Nose and Face Bumping of Blind Dogs
Blind dogs bumping their noses or faces and protecting them
Are Whiskers of Blind dogs trimmed off before surgery? Date: Tue Aug 2, 2011 6:25 pm ((PDT))
Blind dog’s nose-(face)-bumping into things might be happening a lot to the dogs whose whiskers were trimmed? Maybe trimmed to prepare before surgery? Our dogs have whiskers about two (2) inches long, which they use to measure how close their nose and muzzle are to things like a ball thrown to them, or a chair leg. My guess is that dogs with lots of long hair on their muzzle might have whiskers in there, which do the same for them. From research Dr. Stanley Coren, in his book "How Dogs Think", 2004,Free Press,-says on his page 96 and 97 how dogs' use whiskers to protect their eyes from being hurt by hitting their face or nose on things, like chairs. He strongly urges DO NOT let anyone cut off a dog's whiskers, because dogs need them to be safe from hitting into things by accident. His dog's whiskers were cut off with bad results of the dog bumping its nose [The book is available on Amazon.com] My suggestion, is to ask before surgery that if the Veterinarian will, please do Not trim off the blind dog's whiskers, because the dog is going to need to have them to protect her face and nose after.
IF a blind dog or a blind-deaf dog is bumping into walls with its nose, there are several possible reasons, with different needs for protection. A newly blind or blind-deaf dog probably hasn’t figured out yet how to use her natural abilities in new ways to get around painlessly. The simplest protections are to make sure there are no dangerous objects or corners she might run into, and perhaps wrap some “bubble” wrap on the furniture legs or wherever you see her apparently uncomfortable when she bumps something. The book by - - -described how to make “white-cane” collars for blind dogs, to help them detect when they are near other things. Those might be commercially available?
If the thing that they are approaching is solid so that it reflects sounds most dogs will be able to handle the situation just like they were about to catch a ball thrown to them – by orienting their muzzle and nose to contact the surface almost painlessly, and at the same time to tighten their muzzle muscles to prevent injury or pinching their lips on their teeth. Obviously short muzzle dogs without whiskers are at the greatest difficulty in minimizing pain or injury when contacting something hard. Long muzzles provide a physical protective distance between a contact and their eyes. Long whiskers serve the same warning use as the commercial “white-cane” collars with rods around the dog’s face – the dog can flinch to avoid contact, tighten their muscles, and try to be sure that the contact isn’t too painful.
Discussion
Nose or head bumping problems for blind dogs? Their people worry – when, why, what to watch for. Blind dogs nose-(face)-bumping into things might be happening a lot to dogs whose whiskers were trimmed. Maybe trimmed to prepare before surgery?
Our dogs have whiskers about two (2) inches long, which they use to measure how close their nose and muzzle is to things like a ball thrown to them, or a chair leg. My guess is that dogs with lots of long hair on their muzzle might have whiskers in there, which do the same for them.
From research Dr. Stanley Coren, in his book "How Dogs Think", 2004,Free Press,-- says on his page 96 and 97 describes how dogs' use whiskers to protect their eyes from being hurt by hitting their face or nose on something. He strongly urges DO NOT let anyone cut off a dog's whiskers, because dogs need them to be safe from hitting into things by accident. His dog's whiskers were cut off with bad results of dog bumping its nose [The book is available on Amazon.com]
My suggestion is to urge before surgery that if the Veterinarian will, please do Not trim off the blind dog's whiskers, because the dog is going to need to have them to protect her face and nose.
a. Blind Dogs
If a blind dog is taking medications, perhaps for inflammation or pain relief, bumping her nose or her head (face) might be a significant concern. A plastic “cone” is often prescribed by Veterinarians to protect a dog from interfering with its surgery areas. A cone can provide considerable physical protection for the dog’s nose and face by preventing direct contacts with objects, and transferring collision forces to its shoulders. If the blind dog is still taking medications after the cone isn’t needed, her people need to learn what the side effects on the dog’s thinking might be.
Some meds can cause mental confusion, or unsteadiness – which might cause the dog to wander nose-first into walls, furniture, or other animals. [I’d guess that some pain-killers might reduce the usefulness of its nose for odor detection for preventing collision?] Our experience and that of friends was that Veterinarians almost never mention side-effects on the patient’s thinking, and might never have been taught in school that it could be a problem. About all I can think of, is to wrap furniture corners, legs, wall corners and so forth with bubble wrap, and keep track to be sure the wee doggies doesn’t try to use the wrap for lunch or tear it up for toys; triggered in part by side effects of meds?
If a blind dog continues to bump her nose or face on objects after it’s several days off taking medicines, please watch carefully to figure out if the dog is maybe doing some of the bumping more or less on purpose, which would mean that the dog is using bumping to learn the terrain, or (perhaps oddly) to relieve discomfort of itching from healing of stitches from operations on its face. Dogs that after several weeks, who are mostly off their painkiller meds (which sometimes affect their thinking process), and are still bumping into walls, furniture, other dogs and people are likely to have learned to use their ordinary hearing to judge distances and navigate like bats do (but encounter mistakes if the stuff they are approaching is “nearly invisible” because it is sound absorbing material like cloth or a really furry dog, or a mostly open mesh, or is outdoors wide-open space which doesn’t give them useful sounds or echoes).
b. Ordinary dogs
Nose-bumping can be a common event for some breeds of ordinary dogs who engage in sports such as soccer, disk, ball catch-retrieve, and so forth. Rarely is nose bumping or head bumping a problem for dogs of the active breeds such as terriers, border collies, and such.
Our deaf and our “ordinary” hearing Border Collie will when indoors occasionally become so intent in a game that if they suddenly leap side-wise, they “clunk” into furniture or a corner of a wall, etc. Usually if they do that, they are so excited that they keep going without any sign of pain. We never has one get hurt that way indoors because we make sure that there are no sharp things at their height that they could accidentally run into when extremely excited.
Our dogs when learning to play soccer, or catch and retrieve tennis-size balls, at first would try to bounce the ball with their nose (like adult people do with their heads and other body parts in soccer games or in handball games.) After hitting back a ball very hard our dogs at first would sometimes rub their muzzle on the floor or the ground. We figured that the dog had pinched her lips against her teeth when she was catching the ball, or the impact stung her nose. By teaching them with easy tossed balls, all of our dogs quickly discovered how to catch the ball in mid-air or bounce it off their nose-muzzles without any indications of discomfort.
We never detected any dental damage or other harm caused by ordinary nose bumping r head bumps during play, except a tendency to wear down their front teeth is they played with tennis balls. Engineering analysis calculations suggest that any dog who was able to catch a tossed ball without being hurt by that, will learn to dash about while occasionally more or less deliberately running into things in a way that would make their people flinch with imagined pain from the impact. Our dogs and (like many others) get attention by poking people with their noses. Our deaf dog prefers to just touch a person with her whiskers, which tickles the person. We guessed that our dogs don’t mind mild nose-bumps, so they use nose-poking to get the attention of people and other dogs, and also probably to find things in darkness.
2. How do dogs protect themselves (might be different among breeds) - assuming not on meds
Whiskers as “white-canes”: Close range protection, at least.
Terriers and such who have dense facial hair probably have whiskers in there somewhere and the facial hair will provide considerable protective padding as well as helping their whiskers to react properly to an approaching impact. Short muzzle short-hair dogs such as pugs, etc. appear to be most at risk from injury caused by nose and muzzle contacts with things – their eye sockets have least distance spacing from their nose, and least amount of instinctive warning time to prepare for protecting against harm in an impact. Try to be sure that the dog’s whiskers don’t get trimmed off before surgery, or any other reason, if you can, because the whiskers are very protective for most blind and blind-deaf dogs.
Months of careful observation showed that our dogs were able to “fold” their whiskers (about two inches long on average) back out of the way when they were putting their nose out of the partly open doors to smelling aromas on the porch, or staring at things far away. Conversely when they expected to catch a tossed ball at close range, they positioned their whiskers maximum forward – with the tips reaching in front of their nose a little way. Dogs that weren’t blind in situations involving their whiskers, the whiskers were being used to “trigger” on some signal of the approaching ball the tightening (toughening) the muscles of their muzzle and to orient (point) their muzzle to catch a ball in their jaws painlessly or bounce it off their nose.
Smell: A dog’s nose for aromas technically ought to be quick and sensitive enough to avoid unwanted collisions with objects- - IF the dog knows from a specific aroma that it’s about to run into something solid, or some another animal. That to be effective might be aided by their people putting distinctive faint perfumes or spice smells on the objects that could be a problem,
“Short-range Sonar”- Enhanced post-blindness hearing (see neurological research reports)
{Also look at the "Adaptive Seeing" page of this Site}
> Sensing
- See S. Coren, 2004, many modes of canid sensing of vibrations; technically the most useful might be the nose-touch, whiskers, and ear-hairs}
> Processing
- Time difference of arrival; TDOA,
- Phase Interference and standing waves,
- Amplitude variation across body
- Shadowing and refraction across body parts
- Kinesthetic and touch senses
> Vibration Phenomena that a dog can use to detect things before they bump
- Ordinary echoes
- Standing waves (beats?)
- Silent zone (dog obstructing sounds from echoing off object?)
- Porous screens might not be resolvable with sonar?
3. Mechanical Aids to reduce risks of head-face-nose bumping
Plastic cones? An alternative that might be on-hand for a dog that has had surgery is to place one of the medical plastic “cone-collars” on her when she’s dashing about. That will keep her from getting hurt, but will slow down her learning to navigate with her learning to use her ability to map things with her ears (bat-sonar-like if she isn’t deaf). A plastic cone on a blind-hearing dog will amplify-strengthen the sounds from directly ahead, but cut off sounds from the sides.
Also it will cause “noise-echoes” by sounds from in front bouncing off the plastic and overlapping the sounds that get to her ears. Dogs that were used to having good hearing could get confused and upset by messing up their hearing with a plastic cone. [I’ve tried it personally!]
Cloth cones? Maybe somebody could copy in a stiff fabric the shape of a plastic cone & possibly use a little starch to make it hold the shape needed?
“White-canes”: ----- plastic wire-frame shaped like a cone; plastic rods attached to a collar [Whiskers are natural “white-canes?”] See suggestions in the book Review - - -
4. A minor problem with using white-cane collars, or a kind of cone, is that some dogs who have a sense of humor learn to bash other dogs, cats and people’s legs with the things. That can have dog-social results if the other dogs were from curiosity messing with the blind dog who suddenly is wearing a weird thing on her head?
Footnote: Dog-science - Mechanics of Sound, simplified
1. Sensoria (S. Coren, 2004 & Weebly: Adapting to Deafness pages)
2. Mapping, navigation and 3-D perception
- Active sonar
- barking
- Passive sonar
- Emitters of opportunity
- Beacon sonar
- “I’m Lost!”-
3. Information Content Analysis
- Pitch and pitch modulation
- Volume and volume modulation
- Duration (limits)
- Pulse features; spacing code, and pulse frequency modulation
4. Echoes
- Flat surface (hard surface)
- Simple wedge-channel (hard surface?)
- “cave” (hard surfaces)
5. Outer Ear & “Cones”
- Natural ears & channel
- Amplifiers
- Multipath
- Fabric cone?
6. Non-ear sensing of the directions of sounds
- TDOA,
- Phase Interference, standing waves,
- Amplitude variation across body
- Shadowing and refraction across a body and body parts
- Kinesthetic and touch senses
Are Whiskers of Blind dogs trimmed off before surgery? Date: Tue Aug 2, 2011 6:25 pm ((PDT))
Blind dog’s nose-(face)-bumping into things might be happening a lot to the dogs whose whiskers were trimmed? Maybe trimmed to prepare before surgery? Our dogs have whiskers about two (2) inches long, which they use to measure how close their nose and muzzle are to things like a ball thrown to them, or a chair leg. My guess is that dogs with lots of long hair on their muzzle might have whiskers in there, which do the same for them. From research Dr. Stanley Coren, in his book "How Dogs Think", 2004,Free Press,-says on his page 96 and 97 how dogs' use whiskers to protect their eyes from being hurt by hitting their face or nose on things, like chairs. He strongly urges DO NOT let anyone cut off a dog's whiskers, because dogs need them to be safe from hitting into things by accident. His dog's whiskers were cut off with bad results of the dog bumping its nose [The book is available on Amazon.com] My suggestion, is to ask before surgery that if the Veterinarian will, please do Not trim off the blind dog's whiskers, because the dog is going to need to have them to protect her face and nose after.
IF a blind dog or a blind-deaf dog is bumping into walls with its nose, there are several possible reasons, with different needs for protection. A newly blind or blind-deaf dog probably hasn’t figured out yet how to use her natural abilities in new ways to get around painlessly. The simplest protections are to make sure there are no dangerous objects or corners she might run into, and perhaps wrap some “bubble” wrap on the furniture legs or wherever you see her apparently uncomfortable when she bumps something. The book by - - -described how to make “white-cane” collars for blind dogs, to help them detect when they are near other things. Those might be commercially available?
If the thing that they are approaching is solid so that it reflects sounds most dogs will be able to handle the situation just like they were about to catch a ball thrown to them – by orienting their muzzle and nose to contact the surface almost painlessly, and at the same time to tighten their muzzle muscles to prevent injury or pinching their lips on their teeth. Obviously short muzzle dogs without whiskers are at the greatest difficulty in minimizing pain or injury when contacting something hard. Long muzzles provide a physical protective distance between a contact and their eyes. Long whiskers serve the same warning use as the commercial “white-cane” collars with rods around the dog’s face – the dog can flinch to avoid contact, tighten their muscles, and try to be sure that the contact isn’t too painful.
Discussion
Nose or head bumping problems for blind dogs? Their people worry – when, why, what to watch for. Blind dogs nose-(face)-bumping into things might be happening a lot to dogs whose whiskers were trimmed. Maybe trimmed to prepare before surgery?
Our dogs have whiskers about two (2) inches long, which they use to measure how close their nose and muzzle is to things like a ball thrown to them, or a chair leg. My guess is that dogs with lots of long hair on their muzzle might have whiskers in there, which do the same for them.
From research Dr. Stanley Coren, in his book "How Dogs Think", 2004,Free Press,-- says on his page 96 and 97 describes how dogs' use whiskers to protect their eyes from being hurt by hitting their face or nose on something. He strongly urges DO NOT let anyone cut off a dog's whiskers, because dogs need them to be safe from hitting into things by accident. His dog's whiskers were cut off with bad results of dog bumping its nose [The book is available on Amazon.com]
My suggestion is to urge before surgery that if the Veterinarian will, please do Not trim off the blind dog's whiskers, because the dog is going to need to have them to protect her face and nose.
a. Blind Dogs
If a blind dog is taking medications, perhaps for inflammation or pain relief, bumping her nose or her head (face) might be a significant concern. A plastic “cone” is often prescribed by Veterinarians to protect a dog from interfering with its surgery areas. A cone can provide considerable physical protection for the dog’s nose and face by preventing direct contacts with objects, and transferring collision forces to its shoulders. If the blind dog is still taking medications after the cone isn’t needed, her people need to learn what the side effects on the dog’s thinking might be.
Some meds can cause mental confusion, or unsteadiness – which might cause the dog to wander nose-first into walls, furniture, or other animals. [I’d guess that some pain-killers might reduce the usefulness of its nose for odor detection for preventing collision?] Our experience and that of friends was that Veterinarians almost never mention side-effects on the patient’s thinking, and might never have been taught in school that it could be a problem. About all I can think of, is to wrap furniture corners, legs, wall corners and so forth with bubble wrap, and keep track to be sure the wee doggies doesn’t try to use the wrap for lunch or tear it up for toys; triggered in part by side effects of meds?
If a blind dog continues to bump her nose or face on objects after it’s several days off taking medicines, please watch carefully to figure out if the dog is maybe doing some of the bumping more or less on purpose, which would mean that the dog is using bumping to learn the terrain, or (perhaps oddly) to relieve discomfort of itching from healing of stitches from operations on its face. Dogs that after several weeks, who are mostly off their painkiller meds (which sometimes affect their thinking process), and are still bumping into walls, furniture, other dogs and people are likely to have learned to use their ordinary hearing to judge distances and navigate like bats do (but encounter mistakes if the stuff they are approaching is “nearly invisible” because it is sound absorbing material like cloth or a really furry dog, or a mostly open mesh, or is outdoors wide-open space which doesn’t give them useful sounds or echoes).
b. Ordinary dogs
Nose-bumping can be a common event for some breeds of ordinary dogs who engage in sports such as soccer, disk, ball catch-retrieve, and so forth. Rarely is nose bumping or head bumping a problem for dogs of the active breeds such as terriers, border collies, and such.
Our deaf and our “ordinary” hearing Border Collie will when indoors occasionally become so intent in a game that if they suddenly leap side-wise, they “clunk” into furniture or a corner of a wall, etc. Usually if they do that, they are so excited that they keep going without any sign of pain. We never has one get hurt that way indoors because we make sure that there are no sharp things at their height that they could accidentally run into when extremely excited.
Our dogs when learning to play soccer, or catch and retrieve tennis-size balls, at first would try to bounce the ball with their nose (like adult people do with their heads and other body parts in soccer games or in handball games.) After hitting back a ball very hard our dogs at first would sometimes rub their muzzle on the floor or the ground. We figured that the dog had pinched her lips against her teeth when she was catching the ball, or the impact stung her nose. By teaching them with easy tossed balls, all of our dogs quickly discovered how to catch the ball in mid-air or bounce it off their nose-muzzles without any indications of discomfort.
We never detected any dental damage or other harm caused by ordinary nose bumping r head bumps during play, except a tendency to wear down their front teeth is they played with tennis balls. Engineering analysis calculations suggest that any dog who was able to catch a tossed ball without being hurt by that, will learn to dash about while occasionally more or less deliberately running into things in a way that would make their people flinch with imagined pain from the impact. Our dogs and (like many others) get attention by poking people with their noses. Our deaf dog prefers to just touch a person with her whiskers, which tickles the person. We guessed that our dogs don’t mind mild nose-bumps, so they use nose-poking to get the attention of people and other dogs, and also probably to find things in darkness.
2. How do dogs protect themselves (might be different among breeds) - assuming not on meds
Whiskers as “white-canes”: Close range protection, at least.
Terriers and such who have dense facial hair probably have whiskers in there somewhere and the facial hair will provide considerable protective padding as well as helping their whiskers to react properly to an approaching impact. Short muzzle short-hair dogs such as pugs, etc. appear to be most at risk from injury caused by nose and muzzle contacts with things – their eye sockets have least distance spacing from their nose, and least amount of instinctive warning time to prepare for protecting against harm in an impact. Try to be sure that the dog’s whiskers don’t get trimmed off before surgery, or any other reason, if you can, because the whiskers are very protective for most blind and blind-deaf dogs.
Months of careful observation showed that our dogs were able to “fold” their whiskers (about two inches long on average) back out of the way when they were putting their nose out of the partly open doors to smelling aromas on the porch, or staring at things far away. Conversely when they expected to catch a tossed ball at close range, they positioned their whiskers maximum forward – with the tips reaching in front of their nose a little way. Dogs that weren’t blind in situations involving their whiskers, the whiskers were being used to “trigger” on some signal of the approaching ball the tightening (toughening) the muscles of their muzzle and to orient (point) their muzzle to catch a ball in their jaws painlessly or bounce it off their nose.
Smell: A dog’s nose for aromas technically ought to be quick and sensitive enough to avoid unwanted collisions with objects- - IF the dog knows from a specific aroma that it’s about to run into something solid, or some another animal. That to be effective might be aided by their people putting distinctive faint perfumes or spice smells on the objects that could be a problem,
“Short-range Sonar”- Enhanced post-blindness hearing (see neurological research reports)
{Also look at the "Adaptive Seeing" page of this Site}
> Sensing
- See S. Coren, 2004, many modes of canid sensing of vibrations; technically the most useful might be the nose-touch, whiskers, and ear-hairs}
> Processing
- Time difference of arrival; TDOA,
- Phase Interference and standing waves,
- Amplitude variation across body
- Shadowing and refraction across body parts
- Kinesthetic and touch senses
> Vibration Phenomena that a dog can use to detect things before they bump
- Ordinary echoes
- Standing waves (beats?)
- Silent zone (dog obstructing sounds from echoing off object?)
- Porous screens might not be resolvable with sonar?
3. Mechanical Aids to reduce risks of head-face-nose bumping
Plastic cones? An alternative that might be on-hand for a dog that has had surgery is to place one of the medical plastic “cone-collars” on her when she’s dashing about. That will keep her from getting hurt, but will slow down her learning to navigate with her learning to use her ability to map things with her ears (bat-sonar-like if she isn’t deaf). A plastic cone on a blind-hearing dog will amplify-strengthen the sounds from directly ahead, but cut off sounds from the sides.
Also it will cause “noise-echoes” by sounds from in front bouncing off the plastic and overlapping the sounds that get to her ears. Dogs that were used to having good hearing could get confused and upset by messing up their hearing with a plastic cone. [I’ve tried it personally!]
Cloth cones? Maybe somebody could copy in a stiff fabric the shape of a plastic cone & possibly use a little starch to make it hold the shape needed?
“White-canes”: ----- plastic wire-frame shaped like a cone; plastic rods attached to a collar [Whiskers are natural “white-canes?”] See suggestions in the book Review - - -
4. A minor problem with using white-cane collars, or a kind of cone, is that some dogs who have a sense of humor learn to bash other dogs, cats and people’s legs with the things. That can have dog-social results if the other dogs were from curiosity messing with the blind dog who suddenly is wearing a weird thing on her head?
Footnote: Dog-science - Mechanics of Sound, simplified
1. Sensoria (S. Coren, 2004 & Weebly: Adapting to Deafness pages)
2. Mapping, navigation and 3-D perception
- Active sonar
- barking
- Passive sonar
- Emitters of opportunity
- Beacon sonar
- “I’m Lost!”-
3. Information Content Analysis
- Pitch and pitch modulation
- Volume and volume modulation
- Duration (limits)
- Pulse features; spacing code, and pulse frequency modulation
4. Echoes
- Flat surface (hard surface)
- Simple wedge-channel (hard surface?)
- “cave” (hard surfaces)
5. Outer Ear & “Cones”
- Natural ears & channel
- Amplifiers
- Multipath
- Fabric cone?
6. Non-ear sensing of the directions of sounds
- TDOA,
- Phase Interference, standing waves,
- Amplitude variation across body
- Shadowing and refraction across a body and body parts
- Kinesthetic and touch senses