THE OTHER END OF THE LEASH

I’m leading another safari in Kenya and Botswana this August. Wanna come? It probably will be my last.

The first time I went to Africa to lead an animal-behavior-focused safari, I cautioned the participants the day we arrived that we weren’t going to see what we usually see on a nature special on television. “What you see on a nature special is the result of hours and hours and hours of long, boring observations, while waiting to capture the excitement and beauty and drama that eventually will be edited down to a series of amazing sequences. We’d be wise to have our expectations be realistic: we’ll see some wonderful animals and some interesting behavior, but it will be far cry from what you see on TV.”

Boy was I wrong. I mean, totally wrong. I mean, totally, completely and utterly wrong. Here’s just a little of what I’ve seen on the past 3 trips I’ve taken to Africa:

~ Lions mating about 15 feet from our vehicle (and  mating, and mating, and mating… about every 20 minutes. (The photo below was between matings when the male lion got up and began courting the female again.)

~ A herd of elephants stumbling across a pride of lions, and ears flapping and trunks trumpeting, chasing the lions out into the savanna.

~ A cheetah and her two adolescent cubs fighting off a flock of vultures from the Grant’s gazelle she had just killed.

~ Thousands and thousands of Wildebeest “gnu gnu gnu-ing” (that’s what they sound like) as they stream across the Maasai Mara (the Kenyan Serengeti) on the largest migration of animals on earth, accompanied by herd after herd of zebra, hundreds and hundreds of gazelles–and the lions, cheetahs, leopards and hyenas that follow them. It takes your breath away (and this next trip is going during the migration, just fyi!)

~ An antelope mom and young cautiously circling a salt lick (a natural one) all night long, while a herd of elephants dug up the salt, and stroked a new born baby with their trunks (they were about 20 feet away from us, we could count the tiny hairs on the babies gray skin). Baby elephants are called Tembo Toto in Swahili, a perfect name for them we all agreed–the cute factor of baby elephants is out of the box. Seeing  them in person simply can’t be described. At dawn, we arose for breakfast, only to watch a leopard leap onto the back of the same antelope mom and subsequently drag her up a tree.

The elephant mother below walked across the river and right in front of our jeep–very common but never boring!

The two adolescent male lions below were part of a nine-member pride that walked out of the grass just before we were about to leave for ‘home.’ I had to take OFF my telephoto lens to get the picture, they were literally right next to our vehicle (which they completely ignore, as if it wasn’t there!).

~ Samburu warriors dancing their “I’m about to prove my manhood and go kill a lion” dance, followed by the “I’m about to be married and go into the hut with my new wife” dance. All I can say is that some of us considered staying a little longer than planned after the last dance…. Here are some young Samburu women watching the dances with us.

~ A Thompson’s gazelle being born, (and knowing that a pride of lions was not far away…)

~ A pack of hyenas squabbling over a kill they had made the night before. We spend several hours parked just a few feet away from them, and eventually were able to identify each as individuals. Imagine how satisfying it was when the next day we say a single hyena and, in unison, exclaimed “It’s Greybelly!!!!!!”

~ Maasai children singing for us in thanks for the school supplies we brought to their school. Try to do this and keep tears from streaming down your face; just try.

~ More gorgeous, colorful, outrageous birds than Dr. Suess could make up and, as importantly as all the above…

~ Some of the kindest, sweetest, dearest people you could ever imagine meeting. I have been consistently treated with tremendous care and kindness by the Africans that I have met. There is a saying that you can leave Africa, but it will never leave you, and I think that is partly because of the people. The sunsets and the animals and the light (golden!) is part of it, but for me, the kindness of the people stays with you the longest.

Here are some Maasai with their cattle, having trekked miles as they do each day, for water. I never saw them use dogs for herding, but the dogs play an essential role at night, barking at the slightest hint of a predator trying to break through the thorn bush ‘fence.’

You’ll have lots of opportunities to meet village dogs… you find them in lots of places, including in a Samburu village where I took this photo:

On every trip, I have taken either my nephew or one of my nieces, and I only have one left! I’m going to New Zealand in 2010 and Scotland and back to Alaska in 2011, so I just don’t know if I’ll get back to Africa again. I love to travel but I love to be home more, and I just don’t like to be gone too much.

I hope that some of you can come, I’ve begun to think of you as a kind of family.  Here’s why you might want to consider it: This animal behavior-focused safari different than most safaris in which you stop when you see an animal, give everyone a chance to take a picture, and then drive on. We’ll be much more patient, and will focus on observing and learning about behavior, rather than just capturing cool snapshots to impress people back home.

We are going to Kenya during the height of the Wildebeest Migration, and staying at places that put us right in the middle of the action.

We’re staying at Fantastic Places. For example, we’re staying four nights in the Kenyan Serengeti, the Maasai Mara, at an amazing tent camp, Tipilikwani Camp.  In Botswana we’re staying in luxurious tent camps, Chitabe Camp and Chitabe Trails which are right beside a research camp where the African Wild Dog Project has been studying African Wild Dogs since the 1980′s.

You’ll be with Expert Guides who know and love the people of Africa as much as the animals.

We got a Price Break! Whoppeee… Africa on sale! The economy hasn’t helped tourism in Africa, so the Kenyan safari is now 10% less than it was previously. This is also the perfect time to go because tourism is down, and that means the parks will be much less crowded. The first time I went to Kenya tourism was also down, and it was like having the park to yourself. (It is possible to have 20 vehicles parked around a pride of lions, all from 5 different groups when it gets busy….Going at a ‘down’ time is a huge advantage.)

We’re going at The Best Time. We’ll be in Kenya at the height of the Wildebeest migration and in Botswana when it’s cool and dry. It is usually horrendously  hot and muggy, and I am a major Border collie when it comes to heat. I am miserable when it’s hot and humid, so we went way out of our way to go at the perfect time with the best weather. It’s also a great time for families… you’ll be home well before it’s time to get ready for school.

It is SAFE. Okay, there is always some risk involved in traveling, but believe me, I wouldn’t go on this trip if I didn’t believe in my heart and soul that it is safe.

You can do both trips, or either one, depending on your time and resources. You can come from anywhere in the world, and meet us in Amsterdam en route, or Nairobi.

If you want to learn more, go to my website to African Safari. There you can read more details about the trip, and download a pdf that describes the entire trip. I should mention that I did take all of the photos here, but that my best ones (pre digital) are all in albums. The potential for photography is astounding, and everyone ends up with covers for National Geographic! Here’s a lion responding to us driving up right beside him. Note the signs of extreme stress…

Hey.. there are ALWAYS a million reasons not to do something (I know, I use them to put off doing my yoga every day!)… but maybe this is the time to JUST DO IT!

I promised I’d write about the last alternative treatment that I use for my dogs: homeopathic medicine. I’m totally comfortable with someone calling this wackadoo and weirdo, because even I am not comfortable with the explanation given by proponents of the treatment. I’m fine with the first part, in which preparations are given that are believed to cause a diminished version of the very symptoms you are trying to treat. This is much like the vaccination principle in allopathic medicine, and I have no problem with it. It’s the second part that loses me, in which the preparation is so heavily diluted that in some cases, there are virtually no molecules left of the original substance. It was explained to me that it works because the energy field around the water molecules has been changed. Oh my. This is when I have to chant: “Just because we don’t understand the mechanism for something doesn’t mean it doesn’t work.”

I have not been impressed with any research into its efficacy, both of which have been done with acupuncture and chiropractic medicine. As a matter of fact, here’s an excerpt from Wikipedia:

“Claims of homeopathy’s efficacy (beyond the placebo effect) are unsupported by the collective weight of scientific and clinical evidence. Specific pharmacological effect with no active molecules is scientifically implausible and violates fundamental principles of science, including the law of mass action . . . The lack of convincing scientific evidence supporting homeopathy’s efficacy and its use of remedies lacking active ingredients have caused homeopathy to be described as pseudoscience and quackery.”

There’s only one problem here. It seems to work, at least for me and apparently, for some of my dogs. I have taken Arnica many times, including when I was badly bitten on the hand by a wolf-dog hybrid, who sunk his teeth into my hand up to his gums. It hurt like blazes, and as I continued talking with the owner my hand began to swell up. After the owner left, I called the guy I was dating and whined about the terrible bite I’d received. He was all over it: “Oh you poor thing!  I’ll take you out to dinner tonight to make it better.” After I hung up I took some Arnica. In half an hour the swelling had disappeared, and all you could see on my hand were 2 tiny slits that looked like paper cuts. When I met my date that night he laughed at me, saying “That’s the terible bite you got! HA!” and preceded to tease me relentlessly about what a wuss I was. I actually said to a girlfriend that I should’ve skipped the Arnica and gotten the sympathy. (Let me be clear here.. my hand still hurt, and I still had 2 serious punctures in it. Arnica took care of the swelling, I believe, and decreased the pain, but in no way did taking it mean I didn’t have to attend to it very, very carefully with antibiotics and careful monitoring.)

I’ve used Arnica a lot when I badly scratched my eyeball, sprained an ankle and bruised various and sundry body parts. Here’s an example of using it on my dogs: As regular readers know, Lassie is 15 and a half, and has quite a bit of arthritis in her paws and forelegs.  A few months ago her forelegs began to turn salmon colored and I  noticed she was licking them often. My vet and I agreed that her arthritis was getting more painful, and that the level of Tramadol and chinese herbs she was on was not taking care of it. I increased her chinese herbs, continued to get her acupuncture, but she still kept licking them. There’s no question that both of those treatments helped tremendously, if I take her off them she gets much worse, but I was unhappy watching her lick her paws so often, knowing that she was doing so because they hurt her. (I have arthritis in my hands too, and man can it hurt!) A CAAB asked if I’d ever tried Zeel, a homeopathic supplement made for arthritis by the same folks who make Traumeel (which I’ve used a lot successfully for sore muscles).

I figured it couldn’t hurt. If homeopathic substances are so diluted that they are barely there, how could they? I do think we need to be very careful about all health care. As I said earlier, if something has the power to do good, then it well might have the power to do harm. I never use any treatment without talking to a variety of people I trust, including my regular veterinarian. I also think some people are too quick to try “alternative medicine” because it sounds “natural” or somehow less intrusive than western medicine. Well, arsenic is natural, and it can kill you. But in addition, I think some people are too quick to use western medicine too, so this advice goes both ways. However, of all the “alternative treatments,” given the diluted nature of the medicine, it seems that if anything, homeopathic medicine may hurt your pocketbook, but it’s doubtful that it could physically hurt you or your animal if you use it as directed. (Note that I didn’t say impossible, just doubtful.)

Three weeks after starting Lassie on Zeel, her legs are white white white. She doesn’t lick them anymore, or not very often. Placebo effect? Did she see an ad? Read an article? Got me, but you can count on me to keep giving it to her. (Did I mention I’m taking it myself now? Are my hands better? Yes.  Placebo effect on me? Maybe…. but isn’t that 1) acceptable because it’s working? 2) better than something with serious side effects? and 2) isn’t the “placebo effect” a fascinating, important biological phenomenon? Why we would dismiss it, and not pursue it, if it is so powerful? (Could it be that it’s hard to get a patent on the power of belief?)

So, I want to be very clear here. As I biologist, I can tell you that the science behind homeopathic medicine is shaky. As a person who takes care of other animals, I’m really glad it’s around. I have Arnica in my desk drawer, in the cupboard at home, and never travel without it. (Speaking of travel, my next post will be about my last trip to Africa. I really, really hope you can come!)

Meanwhile, back at the farm: It rained buckets on Saturday, perfect for the farm because I had the pasture fertilized in anticipation of the rain. It was expected Friday night, but I woke up to clear skies and dry grass. I was sorely disappointed. The sheep can’t eat grass that has been sprayed with nitrogen until the rain washes it into the soil, and I really wanted the flock back on grass and off hay. Luckily, by mid morning it poured, and today the sheep are up in the hill pasture, gobbling fresh, emerald, green grass as fast as they can.
Here’s Willie on some green grass on the front lawn, hogging the spotlight as usual from Lassie behind him, both of them waiting for me to throw the frisbee.

And here’s a welcome burst of spring color:

A comment from a reader inspired this post, about “alternative” medicine for dogs (see the comments for April 15th). In her comment, she expressed great disappointment that I bought into “…wackadoo absolutely scientifically unsupported claptrap.” This is not the first time I’ve been told that my interest in Chinese medicine, acupuncture, chiropracty and natural foods is a kind of a betrayal to my scientific background. And yet, it is exactly my background in science and research that causes me to make the choices that I do for my own health and for that of my dogs.

One of the things that one learns when getting a Ph.D. is that “science” is a fluid creature, moving this way and that, depending on the state of our knowledge (and the culture) at the time. You also learn that there is a profound amount that we don’t know, that many of the things that we think we do know turn out to be wrong a few years down the road. In addition, it becomes stunningly clear that, at any given time, science may acknowledge a particular observation or result, but not understand the mechanism to explain it. It was my experience in graduate school that helped me see the difference between result and  mechanism: not understanding why or how something works is not a good reason to argue that it doesn’t work. That said, I have tremendous respect for Western medicine, and there is absolutely nowhere in the world I would rather be if I was in a serious car accident, or had a dog who needed surgery. I have a James Herriot kind of regular veterinarian, perhaps one of the kindest and most wonderful vets you can imagine. He has never once rolled his eyes when I talked about the “alternative” medicine I was planning to add to my dog’s health care, and has joined with me in changing our practices as we learn more through the years. (He feeds his dog a lot of table scraps now, after researching and thinking about my contention that it couldn’t be good for otherwise healthy dogs to eat nothing but the same processed food, day after day.)

I also am of the firm belief that there are many products out on the market that are of no use in human or canine health, and that we all need to be very careful about not jumping on this or that band wagon of the supplement/medicine/food-du-jour. (That is true of all fields, including western medicine, I would humbly suggest.)

That said, here’s the health care I use regularly: Besides my regular vet (John Dally of Spring Green Animal Hospital), my “sports medicine” vet is Dr. David Ettinger of Veterinary Specialty & Emergency Care in Madison. He and I are in conversation about Willie’s shoulder… final decisions about surgery awaiting more time to see if Willie will respond to Chinese medicine by summertime. I have spent many a day at the University of Wisconsin Vet Clinic, seeing specialists too numerous to name for various and sundry medical crisis. Once a month, Lassie and Willie go to a chiropractor board certified in animal chiropracty, Dr. Mark McCann through Middleton Veterinary Hospital. The difference it makes, especially with old Lassie, is obvious and observable as she walks out of the clinic. (Many years ago a chiropractor saved me after five months of abject misery due to a serious whip lash accident. I had been to three physicians, including a neurologist who said that if I didn’t have 3 cervical vertebrae fused I would lose the use of my right arm. I wanted to avoid surgery and a permanent disability, and was referred by a friend to a chiropractor. After one treatment I was 85% improved and got the first relief I had had in months. I have a lot of back trouble, and can’t imagine living without a good chiropractor. Of course, a bad one can cause all kinds of trouble, and I’ve been to a few, but that’s no different than any other doctor. As a pharmacist told me once “If it has the power to do good, it probably has the power to do harm.”)

My dogs also see Dr. Jody Bearman through AnShen Vet once month. Dr. Bearman is a DVM who has spent years studying Chinese medicine. Chinese medicine is indeed based on a completely different paradigm than western medicine, and I won’t pretend that when I was first listening to chinese doctors talk about it my eyes weren’t spinning around like a cartoon character’s. I’m actually not sure that I buy the ‘energy flow’ explanations for why certain types of acupuncture work, neither do I have a certainty that certain forms of protein are better for some dogs than others. However, there is a growing body of solid (‘western’) science showing that acupuncture is indeed effective for relieving certain conditions, just as there is overwhelming evidence that chiropractic medicine is significantly more effective than “traditional medicine” at curing certain problems (back pain for one.)

I read one study not too long ago (sorry, don’t remember where… Sci Am Mind?) that compared 1) acupuncture needles placed in areas as prescribed by chinese medicine practioners, 2) acupuncture needles placed randomly around the body, and 3) sham acupuncture with no needles actually penetrating the skin. In this study, needles placed anywhere into the body were successful at alleviating pain, while the sham treatment was not. The western medicine explanation is that the needles stimulated the body to produce hormones that act to inhibit the sensation of pain, not that Chi or energy flow was being released, as explained by chinese medicine. (That relates to what I said earlier that often we don’t understand the mechanism until many years after we discover the action of a substance or a procedure.) I am not convinced that anyone knows the exact mechanism of why acupuncture is so successful, but there is no question in my mind that it is a legitimate medical therapy.

The fact is, what used to be considered “alternative” medicine is now called “complementary” medicine by most progressive physicians, hospitals and research institutions. The UW Vet clinic here does acupuncture. Here at UW and at Harvard there are centers for the study of “Integrative Medicine,” as it is becoming increasingly clear that health is more than a collection of happy cells and nerve fibers. I took “Mindfulness Meditation” through the UW Hospitals and Clinics, one of the many places that is doing research showing that meditation increases immune function, decreases pain and increases focus and overall reports of “positive affect” (the rest of us just call that being ‘happy!’).

Right now, Lassie and Will receive acupuncture, chinese herbal medicine and I take Dr. Bearman’s advice about what protein to use for the both. I truly don’t know if feeding them both duck, fish, beef and eggs, and avoiding chicken and lamb, really does help them, but because they are getting a good, varied diet, I can’t imagine it hurting. I can tell you that Lassie is not just 15.5 years old, she is spunky and playful and doing astounding well, even after being diagnosed almost two years ago with “Stage 2 Kidney Failure.”  Do I know that the chinese medicine helps?  No, not directly, but I tried to cut back on some of her meds awhile ago, giving her fewer of her “Body Sore” pills that are supposed to alleviate arthritis. A few days later her forelegs began to take on the salmon-colored glow of fur that’s been licked a lot….so she’s back on her usual dose. I should add that she also takes a 1/2 tab of Tramadol that also makes a big difference in her pain level, as well as a Omega-3 tablet and a homeopathic medicine I’ll talk about in another post.

One last thing about these two practices, chiropracty and chinese medicine. What is important to me is that I see real experts in those fields, not people who have degrees in other practices and have learned to dabble in another one. My dog’s chiropractor is not just a degreed doctor of chiropractic medicine, he is board certified to work on my dogs. My chinese medicine vet is a DVM veterinarian, and has extensive training in both perspectives. The biggest harm that I have seen is from people who don’t take the complimentary medicine seriously, take a weekend clinic on it, and then add it to their practice without enough training or experiene. Again, if something has the power to do good, it probably has the power to do harm.

One more comment, about a response to my post that I add Probiotics to Willie’s meals. Just to be clear for those of you who aren’t familiar with them, Probiotics have long been accepted by physicians, nutritionists, etc etc. as an important addition to the diet of individuals who are “digestively challenged,” as Willie was when he was a young pup. (If giving Willie sheep manure that I had to pre-digest myself would’ve stopped his projectile diarrhea I would have done it. There is just so much cleaning of poop off of walls, floors, crates, carpets and one’s own jeans if you happened to be standing at the wrong place at the wrong time that a girl can take. Seriously.) Several nutritionists argue that everyone should be taking prio-biotics (which replace the natural, healthy bacteria in our guts that facilitate the absorption of nutrients), because so many of our foods are nutrition poor. In Willie’s case, the addition of Pro-biotics was essential for the first year of his life. I’ve found I can skip them for a night or two now that he’s older, but if I add anything out of his usual menu he needs the Pro-biotics to keep his stool healthy.

If I haven’t lost you already in the land of “claptrap,” it gets worse. If you really want to hear how Dr. McConnell has gone “wackadoo” (I am becoming quite fond of that word), follow along for another post soon to come, about my reliance on Arnica, Traumeel and Zeel, homeopathic medicines which, to my mind, shouldn’t work at all, based on their proponents description of how they work. Except they do. Go figure.

Meanwhile, back at the farm. The main flock is now out on grass, sparse though it may be, and they are loving it. We had a few interesting moments when Barbie, my most protectively aggressive ewe, chased Willie a good fifty feet across the front yard, but things are settling down. Here’s they are on their first day up the hill with their young lambs:

Here they are waiting for their grain in the evening by the barn. They love to sleep outside, but close to the barn. I am still nervous about the coyotes, but so far, so good.

And here’s another spring ephemeral, Bloodroot, as it is closing up for the night. It’s called Bloodroot because the sap is a reddish orange. It’s a gorgeous early flower, and it is spreading up the hill behind the house. Makes me so happy…

So many of you have asked what I feed my dogs that I feel compelled to answer. I sympathize, truly, nutrition is such a complicated and sometimes contentious issue. I’ll honor your requests if you’ll honor mine: Read the following carefully before getting to the menu!

1. I am not an expert on canine nutrition,  not by a long shot. I know lots of people, professional and committed dog lovers, who know much more about the topic than I do.

2. I don’t believe that my dogs get the perfect diet. I do the best I can, and I know that my dogs do better than most, but there’s no question that the way I feed them isn’t perfect.

3.What I feed my dogs changes, depending on the dog, the week, how busy I am and what article I read the night before.

4. I think diet is important, but so are genetics. My first Border Collie, Drift, lived 15.5 yrs on plain old supermarket Purina. Dry kibble, no additions, no supplements.  Lassie is the same age, and you’ll see that things have changed. I like to credit her longevity in part to her diet and how I take care of her… but how do I know what effect it’s having?

That said, here’s what I believe (then I tell you what Lassie and Willie ate last night.):

Variety is good. Dogs are omnivores, and they are predisposed to eat a variety of foods. Coppinger’s hypothesis that dogs derived from bold wolves who found a new ecological niche in human settlements (garbage and poop) seems to be the best guess that we have of how this whole amazing relationship started. Wolves specialize in large ungulates, but they’ll also eat anything they can if they are hungry. Dogs, specialize in, well… food. “Picky about food” does not describe their behavior or their digestive systems. (I know, there are exceptions, but they prove the rule because it’s news when a dog won’t eat chicken, right?)

I was profoundly affected when someone (Billinghurst? Don’t remember) asked “What would you think of a parent who fed their child the same food, day after day, even if it was “nutritionally complete?” Yikes! How would you feel if a friend of yours fed her children the same kind of cereal for every meal, every day? How could that possibly support health? I was talking to my vet about diet and asked him the same question. He now feeds his dog half commercial dog food and half table scrapes!

I know that allergies are often caused by repeated exposure to the same thing, and wonder how many food allergies are the result of eating the same food every day, year after year. I also always wondered when we were/are advised to change a dog’s food very gradually. In general, that just makes no sense, if you think about it. How could a healthy dog not be able to tolerate eating chicken one night and beef the next? You can, why shouldn’t your dog? Well… if they’ve only eaten one food and only that food for years, then it makes sense, but that hardly sounds healthy. (Of course, we should go slowly if making a radical change or we have a dog with a sensitive stomach, but those are special cases.)

Non-processed is good. Fact? Heck if I know. I subscribe to the Micheal Pollan approach: . “Eat Food, Not Too Much, Mostly Plants.” (see In Defense of Food, great book) The “mostly plants” is for humans, but the “eat food” means REAL food, not food that has been so processed and converted and changed that it is barely recognizable as such.

Fresh veggies are good for dogs. Again, is this a fact I can back up with research? Not directly. I can tell you that my DVM Chinese Medicine Vet read an article that dogs fed cooked, green veggies had lower rates of cancer. I haven’t taken the time to look it up yet myself, anyone out here seen it? I also know that the ‘new’ foods by some dog food companies that are supposed to extend the healthy life of a dog contain more of what I would call “real” food: vegetables, even fruits full of anti-oxidants.

Organic is good. Whether it is better for our dogs or not, I think it’s important to be benevolent to Mother Earth. We haven’t been doing so well on that score lately. Ideally I’d feed my dogs nothing but organic meat raised locally by producers who put the welfare of their animals over that of their own, but I can’t manage that much of the time, I just strive for it. When I can afford it and it’s available, I use organic, especially vegetables. I belong to a CSA, and they are very generous with seconds, so Will and Lassie get a lot of broccoli, green beans, squash etc that wasn’t pretty enough for the weekly shares. I collect it whenever I can and freeze it in my huge, chest-style freezer.

Pro-biotics. I started Willie on Pro-biotics when he was a pup. Three months of off-and-on projectile diarrhea will teach you a lot about a puppy’s gut. He still gets them every day, even though his digestive system has stabilized, but many of the people I respect in alternative medicine argue that Pro-biotics are important for any of us who don’t eat natural food most of the time. (I take them too now, for whatever that’s worth.)

Raw versus Cooked: I don’t feed much raw. I don’t have the time (or the energy?) to make it myself, and am not convinced enough in it’s importance to spend the money to buy it commercially. (Please, oh please, don’t write me and tell me that if I don’t feed my dogs raw food I am a bad person and a bad dog owner. I know lots of stories of dogs who truly have done beautifully on raw diets, including dogs who had serious health problems beforehand. I also know dogs who didn’t do well on them, and lots and lots more who thrive on other diets.)  I do give my dogs raw beef bones, usually the large joint bones or the long bones with lots of marrow inside. I am pretty conservative though, once they get eaten down a ways and start to look a little brittle I toss them out.

Kibble versus Non-Kibble: I don’t feed much kibble anymore. I add a bit to their dinners, but even high quality kibble is highly processed and lacks the moisture it seems dogs would need.

My favorite source for good information about dog food: Whole Dog Journal. Get it yet? If not, I highly  recommend it.

Here’s what Lassie and Willie ate last night:

Lassie:

A tiny handful of kibble (Natural Balance Duck and Potato, 20 pieces?) for crunch (she loves it); cooked, organic Steel-cut oats (her kidneys are challenged so she needs limited protein, cooked beef (stew meat on sale at the supermarket), 2 TB cooked green beans, kale and broccoli, an Omega 3 capsule + her meds and supplements.

I vary the protein between duck, fish, beef and eggs. (The duck, fish and sometimes beef is usually Natural Balance or Wellness canned.)  In Chinese medicine, duck and fish are ‘cooling’ foods, good for Lassie with her struggles with bladder infections and her kidney problems. Beef is ‘neutral,’ so I use a lot of that. Wouldn’t you know, lamb, which I have a freezer full of, is a “warming” food, and I am advised not to use it for Willie or Lassie either. Sigh. The dogs of my friends are very grateful.

I should add here that I have never seen any research about feeding dogs different types of protein based on their chinese medicine evaluation, but because I feed good,  high quality food and give them lots of variety,  I can’t imagine it would hurt them to follow that advice and it might help, so why not? (see Four Paws, Five Directions for more on this.)

I use Natural Balance canned food and Wellness most often for their primary protein if I don’t have something cooked up for them at home. I am always looking for specials at markets: last night I bought a somewhat obscene 10 pound roll of hamburger for $1.79 pound. I cut it up into one pound pieces and froze it.

Their veggies are usually some combination of broccoli, kale, spinach, green beans, celery, lettuce, potato, carrots and squash, all cooked.

Tonight I’ll give Lassie duck or fish, (canned), and since I’ve finished up her oats for now, she’ll get cooked Kashi for grains, (not the cereal, the grain) and cooked carrots and spinach for veggies. (I usually cook up batches of veggies for the dogs over the weekend. It helps to have TWO freezers at the farm!)

Willie:

Last night Willie ate about a 1/4 cup of Duck and Potato kibble, about 2/3 of a cup of cooked beef, (much more than Lassie), 3-4 TB of veggies, a whole sardine (canned in water, no salt) and a Pro-biotic tab. Tonight he’ll get canned duck or fish and the same veggies that Lassie gets.

Both dogs get LOTS of water added to their dinners, even though there is so little kibble in it I basically feed my dogs soup in the belief that they need lots of fresh water. That may be crazy, but it can’t hurt them. They also are fed twice a day, getting only slightly more in the evening than the morning. In addition, they eat kibble and canned meat stuffed into a frozen Kong first thing in the morning.

I hope that is useful information to those of you who asked. I’d be curious to hear your thoughts on all this.(And if you pay as much attention to your own diet as you do to your dog’s!?)

Meanwhile, back at the farm: I had hoped to add a video of leaping lambs that I taped this morning, but I’ve spent too long writing, and have 4 more papers to grade and hours more work on my UW lecture for tomorrow…. so here are some beautiful harbingers of spring for you, leaping lambs to come soon!

Oh my. An article just came out in the Sunday  Wisconsin State Journal about dog parks, full of information about how to read dog language to prevent potential problems between dogs. The author, Chris Martell, spent a long time with me, gathering photographs (thank you to all who have sent me photos to use for education!), getting clear on what signals meant what…. All that is greatly appreciated. She even checked the accuracy of quotes with me, something many journalists don’t do. But when I read “..McConnell says many dog owners–no matter how much they love their pets — are clueless when it comes to body language,” I winced.  Ouch.  “Clueless.” That sounds horrible. Did I say that?

The truth is, many dog owners are not very good at reading body language from dogs.. but “clueless?” That’s not a word I ever use, and it sounds so rude. Did Chris read me that quote when she was fact checking? Could be… there were several quotes in which she had used “most” and I asked her to change the word to “many.”  It might be that ‘clueless’ slipped by, while I focused on the word ‘”most” instead of “many.”

I read the sentence to Jim, and he said “Uh oh.” I asked Office Manager Denise if she’d read it and she said, “Yes, and I said ‘Uh oh’ when I did. I knew you wouldn’t like it.” She was right. I put the paper down and couldn’t look at it until today. It has always been essential to me to be as respectful to people as I am to dogs. They are, after all, my two favorite species. I don’t understand professionals in the training and behavior world who are kind and gentle to dogs, and impatient and rude to people.  I do understand that it can get frustrating to say the same thing year after year in answer to the same seemingly simple question, but as the saying goes: “A good teacher responds to questions she’s been asked a thousand times as if each time is the first time she’s ever been asked.” After all, if everyone knew all they needed to know about dogs and training… professional trainers would be out of a job. I always tell trainers to remind themselves that every question, no matter how basic, is their bread and butter (or their dog’s orthopedic surgery, etc etc.)

I felt a little sick all day yesterday about the whole thing… you’re just so helpless once something comes out in print.  And the journalist in question here did a truly bang up job.. I have no complaints there at all. I just wasn’t careful enough about how each word would sound when it was printed in a Sunday paper. (I used the F word once when talking to a journalist in Chicago. We’d talked for over an hour, she was loose and goosey and funny and we laughed as much as we talked.  I was dumbstruck when she quoted me exactly, inserting a line that I had thrown off as a joke between her and me. Reading it in the Chicago Tribune Sunday magazine was like being hit in the stomach. It does make me laugh to remember that it’s the only major article I never sent to my mother when she was still alive. At least I learned my lesson on that one! (Or will I be sorry tomorrow that I wrote on my blog that I used the F word once when talking to a journalist? Sigh.)

Well, here’s the good news. There is a lot of good information about reading body  language in the article, Chris Martell did a really good job of conveying a lot of information in a very short space. I did get an email from someone who said she loved the article, so at least that’s one person who doesn’t think I’m a rude and arrogant jerk. (I also said I don’t think dogs should go to an off-leash dog park unless they have a reliable recall. I truly believe that, but I am sure it won’t make me very popular!)

Here’s some more good things: some photos of the joy-filled Easter ritual that Jim and I celebrate every Easter. With our dear friends, David and Julie, we decorate Easter eggs like a bunch of kids, and then take turns hiding them for each other (usually the girls against the boys.) We have a great time… it’s a perfect example of “flow” and playing in a child like way.

Such a joy to play with color after a long, black, white and brown winter! And here’s the winner (Jim’s masterpiece):

Ahhh spring.  Finally the weather is mild enough to let the dogs lie outside and chew on bones. I just love watching my dogs chew on real, fresh bones. Of course, I would never give my dogs cooked bones (I know most of you know already that cooked bones are brittle and tend to splinter. Don’t ever give them to your dog.), but I love giving them the kind of fresh, raw bones that are safe–the large joint bones or large long bones from beef are my preference.

The first time I watched dogs chew on real bones I was astounded. Okay, that sounds pretty strong, but I had not anticipated how much exercise and skill it takes to chew on a bone.  All of the parts of a dog’s mouth, including the jaw muscles and different types of teeth are engaged in tearing, pulling, grinding and chewing. It was an epiphany watching them work out over a bone… “Oh! That’s what all those different kinds of teeth are for!” Chewing on large bones not only provides exercise, it must be so wonderful for dogs to be able to do it. Talk about doing things that you are good at and that you enjoy! Bones satisfy both of those criteria for dogs, and it is a joy for me to watch them do it. I spent a couple of minutes yesterday watching Lassie go to it.. I suspect she was in the state of flow that Csikszentmihalyi talks about as a route to true happiness. (I was taught to pronounce it “chick sent me high”!.. and I’m missing some accent marks, don’t know how to add them in the blog!)

I realize that there are lots of strong feelings about feeding bones, not feeding bones, canine nutrition, etc. It’s interesting how much things have changed since I got my first Border Collie, who was fed Purina Dog chow from the supermarket and lived 15.5 years.  Now my dogs get lots of fresh real food, high quality canned food, organic vegetables. Sometimes I have to stop myself from feeling guilty that I’m not feeding them well enough, and these are dogs who get custom made dinners every night (along with meat and vegetables, Lassie gets Steel-cut organic oats, Willie gets a sardine added to every dinner, etc). How to feed a dog is certainly is a hot topic: sometimes discussions about food get as heated as ones about politics. I try to avoid arguments about food, and keep my perspective relatively simple: I feed varied, high quality food, giving each dog the protein source I think is best for them.  It’s not all raw and it’s not all cooked. I’ll write more about feeding dogs if you are all interested, but for now…

here’s Lassie flowing in bone bliss:

And here are some photos new lambs: I got to watch Rosebud give birth last night (I have photos but they are pretty graphic, not sure that squeamish viewers would want to see!).

Here she’s licking off her first lamb, about 2 minutes after its birth. She swallows the sac, which provides nutrition, helps to dry off the lamb and prevent hypothermia and stimulate the lamb to get up and look for milk.

This next photo shows her licking off her second lamb, born about 2 minutes before the photo was taken. The first lamb was born about 10 minutes before, and is making her first attempt to stand.  I’m happy to say that all are doing well, last I checked–full, fat bellies and warm, toasty mouths, all signs of happy, healthy lambs.

As you probably know, we don’t offer a lot of books by other authors on our website, but we’ve just put up Dr. Nancy Kay’s book, Speaking for Spot: Be the Advocate Your Dog Needs to Live a Happy, Healthy, Longer Life. There’s just so much good about this book, and it is such an important resource for those of us who consider our dogs to be family. I love Nancy’s thoughtful and compassionate voice, and couldn’t agree more with her encouragement to all of us to be active advocates for our pets’ veterinary care.  I will admit that there are times I’ve longed for the “good old days” when medical decisions were simpler–it seems most of my dogs develop complicated, confusing ailments that elicit completely different recommendations from vets, and create tremendous angst when it comes time to decide what to do. However, in the long run it is so much better to work with health care professionals who acknowledge that this is OUR animal, that medicine is both a science and an art, and that we all need to be involved as equals in health care decisions.

Nancy sounds exactly like the kind of vet I’d like to have (and do, lucky me!). I especially love her chapters on important questions to ask your vet, cancer (an entire chapter on cancer, yeah! It is such a complicated and loaded issue), when and how to say goodbye, and her section on vaccines.  Vaccines are so controversial, and you may not agree with everything she says, but I love her careful and balanced approach (vaccines save lives, pure and simple; vaccines can be overused and cause terrible problems, including death).  Certainly an entire book could be written on vaccines and more detail could have been provided (Lepto once a year not enough? How often if a dog lives around livestock and wild animals?), but in general she provides a good introduction to the pro’s and con’s of vaccinations.

Personally, l would love to have seen more on alternative medicine and nutrition, but that’s just me, and besides, any single book can’t address every issue. I think the book is essential for everyone who owns a dog, and will re-read her chapter on important questions to ask your vet before my next discussion about Willie’s shoulder or Lassie kidney disease.

One additional note from me about making the most of a vet visit: I’ve found that no matter how ready I am with a written list of questions, I’ll think of more questions as I drive away from the clinic.  That’s because it takes a while to process the new information I got during the visit–questions I couldn’t have anticipated until the first discussion took place. So I always set up a time for a ‘follow up’ set of questions by asking “Can I call you tomorrow when I have had time to digest what we’ve talked about, or would you like me to come back in for an office visit?” (Okay, me and my vets prefer the phone call, but I’m trying to be respectful here. Not long ago I had 2 half-hour long phone conversations with Dr. David Ettinger, Willie’s sport medicine vet, and was so grateful for the time and patience he took discussing Willie’s shoulder that I insisted on sending in payment for an office visit. There are only so many half-hours in a day after all, and how nice for me to not have to drive all the way into Madison. It was well worth it, and surely it’s important to reinforce our vets for being so dedicated, yes?)

Speaking of reinforcement, I’ll reinforce Dr. Kay if and when I see her at a conference–she deserves it for a useful and compassionate book. (Who could not love a vet who says: Thou shalt push thy veterinarian off her pedestal! Page 66: Speaking for Spot!

Meanwhile, back at the farm: Jim spent most of  Saturday morning building lambing pens in the barn. We had 6 ewes all due Sat and Sunday, and since Barbie likes to steal the lambs of others and Snickers and Truffles don’t gently push the lambs of others way–they back up and attempt to kill them with ramming moves suitable for a Nat’l Geographic special–we wanted to separate out the ewes as much as possible.  Well, animals just don’t read the books, do they?  Saturday afternoon: nothing.  Saturday evening: nothing. Late Saturday night: nothing. Sunday morning (for sure there’d be lambs! Dororthy and Barbie are already several days late): Nothing. Etc. etc. Nothing nothing nothing. And of course, we stayed home all Saturday and Sunday just waiting for little bleating, soggy sacks of life-affirming spring time. Nothing. Darn (though it did give me time to bake baguettes and make a rhubarb, blueberry and raspberry pie from local fruit I stashed in the freezer last summer!)

Finally, this morning (Monday) old Martha delivered 2 healthy ewe lambs. Yeah Martha. Martha is very old and lost 1/2 of her udder to mastitis 2 years ago, but I couldn’t bear to say good bye, so our good friend Donna came out and took home one of the lambs so that Martha only had to raise one. Donna raised dairy goats for years, and has some young kids and plenty of goat milk. That little lamb will do well, and Martha will only have one lamb to nurse, which given her age and udder is perfect. The remaining lamb was a bit slow about finding the milk source, but after some encouragement she discovered it early this afternoon, and had a lovely, round belly last I went to check.

Here’s some spring time photos… every year spring means flowers, lambs, and adorable young children to come visit the lambs.  All equally welcome and cherished.

Every morning I start my day writing a list of things that I am grateful for. Sometimes they are big things (Jim, my dogs, opportunities to learn, grow and improve relationships between people and animals) and sometimes they are small (the plaintive Wooo Heee song of courting Chickadees, the deep, purple blue of the first spring flowers). This morning I surprised myself, by adding:

I am grateful that none of my dogs potty in the house.

House training and elimination control is like health, isn’t it?  If everything is fine, you don’t really think about it much. But when it’s not, it can be overwhelming. I went through two years living with old dogs who simply couldn’t control themselves. Pippy Tay lost control of her anus in her last year of life (at age 15) and I picked up poop at least five times a day. Tulip had Irritable Bowel disease and problem with her pancreas, and a variety of unwelcome substances decorated my house with alarming frequency. (One of the things I am grateful for is that Jim never once complained about living in what felt like a litter box.)

Years earlier, when Luke was alive, I had to keep the door shut to an upstairs bedroom. The orange and  yellow shag carpet that was there when I moved in had clearly been anointed by other animals, and Luke never missed a chance to mark it until I finally ripped it out. (One could argue that a yellow and orange carpet deserves nothing more than to be urinated upon.. oh, the 60′s!)

A week doesn’t go by that I don’t get an email or phone call from someone who is having trouble house training their dog. Isn’t it interesting how simple house training feels once you get it, but how terrifically un-intuitive it is before you’ve done it repeatedly?  When Karen London and I wrote Way to Go, we were struck by how many people resisted giving their dog a treat for eliminating outside, and how common it is for people to give the treat long after the dog is done, and after she trots back to the house. Once you face the fact that you just have take your dog out every time you turn around,  give them the treat immeditely after they potty, and prevent accidents in the house… well, it usually goes so smoothly.  That’s not to say that some cases can’t be difficult: dogs who grew up going to the bathroom where they live, dogs who had health problems when young that interferred with training, etc. I am very sympathetic to the difficult cases, and I’ve seen some tough ones as you can imagine.

But for now, THANK YOU Willie and Lassie!  Lassie is susceptible to bladder infections, so I always look for a puddle in the dining room first thing as I enter the house (a sign her infection is back), but it’s been over a half of year since I’ve had to clean anything up.  Wow. Life is good.

Meanwhile, back at the farm. No new lambs, although I’m going to leave the office as soon as I finish this to check on the flock. Barbie and Dorothy are due any day, so they are confined inside the barn (and are none to happy about it. Barbie smashed into poor Willie as he was leaving the pen yesterday–this after he stood up bravely to an attack from Redford, I was SO proud of him). She went after me this morning. I guess if I was as big as she is I’d be in a bad mood too. She gets huge.. we call her “Explodo sheep” before she gives birth.)

I didn’t get any pictures taken this morning, started grading term papers at 6 am. But I did take the time to  write that I am grateful for the opportunities to travel to amazing places through my work, and to meet wonderful people all over the world. Here are two of my favorite photos from our trip to Sweden, thanks to Natasja at Hundens Osterlen, who hosted the seminar.

The Swedish “Stonehenge”

Isn’t this church gorgeous? It makes me happy just to look at it. That’s Jim at the end… it makes me happy to look at him too!