Message: 2
   Date: Tue, 28 Jan 2003 19:51:18 -0000
   From: "lucyjane_98 <lwacksman@hotmail.com>" <lwacksman@hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: how to greet strangers?

Cheryl,
Thanks so much for the tips!  I think we for SURE will try this.  Sydney is super food motivated.  We had heard about the "place" (boundary) command, but weren't sure how to accomplish this along with the door b/c of her adreneline rush!  Maybe we can get a cheapy bathroom mat so it'll be easy for her to distinguish her "spot". :D
Yay, something to work on now!

Thanks,
Lucy

--- In ClickerSolutions@yahoogroups.com, "Cheryl Jarvis
<professorcj@y...>" <professorcj@y...> wrote:
> Hi Lucy -
>
> I think the key with Sydney is to give her *another* job to do rather than guarding the door, and to change her emotional reaction to people coming in the door.  The barking will take care of itself once that's done. I've got a fear aggressive dog too, and we found a great solution to just the problem you've described.
>
> First, a task to replace guarding the door - we allow Brady to bark once or twice when the bell rings to alert us, then she must go to a spot on a rug at a distance from the door and hold a down-stay until we release her. The distance from the door is critical - the physical distance helps reduce the adrenaline rush that comes from feeling threatened, and eliminates the potential for a bite should someone suddenly try to reach for her despite me telling them not to!
>
> How we accomplished this was to keep a jar of her best-ever most-
> favorite stinkiest treats by the designated "down" spot (use a mat or rug so she can clearly distinguish her boundaries for the behavior), and when the doorbell rang and she barked we'd interrupt her by singing out happily "oh boy someone's at the door" and running to that spot (she'd automatically follow if we ran! <g>) and getting out a handful of treats and absolutely *shoveling* treats as the door was opened until it was closed. This takes two people to manage - one has to be handling the dog while the other handles the door.  You might also want to have a leash on her to help you keep her in place
(just step on it and keep it short enough to keep her where you want her)
> so that you can reward her for being there. It also goes faster if you have a third person to do multiple "setups" by ringing the doorbell at various times during the day.
>
> Someone on this list once used the phrase "She can't pump adrenaline if she's pumping saliva" (Laura, possibly?) and I just love that. This is pure classical conditioning - changing her associations with strangers at the door from something scary to something wonderful. 
> In addition, it's giving her a task to do that's appropriate - she's really *not* in charge of guarding the door! - and a down-stay is also a calming task that will help her control her emotional and physical reactions to the excitement.
>
> I've found now that Brady often forgets to even bark once - she's too
> busy hustling to get to her spot so she can get her treats!  Once I didn't hear the bell and just happened to walk through the living room and noticed Brady in her spot looking very eager, so I looked out the door and there was the UPS guy! As she improved, we no longer had to shovel treats - she now gets one great treat after the door is closed, as a reward for the complete behavior. Halloween was a joy this year, for everybody involved!  She got a gazillion treats and didn't scare one small child by barking!
>
> Hope this helps....
>
> Cheryl & Brady ("did I hear the doorbell? oh boy!")

Dogs generally don't do as well in class due to all the distractions.  Remember (and remind your mom!) that in class, you need to keep reinforcement rate high, which may mean relaxing your criteria.  It is also a good idea to actively
work on training the dog to pay attention to you in class.  If you
can't get the dog's attention away from the interesting dogs around
her, you won't be able to accomplish much in class.  When I take one
of my own dogs to a class, teaching the dog to focus on me is my
primary goal- all the rest is meaningless until that is accomplished!

Hope this helps!

Susan Mann, Tip Top Training
Pepper, Scout, Brodie, and Kyp!

Message: 3
   Date: Mon, 23 Sep 2002 02:37:15 -0000
   From: "Mitch Kirby" <uf7r@icrossroads.com>
Subject: Vit C

Hello All,
In case anyone was wondering how important Vit C is to our friends,
please read, lengthly but worth it!

An acquaintance of mine, B.J. Richardson, was calling from Texas,
doubt and hope in his voice. "My English Pointer isn't a year old,
and he's already lame in the rear end, especially the left hip,"
Richardson said. "The X-rays show hip dysplasia. The veterinarian
says there are two choices: operate to alleviate the pain, or put
the dog down. I can't afford one and won't do the other. Is it true
that Vitamin C might help?"

I had to say that I'd never heard of Vitamin C curing canine hip
dysplasia, but I was aware that veterinarian Wendell Belsfield of
San Jose, CA, did prevent CHD -- or least its symptoms -- in eight
litters of German shepherds, a breed that is prone to crippling
abnormal development of a dog's hip joints. In those instances, all
of the dogs' parents had CHD or had previously whelped pups that
became dysplastic. Belsfield gave the bitches Vitamin C throughout
pregnancy and lactation. The pups received Vitamin C from weaning
until they were two years old. None of the pups developed CHD during
that entire period.

Though Belsfield's work wasn't scientific in the strict sense, it
certainly indicated that CHD could be prevented. Still I couldn't
see how the joint could be remodeled once it had grown improperly,
at least not without surgery. However, Vitamin C therapy seemed to
be Richardson's only hope, so I told him what I knew.

Many readers had written and told me that their arthritic dogs
normally were laid up after a few hours in the field, but when given
Vitamin C, they could hunt several days in a row. None had said they
did it with dogs that had CHD, but maybe....

I also recalled reading about the efforts of Dr. Bob Cathcart, a
medical doctor in California who championed the use of Vitamin C in
curing a wide variety of joint ailments and illnesses. Much of his
work centered around using the vitamin in large quantities,
increasing the doses until the body reaches "bowel tolerances."
Though Cathcart's work was with human patients, many veterinarians
adopted his method, saying that Vitamin C should be given in
increasing doses until the dog's stools loosen, at which point the
dose should be backed off a half a gram or a gram at a time until
the stools became firm again. At that point, the dog's body receives
the maximum Vitamin C that it can utilize.

I also understood that a superior form of the vitamin is Ester-C,
which can be purchased in health food stores. The vitamin in Ester-C
is molecularly locked to calcium, so it doesn't cause the acidity
problems normally associated with ascorbic acid (the common form of
Vitamin C), which can upset a dog's stomach. Ester-C also has
natural C metabolites that get it into the cells faster and more
effectively (common ascorbic acid is slower getting out of the blood
serum, so it passes through the kidneys, where much of it is rapidly
lost in the urine).


Pinto's Rebound
A month or two later, I heard that Pinto, Richardson's dog, had
begun improving less than a week after receiving maximum doses of
Ester-C. Pinto, the grandson of Miller's Chief -- an 11-time
champion in horseback-style bird-dog trials -- was now running like
the wind. I was as surprised as I was delighted.

Two years later, I was in Texas and dropped in to see Pinto.
Richardson had kept him on a maintenance dose of Ester-C. The dog
was moving with a fluid grace and power in the hips. Twice, for a
step or two, I saw a bunny hop, suggesting that not everything was
100 percent correct. But both times, Pinto immediately shifted back
to a normal gait.

I still couldn't understand how Ester-C could remodel a defective
joint, but I was hopeful. Nobody I knew whose debilitated dog had
improved clinically on Ester-C had ever taken X-rays of the joints,
so I asked Richardson to have X-rays taken.

He did and mailed me the original X-ray taken two years before and a
new one. I showed both to Dianna K. Stuckey, a board certified
radiologist in St. Louis, who looked at the original and pointed out
the hip dysplasia with the left hip most severe. The
second? "Arthritis that customarily follows hip dysplasia," she
said. I explained Pinto's quick and lasting response to Ester-
C. "How could this dog go from lame to moving freely, and apparently
without pain, in a few days -- and stay that way without something
improving in the joints?"

"We occasionally see this," Stuckey said. "A dog is arthritic yet
moves as if it feels no pain. We don't know why. Great 'heart'
maybe, or high pain tolerance."


Mystery Unfolds
I'm sure that veterinarians do see this. But the answer to my
question, Pinto's improvement was not because of great heart or high
pain tolerance. He had been hurting and he had been limping badly.
If his response to such pain improved in just a few days, something
caused that change.

Dr. Chuck Noonam of Weston, CT also compared the X-rays. He noticed
slight improvement in the severity of the dysplasia but said the hip
joint had clearly succumbed to degenerate arthritis from the
dysplastic hip joint banging around in and out of the socket.

"Eighty-three percent of dysplastic dogs either show an improvement
in their hip dysplasia or they learn to deal with the problem as
they grow older," Noonan said. "The second X-ray shows that the
dysplasia is slightly less severe, but because of the arthritis, the
joint is worse overall than in the earlier X-ray. It is possible
that the Vitamin C was helping to sort of lubricate the joint so the
dog felt less pain."

In my investigations, I had found that Pinto's results from Ester-C
weren't unique. Soon after Richardson first called, I received a
letter from Steve Dudley of Arizona. His young black Lab, who showed
great promise at hunting Gambel's quail, went lame with CHD.
Dudley's vet suggested that Dudley replace the hip -- or expect to
put the dog down by age four. Dudley tried Ester-C instead and the
dog promptly improved. Kept on Ester-C, the dog lived until age 13
without showing signs of soreness, lameness, or unwillingness to
hunt, Dudley wrote.


Flood of Proof
My investigation also led to Charles Docktor, an Arizona
veterinarian who was the first to test Ester-C for its effectiveness
in healing joint problems. In 1983, he used Ester-C on a large
number of arthritic dogs, finding that 75 percent improved in
various degrees in a short period of time.

Independently, a continent away, Dr. Geir Erick Berge, a
veterinarian in Oslo, Norway, performed a similar study, that was
reported in the August-September 1990 issue of The Norwegian
Veterinary Journal. Berge selected 100 dogs with a variety of joint
ailments. His testing revealed that 75 percent of the dogs rapidly
improved on Ester-C, some only slightly, some almost totally. Dr.
Berge added that large amounts of Vitamin C metabolites, substances
essential to a body's metabolic processes, are required in
rebuilding diseased joint tissue.

Corroborating data were also reported by Dr. N. Lee Newman, who
conducted 18 months of clinical tests using Ester-C to combat
degenerative joint disease in performance horses. She reported a
remarkable 90 percent success rate, ranging from good to excellent.
Furthermore, 80 percent of the improved horses remained sound after
Ester-C was discontinued. Newman credited supplemental Ester-C with
maintaining the integrity of collagen and connective tissue and with
mobilizing white cells in the immune system, while deactivating free
radicals that damage cell membranes.

But other respected voices were making contradictory statements. The
Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine Animal Health
newsletter in May 1995 denied that Vitamin C was of any value for
either preventing or treating skeletal diseases in dogs. "There have
been absolutely no confirmed reports that Vitamin C is helpful in
any such instances," the newsletter stated. It went on to theorize
that supplemental Vitamin C has no value because dogs produce
adequate amounts of the vitamin in their livers.

But that reasoning is questionable. Vitamin C production varies from
dog to dog, individual bodily needs vary, and circumstances --
health and environment -- vary enormously. "Adequate" in human
medicine only means enough Vitamin C to prevent scurvy. What is
adequate for a strict carnivore like a dog? And in any
case, "adequate" should not be assumed to be a synonym
for "optimum."

This is where a Vitamin C standoff occurs, and getting people to
change their scientific opinion is like asking them to change their
religion. In Cornell's favor, the evidence that has existed
supporting the use of Vitamin C on dysplastic dogs is heavily
anecdotal. Even the various veterinarians' research that has been
cited was actually efficacy tests -- that is, all of the dogs tested
were given similar doses of the vitamin and no controlled
comparisons were made. Efficacy testing strongly suggests conclusive
evidence, but it does not provide scientific proof.


The Acid Test
But in 1994, veterinarian L. Philips Brown presented the results of
scientifically acceptable "double-blind crossover" study on the
effects of Vitamin C to a national conference on holistic veterinary
medicine. Brown, the owner of the largest veterinary hospital on
Cape Code for 22 years, tested Vitamin C on 50 dogs with serious
joint problems. The dogs were among a population of more than 500
canines at a large animal sanctuary in Utah. It should be noted here
that representatives of Inter-Cal, makers of Ester-C, specifically
asked Brown to study the vitamin because they felt it could have a
major role in the treatment of joint abnormalities. Dave Stenmoe,
one of the representatives of the manufacturer, says "We told
[Brown] not to take our word for anything." Just to keep an open
mind and conduct a scientific comparison of Ester-C, ordinary
Vitamin C, and a placebo. He finally agreed to do it.

Brown, along with the Utah sanctuary's resident veterinarian, hand-
picked the dogs with the worst cases of joint disease and placed
them in five groups.

After four weeks of testing, the supplements were withdrawn for
three weeks. Then, each dog was crossed over to a different group
and received another supplement for another four weeks. After yet
another three-week layoff, 60 percent of the dogs were switched to a
third supplement. The remaining 40 percent went back to whatever
they were given during the first four weeks. At the end, mobility
scores were calculated to determine the average for each of the five
groups.

The results were impressively in favor of Ester-C therapy. Seventy-
eight percent of the dogs on 2,000mg of Ester-C experienced improved
mobility within four or five days. The average improvement score was
1.52. About 60 percent of the improved dogs relapsed when Ester-C
was discontinued, but the group that returned to Ester-C in the
third phase then regained mobility. Handlers reported no negative
side effects.

On the low (850mg) dose of Ester-C, only 52 percent of the dogs
improved, with an average score of 0.45. Obviously, size of dose was
important. Of dogs receiving 2,000mg of Ester-C with extra minerals,
62 percent improved by an average score of 0.87. Why Ester-C without
extra minerals had better results remains unknown.

Ordinary Vitamin C improved 44 percent of the dogs, with a score of
0.67. As expected, no noticeable change occurred among dogs on the
placebo.

Not even the most dyed-in-the-wool skeptic can ignore the results of
such a double-blind crossover study. But the success of Vitamin C in
treating CHD can still be questioned, or even denied, because X-rays
show that the joints remain loose or arthritis remains. Even Brown
confirms that X-rays taken for his study reveal defective skeletal
structures even after the Ester-C treatment.


Soft Tissue Factor
But those who see improvement with Ester-C are looking primarily at
an animal's behavior -- they see an improved ability to function.
How can both proponents and skeptics consider themselves correct?
Perhaps by each being half right.

A joint is not bone alone. Soft tissue -- cartilage and synovial
membrane -- exist between bones to permit movement. If such tissue
deteriorates, movement becomes more painful. Vitamin C is essential
in the making and rebuilding of soft tissue because it promotes the
growth of Collagen, a tough, stringy "mortar" that holds cells
together. At the same time, the soft tissue also holds water, which
maintains compression resistance to cushion the joint -- this is
the "lubrication" described by Noonan in his assessment of Pinto's X-
rays.

In healthy cartilage, normal cell loss is balanced by the rebuilding
of cells. Under diseased or inflammatory conditions, cell loss is
excessive. In the case of a dog's hip joint, this can mean that
adequate cushioning no longer exists. The high demand for Vitamin C
may begin exceeding the amount made in the dog's liver, so
deterioration continues. Or supplemented Vitamin C may turn the
process around.

Field experience, although still anecdotal, suggests that dogs on
Ester-C lead full lives without terrible pain and debilitation.
Ester-C may prove to be a wondrous holistic cure, but OUTDOOR LIFE
cautions that it's too early to state definitively that Vitamin C
can cure or rectify canine hip dysplasia. Some doctors contend that
the treatment is merely a Band-Aid on a far more serious problem.

We should add one point. Hip dysplasia is at least partially
inheritable. And it is not a simple, single-gene defect. There is
now concern that dysplastic dogs returned to mobility may also be
returned to reproduction, which would further spread the malady. It
is fair to say that there appears to be a great deal of hope for the
benefits of Vitamin C, but before administering the vitamin to your
dog, consult your veterinarian. And until more is known, don't breed
that dog.

I must add I use Cili Boa for a Vit C replacement, I feel it is much
better but each to their own.

Mitch