Your dog will always be a key part of your family, no matter how old he gets. However, when your furry friend is getting on in years you might need to adjust your lifestyle a little to accommodate your older dog.

Whether your dog is a senior or not will depend on its breed. A small dog like a terrier or chihuahua won’t be considered to be a pensioner until they reach the age of ten or twelve, however bigger breeds like Great Danes could be seniors at just 5 or 6. Not only does breed and size have an impact on your pup’s life expectancy, their genetics, environment and diet all have a role to play.

The good news is that modern medicine hasn’t only extended human lives, it can also help your dog to live a long, happy life too. As long as you give your fur baby the right preventative care and attention, your aging dog will have the longest and best life possible.

With that in mind, here are some tips for caring for your older dog.

Caring For Your Dog’s Skin

As your dog ages they may develop more sensitivities. Their skin may be more easily damaged so switching to a hypoallergenic shampoo is good for your pets as they get older.

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Exercise For Mind And Body

As humans age, they struggle to perform physical activities. It’s the same with dogs. As they get older they may experience pain or find it hard to do the things they used to love. Exercise, however, is still vital to your dog’s well-being and health. Take your pet on gentle, short walks but take care to monitor his gait and breathing to ensure that everything is ok. Your dog’s mind also needs exercise. Food puzzles and other stimulating toys will help to keep your pet sharp.

Schedule Regular Vet Visits

You should take your older dog to the vet for a check up every six months. In the same way as older people have to take care with their health and see their doctor more frequently, older pets also benefit from more frequent vet visits. Old pets often need more examinations, dental treatment and blood tests. Some breeds are also more predisposed to developing certain conditions like diabetes, cancer, hip dysplasia and arthritis. Detecting these problems at an early stage will help to prevent them from becoming serious concerns.

Pay Closer Attention

Always monitor any change in appetite, weight, behavior and dental problems as well as lesions, bumps or lumps which appear. Any changes you note should be reported to your vet.

Although it’s harder to care for your older dog, your lifelong companion will be by your side for the rest of his life, so it’s worth making a few small changes.

Our dogs are our family and most of us treat them like our children.  Guilty!  In loving them as much as we do, we want to protect them and keep them safe from harm.  Whether it is on the home front, throughout the daily routine, or out and about traveling, we want to ensure their safety.

There are plenty of pet containment systems available to aid in providing safety.  Ranging from wireless fences to traditional fences and all things in between, you will most likely be able to find something to best suit you and your family.

Electronic Wireless Fencing

These types of fences allow owners to monitor their dog through a GPS (Global Positioning Systems) collar, by placing a transmitter in a central location, connected to the GPS.  The transmitter then gives off a signal that provides an invisible boundary for the dog.  Unlike the base for the wired fencing, this transmitter must be in an indoor location.

Similar wireless systems do not need a transmitter, rather can create a boundary or invisible fence connected directly to the GPS collar.  Your dog can then learn the boundary areas, through training.  If he wanders outside of the boundary, he will receive a corrective stimulation through the collar.

There are several different types of GPS fence systems on the market.  Most of them only provide a circular boundary, covering only a certain amount of feet.  Some may see this as a negative if you are looking for more space for your dog to roam free.

Many of the GPS systems are designed to be completely portable so that you can easily travel with your pup.  This may be a nice alternative to the wired systems, for that reason.

Along with the wired electronic fencing, the wireless fencing cannot guarantee to keep your dog in the boundary; and will not be able to keep others out.

The wireless system may be prone to more outages as well, in comparison to the wired fencing.

Indoor Systems

Needing to keep your pup contained to a certain room, or away from the trash can?  The electronic GPS systems can work for this inside.  Some systems allow for the GPS collar to work with a boundary transmitter, marking off certain areas to keep your pet away from, or confined to, ranging from eight to ten feet.

Using this type of system would provide a good alternative to those child or pet gates that may be going up all over the house.   Although, the system is still operating like the outdoor ones in which the dog’s collar is connected to the frequency transmitter.  The dog could still find a way to disregard the corrective stimulation and go after what he wants.

Other Safety Factors

Regardless of the pet containment system you are thinking of, or currently using, keep in mind nothing is full proof.  Our dogs are instinctive animals, and simply put, animals.  Some of them can find their way out of any containment.

Certain precautions should be taken in addition to using pet containment systems.  Visually monitoring your pup even when he is outdoors in any type of fencing, is recommended.  Make sure your dog always has his ID tags on and visible.

Having a microchip can also be a lifesaver.  Our neighbors found a dog without any tags or ID and drove her to a local pet store where the store looked up her microchip.  They were able to contact the family and they were reunited within a few hours.  A happy ending that may not have happened otherwise.

Ear cropping and tail docking for dogs is usually considered to be cosmetic surgery for dogs. In other words, neither procedure is necessary for a dog’s health; it is simply done for appearance. These procedures used to be standard for certain breeds.

However, many owners are reconsidering having them done because they are unnecessary and may be considered cruel.

Which Dog Breeds Have This Done?

According to the American Kennel Club, there are as many as twenty breeds that routinely undergo this procedure. These are some of the most common breeds.

The American Kennel Club estimates that there are 17 other breeds that undergo ear cropping and 62 other breeds that undergo tail docking in addition to the most common ones listed here.

According to the Pet Health Network, these procedures served a useful purpose at one time. Cropped ears on guard breeds such as Great Danes and Dobermans prevented the ears from being ripped in a fight. Docked tails on hunting and herding breeds prevented injuries as the dogs performed their various functions. Over time, these breeds were used more for companionship rather than the purpose for which they were originally bred. So the necessity of these procedures are being questioned.

Why Are These Procedures Done?

As stated previously, at one time there was a practical purpose for these procedures. However, they have now become more cosmetic than practical. Several countries, including Australia and the United Kingdom have banned them altogether.

In the United States, the controversy is becoming more heated. This is partially due to the American Kennel Club’s stance on preserving the historical standards of the breeds. In fact, these procedures are still part of the AKC standards for these breeds even though they now say that dogs who have not had them done can still compete and win dog show competitions. However, many veterinarians in the United States are against the procedures and the American Veterinary Medical Association discourages the practice. Because of this, a few states are considering banning the procedures but none have done so at this time.

Conclusion

Companion and service dogs have no need for either of these procedures. There is no increased risk of injury or infection if they are not done and the procedures do not give any real benefit to the dog. Research also indicates that the perceived risk of injury for working or hunting breeds is unfounded.

Therefore, these procedures are cosmetic and elective. The only motivation for them is to conform the dog’s appearance to a certain standard. When enough pressure is brought to bear on the dog show world, hopefully those standards will change and the procedures will be banned altogether. This is why many animal welfare associations are actively working to legalize a ban on these procedures in the United States and for cropped ears and docked tails to be removed from AKC standards.

Ultimately, every dog owner needs to research and decide what is best for their dog. However, the majority of evidence proves that not only are these procedures out-dated and unnecessary, they do inflict pain on young puppies and expose them to an increased risk of infection.

Because of this, ear cropping and tail docking could indeed be considered cruelty to dogs.

Is it a myth?

Yes, it is a myth that dogs see only in black and white, but they don’t have quite the color vision of human beings. A dog relies on its sense of smell to give it the most information about the world. When a person takes their dog for a walk and the dog sniffs at eveyrthing, it is getting about as much information as a human would from reading the morning paper. A dog’s sense of smell must be as astonishing to humans as human vision would be astonishing to a dog.

Still, a dog’s eyes are very much like a human’s. It is a sphere made up of a cornea, vitreous chamber, lens, pupil and a retina at the very back of the eye. The retina is filled with structures called rods and cones. Cones allow the dog to see colors and bright light while rods allow the dog to see in low light.

Since humans and dogs are both predators and work in groups, their eyes are positioned in the front of the head, but some dog’s eyes are a bit more widespread. This gives them a wider field of vision as well as good depth perception. This helps the dog focus on potential prey and helps it see where the pack/tribe members are.

Dogs can see in the dark three times as well as a human because they have more rods than cones in their retinas.

They also have large pupils and a membrane called a tapetum lucidum beneath their retina, which enhances their ability to see in low light. Cats also have a tapetum lucidum, which we shall see. This membrane is why the eyes of both cats and dogs glow in the dark.

How do dogs see compared to people?

The three types of cones that humans have are sensitive to blue, red and green, and the two cones in dogs are sensitive to blue and a color between green and red, whatever it is. Dogs can’t focus as well on close items as human beings and would be considered quite nearsighted if they were human. Most dogs have about 20/75 vision, which is fairly bad! They don’t discriminate between shades of colors well either. A forest full of beautiful autumnal trees is a blurry, dull light green to a dog.

However, dogs have an advantage when it comes to motion detection. This is because of their better night vision and their ability to sense even the smallest prey moving in the duff. A drawback of their large pupils is that an image is sharp only in the center of the dog’s field of vision while everything to the side is fuzzy. This is an acceptable situation when a dog is running down a prey animal or a ball. Dogs can also see much farther than humans, especially if the object is moving. In one test, dogs were able to see a moving figure a half a mile away, and a stationery figure a little over a third of a mile away. Dogs are also better able to see flickering lights. When a person sits down to watch TV with their pooch or sneaks them into a movie theater the dog sees the film frame by very fast frame, while human eyes are tricked into thinking the film is one continuous experience. This flicker fusion frequency, as it is called, is another thing that helps the dog find small prey at night.

How do dogs see compared to cats?

The dog and cat eye are comparable in that they both have a nictitating membrane and a tapetum lucidum. The nictitating membrane is a transparent eyelid that keeps the animal’s eye clear as it hunts at night. It is also called the haw and allows the animal to keep its eyes open while it is hunting. Most dog owners don’t notice this third eyelid until the dog gets an infection called cherry eye. Cats and dogs also experience the same limited range of colors.

Dog eyes also have a fovea, which is a pit in the center of retina that is full of cones. Instead of a fovea, a cat has a structure called a visual streak, which isn’t a pit or a point but a streak that is found across their retina. This makes them better able to detect movement in their peripheral vision.

But no one should feel sorry for cats and dogs because their vision isn’t as color-filled or sharp as a human’s. Their other senses, such as touch, taste and especially smell are much more acute than human’s, and tell them everything they need to know about the world.

Puppy mills are large operations that focus primarily on breeding dogs without much attention being placed on the well-being of the dogs in question. There are many reasons as to why you should avoid purchasing a dog from a puppy mill and zero advantages towards doing so. Due to the breeding of these dogs without any regard to their health, these puppy mills often cause the production of breeds that have hereditary defects that go unchecked, which is one of the many reasons that you should consider adopting or purchasing a dog from a more reputable option.

You Might Get a Sick Puppy

When you wish to purchase or adopt a dog, you’re obviously going to be looking for one that’s healthy or at least has received adequate vet care. In most puppy mills, vet care is seen as an afterthought due to the rapidity at which these mills try to breed the animals that they bring in without putting much thought on actually caring for these dogs. Because of the lack of vet care that these dogs receive, you have a high potential to get a sick puppy, especially if the puppy mill has been in existence for a lengthy period of time.

The longer that a single puppy mill is breeding dogs, the more likely it is that future generations of puppies bred in these mills suffer from certain hereditary or congenital conditions. The reason that this occurs is because the majority of mill owners do not attempt to identify if some of their dogs are sick, which means that sick dogs will continue to breed with other dogs, heightening the chances that the puppy you obtain from one of these mills has some kind of disease.

Some of the more common hereditary conditions that these puppies may suffer from include:

• Heart disease
• Kidney disease
• Anemia
• Cataracts
• Glaucoma
• Disorders within the musculoskeletal system

Due to the lack of vet care provided to these dpgs, there’s also a chance that the one you purchase from a puppy mill has some form of disease. These diseases can include everything from infections in the upper respiratory system, pneumonia, ticks, fleas, diarrhea, and mange. When you adopt or purchase a puppy from a rescue group or shelter, it’s highly unlikely that they will have any type of disease or disorder, allowing you to avoid the many issues and expenses that can occur when the puppy is already sick.

Further Reading:

Breeding Females Treated Poorly

One of the more horrifying aspects of puppy mills is that breeding females are almost always treated very poorly, wherein they are bred as often as possible. Since the majority of puppy mills are focused on boosting their profits, this means that breeding females are given hardly any time to recover before being bred again. When these female dogs no longer have the strength necessary to continue breeding, they are usually killed. In many cases, records aren’t kept, which means that the owners of the puppy mill have no idea how many times that a female dog has produced litters.

Crate training relies on your puppy’s natural instinct as a den animal. It is a safe place for them to escape and sleep. The caution with crate training a puppy is that they shouldn’t be left in it for too long. A puppy can only hold their bladder for so long before an accident is inevitable. The main purpose behind crate training is for housebreaking your puppy. Meaning that you want to train them to not relieve themselves in the house or destroy your home while you are gone. A crate will not solve all of your puppy problems. Use it in conjunction with other training methods. Here are the steps to crate train your puppy.

Further Reading:

A crate should never be used for punishment. This will cause your puppy to associate their crate with negative emotions. Another thing to remember is that your puppy may be whining because they need to relieve themselves. Say the phrase that they associate with going outside. If they get excited, take them outside. Crate training will take time and patience.

The Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) defines a service animal as “a dog that has been individually trained to do work or perform tasks for an individual with a disability.” It also says that the tasks must be directly related to the person’s disability. This means that a service dog is trained to help with specific things that the individual is unable to do because of their disability. For example, a blind person may need the dog to lead them, or a person with seizures may have a dog trained to alert them when a seizure is about to happen.

For those with service dogs, these dogs must be available to them at all times. This includes when they go out to various public facilities and stores. All facilities are required to allow service dogs, regardless of the type of business. This includes restaurants and medical facilities, as these dogs are necessary for the disabled person to function in their daily lives.

There is no current requirement to have a service dog certified due to the further complications it could bring to a disabled person. It is believed that a disabled person faces enough challenges in their daily life that a required certification could bring undo hardships to those with a disability that requires a service dog. They could be limited in their ability to perform their daily tasks due to a lengthy registration process, as well as open them up to more questions and complications when taking their service dog to various facilities.

Further Reading:

Animals That Help Humans
Crate Train a Puppy
Training a New Dog

Where can you take a service animal?

You can take a service animal anywhere. This includes any public area, school, restaurant, grocery store, and even medical facilities, such as hospitals. However, the handler is responsible for all care and supervision of the service animal. The only limitation is when there are two service animals and the facility cannot safely accommodate both. For example, a small restaurant may limit the guest to one service animal, only if, only one dog can safely sit under the table and the other would have to remain in the walkway. Even hospitals are required to allow service animals for patients as long as the dog is cared for during the stay.

According to the ADA, these facilities are only allowed to ask two questions concerning the service dog.

• Is the dog a service animal required because of a disability?
• What work or task has the dog been trained to perform?

The staff is not allowed to ask any questions pertaining to the disability, nor are they allowed to request documentation or a demonstration of that task.

Can I get my dog certified if I do not have a disability?

No. Service dogs are specifically for those with a disability. They provide a specific task to help lessen the burden of their disability on their daily activities. Although it is possible to get the certification at some less than legitimate sites, it would require lying about such disability and fraudulently taking advantage of laws established to protect the disabled.

Further Reading