Caught on tape again… my Akita Kensho is washing our cat.

She doesn’t want him to stop!

Here’s the one I took before (this time, she wants him to stop… make up your mind kitty-cat ):

Once or twice a day my Akita Kensho has his crazy 5 minutes and today.. finally… I had the camera within reach.

The routine is the same every morning: we go for a 30 – 45 minute walk, I pick up the newspaper en we return home. He plays with a fluffy toy or ball and starts to eat when I sit down for breakfast with the morning paper.

I uploaded the movie to YouTube and starting thinking about bloat in dogs and how in fact, this movie is a demonstration of correct chewing behavior not commonly seen in dogs. Perhaps you have read my article on Best Dog Food Guide about dog table manners and if not, you can find the link here to go and find out about the digestion differences between you and your canine companion.

Now onto Kensho’s demo: you play first, and only then.. you eat. When eating, chew your food carefully (don’t fall into that typical gorging behavior that give dogs a bad name as diner companions).

Why is this good behavior?

Play reduces stress and the risk of developing gastric torsion is reduced when your dog has no stress, doesn’t exercise after a meal and chews his food whilst eating slowly.

Find out about the acute health risk of gastric torsion, commonly referred to as bloat on Best Dog Food Guide.com

Other articles you may find interesting:

Dog table manners (about the differences between you and your dog)

Bad breath in dogs (dental care diet)

Exercise is very important in a dog – dog owner relationship. Being your dog’s owner by law or by payment does not mean your dog will acknowledge that fact. You have to deserve being the alpha, the guy or woman in charge!

According to Cesar Millan, the “Dog Whisperer”, you should maintain a healthy relationship with your dear Akita via this formula: 50% physical exercise, 25% discipline and 25% affection. Exercise, including playing with your dog, establishes and confirms your and his position every time.
In order to be able to enjoy exercising your Akita and take him out often for long walks, he (or she!) should learn to behave well on the lead. This also implies YOU should learn how to use the leash well. Too many dogs are just being dragged around on a leash. Think about elephants or horses being taught tricks. By no means a man can force an elephant to do something he doesn’t want. There is no aggression or force involved. Only gentle instructions and motivational rewards, and a lot of patience.

Remember this when you train your puppy. No matter how small the animal to be trained: don’t use force! It will damage your relationship and work counterproductive. If you feel the urge to do so, then bang your head to the nearest tree and start over.

Teaching an Akita, or any dog for that matter, to walk gently besides you on a leash requires patience too. From my own experience with Kensho I can tell you it requires a lot of patience… but it really pays off!

When my Akita was about 9 months old he would pull the leash to make me go faster. Of course I would not let him have his success. So every time he pulled the leash, I would just stop. And I would wait…. and wait… and wait until he stopped pulling. Only then I continued walking. This way I could take 30 minutes to walk 50 meters. So then I changed my method. Every time Kensho would pull the leash I would walk in the other direction. This must have looked very strange to people on the street but this worked. Kensho noticed he did not succeed when he kept pulling the leash. And every time he walked besides me on a loose leash, I would praise him heavily. Good dog!

Another method I used was substituting his dog collar for a halti. A halti looks like a muzzle but your dog can still bark, bite, eat, drink and lick. A halti can work miracles but only when you use this tool correctly. You can NEVER apply any pressure for this can cause severe neck injury. My experience is that because a halti looks like a muzzle, people would assume I was walking an aggressive Akita. Since I cannot control people’s thoughts I just continued using the halti until Kensho was ready to walk with his regular dog collar again. He’s a fast learner so we could make the switch within a couple of weeks.

Back using the dog collar he sometimes relapsed and then 5 minutes with the Halti (which was always in my pocket at that time) he remembered the lessons and behaved like a very nicely educated Akita again.

You can search the internet looking to buy a halti online or you can ask for it at the nearest pet shop.

For guidance as how to train your Akita you can subscribe to the free six day dog training course.

More information about dog dominance is also covered in the three free e-books that you can download from Best Dog Food Guide. The only thing you have to do to get your hand on these is subscribe to the ezine ‘HoundBytes’, receive your password and then go to the Members Only section of this website.

Do you know of a clever way to feed your dog cheese without the use of your hands?

No cheating allowed!

Watch this (very short) movie and discover Owen’s solution to the question.

The result of this: They have become best friends within 10 seconds!
But Owen almost immediately went to the bathroom to brush his teeth

But please children, I have to warn you: do NOT try this at home!!
Not all dogs are as cute as Kensho.
Never let children play with dogs without the supervision of an adult.

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Apparently Kensho is very happy to see Tommie the Cat again (he has stayed at my mother’s for a full week… and we all missed him too). Kensho is following Tommie through the house all day. She likes his devotion as the movie clearly shows. Hear her purrrrr……

Who could have thought they would become like best friends…..

Watch another cool video of Kensho on Akita Pictures.

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Having a dog can require some logistic intelligence so now and then. When I used to work close to my home Kensho would just stay in the garden; patiently waiting for my return (which you can read as ‘sleeping until my return’) I’ve had him on camera for several hours during my absence so I know for sure.. not a sound, not a whisper. December 2007 things changed as I got a new job and had to travel a lot more. Working long hours doesn’t match with having a dog that’s waiting at home. Quickly a solution was found: Kensho joins me every day to work as we drive to iens.nl in Amsterdam. The first weeks he was tired, since he didn’t take any naps during work hours but now he’s fully accustomed. Today we went for a lunch outside of my office. There are several cafe’s at the ‘Westergasfabriek‘ to choose from and we went to the ‘Westergasterras’. Very nice place and good service. Kensho was personally welcomed by name ‘Hi Kensho‘ and since they now know him by name he didn’t get his water in a plastic bowl but in a real champagne cooler. I’m just so sorry I didn’t bring my camera.

Later that day it got even better for Kensho as iens.nl won the very first cask of ‘Hollandse Nieuwe’ (a fish typically Dutch that is eaten raw and with onions on top) for which we now get a lot of promotion. Everybody at the office could taste these fish and this year these are exceptionally good. When I say everybody at the office, I mean everybody at the office – so including Kensho. He is very picky and has approved these herrings. Oh boy.. he really liked these raw fat fish.

Kensho now probably is the only dog that can say: I drink water from a champagne cooler and the only herring I eat is from the very first fresh herring.

One fresh herring this year (from the first cask) costs about 1375 euro (2125 USD).

Please don’t forget to vote for Akita Kensho at the Canon photo contest.

Remember this is the picture that was sent in by semi-professional photographer T-Nell in the category Light & Animals:

Just follow these simple steps and I’ll give you Karma points!

1. Visit the Canon contest website and sign up as a new user.
2. Check you mail account to find and click the activation link.
3. Go to Kensho’s picture and vote.

Most Akita dogs aren’t that keen on getting wet. Perhaps it has to do with their dense coat. One time Kensho fell in a pond by accident and it took nearly 24 hours for him to dry.

But Kensho does like to get in the water up to knee height (like we do when it’s cold or forgot our swimming suit). He likes to run with his mouth open, gulping the water and he’s drinking just for fun (like we do when we go out; the ‘drinking for fun’ part I mean ).

It’s a perfect way to get the dirt of his coat from digging that big hole earlier today.

Akita’s are very photogenic because of the contrast rich colors they have. It’s so much more difficult to take a good picture of a dark dog.

But Akita’s aren’t photogenic just because of their colors … it’s their smile! See for yourself. The Akita character ‘Riku’ in the Japanese anime novel ‘Kino’s journey: the Beautiful World’ always smiles. Does your Akita have a beautiful smile too?

And finally some pictures which I took today…

Would you want to have a picture like this one of YOUR dog?

You’d have to make your dog laugh first. If that’s not in his nature then here’s a great help:

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My Akita Kensho has his passions. If I had to deduct his priorities from his behavior I would say this is his top 3:

1. Play with bitches, preferably when they are in heat
2. Digging
3. Tracking and hunting

In a dog whisperer workshop I have learned to never ever take away the passion of a dog. You’ll risk ending up with a lethargic animal, unworthy of a dog, without a fire burning inside. So find the passion of your dog, no matter how deep you’ll have to dig, and give him the chance to enjoy that passion (within bounderies ofcourse).

Kensho just loves to dig massive holes.

Until he just disappears…

This is one happy Akita !!!

As of today I have moved ‘digging’ from number 2 to number 1 in the Akita Passion Ranking. A bitch approached Kensho in a playful manner. He just looked up for a split second, slightly worried he was going to have to share his hole. As he ignored her, she moved on and Kensho went back to his important work.

Usually Kensho is pretty good at the ‘letting go’ thing. It’s a Buddhist skill to not get attached to belongings etc. Attachment is where the suffering starts. But today, Kensho wasn’t in a Zen state of mind. He was so preoccupied with ‘his’ hole that he didn’t want to leave. He made it perfectly clear he was determined to get to the other side… or back to Japan or something like that . Finally I had to practically drag him away to get back home. All good things come to an end.
As the Zen Buddhists say: ‘Everything changes’. The doctrine of impermanence says that everything is constantly changing. Impermanence can lead to suffering as one fails to accept the continuously changing nature of the world. This means that as one tries to relive an event or strives to keep things the same, suffering is caused by the discrepancy between impermanence and desire for permanence. As one strives for nirvana, it is essential to accept the impermanent nature of things.