senior dogs and mental stimulation

Wow! I see I haven't posted since February. And I know why.. It has been so hot that Penny has been less willing to go for a walk.

She has spent most of the time each day snoozing, and we had put that down to her age. Our vet agrees that perhaps she doesn't deal so well with hot weather these days, so we have let her set the pace on walks and if she didn't want to go we'd let her lie. However, we do manage a walk of some sort most days.

Lately, though, it has become cooler, and we're wondering if her sleepiness might be as much due to boredom as to her senior status. So, we're trying to play a few games each evening, and use some of the lovely Nina Ottosson games when feeding her. ( A bit tricky, given that these days we only feed raw meat, with some additions of vegetables and vitamins.)

Also, today I took her for a swim in the warm water of the indoor pool at Kepala.

Afterwards, I asked in the office whether it would be okay for us to pop into the agility area to see how Penny would cope with it. As soon as we stepped through the gate, she headed for the tyre and the tunnel!

Before I even had time to give the 'begin' signal, she was through. I hurried to catch up so she wouldn't jump over the higher items (because of her arthritis.)

She managed the little seesaw like a pro.

And what was that in the distance? A set of weave poles...

Yes, she sort of still remembers how to do them. Hooray! So, next time, after a warm swim to get her muscles loosened, I think we might try this again.

Bone broth for a raw-fed dog

I received a yummy-looking recipe from DogsNaturally magazine recently and decided to make it - bone broth. I hastened down to the local raw-food/canine naturopath to buy some bones.

I shouldn't have been surprised when she said she doesn't bother making bone broth. As she says, it's unlikely that dogs in the wild would be boiling up a batch of broth.

But I wanted to try it.

Fortunately, I  was wise enough to cook it out of the house. I thought of doing it on the back patio, but the thought that Penny might sniff around the slow-cooker and perhaps scald herself was worrisome, so I did it in the glasshouse at the bottom of the garden. The reason for going outdoors was the mention of a bad smell.

Bad smell... Wow! Yes! Disgusting to me. But Penny thought it was interesting, as the slow cooker operated over the next two-and-a-half days. Yep, I decided to give it a nice long cook.

So, after cooking it up, I put it into the fridge and a layer of fat collected on the surface. I skimmed that off and put it into the compost. The result was a thick jelly that looked delicious, but smelled awful. I've put it into ice-cube trays in the freezer. There seems to be enough to feed a pack of dogs for the next century.

Penny thinks it's delicious.

Here's the recipe, but I acknowledge it comes from DogsNaturally and suggest you go over there and check it out properly. There are great photos of the broth preparation.

BONE BROTH FOR DOGS Step 1: Add Bones, Water And Vinegar
 First, I fill my crockpot with bones. Because I like to make sure there’s lots of healthy, joint protecting gelatin in my broth, I use bones with a lot of joints in them like chicken feet. I’ll also add some garlic for health and flavor (and if you think garlic is dangerous for dogs, just leave it out or read this article).If you don’t have a crockpot, you can use a regular old pot on your stove … but you have to leave it cooking overnight so I prefer the crockpot.Organic, grass fed bones will be the best … don’t skimp on the bones and feel free to use discarded bones from your own meals … they’re just fine for broth. Step 2: Add Water And Vinegar Next, I’ll fill the pot so the bones are completely covered, plus an extra two or three inches of water on top. The important part is to add raw apple cider vinegar or lemon juice to the pot … this is the magic ingredient that makes sure your broth has all of that great and healthy gelatin in it … it also pulls the nutritious minerals out of the bones.I’ll add about three or four tablespoons of vinegar to a pot this size.Once I’ve added the bones, water and vinegar, I put my crockpot on high for an hour, then I turn it down to low and leave it cooking for 24 hours. You can leave it cooking for two or three days if you want, but I find it starts cooking down too much after a day and I can still get a good jelly-like consistency after a day. Step 3: Strain The Bones
 When the broth is finished, I need to strain the bones and meat out. These bones shouldn’t be fed to dogs, so I put them in the green bin. My dogs don’t need them anyway … I’ve already got the good parts in my broth.  Step 4: Get Creative Here’s the fun but optional part.When I turn the crockpot off, I’ll add some nutritious extras. For this batch of broth, I added some frozen kale and fresh leftover green beans. But I also like to add medicinal mushrooms, broccoli, kelp and herbs … and sometimes nothing at all. Check out this articlefor some ideas of nutritious veggies you can add.
Toss in any healthy herbs or vegetables your dog loves (and if he doesn’t love them, then bone broth is a great place to hide them).I’ll add these ingredients while the broth is hot, right after I’ve turned it off. Then the broth will cool with the veggies in it, making them just soft enough for my dogs to get their yummy goodness. Step 5: Let It Cool Once my broth is cooled, I’ll put it in the fridge. This is where the magic happens … and in just a few hours, you’ll know if you’ve made a good batch!Once your broth comes out of the fridge, it will have a hard layer of fat on top. You should chip this off and toss it in the green bin. Underneath the fat, your bone broth should now look like jelly … the jelly means you’ve got lots of gelatin in there, and that’s what helps with your dog’s joints and the leaky gut that can cause allergies and digestive upset. That gelatin plugs the holes in leaky gut that can cause allergy symptoms, so the more jelly-like, the better! If your broth doesn’t look like jelly, don’t worry … it just means you didn’t add enough vinegar. Next time just add a little more vinegar and your next batch will be just fine. But first use the broth you have because it will still be packed with healthy goodness! Step 6: Store Your Broth  Because I have a lot of dogs, I just leave my bone broth in the crockpot in their fridge (yes, my dogs have their own fridge, but I’m sure there’s room in your fridge for bone broth). A pot this large will last my five large Labradors about 4 or 5 days. I wouldn’t want to keep it in the fridge for more than a few days anyway so I just make a fresh batch once or twice a week.If you have just one or two dogs, you can take the broth and label it into mason jars and store it. If you’ve got small dogs, you can ladle your broth into an ice cube tray and just pull a cube out at a time.Having a supply of bone broth in your freezer is a super idea … bone broth is incredibly nutritious and healing for sick dogs (think chicken soup). So make sure you have some on hand for emergencies.  Step 7: Give It To Your Dog! The final (and best) step is to feed the bone broth to your dog!I pull bone broth out of the fridge and give my large dogs two or three heaping spoonfuls over their dinner. It’s food not medicine, so I don’t get too hung up on exactly how much I give my dogs.My dogs love hanging out in the kitchen when it’s cooking … and you can see above that Dottie can’t wait to sample it after smelling it all day!So there you have it … it’s incredibly easy to make bone broth and your dogs will love the taste and reap the health benefits.

Raw diet for dogs

All the best for 2018 to all my readers and blogging pals!

I haven't written anything for a while, but Penny has been getting on with life much in her usual way, albeit more slowly now that she is a senior citizen.

We've moved Penny onto a raw diet, after much consideration, and so far she seems well. Her coat is glossy and she is interested in life.

We're giving a limited range of muscle meats. We started with kangaroo, which has the reputation of being the idea meat for dogs, but I'm concerned that my neighbour told me this industry is not regulated well and the babies are often left to die after hunters kill the kangaroos. I'll have to research this more. It's hard to find meat that is ethically sourced.

We had stopped with the kangaroo anyway, because of the dark, runny poos that Penny was doing. Lots of sites on the internet say that this can be expected with a change to kangaroo, but it was still scary, as I couldn't distinguish definitely that Penny was not bleeding somewhere in the upper digestive system.

We moved to veal (yes, another ethically  problematic meat!) and beef, which has led to better bowel motions. We're lucky that a shop has opened in our neighbourhood, providing a huge selection of meats, some with ground bone, some with organ meat, and some with shredded vegetables.

We also give Digestavite, Vitamin C, turmeric, antibiobotanical, home-juiced vegetables and omega oil. We added goat kefir for a few weeks, but I think that doesn't suit her digestive system, so we've stopped that one. For most of her life we've been giving her Glyde for her joints.

Today we've started her on rabbit as a muscle meat, and the naturopath who runs the pet supply shop says this is a very good meat for Penny, because it contains organ meat and bone.

So far so good. The aim is to have a couple of meals a week that consist of a meaty bone, but she tends to simply bury any bone we give her. She then goes back for it a few days later, when it smells delightful to her - but disgusting to us. So bone-eating is still a work-in-progress.

what is 'dog food'?

When Penny was recovering from her cruciate operation, I downloaded the incredibly helpful and FREE booklet from Dr James St Clair about post-operative care. (I'm not sure it's still free, but I hope it is.)
I have the greatest respect for him as a vet, even though I've never met him. (I live on the other side of the planet from him.) So when I read a post by him about the pet food industry, I expected  it to be good.

And it is.

the dangers of dogs eating beans

Most evenings we eat vegetables and so does Penny. Her favorite place in the house is near the food preparation bench, where she sits patiently waiting for off-cuts of vegetables - carrots, particularly. One thing she loves also is the end of a bean. We've been giving her little bits of green beans for ages.

Lately I've been growing broad beans in the garden, mainly so I can dig them in and add to the nitrogen in the soil. But last night the pods of beans looked so enticing that we decided to cook some and eat them. (Okay, those who know we were supposed to eat the beans inside, and not the pods, are wincing, I guess.)

Human number two threw a couple of cut-off ends to Penny and decided to throw the rest in the compost, because of the funny whitish look of them.

Thank goodness she didn't give Penny the usual amount, because ten minutes later Penny was in the garden throwing up. And again, thirty minutes later, after she had her evening meal.

Of course, other than keeping an eye on her, it was immediately off to the internet to look for information.

First of all I came across this story, from bakers8:

I came home from work this week and thought that I would see if any of the broad beans were ready for eating. Upon viewing the vegetable garden I wondered at the fact that there were quite a few long stems of beans lying flat. It hadn’t been overly windy that day and it was dry. What had happened? Then I saw that there were no beans on any of the stems that were on the ground. No beans?

I puzzled for a while, picked some beans and went inside to prepare them for dinner. The chooks were happy to receive the empty pods and I thought no more about it – until M asked if I had fed Terry some broad beans. A lot of broad beans.

“No” I said, “I don’t think he likes them”.

“Well” said M, “there are a number of piles of dog vomit around the yard and it’s all broad beans!” (apologies to the faint and/or those with vivid imaginations).

Sure enough, there was the evidence that somebody had decided to have a little smorgasbord prior to my return. And he must be feeling rather poorly as he hadn’t performed the other disgusting dog habit of cleaning up after himself!

I also found this on GardenWeb:

Beans in the family Phaseolus Vulgaris contain a chemical called Phytohaemagglutinin. If you cook it, the chemical is released and poses no threat. Raw, it's pretty nasty. In humans, eating small amounts of it via raw beans isn't usually fatal (from what I know, so don't read this, eat some raw beans then sue me when you die or get deathly ill), but even eating a small dose can cause some serious sickness like vomiting and general malaise and all. It's not usually fatal in humans unless larger amounts are consumed, but it's still dangerous enough to where I wouldn't eat raw beans.
It's dangerous though to most animals, not just humans. So, a dog would be just as likely to get it, if not more likely, as a human.

After all this research, I began to wonder whether my plants were in fact the same broad beans that others were writing about. However, I felt sure I had identified my plants correctly when I looked at the photos on this site, and read:

In much of the Anglophone world, the name broad bean is used for the large-seeded cultivars grown for human food, while horse bean and field bean refer to cultivars with smaller, harder seeds (more like the wild species) used for animal feed, though their stronger flavour is preferred in some human food recipes, such as falafel.
The term fava bean (from the Italian fava, meaning "broad bean") is its most common name in the United States, with broad bean being the most common name in the UK.

By the way, Penny seems fine today. Also, quite separately from her reaction to the beans, we scraped our own cooked pods into the compost because they tasted so awful.

is tuna safe for dogs?

I was told recently that I shouldn't feed Penny tuna as often as salmon, because tuna has a high level of mercury. I don't know much about that, but I do know salmon is certainly a bit expensive to be a regualr part of her diet.

So I was interested to read this article on PhysOrg.com (a science and technology news site) that some species of tuna have less mercury than others.

camel meat as dog treats

In responding to Maggie and Mitch's comment on my post about the dog birthday party Penny attended on Sunday, I remembered that our hostess had gone to the trouble of preparing a special doggy-bag of treats for dogs with sensitive skins.

Penny hasn't eaten any yet, but I'm keen to see whether she likes the camel meat treats that were included. Our hostess gets them from a canine skin specialist, so I'm confident they won't cause Penny any allergies.

It's a strange thing that Australia has huge herds of camels roaming the interior. They are the one-humped camel, dromedaries. As I was looking around to try to find information about dog treats (I didn't find any), I came across an article about the attempt to start up an export market for camel meat and another Lonely Planet piece about what a pity it will be if the meat of camels is wasted when they are culled. (Apparently they are breeding up to plague proportions.)

I sure hope that if such an industry is started, the camels are treated humanely. We humans don't have a good record of treating our fellow animals well.

learning about the amazing treat machine

After unpacking The Amazing Treat Machine, Penny and I, together with our video assistant, set about trying it out.

I find that video clips advertising products show the results achieved after some practice. Well, here's a 'warts and all' unabridged version of how a dog tries out this product for the first time.

We did have the advantage, however, that Penny already knew how to pick up a ball and put it in a box. (It's taught by putting the container under her mouth so that the ball drops into it and, if using a clicker as a marker for good behaviour, clicking and treating every time the ball falls into the container. Eventually the container can be left on the floor and the dog learns to bring the ball to it.)

Here's our first try. We had fun but no success!



Okay, so we needed to make some adjustments- for instance, jamming the bottle in more securely. But still no luck.



Never give up! Penny noticed before I did that the treats had begun to emerge from the hole at the bottom.



At this stage I decided to cheat a little - which turned out to be a bad idea.



Finally, success - sort of. I cheated again! But Penny has the idea and I'm sure we'll do better next time. I think it's a good product, and not too expensive - if you don't live at the end of the earth and have to pay more in postage than the product costs...

organic is best for dogs and for humans

Whenever possible, we buy organic, for our own health and for the sake of the planet, so I was pleased to see a new range of organic dog biscuits in our local supermarket. They're called Biopet Organic dog bones and they contain only good things, as far as I can judge, though of course there's the question of feeding dogs grain products.

The manufacturers are Australian and say on their site they try to source reginal produce. (They're in in Bellingen on the Mid North Coast of NSW.)

I brought the box home, emptied the biscuits into a jar, fed one biscuit to Penny and threw the empty carton into the recycling pile.

Hmmm...I think they taste nice. Penny spent the next few minutes checking that the carton was definitely empty.

meatloaf recipe for dogs

I've cooked the first recipe from the beautiful nibble munch chomp pet-feeding book I bought recently. It's published by Jojo Publishing, a local company I hadn't heard of previously.

This is a beautiful book, with gorgeous photos that make it a pleasure to look at as well as to use.

Here's our first product, raw and then cooked.







Now, here's the thing...
I reckon it must taste wonderful, because in an instant Penny learned a trick we've been working on for ages with less tasty treats - the reverse heel position.

I held a little portion of meatloaf in my hand and lured Penny to a position beside my right hip, and stepped back. It was as if she were glued to my side!

Almost immediately I faded the lure (I didn't actually hold food in that hand), but seeing it's a newly learned behaviour, I did still reward her. The command is 'hip' for heeling beside my right hip. We'll be moving onto 'hop' for the left hip, when this behaviour is established.





Apologies for the terrible quality of the video clip. I was too impatient to wait for daylight - I wanted to film it tonight.

great new dog cookbook aids animal hospital

Yesterday I came across a lovely new book full of healthy recipes for dogs. (Actually, it's for humans, too, and cats, ferrets, birds, lizards, turtles, rabbits, guinea pigs and rodents, but who cares about them?)

The cover of the book grabbed me immediately because it was so gorgeous. (I always judge a book by its cover!) But I've noticed the version that is to come out soon on Amazon has a less colorful design. I presume the Amazon version would have US measures and names for ingredients, as I can't think of any other reason for the difference in the editions, seeing it's brand new.

It's written by Dr Sasha Herbert, senior vet at the Lort Smith Animal Hospital, so that gives the recipes credibility. She mentions a recipe loved by Jasmine, a samoyed her family adopted from an animal shelter many years ago. She say:

Walking along the rows of cages with all those sad eyes or frantically wagging tails is one of the hardest things to do.

Yes!! Many years ago I took my class of young children to an animal shelter. It was the first time the children had seen me cry. I couldn't stay within metres of those sad, sad cages and had to wait outside for the students to come out.

So I love the fact in buying this book I'm giving money to the Animal Hospital.

The first recipe I'm going to try is a meatloaf, made of one kilo (2.2 pounds) of beef mince, two eggs, a tablespoon of tomato paste, two cups of breadcrumbs, one large carrot, grated, one cup of chopped celery, including the leaves, two tablespoons of soy sauce, one large garlic clove, chopped, and a cup of raw rice (which has to be boiled for 15 minutes and the water strained off after it has cooled).

It sounds simple. You just bake it for forty minutes at about 5 cm (two inches) deep in a baking tray. She says for the celery you can substitute fruit or vegetable pulp left over from juicing.

There are a couple of ingredients I've never given Penny - garlic, tomato, soy sauce - but I'm willing to try them because the author is an experienced vet. However, I won't be feeding this often, because Penny basically has a raw diet, and we don't usually feed her rice or bread.

I thought I might try baking a little of it for longer and producing treats for training - but it might be too crumbly, so I'll have to experiment.

This is one of the most beautifully produced dog cookbooks I've seen.

German animal lovers help pets in need

Penny was eating her breakfast as I sat reading The Age newspaper today. When I read an article about a German organisation called Tiertafel I realised how lucky we are to be able to feed Penny well.

With times so hard all around the world, many people are having to make the hard decision to give up a much-loved pet because they have to choose between feeding themselves (or their children) - or feeding the pet.

Many elderly pensioners are in this sad situation and we all know that if an old pet is given up to a shelter it's unlikely to be adopted.

Tiertafel was set up to stop people having to make this awful choice. Pet owners in financial difficulty, short term or long term, can get free food for their pets.

There are about 19 of these free food outlets in Germany now. I had a look at a lovely feel-good video clip showing the 'pet soup-kitchen' in action in Berlin. Even if you don't speak German, it's a nice video to look at. First it shows 'two-legs' patiently queuing with their four-legged pals and then explains that people need to prove they are in need. Then we see volunteers bringing in donations and a lady explains that she's donated some food because she feels for people in this situation.

Verein "Tiertafel" - Menschen helfen ... @ Yahoo! Video