Cynologist
Cynology: Puppies Dogs
In addition to avoiding training procedures that are needlessly aversive, cynopraxic trainers avoid procedures that intrude excessively upon a dog's freedom incentive (see Hydran-Protean Side Effects, the Dead-dog Rule, and the LIMA Principle). Training efforts that inappropriately restrict a dog's ability to initiate goal-directed behavior not only adversely impact the dog's quality-of-life but often do so without contributing any real therapeutic benefit. For example, inappropriate restraint or isolation, pointless deprivation procedures, intrusive rules of interaction, and tedious extinction and training rituals may be of little positive benefit with respect to training goals but impose time-consuming hardships on the owner, impede the bonding processes, and impair the dog's ability to adjust, perhaps making the problem worse. Although highly intrusive procedures do not generate physical pain, they can produce significant emotional pain and distress while augmenting interactive conflict.
Pharmacological Control of Behavior
Mechanical Suppression of Behavior
The restrictive loss of freedom imposed by excessive crate confinement is especially prone to cause harm in cases where the procedure is used in the absence of Read more [...]
In recent years, the introduction of a medical model of dog behavior has led some practitioners to treat adjustment problems as mental disorders having physical causes and often to emphasize the role of disease as the underlying cause of behavior problems. Although the medical model is not entirely without merit, as some valid parallels exist between certain psychiatric disorders and canine behavior disorders and undoubtedly some behavior disturbances are the result of disease, overly speculative assumptions, problematic diagnostic labels, and an excessive reliance on psychotropic drugs based on rationale borrowed from human psychiatry serve only to compound the current puzzlement regarding the etiology and functional significance of canine adjustment problems. In addition to emphasizing disease etiologies and the importance of drugs to treat behavior problems, many practitioners who stress the medical model claim special authority pertaining to matters of diagnosis whereby the "physical" causes of the problem are purportedly identified, usually by means of speculative inferences from emotional and behavioral signs. These putative but unproven physical causes are then targeted with various medications believed to mediate Read more [...]
At every step in a dog's ontogeny, predictive relations are refined and integrated into a base of genetic and experiential prior knowledge. These predictive relations are organized to promote stability through change, referred to as allostasis. Allostatic adjustments enable dogs to anticipate and avoid future risks to stability, thus enhancing adaptive efficiency by responding to predictive signals. The genes that regulate neuronal activity depend heavily on experience for the information needed to maintain the brain's functional stability and capacity for coping proactively with change. The feed-forward unfolding of genetic information via experience-dependent gene activation and suppression is consistent with the notion that regulatory genes are responsive to positive and negative prediction-error signals. Consequently, causing neuronal activity to increase or decrease results in the production of structural proteins and enzymes, and thereby alters the neurophysiology in the process of mediating allostasis. Thus, the process of emergent individuation is seamlessly interwoven into a multitude of neurobiological changes that mediate cognitive, motivational, and behavioral adjustments. During such accommodation and allostatic Read more [...]
Aversive procedures are legitimate and valuable tools for controlling undesirable behavior, but such techniques can be rapidly debauched into a form that substantially complicates matters. Technically, punishment results when established control expectancies are discontinued, for example, when the trainer discontinues an attractive or aversive contingency. Punishment occurs when the dog recognizes that some previously successful action no longer controls the occurrence of some attractive or aversive event. Severe and sustained aversive stimulations in the absence of options to escape (e.g., beating) are of no use in dog training and for whatever reasons such nasty actions are performed they are likely to foster a far worse problem.
Just as chopping off the mythical Hydra's head only caused her to sprout more monstrous and threatening replacements growing out of the severed stump, the use of inappropriate physical punishment, restraint, and manhandling may only serve to stimulate autoprotective behavior and initiate various unanticipated vicious-circle effects. In such cases, the escalation of conflict and aversive arousal evoked by severe physical punishment may cause difficult behaviors to transform into even worse Read more [...]
^ Knowing how much protein, carbohydrates, and fats your dog needs
^ Making sure that your dog is getting the right amount of vitamins and minerals
^ Getting an inside look at how your dog's food is made
^ Checking out organic options
Dogs are carnivores — meat eaters. Their teeth are shaped for biting, tearing, and grinding flesh and bones, and their intestinal tracts are short, with enzymes that are good for digesting proteins (but not very good at breaking down and absorbing plant material). So it only makes sense that your dog's diet should be meat based.
Dogs are also opportunists, which means they'll eat whatever comes their way, including the trash in your kitchen and the grass in your yard. They do gain nutritional benefits from vegetables, fruits, and grains, but they need meat in their diets as their main source of nutrition.
This post covers the eight building blocks of nutrition. All these building blocks are required in a well-balanced diet, regardless of the dog. But the amounts of these nutritional elements that each dog needs depends on that dog's unique situation — puppies and adults need different amounts, as do spayed and pregnant females, and active and inactive dogs.
Proteins
A brief history Read more [...]
Proteins are the most critical component of food for your canine carnivore. They are also the most abundant component of your dog's body. Your dog needs proteins to produce hair, nails, tendons, cartilage, and all the connective tissues that support the rest of the tissues and organs in her body. Adequate protein is important for your dog's growth and proper development, her muscle development and strength, a functioning immune system, the production of functioning hormones, the proper volume of blood, injury repair and prevention, and much, much more.
Your dog's body can also use proteins to produce energy, if necessary. Fats and carbohydrates are much more readily available sources of energy, but dogs can break down proteins and convert them to energy when necessary, such as when food supply is low.
Proteins are made up of amino acids linked in a chain. When your dog eats protein, enzymes that the pancreas secretes into the intestines break them down into shorter chains of amino acids called polypeptides, which are small enough for the intestines to absorb. A dog's body makes 20 different amino acids — some are essential amino acids and others are nonessential amino acids. As the name implies, your dog requires Read more [...]
Before the late 19th century, there was no such thing as prepared dog food. Lucky dogs owned by the well-to-do ate the leftovers from their owners' dinners, and street dogs aplenty canvassed the alleys, scrounging in the trash. In the 1870s, a time when transportation literally used horse power, a European entrepreneur devised a unique way to solve the problem of what to do with the carcasses of the many horses that died every day in the cities: He decided to package and sell the horse meat as dog food. The idea caught on, particularly among the wealthy, who appreciated the convenience of having a ready-made food for their dogs.
The first commercial dog foods in North America were made by Ralston-Purina in 1926. The foods were tested on dogs that the company kept in large kennels on the property near St. Louis, Missouri. Ralston-Purina dog food was given the ultimate test when it was fed to the sled dogs on Admiral Byrd's expedition to Antarctica in 1933. Although this was a punishing test for a dog food, it also was an early precursor to the celebrity endorsements that are a major part of the advertising budgets for many large companies today.
In the decade after World War II, the idea of prepared dog food really Read more [...]
Fats are the major source of energy for dogs. Dogs who live outdoors in the cold need more fat to supply them with the energy to keep warm. And police dogs and working dogs need enough fat so they don't have to get their energy from carbohydrate or protein supplies.
But fats do more than provide your dog with energy. They also help keep skin and foot pads supple and coats healthy. Supplying an allergic dog with the proper amount and type of fats can make a huge difference in how much she scratches. Fats also carry fat-soluble vitamins into the body from the intestines. These vitamins are essential for health, and the only way your dog can absorb them is if she eats enough fat to carry them into her body. Plus, just as with our own food, fat makes a dog's food tastier, which can be important in helping dogs who are ill to eat enough.
Fatty acids are the major component of fat. Dogs really need only omega-6 fatty acid (linoleic acid), because they can't make it on their own. Linoleic acid keeps your dog's skin supple and pliable, and her pads and nose leather flexible. Dogs lacking linoleic acid have scruffy, dry coats and dry, cracked pads. Luckily, dogs don't need a lot of linoleic acid. Good sources are beef, pork, Read more [...]
Dogs require 14 different vitamins. With only a few exceptions, dogs don't make the vitamins themselves, which means they must get these vitamins in their food. Vitamins participate in numerous chemical reactions that help to release the needed nutrients from food and help the dog's body put those nutrients to use. Vitamins can be either water soluble or fat soluble.
Water-soluble Vitamins
Water-soluble vitamins have to be supplied on a daily basis, because they are continually broken down and excreted. They include the following:
• Thiamin (vitamin B1): Promotes a good appetite and normal growth. Required for energy production.
• Riboflavin (vitamin B2): Promotes growth.
• Pyridoxine (vitamin B6): Aids in the metabolism of proteins and the formation of red blood cells.
• Pantothenic acid: Required for energy and for protein metabolism.
• Niacin: Exists in many enzymes that process carbohydrates, proteins, and fats.
• Vitamin B12: Necessary for DNA synthesis and intestinal function.
• Folic acid: Works together with vitamin B12 and in many of the body's chemical reactions.
• Biotin: Acts as a component of several important enzyme systems.
• Choline: Required for proper transmission of nerve Read more [...]
Minerals are present in small amounts in the tissues of all living things. Teeth, bones, muscles, and nerves have especially high mineral content. Although the AAFCO provides guidelines for the minimum amounts of minerals necessary for canine growth and development, each dog's mineral requirements depend on the current nutritional state. For example, if a dog is iron deficient, he will need and absorb more iron from the intestinal tract. Working dogs and ill or stressed dogs may also have higher requirements.
Minerals can be divided into two groups: major minerals and trace minerals. The major minerals are required in gram amounts each day, whereas the trace minerals are required in milligram or microgram amounts per day. Of the trace minerals, several are known to be required for canine health, and the roles of others are less understood.
Your dog's body needs to maintain a delicate balance between the various major and trace minerals. For several trace minerals, the line between the required amount and toxic levels is a thin one. So supplementing an already balanced dog food with minerals can create more problems than it solves.
Table Sources of Minerals lists the different minerals your dog needs and which foods Read more [...]