The Replacement Dog: how a veterinarian / dog rescuer / geneticist searched for the right puppy

The death of my fifteen year old golden retriever Jack wasn’t just about my loss. It was about finding someone else to do his job, which for the last five years had been serving as a security blanket for Jenny, my shy collie mix. Jenny depended on him to tell her when people did not intend to eat her, to run interference with well-meaning strangers, and to demonstrate calm at the veterinary clinic. We could not remain a single dog household for long.

Jack and Jenny

I adopted Jenny at age 13 months. She had never been off the farm where she was born until her surrender to a shelter, and the world proved much larger than she expected. Jenny has excellent dog skills but a crippling anxiety upon encountering new people or environments. I adopted her knowing about her idiosyncrasies because I wanted to study anxiety in dogs, and wanted to experience it first hand. And so I have; living with Jenny has informed my understanding of anxiety in a way that reading about it never could have.

In my research, studying the way genetics and environment interact to affect the risk of anxiety has brought me back time and again to the importance of early environment: in utero environment, early maternal care, and puppy socialization. How the brain changes during and after the socialization period turns out to be a huge part of my research interests, and to learn from the source as I had done with Jenny, I would need a puppy, and a very young one at that. I’ve only adopted adult dogs in the past, but now is an excellent time for me to raise a puppy, as I work from home many days.

A puppy who would grow up to fit in well with Jenny had to fit a specific mold: confident around people and other dogs, but not so pushy as to annoy her. Someone she could play with. Someone male, because I didn’t want to deal with girl dog politics for the next ten years.

Jenny

Now, I have counseled others that adopting a very young mixed breed puppy from a shelter or rescue group means you really have no idea at all who you have just brought home, and that there is no shame in purchasing a dog from a responsible breeder. However, in practice, I balked at purchasing a dog. I completed an intense shelter medicine internship at the University of Florida several years ago, and I still feel part of that community. As the distance between the present day and that experience increases, I find myself holding tighter to those connections and looking for new ways to remain a part of sheltering. Purchasing a dog who was not going to be in want of a home felt a bit like eating humanely raised meat: I tell myself it’s okay for others to do it, but when I actually try to do it myself, some part of me rebels.

Yet as I looked at puppies from local rescue groups, in short order I found myself in a panic: could I really adopt a puppy whose genetics were completely unknown, whose parents I most likely couldn’t meet, and who had almost certainly had some early life trauma before ending up in foster care? Genetics and early experience are both critical in shaping the adult personality, and while I hope I could handle dealing with another shy dog, Jenny needed someone dependable, not another neurotic failing to keep it together when the mailman drove past.

When I started to seriously consider purchasing a dog, I had to decide on a breed. I love retriever-collie mixes: ideally the best of both worlds, retriever-social and collie-smart. But finding a responsible breeder of retriever-collie mixes seemed a tall order. Border collies are too intense for me. Australian shepherds have their tails docked so short. And I wanted to find a breed that is not recognized by the AKC, that is absolutely not bred for looks, that possibly even has open stud books to keep the genetics pool large and diverse.

I found the Scotch Collie and the English Shepherd. The Scotch Collie club had an open stud book policy going for it (good for them!). The English Shepherd club had a closed stud book policy (open it up, guys!) but it had been open relatively recently, the breed isn’t recognized by the AKC, and the dogs can’t be shown in conformation classes. The breed is a versatile working breed. Both breeds have lovely breed standards that accept a wide range of phenotypes (for example, 30-80 lbs in adult weight - a wide range!), which in itself tells the story of breeding for temperament and not looks.

In the end, I chose the English Shepherd based on the fact that there are more of them around, so it was easier to find a litter promptly. Waiting a few months would mean potty training a puppy in January in the Midwest, an experience I’ll leave to others.

The English Shepherd club maintained a list of breeders who had available puppies, with lots of information about the parents. It’s a well designed resource, and I link to it not to encourage others to run out and get an ES puppy (they are smart and high energy and not for everyone) but to provide an example of what kinds of information should be provided about available litters.

I screened the descriptions of parents: I discarded those who weighed more than 70 lbs, as managing Jack in his dotage had been hard on my back. I discarded those who were described as “protective” or “taking some time to warm up to people.” I checked that the parents had passed the relevant genetic tests (for this breed, tests for several eye diseases and hip dysplasia). Then I looked at the remaining breeders’ websites.

The breeders I liked talked about how they raised the puppies: giving them lots of positive experiences. They talked about what they did with the puppies’ parents - agility, nosework, herding. They often had long applications for potential owners to fill out, which asked all the questions they should: How will you exercise this dog? Do you have a fenced yard? What will you do if he is destructive?

I found a litter in Virginia with a male who sounded perfect: confident, social, and by the way athletic. My husband and I stuffed Jenny into the car and drove 9.5 hours to pick up our boy. He cost, by the way, probably more than twice what a rescue puppy would have cost, but I have paid for knowing that he is clear of some genetic diseases for which he might have been at risk, and for knowing that he was in the uterus of a calm, happy mother; raised with a litter who had plenty of high quality food and safe places; and had extensive early socialization (including the Early Neurological Stimulation and Early Scent Stimulation programs). He has proven, in his first week and a half with us, to be social and sweet, willing to settle down when asked so long as he is given plenty of exercise and mental stimulation, and terrifyingly smart. He and Jenny are already wrestling for hours daily, laying the foundation for what I trust will be a long friendship.

That is the story of how we found Dashiell.

Dashiell

The spectrum of hoarding

There was almost no furniture in the entire house. This was unusual for hoarder houses, which are usually packed full of stuff or just of trash. But she was a somewhat unusual hoarder, with only 26 cats and one dog. We stood in the living room and talked to her about her animals. We could see into the kitchen, which was swarming with cats, on the counters, poking out of empty cabinets, sleeping in the sink. The woman we were talking to told us how she loved them but how her son had called us in because he was concerned about them and about her.

While we talked, her dog urinated in the middle of the empty floor in front of us. She didn't notice. The room contained a couch and an entertainment center and absolutely nothing else: the entertainment center had a few knicknacks but was mostly empty. On it sat the box of flea preventative that our team had given her months ago. It was unopened.

And everywhere was the smell of urine. I could barely stand to be in the room, but I could do so without a mask, which made it one of the cleaner hoarder homes. All I could think of was getting outside and getting a breath of air that was not thick with ammonia, so thick that my eyes watered and I could not fill my lungs. But this woman lived here. She could no longer smell it. She no longer noticed or cared when her dog urinated in the middle of the floor. And I remembered another time I had smelled this smell: at a cat shelter in another part of the country.

That was in rural New England. The two women running the place called it a shelter, but I knew it was really a hoarding house. They did not know how many cats they had. They would find cats unexpectedly dead, because no one had noticed for days or weeks when they were sick. And everywhere the smell. Not as bad as in the hoarder house in the big city, but bad enough to scare away adopters. Yes, they opened their doors to adopters. They advertised their cats for adoption. But adopters who brought these cats home risked bringing a sick animal into their lives, or contracting ringworm from their new pet, a story I heard unfold at least once from this shelter. The women running the shelter grilled every potential adopter and turned many away for not being good enough for their cats. And they continued taking in more cats — if they turned them away, they said, what would happen to them? But could another fate have been worse than dying trapped in that place, where adopters did not want to come, and were turned away when they did? Was this place a shelter or a hoarding house or some weird combination of the two?

But the combination isn’t weird. It happens all the time. I saw it again at a shelter in the deep South. This shelter proclaimed that they would kill no animals, and they did not, even the dogs who had been there for seven or eight years, that had gone insane and were unadoptable. These dogs were loving with the shelter staff, but when I came within a dozen yards of their enclosures they would erupt in terrifying, violent barking. I had no doubt that if I entered their enclosures I would be badly bitten. One dog was not aggressive, but hardly seemed to see the rest of the world any longer: he spun in circles around his enclosure, up on the roof of his dog house, down on the ground again, paws hitting exactly the same point every time. Over and over and over.

And the dogs who were not yet insane were not moving out fast enough. I could see their fates. This shelter was so overwhelmed with the number of dogs they were managing that they did not have the energy to keep these dogs mentally healthy, or to do the extra legwork it takes to adopt out a large dog in an area like the South which is so overpopulated with them. These dogs needed transfers to different shelters, they needed adoption events, they needed foster care to get a break from the shelter. They got none of those things. And as soon as a cage opened, it was filled with a new dog. This shelter actually transferred dogs in from outside their community. If they had not done so, they told us, what would have happened to those dogs? Where else could they have gone?

When I started to look, I started to see it everywhere. How many shelters provided enough space for their cats? Even the shelters that have big condo-style cages for cats in their adoption areas, with enough space to move around and a separate area for the litter box, even these shelters still have cats in tiny three by three foot cages in the back, in the sick rooms, in the intake and holding rooms: not enough room for a cat to stretch out, not enough room to get away from the litter box to eat. Even these shelters tell me of course they can’t use that antibiotic, because it must be given twice a day, and they don’t have time to visit so many sick animals twice a day, so they must use the one that doesn’t work as well but can be given less often. Even these shelters say, Of course we would love to have dog play groups, but we don’t have enough trained staff to manage them.

So what is sheltering and what is hoarding? A good shelter provides a needed service: a brief place for an animal to stop on its road to a new home, some medical care, some help finding that home. Keeping that stay brief is the hard part. It is, in fact, a very hard part, balancing keeping the animal healthy (it’s hard and potentially unethical to adopt out a sick pet), finding the right adopter (for that pit bull type dog that looks like row upon row of others in your shelter, for that orange cat that doesn’t come to the front of his cage to meet adopters), keeping them mentally healthy while you’re at it (play groups, training, just plain time out of the cage and time with humans).

And keeping large animals like dogs takes space. In fact, keeping a small animal like a cat takes space, much more space than we as a sheltering community realized until recently. Sheltering can so easily start to slip down the spectrum. It is a spectrum! Many shelters, real shelters, shelters that have legal non-profit status with the government, shelters that don’t smell like urine and have lots of volunteers and get grants and have spay-neuter services, yes these shelters too can fail to provide minimally acceptable care for their animals. Simply because they have too many.

What’s the answer? In one sense, it is simple. Call in someone from the outside, who can see your facility with unbiased eyes. Someone who doesn’t have to answer all the calls for pets that need homes. Someone who can look at the pets that you have and tell you how you are keeping them. This person must know how to assess humane capacity, so it can’t be just any animal lover. They should be able to look at your facility, know how much space is appropriate for animals of different sizes, and calculate how much space you have for each animal. Then they must look at your staffing, and calculate how much staff time you have for each animal. Not just to feed and clean them, but to spend time with them. To notice when they are sick: to look at them every day, carefully, and think about what they need and how to get it to them. To not be running ragged putting out fires, but to be able to plan adoption events, and to notice that dog that’s been here for months and needs special work to get out.

When this person tells you how many animals you can care for humanely, not just how many you can fit in your facility, you will be shocked. You will deny it. You will say that’s half what you can handle. You will point to your records: you’ve had many more than that for years! But they will insist: yes, you’ve had more. But you haven’t had them humanely. You have had a toe on the road to the hoarder end of the spectrum.

So in another sense, it is not at all simple. Because embracing humane capacity means accepting that you have not done as well in the past for your animals as you could. It means not beating yourself up over this, not feeling guilty, not indulging in denial. It means moving forward: it means promising yourself and the animals in your care that you will do better in the future.

And even harder, it means saying no. No to the animals that need a place. No to the people who just can’t find a home for their pit bull type dog but have to move, and the new place does not take animals. No to the mom whose dog bit her child but is such a loving dog with adults. No to the stray cat who is so sweet. Surely you can find homes for these animals? If you don’t, who will?

But that is the central point: you can’t do it humanely, but you try anyway, you will add to the problem. Sheltering is where it is because shelters try to do too much, and if a shelter’s doors are open, animals will pass through them. Shelters which have put waiting lists into place have found that many people do manage to find homes for their animals, if they have to keep trying. Some don’t, and they wait until a place opens. Will these people abandon their animals on the street? Will they take them to a quiet spot and shoot them between the eyes? Very, very rarely does this happen: when it does, it is big news. But you know what? Doing that is illegal. And that is where we need to prevent it: with laws, and enforcement of them. Not by saying, Okay, I will take over your responsibility for you.

That is what we as a society must embrace: responsibility. Not taking in animals that we can’t care for appropriately. And not accepting someone else’s responsibility. Being strong, and doing only what we can, and no more. Because by doing more, we actually do less.

The cat in the tree

The skinny little tree was only about 30 feet tall and growing in the middle of a swamp. Recent flooding had surrounded it with water several feet deep. And yet somehow an orange cat had managed to climb it. He was perched precariously: when I first saw him, he was jammed into the fork of two branches, and his every movement made the little tree bend. I was riding with an animal rescue service, and we had been called out to get the cat out of the tree. It was supposed to be a simple job of using climbing gear to get up the tree; the rescue driver was trained to do jobs like this. But this tree was never going to bear her weight. It could barely hold the cat. Even getting to the tree was going to involve wading through waist-deep water in the chilly November weather.

The cat was glad to see us. He made eye contact and meowed, clearly asking for help. But it was not immediately clear how to help him. We talked about our options, and eventually decided that we were going to have to call back to the shelter for assistance. The rescue driver called her boss, but initially failed to convince him that she couldn’t just climb the tree. She eventually had to photograph the situation on her phone and send him that as proof that the tree couldn’t support a ladder, and that trying would just knock the cat off so that he would fall 30 feet into the cold water.

As we watched and talked about what to do, took photos and made phone calls, the cat eventually stopped talking to us. I think he gave up on us. A few minutes later, he decided to change positions. I think his legs were getting tired of holding him up. After all, we had no idea how long he had been up there; a good samaritan had phoned about him about an hour previously, but the road we were standing on was small and rarely used, so he could have been there unnoticed for hours. I also think he was trying to assess his situation, see if he could take matters into his own hands and find his own way down, since we were clearly useless.

As he moved around on the little tree, it bent terrifyingly. Unable to help ourselves, the rescue driver and I yelled “No, stay still!” up at the cat. This had about as much effect as you’d expect. But he managed not to fall. Over the next thirty minutes, waiting for help to arrive, we watched as he periodically moved around and tried to find a way down. We became worried enough about him that the driver put on her dry-suit and made her way down to the water so that she could fish him out if he fell.

Finally, as the light was failing, our help arrived, in the form of the driver’s boss who had driven down from Boston. Now things started to move quickly. As the cat watched with trepidation, the driver got into the water (in her dry-suit) with a big net; I hovered with another big net; and the driver’s boss attached ropes to the little tree. He pulled, and the tree bent towards the roadway where we stood. The cat braced himself, then, when he was only about ten feet off the ground, jumped. I swung with the net and missed. We watched as the cat ran at top speed away from us down the long road and disappeared into the night.