Embrace Pet Insurance Blog

NY Times article: The Modern Kennel Conundrum by Jon Mooallem

Pets are everywhere, it's official.

As I was sitting in the waiting room at our local Subaru dealership, waiting for the endless amounts of paperwork required to buy a car, I was drawn to an article in the NY Times magazine on the rise of and controversy around the hybrid dog in the US, The Modern Kennel Conundrum by Jon Mooallem, Feb 4, 2007

Still, past canine fads, like the run on purebred Dalmatians after the movie “101 Dalmatians,” have ramped up production at inhumane, large-scale “puppy mills.” And fickle owners often end up abandoning those dogs once the trend passes. Thus, for show breeders who have spent much of their lives studying and refining a single pure breed — like the men and women congregating next week at Madison Square Garden for the 131st annual Westminster Kennel Club Dog Show — the rise of mutts as commodities has been bewildering and embittering. Many traditionalists see mixing breeds as somehow irresponsible in and of itself. As one pug breeder with a two-time, No. 1 show bitch to her credit told me: “There was only one really perfect thing on the face of this earth, and he was crucified. To us, the pug is pure.”

It's an excellent article putting forward many facets of the issues surrounding breeding dogs for looks, both purebred and hybrid.

For example, considering the Puggle (a Beagle mixed with a Pug):

• mixing breeds is a good thing as it reduces the incidents of genetic conditions that any one breed might have
  (Beagles are susceptible to cleft palates, demodectic mange, dwarfism, epilepsy, eye problems, hip displasia, hypothyroidism, intervertebral disc disease, luxating patella's, and reproductive disorders, and Pugs are prone to deformities of the mouth and nose, eye and eyelid problems, heatstroke, hip displasia, Legg-Perthes disease, luxating patella's, Pug dog encephalitis, brachycephalic airway disease, democidosis, skin fold dermatitis, and corneal disease)

Given the roughly 350 inherited disorders littering the dog genome, crossing two purebreds and expanding their gene pools can be “a phenomenally good idea,” according to one canine geneticist — if it is done conscientiously.

• on the other hand, taking traits from two breeds and mixing them might make things worse.

While designer-dog sellers often claim to combine only the most functional and lovable qualities of each breed, here I was being told just the opposite: that mixing breeds would create an intractable slop house of each breed’s most problematic traits. “A pug has no doggie sense whatsoever,” said Jutta Beard, who had driven to Oconomowoc from Maryland in her motor home with one husband and 13 pugs. “You put this dog out on the next street over, and it will never find its way home. Now a beagle has wanderlust. It’s a little hound breed. It puts its nose to the ground and just goes. So now you’ve got a dog with wanderlust and no doggie sense.”

There's a whole lot more to the article than this about world of the purebred dog and the new hybrid dogs and I highly recommend you read it (you'll need a subscription in a few weeks unfortunately - or go to your local library and read it from the archives). It really is a fascinating window into a world you might not have seen into before.

More on curing a dog's chewing

This post is Lea's email response to a comment by a desparate pet parent of a 9-month old labrador on our post Curing a Dog's Chewing.

Thanks for writing in about your Lab’s chewing. I sympathize with you, as my Lab mix did the majority of his chewing in the first year and a half, and it was bad. Let me tell you a few things that helped me…

One thing that stuck in my mind during all his chewing was something another Lab owner told me. She said that research says that great majority of Labradors that are re-homed are given up by their owners under the age of two and half. Beyond that age, the number of people who re-home their lab decreases significantly. This is clearly showing that young labs chew, but that it does get better. I promise you it will get better, and in a year or so, you won’t even remember how bad it really was.

If your dog is chewing the wood while you are away, I would suggest that you crate him during your outings. He’ll need a crate large enough to stand up and lay down in, and it may help if he’s got an enrichment toy with him.

If it’s a matter of his chewing while you are home, you may want to consider tethering him to you using a 5 ft leash, so that you can stop him before the chewing starts, and redirect him onto a toy or treat that is acceptable.

Toys like the Everlasting Treat Ball (see Embrace Community Post: Your Dog Wants an Everlasting Treat for discussion) or a Kong (available at ANY petstore) can be setup to give your dog the chewing satisfaction he’s looking for, if they are stuffed or frozen with treats like peanut butter inside. You just need to catch your dog to redirect him.

Beyond this, I can just emphasize the need for exercise. A 9 month old lab will need a minimum of an hour of exercise a day, which means a real walk or swim or fetch. If you’re just letting him wander the yard on his own, this is only going to increase his boredom and increase the chewing. You may want to hire a dog walker, or consider doggie daycare to help tire your Lab out. If this is not practical, then see if there are other dogs in the neighborhood that you can organize playtime with, so he can expel some of his nervous energy with them.

A site that has helped me with many different Lab related issues over the years has been OhYellowDog.com. Their message board can be seen here: I highly recommend you check in with these folks, as they’ve all been where you are now, and can help you through it.

Take care, and don’t give up.

Three tips to cure a dog's chewing

Here's a post based on an email a caring pet parent sent me on her dog's destructive chewing. With Lea's permission, I'm sharing it with you because it has some really helpful info on how to control this behavior.

While my dog may appear well balanced and a model citizen now, this was not always the case. Those folks who knew me when he was an adolescent heard all of the stories about my mixed breed: part lab, part spawn of satan. It became a routine occurrence for people to offer me their sofas and mattresses before hauling them to the lawn, saying “I know your dog chews up furniture, so we thought you’d want a backup for next time.”

My dog did destroy 2 mattresses and 3 couches before he was 2 ½ years old, among other things. No book, furniture, or undergarment was safe. To make it worse, crating him only drove him to become more destructive. (He would scoot his crate to the window, pull in the curtains, and chew them off as far up as he could pull them in. I’d leave him with full drapes, and come home to café style curtains.)

It took a lot of research, a lot of investigation, and a lot of trial and error with our mixed up mutt, but we have finally curbed his manic destruction, and he’s been a Recovering Chewer for 3 years now. Different methods work for different modes, but let me give you these three tips that I’ve called the cure for my dog’s chewing:

1. Bitter Apple Spray
   Safe for use on furniture, walls, clothing, carpets - whatever your dog wants to rip to bits. The spray tastes like it sounds, and no sane dog would continue to chew after a sample of that. It’s available at your petstore, and also works to help deter dogs from licking at hot spots, or surgery sites.
2. Keep your comings and goings very low key.
   When you leave your dog, don’t fuss, don’t whine, don’t baby them. As a matter of fact, make it a point to ignore them for about 20 minutes before you leave the house. When you come home, instead of a dramatic return, just let them outside, and when they’ve calmed down, you can acknowledge them with a polite, “hello, fido.” Don’t make a big deal out of it, and it’s likely they won’t either.
3. If your dog is chewing, your dog needs more exercise.
   A tired dog is a happy dog. It sounds so simple, but it’s probably the most important factor in improving a dog’s behavior. 30-60 minutes each day of walking, running, swimming, or agility training will keep a dog from releasing his energy and frustration at the expense of your belongings. I hate to say it, but just playing a game of fetch isn’t going to cut it for most dogs, and just letting your dog outside to roam the yard isn’t going to do it either. Keep your dog’s mind and body active during exercise time, and his mind and body will be too tired to raise a ruckus when he’s left unsupervised. Even my ‘middle aged’ dog needs his fast-paced mile walk every night.

Now that we’ve gotten his ‘issues’ under control, I talk to other dog owners all the time, who say, “oh yeah, my dog did that too.” Where were they with the advice, when I needed them?

Here's a follow up to this article in More on Curing a Dog's Chewing.