Wednesday, November 2, 2011

Meet the Crew and First Days

 I figured you may want to meet the dogs in our story, since we'll be following them, and it IS their story after all. 


Both of our dogs, both girls, were adopted off of craigslist.  Normally I don't like getting animals off of CL, as I've had nothing but horrible experiences with animals from there.  But in these cases, we reached out to the families and I'm glad that we did, because we now have the two best dogs ever for our family.





Meet Inga!



Inga is a 5 year old Doberman/APBT mix.  She is spayed, is full of energy but calm around us and our kids. 

She is "child proof" as I like to call her because our young kids can sit on her (which I don't allow but it happens), dress her up, play with her, and she's very tolerable of it all.  She is very gentle with them and has good spatial awareness with them, meaning she won't knock them down or pummel them with her happy tail.

She has some "issues" that we've been able to work with her and train her out of.  But it wasn't really anything that would make me want to rehome her or anything.  After getting Inga's medical records, we discovered we were her 5th home, and I think that's horrible.  She's such a sweet dog and at first we didn't understand why, but as time went on we found out Inga likes to bolt out doors and is a runner.  We also found out she has a very, very high prey drive, so we've worked with her a long time to get her to understand it is NOT ok to chase the cat, and we don't even let her interact with our smaller animals until she knows they are off limits and not to be touched/eaten.  We found out she has no dog socialization and seeing another dog would send her into such a hyper frenzy that she would be so stimulated it would start a dog scraffle 99% of the time. 

Other than a couple..personality quirks...that we easily overcame, all in all she's a wonderful dog.  She has lovely manners, knows her obedience, is very smart, listens well, is great with the kids, us, and strangers, and is an excellent watchdog.  She has never had an accident in the house and is well versed in "house doggery" as I like to call it.  House Doggery is what I call a position a dog holds in the household when they know how to behave inside and they are an inside dog, with inside manners.  This means no breaking of things in my house, chewing of things they aren't supposed to have, and knowing their place in the pack structure.

Inga is a very healthy dog with no underlying health issues, she eats whatever, and doesn't have any allergies so far.  She's done amazingly well on the holistic food we were buying for her.  She has some leash issues and dominant dog issues we've worked on for a very long time.  Inga has come a long way and is a wonderful addition to our family and "pack."


A Sidenote on Doggy Discipline in our home

I strongly believe in positive reinforcement when it comes to dog training.  I've used clickers and not used clickers, I've trained several dogs.  I've studied dog behavior, worked with and groomed dogs of all kinds and breeds for almost 12 yrs now.  I know what I'm doing. 

With that said...some forms of dog training do not work for every dog.   Inga is that kind of dog.  And honestly, the breeds of dogs we like require some "stronger" leader type training. 

I'm not saying in the least that anything we do requires aggression or violence in any form.  That is wrong and unacceptable in dog training.  Dogs should never be harshly reprimanded or physically punished in any form.  

What I'm saying is that Inga is a very dominant dog, and some dominant dogs require being taught pack structure so that they know that we are pack leaders and they do what we say.  I found a website a while back that helped us with some issues we were having with Inga's dominance.  This guy has been training dogs a very long time, and he has more of a view on dog training that I agree with. 

Only Dog Training Information you'll ever need, ever again.

When we planned on finding a second dog for our pack I knew her dominance could potentially become an issue and the kind of dogs we were looking for would most likely need pack training as well.  So, I followed a lot of his advice and it worked so well.  When we acquired Laila it helped us so much I can't even tell you.  If I hadn't introduced the girls the way he suggested and formed our pack the way I read about, I don't think Laila and Inga would have the relationship they have today. 

I digress... but wanted to show you, the reader, how important dog training is for your dog.  Just letting your dog do whatever it wants, when it wants is a disaster for a spoiled dog that doesn't respect you, and is a bite waiting to happen.  Just because a dog does tricks for you doesn't mean it really listens or thinks for itself.  Leave a piece of food on a table.  A dog that respects you and it's place in the pack won't touch it without going to you for guidance.  A dog that isn't trained well and doesn't know it's place with snork that food off the table with little care as to your input, and will prolly fight you for it if you go after it.

Moving on...

Meet Laila!



Laila is our newest dog.  She is an APBT, or American Pit Bull Terrier, Red Nose, cute as a button, sweetest personality ever! 

A cute sweet pitbull?  I know right?  Those of you thinking I'm crazy or we've endangered our children, go read up some more and educate yourself, I'm not going to spend my time writing a novel on breed profiling and how wrong it is.  Don't get me started.  Ignorance is weakness.  BSL is wrong, etc etc...  Punish the deed not the breed etc.

Laila came to us from a nice military family who was being transferred overseas.  They only had a couple days to find a family and we were lucky enough to be picked from a handful of people they'd already met.  We're still in touch with them.  I'm so incredibly glad we found them. 

Laila is an amazing dog!  She's barely a year old and still insanely puppy dumb, but we still love her.  She has manners, sort of, but still needs to learn that we, as a family, don't allow her to sit her 50 lb butt in our laps, or let her sleep in our bed.  She's cute of course, but until she gets over her own dominance issues and learns to listen she can't sit on me lol.

Although her family didn't have kids, she's great with our kids and has adjusted surprisingly well to our kids, who are loud, rambunctious, rough and tumble, and fun.  She has good spatial awareness and doesn't knock them down, she's gentle with them, and loves to give kisses, a little too much.  She's an obsessive licker, and kind of doesn't stop once she gets going.

Health wise, she could be better.  Nothing serious, but she's plagued by ear infections and the worst allergies I've ever seen.  She breaks out if she even looks at a weed XD  She'll break out in hives, has oily skin, her face and muzzle get swollen if she starts rolling in the wrong area of weeds, etc..  I have to bathe her weekly to help soothe the itching.  Vet med wise, there's not much we can do other than keeping her on benadryl every day and getting steroid injections every month.  But after having a dog for 12 years that suffered from allergies and had steroid injections, I don't want her to live that life.  Steroids over a long time deteriorate a dog's health.  I want so much more for our dogs.

Raw appealed to me so much due to the fact that it will improve Laila's health the most. 

So now what?!

The raw diet has begun!!!

We fasted the girls for a day, and started them on chicken quarters last night.  They took to them immediately, weren't picky at all thank goodness, and were really, really enjoying their primal meal.  There was no food aggression from Inga at all, which she has normally, and both of them actually seemed to be satisfied and weren't scrounging for food all day like they normally do.

So we're on Day 2 of the PMR diet, and they're doing great so far.  No cannon butt or stomach upset *knock on wood* and I'm thinking, and hoping, that we won't have any issues. 

I fed them in their bowls, but it ended up on the floor, which I promptly disenfected once they were done.  Today I fed them on a towel, which was a lot more sanitary and easier cleanup.  I'll prolly start feeding them outside once it warms up, but I do like being able to monitor them and make sure there are no fights over food.

So, there you go!  No big issues going on.  Laila's rash is already clearing up, her face isn't swollen today, and she has good positive energy, as opposed to crazy pent up energy.

I'm happy and satisfied thus far.  If things go well we'll start adding in turkey in 2 weeks from now.

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