Giving a dog a bath can be fun – or a challenge! You might not expect it, but even the most untrained dogs will often be really good when you give them a bath. Dogs can understand you’re helping them get clean, and most appreciate it! If you are an experienced dog bather, you might think a whole blog article about how to give a dog a bath is a little silly! But for a dog bath newbie, knowing what to expect and how to prepare for the experience can make it less intimidating the first time, and soon they’ll be an expert dog bath giver too. Here are a few simple steps so your dog washing event is smooth sailing for both you and your pup.

Photo credit: http://www.sxc.hu/photo/8638

Bath location: Decide where you are going to give the bath. If you’re in an apartment or don’t have a yard, it will likely be in your bathtub or shower. Kitchen sinks can work for a very tiny (under 10 pound) dog, if you have a nice flat big kitchen sink, with a faucet you can move totally out of the way. Even if you have a yard, giving a dog a bath with cold water from a hose isn’t much fun for either of you, except on the hottest days. You’re going to likely be getting pretty wet too! But it is often the only option for a dog that is too big for you to pick up if you only have a tub. You can’t expect a big dog to jump into the tub!

Bath supplies:

• Dog brush
• Dog-safe shampoo
• Dog-safe conditioner (optional)
• Towels 
• A shower nozzle (see below), or a plastic bowl or big cup, to scoop up water out of the tub for wetting and rinsing.

Shower nozzle: If you are going to be bathing your dog at home regularly, having a spray nozzle on the end of a hose attached to your faucet, so you can spray your dog with exactly the right temperature water to wet and rinse them, makes bath time so much easier! 

Find a helper: having someone to hold the dog while you bathe them so they don’t jump out of the tub is ideal. If you can’t find a helper, bathe them wearing their harness or leash, so you have more control – you will be bathing them one handed that way though, so it does take a bit longer!

Steps to give your dog a bath in the tub:

1. Brush your dog. If your dog has longer hair, make sure it is tangle-free. Matts will become impossible to brush out once they’ve become wet.

2. Set the shower or tub’s water temperature to warm – not hot. About as warm as you’d have for a human baby.  If you don’t have a nozzle spray, fill the tub up to six inches at most, even for a big dog. More water usually just means more mess! You also don’t want your dog to feel like they have to swim, so have the water level be low enough so it’s not touching their belly when they are standing in it.

3. Make sure you have all your supplies in the bathroom. Bring your dog into the bathroom and close the door. Pick up your dog and put them in the water. Lots of praise telling them how good they are being!

4. Using the spray nozzle or the plastic cup, wet their fur all over. Do not get water in their ears or eyes – just use your wet hands to wet the fur on their ears and face, don’t pour water over their head.

5. Shampoo: Put a tiny amount of dog shampoo in your hand. Starting with less is better, so you don’t have to do too much rinsing! Lather up starting at their tail. You can often push the shampoo foam through their fur so you don’t need to use as much. To clean their ears and face, wipe your barely-soapy hand over the outside of their ears (never inside) and their face avoiding the eyes by a wide margin.

6. Rinse: Thoroughly rinse off all the shampoo using the nozzle spray or scooping water from the bottom of the tub.

7. Dry: Lift them out of the tub, and towel them off. You’re all done, you have a clean dog! Now all you have to do is clean the tub…

What about blow drying? Dogs really don’t like the noise of a blow dryer. But if your dog is older, is a puppy, or otherwise susceptible to getting chilled and your house is cool, you may want to dry them with a hair dryer, set to medium (not hot) and blown from about 2 feet away from their fur while running your hand over the fur at the same time, so you make sure its not getting too warm. You can also engage them in some active play (race around the living room table!) to get their internal body temperature up.

You may have noticed that we don’t have many blog articles here about adopting parrots or other birds. That’s because although I have had decades of experience caring, fostering, and adopting out dogs, cats, rabbits, and other pets in my work with animal shelters and rescues, when it came time to counsel someone about adopting a bird – I would always ask that one of the more bird-experienced staff handle that adoption consultation. Many first-time bird adopters are just like me: they think birds and parrots are beautiful, fascinating creatures, but know almost nothing about what would be involved with adopting and caring for a bird, especially a parrot. Fortunately, there are great bird and parrot experts who can help guide us bird novices through deciding if we are ready to adopt a parrot, cockatoo, canary, or any other bird. Read on for some basic steps to get you ready to adopt a bird!

1. Educate yourself. You can get books about the bird your interested in adopting from your local library, or read articles on bird rescue website. Every type of bird is different, so make sure you read up on the particular needs. Many birds are very social and need lots of attention. Birds do produce dander so are not hypoallergenic. They can be messy and their area will need daily cleaning. See the bottom of this page for links to more great online articles from bird experts too!

2. What kind of bird? If you’re not sure what type of bird you want to adopt yet, go spend time with possibilities, and talk to their foster homes about their personalities and needs. Birds need varied diets, exercise outside their cage, socialization, sufficient daily direct sunlight or full-spectrum lighting, When you think you’ve decided, you might want to start by fostering a bird for a local rescue. That way you can give bird care-taking a try, without making a lifetime commitment. Parrots  can live 50 years or more!

3. Budget for your bird. Just like other pets, bird costs vary – mostly depending on size. Smaller birds eat less so monthly costs are slightly less, while the initial setup costs can be a lot more for bigger birds for a proper cage, carrier, and flight cage or aviary. Birds need vet care from vets that specialize in birds, which can be expensive. See this PDF of How Much Birds Cost from the Companion Parrot Connection.

4. Check with your landlord or HOA to make sure birds are allowed where you live. Parrots, cockatoos, cockatiels and many other types of birds like to talk! They also can be destructive if not properly exercised and entertained – chewing wood is a natural behavior for many birds, and while that can be directed at an appropriate bird wood chew toy, it can also be a window sill or door frame if you’re not careful.

5. Find a bird to adopt! You adopt a parrot by using the Parrot Search on our website, or you can adopt a bird like an African Gray, Canary, Cockatoo, or even a Chicken using our Adopt a Bird search to find all kinds of birds for adoption near you.

More reading:

• Mickaboo Companion Bird Rescue’s Reading Room dozens of articles.
• The Avian Welfare Coalition’s PDF flyer on Keeping Parrots as Pets
• The True Nature of Parrots as Pets
• Chole Sanctuary online library including videos.

You’re a great pet parent. Your pup eats only the healthiest of dog foods, and follows the perfect exercise regimen for his age and energy level. Unfortunately, winter or bad weather any time of year can throw a wrench into your morning jogs or afternoon walk routine. Have you ever spent a snow day stuck indoors with an un-exercised energetic dog? As the “fur mom” of a 1-year-old adopted Boxer mix, I can personally tell you that it’s a bit like spending an afternoon with a sugared-up toddler! I love my pup so much, but when we’re snowed in and he can’t get his daily exercise, he will get into anything and everything, run in circles around my living room, and won’t stop whining. Fortunately for me, and other pet parents of higher energy dogs, you can give your dog a full physical and mental workout indoors with just a few commands and toys. Here are three games you can play indoors with your dog, no matter what mother nature is doing outside. As with any physical activity, both you and your dog should start out slowly with the intensity and duration of any exercise, and build up your strength and stamina slowly over time. 

Photo credit: FlyNutAA

Search

Playing search with your dog is a great way to exercise physically and mentally. As your dog becomes more adept at finding, you can increase the difficulty of the game by using harder hiding spots.

1. Name one of your dog’s toys. For this exercise, we’ll call his bunny toy Bunny.

2. Ask your dog to sit and stay. Let him sniff Bunny. Tell him, “This is Bunny”. Walk away a few paces and drop Bunny at your feet. Call your dog and tell him to “Find Bunny.”

3. When your dog runs over and “finds” Bunny, give him a treat and praise.

4. As your dog gets more comfortable finding Bunny, hide the toy out of sight in other rooms in increasingly difficult hiding spots.

Search games can take many forms. You can hide treats around the house for your dog to find. Or train his nose with a modified version of the shell game with kitchen pots.

The Statue Game

A great way to burn off excess energy and focus on training is the statue game. The goal of the game is to get your dog wound up and then having her respond immediately to a sit and stay command. So they need to have a good understanding of the sit and stay command first, before trying this game. This teaches her valuable listening skills for situations when she is overly excited.

1. Start dancing or jumping around with your dog to get his or her energy up.

2. Freeze in place and tell your dog to sit and stay.

3. Hold the freeze and give a treat and praise.

4. Repeat!

Any kind of game you play that will get your dog excited and then immediately require her to calm down and perform some of her commands or tricks will be beneficial to you both.

Stair Sprints

When your afternoon visit to the dog park isn’t an option, either because the weather is too bad or because you had to spend more time at the pet wash than you anticipated, you can try this tiring game. Ideally you’ll use a second human to help, but you can get a workout yourself going up and down the stairs too!

1. Position one person at the top of a flight of stairs and one at the bottom, each with a stash of treats.

2. Take turns calling your dog to the top and the bottom of the stairs.

3. When your dog gets to you, give a treat.

4. Immediately have your partner call him back to them.

This game will also work in a hallway if you don’t have stairs. Depending on how energetic your dog is this might be a very short game. Don’t forget to build up their endurance over days and weeks, just like if you were starting a new exercise program! Even if your dog is used to going on long walks or jogging with you, stairs work different muscles.

When to Stop

As pet owners we need to make it very clear when the game is over, especially when it involves behavior that would be unsafe in other situations. Imagine your dog sprinting on the stairs every time you went upstairs. Keep your playtime voice and mannerisms more playful. When the games are over, stand up straight use a calm tone and say “over” or “done.” It also helps to redirect your dog to his or her water and a special treat like a peanut butter filled toy that will help them transition to a more calm state.

We hope you enjoy these fun indoor games with your dog!

Michelle Rebecca is an aspiring writer, blogger, and new fur mama to a 1-year-old boxer mix rescue. She has a passion for the Internet, and loves how it connects people across the globe. She loves that blogging gives her the opportunity to voice her thoughts and share advice with an unlimited audience.

Did you make a New Year’s Resolution this year? Maybe more than one? We have quite a list going here in the Adopt-a-Pet.com home offices… see below for our New Year’s Eve resolution countdown! Topping my foster pets’ resolutions is to find a forever loving home! They are very excited about what’s on the 2014 calendar for Adopt-a-Pet.com to help them — and all the other hundreds of thousands of pets listed on Adopt-a-Pet.com — a fabulous adoption match. Second on the foster kittens’ list is not to jump on my keyboard to send half finished email messages, no matter how much fun it is! I admit, helped them write their list. Not all New Year’s resolutions are fun or easy to keep, but I am definitely going to enjoy helping them with both of those! Here at Adopt-a-Pet.com we work on our resolution all year long of helping shelters and rescues find great loving adopters for the homeless pets in their care. We’ve kept that resolution, along with others like keeping our nonprofit website totally free for adopters, shelters, and rescues to use; to make our site the best it can be so finding a pet to adopt is quick and easy, as is listing pets so we’re saving shelters and rescues time. We have some new resolutions in 2014 and we’re really looking forward to sharing them with you soon! As the countdown to a new year begins, we decided to countdown 5 resolutions we hope you’ll join us in making for the new year:

5. Help a homeless pet by sharing or tweeting their Adopt-a-Pet.com link to my friends and family. 

4. Volunteer at my local animal shelter or rescue.

3. Get my pets a yearly vet check-up to help them stay health and happy.

2. Spay or neuter my dogs, cats, and rabbits.

1. Adopt a pet (or help a friend or family adopt) and give them a life-long loving home.

Happy New Year! 

As veterinary care for pets continues to advance, one of the amazing ways dog owners can help their dogs heal or regain mobility is with the use of orthopedics. Sometimes it looks like the making of a bionic dog, especially when a pet in pain or without a limb can suddenly walk or even run again! There have been tremendous strides made (excuse the pun) in both surgery and prosthetics and orthopedics for pets in the past decade. One company at the forefront is Animal Orthocare. We had the chance to speak to Derrick Campana, who founded Animal Orthocare in June of 2005 and is the company’s current president, as well as being a certified Orthotist/Prosthetist. Here’s what he had to say!

What inspired you to starting helping other animals in addition to humans?

In 2004, A veterinarian came to the office I was working at (Hanger Orthopedic Group in Bethesda, MD) with her dog named Charles. He had a congenital deformity and was in need of a prosthesis. I built the device and the veterinarian said that there is a very high need for these services, but no one does this. At the time only one other company had been established about 6 months before I started Animal Orthocare in 2005.

Which is your most popular product?

Approximately 85% of our business is fabricating stifle braces (ACL knee braces for animals). CCL ruptures are the most common injury that we see and help via the use of our custom knee (stifle) braces. From there, we se a lot of prosthetics, then hock braces for Achilles injuries and carpal braces for carpal hyperextension.

Aside from the information you provide in your website’s FAQ, are there other questions or concerns from vets or pet owners that you are asked frequently?

Probably the biggest misconception is the price of our products. Most people think that only rich people can afford a brace or prosthesis, but in reality they are much less expensive than surgery and can save thousands in the long run. Braces can be worn and surgery can be avoided on a lot of cases I see.

Is there any advice you have for pet owners who are trying to decide between surgery and a brace?

Speak to your veterinarian about options other than surgery. There are more and more open minded vets that see good results from bracing, etc. but there are still a lot that are stuck in their ways and believe surgery is the only option. I would try a brace for certain diagnoses and see if the limb can heal. If not, surgery is always there as an option and the brace can be worn post-operatively instead of splints that can cause irritation and cost money every week during bandage changes. These weekly bandage changes can cost more than the brace itself and with the brace you can monitor wounds every day because you are able to take it on and off.

Are there cases where you would not (or did not) recommend trying a brace or prosthetic?

We can only make prosthetics for animals that have most of their limb remaining. We get calls everyday asking why we cannot make a prosthesis for shorter limbed patients and the reasons are 1) we cannot suspend a prosthesis from a short residual limb 2) The animal would not have control over a prosthesis and end up hurting themselves if the residual limb is too short).
I would not always recommend a brace for a completely ruptured CCL since the leg does not repair itself most of the time with this diagnosis , but we sometimes brace the contralateral limb as a preventative measure as a lot of the time the CCL on the other limb can tear.

Have you heard any stories where a rescue or shelter purchased one of your products, which helped the pet get adopted?

Rescue organizations contact us all the time and use our braces. We give very good discounts to rescue leagues.

Do you have any other inspiring success stories about individual pets who’ve benefitted from your products?

Google “Hudson the railroad puppy”. (We did and found this heart-wrenching story with a very happy ending on the Daily News here.)

 Anything else you’d like to share with our audience of potential adopters, pet owners, animal welfare advocates, shelter and rescue staff and volunteers?

I believe this is a great option for a lot of dogs/dog owners. Don’t let veterinarians corner you into surgery without researching options.

Thank you for your time! For more information about Animal Orthocare products, visit  www.animalorthocare.com

Cats love cardboard boxes! The official Boxing Day holiday doesn’t really have much to do with cardboard boxes, and even less to do with cats, but our foster cats thought it would be fun to recognize the name of this holiday with their own feline twist! Boxing Day is an actual national holiday in Great Britian, Canada, Hong Kong, Australia, and a number of other countries too. It typically is the day after Christmas Day, and there are a few stories as to how this holiday got it’s start. The theme seems to be giving gifts to those that are needy. We’d like to suggest celebrating Boxing Day by helping our needy animal friends — dogs, cats, and other pets who are up for adoption in shelters and rescues. Fill up a cardboard box with goodies that will make their holiday season a little happier as they wait for their new home. The cats may enjoy the box you bring your gifts in most of all! Happy Boxing Day!

North America’s largest non-profit pet adoption search engine reports 25% growth in holiday search traffic.  Good News for Pets in America’s Shelters: More of you are getting homes for the holidays! It looks like shelter pets are high on many families’ Christmas lists this year.  Adopt-a-Pet.com, North America’s largest non-profit pet-adoption search engine, is reporting a 25% increase in traffic over the past 30 days compared to the same period last year.  That’s an extra 700,000 people who have come to the website, searching for a pet to adopt from their local animal shelter or pet rescue group.

According to Adopt-a-Pet.com’s executive director, Abbie Moore, the upward trend might be attributable to factors like an improved economy, or it could be something even more heartwarming.  “Our hope is that a higher percentage of families have decided to adopt a wonderful pet from a shelter rather than purchasing from a pet store this year,” says Moore, “and that’s a gift for the pet whose life is saved, and for the family, who will be the recipient of that pet’s love and gratitude for many years to come.”

Adopt-a-Pet.com would like to remind people that the whole family should be involved in the process of choosing the right pet to adopt. “If you want to surprise your kids with a pet on Christmas morning, that’s great!” says Moore, “But instead of a living being, why not create a large gift certificate, redeemable for one shelter pet the whole family will choose together? Browsing Adopt-a-Pet.com and going to the local shelter will just extend the fun of the gift.”

To assist those new adopters who opt for a puppy instead of an older pet or that of another species, Adopt-a-Pet.com has just launched their first comprehensive ebook, The Puppy Manual, chock full of great tips and advice to help navigate those early months. You can download your free copy for your e-reader or tablet here or get the PDF version. The Puppy Manual is also be available on Amazon for Kindle.

Adopt-a-Pet.com is North America’s largest non-profit pet adoption website.  We help over 13,500 animal shelters, humane societies, SPCAs, pet rescue groups, and pet adoption agencies advertise their purebred and mixed breed pets for free to millions of adopters each month.  Sponsored by the pet lovers at Purina and Bayer AnimalHealth LLC, we help homeless dogs, cats, and even rabbits and other animals go from alone to adopted.  But we don’t stop there.  Adopt-a-Pet.com also provides valuable information on the human/companion animal relationship to help keep pets healthy and successfully living in their loving homes.  Visit our Facebook page and blog for supportive content and articles, and our YouTube channel for entertaining and informative pet training videos, all produced by our staff of experts in animal training and behavior, as well as human psychology.

Here’s a happy adoption story just in time for the holidays… times two! These adorable puppies were given this chance at their happy beginning to the rest of their lives thanks to the humane society who, seeing past their wild ways and recognizing their potential took them in and began their socialization, and of course too the compassionate person that adopted them. We heard about this doubly happy adoption story thank to the Adopt-a-Pet.com Happy Beginnings Fund grant program for shelters and rescues. The grants provide funding to shelters and rescues for their adoption programs, to make more Happy Beginnings like these two possible. If Adopt-a-Pet.com helped you find a pet to adopt, and you have a happy adoption story and photo that you’d like to share to help inspire others to adopt a pet, we’d love to hear from you! Please send an email with a photo or two of you and your adopted pet (or just your pet, but we love seeing your smiling faces too) attached to us here at  info@cms.adoptapet.com, and let us know how Adopt-a-Pet.com helped you find your pet! Now on to the wonderful story of Sam & Bertie, and the photo with their new person below…

Their humane society writes, “One of our favorite Happy Beginnings is about Sam & Bertie the two Miniature Dachshunds that were surrendered to our shelter as “mean and wild”. To the contrary, these two little minis’ were so frightened and scared that they were hunkered down in the pet carrier not wanting to come out. With lots of love and patience we won over these two cuties. They went to an outdoor festival in Lexington, KY where they were the two featured dogs for “Smooch the Pooch” and helped to raise $1,316.00 for our shelter. Not only did they raise monies to SOS – Save Our Shelter – they were ADOPTED! Belinda adopted the two of them together as bonded pair. She changed their names to Priscilla and Elvis! ROCK ON! – Mark and all the Critters here waiting at No Kill Central KY Regional Humane Society”