Last week at least three very sad and preventable incidents occurred due to people leaving dogs in vans/cars during the very hot (90s) weather.

Last Sunday night a “handler” (a person who shows dogs for other people for a living) got home late at night and according to the news stories decided it was too hot in the garage she kept clients’ dogs in so left them in the van they had traveled in. Supposedly there were fans on the dogs with windows, side doors left open.
7 out of 8 dogs in the van died.

Read the latest article about this tragedy.

Also last week a man decided to take in a movie while leaving his Lab in his car with no windows open.

See this article.
I just wish someone had broken the window out as soon as the dog was noticed — his temperature was 111 at the vet clinic where he died. The owner is being prosecuted.

Closer to home I got an e-mail Friday evening that made me ill — an agility student e-mailed me to tell me she would no longer be at classes this summer because she forgot she had left her two dogs in the car when she got home and both dogs died of heat stroke. Knowing these dogs, it made me very upset to think about them suffering and dieing in their own driveway. I don’t know exactly what happened and probably won’t but I do know I would have trouble forgiving myself if this happened to any of my dogs.

PLEASE don’t take your dog with you when it is hot outside. Even when it is 70 degrees outside a car sitting in the sun can heat up quickly and soon be over 100 degrees inside. Since dogs wear fur coats and don’t sweat they can only expel heat through panting and a little bit of sweating through their paws. Their body temperature can heat up to over 108 degrees in 5 minutes in those temperatures then they can have seizures and die. These are deaths that all could have been prevented. Say a prayer for those owners that loved their dogs, hug your dogs and leave them home in the air conditioning unless you can take them inside whereever you are going.

The My Dog is Cool Campaign operated by United Animal Nations lets people know that leaving a dog in a car for even “just a few minutes” may be too long.

To order or download educational fliers and posters, or to enter your zip code and find out if it is too hot to bring your dog in the car, visit:

www.MyDogIsCool.com

There is a temperature monitor and alarm you can put in your car, truck or motorhome that will cause the horn to blow if temperature is over or under a certain range. It is made by Safe Home Products. It isn’t cheap but in all of these cases it could have saved the dogs involved.

Written in memory of Kitzel.

I haven’t written about the mini foster horses in almost 2 weeks because progress is slow and I don’t want to bore everyone. In the last few days things have moved along a bit though.

The girls are spending much more time on grass now, their winter coats are finally all gone and their coats are pretty shiny and healthy looking. I still can’t brush them so their manes are pretty scruffy but hopefully in the next month I’ll be able to try, at least with Spice, the bolder one.

It has helped to take the advice about working with them “outside their bubble”. I have been hanging the carrot stick over the fence, flicking the rope around from the other side of the fence, letting the rope touch them briefly and finally (only with Spice) rubbing back, neck, rump with the carrot stick so they know it won’t hurt them. I think Spice is starting to think that feels really good as she is starting to stand still for the scratch with the stick. I can also drape the string that is on the carrot stick (Savvy String) around her neck, over her back and touch her legs with it. Sugar still is very wary of the stick and string although I’ve been able to get it a bit closer to her lately and she has sniffed it. Being able to rub her with the stick has been a huge breakthough. I hope Sugar will accept some rubs with the stick soon.

Tonight I made some great progress. I had the girls loose in our outdoor arena to graze. I went in the arena and start lightly flicking the carrot stick and string around as I walked then stopped and waited for the girls to come over to me. They both did and got treats for coming to me. Then I started walking around the outdoor flicking the stick rhythmically in front of me. They both followed me all over and when I ran, Spice trotted behind me and when I stopped she usually stopped although once I had to slap the ground with the stick so she didn’t run into me. I played this game for a while with them and occasionally doled out a treat to each one then left the arena without putting pressure on them to do anything.

Later tonight when I went to feed them they both came over the fence and Spice poked her head through at me. I was able to rub her face with my hand for many seconds then worked my hand along her neck and rubbed it for quite a while. When she seemed okay with that I touched/rubbed her chest then touched her upper legs. I was also able to run Sugar’s face for the longest time I’ve ever been able to touch her. This is a big change even in the last week.

Horses see us as predators and they are the prey so it takes a lot of work to earn their trust especially when they haven’t had much human contact. Here is a video showing the friendly game and how it is used to win the trust of and desensitize a horse.

Friendly Game

Eventually I should be able to do more of this with the girls. Of course right now they haven’t even had a halter on yet so everything is done with them loose in a fenced area and usually from more of a distance. I’ll do another update once we have made some more progress.

Cookie has returned from her “tryst” with OhBee. She was ultrasounded this a.m. and is in foal so Ed, OhBee’s owner, was nice enough to trailer her home to us tonight. Nick was so happy to have his friend back and the two of them happily cruised the pasture as soon as we put them together and tonight Nick is looking very zenned out in his stall. We are looking forward to a gorgeous foal next April.

I was at our Lab Specialty agility trial all day today running two dogs as well as working at it. Jazz had some really fast runs (as in fastest in her class) but still can’t keep all of the bars up. People keep saying “wait til she grows up, she’ll calm down” — she is SIX! It is very frustrating to have such a talented dog and still be stuck in Novice Jumpers and no legs in Open Standard. Cori had the opposite problem — she doesn’t like it when it gets hot and in the sun it was hot so she just trotted along or barely ran until the last few jumps. She either didn’t make time (and had the slowest time in her class) or had a knocked bar due to laziness. I think I just need to give up running her outside in summer weather. So I ran two directly opposite types of dogs and no “q’s” today. Just venting…….

ADDENDUM: Saturday Jazz qualified in both rally obedience classes with 4th places in each (95 and 97 out of 100) so partially redeemed herself.

The foster mares have been here one month today. We have to keep them in a pen or “dry lot” except for a few hours a day as they cannot be on grass all day or they will founder (develop laminitis). They are now less skittish when we enter their pen and they do come right up to the fence when I am out in the barnyard or go to feed them. They do enjoy their time on grass and nicker at me when I go to open the gate letting them into one of the grassy areas of our farm. Tonight they got to go in the largest pasture we have along with my horse Nick. I thought they would feel more secure if they had him with them and they all played at first before they settled down to graze. I did not have any trouble separating Nick from them or getting them to move to their pen tonight after about 3 hours on grass. That was a pleasant surprise as I was a bit worried they would just take off and run and run since I can’t get a halter on to catch them but instead have to use the “driving game” to move them from space to space.

I can now touch their faces pretty much every time I am around them, even Sugar is letting me push her mane out of her eyes. I would so love to get a brush on them but they aren’t ready for it yet.
At the Parelli event this weekend one of their instructors told me to try working with them from outside their “bubble” so I have been flicking the “carrot stick” (a long orange stick) with a rope around outside their fence then hanging the rope into their pen and letting them see it. I am calling it my horse fishing pole. I actually was able to drape the rope over Spice’s neck and scratch her back and rear briefly with the stick. Sugar will not let the rope be too near her yet but will let it touch her head briefly while she reaches for treats.

Their coats look much better as they have lost most of their scruffy winter coat and have a shine to their summer coats now. Spice especially has filled out and doesn’t look ribby any more. Sugar has filled out a bit but still looks too thin. I am still wondering if she may be expecting a foal due to the shape of her belly and that her spinal muscles seem dropped down from her spine as a pregnant mare can look. Time will tell……

I’ll write more about their progress and try to take some new photos of them soon.

Speaking of Natural Horsemanship — I stumbled on these really neat videos of a 15 year old girl, Danielle Herb, working with a horse and her work helping ADHD and autisitc children by having them work with horses. Her program is called “Drop your reins” which is also the name of her web site. The one video is called “Natural Peopleship Learning”. What a cool young lady! Check these out:

Drop your reins

Natural Peopleship Learning

Working with Halo

Yesterday and today I have been attending the Parelli Celebration which is an educational event about natural horsemanship, a great way to train horses in a positive manner. This year they have a new format where some students are “spot lighted” showing what they can do with their horses then Pat (Parelli) gives them a score and his comments which include a lot of constructive “this is what I would like to see you do with your horse”. Pat then shows the students how to accomplish whatever his suggestions are. I thought it might be a little boring watching others work their horses but actually it has not been and I’ve seen some awesome partnerships between horse and human this weekend as well as heard suggestions that will help me with my own horses. I did end up buying the new “Parelli Patterns” DVDs and hope to actually find some time (probably late at night) to watch them and learn more.

I am hoping some of what I have learned will help with the mini/pony foster mares as well. I was disappointed to see that the rescue horse Pat Parelli chose to work with was from a rescue in another state rather than from a local rescue such as Spirit Horse Equine Rescue (where our foster girls are from). I hope that next time they will use a local rescue. Spirit Horse is doing some wonderful work using the Parelli program with their foster horses and it would be nice if the Parellis recognized that and worked with one of their horses instead of one from 4 hours away.