Hi Dog Lovin' Peeps, 

Hope you are enjoying the great weather.. it took a long time to get here, but was worth the wait! Now that the temperatures are rising, I wanted to talk about a cool summer treat for fido - PUPSICLES! For those of you who can't deduce what those are, its pup + popsicle, so popsicles for dogs! We could share our human popsicles with dogs, but we would have to worry about the amount of sugar - and also that they didn't include any toxic ingredients (like xylitol, an artificial sweetener). 

I actually try to make these year round because of the amazing health benefits - but come summer time, they have an added benefit: cooling your pooch down. I thought I would show you my most recent batch, and also give some tips and recipes to make your own. 

Pictured above are 2 amazing base ingredients: bone broth & raw fermented goat milk. You can actually just pour these into ice cube trays and you have INCREDIBLE pupsicles already. You don't need to get overly fancy, by simply adding bone broth or goat milk to your dog's meals or feeding as a snack - you are giving them something delicious with incredible health benefits. The benefits include:

• Bone broth contains tons of glucosamine and chondroitin, which are incredible for their bones and joints
• Bone broth helps keep the gut healthy, and has been thought to help reduce allergies from developing 
• When a dog is sick and risking dehydration, bone broth can help get them to drink (because it is so yummy) and it is packed full of nutrients 
• Goat milk helps the gut too! This time it is done by removing bad bacteria and replacing it with good ones. 
• Chock full of vitamins! So good for helping our pup's immune system. 
• Dogs love dairy/creamy foods, but cow's milk isn't very easy to digest. Lucky for us, not only is goat milk easy to digest - but is also delicious!

One of the cons of buying bone broth & goat milk without making them into pupsicles is that they often expire before we use them up. By turning them into a frozen treat for our dog, they have a much longer shelf life. Both of these items can be found at the Global Pet Foods in Liberty Village FYI. 

Mmm, coconut oil. I like to melt some coconut oil & line the ice cube trays with them. Such an easy way to add coconut oil to our dog's diet. We all know about the hype coconut oil has when it comes to our human health - but it is also great for our dogs! Here are some of the top benefits:

• Antibacterial properties - this is great for helping keep a clean mouth! See u l8r, bad breath! 
• Helps keep skin moist, and their coat healthy and shiny
• Freezes well!

Like I mentioned, you can make pupsicles from goat milk/bone broth & a little bit of coconut oil and call it a day! However, you can also play with your ingredients & sneak in even more healthy supplements for our dogs.

For my latest batch I did several plain goat milk & bone broth (combined), and I did a few with berries & a greens (kelp, spirulina, and alfalfa) supplement from Big Country Raw (not sponsored but it is an incredible supplement with a very low cost). 

I measured out enough of the supplement that would be 1 serving size per ice cube approx (omg maths), then added bone broth & the berries. And then I blended that shiz together! Done! It is so easy. 

A few tips for making the transfer from blender to tray as clean as possible 

• Put the ice cube trays onto a baking sheet. This helps put them into the freezer without a giant mess - but also will catch any splash that we may have pouring them into the trays
• Move the dog smoothie into a measuring cup or something with a spout. Makes your life much easier I promise 
• Find room in your freezer BEFORE trying to transfer the trays or the baking sheet into it. I learned the hard way. 

Once frozen they are good to go! I like to move mine from the ice cube trays into a Tupperware container just to save space and prevent freezer burn. I tend to give a plain pupsicle for my dog's breakfast (pictured above is plain goat milk) because they get glucosamine in the morning & then I either give a berry boosted cube for dinner or as a post walk snack. They love them, and I love knowing my dogs are getting optimal nuritrion. 

As I am sure you could tell, I kind of just wing it when making these. But - here are some fun ingredients and recipes you can play with!

Orange is the new black:
Pureed pumpkin (NOT pumpkin pie filling)
Carrots (steam before blending)
Bone Broth 

Berry Delicious:
Strawberries
Blueberries
Bone Broth

Turmeric? I barely know her!
Turmeric (ideally as Golden Paste - see recipe here)
Goats milk 

Other fun ingredients to explore:

• Greek yogurt (unsweetened)
• Peanut Barker, or a natural peanut butter (ooo, strawberry, bone broth, and peanut butter = PEANUT BUTTER JELLY TIME pupsicles)
• Watermelon or cantaloupe 
• Pineapple
• Bananas
• Apples
• Cucumbers
• Adding a treat in the middle (like a sardine) as a fun surprise

Tips:

• The reason I use the blender when I am adding additional ingredients is because it makes them much more nutritious for our dogs by breaking down some of the enzymes. Dogs 1) don't chew a lot and 2) don't have amylase like we do in our mouths, so they don't break down some of the enzymes needed for proper nutrient absorption. Because of this, often dogs will eat the healthy foods - but they pass right on through and you don't get the awesome benefits. By blending these items, we help with that first step of digesting & help them absorb those great nutrients. For veggies I like to steam them as well to make for easy blending (veggies have less water than most fruits). 
• You can make these without bone broth or goat milk, these are delicious and nutritious... but not mandatory. Blend with water or un-sweetened greek yogurt instead! 
• Be sure to make sure the ingredients you use are dog safe. If you aren't sure, double or triple check before giving it to them 
• Have fun and get creative! And please share any recipes you create

How is that for a blog title? Wild eh? Imagine how I feel! This has been a wild week, and I have doggy first aid preparedness to thank for keeping me safe. I wanted to share because it showed me the importance of being prepared for emergencies - not just with our dogs, but with ourselves as well. 

A few weeks ago, I had the team over to teach pet first aid basics. I also updated & upgraded our first aid packs - which meant I had all the supplies on hand. 

The first aid kit contains mostly stuff for cleaning and wrapping wounds, but also peroxide to induce vomiting and Benadryl in case of an emergency allergic reaction. Before I upgraded these packs, my house was without Benadryl. This gives me anxiety, because if what happened last Wednesday happened a few weeks earlier - there's a chance I wouldn't even be here to write this blog. 

So, a week and a half ago I was eating chips on a Friday night (nothing new here). I was eating my favourite flavour of non-dortios chips, sea salt and malt vinegar. They were SOOOOO sour, and made my mouth burn and my tongue feel raw but I live for this. Even typing this my mouth is drooling because I love those sour and salty chips so much. As I was eating, I noticed my lips tingling. I looked and they were for sure swollen. But I just assumed it was because I was eating my mouth raw and swollen lips didn't seem so crazy to me. So I finished the bag (as I do), and went to bed. Whatever.

A few days later on Wednesday, same thing. Different brand, but same flavour. I was laying in the dark watching RuPaul and eating the chips. I do this disgusting thing that I can get away with because I am single, where I lick each chip to maximize the flavour before eating the chip. Lmao so gross. Anyway my tongue was so sore, but I was loving the chip eating so I actually was like using the side of my tongue that didn't hurt to lick the chips. I just kept eating through the pain. But then it was really really sore, so I was like "you know what would help? Ice cream!" So i went into the kitchen and like, got a bottle of dulce de leche ice cream, put it in a bowl, and microwaved it... and got the ice cream tub and a spoon and went to the couch. I took a bite and it honestly hurt so bad. I tried again, but it still hurt so much and I couldn't even really get the spoon in my mouth. Then I thought about it, and my lips were really tingly. So I got my camera and opened snapchat and took a video of my face. My lips were VERY swollen. 

OK. Kind of scary. So I go to the bathroom and before my eyes I see my tongue swelling. So I do what any reasonable person would, and I take snapchats and send it to my best friends like "lol wtf?". However, a very reasonable voice in my head told me to take Benadryl - which literally 1.5 weeks ago I would not have had in my house. So I took a huge dose (75 mg) and I called David, he told me he was on his way. Then I called my mom. As I was talking to her my tongue swelled so bad that I couldn't talk. Fuck. What the actual fuck. Now I was scared. She told me to go to the ER - so I did what any reasonable person who is about to die would, I call an uber :) 

Uber gets here, we are on our merry way - and we get stopped in traffic. The TFC game just got out. This is when I panic. I realize that I could die here in this uber, and that I should have called 911. But that because we are gridlocked, even 911 couldn't get to me. My sister had tuned in at this time and she was very mad I didn't call 911 but I confirmed to her I could still breathe and she kept me calm. As I was sitting there in traffic, I could feel half of my tongue stop swelling and I realized the benadryl was kicking in. Thank god. It was the longest 15 minutes of my life, but I got to the hospital. 

How it works is that you get triaged by a nurse, and then called back based on the urgency. However, to get triaged - you have to take a number and wait til your number is called. Me, being the reasonable person I am, took a number and sat and waited. With my swollen tongue. My number was called quickly and the nurse was like ~WTF WHY DIDN'T YOU SAY SOMETHING~ and I get surrounded by help as I register and am taken back immediately. I get hit with extreme nausea and guess what! Turns out I am having an anaphylactic reaction :') The nurse told me it was really good I took the benadryl, but that next time I needed to call 911. They gave me 0.5 of epinephrine and an IV. Blah blah blah, I now carry an EpiPen and as far as I know am allergic to salt and vinegar chips (??).  

I guess allergies can just happen like that. All of a sudden your body sees something that you have had hundreds of times as a threat - and attacks it. And I guess each time you are exposed after that, the reaction gets worse (and in my experience from time 1 to time 2 this is totally true). I lived my whole life not being allergic to anything, I never even considered it to be a threat that I had in my life. If it wasn't for my first aid preparedness for my DOGS I have no idea how that night would have turned out. I say my dogs are my little life savers because they make me so damn happy, but because of them & my need to protect them (and your dogs) my life literally was saved in a tangible/measurable way. 

Morals of the story:
- Be prepared for emergencies for both your dog, and yourself
- Having benadryl can help save your dog if they get stung by a bee or have another emergency reaction, but also can help delay an allergic reaction from becoming anaphylaxis or deadly in time to get you to the ER or to have an ambulance come to you
- The benadryl dose for dogs is about 1 mg/1 pound. The standard pill is 25mg, so a 10 pound dog can have about 1/2. A 25 pound dog can have 1. A 50 pound dog can have 2. But please always consult your vet first if possible.  
- If your tongue and lips swell, call 911. Do not fucking uber. 

Hi guys! Today I want to tackle a really common training myth that I hear from people all the time (including this week) - one of the hardest things for people with reactive dogs to understand. And that is that reactivity is not a behaviour. Why this is something I want to address is because it really affects how we approach reactivity training. 

The biggest issue people have with reactivity training is what to do when the dog goes over threshold, and has a reaction toward the trigger. Most people (even those very familiar with positive reinforcement) see this as undesirable behaviour & therefore they either choose to ignore it, or punish it in hopes that this would cause the behaviour to extinct or decrease. They also believe that if you were to feed the dog in this situation, that this would REINFORCE the behaviour - and therefore cause it to increase in frequency. But that isn't how it works when you are dealing with reactivity - because reactivity comes from emotion, mostly fear. You cannot reinforce or punish fear. In these situations when our dogs go over threshold, training is on a time out. All we can do in these moments is make our dogs feel better - and giving treats is a great way to do that. 

I recorded a YouTube video on this. This is my first training video, so bear with me as it is a little bit rambly.. but the information is there. I go into detail on this topic, and hopefully I can help you have that Aha! moment if you, like I once was, are struggling to grasp this concept. 

I know it is embarrassing, frustrating, stressful, etc, when our dogs go over threshold - but we need to take a step back and remember that this comes from a place of emotion, not behaviour. Our dogs are not thinking logically, and therefore training can't happen. We simply need to make our dogs feel better in this situation, otherwise we run the risk of the fear getting even worse. If we punish our dogs in this situation, we are adding salt to the wound! Making a scary situation even worse. If we ignore the behaviour, we aren't doing anything to help our dog. But if we feed our dogs, give praise, carry them, jog away while singing to them - we are doing our best job to make them feel safer in that moment. To make that fear they feel a little less raw & scary. 

The goal here is to NEVER go over threshold, and to do training at a distance where the dog still has the ability to process things logically. But this is important to know and to understand for those inevitable times where our dogs do over threshold. Be kind. Be patient. Be generous with treats. Your dog needs you to advocate for them. 

Remember, it's a dog's world - we're just living in it!