We’re still big fans of PoshNosh tripe {although not as big a fan as our dog}, but we find Bella gets tired of the same non-tripe food if given to her for too long.

Force is a dehydrated raw dog food. It contains 100% human food grade chicken {very important!} and lots of great fruits, veggies, and even organic flaxseed. It comes in a neat container and we use 1/3-1/2 cup for each meal.

You just add the same amount of water to the dry food, mix it up, and in 10min you have a very well balanced raw dog food.

We sometimes add the meat of a raw chicken leg {we also give her the raw chichen leg bones while the mix is hydrating}, or 1/3-2/3 pound PoshNosh green tripe.

One of the few owner-negatives to a RAW diet {there are no significant negatives for your dog} is that you need to manage a balanced diet and monitor your dog. For example we were giving Bella pork riblets at one point, and she loved them. But she started having gas, which she never had before {she smells great!}. Turns out it’s a sign that Bella’s digestive system is working overtime, so we took her off pork and the gas stopped immediately.

If a RAW diet seems daunting, try giving your dog some of these:

• Peanut butter filled chew toy
  It’s better for dogs than humans
• Beef marrow bones raw
  give them frozen to reduce mess and lengthen chew time
• Cod liver oil
  gel caps or mix it into any food
• Flax seed
  mix into any food

She really loves to run…

I dissolved a small piece of vegetable broth cube into some boiled water. I then soaked a few raw hides for a little while in the broth. Bell now LOVES her raw hides again. The broth flavor gets her past the hard bone start and into the soft rawhide zone and we get about an hour of free time.

Oh, check to ensure there’s no MSG in the cubes… I can bet that some dogs may flip out on msg.

We’ve had Connie from bark busters come by and give us a hand with Bella. She taught us a lot of great stuff, and we found a way to tire Bella out fast. We can walk her for hours and she’s still ready for more. But if we work her brain, she’s pooped in 15 minutes.

One game we play with her that works well is monkey in the middle. Magda and I pass 2 small pillows between us and Bella grabs them as they fly past. This works her brain as she’s holding and briging her pillow, while tracking the other one.

15 minutes of this an she calms right down, and sometimes takes a nap.

I think the video quality is far superior to the last attempt. I’m starting to figure out how to get the best from YoutTube. I contacted their technical group who told me 320×240 MPEG-4 video uploaded should result in the best quality YouTube video.

This one was a 2.1Mb/sec WMV I exported from Windows Movie Maker {oh when are we getting a Mac…}.

I’ve been experimenting with how to get the highest quality video from YouTube. If I can make any progress, I’ll have a blog post about it soon.

See more of Bella at Mark’s Flickr photostream >>

Thanks again Mark!

We picked up a copy of ‘Puppies for Dummies’ as a start. There’s so much information online and some of it contradictory. I assume that different tactics work better and worse for different breeds. Bella’s only 8 weeks old, so her brain isn’t finished growing. She forgets things day to day, although with a few days work we were able to teach her “sit” and “down”.

I wasn’t prepared for the puppy energy spurt. This is when the puppy gets a blast of energy from the food it ate an hour or earlier and just goes nuts. She explodes around the room and just can’t pay attention to anything.

We’ve started the teaching-lead method. This is where you keep your puppy on lease while outside the crate and with you. It’s all about taking the lead in every situation. We’ve only just started with it… we’ll see what kind of success we can get out of it.

Here’s our puppy, Bella. She’s really cute, but man can she whine and howl! We’re working on getting her used to not having us around 24/7. This morning she was flipping out for about 30 minutes. She finally calmed down so I could go see her. She was so happy to see me. Then she fell asleep; being a puppy is so stressfull.