Dog Clothing, Products, News and Tips

Mankind’s two best friends don’t always fight like cats and dogs, according to a new study. When living under the same roof, these two furry friends often get along just great, especially if they’re introduced at a young age.

Tel Aviv University surveyed 170 Israeli households with both a cat and a dog as pets. Two-thirds of the households reported an amicable relationship between the species. Indifference prevailed in a quarter, and less than a tenth reported fighting.

Interspecies harmony was most likely if the cat was adopted before the dog and if the animals were introduced when the cat was younger than six months and the dog younger than a year.

What’s more, Feuerstein and Terkel found that the animals learned to understand each other’s body language—even those signals that convey opposite meanings for the two species. When a dog averts its head, for example, it normally expresses submission; but a cat’s averted head can signal aggression. From video recordings of cat–dog interactions in forty-five of the households, Feuerstein and Terkel found that four times out of five, each animal reacted to its companion’s behavior according to the other’s native code.

[Source: LIVE SCIENCE]

Be careful what you say around your dog. It might understand more than you think. A border collie named Rico recognizes the names of about 200 objects, say researchers in Germany. He also appears to learn words for new objects as easily as a 3-year-old child would. Its word-learning skill is as good as that of a parrot or chimpanzee.

Rico knows the meaning of a surprisingly large number of words. In one experiment, the researchers took all 200 items that Rico is supposed to know and divided them randomly into 20 sets of 10 objects each. The dog waited with one of his owners in one room, while an experimenter put a set of 10 objects into another room. Then, the owner told the dog to fetch one of the items. The dog had to go to the other room and bring the object back.

In four trials, Rico got 37 out of 40 commands right. Because the dog couldn’t see anyone to get visual clues about what to bring back, the scientists concluded that he must understand the meanings of certain words.

In another experiment, the scientists took one toy that Rico had never seen before and put it in a room with seven toys whose names he already knew. The dog’s owner then told him to fetch the object, using a word Rico had never heard.

In 7 out of 10 trials, Rico picked the right object, suggesting that he figured out the answer by process of elimination. A month later, he remembered half of the new names, which further impressed the researchers.

Rico is probably smarter than the average dog, the scientists say. For one thing, he’s a border collie, a breed known for its mental abilities. In addition, the 9-year-old dog has been trained to retrieve toys by their names since he was 9 months old.

It’s hard to know if all dogs understand at least some of the words we say. Even if they do, they can’t talk back. Still, it wouldn’t hurt to sweet-talk your pup every now and then. You might just get a big, wet kiss in return!

[Source: Science News]

The average Great Dane cost its owners $1200.00 over its lifetime in stained carpets, wrecked furniture and chewed cables, while chihuahuas notch up an impressive $1300.00 dollars worth of damage.

Mastiffs came third, costing their owners $1100.00 over a lifetime while Basset Hounds were found to cause $1100.00 of damage on average. Finishing off the top five is the Whippet, which will leave a trail of destruction totaling $1000.00. Other dogs with wrecking tendencies include English Setters, Bulldogs, Dachshunds and Boxers.

Among horror stories that emerged in the study was one about a Great Dane who thought the patio doors he was hurtling towards were open and knocked them straight out of the wall. Another owner told how his Border Collie’s wagging tail knocked over a large glass of red wine onto a cream carpet, two days after it had been laid at a cost of $6000.00.

Mike Pickard, Head of Risk and Underwriting at esure pet insurance, said a dog’s destructive tendencies comes down to boredom. “To help minimize your dog’s destructive behavior, remember to house train them from a very early age, maintain their health with regular vet check-ups, and give them plenty of exercise,” he said.

How much money has your dog cost you in damages?

[Source: Telegraph.co.uk]

“Their saliva is much cleaner and if you have a cut or anything, if they lick it — it’s healing,” one woman told “20/20″ while being interviewed in New York City.

To find out just who has a cleaner mouth, we asked veterinarian and fellow dog lover Marty Becker, author of “Chicken Soup for the Dog Owner’s Soul,”. “They raid the garbage can. You know, we give each other a peck on the cheek when we say hello, they give each other a peck on the rear end,” said Becker. “All you got to do is look, watch, smell and you’ll realize that that is not true.”

He thinks the myth that a dog’s mouth is clean stems from their practice of licking their wounds. “And they’ll be licking that wound and you’ll notice that the wound heals very fast - what that tongue does is it gets rid of the dead tissue,” said Becker. He compares that tongue lashing to the work of a surgeon who cleans out a wound, and said the licking also stimulates circulation.

If you want to give your pooch a kiss, it may be safer than kissing another human. Becker says many of the bacteria in the mouth of a dog are species specific, so it won’t harm its owner. “So a staph or a strep for a human is not transmissible to a dog, if you were to kiss it, and vice versa,” said Becker.

Bottom line - you’re more likely to get a serious illness from kissing a person than kissing a dog. But since dogs do transmit some germs, Becker has some advice: “Keep the vaccines current. Good external parasite control, good internal parasite control. You’re going to be good to go.” And then, he says you can kiss them all you want.
[Source: ABC News]

The New Scientist reports that dogs may have a rudimentary sense of morality and inequity. For instance, a pair of dogs recognize a difference when one of them is given a treat and the other is not, scientists said.

A few weeks ago, the study was presented to the first Canine Science Forum in Budapest, Hungary.

“I agree,” said Will Thomas, Tampa Bay Dog Whisperer. Thomas says he’s worked with over a thousand dogs and has been successful because he’s learned to think like a dog.

[Source: Tampa Bays 10]

Bernann McKinney says her pit bull “Booger” saved her life when another dog attacked her, then learned to push her wheelchair while she recovered from a severe hand injury and nerve damage. He died in 2006, but now he’s back in clone form, after the birth last week of puppies replicated by a South Korean company.

“Yes, I know you! You know me too!” McKinney cried , hugging the puppy clones as they slept.

The five clones were created by Seoul-based RNL Bio in cooperation with a team of Seoul National University scientists who in 2005 created the world’s first cloned dog, a male Afghan hound named Snuppy. It is headed by Lee Byeong-chun, a former colleague of disgraced scientist Hwang Woo-suk, whose purported breakthroughs in stem cell research were revealed as fake. Independent tests, however, proved the team’s dog cloning was genuine.

Lee’s team has since cloned some 30 dogs and five wolves, but claims Booger’s clones, for which McKinney paid $50,000, are the first successful commercial cloning of a canine. The procedure, which costs up to $150,000, is drawing criticism from animal rights groups which oppose cloning pets. They say it can lead to malformed offspring and exploitation of surrogates and egg donors, as well as unfounded claims that the new animal is an exact copy of the original.

“It’s fraught with animal welfare concerns and it does not bring back a loved one,” said Martin Stephens, vice president for animal research issues at The Humane Society of The United States, based in Washington. “A dead animal’s DNA does not guarantee the offspring will be identical to the deceased. It takes more than just genes to create an animal,” said Stephens, who is a biologist.

He said the cloning process also subjects hundreds of dogs and cats to invasive procedures as egg donors and surrogates. According to a report released by The Humane Society in May, 3,656 cloned embryos, 319 egg donors and 214 surrogates were used to produce just five cloned dogs and 11 cloned cats who were able to survive 30 days past birth. There are millions of homeless dogs and cats in the U.S., Stephens said, and “we don’t need new sources to compete with animal shelters and reputable breeders.”

McKinney, 57, a screenwriter who taught drama at U.S. universities, contacted Lee after her dog died of cancer in April 2006. She had earlier gone to U.S.-based Genetics Savings and Clone but it shut down in late 2006 after only producing a handful of cloned cats and failing to produce any dog clones.

The Korean scientists brought the dog’s frozen cells to Seoul in March and nurtured them before launching formal cloning work in late May, according to RNL Bio. “The cells’ status was indeed bad as they had been stored for a long time,” Lee told The Associated Press in a phone interview. “But the scientific technology has also developed compared with when we cloned Snuppy. There is no room for any doubt over whether they are real clones,” said Lee, whose team has identified the puppies as Booger’s genuine clones. His university’s forensic medicine team is currently conducting reconfirmation tests.

Lee said the five clones, which share identical white spots below their necks, were all healthy though their weights vary slightly.

RNL Bio charges up to $150,000 for dog cloning but was paid a third of that by McKinney because she is the first customer and helped with publicity, said company head Ra Jeong-chan. Ra said his firm eventually aims to clone about 300 dogs per year and is also interested in duplicating camels for customers in the Middle East.

[Source: The Associated Press]

It’s not just Frisbees and sticks. Dogs catch yawns from people, too.

Dogs who watch a human yawn repeatedly will yawn themselves, says Atsushi Senju of Birkbeck, University of London. Just as that big jaw-stretch spreads contagiously from person to person, it spreads from person to dog, he and his colleagues report in an upcoming Biology Letters.

“It is contrary to what I’ve heard informally from a lot of dog owners who say they catch their dogs’ yawns, but their dogs never yawn when they do,” says psychologist Gordon Gallup Jr. of the State University of New York at Albany. The data are “pretty compelling” though, Gallup says of the new study. “If it can be replicated it strongly suggests dogs may have a primitive empathic capacity.”

[Source: Science News]

Research has shown that living with pets provides certain health benefits. Pets help lower blood pressure and lessen anxiety. They boost our immunity. They can even help you get dates.

Allergy Fighters
“The old thinking was that if your family had a pet, the children were more likely to become allergic to the pet. And if you came from an allergy-prone family, pets should be avoided,” says researcher James E. Gern, M.D., a pediatrician at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, in the Journal of Allergy and Clinical Immunology. However, a growing number of studies have suggested that kids growing up in a home with “furred animals” — whether it’s a pet cat or dog, or on a farm and exposed to large animals — will have less risk of allergies and asthma, he tells WebMD.

In his recent study, Gern analyzed the blood of babies immediately after birth and one year later. He was looking for evidence of an allergic reaction, immunity changes, and for reactions to bacteria in the environment. If a dog lived in the home, infants were less likely to show evidence of pet allergies — 19% vs. 33%. They also were less likely to have eczema, a common allergy skin condition that causes red patches and itching. In addition, they had higher levels of some immune system chemicals — a sign of stronger immune system activation. “Dogs are dirty animals, and this suggests that babies who have greater exposure to dirt and allergens have a stronger immune system,” Gern says.

Date Magnets
Dogs are great for making love connections. Forget Internet matchmaking — a dog is a natural conversation starter. This especially helps ease people out of social isolation or shyness, Nadine Kaslow, Ph.D., professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Emory University in Atlanta, tells WebMD. “People ask about breed, they watch the dog’s tricks,” Kaslow says. “Sometimes the conversation stays at the ‘dog level,’ sometimes it becomes a real social interchange.”

Dogs for the Aged
“Studies have shown that Alzheimer’s patients have fewer anxious outbursts if there is an animal in the home,” says Lynette Hart, Ph.D., associate professor at the University of California at Davis School of Veterinary Medicine. “Their caregivers also feel less burdened when there is a pet, particularly if it is a cat, which generally requires less care than a dog,” says Hart.

Walking a dog or just caring for a pet — for elderly people who are able — can provide exercise and companionship. One insurance company, Midland Life Insurance Company of Columbus, Ohio, asks clients over age 75 if they have a pet as part of their medical screening — which often helps tip the scales in their favor.

Good for Mind and Soul
Pet owners with AIDS are far less likely to suffer from depression than those without pets. “The benefit is especially pronounced when people are strongly attached to their pets,” says researcher Judith Siegel, Ph.D. In one study, stockbrokers with high blood pressure who adopted a cat or dog had lower blood pressure readings in stressful situations than did people without pets.

People in stress mode get into a “state of disease,” in which harmful chemicals like cortisol and norepinephrine can negatively affect the immune system, says Blair Justice, Ph.D., a psychology professor at the University of Texas School of Public Health and author of Who Gets Sick: How Beliefs, Moods, and Thoughts Affect Your Health. Studies show a link between these chemicals and plaque buildup in arteries, the red flag for heart disease, says Justice.

Like any enjoyable activity, playing with a dog can elevate levels of serotonin and dopamine — nerve transmitters that are known to have pleasurable and calming properties, he tells WebMD. “People take drugs like heroin and cocaine to raise serotonin and dopamine, but the healthy way to do it is to pet your dog, or hug your spouse, watch sunsets, or get around something beautiful in nature,” says Justice, who recently hiked the Colorado Rockies with his wife and two dogs.

Good for the Heart
Heart attack patients who have pets survive longer than those without, according to several studies. Male pet owners have less sign of heart disease — lower triglyceride and cholesterol levels — than nonowners, researchers say.

[Source: MSN.com]

More than 63 percent of American households own a pet today, which equates to 71.1 million homes and a whopping 382.2 million pets, according to a recent American Pet Products Manufacturers Association survey of pet owners. So are the critters just hanging out at home, or are they going to work with their human companions?

Pets, it seems, are showing up in the workplace more than ever, with 30 percent of employers allowing workers to bring pets to the office, according to a recent consumer survey commissioned by The HON company, a leading designer and manufacturer of office furniture. Of those who actually bring their pets to work, the majority of Americans bring dogs (24 percent), followed by fish (12 percent) and cats (8 percent).

Visitors to The Warehouse Office Furniture Mart, a Cincinnati-based contract furnishing dealership that sells HON office furniture, can expect to be greeted by a couple of unusual “customer service representatives” when they enter the showroom. Jake and Woody, Labrador Retrievers owned by the company’s president, Jack Keane, can be seen daily at the dealership.

Since 2000, Keane has encouraged employees to bring in any well-behaved pet to spend the day in the company of the dealership’s staff and customers. He even encourages customers to bring their dogs along when they visit the showroom.

The affable and quite mannerly pair – often referred to as the “star customer relations team” – spend their days tethered on long leads in the 15,000-square-foot showroom’s office area. This arrangement allows them plenty of interaction with dog-loving customers but keeps them out of the way of the handful of those a little more canine-wary.

“We’ve had at least 95 percent positive feedback on Jake and Woody’s daily presence,” Keane says of the boys.

Keane’s business isn’t alone in cultivating a pet-friendly atmosphere. A recent search online at Simply Hired (www.simplyhired.com), an online job search engine, turned up 8,100 open jobs at pet-friendly companies, including natural candidates like PetSmart and IAMS Pet Food; but also big names such as Google, Amazon.com and even Dartmouth College.

There are other benefits to having pets in the office – millions of Americans believe pets on the job lower absenteeism and encourage workers to get along, according to responses from both the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association and HON surveys.

Keane feels having Jake and Woody in the showroom actually helps build top-of-mind awareness for his business, too.

“People definitely remember our showroom,” he says. “It’s a great way to reach out to customers, especially dog lovers, and make ourselves stand out from the competition.”

[Source: ABC13]

A handful of cutting edge veterinary medical teams are pushing the prosthetics envelope and creating artificial legs and paws that are a hi-tech step above the makeshift limbs or carts given to most animals.

And more important, the progress improving the lives of lucky cats and dogs holds big promises for people.

One-year-old Nubbin seems unaware that he’s a bit different from his four-legged pal.

“I honestly don’t know that he knows that he’s only three-legged,” says Nubbin’s owner, Erika Edwards.

The cute canine happens to be a patient at North Carolina State University, where engineers and veterinary surgeons are fine tuning a state-of-the-art approach to prosthetics - custom-designed metal implants that attach directly to an animal’s own bones.

“We’re getting much better and we can develop new types of implants much, much faster than we did in the past,” says Ola Harryson, a biomedical engineer at North Carolina State University.

Here’s how it works: a machine transforms CAT scan images into replicas of an animal’s bones that are used to help design and customize the implant.

During surgery, the implant is inserted into the end of remaining bone. Over time, new bone grows around the metal and creates a strong anchor and a prosthetic foot is attached.

“I think it could work very well in a number of species,” says Dr. Denis Macellin-Little, a veterinary surgeon at North Carolina State University.

And that includes people, but that’s in the future.

Nubbin will be one of the first dogs to get the hi-tech implants in the next few months. The North Carolina team has had requests from pet owners around the world, including China, where a panda is missing a paw.

The group is also in contact with a number of military hospitals that are keeping close tabs on the progress in hopes returning soldiers will one day get the implants.

It is estimated that nearly two million amputees are living in the United States, a number that is expected to jump dramatically in the next ten years in part because of the war in Iraq.

[Source: KARE11 Minneapolis]