Most dogs are social animals, so why not help your dog fulfill its social aspirations?  Your dog will make more friends — with people and with other dogs — and it will gain confidence.  What better way to endear yourself to your dog than to help it make friends?  Which is something it desperately wants to do.

Here’s an article from WikiHow that has some suggestions on how to help your dog socialize.

And here’s one from about.com.

Callie’s very social — both with people and with other dogs.

On our morning jog, we often take shortcuts through the local golf course.  So Callie has become best of friends with Jeff, the assistant greens keeper.  Jeff occasionally gives Callie a newly found tennis ball, which, in Callie’s world, is every bit as good as a puppy treat — maybe better.  When we’re anywhere near the golf course, Callie is obviously looking for Jeff.  If there’s a golf cart within 100 yards, Callie focuses on it; she gets excited if she thinks it might be Jeff.  Yesterday, Callie did see Jeff in  his cart, but he drove away to do some greens keeping business.  It was obvious that Callie was very disappointed.  She pulled on the leash to chase after Jeff, ears back expressing her frustration.

Callie also likes to make doggie friends.  She has about a dozen regulars, but she’s always up for meeting new dogs.  Here’s Callie with one of her favorite regulars, Bub McLoughlin, the Goldendoodle cadaver dog.  Callie sees Bub every few weeks at Lake Arrowhead village, and every reunion between the two good friends is playful and sporting.

It’s kind of obvious that, if dogs are so social, it makes sense to let them socialize.  But I think a lot of owners mess this up.  They’re afraid their precious pet might get hurt.  So they don’t let it socialize.  Or they keep the leash so tight that the dog thinks the owner is afraid of the other dog — so the owner’s dog gets defensive and protective.

The best policy in these situations (outside a dog park and assuming leash laws apply) is to give both dogs lots of loose leash and let them “work it out.”  Chances are the other dog is a social addict, too, so they’ll probably enjoy getting to know each other.  You may have to work with the other owner to keep the leashes from getting tangled.  But the dogs will have fun.  On the odd chance that things do get out of hand, just pull your dog away and go find a more friendly companion.

Nurturing your dog’s personality is one of the best ways to build a stronger relationship with it.  Almost all dogs have a strong desire to interact with dogs and people.  Stanley Coren has an interesting way of saying this.  He says that dogs have the intelligence of a 2 1/2 year old child.  But he also says they have the social instincts of a teenager.  So help your dog be a teenager!

Janene Zakrajsek is a co-founder of Pussy & Pooch Penthouse and Pawbar, a unique gathering place for dogs and their people — in the middle of downtown Los Angeles. Janene takes the listener on a tour of this unusual shop and she discusses the shop’s different dog and human “social programs.”

The “My Doggie Says…” show helps listeners gain a deeper appreciation for “Man’s Best Friend.” The show is broadcast live from 8:00 to 9:00 p.m. on Wednesday nights, on KFNX 1100, Phoenix. It is streamed live on www.1100kfnx.com. Host Fred Haney interviews experts on all aspects of dogs and dog ownership. The show is also available as a podcast on iTunes. Go to the iTunes store, click on “Podcast,” and search for “My Doggie Says…”

Here’a a great article about Buddy, a German Shepherd and trained service dog, who called 911 (in Phoenix) when his owner had a seizure. This sounds pretty spectacular, almost impossible, but Buddy is trained to call 911 in emergencies, and he has done it twice before. Actually, the police had Buddy “on file,” so they knew what it meant when the 911 operator answered the call and only heard Buddy’s whining and whimpering at the other end. The police were there in three minutes, and Buddy’s owner spent two days in the hospital recovering, before heading home.

You can read the article here.

“Man’s Best Friend” does some pretty amazing things!

Why do readers of “My Doggie Says…” feel closer to their dogs? What’s unique about the “dogs’-actions-speak-louder-than-words” approach of “My Doggie Says…?” How did the behavior of Jamie, Fred’s Golden Retriever, lead Fred to write this unique book that is helping people improve their relationship with their dog?

As you can see on this page, “My Doggie Says…” has won four awards. The most recent is the “Mom’s Choice Award,” Fred Haney, Author of “My Doggie Says…” was recently interviewed by Tara Paterson, founder of the “Mom’s Choice Awards.” The interview answers these — and many other — questions.

Pet Sitters International created a neat thing; they created national “Take Your Dog To Work Day.” It’s today — June 20, 2008. Here are a couple of links to articles about “Take Your Dog To Work Day.” K9 Magazine. National “Take Your Dog To Work Day.” Big Wag Gourmet Bakery. “Take Your Dog To Work Day.”

Actually, more and more companies are becoming dog-friendly and allowing employees to bring their dogs to work. You can read about it here. Most of these places have some pretty strict guidelines, such as 1) dogs have to be on the leash, 2) dogs need to be well-behaved, 3) three strikes and your out, 4) owners are expected to clean up, and 5) some rooms (like the cafeteria) might be off limits.

Callie, my 17-month old Golden Retriever puppy, has learned to be pretty calm when she’s allowed to hang out around my office. This morning, I went to her crate, opened the door, and said, “Hey, Callie, it’s national ‘take your dog to work day.’” Callie grunted approval and followed me into my office. Then she made a tight u-turn, went back to her crate, and retrieved her “Stinky,” her favorite stuffed puppy security object. She sat down beside me and proceeded to suck gently on “Stinky.”

After a while, she got tired of “Stinky” and went to her crate to get one of her Nylabones, which she also loves. So Callie’s having a very successful “Take Your Dog To Work Day.”

Be sure to tune into the “My Doggie Says…” radio show on Wednesdays at 8:00 p.m. MST/PDT. It’s broadcast live on KFNX 1100 in Phoenix and streamed live over the Internet. (Go to the KFNX web site and click on the “Listen Live” button in the upper right hand corner.)

Have you ever known parents who were so concerned about their kids’ health that they created a sanitary and pristine environment for them at home? There are people who have white carpets, or no carpets, in every room and insist that family members and guests remove their shoes at the front door. They may also keep windows and doors closed all the time, in order to keep out all germs. Some of these people insist on a healthy dose of hand-washing, too.

But maybe the answer is to get a dog and let it have free run of the house. This suggestion would probably horrify some health-conscious parents, but there is scientific evidence that having a dog around the house reduces allergies in kids.

The research was done by a team from the National Research Centre for Environmental Health in Munich. The team, led by Joachim Heinrich, studied 9,000 children over a six-year period of time. The study showed that children who had a dog in their home during infancy had a “significantly lower level of sensitization to pollens and inhaled allergens.”

The theory is that having a dog around increases the infant’s levels of antibodies to common allergens.

So open the windows and doors, put on your shoes, and let Fido come and go as he pleases. It might make your kids healthier.

I would have thought that dogs were natural swimmers. That teaching a dog to swim would be like teaching a bird to fly. But not quite so. Apparently some dogs do need a little encouragement and training.

Last summer, when Callie was five months old, she started learning to swim in Lake Arrowhead. It didn’t come all at once, as she had to overcome some fear of the small waves lapping at the shoreline. And she was apprehensive about getting into water over her head. But finally, with a little coaxing, she worked through it and became an “adequate” swimmer.

We kept her on a long leash, though, because we didn’t want to risk her swimming out into the main part of the lake, where there can be a lot of boat traffic.

Here’s some video of Callie swimming last summer, after she overcame her initial fears:

It’s spring at Lake Arrowhead, so we decided the water was warm enough to take Callie swimming for the first time this year. Again we kept her on her leash, not because there’s so much boat traffic this time of year, but we don’t quite trust her to “come” when we call her yet.

But Callie had to work through her little fears all over again. There’s a very nice stone stairway that lets her walk right into the water. She took the first few steps, and she obviously wanted to retrieve the small pine stick I had tossed into the water. But she did not jump in (as I had thought she might). She didn’t even walk in. It was as if she forgot everything she learned last summer, including how much fun it can be to swim. She kept shying away from the water — wanting to dive forward, but then pulling back.

Finally — again with a little encouragement — she took a few dog-paddles and then she leveled out her sleek Golden Retriever body and swam like a Golden Retriever should swim. Very graceful and confident in the water.

So Callie had to work through her fears all over again, but she did it, and, when it was time to go, of course, she wanted to stay and swim!

Here are two good articles about teaching your dog to swim:

How to Teach Your Dog to Swim – Part 1 – Catherine Forsythe at Lockergnome.com.

Teaching Puppies to Swim, Butch Goodwin, northernflight.com.

Dogs love to swim and play in the water, but some of them need help. It’s a great gift to give your dog, though, and it will be eternally grateful.

You already knew that dogs have an incredible sense of smell. They have about 25 times as many smell receptors as humans, and they can sense odors at one-hundred-millionth the concentration that would be required by humans. Click here for an interesting summary of doggie olfactory capabilities.

But this article from MSNBC provides some amazing examples of how dogs’ super-sensitive-sniffers are being used to solve some real-world problems.

The University of Washington’s Center for Conservation Biology uses dogs to sniff out “doo-doo” (scat) from different species of animals — and specific animals within a species — in order to track their movements and, in some cases, solve some important mysteries.

For example, the researchers were able to determine the effects on whales of some Navy sonar testing by having the dogs collect the whales’ scat before and after the testing. They were able to learn about any changes by examining different hormone levels in the scat.

Head researcher, Samuel Wasser, says the dogs are a little hyper compared to other dogs. They are highly motivated, on their scat searches, to find something useful, because they love their reward — 90 seconds of play with the other scat-finding dogs.

In California, the dogs were able to distinguish between 1,300 kit fox scat samples. In Africa, the dogs were able, with the help of DNA samples, to find the elephants from which ivory tusks had been poached. In the Pacific Northwest, two of the dogs are helping scientists track levels of PCB (a banned industrial substance) in the scat of Orca Whales.

A really neat slide show accompanies the MSNBC article. It has 8 images of the dogs at work and the ivory tusks that were poached.

So, next time you walk outside with your dog, don’t be surprised if it sticks its nose up in the air and checks out the smells for a few seconds. After all, it can smell things in microscopic concentrations (almost one billionth) compared to what you would need to detect an odor.

I know, I know, the patient is supposed to be on the couch, and the psychologist is supposed to be in the arm chair. But I couldn’t find a patient. Where are those Labrador Retrievers when you need them?

You may have read that there’s a new book that helps people figure out, if they were a dog, which dog would they be? Here’s a link to the article. The book is called, “Which Dog Are You?”

There are also some sites where a person can take an on-line test to see which dog they are. Here’s an example at www.ivillage.com.

Well, if people can have a “which dog are you?” book, I decided my doggie friends should have a “which person are you?” book. So I decided to start writing it, and I thought I’d use myself as an example for the first chapter. You can see it here.

This time, we’re going to talk about Labrador Retrievers and see which person they are likely to be like.

According to the AKC, Labrador Retrievers are kindly, outgoing and of a tractable nature. (Can’t you just hear the guy at the dog shows reading this stuff?) They are also supposed to be easy to please, gentle, intelligent and adaptable.

By my doggie psychology calculations, lots of Labrador Retrievers are “ESTPs.” This means they see a world “outside themselves.” Like a lot of dogs, they are very oriented toward their highly efficient senses. They are “sensors” more than they are “intuitors.” Their intelligence often makes them “Thinkers” (as opposed to “feelers”) Their action orientation gives them a tendency in the direction of “perceiving,” as opposed to “judging.” So, Labrador Retrievers are often ESTPs.

There’s a joke titled, “How Many Dogs Does it Take to Change a Light Bulb?” You can see it by clicking on this link. There’s an answer for lots of breeds. But the answer for the Labrador Retriever is very revealing of their personality: “Oh, me, me!!! Pleeeeeeeze let me change the light bulb! Can I? Can I? Huh? Huh? Huh? Can I?” If that’s not an ESTP, I’ve never seen one. (Although I suppose a few could slip over into ESFP.)

According to my Dr. Doggie text books (my doggie friends, you can learn a lot about this stuff at www.personalitypage.com), ESTPs are generally action oriented, flexible and adaptable, fun to be around, and good natured. Does that not sound like every Labrador Retriever you ever met?

So, dear Labrador Retriever, if you want to know what kind of people-job you might have, your qualities would make you an excellent sales representative. Your strong sensory processing, your outgoing nature, and your enthusiasm all come into play here.

Your qualities also make you an excellent candidate for police or detective work.  Duh!  No wonder so many  of our friends are already employed this way.  You could also be a paramedic. (Not sure they allow doggie wound-licking)

Finally, you, dear Labrador Retriever, should be very comfortable as an entrepreneur. Again, your outside-world view, your sensory abilities, your intelligence, and your action-orientation all make this a good path for you.

Who knows, maybe someday you’ll write a blog, like me.

Bye for now,

Dr. Callie, Golden Retriever

You’ve heard the stories about dogs that showed up on their owners’ doorstep after being lost for months or years. Sometimes, these days, it’s because they have an ID “chip” that tells a vet or a pound where they live. We blogged about the “Return of Pickles on Chrismas Day,” on January 18. And just the other day, I overheard a conversation about another dog that found its own way home on Christmas Day.

How do dogs find their own way home after being lost? Do they have ESP? Here, from smalldogsparadise.com is an interesting three- part article about dogs and ESP.

Canine ESP: How It All Began

Canine ESP: Do Dogs Rally Have ESP?

Canine ESP: Can Dogs Sense Danger?

These articles talk about:

• A Collie named Bob, who found his way from the East Coast back to his home in Orgeon,
• A mixed-breed named Henry who was left with friends when his family moved from Illinois to Michigan. Six weeks later, Henry greeted his family on a street corner in their new town in Michigan.
• Prince, a German Shepherd who swam the English Channel during World War I to find his owner in a trench in France.
• A mixed-breed dog named Daisy who somehow moved herself and four puppies 30 miles from to an apartment in New York City to re-unite with the people who had befriended her at a summer vacation resort.
• A German Shepherd in Georgia that “knew” when his owner had been injured in a plane crash in Pennsylvania. The dog lay motionless until its owner regained consciousness.
• A dog that saved the three children in his family from a forest fire burning five miles away.
• A dog in Virginia that sensed when his family, vacationing in Florida, was in trouble — they had been marooned in a flood.
• Gary Cooper’s dogs, who sensed the exact moment that he passed away.

Some of the scientific studies of parapsychology in animals are summarized in this article from empowerment.com.

Lots of people think they have an ESP connection with their pets. Not surprisingly, scientists say that the ability to have an ESP connection depends on the strength of the emotional tie between the subjects — in this case, you and your dog.

If you’d like to test your doggie-ESP, here are some experiments you can do.

And here’s a place where you can get your own ESP cards, although you may have to modify them a little for your dog.

Is this the ultimate test of the strength of your relationship with your dog? Whether you have ESP or not, it’s fun to try to “tune in” to your dog.