Category: Dogs and Society

FSA Warn Against Raw Chicken – Again

Posted on by

Yet again the FSA has been obliged to issue a warning against eating raw and undercooked chicken. The latest warning was prompted by a chef who was promoting chicken sashimi and who stated that “…if birds have been free range, kept in quality conditions and processed in a clean environment, there’s not so much to worry about”.

Not much other than campylobacter, salmonella and e coli that is. The FSA state yet again that “All raw chicken is unsafe to eat” regardless of the conditions in which the birds have been kept. They add that, in humans, eating raw or undercooked chicken can result in “Symptoms [that] include abdominal pain, diarrhoea, vomiting and fever. In some cases, these bugs can lead to serious conditions”.

In an update on October 19th, 2017, the FSA published their annual results, and, although levels of campylobacter have continued to fall in tested chickens, between 46.7% and 67.3% of chickens tested positive. the high-level campylobacter prevalence among the top nine most popular retailers surveyed was 5.6%. That means for every 100 chickens purchased, at least five are likely to have very high levels of contamination. Smaller retailers and butchers had a significantly higher prevalence at 17.1%. This is especially significant as people who feed raw diets are more likely to shop at independent retailers, presuming that the food will be “healthier”.

Dogs have different digestive systems to humans; they have a shorter digestive tract and a higher stomach acidity. This means that, if otherwise healthy, they are less susceptible to the pathogens present in raw chicken as bacteria do not stay in the dog’s body for as long as they do in a human. The bacteria have less time to multiply to dangerous levels and dogs are generally better able to cope with the toxins that the bacteria produce which is the cause of illness in humans and dogs. Whilst healthy dogs might be able to cope with the pathogens that they shed when fed a raw diet, young, old or sick dogs will be less resilient and all of the humans with which they come in contact will also be exposed.

A peer-reviewed paper published in April 2017 noted that the cats in the study shed pathogens as a result of eating a raw diet “for months” and concluded “The practice of feeding raw meat to dogs and cats may increase the potential transmission risk of meat-borne pathogens to people. Pet owners, especially individuals at increased risk for infectious diseases (small children, old people and immunocompromised individuals), should be aware of the safety risks of feeding RMBDs”[raw, meat-based diets]. Of course the transmission of pathogens from handling the food and the dog or cat will not only affect people in the household. Dogs and outdoor cats have the potential to come into contact with vulnerable people every day as well as other animals.
Charity Burns By Your Side is the most recent organisation to exclude dogs from their volunteer scheme if they are fed a raw diet.

There is a lot of anecdotal support that can be found online from supporters of raw diets but, not only is there no peer-reviewed evidence to back it up, a growing body of a veterinary organisations and scientists are finding that such diets are harmful because they lack essential nutrients and can cause damage when digested and excreted.
There is another worrying factor that is not immediately obvious for some owners who feed raw. There is evidence to suggest that such owners are also less likely to use prophylactic health care such as vaccination and treatments that prevent parasitic infestation because they do not trust veterinary advice.

The serious contamination of pet food with illegally imported melamine in 2007 still has repercussions, although food in the UK was not affected. Marion Nestle’s Pet Food Politics: The Chihuahua in the Coal Mine provides the only independent account of this scandal. Anyone contemplating feeding raw because they do not trust commercial dog food should read it. Similarly, scares about the dangers of human vaccines abound, even though disproven and have spread to companion animals.

The wide availability of NHS services means that most people in the UK are not used to paying for healthcare at point of use. Many are therefore shocked at the cost of veterinary treatment and accuse vets of profiteering, having no idea of the actual cost to the vet, and ignoring the fact that, if vets do not make a profit, they will go out of business. They are similarly inclined to accuse pharmaceutical companies of advising over-vaccination. Again, this is illogical: no vet would ethically or professionally administer a drug that was not necessary. In fact they could be prosecuted if they did.

Not vaccinating puts your dog and every other dog at risk from dying of parvo-virus, leptospirosis, canine parainfluenza, distemper and hepatitis. Not worming your dog puts other dogs and humans at risk of picking up tapeworms, lungworm and toxocariasis amongst others.
Some of these diseases such as parvo virus and distemper were rare due to mass immunisation in the 1970s and later, but are now on the increase fuelled in part by the number of illegally imported dogs. This, combined with irresponsible owners not vaccinating their dogs reduces the herd immunity conveyed when the majority of dogs are protected, so the danger of catching a potentially fatal disease is increased for each unvaccinated dog.

The evidence is plain. Don’t feed raw , vaccinate your dog and treat it for fleas and ticks. It is your responsibility to your dog, every other dog and your community.

Devil Dog or Poetic Justice?

Posted on by

Most sensible people would dismiss the notion that bull breeds, Rotties and whatever the fashionable bad dog of the moment is are “devil dogs”, but would many realise that it is more than bad handling and breeding that might cause a dog to be a killer?

Last March a Staffie killed its owner by crushing his larynx in front of a BBC documentary crew. The incident wasn’t filmed. An inquest has just been held into the owner’s death where it emerged that the dog had probably ingested crack cocaine.

Drug addicts will stop at nothing to get their fix – just look at the number of smokers desperate to light up as soon as they get off the tube or sucking down as much of their carcinogens as possible before they get to work (whilst forcing anyone passing to partake). A quick internet search will reveal that dogs have been deliberately maimed so that people addicted to Tramadol can get a veterinary prescription. Some feed drugs to their dogs so that they are not discovered if they think that they will be raided. Some think it funny to watch the suffering of their dog as the drugs take hold – this includes people who give their dogs alcohol. Some people discard drugs in public places so that dogs die when they inhale or ingest them. I have personally known of two dogs die horrible deaths in this way.

Behaviourist Patricia McConnell describes in her excellent book The Other End of the Leash how one of the most frightening dogs that she has ever come across behaves when given toys. Yes, that’s not a typo: when given toys. The dog’s terrifying, out of control aggression provoked by objects that should evoke joy was caused by his previous owner force feeding him drugs. His new owner had done everything that she could to rehabilitate him but he was beyond help and had to be euthanised.

Major, the poor dog that killed his owner, will suffer the same fate as his neurological damage is probably far too great to make him safe.

Some may say that his owner received poetic justice, but I can find no poetry in this horrific tale and the hundreds like it. Humans take drugs of their own free will. Dogs never do.

Accessible and Safe – Not Much To Ask

Posted on by

The ability to exercise dogs in open spaces has come under increasing threat from restrictive by-laws in recent years and several campaigns have sought to protect long-used access. However, in addition, a new threat was brought home to me this weekend when a dog was killed by an event organiser in a local park.

Many parks and open spaces that were run by councils for the general benefit of the public have been privatised and are now run by large companies such as Mitie, Carillion and Amey that have fingers in several pies. There are approximately 27,000 public parks in the UK, although it is difficult to arrive at an exact figure as many councils do not have accurate records and planning guidelines no longer define public parks. Most are owned by local authorities, although there are “royal” parks in London such as Hyde park, Bushey park and Richmond Park that are owned by the crown and run by a government agency. Some parks were deliberately created in the early 19thC in an attempt to prevent Chartists from holding “monster” rallies and some, including the “royal” parks, were hunting grounds. Many parks were created when philanthropists bequeathed them in perpetuity for the benefit of local people. The latter is true of the park where the dog was killed and should be protected by a set of covenants that attempted to restrict building and other uses to ensure that the public would always have free access.

Parks had traditionally been funded by local authorities with support from community groups that volunteer and raise funds. There are approximately 5,000 such organisations across the UK generating about £30M annually. A Heritage Lottery Fund report found that 86% of parks had revenues cut in the three years prior to the study. Almost half of councils are planning to dispose of some of their green spaces with 19% considering outright disposal of parks. Many more are selling off sections of parks for development and/or running multiple, intrusive events, claiming that the revenue generated will fund upkeep.

The park where the dog was killed occupies 186 acres of land and includes Grade II listed buildings and many extraordinary plant and tree specimens. It is a much valued resource for local dog walkers and is one of the few parks in the area not to impose on-lead restrictions. Since it was gifted to the public in 1926, it was run jointly by two local authorities who spent much of the last 35 years or so passing the buck in a perpetual rally that resulted in the buildings going to wrack and ruin, the planting being overgrown and the tress neglected – sometimes dangerously so. Recent lottery funding has seen huge improvements being made to some of the buildings, but staffing levels remain low and some planting has been ripped up to save on maintenance costs. Management of the park will be handed over to a so called “Community Interest” Company (CIC) which, in the council’s own words “provides freedom for the park to operate in a commercial manner”. This has included winning a successful licence to run multiple commercial events including sound systems, alcohol and vehicles all year round and increased the finishing time from 21.00 hrs to 23.00 hrs. Up to 10,000 people would be licensed to attend for the larger events and in total, events are allowed to be held for 28 days every year. This of course does not include the setting up and striking of events which typically occupies several days either side of public access. In spite of 109 written objections and opposition at the hearing, which ran for four hours until nearly midnight, permission was granted in full.

Opposition to the event at the weekend had run for many years as it was clearly seen by many to be breaking the covenants on the use of the park. The original owners had sold off adjacent land after World War I resulting in the park being fringed by housing and local residents were (rightly) worried about the levels of disruption. Permission was however granted and the organisers began to set up for the 2017 last week. The event occupies the old polo grounds and was not segregated from the public during set up. Fencing was erected on the day of the event to prevent revellers from accessing the existing café and the staff member there was in turn prevented from accessing the lavatory which was subsequently damaged. It could be deduced from these actions that the fencing was there primarily to protect revenues rather than people.

Complaints had been made by several park users about the speed at which vehicles were traversing the park. Great care has been taken during the building works to ensure that plant and other vehicles travel within the 5mph limit and plant is accompanied by a supervising pedestrian. No such care was taken by the event organisers and, in spite of being warned by park staff, one of their member ran into a dog. The dog subsequently died of its injuries.

The increasing use of parks for commercial events not only deprives the users for whom it was intended of facilities, it further restricts the ability for dog owners to exercise their dogs in a relaxed environment. Parks, towpaths and pavements are already major hazards for pedestrians and dogs due to illegal and reckless cycling. Even if dogs are safe and segregated, few will want to access parks whilst amplified sound is being blasted out and hordes of people are crowding the spaces.

This should be a spur to all to redouble their efforts to save and preserve open spaces as havens of peace and quiet in an increasingly tumultuous world. A dog should never again been sacrificed to commercial gain just by engaging in natural and essential behaviour.

Cornwall Cool Dog Campaign

Posted on by

It seems sadly inevitable that on a baking hot bank holiday weekend a woman left three dogs in a hot van from 11.00 hrs – 15.30 hrs. Luckily, attendees at the Newlyn fish festival intervened and saved her dogs from certain death. It remains to be seen whether she will be prosecuted.

Meanwhile, Cornwall Live are running photographic competition to find the coolest dog in Cornwall.

Bear in mind that forcing your dog to wear clothing as shown in many of the images may make them even hotter than they are already.

Royal Mail Dog Awareness Week 2017

Posted on by

Royal Mail workers make deliveries to more than 29 million addresses across the UK. Not all of them come away unscathed.

An average of seven postal workers are attacked by dogs each day. Attacks increase during the school holidays and in the summer months especially when dogs are left unsupervised in gardens, allowed to roam or taken out off lead. Owners who do not keep their dogs under control could be in breach of the Road Traffic Act, The Control of Dogs Order and/or the Dangerous Dogs Act to name but three pieces of legislation. Since 2013, the DDA has covered attacks by dogs that occur on private property. The majority of the dogs reported as stolen have been left unsupervised in gardens, so, it is not just postal workers who are at risk.

2,471 postmen and women were attacked by dogs between April 2016 and April 2017. Some were left with permanent, disabling injuries. 71% of attacks happened in gardens or on the doorstep. No one should work in fear of their safety and no one should be traumatised or injured through preventable causes.

All dogs have the potential to be a danger to postal staff, regardless of their size. What you might perceive as being boisterous and friendly may seem frightening to your postman and even the tiniest of dogs can inflict nasty injuries. Even if your dog’s intentions are benign, your postman should not have to endure being jumped on, scratched or barked at every day. (Neither should anyone else for that matter). Every time that your dog barks at someone delivering letters and they go away, his confidence increases because he has defended his territory from an intruder. (A territorial dog is not protecting you, he is asserting his possession). The next time that you have to open the door to sign for something or receive a parcel, your dog may escalate his defensive aggression and bite.

  • Keep your dog away from the front door every time that visitors call – use a child gate or shut the door
  • Do not allow children to open the door and make sure that they do not allow the dog out if confined
  • Train your dog to lie quietly on a mat when visitors call and reward him for staying there
  • Control your dog’s greeting behaviour and do not allow jumping up, scratching or over-excited barking
  • Control territorial barking – get professional help if necessary
  • Do not leave a dog unattended in a garden and secure the garden so that your dog cannot get out
  • Always put your dog on a lead before you leave the house even if you are putting your dog in the car
  • Fit a secure mail box on the property boundary or a wire receptacle behind the door to contain the mail so that postman cannot get bitten when using the letterbox and to prevent your dog from damaging the mail.

Postal workers’ safety is YOUR responsiblity.

What’s In A Meme?

Posted on by

Meme is a neologism coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1989 classic The Selfish Gene that describes an idea, behaviour or style that spreads from person to person within a culture. A meme acts in a similar way to a gene that carries genetic information in plants and animals but instead acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices that can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or anything that can be mimicked. Like genes, memes can self-replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures.

So what has this got to do with dogs?

Anthrozoologist Hal Herzog has proposed that keeping dogs as pets and, in particular, preferences for specific dog breeds are memes. He proposes that he acted as a “vehicle through which the dog-as-pet meme” replicated… “inadvertently spreading the dog-as-pet meme by raising my children with dogs and by extolling the joys and tribulations of having companion dogs in my classes.” He thinks that this may well be a mechanism to explain the explosion in popularity of specific dog breeds as such cultural changes can replicate many times faster than genetic changes.

This monkey see, monkey do approach would explain why, against all rational, and I would argue ethical considerations, the expected registrations of the French bulldog, to name but one brachycephalic breed, is expected to exceed 28,000 this year with the UKKC alone. It would seem that the desire to fit in by conforming to popular behaviours and the reverence for supposed role models – indeed actual models – that have helped to make this breed fashionable is much stronger than the obvious fact that most cannot give birth naturally and cannot breathe without extreme difficulty. (In addition to the common occurence of cleft palate/hare lips, anasarca puppies, congenital abnormalities of the vertebrae, hip dysplasia
luxating patellas, straight stifles and loose ligaments, hindquarter paresis and spondalytis). One owner happily stated to me that he spends a fortune on air conditioning so that his dogs do not overheat and that he would prefer his dog to sleep with a ball in his mouth so that he does not die from sleep apnoea than contemplate surgery to correct BOAS.

Perhaps, as well as providing many enlightening insights into attitudes towards animals in his excellent book Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat, Professor Herzog may have solved the mystery why otherwise kind and straight-thinking people can profess to love their dogs and perpetuate and ignore misery and deformity.

KC Plays Tail End Charlie

Posted on by

The KC has just published a report entitled What the Kennel Club does for Dog Health

Many dog owners may feel that the title is a bit rich given that canine health would probably not be in such dire straits were it not for the KC’s implementation of closed stud books and perpetuation of breeding for looks.

The Kennel Club has been playing tail end Charlie in the court of public opinion since at least 2008. Its brand is being seen as being increasingly toxic and any efforts that it makes to improve the situation are likely to be doomed to irrelevance in the face of the scale of the problem that is, after all, largely of their own making.

Is it too little too late?

Read more…

Man Bites Dog

Posted on by

Last year, an American bulldog dog killed a three year old. Although fatalities from dog attacks are still extremely rare, incidents such as this still crop up a few times a year and of course attract far more attention than the 1,700 people killed in traffic accidents or the 78,000 deaths directly attributable to smoking that occurred over the same period.

The owner of the American bulldog has just been given a 12 month custodial sentence, suspended for two years. She was also disqualified from owning a dog for 10 years and ordered to complete 100 hours of unpaid work.

The dog of course was euthanised.

So how will this punishment help? It certainly won’t bring the dog back. It won’t prevent other people and other dogs from ending up in the same position, not to mention the 7,000 or so people who will still be bitten by dogs and require hospital treatment in any given year.

In theory, this woman and others like her could just go out and get another dog in 2027 and nothing will have been done to educate her in responsible dog ownership. Her community service is likely to entail removing graffiti, clearing litter or decorating public buildings. How much more beneficial if she spent those 100 hours – equal only to two weeks work – learning about dogs.

The causes of such attacks are usually depressingly similar. Bad breeding, lack of socialisation, bad handling, lack of stimulation and exercise, lack of training, poor diet.

The owners often live in similar depravation. It is hardly surprising that most of the people who get bitten and even killed by dogs are relatively poor; the impoverishment being as much social as financial. Just as the status dogs of the relatively wealthy often comprise gun dogs that suggest the landed estate, the dogs of the poor are usually musclebound hulks providing the illusion of power that is lacking for people with minimal education, poor job prospects and limited opportunities. There’s also the chance that they will protect you from the loan shark or the drug dealer or the gang member.

Wealthy people just give their dogs away when they can no longer cope with their lack of training and socialisation or dump them on the dog minder for most of their lives. The poor compound their errors until, every so often, the dog, through no fault of its own, kills someone.

I Hope That Bad Owners Don’t Come In Threes

Posted on by

My poor dog hasn’t had too good a time of it in the last few days. First we encountered a dog running loose in the park, owner nowhere in sight. It wasn’t until after he had happily played with my dog that I realised that his eyes were oozing with a green discharge.

Yep, conjunctivitis. I eventually caught up with the owner who casually remarked that he had been “Meaning to do something about it”. Somehow refrained from adding “What? Infect as many other dogs as you can before you consider that your dog might not be very comfortable and his eyesight might even be compromised if you leave it any longer?”

So much for the Animal Welfare Act.

Half way through a week of chloramphenicol tid, he was attacked by a seriously aggressive boxer that actually pursued him when he had moved away. OK, that was annoying. What made me really mad was that the owner admitted that she knows that her dog is aggressive and had done nothing about it. Needless to say, the dog is uncastrated. She did proceed to hit it and shout at it. Miraculously, the dog didn’t turn on her – this time. She was a polite woman who was in total denial about her dog and, even though she knew that she had little control, still let it run loose in the park, unmuzzled.

Warning other owners on the way out of the park, I discovered that they all knew exactly which dog I meant as every one of them had either had a problem or witnessed the dog attacking other dogs. So had the park warden.

No serious damage done this time, but it remains to be seen if the dog wardens from the two boroughs that run the park will follow it up.

Call Me Cassandra…

Posted on by

I met a women in the park a few months ago. She was walking a Finnish Spitz and, as they are not common where I live, I asked her if she had always owned the breed. She replied that it was her first dog. I then asked if she had bought on looks alone and been surprised at the amount of barking and relative difficulty in training, especially recall, that her dog exhibited. Astonished she agreed that all were the case. I then cheerfully informed her about the way that the Finnish spitz was bred to hunt and told her about the annual King of the Barkers competition. Needless to say, she didn’t take up my offer of help with training.

I met her again last night, now accompanied also by her other dog, a nervous Staffie cross that I would guess is a rescue. She is pregnant with twins and was cheerfully talking to another (very sensible) dog owner about it.

I asked if she had a plan in place for accustoming her dogs to the major changes that they are about to undergo.

She laughed.

I explained that I was perfectly serious. She then informed the other dog owner that she intended to breast feed and would hug each dog to either side of her while she accomplished this feat so that they felt included because “they think that they are human”.

My sincere entreaties that this would lead to potential disaster were dismissed.

Sadly I suspect that it is only a matter of time before two dogs are looking for a new home, assuming of course that they have not been put down for biting “out of the blue”.

This is not a good week. A couple of days ago, I found out that my neighbour had re-homed his lovely Australian Shepherd. I first met him with his partner and the then tiny puppy outside a local pub. The dog had not had his second vaccinations but they had carried him round the corner so that he could experience the world going by. They were first time dog owners and I suggested that they might have their hands full with such a breed. Of course, they assured me that he was centre of their world and all would be well. He went through a very nervous adolescence and my doubts grew. Then she got pregnant.

Surprise, surprise, the dog was no longer centre of their world. Last month they sent him back to the breeder because they were too busy to deal with him and he had started stalking their offspring.

They are of course to blame but then so is the breeder for selling them this dog. I hope that he has a fulfilling and happy life with a new owner. I will miss him.

(Image courtesy of Wiki Commons)