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.

feeding dogs bones

I didn't succeed with setting up a tooth-cleaning routine for Penny, even though I'd bought the toothpaste and the finger-toothbrush. I think I just wasn't prepared to put the work in. (I've still got all the equipment, though, so I can always try again another time.)

So, today I remembered I'd better buy Penny some meaty meals that would get her teeth working. I bought a few brisket bones, because a friend told me they are softer than most bones, and my butcher had confirmed this (sort of). I also bought a rabbit - fresh, not frozen - and the butcher cut it into six pieces.

She had a look at the rabbit in her bowl and decided it wasn't too appetising, but she took the brisket bone and ate it up in twenty-five minutes of hard chewing. So I guess that was successful as a tooth-cleaning exercise. Not all that successful as a meal, in my opinion, because it did look fatty and there wasn't much meat on it.

But the rabbit was still waiting on the eating mat, where Penny had dropped it. And she wasn't interested in it.

Until I picked up a plastic bag. Who says dogs don't have good memories? Months ago, if not years ago, when Penny left a piece of rabbit on her mat, I picked it up with my hand in a plastic bag and popped it back into the fridge to keep cool (in her special drawer in the fridge, away from our food).  So this time, when she heard the rattle of the plastic, she leapt to grab her unwanted rabbit and hurried out through the doggy door to bury it.

Of course she buried it right under a precious plant. Doesn't she always? Let's hope that if she forgets it, the thornless blackberry likes a bit of meat around its roots.

The dirt or the rabbit must have tasted okay, because she was licking her soil-encrusted mouth as she hurried back inside to check whether something tastier might have appeared in her bowl. (It hadn't.)

PS. I researching this article, I came across an interesting post about feeding bones to dogs. The writer says that we should take out the thin bone in chicken thighs, because it is very sharp. I had already come to the conclusion that the thigh is the only part of the chicken carcass that I don't think is safe for Penny to eat.

the evolution of dog's dogs' diets

I've seen mention on Slavenka's blog about a recent study looking at the genetics of dogs and grey wolves.

Basically, what I gather from the reports, especially one in The Los Angeles Times, is that there are certain genes in dogs that enable them to digest starch. This would suggest that, like humans, they changed in their eating habits when agriculture developed. Here's a short quote from the article:

Taken together, the data fit with the fact that dogs eat more starch than wolves, Axelsson said. He added that this adaptation would have allowed the first dogs to get more goodness out of the waste food they were drawn to at early farming settlements."It makes perfect sense that the most efficient scavengers were the wolves that could cope with this starch-rich diet," he said.
Still, dog domestication may have happened long before humans adopted an agrarian life about 10,000 years ago, said Robert Wayne, an evolutionary biologist at UCLA who wasn't involved in the Nature study.
Perhaps dogs evolved through hanging around hunter-gatherers so they could feed on leftover carcasses of the mammoths and mastodons our ancestors killed, Wayne said. In that scenario, the starch-tolerant changes would have cropped up only after dogs were domesticated, just as genetic changes that help break down starch evolved in human beings after we adopted a farming life.

And here's a little of what Patricia McConnell on The Other End of the Leash (one of the most informative and useful blogs on the internet, in my opinion) has to say about it:

 This is obviously of great interest to geneticists and evolutionary biologists, but also to those of us who are feeding domestic dogs on a daily basis. As you all are well aware, some argue that wolves primarily eat meat, raw meat at that, and we should use the diet of wild wolves to direct the menus of our companion dogs. At the risk of stirring the pot (so to speak!), about ideal diets for dogs, we would be wise to use the study above to remind ourselves that dogs evolved as omnivores who ate a little bit of just about everything 10 to 12,000 years ago. That does NOT mean that individual dogs do not do better on a particular diet. There is no question that some dogs do better eating “A,” and other dogs can’t handle “A” and do better eating “B.” I’d say the take away messages are to 1) know your dog and 2) don’t be seduced into claims that a new dog food is best for your dog because “it replicates the diet of a wolf.”

The research casts a new light on the daily question we face, as to what is best to feed our dogs. I'll look forward to seeing how the mega-corporations try to jump on the bandwagon on this one! They'll all be saying we should feed their products.

I'm still of the opinion that a raw diet is the best for Penny, together with some commercial foods to make sure we give her the needed  supplements, and then also a dash of home cooking  - and even more home cooking.