Jacki Skole's Blog, page 7

Dog Tales: Stories about dogs written by the children who love them

This is the third in a series of stories written by young people. Writing encourages children to explore their relationships with pets and works to strengthen the human-animal bond. After all, today’s youth are tomorrow’s pet owners.

Stories have not been edited for spelling or grammar. Each story belongs wholly to its author.

The Dog That Touched My Life

Author: Kaylin, 11

When I was 10 years old I had to have surgery. I was scarred that something would go wrong and my ears wouldn’t heal. Right before I had to get surgery, a service dog named Sophie came into the room. I was allowed to play with her.

Sophie laid down and I sat there and just pet her and pet her. She was so soft. While petting her, I felt relaxed. By the time Sophie left I felt great and not scarred.

Today is my birthday and I have just found out bad news. My ear has not healed and I need to have surgery again. Whenever I feel sad or nervous, I think of Sophie and she gives me courage. Wish me luck with my surgery!

Kaylin gets a welcome visit from Sophie, the therapy dog

Kaylin’s mom told me Kaylin will not need another surgery after all. As for her daughter’s time with Sophie, “It was AMAZING how calm Kaylin was when the dog was there. She got a good 30 minute visit and was petting the dog the entire time and didn’t once get worked up while she was waiting to go back for her procedure. It was really a blessing.”

***

To learn more about this series, including how a young person you know can contribute his or her own story and perhaps have it published, click here.

Fireworks + Fido = Fear

July 4th holds an extra-special significance for my family. It’s the day my daughter Lindsey was born—in Philadelphia, in the very hospital founded by Benjamin Franklin back in 1751. When Lindsey was young, we would tell her the fireworks lighting up the sky on her birthday were for her. Early on, I think she may have believed us.

These days, I don’t look forward to fireworks—not the choreographed type my township sets off, not the random ones neighbors launch into the darkness. Even the most dazzling display is problematic for one reason: Galen hates fireworks.

In this, she’s not alone. Many dogs fear fireworks—not so much the brilliant displays of light, but the booms and bellows that accompany the show. That, of course, is because a dog’s hearing is superior to a human’s.

According to doghealth.com, “The real key to better hearing in dogs is the 18 or more muscles that control a dog’s pinna, or ear flap. These numerous muscles allow a dog to finely tune the position of his ear canal to localize a sound, hear it more accurately, and from farther away… It also means that dogs are much more sensitive to loud noises than are humans. Loud noises that are tolerated by humans may be scary or even painful to dogs.”

Animal shelters report intake jumps each year around the Fourth as more dogs—more than at any other time of year—are found wandering loose. A shelter director in Michigan told a local TV station that it’s not unusual for the number of dogs coming into his shelter to increase fivefold.

So what’s the owner of a frightened dog to do?

This year, I’m testing out the Thundershirt, a blanket-like contraption that wraps around a dog’s middle applying a gentle and constant pressure that supposedly calms the dog’s nervous system. It’s akin to swaddling an infant. My vet recommended the Thundershirt not because of Galen’s fear of fireworks, but because she’s become terrified of thunderstorms. That the manufacturer advertises the shirt’s effectiveness to combat anxiety brought on by fireworks is a bonus.

Galen models her new Thundershirt.

In addition to outfitting Galen for the night, I also plan to heed advice culled from several online sites:

Exercise your dog during the day. (Apparently a tired dog is a less anxious dog.)
Keep your dog inside during fireworks, preferably with human companionship.
Keep windows closed and air conditioning on to try to muffle the sound.
Provide your dog with a safe place—dogs often prefer small enclosed spaces—to escape to once the booms begin. (During thunderstorms, Galen likes jumping into our car and wedging herself onto the floor in front of the passenger seat or curling up in the Prius’s hatch.)
Make sure your dog’s collar fits properly (tight enough so you can fit two fingers under it) and your dog’s ID tags are attached.
If your dog will be home alone, leave her favorite toys and treats. A frozen Kong or cookie-filled Kong are great because they focus a dog’s attention (at least for a little while).

***

Happy Independence Day! Enjoy the fireworks, but if you go, remember this is one time Fido would probably prefer you not take him with you.

Dog Tales: Stories about dogs written by the children who love them

This is the second in a series of stories written by young people. Writing encourages children to explore their relationship with a pet and works to strengthen the human-animal bond. After all, today’s youth are tomorrow’s pet owners.

Stories have not been edited for spelling or grammar. Each story belongs wholly to its author.

Mia’s Tale

Author: Laityn, age 11

When I was 5 years old I got one of my favorite dogs, her name was Mia. She was a white tiny maltese, and she was so playful, and cuddly. Mia always made everyone smile, and I loved her very much.

The day I got Mia I remember holding her the whole way home from Alabama. When we got home, Mia and I played with all of her toys. I knew then she was going to be one of the best dogs ever!

I grew up with Mia and we started to become even closer. We played all day, and night. When we started to get tired, we would go sit on my couch and watch my favorite tv show Cailou. If we were tired enough, sometimes she would even fall asleep on my lap.

One day my family was going to eat out at lunch. We left Mia outside when we left because we have a large fence all around my yard. When we left for lunch Mia was perfectly fine. When we came back we called, and called for her. She never came! Our family looked all around the yard, our neighborhood, and she was still nowhere to be found. We put up lost dog signs and waited for what seemed like forever! Mia was still missing.

After about a week our family finally realized that Mia was gone. It was one of the worst feelings I have ever felt. I still wonder today what happened to Mia. She will always have a special place in my heart, and I will never forget the time of my life that I spent with her.

Laityn is the cutie in the sled. This is the family’s last photo of Mia.

Laityn’s mother told me Mia was just two-years-old when she went missing. “ We currently have 2 other Maltese,” she added, “and neither goes outside alone.  We learned our lesson.”

***

To learn more about this series, including how a young person you know can contribute his or her own story and perhaps have it published, click here.

Dog Tales: Stories about dogs written by the children who love them

This is the first in a series of stories written by young people. Writing encourages children to explore their relationship with a pet and works to strengthen the human-animal bond. After all, today’s youth are tomorrow’s pet owners.

To learn more about this series, including how a young person you know can contribute his or her own story and perhaps have it published on this blog or in a book, click here. Stories have not been edited for spelling or grammar. Each story belongs wholly to its author.

How our dog got it’s name

Author: Matthew, age 6

We adopted our dog on March 11, 2014. Our dog only has 3 feet. he is to cute.

It is funny how we got his name. My daddy wanted to name him tripod. I wanted to name him Pegleg. That made me think of Jake and the Neverland Pirates. So we named our dog Jake! Sometimes I call him Jakey.

Matthew and Jake, March 2014, the day Matthew’s family adopted Jake.
Jake was picked up as a stray following a snow storm. He spent one month in a Georgia animal shelter before Matthew’s family gave him a loving home.

 

 

Calling all kids

Do you know a young person who has a story to tell about a dog? If so, I’d love to read it—and, maybe even, publish it.

In Dog Tales, Part Two, I introduced readers to the Homeless Pet Clubs, a non-profit organization founded by Georgia veterinarian Michael Good that empowers young people to save the lives of shelter dogs and cats, while also teaching empathy, compassion, and how to care for companion animals. Students’ stories about their pets were Good’s inspiration for the Clubs. Now I’d like to use young people’s stories to fundraise for this exceptional organization.

Throughout the summer and fall I will be collecting stories from young people about the dogs they live with, dogs they’ve met, dogs they’d one day like to own. I plan to publish the most humorous, heartfelt, and poignant stories on my blog and in a book, with 100% of the proceeds going to the Homeless Pet Foundation, the parent organization of the Homeless Pet Clubs.

So please spread the word. Parents, tell your sons and daughters. Teachers, tell your students.

And if the young person you know needs inspiration, offer up one of the following writing prompts:

Who picked your dog’s name? Is there a story behind your dog’s name?
If you were to write a letter to your dog, what would it say? Start your letter with “Dear (insert your dog’s name).”
If your dog were to write a letter to you, what would it say?
What is your favorite activity to do with your dog?
What is the funniest or silliest thing your dog has ever done?
Have you ever been to an animal shelter? Describe what it looked like, smelled like, felt like. Did you get to pet a dog? If so, how do you think that made the dog feel? How did it make you feel?
If you don’t live with a dog, why do you want to? What would you and your dog do together?

Answers to some questions you may have:

How long should a story be? One paragraph or one page. What matters is that the story is written from the heart.

How old is a young person? Old enough to tell a story—so anywhere between the ages of four and eighteen. Moms and dads, please no editing for grammar or punctuation or style. These are your children’s stories, in their own words.

Please send stories—and pictures of your child and that special dog—to me at celebratedogs@yahoo.com.

My next post: A story by six-year-old Matthew Syken, about all the thought that goes into finding a dog’s just-right name. Thank you, Matthew!

Dog Tales, Part Two

People love stories—telling them and listening to them. Perhaps that’s why we start telling our children stories when they are just days old. Then, by the time they’re talking, they’re telling them, too.

In 2010, a group of first, second, and third graders at a Georgia elementary school told Dr. Michael Good, a veterinarian and animal rescuer, so many stories about the dogs and cats they live with, their grandparents live with, their friends live with, that he had an inspiration: What if we got millions of kids all over this country to tell stories about dogs who don’t have homes and we make shelters promise not to kill any dog whose story is being told? Then these animals are going to get great homes.

Fast forward to today, and Good can lay claim to more than 150 Homeless Pet Clubs in schools in eleven states. The pet club model is brilliant for two reasons. First, the passion that kids have for animals ensures participation. Second, because the clubs exist outside a school’s curriculum, all that’s needed to institute one is a teacher willing to host it.

Even better, Girl Scout and Boy Scout troops have caught the club spirit, so they, too, are sponsoring shelter dogs and cats, telling their stories through social media, and saving lives. Youth clubs in churches and synagogues are springing up. And at least one high school graduate started a club in her college sorority.

If empowering young people to save the lives of America’s homeless pets was all that the Pet Clubs accomplished, that would be impressive enough. But the Clubs seem to be doing far more. Good says they teach empathy, reduce bullying, and instill values like respect for all beings—lessons he hopes last a lifetime. One Georgia elementary school principal told me he’s seeing his students reap the rewards of participation. “The kids become more compassionate … they also tend to be more empathetic, in tune with their classmates, and they become more helpful.”

And since today’s children are tomorrow’s pet owners, club members learn what it means to properly care for a pet, including the importance of spay/neuter. A second grade teacher whose club I visited told me she is very honest with her students, explaining that the consequences of failing to spay or neuter a pet can lead to unintended litters, overcrowded shelters, and euthanization.

If we are going to end shelter killing, we need to rescue the dogs and cats in our shelters today and stop the unintended litters that will overcrowd our shelters tomorrow. The Homeless Pet Clubs may be one step toward achieving both these goals.

And to think, all this started with children telling stories to an adult who listened.

Want to learn more about Homeless Pet Clubs? Check out its website and read Dogland, out in August.

***

I recently came across several quotes about the power of storytelling. Here are a few of my favorites:

We cannot think without language, we cannot process experience without story.—Christina Baldwin, author

People are hungry for stories. It’s part of our very being. Storytelling is a form of history, of immortality too. It goes from one generation to another.—Studs Terkel, author and historian

It takes a thousand voices to tell a single story.—Native American saying

I story, therefore I am.— Michael Margolis, founder and CEO of Get Storied

Dog Tales, Part One

My dog ate a mouse, says a blonde third-grade boy.

I have two dogs, offers another, a brunette.

A third, also brunette, says, My dogs died.

The three boys, along with several friends, have come to pet Galen and to see why my daughter and I are seated beside a table covered with dog treats, dog toys, and pamphlets and magazines featuring Best Friends Animal Society.

It is Mitzvah Day at our synagogue—a day when we don’t just speak of the importance of tikkun olam, which translates loosely as “to repair the world,” but when we pursue it by raising money for multiple charities and running blood, food, and housewares drives.

Lindsey is raising money for Best Friends as part of her becoming a bat mitzvah, so we decided Mitzvah Day presented us with a great opportunity to spread the word about the organization and to fundraise for it. We brought Galen along because we knew she’d be a draw. (We figured Galen would make the soft sell, Lindsey the hard sell.)

But back to the boys.

They walked to our table as soon as they spied Galen. Some petted her, some simply started talking—to each other, or to me and Lindsey, it wasn’t clear. They just seemed to need to tell their stories about their dogs.

It was a spate of stories, much like these, that Dr. Michael Good heard from first, second, and third graders in a Georgia elementary school in 2010. Good had been invited by a teacher to talk to students about being a veterinarian. He’d assumed he’d be speaking to high schoolers considering careers, but, to his surprise, he found himself before a much younger audience.

As Good recalls, “I am caught totally off guard, and I have ninety minutes to tell these kids what a vet does. Well, it takes less than a New York minute. I say, ‘As a vet, I get your best friend well so he can go home and play with you.’ And then I’m done, and I still have ninety minutes left. Well, to the credit of this young teacher, she asks the kids if anyone has a question, and there were three hundred kids, and three hundred hands go up. And not one of them asks me a question. They tell me stories about their pets; and grandma’s pet; and their neighbor’s cat having kittens; and going for a walk in the woods with their dog and it chasing a squirrel up a tree, and they can tell me every branch it climbed; and they talked with a loud voice and a big smile on their face, and they were so passionate about telling their story. And I got to thinking—what if we got millions of kids all over this country to tell stories about dogs who don’t have homes, and we make shelters promise not to kill any dog whose story is being told? Then these animals are going to get great homes.”

Coming soon, Dog Tales, Part Two: Dr. Good’s Homeless Pet Clubs empower children and save lives.

You may judge this book by its cover

I can only hope the reviews of Dogland will be as glowing as the accolades over its cover.

I have two people to thank for that: Matt Smith, the graphic artist who designed the cover and Shannon Johnstone, the photographer who captured an image at once haunting and uplifting—a perfect metaphor for the story itself.

I wrote about Johnstone in a blog post in 2013, after coming across her Landfill Dogs series. In it, Johnstone trains her lens on dogs who have been in North Carolina’s Wake County shelter for at least fourteen days, who will be euthanized if not adopted. The photos—taken at the county landfill and posted on the shelter’s website—are a final effort to save the dogs’ lives.

More and more photographers, like Johnstone, are donating their time and talent to taking pictures of shelter animals, and for good reason. Increasingly, want-to-be pet owners are turning to the Internet to do their initial search. That means online, image is everything, and powerful images move animals out of  shelters— and they do so quickly.

Take Dogland’s cover dog.

Johnstone photographed the two-year-old pit bull on January 17, 2013. At the time of his photo shoot, the young pit, who shelter staff had named Ice Frosting, had been in the shelter for twenty days. His time was running out.

Then his picture hit the net.

Landfill Dog: Ice Frosting

Within days, Wags, a small animal rescue out of Bucks County, PA was negotiating his release. A Wags volunteer had seen Ice Frosting’s photo online and was smitten. The rescue wanted to bring him north, to find him a home.

In his first week in Pennsylvania, Ice Frosting went through two foster homes. He was thin, his coat wiry. He was skittish. He didn’t seem to like men. So Wags’ foster coordinator, Emily Schnarr, decided to take him in.

She fell in love.

Schnarr says she’s fostered “a ton of dogs,” but Ice Frosting is the only foster she “couldn’t let go of.” She also says that in their time together he’s filled out physically, has overcome his skittishness, and has been certified a Canine Good Citizen through the American Kennel Club’s training program.

He’s also no longer known as Ice Frosting. He’s now Ice Man. And Ice Man, I’m happy to report, is living the life he deserves.

In an email to Johnstone, Schnarr wrote, “He is loved and cherished and still so photogenic.” She even provided the evidence:

Ice Man (right) and a foster friend.
Handsome guy

***

Shannon Johnstone’s plan, when she conceived of Landfill Dogs, was to shoot the series at the county landfill over the course of a year. In her artist statement she says she wanted viewers to “see the landscape change while the constant stream of dogs remains the same.” But the year passed, and Johnstone has yet to put down her camera. You can read about Landfill Dogs at her website. You can also help the dogs in the Wake County shelter with your donations.

she’s a dork: canine stories of love and rescue

Welcome to the new blog space for she’s a dork! I’ve moved the blog here so all things she’s a dork and Dogland can live in one place. Please sign up to continue receiving posts–you can do so on the right-hand side of this page.

Thank you for making the move with me.

Coming soon: The story behind Dogland’s cover dog.

-Jacki

A Manipulative Little …

Kevin and I are in agreement when it comes to our parenting philosophy—we occupy that middle ground between helicopter parenting and free range parenting. But the rules differ when it comes to Galen. I spoil her, and Kevin, well, he grudgingly lets me, even when doing so leaves him lacking one of humankind’s most basic needs: a good night’s sleep.

You see, Kevin claims there is a causal relationship between his lack of sleep and our four-year-old pup’s presence on our bed. Perhaps, but for as long as I’ve known Kevin—almost two decades—he’s been a poor sleeper. I will concede, however, that having fifty-eight pounds of sacked-out dog inhibiting him from tossing and turning doesn’t serve his cause—though I gather all that tossing and turning doesn’t either. (I, on the other hand, rather enjoy when Galen presses her furry self up against me as if I were one of her littermates.)

I keep a sheet on the bed to keep fur off the comforter. This night, Galen beat the sheet onto the bed.

The irony of our situation is that Galen is only on the bed because one night, when she was a puppy, Kevin got lazy. Initially, Galen would hang with us, on the bed, until lights out. Then we would put her in what we called her “jail”—a metal pen at the foot of the bed that surrounded a large, comfortable dog bed. (I’m confident in its creature comfort because Gryffin slept on it for years—by choice.)

One night, when Galen was about a year old and I was out of town, Kevin was so exhausted he didn’t jail her.

You know what happened next.

No amount of American cheese could lure Galen back into her pen, and if we picked her up and placed her in it, she whined … and whined. So we did what we’d never done when our daughters cried in their cribs—we gave in.

Of course, we’re not alone in our habit of canine co-sleeping—several recent studies have found that nearly 50 percent of dog owners sleep with their four-legged friend–and Kevin isn’t alone in bemoaning its negative effects. Indeed, according to a study presented at last year’s annual meeting of the Associated Professional Sleep Societies, 30 percent of co-sleepers reported being awakened by their dog at least once a night, 63 percent reported their sleep quality suffered, and 5 percent said they had trouble falling back to sleep once awake.

Still, as Bill Barol writes in Why It’s So Wrong—But So Right—To Sleep With Your Pets, many sleep-deprived dog owners, like himself, choose deprivation over kicking their pet out of bed. His take on why: “Dogs are the greatest human-manipulators on the planet.”

The great manipulator.

I’d agree, as would Kevin. Many times I’ve heard him refer to Galen—lovingly, mind you, perhaps even admiringly—as a “manipulative little b*tch.” It’s his term of endearment for the girl who curls up beside him, and between us, each and every night.