The BonaDea blog has moved! Thus far the blog has been hosted on the free wordpress.com site, but since I’m using DreamHost now I wanted to move the blog over so it would be hosted through them. It is still the same blog, and has all the old posts, comments, etc, but this should allow me to do more with it in the future (once I learn how to do all the cool things, that is). This will also get rid of any pesky google ads you might see (especially ones about buying “Toy Aussies,” ack!). I will not be posting on this URL anymore, so to go to the blog now, please go to http://blog.bonadeaaussies.com or go to http://bonadeaaussies.com and click on the “BonaDea Blog” tab. I hope you follow me. Thanks for reading!!
Just a reminder, in case you forgot, I am not a vet or a nutritionist. These are my own observations and ideas. Please consult with a holistic vet or qualified canine nutritionist before making any changes to your dogs’ diet, medications, and/or supplements.
The other thing to note when making the switch to a raw diet is “enteritis.” I somehow managed to never come across this term before I switched the dogs over to raw, and so when one of the dogs had a couple of bad episodes of diarrhea, I was about ready to give up. Luckily, a few encouraging people helped me stick with it, and I am proud to say everyone is not only surviving but thriving on the new diet.
Basically, for dogs that are used to eating processed kibble, you can expect to see some tummy upset to begin with. The way the body processes these two kinds of food is REALLY different, so give it a little bit of time. Sky and Lyla had always eaten RMB one or two nights a week and kibble the rest, so I thought they would transition fine, but when I pulled the kibble and put them on only fresh food, Lyla’s tummy rebelled (although I think one of those rebellions had more to do with eating an entire Ziploc bag then the raw food itself).
The other area I messed up when switching, and probably the cause of some of Lyla’s tummy trouble was introducing too much too fast. I tried to start on that aforementioned menu the first week in with varied RMB, pork spleen, beef liver, beef heart, green tripe, etc etc. BIG MISTAKE! Because this new diet is such a switch for the body, start slowly. Variety in raw is important, but not at the beginning. To start, just introduce protein sources one at a time, and don’t move on to a new one until the stools are normal from the current one.
Brando is on kibble right now, but will be switching to a raw diet this month. As soon as this bag of food is gone, it’s on to raw we go. Much wiser from my previous mistakes, here’s how I plan to make the switch with Brando.
About a week before the kibble is gone, I will start feeding him probiotics/digestive enzymes. Two to three days before the kibble is gone, I will start feeding slippery elm bark (get at any natural foods stores). When the kibble runs out, I will fast him for one day. No food at all on that day. Then the next day I will start with a whole chicken, cut up (actually, in Brando’s case, he will eat more than one chicken in a week, so I will probably actually feed 2 or 3 chickens during the week). Throughout the week I will feed pieces of the chicken, starting with the meatiest portions first (ie, breast) and working my way to the bonier chicken frame. That first week there will be no liver, no heart, etc. If his stools are normal, then towards the end of the week I might try a little tripe because this tends to be pretty gentle on the stomach since it contains so many digestive enzymes already. If all is well at the end of the week/beginning of next week, I might feed a tiny bit of chicken liver (maybe 1/8 cup; liver is really rich, so introduce very slowly). As long as we aren’t having any problems, I will take him off of the slippery elm bark and probiotics at the end of this week (these things just help prep the system to digest the new, fresh food, you don’t need to supplement them long term in most healthy dogs).
The next week, if all stool is solid and normal, I will introduce another protein source, probably beef. So during that week I will introduce ground beef, beef heart, etc. And so on and so forth until I’ve introduce several of the protein sources I plan on feeding. Once I’ve done this, I will start in with my “menu” and rotating all of my different variety of sources (pork, venison, rabbit, wild boar, etc, etc… get creative!).
That, in a nutshell, is how Brando will make the switch. I will be sure to post how everything goes on here.
Posted in Dog Health, Raw Diet | 2 Comments »
I get asked from time to time about how I feed my dogs. As I’ve mentioned before, I’m kind of a research nerd, and this research has led me to be a dog food freak. Not everyone agrees with how I choose to feed my dogs, and that’s okay I suppose, but for those of you who are interested in feeding a homemade raw diet, here are some of the resources that I used the most before, during, and after the big switch.
Websites
Grand Adventures Ranch Intro to Raw
Books
Raw Meaty Bones: Promote Health by Ian Billinghurst (this is really a science behind the idea book, not a practical guide for feeding raw)
Raw and Natural Nutrition for Dogs: The Definitive Guide to Homemade Meals by Lew Olson
Yahoo Groups: I am a member of rawfeeding and RawMeatyBones. Both are great to ask questions and just lurk around on to see what others are doing and what kinds of problems they are running into.
By far the hardest thing when I started to make the switch to feeding raw, was knowing what to feed to keep ratios and whatnot in balance. I wish that Lew Olson’s book had been out before I started, it is a great reference. Since I didn’t have that, I asked around and got “menus” from some people who had been feeding raw for a long time. From there I made my own menu (and now that I do have Olson’s book, I am pleased to say that the people I talked to knew what they were talking about, not that I doubted, and my diet fits within the book’s guidelines quite nicely). So, I will post a sample menu here, not because it’s the right way or the only way, but because I know when I started I just wanted someone to tell me how they did it in concrete terms. (Disclaimer: I am NOT a vet and I am not saying that this is the right diet for your individual dog)
Sunday: Muscle Meat
Monday: Raw Meaty Bones
Tuesday: Liver (or other organ meat- kidney, spleen, etc)
Wednesday: Raw Meaty Bones
Thursday: Green Tripe
Friday: Raw Meaty Bones
Saturday: Beef Heart
Raw meaty bones in the above “menu” are any animal part that has a combination of edible bones and muscle meat. What is an RMB for your dog will depend on your dog’s size. For my dogs it is a chicken back or leg quarter or a turkey neck, or any of the other “mid-sized” RMBs. For a large dog it may be pork ribs or half of a chicken. For a small dog it may be a chicken wing.
Muscle meat is anything that is just meat, not bone or organ. Muscle meat is boneless chicken breast, ground beef, beef trimmings, boneless pork chops, etc. One important thing to note is that heart and poultry gizzards are a muscle meat, not organs.
Organs are any organ that is not the heart. Organs should make up about 10% of the diet (even though they are icky gross) and at least half of that should be liver. Liver has lots of awesome nutrients in it that aren’t found anywhere else.
Green tripe is not a category in and of itself. It counts as a muscle meat in the above “menu.” Remember, this is not the bleached tripe you buy at the butcher’s or in the grocery store. You generally have to find green tripe somewhere “special” or ask for it because it is not allowed to be sold as “fit for consumption.” I like to feed the green tripe because the dogs love it, and it is one of the other foods that has a lot of good vitamins in it. The downside is it smells like nothing I have ever encountered in my life. It smells like cow poo, literally. I feed it once a week and I HATE tripe night, but, ironically, it is the dogs’ favorite night!
Coming Soon: Tips for making the switch from kibble to a homemade raw diet
Posted in Dog Health, Raw Diet | Leave a Comment »
Oh, it was another really early Saturday morning again. I can’t wait until it cools off some and herding won’t have to start at 7 AM on my weekend.
Today was Lyla’s turn to go to class. She did a really good job. She is still a little spotty in her interest sometimes. She’ll work the stock for 60 seconds, roll in poo for 30 seconds, come back and work, leave and go pee… it usually goes like this the whole run. The thing is though, when she is focusing on the stock, she’s really good. She has a pretty natural sense of balance and has nice focus on me and my commands.
Our instructor suggested that we do at least one run at the trial coming up in October. The only thing is, it is the same weekend as an AKC show I was going to go to, and I’m not altogether convinced that her interest is going to be sustainable enough to trial her in a little over a month. On the other hand, I have several reasons to go to the herding trial. I have three dogs that could benefit in some way from it, and AKC shows happen all the time, but herding trials don’t happen as often. So, we’ll see.
Posted in Dog Shows, Herding | Leave a Comment »
Hopefully I made it clear in the first part of this series, but just in case I didn’t, I am NOT picking on working dogs. I love me a dog that can work stock. I have never said that if a dog can work it wouldn’t do well in the show ring, but there are a lot of people that say if a dog can do well in conformation it can’t work stock (which makes no sense!). What I was picking on was breeding for any one trait exclusively at the expense, or apathy, of other important traits. Whether that “all important” trait is working ability, head, coat, color, etc, it can’t be idealized to the point that the dog as a whole suffers because of that focus.
On the other hand comes the question, can you be breeding to preserve the breed, and use dogs that don’t show that instinct? In my case this is herding, so I will probably just refer to it as such, but you can substitute hunting, pulling, etc. I don’t have the perfect answer to that question but here’s what I do know, if I’m looking at the whole picture of a dog I am not going to automatically include or exclude a certain dog on herding instinct alone.
If I come across a dog in my program that isn’t showing the level of working ability I’d like to see in a dog, I would have to seriously consider whether or not to breed that dog, but I wouldn’t make an immediate decision to take the dog out of my breeding program. In the past I thought perhaps I would, but the more I think about it, for what I want to do, I think that a dog showing low or maybe even no instinct would be a similar situation to me as a dog with an ugly head or not enough coat . It’s something I would try to breed back in, but I would hate to take out an otherwise good dog that could have something to contribute. That’s the point where I have to balance, and I don’t think that herding instinct means more or less than any of my other priorities. Instinct is important, and I certainly want to preserve it, but it is not the be all end all of my breeding program.
I know some people might think that is wrong, and that’s really okay because this is nothing other than pure opinion, but what I’ve really had to look at is also creating a dog that can best fit into the world I put it into. The honest to goodness fact of the matter is that the majority of my dogs are going to be heading into pet, performance, or serious show homes. Most of those homes are not going to have the resources and/or desire to have a true working dog that has energy and drive to work stock every single day. If they wanted a dog like that, they probably wouldn’t be looking at me anyway because most of the really serious working dog people either breed their own dogs or buy them from someone on another ranch… none of those “foofy show dogs” for them.
While I certainly would hope and expect that my dogs could hold their own in the herding trial world if their owners choose to do that venue, a trial dog is still not a working dog (and that is a whole other can of worms I’m not getting in to). There is very little need for true working dogs in our modern society, and to create a dog that has the drive of a real working ranch dog and placing those dogs into family homes would be miserable for the dogs and the families. I would much rather create a moderate dog with an off switch.
As I’ve said before, my opinion might change in the future after I’ve seen what my efforts produce, but for now, my ultimate goals is moderation in all aspects. Moderate coat, moderate bone, moderate drive. If I can come close to that, I think I can be happy.
Posted in Dog Breeding | 3 Comments »
The BonaDea Aussies blog had its busiest day ever today! We got 90 views from 7pm last night to 7pm tonight. WordPress is on a different timezone, so they are already into tomorrow, and we’re still getting hits! I am flattered that so many of you read my blog. Amelia says, “Thanks!”
Posted in Amelia | 6 Comments »
Just to clarify, this is NOT going to be a post about what is more important, physical attributes or working ability. There are a lot of people who know a whole lot more about dogs than I do to fight that fight every day. I don’t care to. I think both are important. And besides, I’m not a fighting kind of gal.
What I do hope to accomplish is to sort through some of my own thoughts on the subject as it pertains to breeding decisions I might one day make. And then you, lovely readers, can tell me if I’m way off base, or said something semi-intelligent, or have no earthly clue what I’m talking about (because, let’s face it, I don’t).
At herding class on Saturday the topic came up, as it always seems to when you get a group of very serious dog people together, whether it is more “right” to breed for working ability or for “show dogs” (please see the post right before this to understand what my definition of a show dog is). My herding instructor said, “I don’t care if you want to show your dogs, that’s fine, but it absolutely has to take a backseat to working ability or you can’t be breeding a good dog.” I think this statement dovetails nicely into something that was on Ruffly Speaking this morning, and that’s where I want to go into a little more depth.
To me, having a breed of dog that is meant to do a certain kind of work, actually be able to do that work, is an important part of preserving a breed. So, for Australian Shepherds, I want to be able to keep herding instinct, or I think I lose some of what is the Australian Shepherd. But to say that this is always the most important attribute, even at the cost of other parts of the dog, I just can’t see that. I think that is just as dangerous as saying that you must always breed for coat or head or any other singular attribute above all else.
Imagine I have a dog with a gorgeous head. His head is the epitome of what a dog of his breed’s head should look like. When you see his head in silhouette, you immediately know what breed he is because his head is that perfect. He has a pretty bad front, but his head his so amazingly wonderful that when judges see it they are taken aback and they love him. I think heads are an important part of breed type and if you lose that nice head, you might as well just have any old dog, so I breed him to a bitch with the nicest head I can find. She kind of has a bad front too, but her head is to die for. I keep the puppy with the best head, even though she inherited that bad front from both of her parents.
I continue this cycle of breeding decisions for generations. The heads on my dogs are the envy of the breed world. But I’m starting to notice that some of my offspring are breaking down young. They are getting arthritis. The ones competing in agility get injured a lot. After a couple of generations I have the prettiest heads, but winning in the ring isn’t so easy anymore because the structure of the body has taken such a backseat in my priorities that my dogs no longer have the body to move nicely or stand square. My dogs can’t compete in the veteran classes of conformation because their poor bodies have usually given out on them by age 7 or 8.
How ludicrous would I be if I bred dogs like that?! People would be telling me left and right to stop the madness and balance my priorities. That to breed for heads, and only heads, was hurting my dogs. A lot of people, especially working dog people, DO say this about dogs in the conformation ring. Now stop for a minute and think. How is that any different than saying I should only be focusing on breeding for working ability?
If I am breeding solely for working ability above everything else, what is to stop me from breeding in structural faults? Or rather, because no one would intentionally breed an unsound dog, what is to keep me accountable for making sure my dogs are structurally sound? Just because a dog can mentally do its historical job doesn’t mean that its body structure has been maintained in such a way that the physical makeup of the dog allows it to do its job in the most efficient way possible. I don’t think that you can elevate working ability above everything else and say that is the one and only way to breed the best dog. Now, because breeding for working ability usually dictates that dogs do work, they will probably have structure at least good enough to be able to get the job done and not be injured every other day; but if the breeding decisions are made with no thought to anything but working ability, can you really say that the dog has the most efficient, sound structure possible? Probably not.
Again, this is all my opinion, and I may look back after 30 years of breeding and say to myself, “Oh boy, did I have it all wrong.” But I really think that to be getting the dog most true to the breed, the best possible dog you can, you have to be breeding for multiple things. You have to have priorities, and I think you have to be able to juggle those priorities sometimes.
The order of prioritizing and the act of juggling is where I start to have a lot of doubts, and where my opinions truly become my opinions, so I’m not going to go into that here. More on that tomorrow…
Posted in Dog Breeding | 8 Comments »
I wanted to take a moment to highlight what, in my opinion, dog shows are good for. When I talk about a show dog, I do not envision some overdone caricature of a dog that is so dumb or so cumbersome it cannot do the job it was originally bred for. There are certainly dogs like that out there, but it is not what I prize, and I would dare say it is not even the “most winning” dog in the ring. Under some judges, maybe, but overall, no.
To me, a dog show is all about evaluating one aspect of my dog, the physical aspect. Technically, that physical aspect of my dog is made of two parts: soundness and type. Soundness is the basic structure of a dog. Is the dog built in such a way that it is not going to break down or become repeatedly injured doing its job? Can it move in such a way that it can do its job all day while exerting the least amount of energy possible? Type is all about what makes a certain breed of dog a certain breed of dog. It’s what makes a Lab look different than a Golden Retriever, a Cardigan Corgi different than a Pembroke, an Aussie different than a Border Collie. It’s a head, a body, a coat, a color, and a lot of stuff that’s hard to put your finger on but you know it when you see it.
There’s a fair amount of discord among people in the dog show world about which is more important. Personally, I value soundness above type. I would rather have a sound dog that is not going to get hurt over and over again, even if I sacrifice a little of what makes it really look like a perfect dog of that breed. To me, type is the pretty. However, that is not to say that I do not think type is important. Without type a dog would be a dog would be a dog. There would be nothing that kept a Poodle from looking exactly like a Chihuahua, and then we would lose some of what makes “our breed” special and different than all the others. So it really is a balancing act.
A dog show is only judging this physical aspect of a dog, and I am under no illusion that a CH in front of a name is some kind of magic pass to breed whatever dog I want. A CH says this dog was sound enough and had enough type to win over a few other dogs a few times under a few judges. It tells me nothing about the temperament, the working ability, or the genetics of the dog.
I do think dog shows are an important part of evaluating breeding stock and breeding decisions. It is a peer review. If nothing I ever bred can win in the show ring, I need to go back and look at my breeding choices. What am I doing that is making these dogs unable to get positive feedback by my fellow breed fanciers? Where am I not meeting the breed standard and how can I change that?
Also, keep in mind that how you see dogs look on TV dog shows, or even at a local dog show you are spectating, is sometimes an illusion. My dogs get lots of product in their hair and get blown out with a super powerful blow dryer to enhance the way their coat looks. It’s just part of the game we all play to be able to participate. Remember that sometimes when you see something that makes you go “holy cow, what have they done to those poor dogs?!,” it really is just grooming magic.
I’m writing all of this because, before I can really talk too much about the breeding for working ability discussion that was had this weekend, I had to give you a working definition of what a “show dog” is to me. A show dog is just a dog that had some good structure and maybe a pretty head. It is not a magical kind of dog that is exempt from being good at anything else just because it is a “show dog.”
Posted in Dog Shows | Leave a Comment »
So, I know I promised a blog post today about my thoughts on all this breeding, working/structural mumbo jumbo. And it is coming; it is. However, it probably won’t be until later tonight, or maybe even tomorrow. I got all caught up in watching some old DVR’ed movies this afternoon and before I knew it the whole day was gone. So in the meantime here is Molly, my herding instructor’s new livestock guardian puppy. She’s some kind of Great Pyr/Anatolian mix. Sweet as can be and HUGE at 5 months old!
Posted in Uncategorized | Leave a Comment »
Today was a good dog day. Got up early and went herding with Miss Amelia. I really love having the opportunity to work with her in any capacity. She truly is the epitome of a good dog.
There were some interesting conversations going on between runs on breeding for working traits v breeding for physical traits. Three out of the five of us there were Aussie people, and needless to say there were some differences of opinion. I’ll post some thought on it tomorrow after I’ve had more than 4 hours of sleep. Until then, enjoy beautiful Bree as she watches the sheep.
(Bree is my herding instructor’s Border Collie)
Posted in Amelia, Herding | 3 Comments »
Bona Dea Australian Shepherds 