Dog Food Part 1.

As I've mentioned before, I make Conker's food in a style called Prey Model Raw.  It's made up of roughly 80% meat, 10% bone and 10% organs and uses raw stuff, hence the raw in the title. No cooking or whatever.
I do supplement a few things.
Salmon oil
VitaminE
Glucosamone/chondroitin/MSM

The omegas in the salmon oil are great for joints, immune health and an amazing coat.  But they can block vitamin E absorption so I give one 200IU capsule a day.  It's generally a good thing to give since it's an antioxidant.  I give Conker Liquid Health g/c/MSM due to his Luxating Patella to help keep the joints in good shape.  It DOES NOT treat LP, it's simply used as a preventive measure against wear and possible future arthritis cause by LP.
Conker also gets at least one raw egg a week, sometimes two.  Shell and all. 


Normally his food looks something like this.

A cut of bone-in pork (that I hacked up with a cleaver... boy was that fun) with beef liver and kidney and the liquid supplements squirted on top.  The white stuff is frost.

Which brings up a subject.  Why is there frost on Conker's meat?  Because it's frozen.  And why do I feed it frozen... because he is what us rawfeeders call a gulper.  Conker will try to swallow that hunk of meat and bone whole or with minimal "chewing".  Dogs don't actually chew their food but Conker fails to break it up so he gets it frozen so he's forced to work on it.  But he'll still try to swallow it whole once he gets it to a certain size so I always need to watch him.  He will chew the meat off the bone if it isn't completely surrounded and try to swallow that but he will crunch the bone up just fine if there's little or no meat on it.


So I'm going to attempt to combat Conker's stupid eating habits that he probably learned from me.  After I find the whetstones, I'm going to sharpen up the old cleaver and a couple other knives that are so dull I can drag them hard against my skin and not cut it, and punish some meat with them.


Tune in soon for Dog Food Part 2 to see what I do next.

Shibite.

What do you think is going on ins this picture?  Is Conker biting my hand?  Yes.  Is he doing it aggressively?  No.  Am I grabbing his mouth?  Yes.  Is it a form of punishment?  No.  Both of us are playing.
I roughhouse with my dog to the point where it looks like both of us is going to kill the other but a simple "that's enough" stops the game if I feel Conker is going at it with a bit too much teeth.  If if don't do this every morning he'll sit near my bed and chirp at me until I do.  He'll even chirp if I kick him out of my room.
It's the most annoying sound I've ever heard.

Chillin with ma peep

I know it's a Penguin and not a peep but anyways. 

I'll have to record myself saying Penguin someday since I say it very strangely.  Just saying Penguin like that will send Conker into a frenzy if he isn't already.

In other news... I bought some beef liver, chicken livers and gizzards and some vitamin E for Conker at a grocery called Ray's today. Guess what the total was?  $8.00 flat. What are the odd of that happening?  I thought it was pretty neat.

Sleeping

I like to take macro shots with both my digital point-and-shoot and film SLR.

I found something VERY interesting.

But first a few dog park photos.

Conker watching Leo (brindle Pug), River (Catahoula mix), Midnight (Lab) and Zeke (Husky Terrier mix) head towards Teddy (little boy with game thing). 

River playing with Leo.  That little Pug was the coolest Pug I've ever met.  He WASN'T fat, was full of energy, played great with the bigger dogs and didn't overheat/hyperventilate or whatever Pugs do.  That was neat to see.  River is a neat dog too.  He's a very very dark blue merle and tan (like black and tan?) with white markings.


Anyways, onto the interesting thing.
Canine Genetics.

Oh my GORSH that is so interesting!  I've been reading snippets on canine genetics here and there over time but today I found an article a Boxer guy wrote about his experiment on trying to introduce the bob-tailed gene from Cogri's into the Boxer as a way to skirt the docking ban in the UK.  Wow, what was a fun read!  See, my view on breeders isn't like that of a lot of people.  I am NOT all for keeping the breed pure no matter what blah blah blah.  If your breed has an issue like, lets say Dalmations, then yes, a cross could be useful in preventing it.  And it's been done in Dalataions with Pointers.  Can't even tell there's Pointer blood in them Dals that's how well it worked.

Anyways, this is defiantly something I'm going to read further into, maybe even take some classes on genetics and such.  I'm now going to try to find some good canine genetics books to read since reading on the computer (as helpful as the internet is ) is somewhat obnoxious and boring after about 10 minutes.


Note: White it most certainly is very interesting that this dude put the Bob-Tail gene in Boxers, the gene is a leather semi-dominant and is NOT a good one so it wasn't really the best idea since it was based purely on cosmetics. So really, don't mess with the Bob-Tail gene, the effects are not pretty.

Shiba eating habits

When first given his food Conker will lick it to death.  This is probably due to the salmon oil and glucosamine/chondriotin/MSM stuff I squirt on top if it, but even after it's gone he'll lick lick lick the meat then start to grab it with his teeth.

Depending on the size of the meat he'll either "toss" it into his mouth, where a dog grabs something then jerks their head back or whatever.  I personally HATE this behavior, it drives me insane.  Anyways, if the meat is big enough or somewhat frozen he'll chew it a few times but for the most part he just swallows it.  I can't tell you how many times I've had to fight with him while trying to get a piece that was too big to simply swallow out of his throat.  Mom always wonders why I do this but I'd rather have a living and not choking Shiba.

Cutting Conker's meat into smaller pieces only promotes him to eat faster.  I tried, he inhales it, and I hate doing it.  I don't like it when he downs an entire meal in five seconds so I give him a few smaller pieces and a few bigger pieces. Bones are always big enough that he has to chew them and if they are chicken bones I take most of the meat off so he won't just crunch and swallow hole.  Since for some reason he'll actually take his time to do that with non-meat covered bones.


So the other day I was downing some soup when something hit me.  I eat very similarly like my dog.  I take several spoon/fork fulls of whatever I'm eating at the time, chew a little then swallow.  I've almost chocked on pizza before, even rice.  Hmm, I really hope I didn't teach Conker to eat that way...  The only difference between us is that unlike him, I actually do chew EVERYTHING that goes into my mouth instead of just swallowing whole pieces.  And I don't thrash my head from side to side and throw chunks of food everywhere like he does.  I hate that behavior as well.

I've been meaning to go for a walk but lately the rain has been... constantly present.  I'm gonna try later on today though. Probably won't be very successful.  I hate this Northwest weather.  It sucks big time.

Snazzy Collar

I made something for Conker today.  It started out as this:

And ended as this:

Kitty

This is what happens when you say "Kitty!" in my house.

Lack of fun

It's looked like this outside for... a long time.  I'm so sick of it.  Rain, constantly.  And not even cool rain like thunderstorms and wind and such.  Boring barely-more-than-a-drizzle rain.  I really don't like the northwest.

Because of this stupid weather I haven't done anything fun or even remotely interesting.  Conker is getting on my nerves since we don't go for walks when it constantly rains like this.

Picture FAIL

This is what happens when I try to take a picture of Conker while getting out of my computer chair which results in me crashing to the floor, waking him up and thus ruining the funny pose I initially wanted to take a picture of.