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Wipe your paws: Keeping spring mud from your floors isn’t easy
By Pet Connection Staff
March 25, 2009
Oh the beauties of spring… flowers, birds, gentle breezes, fluffy clouds floating overhead in blue skies.
And mud. Lots and lots of mud on the dogs’ paws… and your floors.
But don’t worry — Gina’s got you covered. From this week’s Pet Connection newspaper feature:
March is when winter finally lets go, although usually not without a final blast or two. The start of spring means many things — the first early blooms, longer, warmer days and a time to clean the house — but for dog lovers, there’s one thing spring brings most of all.
Mud, mud and more mud. The soupy remains of winter on the paws of our pets is the constant nemesis of all dog lovers, and it’s never so bad as in the spring.
The best way to keep floors clean is to never let them get dirty. And that means catching those muddy paws before they come inside.
She tells you how, right here.
From Gina and Dr. Marty Becker, the inside story on dogs’ amazing scenting abilities:
While most of us tend to think scent work is the near-exclusive province of a handful of breeds — bloodhounds, German shepherds and maybe a Labrador retriever here and there — in fact, a wide range of breeds and mixes is trained to detect various scents. Because of their fine noses and friendly dispositions, beagles are used to work airports by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and any manner of mixed breeds — lucky dogs pulled from shelters — have been used for other kinds of detection work.
Humans have about 5 million scent receptors in their noses; dogs have about 200 million. Dogs can detect tiny levels of odors, even a few parts per billion. Their noses are also uniquely designed to draw air samples through — for the most part.
You’re not going to see a dog with a pushed-in muzzle, like a pug, tracking someone on “America’s Most Wanted.” That’s because when breeding for a short nose — and a face more like ours — we’ve reduced the real estate available for scent receptors in these breeds.
On the other end of the scale, a dog developed for tracking, such as the bloodhound, has a sense of smell so keen, the results of his work are admissible in a court of law. In addition to a long, deep muzzle, the bloodhound has ears to sweep scent from the ground and skin folds to hold scents around the face.
Dr. Marty Becker and Mikkel Becker Shannon ask, how long does it take to make an ass of yourself?
If you’re a donkey, it takes a year, as 365 days is the average gestation period. Sperm whales are pregnant for 480-500 days, deer for 201 days, dogs and cats both go 58-65 days, kangaroos 42 days, rabbits 30-35 and mice 19-21.
Plus: Anesthesia tips for pets from Dr. Becker: coping with deaf cats; feeding wild birds. All this and more, in our Pet Connection newspaper feature, which you can read right here.
You can also see it exactly the way we send it to our client newspapers here. (PDF)
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I love how blissfully happy that doggie in the mud puddle looks!
Comment by Original Lori — March 25, 2009 @ 12:26 pm
Another muddy paw tip - we have clay soil here and when it gets wet it gets STICKY and can be really difficult to wipe off the paws. But a spray bottle of waterless shampoo does the trick - spritz it on the bottom of the dog’s foot then wipe with an old towel. The feet get much cleaner in half the time.
Comment by Barb — March 25, 2009 @ 5:31 pm
Gina!
For a minute I thought this was part two of “Pet myths busted.”
The old saw about “bloodhound evidence” being specially privileged in law courts is terrific folklore, and the darling of mediocre bloodhound handlers, but not very “legal.” That’s because it has no basis in reality.
A handler of ANY kind of detection dog had better be prepared to justify in a court of law any search warrants, arrests, etc. that were brought about by her dog’s work. That means both empirical evidence that what her dog did is possible, and training records demonstrating that it is within the scope of that dog’s trained abilities.
Bloodhounds can be very fine trailing dogs with solid training, but they do not crawl out of the whelping box as operational mantrackers with expert witness creds.
Just try to convince some of the lazy bloodhound owners who bought the hat and now am a dawg handler of that.
Comment by H. Houlahan — March 25, 2009 @ 6:37 pm
Gah … do you know how many reference books that’s in?
Comment by Gina Spadafori — March 25, 2009 @ 7:01 pm
Yes, I’m afraid I do.
Comment by H. Houlahan — March 25, 2009 @ 7:45 pm
My three dogs wear mud like it’s the new fashion trend! Thankfully they are small enough to rinse off in the kitchen sink.
Comment by Anne Good — March 26, 2009 @ 6:37 pm
Fashion statement? Absolutely!
Here’s Woody the mud-encrusted fashion plate.
Comment by Gina Spadafori — March 26, 2009 @ 6:53 pm
I am deeply, truly impressed. Woody is a professional. That’s a five biscuit photo.
Comment by Susan Fox — March 26, 2009 @ 7:06 pm
Having just shown the photo to my husband, he commented that he can’t say how thankful he is that that’s not our dog. (You’ve seen photos of the big coat collie boy. It would take DAYS to get him clean if he got into that kind of mud. We’d probably be finding dried flecks of it for months.)
Comment by Susan Fox — March 26, 2009 @ 7:19 pm
I had to laugh about the line that says you won’t see a pug tracking. Make that many pugs.
Is it possible that I have the worlds only tracking pug?? I suppose it is possible. Jenny is from rescue and is obviously a product of a BYB with her slightly longer nose and legs but we do indeed track. I shall add video of her in action on my blog soon. Stay tuned! VBG
Comment by Marie — March 28, 2009 @ 5:57 pm
P.S. I have found spreading hay over the muddy areas in the yard has done wonders for preventing much of it being dragged into the house. It is also easy to rake up with finished with it.
Comment by Marie — March 28, 2009 @ 6:00 pm
Marie, I found this article for you (in response to the question you posted on your blog):
http://www.ehow.com/how_467139.....ernet.html
Comment by The OTHER Pat — March 28, 2009 @ 6:20 pm