I broke that smart camera phone thing

Well, actually, several cars did. So, no more decent quality pictures. Back to the screenless Fuji and my crappy cellular phone! Yay...

Here's some dog food, because nothing even remotely interesting has happened recently.

Yesterday: Kibbles, shredded beef, eggs, an apple core for Sasha, and ground beef with hidden "goodies" for Conker.

Today was kibbles, eggs, and liver for everybody, apple chunks for the Girls, turkey neck hunk and ground beef balls for Conker.

Some Foods

The girls are back on Diamond Naturals, but will be getting the meat I got for free from a craigslist ad as a topper/side dish.

Today was one cup kibble and a hunk of steak. Conker got 1/2 cup kibble, an egg, half a turkey neck, and some ground beef balls with his fish oil, glucosamine/chondroitin, and MSM supplements hidden inside. He gets those three things twice a day.
He does not eat eggshells, but loves the membrane from inside, so I pull it out for him. Eggshell membranes are supposedly good for joints, but I do not know if they actually do anything or it it's just hype. I have yet to see a credible study on them.

Conker has gone back to liking food again. He ate a turkey leg the other day, loves his turkey necks like before, and scarfs down his ground beef without hesitation. I am thinking that the kibble he was previously eating gave him an upset stomach, or something along that line.

Leftover Bone

Conker found a bone in the yard. Decided it was his.

Look at that...

There's a giveaway going on over at My Rotten Dogs for a BarkBox! Ends on the 27th, so go check it out!

The Baby Beef is done!

I decided to not extend the baby Beef out any longer and instead gave what remained to the girls today. I could have wiggled three (including today) more days out of it if I had wanted to, but I was a bit sick of it so I just gave them the large hunks of meaty bone and let them have a go at it.

 Baby Beef day 15: Pelvis and spine, neck (not pictured), and the rest of the organs.

Here's Sasha working on that neck. I gave it to her frozen since I gave the bigger hunk to Juneau and didn't want Sasha to try to hoard it from her sister. Because Sasha eats twice as fast as Juneau.

And Juneau with the big hunk or pelvis and lower spine.  

At first I laid the pelvic hunk in the grass and told all three dogs "Go ahead! Get it!" to which they all looked at me like I was possessed. Conker was the first to approach. He sniffed cautiously, then looked at me as if to say, "Sure, like I'm going to eat that." but stood guard over the meat, unsure is he really wanted it or not. He is, after all, the epitome of greed, and though he did not want to eat the meaty bone himself, he was surely not going to let those black dogs touch it.
Juneau was the second to approach. She walked towards the carcass in a semi-circle, eyeing Conker like some sort of Border Collie eyeing sheep. Juneau reached the heap of meat and bone, placed one paw on the prize, her head still low, eyes glued to Conker, and raised her lips. It was the most horrific looking snarl I have ever seen Juneau give.
Conker looked utterly shocked, and immediately retreated away from his former prize.
Good choice, Conker. Good choice. Juneau looked like she had the full intention of backing that snarl if she had to.

Conker buggered off to be annoying while I fetched the frozen neck for Sasha. They took quite a while to eat their hunks. Juneau actually didn't finish her whole piece. It was indeed, very large, and I knew she was not going to be able to finish it all today. But she laid out there in the yard beside it for a long while after she was full. It's still out there, since it's cold enough.

Tomorrow the Girls are going to get turns gnawing on the remains until they are all gone.

F-22

Baby Beef day 14: Ribs, various organs.

The Baby Beef is nearing extinction. There is 2-3 days left, depending on how I hack up the pelvis, not including the remaining lower leg bones and hooves. (No meat on those, they are good for chewing.)

Today I took Juneau to the Home Depot. She thought it was FUN! Juneau is usually pretty timid indoors, not anything like Conker and not incredibly outgoing like Sasha, somewhere inbetween. Today she thought we were having a load of fun and was incredibly polite to all the people she met.

We also went to Petco where she was a little less polite (understandable, since it is a petstore) then she got to sit in the Jeep while I ran into the grocery to grab some eggs for the dogs that I had a coupon for.

F-21

 

Baby Beef day 13: Ribs, shoulder blade, and a bunch of organs.

I took Juneau on a short hike today. I wanted to work with her alone in order to brush up on some manners that have gotten quite rusty. One way I train is to have the dog walk nicely on-leash, and when they do that for a bit they get to run around off-leash as the reward. Rinse and repeat, throw in some heeling, etc. When we encounter people the dog(s) is leashed, and if they are polite, they go off-leash right away. If not, more heeling and leash manners.
We did mostly heel/leash work since there were not a lot of people today, so I guess I'll either have to take her on another solo hike or... A walk. I don't do walks. Not happily that is. I hike, not stroll around the neighborhood.

 This is but one reason why I don't do walks.

F-20

 Conker got into the fire pit last night.

 Baby beef day 12: Juneau got a shoulder blade, Sasha ribs, both got a large assortment of organs.

I took Conker on a short 4 mile hike today.

Obligatory

Nothing much interesting happened. Met a happy-go-lucky Labrador whom Conker ignored.

One Down...

Who knows how many more to go.

There have been rats in the ceiling for a while now. Every so often I hear them making noises at night, and since I am a light sleeper, they keep me awake.
Mom finally decided she did not want rats in the house, so she went out and bought some traps. I set one up on the "rat highway" in the garage where we have seen them run a few times. Since the beam is narrow, and we didn't really want the triggered trap and caught rat to come flying down into the garage, I nailed the trap in place. The bait portion is over the beam, the rest is hanging out over the garage door. I set the trap with peanut butter and waited.

THUD!

I do not particularly like killing the rats. I am against poisoning them (for various reasons) and since I cannot fit Conker into the space the rats have nested in, traps are what the solution is.

F-19

Baby Beef day 10:  Nothing, since the Girls ate so much the day before. They did get a few biscuits though.

Baby Beef day 11: Ribs, liver, heart, and lung.

I recieved a delivery today.

An assortment of training and nutrition dog books from a fellow dog lover!

I skimmed through the books on fearful dogs and think they will be very helpful for dealing with Conker's stranger fear. The others should come in handy with re-teaching Juneau some basic manners that seem to fly out of her head while on hikes.

It has begun

The Emperor is beginning to blow his coat.

This is but a small taste of what is to come.

Fagtastic

Well, blogger decided be be a total asshole and deleted all the comments from January 21st 2013 onwards, so all the recent comments are gone. They appear as "This comment has been removed by a blog administrator." when I did not remove them at all. And thanks to blogger's assholery, there is no way I can get them back on my interface.
So, sorry about that.

I've contacted blogger about this but highly doubt they will do anything to fix it.
I might switch to WordPress if this shit happens again.

Spines and Parties

Baby Beef day 9: Liver, lung, and spine sections. Big meal today!

 

The Girls crunched, munched, ripped, and tore through their spine sections. They LOVED today's meal and thoroughly enjoyed themselves. Sasha was very efficient with her section, incredibly wolf-like in the way she ate it. Juneau was a bit more dainty than her sister.

Here's a video of them eating their spine sections. Sorry, no audio.

My neighbor gave me one of those smart phones that she never uses anymore, which has a camera (and is the reason she gave it to me) so I can now take pictures that I can actually see what my subject is and are of semi-decent quality! I can take video and audio recordings too, but I haven't figured out if the video is always silent or what yet. Still learning how to use this thing.
(No, I will not be using it as a phone. Just a camera.)


Today my neighbor (who gave me the smartphone) threw a birthday party for her Carin Terrier, Toby, who is turning 9. There was something like 16 or so dogs who showed up, including my three. All of whom behaved much better than I thought they would, no fights or squabbles occurred. (Conker and Juneau barked a few times but didn't start anything.)
There was an assortment of dogs: Bullmastiff, Bloodhound, Bulldog, Yorkshire, Carin, Tibetan, and West Highland White Terriers, my two mutts, a Standard Poodle, The Emperor (a.k.a. Shiba Inu), Dachshund, and a generic Labbish dog.
I lent Conker to an elderly Irish lady for the party since she had no dog of her own, with whom Conker became good friends and behaved nicely for. We tied balloons to the dog's collars and marched them down the street, people giving us odd looks, some coming out to see what the parade was for.
After the parade we migrated to the backyard for cake and yogurt snacks, which Sasha hogged out on, eating Juneau's share several times, and Conker ignored.

Overall it was a lot of fun, the dogs enjoyed it (especially Sasha who is now in a food-induced coma), and I am very proud of Conker for not being a jackass to everyone and behaving well for the Irish lady.

Filling up the freezer

Oh boy Juneau and Sasha are going to be quite happy! Conker... maybe, depends on what it is.

Two large boxes (and a black garbage bag) full of free meats! I put an ad on craigslist for unwanted/freezerburnt meat, and along with the Baby Beef, this is what I have gotten from it. I've had several other people call, two were too far away and the third never showed at the meeting spot, but this last one turned out to be pretty good.

Contained in the boxes (and bag) is roughly: Various parts of chickens (whole, legs, breast, etc.), beef organs (tongue, heart, liver), various pork items (hams, sausage, loins), various beef cuts, I think some venison, some fish, eggs, assorted veggies (I will make a mush out of them), lamb parts (leg, breast), some seafood, and a couple other random things (meatloaf?). In total, about 150 pounds of food. For free!
Most of it is pretty freezerburnt, but as long as it doesn't smell like death, it will be fine to feed.

There is NO room whatsoever in the freezer for anything else.


In other news...

If you guessed more legbones with a bunch of organs...

Nature's Variety Instinct Chicken Raw Boost

This kibble has a long name...
Conker has been eating one of Nature's Variety's recently introduced Raw Boost kibbles for a short while now. This is the breakdown and brief review.


A while ago I found a coupon for $3 off a bag of Nature's Variety Raw Boost, and I also had a Petco coupon for some percentage off, or like, $5, or something. Can't remember.
Without these discounts I would not have purchased this kibble since it's something like $20+ for 4.1 pounds of food. But since I had them, I figured why not give it a shot?
My Petco has a shitty selection of foods and only had the Chicken formula in the smallest bag, so that's what I got.

Chicken Meal, Tapioca, Chicken Fat (preserved with Mixed Tocopherols and Citric Acid), Pumpkinseeds, Menhaden Fish Meal, Sun-Cured Alfalfa Meal, Montmorillonite Clay, Natural Chicken Flavor, Freeze Dried Chicken (including Freeze Dried Ground Chicken Bone), Freeze Dried Turkey, Freeze Dried Turkey Liver, Freeze Dried Turkey Heart, Vitamins (Choline Chloride, Vitamin E Supplement, L-Ascorbyl-2-Polyphosphate, Biotin, Niacin Supplement, Vitamin A Acetate, d-Calcium Pantothenate, Riboflavin Supplement, Pyridoxine Hydrochloride, Thiamine Mononitrate, Vitamin B12 Supplement, Beta Carotene, Vitamin D3 Supplement, Folic Acid), Minerals (Zinc Proteinate, Iron Proteinate, Manganese Proteinate, Copper Proteinate, Sodium Selenite, Ethylenediamine Dihydriodide), Salt, Dried Kelp, Apples, Carrots, Butternut Squash, Inulin, Flaxseed Oil, Peas, Chicken Eggs, Ground Flaxseed, Broccoli, Lettuce, Spinach, Apple Cider Vinegar, Parsley, Honey, Salmon Oil, Rosemary Extract, Olive Oil, Blueberries, Alfalfa Sprouts, Persimmons, Rosemary, Sage, Clove, Yeast Culture (Saccharomyces Cerevisiae), Dried Enterococcus faecium Fermentation Product, Dried Lactobacillus acidophilus Fermentation Product, Dried Aspergillus niger Fermentation Extract, Dried Trichoderma longibrachiatum Fermentation Extract, Dried Bacillus subtilis Fermentation Extract.

Looong ingredient list! This is partly due to the "Raw Boost" bits that have their own ingredient list on top of the kibble's. In general, it looks okay, nothing really sticks out as bad to me.

Crude Protein (min):  42.0%
Crude Fat (min):  22.0%
Crude Fiber (max): 4.5%
Moisture (max): 8.0%
Calories per cup (calculated) – 495 kcal/cup
Calories per kg (calculated) – 4170 kcal/kg

I like high-protein foods since they tend to have better results than lower to mid-range protein foods (at least with my dogs that is) so I do not find the protein content of this food to be excessive at all. (It is almost identical to that of a typical homemade raw meal, minus the moisture so it appears more concentrated but is in fact, the same.)
Conker requires about a cup and a half of this kibble in order to maintain "good" body condition. However, during the first half of feeding this food he was getting 1 cup with some raw foods as a separate meal. For the latter half he wouldn't eat the raw foods, and not much of the kibble.

Anywho...

The kibble has the typical round, dense shape, is not overly smelly nor greasy. The "Raw Boost" bits are cylindrical in shape and vary in length. They hardly weigh a thing, and I was quite disappointed in how few there were in the bag. Seems more like a "Raw Taste" more than a boost.
Speaking of raw... I do not consider freeze-dried or dehydrated products to be fully-raw, especially if they are "sterilized."

So, how did Conker do on this kibble?

Coat was okay, a bit drier than I like despite fish oil and eggs/raw foods being included during the first half of feeding this kibble. Coat got drier during the second half, but nothing drastic. He also developed that kibble-fed "doggy smell" but like most high-end kibbles it was not overly obnoxious or easily noticable.
Poop is regular for a high-end, high-protein, low-carb food, (compact, non-smelly) but is light colored, a sort of yellowish tan. Don't know if that's normal or because this is a chicken-based food. (Raw chicken poop looks about the same.)
Teeth are okay. The raw bones help to keep them clean, but they would have otherwise developed a bit of tartar despite him chewing every little piece of kibble. (In my experience kibble does not clean teeth, despite what marketing says. It sticks to them, especially when overly-chewed like Conker does, and I do not concider that to be a good thing.)
Muscle-tone was great. He put on a lot of muscle since the Alaska trip and I think this food certainly had helped.
He burps a lot on this food, something I am looking into. He also has NASTY deathfarts, and licks his butt often. I think there is a digestive anomaly going on here.

Note: Conker always burps after a meal, but not a small snack, which he does when eating this food (snacks on it). He also "normally" has deathfarts, but not as often as on this food. The butt-licking is also somewhat normal, but again, is increased on this food.

Something that hasn't happened on other kibbles is this: Conker has thrown up multiple times. I don't know if the raw food caused it or the kibble did, but every time he's thrown up there was kibble in the nasty, and he'd eaten the kibble many hours before then. I do not know for sure if it's connected or what.

Conker does not seem to like this food very much. At first he thought it was great and would finish his entire bowl in one sitting. Then he gradually lost interest, and now it's very difficult to get him to eat more than 1/4 cup at a time. He hardly eats a full cup a day, and dressing it up does not help.
However, he also won't touch most raw foods either, so I don't know if the kibble is causing that or if it is something else, and if it is something else, he might actually like this kibble a lot.


In general, I find this food to be comparable to other high-protein kibbles I have tried. Was there much of a difference between this food and the others, particularly the other Instinct formula I've tried? No. In fact, I found the results to be slightly lesser quality, but still good.
Bottom line: I do not think the "Raw Boost" has done anything at all other than be a fancy marketing scheme to get people to buy a lesser amount of food for a higher price than the other "plain" formulas Nature's Variety produces.

Would I feed the Raw Boost again? Sure! If I could get it for cheap cheap like I did this time (and if the dang dog would eat it). If not, no, I wouldn't bother with it. I'd get the regular formula instead.

F-15

Baby Beef day 7: Boneless legmeat. Again!

Took all the dogs hiking today.

Conker thought 65 degrees was HOT.

He still managed to keep up with the girls who didn't appear to be affected by the "heatwave". 

Note his right rear leg. Funny gait, most likely caused by his knee. Probably a bad thing.

Still a bit of snow on the far distant mountains. Winter isn't over yet.

We stopped for a group Obligatory Bench photo. Juneau kept jumping off the bench when I told her to get on and wait. Hence the odd posture.

We made our way down into the cool shady forest junction. (There are four different trails that intersect here.) Juneau and Sasha stopped to see why I was standing in the middle of the trail swearing (at my camera). Conker on the other hand blew me off. He's up there somewhere.

We progressed to the new "Katy" trail. The dogs always try to take this one on the way in, but since we usually go a different route into Cathedral Hills, if we were to take it at that juncture we'd end up back at the parking lot. So I save it for last.

They forged ahead, leaving me behind to fiddle with my screenless camera. 

We stopped for another break on a small shaded switchback overlook. Conker decided to sit on his right leg in an odd manner.

This hike was only about 3.5 miles long. I did not do an average or longer hike since Juneau's harness had rubbed her armpit raw on the last hike I took the Girls on. I haven't taken them with for a while to give the sore time to heal. I think it was caused by the velcro straps on the pack section that holds the bags in place, since that is exactly where it would rest. I am going to pad the harness and velcro straps in that area to prevent any further rubbing.

Small Conker Update

Baby Beef day 6: More legbones! And a bunch of organs.

Conker briefly investigated the bones but would not lick them. He still won't touch any part of the Baby Beef.

Anywho...

Conker has developed inconsistent eating habits again. His old favorite, raw eggs, are no longer a favorite and have been reduced to "No, I'm not going to eat that." status. He will sometimes eat his kibble, sometimes, but hardly ever finishes a full portion in one sitting. Sometimes he does, but not as the norm. He loves raw bacon though, and that is how I get him to eat his supplement pills. Not the best thing to use, but it works. For now.

He also doesn't seem to have any interest whatsoever in any form of normally fed raw foods. He used to be fine with turkey necks, now they are bad. Beef liver is bad. Chicken is bad. Even ground beef is bad!

I am starting to think he's got some other sort of digestive problem in addition to not digesting stuff normally. Now that he's been eating mainly kibble for a while now, I believe it is going to be tough to, digestively, transfer him back to raw foods. He is able to eat kibble and raw intermittently, without digestive issues, but he has occasionally thrown up after eating some raw items. This is a new problem that has not been an issue in the past. Digestive upset that results in nastyass poop is what I'd expect from this, not throwing up. That is a new symptom.
Maybe it's an acid reflux problem. Either way, whenever he throws up after eating something, no matter what it is, he becomes averse to that item in any form.

Oh, and he has no interest in his previous favorite chews, bully sticks. So now I've got all these bully sticks sitting around and he won't touch them. 

I am once again on a quest to figure out what is wrong with Conker's digestive system. Is it this new kibble? Is it because it's chicken-based? Is it some other problem that's been hidden for a while and is just now showing it's ugly head? Or is he just being a jackass? I have no idea what it might be.

Whatever it is, it hasn't affected him in any other manner except appetite, which is big but not for his foods. He is still the obnoxious Emperor Conker and is still a very energetic dog, enjoys hikes, and loves to play rough games.
I do not think a vet visit is in order unless that begins to change.

Happy Dog

First off...

Baby Beef day 5: Same as yesterday.

Conker decided that he was going to be a happy dog today. He started it off by having a very long morning nap, then spend a good chunk of time basking out on the deck.

It was a warm 62 degrees today. Perfect for winter/spring basking.

Then we went on a hike. My younger brother found Conker's harness, it was in an odd place, no wonder I couldn't find it.

Conker was incredibly excited to go hiking today. I don't really know why, maybe because he was wearing his harness, maybe because we hadn't gone hiking yesterday. Either way, he started whining then barking when we got close to the parking lot and pulled in. He's never done that before.

He was very energetic today, but was able to control himself and not chase after a pair of mountain bikers who passed us on one of the trails. (He will occasionally chase them for a few yards if they are going fast enough.)

Here is a rather unspectacular picture of the sun.

I let Conker pick half of the trails we took today. The other half I picked in order to make the hike not too long or too short. Conker protested this route for a few minutes. He wanted to go a different way.

We didn't get to see the sun set (we were on the wrong trail at the time) but we did see some cool looking scenery.

Obligatory bench.

The hike was around 7.25 miles. Conker loved every minute of it.