The Organic Pet - coming out T.O.P!

I've bought so much stuff for the girls over these past 3 years of having them that it takes quite a lot to get me truly excited when it comes to pet products. Most things seem to be re branded copies, ridiculous and useless, horrendously overpriced or poor quality, which isn't acceptable even if they're -just- for pets. (Just, ha.)

So when I stumbled across The Organic Pet I must admit I did get rather excited! 

I don't tend to give my girls treats too often, they wouldn't be treats if I did but when I do I try to keep them natural and organic. We've tried other treats in the past but they never went down amazingly well, some obviously weren't too tasty and some stank the house out!

We're always up for trying new things though, so we went ahead and placed and order on The Organic Pet's UK website.
(They sell their products at a really amazing price and no, the usual e-tailers can't beat it!)

The Organic Pet company stand by their name and keep every ingredient organic and as nature intended, they don't use any wheat gluten, soy or dairy in their treats and avoid all additives and preservatives. The don't use any added salt or sugar. They explain it all on their nutrition page.

T.O.P have 3 sizes of treats; minis, bites and jumbo. They also do some pretty cool selection boxes. The selection boxes would make a great doggy gift! -hint hint- ;)

We opted to try out all their flavours, 5 in the minis form and 1 in the bitesize.

(Click to enlarge.)

L-R Banana, Carrot & Apple, Cinnamon & Honey, Mint & Herbs and Sun Dried Tomato, Spinach & Herbs.

 

Banana and Peanut butter. 

Don't the flavours sound delish? The human Hiltons might have to have a sneaky nibble too, just to test them of course ;)

So onto what we thought! 

Well, firstly their website is great, it looks good, has great service and prices, we cannot fault them as a brand at all. When the treats arrive, they're beautifully packaged in good quality materials, they're actually nice to look at, the cover bodes well for the book! (Never judge a book by its cover, except for here, here you can.)

The treats themselves are a good size and they smell amazing. We tried the girls with all the flavours and they went down swimmingly, with the Cinnamon & Honey being the favourite so far. 

With the quality ingredients and the fact that the girls really seem to enjoy them I can see these treats being in our cupboards for good!

Oh and did we mention how much we love their motto!?!

Says it all really doesn't it?

Bon Appétit!

Love & licks,

Rio, Jonny, Buffy, Rafferty, Monroe, Lily and Lola.
xo

Buffys 3rd Birthday!

It's Buffy's Birthday today! I can't believe my big girl is 3, time really does fly...

We're celebrating her day in style, with a beautiful 'snuggle bed' from the fabulous Charley Chau and a bundle of goodies from the lovely Laughing Dog! She got a large 'Dotty Chocolate' snuggle bed, plus 3 packs of 'Oaties'.

She's thrilled with her gifts, I love how excited she gets! She's super excited to show her gifts off to my dad and step mum too, who will be visiting soon to bring her a little gift, so we'll update asap about that!

Love & licks,
Rio, Jonny, Birthday Girl Buffy, Rafferty, Monroe, Lily and Lola.
xo

Scruffts!

Scruffts is a competition for our nations cute crossbreeds and offers a fun day out for the whole family. This is Scruffts 11th year and The Kennel Club have been running this years shows countrywide since late February. The last show will be held mid October. There's still plenty of time/shows left to get your dog a place at the final, so to find a show near you, check out the shows page here. This years heat winners will go on to the Grand Final which will be held at Discover Dogs 2011, in November.

Pretty much any dog can enter, as long as they're aged 6 months - 12 years and of course, a Scrufft-y crossbreed! Rosettes are awarded to the dogs who get 1st, 2nd and 3rd place in each local heat and the 1st place rosette winner from each heat goes on to Discover Dogs for the Grand Final!

Entry is simple, you just turn up to the show nearest to you and be ready to wow. Entry is only £1 and all the money goes to a great cause - The KC Charitable Trust!

The KC Charitable Trust are working hard to 'make a difference for dogs' by funding research into canine diseases, helping welfare organisations and promoting better care and understanding of all our 4 legged friends, pedigree or cross.

So with that in mind and the possibility of seeing your dog with a winners rosette, there's every reason to go ahead to one of the local heats and let your dog have its day!

There are 5 heats left - Sussex, Kent, Cambridgeshire, Suffolk and Nottinghamshire. To find out where to go and when, check out the information here. We hope you'll turn up to support the KC's Trust and let your dog strut its stuff :)

Each local heat has 4 classes for entry - 

• Most Handsome Crossbreed Dog 6 months - 7 years
• Prettiest Crossbreed Bitch 6 months - 7 years
• Child's Best Friend* 6 months - 12 years
• Golden Oldie Crossbreed 8 years or over **

*(Handled by a young person between 6 and 16 years of age).
** Dogs entered at the organiser's discretion.

Scruffts is a fun competition, for the owners and the dogs entering, so the judges will be looking for happy, healthy dogs, with sound temperaments. Does your dog fit the bill? Try out and let us know!

As a bonus each dog that enters any Scruffts heat will get a free bag of Wellbeloved treats - as they kindly sponsor Scruffts :)

We hope you go along, whether you enter or you just go to have a fabulous doggy themed day out with your human family members!

Best of luck to everyone going!

Love & licks,

Rio, Jonny, Buffy, Rafferty, Monroe, Lily and Lola.
xo 

Training Tombles (Lola).

Everyone who has a dog thinks theirs is beautiful and each dog is, in its own way. As any proud parents would, we think Tombles (Lola) is gorgeous. She's also really quite clever and very quick to learn new things, so we've decided to try her out in the world of doggy modelling. Before we can sign up with an agency though we need to get her trained up and be confident in her skills. While we're on the training path, we thought we'd share some of our sessions with you!

We actually started training her to 'sit' yesterday, so she's pretty good at that already;

However mid session Daddy (Jonny) decided to throw her a curve ball and try her with 'down'. We caught her first attempt(s) and her third attempt on film! (Her second attempt was used on a 'practise go' ready for the next video).

First ever attempt - working out what exactly 'down' is;

I love how enthusiastic she is hurling herself into the 'down' position in this next video, she seems so pleased with herself! Obviously over time once her confidence grows and she gets used to the commands we'll polish up her method of going into the lie down pose, but for now we'd rather she enjoyed our short sessions and keep it fun and happy for her :)

Third try - pretty darn good!;

Of course it's early days, so Tombles still makes mistakes, here's a little blooper video - she does a half sit, a real sit and then she drops her biscuit - please excuse my giggling, we were dying laughing!

We'll post updates on her training every so often, when she learns a new trick or really perfects one we've already started working on :)

Love & licks,
Rio, Jonny, Buffy, Rafferty, Monroe, Lily and Lola.
xo

Note; We don't use what's known as the 'Alpha method' (used by certain TV dog trainers/whisperers, ahem) and physically push them into a sit or a lie down, or scold them if they do it 'wrong', we exclusively use what's become known as the 'Victoria Stilwell method' (plus positive reinforcement) and wait patiently while the puppy/dog actually figures out what it is we want her to do. If she doesn't do it we don't make her feel like she's failed, we just try again and when she does do it, we give her a treat and praise her, so she learns doing the command = something really good. Personally we find it feels kinder and seems more effective than other methods, it's better for them to use their brains, right?

Food, Glorious food!

In light of our recent toy 'Haul', the girls have been going through their treats, so we decided to grab a few more things, ready for all the summer fun!

This time around we ordered;

 Dried duck fillets x2.

 A 6 pack of Salmon mousse.

And 2 Kong pastes.

1 Peanut Butter to replace the one we have, which is almost empty & 1 Chicken and Rice flavour.

Seeing as it's starting to get warm now, we've started breaking out our summer cooling methods :)

A good food based cool down in to stuff your dogs Kong/treat dispenser with paste, mousse, yoghurt or canned food (or a combination) and freeze it!

Voila, a pupsicle! ;) (see above)

We have a few cooling tricks up our sleeves, so we'll do another post soon, explaining a few options to keep your pooch comfortable in the heat.

So that's it for now, hopefully the girls will enjoy their lot :)

Love & licks,
Rio, Jonny, Buffy, Rafferty, Monroe & Lily.
xo

As a side note, there seems to be a lot of confusion over what you can and cannot safely feed your dog...
Most people know the obvious unsafe foods, such as chocolate and onions, but did you know you should also not feed them raisins, grapes, mushrooms, avocado, pork i.e sausages/pork bones and cooked chicken bones?
Even more worryingly unknown, is that you shouldn't feed your dog products containing, or made of, rawhide!
Rawhide is terrible for dogs, as they can't properly digest it.
It's also wise to watch out for additives in kibble, like ascorbic acid and beet fibre.
'Human foods' such as pasta, milk and anything overly greasy/fatty should be kept to a bare minimum too.

Good food is the base of a happy, healthy dog :)

Order up!

A few days ago we were all bored and had a few spare pennies, so we decided to add to the girls ever expanding toy collection!
(Which is now standing at 34 toys!)
(The rainbow ring arrived as you may remember and the pink rope sheep was resurrected!)

So this time round, we got them the Kong Wubba fox, a rope scruffer toy, a Hartz dental ring and a small Choo Chum chocolate flavour chewy ring...
Then, the crowning jewel of our shop, we fiiinally ordered the Trixie Gambling Tower! :D

I think we're more excited than they are...

Here's what we got in pictures anyway;

 

We'll have to upload some pictures of them enjoying their new toys in our next post :)

Back soon!
Love & licks,
Rio, Jonny, Buffy, Rafferty, Monroe & Lily.
xo

Buffy's such a classy dog...

Need proof? Well look no further...

 

Enough said! 

Love & licks,
Rio, Jonny, Buffy, Rafferty, Monroe and Lily.
xo