Help prevent and treat Canine obesity

Obesity is No Laughing Matter

Happy new year!  Tradition which dates back to the Colombia - British 153 dictates every 365 days or if you try to kick bad habits and begin their new life!  What kind of resolution did you this year?  It is likely because its already January 3, most people have already failed in what they wanted to accomplish.

I kicked accustomed to once a year commitments, there are many years each new year, but still me pining for the idea.  The idea is simple and magical. It is monitoring in this way takes determination and desire!

At the dawn of this new year I allows you to account for the impact of obesity on your furry friend.  Obesity is an epidemic not only with humans in our country, but in our pets.  We believe that, to the indulgence is a form of love and that is why we provide not only, but sometimes encourages indulgence in our animals.

Additional books a burden on virtually all organs of the body not only in ourselves, but our pets.   Overload of bodies often leads to disease and death.  Specifically obesity may lead to the:

Fat diabetes may be dead your DogDamage joints, bones and a decrease in pressure blood ligaments (especially in large dogs) cardiac diseaseIncreased (Yes dogs may also suffer from hypertension) anesthesia liver functionDifficulty breathingDecreased staminaHeat intoleranceIncreased riskDigestive disordersImmune dysfunctionSkin hair and layer problemsIncreased cancerDecreased quality and lifetime risks

I want that my best friend to be around as long as possible.  I want as his life to be full of fun and excitement.  I dont want to administer beatings of insulin or medications that can be avoided or to be shorten her life with every meal and to deal with.  During the indulgence of food has a price, and I am not prepared to pay with my friend lives.

Prevention

Power supply:

A normal healthy dog is always hungry!  This is how the wild dog adapted and survived, but this does not mean that your dog is hungry.  Dogs have different nutritional needs and the amounts of their lifetime.  Active young and dogs working dogs require more calories and protein than couch potatoes and older dogs.Recommendations on the back of the bag of dog food is prepared for an intact male working dog.  Most of us have no dogs that are intact (I hope) and certainly have no active test field, or police dogs.  If we can reduce the amount we use and recommend the bag.Food meals is an another easy way to reduce intake.  Just as we could deliver more if we take the set of tokens bag to snack in front of the TV, because were bored, your dog probably more indulges if food is excluded throughout the day.

Exercise:

Provide exercise!  Exercise has benefits for the heart and muscles and his mind!

Regulate her weight:

POP in for a veterinarian hello fast and weight verification!  This is a quick and easy way to make less traumatic vet visits and to maintain a healthy weight!

Limit or eliminate the treats:

I think thats treats to my advantage while training, however I adjust meal of my dog at the time of the meal if we had a big day by reducing the amount of food that I give.

Beginning of a weight loss program

If your dog is already more weight, it is time to consider a weight loss program here are the steps, you need to succeed.

Visit your veterinarian:

Certain medical conditions can cause gain weight in dogs, and as with humans doctor should evaluate your dog before starting an exercise regime.  Your veterinarian can help you determine a realistic goal weight and chronology.Normally, we recommend starting by measuring the amount, the dog was currently giving and depression by ¼.  We also recommend giving charges or frozen green beans (not preserved not because there is too much salt) as filler to help your dog to feel full.

Monitor progress:

Make a chart and monitor your success!

Ive found often difficult to maintain my own success when it comes to my relationship with food (although Im proud to announce the I am currently training for a half marathon).  I wish that someone could feed me in small doses and control my access to food!  But I control is what my dog eat and its capacity and access to exercise.  I think of it as a gift, I can give to him and myself, the long life of quality gift spent together!

So heres my challenge you for the new year to come, to choose something simple on living with your dog and change for the better.  Spend more time together, or swear some weight and exercise together!

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Dog Training Tips from Cooper City to Help Your Dog Eat His Food

Ideas to get Your Dog to Eat His Food

I was out at a Dog Training revisit this morning in Cooper City for a Coonhound that we haven’t seen for over seven years.  The dog had been doing great for a very long time until recently when a few things had changed in the family dynamics.  We took care of that pretty quickly (and that can be the topic of a future article).  The client then mentioned, “I just dont get it.  I spend more money on Mystie’s "holistic/good for you food" than I spend on myself.  I put the food down and she really isn’t interested in it.  I dont want to feed her the junkie food with all the additives, but I don’t want her to starve.  What can I do to get her to eat the healthy food?”

So many times we can relate our current experiences with things we have lived through in the past.  Lets think about our childhood and our mom serving us green beans.  If you are like me, there was no way I was going to take my fork and eat those green beans sitting on that plate.  But you know what?  If I mixed the beans in with some mashed potatoes and then put some melted butter on the top, I would eat them all day long.  I am not saying that we need to cover Mystie’s food in mashed potatoes and butter, but there is a way to enhance the food to make it more desirable.  There are things that we can add to Mystie’s food as “side dishes” that are healthy and will enhance the desirability of the entire eating experience.  Here is what Robin, my wife, adds to our dogs food and they just love:

• PUMPKIN PASTE.  Pumpkin is very healthy for dogs and is a great additive to the dry food.  It is a little hard to mix with the dry kibble, but a great, tasty treat for our dogs.
• LOW SODIUM CHICKEN BROTH.  Chicken is a healthy and light meat and the low sodium minimizes any additional salt added to their diet.  The moisture gives a pleasing smell to the dry food that our dogs love.
• COTTAGE CHEESE.  The wonderful aspect about cottage cheese is that it is so easy to mix up with the dry food.  The moisture that it adds helps take away the “dryness” of the kibble.  It is healthy and good for the dogs and what dog doesnt love cheese?  It is a true winner that we have been using for years for all six of our dogs.
• FREEZE DRIED RAW DOG FOOD.  Many experts are proponents of feeding dogs natural, raw food.  Although very healthy and rich with minerals and vitamins, it is just a pain to actually do.  You can now buy raw dog food in freeze dried form in many of the better dog food stores.  Put a few teaspoons of the food into a bowl, add a little water, and wait for about twenty minutes.  You now have a great, healthy treat that you can add to your dog’s food and he will love it.

Again, these are just some simple ideas to spice up your dog’s healthy diet.  The one thing that I want to emphasize is to not add wet dog food to your dog’s diet.  Although there are many good and healthy wet dog foods on the market, they all require you to brush your dogs teeth regularly.  Most of us just dont do that.  Our dogs teeth will then rot out early, causing health issues in their later years.

Try one or more of these options and I am sure you will find that your dog can’t wait for meal time.  As always, check with your vet regarding all your dog’s health and nutritional needs.  For more information about this or any dog training issues, please contact us at (954) 424-0170 or our web site at The Best Dog Trainers in Cooper City and South Florida.

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Dog Training Tips on Canine Communication

I am doing everything I can to get my dog to sit.  I say "Sit!  Sit,sit you crazy dog, sit! Just humor me this one time and put your rear on the ground!  This isn’t funny anymore, now I am getting mad, SIT SIT SIT!"  It’s just not happening....

So how was that for you?  You have run head long into a big difference in the way humans communicate and the way dogs communicate.  We have words, languages, punctuation, antonyms, synonyms, slang, accents, and other ways we verbally communicate.  Multiple people can look at the same thing and describe it using different words and we all can understand exactly what that thing might look like.

Our dog does not have the multiple communication choices that we have.  He does not have a dictionary where the same word might have multiple meanings and a list of other words that mean the same thing.  All he has are the sounds and tones that come out of his mouth.  We might call it whining, growling, or barking.  Those are all the tools that he has when he wants to verbally communicate to other animals.

In order to verbally communicate with our dog, we first have to understand that words are simply sounds to him.  If we want him to understand those sounds, they must be unique, with only one meaning.  For us, this could be equivalent an emergency vehicles siren.  We hear that siren and we know that there is an emergency vehicle nearby.  We look for the vehicle, pull over, and let it by.  The unique sound of the siren invokes a unique response from us.

That is how our dog verbally communicates.  If we want to have our dog sit, we must have a unique sound that whenever he hears it, he always sits.  Most people use "Sit".  And, by the way, "Sit, sit, sit, sit" is a different sound than “sit”.  

So remember, you must use unique sounds with your dog to have him understand you.  For more information, please contact The Best Dog Trainers in South Florida.

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Sorry Ive been gone so long

Back in 2006 I opened Pikes Peak Manners In Minutes when I retired from the Sheriffs Office.  This was never supposed to be a full time job, just something for an old cop to do.  The goal was about a thirty hour week and enough income to pay the bills.

And that is what it was until 2012.  Suddenly I was working six or seven days a week anywhere from 40 to 70 hours. 

As a result this blog fell by the wayside.  It wasnt that I didnt have something to say, it was finding time to say it.

Ive grown as a trainer and as a result at any given time I have about 60 to 80 dogs that I am working with.  Neighborhood pack has grown from one session a week to four.  Some days I get here at 9 and dont get home until 8 or 9 at night.

But this has become a very rewarding way to spend my retirement.  I get to watch so many dogs change and so many owners improve their skills.

Ill try to be better about posting things that may help you. 

And now I have to go work with a dog

Doug

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Dog Training In praise of praise

    I have a huge advantage over most dog trainers.  I don’t train in order to make a living, or even as a supplemental income source.  I have a nice police pension and no longer have to work for a living.  But I am a type A personality and the idea of becoming a couch potato after retiring had no appeal. I train dogs to have something to do

    This allows me to stand back from the industry and make my decisions without being influenced by the need to make money.  As long as I pay the overhead, finances are not my motivation.

    When I met Pat Muller, the inventor of Manners in Minutes training, it was an “aha” moment.  I realized that she had come up with a training system that made sense to both the dog and the dog owner.   And since it made sense to both of them, it was the fastest way to train a dog.

    The dog training profession is almost entirely made up of two schools.  The first school is the all positive reinforcement methodology; the second is a dominance/alpha school.

    Positive reinforcement is by far the largest school.  The vast majority of trainers are in this school.  The idea is simple.  Reward positive behavior and through repetition the dog will perform reliably.

    I find some major flaws in this technique.   Too many trainers use food as the reward.  Food reward has some major drawbacks.  Some dogs are not food oriented.  But more often, as I have written before, the trainer fails to get the owner to see the difference between motivation and bribery.  Many times I see dogs that have turned the tables of the owner.  The will only perform for food.  Or they will deliberately misbehave so that the owner gives them food to change their behavior.  Far too often someone ends up with a fat dog that only behaves when food is immediately available. 

   And while some of them claim to be all positive, frustration can lead to harsh corrections. 

   And there is a lot of smugness and self righteousness by many of these type trainers.   They have a built in excuse for their training failing you.  It is your fault, you aren’t kind enough.

    I think, in theory, the dominance/alpha school is closer to the right track.  But in practice, most of them get it wrong. 

     It seems far too many of them are just plain bullies.  They end up punishing the dog to the point that the dog obeys out of fear.  And fear is not the relationship you should have with a dog.  They misinterpret the alpha/pack concept to cover their own shortcomings.

   Because of these people, dominance training has become a dirty word within the dog training industry, especially with the all positive people.

   There is a third school.  I call it the balance school.  It isn’t all positive reinforcement, but instead of punishment it uses gentle correction techniques.   But what sets it apart is the use of praise.

    Unfortunately there are not a lot of balance trainers. You really have to work to find one.  And a lot of people who claim to be balance trainers aren’t.

    I tell my clients even if they mess up on everything else, if they get the praise right, the will get the dog right.  It will just take longer.

    There are some simple rules for the effective use of praise.

1.        Try not to gush.  Gushing is using the same phrase multiple times for one performance.  So when a dog sits when told to sit, tell them “good sit” one time.    Dogs often mistake gushing as barking and one of the reasons dogs bark is to invite play.  Gushing can sabotage training.

2.       When the dog obeys a command, make sure you praise it immediately.  Since one decision gets only one reward (good sit) praise the dog as it obeys, not after the fact.  “Good sit” should be said as the dog is in the act of sitting, not when the dog has been sitting for a while.

3.       Praise everything the dog does even if you did not give it a command.  If you walk by and the dog stands up, tell it “good stand.”  If it does not get up tell it “good down.”  Praise makes the dog believe you are in charge.

4.       If you make a correction, praise the dog when it obeys.  Corrections without praise are revenge; it is the praise and not the correction that makes it training.

5.       Praise the action.  “Good dog” means you like the dog. “Good sit” means you are reinforcing the command.

     The effective use of praise can often overcome other poor training techniques and incompetent trainers.

Doug

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Canine Rage Disorder

I’m not a veterinarian so I can’t make any judgments about medical causes of this condition, but I have seen one case of extreme Canine Rage Disorder. So this blog is about rage and a possible behavioral explanation for the rage.

I received a call well over a year ago. A vet referred an owner to me. The owner explained that he had a French bulldog that was extremely aggressive. The dog was fine with another dog in the home, his wife and he, but would suddenly attack any other dogs or humans.

I like to know generally what I am going to be asked to deal with before people come in for an evaluation. But usually I wait to get the details. And I deal with aggressive dogs all the time. But this owner was almost frantic. He said he was reluctant to even bring the dog in for fear it would attack me. I assured him that I was used to working with aggressive dogs. I told him that if the dog did attack it was an occupational hazard I have learned to live with.

I will not work with any dog without the dog and owner coming in for a free assessment before taking the dog. First I like to have an idea of what the dog is like. And it is very important that the owner understand the Manners in Minutes dog training system and be willing to do the work required for the training to succeed. If the training is to succeed the dog, the owner and I must be on the same page and be able to work together.

I always come out to see the dog as soon as you pull up. I am watching the dog as you bring it in. The dog tells me a lot about itself from the minute I first see it. By watching this I get a lot of information about what is going on with the dog.

Except for that evening every aggressive or dangerous dog has told me, via body language that I needed to watch out. This dog gave me nothing to alarm me. But I was on guard because of our phone conversation.

When a dog comes in I have you wait at the door. The dog is always on a line. I watch the dog and ask a couple of questions. But I am really looking at the dog’s behavior and judging its reaction to the center. If all goes well I have you drop the line to see what the dog does next.

I was a little more cautious than usual but again did not see anything. I deliberately stood away to the side at a distance. Then I told the owner to just let go of the line.

When I do this I am looking at three things, confidence, curiosity and caution. The dog has walked in and has already figured out by smell that there have been thousands of dogs in here. To a dog that is supposed to mean that the center is possible a den for a really large pack of dogs.

First I want to see if your dog confident enough to leave your side. A dog that has no confidence will just stand there with rear and front ends lowered. A dog with too much confidence will start peeing on everything in sight to “mark” territory.

A dog with normal curiosity will quickly begin to explore. And if the dog has the right amount of caution you will see it in their body language. When you go to some other pack’s den, you need to be prepared for confrontation.

This dog stood calmly for a moment. He took two steps. Then he turned suddenly and latched on to my shin.

It hurt. But I was a cop for 24 years. Police work is a contact sport and I have the scars, healed broken bones and surgical reports to prove it. It wasn’t very high on my list of pain situations. And I don’t panic easily.

Normally I would have just growled hard at the dog and walked my way up the line (reaching down would have guaranteed an attack at my face) until the line pulled the dog off my shin. But the owner was panicking and any movement on my part would have escalated the situation and made things worse.

I stood there taking the bite and calmly told the owner to slowly pick up the line and pull the dog off of me. Then I had to calm the owner who was reacting all out of proportion to the situation.

After I calmed the owner I had him attach the dog to a point so that the dog could not make another mistake and started to find out what had happened.

The owner told me he got the dog several years ago. The dog was normal and had no aggression. When the dog was two it disappeared from his backyard.

The dog was chipped so they checked regularly with the Humane Society to see if he showed up. After a year the figured the dog was never going to show up. They bought another dog. They did report the dog as stolen.

After the dog had been gone for two years they got a call from the Humane Society. The dog was at the shelter and had been identified via the chip. They went and got him. The Humane Society told them that the police had gone to a home of an older lady on a mental health check the welfare. Due to the lady’s behavior they had taken her in for an evaluation which turned into a mental health hold. As there was no one to take the dog the Humane Society had been called. When they checked for a microchip they found one and discovered the dog had been reported as stolen. As there is no legal right to stolen items in Colorado, the dog had to be returned to the owners regardless of how the other woman got the dog.

They took the dog home and he seemed to be fine until they took him for a walk in the neighborhood when he tried to go after every dog or person he saw. They thought time would cure him but he hadn’t gotten any better.

Then the owner told me that he suffers from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder from his military service. With all kinds of alarm bells going off in the back of my head I asked some more questions and then did some behavior testing.

My greatest concern was whether or not the dog had lost the ability to trust. If he had, then the chances that training could undo the damage were minimal, at best. As a rule of thumb I will not work with a dog that has lost that ability to trust. But there were some signs that he still had the ability to trust.

I do not like people to sign up for training at the end of the assessment. I want you to be very sure before you start with me that this is what you want. And based on what I now had heard and seen I wanted to think about this dog before committing to training it.

I sent them home with a brochure and told them to think it over. I also wanted to thing about whether or not I was willing to work with this dog.

I mulled it over for a couple of days. I decided that the dog was worth the effort. And I believe that if they followed my instructions that we could fix the behavior. But I knew if it failed the dog would be too dangerous to ever have even the slightest chance of getting loose. I decided that I would impose some unusual conditions.

I decided that if the dog worked with me, and it did not work, then I would refund their fees but that they would have to agree to put the dog down. If this dog was so traumatized that training did not work, the dogs life was one of constant fear and that kind of dog was just too dangerous to everyone.

Then I thought about the owner. I figured his wife would keep that agreement but I wasn’t sure about the husband. I knew they loved the dog and they might be tempted to keep it even if the training wasn’t working. Sadly sometimes there is no choice but to put a dog down. But not everyone will make the best decision for the dog.

Luckily they never called back, so the decision was taken out of my hands. I never learned what happened to the dog.

Assuming that all the information they gave me was accurate, I believe that whatever happened the two years that dog was gone filled that dog with rage. And sadly I will never know more about what caused it and if it could be undone.

I haven’t seen anything even close to this since, but I know the next phone call for this condition will come sooner or later. I hope the outcome is better.

Doug

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