It’s Jack here!  Mom and dad cleaned up the backyard this long weekend.  They fixed up our potty section, cleaned up the weed dump, and planted some greenery (which we have to stay out of for now).  Then we got to play!  Remember here and here?  Well I still love water!

Did you know that sauerkraut is the best probiotic you and your dog can eat?  Well it is!

For those of you who don’t know what sauerkraut is- sauerkraut is made by combining finely shredded cabbage with salt, packing the ingredients very tightly into a container and allowing it to ferment for a few weeks.  Sauerkraut contains 13 strains of bacteria and about 100 times more probiotic than most supplements.  The best part, we pay $3 for a big jar pre-made or you can make your own for even less!

Some of the benefits of giving your dog sauerkraut as a probiotic are:

• reduction or elimination of some allergic reactions
• increased natural resistance to infectious disease in the gastrointestinal tract
• prevention of dangerous fungal overgrowth
• enhanced resistance against viruses
• optimized digestive processes, allowing maximum nutritional benefit from food
• improved resistance to toxic bowel problems
• resistance to diarrhea
• boosts the immune system
• high in Vitamin A, B, C, and E
• helps alleviate anxiety and depression

We give about 4 tbsp daily and surprisingly, Jack and Dexter eat it up.  They don’t eat it funny or leave it because of the smell.  Even if I just put down sauerkraut they lick it up.  I was very surprise the first few times!

Dont forget to check the label of the sauerkraut you buy.  Don’t buy wine sauerkraut or flavoured sauerkraut!  Get as natural as possible or just make your own which is the best way to get the full benefit and to be sure that all those good bacteria are intact.

What kinds of probiotic do you give your dogs?  Dexter also loves yogurt.

What did I do when mom brought me to our new home?  I reminded her of my puppy sprints and tested out the additional square footage and new running circle!

We moved into our new house April 1st and mom and dad have been busy renovating the inside.  Mom says it’s a dump and I’m not allowed to roll on the carpet in the sunroom (the carpet is being replaced with hardwood this weekend).  At least we have a backyard to run around in even though mom still has to pull up the patio stones and lay grass for us!  Don’t forget everything else on my backyard list mom!

So what have Jack and I been doing?  Rough housing!  It starts off racing around:

Then we do some cheek biting:

Then it gets serious!  I give jack a right hook:

Then I give him a left hook:

But then Jack puts me in a head-lock!

Bugger.  This is what we do while mom and dad work on the inside of our house.  So far we have an almost finished bedroom and bathroom.  Mom’s painting again this weekend and hopefully then we will have an entry and dining room complete too!  Take your time mom, Jack and I are fine out here!

Jack has been on his raw diet for two weeks now.  He has had absolutely no digestive issues with the change and he LOVES his new diet!

Because Jack is having skin issues and we don’t know if his allergies are food related we are doing an elimination diet.  (Some people call it an inclusion diet)  An exclusion diet consists of feeding your dog one protein source and one carbohydrate only for up to 8 weeks.  The protein and carbohydrate are supposed to be something your dog has never eaten before so check your kibble bags and see what’s in there!  The point of an elimination diet is to find out what food your dog is allergic too.  By feeding one protein and one carbohydrate that they have never eaten before you are completely controlling their diet and within just a few days a lot of people see results.  We saw almost immediate results with Dexter but his issues were mostly digestive.  With Jack it may take weeks.  As long as your dog is not getting any worse, you should stick with the diet for up to 8 weeks to see if there is a change or not.

What happens then?  Well if your one protein source is what your dog is actually allergic too and you haven’t seen any improvement then in that case you should start over with one new protein and one new carbohydrate for another 8 weeks.  Most likely if your dogs allergy is food related, then you will have noticed a significant change and you can then add a second protein source for a period of a week or two.  If there are still no signs of allergies, then add another protein.  Move slow and eliminate each new food one by one.  If your dog takes a turn for the worse after say adding chicken to their diet after they were fine on everything else, then you can remove chicken from their diet forever and know that is what caused their allergic reaction.

For Jack’s elimination diet, we chose pork and sweet potato.  The first week we only gave him pork cheeks to get use to eating raw.  He now gets anything pork- pork cheek, pork breast with bone, pork liver, pork heart, pork necks, pork roast, and he even got a midnight boneless pork chop from our leftovers that I forgot to put in the fridge the other night.  Bugger.  He gets some sweet potato as well with his pork.  Make sure that you feed your dog some bone so that his #2 aren’t messy and soft!  Today Jack will get pork cheek and sweet potato in the morning, and a pork neck tonight.  So far so good!

For those people who are not comfortable feeding pork to dogs, we buy our pork frozen and therefore aren’t concerned with any slight possibility of non-frozen pork with Trichinosis.  Also please note that we are feeding our dogs a raw diet.  Under NO circumstances are dogs to eat cooked bones!