Handling dogs that pull on leash while walking
New findings point to a link between activity, creativity
Dear Cathy: I just rescued a sweet 11-pound Maltese mix. My arthritic hands and fingertips prevent me from opening those squeeze clasps on collars and especially harnesses. She pulls her leash so hard, especially when seeing squirrels, so with a collar, she chokes herself and I fear falling. Research has led me to many sources, even a site for arthritic dog owners, but none deal with this issue. Perhaps you have a solution for me.
— GG, West Hartford, Connecticut
Dear GG: I don’t know of any special canine handling equipment for people with arthritis. But there are two approaches you can take to address your problem: finding equipment that will be easier on your hands and training your dog to heel.
Let’s start with equipment. I recommend using a head collar, like a Gentle Leader, rather than a harness, as it is designed to control the dog around the snout (much like a horse), which provides better control of your dog. All you have to do is move the lead slightly in any direction and your dog will follow. Once you fit the head collar for your dog, keep the leash attached to it, so you don’t have to continually take it on and off. The head collar also will make it easier for your dog to learn how to heel.
Another option is a slip lead, which looks like a regular leash but has a loop on one end that goes over your dog’s head, so there is nothing to attach. When you tug on the lead, it tightens around the dog’s neck, which gets their attention. Trainers often use slip leads as a training tool, but if not used properly, these leads can result in throat
injuries. If you want to use this completely clasp-free approach, please consult a trainer to teach you how to use one.
You also can look for a leash with a French scissor-snap connector. It still relies on your thumb but is a little easier to use. Or you can use a carabiner to connect the O-ring on the leash to the O-ring on the collar. They are much easier to open and close than a clasp. For dogs though, I recommend getting a carabiner with a locking ring (a ring that spins to lock) to prevent it from opening up should
your dog tug on it.
Now for the training. Using a head collar or a slip collar, step off and say your dog’s name, followed by the word “heel.” Tap your leg to get your dog’s attention. When your dog walks next to you, say a reward word, like “bingo,” and give your dog a treat. Continue doing this for as long as your dog remains by your side. The moment your dog gets ahead of you, reverse direction and repeat the command. It’s important to reverse direction every time your dog gets ahead of you. You may be walking back and forth over
a 10-foot span, but your dog needs to think you are unpredictable and so must watch you to know where to walk.
If you are persistent and consistent, your dog will learn how to heel, which will give your hands a much-needed break from the pulling that goes on at the other end of the leash.
Dear Cathy: Although it may not seem like a problem to many, my 15-monthold King Charles spaniel does not bark. Should I be concerned or grateful? Please let me know what this indicates.
— Tess, Massapequa, New York
Dear Tess: While King Charles spaniels can certainly bark, these dogs are very social and don’t bark as much at new people and animals as other dogs do. Some dogs will bark if they hear other dogs barking, so maybe take your dog to a dog park and stand at a distance to see if your dog will bark when they hears other dogs barking. If yes, then you don’t have to worry.
If not, “not barking” could actually be a sign of a medical problem. If your dog is trying to bark and no noise is coming out, that is definitely a medical problem. But if your dog is simply not barking, several medical problems like metabolic disorders and respiratory conditions could be factors in your dog’s silence. Please get your dog checked out by a vet to be sure.
If you often exercise, there’s a good chance you also tend to be more creative, according to an interesting new study of the links between physical activity and imagination. It finds that active people come up with more and better ideas during tests of their inventiveness than people who are relatively sedentary, and suggests that if we wish to be more innovative, we might also want to be movers and shakers.
Science already offers plenty of evidence that physical activity influences how we think. Many studies in people and animals show that our brains change in response to physical activity, in part because during exercise we marinate our brains with extra blood, oxygen and nutrients. In rodent studies, animals that regularly exercise produce far more new brain cells than their sedentary counterparts and perform better on thinking tests, even if they are elderly. In people, too, exercise tends to sharpen our abilities to reason and remember and buoys our moods.
But creativity is one of the most abstract of thinking skills and difficult to quantify, and its relationship with exercise has not been clear. A few past studies have found intriguing relationships between moving and originality. In one notable 2012 experiment, for instance, researchers asked some of their volunteers to move their arms loosely and fluidly through space, tracing the lines of a looping, curvy line-drawing the scientists had shown them, while another group arm-aped a straighter, more angular drawing. After each session, the researchers urged the volunteers to dream up novel, unexpected uses for an ordinary newspaper and found that those who had moved fluidly, almost as if they were dancing, came up with more original ideas than those whose movements had been rigid, straight and formalized.
Another, more conventional 2014 study of exercise and creativity likewise found that moving can spur innovation. In the main part of that multipart experiment, volunteers sat at a desk in a lackluster office space, trying to imagine new ways to use a button and otherwise engage their imaginations. They then completed a slightly different test of their creativity while walking on a treadmill in the same uninspiring room. Almost all of the participants spun out ideas that were more numerous and ingenious while walking than sitting.
But those and most other past studies of movement and creativity looked into the short-term effects of physical activity under tightly controlled conditions in labs or similar settings. They did not examine the potential linkages, if any, between everyday activities, like going for a walk, and the workings of our imaginations, or how being active could possibly affect creativity in the first place.
So, for the new study, which was published in Scientific Reports, researchers at the University of Graz in Austria decided to track the normal activities of a group of average adults and also measure their creativity, to see whether and how the two might align.
The scientists wondered, too, about happiness. Some past research had speculated that good moods might be the intermediary linking activity and creativity. According to that idea, moving makes people happier, and their good cheer in turn makes them more creative; in that scenario, moving does not directly affect creative thinking.
To learn more, the researchers gathered 79 healthy adults, gave them activity trackers for five days and then asked them to visit the lab and let their imaginations soar, conceiving new uses for car tires and umbrellas and finishing partial drawings. The researchers then rated their output on its originality and other measures. The volunteers also completed standard questionnaires about their moods.
Finally, the scientists cross-checked the data, using a complex form of statistical analysis that incorporates findings from related, earlier research (to give the results more statistical heft) and weighs how much of a role a potential mediator plays. In this case, the researchers wondered, did being happy relate closely both to how much people moved and their creativity, meaning it linked the two?
The answer, the researchers concluded, was no.
The most active of the volunteers proved to be also the most creative, especially if they often walked or otherwise exercised moderately. Active people also tended to be happy people, although their moods were highest if they engaged in relatively vigorous activities, like jogging or playing sports, rather than moderate ones.
But the correlations among activity, creativity and moods were slight. People could walk often and be quite creative but not especially happy, suggesting that it was not improved moods that most influenced creativity. It was moving.
The findings point to
“an association between creativity and physical activity in everyday life,” says Christian Rominger, a professor of psychology at the University of Graz and the study’s lead author.
The study was associational, though, meaning it looked at a brief moment in people’s lives. It did not involve a randomized experiment and cannot tell us if being more active directly causes us to be more creative, only that activity and creativity are linked.
It also does not explain how exercise and other activities might shape creativity, if not by raising moods, or show whether a brisk walk now helps us better finish a creative venture later. But the results do intimate that active imaginations start with active lives.
LOS ANGELES — Will Butler breezed through the entrance of the Silver Lake Trader Joe’s, bypassing a small line of shoppers waiting to get in. An employee monitoring access said nothing as Butler swept a red-tipped white cane to find his way inside.
Butler had no idea he’d cut in front.
“How would I find the line?” the legally blind 31-year-old asked.
This time, there were no problems, but that’s not always the case. On Sundays, “when the line is super long and everyone’s like really scared and grumpy, no one will offer any help,” he said. On those days, Butler makes his way to the back of the queue, trying to maintain a socially distanced space without being able to see it.
Like so many challenges wrought by the COVID-19 pandemic, grocery store lines are just one of the new impediments thrown, literally, into the way of the visually impaired.
Those in the blind and low-vision community have long faced challenges now synonymous with the pandemic: social isolation, mobility limitations, classroom dynamics that are less than ideal. But the crisis has exacerbated those problems.
Friends aren’t volunteering as many favors. Sighted strangers who may have previously lent a hand are more skittish to approach. Visually impaired children who learned daily tasks with a hand to guide their own are now relying on exhaustive verbal descriptions over video chats. And public transportation and ride-hailing apps such as Uber and Lyft — lifelines
for those who can’t drive or live alone — now pose potential health risks.
“Everybody’s feeling kind of shut in right now and out of touch with people, but we already have that isolation. So for us, it just has deepened even more,” said Diane Wilkinson, 56, who has retinitis pigmentosa, a degenerative retinal disease.
Visual cues during the pandemic are difficult to navigate for those who can’t see. It is impossible to tell whether someone is 6 feet away or wearing a mask.
And masks present other obstacles. Butler helps orient himself with the sound of voices, which can be muffled behind cloth or plastic barriers.
Wilkinson still has some peripheral vision, and masks can obscure the limited sight she has.
She sometimes bumps
into people. In prepandemic times, most were understanding. Now, she said, they’re scared.
The access and administration of coronavirus tests can be a challenge too. Many of the testing sites are drive-thru. The visually impaired could hail a ride to a testing facility, but many are financially disadvantaged and can’t afford the extra trip. Mail order tests are an option, but many can’t read the instructions.
For those living on their own, like Butler, getting COVID-19 “is kind of your worst nightmare,” said Butler, who began losing his vision when he was 19 from a retinal detachment.
“You can’t see already, but what COVID does is, if it’s bad, it’ll disengage your ability to speak,” he said. “So if you can’t write and you can’t speak and you can’t see the FaceTime call,
you can’t do anything but listen. It’s like torture.”
An app called Be My Eyes, for which Butler works, allows volunteers to assist visually impaired people by describing what the user points at with their phone camera.
It has partnered with Accessible Pharmacy, a home-delivery pharmacy based in Philadelphia that specializes in services for the blind and low-vision community. Users can order medications with Braille labels or have COVID-19 test instructions read to them.
But many in the blind community don’t know about that option, Butler said, noting he wished bigger pharmacies would provide such services.
The Braille Institute
— a nonprofit organization that serves nearly 12,900 adults and children across the county — offers three times as many support group sessions to students in Southern California as it did a year ago, when the coronavirus was first detected in the U.S., according to Sergio Oliva, associate vice president of the institute’s programs and services. Because of COVID-19 restrictions, all sessions are provided over the phone or online.
“Just close your eyes and imagine all you can do is hear what is going on,” Oliva said. “It brings a lot of anxiety. It brings a lot of depression.”
Troubleshooting a video session — a messy room showing up in the frame or the web camera being too close to your face — is awkward enough for those who can see. For those who can’t, it can be a daunting task, especially for young children who have to face sometimes less-than-sensitive classmates.
“Video meeting, it’s a very visual medium,” said Matthew Beckwith, the youth programs manager at the Braille Institute. “So for kids who have visual impairments, it’s a matter of how do you actually engage?”
The Braille Institute offers specialized supplemental classes and now sends young students a “distance-learning kit” with tools such as a smartphone or a tablet stand, Beckwith said.
But not all teachers are convinced that distance learning is feasible for the visually impaired.
Krista Bulger, a teacher in Vancouver, Washington, who works exclusively with visually impaired children, says the kind of hands-on education offered inside a classroom to students with disabilities “can’t be replicated in the same way. It just can’t.”
Many with visual impairments who’ve been forced to become tech savvy during the pandemic aren’t digital natives.
“It is a technology hill to climb — to learn, but it feels good to be on that,” said Annette Nickerson, 81, who learned to use video meeting software through the Braille Institute. Nickerson has macular degeneration, one of the most common causes of vision loss for older people.
Coronavirus restrictions have led to the loss of gym access and in-person classes, which can be isolating, Nickerson said. But with the ability to make video calls from her computer and phone, she can meet friends and family more safely.
And technology also has adapted to COVID19 protocols. Sunu, an armband that uses echolocation-like technology to help guide the visually impaired, now offers a setting to alert users when someone or something is 6 feet away.