Dog Ownership & Training

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The ethics of basic dog ownership are far more complex than many people realize. In order to ensure that your dog is happy and healthy, it is essential to ensure that their basic needs of healthcare, food, and shelter are fulfilled sufficiently, and these needs can be far more demanding than some people realize.

Vetting

Your dog should visit the vet a minimum of once per year. As a puppy, your dog should be vaccinated against rabies, parvovirus, distemper, leptospirosis, and hepatitis, and these vaccines should be followed up with boosters as needed. If your puppy has not received their complete set of parvovirus vaccines and boosters and you do not know for 100% certain that your property is completely free of parvovirus, you should keep your puppy inside until they are fully vaccinated against parvo. This virus can stay in the soil for up to 10 years and is often fatal for any unvaccinated dog or puppy who contracts it. Even if you know your own yard is free of parvo, you should keep your puppy away from other outdoor areas with soil until your puppy is fully vaccinated against it. In addition to proper vaccination, puppies should be dewormed and have a clear fecal and heart worm test before you decide that their puppy vetting is complete. Dogs should also be given monthly preventatives for heart worm, fleas/ticks, and intestinal worms to keep them safe from parasites. 

Unless your dog is fully registered and you are working on health testing and titles, you need to get your dog fixed upon sexual maturity. Desexing too early can result in joint problems, but neglecting to do so at all can result in behavior problems, cancer, and unwanted puppies. If you are unsure what age would be best for your puppy's breed, read this and then discuss it with your vet. If your vet tries to push you to do a pediatric (too young) neuter/spay, find a new vet.

If you know your dog's breed(s) but its parents were not fully health tested (or you have not personally seen the actual tests) you should also fully health test your dog per the national breed club's recommendations. If you do not know the breed composition of your dog, you should get your dog DNA tested (breed + health) so you know whether you need to be prepared for things like hip dysplasia, Von-Willebrand's Disease, degenerative myelopathy, retinal atrophy, and cancer.

Ethical dog ownership also means microchipping your pet so that they will be returned to you if they ever run away and end up in a shelter. Ethical breeders and rescues will usually require that you keep their information on the microchip as well (some won't even add your information because they don't want you to remove theirs), and this is good because it means they are being responsible for the lives they have created (or taken in). Another method we recommend for keeping track of your pets is getting a GPS collar for your dog so you can see their location anytime, or at least getting an Apple AirTag (or similar device) and attaching it to their collar so you can see the GPS location of the last Apple device they were within Bluetooth range of.

You should also be prepared in case of a veterinary emergency. Pet insurance is highly recommended, and most major insurance companies offer it, but you should at least have an emergency credit card (e.g., CareCredit) dedicated solely to veterinary emergencies.

Diet

Most dogs thrive on a quality kibble diet, but "quality" is a very specific term. We recommend Purina Pro Plan, Hills, and Royal Canin, because they 1) use all safe and tested ingredients; 2) have canine dietitians and researchers on staff; and 3) include a combination of plant proteins that are complimentary (i.e., they are not lacking in the same essential amino acids). The most important thing to look at with kibble, though, is that it is not grain-free. Grain-free foods typically use legumes as their main source of plant protein (which are excellent for humans but not dogs), and these legumes interfere with taurine absorption, which can lead to taurine deficiency and ultimately heart failure and death in dogs. For help deciding which food/brand to feed your dog, consult Dog Food Advisor. Some people prefer to feed their dogs a raw diet, which is totally fine if they can accommodate the vast nutritional needs of their dogs, but raw feeding is very complicated and we do not have any known ethical guides or resources to provide here, nor do we feed our own dogs a raw diet. Unless you are an actual canine dietician, we do not recommend raw feeding.

Housing

Most municipalities have laws regulating the keeping of outdoor dogs, but most of these laws are insufficient. If you keep your dog outside most (or all) of the time, you need to ensure they are experiencing adequate human interaction and have a legitimate doghouse with an HVAC system. If you keep your dog outside in an igloo or a pen, you are neglecting your dog. Even if your dog is a primitive, independent LGD (livestock guardian dog) breed, it needs to have the option of staying out of the weather in some kind of real shelter.

Toys

Toys are essential to dog ownership, but it is extremely important to know which kinds of toys can be left with your dog unattended. Many dogs will rip up toys and consume pieces of them. If your dog does this, do not leave them with rope toys, squeaky toys, or rawhides (pork hide is ok because it is far easier to digest); Kong Classics might be the only toy you can leave with your dog safely, and that is assuming your dog doesn't destroy and eat those as well (some dogs actually can and do eat Kongs, including our pit mix Simon whom we give stuffed Bell peppers instead of stuffed Kongs). If your dog doesn't consume their toys, then rope toys and plush/squeaky toys might be safe to leave with them, too, but we have Ring cameras in our mud room (where we keep our dogs when we aren't home) so that we can check on them periodically and head home if there is an emergency. Nylabones and Benebones are excellent toys for many dogs, but they are extremely hard. Stepping on a half-chewed Nylabone is worse than stepping on Legos, and our corgi has broken a tooth on a Nylabone before, so be careful with those as well. Soft rubber toys tend to be too easy for adult dogs to tear up, but they are the absolute best for teething puppies.

Grooming

If your dog has a double coat or a coat that continuously keeps growing, grooming is essential. Double coated dogs require frequent (usually at least weekly) brushing and need to be socialized with grooming equipment as a puppy, and dogs with hair that continuously grows will need to be socialized with brushes as well as clippers. If your dog has a combination of these coat types (e.g., almost any kind of doodle), they will require very frequent shaving to prevent matting and/or groomer-directed aggression. 

If your dog does NOT have a coat that continuously grows, you should not regularly shave their fur because it will grow back differently and probably look very strange. However, if you need to do this because of a medical procedure, gunk stuck in their fur, or poor heat regulation in the summer, it is fine to shave your dog. Some people argue that a double coat insulates your dog from the heat, but a dog's body temperature is hotter than the weather pretty much anywhere all the time, so that extra insulation keeps the heat in, not out. That thick double coat of some breeds (e.g., Siberian Husky, Samoyed) does, however, protect them from the sun (solar radiation and skin cancer), so if you don't need to shave them, you shouldn't.