Harness Up Spring, 1999 A Publication of the National Association of Guide Dog Users, a Division of the National Federation of the Blind Suzanne Whalen, President Karla Westjohn, Editor .op HARNESS UP A publication of the National Association of Guide Dog Users. A division of the National Federation of the Blind. President: Suzanne Whalen 9407 Mixon Drive, Apartment 216 Dallas, TX 75220 (214) 358-5002 suzwhalen@aol.com Vice President: Dana Ard 301 Bruce Avenue Boise, ID 83712 (208) 345-3906 mard@aol.com Secretary: Eugenia Firth 1019 Martinique Dallas, TX 75223 (214) 824-1490 gigifirth@aol.com Treasurer: Priscilla Ferris 55 Delaware Avenue Somerset, MA 02726 (508) 673-0218 nfbma@delphi.com Harness Up Editor: Karla Westjohn 2009 Broadmoor Drive Champaign, IL 61821 (217) 356-0973. Table of Contents 1 President's Message by Suzanne Whalen 9 Editor's Notes Editorial Apologies and Convention Suggestions by Karla Westjohn 14 Treasurer's Letter by Priscilla Ferris 17 Report from United States Council of Guide Dog Schools by Suzanne Whalen 19 Scavenging by Eugenia Firth 23 Canine Health What Goes Down Sometimes Comes Up by Dolores Holle, V.M.D. 24 Helping Your Dog Help You Orient by Suzanne Whalen 38 Clean It Up! by Karla Westjohn President's Message by Suzanne Whalen Hello again, everyone. I hope it has been a good winter for all of you. Some parts of the United States and Canada had a rather punishing winter. The same cannot be said of us here in Dallas. It was actually very, very mild--with lots of days with high temperatures in the 60's and 70's. I just hope we're not going to pay for it this summer with the kind of brutal heat many of you remember from last summer's convention. On a personal note, I shall begin this issue by telling all of you that my own dog, Illiad, has died. He was euthanized on December 7, 1998, which is not only Pearl Harbor Day but is, ironically, also the birthday of his predecessor, Jesse. Illie's own birthday is November 8, so he lacked one day of surviving a month after his fifth birthday. He had lymphangectasia. This is, thankfully, a very rare autoimmune disease. I say thankfully rare, because the disease is 100 percent fatal; there is no known cure. According to veterinarians at Texas A and M University, where the disease was ultimately diagnosed, about 25 percent of dogs do not respond to treatment at all. Another 25 percent live one year or, in some very rare cases, longer. About 50 percent of dogs do what Illie did: they have a remission that lasts from two to six months, during which they seem to do well for a time, but then they crash, and, once remission is over, the kindest thing is to euthanize the dog. I will spare you all the details of this disease and its effects. Suffice it to say that it was terrible; I gave Illie a quality life for as long as I could; when the time came, with a broken heart, I did what I had to do. Considering how healthy Illie was at convention time, I had no idea that, by mid-September, he would be fighting for his life. It is a bitter irony that I am serving as your president, and I do not have a dog. Following our Atlanta convention, I will be entering the July 17 class at The Seeing Eye. I would have gone sooner, but as a schoolteacher, I could not take that much time away from my second grade students. If I had gone at the end of May, when school just let out, I would be throwing my new dog into convention far too quickly. For those of you who supported me on our listserv, I want to thank you with all my heart. For all of you who are coming to Atlanta, and I hope that will be many of you, and that we'll have the greatest attendance at a NAGDU meeting that we've ever had, I have one favor to ask. I'm suffering from severe dog deprivation and withdrawal. Whenever you see me and it's convenient for you, please take that furry critter's harness off and let me pet him or her. Pretty please? With sugar on top? On a more positive note, let's deal with the accomplishments our Division has made during this past year. Our listserv is up and running, thanks to Pete Donahue, and people are exchanging a lot of useful information there. One of the best things about having the listserv is that it has enabled us to reach people who might not otherwise know we existed. In fact, of the requests for assistance or information we have received during the past year, approximately 80 percent begin their phone calls or letters by saying they got either my name or NAGDU's name from the Internet. To subscribe to the NAGDU listserv, do the following: From the Internet Service Provider account you wish to use, send an E-mail message to "listserv`nfbnet.org and leave the subject area blank. Then, in the body of the message,1 type subscribe Nagdu. Use no period or other punctuation, unless you want the digest. If you wish to have the digest instead of being subscribed to the list, type dash D after NAGDU. Our mentoring project, Helping Hands, is off the ground. Rick Fox is coordinating it. If you are interested in mentoring on any or all of the following topics, please call or write or E-mail Rick. Rick's phone number is 973-743-6107. His address is 188 Baldwin Street, Second Floor, Bloomfield, NJ 07003. His E-mail address is "rjfox`webspans.net. The topics are3 grief and bereavement at the death of a dog; retirement of a dog--including knowing when to do it and what your options are for keeping the dog or finding her a home; canine misbehavior, which includes help in knowing when to seek instructor support and coping with the guilt of returning a dog to the school. The NAGDU Board and I have between us dealt with over 100 individual requests for assistance. We have helped by letter, E-mail, and telephone. These requests run the gammut: a reporter from the San ____ Francisco Chronicle and another from Exceptional Parent Magazine ___________________ ____________________________ wanting interviews; people facing discrimination when trying to rent an apartment or ride in a taxi; folks wanting information about financial aid for veterinary expenses; and people with questions about bringing their dogs to convention. For the first time ever, a NAGDU President addressed the meeting of the US Council of Guide Dog Schools. Information about that meeting will be found elsewhere in this issue. Suffice it to say that we have come a long way toward establishing a working partnership with the schools. As everyone who has been involved with NAGDU over the past several years knows, the attendance of school personnel at our NAGDU meetings and the NFB convention as a whole has steadily dwindled, and some schools have not come for a very long time. We should expect to see almost all of them this year in Atlanta, for the first time in a long time. We have been working hard to establish a state affiliate of NAGDU in every state. Several of the state presidents have appointed someone to coordinate this effort and recruit people in their states; others have not. Check with your state president. Ask him or her who the person is in your state. If no one is currently serving, volunteer. Then please send me a letter telling me who the NAGDU coordinator in your state is. I shall also contact state presidents who have not yet contacted me with their coordinator choices. We are trying something different this year to encourage attendance at our NAGDU business meeting and at our seminar, "A Guide Dog in Your Life," which returns this year because so many of you requested it. In the past, because the NAGDU business meeting occurred at the same time as the Windows seminar, the Internet seminar, and lots of other tempting offerings, we have often had to make tough choices. To minimize that, I've spoken with Mrs. Jernigan, and together we selected the two least crowded evenings on the convention calendar: June 30 for the business meeting and July 3 for the seminar. Both meetings will take place from 7:00 to 10:00 p.m. Everyone is welcome at NAGDU meetings, both guide dog users and those interested in guide dogs. I hope to see lots of people at the business meeting and at the seminar. We will cover a wide array of topics at both meetings, including: the pros and cons of allowing contact between puppy-raisers and graduates, abuse and changing abuse laws, progress of the Hawaii suit. Guide dog schools will provide updates, and Ed and Toni Eames will discuss some of their activities. The seminar provides detailed information about what having a guide dog is really like, deciding if a guide dog is right for you, preparing to go into class for a dog, knowing when to call an instructor, and implementing a guide dog into your family. We will have panel discussions on some of these topics. If you would like to be on a panel, please telephone me at 214-358-5002 and specify which topic you would like to discuss. To help raise funds for our Treasury, NAGDU is compiling a cookbook. Please, please contribute recipes for it. Ask your families, friends, neighbors, co-workers, etc., to contribute recipes. The cookbook will be available in print, large print, Braille, and cassette formats. During one of the three NAGDU Board telephone meetings we have had so far this year, we discussed the possibility of our taking at least part of the proceeds raised from the sale of the cookbook and contributing it to The Jernigan Fund. The cookbook will not be ready for convention this year. Its debut, however, is a goal that we ought to achieve next year. If through our individual donations, we raise several hundred, maybe even a thousand dollars for the Jernigan Fund, it would feel really good to stand before the Board of Directors meeting or before the convention floor later in the week and present Dr. Maurer with a check from NAGDU. Finally, Dr. Maurer has invited me to speak briefly before the Board. The subject is guide dog aggression at convention. Last summer a vendor at our exhibit hall had a dog who was extremely aggressive. Several times this dog snarled or lunged. He even attacked Karla Westjohn's dog, Jodie, biting her just above the eye. I contacted the school, Guide Dogs for the Blind in San Rafael, California, and I want to commend them for their quick action. Also at the 1998 Dallas convention, a woman was in the relief area with her German shepherd, and an aggressive dog jumped on her, knocking her to the ground. As a result of these occurrences, the NAGDU Board wrote a policy statement pertaining to aggressive guide dogs and their owners and submitted it to the Board of Directors of the National Federation of the Blind. As a division of the Federation, we do not have authority to make national policy which would bind the organization, and we'd never presume to do so. We do, however, have the right to make recommendations to the Board of Directors. When I spoke with Dr. Maurer about our concerns, he invited us to submit our recommendation to the Board, which we did in time for it to be considered at the Thanksgiving meeting. In a nutshell, the policy stated that the President will appoint two people to investigate reported incidents of aggression. If this is a case of true aggression, the handler would be required to seek professional assistance. If the situation does not improve, the matter will be brought to Dr. Maurer's attention. Unfortunately, the person involved in the attack on Miss Westjohn's dog was observed trying to hide his name badge. I have asked representatives of guide dog schools attending our convention to assist us in identifying aggressive dogs, regardless of the school where the dog and handler were trained. The Board of Directors did not approve the policy. When I spoke with Dr. Maurer about the Board's decision, he said that, if he remembered correctly, the Board declined to approve the policy because it did not wish to imply that blind dog handlers are any more dangerous than sighted ones. I conveyed to Dr. Maurer our concern that, without a national policy in place, challenging someone who could not or would not control a dangerous dog would be difficult. Dr. Maurer assured me that no dangerous behavior would be tolerated at convention--whether such conduct is the behavior of an aggressive dog, or someone flailing a cane around irresponsibly. He invited me to speak to the Board about these issues at its open meeting, and he assured me that, if NAGDU has a problem it can't resolve at the division level, we should bring it to his attention. I don't want to be misunderstood. Guide dogs are more than welcome at NFB conventions. Convention can be stressful for dogs, and sometimes dogs will bark or whine. That behavior is not the problem. Problem dogs are those who repeatedly lunge at other dogs or at people, who growl constantly, and, above all, whose handlers cannot or will not stop the behavior. Fortunately, among guide dogs this is very rare, but even one aggressive, unruly dog can cause serious problems at a convention. Editor's Notes Editorial Apologies and Convention Protocol by Karla Westjohn At long last this issue of Harness Up has gone to press. This spring has ___________ been exceptionally busy for me. I meant to begin working on this newsletter long before I did. My second apology goes to Eugenia Firth. She sent me a great article on guide dogs at convention, and unfortunately, something happened to that file. I wanted to include that article in this issue, but, given that state conventions occur in the fall, and given that good advice is never untimely, I can only beg her to resubmit it. In the Federation generally and in NAGDU in particular, the debate rages about whether or not to work dogs at convention. Convention is a frenetic, exciting, somewhat stressful time. Amid the crowds and the whirling activity, guide dog handlers must keep some semblance of normalcy in their dogs' routines. Feeding, relief, grooming, obedience, and play remain part of the guide dog handler's hectic convention schedule. Working conditions at convention can be somewhat unusual: an unfamiliar, often complicated hotel; hoards of white canes; and numerous other dogs. Faced with these circumstances, some guide dog handlers choose to use their canes during convention week. The decision is a personal one, but many guide dog handlers find the contrary arguments more persuasive. A well-handled guide dog is a real asset in meeting the unique travel challenges of convention. Common sense and adherence to guide dog basics make dog-handling at convention more than just manageable. It can be fun! It also affords other Federationists a chance to see well-behaved dogs working under unconventional circumstances and gives those contemplating work with a guide dog a clearer picture of what that work entails. Guide Dog Basics. They may be mundane, but proper grooming; regular obedience exercises; and frequent, varied work are indispensable to good guide work. Hygiene is as important to dogs as it is to human beings. A malodorous, unkempt, flea-ridden dog is as unpleasant to be around as a person who does not bathe or brush his teeth regularly. Such dogs may transmit parasites to other dogs, and they reflect badly on all guide dog teams. A bath and flea treatment before convention and grooming at convention makes for an aesthetically pleasing, if not a pretty dog. If you cannot have your dog treated for fleas before convention, take advantage of the flea treatment provided early in convention week. Grooming can be done in a hotel room by brushing and combing the dog in a tiled bathroom--with a waste can readily at hand to catch the hair; after grooming, use a paper towel to pick up any excess hair left on the floor. Dog biscuits are more than tantalizing treats; they freshen breath, too. Obedience exercises and work, to be truly effective, must be done regularly. Obedience exercises may not be as dramatic as a good traffic check, but they allow a handler to enforce commands and keep most dogs focused on guiding when they are in harness. Frequently working a dog keeps harness skills sharp--particularly if the handler varies routes and goes to new places. Constant work also exposes a dog to people, animals, noise, heavy traffic, and diverse obstructions. A guide dog accustomed to obedience exercises and challenging work is less likely to be overwhelmed by convention pressures. Travel Tips. Traveling to andf convention is much like traveling anywhere else. Packing individual servings of dog food in ziplock bags makes feeding easy: just open and pour. The bag can then be used for clean-up--if you choose not to bring other plastic bags for that purpose. A window seat on the plane can benefit your dog and other passengers. With a window seat, a guide dog, whatever his size, is out of the aisle and is neither stepped upon nor tripped over. Consider giving your dog only a light snack before flying. Queasiness is not just a human problem. If you must change planes and have a long layover, providing your guide dog with a relief opportunity before boarding your connecting flight can prevent an accident. Luggage is sometimes lost or misplaced. A portable water bowl and some dog food or dog biscuits in a carry-on bag can be a Godsend. Stress Management. Convention is fun. Convention is educational. Convention can also be stressful--for human and canine Federationists. The steps you take to help your dog may also help you. Many guide dog handlers decline to fight the elevator wars, choosing instead to use stairs or escalators, staying at the overflow hotel, or registering early enough to request a room on a low floor. At least once during convention week, though, everybody uses an elevator. Walk as far to the back of the elevator as you can; this will give your dog optimum protection as the elevator fills. If your dog has been taught to find elevators and mysteriously fails to do so at convention, her disobedience may not be deliberate. In the multitudes of legs, she may not be able to see the elevator, or you may be standing in a huge elevator line. Shoddy work must be corrected wherever it happens, but be sure, before pulling back on that leash, that the work is indeed shoddy. Conversely, good work should be universally rewarded. A guide dog doing his level best under difficult circumstances deserves lavish praise. Such praise need not be loud and gushy; the whole world does not need to know. Profuse praise is not unique to guide dog teams. Everyone who successfully works a dog praises her for a job well done. The same principle governing elevators applies to all travel situations. If you minimize your own stress you will probably feel calmer, better able to interpret the information that you have and to direct your dog. Arriving early at convention events will undoubtedly simplify your dog's life, but you may find yourself less frazzled, too. Certainly, guide dog handlers enjoy a night out as much as anyone else, but consider taking one night--perhaps a night in the middle or latter part of convention week--to play quietly with your dog in your hotel room. This downtime may revitalize you both. Include a few toys when packing for your dog. If you decide to go somewhere without harness and leash in hand, ask a friend to stay with your dog, or have someone check on her periodically. Lonely, anxious dogs have barked incessantly or engaged in destructive chewing. Relief and Accident Prevention. Guide dog relief and guide dogs' accidents have been hot topics in the division and in the Federation as a whole. The relief areas at the last four NFB conventions have been spectacular, affording no excuses for relieving dogs outside them. Packing plastic bags is easy and should be second nature for an experienced guide dog handler, but clean-up bags have been provided at relief areas in recent years, affording no excuse for failing to pick up after a dog. Clean-up is not only courteous, it provides a clear indication of a dog's physical health and psychological status, giving a handler time to take preventive steps before her dog becomes ill. The Federation in general and NAGDU in particular are friendly organizations. Guide dog instructors are prevalent--especially early in convention week. If you don't know how to clean up after your dog, what better time to learn? Ask for the help that you need! If the unthinkable happens, and your dog has an accident, stay put or have someone else stay in the area to direct others around the mishap. Alert hotel housekeeping to the problem, apologize, and offer to pay for any damage caused. Irresponsibility, not the accident itself, is what angers most people. With consistency, courtesy, and common sense, guide dog handlers can enjoy the same travel advantages at convention that we relish at home. Our guide dogs can be integral parts of convention, helpful to us, unobtrusive to others. With a little forethought, dogs, too, can enjoy convention. See you in Atlanta. Treasurer's Letter by Priscilla Ferris May 17, 1999 National Association of Guide Dog Users 140 wood Street Somerset, Ma 02726 Dear Harness Up Members: As we approach the upcoming National Convention of the National Federation of the Blind, we are also looking forward toward our National Association of Guide Dog Users seminar. It promises to be a very interesting and informative one. As treasurer of our division, I need to ask your cooperation in making registration faster, easier, and more orderly. Our registration fee is fifteen dollars (15.00). If you have a check or cash ready, it would be so very helpful. If you have changed your address, please put the old and the new address on a card and have it ready to hand to the persons working at the registration table. It gets hectic when everyone is shouting. Very often addresses are misunderstood, and names are misspelled. Sending registration information and fees to our office in advance would cut down on the confusion considerably. Your help in this matter would be very much appreciated. If you have had any problems receiving Harness Up please call or drop me ___________ a note, and we will try to correct the situation. The phone number is (508) 679-8543. Thank you for your help in advance. I look forward to seeing you all in Atlanta, GA. Yours in Federationism, Priscilla A. Ferris, Treasurer, National Association of Guide Dog Users. Report from United States Council of Guide Dog Schools by Suzanne Whalen As President of NAGDU, I had the privilege and pleasure of being invited to address the meeting of the United States Council of Guide Dog Schools. To my knowledge, this is the first time that a NAGDU President has attended this meeting. For as long as I remain President, and I hope beyond, communication between NAGDU and the guide dog schools will improve and flourish. Both the schools and NAGDU benefitted greatly from the exchanges of ideas which occurred formally and informally. The United States Council of Guide Dog Schools is not a decision making body. Rather, it serves as a forum through which guide dog schools can meet and exchange ideas. The meetings occurred on March 11-13. The Council meets twice a year, once in the fall and once in the spring, and member schools take turns hosting the meetings. This year's spring meeting was hosted by The Seeing Eye in Morristown, New Jersey. The first order of business occurred on Thursday evening, with a cocktail reception followed by dinner. This mixing and mingling with school representatives gave me many opportunities to explore ways in which they and we could assist each other. As I have previously done, in telephone contact and written correspondence, I assured the school representatives that, although we would not hesitate to suggest improvements to programs and services or to voice our disagreement with damaging or counterproductive policies, we were eager to work with them constructively. We valued the service they provided to their graduates, and they would be treated with courtesy and respect at our meetings. Friday was devoted to special interest, closed meetings. For example, all the veterinarians met together, the Directors of Training met together, the CEO's met together, etc. I could not attend these meetings, but this gave me a chance to polish my remarks, which I delivered Saturday morning. The Friday evening reception and banquet provided a second, informal opportunity to exchange ideas with school representatives. My address constituted the entire Saturday morning agenda, from 8:30 to 10:00. Because what he had to say was so timely, I gave 20 minutes of that time to one of the representatives from Fidelco. He had traveled to Hawaii with his guide dog after the settlement of ACB's lawsuit, and the experience was absolutely horrible! He and his dog were thrown out of many establishments and harassed in others. Dealing with all the paperwork and red tape at the Honolulu airport took over three hours. He was expected to provide his itinerary in advance. By the time he had concluded his remarks and fielded questions, I think everyone in the room had a pretty clear idea that the present settlement leaves much to be desired as a means of guaranteeing guide dog users access to Hawaii. The main points I covered in my remarks are as follows: 1. We do not want training standards to be lowered. Graduates should be consulted before commands such as "Fetch" are no longer taught. Some schools, like Southeastern, teach over 40 "find" commands; others teach very few. Graduates should have some means of indicating which of these commands would be useful to them. For example, several guide dog users have told me that it would be helpful to them if their dogs were more consistently taught the straight line concept so that, as new dogs, they would cross off- set and rounded intersections as new dogs and compensate for any veering problems the handler may have. I also mentioned that some people had difficulty with their new dogs not maintaining adequate clearance from edges and drop-offs. 2. Blindfold training should be used sparingly with new employees. New employees lack the skills in alternative techniques used by the blind, and the resulting fear and uncertainty under blindfold may reinforce a negative philosophy about blindness. 3. When the need arises, NAGDU is more than willing to work with any organization on any projects or problems on which we can agree or find common ground. 4. As mentioned in my President's message, I asked the school representatives to the Council to assist us in identifying aggressive dogs at convention. 5. Several of the schools offered to assist in conducting orientation activities the first couple of days of convention. I publicly thanked them for this and indicated that we would find it helpful. I fielded questions, and the meeting ended. Whose who wanted to go were given a tour of The Seeing Eye. I went. It may be my only time ever to set foot in the Vincent A. Stabile Center or the Walker Dillard Kirby Center. Seeing Eye graduates can be justly proud of those facilities. They are truly fantastic, impressive, and state-of the- art. I attended this meeting with Dr. Maurer's approval; only time will tell how much fruit it will bear. Scavenging By Eugenia Firth I have heard it said that Labrador Retrievers comprise the worst and most adept scavengers around. Currently, I am working with my fifth dog, Bianca. She is a yellow Lab and shows absolutely no interest in scavenging. My first dog was a German Shepherd. She specialized in scavenging on the bus, where people drop chicken bones and other leftovers from fast food places. My all-time worst scavenger, however, was Cara, a yellow Lab. I had always had some problems with Cara's scavenging, but when she was seven years old, Cara decided that anything she saw on the ground was hers. It did not matter what object was in her path; she was going to have her heart's desire, food or any interesting rock. Usually food grabbed her interest more than anything else. Cara was so bad that any correction I gave her made it look as though I were being cruel to her. I had to grab her leash and drag her back from whatever had her attention. People thought it was funny, except for the lady who objected to my method of stopping her. Confirmed scavengers leap violently at the object. If furniture or people are in the way, that's too bad. Cara never actually did anything unsafe, but guide work was on hold while she plunged for the food. I started calling The Seeing Eye about this problem. I was given several suggestions. I held her leash in my hand so that I could give her an immediate correction while she was in the process of diving for food. For a brief time, I tried using a soft magazine with which to startle her when she was in the midst of diving for the ground. None of these ideas worked. Even if Cara lost some prized possession, and even if she was corrected, Cara saw scavenging as worth the price. In her mind, she might lose her prize several times in a row, but the one time she won was worth all the trouble. One instructor told me he thought my dog was a hopeless case in this area. He said that he had run our of ideas. A friend was having trouble with her dog. Another instructor, Pete Jackson, was coming to work with her. I asked my friend to have him call me so I could get ideas from someone else. When I explained my problem to Mr. Jackson, he said he had an idea that might work. We set up an appointment for later that day. He brought with him a gentle leader, a thing I had never heard of before. For those not familiar with it, a gentle leader resembles a muzzle. Unlike a muzzle, though, a gentle leader has a place to attach a leash. Also, it allows the dog to open the mouth wider than does a muzzle. This feature makes the Gentle Leader safer than a muzzle in hot climates such as Dallas. Pet stores sell these for pet dogs who have become aggressive. The master or mistress can close the dog's mouth simply by pulling gently on the leash. If you get one of these for your dog, be sure not to jerk hard on the leash. You can hurt your dog if you do. After we introduced Cara to the Gentle Leader, (sometimes called a Halty), we started walking the neighborhood. As we went along, Mr. Jackson threw rice cakes out in front of Cara. After awhile he did this without warning so that Cara nor I would know for sure where and when Cara was going to be tempted. We started correcting Cara just for looking at food. Mr. Jackson explained that in Cara's case this procedure was necessary; later, after he left, she would probably attempt to revert to her old habits. A little over-correction was needed to encourage her to become at least tolerable around food. He explained that she would probably always think about scavenging, but over-correction would slow her down. Slowing her down would make it easier for me to catch her before she leaped into action. We walked around for two hours. Before we were finished, Cara was treating food as obstacles to be avoided. She actually walked around it! It was very helpful to have a professional work with me on this problem. If I had bought the Gentle Leader myself, I could have tried it without help at all. I could have gotten a good friend to help me by throwing out food. Since most of my friends feel sorry for my dogs when they get corrected, I don't think this idea would have worked very well. If I had used the Gentle Leader on my own, it would have eventually worked. However, I had never heard of this device. Also, I think I would have been too soft-hearted to throw food out in front of Cara just to correct her. I don't consider myself to be inept with my corrections, but I'm certainly not as tough on a misbehaving dog as a Seeing Eye instructor. Cara never again knocked furniture out of the way to get food. I could never fully trust her, and I always had to be ultraalert in restaurants. When I went to a restaurant, however, noone knew this but me. I was able to stop her before the situation became obvious to everyone else. If you have a really confirmed scavenger, consider getting a Gentle Leader. Whether you do it with or without instructor support, keep in mind that, if you tend to administer hard leash corrections without thinking about it, a Gentle Leader is probably not for you and your dog. The device itself is not harmful. It just closes the dog's mouth when pulled. For those who can use it, the Halty is a very useful tool. Canine Health: What Goes Down Sometimes Comes Up by Dolores Holee Reprinted with permission of The Seeing Eye, Inc. This article appeared in The Seeing Eye Guide, Spring, 1999. ______________________ Vomiting is a problem we are all likely to encounter with our dogs. It can be a sign of many serious diseases, but often it is the result of a simple and more easily managed case of dietary indiscretion. If your dog vomits and has a variety of other signs, such as listlessness, an abdomen that is painful when touched, obvious discomfort or pacing, remove food and water and call your veterinarian immediately. If, however, your dog vomits and is otherwise acting normally, there are a few steps you might try before calling for help. Allow NO ACCESS to food or water for 12 hours after vomiting. This means not only lifting the water dish but also making sure the toilet seat lid is in the down position. Dogs often view the toilet as the perfect water fountain! After 12 hours, if there has been no additional vomiting, place some ice cubes in a dish for your dog to lick. This provides a small amount of fluid intake at a rate which will not cause further vomiting. Replenish the ice cubes every two to three hours. After an additional 12 hours, 24 hours after the last voisting episode, if there has been no further vomiting, begin to offer a cup of water every half hour to an hour. If your dog is able to hold down the water and no vomiting occurs after several drinks, a small amount of a bland diet may be offered. There are several commercial varieties of bland intestinal diets. Among these are Eill's IstD and CNM's EN. If you prefer, you can prepare your own mixture of boiled white rice and an easily digested source of protein. Frequently, boiled hamburger with the fat removed or boiled chicken is recommended. However, a more easily digested source of protein is low-fat cottage cheese. Mix one-third of the protein source with with two-thirds boiled white rice. Initially offer a half cup of the mixture. The dog should remain on a bland diet for three days, and over the following three days, gradually switch the dog back to regular food. If your dog vomits again at any point in the course of home treatment, seek veterinary attention. Continuous and frequent vomiting is a serious sign that should not be ignored.