Rainbow, Myrtle & Cockatiels

[liz]

Liz, hotdogs are real bad for dogs given on a regular basis (even the all beef ones). They are full of nitrates and salt (both things mess up their kidneys).

I buy chicken low sodium hot dogs with only 8 grams of fat. I know it would be better if they had not been taught that a 3 pm hot dogs was their right. I just haven't come up with a better idea. These dogs can tell time and demand their treat at 3. This was started because we eat a late lunch and hate to just eat in front of them.
The bed time jerky treat started as dog biscuts and was because I eat in bed. I only give them American made which costs more but Jasmin has a damaged pancreas because of Waggin Train which is made in China.
I would brake them of the habbit of these treats but my aunt always believes they are starving when they beg and I am having a hard time breaking her of feeding them under the table. She is causing them to beg.

[Wolf]

At one point in my life I tried to eat on a regularly scheduled basis, where meals were ready to eat at a regular time and I learned to feed my dogs at the same time so they felt that we were all eating together, just the same as with parrots it is a bonding and social activity. It also keeps them from begging under the table a bit longer. However, just like my parrots, if they see me eating something they want some too and most of the time are satisfied with just having a bite of it.

[liz]

Rambo and Myrtle have been getting a little aggressive with food lately. They do not want for anything.
If I do not give Myrtle what she wants she has started pinching my arm hoping to get her way. All my critters know the word "mine". It means there is no way in h.ll that they will get what I have and they just might as well give up. Myrtle does not like the word and will pinch me.
If I give Rambo something from my plate that he really likes he will put his down and try to take mine from me. It is like the time Momma gave him a piece of her toast but there was still a piece on her plate. He put his down. Walked over and took hers back to were he was. He put his foot on the new piece then picked up the original to finish eating it.

My son was unloading hay from my van yesterday evening. (Rachel has a truck but they needed hay now.) I guess the horses thought the grass was greener on the other side of the fence. Both got out while he was carrying the hay in. Indy was just walking in the yard eating grass but that knot head Hinder decided to run the neighborhood. Neighbors joined in trying to catch him but no one was fast enough. I considered running him up the road and putting him in some one elses fence. While bouncing around acting like an idiot he did not realize that he got close enough to a neighbor to grab his harness. He had to be wrestled into the gate. Chuck was exhausted. He may be a little horse but he has four feet to dig into the ground.
Indy is huge and not wearing a harness because Hinder tries to take it off him. I tried to talk him in with an apple but he just grabbed the apple and ate it. This is when I actually started thinking and went for his feed bucket. A rattled feed bucket always called my Dad's horse and it worked for Indy too.
Chuck was upset that I did not think of the feed bucket before he wrestled the knot head. He is also upset that Rachel left me with these two. He is even more upset that he is trying to take care of me and has been doing the evening care because I am too tired by then. He is quite happy with his two little dogs and sees no reason to have a pet that could squash you if it wanted to. I am grateful that Indy has a good temperament.

[Pajarita]

Well, I have to agree with Chuck, having horses as pets and expecting your old mother to care for them all the time seems a bit much...

Why don't you try giving them something else at 3 pm, Liz? There are lots of good treats for dogs nowadays- the chicken jerky thingies are pretty safe and they love them (my dogs love apples and carrots, have you tried giving yours some?). I had a dog with pancreatitis many years ago and, as the only symptom is that they lose their appetite, in an effort to make her eat, I was feeding her hot dogs and my vet was very clear about how bad they were (I could have killed the dog with them because eating hot dogs is actually one of the reasons why dogs get pancreatitis -it's the sulfite in them that does it). There is one good thing you can say about me and it's that I learn my lessons!

[liz]

I use the least offensive hot dogs but would prefer giving them something else. They get chicken or duck jerky at bedtime. Jerky is really expensive and I learned the hard way (Jasmine has liver damage)that all jerkys are not equal. Waggin Train products come from China and are killers to animals. I now look for American made. Even if it is distributed by an American company it is not to be trusted because I don't know what country made it.

Giving them a piece of chicken is accepted by them but it is not convenient enough to do this every day. For a while they accepted carrots but then I started finding carrots all over the house. My girls and Chuck's girls would be happy with a cooked vegetable.

I just lost half of what I typed so a long story short: does anyone have an idea of what to give them as a treat every day at 3 pm? I started with the hot dogs because my aunt had been giving hers sandwich cookies that made them fat and could have been dangerous.

[Wolf]

I keep some dog biscuits on had all of the time and that is what I give to my dogs most of the time. If I have corn on the cob, I will save the cob overnight and give those to my dogs instead of a biscuit the following day. My dogs don't care what it is as long as it is something and even better if it is what I have or had. Sometimes my dogs get hot dogs, but to be honest I feel that they are getting the short end of the stick when they get them because all of my dogs are large dogs and they only get one hot dog between them.

You might want to check at the butchers, a meat packing plant or even some grocery stores to see if they will sell you or give you dog bones. Some places will give them away and some will sell them cheaply and still others are greedy and have to charge prime rib prices for bones. Another source of bone is restaurants, especially steak houses. If you get them from a restaurant you will probably need to rinse them off before giving them to the dogs, but if you speak to the manager or with the dishwashers you will probably get more than you need for free.

[Pajarita]

My dogs get biscuits, too. They are actually quite practical because they are not expensive, you can get them in several sizes (I get large, medium and tiny) and they are CLEAN (and that's a BIG thing for me because giving them something that is going to leave an oily residue on the floor or on their paws means extra work for me).

Now, I used to give my dogs bones but, in order for this practice to be safe, you need to give them raw bones (cooked bones will splinter but raw bones will not) and you need to do it under supervision because that have been cases of dogs choking on them.

Wolf, you might want to do a bit more research about giving your dogs corn cobs, they are 100% indigestible and have been known to cause occlusions and even perforations on dogs (see this: https://www.vets-now.com/pet-owners/you ... b-to-dogs/ and this: http://blogs.webmd.com/pet-tales/2013/0 ... -dogs.html)
Also, boxers are very prone to bloat (even more so than other large species) so you need to be extra careful on what goes into them, how and when...

[liz]

My aunt does everything as lazy as she can. She would put out a bowl of dry food and a bowl of biscuts right beside it. Biscuts were no longer a treat. She went to cheap high fat cookies which they loved. When I moved in I changed it to chicken hot dogs.

When I had my own home my girls would get dog biscuts in bed because I ate in bed.
Don't judge me. That is my bed and I do it my way. No one else but my dogs are in it.

Rambo found the little bird cage. I don't know how he climbed up there but he is sitting in it waiting to go back out.

[seagoatdeb]

I eat raw mostly and vegan most of the time but i do eat meat rarely, and I am really fortunate that the area I live in has a few places where I can get natural grass feed free ranging animal meat, all organic and no nitrates or anything bad in any of it.

[liz]

YAY. When I went in the cockatiel room to tell everyone good night I found Gimpy sitting on the window sill. He cannot hold onto the perches like the others but managed to find a place with them that was flat. His flying improves every day. The others had been going into his cage to visit him but now he can actually join in the flock. I need to make more platforms.