Glock Videos

Looking through my YouTube videos and rediscovered some old videos of Glock.

Update on Raw Feeding

 So we are about three and a half weeks into the switch to a raw diet. So far so good!! We started out on chicken drumsticks and leg quarters. With leg quarters he got one in the morning and one in the evening. While the bone to meat ratio is slightly higher than what most people recommend for the normal ratios, I found it to be perfect for the switch as it helped with any.... loose stools he might have had with a diet switch.

Since Glock was doing so well on the chicken I decided last week that it was time to add in a second protein source. I started adding in a bit of pork with his leg quarter and he has been doing great on that!

Saturday I went to the store to pick up some split chicken breasts and also got some chicken liver. Saturday was three weeks in and he was doing great on chicken and some pork that I figured it was safe/time to start adding in some organ. He gets a piece of liver every evening feeding. There haven't been any issues with that either!!

I have to say that so far I am feeling really good about this change. I am keeping my eyes peeled for great sales on meat, and am excited about adding in other protein sources. I think that it is most likely that his raw meaty bone portion of his meals will continue being chicken, either split breast or leg quarters, simply because they are so inexpensive. Obviously other raw meaty bones (RMB) will be added in if I find them at a great price. Pork and turkey will probably be a main portion of his diet as well with beef organ and muscle meat (heart), as I can get those for a decent price.

So, how is he doing? Well his ear infection seems to be doing quite a bit better these last few days. I have also started adding in a bit of Bragg's Apple Cider Vinegar to his water to help and heal it as well. I figure hit it with everything to heal it as quickly as possible! He LOVES his food, gets super excited for dinner time and always wants more. He took to the liver immediately, apparently some dogs don't like it at first, and has loved everything he's gotten so far (not that that has been a terribly big variety).

Portioning out liver to bags!

Glock's Raw Food

So we are on day three of Glock's raw food diet. I have to say that it is going great! Saturday morning, when I first gave him his food he picked up a drumstick, gave it a few licks and looked at me like, "Is this really for me??" I picked it up and handed it to him. He took it from me and started in on it. After that it was smooth sailing.

We started out on drumsticks. I know some people say not to give large breed dogs drumsticks out of a fear of gulping it down and not chewing it at all. I know Glock well enough to do that he would at least chew it a little bit, so that is what we started out with.

Glock is about 90 pounds, probably not quite that much, but is the weight we are going off of. For 2% of his body weight that is a bit less than 2 pounds a day. He is a bit skinnier right now than I would like, so we are feeding about 2 pounds a day. There were two packages of drumsticks in the freezer, each just a tad over 2 pounds. So he got half of a package in the morning and half in the evening, three drumsticks each. This morning we started with leg quarters, and while he did give it a slight questioning look at first, he ripped into it and life was good.

I'm feeling good about this change in his diet. He hasn't had any diarrhea on it, and definitely enjoys it. In a couple of weeks we will add in liver and organ meat. Then add in a second protein source.

Feeding Glock Update

So, I did the homecooked food for Glock for a few weeks. A bit off and on, I went out of town and he just got regular kibble while we were gone, didn't want to deal with cooking it and everything. His diarrhea went away while back on the kibble, so when we got back I did a bit of a mixture of homecooked food and his dry kibble. This did seem to help. However, the more I really thought about it the more I knew that this was the time to start feeding him raw.

I have wanted to put him on a raw diet for quite awhile. Pretty much since he was a puppy I have done research on it. He was less than a year old when I decided I wanted to do it. At that time I was living in Show Low with my dad, and there just weren't the options of places to get inexpensive meat from me to feasibly do it, plus I didn't quite want to start him when living with family. Once I moved into my own place I really couldn't afford it, my money was pretty much all tied up in keeping us going.

Now that I am in a town with many more grocery stores, supermarkets, and ethnic grocery stores I have a much wider range of possibilities of meat sources. On Thursday a friend and I visited several of the ethnic grocery stores so I could get an idea of what they had as far as organ meat, and other types of meat. I did not buy anything from them that day, but now I have an idea of what they have and the prices.

We did go to Restaurant Depot where I knew they had chicken leg quarters for $.45 a pound for a 40 pound box. Soooo I figured that was the perfect way to begin, it would last a few weeks, and it was cheap. We went and I picked up a box, it did end up being $.47 a pound, but it was just over $18 for the 40 pounds!! Can't beat that!

With all of that said, today was Glock's first day of a raw food diet. Hopefully this will be a good thing for him!!

Glock's Food Update

Just a note of warning, this is a post about a dog, his new diet, and the resulting.... consequences of not getting his diet balanced right, i.e. resulting bodily functions. Just so you know!

So today is Glock's third day of home cooked meals. Yesterday he had more of the ground pork mixture. I added some yogurt morning and evening, as well as an egg last night.

He woke up this morning insisting on going outside. He had extremely runny stools, then came back inside and threw up some yellow bile. *Note to self, he most likely got too much dairy yesterday, and double check to make sure he is not getting too much fat on the meat.*

Even with his upset digestive system this morning I still feel like this is the best solution for him. I feel like his ear is continuing to improve, it hasn't been an immediate 100% improvement, but every day it seems to be bothering him less and less and looking better as well. It will take me a bit of time to get the hang of all of it and making sure he gets the right amount of everything that he needs, and not too much of anything.

First Day of Glock's Homecooked Meals

So, first day of Glock's new feeding plan. Honestly, I didn't put much thought into it this morning. I just pretty much went downstairs and decided I didn't want to feed him his regular dog food. I opened up the fridge, knowing we had leftover meat in there, pulled out the pork roast, the rice, and the congealed beef broth stuff I had saved. So, I threw it all in a pot and heated it up, remembered there were some green beans that needed used, pulled those out and threw them in, and pulled a few blueberries out of the freezer. All of that was thrown in the pot, mixed together while heating, and put in his bowl. He LOVED it. Maybe it is just my imagination but his ear doesn't seem to be bothering him as much today.

There was some of the pork and rice mixture left over, and he was so excited about it that he got a lunch time meal, which he usually doesn't get.

Earlier today I pulled out a package of ground pork from the pig that I got over a year ago. I figured it wouldn't be cooked for us for a long time,if ever, and it was the perfect way to use it up. For dinner I threw that that in a small pot, added some water, chopped up some carrots, a huge leaf of swiss chard, some fresh basil, then at the end added in some strawberries, a baked red potato and some more chopped pork as well some leftover chicken from last week. I kind of felt like it needed a bit more meat for the amount of potatoes that was in there. I poured a part of it in his bowl, added a couple of tablespoons of cottage cheese on top of it all and served it up. He devoured it.

I'm feeling like as long as I can find good deals on meat and get some supplements, Vitamin E and some fish oil, this is going to be a good plan for Glock. I haven't noticed him seeing as bothered by his ear today, and am hoping that that will continue to improve.

I need to make sure I don't feed him too much though, he has put on a couple of pounds recently, he's looking a bit thicker than I like. That probably has something to do with the fact that it's been 110 ish lately and even early in the morning isn't ideal for our walks or runs.

Ponderings of New Dreams... That Will Hopefully Turn Into New Beginnings...

So, lately I have been overcome by this surge of new ideas/possibilities and things that I want to try. Not too terribly rare for me, but some of these are new things, things that I have not pondered before.

Idea one: Kayaking

A few times when I was younger one of my uncle's would bring his up to our cabin in Idaho and we would kayak around the lake. I loved it, but haven't thought about it much in the last 15 or so years. That is until a few weeks ago when we drove by Redfish Lake and I saw a couple kayaking on the lake. It suddenly struck me how peaceful and wonderful that seemed, and I remembered how much I had enjoyed those short kayaking jaunts when I was younger. "I want to start kayaking" I decided. Well, that thought hasn't gone away. Now, I currently live in the middle of the desert in Arizona. Not exactly ideal kayaking country. However, I did find a free informational kayaking class offered once a month at a local sporting good store. Here is a link to that class. While it isn't actual kayaking, I figure it is a good first step towards what will hopefully be a regular hobby.

Idea two: Homemade food for Glock

Doesn't this face deserve the best possible food??

So, this is something I have thought about off and on pretty much since the time I brought Glock home at two months. Originally I thought of putting him on a true raw diet, but realized to give him a good and balanced diet would be more than I could really afford. So, he has been on a fairly high quality dry dog food.  I thought about the raw diet again, almost off and on over the past four years, but still have never felt like I could afford it. I toyed with the idea of just kind of making it up as I went along and cooking food for him, but never could find anyone who seemed to think that was a great idea. A few months ago though I saw one of my Facebook friends who is a good German Shepherd breeder post pictures of the food she feeds her dogs. Guess what. It was a picture of a combination of cooked ground meat, potatoes, vegetables, and fruit.

This put the idea back in my mind of cooking for Glock. I have started to do some research and feel like this is what I should/want to do with him. He has suffered from infections in his ear for the past year or so. I will get it all cleared up, and then usually when I leave for a day or two it comes back. I don't know if it the stress of me being gone or what, but it has gotten a bit stressful for me. I am hoping that with a homemade, home cooked diet, that will clear up.

Idea three: The FUTURE

HA. Okay, so obviously the future isn't one individual thought, but it is an idea/theme that has been running through my mind lately. The last several months of the school year I was working as a substitute for one of the local school districts. While this was extremely convenient and nice while I was dealing with my health issues and resolving the food allergy stuff, it wasn't exactly the most and reliable thing in the world. Okay, it was not fun, and since I could pick and choose when and where to work, some days I choose to not work... even when I probably should have taken a job. This simply will not work for the future. There were times I enjoyed it, but many more that I did not. On top of that there are no benefits, no retirement, etc. and it does not pay well enough to make up for all of that. So, idea three is the FUTURE. But, more on that later, I think this post has rambled on long enough.