Archive for the ‘Dog Breeds’ Category

Panda Dogs?

Posted on: December 1st, 2023 by Asia

“This year, popularity for one unique type of dog is surging in China. The black and white pooches are chubby and exceptionally fluffy. They bear a striking resemblance to pandas.

The panda dog is not an identified, accepted breed, but instead they’re Chows that have undergone cosmetic primping to get them to appear as adorable pandas.

Chinese citizens don’t seem to care how the doggies get their look, because pet shops are having an incredibly hard time keeping up with the demand. One pet store owner in Chengdu city, Hsin Ch’en remarked “Ten years ago the natural instinct of a Chinese person was to eat a dog. Now we are like westerners and want one as a companion. The cute breeds like French bulldogs and Labradors were the favorites, but now it is the panda dog.”

Ch’en isn’t complaining about the trend though, as he’s responsible for creating the makeshift breed.

He claims to have ‘perfected’ the grooming and coloring technique for the panda dogs.

It takes roughly two hours to transform a plain Chow into a panda dog, but after about 6 weeks, the color fades and the pooches need another grooming touchup. What do you think of the panda dogs?” ~ GeoBeat News (I personally believe that this is cruelty to Chows).

P.S. looking for a breed specific book? Go to Must Have Publishing and see if I’ve written a book about your favorite fur friend (400+ books and counting!). New books are regularly added.

Asia Moore ~ Ask a Dog Whisperer
© 2014 – All Rights Reserved
K-9SuperHeroesDogWhispering.com

Asia

Asia Moore has been dog whispering for 40+ years, and along with K-9 Super Heroes Dog Whispering team members Jim and Boris the dog, offers insights about dog behaviour and psychology and their relationships with their humans! Many humans don’t realize that they could have a much happier life with their canine counterparts. You don’t have to live with the embarrassment of behavioral problems because with just a little dog whispering, everyone can live a happy, stress-free life together. ^..^

Are You Making Your Dog Fat?

Posted on: February 26th, 2013 by Asia

Is your dog fat? Unfortunately, many of our beloved pets are, like their human counterparts, unhealthily overweight.

If your dog is fat, chances are that you could lose a few pounds yourself because a fat dog doesn’t just happen from over-feeding – it’s also because of under-exercising.

Are You Making Your Dog Fat?

Chances are that if your dog is overweight, it means that you’re not giving your best friend enough daily exercise.

Have you taken into consideration the real exercise needs of your dog? Is your best friend naturally energetic, are they a working class of dog, or a breed that requires little exercise to stay healthy?

All dogs are amazing athletes who need to move to be healthy. Interestingly enough, we humans also need to move to be healthy which means for all us dog lovers, that we already have everything we need to shed some excess poundage.

Your dog is there, ready and waiting to go walking and help you both accomplish a healthy weight.

How Can You Tell if Fido is Fat?

There’s a simple test you can do to determine whether your dog is overweight and whether he or she needs to shed a few pounds.

All you need to do is feel around their ribs and spine. If you are unable to easily locate both with only a thin layer of fat between the skin and bones, you have an overweight dog.

Fat Like Us Humans

Sadly, our dogs are following in our footsteps as humanity rushes down that unhealthy path of being overweight or obese.

Make sure you know what your dog’s optimal weight will be once he or she reaches maturity, and check their weight regularly, because, for a dog, just 15% above that ideal weight means your dog is not just fat, it’s obese.

Anything up to a 15% increase means your dog is overweight, and sadly, according to a 2011 study, more than half of our best friends (53%) are overweight or obese.

Of course, this is a direct reflection on how little we humans are getting out there to exercise with our dogs because generally speaking, if Fido or Fifi is overweight, so are you.

Is It Genetic?

While some dog breeds do tend to gain weight more easily, this just means that these breeds require much more exercise in order to maintain a healthy weight, and humans should take this into consideration when deciding to share their homes with these breeds.

Simply because a certain breed may have tendencies to gain weight more quickly than others, is not a good excuse for allowing this to happen because you are ultimately responsible for making your dog fat.

Which Breeds Can Be Prone to Obesity?

While we know that some breeds are known for being typically slim, such as Yorkshire Terriers, Greyhounds, Whippets, and German Shepherds, there are other breeds that can be prone to obesity, including Cairn Terriers, Bulldogs, Dachshunds, Scottish Terriers, Spaniels, Beagles, Basset Hounds, Labrador Retrievers, Golden Retrievers, Shar-Peis, Rottweilers, Bernese Mountain Dogs, Newfoundlands, and St. Bernards.

If you share your home with one of the breeds that may have a tendency to be overweight or obese, you need to get out there and exercise with your best friend that much more often and/or strenuously.

You’ll both be healthier for it.

Are You Overindulging Your Dog?

Many owners, for many reasons, may be overindulging their dogs by over-feeding them at meal times, or more likely with treats, snacks, or sharing unhealthy people’s food and these habits have created many a fat dog.

You’ve heard the saying, “Food is love” and many people over-feed their dogs because they believe that it makes them happy.

Unfortunately, many of our fur friends just don’t have any natural portion control, are very practiced and fixated on food and appear to be “starved” all the time, and will literally eat themselves to death if you let them.

Are You Feeding the Right Portions?

It’s important to make sure that you know the correct serving size of food for your dog so that he or she does not become overweight in the first place, or if this has already happened, to know how to exercise the right portion control to help your best friend shed the extra poundage.

You need to take into consideration your dog’s age and metabolism, and how much your dog is exercising, not just what it says to feed on the label, because feeding the suggested amount when your dog doesn’t get proper or enough exercise will make your dog fat.

Obesity-Related Problems

Just as being obese can seriously affect our human health, obesity can seriously affect our dog’s health in many the same ways.

When your dog is overweight, he or she could suffer from diabetes mellitus, joint damage, bone and ligament damage, heart disease, high blood pressure, eye problems, difficulty breathing, decreased stamina, decreased liver function, digestive disorders, skin and coat problems, increased risk of cancer, reproductive problems and surgical and anesthetic risk.

Just as being overweight and/or obese will shorten our human lives, there is absolutely no doubt that obesity can and will have adverse effects on your best friend’s quality and length of life.

What Causes Dog Obesity?

Of course, just like us humans, the primary causes of a fat dog are simply feeding them too much food and/or the wrong kind of food, combined with a sedentary lifestyle without the exercise they need to be healthy.

If your dog is taking in more calories than he or she is burning up through their daily exercise, they will be overweight.

Something we humans tend to forget as our dogs grow older is that, like us humans, they usually become less active, which means that we need to pay attention and adjust their food intake appropriately so that they can live out their more senior years not as a fat dog, but as a healthy older dog.

Also, when your dog is spayed or neutered, this will also affect its metabolism by slowing it down, which means that it then will require fewer calories to maintain a healthy weight.

Get Moving – Be Healthy

If you’ve been noticing that your best fur friend is getting a little chunky, take a good look at yourself and how sedentary your lifestyle may have become because a fat dog usually means a fat human.

Don’t be cruel to your best friend by shortening their life because you may have allowed him or her to be an unhealthy weight.

You have a dog, which means you have the perfect excuse for keeping both yourself and your dog healthy and fit. Get out there and get moving.

– Asia – Dog Whispering for 40+ years
© K-9SuperHeroesDogWhispering.com [Since 2008]

Asia

Pets Outnumber Children 4 to 1

Posted on: February 14th, 2013 by Asia

You might have been recently noticing that there seem to be increasingly more and more dogs, cats, and other pet owners, and you’d be right because according to new statistics that are about to be released in a book written by Jonathan V. Last, pets now outnumber children 4 to 1 in America.

Fur Friend Explosion

I think most of us would agree that there certainly seems to be an explosion of pet ownership and all the subsequent businesses that go hand in hand with the age of fur friends.

Do we get pets for our children or for something we’re missing in our own lives?

Is this because our aging population has now seen their children become adults and now the many empty nesters are feeling lonely, like they’re something missing in their lives, and because of this they are turning to pets as human replacements….the need for a replacement that can in some ways satisfy their need to nurture and care for someone?

Perhaps the huge increase in pet ownership can be attributed to young adults being too busy or unable to consider today’s high cost involved in raising a human family, so, therefore, lower-cost pets are filling the family’s “need”.

According to various sources, including the American Kennel Club and the U.S. Census Bureau, pets, including dogs, outnumber children in U.S. households.

Booming Pet Industries

Certainly, this is true anywhere pets ownership is prevalent, as we’ve all noticed the increase in the number of veterinary clinics, pet stores and boutiques, grooming salons, training services, pet walking services, pet magazines, pet TV shows, pet paraphernalia, and doggy daycare businesses springing up across the city to meet the demands of a busy working population that doesn’t have the time to devote to their dogs during the day, yet wants to have it all when they get home.

According to statistics in Jonathan Lasts new book, What to Expect When No Ones Expecting, “In 1994 Americans spent $17 billion on pets; …even in the face of a massive recession, it had climbed over $4.8 billion.”

Cost Increases of 100% or More

According to statistics, over a span of just eight short years, the cost of medical care for the average American dog-owning household (with Canadians following closely behind) has increased more than 100%, from $383. in 1998 to $672. in 2006, and dog grooming costs have increased more than 100% during this same time, too, increasing from $59. to $127.

Of course, we dog lovers have known for a very long time that there is much evidence to support the reality that over the years our beloved pets have indeed been elevated to the level of full-blown family members and that our furry family members deserve the latest fashions, food, and services we would give ourselves.

Certainly, the marketplace has taken full advantage of our pet-crazy society, leading us humans down an ever-manic path, which has created a humanizing hailstorm of our doggy friends, which in turn has caused a great deal of unsettling behavioral issues to arise in our dog population who continues to do their best to fulfill the desires of humans who disregard the real needs of the dog.

Travel Policies for Fido

For instance, did you know that there are now companies offering policies for pets traveling in cars? And did you know that the more affluent dog owners have been able to successfully lobby for changes in estate law that permits pets to be the legal recipients of inheritances and trust funds?

Tax Breaks?

You may not have heard that a bill was recently put forth in Congress asking for a $3,500. tax break for pet care expenses, which is apparently more than a family would receive for a human child. This bill was called the HAPPY Act (Humanity and Pets Partnered through the Years). Although this bill failed to reach a vote, if the population continues to choose pets over procreation, perhaps the time is not too far off when it will.

The Growth of Pet Owners

How has all of this coincided with the growth of pet owners? To say it has been anything less than explosive, would be an understatement as surveys indicate, during the last 38 years (from 1947 to 1985), while fewer than half of Americans reported that they owned a pet, today American pets outnumber American children by more than four to one, and statistics indicate nearly 3/4 of all households have pets.

As of 2024, there are approximately 74 million pet cats in the United States. This figure represents a significant increase from previous estimates, which ranged from 60.2 to 62 million pet cats according to the American Veterinary Medical Association (AVMA) data from 2022.

The number of households owning at least one cat is also substantial, with around 47 million U.S. households having a pet cat. This makes cats the second most popular pet in the U.S., following dogs, which are owned by about 65 million households.

According to Last, “Educated, middle-class people have all but stopped having babies,” as “Pets have become fuzzy, low-maintenance replacements for children.”

Asia