Hello all, I found this forum during my research period before getting our beautiful girl Gaia two days ago. We adopted her from Craigslist, and already love her to pieces. This looks like a great community full of wonderful people who can offer advice! Looking forward to interacting with everyone.

We adopted Gaia on Sunday through a Craigslist ad. She is around 5 months old, and just loves everyone she meets. She has some potty training issues due to diarrhea, but we had her checked out at the vet and all seems to be okay with her so far, so it's probably just nerves. We are meeting with a trainer tomorrow who will be helping us learn how to be the "alpha" in our household.

Thanks for having me, and I look forward to getting to know the other owners on here. If there are any owners in the DFW area in Texas, I would love to set up playdates or something once she is up to date on all of her shots, and has had a little more training.

Welcome to the forum!! Indeed, great people here. If you read Sigh of relief thread Ashley is a new husky owner too who I think lives in DFW area, I so wish I did, you got yourself a pretty girl.

Btw, I did want to mention that huskies are prone to upset tummies, most do not do well on grain diets, after she is acquainted with you, I'd look into feeding a grain free diet.

MiyasMomma wrote:

Welcome to the forum!! Indeed, great people here. If you read Sigh of relief thread Ashley is a new husky owner too who I think lives in DFW area, I so wish I did, you got yourself a pretty girl.

Btw, I did want to mention that huskies are prone to upset tummies, most do not do well on grain diets, after she is acquainted with you, I'd look into feeding a grain free diet.

Oh! That's good to know. We have her on Royal Canin at the moment, which is what the vet recommended. Her previous owner had her on Purina (ugh). Do you have any recommendations for dry food? I had read that Timberwolf was a pretty good quality food.

Royal Canin is a so/so food, but has corn gluten, which with Miya anything with corn gives her loose stools. problems with stools thread under general discussions and the sticky under food and nutrition called what are you feeding can help. If you can't locate give me another shout and I'll try and copy and paste them for you.

Thanks so much, I'll head over there and look.

Karu4Link wrote:

Hello all, I found this forum during my research period before getting our beautiful girl Gaia two days ago.

Hello Christina,

Welcome to the board! Enjoy your new family member!

Gaia is beautiful!!!

I have a 6 month old lil girl and feed her Blue's "Freedom" (puppy), its grain-free and she (and my boy Kohdi) love it and both had diarrhea at first, and Freedom stopped that.

Welcome to the board

Christina, I had an opportunity to read up on the Timberwolf for you, I'm a little weary of some things about it. On the outside looking in dogfoodadvisor ranks it a 5 star which is awesome, but when you read peoples comments I'm not so sure, they had a recall in 2007-2009, they spray some protein components, and from my understanding you can only purchase through their website and apparently their customer service is terrible. The other thing to note is that the ingredients and formulas have changed repeatedly over the last few years. i would stick to some of the suggestions in the thread and sticky I gave you.

Renee

MiyasMomma wrote:

Christina, I had an opportunity to read up on the Timberwolf for you, I'm a little weary of some things about it. On the outside looking in dogfoodadvisor ranks it a 5 star which is awesome, but when you read peoples comments I'm not so sure, they had a recall in 2007-2009, they spray some protein components, and from my understanding you can only purchase through their website and apparently their customer service is terrible. The other thing to note is that the ingredients and formulas have changed repeatedly over the last few years. i would stick to some of the suggestions in the thread and sticky I gave you.

Renee

I saw the same thing once I researched it more. I'm leaning towards trying some TOTW. I've already tossed her beggin strips in favor of some Zuke's grain free treats. Amazon actually has them for about half the price of the beggin strips at the moment! I got several different types to see what she likes the best. Can't wait for them to arrive! I'm also considering getting a dehydrator to make my own jerky treats for her at some point. Her training sessions tonight went great! She's made SO much progress just in a couple of days! She is responding well to our clicker training. So thankful for this forum! It makes sifting through all of the info on the Internet so much easier!

It really does. I wanted to ask you, I read on another thread that you exercise 2 hours, wasn't sure if that was addressed or not, but are you doing extensive exercise for 2 hours straight or 2 hours total for the day?

If you are walking her, or heavy exercise, you need to keep the rule of 5 minutes for every month alive, so at 4 months you should be walking her no more than 20 minutes at a time,5 months 25 minutes and so on. otherwise you put added stress to her growing bones and joints and may have problems down the road as she ages.

Welcome to the forums!!! She looks beautiful
I personally don't like Royal Canin, so far most of the people I know that have used it ended up with dogs with upset stomachs ): Right now I use Pedigree, although I'm not so sure if it's grain-free so I may end up switching to another food. Here is a list(I hope it's ok to post links on the forums??) to some brands with grain-free food.

MiyasMomma wrote:

It really does. I wanted to ask you, I read on another thread that you exercise 2 hours, wasn't sure if that was addressed or not, but are you doing extensive exercise for 2 hours straight or 2 hours total for the day?

If you are walking her, or heavy exercise, you need to keep the rule of 5 minutes for every month alive, so at 4 months you should be walking her no more than 20 minutes at a time,5 months 25 minutes and so on. otherwise you put added stress to her growing bones and joints and may have problems down the road as she ages.

It was addressed, yes. I didn't know about it and adjusted our routine accordingly. It was originally spread out throughout the day. 30-45 minute walk/run in the morning, 30-45 in the evening, and 15-20 of playtime in the evening. She lets us know when she's tired out, so we haven't done more than 30-45 minutes at a time so far. We've cut it down to 15 minutes in the morning and 30 minutes in the evening followed by playtime/training if she's not too tired. We've only had her since Sunday, and she's already learning a lot of things. She's very smart!

Orion wrote:

Welcome to the forums!!! She looks beautiful
I personally don't like Royal Canin, so far most of the people I know that have used it ended up with dogs with upset stomachs ): Right now I use Pedigree, although I'm not so sure if it's grain-free so I may end up switching to another food. Here is a list(I hope it's ok to post links on the forums??) to some brands with grain-free food.

We're looking into TOTW, I definitely want to make sure we give her the best for her tummy! Orion, I noticed one of your furbabies was named Stormageddon? Doctor Who reference I assume. Our cat is named Stormageddon as well.

I've tried to say "Howdy!" twice from my tablet and both times the internet gods ate my reply! So, I'll try it again.
Greetings to the from from the Big Bend Region of the Great State of Texas!!!
I've been investigating dog foods as well, I have two animals; one an overweight Siberian Husky and the other an underweight Alaskan ... one gets free fed and the other gets limited to 1 3/4 to 2 cups a day and I bet it doesn't take much imagination to figure out which is which!

aljones wrote:

I've tried to say "Howdy!" twice from my tablet and both times the internet gods ate my reply!  So, I'll try it again.
Greetings to the from from the Big Bend Region of the Great State of Texas!!!
I've been investigating dog foods as well, I have two animals; one an overweight Siberian Husky and the other an underweight Alaskan ... one gets free fed and the other gets limited to 1 3/4 to 2 cups a day and I bet it doesn't take much imagination to figure out which is which!

My family used to go camping all the time in the Big Bend area! Nice to meet you.

Hey, I'm in Fort Worth too. Find me on facebook.

ashley.tully wrote:

Hey, I'm in Fort Worth too. Find me on facebook.

Found you! Sent a friend request.

Karu4Link wrote:

My family used to go camping all the time in the Big Bend area! Nice to meet you.

It's a beautiful place to camp, it's a better place to live - except it's getting crowded, I think I've got 5 houses within a mile of me now!

C'mon down, Chili Cook Off's this weekend!!

Ooh, I love a good chili haha! We have a follow up appointment for all of our animals on Saturday though. I would definitely love to take Gaia on a camping trip at some point though once she's fully trained and vaccinated.

Karu4Link wrote:

We're looking into TOTW, I definitely want to make sure we give her the best for her tummy! Orion, I noticed one of your furbabies was named Stormageddon? Doctor Who reference I assume. Our cat is named Stormageddon as well.

Yep!! Haha it's the perfect name (:

I just moved from Austin Texas. Happens to be Risky's birth town.

A little first hand insight on Taste of the Wild. We both love it. She had dry skin, dull coat, and was very skinny when I took her home the first night. A friend who trains and fosters dogs recommended a few different types of dog food. TOTW happen to be one so I picked up the Pacific Blend for its higher content of omegas for her skin and coat. Within 2 days her coat started to shine and she wasn't itching like crazy! I like to change up the flavor for her and found that she absolutely love lamb. So, this month she's being fed TOTW: Sierra Mountain. She loves it so much I can use it as treats to help with her training. (: Let me know what you decide and why.

RiskyBusiness wrote:

I just moved from Austin Texas. Happens to be Risky's birth town.

A little first hand insight on Taste of the Wild. We both love it. She had dry skin, dull coat, and was very skinny when I took her home the first night. A friend who trains and fosters dogs recommended a few different types of dog food. TOTW happen to be one so I picked up the Pacific Blend for its higher content of omegas for her skin and coat. Within 2 days her coat started to shine and she wasn't itching like crazy! I like to change up the flavor for her and found that she absolutely love lamb. So, this month she's being fed TOTW: Sierra Mountain. She loves it so much I can use it as treats to help with her training. (: Let me know what you decide and why.

Well, we had her on Simply Nourish High Protein Puppy from PetSmart. It seemed to help with her loose stools at first, but now we're back to sloppy patties, so we ordered TOTW Pacific Stream and are going to see how she does on that. Not sure what caused her poop to go back to runny. It was nearly completely solid, but now it's back to how it was when we first got her. Hopefully TOTW will be easier on her stomach.