• No one flies their pet via air cargo or in a baggage hold for a vacation. The need to transport a pet for a move is another matter entirely
• Some airlines are far better than others for transporting pets. Continental’s Pet Cargo service gets very high marks.
• For the most part, problems occur on the ground, not in pressurized and temperature-controlled hold areas (although pets sometimes end up in areas that are not temperature/pressure controlled by accident)

PetRelocation.com explained the third point as follows:

The issue is that many of these airlines that have temperature restrictions are not set up to keep pets in climate control when they are being transferred on and off the planes. This requires air conditioned/heated vans and climate-controlled holding facilities at origin and destination (pets typically have to be checked in at least 90 minutes prior to their flight and sometimes up to 4 hours prior to international flights).
That’s what makes the real difference between a “pet friendly airline” and one that is not. Airlines like Continental, Lufthansa and KLM all have specialized vehicles for transporting pets to and from the planes, as well as climate controlled areas where the pets are kept while waiting to be loaded on their flights.

Love Sponge Chloe, BlogPaws Bound

Getting ready for the BlogPaws West conference involves finishing up a bunch of assignments that are not — shockingly enough — dog related. And I’m not going to be taking Frankie along to Denver because he’s not exactly a road warrior and the idea of dealing with needles and insulin and a carrier… well, I break into a cold sweat even thinking about it.

But one of the great things about BlogPaws is that it’s all about the pets — and that includes actual as well as virtual ones. I’m already excited at the prospect of getting reacquainted with Chloe, the love sponge Cavalier King Charles Spaniel who owns DogJaunt.com‘s Mary-Alice Pomputius. I’m also hoping to meet Ty and Buster, the pups of PetFriendly.com; I saw their Winnebago home at the Columbus, Ohio, BlogPaws, but the boys didn’t put in an appearance. Prima dons, perhaps?

I know there were cats there, but I didn’t encounter any. I did meet a charming ferret and a very soothing  — he purred encouragingly at me before my talk! — guinea pig.

Instead of working, I’ve been fantasizing about the furry creatures I’m going to encounter this time.

So tell me: Which bloggers are bringing their pets to BlogPaws this time? I want to read all about you  in advance, so I can recognize and be properly deferential to the Furred Ones. Please post links to your sites below.

Winnie, the wonder dog decoy

Frankie and I haven’t done much Behavior Adjustment Training (BAT) with Crystal Saling and her wonder dog decoy, Winnie, lately because it’s either been raining — which means scary thunder and lightning — or too hot to spend much time outside. But we managed a get together this past Sunday and saw quite a bit of progress.

That would be in me as well as in Frankie.

Let me backtrack. Frankie gets a tad upset when there’s a strange person or dog in “his” yard; he barks his little head off and has been known to chase the offender around the property. So Crystal and Winnie have been doing set ups (see the first in the series of BAT posts by Irith Bloom of the Sophisticated Dog for an explanation) with Frankie and me. Winnie has been waiting in a corner of my yard with Crystal as Frankie and I move progressively closer to them — but then back off as soon as Frankie expresses discomfort.

After about 20 minutes of the latest encounter, Crystal declared “Mission Accomplished,” and suggested we move on to a larger decoy, her dog Penny.

Really? I’d assumed Winnie and Frankie needed to be BFF before our goal was achieved.

According to Crystal, the training was a success because:

• Frankie was able to be within 3 feet of Winnie.

• He gave calming signals the entire time: head turns, ground sniffs, blinking eyes, paw raises, and yawns (see this post for an explanation of calming signals)

• He gave no distance-increasing signals: barking, lip curling, growling, freezing, whale eye, hard eye etc

• His body was relatively loose

• He was able to parallel walk with Winnie, and continued to give calming signals during the walks

When I asked why she thought that was good enough to move on to another decoy, Crystal said:

Getting him any closer is just not necessary.  It is not our goal to make Frankie like other dogs; we want to teach him an alternate strategy to feeling like he has some control over his environment.  So, instead of barking at dogs in the yard to go away, he gives them calming signals.  This in turn has an effect on the other dogs, who return calming signals back to Frankie, communicating they want a peaceful, low arousal interaction. Frankie will therefore feel safer around them.

It is not necessary for Frankie to want to interact with the dogs beyond those calming signals. It’s just not who he is at this point in his life and I have no intention of changing him!

Thank you, Crystal, for reminding me I love him just the way he is — but want to make the world a better place for him.

This week, as I was booking my seat assignment for BlogPaws West, I started wondering about pets that travel as baggage. Frontier Airlines, my carrier to Denver, writes of its pet policy:

Your pet will be handled with great care and will be treated as one of the family. For their safety, pets must travel in an approved travel container as follows:We charge a fee of $150 each direction per kennel, so please make sure to give yourself extra time for checking in. You’ll need to pay this fee at the ticket counter when you check in.

Wow. It’s only $75 each way for a pet in the cabin. Also:

Your pet must be harmless, inoffensive, odorless and require no attention during transit.

What’s with this harmless, inoffensive, and odorless business again — not to mention the “no attention” requirement? Why are pets being held to higher standards than, well,  human family members (no offense, Tilda, Rebecca, and Shari).

But I digress.

I initially assumed the baggage and cargo holds were not pressurized and temperature controlled, making transporting your pets foolhardy (in my mind), but learned from PetTravel.com that this was not the case:

If you cannot accompany your pet, or they are too large to fly in the cabin, dogs and cats typically are transported as cargo or as checked baggage…You may only transport your pet as checked baggage if you are a passenger traveling on the same flight as your pet and the combined weight of your pet and its crate is under about 70 pounds. (This weight varies by airline.) If flying cargo, your pet may travel unaccompanied, either through the regular cargo channels or through an especially expedited delivery service that several airlines have developed….Pets traveling as cargo are transported in the same pressurized holds as those in the checked baggage system and this area is temperature and pressure regulated similar to the cabin.

I also learned that most problems with flying pets occur on the ground because of flight delays. Back to the Frontier Airlines site:

To protect your pet’s health and well-being, temperature restrictions have been established to ensure your pet isn’t exposed to extreme heat or cold. It’s not safe to transport your pet if the forecasted temperature in any city on your itinerary is below 45°F (including the wind chill factor) or above 85°F.

For this reason pets are not allowed to travel to certain cities — including my home, Tucson — from June to September.

My first question: Huh? Why doesn’t the baggage/cargo hold remain temperature controlled as the cabin does on the ground? Passengers aren’t subjected to uncontrolled temperatures –though they often demand cold beers, unlike dogs — on the ground.

And: Have any of you traveled with pets on vacation — as opposed to transported them for a more permanent stay — in cargo or baggage? If so why — e.g., did you want your pet with you but have a time constraint? And was it worth it?

That is VBBK (Very Bad Blog Karma).

The basic tenets of both awards are the same, except for the second section, which only the Versatile Blogger award requires.  So without further ado:

1. I am in the process of arranging to have a swarm of bees on my roof relocated. Note that the word “relocate” is not a euphemism for “sent to bee heaven.” I don’t want to have ABK (Angry Bee Karma) in addition to VBBK so I am not planning to euphemize my bees.
2. I honeymooned in two of the three Axis of Evil countries, Afghanistan and Iran, and one Cold War enemy, the Soviet Union. In my defense, I was a hippie, they weren’t Axis of Evil countries at the time, and I wanted to visit the Hermitage.
3. I sometimes let Frankie lick my plates and then serve other people from them (after actually washing them).
4. My Ph.D. dissertation was later published as a book,  The Collected Poems of Paul Blackburn.
5. Despite this evidence to the contrary, I often dream that I never finished my dissertation or that, because of some technicality, I have to give my Ph.D. back.
6. My office floor is strewn with piles of paper, theoretically en route to file folders that are often mislabeled.
7. I revise everything I write endlessly. This last revelation has been at least 5 different things.

Pass the Award to 15 as many as you have time for other bloggers you’ve discovered

In spite of having established a guilt-free zone, I worry that the people I didn’t choose for the awards won’t like me. I assure you, I love many other blogs. I owe all the following bloggers money.

I leave it up to the bloggers themselves to decide whether they’re Lovely or Versatile or both (note: If you’re Lovely you don’t have to share seven things about yourself, embarrassing or otherwise).

Dancing Dog Blog. Mary Haight brings a wonderful blend of compassion and serious smarts to a blog that is often the bearer of (useful) bad news  — pet food recalls, puppy mill busts–  but also knows how to have a good time with interviews of small pet business owners, say, and giveaways (my favorite was the monk-made dog biscuits).

Go Pet Friendly. Rod and Amy Burkert complement the service part of their pet travel website — which is extremely useful — with a Fetching News blog that often deals with serious issues about traveling with pets, in an engaged, often playful fashion. Great pictures of their road trips, too.

Dog Spelled Forward. Eric Goebelbecker tackles dog training issues with a daunting intellect and, at times, righteous anger.  And did I mention funny?

Champion of My Heart. Roxanne Hawn manages to squeeze a LOT of topics — caring for aging parents, books, relationships — into a blog that has Lilly, a fearful dog, as its center, writing with wit and thoughtfulness.

Boulder Dog. Deborah Flick blogs from the heart while putting her moving tales of everyday life with Sadie, her fearful poodle, into a larger context of training theories she’s read about and worked with over time.

Dog Jaunt.  Mary-Alice Pomputius brings a delightfully geeky (and exemplary) attention to detail to her reviews of travel-related products and dog-friendly transportation. Her site’s got a great new look too.

Fido and Wino. Shauna (whose last name I can’t find on her blog) is a sassy Woman with Attitude, endlessly upbeat about rescue without ever crossing the line into (shudder) perky. Her ROAR (Rescue Owners are Rocking) series, well, rocks.

FearfulDogs’ Blog.  Debbie Jacobs’ assessments of working with fearful dogs is commonsensical, intrepid, earnest, sympathetic — and philosophical. I always learn something about the world from her blog.

Hmmm. I seem to read a lot of blogs about fearful dogs. I can’t imagine why.

Finally I am going to put my favorite vet bloggers into a single “You don’t have to pass this along because you’re way too busy” category: Dr. V at Pawcurious; Janet Tobiassen  Crosby at About.com: Veterinary Medicine; Lorie Huston at The Pet Health Care Gazette;  and Shawn Finch at Riley and James Fan Club. Although each has a distinct tone and style, they share a love for animals and the people who care about them.

To be continued with a Travel, Food, and Everything Else I Love to Read About — aka Kitchen Sink — edition

Grandpa -- aka Superlandlord -- Loves Peanut

I occasionally miss things about New York that I never would have anticipated, including weird urban sights like smoke rising from manhole covers in the middle of the street.

Frankie would hate the city, I suspect — too many people, too much noise — and he’s not a competitive urinater.  He either squats or lifts his leg, balletically, in a single spot. So even if he visited Manhattan,  he would probably skitter along the sidewalk rather than stopping to use the fire hydrant facilities.

But the above picture sent by Carla (of Leap of Faith fame) of a backyard ornament created by her landlord reminded me that I have a similar photo of me and Frankie, taken at In the Raw, a dog-friendly restaurant in Scottsdale. This in turn took me on a trip down memory lane, back to the time when Archie taught Frankie how to pee like a man. Or at least more like male dogs generally do.

So here’s to New York City and young(er) dog dreaming.

Update: Rod Burkert of GoPetfriendly.com sent his own dog-with-fire hydrant photo, which I will dub Fire Hydrant Squared: In addition to the fire hydrant itself, note the poop bag holder at the end of the leash.

Ty ties one on in Park City, Utah

Feel free to submit your own dog-with-fire hydrant photos via jpeg to writestf at mac.com. I promise to post them.

I first met Dino on Twitter a few months ago, when he started retweeting my tweets so often that I couldn’t fail to pay attention to him.  He then wrote a post on seven bloggers he admired, and included yours truly, which naturally led me to read his blog.

So I knew Dino knew his social media stuff (a.k.a. had chutzpah), and was smart, funny, quirky, and loved dogs. I didn’t know he was a Sensitive Guy.

Now I do. And so will you.

Update: The audio version of this post is now available over at my pal Roxanne’s blog, Champion of My Heart — with a lot more musings about the approachability that dogs convey, as well about love and marriage and a new book. Check it out. If you doubt that audio would add much to the experience, you’d be wrong. I got a distinctly different impression of Dino from the “voice” of the text versus the physical voice. Do you agree?

***

Why Girls With Dogs Make Better Wives

I’ve read somewhere that there was this ginormous study done on thousands of married couples asking them one simple question.

What is the most important quality that you love and appreciate in your partner?

Do you want to take a guess which quality came out on top?

I’ll tell you later, but for now, let me make my case for girls with dogs.

Humans go through significant hormonal changes throughout their life. Think puberty on one end of the scale and ordinary, subtle yet powerful chemical reactions that we barely notice on the other end of that same scale.

Perhaps the most powerful hormonal change is during the pregnancy and after the birth of the child.

Sure. Everyone knows that women go through significant, seismic hormonal changes during pregnancy.

But so do men.

Males will see a significant decrease in their production of testosterone after the birth of the child.

This is the Evolution’s attempt at making sure the male of the species sticks around (and doesn’t “roam”) and ensure that the female and the offspring are protected and cared for.

While saliva and blood test were used to confirm this theory, we don’t need any fancy test to see it in action

Observe any human –male or female- interact with a child.

The interaction usually begins with “awh….so cute…whosh a goot bay-bee”.

Our brain releases a chemical that makes us “melt” to ensure our young survives into adulthood.

If there wasn’t for this “love, care and compassion” chemical, we might end up eating our own young like the finches do.

What’s really interesting is that tests show that the same chemical is released when humans interact with dogs.

This is not surprising to me.

Humans have “grown up” (as a species) with dogs and we share many characteristics.

Side note: Dogs and humans have coexisted for over 200 thousand years. (Not 10-15 thousand years as previously thought). Coincidentally, homo sapiens is approximately 200 thousand years old. (tho some studies show we might be even older). In either case, it’s likely that early dogs have walked along side homo erectus.

Let’s just say we have a history together.

Observe any human –male or female- interact with a dog (especially a puppy).

The interaction usually begins with “awh…so cute…whosh a goot bay-bee” or in this case “dawg-gee”.

Why?

Both puppies and babies cause the same chemical release in our brains that makes us want to protect and care for them. Tricky little buggers, aren’t they?

Back to the massive study done on couples.

What is the most important quality that we humans love and appreciate in our partners?

The answer that beat all others by a long shot?

Kindness.

It’s obvious that we humans tend to anthropomorphize (assign “human” characteristics) to everything. Hell, we even assign “human” emotions to inanimate objects and weather events. “Moody” clouds comes to mind.

Besides, how many times have you heard a human say this when referring to her/his dog?

“Oh…that’s my baby”.

My point here is that humans tend to relate to dogs the same way they relate to other humans.

So. We may not know this. We may not be able to see it because we all tend to be little emotionally screwed up. But the best quality you might find in your partner (if you are lucky) is kindness. And who has kindness in spades?

Why girls who own dogs of course.

Dogs will test your patience. They will test the depth of your kindness for sure.

Imagine having a big toothed four-legged baby who poops all over the place and expects YOU to pick it up.

Yup…dogs will test your kindness.

I find that any furry animal, especially the human male, requires kindness.

Wives ought to be forgiving, understanding, patient, kind, and caring.

Wives MUST be forgiving, understanding, patient, kind, and caring because the husband-animal is as likely to have as much sense as the big toothed four-legged baby who poops all over the place and expects YOU to pick it up.

Without kindness, the marriage is likely to fail.

And who’s got kindness in spades?

Why girls who own dogs, of course.

Bio: Dino is a blogger, writer, motorcyclist, dog trainer, singer/songwriter, Martial Artist. He is currently working on Human-Dog Problem Tree; a thesis in human-dog relationship. You can find Dino on Twitter http://twitter.com/dino_dogan or visit him at his DogandDog blog.

Nothing to sneeze at! American hairless terriers

After posing the question on Sunday, How do pet allergies work? — geared towards determining how they affect travel — and  checking into  airplane policies, I thought I was going to have some definitive data to present.

Instead, I was left with more questions and:

– Awe at the commitment that several people with allergies have made to dogs and cats nevertheless. Two Twitter pals,  @MelzPetPals and @Keeping_Awake, both of whom who work with animals, are particularly impressive. Deciding to undergo a variety of shots and medications in order to devote yourself to the furred is inspirational.

– A better knowledge of how pet allergies work, from various sufferers who wrote in and also  from Sweet Lucy’s, a site devoted to hairless dogs (the pictures here are from that site’s fascinating photo gallery):

There is no dog breed that is truly non-allergenic (not allergy causing) because all dogs produce dander (shed skin cells), saliva, and urine. You can be allergic to the dog dander, dog saliva, or even dog urine. Urine is less of a problem since dogs usually potty outside. Pet hair itself is not an allergen, [italics mine -- who knew?] but it can collect dander, dust, and pollen. The word hypo-allergenic (less allergy causing) is typically used with skin care products that tend to be less irritating to sensitive skin.

People with pet allergies have supersensitive immune systems that react to harmless proteins (allergens) in the pet’s dander, saliva or urine. These allergy-producing proteins can cause nasal congestion, sneezing, itchy and watery eyes, skin rashes, headaches, fatigue, coughing, shortness of breath, wheezing, and serious asthma attacks. This can happen within 5-30 minutes or occur much later as a delayed reaction. Based on pet allergy sufferers’ testimonials, it is possible to be allergic to all dogs or only to certain breeds.

Some dog breeds supposedly produce less dander than others, and many people who are mildly allergic to dogs can tolerate some of these “low dander” dog breeds with proper environmental controls. Sometimes people call these “low dander” dog breeds hypo-allergenic, low allergy, or allergy friendly.

Be careful though, as there are no guarantees! People’s pet allergies vary greatly. Severe pet allergy sufferers may not tolerate any dogs at all, even with the best environmental controls.

I therefore figured that was that, as far as air travel was concerned, except for people who are willing to drug themselves. And then my ever-alert pal Mary-Alice Pomputius of DogJaunt.com, sent in the following comment:

…  people don’t realize just how clean airplane air really is. It is recirculated, but it’s also filtered — through HEPA filters — and there is typically a complete exchange of air between 10 and 15 times an hour. That’s darned good — better than most places humans occupy — but it’s not well known. Given that recirculation and filtration, I suspect that allergy sufferers would likely not be affected by the presence of a small pet on a plane — but as I’ve said before, there are no studies out there providing really reliable data. As a friend of mine pointed out, the plural of anecdote is not data.

Mary-Alice also provided a link to the Federal Aviation Administration’s (FAA) Q & A on “Pets in the Passenger Cabin,” which includes such information as:

Can I be sure that there will be no animals on my flight if an airline does not allow pets in the cabin?
No, you can’t be sure. The Department of Transportation (DOT) has rules (14 CFR part 382) (PDF) that require airlines to allow passengers to fly with their service animals in the cabin on all U.S. airlines.

And

I have severe allergies to pet dander. How can I be sure that there is no pet dander on my flight?
You will still be exposed to pet dander on every flight, even without any pets in the passenger cabin. This is because most allergens are carried into the cabin on the clothes of other passengers.

My favorite, however, is the list of stipulations that individual airlines may add on to the standard FAA regulations about pets traveling in the cabin, which includes:

A requirement that your pet be harmless, inoffensive and odorless

Would that such a requirement were in place for human passengers!

To read the rest of this Q & A, click here.

Sometimes I forget just how technically inept I am.

Long story short: I asked Anthony Holloway, CEO of k9Cuisine.com and a previous guest on Tracie’s show, how he edited the clip he posted. Anthony, one of the nicest people in the universe, offered to do it for me, and I gratefully accepted. He then edited it further, to eliminate an intrusive cat, and posted it on his site so I could have a url to link to.

If there is a heaven for those who take pity on the technoramuses, Anthony will get instant entry, if I have anything to say about it. In the meantime, on earth, you have my endless gratitude Anthony.

Everything is pretty much self-explanatory, or explained in the notes to the video (click through to the YouTube site itself to read those).  I loved the part where Irith asks which dogs responded appropriately to the calming signal –  a quick test I could pass! I also loved the calming music, which Irith told me was Minuet by Boccherini.

Irith Bloom is the owner of The Sophisticated Dog, a pet training business offering services to clients on the Westside of Los Angeles. She specializes in clicker training and other pet-friendly methods of animal training and behavior modification. Irith is a Karen Pryor Academy Certified Training Partner) and a member of the Association of Pet Dog Trainers (APDT). You can see more of her writing on her Sophisticated Dog website, on Karen Pryor Clickertraining’s website and on Examiner.com.