baths, bears, and biscuits

Poor Ellie had to get a bath for her itchy skin. I helped a little at first but she's still pretty itchy and not signing up for another bath anytime soon.

On a plus side, her post-bathed body looks more bear-cub like.

Ellie

real bar cub

 Typically she has more Van Buren type mutton chops on her cheeks that I think are cute.

martin van buren

You can sort of see the chops in this picture.

In other news we've been making homemade food for her. Which we used to do back before I was in graduate school. Ellie is on a restricted diet to see if it helps her skin. I haven't seen any grand results but she did cheat with Sienna's food once (we were using up the kibble with Sienna).

I also wanted to make some treats that were OK for her new diet. Basically they had to only have quinoa, lentils, squash, liquid smoke, and salt. We also used Vegedog vitamin powder.

 

The first attempt I used equal parts squash and quinoa flour. Too soft. 

 

 Then I reduce to only 1/4 squash to 1 part quinoa flour, and the vitamin powder and liquid smoke (to make it taste/smell meaty). Still too soft. I wanted crunch ones.

 

  I finally read over the instructions for kibble in Vegedog and talked to Molly from Vegan Dog's Life (who has tons of awesome recipes for dogs on her site and a cookbook too!)  I decided to eliminate the squash and bake longer. These biscuits went quickly! They were very hard and crunchy.

 

So I repeated the recipe and doubled it this time.

Quinoa Dog Biscuits
2 cups quinoa flour (easily made by grinding quinoa in a grinder or high speed blender)
1 cup water
1/2 teaspoon liquid smoke
1/4 teaspoon salt
optional: a few teaspoons vegedog*
parchment paper

Preheat oven to 350. Mix quinoa flour and salt and optional vegedog. Mix water and liquid smoke. Add water to dry ingredients slowly until all flour is wet but not too sticky. Roll out between two pieces of parchment paper. Then bake on parchment paper for 15 minutes at 350. Flip over and bake another 5 minutes. Then cut into small pieces with a pizza cutter. To get biscuits really hard, lower oven to the lowest setting (mine is 170) and bake for about an hour or until firm to touch and does not yield when pressed. Once mine weren't ready and I just turned off the oven and left them in overnight. They were firm in the morning

Let biscuits cool completely before feeding to dog. If your dog is really hungry, put a few in the freezer for about 10 minutes to flash cool them.

*Since I wasn't using this as the main food source, i didn't worry about adding vegedog each time. They get that on their food.

 Sienna and Ellie both love homemade biscuits! The only downside is they think everything coming out of the oven is for them now.

Ellie gets trained

We signed Ellie up for a workshop on leash walking. We opted not to sign her up for a whole 6-session class because she has already learned a lot of what Sienna learned in Basic Manners class, like sit, down, and some other tricks. Her main issues are with walking.

Inside, Ellie is a calm and quiet dog. She doesn't chew anything or make much noise. She sometimes hides under the bed just for quiet or when she's hiding from the comb or toothbrush. But when she goes out, she's a wild dog. She loves to track and chase squirrels and the neighborhood cats.

 

At the workshop, Ellie was a model student. She followed the cue and even got used to the clicker (she has previously been fearful). But when we tried to take the techiniques home, she didn't show any interest in the treats outside. She heard the clicker, as we clicked when she did something we wanted her to do, to "shape" her behavior, but didn't care for the treat.

Now we know we may have to find a more desirable treat, but she's never shown much interest in treats. It just isn't her thing. She gets used to them and will eat them inside but much prefers chasing squirrels.

 

At least we are armed with a few ideas now and know that she doesn't hate the clicker. She's responded well to training indoors, so we'll keep up with that and hope something transfers. We also struggle with whether to avoid walking her to the places where there are squirrels, or to just walk her where we know there is grassy area at the nearby park. It's a tough call.

Advice welcome!