The Dish by Darcy

[Dear Readers, Yes, I'm happy to add "My dog won't eat" to the title of this post so your friends can find it, too. This is the second most searched on subject that I write about. That's a lot of dogs turning down packaged dog food. I'm so happy that you're listening to your dogs instead of adding "gravy" or yummies to encourage them to eat it. Yes, the cooked foods I mentioned in the post below are dog foods, canned and kibble. If the ingredient list of your food has corn or wheat as the first four or five ingredients and you want your dog to be healthy and happy, you might think about trying something better. There are many high quality good foods in the market place if you want to continue to feed dog food because it's convenient to use. SitStay.com has some high quality foods and we'll be adding some more brands for your dog, the next will be Addiction Foods. Let me know if you like any particular brand and I'll see about adding it to the Store for you. Thanks for the questions, concerns, and comments. Darcie]

Trina read her dog food label for the first time. “Are you kidding me! I’ve been feeding corn and wheat to my dogs as a daily diet. That stuff puts the pounds on me so fast, I can’t even look at bread, cereal, donuts or corn on the cob without adding five pounds. Why would I think my dogs could eat it without the same thing happening to them? And they are so much smaller than I am. What have I done to these dogs that I love?!”

Dogs who eat corn and wheat as a daily diet are usually overweight. It makes them uncomfortable emotionally and mentally. They are harder to train and sometimes have aggression problems, too. Physically, it’s a life challenge for them. How do you feel when your body weight is up? Not good, huh.

Corn and wheat add fat to dog bodies just like it does to us humans. Fat isn’t just on the ribs or around the middle of your dog. The heart, liver, kidneys have to work harder when they are full of fat. It makes you wonder if that’s part of the reason that dogs are dying of cancer and heart disease, doesn’t it.

Really. Would you eat breakfast cereal made of corn and wheat every day of your life and expect to feel good? No, of course not. You’d eat meats, poultry, fish, veggies, and fruit. Simple foods. Foods that don’t have to go through a process of some sort are better for all of us. Your dog is the same as you. The only things different from your simple food diet that he needs to have added to his diet are bones and the marrow inside.

Did you know that corn is used to fatten cattle so we can have a nice fat, juicy, marbled steak? (Just in case you didn’t know, marbled means “fatty” and fat makes a steak tender.) Yep. They put cattle in a pen where they can’t run around to run off the fat and then feed them corn. Meal after meal after meal. It makes them nice and fat. Unless you’re going to eat your dogs for dinner, stop feeding them corn.

Raw food for dogs is better in my opinion but if you like a cooked diet for convenience, there are lots of them around that are made of the good stuff.

Read your label. Is your dog a corn dog?

Dear Darcie, You helped me get rid of fleas and I can’t thank you enough. Jill

Dear Jill,

You’re welcome. Yes, I hate fleas and ticks, too, but I hate fleas the most. You can’t catch and remove those little buggers and they lay eggs faster than you can pick the fleas off. It takes some doing when there is an infestation but it can be done. Like you learned when we worked on this, don’t lose heart. Keep your head on straight and don’t panic. This too shall pass.

So what have we learned for those with dogs who might get fleas? If you find fleas on a weekend or the vet’s day off when you can’t get some flea control, try this to give your dog some relief. Run a bath of warm water and squirt a nice healthy squirt of Dawn dishwashing liquid into the water (we used the blue kind). Swish it around, then put your dog into the bath. Pour water all over him, even his head, protect those eyes, please. The fleas will die instantly. Rinse throughly with clean water.

This is not a cure for a flea infestation. Those fleas that were killed during the bath will be dead but there are more where they came from. Probably in your yard, your carpet, and your bedding. Talk to your local pest control to get rid of the fleas on your property.

I’m not against natural methods but I won’t live with ticks and fleas and I’ve not seen the natural methods work as quickly or as well as the pest control way. I wish it wasn’t so. I hate using poisons around or inside of my dogs.

And again as I always say, raw fed dogs do better all around. Dogs who eat raw food naturally repel pests better than those who eat the low quality dog foods that you usually find in your local vet’s office, grocery store, and large pet store chains.

I was glad to help. Your dog was a darling.

Dear Darcie, My big dogs constantly jump on the window sill to bark at the outside world (especially when I’m at work). Even a product designed to deter them from “jumping on” something may work. Thanks.

You’ll like my article on how to stop unnecessary barking. It’s great training when you are at home. When you are away, you’ll need to manage the dogs better so they can’t reward themselves by barking in the window.

Now we do have the ScatMat (search at SitStay.com to see it) and in your case, you might like to try it. But don’t do that until you’ve tried some other things first. I like the natural method of training, then if I have to go to something else like a ScatMat tool to keep my dogs safe, I will.

If your dogs are crate trained or will stay in a smaller room, like a bedroom or bathroom, while you’re gone, that’s the best way to leave your dogs while you’re out. Keep a radio or a TV on to blur out the sound of the outside of the house. Make sure your dogs have toys they can’t destroy and chews to keep them busy when they’re not sleeping (these are also available in great choices at SitStay.com).

What you’re trying to accomplish is to give your dogs peace when you’re away. And taking away the window so they won’t be rewarded by barking at things that move outside will help their level of stress come down so they can rest. Most dogs sleep a lot during the day, that is your goal for yours.

Exercise them with a nice long walk, at least 30 minutes, an hour is better, before you leave them, make sure that they have pottied so that’s not a problem while they are alone.

You might consider putting the dogs in different areas of the house unless they will stay calm together. Sometimes one is the culprit that starts the barking. Watch to see who starts it. It’s not always the dog who starts barking, it can be the dog who alerts first. Watch them a few times before you start working with them, you’ll see what I mean.

No yelling. That just sounds like you’re barking, too, and it will up the alert.

Let me know how it goes.