Why it’s a bad idea to get two dogs at the same time

When you’re thinking about getting a dog, it’s a really, really bad idea to get more than one dog at a time, and this applies whether you are getting a puppy or a rescue dog. The only exception is if you’re rescuing from a responsible rescue centre (such as the Dogs Trust in the UK) which has undertaken a proper behavioural assessment and has deemed that two dogs who have grown up together should be rehomed together.

Puppies.

Giving a home to one puppy is incredibly hard work, so taking on two puppies at the same time is even harder. Aside from the obvious doubling of time, expense and hassle, there is a phenomenon known as ‘littermate syndrome’ which is the real reason why taking on two puppies at once is an absolute no-no.

When two puppies are raised together, they form a close bond and learn to rely on each other. This may sound lovely and romantic, but it leaves you, the human, somewhat left out of the equation.

When raising a puppy, you need to form a very tight bond with it. This is rewarding for you, of course, but also enables you to have behavioural control over the dog as it grows up.

The two puppies will bond tightly and will respond to each other at your expense. It will be impossible to gain any form of control over their behaviour as they grow up, since all training methods rely on the your dog being bonded to you and listening and responding to you. If another dog is around, you will simply be ignored.

There are no ‘ifs’ in this scenario – it will happen and is almost completely impossible to prevent. The only way you could manage the situation would be to keep both dogs completely separated for nearly all of the day, except for perhaps some controlled play time, while you put in the same amount of work training each one individually that you would do for one puppy.

This time commitment is simply not achievable by anyone except the most dedicated people with a professional interest in dogs.

As an example, take toilet training. The normal method of toilet training a puppy is to keep it attached to you at all times, using a house lead, preventing any accidents inside the house (or if they do happen, being in a position to quickly and gently interrupt them) and then taking the puppy outside every hour, and after every meal and drink, to do his business, rewarding him with a treat every time he does it in the correct place.

This is every bit as time-consuming as it sounds, but done correctly (preventing any accidents from occurring inside the house), it only takes a week or two to crack. The key to housetraining is to prevent any indoor accidents from occurring at all – if the dog is successful in doing his business inside the house, this reinforces the behaviour (since it is rewarding to him to relieve himself) and the scent laid down on the spot where it happened will encourage the pup to continue using that same area as a latrine.

Imagine trying to keep an eye on two puppies and prevent accidents occurring inside the house. Then imagine trying to get them both outside in time for them to ‘go’. Then imagine trying to be close to the puppy which is doing his business outside at the exact time he ‘goes’ in order to give him a reward. Imagine you are doing this with puppy 1, while suddenly puppy 2 decides to squat down at the same time but on the other side of the garden and you can’t reach him in time to give him a treat. Imagine trying to get the attention of the playful puppy who is only focussed on chasing his brother’s tail in order to communicate to him that he’s done a great thing by peeing outside, but he barely even notices you.

Imagine puppy 1 squatting and doing his business on your bedroom carpet. You catch him in the act and whisk him outside quickly. Meanwhile, puppy 2 wanders into the bedroom, sniffs the spot that puppy 1 has now marked as the latrine, squats down and does his business there too.

Still think having two puppies will be twice the fun?

Older rescue dogs.

While older rescue dogs are not going to suffer from ‘littermate syndrome’ if rehomed at the same time, it is still a very bad idea to take on two older dogs.

It is simply a question of time. Rescue dogs require work and they usually come with baggage. I don’t think there is a single rescue dog on the planet which isn’t going to need at least a little bit of work to fit in with your family life.

A pair of rescue dogs could reinforce each other’s unwanted behaviours, will require at least twice the work in terms of training and rehabilitation, and are unlikely to bond with you as strongly as they would if they were alone.

If you dream of a multi-dog household, have at least 6 months between getting each dog, and don’t introduce a new one until you are sure that you have completely bonded with and trained your current dog.

Warning about dog sitter services

Just a quick note to dog owners in Qatar to be very wary of who you choose to look after your dog while you go on holiday, after a recent bad experience we had.

A lady from England had recently set up as a dog sitter in Qatar and I was keen to use her, as she came on personal recommendation. Our dog is quite skittish and I would prefer her to stay in a home environment rather than kennels wherever possible. Furthermore, this lady is a qualified dog behaviourist and it felt reassuring to know that someone would be caring for my dog who was an expert on dogs.

We had some email conversations back in March/April, where I quizzed her about her approach to behavioural management and we talked about booking my dog in for the summer holidays.

She was a bit concerned about how her clients’ dogs would interact with her own dogs, so I suggested that we book my dog in for a trial weekend to see how they got on. I was brutally honest about my dog’s particular issues and painted her an absolute worst case scenario of how my dog can behave.

For various reasons, this trial weekend never happened, despite me chasing it up repeatedly. By May I was getting worried as I knew all of the boarding kennels would likely be almost fully booked for the summer. The lady reassured me that she was absolutely sure she would be able to have my dog without needing a trial weekend, as a mutual friend had provided a ‘reference’ for my dog, so we made definite arrangements for the summer.

The day before our holiday, I drove my dog over to the lady’s house. We settled the dog in and all seemed fine, but my dog was very excitable (she always is in new situations) and probably wasn’t on her best behaviour. There was the usual to-ing and fro-ing between the dogs as they tried to sort out a pecking order. At one point, there was a tiff over a chew. My dog growled at me to try to tell me to back off as I tried to intervene.

I know that this is not perfect doggy behaviour, but neither is it a big deal. Dogs have tiffs, dogs growl as a form of communication and dogs don’t act like their normal selves when in new (and stressful) situations. All of this should be perfectly manageable by a qualified dog behaviourist.

Anyone caring for a number of unknown dogs in a home environment should probably know better than to leave chewy treats lying around everywhere. It is fine for dogs who live together all the time, but in an environment where new dogs are being introduced, it would be common sense not to create any potential flash points. I personally never leave chews lying around all the time anyway; my dog has chew toys, but edible chewy treats are saved as a reward for good behaviour, or for when we need to settle dog down for an extended period of time.

The upshot of all this is that the lady decided there and then that she would not take my dog in for boarding. Rather naively, she tried to ring around all of the vets and boarding kennels to see if they had any space. but obviously none had any room, given that it was the height of summer and Ramadan was about to start and we were going on holiday in less than 12 hours, for four weeks. I left in tears.

I was absolutely devastated. It was absolutely one of the most stressful days I have ever had. With 12 hours to go until we left, I had to think on my feet. It was a choice between cancelling the holiday for the entire family (which wasn’t really an option as my husband had booked time off work months in advance, and my family in England were very excited about meeting my baby twins for the first time, and it would have cost us over £2,400 to do so) or arranging to take our dog to England with us.

Thankfully, Nicky Roffey, the Qatar pet relocater, was very sympathetic to my story, and while she wouldn’t normally step in at such short notice, she really came up trumps for us.

She arranged short term accommodation for my dog and had her flown out to England for us within a few days. It cost us a fortune, but it was really our only option.

I am very angry about what the boarding lady did to us, partly because of the wider problem in Qatar of dog dumping. Had I been poorer or less responsible, I might have dumped our dog out on the streets to fend for herself while we were away. This sounds a bit far-fetched, but it happens every single year without fail, so dog boarders in Qatar carry extra responsibility to do the right thing by their clients to prevent dog dumps occurring.

There is also no such thing as the perfect dog, especially here in Qatar where nearly all rescue dogs have issues because of the way they may have been treated before adoption, or as a result of negative experiences encountered on the streets.

Anyone setting up dog boarding facilities needs to be prepared to manage any doggy issues. This goes without saying; what else is the daily fee for (apart from covering necessary expenses)? My dog is a fantastic dog. She has a few issues, which I was very honest about in my initial email conversations and which have been well documented in this blog, but they are nothing a dog enthusiast can’t handle and they are certainly nowhere near as significant as other dogs’ issues.

So, if you are looking for boarding for your dog, take this advice on board:
– Make sure you book well in advance and that all arrangements are absolutely watertight and set in stone – pay a deposit, sign an agreement.
– Have a look around the facilities beforehand and take your dog to see how she reacts.
– Only use reputable and experienced dog boarders
– Don’t leave your dog with the maid. Apart from the potential for loneliness, or even mistreatment, there are cases every year where dogs have gone missing while under the care of maids.
– Consider using Pampered Pets, they are absolutely fantastic.
– Other boarding facilities are listed in the tab at the top of the page.

Have a great holiday if you haven’t been already 🙂

Can you give Monty a forever home?

There are scores of dogs in desperate need of a forever home in Qatar. If you’re interested in seeing some of them, take a look at the rescue pages listed under the ‘Dog Shelters and Animal Rescue Organisations’ tab at the top of this page.

(NB All of the rescue centres will rehome overseas, and will raise funds to export the dogs, so that you won’t have to pay anything if you can offer a kind and loving home in Europe, America or Canada. So please do consider an overseas adoption!)

But one lovely boy has stayed in my heart, ever since we looked after him for a few days when his foster Mum had a family emergency back in March.

His name is Monty and he’s an absolute sweety. I would love him to find his forever home, but people seem to be overlooking him because he’s not really going to win any cutest dog competitions (come on people, how shallow can you get?!).

Monty (left) curled up on the back seat of the car with my dog after lots of fun on the beach

The real tragedy is that he would be PERFECT for a first-time dog owner. He’s being fostered by Dogs In Doha’s most experienced foster carer, and as a result he has perfect manners and is impeccably well trained.

He’s come through the quite frankly hideous puppy stage (getting up at 2am to go outside for wees is NO fun, I can assure you) and he’s past the horribly challenging teenager stage too, but he’s still very young and adaptable. I think he’s around 2 years old now, which is a perfect age, as that’s when dogs really start to settle down and implement their training, but are also still young enough to settle into new routines.

He was very good with our dog (who still IS in the terrible teenager stage – she was 13 months old when Monty came to stay, and as such she terrorised the living daylights out of him constantly). He put up with a lot, as you can see:

Monty being pestered by my dog, but being very tolerant and relaxed about it.

Monty has typical saluki energy levels i.e. sleeps for 90% of the time, with the occasional burst of energetic play. He doesn’t look very much like a saluki and there’s obviously a good handful of other breeds mixed in there as well, but, being a true Doha desert dog, there is inevitably some saluki in the mix, and this definitely shows in his personality.

Monty playing ‘tuggies’ with my dog

He lives with lots of other dogs and a cat, so he’s been very well socialised. He would probably prefer to live in a busy household, with someone at home all day, because he’s used to company and the hustle and bustle of a multi-dog household.

He has, of course, had all of his vaccinations and been castrated, as per Dogs in Doha policy. He has no health issues and no behavioural issues.

If you can offer Monty a forever home, please leave a comment at the bottom of this page and I will speak to his foster mum for you, or get in touch with Dogs in Doha via their Facebook group.

Monty in his usual position, asleep on the floor

Microchipping your dog

It’s just as important to microchip your dog here in Qatar as it is anywhere else in the world.

Dogs go missing and unfortunately, some more desirable breeds are being stolen for breeding and selling.

Furthermore, it’s a requirement of many countries, including Britain, that your dog is microchipped before being issued with a ‘pet passport’, so if you get a dog whilst living in Qatar and intend to move overseas with it eventually, a microchip is an essential.

Up until now, though, there was no national database for microchipped dogs here in Qatar. So, if your dog went missing and was found and taken to a local vet, they would scan him, but they wouldn’t be able to access any information about the dog. (That’s not to say that the microchip would have been a complete waste of time – it’s a strong enough marker for the vet or rescue organisation to indicate that the pooch is a well-cared-for pet and therefore greater effort would be made to reunite him with his owners).

This has all changed in the past couple of weeks, with not one, but TWO national microchip registers having been set up.

It is up to you, the pet owner, to register your dog’s details. It is too early to tell yet whether or not the two databases will eventually be merged, or whether one will turn out to be dominant, so at the moment it’s wise (and not much hassle) to register your dog on both databases.

As I type, I haven’t yet registered my dog on either of the databases, but I will update the blog as I go through the process! The two databases are:

1. petsafeqatar.com – operated by Qatar Veterinary Center. To quote Dr. Paul Hensen from the Dogs in Doha Facebook page on April 25th: “www.petsafeqatar .com is created by Qatar Vet Center and went live yesterday. We have been working on this for a while and registered the domain back in march. We want there to be a register with professional support where owners data is confidential. At the moment people can register their pets but have to call us to run a search. We are working on having a search function so that people eg those with a scanner, can search the database to reunite pets with their owners on the website itself without having to call us. The service is free, Qatar Veterinary Center is not making any profit from this venture.”

2. Qatar Pet Register – operated by two volunteers from Dogs in Doha. They have assured people through the Facebook page that the site is completely secure and that your personal details will not be accessible unless someone has the number of your dog’s microchip.

I intend to register my dog on both databases. Now, to dig out her vaccination record card which has her microchip number recorded on it…….

 

UPDATE: That was very easy, it only took me a minute or two (once I’d found the microchip information of course, but thankfully my vet had always emphasised the importance of keeping it in a safe place!). The PetSafeQatar had a built in checker, by asking you to fill in your microchip number and telephone numbers twice, which was useful to make sure you hadn’t entered anything incorrectly. It also allowed me to enter as many phone numbers as I liked (so I put 4 in – you never know if you will ever move house, change jobs or mobile numbers during your pet’s life!), whereas the Qatar Pet Register only allowed two phone numbers. Neither offered the option to check or review your data once it was entered, which is slightly concerning, as you could have incorrectly entered your microchip number, thereby rendering all of your efforts a waste of time! I have, however, had an email confirmation from Qatar Pet Register which very helpfully re-confirms all of the details I entered.

Ticks in Qatar

Just a quick note to say that tick prevention is really important in Qatar, because ticks here carry a nasty disease called Ehrlichiosis, which can be fatal.According to Wikipaedia “There are three stages of ehrlichiosis, each varying in severity. The acute stage, occurring several weeks after infection and lasting for up to a month, can lead to fever and lowered peripheral blood cell counts due to bone marrow suppression. The second stage, called the subclinical phase, has no outward signs and can last for the remainder of the dog’s life, during which the dog remains infected with the organism. Some dogs are able to successfully eliminate the disease during this time. In some dogs the third and most serious stage of infection, the chronic phase, will commence. Very low blood cell counts (pancytopenia), bleeding, bacterial infection, lameness, neurological and ophthalmic disorders, and kidney disease, can result. Chronic ehrlichiosis can be fatal.”

We find ticks regularly on our dog, but we might be just very unlucky, because I know other dog owners whose dogs never seem to get ticks! I think there is an active population living in our garden, because she always seems to pick them up when she goes out there. I think she also catches them from the grassy areas in our compound, perhaps because they are fertilized with camel manure.

The best prevention is to use both a Frontline type of repellant (the sort which comes in a sachet and is squeezed between the shoulder blades) and a Preventic collar. These are expensive, but when used in combination they do seem to be quite effective.

These treatments should be repeated every 3 months. When you apply the Preventic collar, it’s a good idea to keep the receipt and write the date that the packet was opened on the collar itself in permanent marker pen. This is because nearly all of the pet boarding facilities in Qatar have a requirement for up to date tick prevention to be applied before the animal can be boarded and if you cannot prove that your dog is wearing a tick-prevention collar which is less than three months old, they may force you to buy a new one before accepting your pet for boarding.

Even with good tick prevention, you will need to still check regularly for ticks. If we find one, we pull it out right near the dog’s skin using a very sharp pair of Tweezerman tweezers (so as to capture all of the mouthparts of the tick) and then we set fire to it using a cigarette lighter! I did used to just try and squash them (surprisingly difficult) and/or flush them down the sink, but apparently they can survive and go on to lay eggs wherever they end up, so I prefer to make sure they are good and dead along with any eggs they may be carrying!

A warning about dog poisonings in Doha

As I said in my dog walking post, Doha is awash with random sandy plots of land, which are about the only places you can walk your dog within the city, although they are universally covered in hazardous construction waste and not very pleasant to walk on.

Unfortunately, it has come to light that there is a risk that some of these plots are baited with poison, possibly rat poison. Nobody yet knows if dogs are being deliberately targeted, or if the poison is being put down to clear rodents from potential construction sites in advance of construction commencing.

I first heard of the unfortunate death of a puppy a few months ago, after being walked through an inner-city area and ingesting something unknown but deadly.

Then, on March 9th, Park View Pet Centre put a warning out on Facebook, and I have cut and pasted the whole conversation below, which includes statements from the owners:

Park View: Today, we are issuing a special plea to all dogs and dog walkers. Please please take care when and where you are walking your dogs. This morning we had an emergency case in the clinic, where the dog had consumed a poison (believed to be rat poison) while out walking in a barren area. Sadly, the dog did not make it. If you are unsure of the territory you are planning to take your pets too, or, if you see rat traps anywhere within the area you are walking with your dog, please do not venture any further. Some symptoms to watch for are vomitting, foaming at the mouth and seizures. If your pet is displaying any of these symptoms, please phone or take them to your vet as soon as possible. Keep in mind that poison acts immediately so the quicker you act, the better chance your pet has. To exercise caution is to save a life.

Owner 1: there was no sign of rat traps or poison in a field our dogs have been to 100s of times near education city… from the time our dog started foaming at the mouth & had a seizure & was raced to the vet was under 10 minutes in total so, it’s doubtful if a pet has been poisoned that it can be saved. at any rate, i’d like to thank abdullah & his staff at parkview for arranging an emergency vet & taking care of our dog in his final moments xxoo

Park View: Again we are so sorry for your loss. After the devastating incident with your dog, we are sending a general plea to all dog owners to take caution when walking their pets in these barren areas. We have been told previously about the rat traps and poison used to clear the rats due to ongoing construction projects. Our hearts go out to you and your family and we are hoping to help prevent any further types of poisoning situations.
In regards to  thiscase, we are anxioulsy awaiting the lab results to find out what type of poison was consumed.

Owner 1: Thank you for sending out a warning to all dog walkers in Qatar… I’ve also shared your post & pray no other animal is poisoned in the field directly opposite education city housing. I’m also paranoid for our surviving dogs to be walked anywhere in this town after our dog’s sudden death this morning.

Owner 2: Thanks for your help with my big guy this morning, but whatever he ate cold probably have killed an elephant, he’s 45kg and was DOA in 15 minutes from first sign of shackling and frothing. i don’t think this is just about barren areas, rat traps(cement tunnel stuffed with poision) are all over Doha, just outside my villa i can see 2 of them from my gate. so even in urban areas where these are being filled with poison(and the old poison being discarded safely by the rat controllers) even walking your dog outside your villa can be risky. . . .~

Owner 1: the exact dirt field that our dog ingested poison yesterday morning is located behind ECCH lot 1 & 2, but i think the point of this warning is that any dirt field in doha is not safe to walk your dogs because there could be rat poison without any visible traps. it would be best to take your dogs either on leashed up walks around your neigborhood or to a beach (where it’s doubtful poison is distributed)

Another dog walker: Thank you for letting us know the exact area. It is very possible you have saved the lives of other dogs, as many as 11 dogs that I know of have been in that area recently. And just for further awareness, there has been a dog death due to poison at the mangroves a few years ago so its best to be vigilant everywhere. And, so sorry for your loss :((

As you can see, with the lax attitude to waste disposal in this country, possibly nowhere is safe from this problem.

I have stopped letting my own dog off-lead in the wasteground near our house, but I can’t stop letting her off the lead at the beach or the mangroves, as she would never get to run around, so it’s a calculated risk I have to take.

You can reduce the possibility of your dog ingesting unwanted items through training and possibly considering training them to accept a muzzle. I have also found that taking my bike out when I walk the dog at the mangroves means that she spends more time running alongside me, and less time weaving off into the bushes to hunt.

Muzzle training.

I haven’t got around to training my dog to wear a muzzle yet, but it is something I would like to do, as she has had occasional bouts of diarrhoea after visiting certain beaches (the beaches in this country are literally covered in BBQ waste, as it seems to be culturally acceptable to bury it rather than take it to a bin). This new poisoning threat gives added imperative for muzzle training.

Apparently, the best way to do it is to introduce the muzzle gently, rewarding the dog with treats for sniffing the muzzle and generally making it an exciting thing when it is brought out. You can then progress to putting treats inside it, or smearing cream cheese inside, so that the dog has to put her nose inside it briefly.

Then you can progress to holding the muzzle over her nose briefly, rewarding and removing it, before eventually doing up the straps and leaving it on for a minimal amount of time, followed by lots of treats. The speed at which you progress through these steps depends on the dog, but it could take days or weeks.

The reason you don’t just strap a muzzle on and leave the dog to it, is because you will find that as soon as you get the muzzle out, your dog will run for cover and will make it very difficult for you to put the muzzle on her, possibly being aggressive in the process. By taking your time to introduce the muzzle in a positive way, you are making both your life and the dog’s life easier in the long run.

The basket muzzles, favoured by greyhounds, are essential in this country, as they allow the dog to pant freely – do not use the fabric ones which restrict the dog from opening its mouth, as this could be a fatal mistake in Qatar’s heat.

Training ‘leave it’ and encouraging your dog to stay near you.

If there is a danger of ingesting dangerous items, it’s a good idea to have an absolutely rock-solid ‘leave it’ command. We are still working on this and our dog is 13 months old, so it’s a case of do as I say, not as I do!

It’s a good idea to start training ‘leave it’ from a young age, because puppies will always be found with things in their mouths that they shouldn’t have.

Trying to intimidate a dog into ‘leave it’ by chasing it, shouting at it, or spraying it with a water bottle or similar, will only teach the dog to become ferociously guarding of anything he finds and this can lead to aggression.

The best thing to do is to offer the dog something of higher value than whatever it is he has in his mouth. Then he will gladly drop whatever he has, and take your treat/favourite toy instead.

This does lead to you enduring a bit of a phase when the dog catches on to the trick of getting a treat for bringing you your remote control/shoes/wallet etc, but it’s worth persisting with, as this risk is outweighed by the benefits of having a rock-solid ‘leave it’.

Eventually, if you practise with increasingly high-value ‘finds’ and in different situations, you will have a dog which will immediately open his jaws as soon as you say ‘leave it’. We are about 80% there with our dog, as she still won’t drop food items, but I’d have probably got there a lot quicker if I hadn’t lost patience with her on a few occasions when she was little and had run off with my shoes!

To encourage your dog to stay near you on a walk, just imagine there’s a 3-foot circle around you and reward your dog every time she enters or walks inside the circle, with either a treat, a game or some attention. If you have this nailed through puppyhood, it will make the teenage phase of disappearing into the far distance a lot easier to cope with!

Recall.

A strong recall is especially important in Doha, where you might encounter lots of hidden dangers or people who really don’t like your dog.

It is important to increase the amount of distractions that you can recall your dog from. Over many months, you should practice building up the distractions in different situations.

A long-line (I got mine from a UK website) attached to a harness (not a collar) is essential. There is a great video about recall training away from distractions here

With the help of a friend, my dog’s recall away from other dogs is getting much better now, but we are still having a few issues with recalling her away from buried BBQs. I am practising this at home by laying some treats on the ground and encouraging her to come to me instead of the treats, rewarding her with much higher value treats for doing so. It’s difficult, but we’re getting there!

Happy walking and keep your dog safe 🙂

Calming signals, aggression and reading your dog’s mind.

If you are a dog owner, or are ever likely to interact with a dog, it is really important that you know how to read your dog’s body language.

In well-adjusted dogs, aggression doesn’t occur without prior warning. The dog will give signals before a bite, warning you to back off. The bite only usually occurs as a last resort, if none of the other signals are having the desired effect.

If a dog is uncomfortable with the way you’re interacting with him, at first he will give you some calming signals. These are subtle to us humans, but to dogs they are screamingly obvious. They are saying “Hey, I’m not a threat, please back off and give me some space”. Another dog may return the calming signals to say, “Hey, I’m not a threat either”. If you watch two dogs playing, you will see the calming signals being used constantly to manage the space between them.

Calming signals can include lip-licking, turning or dipping the head, and yawning. If a dog does any of these things while you are stroking him, he’s NOT comfortable with it, so stop and back off to give him some space.

My dog is very shy about being touched and I have watched her give off some screamingly obvious calming signals to our house guests before and have had to take her away from the situation for her own sake.

Kikopup (my heroine!) has produced a really good short film about calming signals, which should be compulsory viewing for all dog owners.

As you can see from the video, the calming signals work both ways. You can offer them to your dog when you want to reassure her that everything is OK. My dog is quite jumpy about noises outside the house, and if she hears something and leaps up with her ears pricked up, I give a few obvious calming signals, such as a yawn, which often prevents her escalating into ‘defending the house’ mode.

Help! I watched the video and realised that my dog doesn’t like being touched!

If after watching the calming signals video, you have had a lightbulb moment and realised that your dog isn’t comfortable with the way you touch him, don’t panic. I am in the same boat with my dog, as are many other dog owners here in Qatar, because rescue dogs in Qatar usually have an unknown history and are often nervy saluki-type dogs with that sort of temperament.

You can condition your dog to accept your touches. I have done this with my dog, just to make her tolerant of people being a bit too over-enthusiastic in petting her. But I know her well enough to know that she will never enjoy being stroked and petted, and so we don’t do that to her at home. She is comfortable lying with us on the couch for snuggles and that’s as far as we’re prepared to push her.

Kikopup comes to the rescue yet again with another informative video for conditioning your dog to accept being handled here.

What happens if you ignore the calming signals?

If calming signals are ignored, sometimes dogs will go into themselves and become very withdrawn, accepting their fate and freezing. This is what our dog does when people stroke her, and it’s not very nice to watch once you can read her signals. Dogs will especially take this approach if they find the situation very overwhelming or intimidating and don’t feel that they are in a position to defend themselves. Very sadly, this is often the state that Cesar Milan reduces his clients’ dogs to, by bullying and intimidating them. To the untrained eye, it can look like the dog is complying or submitting to you, but once you know how to read a dog’s body language, you can actually see that the dog has withdrawn into himself to try and shut out whatever is happening to him – very sad.

The other consequence of ignoring calming signals is that you are potentially setting your dog up to be aggressive in certain situations. For example, if you allow toddlers or small children to interact roughly with your dog, your dog may well tolerate it for a certain period of time. During that time, if you look closely, you may see the dog offering calming signals. If these, in the dog’s mind, are failing to work (e.g. if the play is allowed to go on for longer than it normally would, or if a new child comes onto the scene and goes for the dog in a more enthusiastic way), the dog may escalate his response to aggression.

The next step up on the aggression ladder, from calming signals, is usually a growl. The next step up, if a growl doesn’t work, is baring the teeth, and then a snap into the air, and then a bite (and then a more serious blood-drawing bite if the dog is really stressed). If the dog feels especially threatened, the ladder can be climbed in less time than it takes to blink, giving you very little time to intervene between the first teeth-baring and the eventual bite.

However, if the dog doesn’t feel like he is in grave danger, AND if a dog has learned, from positive past experiences, that a growl DOES work, then he won’t escalate his behaviour up the ladder.

This is why you should never, ever, punish your dog for growling. A dog that growls is a good thing. It gives you valuable time to intervene if the dog ever finds himself in a situation which is uncomfortable for him and the dog knows that all he has to do is growl to make the bad thing go away.

A dog that growls is not aggressive. He’s just using one of his limited communication tools to tell you something. If your dog growls at you, back off from whatever it was you were doing, and give him some space. He needs to know that growling works – that way, he won’t ever be so quick to try biting or snapping instead as a means to protect himself.

If you ever punish your dog for growling, or try to over-ride his wishes by ‘dominating him’ and persisting with whatever it was that you were doing that caused him to growl, the next time he finds himself in this situation it is more likely that he will by-pass the growling stage and lunge straight into a snap or a bite.

I speak with total humility here, as I know from bitter experience that this can happen, as I have caused our dog to snap on more than one occasion and I hope that other people can learn from my stupid mistakes.

My mistake number 1: Getting out of the car.

Whenever we come back from the beach, our dog gets hosed down on the driveway before coming back into the house, to make sure all the salt is off her skin. It never used to be a problem, until she had a skin infection and we had to start shampooing her all over, including on her oh-so-sensitive muzzle.

From this point onwards, she came to hate the hose. I tried conditioning her to it using treats, but I didn’t try hard enough because I am usually cold and exhausted after coming back from the beach and I don’t have enough hands to do everything.

It has come to the point where in recent weeks, it has taken some cajoling to get her out of the car at the end of the walk. Normally, she can be persuaded with treats, or patience. But in a fit of stupidity/anger one day, I tried to pull her out of the car by her lead. As you can imagine, this didn’t go down very well with the worried dog, and she growled at me to tell me to back off. On this particular day, I’m ashamed to admit that my patience was at an all-time low and I managed to forcibly remove her from the car by picking her up. In doing so, I accidentally taught her that ‘growling doesn’t work’ in this situation.

Since then, I’ve been more patient with her, but I hadn’t explained to my husband the full story about her new ‘getting out of the car’ issues. So when I was sick, he took her to the beach one day, and when he came back, he leaned right into the car to take her harness off in preparation for getting her out of the car for her shower. I was actually looking over his shoulder and saw the dog give off some screamingly obvious calming signals, but it didn’t really register at the time that I should say something. In the blink of an eye, she went from calming signals, to growling and snapping at him in the face (because he was leaning right into her personal space). He was pretty shaken up, so I sent him back inside the house and got the dog out myself using positive reinforcement. i.e. I had a bag of treats on me and scattered some outside the car so she came out willingly.

Since then I’ve done what I should have done all along – I’ve been encouraging her out of the car using tasty treats and saying the key words “out of the car” as she jumps out. It’s starting to work and she will now willingly jump out of the car when I say “out of the car”.

I should have done this in the first place when we started having problems. Dominating and over-riding your dog is a quick and easy fix for situations, but you will be setting yourself up for other problems. Conditioning the behaviour that you do want, using positive reinforcement, takes longer and it takes patience, but you end up with a happy and confident dog that is willing to do as you wish. You don’t have to use food – a ball-motivated spaniel or jack russell terrier would be more than happy to jump out of the car for a game of ball I am sure 🙂 You just need to find whatever it is that motivates your dog the most.

My mistake number 2: Eye drops

A few weeks ago, our dog had a slightly runny eye. I wasn’t too concerned, until it spread to the other eye, so I took her to the vet. He didn’t seem at all concerned about it, but gave me some eye drops to help clear it up.

For the first day, we managed fine. She didn’t like having them applied, and gave me some pretty obvious calming signals as I did it, but I managed to do it so quickly that it was all over in a flash.

On the second day, I tried to put some in while she was a bit more awake and active, and that meant standing over her to try and hold her still. It didn’t work and we ended up with eye drops everywhere except in her eyes. She wasn’t at all amused by the whole situation and I gave up after 5 minutes of trying.

When my husband came home from work, I asked him to try putting the eye drops in. He stood over her as I had done earlier, and this time she knew what was coming. She growled at him, and when he ignored it she snarled and snapped the air near him.

He quickly withdrew and it was pretty apparent after that that we were now at the point where she would run away as soon as she saw the eye drop bottle.

Because we felt we were losing her trust by carrying on with this battle, we actually stopped trying to give her the eye drops after that, knowing that it wasn’t a serious eye problem anyway (and it actually cleared up by itself within 48 hours ). We had had a hard enough time earning her trust in the first place and we didn’t want to go back to square one with her.

So what went wrong? Basically, I should have spent more time when she was little preparing her for things like this. I had done a lot of conditioning with basic handling exercises, but I hadn’t pushed it as far as fiddling with her eyes. I should also have taken her calming signals on day 1 a bit more seriously and made the whole experience a lot more positive for her. We are now working on conditioning her to have her face held and eyes treated etc.

IF her eye condition had been more serious and the eye drops had been an absolute necessity, I would have had to do some pretty intense work to condition her to the presence of the bottle, and then to have her head held and then her eyes touched etc within the period of one day. The other alternative would have been to muzzle her and get on with it, but I would only have done this in an absolute emergency, as it would have set us up for immediate failure with similar situations in the future.

My mistake number 3: Possessiveness.

When our pup was very young, she found a rotting turtle bone on the beach. She ran around with it proudly and carried it into the car with her, and as I reached in to the back seat of the car to give her a drink of water, she completely caught me off guard by growling and then snapping at me because she was guarding her new bone. I was shaken by it, and because she was so little and still had the lead on her, I restrained her and took the turtle bone away.

This was, with hindsight, really stupid, as from then on, when she found a “prize” when we were out and about, she moved straight into guard mode when we even got close to her. She once bared her teeth at my husband when he innocently bent down to see what she had in her mouth.

What I should have done was get some treats out of my pocket and try and swap the turtle bone for the treats, or just have left her to it and dealt with the situation more calmly once we got back home.

I know that there are some people from the old-school of dog training still around who will think I did the right thing originally, by exerting my dominance over her and showing her that I was the boss, but actually, all I succeeded in doing was creating a dog who won’t let me near her when she has ‘contraband’ and will aggressively defend it in the process.

We have managed to work on the issue since then, by training a leave-it command in a positive way, using treats and she will now happily drop most things that she shouldn’t have (apart from edible things – we’re still working on that). But it took many weeks of training and a lot of hard work.

What to do if you have an aggressive dog.

It should be noted that ALL dogs have the potential to be aggressive. If they feel in grave danger, the progression from calming signals through to a full-on, blood-drawing bite can escalate in an instant. What you see as grave danger and what your dog sees as grave danger can be two completely different things, so if your dog feels threatened by your gardener or men with walking sticks, take it seriously and try and work on it and get to know your dog well so that you know when he might feel threatened. Keep a close eye on your dog in unfamiliar situations and around children; even the most well-meaning kids can push a dog into discomfort very quickly. Likewise, it’s really important to teach your kids how to behave around dogs from a very young age, even if you don’t have a dog.

Also, if a dog shows a sudden and unusual aggression reaction to something which may not have bothered him in the past, this can be a classic sign of bad health, so you should have a vet check him over to make sure he’s not in any pain. Dogs are very good at hiding pain for evolutionary reasons, but it can make them more grumpy and prone to snapping.

That aside, if you do feel that your dog is genuinely aggressive, because his growl instinct has been overridden in the past or if he has been physically abused or is incredibly fearful and prone to snapping/biting without warning, there are basically two options open to you. If we were not in Qatar, the first thing to do would be to call on a behaviourist, but unfortunately here in Qatar this is simply not an option. So, your choices are either to have the dog put to sleep, or manage the situations he encounters to ensure that he never gets chance to be aggressive (e.g. keeping him on a lead, muzzling him) and to try and work on his aggression through conditioning. This can be very hard to do without the support of a behaviourist, but if it means the difference between life and death for your dog (and if you can keep other people safe while you work on him), then it is definitely worth a try. There is a useful video here but you may also like to read up on Behaviour Adjustment Therapy (BAT) and consult doggy experts on forums such as dogforum.com

If you do decide that euthansia is the only option, you shouldn’t beat yourself up about it, although of course it will be an incredibly difficult decision to have to make. A dog that lives in a constant state of fear and aggression is not living a happy and fulfilled life anyway. Unfortunately here in Qatar, there are simply too many dogs in relation to the number of homes anyway and plenty of perfectly healthy dogs are put to sleep every year through no fault of their own. By putting your own dog out of his misery and constant torment, you are also acting in the best interests of people who could have ended up being bitten by him and you will also be putting yourself in a position to re-home one of the many other homeless pups in this country, should you eventually decide to try again with another dog.

Dog walking in Qatar

Finding places to walk your dog in Qatar is relatively easy, given that there are so many vacant lots of dusty land dotted around all over the city, but also quite challenging, as you may often encounter piles of waste and litter and also get hassle from people who fear or dislike dogs. The ground can be rough and difficult to walk on and nowhere is completely traffic free, as empty land is often used as a short cut, given that most people have 4WD vehicles.

Walking anywhere in Doha is challenging, as the city has been built around the car and pedestrians are only ever considered, if at all, as an afterthought. Some roads do have pavements, but they are prone to running out, or may be in a very poor state, and opportunities to cross the road are few and far between, with most roads having three lanes of traffic running in each direction.

Some people get lucky and find a great walking route close to their compound. But for owners of bigger, more active dogs, a weekly trip to the beach or the mangroves is often necessary to give your dog a safe and enjoyable opportunity to run around freely.

Personally, I make the trip at least every other day. It’s a great way of tiring my dog out, and there are relatively few distractions on the beach, so it provides good training opportunities, and I really enjoy getting away from the city.

There is a Facebook group called Dogwalkers in Doha which you can request to join – members post on an almost daily basis saying where they’re going dog walking and you can choose to join them, or avoid them, depending on your dog and your mood!

Here are the main places for dog walking around Doha:

Al Wakra Beach

The small town of Al Wakra is about 20km south of the city, and there are a number of ways to get there, including a fast new highway which passes by the new airport. Some expats choose to live in Al Wakra, but there isn’t much to do there, and it is a long taxi journey into Doha for nights out and shopping.

As you drive into Al Wakra, you will see a large power station/desalination plant on the left (Ras Al Funtas). Shops will appear on both sides of the road. You will then arrive at a roundabout with a large, white oyster shell in the middle of it (‘Pearl Roundabout’).

Turn LEFT at Pearl Roundabout and head straight down the road towards the huge pile of sand. Here, the road ends abruptly, so do a u-turn and then take an immediate right. You will pass ‘Marah Land’ on the left. Just after this, make a right and you will see the beach ahead of you. You can park anywhere you like.

Personally, I choose to drive onto the beach and head off as far to the right as possible – at low tide this will usually get you far away enough from other beach users to ensure that you have a lot of space for your dog to run around freely without bothering, or being bothered by, other people. But don’t drive onto the beach unless you have been with someone else first, as there are only one or two safe places to get onto the beach and you need to know where the areas of soft sand are, which must be avoided if you don’t want to get your car stuck! Once on the beach, drive as close to the water line as possible, as this will keep you away from the soft sand, and also avoid any of the raised spits of dry sand, as these tend to be softer and more difficult to drive on.

It is very helpful to know the tides, as the water here is very shallow for many hundreds of metres, so even a 10cm difference in tide height can produce a rapid change in the amount of dry beach available. At low tides, you can drive right out to the old lorry axle which is situated down the far end of the beach.

The old lorry axle at the south end of Wakra beach

At mid tide, this area is covered, but you can park closer to the land and there are lots of sand islands you can walk out with your dog. The water gets no deeper than knee or thigh height anywhere on the beach.

Playing around on the 'islands' at Wakra beach at mid-tide

At high tide, it’s not really worth going at all, as the beach gets completely inundated with water, so you will not be able to walk unless you wade through the water.

Al Wakra beach at mid-high tide

There is land around the beach, but it is usually busy and covered in BBQ waste and litter, so not ideal for dog walking.

For tides, I have the Navionics Marine: Australasia and Africa app on my iPhone, which is expensive at £30.99, but I get plenty of use from it and it’s very detailed. Now that I know Wakra beach really well, I can look up how high the tide is and picture what the beach will look like in my head, which enables me to assess whether or not it’s worth going. A low tide is around 0.5m or less, mid-tide is around 0.8m and anything over 1m is not worth bothering with as the beach is completely inundated.

If you don’t want to fork out so much money on an app, you can use the Easytide website, although this can be quite limiting; I don’t find it to be detailed enough for a shallow beach where a few centimetres can make all the difference.

The Mangroves

‘The Mangroves’ which most people talk about in the context of dog walking are about 20 minutes south of Al Wakra, so they take around 45 minutes to reach from Doha.

It is more isolated and pretty than Al Wakra beach. I tend to go there on Fridays, when dog-walking on Wakra beach is almost impossible because of the number of families picnicking. It is also less tide-sensitive than Wakra beach, so you can go there even when the tide is high.

To get there, head to Al Wakra, but pass straight over the Pearl Roundabout (instead of turning left for the beach). Go straight over all of the other roundabouts too. Beware of newly installed speed cameras along this 80km/h route.

You will end up leaving Al Wakra behind and will be on the main highway to Mesaieed, with a 120km/h speed limit (and plenty of speed cameras). You will eventually pass a petrol station to the right. You will then pass a u-turn gap marked ’emergency vehicles only’ and then a speed camera facing towards you. At the NEXT speed camera, which faces away from you, there is a gap where you should make a u-turn, so make sure you’re in the outside lane in good time (approx. 4km after the petrol station).

After you’ve done your u-turn, drive for approx. 2km and take the next right-hand turn, which is signposted with a warning triangle quite late, so make sure you’re on the inside lane. This will take you over a small hump-backed bridge and towards a car scrapyard. Once you get to the start of the scrapyard, turn right and follow this rough and ready track along the edge of the scrapyard and then passing a ‘canal site investigation office’ to your right. (You are now off-roading, pretty much, but you don’t need 4WD engaged at any point during this journey, and it is possible to get to the mangroves in a ‘normal’ saloon car).

Eventually, the track forks into three – take the left fork and head towards the coastguard station and tree slightly to the left and ahead of you. When the road forks again, just make sure you are headed in the vague direction of the coastguard building and you can’t go wrong – all of the tracks will lead you to the coast.

You should aim to reach the coastline just to the left of the coastguard building. Cut up and across the sand ahead of you and then follow the tracks to the left, keeping the sea and mangrove trees to your right. You can park somewhere along the track, or keep driving. If you follow the trees and coastline, you will eventually come to a sandy area with lots of lovely saltwater pools scattered around it. There is a gap in the mangrove trees here, through which you can walk to a beautiful creek (which can be crossed at mid-low tide to get through to a beautiful, remote beach). Alternatively, you can just carry on along the track, keeping all the mangrove trees on your right, and you will eventually (after about 30 minutes of walking) come out onto the same beach, but at a different place.

This is all quite difficult to explain, so it is worth joining the ‘Dogwalkers in Doha’ Facebook group and tagging along with someone else the first time you go. Personally, I don’t like going there alone anyway, as it feels too isolated and I worry about what would happen if I got into any bother.

It is a really stunning spot, and great for doing a circular route, which can add a welcome sense of purpose to your walking.

Here are some photos, including those from the first annual beach clean which took place there in November 2011.

The mangroves at sunset

Our dog undertaking her favourite pastime of fish hunting

Walking along the track towards the mangroves. We usually park where the cars in the photo are, close to the pools and the gap in the trees which leads through to the creek.

The mangroves beach clean November 2011

The organisers of the mangroves beach clean

All the participants in the mangroves beach clean

There are other places to walk your dog in Qatar, which I might cover another day, but really these are the two best places to go within a 45 minute drive of the city.

Raw diet for dogs update

PLEASE NOTE: This post was originally published on my escapetoqatar blog in December 2011.

My previous post about the raw food diet for my dog seems to have gone down very well indeed, so I thought I would provide a bit of an update for those who are interested. So, has it been a success? Overall, yes, but there have been some bumps along the way.

Food amount.

First of all, we were underfeeding her at first, which I didn’t realise until a couple of weeks in, when she became lethargic and started hunting for food all the time. It was always difficult to know her eventual adult weight, so now I feed her at least 600g a day and use training treats on top of that. She is a very well-exercised dog, so it’s easy to keep her weight in check. Her weight is now around 21kg and seems pretty stable (she is now 10 months old). She is skinny (that’s the saluki in her), but not too skinny.

Food quality.

She started having some digestive problems, culminating in a severe bout of diarroeha. This was actually caused by her hoovering up leftover BBQs on the beach, but it spurred me into action to address her digestion generally. Her poos had already started to become regularly soft and in my research, I had found out that this was not normal and needed to be sorted out.

She then developed a skin infection and I suspected this was indirectly linked to some sort of food allergy, as she was a very itchy dog and the vet had raised concerns about food allergies a few weeks prior to this.

So, after the illnesses I took her right back to basics. I started to feed her only whole chickens. Conveniently, you can buy 600g whole chickens in Lulus and seeing as 600g seems to be her ideal daily food amount, each chicken is exactly one day’s worth of food. I just hack the chicken in half (not for the faint-hearted) and give her half in the morning and the other half at night.

I cut out all the treats she had been having and just used pieces of cooked chicken breast as a training reward.

This was a few weeks ago. The effects were instantaneous (firmer poos, happier and less scratchy dog, shinier coat).

I have gradually played around with introducing other foods and I am now fairly convinced that cheese was the biggest problem for her – we were regularly using cubes of cheese for training.

She is still predominantly fed whole chickens, but she now gets kidneys and mutton chops as well. I have also started to introduce fried oily fish and raw eggs into her diet to help her skin, fur and claws.

I don’t feed her liver at meal times any more, but use it as a training treat instead (boil the livers in water for 20 minutes, dice them and dry them out in a cool oven for 1-2 hours). You can also use the water leftover from boiling the liver to make ‘doggy lollies’ – just pour the stinky water into paper cups and freeze. A liver lolly keeps her happy when we go out and leave her at home!

I intend to bring in other types of meats over time. I think the raw buffalo meat was a bit rich for her at first, but now her digestion is good again I plan to start reintroducing it, especially as it’s so cheap and convenient.

The only thing I am still concerned about is getting the meat:bone:organ ratio correct. Feeding whole chickens has completely thrown my calculations out of the window, as obviously the bones are included with the meat and I don’t know what the ratio of weights is.

I’m not worrying too much about it for now as I feel that she is getting a good diet (and certainly a better one than Royal Canin!) but I do plan to give it some more thought over the coming months.

Practicalities for us humans!

Would I do the raw diet again? Honestly, no, not if we were in England. I would take the lazy route and buy high-quality prepared foods instead, such as James Wellbeloved or Fish4Dogs. But you can’t buy those in Qatar, and I am much happier giving her the raw diet than I would be feeding her Royal Canin or Hills.

The issues we’ve had are:
1. Hygiene. Having a dog dragging raw chicken around the floor is not ideal in a hot climate and we did have a brief increase in the number of cockroaches and ants coming into the house. So we have started to throw her food into her crate and lock her in the crate until she’s finished it – this has also had the very positive effect of crate-training her (which is quite impressive given that she was terrified to even go near her crate a few weeks ago). It’s also essential that she has a positive association with her crate, since she will have to spend 10 hours or more in it when we eventually fly her back to England. After a difficult start with the new regime, she now happily leaps into the crate to remind us when it’s time for breakfast or dinner!

2. Food burials. There was a point where she stopped pooing and weeing in the garden and we found out that this was because she had started burying her meals out there (and bringing them back into the house 3 days later…). I’m not sure what caused this, but I think it was when she lost patience with trying to eat frozen food, so we now defrost it in the fridge before feeding her.  Locking her in her crate for meal times has also put an end to this problem.

3. Freezer space. We ran out of room in the freezer when trying to prep for Christmas so we’ve had to buy another freezer just for the dog!

4. Shopping. Buying raw food adds an extra layer of tedium to the weekly shop as you have to really think about what you are buying and it’s also obviously an extra expense. I do have a habit of concentrating so hard on what to get the dog that I often forget to buy enough food for us humans!

5. Preparation. After coming back from Lulus, the absolute LAST thing I want to do is spend 2 hours hacking up and bagging dead birds or meaty bones, but that is exactly what I have to do! It is extremely tedious work, but it pays off, as for the next 2 weeks all I then have to do is remember to get a few bags out of the freezer to defrost occasionally and then throw the contents into the dog crate at feeding times.

For my next post, I will explain the preparation process and also update a little on buying dog food from the different supermarkets here in Qatar.

Feeding a raw food diet for dogs in Qatar

Please note that this post was originally published on my escapetoqatar blog in September 2011.

Since we’ve been in Doha, we’ve acquired a dog. She is now 7 months old, and we’ve very recently switched her to a raw food diet, for various reasons. Firstly, the more I read about the veterinary-recommended Royal Canin that she was on before, the more I didn’t like feeding it to her. It is packed full of fillers and all sorts of rubbish; empty calories which don’t give the dog any benefits and could in fact be bad for her.

Secondly, Royal Canin is expensive for what it is. There are higher quality foods available in Britain, such as Burns and James Wellbeloved, but you can’t buy them in Qatar. You can only get crappy supermarket brands such as Pedigree and Bakers, or veterinary-marketed brands such as Hills or Royal Canin. None of them come cheap.

Thirdly, she seemed to be developing some skin allergies/anal gland blockages before we went away for our summer holidays, so a natural diet seemed like the way forward to stop the problems from getting any worse in the longer term.

So I trotted off to Lulu Hypermarket a few days ago to stock up, and I thought I would share my experiences in case anybody else is thinking of switching their dog to a raw diet too.

How to feed raw.

The more you read about raw diets, the more complicated it can seem. There is a community of passionate people on the internet advocating raw feeding, or the (slightly different) BARF diet, and you can find endless debates online about the pros and cons of certain foods, which type of bones are OK for dogs to eat, whether or not to feed complex carbohydrates and/or fruits and vegetables, among other things.

I decided to put our pup onto the simplest raw food diet (based on the prey model diet), which is thus:

Feed your dog 2-3% of their ideal adult weight per day. So for our pup, who is now 20kg (and I estimate her adult weight will be around 25kg), this worked out at 400g-600g per day, or 200g-300g per meal.

The diet should be broken down as follows:
(the percentages are averages over the course of a week or month)

80% should be meat (i.e. muscular tissue, which can include heart)
10% should be raw, meaty bones (non-weight bearing bones with lots of meat on, such as ribs)
5% should be liver, which is essential, but if overfed can cause vitamin A overdose in the long term
5% should be ‘other organs’ e.g kidneys, brain etc.

For our 25kg dog I calculated this to mean roughly:

2.8kg-4.2kg of food should be given per week
(Using 4.2kg for the breakdown below):
3,360g of meat per week
420g of bone per week
210g of liver per week
210g of other organs per week

So, I would feed her 200-300g of food at each meal, and one meal a week would be liver, one meal a week would be ‘other organs’ and two meals a week would be bones. The other meals would all be meat.

You don’t have to be TOO pernickety over these amounts, but this is a rough guide for the proportions you need to be aiming for over a period of time. The idea is that you assess the dog’s build regularly to see if she needs to eat more or less, and inspect her poo for consistency when you are picking it up, to check that her digestive system is coping with the diet. E.g too soft poos can be rectified by feeding more bone, and too hard poos/constipation can be rectified by feeding less bone. Sorry for that!

We didn’t bother changing our dog over gently – we just went right ahead and started her on the new diet straight away, although I have in the past given her raw bones, so I knew that she enjoyed and knew how to chew raw food and that she would confidently take anything I gave to her.

What to buy

I have only done one shop so far, so I am still on a learning curve (and would appreciate anybody else’s thoughts through the comments section below), but I will describe what I bought at Lulu Hypermarket so that it can be used as a guide by anyone else feeling a bit overwhelmed at switching to a raw diet. I didn’t buy any chicken meat, as you will see; this is because we have tried her on chicken wings in the past and they made her sick. I’m not sure if this is a chicken allergy, or because she insists on swallowing chicken wings whole without chewing, but either way I didn’t think it wise to include it.

So, here’s what I bought (1 portion = roughly 200-300g):

1 x pack of mutton hearts (makes 2 meat portions)
2 x packs of mutton chops (makes 4 bone portions)
2 x packs of mutton kidneys (makes 4 portions)
1 x large beef liver (makes 3 portions)
3 x packs of buffalo steaks (makes 6 portions)
3 x packs of frozen buffalo meat blocks (makes 9 portions)
1 x double pack of frozen chicken livers on special offer (makes 4 portions)

This made a total of 32 portions, or 16 days’ worth of food.

The total cost was QR203.95, or the equivalent of £35.86. In English money, which is still how I analyse my finances, it works out at £16/week.

I still think this is quite expensive, although I haven’t yet worked out what the daily cost of the Royal Canin worked out as.

I would like to try and get the cost down more, so I am going to try buying more from the frozen food section next time. I might also venture down to the Wholesale Markets to see if there are any bargains to be had there.

The great thing about living in the Middle East is that you can get all sorts of meat and offal very easily in the supermarkets. Stuff that would be a special request in British butchers is widely available, and that includes any part of an animal you can think of! You can even buy ready-packaged sheep heads in the fresh meat section of Lulu! I have heard of a lady feeding these to her dog, as apparently it made her dog very happy and kept it busy for hours, but I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing our mutt chomping on eyeballs or standing outside the lounge window with half a sheep’s brain in her mouth!

Anyway I am sure that if I look a little harder, I will find other types of meat at even lower prices which are suitable for the dog without making my stomach turn!

The chicken livers were an amazing bargain, and the frozen blocks of buffalo meat worked out a lot cheaper than the fresh buffalo steaks. However, one of the brands of frozen buffalo meat blocks had a lot of bone in it, so I must remember not to buy that again (check the packet carefully and look for the bone-free stuff). The frozen buffalo blocks are also a sod to portion up, as you need a big meat cleaver and a lot of patience to break them up. (NB it’s OK to defrost and refreeze dog meat, as dogs’ stomach acid is extremely concentrated and this makes them almost immune to the types of pathogens which us humans have to worry about).

Once I got all the meat home, I portioned it up and put each portion into a food bag and popped it into the freezer. This only took me about an hour.

At dinner time, I just grab a portion and give it to her frozen, which takes me less than 5 seconds. She normally takes it outside to eat and it keeps her busy for a good half an hour, which is a very useful way of buying a bit of extra time to myself twice a day!

We have already noticed that her poos are smaller, less frequent, less smelly and easier to pick up and she certainly seems to be doing very well on her new diet. The only slight issue we had was that she wouldn’t touch the raw chicken livers, so I had to fry those up in a little bit of oil and then she was more than happy to eat them.

In the longer term, I am hoping to see a slightly less hyperactive dog, with a very glossy coat, few health problems and very clean teeth!