Dental care month

 February is pet dental care month, and as I'm not really have the knowledge of cats and other animals, I need to talk about dogs!

80% of all dogs over 3 years have dental problems, that is a lot, I don't exactly know how many dogs are wandering the globe, but in 2020 there where 1,5 milion dogs  in the Netherlands, and approximality 75 milion in the USA, so we talk loads of dental issues.  

Dental care is very important, altough sometimes not that much fun. And to be honoust, years ago I would just leave the teeth to their own, and yes the dogs did have smelly breath. Brushing teeth, it just was not what I did. And I do think it is still what loads of people don't do.

But why is it important. Think about it, in the middle-ages people would die at a very young age, and why? because of teeth problems. And it does make a lot of sense, if you don't take care of your teeth and gums, tartar will build up. Tartar did never kill anyone, however the gums would become inflamated, the gums will pull back, and then bacteria's and other interesting stuff can make their way to the bloodstream.

Then things get pretty nasty. Those bacteria's that go in the bloodstream have this very nice idea of making inflammations on the heart valve. A healthy body is capable to fight the inflammation, but there will always be a supersmall scar tissue, scar tissue always shrinks a bit so a minor defect on the heart valve is a fact.

Ofcourse when that happens a few times, your dog has a heart disease, and that is not what we all want for our furkids. 
These inflammations also have a tendency to go to kidneys. The kidney story is even more terrible and I want to spare you that one. (When my teacher told me the kidney story, I got nauseous)  

So what we can do. Well brushing, it is the best way. I talked with my vet about this, because I really disliked it, it gets better now, as it will become a habit.
But before that became a habit I made huge mistakes.  

The last few years the Himalayan yak bones where getting very popular for cleaning dog teeth. It is some kind of a very very extreme hard cheese, made from yak milk. Dogs love it, really all my dogs where crazy about those. And 1 of my dogs had the cleanest teeth, I was really exited. This was the magic, and it saved me brushing.

Well it turned out pretty bad, because a few of my dogs are really enthousiastic gnawers. And one day after chewing on a yak bone for 15 minutes one of the girls had a molar, loose in het jawbone.
I was devestated as she already had a molar that looked not so great ( I promise that will be another post) so now she had her P1 (the teethcode) and it was loose, and within a week it was out.

As you can imagine I never wanted to give bones anymore, so I needed to look for different options. So brushing it is. 

Current toothpastes 

The dogs have to get used to handling their mouth, I'm very fortunate that because I do conformation, I start checking teeth at a very early age. And the AFP toothpaste has the taste of peanut butter, and vanilla. That is a big plus, I have not ever met a dog that did not like the flavour of peanut butter.

AFP Tootpaste met Vanilla Ginger Flavor

AFP Sparkle Finger tandenborstel, 6 stuks

Orozym Toothpaste Gel

I do think the Orozym is the better one, as it has active enzymes, but I like to treat my doggies with the tasty toothpastes.

Dental care is something I'm very keen on now, so I will try and make more posts about this subject. As it is a subject that is sometimes neglected and so super important. 

And on the picture you see my girl Leia, who was supposed to posing with the toothbrush, she had other ideas with it.

Stress, buckets and calmness, Inspire calm and have great life.

We all know stress is not ok for our health, and this is obviously also true for our dog's. There are many things we can do do to reduce stress in dogs, we only sometimes are not aware of it.

Inspiring calmess into our dog's daily live is a huge benefit in longevity and reducing stress.

If we had a bad day, it is often advised to go out and breath in some fresh air, however often walks can be huge bucket fillers for our dog's. 

There is a car, a bike, a squirrel, screaming kids, you name it. All those little things pay in their bucket. And when that bucket overflows, wow, barking, lunging, screaming dog, not funny.

I've had this with multiple dog's in the past, and sure enough nowadays, I do have occasionaly those situations happening. Life happens, you cannot really control what is going out in the world or in your enviroment. Only a few years ago I really did not know what to do, I had no clue and it was hugely annoying, and I read all the books of so called experts and we came to this amazing conclusion, I needed to exercise my dog more!! 

Was I wrong, the only thing what we did was filling her bucket more and more, never gave it the change to empty. And she was getting strong, because we trained her on the treadmill, she really got great endurance condition, not to mention her amazingly strong muscles.

Well the muscles where not that bad, altough her behaviour was not really to be exitited about. But when you do think the current tv dog trainers are what you must do and follow, you really think you do the right job.

I never tought that calmness was a thing to consider, actually, I did not even like the idea of owning a calm dog, because I really tought that is would matter in the conformation ring. Sure enough I wished she would not bark, pull, lunge and snap at dogwalks, but calmess was nothing to consider.

Eventually we put her on pills and she was ok, ok, but not great. 

Sometimes I feel bad about what I now know, and what I didn't know back then. However nothing can be changed and I did try to do all things to make her life a nice one, I do think we did we had a great relation, the pills did work and she was enjoying her trainingsessions with me. 

I also knew I didn't want to use the not so happy methods again, and I started training in a games based training. I learned about every dog having a bucket, that fills up with everything that happens on a daily basis, and that it sometimes isn't so bad to skip a walk. It can be even better to skip a walk and have a positive quality walk instead of just making those km's, and get it over with.

I learned that the dog laying on a bed and chewing a kong or licking a mat is de-stressing and calming. And because of that, easier to train. So I incorporated snuffle mats, calm k9 mats, kongs, just chilling on the bed in my training. And I found a beautifull supplement called  A-ok9 calm  

It contains ingrediënts that support gut and brain health. (you probably all know dog's that are having very loose stools because of stress) It contains L-Thrypthophan, and that gives a boost to the Happy chemical in the brain called Serotonine.

Because of that they are more confident and happy in life, buckets don't fill so quick and they are generaly calmer on the walks, and calmer in the house.

And what I really liked, it can be put over food, and be put in a kong or on a lickmat, so you can inpire calmness double time.

So if we had a stressfull walk, I now just skip a walk, exercise them at home, by playing some fitness games and lett them have a pasive calming activity like a slowfeeder bowl or a lickmat.

Lickmats are also to be found on the website of A-ok9 aswell as many other great products.

Emmy is having calm now, and she will walk on a loose lead, can go for oflead walks, is not spooked anymore by everything. And is also more focused and easy to train. 

Emmy, happy and healty