Fulcrum Dog Training

08/29/2025

Well, I thought it was funny...
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08/29/2025

Just FYI

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BREAKING NEWS -- use caution when feeding your dog fresh food from brands such as The Farmers Dog, JustFoodForDogs and Nom Nom⚠️

The University of Minnesota College of Veterinary Medicine Urolith Center has discovered a NEW urinary stone and the likely cause🔬
The UMN Urolith Center is the laboratory we use for all bladder stone analysis that are conducted for HAH patients and we recently received notification of this new information.

These new stones are called "calcium tartrate tetrahydrate" (CTT) uroliths according to Dr. Lulich (co-director of UMN Urolith Center). Canine patients get "choline bitartrate" (the main compound in CTT uroliths) from fresh dog food and supplements recommended for dogs that eat homemade food.
The data collected by Dr. Lulich and his team showed a clear link between choline bitartrate found in some of the most popular fresh dog food brands -- including The Farmers Dog, JustFoodForDogs and Nom Nom -- and the newly discovered CTT uroliths.

This discovery was published in April 2025 in the Journal of Veterinary Internal Medicine.

08/29/2025

Just FYI

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08/26/2025

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QUICK TIP: I've been posting this for the past 15 years, as many of you know, but I will keep positing it until it is common knowledge.

If the trainer you are considering using falls into any of these categories, you should pick another trainer.

• If the equipment recommended for basic obedience includes or is focused on choke collars, prong collars, or shock collars.

• Trainers who ban head collars of any kind may rely unduly on force.

• If the trainer instructs you to manage your dog’s behaviors by pinching toes, kneeing the dog in the chest or abdomen, hitting the dog, forcibly holding the dog down against their will, constantly yelling at the dog, frequently yanking the collar constantly, or using prong, choke, pinch or shock collars or electronic stimulation.

• If the trainer believes most or all training is about encouraging the person to be “alpha” and teaching the dog to “submit”.

• If the trainer explains that most dog behavior, for example jumping on people, occurs because the dog is trying to be “dominant”.

• If a trainer recommends “alpha rolls”, “scruffing”, “helicoptering”, “choking” or any other painful or physical methods as a means of “training” or modifying behavior.

(Source:https://cdn.ymaws.com/www.dacvb.org/resource/resmgr/docs/How-to-select-a-trainer-vet.pdf )

*** The American College of Veterinary Behaviorists (ACVB)

08/22/2025

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With thanks to Sophie Carter:

Did you know that the tiny vertical groove between a dog’s nose and upper lip actually has a purpose? It’s called the vegetal groove (or philtrum), and it’s not there by accident!
Each time a dog licks its lips, a bit of saliva collects in that groove. Through a process called capillarization, the moisture travels up to the nose — helping keep it damp.
And why does that matter? Because a moist nose is much better at capturing and holding scents from the air. 🌬️✨ That’s part of what makes a dog’s sense of smell so incredibly powerful!
Nature’s design is always so clever, isn’t it? 🐕💛

08/17/2025

Ok. This is really funny. How absurd is it when humans act like dogs?
OTOH, we have absolutely no problem expecting dogs to act like humans.

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08/13/2025

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08/11/2025

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08/04/2025

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07/29/2025

In case you are overdue for a good cry....
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They buried her out by the west fence, just like the others — and this time, he didn't bother to wipe the tears off his weathered face.

The ground was still half-frozen, spring dragging its feet like an old man in snow boots. Earl McKinley had been up since before dawn, same as always. Only today, there wasn’t a bark at the screen door. No excited tapping of paws. No eyes watching him sip his coffee like it was holy.

Sadie was gone.
The last of them.

She’d died sometime in the night, curled under the bench in the barn like they always did, like they all did. She was twelve. He was seventy-eight.

Earl stood with his shovel sunk into the dirt, boots caked in brown slush, the Mississippi wind licking at his spine through the holes in his coat. He hadn’t bought a new one in twenty years. Didn’t see the point. Everything wore out — coats, tractors, knees, even the good years.

He looked down at the blanket-wrapped form and sighed. “You did good, girl. Real good.”

Sadie had come after Millie, who’d come after Buck, who’d come after Daisy, and before that there’d been Red and Shep and Scout and June. Each one a damn Border Collie. Each one smarter than the last, like they were born knowing the rhythm of this land — when to circle the herd, when to sit still, when Earl needed them close without asking.

They were workers. Partners. Family, maybe.

The world had shifted plenty since his first dog. The county paved the gravel roads, built a Dollar General right over the field where he and his brother used to set off bottle rockets on the Fourth of July. Folks stopped waving from their pickups. Kids stopped helping on weekends. And now, most of the farms were dead or sold to outfits with names like “AgriCore” or “GreenFuture.” Hell, even the church closed two summers ago.

But he still had his dogs. At least, he used to.

He came back from the burial stiff and aching, hands raw. His knees clicked with every step. The house was too quiet. One of those silences that buzzes. That reminds you how long it’s been since you heard a voice not coming out of a TV set or a doctor’s office.

He sat at the kitchen table, next to a wood-framed photo of him in his thirties — tall, sinewy, leaning on a fence post with a dog at his side and the whole damn sky behind him.

He remembered Daisy best.

She was his first — a gift from his father the year he turned eighteen and took over the herd. 1965.

She’d run like the wind, tongue flapping, eyes locked in that trance-like focus. Never failed him once, not in twelve seasons. When a tornado touched down in ’73, it was Daisy who herded all twenty-seven sheep into the cellar barn without a single command.

He’d never felt more in awe of an animal. Not even his own kids had that kind of instinct — not that he blamed them. The boy moved out west. Something in computers. The girl married a bank manager and sent Christmas cards from Florida.

“You’re too sentimental,” his late wife Carol used to say, watching him carve the dogs' names into cedar plaques, hammer them gently into the fence post after each one passed.

“Maybe,” he’d answer. “But they stuck around.”

Earl stood slowly and grabbed a bottle of Wild Turkey from the high shelf — not to get drunk, just enough to take the chill out of his chest. He poured a bit into his chipped enamel mug and a little onto the ground outside for Sadie.

He stared at the empty yard. The wind caught the edge of the screen door and creaked it open, then let it slap shut. That sound had once driven Sadie nuts. She’d bark at it like it was an intruder, then look up at him for approval, tail wagging in little hopeful arcs.

A man doesn’t cry when a dog dies. Not out loud. Not where anyone can see.
But he did today. He let it come.

Not because she was the best of them — though she was damn close — but because it felt like the final stitch had come loose.

No more dogs. No more sheep.
No more “Earl and his collie.”
Just Earl.

In the late afternoon, he took the old path out to the barn. The boards were dry and gray now, sun-bleached like old bones. The hinges groaned like they knew him.

Inside, everything waited in silence. The empty feed bins. The halters. The worn leather collar Sadie used to wear when she was still a pup and too scrawny to work the fields.

He sat on the overturned bucket where he’d once taken his coffee breaks. Back when there were lambs bleating and dust in the sunlight and someone to share the day with — even if it was just a dog who didn’t talk back.

Funny how folks thought dogs were the quiet ones.

They had a way of filling space, of keeping you company in the most sacred, invisible kind of way. They didn’t leave notes, didn’t send postcards. But they never left you either.

That night, Earl lit the wood stove for the first time in a while. He wasn’t cold — he just missed the sound. The crackle. The kind of warmth you couldn’t fake.

He pulled a quilt over his lap, poured another inch of bourbon, and opened the notebook he kept in the drawer. He’d written every dog’s name there. Their years. Little notes.

Daisy — 1965–1977
Trusted with newborn lambs. Barked only when needed. Saved my damn life more than once.

Red — 1978–1989
Had a crooked ear. Hated thunder. Wouldn’t let Carol walk to the mailbox alone.

Sadie — 2012–2025
Gentle soul. Understood when to sit still. Waited for me at the gate, every morning.

He stared at the page a long time before adding one more line under Sadie’s name:
The last one.

Then he closed the book, blew out the lamp, and listened to the wind tap against the window.

In the morning, he stood at the back fence, hands in his pockets, eyes on the pasture. Empty now. Still.
And yet, for a moment, just before the sun broke through the mist, he could swear he saw them all — ears perked, eyes bright, tails wagging — waiting at the edge of the field like they used to.
Maybe they were.
Or maybe it was just memory, being kind.
Either way, Earl smiled.
Because he knew one thing for certain:
He never farmed alone.

🪵
If this story stirred something in you, maybe leave a light on for someone who’s feeling the quiet tonight.

07/08/2025

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02/18/2025

https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/us-cats-euthanized-after-testing-positive-bird-flu-linked-raw-pet-food-2025-02-14/?utm_campaign=trueAnthem%3A+Trending+Content&utm_medium=trueAnthem&utm_source=facebook&fbclid=IwY2xjawIg0wdleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABHbdXcTdXlvKxuHjoJT3oR6JGAXzHa4KWrDuAOjyz9g3MmLK7Nu8cHZXzJA_aem_h80MBQWVgO02psAIP_knSQ

Two house cats in Oregon were euthanized after testing positive for bird flu linked to their consumption of pet food made from raw chicken, state agriculture officials said on Friday.