February 20, 2017

Today is national 'Love Your Pet Day'.  I know this because I subscribe to Buchheit's blog.  Of course, they have an ulterior motive for mentioning this day.  They want you to buy something special for your dog.

The first item they suggested was to make sure you are feeding the right kind of food to the right kind of dog.  We are already doing this.  Mabel gets a food called 'Bright Minds' because she is old and has bad eyesight so we figure this is the right food for her needs.  Buddy, on the other hand, is also old but he is losing his hair so he gets a high protein food.  This food is apparently delicious so we also give it to Frankie even though he is young and not losing any hair (except for normal Basset Hound hair loss which is a lot believe me.)  Basically, he gets to eat this food because we (I mean Mike) deny him nothing.  He is the baby.  

Gracie and Blackie are overweight which is a health concern so they get special weight loss food.  Needless to say,  it is quite a chore for Mike to prepare the food for these dogs every night and then to make sure the right dog eats the right food for his or her needs.  

Then they suggested teaching your dog a new trick.  This is supposedly good mental stimulation for your dog which I am sure it is.  However, our dogs do not even have any old tricks so I decided to just bypass this idea.  

Next suggestion was to give your dogs treats.  As it is, Mike gives the dogs a treat every morning after he gets them up.  As far as I can ascertain, they 'earn' this treat just for getting up.  Then during the day he gives them 'Chew Chips' from PetSmart.  They do not need anymore treats.  

The last suggestion was to take your dog for a walk.  Dogs should get 30 minutes of exercise daily according to the Buchheit blog.  This we can do and it does not cost anything.  So Mike and I started out on a 4 mile walk with the dogs.  See below for how they looked about half way through the walk.  Three of the four dogs have their tongues hanging out.  The only reason Frankie does not is he just took a drink in the pond.  Not surprisingly they did not make the full four miles.  They quit after two.  

I am not worried though.  Our dogs may not get pampered like in the first picture on this blog but they do get pampered.  Every day around here is 'Love Your Dog Day'.