Jessica Vogelsang DVM

This content is sponsored by Petplan. 

Ho ho ho, it’s December and you know what that means! Drama in the vet clinic, that’s what. Between the chocolate and the tinsel and the holiday Swiss Colony beef logs that pets never fail to get into, ’tis the season for a variety of surprises we’d be happy to leave behind in Santa’s sack.

With that in mind, we here at DAR are pleased to present you with a little holiday levity to get your mind off all the hardship that comes with the season. So tell us: which holiday pet emergency are you?

While DrAndyRoark.com has received compensation for this post from Petplan, all opinions expressed are those of the DrAndyRoark.com editorial team.

Having a baby is a life-changing experience for everyone involved, including your client’s pets. Just as they’re preparing for baby’s arrival, their dog needs advance preparation for this big change, especially if their dog has not spent time around children.  With so much incorrect information available via Dr. Google we have to remember that our clients simply don’t know any better.

I’ll never forget the hysterical phone call I received from an expectant parent who read to show their dog that the baby was dominant and to use the baby blanket to pin the dog down.  The story continues that the parent pinned the dog down, was bitten and was now terrified that the dog was definitely going to bite the baby.  What a great opportunity for open education!  We talked all about body language and the series his dog went through prior to actually biting.

After all, we know that dog bites don’t happen out of nowhere but the recognition of those clues isn’t nearly as natural for our clients. In fact, according to the National Canine Research Council, there are many factors that were present in more than 80% of cases.  Notice I said many, four or more to be exact.  For me, that’s terrifying!

• no able-bodied person being present to intervene;
• the victim having no familiar relationship with the dog(s);
• the dog(s) owner failing to neuter/spay the dog(s);
• a victim’s compromised ability, whether based on age or physical condition, to manage their interactions with the dog(s);
• the owner keeping dog(s) as resident dog(s), rather than as family pet(s);
• the owner’s prior mismanagement of the dog(s);
• the owner’s abuse or neglect of the dog.

Working in an animal shelter, I see dogs surrendered for a variety of reasons.  I’ve had couples who were still experiencing their own unresolved trauma from witnessing or experiencing a dog bite.  Now that they are expecting, they are too paralyzed with fear to think clearly.  I’ve also had folks describe watching their dogs interact with the baby through the monitor screen and thinking that meant they were supervising appropriately. Once the bond has been broken and the dog is on our doorstep; it’s too late for education.  We need to catch the family in their vet’s office and guide them to an experienced behavior professional.

Help clients start preparing their pet now for baby’s arrival to create a safe and happy environment for everyone, and establish the start of a lifelong bond between their new baby and canine companion.  Here are some easy, practical tips to start educating and supporting your expectant parents.

Know how their dog reacts. Watch for signs that their dog is nervous or scared by looking at the position of their eyes, ears, tail and muzzle. Think about how their dog reacts to different situations, sights, sounds, smells and touch. For example, does their dog show fear when guests come to their house or get nervous when you rearrange furniture? How their dog reacts to these types of experiences can provide insight into how they may respond to having a new infant in the home.

Introduce new sights and sounds before baby arrives. Think about what sounds, like fireworks, make their dog nervous or scared. Their dog may have a similar reaction to a baby’s cry. Play a CD or audio of baby sounds and slowly increase the volume over time to help familiarize their dog with these new sounds. It’s also a good idea to set up baby equipment like the crib and swing early to give their dog time to investigate and adjust to these new sights.

Create positive associations with baby’s scent. Have dad or a familiar family member bring the hospital blanket home so their dog can sniff their baby’s scent and build a positive bond with this new smell. Reward their dog with a special treat for being curious about the blanket and investigating it in a calm way. Put some of the lotion or oil you will use with the baby on the baby equipment to familiarize their dog with the scent.

Brush up on their dog’s cues. Strengthen their dog’s obedience cues, like sit, down, wait, or go to bed. Make sure their dog can respond to these cues both verbally and from a distance so they can follow even when their hands are full with the baby. Carry a doll around the house to see how their dog reacts when their hands are full.

Get their dog used to a flexible schedule. Once baby arrives, parents won’t always be able to stick to their dog’s regular feeding and walking schedule, so get them used to eating or walking at different times. Have the couple introduce their dog to the person who will feed and walk them while they’re in the hospital.

When returning home, mom should greet the dog first and alone. When mom and baby first come home from the hospital, mom should go inside by herself for a few minutes. Mom’s been gone for a few days so their dog will be excited to see her. Once they bring the baby inside, don’t force an interaction with the dog, but do invite their dog over for a sniff and reward calm, quiet behavior.

Practice active supervision. Don’t rely on the baby monitor when they’re home with their baby and their dog. An awake adult should supervise at all times. If they’re napping, their dog should be gated, crated, or tethered away from the baby. And if baby is sleeping in the crib, close the nursery room door.

Be careful taking family walks. Again, know their dog’s behavior. If their dog likes to chase squirrels or bark at other dogs while on a walk, parents may not want to attempt a solo walk with their dog and stroller. Practice walking their dog with an empty stroller or walk with two adults present to keep everyone safe and on course.

Teach their dog boundaries. It’s important for their dog to know what behavior is expected around the baby. Let their dog sniff baby’s toes, but not baby’s face. Reward their dog for calm and quiet behavior around the baby, and ignore unwanted behavior. Think about how their dog gets their attention now. Do they whine, bark or hit you with their paw? Parents should starting teaching their dog how to get their attention in a more appropriate way.

Teach young children how to greet a dog.  It’s ok to tell children that a dog would rather not say hello!  There is a whole program called; “Be a Tree” that teaches children how to handle a strange dog approaching them but what about a child approaching a dog?  I teach children to stop and ask.  If the parent gives permission, have the child look at their feet and tap their leg.  We just gave the dog a choice to say hello and walk away. Remember, invites decrease bites!

One of the most rewarding parts of my job is networking with local Veterinarians! I love consulting on various cases while we address the medical and behavior needs of our patients.  I have the added bonus of spending an hour with the patient, in their home, and reporting my observations back to their Veterinarian.  I believe it is everyone’s responsibility to help create dog aware generations and the larger our team is; the more we can support our clients!  We can all help keep dogs and babies safe while creating a lifelong bond and easing the transition for our clients.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the DrAndyRoark.com editorial team.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Meagan Montmeny, ABCDT, CPDT-KA is the Behavior and Training Department Manager at SPCA Tampa Bay in Largo. She is a certified professional dog trainer and has completed the 13-week Dogs & Storks educator course offered by Family Paws Parent Education. Meagan is currently working to complete her master’s degree in companion animal behavior analysis and counseling.

SPCA Tampa Bay’s Dogs & Storks program is the first program in the nation that provides positive, practical and fun solutions to help families with dogs prepare for baby before baby arrives. Please visit www.spcatampabay.org/dog-training for more information.  To find a Family Paws Parent Educator in your area, visit www.familypaws.com.

When I sat down to share these thoughts, that classic song found a home in my ear. I just can’t think of any feeling that’s lonelier than feeling alone when you’re in the middle of the treatment room of a busy hospital.

That’s how I felt, though, back in the summer of 2010.

You see, I live and work in a small resort town which is very sensitive to our local and national economy. We typically live a feast and famine lifestyle- with seventy percent of our annual income raging through the door from July to September. This is followed by almost spooky empty days stretching into months, until we once again pick up a flurry of business during the Winter holidays.

I’m used to scrimping through the “shoulder” seasons, and then kicking ass through the busy months, and had always budgeted for the slow times. But back in the summer of 2010 I was heading into high season having unexpectedly lost a full time associate, and was running as fast as I could to cover all of the shifts that the two of us had previously shared. In those days we took emergencies till 10pm every day, and had our hospital open from 8 am till 7 pm six days of the week…covering those shifts felt like an impossible task. If I’m keeping it one-hundred, it was an impossible task.

It was crazy. I was crazy! I was so blinded by my fear of financial failure and wanting to be there for my clients, my patients, my staff, and my family that I forgot to be there for myself.

The economy was in tatters and our financial experts could only promise things were sure to get worse before they got better. I was six years into my new animal hospital and two years into my new boarding and training facility…with eleven team members to support, along with my family of three and a farm-load of pets.

I made it through that summer, and was able to squirrel away a good deal of the money our teams would need to weather the winter.

I’d love to be able to write that I learned my lesson from that impossible summer, but I’d be lying. I am far too stubborn to learn my lessons the easy way.

When the summer was over I figured I just needed to put my head down and work harder, be better… more vigilant, more correct, more available to my team. I worked and missed my daughter. I worked and missed my husband. I worked and paid trainers to ride my horses. If you’re thinking this all sounds like a terrible plan; you’re right. It was madness, and I almost ruined my health, my spirit, and my family by struggling through all of this on my own.

So I started looking around to try to find some help, perhaps a wiser colleague to help me assess my situation, and I started to see hundreds of other veterinarians just like me out there. All so self-sufficient, stubborn, and afraid of being seen as flawed or weak that we don’t reach out.

Enter Vets4Vets

Standing there, in the middle of my pile of failure and despair, I decided to do something different. Something courageous. I reached out to my colleagues on Veterinary Information Network (VIN). Many of us gathered together to start a conversation about the kinds of support that we wished we could have had during our darker moments, and from this VIN Foundation’s Vets4Vets program was born.

It was winter, my slow time, and as part of my self-healing I agreed to make my pain my purpose.  Vets4Vets started small- simply offering an opportunity for veterinarians to reach out and speak with another veterinarian in a confidential and caring setting. My team at the hospital fielded phone calls, and we’d chat by email and phone, laughing through tears at the challenges, losses, and frustrations we’d faced.

Vets4vets grew; folks started asking for a safe place for recovering addicts to meet in confidence, so we started VIN Foundation’s Vets In Recovery. We then realized we needed a psychotherapist to offer a regular, confidential support group and Dr. Susan Cohen came on board. Dr. Michele Gaspar, who’d been an essential team member from the beginning, attained her pastoral counseling degree and *bam!* we grew again. Just as soon as we were feeling pretty confident with our ability to respond to colleagues and offer support Charlotte Waack, LVT pulled me aside to discuss our support staff members’ need for help and Support4Support was born.

Vets4Vets has helped almost five hundred colleagues in the last year, and we look forward to helping even more veterinarians and support team members in the next year. I like to say “you’ve got a problem, I’ll make a program” and that’s pretty much the way Vets4Vets has grown from a tiny offering of an email and a kind word on VIN to a program which is available free to every veterinarian and support team member in the world (no VIN membership required), thanks to the generous support of the VIN Foundation.

Dr. Roark and Dr. Montana are presenting a free webinar tomorrow, December 5: 8 Steps to Exam Room Boundaries. Open to all but you have to register! For more information and to sign up, please click this registration link.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the DrAndyRoark.com editorial team.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Bree Montana, DVM, is a small animal practitioner and owner of the Agate Bay Animal Hospital and Dog Gone Crazy boarding/training facilities in North Lake Tahoe, California. Following the completion of a B.S. in Biology at the University of Cincinnati’s McMicken College, Dr. Montana graduated from the Ohio State University’s College of Veterinary Medicine with a Doctorate in Veterinary Medicine. A past member of the External Advisory and Admissions Committees for UC Davis’ College of Veterinary Medicine, Dr. Montana also served as a working member of the VIN Foundation Board of Directors. In 2010, Dr. Montana helped to create the VIN Foundation’s innovative Vets4Vets program, a confidential support group providing critical emotional care to veterinarians struggling with all forms of stress/addiction/mental health issues.

There needs to be a shift in veterinary medicine, and it can’t happen too soon.  It isn’t about the medicine.  It is about the way we view our patients.  And it is all about behavior.

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away, I earned a shiny degree in veterinary medicine and started work in small animal practice.  I graduated into the culture of “dominance”, the lens through which we viewed all canine behavior.  We held unexamined, unspoken beliefs that our canine patients should submit willingly and patiently to our various administrations, painful or otherwise.  If they refused, they were being dominant or naughty, disrespectful of our authority over their bodies.

The result of this mindset is that we behaved in some appalling ways to the patients our clients entrusted us to treat.  The dog that howled in protest when we tried to insert a rectal thermometer?  He was restrained in a neck hold and told to be good.  If he progressed to snarl and struggle?  He was muzzled and restrained on his side with more, bigger, stronger people.  If he protested yet more violently, he might have been pinned to the floor and yelled at by an impatient, frustrated veterinarian.

I have seen dogs hung up by their choke collars until their tongues turned gray in misguided attempts to punish them for struggling for a blood draw.  I have seen veterinarians shaking muzzled dogs by the scruff of their necks, yelling at them to stop misbehaving.  In one memorable sad case, I saw a dog who developed life-threatening noncardiogenic pulmonary edema shortly after particularly vigorous restraint for a nail trim.  I have heard veterinarians and their staff call their canine patients assholes, jerks, idiots, piranhas, landsharks and a variety of other creative pejorative labels.  I wish I could say that since it was a long time ago in a galaxy far far away, none of this ever happens now, but I still work in small animal practice, and I know it does.  Even in practices that advertise with pictures of smiling vets being licked by happy dogs.

I am a vet with a specialty degree in critical care.  Most of my ICU patients are too sick to complain about what we do to them;  I don’t have a lot of dog wrestling matches these days.  My recent little rescue dog came packaged with a host of behavior problems, sending me on an inquisitive search to understand them.  I discovered that in the years since I have owned a new dog, there has been a change in comprehension of dog behavior, but misinformation abounds in the mind of the public and most veterinarians remain similarly ill-informed.  I work with a lot of new interns, and while behavior is starting to be taught in veterinary college, there is still lots of work to be done to get vets up to speed.

It seems to me that many veterinarians are still blindly immersed in the now debunked dominance culture and have no training in normal canine behavior, a stunning oversight in veterinary education. This unfortunate combination leads to profound misunderstanding and stress on both sides of the exam table. Yes, both sides, because when you see through the dominance lens, you believe your struggling patient is deliberately misbehaving or worse, is malicious.  Your own stress response is triggered, and a grim, escalating match of power and anger ensues.

Veterinarians don’t want to be bullies. They don’t want to yell at their patients and most are likely ashamed of themselves for engaging in aggressive dog wrestling, but they get drawn into a battle because they hold the belief that the dog is being “bad” and if they could only dominate the dog with physical or verbal power it would submit and be “good”.  Patients become enemies.  How crazy stressful is that to add to all the other issues a veterinarian can be stressed about?

Now, let’s imagine how much different these battle scenes could be.  Imagine that veterinarians understood that the primal, evolutionarily honed response to fear is fight or flight and that almost all but the most well- socialized, cheerful kind of dog is experiencing anxiety and fear in the veterinary hospital.  The flighty dog might submit in a learned-helplessness sort of way and cower passively until the horrible experience is over.  The veterinarian will see that the quiet behavior is not because the dog is “good” but because he is frightened, can’t escape and has given up.  That dog needs lots of help to feel more comfortable.

The fighty kind of dog will growl, snarl or snap in escalating attempts to make the scary person with a stethoscope, thermometer and sharp-stick-that-always-hurts-a-lot go away.  The veterinarian’s heart might melt a little, recognizing the intense fear behind the scary snarling teeth.  She would respond not by piling on more restraint and aggression of her own, but by backing off, reconsidering, searching to find a way to make this dog’s experience less terrifying.  She would narrate to her less educated staff about how this dog is afraid, how this is fear, not a malicious character trait or a dog trying to avoid being “dominated”.  She would understand too, that dogs do not come naturally to being touched, poked, prodded and handled.  This is something most need to be taught.

Dogs who resist when their feet are handled, legs are restrained, tails jacked up or are being hugged tight by a stranger are being normal, evolutionarily well-adapted mammals whose innate response is to avoid body handling.  They are not “weenies”, “wusses” or spoiled,  ill-tempered cranks who need a firm hand or stern voice.  They need intelligently applied classical conditioning to accept these administrations with no fear.

This is a message veterinarians with an understanding of behavior need to trumpet loudly and persistently to our colleagues:

“Most aggression in a vet clinic is fear.”

“Most aggression in a vet clinic is fear.”

“Most aggression in a vet clinic is fear.”

Dogs are afraid of you, your staff, the needle you have poked them with, the thermometer you put up their bum, the big barking dog next to them, the abdominal probing that could hurt, the stranger who holds them tightly.  They associate your hospital with scary things.  They want to get away or to make you go away, and that often looks like aggression.  We need to change our language from “good” and “bad” to “comfortable” and “afraid”.  Dominance as a paradigm has had its day.

The pervasive silent influence of the dominance mindset is getting in the way of us doing our jobs, of doing the best for our patients, of being the kind and caring veterinarians our youthful selves envisioned when we submitted our application to veterinary college.  Let’s be a collective voice and kick dominance to the curb.  Maya Angelou wisely says do the best you can until you know better.  Once you know better, do better.  When I graduated more than two and a half decades ago, we did not know better.  Now we do. Let’s all of us do better.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the position of the DrAndyRoark.com editorial team.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Dawn Crandell DVM, DVSc, DACVECC

Student of The Academy for Dog Trainers

Dawn Crandell is a small animal veterinarian with a specialty degree in critical care, working in the ICU of a busy, urban referral practice.  She also has an interest in animal behaviour and is currently immersed a 2 year course by the Academy for Dog Trainers.

In honor of #GivingTuesday, the team at DrAndyRoark.com are proud to share a guest post from one of our favorite groups, The Grey Muzzle Organization. 

In this season of giving thanks, The Grey Muzzle Organization would like to share with you the story of one of our grant recipients.  Meet Howard, A VERY GRATEFUL DOG from San Francisco’s Muttville Senior Dog Rescue.

At 11 years old, Howard found himself abandoned by his family with only one reason given to the shelter, “too old.” Instead of a name, he was now a number – #6541156.

Howard was lame from arthritis and had a cancerous lesion, which gave him very little chance of attracting a new family. Day after day, he watched people pass him by, always smiling through his whiskers, always hopeful someone would see in his eyes that he had so much left to give.

Howard’s lucky day came in August when Sherri Franklin, Director of Muttville, took one look at his sweet face and said, “I think I am in love! He can be a Muttville dog!”

The very next day Howard began his journey with a ride from the shelter, holding his head out the window the entire trip!

Next up was his first flight–a “Pilots N Paws” plane ride to Muttville:

Sherri knew Howard needed veterinary care, and thanks to Grey Muzzle she knew she had the resources to care for him. Here he is recovering from surgery and sporting a very fashionable e-collar:

Recovered from surgery, a hopeful Howard headed to his very first Muttville adoption event–with a few of his new friends. He was a little nervous but gave everyone he met his big goofy grin!

After a few more adoption events, it happened. A man named Patrick came to meet Howard. It was love at first sight. Howard had a new dad!

And so a new life begins for Howard. Sweet dreams of all the great adventures ahead!

Lisa Lunghofer, Ph.D.

Executive Director
The Grey Muzzle Organization

The Grey Muzzle Organization improves the lives of at-risk senior dogs by providing funding and resources to animal shelters, rescue organizations, sanctuaries and other nonprofit groups nationwide.