A DOG and YOUR LIFESTYLE

If I was to come up to you and ask what affect a dog would have on your lifestyle, you would have a reaction, whether you like dogs or do not care for them. Either way, dogs affect your lifestyle. Dogs and humans have interacted for thousands of years, so rare indeed is the person who does not have an opinion or feelings about man's “best friend.”

Therefore, it is safe to assume that you have had at least one experience with a dog that was either positive or negative. This experience has had an impact on your life, whether you realized it or not. If it was a negative experience, you will be scared or distrustful of dogs and avoid them as much as possible. If it was a positive experience, then you will probably have a pet dog or have done so in the past. If the experience was kind of benign, you may not have formed an opinion one way or the other, however, this type of situation is not typical. Typically, that experience with the dog has left you with a life long emotional feeling regarding dogs.

If you think that dogs are big or small stinky nuisances, then you will probably not have a pet dog and you will never experience the emotion of receiving unconditional love (you may have a great love life, but it will have conditions attached to it). In spite of this, you will have to admit that dogs, or a specific dog, has influenced your current lifestyle. If you are completely honest, and haven't substituted another pet in the place of a dog, you will have to admit that your life is somewhat sterile and maybe, just a little empty, or at least missing a little something.

Now, just for fun, let's look at a hypothetical example to see how your emotions and lifestyle can be changed. For this example, let's say you are a twenties or thirties single person who is career orientated. Because you are so wrapped up in your career, you are probably not at your optimum weight or physical condition. You may have even tried to diet or taken out a membership in a gym, but they didn't work because your lifestyle didn't leave enough time to properly adhere to the regimen required,

One night, you come home tired and just want to get off to bed when you realize that tomorrow is garbage collection day and you must put the garbage in the bin in the back alley. It's raining and quite cold. You grab the garbage you've placed into a garbage bag, pulled on a coat and a raincoat and rushed out to the garbage bin. There, huddled whimpering beside the garbage bin is a little puppy. It appears to be abandoned, and it looks pathetically at you. You don't particularly care for dogs because they don't really fit in your lifestyle. But, this one looks so pathetic and helpless that you feel pity for it and pick it up and take it in out of the wet and cold, just for the night.

Once inside you grab a towel and dry the poor little thing. It licks your hand. Once it's dry, you pour a little milk in one bowl and a few leftovers from the refrigerator in another. The little thing devours everything in minutes, then licks your leg and curls up near your feet. You resolve to arrange for the puppy to go to the place where they put abandoned dogs, but you're not sure if it is the city pound or the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA). You take the puppy out to relieve itself just before you head to bed. Next morning, just before you head off to work you take puppy out again, then when you come back in you put a few pieces of newspaper on the kitchen floor and head off to work.

Work is a bedlam of calls and demands and you don't have time to find out where to take the little stray. You'll have to keep it another day. On the way home you stop at Walmart and go into the pet department to get some puppy food. The clerk recommends that you take the puppy for a daily walk, so you buy an inexpensive collar and leash.

When you get home, you find that puppy has wet partly on a piece of newspaper and partly on the floor. You put the newspaper in the garbage and wipe the floor. The puppy bounces over and licks the back of your hand.

You put food and water down for puppy and make a quick supper for yourself. Then you put the collar on puppy who is not happy with it at all. She keeps trying to pull it off with a hind leg. After putting your coat on and pocketing a bunch of paper towel and a couple of plastic sandwich bags to pick up any bowel movements, you snap the leash onto the collar and partly lead and partly drag puppy to the door.

Once out on the front sidewalk, puppy rushed off to the end of the leash pulling madly as she explores everything she sees. A couple of gentle tugs on the leash slows her down a little and you make it erratically to the end of the block. You decide to walk around the block a few times. By the time you get around the block the first time she is walking more normally and not pulling as frantically as she was. The second time around the block, she stops and you're glad you brought two plastic bags. You pick up after her and seal the bags to enclose the odour. When you get back to the front door of your building, you realize that you've just walked eight blocks or about eight-tenths of a mile as most city blocks are about one-tenth of a mile in length. Puppy looks tired and you're a little fatigued yourself. You haven't walked that far in quite a while.

The next day at work is another busy one and you don't get time to phone about the puppy, again.

When you get home, there's no mess left by puppy who happily bounds up to you. You bend down to pet puppy and get a sloppy lick on your chin. You feed puppy and yourself and repeat the walk again. Your legs area a little stiff and sore from the unusual exercise and puppy is much more manageable.

This routine continues for the rest of the week and by Friday, you find, much to your amazement, that you've become quite attached to puppy and can't bear the thought of her going into a cage at the pound or the SPCA. Since you've decided to keep her, you give her a name and get some toys and some piddle pads in case she has to go when you are out. The walks continue and the length of them has increased to three times around the block. “Taffy” has grown a bit and always greets you enthusiastically when you get home from work.

About a month goes by and you notice that your clothes are not fitting as well as they did. They all seem to have stretched. You step on the bathroom scale and are shocked to see you have lost ten pounds. You realize that your daily walks with “Taffy” have resulted in a loss of weight and then you also realize that you are not nearly as stressed or “up tight” as you had been.

“Taffy,” the little stray you were going to put in the pound or SPCA (you're still not sure who looks after strays in your city), has helped you to reduce your weight and make you a happier and less stressed person. She has also provided you with attention and plenty of affection. Quite a reward for taking her in. And to top it off, she has changed your lifestyle and possibly your whole future.

Although the above was a fictional account, get yourself a dog and see if it doesn't make you into a whole different person...I dare you!

Until next time,

Teia


PS. Let me know if a dog has changed your lifestyle.

Six Ways to Make Your New Puppy Comfortable

If you are considering bringing a puppy home and have never done it before, there are some important things you need to know. A puppy is a new member in your household, just like a new baby and therefore needs your care and attention just like any other member of your family.

The puppy has just left its family and is going to be very lonely and just a little lost. As a result, whenever it is awake, it will seek company and a caring touch. If you are not able to provide these crucial elements, plus food and water, maybe you need to reschedule the 'bringing home' event.

In the meantime, do some research on the kind of attitude you need to have when dealing with a new puppy and the kind of care you need to give it. One thing you can expect when a new pup comes to your home is restlessness and whimpering. You can minimize this discomfort. Let's look at the best way to do it.

The first way to make a puppy comfortable.

Do not get a puppy that is less than eight weeks old. All puppies need to be with their mother until they are at least eight weeks old. They need the nourishment, which provides the antibodies necessary to ward off disease, the security and the sense of identity that comes from being nursed by their mother.

The second way to make a puppy feel comfortable.

Since you must transport the puppy from the location where you obtained it, remember that it's a pup, so treat it tenderly. Bring it home as comfortably as possible. Prepare a basket with a cushion, a coverlet and some chewable dog toys. Put the pup in the basket and place the coverlet over it, if the puppy appears frightened. If it appears relatively calm, then leave the coverlet off. Make sure you caress the pup's head occasionally during the journey home. Talk to it. It will probably whimper, but your soothing voice should calm it down and make it feel less abandoned.

The third way to make your puppy comfortable.

Introduce the pup to your home. Carry the pup around your home. Introduce it to the rest of your family. Let them and the pup become acquainted with each other. Put the pup down and watch it when it goes exploring. Gently, but firmly, stop it from doing things that are unacceptable in your household. In this way, you will introduce it to your authority and your rules, which it will have to abide by for the rest of its life.

The fourth way to make a puppy comfortable.

Prepare its corner/basket/bed in a cozy place in the house. Take the same care that you did when you prepared the basket for the trip home. The place where you intend to keep the puppy depends on the rules of your house. Some people prefer to take the pup to their bedroom; others would have it in their kitchen, etc. No matter where you put it, your task is to check on it occasionally, caress it, talk to it (maybe you could name it right away) and to take it out whenever you think it might need to relieve itself.

The fifth way to make a puppy comfortable.

If the puppy has not been completely weaned, give it a bowl of milk and some water in a separate bowl. Keep these next to its basket. Coax the puppy to drink as much as possible. If the pup does not drink at all, you might want to use a dropper to feed it some milk and water. You might also try giving it something semi-solid, like bread soaked in milk. Keep the quantity small. Feeding it too much might cause an upset stomach and the puppy might throw-up. After all, this might be the first time that it has had anything other than its mother's milk. If the puppy has been weaned, fill the bowl with the type of puppy food it had been eating at the location where you obtained it. Do not try changing its food at this time, because the pup will be under stress and its stomach may be upset. Keep some soft paper towels with you to clean up any messes that you, or the puppy might make.

The sixth way to make a puppy comfortable.

The pup will need to relieve itself on its first night away from its family. It may not be possible for you to step out of your house in the dead of night for the sake of the puppy. If this is the case, spread an old newspaper near the pup's basket or provide “puppy piddle pads“ for it to relieve itself on. Whenever you see that the pup is getting restless, lift the puppy, put it on the newspaper or piddle pad and keep it there until it has finished its task. In this way, you will eventually train the puppy to go on an acceptable surface.

The first night with the pup is going to be mostly sleepless for you, what with the whimpering and the waking up. However, you won't mind because you love your pup, don't you? When mom and dad got their first puppy, a black miniature poodle named Mitzi, they had a box with the puppy in it in a corner of the living room. It whined loudly, so after a while the box was moved to a corner of the master bedroom. When the pup continued to whine, dad picked up the puppy and placed her on the bed. She settled down between mom and dad and that was the last time she spent a night anywhere else. Mom and dad are the first to admit that they are pushovers when it comes to animals. They feel that if you don’t make them part of your family, why have them? I’m afraid that I have taken unfair advantage of that feeling and so has my “sister.” We are probably two of the most spoiled dogs around. But hey, I’m not stupid, why not take full advantage of a good thing?

Until next time,

Teia

PS. When you start to get frustrated with your new puppy, just remember that we grow up and provide you with unconditional love and plenty of entertainment for our whole lives. Show us kindness and provide us with good nutrition and we’ll provide you with a loving companion and all the protection that our size will allow.

A Guide to House Training Your Puppy

This entry was prompted by a request from someone who met my dad in the grocery store while he was picking up some dog food for the dogs of a family mom was house sitting for. This lady had just picked up her first puppy and she didn't know how to house train him. Dad told her the information contained in this post and I thought that there were probably many more people who could use the information too. So, for all you first time puppy owners, here's a guide to house training him.

Dogs are probably the only animals in the world who love unconditionally, with their whole heart, body and soul. There are many stories of dogs saving the lives of their owners, of warning people of danger or of seeming to know when an owner is sick or in pain. Some dogs have been trained to diagnose cancer and detect oncoming heart attacks and epileptic seizures in humans.

If you've decided to get a puppy, or you've recently brought one home, congratulations! You will have a loyal friend and companion who will enjoy your company, never be too tired to go for a walk with you and who will always be on your side, no matter what!

One note of caution though. A dog is only as well-trained as he has been taught to be by his owner. It is important that your puppy understands as quickly as possible what is considered acceptable behavior in your home and what is not.

You need to decide early on if you will allow your puppy to get on your furniture. Also decide where she can sleep and what she can chew on.

So house training your dog now, while your dog is still a puppy, is the best way to ensure that she/he is a welcome and happy member of your household.

The crate method is one of the fastest and most humane methods of house training your puppy.

But, first, here are some do's and don'ts for house training your puppy:

DOES:

Do be accessible to your puppy. If you are going to be gone for long periods of time during the training period, then do not give the puppy full access to your house. Put him in an area which you have prepared for accidents.

Do limit the amount of food your puppy has throughout the day. If it's hot outside, make sure your puppy has enough water to drink, because if she becomes dehydrated from lack of water, you could come home to a dead or very ill puppy. Also remember that what goes in, will come out so be prepared for puddles when you come home.

Do praise your puppy every time he or she does what you expect him/her to do. Your puppy wants to please you, and he/she needs to learn what behaviors create praise from you.

Do be consistent. You will only confuse your puppy otherwise.

Do be realistic. Your puppy may not be capable of being completely house trained until he is at least six months old. I had a lot of trouble learning where to go. I was born in the winter and trained to go outside on the snow. When the snow melted, I was confused and didn't know where I was supposed to go. So, I held it as long as I could then just went where ever I was when I couldn't hold it any longer. Eventually I learned that I could go on the grass or the gravel outside, but not before mom and dad got frustrated. As they learned to understand me, they finally came up with a solution that made us all happy.

DON’TS:

Don't reprimand your puppy when he has an accident. It's going to happen and if it does, it means that you didn't get him outside in time. Just clean it up and move on.

Don't use the crate as a means of locking your puppy up for long periods of time, or as a punishment.

Don't let your puppy go to the bathroom anywhere except his/her designated area while you are training him/her.

Why the crate method works: Dogs are naturally fastidious animals and they don't like to eliminate where they sleep or eat. Therefore, if your puppy sleeps in the crate, she/he will not use the crate as a bathroom unless they have an accident because they couldn't go elsewhere.

First things first:

Puppies need to urinate shortly after they eat, drink, play, chew, run or walk. Depending on the breed, size, temperament and age of your puppy, this can be within 15 to 30 minutes.

1. Keep a record, for a couple of days, of the times your puppy needs to go. This will help you to learn his natural schedule and make the training process easier.

2. Plan your "walking" schedule around your puppy's needs. From the time your puppy is about ten or 11 weeks to six months old, he/she should be walked between five and ten times a day. Once your puppy is between six months and 11 months old, this will drop to around four to six times a day. And when he/she is an adult, walking your dog two to four times a day will be sufficient, depending on the breed and temperament of your dog. Remember to take along several clean pickup bags to pick up after you dog has a bowel movement. It is not courteous or sanitary to leave it behind for others to step in. Turn your pickup bag inside out, put your hand into it and reach down and grasp the stool. As you pick the bag up use your free hand to fold the bag down over the stool. Once the bag is right side out again, release the bottom where the stool is and tie the top tightly closed. In this way you can sanitarily carry the stool to a proper disposal container.

3. Especially after your puppy has spent the night in his/her crate, do not return from your morning walk until he/she has eliminated. (If for some reason you do have to return, put your puppy in his/her crate, and then take him/her out every fifteen minutes or so, until he/she goes.) Make sure you give your puppy lots of praise and affection, once he/she has done what you wanted.

What the crate means to your puppy.

A crate is your puppy's home away from home, his/her sanctuary in times of stress and his "bedroom" at night (if you have chosen not to let your dog sleep with you).

Make sure that your puppy associates his/her crate with positive feelings. Put his/her favorite blanket, chew toys and treats inside the crate. When helping your puppy get used to the crate, leave the door open until your puppy shows no sign of fear of the crate.

The more comfortable your puppy is inside the crate, the less likely he/she will be of soiling it. Never let your puppy out of the crate for bad behavior such as barking, whining or scratching.

How to Get Started:

1. Establish a regular schedule of feeding and going outdoors.

2. Put the puppy in the crate at night, but make sure you take him/her out first thing in the morning and don't go back into the house until the puppy has finished.

3. After the puppy has gone to the bathroom, bring him/her in, and let him play for an hour or so. (Remember not to give your puppy complete run of the house until he is completely house trained.)

4. Feed the puppy.

5. Using the chart you created, take the puppy outside within 15 minutes of the time you know he/she is going to need to go. Don't come back in until the puppy has gone.

6. Bring the puppy in and let him/her play.

7. Put the puppy in his/her crate for a nap.

Repeat this schedule throughout the day.

Yes, this is a lot of work. But the method is effective, it works quickly and your puppy will soon become house broken. As he/she gets older, your puppy will let you know when he/she needs to go to the bathroom. In the meantime, you'll be able to have complete confidence in your puppy.

Until next time,

Teia