Puppy Graduates, Nature's Select & Versatile Tiedowns

After our journey through BayWalk, we ended the meeting with a few announcements.

First, two puppies raised in our area were matched in the current class: Isabella, raised by Darlene, and Isabella's sister Maggie, raised by Kim. Congratulations to both raisers and pups!

Second, everyone using Nature's Select food needs to know which one of their many types of food has been approved for feeding to our puppies. It's called "Chicken & Rice High Protein" and comes in a green-and-yellow bag. If you are feeding your puppy Nature's Select food, please make sure you are ordering this type, as only this Nature's Select food is approved for SEGD puppies.

Finally, a word about versatile tiedowns. If you use a small nylon buckle collar (perhaps an old one or one your puppy has outgrown) to help anchor your tiedown, you can create a tiedown virtually anywhere. You'll also need a chain training collar (20 or 22 inches, medium weight), your pup's own nylon buckle collar (which she will wear when tied down), and fasteners to connect each nylon collar to the chain collar. The fasteners pictured below are double-end bolt-snap hooks from Home Depot, but you can also use carabiners or something similar.

Just wrap the small buckle collar around anything sturdy – a heavy furniture leg, a fence post, or (as in my Camry) the metal bar under the passenger seat – and you've got a tiedown for wherever you might need it.

If you need to shorten up the tiedown, you can remove the chain and just hook the fasteners together (or use only one fastener, or three). This is handy in restaurants, especially with young pups, where you can wrap the "anchor" collar around your ankle and keep your pup close by without constant monitoring.

Be aware that a bored puppy could chew through the nylon collar that's tying him down, but with proper supervision and an awareness of your pup's behavior, you'll find you've got a handy solution for a lot of situations.

In a pinch, you can also use a standard leash to wrap around something to create a temporary tiedown, but since this is much more likely to be chewed through by a bored puppy, use with care. In an emergency, such as if your dog breaks its collar, you can also use a leash this way to make a temporary collar-leash combo out of the handle end of the leash.

And if, for whatever reason, you do find yourself with a leash that your puppy has gotten hold of and chewed through, take that lemon and make lemonade! You can use the fastener end of the broken leash to create a "house leash" that you attach to your puppy in the house so that if he engages in undesirable behaviors such as counter-surfing or food-stealing, you are able to grab the leash and give him a proper leash correction.