Eco Dog Training

Green Puppy? Is Your Puppy Eco-Friendly?

April 22, 2011 By Colby 3 Comments

When it comes to raising and training our puppy we make sure we do our best to raise a green puppy. Not literally “green” of course. We do what we can to be eco-friendly and reduce our carbon paw print.

As many of you know today is earth day so we decided it was a good idea to take a look at the things we are doing with our puppy to keep the environment healthy.

Green Puppy?

So here’s what we did: We took a look at the things we currently do that embody raising a green puppy. Then we thought about three things we could do in the future to help minimize our impact on the environment.

Puppies for Adoption

The puppies in the image above were up for adoption at the OC Pet Expo. The two in front looked a lot like purebred Labrador Retrievers. The one in the back looked a lot like a purebred Husky. The Humane Society estimates 25 percent of dogs in the shelter are purebred.

Without further adieu…here’s today’s Earth Day list:

Things we do to raise a green puppy:

Puppy Adoption – We encourage everyone to visit your local animal shelter or rescue. Adopting a homeless puppy/dog does not add to the current population while purchasing from a pet store or breeder encourages more breeding. We adopted Linus, an Australian Shepherd Mix from the Carson Animal Shelter. Take a look at Linus’ Puppy Adoption Story.
Use That Dog As A Heater – In the winter Linus my Aussie Mix and Stetson my black lab make great heaters. We rarely turn the heat on in the winter I just cuddle up next to the two dogs and they keep me warm during those cold winter nights.
Buy Dog Food In Bulk – This is a no brainer for us. We have three dogs and always buy the largest bags we can find. It saves on our own gas and packaging waste. If you have a smaller dog you can still buy in bulk. Just make sure you get a nice Airtight Pet Food Container to keep your dog food from spoiling.
Pickup the Poop – One of my biggest pet peeves is when people do not pickup after their dogs. Dog poop can pollute water and spread disease. Obviously this is bad for the environment, but on top of that I seem to always find the unscooped poop with the bottom of my shoe…grrrrrrr
Spay And Neuter Your Dog – to help prevent overpopulation make it a point to spay or neuter your dog. This will help keep unwanted puppy litters out of the shelter. As an added bonus you may receive a significant discount when registering your dog if he is already spayed or neutered.
Reuse Your Dog Toys - We admit that we love to buy those furry new plush toys. However, we do our best to keep them in use by stitching up the seems over and over again an do our best to keep each toy in use until the very end.

Things we can do to make our pup a more eco-friendly and green puppy:

Use Biodegradable Dog Waste Bags – We’ve long talked about using biodegradable poop bags, but haven’t yet tried them. We have three dogs and the poop bags can really add up. We need to do better and start using earth friendly biodegradable dog poop bags. There are many options on Amazon.com for biodegradable poop bags. We’re going to give these Gotta Go Green Biodegradable & Flushable Earth Friendly Dog – Pet Waste – Poop Bags – 50 Bags a shot and we’ll make sure to let you know how it goes.
Make Your Own Pet Toys – We have tons of old toys and we do our best to stitch them back together and keep them in use as long as possible. However, we’ve also long thought about taking some of our old clothes and turning them into doggy toys for the boys. We’ll add it to our list of things to help our puppies go green!
Purchase Eco-Friendly Supplies – We’re not great label lookers, but moving forward we plan on looking for eco-friendly supplies to clean up puppy messes, organic shampoos, and keep our eyes open for green alternatives whenever purchasing new puppy products.

There you have it! Six things we currently do to raise a green puppy and three things we plan on doing in the future to become better green puppy raisers.

What about you? Are you raising a green puppy? What eco-friendly things do you do to reduce your puppies impact on the environment? Let us know in the comments section below.

Are You Ready For Earth Hour?

March 27, 2010 By Colby 3 Comments

Earlier this week we celebrated National Puppy Day in hopes of bringing awareness about the thousands of puppies in shelters needing a home.

Today we were checking out the Raise A Green Dog blog and found their article We Are Ready For Earth Hour. So what is Earth Hour? Its’ a time (1 hour to be exact) when homes and businesses come together to make their stand against climate change by doing something simple like turning their lights off for one hour.

Are You A Green Dog?

Linus, Stetson, and I have been focusing our effort on becoming green dogs (and people). So at 8:30pm tonight (March 27th, 2010) we’re going to make sure we turn off all the lights in the house for an hour.

Unfortunately, we didn’t have much time to prepare for this years Earth Hour. However, Gracie over at Raise A Green Dog learned a cool new trick to kick off Earth Hour.

Take a look at the second video in the post We Are Ready For Earth Hour…and actually I embedded the video in this page for everyone to see:

Yep, that’s Gracie from Raise A Green Dog learning how to turn off the lights to kick off Earth Hour. Pretty cool trick Gracie!

How about you? Are you going to participate in Earth Hour?

Filed Under: Eco Dog Training Tagged With: Earth Hour, Eco Dog Training, Green Dog, Green Dog Training, Green Dogs

Do You Leave Music On For Your Dog?

November 3, 2009 By Colby Leave a Comment

During my lunch hour I was reading the book Green Dog, Good Dog and trying to learn more about how to turn Stetson and Linus into eco-friendly dogs. By the way, Green Dog, Good Dog has lots of great tips on how to reduce your dog’s carbon pawprint and one of the great things I like about this particular book is that they have 4 different levels of involvement. That is, you don’t have to go from one extreme to another. Instead you can choose to make a more gradual transition on your journey to becoming an Eco Dog or move more rapidly.

Back to my story…one of the sections in this book talks about the benefits of leaving music on for your dog when you leave the house. Is it beneficial to your dog? or is it a waste of electricity and and making us eco-unfriendly dogs?

image by by Kema Keur

Do I Leave Music On For My Dogs?

Until today I never really thought too much about the consequences of leaving the radio on for the dogs when I left the house. I always thought it was a good idea not only because it could be soothing for the dog, but also because it drowned out any noise or activity happening outside the house that might excite or frighten my dogs.

I did take one step towards a greener life-style. We chose not to leave the television on and opted to use the radio for our dogs. However, is it really helping my dogs? Are they less stressed out with the sound of music?

Here’s an excerpt from Green Dog, Good Dog:

Dr. Gerald Buchoff notes that many people leave a television or radio on for their dogs when they leave for work for extended periods of time. In his opinion “That’s an awfully wasteful activity and probably is no more entertaining for your dog than looking out the window.”

The book however recommends that if you’re going to play music then try playing harp music which is particularly soothing.

What are my final thoughts on this one? I mainly like to leave music on to drown out the noise and activity going on outside my house. Linus in particular can sometimes get stressed out when he hears noises outside the house. I’m going to try getting harp music and playing that for my two boys for the next few weeks and see if it has any noticeable effects.

How about you? Do you turn on the radio or television when you leave your dogs home alone?

By the way I’m not quite finished reading it yet, but so far I’ve thoroughly enjoyed Green Dog, Good Dog. If you’re interested in starting Eco Dog Training with your dog then you might want to go get a copy of this book.