The Animal House from WAMU 88.5

Dr. Gary Weitzman, the executive director of the Washington Animal Rescue League is back with us in the studio. We're taking your phone calls at 1-877-610-3647 or you can e-mail your questions to animalhouse@wamu.org. Again, the telephone number is 1-877-610-3647. And again the e-mail address is animalhouse@wamu.org. Dr. Gary, are you ready to help some more folks?

Of course.

And their creatures out there?

Hopefully.

Here's a call. Let's take Rachel. Rachel, glad to have you with us in "The Animal House." Question for Dr. Gary?

I do. Thank you so much. I am the proud parent of three fairly large rescue dogs from an absolutely amazing animal shelter out here in the country.

Good for you, good.

And my youngest is a 15-month-old, 155 pound Newfoundland.

Oh.

Oh.

Okay.

That's three dogs in one right there.

Well, the -- we have a 70-pound hound/boxer mix and we have 140-pound Great Pyrenees.

Wow, you're going for the big boys there. Okay, all right.

How many vacuum cleaners do you have?

Lots.

Lots, sure, yeah.

I like to work out.

She goes right through them.

We've never had -- we'd never had a Newfoundland before and I was wholly unprepared for the shedding.

Right.

Aren't they great, though? They're wonderful dogs.

Oh, most gorgeous animal I've ever seen with this incredible sweet temperament. And he's so funny because the genetic imperative to water with him...

Right.

Mm-hmm.

...is incredible. Like he literally will fall asleep with like one paw in the water bowl.

The tail in the water bowl. And many times I'll be taking a bath and look over to see three feet on the edge of the tub.

Really?

Can I swim? Come on, it's water. Can I come in with you, please?

Exactly.

Yeah.

Like we could both fit, I'm sure. I'm just a tiny little thing.

So what's the problem?

Well, we are going to go visit some friends who live on the Severn River and I would really love for him to be able to swim because I think he would just adore it. But I don't know how to do that process. I realize some of it is sort of engrained in them, but I don't want him to get hurt and I...

Oh, you want to send him to swimming classes.

So you don't know if he can swim, right?

Well, we bought him a baby pool, which he splashed around in all summer but I've never had...

Can he even fit in a baby pool?

I'm sorry?

Can he even fit in a baby pool?

It's pretty funny.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah, send a photo. But anyway, so okay, you're essentially wondering if this guy needs a swim training course or something.

We had a friend with a Labrador who basically was like the dog will be fine, pushed the Lab off the dock. The Lab took two strokes and sunk like a stone at the bottom.

Oh, okay. Yeah, you don't want that. That's bad.

And they had to kind of prop him up and get him there. And with it being cold, I really don't want to have to go in the water after him.

Yeah, no, you don't. Has he ever swum? Actually, have you seen him do the doggy paddle or anything like that?

I haven't.

Okay.

He hasn't been in deep enough water.

Yeah.

I mean, maybe the bathtub, but there hasn't been deep enough water for him to sort of get a feeling for it.

Right, yeah.

Okay.

So you haven't dropped him out of a Coast Guard helicopter or anything like that?

Not yet.

He's not one of those...

That's what they use them for.

What?

They use them for water rescues.

Wow.

So there's essentially video, you can go on YouTube and...

It's incredible.

Yeah. Have you ever seen this? You can see them leaving the Coast -- not leaving in a gentle way…

Right.

...but hopping right out into the water and they are happy as larks.

Water, water, water. We love water.

Yeah.

Okay, so what does Rachel do here?

Well, the good news is, Rachel, you don't have to teach a dog to swim. They know how already. He can't really learn more, but he'll have to -- it'll be playful. It'll be fun. I definitely -- I wouldn't take him over here, we're near Great Falls, of course, I wouldn't take him over to Great Falls to show him his first time with the river.

And, well, the river could be a problem, right? Because there's currents, the fast water...

It could be --so here's the thing, use a lunge line to start.

Okay.

Use a very long leash so that you know that you can rescue this guy. He's just a puppy. And, you know, like all adolescents, sometimes we, when we're young, take a, you know, take on more than we can chew. So I would definitely get some safety line so that you're just sure that he is safe.

Okay.

You know, honestly, he's going to be fine. The thing I'd worry about more than that he'd get hurt is that he'll like it too much, you'll have trouble getting him back.

Well, we've discovered that his entire world will revolve around a tennis ball.

Oh, there you go.

And so, there's a point what we found is that when he...

Mine, too.

…distracted. If we have the tennis ball, he'll turn around and come for that.

Oh, this is going to be tough there, Rachel, because one part of his brain is going water, water, water, and the other side is going tennis ball, tennis ball, tennis. This is going to be really hard for him to decide here.

It's too bad, you know, we don't have a lot of lakes out here. A lake is a perfect place to teach a dog, you know, the water is not moving. It's great.

And the other thing -- but a lot of hotels and things and public pools when they close down for the summer they have the doggie swim and the dogs come and splash around.

They do, yeah.

So, you know, but I mean, Rachel wants to go a little sooner than that. But for other people who are wondering if their dogs can swim, you can take them to the shallow end of a pool at the end of summer.

I know. Actually I know quite a few people that work with the shelter volunteers and they do dog swimming classes at their own homes.

But it sounds like -- what Gary suggested was get the kind of long leash, have a tennis ball ready.

Yeah, just like...

Or four.

Yeah and maybe a steak.

That's for you in case you get hungry, Rachel. But find a quiet part of the river, no currents. Make sure there's nothing else in the river or something and put him in and kind of see how he does. But according to Gary, he should probably figure out this swimming stuff pretty quickly.

Oh, that's fabulous. I hear they breast stroke and don't dog paddle.

Yeah, and they've got, they've got webbed feet.

Yeah. Oh they have incredibly webbed feet, yeah.

And snorkel gear.

He does a backstroke. You'll be amazed what this dog will do, Rachel. Report back to us, let us know how it goes, will you?

Send some pictures.

Yeah, send pictures.

I will and I will send you pictures of him in his baby pool.

Thanks, Rachel.

Thank you.

Yeah, you need a big pool.

I thought she was going to say him in his bathing suit.

Bathing suit? No. No, he goes au natural, little doggies out there. Let's take another telephone call. Our number is 1-877-610-3647. This is Elaine calling. Hi, Elaine, glad to have you with us in "The Animal House." Question for Dr. Gary?

Hi. Thanks for taking my call about my crazy canine.

Oh, crazy.

Crazy canines. We're good on crazy canines. What do you got?

Well, I have a sweet beautiful, loving Lhasa Apso that I adopted from the Humane Society about three years ago.

Oh, good for you.

You know, the Dalai Lama of Tibet has I think two Lhasa Apsos now.

And guards their palace.

Yeah, they're Tibetan guard dogs.

You know, that is something I wish she wouldn't take so seriously.

Okay, is that the problem?

No, well, it is. But that's not why I'm calling.

We're on to a different problem now. Okay.

I know most dogs have, you know, some kind of weird behavior, but I have never heard of another dog having this one. She is terrified of reflected light.

Really?

For example, I have a lamp with a metal base. And when I turn on the lamp, the metal reflects on the ceiling and she just goes berserk.

What does she do?

She barks as if she's in mortal danger...

Wow.

...and backs away. I have to keep a washcloth over the lamp.

Oh, my gosh. Okay.

And even if it's a pinpoint of light, like in the morning sometimes the sun will come in the window and hit my watch crystal...

Oh my, that is sensitive.

It will reflect on the wall.

Okay. Hmm, you ran into that one before, have you, Dr. Gary?

That's a new one.

Okay.

That's a new one. Thank you for calling.

You stumped the doctor, Elaine.

It's funny. What about other things? Does she -- is she generally uptight and she get scared easily?

I mean, she is perfectly calm during thunderstorms. She hangs around the vacuum cleaner while I'm vacuuming.

And as everybody knows, the vacuum cleaner is most dogs' mortal enemy, so that's good. Okay.

Exactly.

Yeah, wow.

She loves human beings...

Okay, good.

...unless they're ringing the doorbell, of course.

Yeah, of course, she's guarding the palace.

But reflected light, she doesn't like reflected light. What's going on there?

Yeah, you know, either here eyes are, while I don't actually, from this distance, I don't really know. I mean, the first thing of course, talk to you vet. There are forms of epilepsy and neurologic disease that are very minor, so don't panic. But sometimes they can be triggered by light. And I think it's a real off chance that there's anything physical happening here. It may just be that it's the brightness of the light. Her eyes are really sensitive to it. But I would get her eyes checked and talk to your vet and just get a good neurological exam. But, you know, if all that, as I think it will, comes out normal, then she just doesn't like bright lights.

So I would try to avoid it. Now you may need to redecorate a little bit, the washcloth may not be the most, you know, beautiful fashion accessory in your living room over your lamp, but there's not a whole lot you're going to be able to do. You can do what we always do, we try to desensitize and pair our negative experience with something positive for a dog, and that hopefully changes what they're doing. So if she doesn't like the light now, maybe she'd like the light if it was attached to a Vienna sausage, so you may be able to assuage her distaste by attaching it to something that she values.

Now, walk us through that, how would that work? So suppose there's a light reflection coming through the lamp or something and the dog starts barking.

Right.

Elaine won't want to reward the barking thing.

No, that's the problem. You got to time it exactly right. So when that light hits, you've got to be like MacGyver here. When that light hits, you give the Vienna sausage. But honestly, how big -- this is what I always ask people, how big a problem is it? Do you want to go through the timing and the work and the effort to deal with something that's not a major issue?

Oh, no. It's not a big problem.

Yeah, yeah.

I just thought it was kind of interesting.

It is.

It's really interesting.

I've not run into that before.

Yeah. When I asked my vet about it, she had never heard of it either. She said, you know, reflections, like a dog seeing himself in the oven door.

Yeah, sometimes.

But not the reflected light.

And even that, it's funny, sometimes they don't even notice that or a reflection in the mirror, they don't even notice their own reflection.

Right.

But this brightness, it may be the sensitivity of her eyes. But you're right, I've never heard of this either. Lucky you.

Yeah, check it out again with the vet to make sure there's no physical problem. But then you're just going to have to kind of cope, I think.

Right.

Can I ask you, real quick, other question?

Yeah, go ahead.

About the barking, I know that these dogs were bred to be watchdogs.

Right.

If there is a bred behavior, can you really train it out?

Oh, totally. Yeah, absolutely. And again, reward. So what you do in that situation is someone comes to the door, and you have to set it up, it could be a company manager here. Set it up, get someone to the door, ring the bell, whatever sets her off. And when she doesn't bark, you're teaching her to sit and look at you and then that person comes in and gives a treat or you give a treat. But you have to change what she's reacting to and make it a pleasant experience.

So, again, you're not rewarding the barking, you're rewarding her paying attention to you in that case.

Yes. All she's doing is what works for her and what you want to work for her is look at mom, sit, look at mom and here's...

Get a treat.

...reward, right.

Yeah, she's easy on the treats.

Yeah. Whoever made these things, perfect design, dogs.

Thanks, Elaine.

Thank you.

All right, let's take another quick telephone call here. This is 1-877-610-3647 is out telephone number. Karen is joining us in "The Animal House." Glad to have you with us. Question for Dr. Gary?

Yes, hi, thanks for taking my call. About a year ago I adopted my second cat, Max, a kitten at the time and he's a big boy, about 13 pounds. And after a careful introduction, he and my first cat, Indie, who's about five at the time, seemed to be getting along really well.

But it was just a ruse, wasn't it, Karen?

You were set up.

No, no, no. They're getting along fine.

Okay, good, all right.

It's just once in a while, you know, Max would a little over-aggressive in his play but I was unemployed so I spent a lot of time at home with them. And I was able to moderate that behavior and get that under control.

All right, so what's the problem now?

Well, the problem now is I got a good job finally.

Good, congratulations.

Thank you. But I have a terrible commute. So I have very little time to spend at home with my guys.

Oh, and Max doesn't approve of the new job, I take it.

Max is actually pretty fine. But Indie, not so much.

Oh, okay.

What's he doing?

He is over-grooming himself. He has bald patches everywhere.

Yeah, he's stressed.

Yeah.

Did you bring him to your vet already?

I have not.

Okay. Well, that's the first thing to do because actually the very common reaction by a cat to stress. Over grooming, we have a really great term that enables us to charge clients money, it's called psychogenic alopecia.

Say that again.

Psychogenic alopecia.

Why don't you use that word when you go in? That way the vet will know what you're taking -- you know what you're talking about.

Yeah, yeah. And maybe you'll get a discount because you've already diagnosed it.

Yeah, okay.

But the problem is that cats really are just bundles of anxiety when things aren't going well for them. And they do -- they reflect that in very unique ways. One is to pull out all their hair, the other is urinating in public place or other things that we don't like to step in.

Indie's not doing that, right?

Doing what?

Urinating or defecating around the house or anything, just the grooming thing?

Yes.

Good, good.

That's good.

That's a bonus.

It could be worse, Karen.

Oh, definitely, definitely. And it's much easier to fix the grooming. So what you're going to need from your vet is a medication. And it's not that this is going to be life-long or, you know, even really probably any more than three or four months, about that. But you're probably going to need some Prozac or something like that that will actually get him through the transition point of you leaving for work.

So not permanent?

I don't think so. It's rarely permanent, very rarely. You know, we can even treat this sometimes with cortisone, which we don't recommend because that has its own physiological effects. But, you know, just a little bit of anti-anxiety and antidepressant. And, you know, don't feel too guilty. You got to work, you know? So don't feel too guilty about him.

Tell the cat that you have to work so can keep feeding the cats.

Right.

Yeah, exactly. And the of course all the things we always tell people, toys, enrichment, you know, they love to climb. They love tubes to play in, you know, so you can make tunnels out of boxes. All those things really make a cat happy, so I would do that in conjunction with whatever your vet gives you to maybe take the edge off of Indie just to transition him through your new job.

Okay.

Yeah.

All right, thanks very much. That's a good question. Now, how come -- you would think that with Max in the house, so you got Indie who's got grooming issues, but Max is there. Why doesn't he pay attention to Max...

No, he wants mom.

...and have fun and play? Is that right?

We always want what we don't have. It goes across species, never fails.

That's interesting. So is that a common problem with cats, over grooming?

Yeah, actually it really is, it really is. It's probably the most common cause of hair loss is usually psychological for cats.

What goes on in their little cat brains?

I know, I know. I know. I miss mom, I'm stressed. I'm going to chew my hair off until she notices me.

I'll show her.

Yes.

Mom, mom, mom, look, I don't have any hair left. Stay with me, never go to work. But as I pointed out to Karen, if mom doesn't go to work, you don't get food. That's what I say to Ella. If I don't go to work, Ella, you don't get fed. And then she's usually okay when I do that.

You still get the guilt.

That's -- oh, I do. But she gets her food, so she's all right with that. Thank you, Dr. Gary. We're just about out of time, that means it's time for the answer to today's critter quiz. We were looking for the reason why an Afghan hound named Snuppy became famous around the world in 2005. Well, it turns out that Snuppy was the world's first cloned dog. The cloning was announced by a Korean scientist who later got in trouble for fabricating some of his data, but the cloning itself turned out to be real. Snuppy, meanwhile, went on to father pups of his own in 2008. We'll just files this story away in the you can't make this stuff up category. We'll be back with more tales of life in the animal kingdom next week. Until then, thanks for joining us here in "The Animal House."

"The Animal House" is produced by Karen Munson, Nancy Robertson and Tara Boyle, Josie Flowers and Sara Cumbrey (ph) with special assistance from Kate Shaw-Cross. The executive director is Mark McDonald. Our engineer is Andrew Chadwick. Visit wamuanimalhouse.org for podcasts, transcripts and more information about this program. You can also find us on Facebook or send an e-mail to animalhouse@wamu.org. This program comes to you from WAMU 88.5 at American University in Washington. I'm your host, Sam Litzinger.