Bailielands Irish Glen Of Imaal Terriers and Jack Russells

In this page i hope to bring together the experiences and methods we have learned in Dog Rearing and Care.

As a natural appoach is what we believe is best in caring for your dog as well as understanding and training your dog, you will find here methods of care based on what dogs and wolves naturally need and do, and on herbal remedies.  

First of all you need to know about a remarkable woman, Juliette De Baraclii Levy.

Her book 'The Complete Herbal Handbook For The Dog And Cat', published by Faber & Faber is an ABSOLUTE MUST HAVE.

Based on her very... life long experiences travelling the world with her Afghan Hounds, prefix Turkuman, this book will teach you far far more than you ever need to know!

A remarkable healer of many animals and types of animals, she gathered the learnings of her own experiences and the learning taught to her on her travels into this complete volume first in 1955 and finally in 1992 as the 6th edition with corrections.

There is much more to her story than this, best to start reading her books and test them out for yourself...

Other books by same Author...

The Illustrated Herbal Handbook For Everyone

The Complete Herbal Handbook For Farm and Stable

Cats Naturally

Common Herbs For Natural Health

See www.julietteoftheherbs.com/juliette.htm

Try entering Turkuman Afghan Hounds on Google to see the huge impact her phenomenal hounds had on the breed & her fascinaing life and travels worldwide.

In this section we will cover our own version of a natural rearing diet for young growing and adult Glens.

A WEANING DIET 

Between 2 and 3 weeks, flat pans of water should be available most of the time to the puppies, to encourage them to learn to lap when thirsty.

During this week, fresh goat's milk thickened with honey and slippery elm flour can be offered at blood heat to the puppies.  If goats milk is not available to you, use a ewe or goat milk substitute available at farm supplies.  This is excellent stuff, way cheaper than the bitch milk substitutes and very very similar in constitution.  And of course when it is cheaper, you nearly always use lots more of it!!!  Its easy to keep big fresh pans of milk on the go when you buy it in 5 kilo buckets!! First attempts at lapping usually result in an almighty mess, so dry off pups quickly after if weather is damp or cold or make sure mum cleans em up quickly after.

I find this is enough to be doing before the teeth come in.

When you feel the teeth through the gums and you can't miss em when they come through! its time to offer meat on the bone for them to start to gnaw on.  Their first meat feed usually causes great excitement to the pups who will often wag their tags continually in delight and grumble possessively at each other.  Excellent meat is lap of lamb & breast of lamb for growing pups as it is soft, very palatable and rich in fat.  It must be fresh and raw, DO NOT COOK ANY MEAT FOR YOUR DOGS.

Between 5 and 6 weeks they will fairly be murdering the meat feeds which should be given at least twice daily. 

Milk drinks prepared as above with honey and slippery elm can be offered for the first feed of the day, the morning milk drink. 

For the midday feed at this age, add quality oat flakes or barley flakes to the milk drink enough to be barely covered by the milk and allow to sit and swell overnight before feeding.   Add a quality vegetebal oil such as sesame, corn or sunflower.  Adding finely grated carrot to the cereal feed helps naturally expel worms and 1/4 clove crushed garlic to a litre milk helps build good health and an early tolerance to garlic which is very useful throughout life.

Mid afternoon & evening offer meat with a scattering some bran & wheatgerm to give roughage and a source of natural vitamin E.  Also add 1 teaspoon of finely minced fresh greens e.g. dandelion leaves, clover, parsley, mint, watercress or celery leaves & 1 teaspoon vegetable oil in summer and cod liver oil in winter.  If you can get seaweed powder add a pinch of it or if not give half a crushed kelp tablet on the meat.  The greens mimics the inevitable contents of a herbivores stomach that dogs and wolves routinely eat and often eat first after the kill, the adding of the greens is very important.

Amhain was weaned on this diet and she is a tremendous bitch.  She did not eat dog biscuit until nearly a year old.  The largest part of her diet was of course meat !!! I always picked out the nicest lamb trimmings for her as a pup.  Ah, flip me its been almost 2 yrs since i reared a pup, i'd nearly forgot about all this until i sat down to write today.

This is the basics of it .... do get yourself a copy of Juliette's book and read all about it.

REARING DIET

To bring on a young Glen once weaning off mum is complete, if you can keep your pup on the milk drinks great benefit can be obtained.  Oddly enough raw fresh goats milk can still be drunk without scour by older glens who have not had milk in years and it is so good for them.

If a young 2 to 4 months pup is on 4 feeds a day, a 4 to 8 should be on 3.  Keep the morning milk drink going as it helps build great bone, offer cereal and milk at midday and plenty of meat in the early evening.

After 8 months you can drop the milk drink and work with 2 feeds, cereal midday, meat evening.

How much to feed?  Well feed to appettite with young growing Glens, at least until a year old.