Dog Park Buddies

Conker watches River smell something behind him.

Yesterday was a nice day, so we went to the dog park.  Conker was pretty chill the entire time, and since it was warm outside he overheated easily due to his still present winter coat.  He didn't do too much running around.
Hank the Hound dog was already there, and he and Conker ran around and wrestled a bit.  Ellie the Pit Bull was also there but left soon after.
Then River the Catahoula mix showed up, and that's when things got going.

Hank leads the pack.

Hank is very fast.  For a while River was the fastet, but when Hank began to come he took the lead.  River's owner was shocked to see Hank running faster than River, who she claims has a bit of greyhound in him.  They would run around in a big loop around us (we were sitting on the hill) while Conker tried to cut them off since he can't really keep up.

Conker is getting left behind again.

Then they would come around again.  They would have a brief wrestle on the sand then get going again.  It was fun to watch.

Everybody chillin.

They eventually wore themselves out and took a break behind us.  Every now and then one of them would pop into somebody's lap and demand to be pet.  It was overall a very good visit.

Yummers

So far the Girls LOVE Taste of the Wild!  I think this is great and hope their preferences will help Mom keep them on it after I move out (if I move out?)

The Taste of the Wild is the smaller darker kibbles.  Pedigree the larger kind.  I won't touch the Pedigree since it's so nasty but the Taste of the Wild I will if I have to.  I personally just don't like touching dog food but didn't have a problem with Conker's Orijen when he was on it since it wasn't greasy at all. 

Sasha approoved.  Look at how she ate the Taste of the Wild first.

Juneau approved as well!  She also ate the Taste of the Wild first but when she had picked most of it out she looked up at me then at her bowl and didn't want to eat the Pedigree.  But since it's only day two she has to in order to avoid stomach upsets.  Which I doubt they'll have since you can feed them about anything without problems.  Rock solid stomachs on these dogs... I hope.

I hope this will help Sasha's weight problem.  I've been trying to get her weight down by feeding her less and exercising her more but she's somehow kept it on.  I think she might have dropped... nothing.  She weighed 70 pounds when I first got here and should be topping out at 55, not 70.

Guests Lucky and Star

Today I went over to a friend of my mother's place to walk her two dogs Lucky and Star.  I've met them before, they are fun dogs.  Mom's friend has been super busy lately and hasn't had time to walk the two dogs and I agreed to take them for an hour or so and give them something to do.
They are very jumpy at first, especially Lucky, but I was able to avoid getting my eyes stabbed out with their noses this time.  They sounded like dolphins the entire time I was preparing the leash-thing but when I went to take a video they stopped.  Maybe next time I'll be able to get one.  They were pretty funny sounding.

Lucky, the tan one, also the boy.  He is the super jumper and last time I saw him his nose ended up in my eye and I couldn't see straight for about four hours.  But he didn't mean to do that, he was just super happy to see me.

Star, the blackish greyblue one. She is a bit calmer than Lucky but still tried to lick my face off when I arrived.

I have no idea what kind of dogs they are.  Jill told me they were labeled as Border Collie mixes at the shelter she got them from.  I don't see Border Collie when I first look at them, maybe a bit of Shar Pei and Pit Bull, but not much BC.  Either way, they are neat dogs.

The walk started with me nearly getting yanked off my feet.  I stopped and refused to move for a good five minutes and in that time they figured out that pull=stop.  They pulled a little here and there but nothing worthy of another five minute halt.  Lucky liked to sniff and pee on things and I only let him do that every other bush.  He almost got Star's head a couple times.
We went about two miles there and back.  At the one mile mark we stopped for a water break.  I whipped out my handy dandy HydroBowl that Mom gave me for Christmas last year.  Lucky was glad for the water instantly but Star wouldn't drink right away.  I splashed some water on her head to cool her off since they were panting a lot.  After that she figured out funny bowl=water and drank some.


In other news...

We FINALLY got Taste of the Wild for the Girls!  I put a small mount in their bowls next to their Pedigree garbage to see what they'd do with it instead of mixing it in.  They ate the Taste of the Wild first.
More on this later.

Long Day

Today was a particularly long day.  Got up (as in out of bed) around 1:45 in the afternoon.  Got dressed, chopped up some treats then grabbed my backpack and headed to the dog park.
We were there until 7 something or other.

The best part was the very beginning.  I saw, for the first time, a Basenji named Helios.
The Basenji was very nice and got along great with Conker.  The woman who owned him was fun to talk to and really liked Conker.  She, like me, prefers primitive dogs and was really drawn to Conker's appearance.  I in return loved her Basenji.


After they left we spent a good hour working on recall and other things until some other people showed up.  Of the regulars we know, Ellie the Pit Bull, Hank the Hound dog, the Westies, Midnight the Lab and River the Catahoula mix showed up.
We also saw Cleo the Boxer/Pit mix, a Miniature Australian Shepherd named Rocket, an Australian Shepherd Irish/Wolfhound mix named Shadow, A Pit Bull/Australian Shepherd mix named Jack, a Pomeranian/Jack Russell mix (awesome little dog) and a few others who's breeds I can't remember.

It was overall a fun day.  Much better than lounging around the house all day.

Rollin

Dog Food Part 2

My dog food experiment was mostly a success.  I started by making a small batch of the new food for Conker to test and when he passed better than the old food, I made up a huge batch of the new stuff.

 Pictured here is part of my supply of meat.  We've got sliced beef liver, chicken livers, chicken gizzards, chunked beef kidney and some "old"  already portioned pork meals.

And here is roughly 6-7 pounds of chicken drums and thighs.

 Out of that I got something like 3 1/2 pounds of meat with some skin.  I removed the skin from the thighs for my own reason.  I like to make Schmaltz with it.

A drum, some "de-fleshed" bones and some meat.  And my Mom's inferior chef's knife.  Mine is a much lamer brand but sooo much sharper.
I left some meat on the bones intentionally.

Chicken hearts, beef kidney, chicken bones, chicken meat, beef liver and a piece of pork.  No gizzards pictured though.



Somerwhere around here I stuck the meat back into the freezer to firm up a bit and went to the dog park.

When meeting new dogs, if there's a lot of them, Conker will get snarky and drop his tail for 5-10 minutes and generally act like a brat then spontaneously decide he likes everybody and get along great.  Pictured above is a gorgeous 10 month old red Golden Retriever, Hank the hound dog mix, Conker, Stetson the Siberian and a Pit Bull who's name is either Ellie or Anna.  Can't ever remember.  The Westies were there but they didn't get in the picture.


A couple hours later...

I did this.

And this.

And made this.  Yum.

All with a knife.  I'm going to get a meat grinder sometime soon when I can find one at a decent price since chopping that much meat by hand takes for-blicking-ever.  But Conker doesn't gulp it down and choke so it's worth it.  I also did that to the already-portioned pork meals.  I made eight chicken and two pork days of food.

This is what a completed meal looks like.  Roughly a cup of the meat/organ mix, one chicken bone and some salmon oil, his g/c/MSM stuff and a probiotic and vitamin E that he gets once or so a week.

Conker is good with the bones, for the most part, and will chew them okay but not enough to make my happy.  I still watch him like a hawk when he eats for that just-in-case scenario if it ever rears it's ugly head.

I'd like to grind everything, even the bones, but that depends on the grinder I get.  If I did that, for teeth-cleaning I'd use larger bones he can't get in his mouth and bully sticks so no worries of gunky teeth here.

We went to the dogpark yesterday morning.  Yes, morning, amazing I was awake at that hour.  Of course there was nobody there so we just walked around the played with the frisbee and ball in the park.  It had been recently mowed wich was nice.

Me and at least two other dog owners go to the dogpark every Thurday at 5:30.  Leo the Pug is one of them, the Westie Lady (with three West Highland Whites Terriers) is another one who goes around then.  Lets see what happens today.

Yesterday was shower day

Post shower Shiba expects food.

Yesterday I decided that Conker smelled a little funky and decided to give him a bath.  But when your bathtub looks like this, that's not really possible.  So I gave him a shower instead.
We lack one of those nifty hand-held showerheads that mount up when you're not spraying people who might be in the bathroom while you're showering and after a quick moment of sizing up the 3x3 shower, I decided I smelled a little funky too.

I really wish I'd gotten some pictures 'cause it was really funny.
Imagine me, a 22 year old person holding Conker, the 10 month Shiba, in the shower.  He wasn't all too happy about it but he's not your typical Shiba and the worst he tried to do was climb onto my shoulder so he could bite the showerhead.  His least favorite part was when I had to flip him over so I could rinse off his underbelly.

Conker's first shower was, much to my surprise, a success.  After rubbing some of the water off him he shook several times then got a thorough toweling which he really enjoyed.  Afterwards he got to lay on my bed and chew on his cow hoof.
I'll wear a bathing suit next time so I can get some pictures and not scare nobody with my nekkedness.  Because soaked shower Shibas are hilarious.

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.