I didn't know today was National Dog Day! Coincidentally, Archie is at the vet for a minor procedure...But when he comes home...he is going to be spoiled rotten. (Whether he remembers it or not-I'm sure he'll pretty woozy.) I can't wait to go pick him up. I feel lost without my doggy by my side.
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Mr. Bean always gets a treat after we eat dinner so he feels like a part of our family time. He's very good (most of the time) and doesn't beg.

He also gets treats after every walk we take!
After a bath - which he hates - he gets a big plate of wet food which he loves. Also, when we come back from a trip, or on holidays he gets wet food too (we keep the wet food to special occasions - Bean was one of the dogs that was seriously harmed by the bad wet food that went out from Priority Dog Foods two years ago - he almost died and was in some pretty bad pain. Don't worry! He made a great recovery! Needless to say we're still nervous about giving him wet food, regardless of who makes it - even tho common sense dictates this is folly!)

Anyhoo, we play with him every day, pet him a lot and cover him with love. He's definitely a part of our family.

Here's my buddy:


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Your dog sees that you appreciate him when...
1. you spend time with him.
2. give him treats especially if he did something good.
3. you tell him that he's a good dog while patting his back.
4. brush his fur while you're both sitting on the sofa.
5. you regularly give him sumptuous meal.
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well you generally give them a treat or say good boy and pet and scratch them. You bassically show them love and affection in a very cuddly way.
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My dog gets access to a tiny amount of "people" food, like pizza or soft tacos if he behaves. He was a rescue dog, and doesn't tolerate physical attention well, but if you feed him, he's happy.
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As a little girl, Sundays were always our family breakfast day. My sister, my mother, and I would spend a couple of hours in the morning making a huge breakfast from scratch for the whole family. We would have eggs, bacon, pancakes, hashbrowns. I would always cook the pancakes since I was the youngest and nobody else wanted to stand there over a hot pan.

I had a white toy poodle that I just loved to spoil rotten. Every Sunday, not wanting her to feel left out, I would make tiny half-dollar size pancakes and make a small plate with tiny doggy bite-sized portions of each thing for breakfast. No syrup of course. So, when we all sat down to eat, Tiny (yeah, that was her name) would have her own little saucer with three tiny pancakes stacked on top of each other, a small spoonful of hashbrowns, about a tenth of a fried egg and one quarter slice of bacon.

Of course I know better now about the danger of feeding dogs people food, but back then we didn't know any better. It never seemed to effect her health. She lived to be a ripe old age until breast cancer got to her.
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Exercise, Discipline then affection!
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I paid attention to what kind of food he especially seemed to go wild for when a pup - fresh liver - and now I try to always have some onhand in the fridge to toss at him when he does something I like, and I associate it to him with a verbal sound that's not likely to be used in conversation with other humans nor by ambient environmental noise (a singy *ding* one octave above middle C... yes my ear can tell it's one octave above middle C).

The theory was that I wanted to reward him for special behaviors, but I couldn't always go to the fridge right away, nor guarantee that there'd always be fresh liver onhand, so I got the idea of hoping he'd associate the action of there being a food-treat only if there was a ding when he did it, but that he wouldn't actually get it until two dings, and that just because there was no ding one time didn't mean he wouldn't get rewarded for that same action in the future.

My CoViva said it was too complex - she said that some humans wouldn't figure that out - but after 2.5 years, it seems that he pauses after doing something he got rewarded for more than two-or-three times in the past, as if waiting to hear a ding, and he doesn't seem to take it personally if there's no ding after the stunt because he'll still do it in the future when queued to do so, but if I give him a ding, he doesn't wait to hear two dings to get excited about his treat... he waits to hear the fridge door open and then guilts me into giving him the liver right away instead of leaving me the option of giving him his two-dings-means-here-it-is later.

He's half-doberman/half-labrador if you're curious.
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I thinks you show your appreciation for your dog(s) by doing some steps!!!!!

1) Treat your dog as your family member.
2) Give him best dog food.
3) Every weekend gone with him for hios medical checkup.
4) And the important thing is that treat her like your children.
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