Wishing you and your family a happy holiday season and best wishes for 2008!

Even if you’ve already made your travel plans for this holiday season, check out the great information that our Boston blog has compiled on traveling with your pet.

Our favorite tip comes from Edmunds…we highly recommend their advice in Tip #4. California now has a mandatory dog seat belt law, but even if it’s legal in your state, we highly urge you to buckle or restrain your dog in the car.

Since Oscar isn’t crate trained, we opted for the seal belt/restraining harness option. There are lots of car harness options available. If your dog already has a harness, you can just get a simple adapter to connect his harness to a seat belt - we got the BatziBelt a few months ago and it’s great! It’s pretty small so you can just leave it attached the the seat belt and then it’s ready to use whenever you need it.

Combine the BatziBelt with a comfortable harness like those made by Puppia for a practical way to keep your dog comfortable and safe in the car.

We wish you and your pets a safe and happy holiday season!

If you’re just joining us, catch up by reading Becoming a Therapy Dog - Part 1.  Back to our story…

As we patiently endeavored to wait a few more months to get started on our therapy dog journey, we stumbled upon the AKC’s Canine’s Good Citizen Program at the AKC’s annual Responsible Dog Ownership Day in Madison Square Park. (As a side note - Responsible Dog Ownership Day is an amazing event for dog owners in New York. The AKC has tables with information about almost every breed of dogs you can imagine - they also have Obedience/Agility/Rally/Performance demonstrations, contests, free samples from sponsors and much more. Mark your calendar…the 2008 RDOD will be help on September 20th!)

Back to Canine Good Citizen (CGC)…at Responsible Dog Ownership Day, we learned that the CGC Program is a certification program that is designed to reward dogs who have good manners at home and in the community. A dog can earn his certification by passing a 10-part test that requires the dog to demonstrate proper socialization and basic obedience.

For CGC, the owner must also sign the Responsible Dog Owners Pledge which states, “We believe that responsible dog ownership is a key part of the CGC concept and by signing the pledge, owners agree to take care of their dog’s health needs, safety, exercise, training and quality of life. Owners also agree to show responsibility by doing things such as cleaning up after their dogs in public places and never letting dogs infringe on the rights of others.”

We liked the idea of the pledge (we hate it when people don’t train their dog or don’t pick up their dog’s poop and give other dog owners a bad name) and we were anxious for Oscar to add another certificate to our fridge, so we took a look at what our little genius would have to do to earn his certification…

Test 1: Accepting a friendly stranger

Test 2: Sitting politely for petting

Test 3: Appearance and grooming

Test 4: Out for a walk (walking on a loose lead)

Test 5: Walking through a crowd

Test 6: Sit and down on command and Staying in place

Test 7: Coming when called

Test 8: Reaction to another dog

Test 9: Reaction to distraction

Test 10: Supervised separation

Hmmm…no problem on the socialization stuff - Oscar’s a lover, not a fighter. He was also pretty good at obedience by then, but we hadn’t completely weaned him off of “incentives” at that time and you’re not allowed to give treats during the test, so we weren’t 100% sure that he would be able to pull those off.

Finally, there was #10 - supervised separation…well that one was going to be a problem. Recently, Oscar had started to develop a little separation anxiety - specifically, when we were out on a family walk and one of us would try to leave (to go into a store, run an errand, etc.), Oscar would stand up, strain at the end of his leash and make this pitiful, frenzied yelping/crying noise. Well, 9 out of 10’s not bad, but unfortunately you needed to pass all 10 tests to earn your CGC certification.

We resigned ourselves to the fact that we would NOT be earning our CGC certification that day. But it was early in the day, the line was short and the test was free - so we decided to give it a shot anyway, it would be good practice to see if we could pass tests 1 through 9 and we’d work on the separation part for next time.

Tune in next time to find out how we did!!

I know how important it is to make sure you keep my four-legged friend well-hydrated. And since we take Oscar with us almost everywhere we go, I’ve been on a search for a good travel water bottle.

We got the Handi Drink water bottle when Oscar was a puppy and it was okay, but I recently finally gave up on it. I could never get the bottle to snap in place like in the picture and the water didn’t come out fast enough. Then, after about 6 months, the rubber nipple at the top started to disintegrate and it started leaking all the time.

So, when my father-in-law asked me what I wanted for a holiday present (I always find that whole situation a little awkward) I requested some new travel water bottles for Oscar. My presents arrived last week and I was really planning on waiting to open them, but I couldn’t take the leaky Handi Drink one more day.

So last night, I busted into one present early and discovered the Thirsty Dog portable pet water bowl. I did a test run at home and was really excited about the functionality. It was very easy to use - just open the tab and the water flows into the bowl. When you’re done, you just stand it back up and any leftover water flows right back into the bottle.

Unfortunately, the water bottle didn’t fare so well outside the test environment. I felt something wet seeping through my pants in the cab on the way to our agility class and sure enough, the tab had come open and the entire bottle emptied into our backpack. Fortunately, the backpack held most of the water so we didn’t make a big mess in the cab, but I felt a little deflated - I was sure I had found the greatest water bottle ever.

I’m not totally giving up on the Thirsty Dog yet, maybe it was a fluke that it opened up, but I’m back on the search for the best dog water bottle. I have one last Christmas present to try - the Gulpy Pet Water Dispenser, but I’m trying to hold out so that I have at least one present to open on Christmas morning!

Does anyone have a travel water bottle that they love to recommend?

If you’re part of the 53.5% of dog owners who treat your pup like he or she is a family member OR someone who is part of this illustrious group is on your gift list, you might want to check out some great gift ideas put together by our Boston blog.

For the dog owner in your life, check out these cool gift ideas…Top Ten Dog Holiday Gifts Part One: Gifts for Dog Owners

And when you’re making your naughty/nice list, don’t forget the pooches in your life! Top Ten Dog Holiday Gifts Part Two: Gifts for Dogs

Oscar loves the new Bungee Loofa Dog Toy and he also drools over Flossies Tendon Chews by Merrick - yum!

Here’s the picture of Oscar that we used for our holiday cards last year…

Stay tuned for this year’s card! : )

Hi there and welcome to the first installment of a weekly series on Oscar’s Therapy Dog Training!

When people hear that Oscar is a therapy dog, we usually get a lot of questions about what exactly he does as therapy dog, why we decided to become pet therapy volunteers, and how he became a registered therapy dog. So, we decided to have a special section of the blog that would be dedicated to posts and comments on this topic.

Maybe you’re interested in becoming a pet therapy team, maybe you’ve had a therapy dog visit you in your time of need or maybe you’re just looking for a feel-good read. In any case, we hope you enjoy our therapy dog exploits. Our first several posts will be dedicated to telling the story of how Oscar became a Therapy Dog…Enjoy!

As soon as Oscar was old enough, we signed him up for Puppy Kindergarten with Andrea Arden Dog Training, where they mostly taught us how to behave like good dog parents. We also learned that training is quality 1-on-1 time that can really help to forge a bond between you and your dog. In our case, it also helped strengthen the bond between the people…we both love spending time with Oscar and we previously had very few leisure interests in common.

Since we enjoyed Puppy Kindergarten so much, we started looking for other challenges to tackle. We were making some good progress on trick training when we saw a commercial for the Westminster Kennel Club’s Angel on a Leash program during their annual Dog Show.

Now at this point, we had started to notice that Oscar seemed to elicit some pretty strong reactions from people on the street. There were the regular friendly encounters with dog lovers or people who would oooh and aaahh over a cute little dog. But we also noticed that even people who didn’t stop to say “hi” would look at Oscar and smile.

In fact, it was rare that we didn’t get AT LEAST a smile. And on Oscar’s end, as soon as he recognized the slightest bit of interest from a 2-legged being, his little stub of a tail would start to wag and he would enthusiastically go over for a sniff or to give some kisses. Finally, Oscar (although he had his crazy moments) was pretty calm for puppy. So when we saw the Angel on a Leash commercial, it seemed like a perfect fit.

After doing some research, we found out that there are two major organizations that provide training programs for animal-assisted activities (AAA) and animal-assisted therapy (AAT) - The Delta Society and Therapy Dogs International (TDI). We learned that you must be registered with one of these organizations in order to participate in Pet Therapy programs at most hospitals, nursing homes and other facilities and that registration also provides coverage under the organization’s liability insurance. Finally, we learned that dogs must be at least one year old to register - alas, Oscar was too young!!!

Tune in next time to learn what we did to get ready to start Oscar’s therapy dog training.

Hi and welcome to the SnifNYCDogs blog! 

In the past year, my husband Josh and I have gone from two people who never owned a dog to self-proclaimed “crazy dog people”.  (Check out the About Us tab to learn more about us and our dog Oscar.)  I was lucky enough to get the opportunity to join a really cool dog-related start-up company earlier this year called SNIF Labs.  So now, I get to bring my dog to work and blog about him - how cool is that??   

This is Oscar, the 2 year old Brussels Griffon who has stolen our hearts…

So, the purpose of this blog is to share some of the cool things we’ve done/found in NYC in the hopes that people who read our blog will return the favor.  We’ll also share any cool dog products we come across and post our random dog thoughts.

Here’s another picture of Oscar posing for his glamour shot at one of our favorite places to hang out - Washington Square Park.

Please visit our New York Dog Map, we’ll be posting more information on this soon.   Also, check out our sister blog in Boston…www.snifbostondogs.com.  They’ve been doing a great job sniffing out all the coolest stuff for dogs in the Boston area.

Until next time,

Anya