Snoopy ponders some of life's tough questions, like "Who am I?" Dogs need mental stimulation too.

Ugh. I'm sick today and have been under the weather for a few days now. I rarely get sick, but when I do, it's usually a doozy, so I'm going back to bed as soon as I write this.

Bad timing, because it's cold and windy outside, too, and I just can't bring myself to take my dogs out for exercise when the weather is like that and I feel like this (miserable). But guilt kicks in quickly. I have six dogs in a small house, and they don't want to lie around sleeping all day without something stimulating to break up that monotony.

Luckily, it turns out that mental stimulation can be just as exhausting as physical exercise, if not more so, for dogs. Anything you can do to get Fido to concentrate will tire him out. This can include interactive toys that make Fido work for food, such as the Kong, the Buster Cube, and the Molecuball; interactive games in which you hide treats around the house for him to find; learning new tricks and tasks, such as how to roll over or how to go get the newspaper; and fun games such as hide 'n' seek.

For my crew today, I chose hide 'n' seek. We played for about 20 minutes, and right now, not a creature is stirring. It worked! And although it was a little chaotic because it was the first time that the foster girls ever played this game, it did have the added benefit of helping to teach them the commands "Stay" and "Come." I'm going to do it again this evening. In fact, I think I'll start doing it every evening, since mental stimulation really isn't optional for dogs any more than it is for us humans. It's essential to a well-balanced, happy dog.

In the words of Norm Schaeffler of Bark Busters, "A mentally stimulated dog is a tired dog and a tired dog is a calm dog. A calm dog is a happy dog and that's what we all want."

Sitting pretty! Theresa, Sophia, and Sarah have found the key to understanding what those wacky humans are always talking about.

Today we had a big breakthrough. This is the day that all three of my foster Chihuahuas learned how to sit on cue! What an exciting moment! Suddenly, a line of communication opened up between us that hadn't been there before. It was as exciting for them as it was for me—I could see it on their faces. Now they follow me around, watching intently to see when the game is going to start up again. How did we arrive at this point?

I had decided to try the "hands-off" method. Dogs already know how to sit—they sit many times throughout the day. You just want to teach them how to link the act of sitting with the word "sit" (just like Annie Sullivan did when she pumped water over Helen Keller's hand and spelled the word "water" in her palm with sign language). So in the "hands-off" method, you don't have to push their little fannies to the floor. Instead, I just waited for them to sit, and the instant that their buns hit the ground, I said, "Good!" and quickly gave them a treat. Timing is important here. "Good!" means that a treat is forthcoming, so you do have a little time, but still, the quicker, the better. (Many people swear by the use of a clicker instead of a word like "Good," but I'm not coordinated enough for that—plus one of my dogs hates the clicker sound.)

After a few sessions of this, when they realized that sitting would get them a treat, I started to say, "Sit," just as they were starting to sit and then "Good!" after their bums touched the ground, followed right away by a treat. It doesn't take many repetitions of this to produce a reliable and enthusiastic sit.

The real beauty of it, though, is that it's not just sit. It's a door flung wide open on learning. Suddenly, they understand what you've been getting at. They've figured out how to learn what you're trying to teach. Everything speeds up now. The fun is just beginning!

January is "Unchain a Dog" Month. Words can't adequately describe the abject suffering of a lonely, intensely frustrated chained dog. Have a look:

Patches

'Nuff said.

Please help unchain a dog this month and every month. Find out how you (yes, you!) can get a chaining ordinance passed in your community. Get a "Friends Don't Chain Friends" T-shirt and bumper sticker to publicize the issue. Watch Loretta Lynn's chained-dog public service announcement, "Life on a Chain Is No Life at All,"and forward it to everyone you know to raise awareness of the problem.

Thank you from the bottom of every neglected, frustrated, suffering chained dog's heart.

An assistance dog's work is never done.

Last week, I ran across two articles on the same day about canine assistance programs (for people) that use dogs who were actually bred for that purpose. One article was about Guiding Eyes for the Blind, and the other one was about a police-dog training academy in the U.K. It just boggles my mind that when millions of perfectly healthy, young, and trainable dogs are being put down every year in the U.S. (and thousands in the U.K.) for lack of good homes, these outfits think it's just fine to churn out more puppies. Another canine assistance program, Dogs for the Deaf, achieves its goals exclusively with dogs rescued from animal shelters, so there's no excuse for such irresponsibility.

There are other unsavory aspects to these assistance-dog programs. According to the article mentioned above about Guiding Eyes for the Blind, the organization imposes strict rules for the puppy-raisers, such as "insisting that the dog always sleep in a kennel; not allowing [the dog] to jump up on people and furniture, and not letting the dog eat scraps from the family table. While many pet owners relish cuddling with their animals on their couches or beds, that's off limits for guide dogs in training, because teaching boundaries is so important." Depriving puppies of some of their greatest pleasures in life, such as sleeping with their guardian on the bed or snuggling on the couch, just so that they will be ready to work 24/7 at a job serving humans strikes me as very nearly the definition of exploitation.

Which brings up another ethical issue: Is it right to force a dog to bounce from breeding facility to puppy-raiser's home to training school to a home with a blind person and then to yet another home (if the dog is lucky) after becoming old or infirm? And it's my understanding that the "retired" dogs are never given the opportunity to stay in the same home with a brand-new, young guide dog―no, that would be too confusing. Even if these organizations can find new homes for all the "retired" working dogs (and I wonder), it's still a huge adjustment for an older dog to change homes. No one seems to be concerned about this in the slightest. (My oldest dog, Rowdy, was depressed for the better part of a year after his family gave him away to me at age 7.) So the system is preprogrammed to end miserably for a dog who has been on call 24/7 for an entire lifetime. That's exploitation, in my book.

I will never forget a complaint that we received at PETA a long time ago about an assistance dog for a child who was in a wheelchair and had mental and physical developmental problems. The complainant wrote that the child persisted in picking at the skin on the dog's back (which was readily accessible with the dog standing beside the wheelchair) to the point of creating lesions and scabs, which the child would then pick off. That dog was forced to stay by that child's side while the child (through no fault of his own, of course) continued to torment the dog all day long with this neurotic behavior. No one would take action to help the dog―that's how ingrained the idea is that human needs trump animal needs. I don't know how that case ended, but it still makes me flinch just to think about it.

Most dogs like having a job. But we humans only work an average of eight hours a day―why should dogs have to be on call 24/7 for years on end without a vacation? Why doesn't anyone challenge the ethics of this notion? Why can't these assistance dogs be replaced with humans who are paid for their services (by the government or by nonprofit organizations or by insurance companies)? We have nannies and we have in-home nursing care―why don't we have a service industry dedicated to helping blind, deaf, and otherwise disabled people get along? Surely, a human assistant would be infinitely more helpful than a dog simply because of the better communication and understanding. Oh, that's right―a human assistant would have to be paid, whereas we can force a dog to do it for kibble, a kennel, and vet care. Yeah, anybody would be crazy to give up a deal like that.

Boris: "Can't you feel my pain?"

Yesterday, I had yet another long argument about crating. But this time, it was with an intelligent person whom I greatly admire and respect, so it was very disheartening for me. I was shocked that she came out with some of the same lame excuses for putting dogs in crates that I've heard from other people—mainly relating to convenience and the fact that it’s not a perfect world. She was also concerned about keeping dogs safe. Safe from ingesting things that could harm them and safe from abusive owners who would come home and beat them to within an inch of their lives if they had an "accident" on the carpet or chewed on a table leg.

With regard to preventing dogs from ingesting something harmful, I think there's some kind of fear factor underlying American culture that really exaggerates potential dangers and plays on people’s fears. In my life, I have had eight dogs of my own and seven foster dogs (three were puppies), and not a single one of them ever ingested something harmful—and that was with free run of the house and a doggie door leading out to the back yard for most of those years. I know it sometimes happens, but I think making a dog stay in a little box in order to prevent it is going overboard. Certainly, a long, tiring walk in the morning would do just as well to keep our dogs safe, because tired dogs sleep!

And it goes without saying that an abusive dog owner simply should not be allowed to have a dog—period. Enabling someone like that by giving them a crate to imprison their dog in is just backward, I think, and won't really solve the problem because if such a person will beat the dog for having an accident, then he or she will beat the dog for any reason. I would spend more time trying to persuade that person that a dog isn't really a good fit for his or her lifestyle and to give up the dog.

But I'm intrigued (and dismayed) by this general unwillingness of people to look at things from a dog's perspective. I think the person with whom I argued yesterday was coming from the standpoint of someone trying to defend her past actions. But there are probably many other reasons why a person would fail to empathize.

Over the holidays, I ran across an article in the Washington Post about a newly coined psychological condition called "empathy deficit disorder," and it really resonated with me because it explained so much. It described people with the disorder as failing to empathize with other people because they have become too self-absorbed with whatever it is that they're focusing on―money, power, etc. But the ability to empathize is hard-wired in our brains, so it can be regained, and the article even offered exercises to aid in this. I believe that the description of this disorder also provides a very good explanation of most people's attitude toward animals.

A lack of empathy for humans is certainly pervasive, but for animals, it’s extremely widespread. The insidious thing is, even people who really do care about animals will refuse to empathize when it doesn't suit their needs or their lifestyle. Why? Because if they really try to put themselves in their dogs' "shoes," so to speak, they might have to make some changes. Maybe even some difficult changes. And most people are afraid of change.

It does take courage and strength and an open mind to look closely at something that has the potential to shake up our lives. But it's so important to do it, and the rewards can be enormous. You can do it for altruistic reasons, or you can do it for selfish reasons. In the Washington Post article, it did mention that "research shows that altruistic behavior lights up the pleasure centers of the brain usually associated with food or sex." So there's that. And then there's this: You don't want to suddenly realize on your death bed just how uncaring you've been your whole life. What a horrible feeling that would be, with no way to undo it!

If you feel the same way that I do about this—frustrated and disheartened by people's inability to empathize with dogs and other animals (including humans)―then I would encourage you to keep challenging people to strengthen their powers of empathy. It can be a lonely and difficult road, but it's the only thing that will save our dogs and our planet.

Darby: "A little white lie now and then never hurt anybody."

Foster Chihuahua Sarah was just getting the hang of the idea that when you eliminate outside, you get a treat, and when you do it inside, you don't. So we were out on a walk, and since she's not the marking type, she wasn't getting a whole lot of treats, whereas her colleagues Theresa and Sophia were peeing everywhere and getting rewarded accordingly. Then the lightbulb went off over Sarah's head, and she proceeded to do a fake pee. It was so shamelessly and blatantly phony—she "assumed the position" for a split second and popped back up much too quickly even to have squeezed out one drop. I laughed and laughed and gave her a treat. When dogs lie, it's just so darned cute!

As an aside, you may be wondering how I have managed to keep my house clean over the past two years with so many foster dogs who started out not housetrained. I know some people swear by carpet cleaners, but I've never owned one. When I got my first foster dog, a large, gorgeous, but emaciated and debilitated German shepherd named Bella, I had baby blue wall-to-wall carpeting (not my choice—it came with the house). Of course, it was doomed. It was already looking shabby from the day-to-day wear and tear by my three big dogs and me. But I was not going to shove poor Bella into a crate—she had already suffered enough at the hands of her previous owner. By the time Bella was gone, after only three weeks, my house was literally reeking of urine. No amount of my usually stalwart Nature’s Miracle enzymes had been able to keep up with her bladder.

So one night, a good friend of mine came over and showed me how to rip carpet out. It wasn’t rocket science, but it was more complicated than I thought it would be because there were these thin strips of wood with sharp little carpet tacks poking up out of them all along the perimeter of the rooms. It took a crowbar and hammer to get those out. And then there were staples too. But once you got the hang of it, it was pretty easy. I thought I would hate not having wall-to-wall carpeting—I thought I would feel cold in the winter—but I really love it! It’s so much cleaner and neater.

It turned out that I had hardwood flooring under half of the carpeting and some kind of icky plywood under the other half. So I put linoleum tile down in the plywood section, and that wasn’t hard, either (I used the peel-and-stick kind). The only hard part was moving heavy furniture around. Now I have scatter rugs with rubber backing throughout the house, and if someone pees on one of them, into the washing machine it goes. Then once a week, I mop the floors. Nothing could be simpler, really.

But anyway, back to the subject at hand—canine deception. My late husky, Darby, was a master at fibbing. Oh, he was good. He had to be, because he always felt like "low man on the totem pole." Once, when I was sitting on the bed with my other two dogs and he wanted to get up on the bed, too, but didn't feel comfortable doing so because of them, he ran to the door of the bedroom barking and pretending that an intruder was coming. Naturally, the other two dogs jumped off the bed and ran to see what was up, at which point, Darby made a beeline for the bed. It was so blatant! I couldn't stop laughing.

Another time, I had gotten a new type of doggie door and was trying to train my elderly cocker spaniel to go through it. The two big dogs, Darby and Shandy, breezed back and forth through it with no problem whatsoever, but little Rogan was having a senior moment. So I kept encouraging him and offering him treats and praising him when he finally went through. Darby took note of this, went back outside, and stood there in front of the doggie door whimpering, pretending that he, too, was having difficulty.

Dogs may never lie about love, but all other topics seem to be fair game!

Hera: "Poop rules!"

Or rather, mind your dog's business. I'm starting to get pretty disgusted with all the dog poop that I'm seeing on the beach in the morning when I take my dogs there to run. Sure, it's possible not to notice it occasionally when your dog does his or her business. And for that reason, I pick up everyone else's poop just in case my dogs made a deposit behind a sand dune out of my view. But there's an awful lot of it right out in the open.

Why don't people pick up after their dogs? It gives all of us dog people a black eye and can lead to restrictive dog laws. The Virginia Beach SPCA, which is in PETA's own back yard, says that 25 percent of all fecal coliform bacteria (like Escherichia coli) in Virginia's Lynnhaven River can be traced back to dog waste. Ouch! And according to The Magazine of the Hydrological Society of South Australia, "A single gram of dog waste can contain 23 million fecal coliform bacteria." E. coli can kill people, and if it doesn't kill you, it will make you wish your were dead for a while. Yet all these bacteria are just being washed right into the water with every high tide or rainstorm.

Dog feces can also contain all manner of parasites, such as whipworms, hookworms, roundworms, tapeworms, cryptosporidia, campylobacter, salmonella, and giardia, each of which comes with its own set of unpleasant symptoms. I was "lucky" enough to get to witness (and clean up) the side effects of giardia in one of my first foster dogs, little Chihuahua Joey. The best way to describe it was "explosive, contagious, bloody diarrhea." Not fun at all.

And let's not even get started on the algae blooms that are caused by the nutrients that leak out of decaying dog feces into the water. The algae and other plants thrive on the nutrients and end up taking over the body of water, using up the oxygen and subsequently killing the fish and other life forms who need it.

So carry plastic bags with you whenever you go out with your dog and do your duty: Scoop up that poop. And, hey, when you pick it up, it's OK to look at it. In fact, you SHOULD look at it. That's the best way to monitor the health of your dog's gastrointestinal tract.

Symptoms that something may be amiss in the diet include undigested food or mucus in the stool, stinky or greasy stool, and chronic soft stool―these call for a reevaluation of and possible change in Fido's diet. Severe or chronic diarrhea, chronic constipation, black stool, no stool for two days in a row, a stool that is flat on one side, diarrhea following vaccination, or any change in stool accompanied by other ill-health symptoms should get you thinking about a trip to the vet in the near future.

And according the The Whole Dog Journal, you should get your dog to the vet right away if you see any of the following symptoms: "Raspberry jam-like mucus, [which] could indicate hemorrhagic gastroenteritis; profuse liquid diarrhea with pungent iron smell, containing blood or pinkish-brown, [which] could indicate parvovirus; stool containing frank red blood, [which] indicates injury or illness in the [gastrointestinal] tract; and any diarrhea in a puppy, [which] could rapidly cause life-threatening dehydration."

So don't be shy―get the straight poop on your dog's daily doo-doo. It's one more way of showing how much you care.

Louie the thinker

The following is a guest post by my dog-trainer friend, Amanda.

"What a smart dog!" "She looks like she knows everything." "She understands English, doesn't she?" Random strangers make comments like this about my beagle mix, Louie, on a regular basis. Louie knows lots of words and phrases. She's very alert and aware of her surroundings. She takes time to listen, learn, and figure things out. She's even a music snob (if you're curious, she enjoys Loesser and Sondheim but does not care for Weber, thank you very much). She's a smart cookie. But, while her intelligence might make her stand out from the pack, it doesn't make her better or more special than any other dog, in my opinion.

The finest articulation of an idea that I've long held dear comes from Dr. Michael W. Fox's 1974 book Understanding Your Dog. Perhaps the geniuses that we have seen throughout history and the superdogs of legend and myth are really everyday, "average" people and dogs with the same innate intelligence, the same basic capacities as we and our dogs have. But they have been raised in and constantly exposed to an environment conducive to the fullest flowering of their genius, which lies dormant in the majority of the members of their species.

I realize that this may be a somewhat unpleasant revelation for some who would rather think that their dogs are stupid than address their own inadequacies as guardians. But it needs to be said: Within every dog lies the ability to be a "super-genius." If you think that Bowser (or any animal you live with) is on the not-so-smart side, please ask yourself what you're doing to encourage his growth. If the answer is nothing, I hope you'll strive to spend more time engaging and socializing him.

Find out what Bowser likes and what he's good at, and nurture those things. Pick up a couple of dog-activity books or magazines and figure out how to provide interactive mental stimulation on his terms. There are plenty of activities that most dogs enjoy, such as tracking, swimming, retrieving, or playing Frisbee, that also require concentration. I once knew a terrier mix who could even solve basic math problems. Pretty much anything that involves you and your undivided attention will get you off to a good start. So get off the computer and start figuring out how to give Bowser the types of activities that he needs in order to live up to his full potential.

It's not Ty's fault that he's a purebred.

Today is Martin Luther King Jr. Day. What an inspiring and insightful visionary he was! With his intelligence and charisma and sheer perseverance, he was able to make a huge difference in furthering the cause of civil rights and in fighting racism.

And while all right thinkers continue to oppose racist attitudes and practices, there is yet another type of racism underfoot that rarely gets mentioned (if ever): canine racism. Now, I know that there exist some dogs who actually harbor racist feelings toward people. A dog might growl at members of one particular race, which of course stems from some kind of mistreatment by a person of that race when the dog was a puppy and has now been extrapolated and generalized to apply to every member of that race. But that's not what I'm talking about.

I'm talking about people who obsess over the physical appearance of a particular breed of dog. Whenever I'm at the dog park, I see lots of purebred dogs and I hear, "Boxers are my favorite breed of dog" or "The only kind of dog I would ever get is a German shepherd" or "Oh, yes, I ordered my collie from a breeder 500 miles away." To me, this smacks of canine racism. Whereas, say, a white person might favor whites above all other races and try to get preferential treatment for them while putting all other races down, the canine racist who favors bulldogs will breed them or buy them from breeders, thereby snatching homes away from equally deserving mixed-breed dogs who languish in animal shelters and effectively sentencing the mutts either to death or to a life of intense frustration in a cage at a no-kill shelter.

Of course, the American Kennel Club and its members are the most blatant canine racists of all, promoting purebreds all the way. And it gets worse. Many of the purebreds still aren't attractive enough for these people until they have a body part or two hacked off. Thankfully, the barbaric practices of ear-cropping and tail-docking have been banned in the U.K.and some other countries, but in the U.S. dogs are still mutilated by people who purport to love dogs. That's one way you can tell that there is something just not quite right about these canine racists―how could anyone who loves dogs agree to let them be mutilated as puppies? And for nothing more than appearance' sake or to win at dog shows! And some purebreds will even end up at the animal shelter alongside their motley colleagues (roughly 30 percent of an animal shelter's residents are purebreds), so there is no guarantee of a permanent home even for them. Canine racists can be fickle. And that's because they are focusing only on the dog's external appearance, not on what's inside.

You may ask me, "How is this any different from a man saying, 'I just love redheads,' or a woman saying, 'I'm really crazy about men with beards'?" The difference is that these preferences for other humans with certain characteristics don't have much in the way of negative consequences. They have more to do with sexuality and pheromones than anything else. But once people start zeroing in on a particular breed of dog, inevitably it leads to breeding more of them. They can't get enough. And then, once a person discovers that there is money to be made by breeding dogs, it's all over. They will start churning out the puppies. Some of those puppies will go to unsavory homes, many if not most will be left "intact" so that they, too, can keep on reproducing, and you can be darned sure that all the Dobermans, boxers, Rottweilers, and cocker spaniels will have their tails chopped off. It's pretty hideous when you look at the big picture, instead of just the cute puppies.

Dogs are arguably the most forgiving and loving animals on the entire planet (way more so than humans!). Inside every dog, regardless of appearance, is a deep capacity for loyalty, affection, playfulness, and companionship. Even dogs who have been traumatized and mistreated have the potential to recover and regain these lovely qualities. So why on Earth are these thoughtless canine racists not making a beeline for their local animal shelter to adopt needy homeless dogs, rather than turning out made-to-order purebreds who will get the homes instead?

Real dog lovers don't care what their dogs look like―and they don't breed dogs. Period!

Hold onto your dogs―no matter what!

As always, current events have an impact on animals, but who hears about it? Thankfully, Mary Umberger of the Chicago Tribune thought to investigate the subprime mortgage debacle's effect on companion animals. What she uncovered is far worse than people's actual financial troubles, and she spells out all the sordid details in an article that was published yesterday called "Dogs, Cats Latest Victims of Subprime-Mortgage Mess." While people are losing their homes, animals are losing their very lives and sometimes in a most torturous way.

Umberger quotes Chicago-area animal shelter workers who have noticed a spike in animals dropped off by people who have lost their homes and moved into places that don't allow animals. Worse, they're finding animals who were simply left behind in houses abandoned because of foreclosure. Some of these animals manage to survive until they're discovered by the next human to enter the home, but some don't. There have even been cases of large numbers of animals (dogs, cats, birds, even horses) left to die of thirst or starvation.

Obviously, people who would allow this to happen to their own animals do not view them as valuable or even sentient. My opinion is that you should give as much thought to adopting an animal as you would to getting married or having children. It should be a commitment. While losing a home is certainly devastating, it should not qualify as justification for abandoning an animal. I mean, would you abandon your kids? No. So what’s the difference? There shouldn’t be one.

While I myself have never been in the position of losing my home because of financial straits, I have seen my share of financial hard times while simultaneously caring for a dog. When I was in graduate school in West Virginia in the early '80s and I had my first dog, Koro, I only made $3,400 a year as a teaching assistant. One day, I made the stupid mistake of letting Koro go off on an errand with a friend, who neglected to put her on the leash in time, and she got hit by a car, breaking her back. The pricetag on the surgery to repair her back was $500, which I certainly didn’t have. So what did I do? I signed up to teach a night class, and I got an advance on the pay, which was exactly $500. And Koro and I shared another 12 years together.

A couple of years later, when Koro and I lived in France and I was teaching English on a salary of $6,000 per year, I accidentally left my wallet in a store right after I got paid, and when I went back to retrieve it, it was gone. Fortunately, I had already paid my rent for the month, but I had to feed myself and my dog for the whole month with no money! So, I went scrounging for leftover freebies at the local outdoor marketplace, and I took bushels of food home―plenty to eat for the entire month.

My point is this: Where there's a will, there's a way. If you don't really want to give up your dog, you don't have to. You just have to focus on solving the problem. Sometimes you have to get a little creative. I did some brainstorming with my coworkers, and we came up with a partial list of things that you can do (in no particular order) in order to keep your dog with you in the event of foreclosure:

Eight Ways to Avoid Abandoning Your Dog Even If You Lose Your Home

1. Ask your friends, relatives, and coworkers for help. Don't be shy. They will be honored and touched by your plea.
2. Ask for help at all your local animal shelters. Many of them have programs in place to help people with animals through hard times.
3. Sell your stuff. Use eBay or hold a garage sale or put up posters or just go by word of mouth, but sell as many expensive items as possible. What's more important―your dog or your stuff?
4. Ask your boss for a raise. You've still got your job, so see if your employer can help you. Be honest. Bosses have hearts too.
5. Do an exhaustive search to see if there's any affordable housing available that accepts animals. Go online, call up realtors, ask your coworkers―leave no stone unturned.
6. Check out long-term hotel prices. Many hotels accept animals, and many offer discounted rates for long-term stays.
7. Take your plight to your local media. If you can get on TV or in the paper with pictures of your animals, someone is definitely going to come forward to help you―you can count on it. Humans are generous and empathetic by nature (at least the ones who haven't been psychologically damaged).
8. If all else fails, you can live temporarily in your car. While not ideal, it's only temporary, and many people have done it. If your goal is to keep your dog, it will be well worth it.

Our dogs depend on us. They give us undying loyalty, boundless affection, and unconditional love. How about if we return the favor?

Seamus: "Uncle! Please can we rest for a minute?"

The following is a guest post by my energetic friend and coworker Alex.

So here I am in the City of Angels, and as far as I'm concerned, they mean the City of Furry Angels. I didn't know Los Angelinos were so dog-crazy! Everywhere I go, I'm seeing humans with their dogs, and more often than not I'm seeing sweet, beautiful, rescued mixed-breeds (a sign that these folks really love dogs).

It's a bit of a problem because I've been trying to go to meetings or have a good run or take a walk in order to recuperate from one of my many vegan restaurant overdoses and I keep getting sidetracked by furry sweetness. Little dogs, medium dogs, hyper dogs, slow dogs, shy dogs, gentle giants … they're all asking me to come pet and admire them. It does sometimes seem like I'm the only one who can hear their voices beckoning to me, and the dog people do sometimes look a bit startled as I descend on their dogs with my affectionate gushing, but this is LA, so I pretty much fit right in.

One sad and unexpected thing, though: Many of these folks don't realize it, but they are abusing the dogs they love so much!

This morning, I went out for a quiet, peaceful run, and I found myself surrounded by other runners. Many of the runners had their dogs with them. Now, I don't want to complain about taking dogs for a run. In fact, I encourage people to take their dogs running. So I was not happy to turn into Miss Negativity, giving good dog people a hard time.

But the problem was that they were overdoing it. It may be January, but this is LA, and it was at least 65 degrees with the sun beating down. Many of the runners were moving along at a brisk pace and dragging their poor dogs behind. I saw one guy with marathon-runner thighs (and pace) running with a Chihuahua! How do you think those short little legs were doing, keeping up with Mr. Strong and Speedy? It was so upsetting to see that sweet little dog running as fast as she could, way back at the end of her leash, eyes wide with fear and exhaustion.

What could I do? I had to stop him. I complimented him on his great pace, I complimented his cute little dog, and then I very politely said that I thought he was running his dog too hard and too fast. Perhaps he should just take Fifi on the warm-up run or the cool-down walk and leave her safe at home during the heavy-duty run. He looked at her, and sure enough, she was actually lying down on her side panting like crazy. He got it! I was so nervous (especially because―let’s face it―if he had wanted to chase me down and beat me up for messin' in his business, I wouldn't have gotten very far).

Phew.

This happened three more times. One woman "got it" and thanked me for pointing out that her old husky was really struggling. Two others, a couple of guys running together with big old labs whose tongues were practically on the ground from heat exhaustion ... they didn’t like me so much. I can only hope that maybe they had to act tough to save their self-image in front of me but that in the future they'll think twice before taking their dogs on such a long run.

It IS great to run with dogs. But please, make sure that your dog is young and healthy and trained, just like you! A dog can't run 10 miles on the first run, either. Don’t take Fido on hot days, unless you're going in the evening or morning or there's a body of water for him to jump into. Don’t take Fluffy if she has a thick husky coat and it's sunny out. Shave her down and/or skip the mid-day runs.

If your dog is old and/or tiny, please―think twice! I've had dogs who could run miles with me without missing a beat, but I've had others who joined me for the initial warm-up run, for long leisurely walks, or for the cool-down walk after running while staying home, safe and cool and resting, during the more challenging runs and hikes.

Humans tend to treat dogs as if they're invincible. They're not. They're just like us: They can get tired, overheated, sore, injured, and even seriously ill from excessive exercise. They love us so much that they'll do whatever we ask and keep running behind us even when their little hearts are about to give out, so it's up to us to watch them carefully and set safe limits.

Ellie (right): "Don't tase me, bro!"

A few days ago, I was lying in bed and little foster Chihuahua Theresa jumped up on the bed to join me for the night. As I reached out my hand to her and she went to sniff my fingertip, she got zapped with static electricity! The next thing I knew, she was huddled on the couch in the living room, shivering, and she has not been back up on the bed since―at all. If I pick her up and sit with her on the bed, petting her and cooing at her, she shakes like a leaf. I find this extremely sad, but not nearly as sad as this recent article in the St. Paul Pioneer Press about people who deliberately shock their dogs with invisible (read: electric-shock) fencing.

Like crates and citronella collars and other abusive dog-training paraphernalia, invisible fencing is becoming more and more popular. Once again, it's the "I want to have my cake and eat it too" mentality, and the dog pays for it. Some people live in neighborhoods that don't allow conventional fencing, while others are just vain about their property and don't think a fence will look nice. Either way, they're willing to let their own dog get zapped in the neck with electricity just so that they can have their nice yard or their nice house. Why do people feel so entitled to "have it all," especially when it's at the expense of an innocent animal? Well, I say, if you have a dog, don't move into a house that doesn't allow normal fencing, and if you live in a house that doesn't allow fencing, don't get a dog. It's as simple as that.

So what are the problems with this system? First of all, using fear and pain to train your dog is just plain mean. OK, that's the bottom line. But in addition to that, the technique can backfire. What if a small child is walking by at the moment that the dog experiences that first scary jolt? Bingo! "That child did it to me, therefore I'll be wary of children (or mail carriers or men or teenagers on bikes or whoever was passing by at that moment) forevermore, and I'll run away from them or maybe I'll even try to bite them!" A significant pain coming out of the blue can be very traumatic. Look at poor little Theresa―she has totally renounced the physical and psychological comfort of sleeping with her pack leader and one of her cohorts all because of one shock to the nose. Don't ever let anyone tell you, "It's no big deal" or "It's just a little tickle." It's serious.

According to Pamela Dennison of Positive Motivation Dog Training, LLC , if you impose this system on Fido, "[y]our dog may start to become neurotic about weird things or become timid, fearful or aggressive. He may start to become aggressive toward the other dogs you have. He may now be fearful about leaving the property at all―even in 'safe' areas. He may also become fearful of new places―especially if you use one of the 'dummy' collars and leave it on all of the time. Think about it: He has a real or dummy collar on and you take him to a new location―maybe even a training class. He is now freaked because he doesn't know where the boundaries are and is terrified of being shocked. He moves around slowly and cautiously because he doesn’t know where the 'safe' places are." Horrible! Electric fences seem to be designed to make dogs neurotic.

But there's more, much more: Dogs have intense prey drives, and many of them will take the jolt just to get out of the yard and chase a squirrel or a cat. But once the chase is over, will Fido be willing to take another hit just to get back in? I don't think so. Who would want to get back into a yard where painful things happen? But let's say that Fido has learned to stay put within the invisible fence. He's the only one respecting that boundary. Other neighborhood dogs could charge right in and pick a fight with him, and he would have nowhere to turn. A dog thief could come by and easily whisk him away. Or a child or a cat might wander into the yard and get mauled by a dog who, by now, has developed displaced aggression from all that pain.

And what of passersby who see a large, scary dog hurtling toward them? How terrifying is that? Some people might even take harsh defensive measures in order to ward off the perceived attack. A police officer, for example, might shoot the dog. It wouldn't be the first time.

Another inhumane aspect of invisible fencing that most people never even think of is the discomfort experienced by dogs who are forced to wear a snug collar with two prongs poking inward at their necks! Even without the electric jolt, that has got to be a huge, constant irritation. I've complained about this before in connection with shock collars. What is wrong with these people that they can't empathize with their own dogs?

But the worst aspect of all is that these electric-shock fencing systems often malfunction, causing the dog to get shocked randomly and severely or even seriously burned. In the St. Paul Pioneer Press article mentioned above, a dog got shocked because he walked too near the air-conditioning unit. Other appliances can trigger shocks as well, and so can rain. Poor maintenance or even simple wear and tear can also cause a malfunction. Who would risk inflicting such a frightening, painful experience on their own dog? Probably mostly people who are uninformed. So spread the word about these devious devices―please! I would love to see them banned altogether.

"Excuse me! Did you call me 'it'?! I'm a she, thank you very much, and my name is Emma. Ms. Emma to you!"

Long ago, in my previous life, I was a linguist and one of my areas of interest was sexism in the English language. Of course, all the "male chauvinists" pooh-poohed this as a non-problem, but I knew they were wrong. In my research, I had found studies showing that women had worse recall of texts that were couched in "masculine generic" language, such as using "he" and "man" to mean both men and women, but they had much better recall of texts that used "gender-inclusive" language, such as "humankind," "people," "he or she," and "they." And even when "man" was intended to include women, it often didn't. I looked at books with the supposedly generic "man" in the title, such as How Man Began, or something like that—and there really were very few women in the books at all, except in chapters on reproduction.

So language can actually influence the way we think, and that is very significant. That's why they say, "The pen is mightier than the sword."

Of course, since coming to PETA, my focus has shifted more toward avoiding the use of inanimate pronouns ("it" and "which") for animals so as not to promote a lack of respect for them. Animals are living, breathing, locomoting beings with intense feelings, just like us, so why should we refer to them in the same way that we refer to a table or a cup? Not only is it disrespectful and inaccurate, it also gives tacit permission to treat that animal in a less humane manner. In other words, if you call both a dog and a punching bag "it," they might be equally likely to get hit. That may seem like an extreme example, but is it really? Dogs and other animals are being beaten, starved, kicked, mutilated, and otherwise abused all across our country every single day. Could language be at least partly to blame? I can't prove it, but I think it does play a role.

So in my book, all dogs are "he," "she," "he or she," "they," "Fido," "Fluffy," etc.—never "it."

In a related language issue, at PETA we usually avoid the term "pet" for dogs and other animals. Is that nitpicking? I don't think so. To me, "pet" conjures up the image of an animal who is really nice and pretty but nevertheless expendable, that is, not essential to the family. Just someone to play with and caress and look at but not someone to go to bat for if inconvenient circumstances were to arise. So we give dogs a label that expresses something more substantial: "companion animal." Better yet: "animal companion." "Animal companion" is better because it refers to a companion who just happens to be an animal, whereas "companion animal" refers to an animal whose purpose is to be a companion to humans, which could be construed as the animal's use. And we don't care whether dogs are useful or not—they have an innate worth apart from their usefulness.

One final note: Dogs are the most loving, forgiving, beautiful creatures on the planet. So please don't call someone a "dog" unless you mean it as a compliment!