If you’re unsure how to approach a fearful dog, you have come to the right place. Today, we’ll cover the details on how to help a fearful dog gain trust in you and how to stay safe in the process. We’ll also share a helpful video from Cesar that explains how to approach a fearful dog by engaging the dog’s curiosity and taking him for walks.

Ready to learn how to approach a fearful dog and boost his confidence? Let’s get started!

Read the Fearful Dog’s Body Language

The first step to approaching a frightened dog is to understand fearful dog body language. Because dogs communicate with humans and other pets through body language and certain behaviors, it is important to be able to understand the meaning behind the fearful dog’s actions.

There are many reasons a dog may act fearful towards you or other humans. New environments, lack of socialization, and new people are just a few factors that can cause anxiety and fear in dogs. Whatever the case may be, it’s important to realize that fearful dogs will have different behaviors than non-fearful dogs. You should always be aware of the dog’s movements and be prepared for aggressive behavior.

As you approach a fearful dog, be on the lookout for the following behaviors:

• Standing completely still 
• Staring directly at you
• Lowering or raising the head while looking away from you
• Growling
• Snapping
• Lunging toward you
• Tucking his tail between his legs
• Trembling

As you approach the dog, be alert of any aggressive behaviors the dog may show. Growling, snapping, and lunging are a few signs a dog may be acting aggressively. In these cases, be extremely cautious and do not suddenly approach the dog.

Be Careful of Your Body Position

Approaching a fearful dog requires you to be aware not only of the dog’s body language but your body position as well. If you notice the dog cowering as you approach him, immediately make yourself “smaller” by either kneeling down or bending over.

If you’re approaching an extremely fearful or shy dog, you may need to build up his confidence and trust before you may continue approaching him. Rather than walking towards him, sit down next to him, keeping your body turned slightly sideways to show him you’re not a threat.

As you gently approach the dog, remember to continue being aware of the dog’s behavior. If the dog is lunging at you or showing signs of aggression, remain standing up and do not get too close to him. If you feel uncomfortable approaching the dog, seek expert help from an animal behaviorist or trainer.

Avoid Direct Eye Contact with the Fearful Dog

The key to approaching a fearful dog is to gain his confidence and trust in you. In order for this to work, you need to appear less intimidating to the fearful dog. Because direct eye contact can appear threatening to dogs, it’s important to avert your gaze as you slowly approach him.

In addition to avoiding direct eye contact, you may turn your body slightly sideways and lean away from the dog. Remember to continue reading the dog’s body language even as you glance away from the dog’s location. 

Don’t Force Anything

Patience is the key to gaining a fearful dog’s trust. If your dog is fearful of new people, slowly introduce him to friends and family members in an area he feels comfortable being in. Never force your dog to meet someone by holding his collar or keeping him still. Once your dog becomes comfortable around individuals, continue socializing him by going to dog parks and walking him around the neighborhood. 

This method can also be used when introducing your dog to particular environments. Many dogs, especially fearful ones, can become frightened when in a new location. If your dog is afraid of a new environment, use positive body language and rewards to assure your dog the environment is safe. Continue this process for several days until your dog becomes more confident in that particular setting.

Use Positive Reinforcement with the Fearful Dog

Just as your body language influences your dog’s behavior, positive reinforcement can help your dog overcome his fears and become comfortable in frightening situations. 

There are many ways to use positive reinforcement to comfort and reward your dog. One way is to praise your dog each time he becomes less fearful and more confident in the situation he’s in. Remember to maintain a quiet yet cheerful voice that does not startle or frighten the dog in any way. 

Another way to reward your dog is through treats. Every time the dog reacts positively toward you, hand him a savory treat he is attracted to. Be careful feeding a fearful dog from your hand, as some dogs may become aggressive and snap at you. If the dog appears aggressive in any way, withhold the treats and use only verbal praise. 

Cesar’s Advice for Approaching a Fearful Dog

Are you still seeking expert advice on how to approach a fearful dog? No worries! Recently, Cesar hosted a group of veterinarians for a day of training at the Dog Psychology Center. In this video, he teaches them how to approach a fearful dog through certain tips and tricks. Whether you’re interested in how to walk a fearful dog or how to help a fearful dog regain confidence, this training video covers all the topics on how to approach a fearful or shy dog.

We hope this article helped you gain a better understanding of how to approach a fearful dog. Remember, gaining a fearful dog’s trust can only be done through time and patience. Once you earn his trust, both you and your dog can live life with confidence and excitement.

The post How to Approach a Fearful Dog appeared first on Cesar's Way.

Of course, your dog may not be as Internet famous as some others — although people do actually make a living from their pets’ accounts on social media. According to a Wall Street Journal piece about The Dog Agency, popular dogs on Instagram, for example, can rake in thousands of dollars for each product placement photo they post.

Just keep in mind that there are a few tips and tricks to making your dog Internet famous, and most of them start with learning how to take the perfect dog photo.

Now, maybe you don’t want your dog to become famous but you do want to stay in touch when you’re not at home. Depending on age group, up to 23% of pet owners have communicated with their dogs on Skype or Facetime, whether it’s just been to watch them from work or to reassure them while on vacation. And yes, there are instructions on how to do it with your dogs.

Speaking of the Internet, while the impression may be that cats rule, statistics don’t necessarily bear that out. In the latest year with animal videos in YouTube’s Most Viewed (surprisingly, it was 2014), 20% of the most watched were dog videos with nary a cat in sight. Dogs also slightly edge out cats in a Google fight.

Looking at the Bark Box survey, though this makes sense — pet owners watch dog videos or look at dog pictures half as often per week as they post something about their own, but even those numbers can add up. Typically, YouTube viewers watch 3.25 billion hours of video per month. That’s over 370,750 years of video in thirty days, or 51 and a half days’ worth of video per second, every second.

Even a tiny percentage of that is a lot of dog video so don’t worry. You’re not going to break the Internet with your dog photos — although, if you do, your dog may join the rarified ranks of the most viral dog videos of the year!

The post Have You Posted About Your Dog Today? appeared first on Cesar's Way.

Douglas Sonders doesn’t like to hear people use the term “bully breed” when they speak about pit bulls or other breeds such as Rottweilers and boxers. He especially doesn’t want to hear it when it comes to Emma, his own adorable pit bull mix.

“Emma,” he’s quick to point out, “is naturally gentle, great with kids and other dogs, and an excellent running partner,” although she does have a tendency to sneak into his bed when he’s not home.

Sonders, a New York City photographer, has teamed up with Cesar to launch a campaign to challenge the stereotype of pits as so-called bully breeds.

His goal, as stated on his website: “Through beautiful portraits and inspiring rescue stories, Not a Bully hopes to eradicate the negativity towards these deserving pets and give them a fighting chance at a forever home!”

His models include Porter, who was found on the street with his legs crushed and his jaw smashed by an abusive former owner. Even with the broken jaw, Porter tried to lick his rescuers — and now he’s safe in a forever home.

“The goal of Not a Bully,” says Sonders, “is to show that, despite what some bad humans have done to these dogs, they are inherently sweet and very trainable. Hundreds of these dogs are put to sleep in the U.S. alone every year, and breed-specific legislation bans them from entire parts of the country, which essentially serves as a death sentence for many dogs in those areas.”

Looking to contribute to the battle for pit bulls? Check out notabully.org — and while you’re there, check out all the pretty pits.

Love pit bulls too? Tell us about the pit in your life.

The post Picture Perfect Pit Bulls appeared first on Cesar's Way.

Many dog owners have seen firsthand how going for a ride in the car can be one of the most exciting things for their dogs. After all, that magic box can take them all kinds of places with you — and even just the ride can be fun for a dog.

That can be seen in the efforts of Eugene Bostick of Fort Worth, Texas, who built a miniature train to ferry around the homeless dogs that had been dumped in his neighborhood. Watching the video, it’s obvious that the dogs enjoy the ride just for the experience, even though it’s something that would normally be entirely alien to them.

It’s becoming clearer, however, that dogs may not just enjoy riding in our vehicles with us, but that they actually do understand the purpose they serve, whether it’s just a joy ride or a trip to the dog park. The next step, though, comes when dogs skip our help and start using that transportation on their own.

Just one example is the remarkable case of Boss, a Staffordshire terrier in Australia who mistakenly thought his human had left without saying good-bye, so he escaped the yard and wound up getting on the morning train alone, in search of his owner, Chris Stockman. Photos of the dog riding the train went viral, which enabled Chris and Boss to be reunited, but the most remarkable part is that the dog made the association between his human and the train in the first place.

This is reminiscent of the story of Hachikō, whose owner died in 1925. The dog came to the train station every day for nearly a decade to wait for his human’s return and his loyalty resulted in both a feature film made about him and an annual celebration at Shibuya train station in his honor.

Now Boss’s story was a one-off and Hachikō only waited for the train, but there’s another dog who’s figured out public transportation and uses it regularly. That would be Eclipse, the Lab mix in Seattle, who regularly hops the local bus to go to the dog park and does it entirely on her own.

While her owner, Jeff Young, is a frequent companion on the trips, she doesn’t wait if he isn’t ready and, if she happens to get on the bus without him, he catches up later. That seems to be just fine with the various drivers and passengers on the route. Even though the dog is technically violating the leash laws, there have apparently been no complaints. There is no word on whether Eclipse is required to pay full fare or to carry exact change if she does, however.

So far, Hachikō, Boss, and Eclipse may seem to be exceptional dogs — but in another part of the world, wild dogs have learned to use human systems without being trained and without having the incentive of human owners to lure them along.

In Moscow, packs of homeless dogs that spend their nights in the industrial outskirts of the metropolis regularly catch trains into the city center in the morning in order to scavenge food as well as beg from the locals, then return “home” in the evening — and they figured it out entirely on their own.

What makes this even more remarkable is that the Moscow Metro system is enormous and not easy for even humans to get around in. It comprises nearly 250 miles of track and 243 stations, boasts an annual ridership of nearly two and a half billion people, and is undergoing major expansion — and yet these dogs catch the trains and get off in the right place.

Did we mention that this is a subway system, so the dogs have to figure out where to get off while they’re underground?

It’s this latter ability that really highlights how well dogs can adapt to human conveniences. Hachikō only had to go to one station, and Boss didn’t know where he was going. Eclipse does manage to get off where she wants to, but she’s looking out the windows and only goes about three or four stops anyway.

The Moscow Metro dogs have them all beat. How do they do it? Nobody has studied the “how” yet so we’re not sure, but in all likelihood they’re using a combination of their noses and sense of timing to figure it out. And then they double down by showing incredible cunning once they get into the city, obeying traffic lights, and demonstrating some very clever urban hunting skills, like using “cute” members of the pack to beg from people, or using a surprise bark from behind to startle someone and make them drop their lunch and leave it for the taking.

What does this prove? For one thing, that animals are a lot smarter than we might think they are, and they are very adept at figuring out our world and working it to their advantage. And this cleverness isn’t limited to dogs. There’s at least one bus-riding cat, and crows that have learned to use traffic lights to their advantage, and those are just two examples out of many.

So the next time you take your dog for a ride in the car, be careful. She may just be plotting how to get hold of your keys and take off on her own!

The post Dogs In “Training:” Canine Commuters appeared first on Cesar's Way.

Here are some other things we can do to show kindness to our dogs:

Adopt Don’t Shop

When you are considering adopting your next dog, please go to a shelter or rescue instead of a pet store. It’s the best way to save a life.

 Not all dogs wind up in shelters because they are “bad.” Oftentimes, it’s because their former family can no longer care for them, whether for financial reasons, a move to a place that would not allow dogs, or the death of a caretaker.

Also remember that it’s very difficult to tell whether a pet store dog came from a legitimate, licensed breeder, or was the product of a puppy mill — even the pet stores can be deceived about the source of a puppy.

Spay and Neuter

In order to reduce the number of unwanted dogs that are destroyed each year, we need to reduce the number of unwanted dogs. Spaying or neutering your pets is the best way to do this.  

There is really no excuse to not have your dogs fixed. All of the standard arguments against it are complete myths. Neutering a male dog will not make him fat and lazy, and he will not lament his lost “manhood.” Instead, it will reduce aggression and excitement, as well as his desire to “mark” his territory, including indoors. It will also eliminate the possibility of testicular cancer down the road.

It’s also a myth that female dogs should have a litter of puppies before being spayed. Spaying before a dog’s first heat cycle can reduce the possibility of various forms of cancer. Needless to say, it will also completely eliminate the possibility of unwanted puppies.

Remember: Dogs experience the world first through their sense of smell, and if you have an unfixed female around that goes into heat, every male dog in the neighborhood will know it, and the unfixed males will do their best to try to get to her.

Donate or Volunteer

Whether you have a dog or not, you can still help your local shelters and rescue organizations through donating, whether your time, money, or material help, and there’s probably a shelter or rescue near you.

 While these groups can always use financial support, if you’re short on funds you can always offer your time. They always need dog walkers, as well as volunteers to assist people in finding and adopting the right pet, to tend to the kennels and the dogs’ needs, and more.

If you don’t have the time or the money, shelters always need supplies, and many of them have wish lists. Old blankets and newspapers are always in demand, but so are things like office and cleaning supplies, toys, bowls, other accessories, and food.

See Something, Say Something

Animal abuse is a serious issue, but the animals can’t report it themselves. If you know of dogs or cats that are living in inhumane conditions or that are being physically abused, report it to your local animal control authorities. It’s another way to save animals’ lives, and to find them homes that are loving and committed to their care.
 

Help Educate Others

Spread the word to your friends on how they can help out, and how they can fulfill their dogs’ needs and bring balance to their pack. If you live in an area with a lot of dog walkers, try to organize a neighborhood pack walk, which will help to socialize the dogs and educate the humans.

Don’t forget social media. If you’re an active user of Facebook, Twitter, Google+ or other such sites, you have a platform to spread the word, and yet another way to help out animals everywhere.

The best gift we can give to our dogs is strong Pack Leadership by giving them rules, boundaries and limitations and providing exercise, discipline and affection, in that order.

A balanced dog is a happy dog. Luckily, dogs naturally know how to be balanced — if we let them. It is only when we have unbalanced energy, are inconsistent in our leadership, or fail to let our dogs know what they should be doing that misbehaviors arise and become a problem.

Preventing those problems in the first place is the greatest kindness we can show to our canine friends, this week and every week.

The post It’s Be Kind To Animals Week appeared first on Cesar's Way.

Here are our recommendations for five very useful apps available for both Android and Apple phones, which we’ve tested on both platforms. Each description is followed by a link to the app and user ratings. The apps are arranged alphabetically, so this is not a best-of order.

1. BarkCam
   Have you ever tried to get that perfect photo of your dog only to find that she’ll look at everything but the camera? This could be the solution. BarkCam is a simple app that plays various sounds in order to get your dogs attention and snap the perfect pic. Sounds include things like a cat’s meow, a dog howl, a siren, and, if your dog has a human sense of humor, a fart. Note that your results may vary, depending upon how reactive your dog is to sound. The Apple owner’s dog perked right up at the sounds, while our Android user’s dog couldn’t have cared less.

   (iTunes 4 / Google Play 4.3
    

2. Dog/Puppy Clicker Training
   Sure, you could get a dog clicker for about a buck, but what do you do if you forget your clicker when you go out for training? With this app, it’s always on your phone. While the app is pretty basic, it also includes a how-to guide on obedience and clicker training, as well as a dog whistle. None of the humans in the office could hear the latter, but the dogs definitely did.

   (iTunes 4 / Google Play) 3.5
    

3. Dog Walk
   Have you ever wondered how far you’ve walked your dog? There’s an app for that and this is it. Just hit the start button, and it will map your route in real time as well as tell you how long you’ve been walking. You can create entries for each of your dogs as well as take pictures in-app on the walk (although apparently only in an Instagram-friendly square aspect ratio), and tag spots where your dog has done his business. Note, though, that in both versions of the app, we weren’t able to log in using Facebook and had to create a separate account. Also, a survey feature in the sidebar on the Android version crashed the app a few times after the second question. Otherwise, though, it’s just what it says on the tin.

   (iTunes 5 / Google Play) 4.2
    

4. Pet First Aid American Red Cross
   The Red Cross has been teaching human first aid for over a century and, of course, they have an app covering the subject — but they also have an app that compiles first aid instructions for dogs and cats all in one place. The information itself is divided into sections including “Learn,” “Prepare,” and “Emergency,” and it includes a section to enter your pets’ info. There’s also an integrated pet hotel finder in the prepare section, and the emergency section includes a place to put your vet’s phone number, a pet hospital locator, a list of warning signs, and quick access to the most common first aid emergencies. Once you’ve gone through the learning section, you can also quiz yourself. All-in-all, this is an incredibly useful resource for any dog or cat owner.

   (iTunes 3.5 / Google Play 4.5
    

5. Rover
   If you’re looking for a dog walker or sitter or a place to board your dog, then this is the app for you. Think of it as like an Air BnB or Uber/Lyft for canines with a network of professionals registered with the app, which also handles payments. And if you’re a dog walker, sitter, or boarder, you can use this app to manage your clients and business. On the consumer side, the available information includes distance, rates, and photos, and the more detailed information pages list special skills, reviews, and services offered. Sitters can update their clients with photos, videos, and updates via the app, and walkers can send their route and a report card on the dog’s behavior. You can also arrange a 30 minute drop-in visit just in case your dog needs a little company while you’re out.

   (iTunes 5 / Google Play 4.3

And, just for fun…

1. Dog Simulator
   Whether you have a dog or not, this game is your chance to be one as you control the worst puppy in the world, on a mission to destroy everything in the house. Yes, it’s just silly, stupid fun — but it does give you a chance to be a really bad dog with none of the headaches of the real thing.

   (iTunes 4.5 / Google Play) 4.6

What are your favorite dog-related apps? Let us know in the comments!

The post 5 Useful Apps For Dog Lovers (And One Silly One) appeared first on Cesar's Way.

You may have heard the term “clickbait,” which is a headline designed to cause a reaction in people — usually anger or outrage — in order to get them to click through to the story. While legitimate news outlets try to avoid this sort of thing, there are too many content purveyors who have turned it into an art form.

Unfortunately, there are also too many web surfers who never read the story, but only the headline. This premise was tested in 2016 with the shocking headline “Scientists say giant asteroid could hit earth next week, causing mass devastation.” The real story was quite different, but only 41% of people would ever figure that out.

Because those of us who are dog lovers are passionate and empathetic people, we can be very susceptible to this kind of thing. Also keep in mind that not all such headlines are just attempts to drive traffic. Sometimes, they happen when an editor doesn’t fully understand a complex story themselves, or if a reporter doesn’t give all the details and sensationalizes the subject when they write it up.

You probably remember headlines like these from late last year:

• Federal Court Rules Police Can Shoot a Barking or Moving Dog While Entering a Home
• Federal court rules police can shoot your dog if necessary
• Court rules that police can shoot a dog if it barks or moves

Along with the headlines, many of the stories (and comments on them) interpreted this to mean that all police could shoot any dog, anywhere, even in a private home, if it barked at them or even moved. That would be pretty outrageous if it were true — but it’s far from true in this case, and is a good lesson in general in learning to look beyond the headlines and get all of the details first.

The important point missing from a lot of coverage of the story was that the ruling does not apply to police in general. Rather, the case came about because the couple involved had sued the police department for violating their Fourth Amendment rights by shooting their dogs. The judge ultimately ruled that, in this case, the officers were justified in their actions.

The judge wrote, “The standard we set out today is that a police officer’s use of deadly force against a dog while executing a search warrant to search a home for illegal drug activity is reasonable under the Fourth Amendment when… the dog poses an imminent threat to the officer’s safety.” (There’s a full breakdown of the ruling at the website Snopes.com.)

Another big thing missing is the officers’ state of mind at the time of the shooting. According to them, the dogs were barking constantly and lunging, and the plaintiffs in the case — the dogs’ owners — never refuted this information. Additionally, something that gets lost in the outrage is that the police were in the process of serving a search warrant in the course of investigating possible felonies, so they had no idea how many people were in the house, whether they were armed, or if anyone was hiding in places they could not get to because of the dogs’ aggression.

There have certainly been cases of police officers shooting dogs without justification, but there have also been convictions in several of them, such as in cases in Louisiana and Long Island. It’s arguable whether either officer was sufficiently punished for what they did, but they both received their day in court and were found guilty, as have people in the reverse situation of having killed a police K-9.

The point of the story is that awareness of animal abuse and fighting against it are important, but it’s also important to get the whole story first, so that we can respond in the right way at the right time. We also need to acknowledge that sometimes tragic things happen.

In an ideal world, police would never have to shoot a dog and we could teach them alternate responses, as well as how to de-escalate an aggressive dog situation without using deadly force. But, in the meantime, we have to balance compassion for animals with empathy for the people who are stuck with a difficult enough job to begin with. We need to educate ourselves as well as educate others, and learn to read beyond the headlines — even the one on this story.

The post The Outrageous Truth About Dogs Being Shot appeared first on Cesar's Way.

Ryders Alley is just what it sounds like, a narrow one-way stretch of street that runs about half a city block southwest of DeLury Square Park on the Lower Westside. And the group is definitely a society. The real key to who and what they are comes in the words “Trencher-fed.” This refers to a hunting group of dogs, usually foxhounds or terriers, which do not live as a pack but are kept by their separate owners and only come together for the hunt.

Tons of rats

Put it all together and, as the name implies, this is a dog pack that hunts down and kills the city’s many rats — which are so ubiquitous that they have their own Wikipedia page. However, while it’s long been an adage that there are as many rats in the city as there are people, researchers finally disproved this in 2014, determining the rat population of two million to be about one fourth the number of humans at eight point four million.

While not as impressive as the higher number, that’s still a lot of rats. Another way to look at it is that there are 750 tons of rats in, under, and around the city.

Dogs with jobs

The group uses terriers and dachshunds and, again, the logic for why is right in the names. Terrier comes from the French “chien terrier,” or dog of the earth, and dachshund is German for “badger dog.” Both breeds were originally used to hunt badgers and rodents. Fortunately, New York is not known to have a large badger population.

According to a New York Post story on the group, while the dogs are naturally inclined to hunt rats, they do have to be taught how to kill them properly so they don’t create a bloody mess everywhere. This involves grabbing the rat by the neck and shaking it until it’s dead. Luckily, this is an instinctual move for most dogs and you’ve probably seen your dog do it with a toy as well, so it isn’t that difficult to train them to not rip the rats apart.

This doesn’t mean that the job is entirely bloodless, though, and it is very common for the dogs to be bitten by rats, although that’s more a minor annoyance than anything else. As R.A.T.S. founder Richard Reynolds told the Post, “Rat bites are nips, and to a terrier, all that does is make them more determined.”

A serious problem

While there probably isn’t a major city on the planet that doesn’t have rats, New York seems to have taken the lifetime achievement award when it comes to spectacular rat problems. Incidents there have included an entire fire station in Queens condemned and gutted due to an infestation, a KFC/Taco Bell combination near NYU being overrun to the bemusement of a local film crew, and in the fall of 2015, the entire Internet was amused by the adventures of the city’s own Pizza Rat, inspiring a Staten Island minor league baseball team (yes, they have one) to consider changing their name from the Yankees to the Pizza Rats. (Spoiler: the name-change idea fizzled.)

Rats aren’t just a danger to buildings or abandoned food. They are also notorious carriers of disease, harboring various bacteria and viruses. It was rats that carried the plague through Europe in centuries past, and scientists have identified at least 18 human diseases carried by rats including hantavirus and Leptospirosis.

Even a rat bite on its own can be dangerous, leading to tetanus or a fatal condition called “rat bite fever,” and infants and children are frequent targets of rats.

Send in the angels

The R.A.T.S. aren’t the only ones out there using animals to deal with the problem. In a sign of the times, the crime rate in New York has gotten so low that the Guardian Angels, former protectors of subway riders, have now branched out. Nancy Regula, girlfriend of group founder Carlos Sliwa, has created colonies of cats throughout the city in areas of rat infestation. She does this by capturing wild cats, having them neutered, and then releasing them into the new colony.

The Guardian Angels have only been in the ratting business for a few months now, while R.A.T.S. has been around for over a quarter of a century, but between the two of them, they’re poised to make a major dent in the Big Apple’s furry little problem.

To learn more about R.A.T.S., visit them on Facebook or YouTube.

The post Small Game Hunting In The Big Apple appeared first on Cesar's Way.

“…le chien… c’est le meilleur ami que puisse avoir l’homme” — François-Marie Arouet (Voltaire), Dictionnaire philosophique, 1764 (“…the dog… is the best friend man can have.”)

 “A dog is man’s best friend” is an often-expressed sentiment and, nowadays, the expression is practically a cliché. Voltaire was ahead of his time when he was the first to express the idea in writing two hundred and fifty years ago, beating out a more famous statement of the same by King Frederick of Prussia 25 years later.

However, in a courthouse in Warrensburg, Missouri in 1870, a lawyer gave an impassioned argument in a case involving the shooting of a dog, Old Drum, in which the expression became a part of the American vernacular. A statue of Old Drum by Ren Gastaldi was erected in the city on September 23, 1958. It quoted that lawyer’s speech, known as “Eulogy of the Dog,” in full and the entire memorial is titled “A Tribute to the Dog.”

At the same time, the people of Missouri have been trying to have Old Drum declared the state’s official historical dog. Although the Missouri State House passed a bill to that effect in May, 2013 and forwarded it to the Senate, it wasn’t until just now, March 2017, that the bill was finally passed to the Senate for approval.

The act reads, in full, as follows:

10.112 The dog known as ‘Old Drum’, whose death became the subject of an 1870 Missouri Supreme Court case and the delivery of a famous speech as the closing argument to the case known as the ‘Eulogy to Old Drum’, is designated as the historical dog of the state of Missouri.

The Prescott Evening Courier of June 3, 1957, gives the details of the original case in the fundraising run-up to erecting the memorial. Old Drum was a dog owned by Charles Burden and shot by another local, Lon Hornsby. (A modern account from the Johnson County historical society, in contrast, states that the dog was shot by Samuel Ferguson, the 12-year-old nephew of Leonidas “Lon” Hornsby.)

Either way, the defendants claimed the shooting was because dogs had killed 100 sheep on their farm, but the impassioned appeal by the attorney George Vest describing the dog as Burden’s best friend moved the jury to find for the plaintiff, who was awarded $50 — the equivalent of about $960 today.

This verdict may seem to be something of an insult today. After all, can you really put a dollar value — and such a low one at that — on a family member, companion, and loved one? However, it was actually radical for the time. Remember, this was before humans had figured out how to conquer rabies, so dogs had not yet become the household pets we know them as today. They were mostly working animals, and sometimes livestock-killing pests, and it was a rare person at the time who considered them to be more than just animals.

So for a jury to make such a finding at the time is a huge example of how moved they were by Vests’s arguments in his eulogy — words that are still having an effect on the people of Missouri nearly a century and a half later.

Missouri Senate Bill No. 376 was just passed to the formal calendar for “Perfection,” the process of finalizing the bill for passage. You can find more information at the Missouri State Senate website.

The post Missouri’s Old Drum: Mankind’s Best Friend appeared first on Cesar's Way.

On the next episode of “Cesar Millan’s Dog Nation,” Cesar and Andre visit San Francisco, one of California’s most vibrant and historically significant cities. It’s a place that has also contributed a good share of stories, legends, and myths to state lore.

One of the most famous real people of San Francisco was Norton I, Emperor of the United States and Protector of Mexico. He was the Emperor because he said he was, and the people of San Francisco just accepted it. After all, his ad in the September 17, 1859 edition of the San Francisco Bulletin proclaimed it:

“At the peremtory (sic) request of a large majority of the citizens of these United States, I, Joshua Norton… declare and proclaim myself Emperor of these U.S., and… do hereby order and direct the representatives of the different States of the Union to assemble in the Musical Hall of this city on the 1st day of February next, then and there to make such alterations in the existing laws of the Union as may ameliorate the evils under which the country is laboring, and thereby cause confidence to exist, both at home and abroad, in our stability and integrity.”

He was a local celebrity and eccentric for twenty years, going so far as to issue his own currency — which local businesses accepted. But since this is “Dog Nation,” let’s look at the dogs involved with Norton.

Bummer and Lazarus the Dogs

Just as Emperor Norton I became one of the City’s biggest celebrities, so were two stray dogs named Bummer and Lazarus. Now keep in mind that San Francisco had strict anti-stray laws at the time, but something about these two dogs so captured the public’s attention that when a dog catcher snared Lazarus in 1862, the outrage was so great that not only was he released to re-join his constant companion, but the two of them were exempted from the stray dog laws after that.

It might have also helped that both dogs were expert rat-catchers and that port cities in the 19th century were notorious for wharf rats and other vermin.

According to accounts of the time, the two dogs met when Bummer arrived to rescue Lazarus from an attack by another larger dog. The attack left Lazarus with a bad leg, and Bummer became his protector and constant companion. The January 18, 1861 issue of “Alta California” reported, “Every night since then, the ‘twa dogs’ have slept coiled up together close to some doorway — Bummer always giving the lame cur the inside booth, and trying to keep him as warm as possible.”

Lazarus died in 1863 and wound up being taxidermied and displayed behind the bar at Martin’s Saloon, a place that both dogs had frequented in the search for scraps. Bummer died two years later after being kicked by a man — who was promptly arrested by the police for his own protection, and the dog was eulogized by none other than Mark Twain. Today, there’s even a brand of gin named for them.

It was only natural that these famous rat-catching dogs would become associated with the City’s famous eccentric in the public mind, and even to this day a lot of San Franciscans refer to Bummer and Lazarus as Emperor Norton’s dogs — but were they?

Emperor Norton and the Dogs

The very appropriately named historian Malcolm Barker disagrees, and attributes the connection between Norton and the dogs to later misinterpretation of humor and satire at the time. In fact, according to Barker, many images of Norton with Bummer and Lazarus were created by a young French artist named Edward Jump — and the only contemporary news article Barker could find that mentioned both Norton and the dogs referred to Norton’s disdain for a Jump cartoon that depicted him eating from a free buffet with the dogs at his side.

Apparently, Norton took such exception to seeing this artwork in a store window that he struck the window with his cane, promptly breaking… the cane.

The Dog Myth

And yet, to this day, the myth that Lazarus and Bummer belonged to Emperor Norton and were his constant companions continues, even being perpetuated by entities like the Virtual Museum of San Francisco, which goes so far as to report that the Emperor and the dogs attended the opening of every theatrical show in the city, sitting in their own reserved front row balcony seats. While theaters did make it a practice to reserve an opening night seat in hopes that their local human luminary would attend, there is no evidence that he ever brought the dogs to the show with him.

So why is this trio so inextricably linked when there’s no evidence from the time that there was any connection between them and, indeed, enough anecdotal information to indicate that Norton himself wasn’t even fond of dogs? Perhaps it’s because all three of them were bigger-than-life characters, and it just seems natural that such a colorful personality as Norton would have to be associated with equally colorful animals.

It’s also just something of the nature of San Francisco, where real lives and legends have been colliding for decades. Nothing about the City is mundane or commonplace, and there is probably nowhere in America that so seamlessly weaves together a rich, living history and modern progress, nor is there a place that so heartily embraces and promotes its own eccentrics.

So even if the connection between dogs and a slightly mad fake leader isn’t real, as far as the City is concerned it was, is, and always will be in one sense, although it was never Norton who owned the dogs. If you drop by Redwood Grove park next to the towering Transamerica Pyramid near North Beach, there you can see a memorial plaque to the two dogs which sums it up the best in these words: “Contrary to common belief, they were not Emperor Norton’s dogs. They belonged to no one person. They belonged to San Francisco.”

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