The rule of thumb I was taught is that a puppy can only wait an amount of time equal to their age in months plus one. So, at eight weeks old (two months), your pup can hold it three hours tops (1 month + 1 month + 1). You should probably schedule a couple of potty visits outside during the night, even though it will be a pain.

When we got Cosette, my wife and set a timer for three hours and three hours beyond that. We took turns taking her outside. At twelve weeks old, we were able to lengthen the time between breaks to 4 hours, then 5 hours at sixteen weeks, etc. It's tough, but it will keep your home (and her crate) clean!

The insulting version of the word dates to the 1400s and derives from the term for a female dog, which is older. I'm guessing dogs in Medieval England were not usually the companions they are today, so the term was probably analogous to calling a woman a sow or a cow today, with the implication being uncleanliness and aggression.

My guess is that when the dog fancy was gaining steam, the upper-class folks who were showing dogs weren't inclined to even acknowledge the vulgar version of the term, so they went with it!

See http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=bitch

@DebraDownSouth said in NEW BRAND of DOG FOOD??:

You cannot look at a dog and know if malnourished... they can be fat and not getting the right nutrition. But I was talking about the ones living pretty much wild, not owned. Many cultures around the world care for their pets.. I hope you didn't think I meant owners neglected them. :( That wasn't my intention at all. The comment was about dogs scavenging for food... that typically isn't an owned dog who is being fed.

Yes, people cooking far longer than 200 yrs, but dogs were still hunting and eating raw/dead things, and of course some or a lot of table scraps. Research has shown parasites were a bigger killer than most problems, but dogs and people can live a long life and have terrible nutrition.

Gotcha. I was just making sure were were on the same page, and it looks like we are. One small proviso: The West African dogs were both scavengers and pets, so their diet came from a combination of both food found in communal refuse piles (from which pigs, goats, chickens, and sheep also were fed), and from the owners' table scraps. It's a very communal system, with refuse piles containing so much organic matter from cooking that it's not as inhumane as it might seem at first blush. But, yeah, this is a far cry from pariah dogs that have no owner to speak of.

Parasites and vaccines were indeed another issue. There was a vet in town who handled that sort of thing, but most dog owners only used him for emergencies, I suspect. :/

@DebraDownSouth The dogs in Benin weren't malnourished, not the ones that had owners, at least. And people have been cooking far longer than 200 years, so dogs have likely been eating cooked food for much longer than that. :) Dogs that died young in West Africa were usually killed by cars or motorcycles.

@eeeefarm said in NEW BRAND of DOG FOOD??:

Dogs historically were fed leftovers from the table, and before that whatever they could scavenge around a human's camp. Probably still eat that way in villages in Africa. Feed companies have implied that you need a degree in nutrition to nourish a dog properly. Funny, children don't get that much consideration! Junk food would seem to suffice for them....

This is absolutely true! The dogs where we got Cosette were free-ranging, and they ate from trash piles by day and got table scraps at night. People thought my wife and I were crazy for buying French dog food in the big city...

@Nancy-Berry said in NEW BRAND of DOG FOOD??:

@Baba-Bamidele I hate that we're having this problem with the stools & R.Rays food but I am glad that it's not just me! Well, the 4 leggers. I've noticed that if I reach into his bowl & get some of the food in my hand, it's greasy! Really greasy & I don't think that's good at all. Does yours feel greasy too? To the point that you can see the grease on your hand?

I picked up a piece when I fed Cosette this morning, and it does indeed greasy! I wonder if that's part of the problem?

@Nancy-Berry said in NEW BRAND of DOG FOOD??:

@tkdbasenji The boy I have now is 3 & I was given the food he was eating, Rachael Rays Grain free Turkey & Potato. My problem with it is when he has his b.m.'s.....it's always 3 rounds. I can pick up the 1st round if I'm careful. 2nd round......is very soft but round 3 ~ wait til it's frozen to pick up. When the stools are that soft all the time, it doesn't express his anal glands normally so he constantly "cleans" when he comes in & I can smell what he's cleaning, it's anal glands. I have some Iams Essentials left from my other b but he won't touch it. Does the Chicken Flavor make the stools better??? I hope!!

We've been having similar issues with Rachel Rey's beef and bison formula. We left Cosette with the in-laws over the holidays, and we forgot her food (oops), so we emergency ordered the Rey food online, since our normal stuff didn't have a one-day delivery option. Ever since, we've been getting three BMs each day, with them getting progressively softer each time, exactly as you describe. I'd agree that there seems to be something wrong with this brand!

We normally feed Cosette Canidae's grain-free line of foods. We rotate through the different kinds, and we've had great success with the fish, duck, and bison blends. It's about on par in price with other high-end foods, and you can get it for a discount on places like Chewy.com or Jet.com (where they're trying to lure people away from Amazon by offering big discounts if you hunt around online).

Determining breeds in a mix is always hard, but I could see her being part basenji. She might also have some chihuahua, judging by her face. Such a cute girl!

CARE is another good resource for desensitizing a reactive dog such as this: http://careforreactivedogs.com. Good luck!

Basenjis are pretty rare, so they're not a breed that often turns up in mixes. But it's certainly possible. Some telltale signs might be a curly tail, fused paw pads on her two middle toes (see http://basenji-freunde.com/pfoten_goldsch_bas.JPG), and a wrinkled forehead. (The absence of any of these doesn't indicate non-basenji parentage, either, of course!)

Behavioral giveaways would be aversion to water, yodeling instead of (or in addition to) barking, strong chase instinct, aloofness, and cleaning herself like a cat.

And if you're really interested in getting to the bottom of her genealogy, you can get a DNA kit nowadays for fairly cheap. Some of them even test for genetic illnesses, as well. The Wisdom Panel series used to be considered the most accurate, but that may have changed in the last year or so since I checked.

At any rate, she's a cutie no matter what her parentage is!

I agree with the others here: Stay away from the dog park. That's the easiest and safest solution.

If it's really important to you that your dog can go to dog parks in the future, you can try to train your dog away from being dog aggressive (or reactive). Behavior Adjustment Training (BAT) and CARE (http://careforreactivedogs.com) are both good for this. Either one will take time, but they can be helpful, especially if you're worried your dog's reactivity could manifest in other situations that you can't easily avoid, like on a walk.

Another solution, if you've got the money, is to pay a trainer to use one of those techniques on your behalf. But for now, at least, avoid dog parks, where your dog is exposed to such a wide variety of dogs that themselves possibly shouldn't be there. Good luck!

I second what Debra suggests. One other possibility is that you've inadvertently changed his sleeping environment. Ours started exhibiting behavior similar to what you describe a couple months ago. Then one night it stopped when my wife put a pillow down on the floor, and Cosette slept on it. We then realized that we'd been throwing the pillow on the floor as an afterthought each night, but we had stopped as it got colder and we were leaving more bedding on the bed. The dog protested that we'd removed her "dog bed"! So yours may be making some similar protest about something you haven't thought of yet...

So sorry to hear about Cody. He had a great life with a loving dog mom, and that's something to cherish.

We rotate the varieties of Canidae Grain Free. Feeding a good-quality kibble can be expensive, but it helps if you buy an airtight dog-food container and buy a 25-pound bag. You can get a 50-pound bag of some foods, but we haven't tried this yet since we're not sure it would stay fresh long enough, even in an airtight container.

Definitely! You can really get an excited basenji riled up by playing into it. We try to ignore it, since we don't want to encourage Cosette to jump up on people, but it's hard not to acknowledge the behavior! Another thing she does is she shakes when she's excited or overjoyed, like she's wet, but she has no water on her.

Our Africa-born girl wags her tail. But like you say, it's more subtle than with other breeds, since the tail is so curled. But I'd take barooing and wagging as a good sign! :) Cosette also jumps up (we have to ignore her) and tries to lick our faces (which my wife allows, but I try to avoid...)

She is gorgeous! Congratulations on your lovely new pup. I'm glad you opted to take in a slightly older dog who needed a home even if you originally wanted a younger puppy. How does she differ from your previous basenji?

Thanks for the replies. It doesn't bother me so much (if I'm getting impatient, I can just find the nearest yard that needs to be mowed). I was just curious!

When my wife and I got Cosette in Bénin, getting her to pee wasn't an issue; she quickly learned to pee on dirt or in grass (but not in the house). But she refused to poop unless she could find a nice patch of bush (tall grass, weeds, thickets, etc.) to burrow into first.

Even now that she's in the U.S., she almost exclusively poops in stands of tall grass or thick bunches of weeds. She'll sometimes settle for a lawn that needs a good mowing, but even that is a last resort.

It makes sense that a dog used to African forests (and, nowadays, motorcycle-clogged roads) would prefer the relative safety of a thicket rather than being indisposed in a more public setting. But then again, there could be snakes in that bush!

So is this pooping in the weeds typical basenji behavior or a quirk unique to our dog?

I tried to get to the bottom of it, but I didn't find much. I did find an article that said food prices in general may be rising due to El Niño, so that may be a factor. Also, an article about general consumer dissatisfaction with higher pet-food prices: http://www.petbusiness.com/January-2016/The-Cost-of-High-Prices/

And, stats from last year that show that pet food prices fell to a fairly low point in August 2015 (which may explain why they're going back up now): http://www.petbusinessprofessor.com/petmarket/buying-pet-products-price-matters-petflation-update-and-more/