Hungry like the wolf

Biologically appropriate raw food

It must be about 20 years ago now that we first started feeding our dogs a raw diet. The reason it came about was that we were having such a problem getting them to eat consistently. They were forever turning their furry noses up at bowlfuls of dried food, also known as kibble. To try and entice them into eating we were smothering the pieces in ‘dog gravy’ or topping their dinner off with tuna, anything to try and get them to eat. Of course, these meals are designed to be wholly balanced so us adding bits and pieces on top wasn’t really helping. Whatever we did,  they would only eat it for a couple of meals and then once again they would leave it. We were getting quite desperate and trying a different kibble every other week, and ending up with bags and bags of half-eaten dog food.

We really weren’t sure about it, but we decided to make the leap and try raw, or the BARF diet as it was back then.

It seemed so complicated. Instead of a balanced meal at each sitting, we had to achieve balance over time. There were different meats to included, offal, fruit, veg and bone. When we started, we had a spreadsheet which detailed their twice-daily meals for weeks at a time.

Dried food, BARF or tinned

However, it was all worth it, and it was a complete revelation when from day one there were no turned up noses or food left sitting in bowls all day. It was eaten with great gusto. We nearly fainted when we first saw our dogs eating a raw chicken wing!

In all that time, with all of our dogs, we’ve never had a dog that wouldn’t eat raw. Yes, there were days they wouldn’t eat if they were unwell, or bits and pieces they would leave. We don’t think we ever had a dog that liked raw liver, cooked yes, raw no! From pups, they’ve all been switched straight to raw without any problems whatsoever.

Until now, that is.

Our Tilly has been raw fed since the day we brought her home at eight weeks. She took to it like a duck to water in the same way as the rest of them always had. However, when she had her first season, we noticed that her eagerness to eat her dinner disappeared. Sometimes her food would be down for a couple of hours before she would touch it.

Tilly and Toby with their first ever chicken wings

When her season was over, she appeared to return to normal, but maybe not quite as enthusiastically as before.

At the beginning of this month, she stopped eating again. We were pulling our hair out trying to entice her to eat. The only thing that had an effect on her was having Toby walk past her meal; she suddenly developed an interest in it.

Just when we were beginning to think she may actually be ill, even though she would happily eat a treat or a piece of cheese, we realised she had come back into season a month sooner than expected.

We moved her out of the house away from our entire male dogs, to the caravan, but she absolutely refused to eat. She was still wolfing down treats but not her meals. The weight was dropping off her. As a last resort, we tried some tinned meat that we had bought for Fin when he was unwell many moons ago. Duck and plum flavour. We started with just a couple of spoonfuls.

She scoffed it up, so we gave her more. Again, she ate it, so she got the rest of the tin.

At last, we had managed to find something she would eat. We ordered a whole stash of tinned meat for her, and she continued to wolf it down, nothing wrong with her appetite at all, she just didn’t like raw.

For the time being, we will keep her on tinned food. Some of it smells so nice; we are quite tempted ourselves!

We are hoping that when this season is over, she will come to her senses and return to raw, as there is a downside to NOT eating raw food…

So, what do you feed your dogs, and why? Dried food is definitely the easiest option for a multitude of reasons and if you have a dog that eats it without fuss then why change?  There are lots of myths and half-truths about the dog food industry, as there is with our own food, and if you are contemplating a change in diet, why not have a look at this website All About Dog Food which may help you to make up your mind, if your dog hasn’t already made it up for you!

And if you’re a cat feeder, check out the Reviews for the Best Wet and Dry Cat Food available.

The Great British Dog Walk

The daily dog walk is sadly in decline

As dog owners, one of our main responsibilities is the daily dog walk. Let’s face it, when the weather is rough, or we fancy another hour in bed, or there’s something good on the telly, we often search for an excuse NOT to walk the dog. In fact, those are some of the top reasons we use as well as a whole host of others. Now Forthglade have launched a campaign to reinstate The Great British Dog Walk and help you re-discover the joy of walking. Not only is it good for our pets, it’s good for us too, and a good walk can affect our health, wellbeing and happiness.

What with the obesity crisis, which affects not only humans, but our pets as well a daily walk could be just what we all need to get us back on track.

But before we all rush out and get started, another factor we may want to consider, especially in the colder weather is the ‘warm-up’, which can be important if your daily walk involves chasing a ball, flying disc, or in our case, the Puller Exercise Toy for Dogs. It had never occurred to us before. Our dogs can be seen hurtling out of the front door, across the yard and into the field in hot pursuit of their favourite purple toy! However, recently we came across an article on Warm-up Exercises for your Dog. Humans are aware that they need to warm up their muscles before exercise but for some reason, we hadn’t thought about it for our dogs.

It doesn’t have to be a long, complicated process, just a few minutes of some basic moves will make all the difference and could prevent injury. It also offers a fabulous opportunity to bond with a bit of training. Do some circles to the left and right, have your dog weave through your legs, teach them a play bow.

Similarly, towards the end of your exercise, make sure that you calm things down and give your dog time to cool off before he returns to the car or indoors.

So now is the perfect time to think a little differently about that daily chore, turn it into a fun experience that is a pleasure for both you and your dog. There are some great motivators on the Forthglade site and also experts on hand to help you along the way.

Take up the six-week dog walk challenge and fall in love with that daily walk all over again, but more importantly, make a dog happy today and every day!

 

It’s in their DNA

We get into genetics…

For many many years, we have been dedicated German Shepherd owners. Only once did we stray, and that was with our Border Collie, Jack. We really needed a sheepdog and the shepherds just didn’t have the knack.

Each and every dog we’ve had has been unique, and we’ve loved them all. It has always been our dream to one day breed a litter, but up until now, we never felt we had dogs of the right temperament.

Along came Toby and changed all that. He is smart, maybe too smart, good-natured, and equally importantly he has good hips and elbows.

We finally thought we had found the perfect dog to breed from. We looked around for a bitch that would be suitable and were lucky enough to find Tilly locally. She is a year now and will soon be hip scored. If she passes, the endorsement will be lifted on her pedigree.

But before embarking on any breeding programme, and because we have had two shepherds who have suffered from DM (a non-painful, progressive disease of the spinal cord that usually results in hind limb paralysis), Daisy is going it through it currently and it’s heart-breaking, we decided to look into genetic testing.

We found a lab that provides this – Animal Genetics – and ordered our testing kits. We were testing for DM, specifically the SOD1 gene. There has been a huge interest of late in genetic testing, and it seems people are not always delighted with the results.

Just like on detective programmes, when the kits arrived, we swabbed the insides of the cheeks of Toby and Tilly, then they were posted off to the lab for testing, along with details of their Kennel Club registration numbers.

Within a week we received the results in an email and as others have discovered before us, we were devastated by the results.

Tilly was clear, no problem with breeding her, she was very unlikely to ever suffer from DM. However, Toby, our precious Toby, was a carrier!

What did this mean?

If he is bred with a clear bitch, he has a 50/50 chance of producing puppies that are carriers. NOT at-risk puppies, just carriers like him.

We were very upset and started talking about neutering. We have been through this horrible disease twice now and wouldn’t wish it on anybody else.

However, we have done further research and listened to advice from other breeders.

If we breed him with Tilly, he could produce carriers, but these carriers would not be at risk of DM. We could have them genetically tested and identified, place endorsements on the pedigrees of the carriers so that they could only be bred with a clear dog. Any future owners would be fully informed, it would all be up there on the Kennel Club website, and it must surely be a good thing that they would know they are getting a dog that is practically guaranteed not ever to have DM?

There are other important issues to be considered in breeding and temperament is one of them. Toby and Tilly both have excellent temperaments, and we would very much like to perpetuate that, weeding out the highly strung, flighty, dare we say, aggressive dogs.

At the moment the jury is out, we haven’t made up our minds one way or the other, and until Tilly is hip scored, we can’t take any decisions. But just recently the Kennel Club published a press release on the powerful long-term impact of DNA tests on dog diseases and appears to indicate that selective breeding using DNA testing is the way forward for responsible breeders.

And as DNA testing can bring good news as well as the not so good, we know Toby will never need a wheelchair, we decided to order a test kit for Archie. At least if we find out now that he is “at-risk” we can take some measures to slow down the onset of this terrible disease.

How we wish now that we had known in advance for our Daisy.

 

Rayburn woes

They don’t make them like they used to…

Back in 2015, we replaced our 1950’s Rayburn with a big new beast. This one ran the solid fuel heating throughout the house. Previously, the heating was driven by an open fire which we replaced with a stove, but we only lit it in the evenings and the house could be quite chilly during the day. By plumbing in the Rayburn too, we were aiming to have warm radiators all day.

After years of living with the ancient lump of metal (our original Rayburn), we had a huge learning curve to understand the new one. It never managed to get the water as hot,  and while it took the chill off the house, it never really heated it completely. However, it was much better than what we’d had previously. The stove was a much better source of heat overall, when lit.

At the end of the summer we thought we detected a slight leak in our new Rayburn. Surely not? We consulted the company that installed it, and they advised us to keep using it, which we did. One morning we were only out of the kitchen for about 15 mins and when we returned there was water literally gushing out of the thing.

We quickly switched off the water and covered the room in towels trying to soak it all up. The tank inside had burst. We’d only had it three years!

Rangemaster provided a new tank but wouldn’t pay the installation costs. We had to have the whole Rayburn removed, the new tank fitted, and then it had to be wheeled back in and reinstalled.

All this took time, and we were suffering a bit from the cold!

A week ago we noticed what looked like another leak inside the firepit and investigations are underway as to whether it is a leak or just the fuel bubbling. In the meantime, we are living on tenterhooks, nervous about leaving the house in case the whole thing happens again and again floods the kitchen. We could be in for a cold, cold Christmas!

We lived with the 1950’s Rayburn for 12 years, our predecessors for a similar time, and we had no real problems with it. They certainly don’t make them like they used to!

 

 

Daisy rides again!

Daisy does a wheelie…

It’s been a huge learning curve for us this past month, and for Daisy too, probably. Last month she was a 4-wheel drive this month only a 2-wheel drive. Somewhere along the line she’s lost the use of her back legs, but only on dry land.

As soon as we realised she was suffering from degenerative myelopathy we visited a local dog hydro centre where we were lucky enough to find a trained physio who did everything she possibly could to help us.

As we’ve mentioned before, she had a full exercise programme designed to keep her back legs working, and she swam or walked on the underwater treadmill. All this built up the muscles in her back legs, so they are very strong. Her problem is that she can’t control them.

Earlier this month we realised that her days walking unaided were over and so tried her in the wheels that we had ready for her. She wasn’t at all keen and just stood still until we hooked her back legs up behind her in the stirrups. That got her moving, but it also gave us another problem.

With her legs so strong, she paddled when she walked in the cart, rather like when she was swimming. This was causing the stirrups to rub on her legs making them sore and bleeding. We began bandaging her legs before taking her out, but with the constant friction, they weren’t healing.

While looking for a solution, we temporarily reverted to the belly band, made from an old sweatshirt. We first used this with Blitz, who also had this horrible disease.

She loved it and took to it immediately, but for us it was exhausting.

The next logical step was to combine the wheels with the belly band. In order to do so, the whole cart had to be re-engineered with new aluminium rods!

We finally managed to come up with a solution that gave her (and us) the best of both worlds, and although it may not look very elegant, she is one happy bunny again. It’s given her back her freedom and independence.

Here she goes…

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All grown up

Tilly leaves home…

It seems like only yesterday we bought home that little bundle of fluff and sharp teeth but already our little girl has grown up. This month saw the start of her first season, and with two entire males in the house, we decided the safest thing to do was get her out of there!

We moved her out and spent a month camping with her in a caravan. She was kept completely separate and every time she went outside it was like a military operation, with texts exchanged between the caravan and house. We are lucky enough to have our land fenced into paddocks, so she was even walked in different areas, to ensure neither Archie nor Toby got wind of her.

We would very much like to breed from her as she has an excellent temperament but that will depend on her hip and elbow scores. Like Toby, she will be tested when she is a year old.

For the time being, however, we managed to get through a very difficult 3 weeks for all of us.

On a different subject, we have been very keen supporters of Finns Law and are delighted by the news is that it is to become a reality in Scotland thanks to supporters and campaigners. If you have somehow missed this story of bravery by a wonderful police dog, you can read all about it HERE and lend your support to ensure that it comes into being in the rest of the UK. A word of warning though, have a tissue handy when you read it!

Dog on Wheels

Daisy does a wheely…

Through plenty of exercise on the underwater treadmill, swimming, and puller sessions, we have managed to build up quite a bit of muscle in Daisy’s back legs. But unfortunately, it’s not enough to keep her mobile on all four paws as although her back legs are strong, she has little control over them. Thanks to her worsening CDRM she doesn’t have much idea of where her back legs are. We have tried Rock tape around her feet to attempt to increase awareness, but it’s a losing battle.

It is heartbreaking because her legs are far from paralysed they work perfectly, just not in the way they should. When she’s sleeping and dreaming about chasing rabbits, she moves her legs easily, and when she’s swimming, there’s no stopping them. Just walking on dry land seems to be the problem.

When she’s in the house, she tends to drag herself around using her front legs. Outside, once you get her up and in a straight line, she can break into a somewhat drunken little trot, swaying from side to side.

We had to face the fact that, despite all our efforts, she was only going to deteriorate. When we spotted some dog wheels for sale locally, we snapped them up.

We are determined to keep her independently mobile for as long as possible but need to be prepared for the inevitable. She’s only been in the cart a couple of times, and she was a little confused by it, but we believe when the time comes, she will adapt to her new circumstances and will love the freedom that the cart will give her. It will allow her to run freely, keeping up with the other dogs without falling over. Just the way she used to, only with a little help.

Fruitful

We take our pick…

What an amazing summer it has been weatherwise. We haven’t had so many sun-filled days in all the time we’ve lived at the Croft.

It hasn’t been without its drawbacks though, and the lack of rain has given us some concerns over our water supply. We have our own well, in fact, we have two wells, one connected to the house and the other way out in a field. They have been known to run dry, although not in all the time we’ve lived here. Not only do we need water for ourselves, but there are also sheep and goats to consider, not to mention very thirsty dogs!

The sunshine has also had an amazing effect on our fruit garden. We have gooseberries, cherries and a staggering amount of blackcurrants, the best crop we’ve ever seen. In previous years they barely ripen before they disappear into the beaks of the ever hungry birds that live here year round, but this time, there must be more fruit than they can eat because the bushes are absolutely laden and we are frantically picking and freezing.

There is plenty more to come as well, apples, crab apples, blackberries and blueberries. The blueberries have never managed to ripen before, but we have high hopes this year. And in addition, at the very end of the now-defunct polytunnel, there is a fig tree, sheltering under the remaining polythene and its branches are full of huge juicy looking figs. Perfect for breakfast with our homemade kefir.

We are also lucky to be close to many beautiful beaches, we can choose from pebbles and mysterious caves, or mile-long stretches of golden sands and the dogs have been enjoying both, but only in the very early mornings when it has been cool.

If the weather can just hold out for a little bit longer, we could even bale a decent hay crop!

Walking under water

Daisy takes a gentle stroll, underwater…

This month we’ve been watching the grass grow, literally. The prospective hay is shooting up, and due to the amazing weather, we may actually have a chance of getting a few bales this year. Admittedly it hasn’t been as warm as the rest of the country, and we do tend to get soggy haar in the evenings, but nonetheless, a massive improvement on previous years.

With the grass so long and packed full of buttercups, the dog’s legs have all turned yellow which is very noticeable on Daisy especially when she goes swimming!

Speaking of Daisy, she had her first session on the newly installed underwater treadmill at our local hydro centre. She did amazingly well and seemed quite relaxed about it all. Secretly she would have preferred a swim, but she would never admit that. She pretends she doesn’t enjoy it, but then can’t wait to get in the car, which is a revelation in itself as she has always really disliked car travel.

You can see how she got on here:

We also attended a Pet First Aid course which was incredibly useful and informative and well worth doing.