The Katzke Dog Diary

… you get kicked out of a pet food store for writing down the ingredients on different bags of dog food so that you can research them at home.

*hangs head in shame*

Save the Pit Bull, Save The World has a review up of a Book about training reactive dogs that I’ve been considering buying for Eowyn.

The most important choice you make about your dog’s health is their food. Dogs can and will eat pretty much anything … table scraps, birds and bunnies they catch in the back yard, the newspaper, your sneakers… but SHOULD they?

I never ever feed my dogs table scraps. On the other hand, I will trim meat before cooking it, cook the trimmings separately for them, and supplement their kibble meals with it. Most of the spices I like are things dogs shouldn’t have — garlic, pepper, etc.

Innova entered Eowyn’s diet two weeks before her surgery. I bought a small bag of it as a ‘treat’ at the feed store when I was picking up some other supplies. Her body’s reaction to it was so favorable that I haven’t stopped feeding it since. She gets large breed, Henry gets your normal adult food since his hardy body doesn’t seem to need the same supplements that her joints do. He’s put on fifteen pounds. He has hair growing on his belly and other male parts for the first time in his life. He no longer suffers from mites and other infections. I’m only half kidding when I say that Innova could probably cure cancer. A friend of mine who feeds her dogs raw says that she feels the same way about kibble vs. raw… she doesn’t like processed food at all.

The benefits of feeding a quality food, no matter what you choose, is huge. The dogs poop less. They fart less. They need to eat less food (by volume) to maintain the same level of health. They have healthy coats that don’t shed as constantly. (I went from sweeping every other day to sweeping once a week.) They have more energy and rest better. I think the only side effect I don’t like is that they don’t think the treats I have for them are as good anymore. Time to start buying dried liver slices again, I guess…

When we went in for Eowyn’s hip evaluation, and I asked why her hips in particular were so bad, one of the reasons was malnutrition during youth and adolescence. That fits — my ex-girlfriend, now a veterinarian in a city near you, was feeding them Beneful … which is just one step better than Ol’ Roy. I think sawdust has more nutritional value than Beneful does.

One other things that my dogs don’t eat is Science Diet. Science Diet is crap. I think it used to be good, but these days it’s mostly filler and it fails just about every measurement of it’s ingredients. Hills does spend a lot of money selling it to veterinarians, who then sell it to you. Don’t buy Science Diet!

I’m working on a database to track ingredients and to develop a quantitative method of rating foods based on their ingredients and processing, but I’m buried under another project right now so it’ll have to wait a few weeks. I’m starting to collect evidence. If you want to help me with that and have a digital camera, please leave a comment with your email address and I’ll get in touch with you.

A question posed by a behaviorist that I talk to — how do you keep track of your progress when you’re training? There are better days and worse days. There are improvements and setbacks. Most people can keep a general sort of ‘tab’ on their progress just by feelings alone — am I happy and is the dog happy? If so, training is working. If not, re-evaluate.

For people who are into sports and running, there’s statistics to track like how far you’ve run, what your heart rate is when you’re cycling, and how fast you’re going. With dog training, there’s the same kind of metrics (”How fast does the dog respond to my commands?” “How reliable is my dog’s recall in the yard?” “How many times do I need to correct leash walking behavior?” “How long can I be out of the house without the dog panicking?” “How many reactions does the dog have to X stimulus in the course of a walk?”), but in the few training classes I’ve been in with the behaviourists that I have access to in my area, I haven’t seen any efforts made to track metrics.

The behaviorist that I’m working with now is encouraging me to blog daily as a tool to track progress, which I’ve been trying to do every time after we do a training walk. I’ve also been keeping track of a couple of metrics at Daytum, like the fights that Eo picks with Henry and the circumstances around them and how many times Eowyn reacts to particular stimuli on our walks. After a week of doing it so far, I’ve decided it’s important to track positive metrics as well as negative metrics… I’m planning to add counters for how many times the dogs DON’T jump up and rush to the front of the house when the dog next door barks, and how many times they sit or otherwise respond immediately without a clear and present reward.

I think blogging — and being able to go over the blog with the behaviorist — is going to be a great tool in the long run. In fact, I might just start blogging in other places that I’m trying to change my life, too…

One of Eowyn’s behavior problems relates to her high reactivity relating to resource guarding. Basically, food aggression. Since this problem is manageable, we haven’t been actively training it… I simply put them in their crates before feeding time, and then lock the doors so that they don’t have access to each other and I bring them the food separately.

I should clarify that — it’s not that the problem is manageable, it’s that I have a workaround that lets me manage the likelihood of an incident happening. Until I make a boneheaded mistake…

This past week I started feeding Henry Innova Adult instead of the (more expensive) Innova Adult Large Breed that Eo gets. Eo’s food is in a tupperware thing on wheels… Henry’s, though, is currently in the bag in the laundry room (with the door closed). Haven’t had a chance to get a tub for his yet because I haven’t made it to PetSmart this weekend… it’s a game day and everyone + their mother is in town. Last night, I was doing laundry and let them in from the backyard… they were laying in the kitchen when I opened the door to the laundry room to change loads, and both of them got up when I opened the door. I didn’t even THINK about it until I heard Eo start her “war growl” … when she reacts to Henry she snaps at him with her teeth and makes the world’s loudest “fighting dog” noise. She rarely connects, but Henry (quite justifiably) cries and cowers. With a surge of adrenaline, I picked Eo (all 75+ lbs of her) completely up off the ground by her collar, and she stopped… Henry belly crawled away and tried to crawl under one of the living room chairs. Ugh. Add another one to the score of “times Eo has Eaten Henry’s face…”

To remove the sting from the experience for Henry, I put Eo on a down-stay across the room (Note: I did NOT yell at her or hurt her; corporal punishment would only serve to validate the way she acted towards Henry…) and then attracted him back into the laundry room with handfulls of food.

So. Starting some resource guarding training. It basically involves me putting Eo on a down stay across the room and showing her a resource she wants, and then giving it to Henry. Slowly, I move them closer together until Eo gets agitated. We build it up over weeks and months. At least I have two dogs living in the house all the time so it’s easy to do… food aggression / resource guarding really is hard to do in a one-dog household.

Eo was reactive again. And very highly so. Something happened when we went out the door of the house that caused her to bite Henry about the ears and neck again. It had something to do with him going through the door before her. After that, he was afraid to go through doors. I let half the moth and mosquito population in Brazos County into my house while we worked on walking through doors on a leash… first with the door open, and then with the door closed and a sit-and-wait. However, Henry came out of it going in and out of doors just fine, and Eo didn’t react further once I took control of the situation. Must do more work to try to figure out what’s causing the reaction.

We walked about a mile and a half, covering the entire neighborhood. I really need to drive it one of these days to figure out the exact length.

I’ve added Sara Ireck’s method for grading dog food to my site. I know that it’s not a very scientific method, but I hope it helps some dog owners make a good choice about food for their pet.

Keep in mind that the cost differences for feeding a better grade are slight. Purina Pro Plan All Breed is about $32/33 lbs at PetSmart, and gets an F. I pay $51/33 lbs for Innova Adult and it gets an A+. For $20 every other month, and the giant difference that Eowyn and Henry have shown healthwise? I’d say it’s worth it.

A lot of dog owners that I talk to at classes and stuff complain about shedding. Do you want your dog to stop shedding? Feed it better food! Want your dog to chew on things less? Feed it better food and they won’t go looking for nutrients from your shoes! Want your dog to poop less, or more reliably? Feed the dog better food, and they’ll poop less (because they use more!) … this isn’t rocket science! But it is all about your dog’s health.

Walking is still the only training period due to other commitments.

Both dogs had lots of energy tonight… I got home early at 4 when it was raining and they slept most of the time until 9pm when we walked. We walked for 20 minutes. They really had a lot of energy and I would’ve kept going, but I was being eaten alive by mosquitoes.

Due to her high energy state, Eo was highly reactive. She barked at three cars.

I tried walking them on different sides of my body tonight. The night before, they had walked on their regular sides and had been very well behaved. Walking on different sides kept them from really knowing what to do. Eowyn walked very close to my side, which helped with the reactivity. I ended up doing the “reverse” correction far more often than I had to the night before.

The first step in Eowyn’s Behavior Modification Plan is to teach her to focus on me a lot better. The first step was to create a scarcity of affection… which is working, even though it’s WAY more difficult on me than it is on the dogs! They’re both getting used to the idea that I won’t walk up to them and give them affection. They MUST earn it, and in Henry’s case, he only gets affection during training periods. I’ve had to watch where my hands are when I’m asleep because I’ve found if I leave them dangling off the side of the bed, he’ll crawl under them and try to ‘pet himself’ …

The second step in Eowyn’s Behavior Modification Plan is to get Eo to start focusing on me more. We’re starting to work with it during the day by correcting her instinct to run to the front door barking when she hears something outside or the dogs next door bark. I’m trying to replace that behavior with “Come to Me”. The other thing I’m trying to get her to do is to look at me for cues all the time.

Can’t get your dog to focus? Don’t know where to start? First, remember that you have to get a dog to display a behavior before you can reinforce it. Jennie Chen, who’s a member of the local kennel club and who also trains and shows her Swiss Mountain Dog and Lowchen in the Texas region, posted a video on youtube that details a technique that I’m going to start working with Eowyn on. It involves holding a treat in your mouth and spitting it at the dog so that they look at your face — after all, that’s where treats come from!

As Jennie says, most of dog training is actually human training.

I’m getting the feeling that Henry will be worse before he’s better. He’s been seeking every little bit of attention from me that he can possibly get… which is none. (Although I did once subconsciously pat his head while I was working on a project from .) He’s been begging, pleading, trying to move his head under my hands to pretend that I’m petting him. Yeah, I think he’s gonna get worse before he’s better … but he is playing with Eowyn some more. I just hope that he doesn’t turn to her completely for attention.

Eowyn was a pain in the rear before we went on the walk tonight. On the other hand, she’s been an absolute charmer on walks compared to her normal behavior. She hasn’t tried to drag me, even when we’ve walked right past a cat. Henry’s been especially good, too… walks are one of the only way for him to get praise right now. I give praise because every time they’re on leash their training time is “on” even if I don’t have treats. Where normally I have had to correct both of them nearly constantly on walks (together or alone), both of them walked with me on a slack leash for almost the entire 1 mile walk tonight. We’ll try walking a little earlier tomorrow night.

For both behavior modification programs, the goal is “a quiet and confident dog that either has a neutral or positive reaction towards events during which they would previously have shown signs of distress.” Well, good luck on that. I’ll cover behavior plans in more detail tomorrow night.