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Step-by-Step Training for Your Dog’s Next Vet Visit

By
Pat Miller, CBCC-KA, CPDT-KA
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[Updated August 24, 2018]

There is a gentle breeze of change wafting through the veterinary community, led by noted veterinary behaviorists Dr. Karen Overall and the late Dr. Sophia Yin, and veterinarian Dr. Marty Becker. All three of these veterinarians have long been outspoken advocates for a kindler, gentler approach to handling animals at veterinary clinics, to combat the widespread challenge of dogs (and other animal companions) who become increasingly fearful, difficult to handle, and even seriously aggressive with repeated visits to the animal doctor.

Your dog may be one of the many thousands who went to his first puppy checkup with his tail wagging, happily kissing the face of the tech who lifted him to the table, but has since morphed into a demon-possessed candidate for a remake of the Exorcist. Or perhaps he started out a little fearful and somewhat resistant, and his behavior has deteriorated to the point that you need to take a sedative before making that dreaded trip with him to the vet hospital. Either way, you know things are only going to get worse. There are many vet visits in your dog’s future, even if he stays perfectly healthy and only needs to go in for his annual well-pet checkup.

a happy dog at the veterinary clinic

Do I have some good news for you! Not only is it possible for you to give your dog a happier opinion of all the various veterinary procedures he is likely to face in the coming years, but the aforementioned winds of change make it easier and easier to find a veterinarian whose handling procedures won’t terrify your dog. Plus, the now readily-available materials on modern, gentle veterinary handling techniques, combined with your own strong advocacy for your dog, give you tons of powerful ammunition with which to convince your current veterinarian to join the low-stress handling revolution. That’s a huge plus for all the other dogs she sees, as well as your own dog.

Advocacy

Let’s start with the advocacy piece. That’s easier, because all you need is the fortitude to be willing to stand up for your dog when he needs you the most. Here are some examples of situations where and how you can, and have every right to, intervene on your dog’s behalf:

1. Stay in the Room

Some vets insist that their clients’ difficult dogs are better behaved when the owner isn’t present. They have the tech whisk the dog to a back room where the vet does whatever needs to be done, then return the dog to the owner, claiming the dog was “fine.” While it’s possible that some dogs are calmer when not in the presence of a stressed owner, there are several other explanations for this, none of them acceptable:

A fearful dog may, indeed, shut down when taken away from the owner. While a shut-down dog may be easier for the vet and her staff to handle, it is likely that the dog is becoming more stressed and fearful during the procedure, and will likely be even more stressed (and harder to handle) the next time he needs to be examined, vaccinated, or treated, by the owner as well as the veterinarian.

When the owner is not there to watch, vets and clinic staff may be less inhibited about using significant force to compel the dog to accept the handling. In extreme cases, some veterinarians have even been caught on video hitting dogs and worse, throwing them against a wall in response to their resistance. If you are present, they are likely to at least moderate their use of force.

When the owner is present, not only might the clinic staff feel less free to use forcible restraint methods they “know” will work, they also may have to explain and defend what they are doing, at the risk of upsetting the owner and losing a client.

2. Ask for Sedation

For the dog, not for you – although some owners might benefit from a little medication as well! If your dog resists to the point that your veterinarian feels inclined to use forcible restraint, ask that she use drugs instead. Unless there is a medical reason preventing your dog from being sedated, this is a far easier, less stressful solution for all concerned, both human and canine. Yes, it will cost you a little more, and yes, there is a slight risk, even for a healthy dog, but well worth both, in my eyes.

Please note: Many veterinarians administer acepromazine (“Ace”) as a sedative when clients request medication. Dr. Karen Overall vehemently argues against the use of acepromazine for dogs.

“I know that the common ‘treatment’ for storm and noise phobias and veterinary office visits is acepromazine,” she says. “In truth, I wish this medication would be placed at the far back of a top shelf and used only exceptionally. Acepromazine is a dissociative anesthetic, meaning that it scrambles perceptions. Ask yourself if a scrambling of perceptions will make an anxious or uncertain dog worse or better.”

If your vet agrees to sedate your dog, ask what drug she plans to use. If she suggests “Ace” for your dog, ask her to watch this video of Dr. Overall speaking about the drug. Alternatively, ask her to speak with a veterinary behaviorist to determine what might be the most appropriate drug for your dog for this situation.

3. Intervene as Needed

One of the reasons some vets prefer not to have owners present is that if the dog does continue to resist, they may opt to use restraint methods that many owners would find unacceptable. In the vets’ defense, they have a job to do, and muzzling and forcible restraint enable them to get the job done while ensuring their own safety and the safety of their staff. Unfortunately, it also ensures that your dog’s behavior will likely get worse and worse with each subsequent visit to the vet clinic.

However, most vet office procedures are not urgent, and if your vet explains what she needs to be able to do, you could conceivably go home and put a behavior modification protocol into practice that will, in a reasonable amount of time, enable you to bring your dog back for the next appointment, willing and able to tolerate routine veterinary procedures. Unless your dog is bleeding badly or suffering from some other life-threatening emergency, make clear to your vet that you won’t tolerate the use of force, and ask her to work with you to find alternatives. Be prepared to assertively stop clinic staff from doing anything to your dog that you are not comfortable with.

4. Choose Your Surface

Some dogs do great on the exam table – but even better if you bring a soft, familiar rug or blanket from home to put on it so it’s not so shiny, slippery, or scary. Other dogs do much better on the floor of the exam room. Stress can causes aggression (see “Understanding the Most Common Canine Behavioral Problem – Aggression!,” WDJ October 2010), so if you know that your dog will be less stressed on the floor than on the table, ask your vet to do the exam and procedures on the floor if possible.

5. Feed Treats

If you can keep your dog happy and distracted with super-delicious treats, there is just no good reason not to do so. And fortunately, many more veterinarians are starting to realize that “doing what works” without force just makes sense!

I recently had to take our 12-year-old Cardigan Corgi, Lucy, to our vet for an anal gland exam (excessive licking and scooting). I was a little apprehensive, as Lucy has been clear about her discomfort with vet exams in the past. I was seeing a new vet and had no idea what to expect.

Girding my advocacy loins, I walked Lucy into the exam room, and immediately started feeding treats to “prime” her (get her in a happy frame of mind) for the exam. To my delight, the doctor didn’t suggest they take Lucy to a back room, so I didn’t have to fight that battle. And when I advised him that she had been difficult in the past and would be happier if I fed her while he examined her, he said, “Well then, you just keep right on feeding her.”

vet technicians draw dog's blood

Modifying Vet Exam Behavior

In addition to having a plan, being prepared, and staying positive (as described on pages 10-11), you can set up your dog to succeed by creating very positive associations (classically conditioning) or changing negative associations to positive ones (counter-conditioning) with the various tools and procedures he will likely encounter during his vet visits.

To start, identify procedures and equipment your dog is already uncomfortable with. If your puppy or young dog doesn’t yet have any bad associations, you can still “inoculate” him against stressful vet visits by conditioning him from the start to think all these tools and procedures are wonderful. Your lists might look like this:

Tools:

Stethoscope, otoscope, thermometer, syringe, tooth scaler, nail clippers, etc.

Procedures:

Examining ears, eyes, teeth, and other body parts; having temperature taken; getting a shot; restraint for blood draw; nail trimming, etc.

Tool Protocols

Since the tools your dog finds aversive are used in many of the procedures he also finds aversive, you can start with the tools. Obtain a reasonable facsimile of each tool, and begin your counter-conditioning program. Ideally you will work for 15-20 minutes per session, as many sessions per week as you can fit into your schedule. Remember to subtract calories from his meals to compensate for all the yummy treats he gets!

1. Sit on a chair with your dog in front of you – on leash if you think he will leave. Have a large container of high-value treats on a table next to you. I prefer chicken: baked, broiled, or canned/rinsed/drained. Most dogs love chicken, and it’s low fat/low calorie – healthier for them than some other high-value treats. Have a handful of chicken in one hand hidden behind your back, and one of the tools (let’s say the syringe) in the other, also out of sight.
2. Hold up the syringe, close to your chest. As soon as he sees it, bring out the chicken and give him a nibble. Then hide both hands behind your back.
3. Repeat Step 2 until, when you hold up the syringe, he glances at it and immediately looks toward the other hand for the chicken. This is a “conditioned emotional response” (CER) and it tells you that he is starting to happily associate the syringe with receiving chicken!
4. When he looks for the chicken each time you hold up the syringe, move the syringe a little closer to him with the next presentation. Work at each new increment until you have a consistent CER, then move it a little closer.
5. When he is comfortable with the syringe touching him, touch it to his fur in various places over his body, again establishing a CER at each new location before moving on to another.
6. Do this with each tool, until he is happy to have you touch him all over with each of the tools. Then bring in someone new – ideally someone who resembles your vet! Start over at Step 1, with the new person holding the tool and you doing the feeding, until he is delighted to have anyone touch him with the various tools.

Procedure Protocols

As you did with the Tool Protocols, you will start with tiny steps toward your goal of having your dog love all of his veterinary procedures. We will use “examining his ears” as our example.

Again, you will ideally work for 15-20 minutes per session, as many sessions per week as you can fit into your schedule. You can do this while you are working on your Tool Protocols ( for example, Tool Protocol in the morning, Procedure Protocol in the evening).

1. Determine where in the procedure your dog begins to be mildly uncomfortable. If you can touch or scratch his shoulder but he gets tense if you touch his ear, start with touching his shoulder and work up from there.
2. Sit on a chair with your dog in front of you. Have a large container of high-value treats on a table next to you. Put both hands behind your back, one holding a handful of chicken.
3. Touch him on his shoulder with your empty hand. As soon as you touch him, bring out the chicken and feed him a bit, then put both hands behind your back.
4. Repeat Step 2 until, when you touch him on the shoulder, he immediately looks toward the other hand for the chicken. This is a “conditioned emotional response” (CER) and it tells you that he is starting to make the happy association: “Touch makes chicken happen!”
5. When he looks for the chicken consistently, each time you touch his shoulder, start working your way up to his neck, then his ear, working at each new increment until you have a consistent CER, then moving a little higher.
6. When he is comfortable with you touching his ears, be a little more invasive, touching the inside of his ear, then moving your finger (or a cotton ball) deeper into his ear canal. Remember to establish a consistent CER at each new location before moving on.
7. Do this with a different procedure, until he is happy to have you replicate each of the identified procedures. If the procedure involves a tool, repeat the process with the tool in your hand, after he has been conditioned to love the tool, and after he’s comfortable with you going through the motions of the procedure without the tool in your hand.
8. Finally, bring in someone new, and start over at Step 1, with the new person mimicking the procedure and you doing the feeding, until he is delighted to have anyone performing the various procedures.

(Note: For details on modifying your dog’s response to nail-trimming procedures, see “Force-Free Nail Trimming Techniques for Your Dog,” August 2012.)

A Lot of Work

This may sound like a lot of work. The good news is that dogs can generalize these conditioning protocols, so as you move from one tool to the next, or one procedure to the next, your dog is likely to catch on more quickly with each subsequent one. In the meantime, you can also give your dog a positive classical association with your vet clinic by dropping in whenever you get the chance, and sitting with him in the waiting room or the exam room, feeding him some chicken, and then leaving, without having anything “bad” happen. It may take some work, but it will be well worth it when you walk into your vet clinic with your relaxed dog happily trotting by your side, eager to see the nice veterinarian and be poked and prodded, yummy treats happening all the while.

Pat Miller, CBCC-KA, CPDT-KA, is WDJ’s Training Editor. She lives in Fairplay, Maryland, site of her Peaceable Paws training center, where she offers dog-training classes and courses for trainers. 

Low-Stress Dog Handling

By
Nancy Kerns
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Dr. Karen L. Overall received her BA, MA, and VMD degrees from the University of Pennsylvania, and her PhD from the University of Wisconsin at Madison. She completed her residency in behavioral medicine at the University of Pennsylvania, is a Diplomate of the American College of Veterinary Behavior (ACVB) and is board certified by the Animal Behavior Society (ABS) as an Applied Animal Behaviorist. A faculty member at the University of Pennsylvania, she has given hundreds of national and international presentations on behavioral medicine. Dr. Overall is an outspoken, high-profile advocate for force-free training and handling methods.

From Dr. Overall’s book, The Manual of Clinical Behavior Medicine:

“If we want patients to be partners in their care, we want their experiences to be as positive as possible. We should err on the side of minimizing any potential distress because it is cheap and easy to do and may have a huge benefit for us (and our patients).”

“All puppies should be conditioned to be handled in ways that foster preventive veterinary care and facilitate veterinary examination.”

From a video interview on veterinarynews.dvm360.com:

“If we see a puppy who, you go to examine and three people are now having to hold him down – Stop! You’re done! It’s over! He’s already past the limit . . . Everything you do is going to make this worse.”

“We subject these animals to these manipulations that they find scary, and people don’t realize that we may be doing irreversible harm. We certainly are doing needless harm.”

Dr. Sophia Yin was a veterinarian, animal behaviorist, author, and international expert on low-stress handling. Her “pet-friendly” techniques for animal handling and behavior modification helped to shape the new standard of care for veterinarians and pet care professionals. She served on the executive board for the American Veterinary Society of Animal Behavior, the American Association of Feline Practitioners (AAFP) Handling Guidelines Committee, and the American Humane Association (AHA) Animal Behavior and Training Advisory Committee. She also created multiple educational DVDs that addressed animal care, handling, and training. Dr. Yin died in 2014, but her legacy lives on as the veterinary community increasingly moves toward low-stress handling practices.

Dr. Sophia Yin

From Dr. Yin’s book, Low Stress Handling, Restraint and Behavior Modification of Dogs & Cats:

“Besides creating a situation where animal caregivers could get injured, handling animals poorly or roughly can have even more serious implications. By handling animals in such a manner, veterinarians could be breaking the promise to ‘do no harm’ on a daily basis. Restraining pets in a forceful or crude manner can make pets behaviorally worse to the point where they can no longer receive veterinary care. It can even precipitate events that lead to heightened aggression at home and, ultimately, to euthanasia.”

“Why not use force if the animal just appears to be unruly? Because there are smarter ways.”

3 Steps to the Perfect Vet Visit for Your Dog (and You)

By
Tiffany Lovell, CPDT-KA, CSAT, AAI
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[Updated August 24, 2018]

Making a grand entrance is something celebrities enjoy. There is a time and a place for this, however, and entering a veterinary clinic with your dog is not it! Unfortunately, a grandly bad entrance into vet clinics is very common, with dogs pulling and lunging at the end of tight leashes, perhaps barking or growling at the other dogs already present in the waiting area, while their people are hard-pressed to simultaneously control them, check in with the front-counter staff, and find a place to sit.

Does this sound familiar? Does it describe you and your dog? You may find some relief in knowing that you’re not alone. But it absolutely does not have to be this way! Here are some simple tips to help you and your dog enter a veterinary clinic with ease.

flexi dog leash and cell phone at door

1. Have a Plan.

Thinking about and planning for every aspect of your and your dog’s vet visit can lower stress for you and your dog. Things to consider:

  • Your appointment time. If your dog becomes stressed and hard to manage around other dogs, schedule your appointment for the first thing in the morning or the first appointment after lunch. This way you are less likely to encounter an entire lobby full of dogs.

man and dog entering vet clinic

  • Transporting your dog. While riding in a crate is the safest option for most dogs, car safety harnesses provide another good option. The two most important things to consider are your dog’s safety and stress level. Each dog is an individual and it is up to you to choose the safest and least stressful means of transporting your dog in your car. If your dog becomes nervous during car rides, please consider consulting a professional behavior consultant for ways to help him become more comfortable and even love riding in a car.

  • Enough time for travel, potential delays, and pre-entrance pottying. Getting stressed (or yelling or swearing) about traffic delays or detours is a great way to make your dog tense and anxious before you even arrive. Give yourself more than enough time to arrive early for your appointment. Get yourself organized, get out of the car in a relaxed fashion, and allow your dog to walk around and even urinate if there is a safe space for this. Your dog will be far more relaxed inside if she has an empty bladder!

  • The parking situation. If your dog is not used to traffic, parking near a busy road may add to her stress. If possible, choose a more secluded parking spot.

  • Payment method. While this may not seem to fit in the category of “entering a vet clinic,” it’s important to consider ahead of time. After the doctor has completed his exam, you and your dog will be ushered to a checkout area. Considering what your dog may have experienced during the visit, she may be ready to leave and relentlessly pull toward the exit door. Why then, do we humans tend to make this one of the longest portions of the visit? “Hmm, should I pay with a check? No, maybe a credit card . . . but, which one? Do you take Discover?” Plan ahead by asking for an estimate of services (and which credit cards they accept) when you make the appointment, and have that card, or cash, or a partially filled-out check at the ready. In addition, it can be helpful to excuse yourself and your dog from the building immediately following the exam. Allow your dog to urinate and then place him/her safely in your properly ventilated car while you return to pay. (Please do this only if you know your dog can remain in your car for a few minutes safely and with minimal stress.)

2. Be Prepared to handle your dog thoughtfully throughout the visit.

Ensure that you have everything you and your dog will need to be successful.

  • Bring reinforcements. How will you communicate with your dog and let her know when she’s doing the right thing? Bring high value food or treats to reinforce your dog’s good behavior – unless you have been specifically instructed not to feed your dog due to a pending surgery or procedure. (In this case, bring a couple of your dog’s favorite toys!) A visit to the vet is a stressful experience for your dog and she will need lots of feedback from you about what she is doing right. Reinforcing good behavior with things she enjoys will increase those good behaviors in this and other settings.

  • Bring the right collar and leash. How will you keep your dog safe and close to you? Never use a retractable leash when taking your dog to the vet (we recommend never using them at all, but that’s another article). It’s harder to control a dog on a retractable leash, especially if you need to quickly pull your dog toward you and away from, say, another dog in the waiting area who suddenly erupts aggressively. Bring your dog to the vet wearing a flat buckle collar (or limited-slip or martingale collar) and/or a properly fitted harness, attached with a 4-6 foot leash. Keeping a short leash will help your dog close to you and focused on you.

  • If you are seeing a new vet or a specialist, bring your dog’s previous health records. This will guarantee that your dog will receive exactly what is needed for her health and what is required by your state law. This will also help your appointment run more smoothly and efficiently, which makes certain that your dog spends as little time in the exam room as necessary. These are all good things when trying to eliminate as much stress as possible for both of you.

3. Stay Positive to condition your dog to love going to the vet.

How do you like to be treated by others when you are worried and anxious? I’ll bet you respond much better to a kind word or a gentle touch than being ordered around by cranky healthcare workers or neglected by absent-minded ones. Keep this in mind while entering the clinic with your dog and it will help immensely!

Also, consider this: As soon as you walk into that lobby together, you become the only familiar piece in a very uncertain and scary puzzle for your dog. She will need you for comfort and reassurance. Be kind in your words and actions. Raising your voice, scolding, leash jerking, and forceful handling are all unnecessary and extremely counterproductive when communicating with our dogs – especially during a heightened time of stress and anxiety.

Will your dog follow your cues? Enter the building with a smile and confidence that this will be a good visit. Watch your dog and reinforce her when she focuses on you. Be present with her to show her that this is a positive experience and she will be just fine.

using credit card at vet clinic

What if you mess up? If your dog jumps on another client or whines during your wait in the lobby, simply consider it information and make a mental note to work on that behavior through training. In the moment, redirect your dog and give her something appropriate to do – and then reinforce her for doing it. Stay positive and know that this is a process. If you aren’t sure where to start with your dog’s unwanted behavior at the veterinary clinic, contact a certified and trained professional who can assist you with your specific needs.

By following these simple steps you are well on your way to creating a more pleasant and productive experience in your vet’s office.

First Pet Professional Guild Conference

By
Nancy Kerns
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Last week, I flew to Tampa, Florida, and attended the first-ever educational conference of a relatively new organization, the Pet Professional Guild, “The association for force-free pet professionals.” PPG is a membership organization “representing pet industry professionals who are committed to results-based, science-based, force-free training and pet care.” The members are mostly dog trainers, as well as behavior-savvy vet techs, dog walkers, pet sitters, and groomers.

What a joy to be in the company of so many people who are committed to training and handling dogs without force – and who have learned, and want to share, and want to keep learning even more innovative ways to train and handle our animal companions. The number of people who now train dogs with only force- and pain-free methods has absolutely gone through the roof, and they are using increasingly creative methods for teaching dogs to behave in the ways that make their owners happy, and changing the behaviors that make owners unhappy.

I’m 52. So it’s still weird for me to meet fully formed adults who don’t remember a time when mobile phones weren’t in common use. Similarly, it’s strange – and thrilling, too – to meet talented, passionate, articulate, creative adult dog trainers who have never trained a dog with force-based methods, who have never known a world where jerking on choke chains was absolutely the normal, accepted way to train dogs. That’s the world I grew up in. In fact, many trainers my age, older, and even many of those in their late thirties and forties, are likely to refer to themselves as “crossover trainers” – people who, early in their careers, trained dogs with the accepted pain-causing methods and tools of their day, and have since learned methods that don’t hurt or scare dogs, methods that preserve the trust and confidence of their canine and human pupils. But these young trainers “came up” in a time when positive reinforcement-based training is the “new normal,” and they’ve done nothing but improved on what they learned as a first language, so to speak. I was riveted by the presentations of young trainers Chirag Patel, who trains in the United Kingdom (his business is called Domesticated Manners), and Emily Larlham, who lives in San Diego (Dogmantics). Both were kind, compassionate, gifted dog handlers with useful, fun techniques, and I hope to share some of their ideas and work with WDJ’s readers, soon.

There were two people at the conference who have been contributing articles to Whole Dog Journal, with whom I have been corresponding by email and occasional phone calls, but whom I hadn’t yet actually met face to face. Nancy Tucker is a trainer who lives in Sherbrooke, Quebec, who has written articles for us about preventing dogs from “begging” for food, door-reactivity, and the many uses of teaching a dog to “find it!” It was a delight to finally meet her and compare our impressions of the various presentations we both saw.

I also got to meet Lisa Lyle Waggoner, a trainer from North Carolina who has written a number of articles for us in the past year or so, including pieces on dock-diving, standup paddleboarding, and “rocket recalls.” Lisa’s husband Brad Waggoner is also a trainer, and they operate their training business, Cold Nose College, together.

They were also presenters at the conference, as was Nancy Tucker, and wouldn’t you know it: their talks were on the exact same day at the exact same time. Argh! I sat in on half of each of their presentations and enjoyed them both.

Our Training Editor, Pat Miller, was also a presenter at the conference. It was a joy to both hang out with her a little bit and do some planning for WDJ’s topics in 2016, as well as to sit in on one of her presentations (she was scheduled to repeat the talk / “lab” session several times) on a training method she wrote about for WDJ in October 2013. An Italian trainer, Claudia Fugazza, pioneered the method that she calls “Do As I Do,” where you effectively teach the dog to watch you (on cue) and then imitate (as closely as a dog with very different anatomy from a human’s) the behavior he observed. Pat has been offering two-day workshops on the method at her Maryland-based training facility, Peaceable Paws, for some time. Somehow, she managed to show several roomfuls of trainers how the method works in just a few hours. Some of the dogs and owners who were “lab” participants were already getting results with the method, to the delight of those of us who were in the workshops without dogs. Imagine that for a second: A crowd of training enthusiasts having a blast watch other people train their dogs in a novel, brand-new way, and breaking out in spontaneous applause when the dogs “got it.”

Okay, maybe that’s not for everyone. But I had sucha great time – and look forward to bringing you lots of new articles based on things I learned about and from people I met at the conference. 

 

Highway Dog Rescue

By
Nancy Kerns
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I’ve read articles about people who got hit by a car and killed while trying to help a wounded or simply frightened animal on the highway. I’ve warned people against doing this – stopping their cars and getting out on a freeway to try to capture a panicked dog. And yet, when a scared dog is running in front of YOUR car, how do you not stop and try to help?

I was heading down the main street of my town, maybe 100 yards from the highway on-ramp, when I spotted a fluffy little dog running down the sidewalk. At first, I looked around for a person jogging or on a bike. The dog was running so swiftly, I thought he was tailing his owner, who I just hadn’t happened to see yet. But I didn’t see anyone. I put my flashers on, and looked next for a place to pull over.

As I did so, though, the car that was two cars in front of me – and ahead of the running dog – turned right onto the on-ramp, in front of the dog, cutting him off from his straight-ahead dash. And, even as I screamed from inside my car, “NOOOO!!” the dog turned right, also, and started running up the on-ramp. And the car immediately in front of me slowed and followed – effectively pushing the dog up the on-ramp onto the highway. My heart started pounding and I broke into a sweat, certain that I was about to witness a dog getting killed in front of my eyes. I followed at a distance, my mind racing, trying to figure out if there was any way I could get past the dog to press him back off the highway. It seemed impossible.

But a miracle happened.

The two cars who had pushed the dog onto the highway quickly merged into traffic and were gone. But the driver of a pickup truck (which had to slow down to allow the bad drivers to merge) spotted the dog, gunned past the dog, put his flashers on, stopped his car in the right lane of the two-lane highway, and jumped out. He started running toward the oncoming cars, and the oncoming dog. Holy moly.

The section of four-lane highway just past the on-ramp is a high bridge that crosses a river, and the sides of the bridge and its center median are solid concrete. The driver of the truck had stopped just before the end of the bridge. The dog was, for a half minute, trapped on the bridge, in a two-lane section. I saw a chance.

Several cars on the highway swerved into the left lane to go around the stopped pickup. I gunned my car into the left lane, my flashers still going, and tapped my brakes wildly, stopping the cars behind me. Traffic halted behind and next to me – just as the dog, frightened by the guy who stopped ahead, ran back into the oncoming – but stopped – traffic past me.  Given that all the traffic was stopped, I jumped out of my car and ran back down the freeway, looking for the dog – and so did a dozen or so other people! Terrified, he ran under another big pickup truck, and as I was running in that direction, I saw several people dive under the truck, and one guy emerge with the squirming little dog completely wrapped in a coat. 

I’m a crier, so of course by this time I had tears running down my face. That’s probably why the guy who was holding the coat-covered dog asked me as I ran up, “Is this your dog?” I said, “No! But I can take him to the shelter!” This was happening really fast, because even as we were having this very brief exchange, people were getting back into their cars and starting to drive around the other stopped cars. The guy hastily handed me the dog, and said, “Cool, have a nice day!”

I started running with the bundle of squirming dog back to my car, even as I was saying out loud to myself, “But what about your coat?!” As I ran, I realized that another guy was running alongside me, grinning; it was the guy who stopped the right lane of traffic. “Good job!” I yelled to him, jumping into my car and nearly throwing the bundle of coat and dog onto my passenger seat.

It was only as I got off at the next exit, so I could turn around and head back to my town’s shelter, that I started shaking.

As I write this, two days later, the collar-less, microchip-less, matted little dog is still at my local shelter, as is the coat that was used to capture and scoop him up. But he’s safe now, no longer terrified and bolting, and will get another chance – if not in his last home, I hope in a more secure and responsible one.

Thank goodness for the goodness of all of you who stopped and saved the life of a little dog. None of us could have done it without the others.

Signs That You Love Dogs

By
Nancy Kerns
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I was driving the other day and saw a car with a personalized license plate proclaiming their love for “K9S”. I love seeing dog-related personalized license plates, but I never thought to take pictures of them and “collect” them before – and I don’t know why! (I think we should use the WDJ Facebook page to make a collection of them! If you have a dog-themed license plate, post a photo!)

When I saw this car in a parking lot, I laughed out loud in recognition: Here’s another person who loves dogs – and whose dog loves them, apparently. I bought a new car in 2014, and the very first scratches its paint received were from my grand-dog, Cole, who jumped up to greet me (after I parked and my son came out of his house with Cole to help me carry stuff into the house). I love my car, but I still smile when I think of Cole’s happy greetings.

Perhaps no dog owner’s car is without these, though – a sure sign that your dogs accompany you. 

What signs of dog-love do you recognize in the parking lot or on the highway?

Fat, Not Fair to the Dog

By
Nancy Kerns
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I was walking Otto the other day when his head and tail went up and he gave a little whine – one that usually indicates that he’s spotted a dog in the yard we are about to walk past. In our town, there are lots of dogs that are lying on porches or under trees in fenced yards, and when you walk by with your dog, they come flying toward the fence: some barking hysterically, some staying silent until the last terrifying moment when they hit the fence and let out a roar. Otto is as good as any dog I’ve ever seen about holding our course in the face of these dramatic approaches; he neither runs nor retaliates nor attempts to fight through the fence, but he usually will let out a whine of anxiety or excitement, prance a little, and (occasionally) will stop and lift a leg on the fence, and sometimes the very nose of the offending dog on the other side of the fence!

For whatever reason, the majority of front-yard fences in our town are low, just over three feet tall, so it’s always worth a good look at the onrushing dog and the fence: Does he look like he could leap over, or wants to? (A few years ago, a dog leaped over one of these very low fences not a mile from where I live and attached himself to a mailman’s neck, taking the poor guy to the ground. Surgery was required for the mailman; the dog didn’t survive the investigation.)

On this day, however, a quick glance told me we had nothing to fear from this dog – the most obese dog I’ve ever seen in person. The dog was lying down – and indeed, looking like this is the dog’s default position. I’ve seen photos of dogs who are fatter, but never one like this in the (abundant) flesh. So fat, I wonder if he (she?) can get up without assistance.

Just like 600-pound humans, this dog could not have gotten this obese without some help from some very co-dependent (if loving) people. It “might” be a medical issue  – the old “glandular problem” – but given that dogs can’t feed themselves, it’s more likely an issue with an enabling human. But it’s not much of a life for the poor dog; it’s got to be uncomfortable, if not downright painful, to be this heavy. The strain on the dog’s circulatory system must be considerable, and on his/her joints? Tremendous.

Few of us who have overweight dogs would allow our companions to get that freakishly fat, but the sight of the nearly immobile dog was certainly enough to make me take another look at my middle-aged pooch, and decide to take another sliver off of his portions. Going into your dog’s senior years, you really want him or her to be on the thin side, for greater longevity and mobility. 

2015 Approved Canned Dog Foods: Whole Dog Journal’s Annual Ratings

By
Nancy Kerns
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0

How many of you feed canned food to your dog every day? Or maybe I should ask, how many of you feed only canned food to your dog every day?

While we’d like our annual canned dog food review to be of use to owners who feed any amount of canned food to their dogs, it should be most relevant to people who rely solely on canned products to provide “complete and balanced nutrition” to their dogs, without much supplementation from any other type of food. Why? Because the more we question pet food companies about what’s in their food, the less confident we become about whether they even know.

When we review dog foods, we generally ask the companies that make the foods that meet our selection criteria for a good food some additional questions. This year, we asked this: “Do you have a complete nutrient analysis for each of your products, and, if so, do you make it available upon request or is this information on your website?” We were very unhappy with most of the answers.

quality canned dog food

Most pet foods on the market – including all the ones we recommend – are what’s called “complete and balanced.” This means they have met the standards of the pet food regulators in this country for a diet that is formulated to provide everything a dog needs to survive and (one hopes) thrive. But when we asked the makers of “complete and balanced” dog foods whether they have lab tests that show how much of each nutrient required by dogs is typically present in each of their formulas, very few of them had this information readily available!

Got that? “Feed our food, it contains everything your dog needs . . . but we can’t (or won’t) tell you exactly how much of each required nutrient it contains.”

We’ve charted the answers we got to our survey on page five of our November 2015 issue. The food companies appear in order of how good we feel about their responses.

  • At the top of the chart are the two companies we surveyed that post the complete nutrient analyses for all of their products on their websites. We admire and respect the professionalism and transparency.
  • Next are the companies that claimed to make their complete nutrient analyses available to consumers upon request, and who were able to follow up this claim by providing some samples of these analyses to us (some in a more timely manner than others). It became apparent that some of them ordered some analyses from their labs just to provide them to us – sweet, but in our opinion, these are something they should have in hand anyway.
  • At the end are the companies that answered our survey by saying, straight up, that they do not make their nutrient analyses available to consumers. While we’d far prefer for a company in the business of making food to openly share information about the nutrients contained in their products, we have a measure of respect for the ones that were straightforward about this and had reasons for their policy. Each of the companies in this category claimed that, if need be, they could get whatever specific information about their food was needed to a consumer whose dog had a health problem and whose veterinarian needed the nutrient data. Let’s hope this is true.

Whether this is justified or not, we were more disappointed with the companies that answered our survey by saying blithely that they do make these analyses available to consumers upon request – but then, when asked to provide a couple of these analyses to us in order to verify their claim, couldn’t or wouldn’t produce the analyses. In some cases, we were left convinced that if they ever had the information, it certainly wasn’t available to the pet food company employees tasked with answering questions from us – or consumers – about specific nutrient levels in their products.

In a few cases, we found ourselves explaining to the pet food company employees who answered the phone (or email) exactly what a “complete nutrient analysis” is. This happened several times; in each case it was after the person sent us either a link to a web page or emailed us a document that contained guaranteed analyses for their products, as if they didn’t know the difference!

More Information is Always Better

In case you don’t know the difference – as every pet food company employee should – the “guaranteed analysis” is that little box that appears (by federal law) on every pet food label and contains (at least) four things: the minimum amount of crude protein and crude fat in the food, and the maximum amount of fiber and moisture in the food. If pet food companies want to, they can put more nutrients in the guaranteed analysis (GA) box, but only those four macronutrients (protein, fat, fiber, moisture) are required there.

Whether the pet food company puts just the four required nutrients in the GA or lists a lot of nutrients, a nutrient’s presence in the box means that the pet food company is literally guaranteeing that those nutrients are present in those amounts. The information in a GA is subject to surveillance and enforcement; feed control officials in each state have the authority to run tests on the food and stop its sale (in that state) if anything in the GA is not accurate.

Keep in mind that pet food companies are not required to list any other nutrient amounts on their labels; only protein, fat, fiber, and water are considered to be useful for consumers to know in order to compare products and to judge which might be best for their dogs. But even though the amounts of vitamins and minerals present in “complete and balanced” foods may vary widely, you’d never know this from reading the label. As long as the foods met one of the two standards for a “complete and balanced diet,” they get to have that statement on their label, causing almost everyone to consider them as equivalent and interchangeable, even though they are far more variable than that.

There are many good reasons to investigate the “actual” or “typical” nutrient levels in your dog’s food, especially if he has any sort of health condition that can be affected by high or low levels of some nutrient, such as copper storage disease or anemia.

Some foods may contain very high levels of some nutrient or another – or, as is often the case if extremely high-fat foods, if the nutrients are reported on a caloric basis (corrected for energy density), they may actually fail to reach the minimum levels of many nutrients called for in the Canine Nutrient Guidelines from the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO). This latter reason is why we also asked the companies for nutrient analyses “by calories” – in very high-fat foods, this may reveal nutrient levels that are below the AAFCO minimums.

Highly motivated owners can request complete nutrient analyses from the pet food companies – and avoid the companies that can’t deliver these.

The next step would be to compare the results received with the AAFCO nutrient guidelines (they can be found online). The next hurdle would be converting the “as fed” numbers that most companies report with AAFCO’s “dry matter” numbers – not exactly rocket science, but it helps to know your way around a calculator.

We will discuss how to do this in an upcoming issue; our dry food review appears in the February issue and we’d love to help you reach competence at this task (if you are interested) by then.

Earning the “Complete and Balanced” Title

Consumers should be aware that foods that have earned the appellation of “complete and balanced” via the “feeding trials” qualification – considered by many as the “gold standard” for achieving this status – may have a number of nutrient levels that don’t meet the AAFCO Canine Nutrient Guidelines.

Yes, it’s true: Foods that have passed a six-month feeding trial might not meet the AAFCO minimums, because they have “proven” their nutritional adequacy by keeping a population of test dogs alive for a whole six months! In our opinion, it’s even more important to take a look at the complete nutrient analysis of a food that has met the “feeding trial” standard than a food that has met the “nutrient levels” standard.

We’ve discussed this many times in WDJ, but for the sake of our newer readers, let’s review how a pet food may earn the privilege of putting a notice on the label that alleges that the product provides “complete and balanced” nutrition for dogs.

There are two main ways that a food can qualify for this legally defined designation. We will call the first one “feeding trials” for short, and the second one “nutrient levels.”

√ Feeding trials: Look long and hard at the cans of dog food in your pantry; if you look hard enough (get out the reading glasses!) you will find a statement that references either “feeding trials” or “nutrient levels.” Feeding trials are just that: The food under study is fed to a population of dogs for a set period of time, and most (not all) of the dogs have to survive in reasonably good health. These trials are costly, but big companies, with deep pockets and a decades-long history and plan for the future, may spend a ton of money and a good bit of time putting their food to the test in feeding trials.

√ Nutrient level: If the company is smaller, new, or its plans more modest, it will likely try the second method for proving its products’ nutritional adequacy: the nutrient levels qualification. Essentially, this means the food is tested, all the nutrients in it are tallied, and the results are compared to a table of nutrient values that is accepted as “what dogs need” by pet food regulators in this country (there are other, slightly different tables of nutrient values used by pet food regulators in other countries).

This standard isn’t perfect, either. A food may contain all the nutrients it’s supposed to have, and yet be highly unpalatable – and if dogs won’t eat it, they certainly can’t benefit from it. Or, it may be palatable, but indigestible! Just because a dog eats it, doesn’t mean he can utilize all the nutrients in it.

In the best of all possible worlds, a food would qualify by a feeding trial and by meeting the AAFCO canine nutrient levels. But this is not a current regulatory requirement!

Make sure when you look for the statement of nutritional adequacy, you notice whether it references “adult maintenance” or “dogs of all life stages.” If the label references “dogs of all life stages” it is formulated to meet the higher nutrient levels required by puppies and pregnant or nursing moms.

2015 List

Below is our list of selection criteria – hallmarks of quality – that we use to identify products we would consider feeding to our dogs. We also list disqualifiers – traits that eliminate products from our consideration. You can use these criteria to analyze the ingredients list on the label of any food you’re considering feeding to your dog.

Starting on the facing page, we’ve listed brief descriptions of some companies that make foods that meet our selection criteria. These are listed alphabetically by the name of the company, not in any sort of rank order.

All of the foods you see on our list of approved foods are good – way better than what you’d typically find in discount or grocery stores. But it’s indisputable that some are better than others on the list. We like to give readers a range, because the availability of some of these foods is so limited in some markets and rural areas, and because some of these foods are wildly expensive – far beyond the means of many pet owners to feed on a daily basis – we’ve also included some that are more modestly priced.

If you don’t see the name of a food you’d expect to see on our approved foods list, make sure you are looking it up by the name of the company, which may be different from the name of the food. Also, check the list of companies (above) that wouldn’t disclose their manufacturing sites or who chose not to respond to our survey this year; those companies make some nice foods, but their lack of disclosure makes us uneasy.

Depending where you live, the foods on our “approved foods” list may be difficult to find; most are sold in independent pet supply stores, or high-quality “pet specialty chain stores.” Don’t forget that these foods are going to be far more expensive than any “grocery store” foods you may find; quality ingredients really do cost more than low-cost fillers like wheat gluten and animal by-products.

Behind Our Ratings: Whole Dog Journal’s 2015 Approved Canned Dog Foods

By
Nancy Kerns
-
0

When we review dog foods, we generally ask the makers of those that meet our selection criteria some questions. This year, we asked this: “Do you have a complete nutrient analysis for each of your products? And if so, do you make it available upon request or is this information on your website?”

To be honest, we were very unhappy with most of the answers.

quality canned dog food

Most pet foods on the market – including all the ones we recommend – are what’s called “complete and balanced.” This means they have met the standards of the pet food regulators in this country for a diet that is formulated to provide everything a dog needs to survive and (one hopes) thrive.

But when we asked the makers of “complete and balanced” dog foods whether they have lab tests that show how much of each nutrient required by dogs is typically present in each of their formulas, very few of them had this information readily available!

Got that? “Feed our food, it contains everything your dog needs. . . but we can’t (or won’t) tell you exactly how much of each required nutrient it contains.”

We’ve charted the answers we got to our survey on page five of our November 2015 issue. The food companies appear in order of how good we feel about their responses.

  • At the top of the chart are the two companies we surveyed that post the complete nutrient analyses for all of their products on their websites. We admire and respect the professionalism and transparency.
  • Next are the companies that claimed to make their complete nutrient analyses available to consumers upon request, and who were able to follow up this claim by providing some samples of these analyses to us (some in a more timely manner than others). It became apparent that some of them ordered some analyses from their labs just to provide them to us – sweet, but in our opinion, these are something they should have in hand anyway.
  • Next are the companies that answered our survey by saying, straight up, that they do not make their nutrient analyses available to consumers. While we’d far prefer for a company in the business of making food to openly share information about the nutrients contained in their products, we have a measure of respect for the ones that were straightforward about this and had reasons for their policy. Each of the companies in this category claimed that, if need be, they could get whatever specific information about their food was needed to a consumer whose dog had a health problem and whose veterinarian needed the nutrient data. Let’s hope this is true.

Whether this is justified or not, we were more disappointed with the companies that answered our survey by saying blithely that they do make these analyses available to consumers upon request – but then, when asked to provide a couple of these analyses to us in order to verify their claim, couldn’t or wouldn’t produce the analyses. In some cases, we were left convinced that if they ever had the information, it certainly wasn’t available to the pet food company employees tasked with answering questions from us – or consumers – about specific nutrient levels in their products.

In a few cases, we found ourselves explaining to the pet food company employees who answered the phone (or email) exactly what a “complete nutrient analysis” is. This happened several times; in each case it was after the person sent us either a link to a web page or emailed us a document that contained guaranteed analyses for their products, as if they didn’t know the difference!

More Dog Food Information is Always Better

In case you don’t know the difference – as every pet food company employee should – the “guaranteed analysis” is that little box that appears (by federal law) on every pet food label and contains (at least) four things: the minimum amount of crude protein and crude fat in the food, and the maximum amount of fiber and moisture in the food. If pet food companies want to, they can put more nutrients in the guaranteed analysis (GA) box, but only those four macronutrients (protein, fat, fiber, moisture) are required there.

Whether the pet food company puts just the four required nutrients in the GA or lists a lot of nutrients, a nutrient’s presence in the box means that the pet food company is literally guaranteeing that those nutrients are present in those amounts. The information in a GA is subject to surveillance and enforcement; feed control officials in each state have the authority to run tests on the food and stop its sale (in that state) if anything in the GA is not accurate.

Keep in mind that pet food companies are not required to list any other nutrient amounts on their labels; only protein, fat, fiber, and water are considered to be useful for consumers to know in order to compare products and to judge which might be best for their dogs. But even though the amounts of vitamins and minerals present in “complete and balanced” foods may vary widely, you’d never know this from reading the label. As long as the foods met one of the two standards for a “complete and balanced diet,” they get to have that statement on their label, causing almost everyone to consider them as equivalent and interchangeable, even though they are far more variable than that.

There are many good reasons to investigate the “actual” or “typical” nutrient levels in your dog’s food, especially if he has any sort of health condition that can be affected by high or low levels of some nutrient, such as copper storage disease or anemia.

Some foods may contain very high levels of some nutrient or another – or, as is often the case if extremely high-fat foods, if the nutrients are reported on a caloric basis (corrected for energy density), they may actually fail to reach the minimum levels of many nutrients called for in the Canine Nutrient Guidelines from the Association of American Feed Control Officials (AAFCO). This latter reason is why we also asked the companies for nutrient analyses “by calories” – in very high-fat foods, this may reveal nutrient levels that are below the AAFCO minimums.

Highly motivated owners can request complete nutrient analyses from the pet food companies – and avoid the companies that can’t deliver these.

The next step would be to compare the results received with the AAFCO nutrient guidelines (they can be found online). The next hurdle would be converting the “as fed” numbers that most companies report with AAFCO’s “dry matter” numbers – not exactly rocket science, but it helps to know your way around a calculator.

We will discuss how to do this in an upcoming issue; our dry food review appears in the February issue and we’d love to help you reach competence at this task (if you are interested) by then.

Earning the “Complete and Balanced” Title

Consumers should be aware that foods that have earned the appellation of “complete and balanced” via the “feeding trials” qualification – considered by many as the “gold standard” for achieving this status – may have a number of nutrient levels that don’t meet the AAFCO Canine Nutrient Guidelines.

Yes, it’s true: Foods that have passed a six-month feeding trial might not meet the AAFCO minimums, because they have “proven” their nutritional adequacy by keeping a population of test dogs alive for a whole six months! In our opinion, it’s even more important to take a look at the complete nutrient analysis of a food that has met the “feeding trial” standard than a food that has met the “nutrient levels” standard.

We’ve discussed this many times in WDJ, but for the sake of our newer readers, let’s review how a pet food may earn the privilege of putting a notice on the label that alleges that the product provides “complete and balanced” nutrition for dogs.

There are two main ways that a food can qualify for this legally defined designation. We will call the first one “feeding trials” for short, and the second one “nutrient levels.”

√ Feeding trials: Look long and hard at the cans of dog food in your pantry; if you look hard enough (get out the reading glasses!) you will find a statement that references either “feeding trials” or “nutrient levels.” Feeding trials are just that: The food under study is fed to a population of dogs for a set period of time, and most (not all) of the dogs have to survive in reasonably good health. These trials are costly, but big companies, with deep pockets and a decades-long history and plan for the future, may spend a ton of money and a good bit of time putting their food to the test in feeding trials.

√ Nutrient level: If the company is smaller, new, or its plans more modest, it will likely try the second method for proving its products’ nutritional adequacy: the nutrient levels qualification. Essentially, this means the food is tested, all the nutrients in it are tallied, and the results are compared to a table of nutrient values that is accepted as “what dogs need” by pet food regulators in this country (there are other, slightly different tables of nutrient values used by pet food regulators in other countries).

This standard isn’t perfect, either. A food may contain all the nutrients it’s supposed to have, and yet be highly unpalatable – and if dogs won’t eat it, they certainly can’t benefit from it. Or, it may be palatable, but indigestible! Just because a dog eats it, doesn’t mean he can utilize all the nutrients in it.

In the best of all possible worlds, a food would qualify by a feeding trial and by meeting the AAFCO canine nutrient levels. But this is not a current regulatory requirement!

Make sure when you look for the statement of nutritional adequacy, you notice whether it references “adult maintenance” or “dogs of all life stages.” If the label references “dogs of all life stages” it is formulated to meet the higher nutrient levels required by puppies and pregnant or nursing moms.

2015 List

Below is our list of selection criteria – hallmarks of quality – that we use to identify products we would consider feeding to our dogs. We also list disqualifiers – traits that eliminate products from our consideration. You can use these criteria to analyze the ingredients list on the label of any food you’re considering feeding to your dog.

Sometimes a New Home is Best

By
Nancy Kerns
-
0

I had a hand in a “rehoming” event recently, and while it’s often framed as a failure when a dog is “given away,” in this case – as in so many – it was absolutely the best thing for the dog, his former owner, and his current owners.

As someone with a strong interest in training, I was confident that I could help Murphy’s owner train him into being a good dog. Murphy is the dog I wrote about in the October issue editorial; he moved into the house where I have my office with a friend who was seeking refuge from a traumatic divorce. Murphy had been rehomed badly several times in his short life already (he was just 10 months old), but this was not a great fit, either.

My friend already had one highly strung dog, and doesn’t have that much experience with training. While she found the Treeing Walker Coonhound to be gorgeous and affectionate, she wasn’t really prepared for a dog with such strong behaviors: he jumped all over people, he pulled on leash, was dramatically reactive to the sight of any other dog on walks, had such terrible manners when he met other dogs that he would invariably get “corrected” by the dog he was being so rude to, and was so aroused by contact with other dogs that he would respond immediately to another dog’s “Hey, back off, pal!” with aggression. He’s also a classic hunting coonhound – prone to “selective hearing” and following his nose off into the wild blue yonder if given the opportunity and in need of a ton of exercise.

He is also very motivated by and interested in humans. So much so that his mild separation anxiety had him pushing through screens and jumping out onto the second story roof of my house when his owner left for a few minutes on an errand (even though there was another dog in the home; as in many cases, the presence of another dog doesn’t usually solve true separation anxiety).

I worked with Murphy, took him out running for miles and miles with my dogs, and showed my friend how to work with him, too. He was making terrific progress: He learned not to jump on people, to ask permission to jump on the couch and to enter and exit through doors (by polite sitting), was already way better on leash, could be called away from the sight of other dogs, and was learning to greet other dogs much more calmly.

But my friend still found him to be overwhelming at times. One day, after a bad walk where everything went wrong, she admitted to me, sobbing, that he was just too much for her to handle and was complicating her life to an unbearable extent. I hadn’t previously heard her express anything other than her wish to make their relationship work out – and maybe she hadn’t said anything like that to me before out of fear of getting judged. But I actually think rehoming can be a HUGE favor to all parties sometimes – especially in a case like this, where the dog and the person are so mismatched (she’s a middle-aged, calm, quiet person, a massage therapist – not someone who enjoys exuberant baying of hounds!). He was likely going to be a trial for her for years – and was never going to be fully appreciated for exactly who he was. The only way he was going to make her happy is if almost everything about him changed, which was bound to be hard on him. They’d both be better off going their separate ways!

Fortunately, I know a GREAT hound rescue group, the American Black and Tan Coonhound Rescue (coonhoundrescue.com) and they were able to take him in. He spent a couple weeks at a dog daycare facility in a large, social group that included a lot of other hounds, and within a couple of weeks, much better socialized to the presence of other dogs, he was adopted by a couple who was looking for a dog exactly like him. Hurrahs all around.

 

Find Proper Dog Food Nutrition and Diet Solutions

By
Nancy Kerns
-
0

When WDJ first reviewed dog food, back in 1998, there was but a handful of companies making what we considered good foods. Seriously, I stretched to find five companies that had products that contained only good-quality ingredients – and more importantly, didn’t contain unnamed animal fats and meat by-products. And just about every question I asked a pet food company was answered with, “I’m sorry that’s proprietary information!”

The industry has come such a long way since then. There are dozens and dozens of good foods on the market today – and not only are the makers of the best ones proud to tell us where their products are made, but also, many of them have invited me to tour their plants, meet their executives and the plant workers and managers, and some have even taken me to see their ingredient suppliers. This sort of openness with a consumer advocate/critic of the industry is meaningful.

And yet, in my view, pet food makers still have a long way to go to completely earn the trust of the most discerning and demanding dog owners. I was sort of horrified to discover that many of the companies whose products I consider top-of-the-line didn’t have information at their fingertips regarding the typical nutritional content of their products. How could that be?

A number of times, we’ve been asked why we we’re so demanding and critical of pet food makers, and whether we hold the makers of our own food to the same sort of standards we demand for dog food. Do we need to know the provenance of every ingredient in our breakfast cereal? Do we want to know how much of every single nutrient is present in our spaghetti sauce?

Well, no. But there is a significant difference between the diet of most dogs and most humans: We eat a wide variety of foods; our dogs eat whatever we feed them, and most people feed their dogs the same type of food every day. If our bodies are lacking certain nutrients, we can act on a craving for a food that can supply us with those nutrients; we deny dogs the same opportunity. If we eat a diet that makes us feel unwell, we can at least explain to a doctor what we’ve eaten and how we feel, and she can most likely determine what the problem is.

In contrast, veterinarians are often educated to believe that all foods that are labeled as “complete and balanced” are nutritionally equivalent, even though the nutrient values for foods of a similar type are all over the place.

In my view, if a dog receives only one type of food every day, day in and day out, it had better truly be “complete and balanced,” containing appropriate amounts of the nutrients dogs need – not too little and not too much. The only way to determine this is to ask, “How much of all these nutrients actually are in your foods?” Lacking a prompt and confident answer in the form of the immediate delivery of a typical nutrient analysis, I wouldn’t recommend feeding a single product, or even a single company’s product. Personally, I’d try to hedge my bets and achieve some amount of “balance over time” by switching my dogs from one company’s foods to another with each and every can and bag.

Truly, it’s an exciting time to watch the pet food industry. The investment in innovation and quality control has never been higher, and I increasingly meet well-educated, passionate people who seem truly committed to producing safe, superior foods. I hope they will help lead the industry toward greater transparency in formulation, ingredient sourcing, testing, and more.

Tips on Introducing your Dog to a New Baby

By
Stephanie Colman
-
0

Father and Baby

Fact or fiction: “If a family member brings the dog my baby’s blanket ahead of time, so he can get used to the smell of the baby, they will be fine together.”

This is perhaps one of the most widely disseminated pieces of advice that’s doled out by well-meaning friends and family members, and even professionals across the board from dog trainers to birthing experts. Shryock says it can’t hurt, but there’s a danger in thinking it’s the end-all, be-all of advice. She likes to quote a colleague who sums up the situation by saying, “If you were to come visit me, I wouldn’t ask you to send your underwear ahead of time so my dogs could get to know you …”

Yes, scent can be a valuable way to provide information to a dog, but how the information is presented is just as important. Many people enthusiastically show the dog the blanket, getting the dog overly excited and creating a heightened introduction. If dad has been visiting the baby and coming home to the dog, he’s already introduced the baby’s scent without needing to parade the blanket around.

Where the blanket can be especially useful is when the dog is staying with a friend or family members for a few days. In that case, the caretaker can help condition a positive association with the baby’s scent through short training sessions where he feeds the dog treats with the blanket nearby.

“A lot of people put a lot of stock in the idea that, if their dog doesn’t growl or react funny to the blanket, everything will be okay,” Shryock says. This can create a false sense of security. “It’s just not that simple.”

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