A good balanced diet can improve the health of your dog. Raw foods, meats, vegetables, fish and eggs can all contribute to a varying diet which gives your dog the variety that it needs.

Teddy’s diet
Teddy, my dog, has a diet which consists of dry food in the morning and raw food at night. I looked at the package of the dry food and saw that it was filled with all sorts of nutrition which I just assumed would fill any lack of nutrition gap. At around age three I noticed that teddy’s coat started to fade and also get quite coarse. His skin would become quite dry and often he would have issue. I read around on the internet on dry skin and found that it might be a lack of oil in the skin due to a not so good diet. Naturally I thought that this couldn’t be an issue with Teddy as his diet is quite good. On reading further they started to talk about fish oil tablets and omega 3 for dogs. I know humans can take fish oil tablets but never really thought dogs could. Reading about how they can improve a dog’s skin and coat I thought I would give it a try, since I did have a spare case of fish oil tablets in the fridge no one was using.

The results of Omega 3 Fish Oil tablets on dog
I gave teddy one whole fish oil tablet every morning with some cheese. Naturally I didn’t expect much to happen as I don’t totally believe this would be a miracle fix to his coat. After one week not a lot had happened and I thought this must be another one of these alternative healing articles which claim more than they deliver. I continued on with the fish oil every morning as I did have 100 tablets and thought I might as well give this a good shot. After a while it became habit to give him a tablet and I soon forgot about his coat. After about a month I was stroking him and I thought his coat feels softer. It was at this point, I wondered if this was the fish oil. Now 3 months on his coat still feels softer than before, its actually quite amazing and didn’t really expect this. I can’t say for sure that it was the omega 3 tablets however it’s the only part of his diet I have changed. Whenever I catch fish now, especially Kahawai I make it a point to feed some to him. I can’t say for sure that Omega 3 fish oil will definitely soften your dogs coat or improve his skin, however on Teddy the results have being very promising.

The main and practical reason we groom dogs is to improve there coat and health.

- Grooming takes away loose hair and dead skin, improving air circulation within the fur and allowing it to breath.

- With regular grooming you can keep an eye on any skin conditions your dog may experience before they get out of hand.

- You will notice any bite marks from fleas or see ticks on your dog. This means you can get proper, effective flea and tick treatment before it gets out of hand.

- Grooming stimulates the lymphatic system, which works similar to a massage in humans.

- Grooming increases the blood flow to hair follicles. This means a healthy shinny coat.

- You can also get a chance to check your dog’s paws and pads out. This can be a common place for grass seeds, cuts and knots.

- Grooming is a great way to bond with your dog.

In today’s world it can be very hard to find time to groom your dog. Lucky for us we have Professional Groomers.

There can be a variety of issues which cause this however most likely the cause is fleas. Often you won’t see them on your dog however you might notice red bites. The reason you might not see fleas is because they often live off the dog in cracks in your home. A flea only needs to feed once every three months, so a dog with many bites could be caused by only a few fleas. Ongoing bites will mean you have a good number of fleas living in your home. Humid conditions, especially after rainfall then a period of sun, will result in eggs hatching and thus more infestation.

Best treatment is first to apply flea control from your Vet. They are the best to advise you because it varies according to your dog’s size and type of coat. The next step is to vacuum your house and often. Make sure you clean your dogs sleeping area and vacuum well where the wall meets the carpet. If you have cats make sure you de-flea them because they are often a cause of bringing fleas into a home. If you own a dog with a non-shedding coat it can also be a good idea to trim its fur shorter than normal. If a dog is able to chew at the flea bites they can swell up into large red marks and cause even more irritation. In very bad cases you can visit your vet and they can provide you with a cream which sooths the itchiness. If flea treatment isn’t working you may need to consider buying a puppy spray and soaking the whole coat. I have had to do this a couple of times with my spoodle and it works very well. Some dogs are allergic to flea bites and they can break out into a rash. You need to watch this as it can lead to anaphylactic shock in worse cases. Other causes of itchiness are toxic plants, splinters (especially on decks), pollen allergies and other insect bites such as spiders. If you are unsure take them to the vet for a quick check

Unka Unka

It was a fairly hot day and we decided to bring the dogs with us. Lucky for them we were able to get the car fairly close to where we were fishing – otherwise I think they would have died of heat exhaustion! We set up our lines and it was a hoot to see Keran attempt to cast, 3 or 4 attempts later he got it out a reasonable distance. The dogs jumped into the water to cool off which was a welcome relief to the temperature – only made worse since the beach is all rocks. I decided to put on a a standard dropper rig with some floats – the crabs up that way are just a killer on your bait! The bait I used was a pillie wrapped around the hook using bait elastic. I decided to put squid on Keran’s hook to see how he would go with that. After about 15mins and some erratic rod tip movement Keran pulled in what can only be described as a small annoying Shark …. Curious Teddy the spoodle was quite interested in checking out what the shark was… I think it was his first encounter with one haha … After another 15mins I decided to check my line only to find it no longer had bait. Dam crabs had stripped it. I decided to add another large float – I must admit my rig now looked like a chunky mess of floats. I got to the bait area only to have found that teddy had eaten a whole lot of the squid…. huuuuh another reason to put the bait out of reach of the dogs – spoodles love FOOD!

Undeterred I decided to try a combo of squid and pillie. We also started to add some berley just off the shore to attempt to attract fish in close. We also had some left over mussels from the previous te horo mission, so we started to throw these in aswell. Around this time a friendly labrador wonder away from some other fisherman just down the beach from us…. well Teddy made friends with it straight away, however my brothers Jack Russell had other thoughts and got all angry… lucky she was tied up! Anyway the fisherman down the beach yelled there dog back and ofcourse teddy being teddy he followed so I had to leave my fishing rod and get him ….

It wasn’t long till Keran hooked up on a good size Kahawai. But as excited we all got, it soon turned into #@$@# and @#$@# as it got off in the shallows. You see you need to walk a fish backwards onto the shore, not reel and drag it up – haha. Anyway lesions learnt another few hours past and all we managed were more small sharks and the odd mullet. The bird activity was great just nothing interested in what we had on. With the heat reflecting off the rocky beach of Te Horo and it getting later in the day we decided to pack up and head for home. By this time I think the dogs had had enough of the heat, they were in the car so it was ok (doors boot open of course) but that low sun really increases the temperature.

It wasn’t a bad trip, nice to change the routine during the weekend and Keran and the dogs had a lot of fun, we showed him a few pointers on casting and also where to find fish, ironically he caught everything reasonable but that seems to always happen. haha… The dogs encountered there first shark and small fish… teddy had fun!