Barf Diet ~ Weekly Menu for Amina.

This is Amina’s menu for a week taking into account that she weighs nearly 14kg and is coming up to 6 months.
This menu is for my own personal use and is not a recommendation for any other pet. I am following guidelines from Dr. Ian Billinghurst’s book ‘The Barf Diet’ which I can recommend to anyone wishing to change to the Barf Diet.

Total kg per day: 1120g (8% of body weight as she is a growing puppy)
Kg per meal: 373g
Meat quantity per meal: 124g
Fruit and veg quantity per meal: 248g

cod liver oil per week: ‘between 20 and 40 iu of vitamin A per pound of pet’ page 35
Tripe/Heart/Lung Per week:10-15% of diet

Veg: Spinach, carrots, broccoli, sprouts, cabbage, celery, green beans, peas, sweetcorn, peppers, tomatoes, cauliflower, parsley
Fruit: Oranges, apples, bananas, pears, grapes, berries, apricots, plums (stoned), mangoes, kiwi etc

Weigh raw meat in the morning and subtract from daily amount.
Monday

Breakfast
Raw meaty bones – lamb ribs

Lunch
One ice cube sized portion of goats milk
Vegetable mix
cod liver oil
egg
kelp

Tea
Raw meat (from frozen packet)
vegetable mix
Bone meal
Olive oil

Tuesday

Breakfast
Raw meaty bone

Lunch
Tripe
One ice cube sized portion of goats milk
Fruit and veg mix
salmon with oil
kelp

Tea
Meat from frozen
Bone meal
Veg Mix

Wednesday

Breakfast
Raw meaty bone

Lunch
Fruit and veg mix
One ice cube sized portion of goats milk
tinned fish
kelp

Tea
Meat from frozen packet
Veg mix

Thursday

Breakfast
Raw meaty bone

Lunch
olive oil
One ice cube sized portion of goats milk
Veg mix
kelp

Tea
meat from frozen packet
bone meal
veg mix

Friday

Breakfast
Raw meaty bone

Lunch
olive oil
One ice cube sized portion of goats milk
veg mix
kelp

Tea
Meat from frozen packet
Chopped heart
Linseed oil
cod liver oil

Saturday

Breakfast
Raw meaty bone

Lunch
Veg Mix
One ice cube sized portion of goats milk
cod liver oil
egg
kelp

Tea
meat from frozen packet
veg mix
one meal

Sunday

Breakfast
Raw meaty bone

Lunch
Veg mix
kelp
One ice cube sized portion of goats milk

Tea
Tripe
Bone meal
Fruit and veg mix

Puppy Training Week 2

Amina has been going to puppy training classes with Scallywags and this is her second week. Last week we learnt: sit, down and stand. We have been practising these all week and she is getting the hang of it. ‘Sit’ is her best action command so far, ‘down’ is on and off and ’stand’ she is not really sure about.

We arrived at this weeks training and met a dog who was away last week due to being poorly. He was called Junior. As we were waiting outside Amina and Junior played, jumping on each other and rolling around, quite unusual for Amina as she often says hello to other dogs but has not behaved like this before! I was really pleased that she was having fun and think we should take her back for another puppy romp session soon.

Puppy training began with what we learnt last week. Sit, down and stand. With these remembered fairly well we moved onto a release word – ‘OK’. This is to be used when it is OK for them to stop doing the command you have asked them to do. The idea being that one day if Amina is asked to sit she will sit until she hears ‘OK’.

Practise: Sit and then (with 5 or 6 small treats in one hand) say ‘good girl’ with every treat one after the other and then say ‘ok’ and move/walk so she knows she is allowed to get up.

We practised the same with down and stand.

The treats we feed Amina at training are – cooked sausage, cheese, puppy chocolate drops and her normal kibble.

‘Wait’ and ‘Stay’

I need to remember the difference between ‘Wait’ and ‘Stay’.

‘Wait‘ – for waiting for food, crossing the road, running across a field when you don’t want them to etc

‘Stay‘ – for leaving her for a short time if for example – the doorbell rings, I need to make a cup of tea. ‘Stay’ lets her know that I will be back in a minute so she can just stay and chill out for a while.

‘Wait’ Practise: Have Amina on the lead. Show her the food, throw the food, she will try to get it and pull on the lead. She must not get to it. When she stops trying to get to the food and the lead goes limp praise her by saying ‘good girl’. She will then probably try and have another go. Only when she has stopped trying to get the food and the lead is limp can I say OK and walk towards the food. Once she has mastered this I can then introduce the command word ‘Wait’.

‘Stay’ Practise: Have Amina on the lead with someone else holding the lead. Say ‘Stay’ and hold palm out flat towards her. Walk away a few steps and come back to give her a treat. Apparently we need to practise this 30 – 40 times a day so she gets bored and learns to relax! But not all in one go – maybe 10 and breakfast, 10 at lunch and 10 at tea.

We also played with the toys. It is a good idea to choose a toy that is

a) one that could become her favourite – that only comes out on certain occasions
and
b) replaceable

Amina has not really been into toys. She has a few and has only very recently started playing with them. The game this evening was to get Amina’s attention with her toy and then run to the other side of the room in the hope that she would follow me. She didn’t. She sniffed the floor. So we tried it with a black and white squeaky football and it worked! Now I know what to buy her when I go to the pet shop next.

She is fast asleep now. I think the thinking tires her out a bit.

Introducing Amina

Hello. Welcome to the blog about our dog! She is a labradoodle (honest).
The evidence is in her tail. She is 4 and a half months old and has lived with us for 7 weeks.

I thought a blog about Amina would be useful for two reasons:

1 To have a diary to look back on
2 To offer our experiences as help for other labradoodle owners

More later…