Living With Dogs (11 page)
Authors: Dr Hugh Wirth
2. Free-running exercise
Providing free-running (off-leash) exercise outside the property once, or preferably twice, per day is highly stimulating for dogs and quietens them down. This does not mean following owners who are running, cycling or driving, but:
letting them run as free as the wind to sniff other dogs’ urine and faeces, race around, play and follow their noses. In other words, just to behave like dogs. This is far more stimulating than free-running in the back yard. Incidentally, big back yards can be just as boring as little back yards as most dogs have many hours per day to become familiar with all the features.
3. Play
Give dogs a range of toys to play with to entertain themselves when they are left on their own. These could include plastic ice-cream containers, a thick knotted rope hanging from a tree or something similar, or a car tyre hanging so that the middle is about the height of the dog’s head. If possible have your dog visited by another dog of similar abilities, so that the two animals can play together. ‘The potential benefits of this canine neighbourhood play group far outweigh the risks, which can be curtailed by intensive monitoring in the early stages.’
4. A view of the world
It is essential to give dogs a view of the world:
Allowing dogs to lie for prolonged periods of the day on the boundary of the property where they can see a busy street has a pacifying effect on them. Where possible they usually choose to have as much contact as possible with the intense and diverse range of stimuli that come from the street activities. It is unfortunate that many dogs are banished to the back yard because they bark at passers-by. This is characteristic of dogs which are only let out the front for short periods. The logical approach initially sounds to be radical and risky. That is to confine the dog at the front of the property for extended periods. It will bark for a few hours but will settle down when its need for stimulation is satisfied.
5. Chewing objects
Chewing objects, particularly bones, are important for a dog’s general wellbeing. Chewing should be directed onto one thing, and discouraged on everything else so that dogs do not become used to chewing whatever is around.
Many factors influence an animal’s internal state of boredom, and each dog has a different need for stimulation and activity.
It attempts to adapt to deficiencies in ways which are often unacceptable to owners and neighbours. Confined animals can be expected to cause problems unless they receive sufficient stimuli and activities to replace what they would receive in the wild. Owners can humanely confine their animals provided that environmental enrichment is an integral part of management.
I have always found that walking the dog is the greatest antidote to boredom. Apart from the exercise and stimulation that the animals derive, walking helps the process of understanding your dog, because you are noticing things about it all the time. Dogs exhibit their territorial instinct whenever they go walking. The surrounding area where they walk is all part of their extended territory, and when they stop to urinate every few minutes, it is not because of a weak bladder, but because they are ‘marking’ their territory, and staking their claim to the area. After a dog has urinated and defecated, it will often scrape its back paws over the grass, to spread its odours and let the other dogs know that this is its territory. The dog is stating, ‘I have been here before.’ When dogs stop on their walk to sniff trees and lamp posts they are exploring for the scent of other animals, and they then over-mark the spot to leave their own body odour, and stake their claim to the territory.
When you say ‘walkies’, dogs know from your tone of voice what it means, and associate it with what has happened in the past. When you walk, take different routes, up every street and side street, so that your dog gets to know all of the area. Then, if the dog ever escapes, or gets lost, it will know how to return home. By the time the dog has familiarised itself with the area, it will know where every animal in the neighbourhood lives.
Depending on the breed, dogs should be walked four to five kilometres a day, although the need for exercise reduces as they get older. A dog has reached middle age by the time it is six, and it will need less exercise. You don’t have to do the four kilometres in one go; get up in the morning and give them a two kilometres burst before you go to work, and then you can walk them again before or after dinner. It’s doing you both good, and the additional benefit is that you’re interacting. Being boss dog and setting the rules has to be continually reinforced by constant interaction and, while I don’t expect you to go down the road yelling and screaming, you should be interacting all the time.
The Petcare Information and Advisory Service’s report ‘National People and Pets’, published in 2006, recorded that 30 per cent of home owners said they were bothered by persistently barking dogs in their neighbourhood and that complaints regarding barking were the number one animal issue reported to councils. A clue to the reason for that anti-social behaviour is the time that dogs were found to spend on their own, without the company of family members or other animals. The survey showed 35 per cent of owners said their dog was left on its own for up to 20 hours a week, while 15 per cent said the dog was alone for between 20 and 40 hours a week. About 5 per cent said the dog spent more than 40 hours a week without company.
Those figures explain why I received so many calls on my ABC radio programme about dogs barking, or being destructive, or a nuisance. The animals are bored. If the dog is to be by itself, it should be with another dog so it can behave like a dog. Only 15 per cent of owners in the survey admitted that their dog showed destructive behaviour either frequently or occasionally when left alone, but that low figure is explained by the fact that the owner isn’t home to hear the howling or barking of the distressed dog. The only way the owner could know that the dog was barking would be if a neighbour complained, but many neighbours are reluctant to jeopardise friendly relations unless the situation becomes impossible. A lot of people are putting up with the nuisance.
All dogs need free exercise, when they are allowed off the lead, and there has to be a compromise between the dog owner and those who control the municipalities. There should be free exercise areas in all municipalities, but in many cases the attitude of the authorities is to deny dogs any free areas, which I believe is ridiculous.
You find that after a routine of walking, games, or chewing a bone, a dog goes into its own routine of snoozing. But it’s only a catnap; dogs keep a weather eye on what is happening. Dogs do a lot of sleeping and waiting, but that’s because they’re with the boss dog. They lie around waiting for leadership.
If you’re away at work all day and you haven’t made arrangements for your dog to be walked while you’re away, you should interact with the dog when you get home. This raises a sense of anticipation in the dog that the boss dog will leave, but he or she will also return. Interaction between dog and owner should occur at least twice a day, and if this doesn’t happen, problems will surface. The obvious sign that something is wrong is that the dog is not pleased to see you. Without constant interaction with the boss dog, it becomes a leaderless dog in the back yard, rather like a child who never sees its father because he leaves for work early and comes home late. All the dogs you see in the RSPCA kennels are leaderless, and they look imploringly at the people who come to see them, as if to say, ‘Will you be my boss dog?’
One of the first things that struck me when I moved to the practice at Balwyn was the strength of the bonding between owners and their animals. I was exposed in real life to the textbook phenomenon of anthropomorphism, where owners attribute human emotions and feelings to animals. It frequently takes the form of people saying that certain treatments are cruel. But it doesn’t help the dog if owners, projecting their own feelings, say the animal wouldn’t like a particular treatment, or it can’t go into hospital because it would fret to death. If you’re dealing with a dog that is a child substitute, the anthropomorphic element can be extreme.
Anthropomorphism prevents many people from treating a dog as a dog. Dogs need to be allowed to be dogs, and they shouldn’t be treated like children. They should be given time to do the things that dogs do, like sniffing, cocking their legs, and watching other dogs. If a dog doesn’t socialise with other dogs, it can become very confused. When a dog comes into a house as an eight-week-old puppy, it’s not going to have much chance to associate with other dogs, particularly when many people won’t allow their dogs to be with other dogs. When this happens, dogs will start to treat other dogs as the enemy.
Dogs are social animals. They belong in a pack, and they must have company, and time off when we are not controlling their lives, in the same way that members of a human family need some time off to do their own thing. Dogs have learned to accept humans as surrogate members of a dog pack, but humans still don’t understand the dog as well as its fellow canines do. If you own a single dog, you run the risk of it not having the time or opportunity to behave like a proper dog. It is also totally at the mercy of the human boss dog for all its interrelationships.
Dogs are happiest living in pairs, and everyone who buys a second dog notices a big difference in the behaviour of their original dog, which becomes more stimulated and contented. Having a second dog also gives the owner a greater understanding of dog behaviour, by comparing and contrasting, and learning more about dogs’ hierarchical social order. It’s not advisable to have three dogs: just as with children, one is always left out because three’s a crowd.
If you’re buying a second dog, it is always advisable to get one of the opposite sex. If you get two dogs of the same sex, and they have dominant personalities, both will want to be number two in the pecking order, behind the boss dog. The only way they will sort this out will be to fight, and the fighting between two dominant dogs, or two dominant bitches, can be horrific. There are always exceptions, of course, but at eight weeks of age, when you buy a puppy, there’s no way of knowing whether it will get on with a companion dog of the same sex.