Channel 5's 'The Truth About Your Dogs Food'....

Er, well, it wasn't really was it!

They attempted to cover far too much ground, without giving enough real detail on any subject mentioned. No really useful conclusions drawn and probably a lot of confusion created.


I'll have a go at explaining some of the points raised - I'll be upfront and honest, I am biased, I feed my dogs raw food with the occasional low cereal or cereal free kibble once in a while (holidays usually!).

Commercial Dog Food In The Uk - a Potted (haha) History...

 

 Up until the 1860's, dogs in the UK ate table scraps, raw meaty bones, and really not much else.
People who didn't have a lot of table scraps and yet still had the money to own pet dogs would buy cheap cuts of meat and often horsemeat to feed their dogs on - those with dogs that could hunt would feed their dogs the bits they didn't want (carcasses).

Along came Mr Spratt, who invented the dog biscuit - not the small kibble we know today but larger flat, hard biscuits much like the Ships Biscuits they were based on. These things were rock hard and crunchy which dogs liked, and would be mixed with left overs, warm water etc to create a softer meal.

Mr Spratt never revealed exactly what was in his 'Patented Meat Fibrine Dog Cakes', though advertising suggested it contained buffalo meat - given he launched his biscuits in London in the 1860's, I would strongly suggest they contained horsemeat, as well as wheat and vegetable matter (you only need to look at how many horses were working in London at the time, and what their average lifespan was to see that there was an incredibly high turnover of the horse population then, working horses started at 2 and were dead before 15 - modern horses work at 4 and live into their 30s now!).

These Dog Cakes would have made use of the waste grain products created by the brewing industry and the flour/milling industry, and by utilizing the one very readily available, cheap meat that was also almost universally shunned by human diners (horsemeat was only eaten by the VERY poor!) Spratt made a product that cost him very little, which he marketed to those owning sporting dogs - those with a fair bit of money to burn!


In the 1930's the industry advanced again with the introduction of canned food, so now not only did people eat tinned meals and found them convenient, but the pet food industry could offer tinned dog food.


Two very important facts become quite obvious from this brief history.

1/ Commercial dog food has ALWAYS been based on combining readily available unwanted meat and grain products and by products, into something dogs will eat and people want to buy.
2/ Dogs have only been eating commercially produced dog food 'en masse' for around 150 years.

It is therefore highly unlikely, in fact to my mind, impossible that dogs have 'evolved' to eat commercially produced dog food based on high grain content flavoured with meat.
Dog food was never invented for the benefit of dogs - it was invented for the benefit of the producers pockets.

Now thats not to say there is anything wrong in making a profit - we all need to live, and money as they say, makes the world go around. But lets not kid ourselves - profit was, and still is, the primary concern of a commercial dog food producer.

The Situation Now...

So fast forward those 150 years from Spratts Patented Fibrine Dog Cakes - we now have a huge range of commercially produced foods available for our dogs.

Those foods are actually produced by only a small handful of huge, multinational companies.

As an example, Mars Inc - famous in most peoples minds for the Mars bar - they own:

Pedigree (formerly Pedigree Chum), Nutro, Royal Canin and Greenies as well as cat food brand Whiskas

Nestle own Purina Pet Care and under that banner, they produce all the 'Purina' brands (Pro Plan, Purina One, Gourmet) but also GoCat, Winalot, Bonio, Beta, Felix and Bakers

The basic principles have not changed - cheap ingredients, tarted up, pretty colours and fancy labelling(and thats not new, Spratt put beetroot in his biscuits to give them a more appealing meaty looking colour!) to command a high price for what is, certainly with all the above brands and product names, a low quality product.

How do I know it is a low quality product. Well, firstly, lets revisit evolution. Dog food has been around for 150 years, give or take a year or so.

Dogs on the other hand have been around for 15'000 years, ish when they split from their common ancestor with what is now our modern wolf (note, modern dog did NOT descend directly from the wolves we have today, they share a common ancestor!)

Do you think it likely that 150 years of eating commercially produced dried dog food and tinned meat has had a significant impact on dogs digestive system, given they have been around for 15'000 years?

We know that their digestive system is no different to that of the modern wolf, and of the Dingo, both of which still survive eating raw meat, bones, semi digested vegetable matter and anything else they can get hold of.

So given that information - if  all these companies had at heart, the best interests of dogs first and foremost, and profit secondary to that - why does a small sample of the ingredients listings for these foods contain huge amounts of cereals, fibrous filler, sugars and colourings?

Food Labels - but those are confusing as heck!

Absolutely they are, and one of the chaps on the program wasn't entirely devious when he pointed out that in part this is because there is no different legislation in the UK certainly, for pet food, as opposed to livestock feed. It all falls under the same rulings about how it can be labelled and what can go in it.

Lets have a look at a food label from one of the above mentioned brands.

First of all, Pedigree, one of the leading brands in the UK and advertises itself with tag lines like:

"Every dog deserves leading nutrition:"

I chose Pedigree Vital with Chicken for medium sized dogs.

Ingredients:
Cereals
Meat and Animal Derivatives (including 4% Chicken)
Oils and Fats (including 0.2% Fish Oil, 0.2% Sunflower Oil)
Derivatives of Vegetable Origin (including 2% Dried Beet Pulp)
Minerals (including 0.7% Sodium Tripolyphosphate)
Antioxidants, Preservatives


 So first of all, it says 'with Chicken'. You may not know this, but the wording even within the name of the product has to conform to certain laws. You couldn't call a dog food 'Chicken Doggy Bits' if it only had 4% chicken in it. You COULD call it 'Chicken Flavour Doggy Bits' if it actually had NO chicken in it.

This one says 'with Chicken' so it has to contain a min. of 4% chicken. It could contain more but we will never know and likely the quantities will change from batch to batch.

Cereals








Next, the actual ingredient list - well it might be 'with Chicken' but we know that only  means a min of  4%... and hey presto, here's the first whammy - the first ingredient is 'Cereals'.

One labeling directive manufacturers must comply with is that they have to list the single largest ingredient first - so that first ingredient in the list is really, the main content of this food.

This food just states 'cereals' - this is because they are then free to change the exact make up of 'cereals' as it suits them (as it suits their profit margins).

So if one year wheat is incredibly cheap, and maize isn't - in goes the wheat. If next year actually oats are cheap and maize is costly - in go the oats.  This lumping together of ingredients here means the exact breakdown of cereals can change.

Meat and Animal Derivatives (inc. 4% chicken).

Now that to most people sounds grim - and yes if you saw what it is, it is pretty grim - it is all the bits of human grade meat and animal 'stuff', that we wouldn't want. Bear in mind, this is the stuff that is too crap to go into sausages, cheap burgers, hotdogs, etc. Despite the nice man from the pet food companies on the TV saying 'well its whats left after we take the nicest bits for people' giving you the impression its just the scraggy bits... no,  its quite a bit yuckier than that. This is mush, its connective tissue, gristle, fat, skin, hoofy bits.

Now thats not necessarily a bad thing - dogs are after all the consummate scavenger, they are well evolved to make good use of the bits no one else wants.

The real reason that this is not a good ingredient is that again it is a 'lumped together' ingredient. Only 4% of this is chicken... what is the other 96% of this particular ingredient?

Like the cereal content, this is going to vary from batch to batch, based on what can be sourced most profitably (ie, cheapest, and not as the man from the PFMA stated, 'due to supply').

For most dogs that might not be a problem but if your dog IS sensitive or intolerant or allergic to some ingredients, you have absolutely no chance of identifying exactly WHAT meats are in this food, and the nutritional value of it will change from batch to batch, some times more hoofy feathery blech, sometimes a bit more fat and connective tissue (still blech but nutritionally more valuable to the dog).

Oils and Fats (including 0.2% Fish Oil, 0.2% Sunflower Oil)


Oils and fats are necessary to the dogs diet, yes. But only 0.2% is fish oil and 0/2% is sunflower oil. What then, is the rest?

We don't know, and we won't ever accurately know, but this will be another variable ingredient, produced from rendered carcasses, recycled from the human food production industry... I actually wouldn't delve too deeply into what exactly is in these fats and oils, even writing about it brings back the horrific olfactory memory of slowly, so painfully slowly, passing a rendering plant on a canal trip some 20 years ago! At 2 miles an hour it took us about four hours to get out of smelling distance of the place!

Derivatives of Vegetable Origin (including 2% Dried Beet Pulp)
Minerals (including 0.7% Sodium Tripolyphosphate)
Antioxidants, Preservatives


The rest of this is basically about making your dog produce poo rather than liquid slurry - thats what the dried beet pulp is for by the way, this is whats left AFTER the livestock feed trade has removed the beet pulp that still contains some nutritional value once its finished being made into sugar for us.

To put that into context, this stuff has already been processed several times before it ever gets to the dog food factory - once for sugar for us, then for animal feed (and the food they give horses and cattle has to be higher grade as they are going to enter the human food chain (potentially for horses, definitely for most cattle), and once its turned into dog food it will be processed again!

Minerals, Antioxidants and preservatives are added so that the product will still contain sufficient legally required minerals even if you feed it right before the use by date, and so that it doesn't go off on the shelves.

So - despite the manufacturers claims to provide 'leading nutrition', its blatantly obvious that this food does not actually offer high quality ingredients, nor does it provide the pet owner with an accurate and useful list of ingredients, because the main ingredients are lumped together and can vary fairly wildly.

This food is on sale for £31.99 for 15kg


Maybe its just that one thats horrible?


Ok then: Royal Canin Medium Adult

Ingredients:
Dehydrated Poultry Protein, Maize Flour, Maize, Wheat Flour, Animal Fats and Oils, Dehydrated Pork Protein, Wheat, Hydrolysed Animal Proteins, Sugar Beet Pulp, Fish Oil, Soya Oil, Yeasts, Minerals, Hydrolysed Yeasts, Antioxidants

Dehydrated Poultry Protein is the first ingredient, single largest ingredient first remember - so yes thats marginally better than 'cereals', but how much? Well we still don't know from batch to batch exactly what the 'poultry' in question is! Is it chicken, turkey, duck, who knows!

Now look for the cereals, there is Maize Flour, Maize, Wheat Flour and Wheat in this food. Given that Maize Flour, Maize and Wheat Flour are the second, third and fourth ingredients here, its highly likely that if they had just listed 'cereals' (particularly if you note that Wheat is listed further down too) there would have been more 'cereal' content than 'dehydrated poultry protein' content.

This is a clever trick that some brands will use to list a meat product higher than cereal content - it LOOKS on the label as if there is more meat in here than there are cereals, but thats not likely to be the case.

This does give the manufacturer less wiggle room to change the cereal content, but not much, bearing in mind that this product is a premium priced brand in their line, unlike the previous one which actually isn't. It is worth it then to sacrifice that leeway to save money on cereal content, but be able to list a meat product higher on the label.

The rest of the ingredients will make up a much smaller proportion of the food and are there to bulk up the protein content to that necessary to keep dogs alive, and to produce firm poo and a shiny coat.

Again, there are no top quality ingredients in this food, and yet this will cost you £52.99 for £15kg

How about a good food, surely there are some?

There are indeed now, some quality dried foods around, and that sector of the market is growing.

Here's a good one.

Orijen Adult Original



Ingredients:

Fresh Deboned Chicken (22%), Dehydrated Chicken (15%), Fresh Liver (4%), Fresh Whole Herring (4%), Fresh Deboned Turkey (4%), Dehydrated Turkey (4%), Fresh Turkey Liver (3%), Fresh Whole Eggs (3%), Fresh Deboned Walleye (3%), Fresh Whole Salmon (3%),  Chicken Heart (3%),  Chicken Cartilage (3%), Dehydrated Herring 3%, Dehydrated Salmon (3%), Chicken Liver Oil (3%), Red Lentils, Green Lentils, Sun-cured Alfalfa, Yams, Pea Fibre, Chickpeas, Pumpkin, Butternut Squash, Spinach Greens, Carrots,  Red Delicious Apples, Bartlett Pears, Liquorice Root, Angelica Root, Fungreek, Marigold Flowers, Sweet Fennel,Peppermint Leaf, Chamomile, Dandelion, Summer Savory, Rosemary, Enterococcus Faecium

The first thing that strikes me is, wow thats a big list, and it is, and probably a lot of what is in there isn't strictly necessary, and probably a fair bit isn't actually all that useful because its in such tiny quantities.

However, this is a premium priced food, in fact this is probably the most expensive food on the UK market!

The first thing you'll note once you get over the shock of the list is that the meats are named, and you are given a percentage for each one.

This food is definitely going to be 37% chicken, if you combine the first two ingredients alone. Add it up and its around 74% meat/poultry/fish based.

The remaining 26% (ish) is pulses, vegetables, fruits, herbs... a small amount of which is there to create some roughage for decent poo consistency,  yes (pea fibre, alfalfa) but not much.

There is NO grain or cereal content in this food - not a single scrap of it. The meat content is all stuff you would recognise as food if it were put out on your table - ok the dehydrated turkey, chicken and fish might not look too appetising, but it would still resemble food.

Of course, 13kg of this will set you back £67.99, but does that actually accurately tell you how expensive this is to feed on a daily basis?

The incredibly useful website www.whichdogfood.co.uk helpfully breaks down how much each food listed will cost you, given your dogs weight, per day.

I'll use a medium sized dog between 15 and 20kg.

Pedigree Vital with Chicken:  53p per day - 248  grams per day
Royal  Canin Medium Adult:  73p per day - 208 grams per day
Orijen Adult Original              78p per day - 150 grams per day

As you can quite clearly see, the price per pack is not a good indicator of how cost effective a food actually is.

Whilst the low quality Pedigree is the cheapest to feed, you will need to feed nearly 100 grams a day MORE of it than the highest quality food!
The ingredients in the Royal Canin food are only marginally better quality than those in the Pedigree, however that  costs almost as much to feed per day as the Orijen, and still, you  need to feed over 50g per day more of it!

Where is all that extra food going? It isn't pretty, but the answer is, in your yard, on the pavement and if you are a responsible owner, into a baggy and into the bin. You are paying for poo.

The reason you can feed the same sized dog only 150g of Orijen per day, but need to feed that dog 248g of Pedigree per day, is that so much MORE of the pedigree food is not actually digestible, nutritious food - it is going to come out the other end!

I can vouch for this myself, as my dogs occasionally eat Orijen and produce on average, two poo's per day. Other similarly sized dogs on a diet similar to the Pedigree listed, produce five or six or more poos per day, (and larger ones at that!).

So what do I feed my dog?

I can't really answer that for you. I feed my dogs a raw diet, which is the most cost effective way I can feed six dogs on a tight budget and still provide what I consider (after over a decades practice and research) a premium quality diet, on a par with the quality of foods like Orijen.

What you CAN do is feed the very best quality food you can afford - and note, I say afford, not 'justify', there is a difference.

Most of us, me included, baulk at paying nearly £70 for a sack of food, but I can justify it, because now that I know how dog food works, and how to read and understand the labels sufficiently, I can make an informed decision about where my money goes.

Learn to read the food labels and find out exactly what you are feeding, and where your money is actually going - if you are feeding a very low cost food such as Pedigree or even cheaper (Vitalin, Wagg etc), then whilst you might appear to be saving money short term, because a bag of either of the latter two costs under £15, you might NOT be saving money in the long term.

How much of that food is going into your poo bags? Does your dog have cruddy teeth, horrid breath, itchy skin, pongy smell, anal gland problems, rashes and allergic symptoms?

Does your dog leave his food and only eat it at the end of the day when there really is nothing else on offer?

In my experience some foods can have a detrimental effect on a dogs behaviour, for example, I won't go and see a clients dog if they are eating Bakers Complete, because time after time, I see dogs eating that who are also dogs who are bouncing off the walls and struggle to learn - change the food and the dog improves!

If you answered yes to even some of those questions, the chances are that your dogs diet could be improved - if your dog is actually fit and healthy and doing fine on a low quality food, thats fine, dogs ARE brilliant survivors and scavengers, but in my opinion, feeding the best quality we can afford means saving money on vet bills and other long term costs, and a happier dog.

Have a look through the Which Dog Food site, and cost up some of the alternatives, as I have demonstrated here, a higher quality diet may well NOT be such a dramatic financial outlay as you think!

Double Trouble - two puppies at once?

*Note - this was first published as a Training/Behaviour article on the Positively.com forums, by me!*

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Double Trouble - Two puppies at once?..

by emmabeth » Wed Mar 31, 2010 6:38 am

Hopefully you are reading this BEFORE buying any puppies at all, and are considering having two puppies at the same time, possibly littermates.

STOP!.... Sit back down.. hold your horses.... wait a second...

Two puppies at once is one of those things, where one or two people... someone you heard of.. maybe a family member did it.. and got lucky.. (we will come back to these people later!).

Believe me for the rest of you... its a slippery slope to a NIGHTMARE and a catastrophe and a wholly unenjoyable puppy/dog owning experience.

First, ask yourself why two puppies seems a better idea than one puppy?

The top answer is because 'two will keep each other company'. Now ask yourself why you need them to keep each other company - would that be because you arent going to be there so much?

If the answer is yes, then honestly... you don't have the time for one puppy. Not without making some other arrangements such as a puppy sitter, a doggy daycare/creche, a family member minding the pup during the day, or being able to take the puppy into work with you.

IF none of the above can be done... then either wait until it can.. or consider an older dog who can cope with being left. Dog ownership is a privilege for those who have the time, money and patience.. not a right for those who plain 'want'.

Next top answers will be 'because they are cute/because the kids wanted one each/because we couldnt split them up/because we couldnt choose between them/ because the breeder offered us a discount if we took two....'

Puppies only LOOK cute because if they didn't we wouldnt put up with the horrible things they do. Puppies are NOT really cute at all.. stop thinking about cute, it baffles your brain and you forget the important things in life. Cute is a survival mechanism, its there to trick you. Ignore it!
Puppies are incontinent, puppies BITE and they bite HARD. Puppies make extremely loud noises and demand and NEED your attention 24 hours a day. Puppies are extremely expensive, tiring and will eat your most expensive stuff, rip up your carpets and sofa, drag your shoes out into hte yard and bury them.... make the neighbours hate you... make you sleep deprived... make you stand in poo... or wee... Puppies... are... not... cute!

What kids want... whilst sometimes important, is NOT important when it comes to 'I want a puppy'. Yes, sure they want a puppy... next week they will want to swap it for a Wii. The week after they want a skateboard - I have nothing against kids, I was one... but what kids want when it comes to cutsey things is NOT a reason to commit to 12+ years of dog ownership.

Splitting puppies up is GOOD for them. Puppies together only practice being puppies, and I will get on to what that really means in a moment. Puppies do NOT learn how to be nice sensible adult dogs from other puppies, like toddlers do not learn how to be quantum physicists from other toddlers. They learn this from adults.

In any given 'wild' situation.. baby animals of sociable species split up as they hit adolescence.. between 'baby animal' stage and 'adolescent' stage... they mix with a WIDE range of other ages of animal of their species.. from similar aged animals to old ones and from nice ones to crabby ones and everything in between. When everyone in their social group is fed up of them, they go on their merry way... to seek their fortunes in the big wide world. Occasionally some buddy up for a while.. through choice, a choice made as adolescents and adults.

In your home there is no choice. They are stuck there, permanently, in a tiny space... those pups who would have grown up, spent time with other adult dogs, aunties and uncles and cousins .. who would have taught them all manner of things... have grown up with only each other. Who is to say at adolescent stage whether they will still love each other and choose to stick together, or whether they will hate one another with a vengeance.. and fight to the death. Certainly not you or I... and do you WANT to live with the possibility that this will happen and you will have to choose between your beloved pets? Or live with the fear that one day someone will leave a door open and Fluffy will rip Precious's head off? Or that King and Prince will fight and your toddler will get in the middle of it and get hurt?

Believe me.. splitting up puppies at 8 weeks is as easy as anything, compared with the horror of discovering one of your dogs wants to kill the other.

If you cant choose, toss a coin, let the breeder choose, go for a walk and think about it for a little while longer.. you will find a way of choosing, you have made harder choices before in your life and you will probably come across harder ones again in the future.

And finally... because the breeder offered you a discount?...

ANY breeder who is happy to sell people two puppies from the same litter, ESPECIALLY same sex littermates... has only one thing on their mind. Your money.

They dont care if the puppies live happily ever after, they dont care if you spend the next 12 years in a living hell, they dont care if you have to take one to the vet to be put down.... they just want your money.

The same goes btw for puppy mills, pet stores and back yard breeders and the breeders of wolf x or made up breeds, all who breed or sell pups without the health tests necessary, without care or consideration towards the parent dogs, without giving you the advice you need to make sure your pup lives a long and happy life. They are in it for the cash and nothing more.


So.. you dont want two puppies to keep each other company cos you reckon you have the time... you arent doing it just because they are cute and you reckon the breeder is a responsible and reputable kinda person..

You still shouldnt get two puppies.

They will take three times the work of one, if not more, everything you do with one puppy.. you must do with the other puppy... seperately AND together.

So thats three x the socialisation. Three x the training, three x the walkies..

Its also a million times harder to potty train two pups... because if you have them outside together they are playing and forget to poop.. put one inside whilst you do the other, the one indoors messes in the house..

Unless there are TWO adults fully committed to doing this work, in the same way as one another, or you have achieved omnipresence.. its going to take way WAY longer.

How many months of wee and poo on your floors are you going to be happy with? Because realistically, ONE puppy takes at least a couple of months to get reliably housetrained. Two... you could easily have half grown dogs still going in the house at six months or more old..

So.. you need two adults to train them together.. and you cant leave them alone together because if you think one puppy can cause some destruction when left alone you havent seen a THING compared to what two puppies can do.. eat your sofa? rip up your carpets.... or put them outside and see them eat through the neighbours fence and howl and play fight all day long...

And that is when they still like one another - wait until they reach sexual maturity and decide that this town aint big enough for the both of them...

As I said at the beginning, theres always going to be someone you know or you heard of who reckons they made it work. Id say for every 1 of those people who is actually telling the truth, 10 more are lying or at least glossing over some details. Ask more detailed questions, ask them where they can and cannot take their dogs.. you'll find out most likely that their dogs never leave the property, or cannot be seperated because one yells the house down if the other leaves the building, or they cant be kept together because one wants to kill the other, or they cant be trusted around guests.. or they wont walk nicely on the lead... or or or..

Question these folk who say its ok, and find out if their lifestyle is actually anything like yours - maybe it did work for them, I'm not saying it never can, but theres a degree of luck there.. and maybe you find out that this person is home all day, has 10 acres of well fenced land and no neighbours for 100 miles in any direction. Maybe they show dogs or work them, there will be some details that mean what works for them may well NOT work out for you.

Most people make mistakes with puppies, we are after all only human and mistakes is something we humans do pretty well - one puppy under socialised is a pain to deal with.. two are a nightmare. By the time you realise that two puppies was a mistake though, very frequently its going to be one of those pups who suffers for your error the most.

If you have already got two puppies you might think I am over reacting or painting a very bleak picture to scare you - believe me I am not writing this to wee on anyones parade here..
We all have dogs because we like them and we have a vision in our heads of what our life with our adult dog is going to be like - its going to be fun and fairly carefree with our dog by our side, obeying our commands and having a ball.

By taking on two puppies at once you drastically reduce the chances of that becoming a reality - you only need to take a look in the rescue centres and shelters around the world to see that MILLIONS of people fail to raise ONE dog every single day.

Why make it any harder than it already is - the world is rapidly becoming less and less dog friendly and dogs are expected to behave impeccably in every situation.
Give yourself the very BEST chance you AND your dog can have, of having a happy life together - get ONE pup at a time, from a reputable shelter or breeder. If you got two pups together and you are struggling with them now... TAKE ONE BACK. Rehome him or her... its a lot easier to do now at a few weeks old than it will be in 6 or 12 months time when its not just a struggle... very few people want to take on half grown out of control pups who have learned bad habits from their sibling.

If you decide to keep two puppies.. we will still offer you all the advice you need and want, this isnt a case of 'do what I say or we wont help' at all... this is about making life as easy, making success as easy as possible.. If you choose to do it the hard way we will still help, and we wont say 'I told you so'.. either.. Positive dog training starts before you even get your puppy, by making the right decisions, no matter HOW hard they might be.

I hope this helps people to decide what to do when they get a pup, or to make a hard decision having already got two pups.

I'm Outta Here! - dogs that escape!

Help, My Dog Jumped Out of the Yard... 

I think most dog owners have been there at one time or another, for whatever reason! Finding that your dog can get out of your garden or yard, and not only that but WILL get out, is a real problem.

I considered my yard totally 'dog proof' - at the time I had four dogs, none of them had gotten out, one or two of them could, I knew from experience, clear a 6ft high fence, but my fence set up had kept them in.

And then I got an Ellie-dog, escape artist extraordinaire!

So, your dog is getting out - first things first, you have to prevent this, so lets look at HOW your dog is getting out.

1 - Clearing the fence - the fence is not high enough
2 - Digging under the fence
3 - The fence has holes in it
4 - The gate is not secure
5 - Climbing the fence - the fence is climb-able, and your dog knows how to climb!

The first step is, keep your dog on a long leash and 100% supervised in your back yard/garden.

If this is not possible, for example your dog lives outside, then you need to consider teaching your dog how to live inside. The chances are, if you can't afford to put up a suitable fence right this second, you also can't afford to set up a running wire type tether or build a secure kennel and run. If you CAN, then go to it... but you need to have a serious think about this next stage...

WHY is your dog escaping?

 

 Your dog has a reason for getting out of your yard/garden. It might be a reason you consider dumb, it might be a reason you hadn't considered before or did not realise was such a strong motivator for your dog. So now it's time to think about it.


Some dogs get out because the yard, quite frankly, sucks. There's no one there most of the time, there's nothing to do out there, yard = boring.

Or, you might actually spend a fair bit of time out there with your dog, you might have a ton of toys out there for him too... but on the other side of that fence there is what he consider's, doggy nirvana! There are squirrels, there are cats, there are other dogs, there is a neighbour half a mile away having a barbeque that smells sooooooooo good...

If the  motivation to get out, is higher than the motivation to stay IN, and your yard is not totally secure - you are likely to have a problem.

That problem is often compounded if your dog doesn't have the strongest bond with you (for example, he is new), or if his training isn't great so he has no recall (or worse, he associates being called back with being punished!).

So... what do I do?

Well, first of all you make your yard secure. I discovered my Ellie-dog could fit through a gap of just 4inches wide! She only got to do it the one time, we blocked that gap up straight away!

Most people think that when it comes to making a fence dog-proof, its all about height.

It really isn't.

You need to consider HOW dogs jump over things. Dogs tend not to try to clear an obstacle naturally, they have to be taught this - what dogs do is jump ON to an item, then off it, or they climb it.

So when a dog jumps, he needs to know really accurately where the top line of that obstacle is, he can't just guess and give it plenty of room, because he is aiming his front paws AT it, to grab and scramble over.

If you  mess with his depth perception and perspective (something dogs eyes are not great at anyway), by making the top line of a fence something hard to grab, something hard to judge, then you are able to make a much lower fence secure.

To do this the best ways are to put a 45 degree inward overhang, and/or, a roller, to the top of the fence. The roller is easy, its PVC plumbing pipe, threaded onto heavy gauge wire. If he did manage to judge the top line, the roller just rolls!

The inward overhang is really great - from your dogs point of view below the fence, he can't judge just where that top line is, he will get too close on take off, and hit the underside of the overhang and just bounce off! Since he can't get a grip on that top line (even without a roller), he can't clear it - and if the overhang is big enough  (around 1ft is sufficient) ,he isn't going to climb it either!

So that deals neatly with dogs who go over. What about dogs who go under?

The first option when you put up a fence is to bury it pretty deep, so you have wire or concrete gravel boards going some depth under the soil. If you know your dog is a great digger, bury that fence DEEP!

The add-on to this for real serious diggers, is to put a concrete skirt around the inside edge of the fence once its erected - or you can lay concrete slabs around the perimeter, so there's nothing for him to dig through!

Why didn't you just tell me this first?

Wellllll... I could have, and you could hop straight to making your yard dog proof, without thinking about why your dog is getting out, sure.

But the chances are, your dog has a really good reason to try to get out, and if you don't address that problem, he is going to come up with some other behavioural issue.

If your dog is bored, and he is getting out because the neighbourhood is exciting, and you stop him - he won't quit being bored!

What's he gonna do now? Well he could howl, or bark, he could take up fence running and snapping through the fence, he could start ripping pieces off your house or trash your yard...

If you don't take a look at why the unwanted behaviour is happening, the chances are you will swap one problem for another!

Separation Anxiety - Secret Life of Dogs!

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A pondering on the funny ideas we get!

You have to face your fears...

Here's one - and in one way, it is true - if you don't sort out a fear or phobia, it can limit your life, it can cause you to react in a way that is dangerous or unpleasant for those around you too!

This is as true for us as it is for dogs, but we forget, we can explain things to other people, those of us with fears can talk about those fears with others and make choices about how they address them.

Dogs can't do that.

If you ask most people how they would go about addressing someones fear, for example, a child's fear of the dentist, they would use rewards, they would try to make the experience nice. The dentist may well have some ideas too, for example, pictures or mobiles on the ceiling above the chair can help distract and calm. Fishtanks in waiting rooms have long been used to calm people and prevent them working themselves into a panicked state before they get into the scary chair.

There are drugs to help too, and stickers for afterwards (and who doesn't love a sticker, I'm 33 and I still love a sticker!).

When it comes to the dog though, how many people forget all the above and shove the dog in at the deep end, and say things like 'he has to get on with it' or 'she's got to get over herself' or similar phrases to that effect.

And then, when a dogs way of communicating his fear involves lashing out, behaving aggressively, barking or biting, people react with anger (do parents get angry when a frightened child kicks the dentist or bites them, probably not NEARLY so much!).

Avoidance is not dealing with the problem...

Again, this is another 'yes' and 'no' thing. If you JUST avoid something and never attempt to deal with it in any way, then no, it isn't dealing with the problem. Of course not.

But avoidance isn't the full story when it comes to dealing with reactive dogs, fearful dogs.

When a trainer tells you to avoid the situations that make your dog react, kick off, panic, they are not saying 'stay at home, never leave the house with your dog again'.

They are saying 'avoid your dog experiencing the level of fear that causes him to react' - dial it back, manage him so that he doesn't get to that stage.

So your dog goes nuts at other dogs, avoid them.... but in the process of avoiding them, also:


Make a mental note of how far away a dog needs to be before your dog reacts.
Make  a mental note of his behaviour - how tense is he, how able is he to comply, how able is he to focus on you, in each context.
Make a mental note of which contexts and situations produce which reactions.

In other words, whilst practicing avoidance, you are also LEARNING about your dogs reactions and how he is handling things.

After a few weeks of avoidance  you should know whether your dog can handle seeing another dog at 30ft, 50ft, 100ft. Is he better if that other dog is on the other side of the street, walking toward or away, is it a small dog or a big dog. Can he handle dogs he can't see but can hear. What about those he can see but can't hear, does the speed of the dogs movement change things, does the other dogs behaviour have much bearing on his reaction.

This avoidance phase also has a positive effect on your dog - you are demonstrating to him, each time you spot another dog and take evasive action, in a way he can understand, ie by your actions, that YOU will handle the problem and importantly, you WON'T force him to approach, deal with it, etc etc.

All too often I see people trying to force their dog to deal with a problem, the dog who is worried about other dogs is just taken to a dog park and forced to get on with it... fairly predictably, this method does not work. Where it appears to work the reality is the dog has suppressed their fear, not gotten RID of the fear!


I like thinking up analogies to help people see the oddness of some ideas or concepts... so this is my 'face your fears and just get on with it' one.

If you are rehabbing a meth addict - would you take them to a meth lab to deal with that problem? Do we take crackheads and put them in a crack house to fix their problem?
The answer to both of those is no, because we do know that actually, to deal with any chronic behaviour pattern, we need to break the job down into easy achievable goals, starting out in an environment that is conducive to success.
So just as we wouldn't expect to teach someone new behaviour patterns, new coping strategies to deal with a meth addiction IN a meth lab, we don't take the reactive dog and try to teach him how to handle other dogs IN the dog park!

Fear - a ramble about how fear happens and how the fearful mind 'thinks'.

For those of you who have me as a friend on the mighty Facebook, you might have read my status update yesterday about a spider.

That incident has proved... interesting and I want to examine it and subsequent events a bit further.

To start with, prior to yesterday I would not have said I was scared of spiders.

I can watch them, I know a fair bit about them (they have hydraulic legs man, that's SO cool!), I can remain calm in the presence of them...

What I did not like was a spider ON me, particularly one on me, unexpectedly, which has happened perhaps five times in my entire life.

Yesterday though a spider crawled up my sleeve - I felt something tickle and thought it was a crane fly as we have got tons of those at the moment. Brushed it off, didn't see anything, continued doing whatever I was doing...

Then I felt a tickle in my cleavage - ooh err missus, so I peered down the front of my top...

And a HUGE  house spider peered back! For those of you not in the UK, (and those truly terrified, sorry for this!)...

This is the guy I saw..





He was probably not far off the size he appears on your screen now (body about 1.5cm, huge leg span of around 4inches).

I stood up, screaming, tore off my top shaking it, still screaming, he fell to the floor and ran under my desk, squeezing past the dog who was lying with his back against the wall.

He was so big the DOG felt him trying to squeeze past, got up, looked, saw the size of him and ran away!

I took a little while to calm down - notably I could not calm down until I made my partner find the spider AND kill it, a step I have never needed before (just being clear that the spider was not longer ON me has always been sufficient in the past).

If it were not for the fact that I take beta blockers, I suspect I would have had a raised heart rate, certainly the cup of hot sweet tea I had immediately after did its job!

So, to cut out all the waffle - I was scared, by a spider. The spider met its maker, end of story?


Errr, well - no.

Because there are more spiders, in fact until earlier today there were at least three more I was vaguely aware of, having seen them in certain locations repeatedly in the last few weeks.

I have to point out here, I know about house spiders - they breed in early autumn, ie, now, and the females tend to stay put in their tube type webs, with the males roaming around trying to find them. It is this roaming around that leads to us seeing them as, for most of the year they stay hidden, eating woodlice and whatever comes their way.

Unlike most spiders, Tegenaria (both T. domestica and the large T. gigantea) males do appear larger than the females. Actually they aren't, their leg span is bigger but their bodies are smaller - however that is NOT what you see when you spot one scuttling along the floor or peering up at you from between your boobs!

What you see are HUGE HAIRY LEGS, mainly!

So - whats happening now is both weird, and interesting.

Even though I understand why these huge hairy male spiders are hurtling about my house, even though I know they really can't hurt me (you can feel their bite but they are not going to cause you even the pain of a wasp sting), none of this matters...

My brain is now in spider spotting mode - and this is the interesting bit that relates to canine behaviour modification.

I am scared - therefore my brain is working hard to SPOT the trigger for my fear. I am actively looking for the scary thing!

Most people with a fearful, reactive dog, miss this. We tend to think if our dog is scared of something, they want to avoid it, and so we don't recognise that actually they may be on high alert, LOOKING for that trigger, because no matter what it is you are scared of, its always going to be slightly less scary if you KNOW where it is, than if its going to leap out at you in an ambush!

Today another spider 'attacked' me - it didn't actually attack me of course, but it ran down the landing and into the bathroom when I was sat on the loo and of course, my brain still being hyper-aware and looking for spiders, saw it SPRINT down the landing and run UNDER my legs... and I was trapped!

I'm quite impressed I saw it in some ways because I was sat on the loo, reading a book, (sorry if its TMI on my toilet habits!), the point is I was not consciously looking for spiders, I was involved doing other things...

What I was however, was trapped and vulnerable (I don't think I need to explain just how vulnerable one is when sat on the loo, I think we all get that!).

This incident actually sent my heart racing despite the beta blockers, it was in many ways MORE frightening than the 'spider down the top' event of the day before.

Immediately following this, I spotted and had Mike kill two more big spiders, cashing in on my brains hyper-awareness to identify spiders from shadows or clumps of dog fur on the floor (ok ok so i read on the loo and I don't hoover that often, so sue me!).

So, to translate this further to dog behaviour modification..

Stress from a particular incident does NOT go away immediately - I was still stressed and hyper aware 24 hours after the 'spider down the top' incident.

Fear leads us to subconsciously spot the trigger, because the trigger we SEE at least, cannot then ambush us.

Even when occupied with something else, the hyper-aware state of the brain will continue to spot the trigger.

Being trapped and vulnerable and already stressed will INCREASE the stress of any subsequent incident, even if that incident is apparently far less upsetting than the initial one was.


  Now, I fervently hope my fear does not escalate - I should think that knowing my OH can come and remove a spider for me will help with that.

It is interesting to note that for a variety of reasons I am not compelled to kill the spiders myself (though, having OH kill them IS an increase in fear on my part, previously I have been happy to remove them myself and throw them outside). I suspect in part this is just my personality, I'd rather not kill things. In part it is a peculiar fear in itself, I don't like the pop or the mess or the feeling of crunching an exoskeleton, even under a shoe!


Similar things will happen with dogs - though for different reasons (probably, I can't swear there aren't dogs out there that plain don't like the feeling of biting something) - some will want to run away, some may make an aggressive looking display that is really a bluff, some will actually be aggressive and intend to do harm.

I do think that all this reinforces my belief that, when dealing with a fear problem, we should absolutely NOT go looking for triggers to try to desensitize our dogs to. Our fearful dogs are going to be a million times better at seeing those triggers, long before we do - if we try to expose them on purpose, even below threshold, we increase the stress and we really risk making matters much much worse.

It also helps me understand 'stress stacking' - there is no way I'd have screamed and made OH come and kill todays spider IF yesterdays incident hadn't occurred. (I know this because its happened before). It was the stress from yesterdays incident that made todays incident all the more scary, simple as. So it really hammers it home to me HOW important it is that we give our dogs a break and we DON'T expect them to progress at our pace, handling one thing on day one, two things on day two etc etc.

SHUT THAT BLOODY DOG UP!!! - Inappropriate barking, why it happens, how to solve it.

Excessive or Inappropriate Barking...

Probably one of the number 1 complaints from non-dog owners about other peoples dogs, and one of the most frustrating problems for a dog owner to solve.

Barky dogs are annoying, to you, to me, to your neighbour to the man down the road who can still hear them at 3am.

For the dog owner, there is not just the annoyance of living with a barky dog, but the added pressure of knowing your neighbours are getting pissed off too. Maybe it is even worse than that, maybe your neighbours are making complaints, sending nasty stroppy letters or reporting you to some relevant authority.

What all this means is, when we have a barky dog, it is very very easy to focus on the symptom - the barking - and not the cause OF the barking. We are driven to 'shut that bloody dog up' and in some cases even actively discouraged from figuring out WHY, because after all, our neighbours actually don't care why, it is just very irritating to listen to!

However it is extremely important to seek out the reason WHY your dog is barking excessively or inappropriately, because attempting to treat just the symptom will not work in the long run. It might even create some bigger problems!

Why Dogs Bark:

• Boredom
• Loneliness
• Fear - to drive something away
• Frustration - seeing something exciting they cannot get at

• Communication - dogs bark (and growl and howl and snarl and  yap and squeak and huffle) to communicate with us and to a certain extent, with each other
  

Why Dogs Carry On Barking...

• Boredom - barking is in the absence of any other activity, self rewarding. The dog gains some enjoyment from repeatedly barking. Not a lot, but then if there is nothing else to do... anything is better than nothing.
• Loneliness - barking will eventually 'work', in that someone will eventually reward the dog by coming back, by shouting at the dog, by in ANY way interacting with the dog. And the dog thinks 'ah ha! if I only bark long enough, someone WILL respond and I will know I am not entirely on my own!' The dog has no idea that someone was going to come home eventually anyway, he has no idea that the person shouting 'shuttup you bloody animal' wants him to shuttup - all he knows is, he wanted a response or someone to return and he got it, result!
• Fear - some dogs bark to drive things away, this is particularly common in dogs left alone in front or rear gardens particular when there is a footpath or pavement the other side of the fence, and also in dogs left to look out of a window with a view onto a footpath.
  What happens is the dog barks at the sight of something, that something goes away, the dog is therefore rewarded for barking, because HE thinks, his barking made the person (or dog, or whatever) go away.
• Frustration - this is very similar to the fear thing - the dog barks at things that are moving and exciting, people passing by, cars, wildlife etc. The barking often appears to make that thing move more (or so the dog thinks!) and so the barking is rewarded!
• Communication - everyone needs to communicate and barking along with the other sounds listed, are some of a dogs ways of doing this. They actually communicate far more with body language, but we humans are desperately poor at reading this, and it is obviously no good for communicating with someone who is out of sight.

So, how DO I fix this problem... he is still barking!

Lets go back to why he was barking. Is he bored? Is he lonely? Is he scared or frustrated, maybe he is a combination of these things.

When does your dog bark?

If he is outside when he is barking, is he out there alone? Dogs actually aren't very good at amusing themselves shut out in a garden on their own. Most of the things dogs like to do outside either can't be done in your garden, or you don't want him to do in your garden. These are things like digging, running long distances, chewing things, chasing prey animals, killing prey animals...

Dogs also don't naturally cope well with being alone, so if your dog is outside and you are inside its highly likely he is going to want to be with you and will bark to get you to come back. If your dog IS spending a lot of time outside and thats not his choice, on his own, ask yourself why do you have a dog if you don't want to spend time with him?

If your dog is barking when he is indoors, again, why might that be? Is it when you are out, is he barking because he can't cope being left behind, is he shouting at things through the window?
Or is he barking when you are home, alerting you to the things he sees, or frustrated or fearful of the things he sees?

Some dogs are reactive to sounds, they will mooch about happily outside and then go nuts barking at something on the other side of the fence.

This is one of the easiest anti-social barking problems to solve - it is so simple. Teach your dog that these sounds now mean he gets a reward. Sound = treat, don't wait for him to react and don't withhold the reward if he does, its simple classical conditioning. It does mean you have to be out there WITH him, with high value treats and whilst you change his habit, you can't allow him outside alone (or he will practice the unwanted behaviour) but it does work!

Dogs who are left outside and bark through boredom or loneliness are a bit harder - you'll need to change the way you live with your dog to fix these to some extent. First of all, stop shutting the dog outside on his own. Next, make his life much more fulfilling, more walks, more play, more training and mental stimulation. Then if he does have to spend time outside on his own, ensure he has a warm dry shelter, plenty of interesting toys (toys you can stuff with food are good) and gradually reintroduce him to the idea of being alone.

Dogs that react to the view out of the window are THE easiest to fix, bar none. Simply remove the view, you can get very attractive frosted window films that are not hard to apply to your front windows, and are removable should you move. They cut out around 80% of the view (or more), meaning the dog can no longer identify things to bark at, but let in 95% of the light so you aren't left in the dark!
This will reduce 'barking out of the window' by 95% in just a day or so - and it only takes that long because some dogs are reacting to the sound as well as the sight (which you can address by classical conditioning as I outlined above!)

The hardest type of barking to fix is separation anxiety when your dog is left in the house alone - this requires a lot of work, and really will only be fixed with a lot of patience, time and kind methods. I strongly recommend you get a reputable, force free professional in if you think your dog has separation anxiety, but I can assure you, punishment will NOT fix the problem, only make it worse.

Why not just punish the dog for barking so that it stops?

If your dog is barking because he is lonely - is punishing him for it going to make him any less lonely? If it is because he is scared, how will punishing his fear help there?

Punishment carries its own problems, the first of which is how do you actually punish a dog for it to be effective.

Punishment requires good timing - the punishment MUST happen within a second or two of the behaviour occurring that you want to stop.
Punishment MUST be aversive, the dog must find it unpleasant, which seems obvious but this raises two further points:
1/ How do you know for sure that the dog will find it unpleasant? If you go out to punish a lonely dog barking in the garden, really no matter what punishment you give, the FIRST thing that occurred closest to his barking was... you, coming back to him! And that as I pointed out earlier, is a reward.

2/ How do you know how unpleasant to make it, if it isn't unpleasant enough then you are just being mean to your dog without effect, thats not training, thats just abuse. If it is TOO unpleasant then you will create some more problems, mainly that your dog will not trust you any more, he will want to avoid you and dislike you - that's not why you got a dog is it?

Much unwanted barking actually happens when the owner is not present, so how do you punish a dog when you are not there?

Well there are for barking, two main options.

1/ Bark activated spray collar.
2/ Bark activated electric shock collar.

Please note, in Wales the shock collar is  now illegal.

So, option 1 is a collar that you put on your dog and the sound of him barking activates a spray mechanism that sprays citronella scent up his nose. Dogs find citronella very unpleasant so asides from the initial shock of the spray sound, he gets a nasty smell, and a dogs nose is very powerful so this probably isn't just a nasty pong but a painful experience for him (ever smelt a REALLY strong smell like smelling salts? Or too much vinegar? Ouch.)

Whilst this would seem to be the answer, there are problems with it.

Firstly the spray collars can be activated by other sounds, for example another dog barking, the dog growling or coughing or sneezing. It would be horribly unfair to punish your dog for these things and if that happened enough it would make the punishment much less clear and effective.

Secondly, the punishment goes on FAR longer than the one second spray, because the dog can smell the citronella for a LONG time after the spray. This again makes the message you intend to put across much more vague.. is it barking he is punished for? Or is it something he did a few minutes later when he can still smell that horrible pong?

Thirdly - dogs are not stupid, some dogs figure out to twist the collar round so the spray jets off harmlessly at the back of their necks. Some dogs (a LOT of dogs) figure out that if they bark repeatedly for a few minutes, they can empty the collars spray unit and then it will no longer work.

The reason these two things occur is because as I say - punishment doesn't address the reason WHY the dog is barking. The dog has a reason, that reason is still there, so he still needs to bark. Further more, if a spray collar actually does stop a dog barking, most dogs will do something else instead - options range from howling, digging, and chewing things up to actually escaping and running away or being fearful of going outside or wherever it is they wear the collar!

So, option 2, the electric shock collar.

Like the spray collar this is activated by the dog barking, and like the spray collar it can also be activated by other loud noises close to the dog.
The shock collars tend to come with a range of shock levels, it is up to you to determine which is appropriate for your dog and here you again have no idea what is enough, what is too much, what is too little and you risk getting it wrong and making the problem worse, or scaring the living daylights out of the dog.

Shock collars are the subject of massive controversy - as I say they are illegal in Wales, deemed not humane and theres a pretty big fine or potentially a prison sentence if caught using one.

The shock collar works by causing pain - there are no two ways about that, if they did not cause pain they could not ever work.

How much pain is almost impossible to tell - you can try one on your own arm (you'll note manufacturers state not to put them around your OWN neck... and the reason for that is that you can achieve some level of nerve damage or worse!) and it might tickle, or sting... or it might make you  yelp and jump.
One of the major points to take in when thinking about trying a shock collar on yourself, is this though - when  you try it yourself, you know what is going to happen, you know why it is going to happen and most importantly, you know WHEN it is going to happen, because you are in control of it.

Pain that is expected and predictable is much more easily tolerated than pain that is unexpected and unpredictable - you can grit your teeth and bear it when you get a jab from a Doctor, but if someone randomly stabbed you with that same needle you would jump and yell out!

With both the shock collar and the spray collar, one of the selling points is that the unpleasant event is not associated with you, the dog does not know that you caused it. The idea is that he figures out HE caused it, but that unfortunately is not guaranteed to be the case.

If your dog sees a cat, barks, and gets a zap from the shock collar - is he going to realise it was his bark that did it? Or more likely, is he going to think the CAT caused it, because after all, he was focusing on the cat at the time, the bark was a sub-conscious reaction not a planned out action.

There have been plenty of cases where dogs wearing shock collars have become too scared to go out into their yards, or have become dangerously aggressive to cats, other dogs, whatever it is they bark at.

There are other unpleasant side effects too - just as with the spray collar the dog could quit barking and take up digging or biting at the fence or chewing things or escaping.

The collar unit can malfunction and cause nasty burns on the dogs neck, or the batteries can die and your dog learns that sometimes he CAN bark (and if you learn that sometimes a thing works, thats actually more reinforcing than learning that it 'always' works! Just look at how many people are addicted to gambling on fruit machines as opposed to people addicted to buying from vending machines!)

So, for lots and lots of reasons, punishment here is not the answer, it carries big risks of failure, of hurting your dog, damaging your relationship with your dog, and making the problem worse.