.

1000 pets prevented from entering the South LA Shelter in only 4 months.

Four dogs sheltered to death who had owners who wanted them back from SavingPets.

Ten reasons why your next sport dog should be a rescue from Team Unruly.

Adopt Bandit! – an adoption video for our current foster dog.

Fun (mostly-) Dog Things

The adventures of dog and her ele-friend.