Sniffydog — Train Your Dog’s Nose

The Portuguese Water Dog has enjoyed a good deal of press lately since the Obamas have announced plans to bring one to the White House.  Lucky dogs!  Hopefully…

 I met a couple of these when doing AKC Agility with Sunny.  They were solid performers and very active — their person said she had to do lots of training with them to keep them manageable and happy.  Sunny being Sunny, I could relate.  A clever, high-energy dog can be great company if you, too, are clever and high-energy, but if the dog is running circles around you literally or otherwise, you will not have a happy household.  A bored dog is a redecorating dog, a barking dog, a hyperactive dog, a nuisance!

The Portuguese Water Dog Club of America, PWDCA, has lots of breed information — and a nice little writeup of how to interpret it.  Their approach seems to be that if they cannot talk you out of owning a PWD, then perhaps you’re really the right person for one.  The site includes pictures of PWDs tracking, doing water trials specially designed for the breed, and busy with other activities.  If you want to see these dogs in action, you can find local events at the searchable AKC listings, UKC listings or the website of the main registries for your country.

Whether these suit the needs of the President, I’m not so certain about.  The PWD is a nice dog and highly trainable, but enthusiastic.  They’re less likely to shed on a visiting dignitary than many, and no more likely than any other dog to throw up into a prime minister’s lap, but they are enthusiastic greeters and high-energy house dogs. 

However, the pound pooch that so many people endorsed would have been a gigantic gamble.  Many of them (and this is personal experience speaking) come out with issues both medical and psychological.  The leader of the free world and his family may not have the extra time demanded for all-too-common heartworm treatments; the girls may not want to keep the dog quiet for the next couple of months once they finally have him.  Another common disease in pound adoptions, especially in puppies, is distemper, which is often fatal and in survivors frequently leaves a parting gift of seizures.  A pound pooch does not come from a known ancestry, so both his long-term temperment and hypoallergenic tendencies may be in doubt.  The sniff test is a start, but only counts if the dog hasn’t just had a bath — a good scrubbing renders any pooch temporarily dander-free.

I’m not sure when getting a dog came to be a public decision instead of a private choice for anyone.  If you told a friend you were trying to get pregnant, and the friend answered, “Why, when there are so many desperate war orphans in the world?” you might feel both distressed and put-upon.  Yes, there are orphans, but many of them have severe physical and emotional problems that you, personally, don’t feel able to handle.  You might be sufficiently unable that attempting to do so is a disservice to the adopted child, and to the rest of your household.  You might only barely feel up to taking the chance of getting an Uncle Harry, Jr., never mind the great unknown of an adopted child from another country.  Why should you feel bad for knowing your limits?  Many pound pooches are shell-shocked, mistrained, undersocialized, or otherwise in need of a great deal of extra help that not everyone is qualified to give, and noble intentions often lead to second surrenders.  That’s not a good setup for the White House Dog either, and if the Obamas don’t feel up to taking a chance on an adoption, that’s their business.  How they run the country outside their house is our business.

On the flip side, if the PWD is the ideal dog for the First Family, I hope the rest of the country doesn’t suddenly decide it’s the perfect dog for everyone who wishes they’d been born an Obama.  Breeds suffer when they become popular and puppies start being cranked out by people who have never heard of health testing, or who have but want no truck with it, or who don’t believe genetics is a real science.  When breeds suffer, individual puppies suffer — hip problems, bleeding diseases, or just plain bad owners.  Myself, I hope that my Dustin becomes the proud father of sons and daughters one day, but hope will not be sufficient.  He also has to come up clear with the OFA H&E, the CERF, the Degenerative Myelopathy DNA test, possibly the BAER (not likely to be a problem, but nothing makes a cleaner health record than not looking for problems), the cardiac test which has no collection of letters, and any other alphabet soup that comes along. 

If you want a purebred puppy yourself, research the breed and know what parts of the alphabet should show up alongside the parents’ names.  If you can find the parents in the OFA database, wonderful.  If you can’t, find out why not.  This is a little like going to Consumer Reports before you buy a car, and you’re looking for something likely to be with you longer than the vehicle.  You’re hoping it will be with you longer than that. 

To bring us back around to the PWD, their breed club addresses nine aspects of health.  If you choose to add a PWD to your home, these are the main concerns to research before deciding on a rescue or on a puppy or adult from a breeder.  Adults do have the large advantage of having probably presented early symptoms of anything they’re going to have and the large drawback of having been integrated into a family not yours for some part of their lives.  You have to ask yourself — and anyone else who might know — why that adult dog is available.  Puppies are, well, puppies, and worth at least fifteen posts all of their own.