What my dogs teach me
If you have a fearful dog, you probably read all sorts of conflicting advice about what to do about that. Everybody’s got an opinion, and unfortunately some of them include very poor methods.
Continue reading “Helping a Fearful Dog Feel Safe”
If you have a small dog with little experience with food toys and who is not prone to chewing hard plastic, the new toy called the Foobler might be the very thing for him.
If you have a larger dog, a determined dog, one who thrives on chewing hard plastic, or most important, a dog who has a lot of experience with food toys, I have some cautions about the product.
That’s right. I’m recommending the Foobler for dogs who are new Continue reading “Fooled by the Foobler? A Review”
Many thanks to jarah’s mom for researching RMSF and answering my questions and generally getting me out of a confused state. Thanks also to Lori S. and Judith B. for their support and info, and to the many other helpful friends and well-wishers.
On November 6, 2014 my dear dog Clara got a blood work result that very strongly indicated that she had Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever, a serious, potentially fatal tick-borne disease that affects people, dogs and some other animals in North, Central, and South America. Clara had been showing symptoms for quite some time.
Clara is probably not in danger for her life at this point, and most people wouldn’t even be able to tell that she is sick. Although she is on a strong course of antibiotics, some effects of the infection remain. Time will tell whether she will recover completely. I’m sharing the story of her diagnosis in case it will help others. This disease can be difficult to diagnose, and a timely diagnosis can save a life in some cases.
In September 2014, I started to notice that Clara was getting increasingly stiff and weak in her hind end. This worsened, and by early November when she was finally diagnosed, she had also gotten prone to trembling, not only when she was cold or excited, but sometimes for no apparent reason, even while asleep.
Thinking back, for as long as several months before this, she had run and jumped less when playing with Zani and had less stamina for playing ball. I didn’t mention it in the post, but you can see in the video in “How My Dogs Play” that Clara typically waits in the corner while Zani runs around the yard (previously, she would have run after her every time). Clara also lies down a lot in the play session, which is very polite and self-handicapping of her, but also could have been because she was tired.
She also had a rash on her chest, abdomen and legs in October 2014, which may or may not have been connected.
I made the movie below to chronicle her symptoms, but held back for some time on publishing it. I wanted to be as sure as possible that her diagnosis was correct and that there wasn’t an additional problem or other reason for her symptoms.
The symptoms of tick-borne diseases vary greatly and also can be confused with many other diseases and conditions. (There are quite a few of these diseases, the most well known of which is probably Lyme disease. I included some links in the Resources section at the bottom of this post that list all the types, for humans and dogs.)
So before the blood work to test for tick-borne and parasitic diseases was done, the following tests were performed:
The lack of other diagnoses plus the low platelet count made tick-borne diseases the next most likely candidate for Clara’s symptoms. She was put on antibiotics and more blood was drawn so she could be tested for tick-borne and parasitic diseases.
The subsequent blood work returned a Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever titer of greater than or equal to 1:1024, the highest result possible at that lab. This high reading indicated that Clara had a large number of antibodies to the Rickettsia rickettsii bacteria and had been fighting the Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever infection for a while, probably weeks or months.
This movie is a bit hard to watch.
Link to the video for email subscribers.
The Rickettsia rickettsii bacteria are introduced into the dog or other animal from the bite of a tick that has been attached for 5-20 hours.[1]Comer, K. M. “Rocky Mountain spotted fever.” The Veterinary clinics of North America. Small animal practice 21.1 (1991): 27-44. (This is a very good reason to perform daily tick checks if your dog has been in areas where ticks are present.) The bacteria have been found to be transmitted by at least four tick species, but the most common are the American dog tick (what probably bit Clara) and the Rocky Mountain wood tick.
The bacteria are nasty. They immediately spread throughout the body via the blood and lymphatic systems and invade the cells of the endothelium, the cells in the lining of the blood and lymphatic vessels. They multiply there and move into the smooth muscle tissue. [2]Harrus, S., et al. “Rickettsiales.” Pathogenesis of Bacterial Infections in Animals, Third Edition (2004): 425-444. Since this is happening all over the body, the presenting symptoms can vary. Many different organs can be damaged or fail. The dog often bleeds from the nose or other locations. There are joint and muscle problems. There can be gangrene in the extremities as the tissue dies. Dogs can have inflammation of the eyes, shortness of breath if the lungs are affected, have seizures or other nervous system symptoms, or can die suddenly of a heart attack. The kidneys can fail.
It most often affects dogs under four years old (Clara is 3 1/2). The response can range from no apparent problems at all, where the dog is infected but remains asymptomatic and lives a normal life, to death in a matter of days.
One dog study reported a mortality rate of 4%[3]Comer, K. M. “Rocky Mountain spotted fever.” The Veterinary clinics of North America. Small animal practice 21.1 (1991): 27-44., but there doesn’t seem to be much information in general on that topic. The rate is probably higher. In studies where dogs were injected with large quantity of the bacteria (sorry to even mention this), mortality was 100% when the disease was untreated.[4]Keenan, K. P., et al. “Studies on the pathogenesis of Rickettsia rickettsii in the dog: clinical and clinicopathologic changes of experimental infection.” American journal of veterinary … Continue reading In humans, RMSF is fatal in 20-25% of untreated cases and for 5-10% of treated ones.[5]Bakken, Johan S., et al. “Diagnosis and management of tickborne rickettsial diseases: Rocky Mountain spotted fever, ehrlichioses, and anaplasmosis—United States.” MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly … Continue reading
Clara is now on her second three-week round of Doxycycline, which luckily does not appear to upset her stomach. She obviously felt better in a metabolic sense after two days on the antibiotic; she was perkier and had more energy, and has stayed that way. But the stiffness has been much slower to change. I’ve been keeping a video record and I think she is finally improving, though. I have to remind myself that progress won’t necessarily be linear.
I feel a little weird for publishing this movie and blog, like I’m exaggerating the seriousness of Clara’s illness. But I’m not. Although the trembling has lessened, she still has periods of weakness and/or stiffness and is clearly fatigued after she exerts herself. I’m still trying to get my head around it all. I go from thinking she will be tragically affected for the rest of her life, to thinking there isn’t much to it and I’m overreacting. There’s still a flavor of “this can’t be happening…” But I’m also counting our blessings.
I’m almost afraid to ask for others’ experiences, because I’m sure there are some sad ones out there. But I think education about RMSF and the other tick-borne diseases is valuable and important. So please share if you are willing.
Kate and BooBoo’s Story: Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever? But We Live in NJ!
Lists of tick-borne diseases.
Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever in Humans
Rocky Mountain Spotted Fever in Dogs
Tick Safety
© Eileen Anderson 2014
Notes
| ↑1 | Comer, K. M. “Rocky Mountain spotted fever.” The Veterinary clinics of North America. Small animal practice 21.1 (1991): 27-44. |
|---|---|
| ↑2 | Harrus, S., et al. “Rickettsiales.” Pathogenesis of Bacterial Infections in Animals, Third Edition (2004): 425-444. |
| ↑3 | Comer, K. M. “Rocky Mountain spotted fever.” The Veterinary clinics of North America. Small animal practice 21.1 (1991): 27-44. |
| ↑4 | Keenan, K. P., et al. “Studies on the pathogenesis of Rickettsia rickettsii in the dog: clinical and clinicopathologic changes of experimental infection.” American journal of veterinary research 38.6 (1977): 851-856. |
| ↑5 | Bakken, Johan S., et al. “Diagnosis and management of tickborne rickettsial diseases: Rocky Mountain spotted fever, ehrlichioses, and anaplasmosis—United States.” MMWR Morb Mortal Wkly Rep 55 (2006): 1. |
| ↑6 | Paddock, Christopher D., et al. “Short report: concurrent Rocky Mountain spotted fever in a dog and its owner.” The American journal of tropical medicine and hygiene 66.2 (2002): 197-199. |
| ↑7 | Elchos, Brigid N., and Jerome Goddard. “Implications of presumptive fatal Rocky Mountain spotted fever in two dogs and their owner.” Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association 223.10 (2003): 1450-1452. |
Why do some dogs scratch with their paws after they eliminate?
I recently read a discussion on Facebook about the meaning of this dog behavior. Some people’s speculations about the reasons for the behavior included:
Note that all but the last three of these have to do with an emotion or internal state.
I was interested in particular in the conjecture that the behavior was linked to some kind of stress. My dog Summer is a “scratcher” and she does it with what I observe to be exuberance and satisfaction. (You’ll see in the movie.) Interestingly, she doesn’t scratch only after eliminating. She will also scratch where there were scents of another dog’s elimination. Summer also lifts her leg to mark with urine. More on that later.
Dirt scratching or scraping has been studied by ethologists. These are mostly observational studies, where numbers of canids were observed performing various elimination, sniffing, and marking behaviors. The behaviors are counted and the surrounding circumstances recorded. Dr. Marc Bekoff points out that it hasn’t been studied all that much in dogs though, compared to the study of other animals.[1]Bekoff, Marc. “The Significance of Ethological Studies: Playing and Peeing.”Domestic Dog Cognition and Behavior. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2014. 59-75. He and others are gradually filling in the blanks, however.
Here are some of the functions for ground scratching that ethologists have proposed:
Note that none of these hypotheses is linked to an emotion, although one source did note that ground scratching was seen more often “when the individual was aggressively aroused.”[18]Petak, Irena. “Patterns of carnivores’ communication and potential significance for domestic dogs.” Periodicum biologorum 112.2 (2010): 127-132. The main discussion revolves around function, and even then, the conclusions are very circumspect. Dirt scratching may be communication to other dogs, but speculations by ethologists about the content of that communication are still very conservative.
This is a valuable reminder to me that as much as we would love to, we can never know exactly what is going on in our dogs’ minds.
One of the hypotheses for the function of the behavior is that glands on the dogs’ paws may give off a scent, and that scratching may deposit and disperse it. What are these glands? Most sources mention sweat glands.
“…paw pads in dogs are one of the few locations that contain eccrine sweat glands. In dogs, apocrine glands are the major type of sweat gland, and the distribution of eccrine sweat glands is limited to the footpads and nose.” [19]Miller, William Howard, et al. Muller and Kirk’s Small Animal Dermatology 7: Muller and Kirk’s Small Animal Dermatology. Elsevier Health Sciences, 2013.
However, there are other glands that may be involved:
“…It has been suggested that the scratching action itself may leave scent in the environment produced by either interdigital glands, sweat glands on the foot pads, or sebaceous glands in the fur between the toes.” [20]Serpell, James, ed. The domestic dog: its evolution, behaviour and interactions with people. Cambridge University Press, 1995.
Since I first published this post, there has been a study of “pedal scent,” scent from the paw glands, in dogs. The researchers found that “dogs recognize scent taken from the pedal glands from other dogs, although the extent to which they use this information to determine the sex of the scent depositor remains unclear.”[21]McClanahan, K., & Rosell, F. (2020). Conspecific recognition of pedal scent in domestic dogs. Scientific Reports, 10(1), 1-9. They found some differences in how male and female dogs sniff—different right and left nostril preference in females. I think I see Summer switching nostrils when sniffing poop in the movie below at about 1:35.
Two studies by Marc Bekoff showed that approximately the same percentages of male and female dogs performed ground scratching (about 10%), but also that the males who ground scratched did so much more frequently than the females. [22]Bekoff, Marc. “Ground scratching by male domestic dogs: a composite signal.”Journal of Mammalogy (1979): 847-848. [23]Bekoff, Marc. “Scent marking by free-ranging domestic dogs: Olfactory and visual components.” Biology of Behavior, 4, 123-139. Another study showed that among females, those who were spayed were more likely to scratch than those who were intact and not in estrous. (Females in estrous were not included in the study.) [24]Wirant, Sharon Cudd, and Betty McGuire. “Urinary behavior of female domestic dogs (Canis familiaris): influence of reproductive status, location, and age.” Applied Animal Behaviour … Continue reading
The same study also found that females four or more years old directed the majority of their urinations at objects in the environment (marked) and directed more of their urinations when walked off their home area than when walked within their home area. Both of these are true for Summer.
Raised leg urination such as many male dogs perform has also been theorized to have the function of visual display, since it is sometimes performed without urination.[25]Bekoff, Marc. “Ground scratching by male domestic dogs: a composite signal.”Journal of Mammalogy (1979): 847-848.[26]Cafazzo, Simona, Eugenia Natoli, and Paola Valsecchi. “Scent‐Marking Behaviour in a Pack of Free‐Ranging Domestic Dogs.” Ethology 118.10 (2012): 955-966. Male dogs have also been observed to raise their legs more frequently to urinate when in the presence of another dog.[27]Bekoff, Marc. “The Significance of Ethological Studies: Playing and Peeing.”Domestic Dog Cognition and Behavior. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2014. 59-75. Some female dogs raise their legs as well, including Summer.
The movie shows Summer enthusiastically scratching the ground in several different situations:
If Summer’s behavior is functional, and not some kind of twisted evolutionary leftover, it may support the “dispersing odor from the paws” hypothesis. See what you think.
Link to the movie about ground scratching for email subscribers.
I’m not an ethologist; I’m a pet owner. So while I’m fascinated with the possible function of the behavior of scratching, I’m also interested in my dog’s emotional state when she does it. My observation is that she is enjoying performing a natural doggie activity. The prompts for her behavior seem to be scents, nothing more complex than that.
Summer is a primal sort of dog. Her breeding is so mixed that she resembles a village dog in all but her double coat (she could fit in well as a “northern” village dog, though). She has a strong prey drive and scavenger drive. And although our bond is strong and she loves doing things with me, her natural inclinations are very, very dog-y. In many ways she is more “wild” than my feral-born dog, Clara, who appears to have a wealth of “I like to partner with a human” genes. Go figure.
Clara has never scratched in her life, as far as I’ve seen, but she does lift her leg to mark when she pees. But Summer seems to love scratching the dirt. You could say she gets a real kick out of it.
How about your dogs? Males, females? When do they do it? What is their demeanor when doing so? Do tell!
© Eileen Anderson 2014
Notes
| ↑1, ↑27 | Bekoff, Marc. “The Significance of Ethological Studies: Playing and Peeing.”Domestic Dog Cognition and Behavior. Springer Berlin Heidelberg, 2014. 59-75. |
|---|---|
| ↑2, ↑6 | Peters, R.P., Mech, D., 1975. “Scent-marking in wolves.” Am. Sci. 63, 628–637. |
| ↑3, ↑7, ↑13, ↑16, ↑25 | Bekoff, Marc. “Ground scratching by male domestic dogs: a composite signal.”Journal of Mammalogy (1979): 847-848. |
| ↑4, ↑8 | Bekoff, M., Wells, M.C., 1986. “Social ecology and behavior of coyotes.” Adv. Stud. Behav. 16, 251–338. |
| ↑5, ↑9, ↑17 | Sprague, Randall H., and Joseph J. Anisko. “Elimination patterns in the laboratory beagle.” Behaviour (1973): 257-267. |
| ↑10, ↑14, ↑18 | Petak, Irena. “Patterns of carnivores’ communication and potential significance for domestic dogs.” Periodicum biologorum 112.2 (2010): 127-132. |
| ↑11, ↑21 | McClanahan, K., & Rosell, F. (2020). Conspecific recognition of pedal scent in domestic dogs. Scientific Reports, 10(1), 1-9. |
| ↑12, ↑15 | Kleiman, D., Eisenberg, J.F., 1973. “Comparisons of canid and felid social systems from an evolutionary perspective.” Anim. Behav. 21, 637–659. |
| ↑19 | Miller, William Howard, et al. Muller and Kirk’s Small Animal Dermatology 7: Muller and Kirk’s Small Animal Dermatology. Elsevier Health Sciences, 2013. |
| ↑20 | Serpell, James, ed. The domestic dog: its evolution, behaviour and interactions with people. Cambridge University Press, 1995. |
| ↑22 | Bekoff, Marc. “Ground scratching by male domestic dogs: a composite signal.”Journal of Mammalogy (1979): 847-848. |
| ↑23 | Bekoff, Marc. “Scent marking by free-ranging domestic dogs: Olfactory and visual components.” Biology of Behavior, 4, 123-139. |
| ↑24 | Wirant, Sharon Cudd, and Betty McGuire. “Urinary behavior of female domestic dogs (Canis familiaris): influence of reproductive status, location, and age.” Applied Animal Behaviour Science 85.3 (2004): 335-348. |
| ↑26 | Cafazzo, Simona, Eugenia Natoli, and Paola Valsecchi. “Scent‐Marking Behaviour in a Pack of Free‐Ranging Domestic Dogs.” Ethology 118.10 (2012): 955-966. |