Month: April 2020

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Benefits of pumpkin for dogs

Panda is one of our professional taste testers!

Most dogs are obsessed with the taste of pumpkin so you don’t need to try to convince your furry friend to eat it, in fact they’ll be begging you for more! You can freeze pumpkin in ice cube trays for a frozen snack, put some pumpkin in a Kong toy, add it to their food or simply give them some by the spoonful! Most grocery stores sell pure canned pumpkin. Just make sure you get the “pure pumpkin” as the pumpkin pie filling has too much added sugar. We always have a can or two in our pantry in case one of our dogs has an upset tummy or in case we want to spontaneously make some treats!

Digestive health

Whether your dog is having constipation or diarrhea, a tbsp of pumpkin added to their food will help solve their problems.

Weight management

Is your dog a little on the hefty side? Pumpkin is full of fiber to help keep your dog full without adding too many calories. Simply replace a portion of your dog’s food with pumpkin, there’s a good chance it’ll help them lose some weight!

Immune boosting

Pumpkin is full of antioxidants and vitamins needed to boost your dogs immune system. Kennel cough season is just around the corner, so why not give your dog’s immune system a little extra boost!

Healthy skin and coat

The moisture, vitamins and minerals in pumpkin is perfect for their skin and coat. They’re skin will be softer and less likely to have dandruff, and their coat will shine more than ever.

Pumpkin is delicious

Last but not least, pumpkin is delicious; even the pickiest dogs tend to love pumpkin. Using the delicious taste of pumpkin you can help picky dogs eat their kibble, or even to help hide a pill if your dog requires medication.

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Benefits of Slippery Elm

Slippery elm is a must have in our house, we never let ourselves run out, and here’s why!

Treats Diarrhea

Slippery elm is our go-to for any type of stomach upset for our dogs. In our experience it can stop diarrhea in 1-2 doses. We will also give this on days where we may be feeding them some extra treats or snacks. We always give them a dose or two of slippery elm for doggy birthday parties, it keeps them regular and prevents diarrhea!

Treats Constipation

Slippery elm is also perfect for constipation, this “magic” herb works both ways!

Soothes sore throats and coughs

Kennel cough is so common, especially if your dog is a social butterfly like our puppies. We’ve had our dogs catch kennel cough multiple times despite our best efforts; slippery elm tea is perfect to soothe their throats and stop their coughs. If your dog socializes with other dogs, goes to pet stores, grooming shops, doggy daycare or dog parks there is always a risk of kennel cough. If your dog catches it, keep them home, make them some slippery elm tea and let them rest!

Immune system

Slippery elm has vitamins and minerals and it has been known to help boost the immune system. It definitely doesn’t hurt to try it!

Topical use

Slippery elm can also be mixed with a bit of water to make a paste. This paste can be used topically on cuts, scrapes, abscesses and hot spots to promote fast healing. The perfect thing about using it topically, is it’s completely edible therefore safe to lick so you don’t need to worry about your dog ingesting it!

Where to buy and how to feed

We buy our slippery elm powder from Totally Raw (click here), as directed we mix 1 tsp of powder with 1 cup of cold water (we typically double or triple the recipe since we have a large pack) then whisk and bring to a boil. Allow to cool then add the proper dosage to their meal and either refrigerate (good for up to a week) or freeze in an ice cube tray! Our ice cube tray holds 1 1/2 tbsp of tea per cube, which is the perfect dose for our little dogs.

We feed our small dogs 1 1/2 tbsp 1-2 times a day as needed. Our Aussie’s get 2 ice cubes (3 tbsp) 1-2 times a day as needed, and Mable, our Doberman gets 4-5 tbsp 1-2 times a day. Read the package and start out with the recommended dose but then you can play around with the amounts slightly to see what works for your dog!

When we first got Mable she had the worst stool quality; It was constantly runny. She was otherwise happy, active and eating well. With the right food and supplements, her stool is almost always solid now and slippery elm has played a huge part in that, we recommend it to everyone!

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Petunia’s 1st Birthday Party!

To say our dogs are spoiled would be an understatement, we really go all out for Birthdays especially! Normally we will bring the Birthday dog to the pet store to pick out some goodies, make a cake, and invite some of their friends over to share the cake and play. Due to social distancing our plans had to change a bit for Petunia’s 1st Birthday. Although Petunia missed her friends, she had a wonderful weekend!

In our families we tend to celebrate Birthday’s for a full week, so it’s really no different for our furry babies! Petunia’s Birthday weekend started with a snowy hike, we joke that Petunia ordered the snow because it’s her absolute favourite, she was thrilled! She has always been an “arctic creature” as we call her, she loves to run, roll, catch snowballs and burrow in the snow, it’s adorable! She was so happy to start her weekend off with snow. After that we picked up her cake and gift that Luv paws put together for her.

Sunday we had an Easter egg hunt, then had cake for Petunia and all her siblings! They all loved the cake! Having 7 dogs we have a fair amount of Birthday parties and other holidays, so our dogs know very well what “cake time” means and they go WILD! Petunia then played a game of Frisbee with her new extreme flyer from the Kong Company. This Frisbee has held up to her tugging very well, even if it only has been 1 day.

This morning was her official Birthday, she started off the morning with a filled Kong (we’ll be posting our favourite recipe soon, so keep your eyes open!) , breakfast including leftover cake, and a game of Frisbee! Next we went for a walk on our favourite trail; Nothing better than an off leash romp. Then we bought some timbits and a plain doughnut for the Birthday girl. She practiced her “hold it” with the doughnut and the timbit box, she did very well! You’d never know it was her first time holding a doughnut and she is food obsessed. There will be a blog post about teaching a good “hold it” soon!

We finished the evening off with supper, more leftover cake and finally she passed out for the night.

Enjoy the video!

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Easter Egg Hunt

Dogs love to be included in everything right? Our dogs like to take part in the festivities of every holiday! We bake them cookies and cakes, we dress them up in cute decorations, so for Easter we thought we’d do an Easter egg hunt. We have access to woods on our property so it made sense for us to hide the eggs in there, but it can also be done in the yard or even inside.

We bought some plastic eggs and filled them with our dog’s favourite treats including quail eggs. Then we hid some around the woods (since it was their first time we hid them easily) and let them sniff to find them one at a time. This is a great and enriching way to add some simple scent work to your schedule since they have to sniff out the treats, as well as tire your dog out mentally.

Some of our dogs caught on more quickly than others and some needed help, but everyone had a blast! This will be a new tradition for sure.

This was our first time trying the Easter egg hunt, we enjoyed it so much that we intend to hide more things around the woods for them to find, and try some scent work classes or seminars in the future! We love finding new ways to tire our dogs out mentally; canine enrichment is one of our favourite topics, so keep your eyes open for more ideas soon.

Enjoy the video!

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First beach visit of 2020

We’ve been getting creative at tiring our puppies out since social distancing started. While our little dogs are 100% cool with just chilling at home with us during the day, our Australian shepherd’s Petunia and Myrtle are missing their friends, their pet store visits and nursing home visits. The water at the beach is still a bit chilly for Mable, cons of having no hair, but floofy Petunia and Myrtle were more than happy to play in the freezing cold water!

So we decided to visit our favourite private beach for a romp for the girls. To say that they were excited would be a huge understatement. We arrived at the beach and they basically jumped out of their skin ready to run! Petunia has been to the beach a fair amount of times during the summer and fall of 2019, so she hopped right into the water. She immediately started digging up shells and catching waves. Eagerly waiting for me to throw her Frisbee, sitting pretty and whining with anticipation.

Myrtle was still young the fall of 2019, she was 12 weeks old during her last beach visit and wasn’t the hugest fan of water back then. When we first arrived she was a bit nervous of the waves, but eventually she came up with the courage to jump into the water. Being 8 months old now, she hesitantly followed Petunia into the water. At first she’d chase her in but get a little uncomfortable but within 20 minutes Myrtle was digging up shells, and very adorably following the bubbles in the ocean.

One thing we always do when arriving at a new place with our puppies is test their training! It’s incredibly important that you make sure they are listening before they run off together, especially in a new place where they could easily get lost. Our routine when we arrive new places is to first let Petunia off leash to practice her recall and practice some other commands, and let her explore for a minute while Myrtle remains on a leash. Then I’ll place Petunia in a down/ stay while Myrtle practices her recall and other commands, then explores by herself for a minute. Once we know they’re listening well, we release them both and let them play! We have taught them both to auto check in with us and they’re good at it, but none of the less we still practice their training throughout the time that they are off leash.

We stayed at the beach for about an hour with no people in sight, it was a perfect and sunny spring afternoon. The girls were exhausted from running off leash through the sand and through the water for the entire hour that we spent there. We had two perfect passed out puppies on the way home!

Social distancing at it’s finest! We’re constantly trying to find new trails and places to let them run and explore during this strange time.

Pro tip: If your dog doesn’t mind the rain, there are 90% less people to worry about if you walk in the rain! Rainy walks are perfect for exploring new trails that are typically busier. You can really get a sense of what the trail is like with nobody around, we’ve been loving our rainy spring walks lately.

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Welcome to our blog!

Are you obsessed with dogs? Are you always wanting to learn new things about dogs? Does reading and seeing cute pictures and videos of dogs make you smile? If you answered yes to any of these questions then this is definitely the blog for you!

Throughout this blog we will be talking about all things dog related, including recipes. We will be sharing all our best recipes including dog cakes, cookies, pies, frozen treats, kong recipes and our favourite supplements to feed and what they’re good for. These recipes are tested on all of our dogs (but everyone knows they aren’t picky haha) as well as other pickier dogs. These recipes will be picky dog approved!

Our next category is going to talk about all of our favourite products. We will share all our favourite treats, food, toys, beds, collars, leashes and bandanas! All of our dogs have different favourites, and with our wide variety of dogs in our pack, I’m sure we have one that relates to your pup!

We will also be talking a lot about training, as it’s a huge part of our lives and our dogs lives. Our youngest pups typically have 2 formal training sessions daily, but their whole lives are revolved around training. Off leash hikes are a great source of enrichment and exercise but also a wonderful time to practice “leave it” “come” “stay with me” “fetch” and many more commands! Our older dogs don’t get as many formal training sessions as they aren’t involved in dog sports and they know all the basics. Some of our dogs don’t know many tricks, so we will probably use them to explain how to teach different tricks from the start! We are not trainers, we are just two people who have tons of experience training different dogs and want to share our journey with whoever wants to read about it.

Another category will be entirely about canine enrichment. A tired dog is a happy dog right? Who hasn’t heard that saying before? Most people think of a tired dog as a dog that’s just run a marathon, but what many people don’t understand is that a truly tired dog has to be mentally tired as well as physically tired. Training is one good way to achieve a mentally tired dog, but in this category we will talk about different puzzle games that you can put together for your dog easily, and anything that is considered mentally enriching for the dog! We will also talk about the best mentally stimulating products that are out there!

There will also be a section on dog grooming. We are both dog groomers and will be sharing different tips for nail trimming, properly brushing, bathing and sharing our experiences with grooming in general. We will also help show you how to deal with dogs that may not love grooming, or dogs that have some fear of grooming. During these hard times with COVID-19 many dogs will not be able to get to their regular groomers, so this section will likely help you keep your dogs in better condition until you can get to a groomer again!

Our final category is probably going to be the one we use the most, this section will be all about our fun adventures with our dogs. Having fun with our dog is the most important thing in the world to us. We are excited to share our gorgeous pack with you, and all our fun adventures! We’d love if you would follow along! Follow us on Instagram to see when new blog posts are up, itsallaboutthebarks.