Lavender Can Ease a Puppy's Stress

When we took Jam back in for training on Saturday, we heard from David Brady, Training Kennel Manager at Southeastern Guide Dogs (you can also follow David's dog Fozzy who is on facebook), who told us that they were filling the kennels and massage rooms (yes, Southeastern Guide Dogs do get massages!) with the scent of lavender in order to ease the kennel stress of the pups as part of kennel enrichment.  He told us there were studies that indicated that lavender decreased stress, and in fact, I found an article by Narda G. Robinson, DO, DVM, MS, from Colorado State University that talked about a recent study indicating lavender oil "diffused into the atmosphere, produced significant effects on dogs’ behavior." Evidently lavender and chamomile essential oils (and this is from a 2005 article, Robinson states) when used in the shelters had the pleasing results of dogs exposed to those oils moving around less and barking less.  The opposite was true when peppermint and rosemary oils were used.  (This study sounded a lot like the one David told us about.)

Photo of lavender and blue bottle from Istockphoto.

Now, before you go thinking that Southeastern Guide Dog are stressed, the CEO of Southeastern told us at IFT also that they did a baseline study of the dogs and the average dog has an cortisol level of 3, while the average for a Southeastern dog was 2. Pretty darn stress free! In spite of the low scores, Southeastern will with kennel enrichment programs to maintain that low score and seek ways to constantly better the life of dogs while they stay in the kennels.

Robinson's article stated that "the second study, published in the September 15, 2006 issue of the Journal of the American Veterinary Medical Association reported that ambient odor of  lavender may be beneficial in calming dogs susceptible to travel-induced  excitement. That is, dogs who would otherwise bark and exhibit restlessness during car rides calmed significantly after exposure to 5 milliliters of lavender oil  sprayed onto a flannel cloth."  I find this very interesting as Coach does seem to exhibit a bit of restlessness in the car.  I will be switching out my car fragrance to lavender.

In fact, Colorado State University Veterinarians even go so far as to give the recommendation of giving lavender scented tissues to a stressed dog as part of their Tips for Helping Pets Through Trauma and Disaster: "Lavender aromatherapy, provided as  easily as applying a few drops of pure essential oil to a tissue near the animal, calms both pets and people."  (I would note, that you want to make sure that the tissue is somewhere that your dog isn't going to eat it.  Jam and HRH Berkeley were very into paper napkins and tissues.)

Coach just arrived.  Jam just left for IFT.  Willow doesn't know who is coming or going.  So, I went out immediately and bought two lavender diffusers: one for upstairs and one for downstairs.

I like to think things are much calmer around here. If nothing else, it smells nice.  It is a little thing I can do to make it less stressful here.

[Note: The diffusers that David Brady at Southeastern uses are FanFuser Diffusers.  The lavender oil he uses is from Jedwards International. FYI.]

A Very Observant Puppy

Sometimes I forget that Jam is a lab.  That he has a history of hunting and chasing in his genes.  Some things will just come naturally to him.

So the other day when I was down in the lower division library in a meeting I was surprised to find Jam staring very intently at something.  But we couldn't figure out what it was. We followed his line of sight.

This year's theme for reading in lower division is Soar Into Reading and they have bird houses all over the library.  Bird houses with fake birds living in them.  Bird houses with fluffy fake birds all around them.  Most of the faux birds are very small, but there were these two owls...

Out of the entire library, Jam had found the two big owls and he stared at them.  He still followed commands and even went over to pose by them.  But he was aware of them and what they were.

I thought he showed enormous restraint.  Good boy, Jam.

Stairs-Up, Stairs-Down

Bingo gets some daily practice with Stairs-Up and Stairs-Down. When he was younger and fearless and believed he could fly, we would carry him up and down the stairs, and that suited him just fine. He would hold out his paw (with this dainty, helpless look on his face) to make it easier for me to pick him up. Soon (I reasoned) he would be ready to learn, but in the meantime the paw thing was pretty cute.

Then one day I saw him and Cheryl walking downstairs as if it were the most normal thing in the world. She laughed and said they had been doing it for several days--while he still was holding out his paw to me. Sneaky.

Chuck, one of our SEGD coordinators, said recently that guide dogs must be able to distinguish between Stairs-Up and Stairs-Down. If, for example, a blind person is approaching a down set of stairs but mistakenly says Stairs-Up, the guide dog should disobey and actually move in front to stop the person from continuing. Wow. But that type of training starts when Bingo goes to school at SEGD--Cheryl and I just work on the basics, to expose him to situations he will encounter in his career.

He still thinks he can fly, though, so we keep a close watch.

Bingo's first guests and his first night away from SEGD - Day 2

Well, the puppy manual was right. He slept with nary a peep. We had to keep him awake from 5 pm on, but he went right to bed and it was quiet all night. I heard a creaking about 1 am and took him out and he peed. Again about 3 or 4 am he moved around and I took him out to pee and he peed, but no crying. He was a very good boy. He did his "kennel in and kennel out" commands very well. This is a shot of him with his first dinner. He didn't like the deep dish so we switched him to a shallower pan.

He also had his first visitors today. I had some former students and a friend and faculty member at my school come to say hello to him. You'll notice that he is looking at Willow but she won't look at him. She is still snubbing him. She plays hard to get.

The breeding program seems pretty incredible to me. Bingo is a very mellow dog. Although he does seem to enjoy being a plant warrior and attacking all manner of plants outside. Mostly he battles evil by napping.

Picking Up Bingo at SEGD -- Day 1

Today we went down to the Southeastern Guide
Dogs for the Blind to pick up our puppy to raise.
We didn't know his name, only that he was a black lab male of the Meg litter and was 9 weeks old.

We got there about 1:30, as requested the afternoon being better as the puppies are more tired by the puppy play time in the morning from 9-11 am. We did not have a good night's sleep as we were really nervous and I kept waking up and worring about whether we would be good enough parents for the puppy, whether we would be able to follow all the rules, you know, just general insane worrying stuff!


When we got there, we went straight to the puppy place and met Pete. He showed us our puppy and told us that his name was Bingo and that he had delivered him. This is a photo of our first look at him in the kennel. The next photo is of me and Melinda with me holding Bingo for the first time. He weighed 18.9 lbs at 9 weeks old! We had to go to the administration building to sign all the papers and find out the particulars about him, get his tags, medicines, etc.

We found out that his sponsor named him Bingo (his full name is Bingo Harry) after his friend and co chairman who runs the "fun bingo on Tuesday morning and regular bingo on Wednesday evening. He devised a game called "walking the dog" where the bingo card looks like a man walking a dog. It's very cute. I'll scan it in and post it later.

Bingo rode on the floorboard with me and slept most of the way.

Bingo got to experience stairs for the first time as well. He did great. He is a pro at the back stairs. Of course, we have two larger sets of stairs inside the house that we will leave for when he is a bit bigger!

We have been frantically consulting the puppy raiser manual even though we have read it twice already. We are now trying to keep Bingo awake because the manual says to keep him up until 10 or 11 pm if you can. He has been sleepy since 5 pm. We keep waking him up and you feel just awful! Wake up little puppy. He snores! Really loud. But we do want him sleeping in the crate and not running around playing tonight. So we will try to keep him up.

He has been a great dog so far. We've caught him when he was sniffing and he hasn't had an accident. He's gone outside every time like he should. He's adjusted really well to the collar and leash. He seems to be getting his name down pretty well. He seems to adore our dog Willow. Willow is still not sure she really likes him. But he is very sweet to her. He isn't mouthy. He just smells her. he doesn't bite or annoy her. She doesn't snap or be mean to him. I think in a couple of days they will be pretty good friends.

He is an adorable boy.