How to Recognize and Treat Arthritis In Dogs

Having a dog it is important to be aware of some of the diseases that can occur with dogs, one of them being arthritis. With puppies and younger dogs arthritis is not a very common concern.

This condition can affect elderly dogs, making it difficult for them to move freely and be a major cause of discomfort and pain. Knowing how to recognize the signs of arthritis in dogs is essential for pet owners, because if left untreated, it can become debilitating.

What are the signs? Some dogs that are normally quite active lose interest in playing, running, and jumping over time. Also climbing stairs can become difficult and painful for an arthritic pet.

Other canine diseases may show similar symptoms like arthritis: hip dysplasia for example. In order to avoid confusion and a misdiagnosis, make sure to have veterinarian examine your dog in great detail.

Before treating arthritis most vets will rule out other possibilities for the dog’s discomfort. Many will order x-rays to find out whether a bone fracture is the reason of the dog’s pain.

There is more than one approach to fighting arthritis in dogs. One of the more popular ways that most vets will start their treatment with are anti inflammatory drugs. But be aware of the danger that side effects may occur. This is why one should be very cautious and inform the vet of all unusual symptoms immediately.

Other than using drugs and medications you should apply other measures to help your dog not to suffer from arthritis too much. Keep him away from drafty areas and make sure that during cold weather he stays indoors most of the time.

Some vets recommend orthopedic dog beds for arthritic dogs. The idea behind this is that the memory foam provides relieve for the dog’s pressure points and makes lying down more comfortable.

Last but not least, a healthy diet plus supplements may improve your dog’s condition. There are supplements particularly designed to improve a dogs’ mobility. Always ask your vet before you give your dog a supplement.

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How to Take Care of Your Puppy’s Teeth

Just like human babes, puppies do not have teeth when they are born. However, within the first twelve years of their life, their first set of sharp primary teeth comes out.

Each time your puppy is visiting the vet for a vaccination, always get the vet to check over his mouth. You want to ensure that his teeth are coming through in the right position, to prevent any palate damage.

But of course your puppy will not keep his primary teeth for too long. During month four, his adult teeth start coming out and within three more months the full set is complete.

A check again with the vet when he is 5 to 6 months of age to check his adult teeth are coming through as they should be is beneficial.

In addition to the regular check-ups, you should also make sure to brush your puppy’s teeth regularly. This should be done from the third month onwards. But never ever use human tooth paste, because it would make your dog sick; use puppy toothpaste instead.

When you first start brushing his teeth, do not worry too much about how effective your brushing is. What is more important at this stage is getting him used to the process.

Using an extra soft brush would be nice of you in the beginning. Then apply some toothpaste, even let your dog taste it first, and then gently brush his teeth. Just like with kids, use small slow motions. And give him a treat afterwards.

If your puppy starts to suddenly dislike getting his teeth brushed at around 3 to 5 months old, just stop the process temporary.

Here is why: As their adult teeth start coming through, your puppy’s gums can become overly sensitive and the teeth brushing could really hurt them. So what can you do? Just sit it out until the full set of adult teeth is in place. Then start again.

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The Best Dog Food: 101

Normally, we feed dogs by just putting any food on their bowl and water on the other, anytime of the day. But haven’t you realized that dogs, too, deserve proper feeding just like humans? How do we know what’s best for them?

How do you go about finding out what is truly the best food for your dog? Well, here’s a start: Ask yourself or your veterinarian what kind of food is best suited for your dog’s breed. If dry food is preferable, get the best of that kind.

Dry food is generally more enjoyable for dogs, because they can chew on it more. Hence, it is also good for their teeth. Then also consider their age. Older dogs might need less protein in their food than puppies, for example. Generally, puppies can start eating adult dog food after they are half a year old.

You do not just want to keep going with the puppy food. It is better for him to make that transition. When doing so, just mix a little of the normal food into his puppy food and increase the ratio over time.

Feeding your dog puppy food forever would not be a good idea. Make sure to switch to normal food in time. You can do this quite easily by mixing a little normal food in with his puppy food. Do a little more of that every day and the transition should be easy.

A well balanced dog food diet promotes healthy skin and shiny coat, firmer stools, less digestive problem and most of all, fewer appointments to your veterinarian. Who wouldn’t want that?

On to the next question: How much food is the right amount for your dog? This depends on your dog, but one thing is for sure: Overfeeding him will harm him.

So, yes, overfeeding will cause you trouble, but how much is enough? Simply ask your veterinarian or the previous owner. They will be able to give you a good idea. Also be sensible on this – and any advice you get concerning your dog: What does he look like? Too thin, too fat? You will probably notice.

However, you can adjust the amount of food on times when he is active, usually in the summer. Again, do it gradually. Rapid weight change is not good for dogs.

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Dog Training: To Punish or Not to Punish?

There are several dog training techniques that every dog owner needs to know. If you are a dog owner and you want train your dog, then knowing these techniques will help you choose what techniques will best suit you and your dog. Here are the different dog training techniques.

Reinforcement – in a positive way: This means praising him or giving him a treat when he behaves in the way that you want him to behave. So you are essentially trying to get him to do more of what he just did.

Negative reinforcement: Reinforcement always means that you try to get your dog to do more of what he just did. This can be done by reinforcing the behavior positively or negatively. Positively means that you give him something that he wants, and negatively means that you take something away that he hates.

You can also punish your dog for negative behavior. This means that instead of rewarding positive behavior, you punish negative behavior. Theoretically, this teaches the dog to avoid misbehaving in order to avoid being disciplined. However, I do not highly recommend this technique.

Another option is called extinction: What this essentially means is that you take something away from the dog that he likes. For example, this could be attention. Instead of paying attention to him, you simply ignore him after he displayed poor behavior.

Last, but not least, you can use hand signals when teaching your dog. All you have to do is come up with different hand motions for each command and use them respectively.

Whatever techniques you want to use, here are some tips to help you succeed in dog training: Start the training as soon as possible, preferably when your dog’s still young. Apply positive dog training techniques as much as you could.

Also keep in mind that short, sweet sessions are better than long and boring ones. Also always try to be as patient as possible and do your training in a safe environment.

Dog training can be quite challenging and asking for help with experts or professional dog trainers might be a good idea. Also read as much as you can on the topic to give yourself a chance to fully understand this topic.

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Puppy Training with Love and Patience

You have a new puppy and want to train him? This can be tons of fun, but, at times it can be quite frustrating, too. So, what do you know to know about puppy training to make it as easy as possible?

Puppy training is more an art than a science, and it is easiest when you start with it right from the beginning – the younger the puppy the better. And, of course, puppies will learn the fastest when you treat them with patiently and lovingly.

Treat them like you would treat an adorable newborn. Just be generous with love and good care, and do not use any negative punishments such as hitting, yelling, screaming, or anything like that.

As for teaching, to start off with, toilet training will naturally be a priority. Do not expect your puppy to know where he is allowed to do his thing. You will have to show him. Just take him to this place repeatedly, and he will begin to understand the process.

Puppies are going to make mistakes occasionally, which would require your patience and understanding. With enough training, they will eventually get it, and try not to change their toilet location once established to avoid confusing your puppy.

One of the things that will most strongly affect the toilet training is your feeding schedule. Make sure to make it as regular as possible. Give your puppy both water and food at meals, and leave some time between his dinner and bedtime.

This is because puppies being still delicate and young are not able to hold their stomachs or bladders throughout the night, and would likely have to disturb you to go to their toilet.

Moreover, to complete your puppy training, you will have to tackle obedience training as well. This means that you teach him to follow your commands reliably. Again, this too, will take some time and a lot of patience on your part.

So be patient, clear, and consistent when you repeat commands to your puppy such as “sit”, “stand”, “fetch”, “potty”, and so on.

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How to Stop Your Puppy from Biting

Dealing with puppy biting can be quite frustrating. At first, we dog lovers do not really mind to much. After all, the little on is so adorable and playful, and it does not hurt. It may not seem like a big deal, but before we know it, we are facing a serious issue, if we do not put a stop to it.

Puppies being puppies they are going to want to bite. We cannot really blame them since they are genetically programmed to do so. This will be especially intense when they are teething. The natural thing for them to do would be to put their teeth into just about everything, including you.

You might wonder whether he will ever stop. When the teething begins, it might sometimes think your cute little puppy is more like a vicious little alligator, snapping and biting everything.

Fortunately, there are ways to teach your puppy that biting and napping is not desired. This is not particularly difficult, but you should start as soon as possible. Ideally on the first day you get him. This will make teaching him much easier.

What is often suggested is to discourage his biting by, for example, ignoring him afterwards, and rewarding positive behavior (i.e. not biting).

When he is biting you, others, the one thing you must not do is to start a tug of war or a struggling, pulling game of any kind. He would misinterpret that to mean that his behavior is, in fact, acceptable.

However you want to go about teaching your puppy, the biggest key will always be consistency. In other words, everyone who will be around your puppy (you, your family members, etc.) will need to use the same technique when it comes to biting.

Since you are the pack leader, you need to let your puppy know what the rules are. Inconsistent rules would only be confusing. And your puppy would be unclear about what you want him to do.

As the one who is above him in the pack order, you need to let him know what is acceptable and what is unacceptable. If you are not happy with his behavior, such as biting, you need to let him know.

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Here are nine ways you should invariably prevent when you are going through the training process:

Don’t give a punishment the dog when you’re angry. This can scare your dog and eventually create deficiencies in trust. You don’t want your dog to respond to you from fear, due to the fact fearful dogs can be aggressive.

Don’t end your training session in a wrong way. If your dog engages in a wrong behavior, correct it and keep on until it can something positive. Then end the session on a good note, with lots of support.

Don’t order the dog many times or nag it. Taking your dog to respond involves timing and patience. Repetition of words doesn’t make your dog understand much better. Screaming words doesn’t help the dog either. It’s a matter of waiting until your dog is able to perform the action.

Don’t coax your dog and after that quickly punish it. You will connect your coaxing with a negative response. Your dog will learn not to rely on you and it’s harmful to future tries at training.

Don’t chase your dog to get it. It’ll can be found after training. There are clear conditions, such as when your dog is loose in the area. Whether it’s indoors, enable your dog understand that it are required to follow you, not have you come have it.

Don’t reduce your cool when you’re training the dog. There’s plenty of patience required for training, and if you are not patient, it is best to discover an individual who can endure it. Again, the dog can be fearful of you and this is never good.

Don’t punish the dog for a disappointment to obey. Instead, punish for bad behaviors. The dog won’t understand why you are hitting it if you’re punishing something which this didn’t do right. Instead show a neutral reaction to a failed behavior.

Don’t confuse your dog by praising it for a behavior during one session, then punishing the same behavior during another session. Make sure you’re clear in regards to what behaviors you would like to reward and/or punish.

Don’t allow others to confuse the dog by giving different commands. Make sure that everyone in the house is interested in training the dog by teaching them your training techniques. This is a common way that training becomes fruitless.

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Raising an untrained adult dog could be a real pain. We get really annoyed by uncontrollable ways when we get adult dogs or fail to train our dogs as puppies. Several years back, I’d a particular female Alsatian, Lucky. She was my very first dog, so I didn’t try to train her like a puppy. Some day, I left the back door of my apartment open and went to work.

Before I came back that night, Lucky and her puppies had damaged all the seats at the living room using their teeth. I got so upset that I started throwing things at them. That’s one very regretful memory for me because I woke up the following day to understand that an individual pup had missing his left eye. I most likely threw some thing that strikes him on the left eye.

Besides this experience, I’ve constantly encountered other people who had horrible experiences with their dogs. Some dogs litter the house with poop although some other dogs could always succeed in biting your most significant visitors. Occasionally, puppies are accidentally run over when backing out or driving into the house.

Lots of people just stop keeping dogs to finish this horror. In sharp contrast, well trained dogs often leave very enjoyable memories in the mind of their owner or guardian long after they’re gone.

It is very crucial that you train your dog so that you can raise a healthy, well-adjusted dog and keep your home safe. Most people (especially if we are having a dog initially) neglect ‘house dog training’. The aftermath is usually more painful than we anticipate. Though teaching new tricks to old dogs may seem to require a bit more effort from you and your dog, adult dogs can still be properly house trained and you’re simply in the best situation to do this training. Actually, training an adult dog can feel really difficult, specifically simply because they can’t talk and you can only guess what is on their head.

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How To Buy A Dog Over The Internet

You can buy just about anything online these days, cars, groceries, a date, even a new dog. It seems strange but people purchase dogs over the internet all the time. Some from breeders clear across the country. It’s almost the new designer thing to do. Personally, I think it’s ridiculous to purchase a dog across the country when there are so many unwanted dogs right in your own backyard. Why put the poor animal in such a stressful situation for traveling? I think it’s cruel but that’s just my opinion and may not count for much. So, if you are going to purchase a dog, here are some guidelines to help make the experience a little more pleasurable for both of you.

The internet has come a long way but it still can’t quite mimic the experience of actually touching and caressing a dog you may have chosen as a potential pet. All you can do is trust that the person selling the dog is being honest with you about the dog’s temperament and demeanor. A picture says a thousand words but unless you can come face to face and interact with the pup, I’m not really sure how you can be certain that he will make the perfect match for your family. But, I digress again. So, how do you choose a dog based on a picture and a paragraph? How do you know if the seller is reputable or not?

When looking online to purchase a dog, be very wary of an ad that professes to be selling “papered” purebred pups. Does this ad come from a credible licensed breeder or is it just an individual selling his litter of puppies and claiming them to be purebred? It’s pretty tricky because pictures of purebred pups do not resemble their adult counterparts at all so just seeing pictures will not be convincing. They must show proof of AKC membership for both the parents and the puppies as having been certified as purebred. Be sure you get a certificate of authenticity from the American Kennel Club with the appropriate documentation. Do some research ahead of time so you know what you’re looking at when you receive it as these documents can be easily forged as well. Purebred dogs are big business these days and just like anything else worth scamming, this is no exception.

Before you start a random search for reputable breeders, go to the American Kennel Club website and look for the link of approved breeders. I personally would trust the AKC of doing their homework as they would not be putting up breeder’s websites if they haven’t been checked out thoroughly. Even with this knowledge however, do not go head on and purchase a dog outright without doing some checking on your own as well. Play it safe throughout the whole process and if anything feels funny about the way the breeder does business, don’t ignore that feeling. Do a little more research to find out if what they’re doing is common practice among all breeders. Pretend that you are buying a car and that you want to make the best deal possible for what you’re getting even though what you get is far more precious than just a car.

Before you consider the sale complete, have the dog checked out thoroughly by your veterinarian to ensure that he is as healthy as the breeders documents claim him to be. If there is any discrepancy, speak to the seller and discuss what (if anything) needs to be done. There is a chance that the original vet check was indeed valid, and if it is only a minor injury or slight issue, keeping the dog might not be that big of a deal, but you should have part of your purchase price refunded to offset this medical care. Be careful, know what you are looking for and be wary of any thing that sounds far too good to be true.

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How many times have I hear fellow dog owners say, “I hate it when he barks non stop… or he utterly embarrassed me when he mounts people’s leg”. Dog owners usually have no problems to fill in tons of their dog behavioral problems into the above statements.

I have to admit that I feel disappointed, even sad whenever I hear dog owners say that statement. Why? Because, these owners have failed to see things from their dog’s prospective! To put it simply, I should say that they don’t understand their dogs at all.

Dogs do not misbehave because they’re spiteful, or are out to annoy or anger you. They just behave in a manner which is expected of a dog!

The fact is that dog behavioral problems that we can’t stand are not problems at all to the dogs. In fact, do you know that dogs “misbehave” for a reason or two? To list a few:

1. Dogs bark because they have something to say, something to tell you.

2. Dogs dig because they smell something underneath the ground.

3. Dogs chew because they are teething and are feeling uncomfortable.

4. Dogs chase after moving objects because they are following its instinct.

5. Dogs turn aggressive because they want to protect you.

For your information, most dogs actually misbehaved (in our eyes) because of the lack of care, concern and training from their very own owners:

1. Health Issue – Many behaviorists & dog trainers believe that at least 20% of all behavior problems are related to the dog’s health in some way or another. For all that you might know. Your dog could be misbehaving because he is sick or in pain. Bring him to the vet for a thorough check-up if he misbehaves suddenly when he has always been a good dog.

2. Imbalance Diet – Feeding your dog the wrong food, with too high in protein, fat or carbohydrates is known to cause hyperactivity. Sugars, starches and many other factors in your dog’s diet can also cause behavioral problems in your dog. Always read the label of the food before you feed him, seek advice if necessary. Remember that dogs need different type of food in different stages of their life.

3. Exercise – Lack of exercise also cause plentiful of problems. A dog that doesn’t get enough exercise is unhealthy and tends to be hyperactive, and display destructive behaviors. Dogs depending on breed type need plentiful of exercises – Do consider this factor before you get a puppy.

4. Lack of Leadership -I can’t stress enough on the importance of the leadership issue. Dogs display TONS of behavioral problems when they lack a leader. Aggressive & destructive behaviors, leg lifting, marking, mounting, barking & etc… It’s very important that you assume the role of the alpha leader!

You must understand that all dog develop behavior problems. These dog behavior problems never develop in a vacuum. They are always the outcome of the interaction between a dog and its environment, including you! Most canine behavioral problems can be controlled if not solved completely. You just got to put in some effort and understand that prevention is better than cure.

Lastly, do try to see and comprehend things from your dog’s prospective the next time your dog misbehaves. You’ll soon find that you love him even more!

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