Purple Pup

06/09/2025

Another couple of collars ready for their new noodle 🥰

06/09/2025

It's another Mega Minke morning this Saturday out at sea off the Yorkshire coast with 18+ Minke Whale reported 3.4 miles off Staithes. North Sea Herring Spawns between Staithes and Whitby every year at this time and the Marine giants come to feed. Report from Yorkshire Wildlife Trust Yorkshire Coast Nature
(library photo Stuart Baines Scarborough Porpoise editor)

06/09/2025

05/09/2025

This is why I rotate proteins through the week, change producers every few months, and often add in a little something something (from 'superfoods' like fish oils, Greek yoghurt, and poached eggs to random table scraps) aiming for a good balance over time. It seems to be working, as we have a fit and healthy seven year old! 🙏🐾💜

Why is my dog losing weight on turkey raw dog food?

Because some recipes are too lean (for some types).

Most companies are not analysing their protein/fat contents in any real way. Those tests are pricey and not required by the authorities.

Like the dry food companies, they are using diet formulators like mine to estimate the nutritional content of their products (as did I when I made raw, not pointing fingers here, needs must) and pop that on the label. That's good enough for the vets who are only really concerned for hazardous bacterial content.

However, most of us now know some can take liberty with what they decide to write on that label.

Eg - is your dog crapping bullets after his rabbit meal? !

That's a common one and it's because there's too much bone in there. No way it's 10% bone. Rabbit meat is expensive, the carcass is not.

In other cases, mixes like beef and duck are notoriously fatty. The fattier the beef mince in the shops the cheaper it is as fat is cheaper than muscle.

In the case of duck parts, the cheapest cut you can buy is carcass, which is hella fatty. They try thin this out with necks which are largely bone and you get this paley pinky mix that looks nothing like deep, dark duck meat....because it isn't. The key to it, when I was manufacturing, was adding duck hearts, some liver and maybe some giblets (if you can find some cleaned). That was great meat but as so many are now making raw, there isn't the hearts to go around. There is no other meat on a duck to work with (that they can afford).

Nobody wants to read 20g fat, 10g of protein on the label so there is a tendency of some of the cheaper brands to claim figures approximating 50:50 protein to fat, but a little experience can tell you from 10m away that it's far, far fattier than that.

Fatty raw has a number of issues. Yes your dog will balloon out in weight but also, less discussed, is that most of the actual nutrition - all the minerals, amino acids, antioxidants etc - are in the red muscle bit. The less of that you get the more deficient the diet becomes nutritionally, over time.

But on the flip side, some raws are too lean. I'm looking at you turkey mixes. Many turkey mixes are made on turkey necks. Reason being, a lot of turkey is flown in from Italy or Poland. Folk don't fly in carcasses (or wings really), that goes to the dry pet food factories so they can put images of roasting turkey breast meat on their labels.

Granted there are some turkey farms in the UK but turkey carcass is pretty hard stuff, for a bird, so you need meat to meaty it up a bit. As we mentioned, when it comes to birds, you think hearts and giblets but again, demand is such that those other bits are hard to find (you need LOTS of hearts per 1 turkey neck....) and inevitably, prices soar.

So there's a good chance some turkey raw dog foods are largely ground-up turkey necks. Still GREAT food for a dog, but a touch boney and, as all poultry necks are de-skinned, a very lean cut of meat.

I like a lean raw dog food myself. I know they evolved on lean animals, not this fatty 1:1 fat-to-protein birds we're putting out (a symptom of high-grain diets and no exercise). Those animals would be cheeseburgers in the wild. Wild animals run for a living, literally. Bar babies, most of them start around 4 parts protein to 1 part fat and get far leaner from there.

But I just finished with a client whose ACTIVE dogs were losing weight on turkey complete. She was feeding quite a lot for the size of them. Waste of money. We upped the fat content with some cheap fatty beef mince and boom, overnight, the weight loss stopped, saving her a fortune and the dog from losing any more muscle mass (while they were clearly getting enough protein, the body needed more energy, so it raids the body for first fat and then muscle protein to fuel it).

Everything in proportion.

03/09/2025

Coat disturbances. What are they? What do they mean? And why do they happen?

They’re often overlooked, yet a dog’s coat can be one of the clearest markers of underlying health and discomfort.

Dry or greasy areas, thinning patches, swirls, flat spots, or changes in colour can all signal that something more is going on beneath the surface.

Sometimes it’s allergies, sometimes musculoskeletal pain, sometimes something deeper. These patterns aren’t always tied to one condition, but when you know what to look for, themes start to emerge.

It’s easy to brush these signs off as “just how the coat grows,” but for those of us working with dogs, paying closer attention can reveal so much more about their wellbeing.

👉 Want to learn how to spot the subtle signs that others miss? Join our Dynamic Dog course and take your knowledge to the next level.

https://www.dynamicdog.co.uk/dynamicdog

03/09/2025

Jak długo żyją psy i co naprawdę ma na to wpływ?
Właśnie ukazało się jedno z największych badań na świecie dotyczących długości życia psów i kotów. Naukowcy przeanalizowali dane medyczne ponad 13 milionów psów (i 2 miliony kotów) w USA. Wyniki dają nam, opiekunom, bardzo konkretne wskazówki.

Najważniejsze wnioski z badania:
Średnia długość życia psów to 12,7 lat.
Tak, małe psy żyją dłużej – średnio do 13,5 lat, podczas gdy psy olbrzymie średnio tylko 9,5 roku.
Suki żyją odrobinę dłużej niż samce (różnica to 1,5 miesiąca).
Kondycja ciała ma ogromne znaczenie: psy z otyłością żyją średnio o 1,5 roku krócej niż psy mające prawidłową masę ciała.

Najważniejszym czynnikiem, na który masz realny wpływ, jest utrzymanie prawidłowej masy ciała swojego psa. To nie tylko kwestia wyglądu – to średnio półtora roku więcej wspólnego życia.
Genetyki ani rozmiaru psa nie zmienisz, ale możesz zadbać o codzienną aktywność, a przede wszystkim o zbilansowaną dietę i unikanie nadwagi. To jeden z najprostszych, a jednocześnie najskuteczniejszych sposobów, by dać psu więcej zdrowych lat.

Źródło: Montoya M, Morrison JA, Arrignon F, Spofford N, Charles H, Hours M-A, Biourge V (2023). Life expectancy tables for dogs and cats derived from clinical data. Front. Vet. Sci. 10:1082102.

03/09/2025

A.k.a. Reverse CPR

03/09/2025

Absolutely this! 👌I get so fed up hearing a certain kind of trainer suggesting that management is somehow lazy, or ineffective. No. It's just common sense! 🤷‍♀️

Being proactive

People often ask me “how do I stop my dog from jumping up/barking at the window/counter surfing?” Instead of thinking about how to stop a behaviour AFTER it’s happened, it’s so much more effective to be proactive and try to PREVENT basic behaviours like these.

There are many parallels between having a dog and having a small child in the house. We don’t ask “how do I stop my child from playing with knives?” - we simply lock dangerous items out of sight. We don’t ask “how do I stop my child from wandering into the street?” - we lock the door and keep an eye on them. It’s exactly the same with dogs - if you don’t want them to do something, your first port of call is restricting their access to it.

So if your dog is barking at the window all day, try making simple environmental changes like moving furniture they can use to climb on, putting up window film or using a noise blocker. If your dog counter surfs, don’t leave food lying around, and if they chew your shoes just pop them away in the cupboard. It takes very little effort and can make a huge difference.

Let me know if this is something you’d like help with 🐾

03/09/2025

This! 👌🐾💜

03/09/2025

It’s fair to call out other forms of abuse. A dog that’s neglected in the backyard, under-stimulated, or overfed to the point of illness, that’s abuse, plain and simple.

But when you call out abuse in no uncertain terms as a way to deflect from what others are leveling against you… and then defend your own position with euphemisms and sleight of hand… you’re acknowledging something. You’re admitting, however indirectly, that what you’re doing could be seen as abuse, otherwise, why the verbal gymnastics?

Because if the tools you’re defending were simply what you say they are, “guidance,” “structure,” “freedom,” “love,” you wouldn’t need to disguise them in softer words or shift the conversation elsewhere.

The truth is simple: abuse doesn’t disappear just because you point to another form of it, and it doesn’t become noble because you rename it. Euphemisms might change how we talk about control, pain, or fear, but they don’t change the experience of the dog.

And I’ll be clear: I don’t stand outside of this conversation. My own training has been a process of evolution. What I once accepted, I now recognize as harmful, and I know there’s still room for me to improve. But if we can’t challenge absurdities and logical fallacies in how abuse is debated, then we can’t ever come to honest terms, as a community, with what abuse really is.

03/09/2025

I NEED TO FEEL SAFE!

Like all living creatures, ourselves included, dogs need to feel safe – it’s a basic need for survival.

It’s hard wired into our brains to keep asking and checking – “Am I safe?” or “Is this safe?”

When we think about feeling safe it’s natural to just think about not being harmed or being in danger, but it’s not just about physical safety - feeling emotionally or psychologically safe is just as important.

While physical safety may be obvious and simpler to address, emotional safety is far more complex and not always easy to recognise or identify.

The same applies to our dogs – they are sentient beings whose behaviour is triggered and driven by emotions.

So many behaviour problems that we see in dogs stem from the brain saying– “I don’t feel safe!”

A dog that lunges and barks or behaves aggressively with another dog or person is very likely doing so because they feel unsafe. They are trying to make the scary thing go away.

A dog that is guarding resources is doing so because they are afraid that the resource will be taken away – they don’t feel safe when another animal or person approaches that resource.

A dog that is reacting to fireworks or thunderstorms or other noises is doing so because they don’t feel safe.

The same can be said for separation distress – the feeling of intense panic when left alone – “I am not safe!”

Some dogs may never get over a specific fear, but doing all we can to help dogs feel safe in our world is one of the most important gifts we can give them.

Our first responsibility should not be about training, obedience or trying to change behaviour, but to focus first and foremost on building trust, self-confidence, resilience, creating a safe and secure base and being the person that our dogs can rely on and trust.

In the words of Dr. Gabor Maté - "Feeling safe is the treatment and creating safety is the work".

In my words (as it pertains to dogs) – It is our responsibility to put in the work to enable our dogs to feel safe and when they feel safe, this will be part of the treatment or the solution to the problem.