Weekly Shibatudes: A Rat

Beebe and Ike have a new favorite game. We call it, "Get that Rat" and it's immediately followed by Shiba screams and a frantic attempt to locate the Rat that has been seeking to burrow beneath my Quail pen. We have greatly enjoyed this new game ever since the discovery of a break in and one badly maimed hen and missing eggs. As poisons are out of the question, I'm trying some natural pest control and using my Shiba girl in a role she is well suited to, after all, they are excellent vermin hunters. They excel at killing laser lights, anyways. Once again, my neighbors must think I am incredibly cruel beating my dogs until they holler :)

Dog Show Newbie blog

This blog is too funny, but spot on:

Here we read about the garden paths in dog showing that many newbies eventually wander down. According to this, my next step is the purchase of a van and an opposite sex show pup to help me win some majors. My head spins when I think about the $ spent on "necessary" junk at dog shows.
http://dogshownewbie.blogspot.com/2009/08/but-stories-you-can-tell-priceless.html

I would just die if this happened to me. One great reason not to wear miniskirts at a dog show!

http://dogshownewbie.blogspot.com/2008/05/what-not-to-wear-dog-show-edition.html

The Shibas Enjoy Raw Meat

First raw organ meal (beef liver)-check

First by product meal (bison heart)-check

First whole prey item (smelt)-check

Growing my own quail eggs to throw in every day or so-check

No more kibble-check

Amazing coats-check

Next step-whole quail

We went to the butcher shop and selected a most unusual array of locally raised meat products including bison tongue and hearts, flash frozen smelts and whole rabbits. We weren't brave enough to take home the sweet breads or spleens, but next visit I would like to buy some chicken feet, sardines, whole pheasant for variety, and some venison for red meat-but I'm not sure what cuts to get.

If anyone is ever interested in that old-timey butcher shop feel, seriously go check out Green Valley Meats in Auburn, WA on Black Diamond Road. They don't have a web page, but they have an amazing selection of locally raised and hand butchered meats. They also process wild game (like quail!)

The Versatile Shiba!

An oldy but a goodie, Beebe goes Lure Coursing and practices her agility while Ike takes notes.

Disqualifying Faults

Although not exactly contradictory to any specific AKC rule, unintentionally producing pups that deviate from the standard is expected when breeding, after all genetics are not always predictable. Selling them is something that is basically up to the breeders judgement on how best to proceed. The ethical thing, in my opinion, is to place a pup with a DQ (disqualifying fault) like over/under height, misaligned bite, or less seriously non standard color, in a screened pet home on a spay/neuter contract.

AKC makes no demands that a breeder do this, only that the breeder abide ethically when breeding along with following some other pitifully inadequate rules mainly concerning registration. AKC is after all, primarily a registration body involved in the pedigree sports of purebred dogs, although the more recent approach is to profess a passion for all things dog, purebred or mix. Some breeders really walk a fine line, however, on the ethics front. They profess to abide by their breed clubs code of ethics, but then I see well known breeders with dogs in the top 20 selling Mame Shiba on their webpages.

"Mame Male Shiba available Aug 31st!I named him "Hamburgular" because he loves Hamburger.He loves to be held, will be very small.sold on a Pet Contract - Please Call me"
http://www.pets4you.com/pages/morningstar.html

What am I to make of all this? To me, this promotes poor breeding practice by endorsing fad breeding. While not exactly violating any AKC rules, like improperly registering a litter or falsifying a pups birth in order to gain registry with NIPPO or JKC, this is a big ethical DQ in my book regardless.

Consequences of Growing My Own

Well, I was attempting to sex/segregate the birds as the juvenile batch is getting older, and some of the males are starting to fight over the few females of reproductive age. As I was doing this, one of the big guys flew right up passed me and out of the coop. After a thrilling little chase with the bird net, he was recaptured (I wasn't going to hold a little thing like that against him, I would have done the same), and returned to the hutch...where he immediately began attacking the other birds. That wasn't going to do at all. So, to make a short story even shorter, I now have a nice big fat Quail decorating the inside of my freezer. In a week or two, he will belong to the dogs.

Don't worry, I'm an old hand at this and it was fast. Seriously though, isn't this all apart of growing your own foodstuffs and getting back in touch with the Urban Farmer in all of us? Is it any better to blindly walk into a supermarket, be completely disassociated from the veg, egg, milk, meat or kibble you have purchased, and take that home to feed your pets instead not knowing what went into the animal or how it was treated before and after death?


I still felt bad, and I have decided firmly that I won't be eating the birds I grow or the eggs, they are for the dogs or perhaps to barter down the road with someone else for a foodstuff the dogs can use in their raw diet. I have also decided that a goal in feeding raw, aside from the primary health benefits to my dogs, will be to attain home grown products from small family farms and to support small, local business thru barter or trade. I won't be supporting companies like Tyson or ConAgra, and I accept the fact that although it may be more inconvenient, I will need to seek out those elusive old timey butcher shops from time to time and do what people did before there was kibbles.


Some exciting news, a family relation is raising a herd Kobe beef and my mom has some hearts, livers and kidneys waiting for me in her freezer, for free. I think the dogs are liking this Japanese themed raw diet!

Disgusting Parasites

There's a what in my what!!!!!

I periodically check stool samples on my dogs for many reasons to screen for intestinal parasites. We are on the road a lot and tend to spend our weekends at Fairgrounds for competetions, where less unscrupulous dog owners may not have cleaned up after their dogs, or medicated them, or even realized they were harboring these disgusting horrid monsters (the worms, not those little yappy 3lb finger bitters).

Beebe goes to daycare once a week and believe me, she hasn't gotten over the habit of putting everything in her mouth. Is she a human toddler or a dog? I can't be too sure sometimes. Ike is also a relentless hand washer, he may be a little OCD in fact, but it could also just be that he likes his gloves to be uber white, so he spends a great deal of time cleaning them. They could at any moment be host to all sorts of burrowing worms.

Imagine my utter disgust and tingly sensation in a bad way when I found Hookworm eggs in a poo sample. We started fenbendazole and will check serial poos, if this does not clear it up, something stronger and more long term will be needed. This can be a very tenacious parasite. I have often seen it in Greyhounds fresh off the track and in rescue, and provided the meds for months to years for entire packs of dogs living together.

Living with multiple dogs and now multiple species, I do keep the yard picked up immediately anyways, and clean. I don't feel this was something aquired from lack of sanitation in my home or eating a raw diet, (the dogs would be more likely to pick up coccidia from the Quail if anything, and they aren't allowed into the Quail area), but more as a result of travel and daily life with multiple dogs that are out and about away from home.

A coworker teased me and suggested I might contract larval migrans, now that would truely be something disgusting and horrible. This hookworm infestation, this is just a disgusting inconvienience of living it up. Good thing we check stool samples!