It used to be mainly the TV cart and the fireplace screen. Now we've moved his mat and it's the couch. But it's hard to get food out from under the couch. He's been concerned for days about the food under the couch so today I finally moved the couch and got the food for him.

It's not easy, so I'll be moving his starting point back to where it was before and the relatively easy obstacles to the strewn food.

He had two small handfuls of kibble and one large handful. He also had a few hot dog pieces today when our guest came over. Tomorrow I think I’ll try some beef and rice again and keep a close eye on him.

One thing he misses is rawhide and other treats. He’s not shy about standing next to the cupboard door to make it clear to me what he wants. We just have to take it slow.

I doubt I’ll ever know for sure what it was, but I’m assuming it was too much raw cabbage. We won’t do cabbage again, so if it was that, I’ll never find out. But he can do lettuce just fine, and even broccoli. I’ll just be sure to take it easy on the raw vegetables from now on.

But the barfing continues. His stomach is clearly tender right now so were keeping him on brown rice and beef until he can have a better track record keeping it down.

But he’s in great spirits, so I’m not too worried right now.

It’s nice to be able to relax a little.

Then he came in and I decided to call the vet at 7:00am when they opened. They could see Kody at 8:00am so I set the appointment.

Well, in true Kody fashion, by 7:45am he was almost looking normal. After days of stress, he starts getting better right before we go see the vet.

I’d rather have him better, and I guess it’s good that calling the vet has such a curative effect. He still had plenty of small symptoms though, but unfortunately the vet said exactly what I thought she’d say. Basically I already had a full understanding of what was going on and how to track the source of the allergy.

One good thing is that I got a prescription for prednisolone for Kody. Steroids are sort of a giant hammer of a treatment with plenty of negative side effects, so they should only be used when necessary. I’m not going to use them unless he is feeling much worse again, but at least I have something.

He also threw up his kibble dinner tonight, although he was very active and happy to have a guest over for Thanksgiving dinner. You know what’s not fun? Having to clean dog barf out of closet door slider tracks. It takes a lot of q-tips.

The truth is, I’m very worried. I don’t like it when my dog is sick and I don’t know what’s happening. I cuddled him tonight and told him how much I love him.

I knew if things got bad I could give him half a benedryl.

I gave him a bath and changed the sheets on the bed. I also moved him down to the basics of food so I can add things back one at a time to see if I can figure out what’s causing this. I’m suspicious of the cabbage, but organic cabbage doesn’t seem like a likely allergen.

We’ll see. I’m just glad he’s doing better.

Kody like vegetables too. He likes carrots and they’re a great chew toy. But he loves lettuce especially ice berg lettuce. I don’t normally wash ice berg lettuce though, and believe it or not, if I don’t get organic it makes Kody itchy. I noticed this a couple of times before realizing it, since I rarely get non-organic. Pesticide issues are common with dogs and vegetables, so thorough washing is good and organic is better.

Anyway, organic ice berg lettuce is actually hard to find, since most organic fans are too snooty for it. So I’m currently trying out some vegetable adventures. Right now I have some red kale, which is kind of tough and has hard spines you cut out of the leaves. You chop the leaves and use a dressing containing lemon juice and olive oil, then toss the dressing in and let it sit to let the leaves soften.

The spines of the leaves are like sticks. I accidentally dropped one on the floor and Kody stole it, chewed it up, and ate the whole thing!

Now I think this is awesome. He didn’t like the Kale leaves, so it was hard for us to share Kale like we used to share our lettuce salads, but now this is the best possible thing and those spines are going to be great for his teeth as well as being a fun toy.

Of the foods they had, it seemed that “Grammy’s Pot Pie” was almost exactly like “Turducken” but without the turkey or the duck. So I wasn’t too concerned about it upsetting his stomach. But I did worry that he might not like something different.

When it was dinner time, I filled up his Canine Genius and I gave it to him. At first he approached it a little slower, he could tell it was new. But he didn’t seem opposed to eating it. He ate it in shifts. When he was done, he went over by the food and treat door and was begging. I thought he wanted treats. But then he came and look at me desperately and picked up his canine genius, dropped it, and looked at me again.

The communication couldn’t have been any clearer, he wanted more of the food! So I put another handful of the food in there and he was happy. Once he was done eating it, he went to sleep. So I guess he likes it.

Once I’ve taken it out of the pan and put it in his bowl to cool, he will come running into the kitchen and just stand there waiting for the timer to go off. When it does, he will run over to the mat that he’s been trained to sit on to wait for his lunch. I will stir it a bit with my fingers and blow on it if it needs a little more cooling. Then I walk over and set it down. When I say “okay” Kody jumps up off the mat and runs over to enjoy his lunch.

As I type this there are some people working on the pool outside, a dog will occasionally bark, and someone is whistling but Kody is being amazingly calm. He’s just laying next to me looking out the slider. It’s that kind of spring day though, that new warmth that sort of calms everyone down and creates a deep inner base of happiness and calm. I can hear that Kody just crawled back into bed. (While I’ve been proofreading he has since decided bed isn’t the right place and is now laying on the couch.)

I talked about it yesterday, but I’ve come to the latest stage in making it easy to cook for Kody and thought I’d post about it. This is how a make one of Kody’s two meals a day. The other meal is dry kibble fed out of a Canine Genius. Kody is about 15 pounds, for your reference.

The Meat

Buy ground beef or ground chicken or whatever meat you want and shape one pound of it into a square. Then cut three times both ways and you’ll have 16 one ounce portions. Put some parchment paper on a cookie sheet (because it’s wonderfully non-stick) put the ground meat on the parchment and smoosh each piece down a little. Flatter pieces cook faster than chunks. Then freeze these and when they’re frozen take them off the cookie sheet and throw the pieces into a Ziploc bag. Once they’re frozen they won’t stick to each other.

The Rice

Just cook rice in a rice cooker, which is the fastest and easiest way. After you have the rice and water measured properly in the rice cooker bowl, throw in some chopped vegetables like carrots, celery, and/or mushrooms for added flavor and nutrition. Once the rice is done use a small ice cream scoop, which you can buy at a restaurant supply (cheaper) or fancy kitchen store (more expensive). Use the same method of parchment paper on a cookie sheet and then drop the rice scoops on and freeze. Once frozen, put them all in a Ziploc bag and back in the freezer.

If you start cooking for your dog regularly you’ll run out of rice and meat on different days so you’ll only have to do one of these tasks in a single day. Most days, of course, you won’t do either.

The cooking

When you’re ready to cook, get a small pan, add two tablespoons of water, one ounce of the frozen meat and one frozen rice ball. Put a cover on the pan, this is important because it’s the trapped steam the does the cooking. Set the burner heat to 6 (out of 10) and the timer to 5 minutes. When the timer goes off, remove the lid and use a wooden spatula to chop up the meat and rice and stir it around to mix. Then throw it in the dog dish, set aside to cool, and set the timer for 5 more minutes.

Once the timer goes off, stir the food with your fingers and blow if it’s too hot. Be sure it’s plenty cool for your dog, they don’t have the self control to stop eating if it’s too hot and will easily burn their mouth, so err towards the cool side. What’s the perfect temperature? That of a freshly dead animal, of course!

Your dog will love this more than anything else you could give them. This is something even you would actually eat. You would prepare it differently for yourself, probably, but you’d eat the exact same thing. So why do dog food makers make their food so stinky and gross? Unfortunately, probably to hide the poor quality of their ingredients.

Post Root Canal – Pre Crown Food

If you’re a regular reader you know that I cook Kody lunch every day and give him kibble from a Canine Genius every evening which he has fun with. But Kody can’t have kibble again or anything crunchy until he gets his crown, so I need to give him soft food in the evening too.

I went to the store and bought high quality canned food for the evening. As I guessed, Kody didn’t like it and barely ate it, eating just a little at a time then leaving it. I wouldn’t want it either, even though it’s very high quality food, it’s covered in slime and it smells like, well, dog food. So I’ve decided instead to cook for Kody in the evening as well. It doesn’t take me long, so it’s not really a big deal.

The only reason I didn’t do this from the start is that I was concerned about nutrition. Kody just gets beef and rice for lunch, so I was concerned such a simple diet would cover his nutritional needs. Luckily I needed to make a fresh batch of the frozen rice balls I pre-cook for Kody’s lunch and decided to mix in some vegetables. To do this, just start to make the rice in the rice cooker as usual add the rice and the water up to the correct level. Now that you have the right amount of water for the rice, add some chopped vegetables. I added carrots, celery, and mushrooms this time for Kody. Be sure to avoid onions and garlic as those are highly poisonous to dogs.

When the rice is done, there are cooked chopped vegetables mixed in. I scoop out the rice balls with vegetables, freeze them, and that will add a few vitamins and minerals to the beef and rice with very little extra work.

Tip: You can add a lot of chopped vegetables, more than you would think. They get smaller as they cook, so what looks like a lot of vegetables when you put them in will cook down to a reasonable amount. The rice also grows doubling the effect.

Also I finally found out how to cook brown rice properly in a standard rice cooker. You just put two “cups” (rice cooker cups) of rice in and instead of filling water to the two mark, you fill it to the three mark. Brown rice comes out perfect. Tonight I made some brown rice for me just to try it out, but in the future Kody will get brown rice too. Brown rice tastes better than regular rice and it has a significantly more nutritional value and it’s one of those magic foods that fights off everything from diabetes to cancer.

Finally, I also bought chopped chicken breast in Kody’s dinner since his dinner is usually chicken kibble. This may surprise you, even buying free range organic ground chicken breast (and organic vegetables), this dinner ends up being cheaper than the canned food.

Kody loved it and had the excited reaction I would expect him to have when presented with good food. Whatever people may tell you, dogs, like humans, prefer real honest to goodness food.

I don’t feel that cooking for a dog is necessary by any means, but it just makes me feel good that he’s getting “real food” and I cook for myself at the same time. But preparation is definitely the key. In this other post about dog food preparation I talk about how I portion and freeze in advance the hamburger and rice that Kody eats so that cooking is pretty easy.

I have refined the portioning process since then. I smoosh the hamburger pieces into patties so they will cook faster than cubes. I started using a small portioning scoop, like an ice cream scoop only smaller, which I purchased at a restaurant supply store to quickly scoop rice balls out of the rice cooker to put on parchment lined cookie sheet to freeze. Once frozen, the rice balls will no longer stick to each other and they go in a ziploc freezer bag.

Today I made an improvement to the cooking process to speed it up. Once you start cooking like this every day, improvements just sort of occur to me when I’m ready to make them.

The Old Cooking Process

I used to put some water in a small frying pan along with the meat and rice. I would set the heat to 4 (out of 10) and set the timer for four minutes. When it went off, I would flip the hamburger and set the timer for another four minutes. So eight minutes but I would get Kody’s water replaced and clean his food bowl during that time, but there was still some time where I was just waiting.

The New Improved Process

As I get to be a better cook for me, that gets passed on to Kody as well. Now I use the same small frying pan sprayed with PAM cooking spray. I set it to preheat with the stove set to 6 (out of 10), so a little hotter, and I clean Kody’s food bowl and get him fresh water. After that, the pan is preheated, so I throw in the frozen hamburger and rice ball. The rice doesn’t do much, but the hamburger cooks pretty quickly. After about a minute, it’s ready to be flipped. Unlike the old process, the hamburger is now a little browned and smells very good.

After the other side cooks for a minute, I pour in a little water (3 or 4 tablespoons) and place a cover on the pan. The water does 3 important things. First it deglazes the pan so all that great beef taste is released. Second it adds liquid which will form a little bit of a gravy. Third, and most importantly, along with the cover, the steam that’s created defrosts the rice after about a minute.

Then I use my spatula to chop up the hamburger, mix it all around with the rice, put it into his dish, and set it aside to cool for a few minutes. While waiting for it to cool, I clean the pans. If you cook be sure to cool the food. You should be able to comfortably stir it with your fingers, if you can’t either let it set longer or blow on it and stir with your fingers until it’s just warm.

So the cooking process went down from 8 minutes to 3 minutes. That’s pretty good! Cooking for your dog just feels rewarding. That’s why so many people do it, and others spend a lot more time at it than I do. Like any cooking you start off doing it slowly and inefficiently, but then you get faster and better over time. I also do it at a time I’m cooking for myself anyway so it kind of just fits in. It’s still extra time, but not much.

He’s also a little more comfortable being away from me, which is great. I can really see his confidence growing by leaps and bounds.

I think I need to change my command for when Kody barks at something, though. Right now it’s “Go get ‘em”. It was kinda funny and such a natural thing to say at first, but more and more often it’s becoming embarrassing because people, of course, think I’m encouraging him. It works so well, I hate to try to change it. It’s something I’m going to have to think about.

Today Kody seemed to want me to leave the house. It was very strange because at my slightest movement he would run into his crate like I was going to leave. I said, “Do you want me to leave or something?” Then I realized we used up the last of his dry food last night and I did need to go to the store and buy some more. While I was paying, it occurred to me that maybe he knew we needed dry food? Then when I got home, he ran over to it. Now it could have been a lot of things, of course, and I’ll never know. But the way he was behaving was just sort of uncanny and to tell you the truth, I’m not so sure he didn’t know exactly what he was doing.

Furthermore, he has started knowing when to trade his bully sticks for a small treat. When he gets down to a little less than two inches, he will stop chewing on them. Then today, he went over to the kitchen area and was asking for something. I finally got it, he wanted to trade for the remaining bully stick. When I went to the kitchen and said, “Are you ready to trade?”, he ran back to lay by his bully stick on the couch and looked at me expectantly. He traded happily.

He’s actually done this a few times now, but I didn’t totally realize he was trying to communicate with me until tonight. I’m amazed, and it’s a bit humbling to realize how smart he is. I’m a little afraid knowing that he’s probably even smarter than I realize and trying to communicate with me often but I just don’t understand.

There is still debate about whether dogs think or have emotions. At this point I can say with almost certainty that Kody thinks and has emotions. I wish I understood them better, but that’s what’s great about observation. Only by observing your dog do you even stand a chance at understanding them. Along with positive training, observation of Kody’s behavior and really trying to pay attention to him is a new passion of mine. He is amazing.

It’s not really a problem, in fact, I wish I could understand what he’s doing better to give him good opportunities to do it at a good time. I’ll just have to keep watching and learning. Actually, it would be really fun to train him to make that sound in response to a command, since it’s so original. But since that’s the first time I’ve heard it, and I have no idea what caused it, that’s probably not going to happen.

Kody is getting really good at the Canine Genius Leo and loves it. I love it too, it’s such a good toy for him because he’s normally such a chewer and this works his other skills. I just sit with him and watch him now because it’s so interesting. He gets his whole dinner out in about 10 minutes.

Yesterday, though, we went to go for a walk and as soon as I opened the door Kody let out the loudest most intense bark I can imagine. It wasn’t a quick bark, it was the howl/scream bark, sort of like “Arrrroooooooo-woof-woof!”, but really loud. When you’re not prepared for this bark it shakes your soul and affects you for at least an hour afterward. Imagine if you were right next to a cute happy baby and then without warning this baby let out the most horrible scream it could and started crying violently. Or like those internet video clips that scare you by being quiet and then having some horrible ghoul scream all of a sudden. It’s very difficult to describe in words, but maybe some of you know what I’m talking about.

I don’t consider this “bad behavior” necessarily, but it’s an unfortunate side effect of Kody. If he gets spooked in just the right way, he’ll do this. It’s usually some way that I could never ever predict. I think it was a strong scent he smelled because there was nothing to see and after that he was intensely smelling everything he could outside. I image some wild animal must have passed by or something.

Also, the Canine Genius is really working out. Kody eats his whole dinner from it now and has a great time. He’s really learning how to get the food out. I still sit with him just in case things get a little slow for him. It’s also just plain fun to watch. Then when he’s done I wash it and put it away for the next day. I’ve also noted that the size of the food is a big variable with this toy. If you can’t get the food in by just dropping it into the top, it’s not going to come out either. Our food seems to be the perfect size, but if you get one, just be aware of that. I also put in a little bit of Natural Balance Roll-a-Round I’ve broken up into small bits to make sure it stays interesting.

I can’t help but feel a little embarrassed to tell this story. Like many other people, I cook for my dog. Just the morning meal, but I still do it. I’ll admit, I definitely have the crazy gene that all of us who cook for our dogs have. Yes, I’m concerned about additives and hormones, especially for a small dog. And we’ve had stomach issues in the past I’m not eager to repeat, so I guess this might help. But honestly, I don’t think my cooking is significantly better than the high quality dog food Kody eats, but he loves it so much I just can’t stop.

Kody gets hamburger and rice and my goal is always to make it easier. I have thought about making a big batch of hamburger and rice and freezing portions of it, but the truth is thawing a big chunk of hamburger and rice is actually more difficult than doing this, if you do it right.

The trick is to make rice cubes and beef cubes. I buy organic ground beef for Kody at Costco. It’s too expensive for me to eat, but with the little that Kody eats it’s not that bad. Yes, my dog eats better ground beef than I do. It comes in one pound bricks that are easy to cut into 16 one ounce pieces. I place these on a pan on wax or parchment paper, freeze them, then put them in Ziploc bags and I’m set for 48 days of cooking. (The beef comes in a three pound package.)

For the rice, I use the rice cooker (easy), and make cubes out if it and freeze them too. You can use ice cube trays or basically the same process we used for the beef. I try to make the rice cubes about the same physical size as the beef cubes. This is for a 14 pound dachshund who gets some dry food in the evening also. It might be a good idea to just use these amounts and make up for the differences in dogs with the dry food.

Then every day, I grab the pan throw in a rice cube, a beef cube, four tablespoons of water and cooking on one notch below medium heat for 4 minutes. Then flip the beef cube and continue to cook for another four minutes. Then crush up the beef and rice and mix together, put in dog dish, and cool in the freezer for another four minutes.

Describing it takes more work than doing it. It’s basically pan, rice, beef, water, heat. Set timer. Flip. Set timer. Mix. Dish. Freezer. Set timer. Wash pan. Give food to dog.

Most of that time I’m actually at the computer working. This blog post was started during today’s cooking. Or sometimes I’ll prepare my own lunch at the same time.

I was talking with my sister about her son Sean who has a new dog. It sounds like he’s being a very good dog parent and using positive training and really working hard. The other night his dog was over at a house with two other dogs. These two other dogs started barking and his dog was just calm and quiet. Well, one of the other people there went over to his dog, grabbed it by the collar, and moved it away. Sean was very angry, and rightfully so. He doesn’t drag his dog around by the collar.

The other people were making fun of him for not allowing his dog to eat leftover human food (like off dinner plates), which they allowed their dogs to do. I guess they pressed on and even said when he had kids they were going to give them lots of candy. Who knows if they really would, but he was obviously disturbed by the lack of respect these comments indicated.

Then he did what you have to do when you’re responsible. He didn’t argue, he just told them he was going to run his dog home before they continued with the rest of their plans. Good for him!

I’m at the end of my rope. This causes me so much worry and I don’t think I can take it anymore. I’m so mad, and there’s nobody to blame, so I end up being mad at god or the universe or whatever. I’m exhausted. I just want Kody to be okay. I just want to go back to the time where I wasn’t worried sick all the time.

I put him in the crate so I could take a shower. I gave him half a cookie which he didn’t eat. I decided to make him some breakfast to see how he would react. He didn’t respond until the timer went off, and then he got a little excited. By the time breakfast was ready, he was excited to get it and ate it all.

Then he actually asked to go outside. We went and I could tell he was ready to poop. He did and I was so happy, it meant that there wasn’t something blocking in there, which I still hadn’t fully been able to rule out. It looked somewhat difficult for him, though. The doctor gave me an antacid to give him and those are known for causing constipation.

We went on a long walk after that, on his request. When we got back, he scooped up the cookie he didn’t eat and chomped it down. I’m just glad that he seems to be feeling better.

Kody is doing so well during our readjustment time without treats. If he barks at something we just turn around and then walk back and then he seems either not interested or very interesting in the thing he barked at. I don’t know what he was thinking before, but maybe that points to something different about dachshunds. Maybe they are just programmed to bark like that, which would make sense. But they’re not necessarily scared or aggressive they’re just doing what they think is right. If you can figure out a way to communicate gently that you’d like something else, they’re more than happy to oblige.

All I can say is, if you have a dachshund and there are issues you’re not sure about, find a really good positive reinforcement trainer. If you live in Seattle I would recommend mine. If not maybe she can recommend someone for you in your area. It’s just a shame to go through life not giving your dog the chance to be the best dog he or she can be.

Life with Kody is so much better. Walks are fun, and I get to walk at a comfortable speed for me, I get to talk to people, and I get to look around. I like the walks as much as Kody does now.