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.

This post is for those of you who are actually concerned that your Rottweiler must weigh 140-180 pounds, so it can protect you and your personal property. I have stated in earlier posts that the Rottweiler is a medium to large breed and that there are size restrictions written into the breed standard and that these demands regarding size are unrealistic and unnecessary.

That doesn’t stop people calling me to ask ridiculous questions about the weight of parents, eventual weight of the pup along with the ‘fact’ that their last Rottweiler weighed 180 pounds, and so on. (As a side note, people generally are unable to guess the weights of things. I have a male who most people insist weighs 130 pounds who is actually around 98 pounds.)

If you want a Rottie to protect you, then get a Rottie who has good nerves, loads of drive and then train him or her slowly and correctly to do the work.   Size matters not at all.

To illustrate this, I have a link here of a video from France’s RAID anti-terrorist K-9 unit, showing their Belgian Malinois dogs doing various containment and take down drills.

These dogs weigh around fifty to sixty pounds each, tops. Enjoy the video and support the Rottweiler breed standard!

Everything you do with your pup or adult dog is essentially training. It might not fit into the category of formal obedience work, but it is training nonetheless.  For example, when you come with your dog to the front door after a walk, does it sit and wait for you to open the door, or does it scratch the door and whine to be let in? Both of these actions are trained behaviors.  The difference is that the dog in a sit position was trained by you and the dog jumping up and down and ruining your front door was trained by itself.

This is why I frown upon leaving a young pup alone with an older dog to ‘keep each other company’.  If the older dog has some poor habits, you can be sure that within a few days, the pup will have learned them. Dogs learn by watching and then become conditioned through repetition, even if self taught. If you let a dog act like a dope every day, pretty soon, you have a problem on your hands that appears impossible to handle.

Forget about all of this ‘dog whispering’ garbage.  Dogs learn to do bad things by doing bad things, over and over. It’s not more complicated than that, I assure you. So, conversely, if you want to undo bad behavior in a dog, you need to recondition the dog, repetitively, daily, until the dog behaves differently. I emphasize the word ‘you’, because you are the only individual who can change the dog’s actions, behavior, habits, etc.

I have reconditioned four and five year old dogs, as well as puppies. Age is not as important as the handler’s willingness to repeat the exercise as often as needed to get the desired result. That means every day, four or five times a day, and so on. You can incorporate obedience and conditioning into daily routines. For example, training the ‘sit’ command can be done when  coming to the door (both inside and out), feeding , entering and exiting the crate, car and so on. After two weeks of this, the dog will get the idea that it has to sit before getting the reward (whatever your reward is for that dog).

Do not expect a dog to change because you yell at it or tell it ‘no’ a million times. That is not dog training. That is you being trained by your dog to react to its behavior.

Actual dog training is for real life situations and is done in real life.

Think about it.

It’s been a year since I began researching dry dog food to find out for myself exactly how this type of food works within the digestive systems of working dogs (Rottweilers and German Shepherds, to be specific).

Well, although I am not a canine food science ‘expert’, I am an expert at what works and certainly very good at observing the obvious as regards my own animals. Here are the results of one year of observation regarding dry dog food:

1. The kcals per kg and kcals per cup are vital to the viable nutrition of the canine. Using this page from a vet supply web site gave me the initial information necessary to begin research and determine how many kcals were needed for active working dogs.

2. Ingredients alone do not determine the caloric content and usable food value of dry kibble. In October of 2010, I had five underweight dogs in my kennel, despite being fed ample amounts of a supposed ‘high performance’ dog food, with chicken as the first ingredient. Since switching to a calorie-dense food with a less fashionable first ingredient (chicken by product meal), every one of those dogs has gained back weight, using the same or lower amounts of kibble per day. So, it really does not matter how much ‘deboned chicken’ or ‘wild salmon’ is thrown into some of these foods, the bottom line is that all of that mush has to result in a calorie dense food that the dog can convert into usable fuel for growth, maintenance and viability. My rule of thumb is that the food must contain at least 400 kcals per cup to do the job.

3. Calorie dense foods are vital to canine reproductive systems and milk production. Prior to switching foods, the loss of newborn pups from mothers fed a lower calorie food was at or around 35% per litter without exception.  Unsuccessful breedings were commonplace. Lack of adequate colostrum and milk may also have resulted in lowered immune systems and more difficulty with puppy growth, but these are not provable with the data to hand. The bottom line is that since switching to a calorie dense food, the newborn loss has reduced to 0%-20% per litter.

4. Calorie dense foods are vital to new puppy growth at weaning. I have observed that pups fed a high calorie diet develop stronger immune systems and experience more stable growth than those feeding on lower calorie diets. Weaning pups on high calorie puppy food had zero ramp up time. This means that before, it would take three or four days for pups to start eating the ‘high performance, all life stages’ kibble. Now, they begin eating immediately, first day, and never look back. Wormings and other preventative meds also appear to work more completely than before. Maybe it’s my imagination, but I don’t think so.

Well, that about wraps it up. If you are a dog owner who is simply status conscious, you will continue to feed your dog low calorie, high cost salmon and bison free range organic kibble, since that is what your vet or the sales rep at the local pet store told you to feed.  If you are a cheap dog owner, you may continue to feed your dog Field Trial or whatever corn based stuff you can buy at the local carry out. Maybe those foods work for you, and that’s fine. I’m not here to revolutionize the dog food industry.

However, if you have a dog that is not doing well on his kibble, for any reason, including, but not limited to:

not gaining or maintaining weight,

having skin or coat issues,

immune system issues,

reproductive issues,

recurring soft tissue injuries,

lack of energy,

constantly hungry resulting in overfeeding, resulting in loose stools and a host of other issues,

then maybe you might consider looking into what’s really in your dog’s food. I hope this has helped.

This post is for three  categories of Rottweiler owners:

1. Those who are new to the breed and who do not know what is the correct size for a Rottweiler.

2. Those who own or ‘breed’  Rottweilers who consider this dog to be a giant breed and who try to convince others of their altered, skewed understanding of the breed standard.

3. Those who own Rottweilers who feel their dog is ‘too small’ because they’ve been told so by others.

Here is the following, from the current, written Rottweiler Breed Standard, taken directly from the AKC web site:

The ideal Rottweiler is a medium large, robust and powerful dog, black with clearly defined rust markings…Dogs–24 inches to 27 inches. Bitches–22 inches to 25 inches, with preferred size being mid-range of each sex. Correct proportion is of primary importance, as long as size is within the standard’s range.

Please note that the Rottweiler is a ‘medium large’ dog. It is not a large or giant breed.  There is no mention of weight, no mention that the dog must weigh over a hundred pounds, or any specific weight for that matter. Note the heights for males and females (at the shoulders).  Those are the correct height ranges for Rottweilers. Take a tape measure and measure your dog’s height. If a dog is inside that height limit, it is considered  correct.  What else is there to understand?

Look, this is not rocket science. You can look up this info the same way that I did. If you own a pure bred dog, you might want to study the breed standard for that dog, just so you know what you have in front of you. Just a suggestion.

Anyone out there who is being told by others that their Rottweiler is ‘too small’, when their dog fits within the breed standard should understand that this is coming from an idiot. They should simply ignore these comments.  Anyone being told that their Rottweiler pup is ‘too small’ when it hasn’t finished developing should ignore this as well.  I personally have never taken kindly to complete strangers making comments to me about things they know nothing about, regardless of the subject.

Those of you out there who want a giant dog, then get a Mastiff or a Dane or some such….and please stop spreading false information about the Rottweiler breed. Thank you.

Here is some information that I feel is vital to the correct development of your working dog. It is often missed, ignored and otherwise relegated to the zone of  ‘that stuff is for other people’s dogs’, which is inaccurate to say the least.

So, when should the red light go off regarding formal obedience training?  When your dog is old enough to know the value of reward and motivation for executing a command, has developed some focus and when it is beginning to test the boundaries of its relationship with the owner. This comes into play around six to eight months old, can happen earlier or later, but it will happen.

Here we have the dog, who, when asked to sit (off leash), will sit some of the time; who will engage in destructive chewing or barking; who will challenge the handler or people in the environment; doesn’t come when called. The list goes on.

Here is the rule: A dog will not learn actual compliance to a command while off the leash/correction collar. True compliance to a given command will only be effective once the dog realizes it cannot disobey the command, ever.

The solution is to either enroll in a puppy obedience class or teach yourself how to train your dog. That means every day, for its lesson, it is on a leash, with a correction collar (usually a prong). That doesn’t mean endlessly telling the dog ‘No’, louder and louder in a vain attempt to control the animal with your voice. This is a useless exercise. There has to be a an actual physical correction in conjunction with the command (Sit, Stay, Come, etc) for the command to have an impact on the dog.  This doesn’t mean, of course, that you should over-correct or be a sadist with your animal.  This is not punishment. It is training. If you cannot differentiate between the two, get a lizard for a pet.

A few minutes a day, with a day or two off per week,  should start conditioning a dog towards good obedience.

As a note on this, there are some people who feel it is cruel to correct a dog with a collar. They feel, instead, that you can use reason and human communication alone to get a dog to obey. There are all sorts of silly dog training ‘techniques’ out there that purport to solve the ‘problem’ of training a dog in obedience by not training the dog in obedience. Good luck with that, especially with a working breed.

If you think this doesn’t apply to your dog, or that your dog is a natural Rin-Tin-Tin, then by all means disregard the above rule. However, I am willing to wager you that at some point your dog will choose to disobey your command and that will be the end of that experiment. A dog will get away with as much as it can get away with, in the obedience department. It is a fact that obedience is not native to a dog’s behavior, so one probably should also conclude that the human handler must  create an environment where obedience is part of the dog’s life.

If you wait for the dog to make decisions on its behavior, you are asking for trouble.

Good luck and Good obedience training.

I was just sent this YouTube  video montage from a proud, responsible Fallhammer Rottweiler Owner, who, having seen it, wanted to share it with me and others on the Kennel Facebook page.

It really communicates what the Rottweiler breed is all about and is an honest and heartfelt presentation.

Take a look at it and enjoy. Note: if you don’t get at least a little choked up while watching, then something’s wrong…

The True Character Of The Rottweiler

Bob

I was speaking with someone last week about how much they feed their dog each day. Incidentally, the dog was obese. Here was their answer: He’s hungry all the time, so I let him eat as much as he wants.

When I stopped laughing, I told my friend the following things about feeding his dog:

1. All healthy dogs are hungry all the time. This doesn’t mean they are underfed or undernourished. Stop making believe your dog is a little person trapped inside a dog’s body.
2. Dogs do not understand the concepts of obesity, poor health, indigestion, etc. If you put a forty pound bag of dog food in front of a healthy dog, it would eat until it bloated and died. There may be exceptions to that, but I doubt it.
3. Free feeding is the worst form of poor obedience training imaginable. Here, the dog is doing what it pleases, when it pleases. Good luck on that NOT spilling over into the rest of the dog’s life.
4. People who show Rottweilers for a living insist that the dogs look ‘thick’ in the loins. It’s no secret that show dogs are over fed. (This is the same as human beauty pageants, where contestants starve themselves to ‘look good’ for the judges.) While this may look nice in the ring, it may not be the healthiest condition for your pet. Look down at your dog from directly above your dog. Can you see where his rib cage ends and his loins begin? If the answer is ‘no’ and he looks like a fat sausage, then your dog is overweight and needs to be fed less food.

If your dog is obese, try cutting back on his food one quarter cup a day for a month. I guarantee you the dog will not starve to death. Trust me on this one.

Bob

Well, it’s time for an update to my post about dry dog food and the low calorie scam being perpetrated by some manufacturers and retailers.

Not being satisfied with my initial calls to those in charge, I once again contacted Sam’s Club customer service, in an attempt to voice my concerns about their food to someone in charge who would listen. I finally reached someone there who cared enough and he gave my number to the head of pet food sales and marketing for the entire Sam’s Club chain. Yes, the person who is in charge of the whole thing, from deciding what formula to tell its manufacturer to use to what it says on the bag, called me to let me know he was interested in what I had to say.

We had an excellent conversation. He is new to the position, apparently had no idea about the recent changes to its Performance formula and appeared to actually want to do something about it. Both of us agreed on many points, as he, ironically, had worked for Mars for quite some time before taking on his new position.

The conclusion we came to at the end of our talk was that there is a disagreement from manufacturers as to what constitutes a ‘performance’ dog food: Protein/Fat Content or Calories Per Kilogram. I am pretty sure he recognizes and knows that calories(high metabolizable energy and caloric density) is the key to maintaining a healthy dog.

I am hoping he can make a difference from his position in the very near future. Meanwhile, I am no longer using or recommending Member’s Mark Exceed dog food for my own dogs and pups. If you have been using this food, contact me and I will help you find a better replacement.

Keep your eyes on the packaging of Member’s Mark Performance to see if there is a change in either packaging or ingredients, or both.

After all, your dog’s health should be important to these businesses, too!

Best,
Bob