Bill's blog

I love my dog to death. She is my baby, but she frustrates me to tears when she completely ignores me. I am afraid she might get away from me and get hit by a car or get lost. What can I do?

You are right. You may love your dog to death when she gets hit by a car. She also has too many legs and is way too fast to be your baby. Stop treating her like a baby and give her a little direction and guidance just as you, hopefully, would a child. Come to our training classes. Kris, our instructor, has a degree in Psychology from the University of Arkansas, and she can help. I have trained dogs and trainers since 1970. All dogs are very social creatures and they expect somebody to be the leader. Without leadership and organization you have anarchy and chaos, and runaway dogs. Do not leave food down and put her toys in a toy box. Put the retractable leash away and get a six foot training leash until she learns to listen to you and stops pulling. Do not let her jump on your furniture and your lap without invitation and make her wait for permission to go out the door. Reward her for behavior you want. She will start listening. When pets have access to everything they want, and no controls over their food, they have no reason to listen to you. In that last sentence, try substituting the words "politician" for /pets/ and "corporate America" for /their food/.

Click on Natures Logic pet food logo to the left to go to the web site. A copy of the study follows

We get so many calls about people who own dogs that are out of control. Mostly it is about running away from the owner whether outside and heading down the street or in the house after chewing something up or some other no-no. The following is really a living with your dog lifestyle more than training the dog. Many problems, no most problems, have to do with your relationship with the dog. First I'll list human behavior caused problems.

I am going to try and post a new subject at least twice a week. I plan on providing more detail referencing my column in the Sunday paper. Space is limited in the paper and I have to condense the subject matter. I hope you find the Sunday column interesting then come to this blog and I will follow up on the same subject in more detail. I am planning on updating the entries on Sundays and Wednsdays.

Ingredients make the pet food, not big advertising budgets or slick packaging. Read the ingredients list!!

In canned food purchases look for whole identifiable meats as the main ingredient, ( chicken, turkey chicken liver, beef, venison--you get the idea).I prefer broth instead of water as an ingredient but that is just a personal preference. Veggies, fuits, etc are also good. If there are any grains they should be minimal and they should be whole grains (rice insteadof rice flour, rice protein rice protein concentrate, rice gluten etc. I do not like corn, soy or wheat in a canned food except there are some descent foods containing pasta made of wheat. Wheat, corn, and soy and all of their grain fractions are prone to causing allergic reactions aaand are carbohydrate dense. Dogs and especially cats do not need carbohydrates from grain. In fact many DVM believe dogs and cats do not need carbohydrates at all. Many people believe canned food is bad for cats or dogs. I continuously hear He will get loose stool or it will upset his stomach or his teeth will rot. I have heard it all after 32 years in this industry and years of showing and breeding numerous AKC Champions. Good quality canned food is better than dry food. It is processed with much more moisture, usually contains more meat proteins (long chain amino acids) and is definitely more palatable. Dry foods are for our convenience and manufactureres profit. I will admit that I feed dry foods to large dogs, but I supplement with canned meats, raw meats when convenient, and raw bones. My Papillion gets Natures Variety Raw meat diet and canned food. She has some dry kibble (Raw instinct by Natures Variety) in a Treat Stik always lying around for a snack.

Dear Natural Balance,

 I am an independent retailer with two stores that has promoted your product line heavily as a trustworthy premium food.  Why would a so-called premium food have as a protein source anything other than meat, fish, or egg proteins??  Why did you not let your retailers know you were changing formulas, in particular to a cheap, poor source of protein??  I can understand a human error, "mistake", resulting in problems.  But using 'rice protein concentrate' appears to be on the same line of greed as the large multi-national coproprations.  We promoted the foods we carry as no by-produc meals, no corn, waht or soy and no grain fractions.  

Everyone is justifiably upset by the suspected poisons found in wheat gluten from China. They have every right to be upset over the suspected melamine and rat poison found in these products. The problem is they are missing the point I have been making for three years now. There is absolutely no justification for wheat gluten, or corn gluten or rice gluten to be in any dog or cat food, especially not supposedly "premium" foods like Iams, Eukanuba, Science Diet, Nutro, Nutro Ultra, or Proplan. The only reason gluten is in pet food is to jack up the protein content. Gluten is an inexpensive by-product of food processing and I believe it is a hard to digest and predominant source of "allergies" in our pets.