tips

These four golden rules should be followed during Do As I Do training (or any other training technique one relies upon).Working sessions must be kept SHORT. Each training session must amount to what is a fun game for your dog to be played in your company. If the dog becomes exhausted, his motivation can decrease and he can be less willing to cooperate with what you are trying to accomplish in the next training session. For this reason, it is important to close the training session before the dog becomes tired, when he is still willing to work (i.e., willing to have fun) with you.

Do As I Do Phase One: Learning the imitation rule. The aim of the first phase of the protocol in the following paragraphs is to teach the imitation rule to the dog. This involves the dog learning the cue "Do it!" means "copy the behavior I have just demonstrated" no matter what it is.

There are a host of other things you can do to lower general stress in your dogs’ environment.

Have you ever felt dismayed over the shrinking access for our canine companions? I know that to a large degree we’ve brought it on ourselves by our collective carelessness about proper public and leash-walking etiquette. Teaching your dog how to walk politely on a leash is more just a convenience.  When you can walk in public with your dog following your moves, he's more likely to stay out of trouble. 

You will make mistakes that scare your new dog. You will drop something that makes a loud noise, or perhaps even accidentally falls right on her. You will stumble over your dog.

After dry food or kibble, the next most popular dog foods are the endless variety of treats available at grocery and pet stores – also the biggest moneymakers for the dog food companies. Treats can be dry as in kibble or moist like zucchini bread or carrot cake (I must be hungry!). Treats can also be chewy biscuits stuffed with meaty-wheaty sticks or rawhides. Almost all treats contain a high amount of carbs, preservatives, wheat gluten and beef by-products. Every day several miserable dogs become patients at my clinic after eating some kind of allergenic treat.

GETTING RID OF GOO

Sooner or later, your dog will get chewing gum, tar, tree sap, burrs, or some other sticky or tenacious substance in her fur. To get rid of sticky stuff without cutting the hair, work some vegetable oil into the goo with your fingers. The oil will help break up the goo into smaller pieces, which you can gently pull out of the fur. When you’re done, bathe your dog with a mild dog shampoo to remove the vegetable oil.

Never use paint thinner, turpentine, nail-polish remover, or other solvents to remove messes from your dog’s fur: they are toxic if licked off or absorbed through the skin.  

For answers to all your canine health questions – big and small – buy The Complete Healthy Dog Handbook by Betsy Brevitz, D.V.M from The Whole Dog Journal.

Recently, Dr. Chris Bessent, a Wisconsin-based veterinarian, advised Whole Dog Journal readers to take a proactive approach to joint maintenance and injury prevention by starting when an athletic dog is one to two years old. This is a far-sighted approach that may not be appreciated by most dog owners, especially when they see the price tag on some glucosamine supplements.

Nine years ago, we described a smoky-smelling pink ointment that worked wonders for seriously infected ears: Pellitol. Pellitol contained zinc oxide, calamine, bismuth subgalate, bismuth subnitrate, resorcinol, echinacea fluid extract, and juniper tar. These ingredients are bothdisinfecting and adhesive, so that as the ointment gradually dried and shrank (a process lasting several days), it healed ulcers, dried pus and debris, and reduced bacterial growth. In addition to being effective, this apply-it-and-leave-it approach spared patients the discomfort of repeated ear-cleaning treatments.

Automatic attention is the mother of all behaviors and one of the first things you should teach your dog. There is no point in teaching your dog how to do things if he is going to ignore you when you ask him to do them. If your dog is off in a mentally distant land and you repeatedly call his name, you are just like static in the background to him. The only thing you…

The point of this training session – which should last no longer than five minutes – is to get your dog used to walking on the leash the way you want him to. I recommend that you use a six-foot leash and come prepared with lots of treats.

“I feed my two dogs together, and the smaller one seems to gobble her food without chewing it and then throws it back up a few minutes later. Why does she do this?” She may be worried that if she doesn’t wolf down her food, your other dog will get some of it. This is rational fear, but her coping strategy isn’t ideal. How about feeding your dogs in separate rooms so the little one feels…