Living With Dogs (8 page)

Grooming should begin as soon as you get a dog. If it has a long coat it should be brushed every day, but you can reduce this to every other day if your dog is short-haired. It usually takes eight to 10 minutes to groom a dog properly. You need to use a sturdy comb with metal teeth to separate old, dead hair from the new hair, and a firm bristled brush, or a rubber-toothed grooming device to get rid of dirt or scurf and to tone up the skin.

If you don’t brush your dog, its coat will become dirty and parasites will have a protected home, which in turn leads to skin irritation and dermatitis. Dead hair also forms fur knots with the live hair, and this is a further source of irritation to the skin. Dogs that aren’t groomed have duller coats, and they become unkempt and moth-eaten in appearance.

Dogs will moult twice a year, usually around late March and late October. This is a natural shedding of the coat, usually heralding the thinning of the coat for summer, or its thickening for winter. The moult is triggered by a change in the daylight hours, either an increase following winter, or a decrease, after summer.

Moulting is most obvious on double-coated dogs like the Labrador, Golden Retriever, German Shepherd and Corgi, but it will hardly be noticed on the short-haired, smooth-coated breeds. The length of the moult varies from six to eight weeks, and it will depend on how much time the owner spends brushing the dog. If the dog is vigorously groomed on a daily basis, the moulting time will decrease. Moulting is a deliberate shedding and renewal of the coat, and it can’t be done by the dog alone; the process must be helped along by the owner. If the dog fails to drop its coat, the dead hair will ball up, trapping the live hair and irritating the skin. The coat will also look bedraggled.

Puppies should have had their first vaccination between six and eight weeks, to guard against distemper, hepatitis and parvovirus. All are viral diseases and are all generally fatal. Distemper affects the nervous system, and particularly, brain cells and the gut. Hepatitis affects the liver cells, and parvovirus mainly affects the cells lining the gastrointestinal tract, causing violent vomiting and diarrhoea. The second vaccination should be done between 12 and 14 weeks and, depending on the particular type of parvovirus vaccine used, a third vaccination may be necessary between 16 and 18 weeks. A vaccination can also be given to protect your puppy against kennel cough, which is the canine equivalent of the common cold.

Puppies should also begin taking tablets to protect them against heartworm by the time they’re three months old. The worm can grow up to 30 centimetres long and destroys the right-side chamber of the heart. If untreated, it can cause heart failure. Tablets to prevent heartworm can be taken either daily or monthly. Worming tablets to protect puppies against roundworm and the other worms affecting the bowel should be started at two to three weeks of age.

The link between a poor diet, disease and a short life is well established. It is important to ensure that your new pup is placed on a good diet from day one of ownership and that this diet is varied to meet the nutritional requirements of each life-stage.

The most common illness in puppies is gastrointestinal upsets, which cause diarrhoea and vomiting. Despite these symptoms, they usually remain bright. These upsets usually occur because the dog is given the wrong food — often milk — or because the transition from the breeder’s diet to the home diet has been made too quickly. Dogs will drink milk because it’s meat-flavoured, but most dogs cannot digest milk lactose (which is a milk sugar) because they lack the necessary liver enzyme. As a result, the undigested lactose causes a reaction in the lining of the colon. If your dog has a food-induced diarrhoea, quickly put it on a non-allergenic diet of white meats, vegetables and rice. You can also give it plenty of water. The diarrhoea should cease within 24 hours. Seek veterinary advice if it doesn’t.

Puppies need a diet that will promote growth and good health, and which contains the five essential ingredients — protein, carbohydrate, fat, vitamins and minerals. Protein comes from red and white meat, fish, and the occasional egg. Carbohydrates are contained in cereals, grains, pasta, potatoes and rice. Fat, which is needed to maintain the dog’s coat and supply the fat-soluble vitamins A, D, and E, should make up about 5 per cent of the diet, and can come from cod liver oil or vegetable oil, as well as the fat from meat. The water-soluble vitamins B and C come from vegetables. Some minerals occur naturally in meat and vegetables, but if a dog is on a natural diet, we generally recommend that the animal is given a mineral supplement. Large dogs should also be given a mineral supplement while they are growing.

When your puppy first comes home it should be fed little and often, at breakfast, lunch and dinner. As it grows, it will start to lose interest in the midday meal, and it should be restricted to two meals a day, in the morning and evening. A dog requires a varied diet, consisting of natural foods as well as the commercially prepared canned and dry foods. The more variety in the diet, the better it is for the dog. If you feed your dog a natural diet it’s important to ensure that it receives the right balance of ingredients, with greens as well as meat and water. If the dog starts wanting to eat grass, this indicates that it needs more green vegetables in its diet.

However much we would prefer to feed dogs a natural diet, the fact is that preparing such food is quite complicated. Not only is it difficult to ensure that we get the balance of the five basic ingredients correct for the particular age of the dog, but we need a fair amount of time available each day to purchase the raw ingredients and prepare the food. It is therefore little wonder that many dog owners prefer to feed their dogs a commercially prepared food. Nonetheless, the Australian Companion Animal Report 2010 (found on the Australian Companion Animal Council’s website) determined that while commercial dog food sales grew by 2.6 per cent in the year 2009, half of all pet dogs were still fed food prepared in the home.

When considering which type of commercial food to purchase it is important to refer to the manufacturer’s claims for their product. Canned food and semi-moist food is not a complete diet and requires supplementing with commercial dry food or natural ingredients. Premium dry food is a complete diet and can be fed as the sole source of nutrition. I have raised many dogs now on premium dry food and have found them to have lived long, healthy, active lives.

Many dog owners insist that dogs should be fed raw or cooked meat misunderstanding that meat protein is contained in commercial dry food.

Dogs are occasionally intolerant of some ingredients in canned food and the result can be vomiting, diarrhoea, or, more commonly, flatulence, caused by allergic colitis. This often occurs in the older dog. If your dog develops an allergy to certain types of food ask your vet for guidance on feeding a non-allergenic diet.

Raw meaty bones should be incorporated into a dog’s diet from day one, and they should be given to the animal at least three times a week. For years I was criticised by many of my veterinary colleagues for advocating the eating of bones, but I think it’s now generally accepted that dogs must have bones to chew on. This was confirmed in a report commissioned by the Australian Veterinary Association and published in the October 1994 edition of the Australian Veterinary Journal, which recommended supplementing dogs’ diets with raw bones to prevent gum disease. The article, by Professor A D J Watson, from the Department of Veterinary Clinical Sciences at the University of Sydney, found that dogs eating soft food were more likely to contract gum disease, and that the inclusion of hard food, such as large dog biscuits, rawhide, or oxtail helped keep the gums healthier.

Professor Watson recommended that the diet for dogs (and cats) should have physical qualities, including texture, abrasiveness and ‘chewiness’, that would help control plaque and maintain oral health. He said that raw, meaty bones should be given to dogs at least once a week, and preferably two or three times.

In practice, you can always tell the dogs that eat bones by their healthy teeth and gums. If a dog is not allowed to chew and gnaw on hard substances, there is a build-up of tartar on the dog’s teeth, and this causes inflammation of the gums. Where you have inflammation, you have tooth decay, and where you have decay, you have bacteria and pus. If bacteria gains access to the blood system via the gums it can result in damage to the lining of the heart, and to the kidney and liver.

The essential part of the exercise is that a dog should spend time gnawing. Bones that the dog crunches and eats straight away, like chicken bones, do less good than beef or lamb bones which the dog will spend a longer time gnawing or chewing. Despite the caution from some veterinary circles, I have found it safe to give a dog any kind of beef, lamb or chicken bone (provided it is a proper leg bone from the chicken, and not one of the small, spiky bones), and I’m still waiting to see my first case of penetration of the bowel by a bone. There will be the odd dog who has trouble with bones, but this does not mean bones are not an essential ingredient. If your dog vomits pieces of bone or passes them in its stool you should not continue to feed it bones.

Once a puppy has had its first vaccination, and the injection has had the chance to work, which normally takes eight to 10 days, it can go for a walk. Don’t try to put a lead on until the dog is used to its collar. A dog will have a temper tantrum when you put a collar on for the first time, and another tantrum when you put on the lead, and when you first tie it up, but they are valuable lessons, and all reinforce that you are the boss dog. Each subsequent time you put the dog on its lead you are repeating the lesson. A dog should always learn to be tied up, even though you don’t intend to do that most of the time because, in an emergency, it’s the only reliable way of restraining it.

Puppy classes are just as important for dogs as kindergarten is for children, and you should start them at 12 weeks, after the second vaccination. The classes help them to socialise, and when you progress on to proper obedience lessons, which are mainly concerned with teaching the owner how to control their dog the dog will be more prepared. Where an owner is not the boss dog, the obedience classes help the person to learn how to assert themselves with their dog. They also teach the owner how to exert the authority of the boss dog through voice control, by using the basic commands like ‘sit’, ‘stay’, and ‘come’. For the average pet owner, this is sufficient, and can be taught to the dog in six to 12 months, but if you want to go on, obedience classes can be great fun, and achievement gives a great boost to the owner’s ego.

The period from three to nine months of age coincides with a very rapid growing phase in your dog, and you can usually see this from the spirit of youthful enthusiasm it has. They’ve come to terms with their environment, and think they know all there is to know, with the result being that the average puppy will be quite cocky. There will be frequent challenges to the boss dog, as they explore the physical boundaries around them, as well as the development of their relationship with the boss dog. They desperately need guidance during this period.

By 12 months small and medium dogs are physically and mentally mature, whereas the larger breeds, from the Labrador upwards, are physically mature at one year, but they will not be mentally mature until they’re about three. The mature dog has learned from experience, and it knows all about its environment.

All this, of course, presupposes that the dog has been in a training routine since it came home as an eight-week-old puppy. If this hasn’t happened, you’ll end up with a behavioural ratbag which the owner grows to dislike more and more. Commonly 10 to 12 months is the time when people get fed up with a dog and dump it, or leave it with the RSPCA.

The first 12–18 months will require a large input of guidance and discipline from the owner. After 18 months, if you’ve been consistent in setting the rules, the work begins to pay off. By the age of three you should have reached the stage where the dog will anticipate what will please you, and correction will only be occasional. The well-trained dog will have learned to follow the boss dog, and live by the rules.

There’s no secret why my dogs are well-behaved — because I’m the boss. Rule number one of dog ownership is that dogs must have a boss. In the wild, dogs are pack animals, and they have a leader, so in the domestic situation, the owner must become the pack leader. Dogs love to follow a leader, and they’re not meant to be ‘boss dogs’ unless they are in the wild.

Rule number two is that the boss dog sets the parameters of behaviour. If the owner tries to run a partnership with the dog, the dog doesn’t understand that. The reason people have unruly dogs is that the dog has been allowed to become the boss dog. Owners have to keep reasserting who’s boss.