Bob's Dog Blog

Let me begin by stating that walking your dog is not a complete exercise regimen.  At best, it is a way for you to get out of the house and for your dog to go to the bathroom.  So, for those of you who own Rottweilers, German Shepherds and other working breeds, let me see if I can give you a fresh viewpoint on the subject of exercise and health.

It is a known fact that most people do not exercise themselves enough on a daily basis.  Just take a look at yourself in a full length mirror if you don’t agree. Now, do you think a dog is any different than a human in this respect?  Over the life of the dog, proper and adequate exercise, diet, training and socialization have a tremendous impact on its longevity and well being.

I’m not going to get into any general statements about what was done elsewhere to draw this conclusion. After over a decade of raising working dogs (Rottweilers, German Shepherds) I can intelligently conclude that these type of dogs require daily, constant, hard exercise to stay in shape, develop good muscle tone, properly digest and metabolize food, keep vital organs oxygenated and live long, healthy lives.

I have always wondered why pet owners will sometimes have a multitude of issues with their dogs,  mostly health related. I used to think it was due to poor diet alone, but I no longer subscribe to that idea.  Taking a look at my own dogs, mostly kennel dogs and bitches, I have observed that without exception, they are healthy, in shape, high energy and long lived. The average life span of one of my dogs is 11 years old. Yet, I hear from people how their dog was put down at age five or six from an assortment of ailments. Why is that?

Okay, I know I’m not doing a scientific study in the purest sense of the word and that I am not a doctor and so on. That does not make me any less qualified to look with my own eyes and draw intelligent conclusions from my observations.

So, based on my own observations over fifteen years of raising working dogs, I am concluding the following:

1. Daily exercise is vital and critical to a dog’s present and future health. This must not be limited to daily walks, as this does not help the dog metabolize his food nor does it help it develop muscle mass/tone, organ development, correct conformation, tissue, ligament and muscle  growth around joints, a strong immune system, and so on. A working dog needs to have at least one good workout per day, for at least five to ten minutes, done when it is NOT too hot, and NOT just before or after eating its meal. Gauge your dog’s stamina and DO NOT OVERDO IT when beginning. Build the dog up, just like a human would build up stamina running or doing other exercise routines. In other words, get the dog in shape and then keep it there by maintaining the daily routine.

2. Obedience training, socialization and play can easily be worked into this regimen, so you can get the most out of the time with your dog.

3. Begin this when the dog is a puppy and continue for the life of the dog.

There is no substitute for proper daily exercise in the life of a dog. (Of course, this doesn’t mean that you run the dog ragged and have it stroke out either!)

Use common sense and help your dog build itself up to be the canine athlete it was bred to be.

Working dogs have needs specific not only to their particular breed type, but to their particular grouping in the dog world. In this case I am referring to Rottweilers, German Shepherds and other breeds listed in the Working Dog Group.

As such, nutrition, exercise and development should be geared towards the actual purpose and functions of each breed type and group. Working dogs have been bred specifically to perform tasks. This is not just a label. It is a fact of life and to ignore this fact or sidestep the importance of raising a working dog AS A WORKING DOG is to violate the actual reason for the dog’s existence.

All dogs have the same basic parts, but the way each is dog bred will determine how those parts are used and meant to be used.  The less they are used, the more prone the dog is to injury, illness and other complications (this includes dysplasia, in spite of what the vets will tell you about it being 100% genetic)

Here is an image of a Rottweiler, with labeled body parts:

Alright, now here is a picture of an Italian Greyhound. This dog is a sight hound and as such has been bred over the centuries to run and chase game. Notice the way this dog is physically centered around that basic function:

So, different dogs have different needs. With working dogs, the needs have everything to do with building muscle tone in the front and rear of the dog, to develop strength in the legs, feet, hindquarters, forequarters, hips, elbows, pasterns, chest, and so on. This is because working dogs have been bred and developed as dogs that do a multitude of tasks, not just one type of job. So, because of this, their muscle and bone development is more demanding in order to potentially perform these tasks.

That is why, when I ask people if they exercise their working dog and they tell me ‘Sure, I take him for a walk every day,” I laugh.  Walking a dog once a day is not exercise. They need to run, jump, sit, lay down, get up and do all of the types of exercise that will develop strong muscle tissue and bone growth. Just like body building with humans. Every day. Look at the muscle groups of the Rottweiler again. That did not come about from laying around the house all day and going for a walk at dinner time.

So, the next time you hear someone tell you all about how horribly prone working dogs are to dysplasia and other issues, think about this article. If I raised a dog that had no muscle tone, no endurance, no immune system, I wouldn’t have a kennel.

Sometimes a pup or an adult gets an injury while playing or training. It happens. What I have noticed is that the first thing, the very first thing an owner suspects when he sees his dog limping is that he has hip dysplasia or elbow dysplasia.

While this is something that you cannot rule out, there are a few other things to take a look at. By the way, I am not dispensing medical advice or diagnosis here, just giving you my viewpoint as a breeder and handler on how to take care of your dog. I train and trial working dogs and prepare them for these trials, so I know a few things. Okay, so you notice that your dog has a limp or is favoring a paw or carrying his weight differently.

1. The first thing I would do is get the dog calm, cooled down and relaxed.

2. Then you palpate the dog. You feel around where he is limping and see if there is a spot where he reacts when you touch or put pressure on it. Pull out his limb and let it come back, see if the leg is coming out or drawing in more than usual. Watch for any signs of pain or reaction in the dog or pup. Feel for any swollen area, broken skin, or any other abnormality on the surface. Check his pads, as sometimes they can split or crack. Make any notes for your vet if you spot something that is obvious or out of the ordinary. If there is a broken bone, get the dog immediate medical attention.

3.  Then, instead of rushing to the emergency vet hospital (unless there is a valid medical emergency), take your dog and put him up in a crate. Yes, a crate.  The reason I am saying this is that, more often than not, it is a soft tissue injury. This is especially true of very young dogs, younger than seven months. The chances of a dog developing a debilitating, arthritic limp prior to seven months are rare, although they cannot be ruled out. Even so, the odds are in your favor that the dog has sprained some muscle or ligament. You must crate the dog and keep him from running around. That’s right, you keep him from running around. Why? because every time he starts to heal the injury, he will re-injure it by running around. If you do not do this, then you will allow this dog to do more damage to himself. So you do what a human would do who has injured himself – give him rest. Take him out for walks on the grass, on the leash, give him a hug and put him back up. No running. At all. You think I am being silly for repeating this, but owners sometimes do not listen because they are being selfish and want to play with their dog or they think it’s cruel to keep their dog in a crate for two weeks.  I think it’s cruel to allow a dog to re-injure itself for no good reason.

4. Do this routine for at least two weeks. Yes, two weeks, minimum, every day, no exceptions. Find other ways to bond with your dog that do not include him blowing out his ACL. After two weeks, if he is no longer limping, wean him off of the rest with light exercise, more walks on the leash.If he’s getting better, but still off a bit, keep him on the routine until he’s 100% better. Remember, it takes time to heal muscle and ligaments. Just ask a human who has had to go through this stuff. It can take months, so do not be impatient.

5. Try to figure out what might have been stressing him out physically. For instance, jumping on concrete, sliding around on tile floors, jumping out of a truck, jumping over tennis nets, heavy running with no warm up or cool down. See if you can discover what, in his daily routines may have led up to the injury. Then, stop him from doing that particular physical activity and when he is healed, get him doing something that is not so stressful physically.

5. Give the dog natural anti-inflammatory supplements right away and continue through his healing stage. MSM is cheap and can be dosed orally. Vitamin C is also a good supplement. DO NOT GIVE THE DOG ANY PAIN KILLERS. Pain killers only mask the cause of the injury and will allow the dog to re-injure. Sometimes owners don’t listen and have to learn the hard way.

It costs about fifteen hundred bucks to repair an ACL on a dog, just so you know.

Best,

Bob

I originally wrote about the following topic on the post ‘Buy Now, Pay Later,’, but I thought some more clarification was in order, being that this is an important issue, so here we go.

We all know that, in the human world, babies who are well cared for and most always grow up to be healthy adolescents and adults. I don’t have hard statistics for you, but as I said, we all know that this is true. We also know that an infant raised on crappy sugar based formula, tons of carbohydrates soon graduates to Pepsi and by the time he is twenty, may develop diabetes, or worse.

The same is true for canines. A pup comes out of the womb and if it is healthy at birth, should thrive, given the fact that the mom has adequate milk, the milk is good, meaning not infected or infiltrated with some harmful bacteria. Okay, given that, the pup should get off to a good start.

Here are some examples of getting a pup off to a bad start:

1. If the breeder fails to keep the whelping box clean, the pups are liable to develop coccidiosis, a very contagious and very deadly intestinal infection, if not treated immediately.

2. If the breeder fails to worm the pups early on and doesn’t continue to worm the pups as a preventative until eight weeks, the worms grow to adulthood and the pups develop enteritis and could possibly die if not treated. If they survive, they may have health issues later in life, I assure you. By the way, all pups are born with worm larvae. The mom passes them on, always. Go and ask your vet if you don’t believe me.

3. Feeding a cheap, low protein food when weaning will also be a cause of problems, just like the human baby formula example I mentioned earlier. Purina Puppy Chow is not what you feed a pup who is undergoing the stress of growth, weaning, socialization etc.

4. Weaning too fast may also cause issues, both physically and mentally for the pup. They need a nice, slow weaning runway so they can be done with mom and have their gastrointestinal tract fully adjusted to solid food.

Okay, so everyone nowadays is a breeder. A person with a male and a female canine is somehow qualified to call themselves a breeder, just because they have AKC papers on both dogs. I think some folks think this is some kind of cash cow that automatically makes money hand over fist and because they don’t really care about the breed they are dealing with, they do stupid, careless things and soon they are out of the breeding game. Successfully reproducing livestock is hard work, requires a thorough knowledge of the breed or species and several years of experience learning animal husbandry skills.

If you buy a discount pup from someone who knows nothing of this stuff and has done nothing to prepare the pup for the outside world, will you care? Even if you pay for double the difference in vet visits over the next few years?

Okay, this was ‘I told you so’, Part Two…

Best,

Bob

This post is about a very real, common situation in the puppy-buying world: You Get What You Pay For. Let me clarify by example.

A young woman purchased a dog from someone who claimed to be a breeder. She paid 300 dollars for the dog. At eight months he was diagnosed with a brain tumor and had to be put to sleep. She purchased another $300 dog who had to be euthanized for extreme temperament issues at a year old. Shall I go on? Okay, another person I know purchased a ‘cheap’ pup who developed hip dysplasia at six months. Um, another one had to put down their dog at three years old due to hip dysplasia and cancer.

Wow. What a deal they got on that puppy. Let’s work out the math, shall we?

Initial cost of pup = $300 – 500

Vet Bills for handling of congenital and other issues due to ‘breeder’s’ complete lack of understanding of the breed standard, genetics, pedigrees or anything else having to do with creating any semblance of a breeding program = $1500 – $4000

So, the next time you see an actual, ethical breeder advertising a pup for more than a few hundred bucks and you think to yourself, ‘Hell, I paid a hundred and fifty for my pup back in 1975, this guy is asking way too much money for a pup’ and you don’t stop yourself and realize that you are being ridiculous, and you go ahead and purchase a pup (covered in it’s own feces, with worms, no health cert from a person who should not be procreating within his own species, much less adding to the dog population), just remember one thing: I TOLD YOU SO.

Best,

Bob

Here is my second article on common false info that I hear about Rottweilers on a regular basis. This is a classic piece of misinformation. I am constantly being told by a caller or someone who has a relative, etc or who he/she themselves owned or currently owns a 160-200 lb Rottweiler. And, let me add, this dog ALWAYS has a head the size of a watermelon. Always.

Now, I don’t know about you, but I have never in my life seen such a dog- not at a dog show, at the park, at the pet store or anywhere. If almost everyone I talk to (and I have talked to a lot of people in ten years of breeding dogs) knows of one of these, how come I have never seen one? To be that big, the dog would look like a, let’s see, uh, a…..MASTIFF. That’s right, a Mastiff, which they are not.

The Rottweiler Quarterly once put on a contest to see who could send them actual proof, on a scale, that a 160 lb Rottweiler existed. Nothing. Nobody ever came forward. Well, I could dismiss that as just, well, those kind of dog owners don’t read the Rottweiler Quarterly. Okay. However, none of these people who claim to have heard of or have seen one of these have never seen them on a scale, weighed and confirmed the dog at that weight. All they do is listen to the owner talk it up and believe it fully.
Now, I am going to use harsh language, so if you can’t handle it, leave the blog now. The tale of the 160 pound Rottweiler is pure bullshit. Period. It is the classic fish story. My dog is bigger than your dog. I have seen large Rottweilers – big males who maybe even should lose a few pounds. Maximum weight probably was 129 pounds. Tops. That’s it. Not 160, 180 or anything like that. People, stop being so gullible by actually believing some idiot who tells you that his dog weighs more than you do. Same with the heads. No, I’m sorry, there are not Rottweilers out there with heads the size of engine blocks, yet I regularly meet a yahoo who will show me with his arms in a circle, the circumference of the dog’s head being about the size of a garbage can lid. Okay, whatever you say.

The reason I bring this up at all is that I actually get people calling me for pups wanting to know if they can get a pup who will grow up to be 180 lbs. I can’t hang up fast enough.

Look, the breed standard is very specific on the height for males and females at the withers and although there is no weight standard or description, a dog that is no more than 27 inches at the withers is not going to weigh 160 lbs and be in proportion at all. End of scene.

So, if you really want a dog that weighs that much, if it means that much to you to have a big, slow, uncomfortable dog with a giant head, then I suggest you buy a Bull Mastiff or Neo Mastiff and be done with it. If you don’t believe what I’ve written here, go to a dog show and ask a breeder or handler about this and listen to what they have to tell you. I’m not a huge fan of the show ring, but at least they know what the dog they’re showing is supposed to look like. I rest my case.

Bob