Let me explain. When we lived in Mexico for several years, we could get some American dog food. Most of it was quite conventional, as was all the Mexican dog food I ever saw — most of that was brands you would recognize. The best of what was available was a Diamond brand lamb and rice, so we used that in combination with homemade dog food I made based on recipes from a terrific book by veterinarian Dr. Richard Pitcairn and his wife. That link takes you to my blog entry, complete with a Youtube video I made, about that approach.

Well, now we are back home in a rather remote town in Colorado. I haven’t been able to find that Diamond dry dog food or anything else I really wanted to feed my dogs within our usual shopping range of about 50 miles. So of course I went online. I found all kinds of exquisite dog food, some of it organic, grain-free, and otherwise really good stuff. Expensive but hey I was going to give it a try.

I tried several different online dog food retailers but once I got to the shopping cart, I gagged at the shipping costs, at least half what the food itself cost. I just couldn’t bring myself to spend that kind of money.

So then I went to Amazon, famed for its free shipping. Now some of the retailers that sell through them do not offer free shipping so you have to watch out. Anyway, I eventually settled on Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover’s Soul Dry Dog Food, which comes with free shipping.  That link takes you to the page where you can read the reviews,etc. I’ve reordered a couple of times. Sometimes I still do some homemade food, sometimes not.

Besides being economical, its ingredients do not start with a grain, something I always try to avoid. Here are the first few: Chicken, turkey, chicken meal, ocean fish meal, cracked pearled barley, whole grain brown rice, oatmeal, millet, white rice, chicken fat (preserved with mixed tocopherols), potatoes, egg product, tomato pomace, duck, salmon, flaxseed, natural chicken flavor, choline chloride, dried chicory root, kelp, carrots, peas, apples, tomatoes, blueberries, spinach, dried skim milk, cranberry powder, rosemary extract, parsley flake, yucca schidigera extract, L-carnitine…

If your thought processes are at all like mine, go check it out!

Chicken Soup for the Dog Lover’s Soul is a post from: Training Dogs Blog

Do you look at the labels, and have a try at reading the small print? It really does matter what you feed your dog. If you make the wrong choice, your dog may suffer from:

• Fatigue
• An immune system that doesn’t work at its best
• Diarrhea or loose stools
• A dull coat

There could be other problems, too. In my opinion, while few if any of the grocery store foods are ideal, if you check labels, you can find something more or less okay.

What makes a dog food a good food?

One important thing to check is the kind of protein it contains. Animal protein – chicken or lamb are common – has a good amino acid balance for your dog’s nutritional needs. But since animal protein costs more that plant-based, the food will cost more. Still, while a dog can survive on the cheap foods, he won’t thrive on them compared to an animal-based food source. Also, be aware that “chicken by-products” can include parts of the chicken that offer little or no real value.

Dogs also need fat in their diet, to metabolize the vitamins in their food. Also, fatty acids help give your dog’s coat that healthy shine you want and also contribute to the health of skin.

Humans of course rely on carbohydrates for energy, but most people don’t realize that carbs are less essential for dogs.

In summary, check the labels on those bags for 18% or more protein and about 5% fat. The list should have animal protein in the top two or three spots on the list. There should be some foods that meet this description.

Giving Your Dog the Best Food You Can Manage

For an ebook that explains what’s in a lot of commercial dog food, why you shouldn’t feed it, and what to do instead, see Dog Food Secrets.

Heads up: the webpage is a bit scary, about the effects of feeding a lot of commercial foods.  But unfortunately he’s right.

I’m feeding my dogs homemade food more now because of having read in Dog Food Secrets what goes into regular commercial dog food. For one example, diseased body parts from chickens and other livestock… ugh.

I still use the highest quality dry food I can get, plus I make supplemental recipes from Dr. Pitcairn’s New Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats, a book I like a lot and reviewed.

Sometimes I make recipes from Pitcairn that are nutritionally complete enough to be fed alone. I don’t think it costs me any more than dry dog food, though I haven’t priced it out lately.

So do give some thought to what you feed your dog or dogs. Whatever your budget is, you can likely improve on what you are doing now.

Do You Feed Your Dogs the Wrong Food? is a post from: Training Dogs Blog

I’m somewhere in the middle. I have at times prepared totally homemade food for my dogs, but at present I’m feeding them a good quality dry dog food and supplementing that with Dr. Pitcairn’s Fresh Meat Supplement for Dog Kibble, from the book Dr. Pitcairn’s Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats… the link takes you to my recent review of the book. It’s got a lot more in it that just dog food recipes, but it’s worth buying for those alone.

It was time to mix up a new batch of the fresh meat supplement the other day, so I snagged my husband and his camera to shoot the process. I edited it, and so here is a video about how I made it:

For some odd reason, sometimes the link to Youtube will indicate that the video is no longer available when it is. If that happens, click on Menu in the lower right corner of the video, copy the url to your clipboard, paste it into your browser. Then you can watch at Youtube.

A few comments about the program: I didn’t give all the exact quantities, particularly not for Dr. Pitcairn’s Healthy Powder, and they really do matter. If you want to try making a meat supplement for the dry food you feed, I think the paperback book, which sells for under $20, is a great investment, specially since it has so much more useful information of all sorts.

Also, there are numerous approaches to how to go about feeding your dog the optimum diet. (Here’s my review of Dog Food Secrets, which is an extremely well promoted ebook on this topic. In a nutshell, I say that I disliked its scary sales page but found the ebook to be useful and well balanced.) Some people think Dr. Pitcairn uses too many grains, for example. My take on all this is that these differences are pretty minor compared to the difference between feeding all or partly a homemade diet for your dogs and feeding ordinary cheap-o dog kibble.

So for more information on Dr. Pitcairn’s useful recipes for dogs and cats, get yourself a copy of Dr. Pitcairn’s Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats. That link takes you to Dogwise, and here it is for Amazon:

It’s also quite widely available at bookstores and pet stores.

Making Dr. Pitcairn’s Fresh Meat Supplement for Dog Kibble is a post from: Training Dogs Blog

If you say yes, then you and I are on the same page.

If you don’t have it, I’d like to suggest that it is a very worthwhile book for your collection. Admittedly, I am a book lover, but this is the most essential of my whole collection of dog books… After I wrote that sentence, I walked over to the bookcase to see if anything else could compete. One or two of the training books tried to get my attention, but really they don’t come close to Pitcairn, as we call the book at my house. It’s an excellent gift for any dog or cat owner.

Richard H. Pitcairn is a veterinarian with a PhD in Veterinary Microbiology. That sounds rather scholarly but he was in clinical practice for many years and now teaches homeopathic medicine to veterinarians. You can tell from the book that he is a down-to-earth, hands-on kind of person, with unusually good powers of observation. His experiences with actual dogs and cats shape what’s in the book, which he wrote with Susan Hubble Pitcairn.

The first edition of Dr. Pitcairn’s Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats came out over 25 years ago. I bought it then. (Now the third edition is out and I have it too… somehow I missed the second one.) The book has sold over 400,000 copies, and believe me, that is a LOT for a non-fiction book! Amazon.com calls it “A must-have for pet owners interested in a natural lifestyle for their pets.” and I agree. It has saved me a lot of stress and provided me with easily-varied recipes I’ve used for years. My dogs and cats are the healthier for it.

What’s in this Book?

Pitcairn has two parts, with a variety of topics covered in each:

• Part One: Natural Health for Pets consists of 15 chapters. A group of chapters discuss what is really in commercial pet food, how to make your own homemade pet food with supplements and how to help your pet make the switch. Next come chapters with titles such as Creating a Healthier Environment, Emotional Connections and Your Pet’s Health, and How to Care for a Sick Animal.
• Part Two: Quick Reference covers over 50 specific conditions in a page or two. From Abscesses and Allergies to West Nile Virus and Worms, this section is extremely useful. There is a particularly thorough coverage of vaccinations, in which he explains his statement “Vaccines are not always effective, and they may cause long-lasting health disturbances” and suggests what you can do.

In the photo, my cat Moonlight looks over my copy of Pitcairn.

Where Can You Get Dr. Pitcairn’s Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats?

It’s widely available, in bookstores, pet stores, and online. Here it is at Amazon.com, where most of the reviewers give it 5 stars out of 5:

And here it is at Dogwise: Dr. Pitcairn’s Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats, where you can also view the complete Table of Contents and a couple of sample pages.

It is also available from the various Amazon websites in Canada, the UK, etc. Wherever you find it, I do hope you pick up a copy!

Dr. Pitcairn’s Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats: My Review is a post from: Training Dogs Blog

Well, I know I like to eat in different places, but it hadn’t crossed my mind regarding my dogs. And of course, it isn’t exactly the same as it is for us. I like to look out at the view from our sunroom, and I have yet to see a dog doing that!

My dogs are already trained to sit while I put their food bowls down and to stay until I say “Okay!” I wondered if that would transfer over completely to this approach of spreading their kibble out along the floor.

It worked fine. I do already feed my dogs in separate rooms, so there was no competitive aspect.

When I spread the kibble out on the sunroom floor near her, Lola thought about going for it immediately, but a glance at me showed her that was not okay, so she waited. With some interest, of course, specially while I turned on my camera and took a few shots.

But both our dogs seem to enjoy eating this way. I often feed both a good quality kibble and some homemade food, and I don’t anticipate spreading raw hamburger around!

Nor did the DVD recommend it. The program is really concerned with more essential training elements and does a topnotch job of teaching them — here is my review of the Train Your Dog DVD. The link at the top of the page takes you right to the DVD’s page at Dogwise, where you can watch a selection of the program. It is an upbeat and informative introduction to positive dog training, covering things like come, sit, stay, down, plus a section on such puppy training topics as housetraining, crate training, and so forth.

Dinner at Last

In the second picture, Lola is finally enjoying the fruits of her patience.

One thing that interested me was that the first time I fed her this way, Lola missed a few of the bits of kibble that rolled onto the part of the floor you can see is made of little inset stones rather than of tiles. Since a dog’s nose is said to be a much more important part of their sensory equipment than their eyes, this surprised me.

Dining from the Floor, for Fun is a post from: Training Dogs Blog

Happily for the dogs, in the past few years, more and more dog owners have begun to realize that the commercial foods, with their additives and often questionable ingredients, are not the healthiest choice. Road kills, body parts of diseased animals, heavy-metal contaminants, and other charming items end up in many brands of food. I could write a whole article about this alone, but I would rather not think too much about it!

Where do you turn to find good information on what to feed your dog?

When the pet food recall of 2007 had many dog owners asking that question for the first time, the American Veterinary Medical Association put out a press release, “Homemade Pet Food Requires Study of Nutrition, AVMA Warns.” The sentence that made me laugh ruefully was, “certainly home-cooked diets are not created with the care that these commercial pet foods are.” The short press release did not address the relationship between dog food and dog behavior.

At the end of this article, I will list some resources for finding out how to feed an optimal diet for both health and behavior, but now — in contrast to the AVMA — here are the findings of noted dog trainer Wendy Volhard. She and her husband Jack Volhard have been breeding Newfoundlands for decades, and they are co-authors of Dog Training For Dummies. You only get to write a “For Dummies” book if you are an acknowledged authority on the topic, and in fact they have written quite a few other books on dogs and dog training as well.

She says on her website, “We have made our own food for well over 30 years now, and our dogs are living longer and longer each generation.” She adds that ten years ago Newfoundlands lived to be 6.2 to 6.7 years old on average, but now their Newfies have even reached the advanced age of fifteen! (I couldn’t help noticing that she is comparing apples and oranges here, average age versus longest, but still the numbers are so different that they impressed me.)

She also states on her website, “Behavior problems, even aggression, can be caused by what you feed your dog…after years of virtually being ignored, the connection between nutrition and behavior, longevity and overall good health is finally being recognized.”

Some people try to discount the work of the Volhards because they are not veterinarians. They can’t say that about Richard H. Pitcairn, who has not only a DVM degree but also a PhD in Veterinary Microbiology. Over twenty years ago, he and Susan Hubble Pitcairn wrote a book that has become a classic, selling over 400,000 copies thus far: Dr. Pitcairn’s Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats.

This large book explains what is really in commercial pet food and how it is deficient, then describes how to create a nutritionally balanced natural diet for your dogs and cats. It covers a lot of other topics too.. . I’ll just quote one bit here that is pertinent to the discussion of homemade dog food and dog behavior: He says — based on his many years of working with dogs as a veterinarian — that if you are dealing with behavioral disturbances, “Take your pet off commercial food, if you have not already done so. Any food that contains artificial preservatives, coloring agents, or other additives contains chemicals that can irritate the brain tissue and cause abnormal responses. Feed our fresh foods diet.”

To sum up, if you want a healthy and happy dog, you need to consider your choices of dog food. Will it be commercial, homemade, or (as I do) some of each? Even since the most recent edition of Pitcairn’s book came out, there has been a blossoming of much higher quality commercial dog food, typically made by small companies. While experts may know more about some aspects of the topic than you and I do, we still ultimately have to make up our own minds regarding what we will feed our dogs.

Resources:

Dr. Pitcairn’s Complete Guide to Natural Health for Dogs and Cats, by Richard H. Pitcairn and Susan Hubble Pitcairn. The link takes you to Dogwise.

Whole Dog Journal is an excellent magazine, available both in print and PDF formats. It takes no advertising, which gives it a rare objectivity. It does annual dog food reports that are highly respected; I have found them very useful. This is where you can find the best choices in commercial food, in my opinion. WDJ also provides a lot of great dog training information. You can buy reprints of back articles from the site.

Wendy Volhard has detailed information on her dog food recommendations at http://www.volhard.com/holistic/artbywv.htm

She has also written, with Kerry Brown, DVM, Holistic Guide for a Healthy Dog, which I have not read. It seems to cover similar topics to Dr. Pitcairn’s book. The link takes you to the book at Dogwise.

There’s a widely publicized ebook called Dog Food Secrets — the link takes you to my review of it. I didn’t like its over-the-top scary sales page but found the book to be reasonable, informative, and useful. Its author is not an expert per se, but then, sometimes that is fine.

There are many other good books on natural health and nutrition at Dogwise; the link takes you to the page where you can browse them.

Technorati Tags: dogfood,dog food,dog books

Homemade Dog Food and Dog Behavior: When Experts Disagree is a post from: Training Dogs Blog

You can tell from the page where I describe the ebook whether you’d be interested. I’m sure it’s too alternative for some people, but if you’re reading this website you’re already interested in what’s effective, whatever the traditional wisdom has been!

Here are some tips from “The Natural Dog.”

[1] The day you get your pup and every day thereafter scour the floor for little items that your puppy might pick up on and swallow: pieces of string, coins, paperclips, pins and needles, dental floss, rubber bands, jewelry, children’s toys and clothes, nails and screws, thread, game station items like Playstation controls and cords, bits of food, napkins and tissues, rags and sponges, remote controls, batteries, etc.

[2] : What types of cleaning products do you use? Have you ever used a cleaning product that made you cough or was so strong you couldn’t stand to be nearby until it dried or dissipated? Consider that same cleaning product from your dog’s perspective.

[3] There’s evidence that suggests that annual vaccinations may not be needed – and in fact, some people suggest that continuing with them may in the long run do more harm than good.

To find out more about “The Natural Dog,” see my webpage where I give the full description….
http://training-dogs.com/natural-dog-ebook.html

It’s only $7, via PayPal

[tags]dog ebooks, dog health[/tags]

The Natural Dog: Useful, Inexpensive Ebook is a post from: Training Dogs Blog

A beauty, isn’t he? But I’m sure he could be a handful when hyperactive. Here’s the latest from his owner Karen:

There has been a further development that I would like to tell you about.

During our annual holiday in July, Marley was sent to the kennel to stay for a couple of weeks. When we came back I went to fetch him and he didn’t seem himself. Within a couple of days however he seemed to bounce back and thereafter reverted back to his old hyper self. Over the next week he became worse than ever and started to bark and bite again. I rang the kennel and spoke to them about his behaviour and asked if he could have eaten anything that may have triggered this episode. To cut a long story short, it turned out that they had not been feeding him with the food I had provided but had been giving him the one that was included in the price. This was a super premium food that is one of the better ones sold in the UK. They had been giving him a large breed puppy food that was 32% protein. As you can imagine I was not pleased but the damage was done and I set about trying to put it right.

Throughout the summer holidays Marley was a totally uncontrollable terror. The food that worked before didn’t have as quick an effect as the first time. I was again at my wits end with him. I started to keep a record of what foods he had eaten and when and also what effects they appeared to have on his behaviour. During this period I was simply fishing around for information, comparing ingredients, protein and carbohydrate content, etc., I suddenly realised that all of the foods he had reacted to had just one common ingredient – BEET PULP. The food that he was okay on didn’t contain this ingredient. I could find only one other food that does not contain beet pulp and decided to try him on this to see what would happen. Marley had no reaction to the second food that did not contain beet. I took my findings to the vet who at the beginning of September confirmed that Marley has allergic reactions to Beet.

Breakthrough!!!! Marley has been on a completely Beet free diet now for 2 months and is again a wonderful and lovely dog. He is still a willful puppy but with firm handling he is controllable. I have read quite a few documents and it appears that the subject of the use of beet in dog food is quite controversial. There are a few who say that the sugar content in the beet pulp is so low not to have an effect. I for one will never feed anything to my dog, ever again, that contains beet. He has only his dried food three times a day, he receives no scraps or other treats of any kind. People accuse me of being cruel when I refuse to let them give my dog a biscuit or some such thing. But hey I can live with that and better still, so can Marley.

Here’s a website with the bad news about commercial dog food and the good news about what you can do.

Marley’s Story III: A Puppy’s Food Allergy is Discovered is a post from: Training Dogs Blog

S. (the consultant) was pleased that we had switched foods, as she feels that the one we were using is not one that she would recommend. Although she has not heard of the food we are now using, she took a look at the ingredients and was very impressed with it. From what I have read and from what S. has said I think it is a high percentage of cereals, wheat or gluten in the diet that can cause a lot of problems. As I am sure you know, dogs can develop allergies to all of the above to varying degrees.

Since we weaned Marley onto this food his behaviour has improved dramatically. He went from having several daily episodes to approximately 1 a day. I couldn’t believe what a difference it made. Obviously the behaviour is still there but improving daily. S. felt we were on the right track – which, as you can imagine, was a relief to hear, at least we are doing something right. She suggested that the rest of the episodes were due to Marley becoming over-tired. S. is a colleague of Turid Rugass who wrote “On Talking Terms with Dogs: Calming Signals”. S. uses Turid’s calming methods and showed us how to predict when Marley was becoming tired so that we could de-fuse the situation and thereby stop the behaviour. She felt that I was over exercising Marley and advised that we gradually reduce the length of his walks and make sure that Marley’s routine includes longer rest periods. If Marley doesn’t settle by himself we are to “enforce” this by shutting him in his crate at regular intervals throughout the day. We have also set up a daily routine, which we vary occasionally so that Marley feels secure but doesn’t get stressed if on the odd occasion we have to change something due to other commitments.

Rosana, we have put into practise everything S. told us and in SIX days Marley has only had ONE episode. It is FANTASTIC. The children can play around him – as long as we are around to keep a close eye on the activity and DE-FUSE any situations. I never believed it would be possible to see such a difference in such a short period of time.

I would like to thank you so much for your support. You helped me to be positive about Marley and encouraged me to actively search for a solution.

I was so happy with this news. And I was very struck with how changing the food had made such a difference in behavior. It was then that I began to think about writing here about dog food’s effect on behavior. Soon after, I went on a two-month road trip and then took another month to catch up on things. Then I wrote to Karen again and asked how things were going. She replied:

We are FANTASTIC!!

As you know I changed Marley’s food. Well, we had been told to put him on a low carb/high protein food. The food that was recommended to us was a very natural food and was extremely high in usable protein (45%). This had the exact opposite effect that we were hoping. Within a few short weeks Marley was climbing the walls. I was taking him out for 2-3 hours of solid walking every day but he was still completely hyper. We went back to the vet for tests and still came up with nothing — all the tests came back clear. The vet decided that as he was by then six months old we should have him neutered, which we did.

We had a rethink and decided to do the opposite of what we had been told to do. Yet again I researched the available foods, (we didn’t have as much choice as most, because when we brought Marley home we made the conscious decision that we would only feed him foods that had not been tested on animals. As I’m sure you know most of the big pet food companies do this and also have a monopoly on the market). Anyway we found a food by “The Natural Dog Food Company” that we were happy to try. We bought an adult formula as all the puppy formulas were higher in protein. The one we chose was a Lamb and Rice formula that had a protein content of 20%.

I was getting a bit desperate by this stage and decided I would just do a complete straight switch, (normally I would have weaned him from one food to the other over a period of approx 1 week). My husband, Kevin, works away for the first part of the week. He left on the Monday morning which was when I gave Marley his first bowl of the new food. Since then we haven’t looked back. By the time Kevin arrived home on the Wednesday night just THREE days later Marley was a different dog. Kevin accused me of switching him with a look alike. None of our friends could believe it. It really was as though somebody had pushed a button to calm him down.

The vet was amazed that changing his diet could have had such a dramatic effect and in such a short period of time.

Marley has now become the dog we dreamed of owning. He no longer jumps or bites or barks. The children can play without us having to shut him in his cage. He is sleeping in a regular dog bed and we haven’t used his crate for about two months. I can take him for a walk without having my arms pulled off. But most of all, Marley now “smiles” all the time. We are a different family and a great weight has been lifted from our shoulders.

I am very very careful about his diet. I feed him three times a day. I measure and control everything he eats. When he goes to the boarding kennels we take his own food (pre-measured in separate bags) even though the kennel fees include food. I will not take any chances or give him any opportunity to revert. It may sound harsh, but he rarely gets any treats. I go to the butcher and get fresh bones three times a week which I give him but apart from that he only gets his allocated amounts of dried food.

I wish you much joy with your new puppy and thank you very much for your continued support.

A very much happier

Karen

This second email, several months later, is a great example of how real life is not quite as tidy as theories tend to be. The first dog food switch, to a high quality but high protein food, made a stunning difference in Marley’s behavior, from his being a danger to his people (especially the children) to his being more more trustworthy, and I thought that the mystery was solved. But then the high protein food began to show that it was making him too hyper, and it wasn’t till Karen changed foods again that Marley made the dramatic changes she writes about at the end here.

Well, again at this point I thought the story was over. I emailed Karen with the text of this post and previous one, for her to check them for accuracy. She replied promptly, with a new twist in the tale, which is worth another post tomorrow.
[tags]dog food and behavior, puppy behavior[/tags]

Marley’s Story II: Changing Dog Foods Twice Leads to Success is a post from: Training Dogs Blog

(I normally discourage people writing to me for help, because in the past I’ve heard the most heartrending tales, have offered some ideas, and then never heard from the people again. Some of those tales still haunt me at times. But in this case, as you can see from the email, Karen showed how responsible she was. I trusted that I would hear back from her, and I did.)

Here is what Karen wrote in that email. It’s reprinted here with her permission.

I have a 4 month old male Yellow Labrador puppy called Marley. On the whole he is a lovely chap. But I have a problem that I do not seem to be able to resolve.

Every day, for no apparent reason and at no particular place or time, he suddenly starts to bark, jump up and bite. The biting has NOT been so severe that hospitalisation has been needed. But it has broken skin. The episodes don’t appear to have any connection to an outside influence, (I say “don’t appear” because it is possible that I am so close to the situation that I am missing something important).

I have two children aged 5 and 7 who have been victims to this behaviour and as a result are becoming frightened of the puppy. He has “attacked” both of them, again for no apparent reason.

For instance last week my daughter was sitting on the sofa watching her favorite programme on TV. Marley was in his crate, in another room, sleeping. Then he just suddenly got up, ran into the sitting room, grabbed my daughter by the leg and tried to drag her off the sofa. He bit down so hard that she had three small wounds on her leg that had broken through the skin.

On another occasion my son and I were walking Marley through the field, having a lovely walk when he started jumping up as if possessed and biting on my son’s arms. When I attempted to stop him he turned on me barking and biting at my back. Luckily my son had a thick coat on so he only suffered from grazes. Marley eventually calmed down and started to eat a lot of grass ( I mention this only because the following morning when I let him out of his crate he had been sick in he night which consisted of several handfuls of grass) and I was able to get him back onto the lead.

I have since kept him on the lead at all times while out walking. This, however doesn’t resolve the issue as he still behaves this way while on the lead. It just means that I have more control of the situation.

I have read book after book on dominance aggression (which I am told this is). I have put into practise all the suggested exercises EVERY day since I got him, all to no avail. I have taken him to training classes and put into practise ALL the advice I have been given but this just appears to make matters worse.

I waited two years to get Marley as I wanted his particular breed line. I planned everything out beforehand, where he would sleep, did a lot of research on foods. He was house trained and completely clean within a week and has never chewed anything except his chew toys and pigs ears (which is exceptional for a Lab).

I was looking forward so much to getting him but now I feel like I am constantly fighting a losing battle.

I am at my wits end, if you have ANY advise I would be very grateful.

Well, as you can imagine, my heart went out to Karen, but it was also quite a challenge to know what to say. Here are some parts of my reply:

[1] If it were my situation, I would immediately stop all free access from Marley to your children. This sounds drastic but dog bites are serious business, as you clearly know. By free access, I mean that when they are home, Marley would be closed in his crate, outside if you have an enclosed area, or on a leash attached to your waist or a chair near you or some such. You’re already doing this outside with his walks but I would also do it indoors. Another approach would be to let him be free in your home but wearing a muzzle.

BTW, I just read recently that it’s easy to get a dog to love a muzzle… Just introduce it by having some really delicious treats in your hand which he can only access through the muzzle. Doing this quite a lot over just a few days should get Marley to the point where he accepts wearing it when you feel it’s a good idea, certainly not all day, of course.

Doing this would buy you some time. I think all of you would breathe more easily.

[2] Another thing I would do immediately is have a thorough veterinary examination. Could he be reacting to the pain of teething, for example? Since you are obviously knowledgeable about the breed, are there any neurological issues that he could be manifesting? Talking to the breeder could be pertinent. You don’t mention exactly how long this has been going on, though clearly for a while.

I’ve got to say that I don’t personally find the “dominance aggression” theory to be at the center of things here. If you have spent much time on my site, you’d know that I simply don’t find it as helpful a mental construct as the more science-based positive reinforcement theories that clicker training draws upon.

When he jumps up like that for no apparent reason, there really IS a reason. Your task is to figure it out. My best guess (and it is only that) is that he experiences something in his body at those times that drives him crazy…

I mentioned an ebook I had consulted before answering her, on when dogs bite, and continued:

Here is a snippet from that ebook that reinforces my pain idea: “Depending on the degree of pain, a dog will bite a beloved owner, member of the family or neighbors when suffering from physical problems like chemical imbalances in the brain, external infections like otitis, tumor, hip dysphasia among others.” But keep in mind I am not attached to this idea, it’s just a guess, with teething as the main question… teething is mentioned at the start of the ebook.

Another thing I would do ASAP may not suit your way of thinking but it could be extremely helpful. My husband and I once produced a program on telepathic communication with animals and there are a whole lot of people now who do this professionally and by phone or email. See the list at www.animaltalk.net.

So I sent that off and waited to hear from her. I’ll leave you dangling here too, briefly, but I will tell you this story eventually had a happy ending and there is a reason that it is in the dog food category of this blog! Part Two will follow tomorrow.

Here’s a website with the bad news about commercial dog food and the good news about what you can do. 

[tags]dog food, dog behavior, dog food affecting behavior[/tags]

Marley’s Story I: A Puppy Has Biting Spells is a post from: Training Dogs Blog