She is a Labrador Retriever.  She is not a large Lab, and I think this is
because of her diet.  I think the huge dogs are susceptible to hip displasia
as well as arthritis.

I feed her chicken thighs that have been seared to kill bacteria but keeps
the meat mostly raw and the bones raw.  When I can find beef heart and liver
on sale, I buy that, but I don't feed her a lot of it at a time, as my vet
said too much meat without the bones is not good.  She needs the calcium to
balance the phosphorus in the muscle food.  She eats 4 eggs every morning,
scrambled.  She will eat salad, green veggies and berries.  If we catch a
mouse in the trap, we give that to her, too.  (We are in our RV in the AZ
desert, so the mice are field mice)  She eats two large chicken thighs in
the evening.  She is not a yard dog, and runs miles alongside the ATV's, so
she burns a lot of calories.

I know this is expensive, but we can afford to feed her this way, and I am
willing to prepare her food.  I lost my last Lab to cancer and am convinced
that her diet of commercial kibble was the cause.  Dogs did not evolve to
eat grains any more than we did.

I, too, trained her with positive responses for positive behavior and
ignored her when she behaved badly.  There were times she had to be scolded,
of course.  She was bitten by a rattler last spring (twice) and her immune
system kicked in and she recovered nicely.  She was bitten over the eye and
once in the throat, which could have been deadly.  We rushed her to the vet
and he was surprised she didn't need antivenom.  Once again, I think it was
the diet.  I will never know, however.

Sorry this was so long.  I get carried away on this subject.
jan