AVIBLOG
Feed Your Dog People Food! Please!!
Why and How to Use People Food to Feed Your Dog Better! Dog owners often proudly tell me that they “never feed their dog people food.” They are surprised when I encourage them to change this practice and get some people food into their dogs! For years, they've been...
Dog Food Buyer Beware
More and More Dog Foods Are Making Dogs Sick! For years, dog owners have faced challenges when choosing food for their dogs but the situation is getting increasingly dire. In just the last three months, we’ve seen well-known dog foods causing serious sometimes fatal...
Dog Poop, Measles and Parvovirus
An Argument for Individual Contribution to Herd Immunity Dr Pauline Chen wrote a compelling editorial linking dog poop to the measles outbreak in the US. Strange bedfellows, you think? Her point is that just as cleaning up after your dog is an act of personal...
Might Dog Dads Contribute More Than Just DNA?
In the past, we focused our prenatal care on our mama dogs. We fed them the best food possible, supplemented carefully and made sure they were in top condition. We knew from experience and research that good moms that experienced low stress created more...
Prepping Your Puppy For The Vet! Part 1
Our dogs love going to Otterkill Animal Hospital and the Otterkill staff loves our dogs! A few weeks ago, in my 2-part blog Teach Your Puppy to Love Visiting The Vet, I wrote about things you can do with your puppy so he will learn to enjoy going to the vet’s. In...
Teach Your Puppy to Love Visiting the Vet! Part 2
In my last blog Teach Your Puppy To Love Visiting The Vet Part One, I covered how to take your puppy to the vet the first time so she learns to love these visits! This blog will present what to do in the exam room and afterwards to be sure everything goes well...
Teach Your Puppy To Love Visiting The Vet! Part 1
Your puppy’s very first visit to the vet with you will be one of many over the course of her life, so it is important to come up with a plan to ensure that it is a good experience. If you are lucky, she had a great experience when she went to the vet with her...
Shake, Rattle and Roll: How To Introduce The Bottle Pool
As we raise each litter our goal is to do everything we can to help the puppies become confident, stable dogs enabling each of them to thrive in their homes. Each litter presents a new opportunity for us to try and create a new way to stimulate the pups. A few years ago we began using the bottle pool.
Are You Sabotaging Your Puppy’s Recall?
In my last blog post I explained a simple process that you can implement to teach your puppy to come. Dog trainers refer to the “come” command as a recall. Teaching a recall to a puppy is quite simple. The real challenge is keeping his recall strong under any...
If you could only teach your puppy only one “command” what would it be?
We have had a very mild winter in New York with some days almost reaching 60 degrees. Last week, however, the feels-like temperature was down in the single digits. Of course, that is the day I am sitting at my computer and...