Train Your Dog Here

Train your Dogs to Rescue You and Family. 

How? 

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The Family Disaster Dog books are free on Kindle and audible as my way of helping everyone be prepared with their pets. 

 

Safety Measures While Keeping Your Pooch Active In Winter

Keeping active in winter is tricky for everyone. For new pet owners, however, keeping their dogs active and fit during the cold season can feel like an impossible challenge if you lack experience. Indeed, despite their natural coat, dogs can feel the cold too. If you’re planning on enjoying the great outdoors, you need to make sure that you can play safely with your dog during wintertime without putting your pet at risk of hypothermia or other cold-related issues. 

What are the precautions you need to take to keep your dog healthy? 

You need to understand that there is a variety of different cold weathers and a variety of dogs, all different in size, coat, strength, and health. Your role as an owner is to find the right balance to keep your pooch active in winter.

Should your let your pooch play in the snow?

Your dog needs exercise no matter what

First of all, dogs need to stay exercised to maintain both their mood and their health. Thankfully, your dog’s needs are simple so that going for a walk can act as an exciting exercise for your pet. 

Regardless of the season, you should walk your dog at least twice a day, morning and evening. You can alternate routes and pace to entertain your dog and keep the walk enjoyable. Ultimately, even if you can’t do anything else in winter, going for a walk can be plenty of fun and exercise even in winter.

Be mindful of rain and deep puddles

However, the winter weather can force you to consider safer and more accessible paths to avoid puddles and cold water. Indeed, your dog can suffer from hypothermia if they jump in freezing water. 

You want to make sure that you keep young and excited pooches on a tight leash in winter to stop them from jumping into cold lakes and rivers during your daily walks. It’s a good idea to invest in a waterproof leash to maintain your grip even under the rain! If your dog jumps and swims into the water despite your best efforts, always try to dry her coat as soon as possible.

Protect your pooch

While some dogs have a thick coat such as Siberian Huskies, others tend to have a thin coat and suffer more in the cold, such as Greyhounds. Dogs who are used to cold temperatures and have double-layered coats handle the winter weather much better than others. You can help your dog make the most of your daily walks by investing in a pet-jacket or coat to protect her. You can also prep the paws using balms and sticking to proper grooming techniques. Cleanse your dog’s paws after a walk to remove all the toxic salt and de-icer. You can also use little boots to keep her feet healthy.

Should you adjust the diet?

Last, but not least, there’s no denying that body fat is designed to keep us warm. That being said, it doesn’t mean you can allow your pooch to put on weight in winter. However, you can focus on a vitamin-rich and nutritious diet that provides all the elements your dog needs to maintain her weight during the cold months. Be careful not to overfeed her!

Keeping your dog active in winter is not about the amount of exercise you prepare for her, but how you ensure that the outdoors time remains safe and healthy. From keeping your dog away from cold bodies of water to protecting her paws, beware of the risks of winter!

Family Disaster Dogs

On March 11, 2011 a tsunami was generated in Japan that spread as far as the Oregon Coast. This event set off our emergency warning system and tsunami sirens that woke the whole town up with evacuate calls to each house at three in the morning.

While I sat on the sofa, prepared and waiting to evacuate with my retired Search and Rescue Bloodhound, Daisy, the idea of Family Disaster Dogs came to me.

I look at her and thought the average family dog could help its own family during emergencies just like search dogs do.

I realized the importance of a family dog already on site and how much valuable time this could save.
And, how easy it could be for the average family to teach their dog to rescue them and find family members in the comfort of home whenever they had time.

The more I thought about the idea the more dog training lessons came to mind and I began to write the Family Disaster Dog Book and this site that night with Daisy by my side until the end of the first draft like she would have been to the end of a trail. Miss Daisy passed away as the book’s draft came to the end in Sept of 2013.

Bloodhounds taught me that one of our biggest fears and chores during a disaster is losing or finding a loved one. Twelve years spent training them and other dog breeds in search dogs skills taught me that every dog has the ability to find its own family members or friends.

Dogs do these skills on their own every day without us noticing. Teaching your family pet to come to your aid during an emergency is not as difficult as one might think.

Our dogs are usually following us around very willing to offer a helpful paw whenever we need one. All we have to do is learn how to ask the dog for help in unusual or disaster situations.

These lessons take into consideration that family dogs come in all sizes, shapes, ages and personalities like the families they live with. Each lesson is tailored to fit into a family situation and the home is the class room.

For this reason, this book is not the ordinary step by step manual of how to train your dog to be on a leash doing exactly what you say.

Search dogs have to think on their own like family dogs do while interacting in human activities which makes a family dog the ideal student for search dog purposes.

Search dog handlers have to learn to work with a dog’s natural ability and most of the training involves learning how to read the dog’s actions, along with how to have the dog show us what they find.

House dogs do this every day by showing us when they want to play with a favorite ball or go outside for a walk. Most dogs are not obedience or police dog candidates; they are pets whose owner has taken the time to show them what to do.

House dogs are preforming search dog skills all the time without us recognizing or knowing they are. When the family dog follows children around the yard or comes to find you at dinner time they are doing what search dogs do.

Your dog is finding, searching, locating and signaling you.

Oregon Bloodhound Rescue

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