Joint supplement update (Ramard Total Joint Care for dogs)

Yes, I put a brand name in the subject line, but that’s honestly just to a google search will pick it up. I’d do the same thing if I was seeing negative results or none at all.

Thankfully, what I am seeing is VERY positive. I am seeing some real resolution to the subtle signs of stiffness and end-of-day aches and pains that were bothering Clue from that pretzeled pelvis of hers.

She is now jumping up on the bed multiple times a day, often just for the heck of it.

She’s climbing higher on the furniture, often choosing to go up on the cushions or even hang herself over the arms instead of curling up on the seat.

Her topline is much, much better than it has been for weeks; she is no longer popping up her loin to keep the hips from moving around.

And her movement is smoother, longer, silkier. She’s always been a natural trotter (one of the things I love about her structure) and now she’s settling in and really extending again. I took her for a long walk yesterday and I could actually HEAR the difference; instead of pad-pad-pad-pad it’s pad-tiny pause-pad-tiny pause-pad-tiny pause as she suspends mid-stride. 

These are SUBTLE – they’re things I saw (and now am seeing leave again) because I am so used to not just looking at her but assessing her daily. It’s not like she went from a sad sick dog to a marathon runner. But they are very definite changes and I am thrilled by them.

Three days after starting joint supplements

And Clue ran into our room and jumped on our bed (about 30″). Which she has not done in months. It’s one of those things that you don’t even notice – dog stops doing a bad thing is not so much a red flag, you know? I am not claiming some kind of miracle yet, but my mouth was hanging open as she laughed at me from the comforter. We’ll see if her naughty streak continues.

Supplement success! (gratuitous title so it will come up in a google search: Ramard Total Joint Care for dogs)

 

Since we saw that Clue’s pelvis is always going to be hinky, and in an effort to address the spinal issues that are part and parcel of owning a dwarfed breed, I’ve been doing a lot of reading about bone and joint supplements. 

A lot of it is like witch-doctorage; in order to differentiate themselves from the others, each company puts in some kind of special “secret ingredient” that they claim makes it better than anyone else’s. It gets really frustrating, because you can’t compare products easily. And is creatinine more imprtant than manganese? Or should I go with the one with the most MSM? It’s super annoying. 

I decided that I wanted to make sure I was getting an excellent foundation of the basics: Glucosamine, Chondroitin, MSM. I wanted Perna Mussel because I’ve heard such good buzz about it in dogs. And based on a very interesting little study that I don’t think anyone ever went anywhere with (i.e., it was never studied further), I wanted hyaluronic acid. 

My front-runners were Glyco-Flex II (I knew I’d have to add the HA) and Synovi G3 (ditto). Each was going to cost me about $20/mo, plus whatever I was going to pay for the HA.

But then I was surfing around the Dover Saddlery site and a little lightbulb went off. Horse supplements are exactly the same as dog supplements, in almost all cases; the only difference is that the horse supplements are actually substantially cheaper because you’re not paying for the liver-based filler that makes a dog capsule yummy to the dog. And Dover (the retail store) is only a mile from my house. 

So I spent a while comparing ingredients and doing lots of division problems and stopped there today and came back with Total Joint Care. It’s a very high quality supplement, lots of trainers swear by it, and while it’s hideously expensive for horses it’s fabulously cheap for dogs. 

I started today, giving Clue 1/10 of the daily horse dose. It will provide

600 mg Glucosamine

300 mg Chondroitin

300 mg MSM

100 mg vitamin C

5 mg zinc

20 mg hyaluronic acid

The only thing it doesn’t have is the perna mussel, but I can get very good human perna mussel for a low price. She already gets, and will continue to get, salmon oil every day as an Omega 3 supplement.

My cost per month will go down to $5.50 for the Total Joint Care and about another buck for the perna. We’ll keep giving her connective tissue treats (trachea and lung) and hopefully this will be a regimen we can keep up for her and for any other Cardi that comes into the house to keep joints as healthy as possible. Yay!

Pelvis schmelvis

OK, we’re home, so here’s the long story.

Unfortunately, I couldn’t bring home the x-ray this time, so you’ll have to imagine in your mind what this looks like. Just as a reminder, she had six major pelvic fractures and her left hip was partially dislocated.

The bad first: Because the fractures were so bad and the bones were separated from one another, none of the fractures has healed in a way that you’d consider perfect. The pelvic spines (the slimmer non-weight-bearing bones) are still completely broken off from their associated structures. The rest of the fractures are actually BIGGER now, much more visible, which (I think) means that her body is building little bridges and webs of bone across the gaps and in so doing pushed the bones further apart. The result is a VERY funky-looking x-ray with a clear line where half the pelvis broke away from the other half. 

The most mechanically dangerous fracture was the one right next to the left hip socket. That one was directly weight-bearing and it would have moved or grated every time she took a step. And, as expected, that fracture shows the biggest change. The entire area has remodeled, with new bone being thrown all over the place in an attempt to stabilize the joint. The result is that the area directly below that socket is about three times thicker than the opposite hip’s. Instead of being a slim, mostly transparent bone, it’s a thick and nobbly and white-edged bone. 

The good (and it’s very good): The separation of the right wing of the pelvis from the main body, which was more of a dislocation than a fracture, is closing up. Despite the extensive remodeling, the left hip has not moved further out of the socket. It remains somewhat dislocated, but there’s still 50% coverage of the femoral head (half of it is in the socket). Her other hip looks really good, with maybe 60-80% coverage. There is not an appreciable amount of arthritis in the direct femur-pelvis contact (though there almost certainly will be as she ages). 

All the major weight-bearing fractures show good stabilization. She is definitely pain-free and was able to stretch her legs way out for the x-ray without sedation and without complaining (her tail is way out of focus because she was trying to wag furiously and kiss the techs as they were stretching her–when she was done she kept trying to run back in the x-ray room and make them do it again). Her pelvis should be functional for a long time. 

The verdict: I’ve always said that I would not breed her if a c-section would be required, because I didn’t want to put the weight of a pregnancy on an unstable or painful hip. So my goal was that there would be a relatively normal-looking pelvic space.

What we see is not a normal pelvis, but the vet feels very confident that it’s a stable and pain-free pelvis. However, she doesn’t think Clue should give birth normally because of that huge thickening near the hip. During the birth process the hips will not be able to move apart and let the puppies through.

So a lot of what we did was talk about exactly what would be involved in a c-section, and whether it would be a good idea to go for it. My vet is the breeder and repro vet in our area, so she does hundreds of c-sections and inseminations. Her team has scheduled sections down to a fine art–they get the bitch down and they’re pulling puppies out within two or three minutes, so the puppies come out screaming. They get the bitches back up just as fast and they’re very experienced at reviving puppies. 

So… with considerable trepidation, we’re going to go for it. I now get to obsess over her during this heat cycle and watch for pyo, but assuming that all goes well she will probably be back in heat in October. If Betty Ann is OK with it, we’ll send her out and have a rendezvous with one of her black and white boys, with the only tricky bit being that we need to do a reasonably good job of pinpointing ovulation so we can schedule the section properly. 

And that means I have to find a CERF clinic around here so she can get certified. I’m pretty positive she’s PRA line-cleared but I’ll re-do the pedigree search to make absolutely sure. I could practically draw her hips from memory at this point, and they’ve been seen by multiple vets who think they’re great, so we’re OK there. It’s not like I could PennHIP them anyway, after the injury. I’m going to DM test her but I’m very serious about the fact that the result won’t change how I breed her. It’s for my own personal records. And in her case with these injuries if she ends up going down in the rear I’d be blaming about sixteen things before I blamed DM. 

By the way, so far her spine looks good. No visible calcification yet, though of course we only saw from the loin to the tail. We’ll be continuing to monitor it every few years so we’re ready to make decisions if discs start to look wonky. I’d rather cut it off at the pass and pay for Adequan every month than ignore it and pay for disc surgery when she’s five or eight. 

The vet felt that her constant shedding was still her body working through the stress of the injury. She doesn’t want to do a thyroid panel unless there’s no recovery over several months. Since Clue is thin and VERY energetic, she doesn’t see anything that worries her. 

It was really good for me to see just how much the pelvis is still pretzeled. Clue is so happy that I expected to see, if not perfection, at least a pretty normal-looking set of bones. Not so. So it’s a good kick in the pants for me to get her on Glyco-Flex or another good supplement now, with the idea that she’ll stay on it forever, and I’ll be very quick to get Adequan going if I see even a little more stiffness. 

In the end, the overall picture is one of optimism that she’ll live a long and happy life as long as she’s properly supported, which (as you all know) is a dream come true after her loss and her injury. The possibility of getting a litter from her (which is as far as I’m thinking – any further decisions won’t even be considered until she gets through a pregnancy and whelping well) is a huge bonus. So now, cautiously, we go onward and upward .

Brief update

Writing from my phone. Absolutely fascinating to see the xrays after three months of healing. The news is mixed but there is lots of good there. She is definitely pain free and the femurs still have adequte seating in the sockets so that she will keep a functional joint throughout what we hope is a long life. Vet says breeding is fine but strongly recommends csection. I’ll tell more and exactly what we saw when I get home.

Off to the vet!

Clue’s getting her follow-up x-rays (WOOT!). I’m a little bit worried but I’m mostly just happy to finally be doing it. 

Why is it so late, you may ask–legitimate question. We had to wait 10 weeks from the date of her orthopedic check, which was the first or second week of January. So that took us into mid- or late March. Which is exactly when Bramble got sick. So Bramble used up all of our vet money and it had to wait until I had a couple of big freelance jobs so I was sure I had enough for anything the vet wanted done. So she’s a couple of weeks late, conveniently went into heat, but we’re finally on our way.

I’ll update when I get home!

Cloodle the Sexy

Clue came into heat today, which won’t screw up the pelvis x-rays too badly (they’ll look loose, but they ARE loose, seeing as one hip is half dislocated and all) but may screw up the thyroid test I was going to run. Darn. I don’t think thyroid needs to be a part of normal Cardi health tests, and coming into heat on schedule indicates that her thyroid is probably just fine, but she’s had a hard time holding on to her coat since she was injured and I wanted to make sure we weren’t looking at a slightly low level. I’ll ask if it should still be run.

Her radiographs are scheduled for Friday–watch this space for updates.

Meanwhile, all the male dogs in the apartment complex are going to spend half an hour sniffing deeply and thoughtfully at pee spots near our end of the building, thereby confusing their owners.

One more reason that dogs love babies

Yesterday we were trying to combat a little bit of diaper rash by letting Zuzu go around naked after her bath. For her, this is an endorphin rush second only to being offered the dregs of my coffee (girlfriend loves herself some caffeine). 

She was running around, shrieking with the joy of feeling the rush of air on her princess parts, and then, quite suddenly, stopped dead still for a moment with an odd look on her face. She then took off again, waving her arms around and laughing.

And there, on the carpet, was a present the likes of which is usually given to me by the dogs. 

The story would end here, with everyone else in the family yelling “OH NO! OH HORROR! WHO DIDN’T DIAPER THE BABY!” etc. were it not for the fact that even before I could grab cleaning materials, I had to bodily launch myself off the couch and on to the dogs, who came skidding into the room with drool already hanging from their mouths, and wrestle them away and into crates while they whined and tried to scrabble over my shoulder and reach their prize.

I have no idea what dogs think, of course, but if I had to guess on this occasion I think I’d come closer than most times. For clearly in their little brains was

“HOLY COW. You mean IT DISPENSES?”

Doodlehead

If all goes well, this week or next Clue is going in for her followup x-rays to see if her pelvis has healed. If there is no narrowing of the birth canal, she can theoretically be bred. If there is intrusion of bone into that space, we’ll be scheduling her spay. So now, while we’re in the nebulous land of maybe, I wanted to let you get to know my buddy Clue.

Clue came to us because of this:

Yeah, the older kids REALLY wanted a dog of their own. At that point we still had three Danes at home–Celie (an adult bitch) and two puppies. So my office looked like this:

However, Clara (the fawn bitch in the picture above) didn’t turn out to be show quality, so was placed.

And then Java (the black bitch above), who was prehaps the most beautiful dog I have ever bred, we determined was just too submissive for the show ring and was being totally beat up on by the grown-up bitch. So we put her in a WONDERFUL home (where she continues to be friendly but timid).

The (spayed) adult bitch ended up leaving us after a series of events that still make me feel very sad, but are not worth going into here. Suffice it to say that we knew even as of that summer that we were not going to keep her.

I had my name in for a litter of Danes that were to be born in Finland. The breeder there was using an 11-year-old stud dog and I REALLY wanted that longevity. So we believed there was another big guy on the way. (As it turned out, she switched stud dogs at the last minute and I backed out of the litter, but of course we didn’t know that then.)

Meanwhile, however, we had kids clamoring for a dog that they could walk and train and be really “owners” of. I had promised that when Meriwether was nine, we’d get them a smaller dog. So for years I had been researching what second breed to bring in. We pursued Sussex Spaniels for a long time, talking to breeders, but in the end I couldn’t hack the heart problems and the neonatal mortality rate. So we switched our attention to Cardigans.

I attended the 2005 Nationals in Massachusetts and fell in love with the easygoing spirit of the show, how incredibly friendly and helpful everyone was (that is, erm… not the way it is in most of the Dane world). I talked with a couple of excellent breeders, but the one whose dog I loved wasn’t comfortable putting a puppy with me because I fed raw. So she suggested I go talk to the breeder of her special’s father, a woman who had been recommended to me by several other people because she had consistently good shoulders and temperaments in her dogs. I knew absolutely nothin’ about nothin’, as they say, so I just figured what the heck and I called her.

Betty Ann is an absolute gem and a HOOT on the phone, but she had nothing for me. But I knew that she was the one I wanted a puppy from, so I kept calling. And calling. And finally she said that she was ready to put a puppy in a crate and send it to me. I had the picture of the puppy, a little merle bitch with one blue eye and one brown, and I was good to go.

It was the first time I’d shipped a puppy in by air, and I had no idea what to expect. I got to the cargo area, picked up my crate, half-ran outside, hyperventilating because I was so excited, and set the crate down. I opened it, and out walked a VERY poopy puppy, messy from her tail tip to her taped ears, with a grin on her face and sparkle in her TWO BROWN EYES.

I called Betty Ann, hands shaking–what had happened? She laughed. “Well, you said you wanted the best bitch, and the other one was my pick at eight weeks, but this one was my pick at ten!” She was exactly right; I had specifically said that I didn’t care what she sent me except that I wanted a bitch, and I trusted her to pick. And she did!

So I held this little nine-pound puppy on my lap, completely ruined my shirt, and by the time we got home she was no more “the kids’ dog” than I was. She and I had an understanding. And that understanding was that she was MINE.

From that very first day, Clue has slept one of two ways: on my feet as I work on the computer or she’ll climb up behind me on a couch cushion and sling herself over my shoulders, with her head hanging down over one shoulder and her tail on the other side. I never taught her either one, especially the “living stole” routine–that’s just the way she is.

When she was ten weeks old, she looked like this:

And her rear and topline looked like this:

I had never had a corgi of either breed before; I had no idea what they were like. So I thought she was just a normal Cardigan. I thought that all Cardigans launched themselves in wiggly glee at every single human in sight; I thought that all Cardigans slavishly adored all other dogs. She played for hours a day with the Danes. I took her to puppy K and playgroup and she played for hours with everything and everybody else. She never, ever stopped wagging; every human was wonderful and every dog was heavenly.

When she was a few months old she looked like this:

And I didn’t really know if that was good or bad; I knew that I couldn’t make her look ugly if I tried, so I figured I’d enter her in a few shows.

At my first show with her, I didn’t know how to put her on the table. The judge helped, and laughed when she covered his face with kisses as he was moving her. There was a more experienced bitch in the ring too, so whe pointed to me and handed me a purple ribbon, I just about fainted. No one had EVER pointed at me. The Danes had all been handled, so I had been able to see them win, but having the point be at YOU.. it’s a totally different thing, a much greater joy, a huge amount of fear too.

The next day someone pointed at her too.

The third day, someone pointed at her and this time there were several other bitches. And ringside they told me that she was beautiful and her movement was flawless, and that was two points.

The next weekend, Steven Gladstone stood and laughed when she hit a perfect stack, then danced on her hind legs and tried to crawl up into his lap and snuggle. And this time when the point came, it was an opposite sex over a bitch special, and she had won a major. I still didn’t even know how to hold her on the table.

The rest is pretty much history. She was shown eleven more times after those first four, winning a 4-pt major, a 5-pt major, and another 3-pt. She went up over specials at most. I never had to show her–I followed her around the ring. She LOVED every second of it, loved the grooming and the excitement and the salmon and she’d move out like an Afghan Hound, way out at the end of the lead, LAUGHING, oh constantly laughing, tail wagging, because she knew if she did the mats all the way around she’d get to kiss a judge at the end of it. She taught herself to stack, she flirted with everybody who came near.

As a show dog she was a freak, a perfect dog. At home she is the most consistently happy dog in the entire world.

She adores the kids, and seeks them out. When she’s not playing with the other dogs, she’s beside a child.

She does not know that she is small, or has a tendency to be fat. She thinks she can fly.

When we brought home Bronte, she just about exploded with joy. Here was another dog who could run like the wind on tiny legs and it was just the best thing that ever happened to her.

Since Bronte was eight weeks old, they have been inseparable. They could not be more different, personality-wise, but they each think the other is just the coolest thing around.

Bronte is usually a little worried about something, most of the time. That’s why you see them like this a lot: Bronte is feeling a bit like she overstepped herself by getting up so high, and Clue is telling her to cowgirl up; it’ll be fine. And while you’re up there, bite that little black and tan thing on the butt, will you?

While Bronte is her favorite, she really does love every dog in the world. And they love her back.

And they should, because she is beautiful. On the rare moments when her tail stops wagging and she closes that laughing mouth, she is stunning.

She has a swirl on the back of her head, right behind her ear. It is where everyone must kiss her.

It gets a pretty constant workout.

Thursday comments roundup!

OK, well, in one minute it will be Friday, but I’m going to be optimistic and title the post before midnight.

First, a tiny rant: We need to buy a second crate now that Ginny is back. She’s the size of a swizzle stick, but I still want to get an Intermediate crate (Vari-Kennel 300) because then I can switch the dogs around if I need to. Intermediates are also a little more practical as working surfaces–with a blanket over the crate they’re impromptu drink carts, changing areas, grooming tables, you name it.  We were running late tonight and couldn’t get to our normal pet supply place, so I ran into PetCo.

Do you know how much they wanted? ONE HUNDRED AND FIFTEEN DOLLARS. This is a SIXTY-DOLLAR crate, peoples! Seventy if you absolutely must, but not a penny more. They are charging almost 100% over the RETAIL price! Insane. Moral: Do not go to PetCo for anything that is available elsewhere, because it will be substantially cheaper almost anywhere else. My personal recommendations are JBPet, PetEdge, Dog.com, and any pet discounter. Just as long as they don’t sell puppies and/or kittens.

A major rave: The spring puppies are starting to come! It’s SO exciting to see the big bellies become beautiful litters and then grow up. And since Bronte’s is the beautifullest and, wow, the biggest, I can hardly breathe with the anticipation. Whee!

OK, on to comments.

A whole raft of them from Micaela:

I thought of another question for you: now that you don’t have the yard playspace for the dogs to run around in, and your living quarters are smaller, I imagine you have to make more of an effort to keep them from getting bored. Do you?

Oh, goodness, yes. This is made even harder by the fact that these are two dogs that do not easily play with each other. Ginny never plays with anybody she can’t be sure she’s in charge of. Clue invites her to play a hundred times a day, but Ginny usually glares at her and flounces off.

Just over the last couple of days we’ve seen them play twice, both for only a minute or two until Ginny realizes what she’s doing. I have real hope that this will continue and their ability to have fun together will grow, but I really have no idea.

Right now we’re focusing on TV for dogs–in other words, digging and chewing. Lots of toys, lots of games of throw and catch, lots and lots of edible chewies. Beds and blankets that encourage digging are also a hit. We’re RIGHT on the edge of letting Clue run again, and at that point every fair day we’ll be taking journeys with the two of them, but for now we’re letting the “TV” do a lot of babysitting.

Also, any tips for dealing with separation anxiety? Our dog’s much-improved, which I’m sure has to do with her confidence & sense of trust in her humans being restored –we’re sure someone hurt her before she got to the rescue group we adopted her from. But she’s still got separation issues, for example she howls piteously if my husband goes outside to wash the car even when the rest of us are home with her. I’m *very* happy tho that she’s not on any of the anti-anxiety meds that other Blueticks get put on. I don’t want my dog on Prozac! Would appreciate any input you may have to offer.

You know how there are breeds of sheep that “flock” and breeds that don’t? Some breeds enjoy company but when stressed it’s every ewe for herself. Other breeds respond to stress by looking for a sister on each side and then pressing close.

If an analogous statement could be made about dogs, hounds are definitely a “flocking” breed. It is all very natural; every breed with a function and a job has had certain wolf instincts magnified. In the same way that herding breeds have the “bring the prey to the pack” instinct or terriers have the “respond quickly to prey” instinct magnified, hounds have the “hunt in a pack over long distances and despite great hardship” instinct magnified. They have their social skills and social needs VERY emphasized, because they were designed to live and work without conflict in large and disorganized groups.

So while a herding dog will natter and complain if a family member leaves the room because they want everybody in the little boxes the dog put them in, a hound genuinely feels bereft, even endangered.

This isn’t necessarily any sign of abuse or even neglect–it’s the reaction of a dog who needs lots and lots of social contact to feel normal.

Perhaps the ideal “cure” for this is a pack–is there a good dog daycare in your area that takes big dogs and has a VERY large safe fenced area? I personally don’t recommend (at least for big dogs) the one-room indoor care–you want something where she can trail and run and get the feedback from other dogs that she needs.

I think I’d also work on meeting her need to hunt, trail, and track. These dogs need to go very long distances in a basically straight line; they are incredibly attuned to the migration/trail. If you can work her up to biking for five or six miles (you bike, she’s on a Springer beside you), rollerblade, skijoring or skatejoring, etc., she will be so tired and happy that her need for constant social input will be substantially blunted.

We’ve been feeding our Bluetick Coonhound the basic Canidae (it’s easy to find at our local feed stores which is a minor miracle given where we live), and supplementing whenever we can with fresh pork chops, beef cuts, ham or pork shoulder bones… it depends on what the family’s eating, we’re not shopping fresh just for her yet. One thing she’s made very clear is that she will not eat uncooked poultry, so I wind up partially roasting any chicken or turkey I’m going to feed her, which makes me nervous about some of the bones not being safe, etc. Another thing that’s driving me crazy is that she seems to be having the dry skin issues that we’re all struggling with because we live in the SW desert… I’ve thought about adding some olive or flaxseed oil to her kibble, but I’d like to read more on the subject. Like, does she need more FAT in her diet, or does she just need more MOISTURE in her food?

I am a great fan of table scraps, so you’ll get no flak from me on that front. The only thing I’d encourage you to do is to try to separate the raw and the kibble as much as possible. Instead of feeding a kibble meal with a couple of pieces of raw on top, store the raw in the fridge for a couple of days until you have enough for a full day, then feed her an entire day (which can mean one meal–she doesn’t need to be fed twice) and don’t feed her kibble that day.

I think it’s very common for them to be confused by raw chicken. I’ve had several like that. I think that searing the piece of meat in some hot butter and garlic is safer than baking it, because you’re just cooking the skin and the top couple of millimeters of muscle instead of cooking the bone. As she gets more used to it (especially if she can’t just go to the food bowl and eat kibble instead) you can sear less and less until she’s taking the raw piece from your hand.

Moisture in food is the same as just drinking water, so as long as she’s a good drinker she’ll be fine on that front. I think she probably does need more oil in her diet, and you can also give her hot oil baths (I used to do it all the time for the Danes).

When I supplement with oil, I make up a gross mixture of a poud of Mirra-Coat (a horse fatty acid and biotin supplement), a big jar of peanut butter, 16 oz salmon oil, about a pound of ground flax, a jar of coconut oil, a ton of olive oil, some honey, and a pound of Nature’s Logic supplement. Adjust as necessary to get it to the texture of a stiff cookie dough. Make it into teaspoon-size balls and keep it in the fridge. If you feed one or two a day you’ll notice a huge difference within a week or two. They get super shiny right along the spine and then it spreads down the sides. I’ve even had them get a little greasy along the backbone, but that’s fine with me because I’m bathing so often and after the bath the hair is SO healthy.

Would it be possible for you to address these questions in a post sometime soon? I asked on a local parenting forum if anyone raw-feeds their dogs and quite a few people replied that they’d tried and their dogs hadn’t liked it. I wonder if they just tried the wrong things, or if food pickyness is as common with dogs as it is with children…

I always take any statements about raw with a certain amount of suspicion. It’s not that I don’t believe people, just that (unfortunately) so many people do it totally wrong and then say that it failed or the dog didn’t thrive or whatever. Feeding raw correctly is not difficult, but it’s not just “feeding raw.” If they’re starting wrong, feeding the wrong things, preparing their dogs wrong, or won’t tolerate the normal transition symptoms (like loose stool), they’ll often say that the diet was at fault.

I’ve started or switched to raw probably 40-50 dogs now, with the puppies I’ve raised and the rescues and the visitors (every dog with me longer than 24 hours gets switched to raw), and I’ve had plenty of them initially refuse it or not know what to do. I’ve never had one that I’d consider a real failure. It sometimes takes a few weeks of standing on my head for the dog, but pretty soon they’re jumping in the air to catch chicken backs just like everybody else.

From Tammy (hi!):

Okay… Loki’s 27 lbs, intact. How much of Orijen do you think I should be feeding a day? He’s fairly active… and what puppy food would you suggest for our new baby Bella?

I’d start with 3/4 cup a day and be prepared to cut back or increase. I am in the habit of running my hands over every dog in the house every day, and I’ll often adjust food amounts daily. Somebody will get a tiny bit more, somebody else has to fast. You can put weight on the typical dog VERY quickly, but it’s a lot harder to take it off. So too little is better than too much, at least initially.

Since Bella is going to be over 20 lb as an adult, I wouldn’t feed her puppy food at all. I would only use a puppy formula for breeds that are prone to hypoglycemia. Anybody else is actually better off with an adult food to make sure they’re growing very slowly. Don’t use a lamb and rice or no-allergy or a reduced-fat formula; you want chicken or beef/other red meat.

In adult conventional kibbles, I like (maybe “tolerate” is a better word) Solid Gold (Wolf King or MMillennia), Canidae, the Natural Balance normal/adult food, Castor and Pollux (the Cesar Millan food is a repackaged version of C&P’s adult food, so that’s good too), Innova (I never had success with this in the Danes because it was much too rich for them, but plenty of people LOVE it).

I’d also encourage you to look at the “foolproof” raw diets for a puppy, if you don’t want to plunge into actual raw feeding. Wendy Volhard’s NDF 2 formula and Sojos Grain-Free are dry vegetable mixes (and Volhard’s has some grains) that you soak and combine with raw meat.

From B:

I followed you here from a galaxy far away…:P I have a motive in hanging around learning from you–looking fwd (in a couple of years) to being the best (pet) dog owner I can– first need to figure out what breed is best for my family and then where to get said dog from…I have two Qs for you at the moment, do you have a how to select a breed thing written up around here somewhere? I thought I saw one from you a while back but can’t turn it up now…Hmm…The other Q is what blogs/essp forums you know of about breeds types, ethical breeding, dog bahviour, general living with dog type stuff that you would recommend as being fairly or totally on the mark. Any help would be appreciated, I am trying to do this right but I admit I am a bit lost at it…Thank you in advance…

Is that… the EVIL galaxy? I still read over there, because it’s like watching a car wreck, but I am so glad to not be part of the crazy anymore.

YES, I do have a breed selection article. It’s long, so you need to download it in .doc form. It used to be on my website (which, yes, I know, is out of date, but all the website files are on burnt computers and I can’t face the task of re-creating them right now). It got left behind when I changed the website around, so this is a good reminder to get it updated and back to the land of the living. I’ll let you know when I’ve got it uploaded–should be in the next few days.

I honestly don’t know of good general dog forums. If any reader here does, please post one. Unfortunately, what generally happens to those forums is the same newbie questions get asked over and over again and so the more experienced posters leave. The only ones left are the ones who can stand the same sob story a hundred times, which is to their credit, but they get REALLY jaundiced about everything. If you come there and say “I have a Peke-a-Poo puppy who has diarrhea and…” they’ll immediately jump all over you for buying a mixed-breed dog (or buying a poorly bred purebred, or whatever) and you’ll be unlikely to get your question answered. It’s absolutely true that you SHOULD NOT have bought that dog, but if it’s got diarrhea you might like knowing how to solve that.

I’ve always found the single-breed listservs or yahoo groups to be the best source for information about that particular breed. Look for the list that has several hundred or a thousand members and you’ve probably found the primary one. My only caution is that you need to SHUT UP AND READ, including ALL of the archives, for at least a month before you ask any questions. Most of the time you’ll realize that yours was answered ten times in the last year. If you wait until you don’t look quite so green and new, you’ll be able to have a much nicer time in the conversation.

From Bonnie: What do you think of Victoria Stilwell’s It’s Me Or The Dog?

Well. That IS a question. Let me begin by saying that I am not 100% in love with any of the television trainers–I think Cesar is a freaking genius but I think he doesn’t realize how poorly most people are implementing what he does so well. His methods require exactly what he has–years of experience in watching dogs, body language, energy, communication, and pack behavior. He responds to the dog’s own language and signals much more than he responds to behavior. I think even he doesn’t realize exactly what he’s doing. If you are a typical dog owner with 99% of what the dog is doing a complete mystery to you, you can misapply his techniques and really hurt your dog.

Victoria does better at communicating techniques that are broader, shallower, more foolproof. Unfortunately, she often SUCKS at body language and she puts dogs into situations that are genuinely dangerous and then pez-dispenses cookies to distract them; the owners perceive this as success but the dog has not changed one bit. I once watched an episode where she had two dogs who were determined to kill each other in a room together, and was rewarding them “so they would associate the presence of the other dog with a reward.” I started screeching at the TV when I could clearly see that the dogs greatly and steadily desired the death of each other, and were quite cheerful about that (there is, as Terhune said, a gay cavalier inside each dog who fights), and from their point of view were getting cookies shoved down their throats in glorious recognition of their hatred. They were staring at each other with tails stiff and eyes fixed, eating cookies as fast as they could.

She is also SO COMPLETELY TOTALLY WRONG about prong collars and choke collars. Head halters are MUCH more likely to cause serious damage than the prong (which is actually the safest collar for the average owner to use) and head halters and ez-pull harnesses and so on don’t train. They just make certain movements physically impossible. The dog doesn’t say “Oh, my owner is telling me not to do that, and therefore I will not do it.” The dog instead is physically impeded. Saying those tools train is like saying that a wall trains dogs not to run away. As soon as the tool–as soon as the wall–is gone, the behavior is exactly the same. You can choose to use those tools, just like you choose to use a wall, but they should be a very temporary stop-gap with the goal of using real training signals as soon as possible.

I also think that neither of them does a good job of verbally describing exactly why they are doing what they’re doing, with fearful dogs in particular. Cesar does talk about stopping dogs from moving forward (decreasing drive) but doesn’t articulate exactly why his methods are working on fearful dogs. I know the shows are edited, so maybe they’re talking with the owners at length, but there’s a lot of “Do this” and very little “Do this because it works this way and has this result.” I think that many (most?) dog owners punish fear. I know I did. I knew you were supposed to stop the dog from, for example, growling, but I didn’t know how to distinguish the growl that means “please don’t; I’m afraid,” from the one that says “don’t, or I’ll have to punish you.” I didn’t know that you have to begin your shaping of the eventual result LONG before it gets to the point of the growl; by the time the growl comes you’ve already failed to a certain extent. If you watch Cesar, he never, ever uses an aversive or a correction on a fearful dog, but I’ve never heard him say “Never correct a fearful dog” in so many words. I think he should be saying it EVERY TIME.

If you want my advice on training, I’d say put away all the actual training books for a few months. Read Rugaas and Aloff’s books on body language and read everything you can get on dog behavior and pack techniques. Dunbar, Donaldson, Pryor are great at teaching about motivation. But if you only read them you will (I am convinced) only get part of the story. You should also read the Monks of New Skete and all the classic ones from trainers long since gone to their reward. Read Bones Would Rain From the Sky. Read Katz. Read books on border collies (not because you’d be teaching herding, but because the best herding training is all about shaping natural and joyful behaviors), and I would very highly recommend reading several books on Schutzhund. Even if you own a beagle or a maltese. Schutzhund researchers understand drive, and how handlers increase, decrease, mishandle, and screw up drive better than anyone else.

You need to read everyone because nobody has the whole story. The pure researchers who focus solely on motivation miss the boat because they are so careful to never attribute any behavior to anything but the self-interest of the animal. For a bonded dog-human pair, that’s like analyzing a marriage and ignoring anything that isn’t the result of self-interest. Dogs DO love, and they DO feel jealousy, and they DO object to inequity, and so on. The behaviorists who determine that no aversive signals can ever be given forget that dogs themselves communicate in aversives. The behaviorists who object to food rewards forget that candy tastes good, and so does liver. And if you want candy you do stuff, and dogs do the same thing.

If you read EVERYBODY, and watch your dog(s) for a long time, you’ll start to build an idea of what’s true. Then you’re ready to go back to actual trainers and throw out what you know is false and keep what you know is true. But above all else, the DOG MUST TEACH YOU. If you are doing anything without the dog “agreeing” with you–if the dog is showing confusion, anger, fear, anxiety, etc.–I don’t care how gold-certified the technique you’re using is; stop it. That’s why I think you must start with the body language books (and videos/dvds if you can get them); you have to know what your dog is communicating before you can continue with the training.

And (last one for tonight), from Pai:

A question though — when you said ‘close physical contact does not equal love’ I wonder about my dog, a Chinese Crested, who as a breed are called ‘velcro dogs’ because they always want to be near their owners or in physical contact with them. Is that then, not affection? Does that just mean the breed is actually just naturally very ‘possessive’?

I think many breeds feel this way. Sometimes it’s possession, sometimes it really is love. Depends on the dog. The huge difference between this and the “training” episode I told about is that the dog is choosing to be close to the owner. There’s no compulsion involved.

Humans are EXTREMELY high-touch, all the time. If you have an intimate and loving relationship with someone, touch and invasion of space are perceived to be a constant positive. Think about all the movie scenes where the hero or the heroine gather the other person close, despite the other person initially fighting. The eventual surrender to the embrace is a sign of acceptance of that person’s love; it’s a signal of emotional wellness and the success of the relationship.

That’s what the trainer in the episode I told you about was trying to push on a dog, with the added “value” that the dog would have to submit to the contact and therefore become a “better” dog.

But that’s not the way a dog thinks or wants or desires; forced contact is the way dogs punish each other and threaten each other. So this puppy perceived himself as being horribly threatened and repeatedly punished, and he was not allowed to apologize by getting away from the punisher.

A dog climbing in your lap or draping himself over your shoulder is very different–that’s contact that the dog chooses and enjoys.