I have been getting a lot of great feedback from all of you regarding the homemade dog treats. So here is another easy to make recipe for some Applesauce Peanut Butter biscuits that are Jaeger and Heidi's all time favorite.
Of course you can always substitute the flour with oats or non-wheat flour, just remember that the consistency of the dough may change and you may need to add more applesauce or water to make the dough so it can be rolled and cut.
Ingredients
3 cups whole wheat flour
2 cups quick-cook oats
1 cup peanut butter
1 cup unsweetened organic
applesauce
1 tsp baking powder
¼ cup coconut oil
Directions
Preheat oven to 350 degrees and
cover 2 baking sheets with parchment paper.
In a mixing bowl, combine all
ingredients
Knead dough on a lightly floured
surface.
Roll the dough to about ¼ inch
thick and then cut into shapes with cookie cutters, or make small
dough balls.
Place cookies on baking sheet
Bake 25 minutes or until lightly
browned.
Let cool completely and before serving.
Notes Store uneaten cookies in an airtight container in the fridge for
up to one week.
For more organic dog biscuit recipes see our previous blog posts:
It is so heartbreaking, I see so many Facebook posts on lost pets every day. Thank goodness many dog owners now have their pets micro-chipped and most pets wear a collar with their owner's cellphone number on it. These two things can make sure that someone can contact you when your pet is found and hopefully you will be able to get her back home safely.
Few people know that you can teach your dog two very important lessons that most likely will prevent your dog from getting lost in the first place. The first lesson is: “Open doors don't mean run through it”, the second: “the safest place is with your owner”. In this blog article, I want to cover the first lesson in more depth with you.
For many dogs, open doorways and gates are an invitation to run and explore the world outside. The most essential training for your dog is to teach her not to bolt through an open door. Your dog should always wait to be invited through any door, other than her doggie door.
Teaching this principle is actually not hard, but it does require consistency on the owner's part. Whether you are going through your front door, the gate at the dog park, or in and out of the car, you must require your dog to wait for your invitation to go through. You need to be able to open any door and not have the dog run through it.
Here are a few examples of exercises you can do in a controlled and safe environment. Teaching your dog in this way, can prevent her from getting lost one day, and may well save her life! Make sure you set aside some time to teach, about 20 minutes a day.
Dogs must wait quietly to exit the vehicle
1. Doors at your home
Start by practicing in your home. Practice with all doorways that lead to the outside world. This may be your front door, garage door, or any side gate in the yard. Practice first with your dog on-leash. Later you can do this off-leash as well, but make sure you control the environment and keep it safe!
With your dog on the leash, approach the door. If your dog is already in front of you with her nose on the door, turn and walk away from the doorway. Continue walking to and from the door until the dog is looking toward you for direction.
Now with the dog waiting by your side – she will be looking at you, wondering what is going on – open the door slightly. If she pushes past you and tries to squeeze through the door, gently close it. Do not say anything, there is no command for this, this is a behavior you are teaching, not a command. Continue to open/close the door until she is waiting for you. This may take a little time.
Once she no longer tries to squeeze through the door, open the door all the way, but do not let her go through. With the door wide open, walk back into the home, away from the doorway. Then walk toward the door. Do not allow the dog to be in front of you, and do not allow her to walk through the door. Walk back and forth until she calmly walks next to you or behind you on a loose leash.(If your dog does not walk on a loose leash on a regular basis, you may need to start teaching her proper leash behavior first. See our FREE training resources tab on our website for articles and videos on leash training.)
After you are able to walk with her toward the door without her trying to rush in front of you, you should stop six-feet away from the doorway. You can now ask her to sit, or you can ask her to wait, whichever you prefer. Make sure you spend some time on this and do not go further until she will sit or wait quietly a few steps away from the doorway with the door open.
Now you can invite her to go through the door with you. I like to tell my dogs “Let's go.” You can come up with any command you like, but I recommend you do not use OK. I have seen many families where they used this command and the dog would bolt anytime someone said OK.
Your dog should walk through the door calmly, not bolt. If the dog rushes through the doorway, say “no” and walk right back inside. Go back to a previous step until the dog is calmly walking through the door next to you.
Practice going in and out of the door in the same manner, and practice all the different doors and gates.
Make sure that everyone in the family is consistent in expecting the dog to wait until invited to pass through any outside doorway!
Our dogs know to wait even with the RV gate wide open
2. The car door
Most dogs get lost either by running from home, or out of the owner's car. Practice getting in and out of the car with your dog. The same principle as with your doorway exercises apply. The dog is to be calm and must wait to be invited through the door. This can be the side door or the back hatch.
With the dog in the vehicle, slightly open the car door. If the dog tries to squeeze through, gently close the door without saying anything. Be patient and continue until the dog waits inside the car. She will be back a little, looking at you for guidance.
Watch our YouTube video to see this exercise performed by one of our dog training clients with her two labs.
Once the dog is calmly waiting, open the door all the way. Tell your dog to wait. I usually use my hand to signal the wait as well as use the spoken command. This is helpful, as we may get out of the car on a noisy highway rest-stop. If your dog tries to come out, gently close the door. Keep doing this until you can open the car door and your dog waits for you to invite her out. Now pick up the leash and step away from the door, inviting her to come out.
Stop right next to the car, don't start walking right away! Expect her to stand quietly next to you. Resist the need to talk to her, praise her or pet her at this time. These actions will more than likely get the dog all excited. This is important, because you need to keep the calm energy for a nice calm walk. This is also so helpful, since you may need to get your things out of the car, and lock the doors, so expect the calmness every time!
Teaching this behavior will take time and patience, but every dog can learn to respect the open doors. Start practicing outside the home as well, making sure the dog does the same behavior at the dog park gate or a friend's house.
Another important lesson I mentioned at the beginning of the article is teaching your dog that the safest place is with you. To teach this, your dog must never, I mean never, get a negative when coming towards you! Even if she just chewed up your expensive designer purse. Every time you call your dog to you, all she ever gets is praise! Remember that you can only correct when your dog is actually doing the unwanted behavior, never after the fact. See a related post on the subjectCreating teachable Moments.
Stay tuned for our upcoming post on creating a trusting relationship with your dog to read more on the subject. I welcome your feedback, please post a comment on your experience with these exercises. Until next time: Keep Your Paws on the Road. Thank you, Bee
Our senior dog Jaeger has arthritis in his front legs, so he gets turmeric and yucca powder to help with the inflammation. I also have him on a wonderful supplement called Fresh Factor. He is usually pretty good about taking pills, and he loves the taste of the Fresh Factor supplement, but the turmeric and yucca, not so much. Because of the powder form, it is easy to mix them into pumpkin or can dog food.
Recently I found this recipe for pill pockets online at the
You can make them as needed. They contain only three ingredients that are usually found in most households: Peanut Butter, Coconut Oil and Oats (you can use Flour instead of Oats). Use all three in equal amounts.
Ingredients for homemade Pill Pockets
I use my coffee grinder to make the oats into flour. If you like, you can substitute regular whole wheat flour, or almond flour.
Mix everything together and then put in the refrigerator to let the dough harden. Roll the dough into small balls and use the handle of a wooden spoon to make small indentations for the pill.
Pill Pockets for dogs
Then you just need to put them in the freezer for about 20 minutes to keep their shape. If you want to make a larger amount, you can simply store them in the refrigerator for up to 3 months.
When you are ready to use one, let it get to room temperature, so it softens a bit, which makes it easy for you to insert the medication and pinch it shut. Now it's easy to feed to your lovely canine!
Is your dog greeting everyone with too much excitement, barking, jumping and clawing at strangers and friends? Is he hyper and overly excited when someone comes up to give him attention and can't seem to hold still to be petted? Maybe he even climbs on top of your visitor, who is sitting on the couch, pushing and licking with way too much enthusiasm?
It's nice to have a friendly, go lucky dog that loves everyone, and surely most people don't mind - or do they?
Well, your friends and family may not say so, but an overly excited greeting can be a bit overwhelming, especially if the guest is not a dog-lover. Sometimes the pawing and jumping can even hurt someone.
So what can you do about it? Most of the people we meet with overly excited dogs don't realize that this behavior is something they have taught their dog over time. They think the dog is just naturally hyper or super friendly. But the behavior described above is anything but natural. If your dog is greeting you, or other people (or even other dogs) in this way, he has been conditioned over time. More than likely, he has received positive feedback, when he acted this way in the past. For example, jumping and scratching at his owner or visitors has resulted in him getting attention. He was petted in return for it. He became the center of attention, even if the attention, later on, may result in negative attention to his behavior.
So now what? Can you break the pattern and recondition the dog?
The good news is: Yes you can!
It may take a little time, and certainly some effort and determination on your part, but dogs can learn new behavior very quickly, as long as the owner is consistent in teaching and expecting it.
1. Start with yourself
Start expecting calm behavior whenever you come home. This can be challenging for most dog owners because they just love to come home to loving enthusiastic fur-babies.
However, if you allow your dog to greet you in an overly excited way, it is much harder to condition him to behave otherwise with strangers.
The best way to curb his initial excitement is to ignore the dog, whenever he is in an excited state. Do not talk to him, and please, do not pet him when he is in this way! When he jumps on you, rather than pushing him off you, or stepping backward, step into him.
When you are out walking your dog, do not allow your dog to walk up to strangers when he is pulling or jumping. The easiest way to discourage the dog to do this is to walk him in the other direction for a few steps until his attention reverts back to you. Walk forward again if he is quiet. You should practice this on your daily walks. This technique will take some time at first, but you will soon reap the benefits.
See how this works for Jim with Abbey, an 8-month-old Labrador Retriever that had learned to associate excitement with greeting strangers:
3. Visitors to your home must not engage with your dog upon arrival
For a while, until he has learned to associate calmness with greetings, ask your friends and family to ignore your dog, when they come into your home. They should not speak to the dog, not pet him, and not look directly at the dog.
Once the dog has calmed down, then the person can give attention. If the dog gets overly excited again or invades the person's personal space, you as the owner need to take control of the dog. This may mean to tell the dog to get back or lay down on this bed.
Again, this is best taught in a teachable moment environment, meaning practice with someone that is willing to help you, rather than waiting until someone comes over that may not even like dogs.
Remember it takes calmness to teach quiet calm behavior in your dog, so keep the sessions short, and don't try to train your dog, when you notice yourself being frustrated or angry.
It took some time for your dog to learn the old behavior, and it will take time to condition him to the new, quiet way to greet and interact with you and others. Consistency is the key in all behavior modification.
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It's nice to go for a walk and have a well behaved dog on the leash. Even more importantly, most people don't realize that allowing their dog to pull on the leash can have negative effects on the dog's behavior and can also injure the dog or the owner. If the dog wears a collar around the neck, strong consistent pulling can damage the trachea, the dog's airway. This does not happen from a little pulling, but strong and consistent pulling bruises the trachea and can lead to permanent damage. If your dog pulls constantly and you hear him gagging or raspy breathing, make sure you switch to a harness for the time being, until you can train him to walk on the leash without pulling.
However, be aware that the harness is going to increase the strength of the dog and the pulling will be worse. A strong pulling dog can do injury to the person holding the leash, as the pulling can strain the wrist, or shoulder, and can lead the person to fall during walks.
Even when no one gets hurt, walking a dog that has bad leash behavior is no fun. When you travel with your dog, you have to walk him at least three times every day. We hear from our dog training clients that fixing the leash pulling and lunging is the number one crowdpleaser - changing the walk to an enjoyable and fun activity for both the dog and the owner.
It is not hard to teach your dog not to pull on the leash. In this blog, we will share an easy to do training exercise that will train your dog. However, it is more important that you, the owner, understands the important part consistency playsafter training. During our private in-home obedience training sessions, Jim can train a dog within 15 minutes to walk properly on the leash, even to heel. The dog will be in the training mode and the owner and dog will be doing great on leashfor the rest of the 1 hour class.Later the dog will often go back to pulling, if the owner does not consistently work with the dog every day.
When we train, we show the dog what behavior we want from him. But it is through repeated behavior, that the dog actually learns. A lot of dog owners work with the dog for some time, but then go back to letting the dog pull and revert to the undesired behavior. Consistency in behavior is what actually teaches the dog, not training.
At first you will set aside time for training, meaning you will make sure you have a controlled environment to do the leash training exercise with your dog. As you both progress, you will expect the new leash behavior at all times.
While you are doing the leash training, you are not actually walking your dog for exercise. So in the beginning stages, you need to be sure to first walk your dog to allow him to relieve himself, and also provide some form of exercise for him. It is a good idea to play fetch or let him romp around in an off leash area, if possible.
We recommend you use a training collar and six foot leash.Take all the other collars off the dog at this time.
Leash training Exercise 1:
In the quiet area you selected for
the exercise, choose two focal points for yourself. This might be a
parked car and a tree. Or maybe a mailbox and a streetlamp. These two
points should be about 100 feet apart. From here on out I will refer
to them as Marker A and Marker B.
Your
dog is pulling on the leash while you are walking
toward marker
A. That's okay, just keep walking toward
A.
Once you get to the
marker, turn your focus
on your
second marker and
start walking towards it. Your dog, thinking he knows where you are
going, will be pulling you towards B, or maybe he is pulling toward
somewhere else he wants to go sniff.
Let him go to the very end of the six foot leash and as soon as the
leash gets tight, turn 180 degrees and walk back towards A. It is
very important that you not
stop, continue
to walk and
do not say anything.
Thetraining
collar will
do all the work. Your dog will feel
the collar tightening and he
will turn around and see your backside, as
you are
walking back
toward A.
In his mind, he wants to get out in front of you, so he will dart
past you and pull toward point A. Just as soon as he runs past you
and the leash gets tight, turn again 180 degrees and start walking
towards B. Do not stop and don’t say anything. Justkeep
walking towards B.
Each time your dog gets to the end
of the leash and pulls, you change direction. By doing so, the
training collar will get tight, and your dog will automatically want
to come towards you to relieve the pressure. As long as the leash is
loose, continue to walk forward. As soon as your dog pulls tight on
the leash, change direction.
After a few minutes, your dog will
become suspicious of you changing your mind all the time and will
start to stay closer to you, so he can keep an eye on you. This is
exactly what we are looking for. Start making it a game, don't just
wait for him to yank on the leash, change directions more often and
see him stay with you. Change your speed and start stopping and then
going again. Your dog will have fun, feeling the challenge to pay
close attention to you and to what you are going to do next.
Do this exercise for several days in a row, at least twice each day. Spend no more than 30 minutes on it each time.After a few days, you can start to incorporate the same leash behavior into your regular walks.
Each time you start your walk, make sure you expect calmness, never start the walk excited. If you get your dog all wound up before you put on the leash, how can you expect him to be calm and not pull you excitedly down the street? Many dog owners unintentionally get their dogs into these super hyper states by talking to the dog about going out for a walk. They will usually say something like: “Fido, do you want to go for a walk? Come let's go outside!” They will use a happy voice. The dog will get excited and start running back and forth, he may jump around or whine. If your dog acts in any of these ways when you are getting ready to go outside, he has learned to associate a hyper and excited state of being with going outside. If you want him to behave on the leash, you must get him to calm down before you leave the home.
Home made dog treats are easy to make and are certainly a lot cheaper than getting them at the store. You are also able to control the ingredients. Store bought dog treats are full of fillers and preservatives.
If your dog has any food allergies or food sensitivities, it makes a lot of sense to make your own dog treats. But even if your dog can eat everything, making your own treats will insure that you are feeding him the best and most nutritious treats.
Here is a easy recipe for our home made dog biscuits:
Ingredients:
2 1/2 cups of oats
1 egg
1/4 cup shredded cheese
1/4 cup bacon bits
1/2 cup chicken broth
Directions:
preheat oven to 350 F
heat chicken broth until hot
add remaining ingredients
knead dough until smooth
roll dough to 1/2 inch
use cookie cutters to make shaped cookies
arrange on lined cookie sheet
bake for 30 minutes
A lot of people comment on the type of leash I use for my dogs and want to know more about them.
So this weeks blog post is about the European adjustable dog leashes I use exclusively when traveling with our dogs. Wherever I go, I get people asking me where I got the leash. The leash looks very classy, but most of all, it is extremely versatile.
I love these leashes, because they allow me to adjust them in so many different ways. I personally prefer the leather type, but also own a few rope ones.
With an easy snap, you can tie your dog to your camping chair, or a pole or whatever you like. It is also perfect for Therapy and Service dogs, as you can clip the leash at any length to a wheelchair, if needed.By using the different rings, you can adjust the length of the tether to your situation.
2. You can adjust the leash length easily from short to medium to long
Rather then gathering up the leash in your hands, which can make it somewhat difficult to carry, the leash can be adjusted to 3 different lengths. This is great for traveling. When you take you dog through a crowded street market, use the shortest to keep your dog right by your side. On another occasion, when you are out walking in the park, you can have the leash at it's full length, allowing Fido to roam freely.
3. You can wrap the leash around your body.
By wrapping the leash over one shoulder, you can have a hands-free set up perfect for biking, hiking or while out shopping. I use this option all the time when walking several dogs. I can wrap my senior dog's leash around my body and have my hands free to work more closely with the younger pup.
4. Use both ends to walk two dogs at a time.
The leash offers you the opportunity to walk multiple dogs. This makes it a great emergency leash, when one gets lost, or you come across a dog that is without leash.
I bought these leashes in Germany, every time I go to visit, I would bring back one more for my personal use. I recently found them online and have now created a link to them in our online Pet Store.
To find a wider selection of different styles of these wonderful leashes,follow this link
