Raw Dog

I shall attempt brevity. I have determined to catch up then taken down this blog a million times since I've been so lax in keeping it up since finding work. But instead of going back, I will start from here and now.

Zulu's habit of rubbing his face intently every morning and after lengthy naps finally got to someone in this house besides him and it wasn't me. So I had a choice: put up with Zulu's scratching and being constantly nagged about that or do something about it.

The Nagger believes Zulu has an allergy or hay fever or something. At his last vet visit, the vet said it's possible and that we can use any Benadryl-type anti-histamine in the proper dose she gave me to treat it.

This works to some degree and there's less rubbing when he takes his medicine. But he does this every day and I don't want him on Benadryl for the rest of his life. As he worked his way through his box of medication, I researched canine allergies. It turns out that dog allergies usually involve the skin, and when it doesn't, itching is usually worse than what our Zu is doing.

Nonetheless there was something that kept coming up that people either used to treat allergies in dogs or as something they did and noticed an improvement in the allergies and that was feeding raw food. I'll skip over the boring bits and tell you that I am about to start feeding Zulu a raw diet IF, and only if, I can make it work economically. But I think I can.

Zulu currently enjoys a premium kibble - Blue Buffalo Wilderness grain-free dry dog food in large breed formula. I usually buy it at Petsmart and the last 24lb bag I purchased was $56 after tax, if I remember correctly. He goes through a bag in a month.

After visiting several meat counters around Miami, I found a 10lb bag of chicken leg quarters for $7.90 and after much pacing up and down, I decided to give this a shot. So I bought that, a package of beef kidney and some chicken necks. All together I have just over 14lbs of meat and I paid just under $12. According to the raw feeding experts, Zulu needs about 2lbs of meat per day, which means this could even be less expensive than his premium commercial diet.

If, as has happened for so many other dog owners, Zulu's allergy improves as well, then I will be very happy indeed.

He gets his first bit of raw chicken tonight. I offered him a bit of kidney while re-packaging the meat and he gobbled it down and looked for more so hopefully he'll like the chicken, too. Stay tuned.

Slip Collar

Over the course of the last year, Zulu and I have completed the Canine Good Citizen course, a basic rally course and a course of tricks. It was all fun but he still freaks out on walks whenever he sees another dog ... or a cat, or a squirrel ... and I've had it with that. So I asked the Doggie Deeva for some help. And she said to get a slip collar and she'd show me how to use it.

We've had Zulu for about a year and a half now and we know he's not aggressive. In this time, he's never had a fight with another dog, never bit anyone, and never attempted to bite anyone. For this reason, Dee said it was safe to use a little corrective measure.

She instructed me to purchase a slip collar made of nylon; the type that looks like a climber's rope but is more or less the same format as a choke chain. It has to be big enough that when he's wearing it, Zulu doesn't even notice it, and can move a bit of distance away without it strangling him.

The slip collar turned out to be for both of us: Zulu has to focus a lot more and it's me he's focused on. He's used to having 6' of leash to do whatever he wants and he can't do that anymore. he has about a foot now. Dee taught me I have to keep the leash slack, but he only needs that much leash and he needs to stay on my left. No more go here, go there.

The results were immediately evident. Even though I still have a ways to go to learn how to tug on the leash properly when there's another dog or some type of distraction for Zulu, He definitely reacts perfectly to my little tugs and with his size, he has to really make an effort to stay next to me as I walk: my pace is faster than his walk but slower than his trot.

This is only day 3 and I'm so pleased. I'm now seeking out other dogs and have way more confidence. It's still not perfect but Dee's giving me the tools I need to better manage Zulu and he's responding just as he should so everyone's happy.

Zulu's Achilles heel

No pic for this post in order to avoid awkward imagery.

I have discovered Zulu's Achilles heel and it is the humble wiener. Now this is also another plug for Zulu's trainer, Dee, because I see now that a good trainer helps you train your dog. A great trainer helps you even when nowhere near you.

You see, it's actually quite simple. Dee trained one of her dogs, Oxford, for some trick by using bits of wiener. Sometimes she uses wiener, sometimes pre-packaged treats, sometimes (for really hard-to-learn stuff) steak. But it never even occurred to me to try out different treats.

So now I've tried various pre-packaged treats (Zulu likes Blue Bits) and chicken. The chicken was too messy to cut up and he was so crazy for the chicken he couldn't function. Getting him to do anything when there was chicken on the scene was impossible.

But today--today I sliced up a wiener into tiny bits and took in on our morning walk. On seeing two dogs walking in the opposite direction across the street, Zulu went into his usual song and dance ... until! Oh yes, until the hot dog wiener came out of my pocket. When he saw what I had, he decided a bird in the hand was worth two in the bush (that's for you, Dee) and sat his fuzzy little butt right down on the pavement and looked up at me.

It happened again as we passed Loehmann's in Midtown. A woman with a little shih tzu on a retractable leash came out and ran straight at Zulu even as Zulu lunged in it's direction. But wait! The rustle of plastic ... the smell of all-beef wiener ... suddenly Zulu forgot all about the little dog right in front of him and paid attention only to the dog in the little plastic bag. Hooray!

Being chewsy

Several months ago I decided I should be more attentive to Zulu's teeth. Having been unimpressed with Dentastix and Greenies for various reasons (the smell of Greenies nearly makes me gag), I went looking for other healthy chews. I also bought some 'toothpaste' and 'toothbrush gloves' in case I got motived.

Petrodex, the maker of the toothpaste and gloves, also makes chews called Dental Chew Bones, which were located on a shelf near the other products I bought so I decided to try them. Here was the result:

Pretty messy, right? Zulu didn't even really like it, he just chewed it up looking for something tasty inside and never found anything so he left it like this.

I was so annoyed I wrote to the company and complained and they sent me another product to try as a replacement. They're called Pur Luv Grande Bones and we received the peanut butter flavor by UPS a few days ago. There're no animal by-products in them but there are grains. I'm not really all that fussy about the nutrition since it's just meant as a chewy treat.

The result was he liked it, and took about the same amount of time to inhale it as he does for a Dentastix or a Greenie, which is not much and certainly not 'long-lasting'. The mess factor was also somewhat less:

My final decision is to keep the replacement chews but only for consumption outdoors.

And to get after myself to brush his teeth properly more often.

Treat n'squeak

Zulu and I just got through a little training session in which I discovered a new thing about him: play really can work as a reward for him.

I hadn't thought it would. And coincidentally he's never really played with this toy until very recently. It has two squeakers and as it's a plush, he didn't seem to know what to do with it, even though it squeaks.

Zulu is learning how to roll over. Mainly because I couldn't think of anything else yesterday during playtime. He's getting it. I ask him to sit, then down, then I move a treat from his nose around to his side and up to his spine. First I rewarded just for laying back and now he's starting to roll all the way over. Either way, he gets cheering and applause from me, which he likes very much (wags tail. And now I've noticed that my laughter makes his tail wag, too.).

But just now, after doing the rollover and getting treat and applause, he dove for this toy and squeaked on it for a good minute or two before letting it go. So I put it behind me and we did the rollover again, followed by more treating and applause and I handed him the toy. Well he loved it. He went for another session of squeaking.

I've noticed that if I leave the room when he's squeaking on this toy (to get more treats or anything esle), he loses interest in it. I suppose I'm sending a Game Over signal. Conversely I guess being there while he sqeaks on it means Game On. Cool.

The prong is just wrong

Last week Zulu passed his AKC Canine Good Citizen (CGC) exam. Yeah Zulu!

Our favourite trainer, Dee Hoult, of Applause Your Paws Dog Training, administered the exam at Kennedy Park on a Sunday afternoon when there were lots of people and dogs around. Zulu never stops surprising me at how good he can be. It really is me who needs to relax and trust him more than the other way around.

I'm embedding another video of Zulu playing with his great friend, Anniel, at Amelia Earhart Bark Park in Hialeah. Anniel is probably Zulu's best friend, since the two of them can really play at their hardest--and they both love this--and trust each other enough not to get carried away. Anniel's owner, Juan, and I (and just about everyone else in the park) just try and stay out of the way.

The video's there just to show that rough play is just that: big dogs playing. They're not fighting, they don't need to be 'controlled'. It's a dog park and they're using the facility for exactly its designed purpose.

Outside of the dog park is another story and that's why we did the CGC class. Zulu and I both learned a lot, developed trust and had fun. Over the weeks I've learned that positive training isn't just for the dog. A weird psychological thing happens when you use positive words with your dog all the time: the positivity rubs off on you. It's actually hard to feel frustrated with your dog when you're saying 'good dog' all the time. But try to stay positive when you're telling him 'no' all the time and you'll see it's not much fun.

Over thanksgiving weekend our little pack of three (me, my partner and Zulu) went out of town. We were together 24/7 for four days, which was great for everyone. Saturday morning on a walk in town, a car pulled over and a fellow asked if our dog was a Rhodesian Ridgeback. It's funny, but this actually happens all the time.

The fellow parked and introduced himself. He called himself a dog trainer and gave me his card. He told us he had a rescue shelter for big dogs in town and that he personally worked with each dog for one month before trying to adopt them out. On his card he had the words 'Dog Behaviorist' under his name but I noticed there was no professional degrees or accreditation to go along with it, like the CPDT that Dee has after her name, which stands for certified professional dog trainer and is given out by a professional association. Like all CPDTs, Dee has to re-certify every three years to ensure her knowledge is current.

We had not spent five minutes with this fellow when he asked me if we have considered using a prong collar on Zulu. First off, why would we? He has no dog-dog or human-dog aggression and even if he did, the Gentle Leader Dee suggested works just fine. 'They [prong collars] don't hurt the dog,' the fellow assured me. Well I don't believe it and he could see it in my face. 'It just gives the dog a correction,' he continued.

And that's the problem, for me. Now that I understand the R+ (positive reinforcement) training and operant conditioning a bit better, I recognise that I don't want to 'correct' Zulu because he's not doing anything 'incorrectly'. He is just being his dog self.

Besides, I never wanted to be a dog's leader. Zulu's my bud, my pal, my companion. Any training we do is to help him stay safe, healthy and to have fun hanging out with me.

Playing Rough

Walking Zulu for one hour each day and taking him to the dog park only after his exercise has made a huge difference in his behaviour in the park--for the most part. However I have come to realise that Zulu likes to play rough and, given the opportunity, will always enjoy playing rough. I'm still working out how rough is too rough though and I finally had my collective self together enough to shoot a little video with my iPhone recently while at Tropical Park, here in Miami.



I'd be interested to hear what others think and/or feel while watching the video. I know I felt a bit uncomfortable while shooting the video but later, watching it at home, it wasn't so bad. Let me add that this dog, roughly a bit more than half Zulu's weight, loved the play and her owner was pretty game but I sensed a bit of hesitation on his part and when they really started to get carried away (after this video was shot) we all decided it was probably time to go since the female seemed to be reaching the limit of her tolerance.

The most important point, for me, is that no matter how much Zulu likes to play rough, his recall needs to be, if not perfect, then very very good.