Most Popular Q&As

Just a quick question... please give me examples of what you add to the Honest Kitchen. I have 5 GSD's; am feeding Back To Basics to which I add some chicken at the evening meal, but am thinking of switching. Four of my dogs are adults & I have a puppy coming this month. Thanks. Sincerely, Elayne

Greetings, I wrote to you a few days ago and I wanted to first say thanks for the quick reply. I have another question in regards to feeding a raw diet; I have been doing lots of research and discussing the information with my husband. He hates the idea of feeding the dog a raw diet, I have brought the subject up from the point of view as how the dog would eat that way if in the wild, be he keeps telling me that she is a dog and just feed her dry dog food. I also spoke with my vet ...

I have 6 shepherds and live in the country. I have an outside allergy/food allergy question for you and am looking for some advice. 3 of my 6 dogs chew on their feet. I did blood testing for food and environmental testing on one of them twice to see if I could get any information to pinpoint the cause. The results were different for both tests, which leads me to believe its less than accurate (first test showed her positive for duck, second test showed negative). What is your belief on t...

Cindy, love the pics of Rush! I'm not sure who else to ask about this but in various places on your website you + Ed talk about teeth wearing down from bitework and the textures of various toys/ bite sleeves. We have a 2.5 year malinois who does agility. He always has something in his mouth and tugs like a maniac. Anyway, we stupidly let him have tennis balls, which he chomped on and carried around night and day and by age 2 we realized he had obvious wear to his teeth. Consulted ...

Ed, I just wanted to run something by you and see if you have any ideas about what may be going on with our male GSD, Samson, who will be 2yrs old in April. The other day he was walked as usual in the morning w/ our female ? walked fine, and then later in the morning we noticed him limping. He also seemed to be very lethargic, wouldn?t eat much, and was taken to the vet. The vet took some blood and later a urine sample and everything seemed ok. She said he had a slight fever and...

I'm writing on behalf of one of my Shetland Sheepdog puppies - well, now he's almost a year old - whom I co-own but who lives with his primary owners in another state. This puppy has a chewing/eating problem that I am very concerned about. He chews on everything and anything, to the point that he has landed in the emergency room twice. The family has tried keeping him somewhat confined (x-pen) when they can't directly supervise him; they have muzzled him when out of doors but he has liter...

I had to take my Service dog to the vet the other day and was told that he has an enlarged prostate. I know this not unusual for a GSD his age, however it is to the point where it causes some problem with him when he moves his bowels. One of the first and common treatments my vet recommends is neutering the dog. I was just curious what your experience has been to how this effects their working drive. He is a very high drive dog and my concern is simply I would like to know what kind of ef...

Cindy, I read your article about raw diets on the Leerburg site. I am very interested to know if any of the GSDs at the Leerburg Kennels have been diagnosed with Perianal Fistulae (a non-healing abscess adjacent to the anus). And if so where any changes to the normal diet made because of this condition? This condition is very common with GSDs I am told. My Irish Setter [7.5 yr.] has been treated for the condition for over two years with little result. Because some research i...

I had a few questions about e-collar training. Do you think it is a good idea to use an e-collar to house train a dog? Would you simply correct the dog with the collar when they are actually in the act of using the house to potty with a stern NO! command and then place them outside in the area they need to go potty (then reward when they do go in the right place)? I am figuring that this would teach the dog, if you go potty in the house, you will get a shock.

Ed My dog is doing well with the introduction of (drugs pseudo). He knows the scent and what to do but his scratching could be more intense. Is this because he is just starting training? It seems like he will scratch then he stops and waits for me to open the box, knowing he is getting his reward. How can I get him to scratch better?

I work on a k-9 team with the department of corrections and have a question you might can help me with. My partner has a female Mal that will not release her reward when she finds narcotics. He has tried several different things to her pain is not an factor. Any suggestions? Thanks, Matt

Hello- I have a five year old Dalmatian very alpha male who has bitten people, including my kids in circumstances when he is frightened or is "guarding" me. He is not a bad dog or a mean dog. He may not even realize that it is my son when he bites. It seems to be an automatic response. For example, he was lying in a curled up position, next to my chair, the wall and the desk, no room to move, and asleep. My son came up to him and reached down to get his collar to take him upstairs....

Dear Sir, Last year we had to put our beloved German Shepherd female down. She was 11 and had cancer. I bought her when she was a 9 week old puppy and trained her myself. She always came when I called and the only 2 problems I was never able to correct, due to lack of knowledge on my part and her personality, were to "go" where I wanted her to go and separation anxiety. Right after we put her to sleep, I bought another female German Shepherd. My first was American this one w...

I had a question about remote collar training. I have already conditioned my 7 month old female pitbull for the collar. My biggest question is, what should I do if my dog does not really respond to a nick at a certain level but will respond to continuous on that same level. Does this mean that my level is too low? Also when you use your dogtra 1900ncp, generally for a 7 month old dog what level do you use. I know that stem level does not have correlation with age, but I was just wondering...

Hi, My puppy dog is a miniature American Eskimo now 12 lbs (will weigh the most 18-22 lbs). Which e-collar is best? What is the difference working with an e-collar instead of a dominance collar? Thanks, LuAnn

Dear Ed, I cannot thank you enough for all your advise on how to train and establish a relationship with our puppy. Your DVDs were extremely useful and fully implemented, Merlin is a happy 8 month old GSD puppy with a cheerful disposition, never ending exuberance and love towards my 8 year old daughter. Thanks to your extremely useful website tips, he does not nip at her and from very early age, even though he did mouth us sometimes, never our little girl. Couldn't have done it wit...

Dear Ed, I don't know what to do. I have a male Cavalier King Charles spaniel who is 3 years old and neutered. He is the friendliest, most unaggressive dog one could ever meet and he has never had a problem with another dog until now. We have made friends with another couple who have a 3 year old female cocker spaniel who is also neutered. Whether we go round to their house or if they come to ours, the cocker attacks our dog out of the blue. It gets very nasty and clumps of ...

Hello We have a problem between our 11 yr old chow and our 3 yr old pit-bull, both female, and the pit-bull just had pups 8-9 weeks ago. The puppies are completely separated from the chow. The two adult dogs will stare each other down especially in the house. They have had a few fights before the puppies and after. During their fights the chow usually submits making your technique for breaking the dogs up easier, and is very effective. After a day of separation when reintroduced wi...

Ed How are things in Menomonie? I've got some dog issue questions I need to run by you. First off, yeah, I'm a dumbass, I should not have 4 dogs together, 2 beagles, lab and a gsd. But, the damage is done, and I need to figure out how to fix it. We've had the gsd for probably 4 yrs, she came from a humane society in Redwing, nice looking dog, healthy, good temperament, never been aggressive except towards cats and a skunk that got in the Kennel (really dumb for the skunk, huge mess?)...

Hi, I hope you can help me. We have (2) one and a half year old Bloodhound brothers that we are training for search and rescue. The problem that we are having is they are now at the age where they want to kill each other. They got along wonderfully as pups (inseparable) but now all hell has broken loose. No, they are not neutered. Yes, they have been crate trained but at over 120 pounds each, they have outgrown their crates. We cannot afford at this time to purchase new crates. We ...