JS and Melanie's Public and Special Events Album

Little Pete After 1 Year

Posted by on November 30, 2004 at 08:52 PM UTC in categories Pete

Donnett's Pepper Pete/20041127-113356-mevallee-0497.jpg does not exist.
Well, Pete celebrated his 1st year on November 4th - as I turned 36 the same day. :-)

It's been a long road, but Pete is doing extremely well these days, and things just keep getting better. We had some aggression issues early on, and after some hard work - and a few training dead-ends - we're now feeding him without any hint of stress. As you know, we feed raw food, so those raw meaty bones have some pretty high value. :-) We're up to 3lbs/day of chicken backs, rabbit frames, meat (venision, bison and beef), offal (green tripe and liver), turkey neck, lamb bones, quail frames, etc. It's a little expensive (almost $200/month), but he should settle around 2lbs/day eventually. We used to chop up the bigger pieces, but now we're giving him the chicken backs, rabbit frames, etc. whole. Our current training consists of approaching the bowl and dropping more food as he's chewing on a piece. He's very relaxed and likes to see us coming towards him when he eats because he expects to get more food. :-) In another 3-4 weeks we expect to introduce larger and bigger bones. We're up to about 2-3 min / piece, but large beef bones can take a good 15-20 mins to finish. We're not there yet, but we'll get there eventually. :-) Pete also developed a dislike for being brushed, having his nails clipped and ears cleaned. We're addressing that by having him "pay for his meals". He has to submit to a brush (just a few strokes), etc. before every meal. If he complains, we postpone the meal. It hasn't happened too often. :-) He's started wagging his tail when he sees the brush, so we're making good progress. :-)

Read more... | 4 comments | view comments
Copyright ©2003 Jean-Sébastien Morisset and Mélanie Vallée. All rights reserved.