Dog poop is one of those things that raises everyone’s ire. It stinks, it’s a health risk and it’s plain unpleasant.

Pick up poop. A home-made sign in Wellington, New Zealand.

I found this article astonishing. It seems that one or more dog owners in a luxury condo building in Baltimore, USA, not only allow their dogs to poop inside the building, but they don’t clean up afterwards.

Some are suggesting DNA tests to help deal with the issue:

Under the proposal, every dog at Scarlett Place and guest dogs would be swabbed for a DNA sample — owners would then have to pay $50 each to cover the test and supplies. Dog owners would also pay an extra $10 per month per dog to cover the cost of having the building’s staff scoop poop and send it to a lab. Feces, like saliva, contains tell-tale DNA.

If the lab identifies your dog as the pooper, that’s a $500 fine. …

Dog excrement has been found in the elevators, in the long, carpeted hallways, in the common areas.

[Via Doggone DNA - baltimoresun.com.]

That sounded like a great idea, at first, but the article went on to point out some drawbacks to the plan. One suggestion was that a dog owner could be ‘framed’ by someone with a grudge.

I guess I’m most shocked at the idea that some dog owners are so cavalier as to just not pick up after their pet inside the building. We already know people don’t bother outdoors.

Amazing. And time those dog owners became a bit more responsible.

At Memorial Hospital in South Bend, Indiana, USA, dogs have a very important job: greeting visitors and patients as they arrive —

There are around five therapy dog greeters at Memorial, and most afternoons one of them is on duty.

Renee Langdon volunteers at the hospital with her therapy dog partner, Drew, a 150-pound St. Bernard.

Drew greets a visitor.

Drew, 3 years old, is a Delta Society-certified therapy dog, and has been socialized for this role since he was 5 months old, Langdon explained.

When guests of the hospital see Drew, their faces light up. Langdon greets each guest, asking them if they would like to pet Drew. Even guests who have walked by will come back to pet the dog.

“Drew has a very calming effect for people. You forget you’re in a hospital and you feel better about yourself,” Langdon said.

Dogs — and all pets in general — have been found to lower blood pressure, Langdon said.

[Via South Bend Tribune: Hospitality has a new face.]

I was interested to read that even people who fear dogs find a dog at the entrance way a talking point, as they share their fears.

What a great idea! Good on you, Memorial Hospital.

A chocolate Labrador is sniffing out endangered animals to help researchers:

Eastern Indigo snake. Photo bybsx.

Researchers are using a popular breed of dog to learn how rare indigo snakes are faring in the Okefenokee National Wildlife Refuge.

C.J., a 7-year-old chocolate Lab, has a nose for more than indigo snakes. He has sniffed for spider monkeys in Nicaragua, big cats in Brazil and bats in New Mexico. …

C.J., who was rescued from a shelter, is trained to track different animals, including individual species of snakes, without confusion, said Kara Ravenscroft,C.J.’s handler. …

The dog’s sense of smell is good enough to lead searchers to snake droppings and skin that has been shed.

[Via : Research dog sniffs out reptiles - Florida AP - MiamiHerald.com.]

There are some lucky dogs in Las Vegas. In southern Nevada more than 40,000 animals are euthanised each year. A few of the dogs avoid the death sentence in favour of prison, thanks to the Heaven Can Wait – Pups On Parole programme:

Prison dog. Photo by JuanRax.

Pups on Parole has been a huge success! Not only are the inmates rehabilitating the dogs, but the dogs are rehabilitating the women who work with them. The resident dog handlers have gained a new sense of confidence in themselves and learned a valuable new skill.

The dogs are taken into the care of prisoners at correctional facilities, and are trained up for release into the care of families.

Inmates at the prisons take on one dog each. They train the dog, socialise it, often help it regain lost trust in people.

And on the other side, the prisoners gain too. I suspect in the following quote, the word ‘retribution’ is meant to be ‘restitution’:

“We’ve been able to track them, and we’re finding that they’re not recommitting crimes. They’re not violating parole,” Kearse said.

Heather Hanley, serving time for armed robbery, said training dogs like 4-month-old Rottweiler Chief is giving her a chance for retribution.

“If I can produce a pet that is not just a great dog but a dog that’s going to be given to a family, that’s going to strengthen their family bond and be a welcome edition to their family, then maybe I’ve done something to give back for all the mistakes I’ve made,” Hanley said.

[Via : Inmates Train Abandoned Dogs For Families - Family News Story - KVVU Las Vegas.]

These kinds of prison training programmes seem to be a win for everybody involved.

In some countries, such as New Zealand, you are obliged to register and microchip your pet dog.

Australasian Animal Registry: update details.

Where it’s not compulsory though, a microchip can greatly increase the chances that your lost pet will be returned to you — provided you keep your contact details up to date.

A recent study in the USA looked at the numbers:

For the study, 53 shelters in 23 states agreed to maintain monthly records about microchipped animals brought to the facilities.

Data were collected from August 2007 to March 2008. The shelters reported outcomes for a total of 7,704 microchipped animals.

That’s a lot of animals. Keep in mind those are the animals that actually had microchips too.

Problems finding owners

In all, owners were found for 72.7 percent of microchipped animals.

In cases in the study in which owners were not found, the reasons included incorrect or disconnected phone numbers (35.4 percent), owners’ failure to return phone calls or respond to letters (24.3 percent), unregistered microchips (9.8 percent) or microchips registered in a database that differed from the manufacturer (17.2 percent).

Confusion and problems with contact details

One of the problems with not being able to locate the owners of microchipped animals is that contact information can be registered in various different places.

Another problem is remembering to update details such as changed phone numbers, and figuring out where update them:

Most people who obtain a microchip for their pet register their contact information with the chip’s manufacturer, Lord said. But a pet owner also can register with another company. In addition, many animal shelters keep their own microchip registry databases.

But a website is going to sort that out:

Because of these multiple registration options, Lord said a new Web site developed by the American Animal Hospital Association,

petmicrochiplookup.org

petmicrochiplookup.org, is likely to further improve the chances that owners of lost animals with microchips will be found. The site, launched in late September, performs a real-time lookup of a microchip number and determines which company has a registry for that microchip.

“The site will tell users that a microchip is registered with a specific database and list the registry number to call.

A shocking statistic

But here’s the tragic item that really caught my eye:

Among those found, 73.9 percent of the owners wanted the animals back in their homes.

So around 25% of owners in the study went to the trouble to microchip their animal but didn’t want it back after it strayed from home? I find that bizarre.

[Extracts taken from: Microchips Result In Higher Rate Of Return Of Shelter Animals To Owners.]

Dogloo.

As a responsible dog owner you probably carry a bag and pick up your dog’s poop. If you’re lucky, the bag — plastic or paper — will be biodegradable. If you’re unlucky, and have concerns about the environment, you’ll worry about the tonnes of poop-filled plastic bags ending up at the rubbish dump.

At home, I installed a Dog Loo. It’s a bin where the poop breaks down and the waste water seeps out into the surrounding soil.

It works fairly well, now I’ve located it in a suitable part of the garden and once I’d dug a large enough hole for it.

While we’re out though, I use plastic bags to pick up and then drop the bag in a rubbish bin. And worry about the mountains of poop at the rubbish tip.

In Ithaca, New York, USA, they’re trying a different approach — composting. Leon Kochian, a professor of plant biology at Cornell was an instigator:

This year, with Mr. Kochian’s nudging, one of the city’s dog parks — part of the Allan H. Treman Marine State Park — became a dog waste composting park.

Special corn-based bags, made by the Biobag Company, based in Florida, are available at several stations in the park. Dog owners put the bag and its contents into large bins near the park’s entrances, which are removed once a week by a company called Cayuga Compost.

[Via : Ithaca’s Pioneers of Dog Waste Composting - Green Inc. Blog - NYTimes.com.]

They don’t yet know how the composting will work out, so it’s something to keep an eye on.

Regardless, though, the idea of corn-based bags is interesting — unless of course they’re made of corn that should have been used for food …

Sometimes schools have special ‘days’ when kids can take along their pets: rabbits, birds, lambs, cats, dogs get to spend a while in class. But how do you decide whether a dog is a companion or a service worker?

In some schools in the US there are lawsuits to decide:

Two autistic elementary school students recently won court orders in Illinois allowing their dogs to accompany them to school. Their lawsuits follow others in California and Pennsylvania over schools’ refusal to allow dogs that parents say calm their children, ease transitions and even keep the kids from running into traffic.

At issue is whether the dogs are true “service dogs” — essential to managing a disability — or simply companions that provide comfort.

[Via : Schools Fight Families Over Autism Service Dogs - ABC News.]

In New Zealand the group 4 Paws NZ is fundraising to bring 4 trained assistance dogs from the US:

• 4 Paws NZ is all about making our children’s lives better with the help of assistance dogs.
• The dogs are valued at US$15,000 each. We will receive them at the hugely subsidised cost of NZ$3,000 thanks to the generosity of 4PAWS FOR ABILITY, USA.
• We need to raise approximately $60,000 to get four dogs to New Zealand. This includes the cost of purchase, training, quarantine fees and flights for each dog as well as the cost of flights and accommodation for the trainer.

These dogs will significantly improve the quality of life of our children, particularly with regards to increased health, safety and independence.

[Via : The Facts.]

We’ve all become fairly familiar with the notion of dogs as assistants for blind people, but it seems their roles are extending far into other areas of our lives too: helping people with their various physical and emotional needs.

It raises quite a few challenges to our thinking, our work and study spaces.

What are your thoughts on this? Leave a comment below with your ideas.

And still on the theme of washing dogs to raise funds … A Baltimore pet spa raised funds recently for military dogs:

there are more than 1,000 military dogs deployed worldwide, including around 700 in Iraq and Afghanistan. Among the supplies being sent are protective goggles that the dogs wear while sniffing out roadside bombs, cooling beds, and more traditional items such as chew toys.

[Via : Dogs have day for the military - baltimoresun.com.]

I have no experience with military dogs. Can any of our readers explain how the goggles protect a dog? Is it from dust, or glare? Because if a bomb went off, I don’t think goggles would help much.

I confess, sometimes our dogs wear nice woolly jerseys. If it’s a cold day and the dogs have been recently clipped, well, I figure the woolly jersey will keep them warm.

And seeing as how our dogs are so close to the ground they sometimes get to wear the jerseys on those wet, windy, muddy days too.

But there are some dogs who really need to wear protective gear. And by that I don’t mean to keep out the cold, or ward off the mud:

as powerful a crimestopper as he is, Cezar’s fur will not stop bullets. And though he’s one of four dogs on the Santa Clara department’s K-9 Unit, only three of the force’s canine cops come equipped with bulletproof vests. The dogs only work on felony crimes — usually to track potentially violent suspects, and occasionally to disable them — so they are almost always in harm’s way.

[Via : It's a dog's life, and the best way to protect it is with a bulletproof vest - San Jose Mercury News.]

To solve the problem of not enough bullet proof vests to go around a local chain of pet stores helped raise funds for the police dogs by offering do-it-yourself-dog-washes. One vest costs US$1,200, and at $15 per wash that’s a lot of clean dogs.

What a great cause!

It’s quite a problem, that we have homeless people in our cities. It’s a problem in cities all over the world, though many groups provide shelters for the people needing them.

It’s not an easy thing though, as some of the homeless have extra needs, such as also needing shelter for their assistance dogs:

Shawnine Mackay, who often sleeps on the street near Hollywood Boulevard by lowering herself out of her wheelchair onto the ground, said she would love to be able bed down in one of Los Angeles County’s dozens of homeless shelters.

But shelter workers have repeatedly turned her away because of her dog, Molly, who is trained to help her detect and cope with seizures.

[Via : Shelters sued over ban on aid dogs - Los Angeles Times.]

The shelters are turning them away because of problems housing the dog. Some have areas for pet dogs, but the dogs may be housed some distance away, for example on another floor of the building.

Obviously that doesn’t work with assistance dogs.

On the other hand, other people in the shelter may be allergic to dogs, or afraid of them.

It’s a tricky problem, and one you’d think could be resolved, perhaps by discussing the problems and rearranging accommodation options.

However in Los Angeles:

the Housing Rights Center and the Disability Rights Legal Center filed a lawsuit against the Los Angeles Homeless Services Authority and several shelters it funds, alleging that such bans by homeless shelters are against the law.

The Americans With Disabilities Act and fair housing laws do not allow discrimination against people just because they rely on service animals, the suit said.

This will be one to watch.