[NAGDU] For Lisa in Germany - Guide dog relieving

[Peter Wolf]

Hi Lisa, 

Sorry, a little computer mystery here.  When I press some particular key, emails seem so just send themselves.  So I just sent an incomplete message i think.   Lets try again…

OK, so you were asking us out here for input about relieving on a longer than usual train ride.  Many of us folks will probably each have a diffferent story or method.  Here is ours.

We are a two working dog family.  My wife has a service dog for head injury, and I have Metukah for vision.  It’s nice to report that we've have consistently good results with both Kira and Metukah, who both are 9.  We’ve had both since puppies.  

You mentioned that you have a pretty tight eliminating schedule, and I am aware that a bunch of schools train for this.  We have never had elimination problems, even with our method, which considerably loose by comparison.  This is hopefully some good news for your nerves, because it is all based on this one magic key…

The magic key is, a dog’s elimination cycle for solids is approximately six hours, and shorter for water and urination.  But to be sure, we use eight hours as the clearing time for our dogs when we travel on anything that is not a car.  This eliminates issues, because once we are into a bathroom restricted space, our dogs have done it all and we all know they are empty.  

If we are going to travel where the girls aren’t going to be able to poop such as an airplane, we will as I mentioned, make it at least eight hours, not just six hours, from the last food and water.  And if our going to bed makes it longer than that, so be it.  We simply pick up food and water so that by the time on the clock that we have to clear airport security or board a train and get inside the gate, the dogs are empty.  This alone should take care of it for you.  

We fly frequently.  The flights are from one or two hours, to cross country which is all together five or six hours including wait times in restricted places like airport gates.  About once a year, we may fly internationally as well, with those ten hour or longer flights.  That is long, but it works.  

Food isn’t an issue.  Dogs are physically built to binge and fast, over periods of days.  Most people feed once a day.  We feed morning and night.  Not feeding a dog isn’t going to hurt it for a day.  And we make it up considerately to them on the other side, after landing.  

What we do always watch is hydration.  We are careful to watch them to make sure they don’t get dehydrated.  Even on longer flights, we have not had a circumstance where we found that we actually had to be concerned about dehydration.  But we still hold the caution.  That’s probably because they sleep or are sedentary for the duration.  Still, we have three watering options if we have to.  One of course is simply giving a small amount of water in a travel bowl, but not enough to start a urinating cycle.  Kira will self-regulate, and take a drink if she really needs it, if we really think we have to give her some.  That has been very rare. 

 Metukah on the other hand is a character.  She’s a camel.  She might not drink, even if we think she needs to.  If we are on a long flight, and we really think we need to give water, we’ll measure out a little bit.  If Metukah won’t drink it, I’ll squirt it in her mouth from a small squeeze bulb syringe from the drug store.  It’s quick and a small measured amount, a game for her.  Usually, she just stays asleep.  As soon as we land, though, we tank them up immediately.  

Long trips can throw them off in terms of the urge to drink.  We want them to drink seriously when we hit the ground because we know they have been in a dehydrating environment no matter how well they have done.  Kira will self regulate beautifully.  But my camel might not want to drink.  So I make it fun.  I just put a teaspoon or two of crushed up high quality organic freeze dried dog food like Open Farm, or at least from Primal Nuggets, something good like that.  I put it into water and stir it in.  Just a little in a baggie in my pack.  Meat soup, dog people, who wouldn’t dive head first into that!  

But you said train.  We have been in this train circumstance before.  It was a cross country train from California to New York, about 3 1/2 days.  And it was the first of it’s kind.  When you are living on the train the nice neat controls around flying aren’t so easy after the first day because the clock and train stops take on a schedule of their own.  The girls were about 5 years old then.  We tried to time things for the stops, but sometimes, the stops were long between.  Or, they too quick to get them out and back from the platform in enough time before the train started off again.   We all worked it out.  But then, a day in, we don’t know why but something went off in Metukah’s belly.  She got sick, and began to tremble and be urgent to poop during a time when there simply were no stops for the next two and a half hours.  

So we took her into a bathroom stall, barely bigger than she is.  We got a trash bag and a newspaper from the conductor.  We lined the floor with the bag, and covered it with paper.  We told Tuki to go.  Being trained, she looked at us like we were nuts.  It took some convincing, perhaps five minutes.  But we finally assured her that she could let it go.  She did, we folded it up and tied it off and it went out on the next stop.  That’s how we learned that in an emergency, where the clock and conveyance don’t cooperate with set schedules, a pad could be invaluable.  We have never needed this again since.  But we always keep one relieving pad in the carry-on when flying even though we may never get the opportunity to use it.  

Really?  A relieving pad for a trained dog?  Guess what, we were at Amsterdam airport, checking in to come home a couple of years ago.  As it happened, this agent told us that a relieving pad was required to board this airlines international flight!  I reached into my suitcase, and flashed it!  The airline has since required a letter stating that for flights longer than 8 hours, a dog is trained to (quote)… manage and/or take care of emergency elimination in a sanitary manner unquote!  No biggie for us, they are trained anyway and running on empty.  This just appears to be a blanket, all dogs thing, not just discriminating about working dogs.  We keep a copy of it in the suitcase and forget about it.  Contact me if you need wording anyone, if you want to keep one in your suitcase.    

Since starting this email, I just caught the incoming issue from NAGDU where some of you have written.  Sounds good.  There was a question about where to find relieving pads.  Here’s where to get them.  There are two kinds, smelly and not smelly.  Otherwise they are the exact same product.  In pet stores, they are called training pads.  It is a paper absorbent like the inside of diaper material, backed with thin plastic.  They come in a couple of sizes from about 1.5 feet square to about 3 feet square.  They fold up small.  What makes training pads smelly is a pheramone treatment that they put into it.  It has a urine kind of smell, which stinks.  It is designed to be a urinating attractant for a dog.  But it will smell up your stuff.   Instead, go to any big store where they sell products for sick or old people.  They will be called incontinence pads.  These go onto the bed under someone who has those issues.  They are just the same pad product, without smell.

Since we who use dialed-in, trained dogs don’t rely on products like this in our normal lives, your dog might not get the point when you roll one of these bad boys out, and say “go”.  For this, I took a little piece of paper towel, and touched a spot where both of our dogs urinated in the yard.  This little one-inch piece, I then let dry, and then folded it up inside of a little piece of aluminum foil.  Being dry, and airtght in the foil, it doesn’t smell.  This little one inch piece of urinating encouragement, I then folded up inside the pad, which lives in a one gallon sized ziplock bag in my carry on.  If we ever are in a situation where we need to use it, it may be helpful to tear the foil open and put it down on the middle of the pad for association by smell.  

Happy travels!
Peter