Posts Tagged ‘Household’
Avocados: A Surprisingly Healthy Fruit For All Dogs | dog health
A useful dog health tip is that most dogs love avocados. They taste good, and they are an excellent source of fat. Fat is responsible for providing dogs with extra amount of energy and gives them healthy skin as well as an extra glow in their coat.
Strangely enough, it was the dogs themselves who led us to the idea of using the avocado as a supplement to the canine diet. It seems that avocado growers’ pet dogs were competing with the growers for any fallen fruit. The growers became curious and decided to compare the nutrients that this amazing fruit contained with those needed by canines.
According to a Veterinary professor at Iowa State University, this fruit enhances hair quality as well as skin tone, with which avocado growers have reported in their dogs is most likely due to the amount of linoleic acid of the fruit when added to the dog’s diet.
Of course, this fruit alone could not be recommended as the only nutrient source for dogs. But an avocado, in small quantities as a supplement, might be helpful if adequate amount of fat were not available from other sources.
A dog’s requirement of fat depends mostly on the amount of activity he engages in. For instance, an active working dog needs up to twenty percent fat in his diet, while the average household dog that walks a few blocks everyday needs only five to eight percent of fat in his diet. The very thin dog should get a diet rich in fat until his weight and health improve. The pregnant and nursing female dog also needs greater amounts of fat in her diet.
The majority of canine canned foods contain adequate fat to satisfy the need of an average household dog. However, if the dog is fed a diet strictly of dry meal, it might be moistened with additional sources of fat.
Avocados are an excellent source of fat for this purpose. And for canines that get most of their fat from canned foods, this tasty fruit also serves as an occasional treat. Avocados might be alternated with other occasional food supplements to add variety to the dog’s regular diet. Simply put, dogs love avocados and they are good for them!
Word Of Warning: Documented evidence suggests that some dogs, as well as other domestic animals like cats and cattle, can be severely harmed and prove fatal when they eat the avocado pit, skin, leaves, and bark of the avocado tree. Therefore, when supplementing your dog’s health and diet with avocados, make sure to only give him the meat of the fruit.
Adopting Your Dog From A Shelter? Be Prepared To Answer These Questions
1. What other animals live with you? It’s quite ok to tell them all about your other four-legged buddies! They’ll probably want to know the species, age, gender, size, breed and temperament of any other dog or cat living in your household. This will help the shelter determine what kind of dog will best get along with your furry family members.
2. Are your other animals spayed or neutered? Many shelters won’t adopt a dog to someone with an unaltered dog at home – mostly for practical reasons, and partly on principle. If you have a grown dog who is not yet spayed or neutered, tell the staff that you intend to correct that situation before you introduce another canine into the household. Then make sure you keep your word and do it.
3. Have you had dogs in the past, and where are they now? It may seem like an odd question, but shelter employees can tell a lot from an answer like “I had two dogs who died of natural causes at thirteen and fifteen years old,” as opposed to, say, “I had a dog that ran away and two cats that I gave to a family on a farm when I moved.” A good “track record” with dogs can indicate that you’re an experienced and committed dog lover who’s likely to give a new dog a terrific home.
However, keep in mind that the shelter staff understands that accidents happen and people make mistakes. Even well loved and well-supervised dogs get lost, stolen or hit by cars. If you’ve lost pets under unfortunate circumstances in the past, be honest about it; if you’ve made mistakes but learned from them, tell the shelter employees so. They’re not interested in judging you; they just want to make sure you’ll take good care of the dog you adopt.
What if you’ve never had a dog of your own before? Well, everyone has to start somewhere, and your inexperience doesn’t have to be a disadvantage. If you’ve ever helped care for someone else’s dog or worked with animals (at a vet’s office or an animal shelter, for instance), those are strong points in your favor. And at the very least, you can tell the staff that you’ve been reading up on the subject of dog adoption and dog care!
Adopting A Shelter Dog & Raising Him To Be Well Behaved
The number one reason dogs are brought to shelters is that they have “behavior problems.” That label covers a multitude of common canine misbehavior’s such as house-soiling, chewing, digging, and general rowdiness or hyperactivity.
If one of those bad habits is what landed your dog in a shelter, you’ll have to be willing to work to overcome it when you bring her home.
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Remember, too, that your dog will probably have been calling a shelter “home” for some time, and the rules of the shelter may not quite correspond to the rules of your household.
Your dog will have been living in a cage where housebreaking was irrelevant and barking was nonstop. He will not have seen furniture or stairs recently (or perhaps ever), and he won’t immediately understand that he isn’t allowed to teethe on your couch and climb on your kitchen counters.
If he’s been living by his own devices for several months or more, he’ll need some extra training so that he learns his manners and can live peacefully in your home.
If he’s a young puppy, especially if he was taken from his mother and litter-mates too early, he’ll need a lot of socialization from you and your family so that he grows up to be a normal, well-adjusted dog. You’ll have to teach him the things he should have learned, but may
not have, during his first few weeks of life: how to play, how to respect authority, how to accept correction and praise.
It’s never too early or late for a dog to learn all these things. While it may take somewhat longer to train and socialize a shelter dog or puppy, you’ll find that the training process will bring the two of you even closer together and help you learn to appreciate and respect each other right from the start of your relationship.
One thing your adopted dog does not need is your pity. There are a lot of adopted dogs who get away with shameful behavior because their people feel sorry for them. And we know many humans who use their dogs’ uncertain histories as excuses for all their problems. But dog needs your understanding and leadership, not your indulgence.
That is the lesson here: if your dog grew up on the streets, that may explain why he has no qualms about shredding your curtains, but it doesn’t give his license to do so. If he was or have been unkindly treated by someone in her past, that may explain why he initially mistrusts people, but it doesn’t give him the right to growl or snap at them. It’s going to take a magical mixture of forbearance and toughness on your part to help him adjust to the world outside the shelter.
The First Step To Successful Dog Training
As a dog owner, what do you really need to know to train your dog? Gathering information and preparing to train your dog follows some reasonable steps. The first phase is the most often skipped and is the most crucial. A mirror test of sorts. How good is your relationship with your dog? The idea is that it’s better to have a good owner-dog bond first before you let your dog undergo obedience training.
The point is, if you already have a good bond, that bond will be even stronger after the training. And maybe the training will be easier since you may not undergo a lot of frustrations compared to owners who aren’t bonded with their dogs.
The thing is, if you have not established an attachment with your own dog, training him to obey is not going to be as smooth compared to if you had a good bond. You could get annoyed easily when your dog fails to accomplish tasks. You may not be as easily annoyed if you and your dog had been through a lot. That dog might not even want to cooperate. To address this noncompliance, try breaking the tasks into small and more manageable tasks.
This way, despite the absence of that owner-dog bond, the chances of your dog accomplishing the smaller tasks will be easier. Suppose you want you dog to stop barking on command. You can do this and silence him at will. When you can do this you can even make him bark on your order. This means you need to start with a small objective in the beginning, and start with easy commands.
The most common complaint against pets, dogs in particular, is that they chew up on the furniture, bite into and drag objects, and munch into them as though they were baby tethers. To address this behavior, you could purchase for your dog some toys he can play with, so his attention will be on those toys instead of things to bite in your household. You need to limit these toys to four or five. More toys will just distract him and he’ll lose interest. To start training, you can test if you can make you dog bite and pick up his chewing toys on your orders. Ask him to bring it to you. Throw it far again. Ask him to bring it back.
But if you just got your dog, chances are you don’t know his behavior much. That’s the first thing, to observe his behavior, especially those that will be problematic for you. List those behaviors that pose problems and try to address them one at a time. If your dog loves munching on household things, you have to and you can change this. If your dog barks incessantly, you can change this. But you really have to allot some time to observe his behavior and bond with him. If he bonds with you, he’ll be motivated to please you, and you’ll have more patience in training him.
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Article Source: ArticleSpan