~Canis-Equus~

That is disgusting, poor lad! Agree with Katie though, afaik its NEVER been legal to dock a dogs tail with a cable tie - people who were willing to break the law these past however many years are going to carry on doing so until its actually policed, lets hope the new legislation will allow that to happen.

Abby and Dilly have occasionally done this nad i did initially think 'cramp'..... However i have a trapped nerve in my back and just occasionally from time to time, it becomes trapped when im lying down asleep.... if its anything like what happens when im awake the leg goes numb, but not that hurty numb you can feel..... just NUMB as if its not there, and cold, in fact all i can feel is cold..... Anyway a few times i have woken up with severe pain from my upper thigh, so bad i have actually SHOT out of bed yelling (and for those of you who have met me, youll have guessed im not the sort of person who leaps anywhere, never mind out of a cosy bed!). So i suspect with a pointy dogs long back and their usual history of extreme work to boot, its quite possibly a trapped nerve.

Awww Davedooley (yes, thats a silent Dave there.... ) welcome to your forever home

Cant really add much useful to that but im looking at a Combo for when OH passes his test - my mother drives one (that should be 'drives' one cos these days shes more an accident waiting to happen than a driver..... but thats another story).... Its very comfy for the driver and passenger - its got a side door as well as double rear doors. Hers has wire between front and back with a hatch behind passenger if needed so you can get into the back without opening either of the back doors or side door. (passenger has to get out for you to do that though). I really like it - cooling would be great but getting a tail gate fitted is probably what ill do, plus fans to drag air from front to back and through.

Sorry - hes a Dave. If (for some freaked out reason) you cut him in half, you'll see it says DAVE all the way through like a stick of blackpool rock. Dave the Dog. Great name. Otherwise..... Steve. (Thats got a silent D in it just like Nigel has). Dont go for a Dill - as Rudi says.... dogs with the name Dill or starting with Dil... end up called..... Dildo Dilbert Dillhole Dillweed Dil-inquent..... My poor Dillydog, he gets such abuse.... (although i call him Smellers so im not one to talk.)

He trains using fear and pain. Thats his FIRST answer to pretty much every situation. He blathers on about dominance and calm assertiveness but what he is doing is teaching dogs to fear him. Cant stand the guy!

Okies, have made note of it so next comp, you gets an entry free cos you already paided!

Bebe - i would have been steaming mad as well and no i probably wouldnt have stayed calm, id have gone MENTAL - if that had been dilly.... hes terrified of travelling, terrified of many things especially scary noises, water hitting glass etc (rain, it means it might thunder, and that means the sky may fall in.....).... On the plus side - you know what happened and you can take steps to solve it. Get a load of delicious treats, RIGHT NOW and go stand by your car and feed her some, Go inside and have a cup of tea, destress - let her destresshowever she wants (although not by eating George). Go back out, open teh boot, feed treats, close boot, go inside.... Repeat until you feel like a yoyo - obviously if you cant get close enough to the car today with her to open the boot just go as far as shes happy with. Use whole sausages or chickens or whatever it takes to get her out there. There is something to be said for being confident so that a nervous dog takes his or her confidence from you - and there is a lot to be said for preventing bad experiences in the first place, which is what you try to do (and me with Dilly). Have to say i dont think id ever trust that particular friend again with one of my dogs if she thinks it doesnt matter if a dog is badly frightened but thats just me.

Scary scary thought...... there are only SEVEN Enumbers in a McDonalds Hamburger and only FOUR in a Cheeseburger (if you are confused - theres a lot in the pickles they put on the hamburger). So.... dog food, with more E numbers than human junk food?

Well done Bert (and you Helen, its quite hard at first cos you feel mean!).... Carrots are great snacks and although tyhey are sugary which is why dogs will eat them, if you feed them whole he wont really digest much of that sugar at all as his teefs and digestion are all wrong for breaking down big chunks of carrot. Apple is good too What i do and this is probably disgusting...... if i have something thats REALLY tasty and dogs want, say marmite on toast.... ill dip my finger on the buttery marmitey bit, and they can lick htat off my finger. Its the TASTE they really want, if i actually give them the toast theyd swallow it nearly whole and not get any more taste out of it than a lick off my finger..... Em

You think people will sponsor me to starve other peoples dogs? Or do i come stay with you and people can sponsor you to starve me....... hmm.....

I dont really tend to bother with ideal weights for breeds... there are big labs and little labs or in my case there are big lurchers and little ones... I look at the dog from above, is there a clearly defined waist (and i mean clearly defined not 'ooh he looks like he goes in a tiny bit just there'...)... Then i feel, again with the dog standing up straight, the back and the last few ribs. You need to be able to feel them quite well.... and heres where you can find it really really easy to kid yourself. Dogs dont tend to get the flabby soft fat we yoomanz gets over our ribs. They get hard fat. Hard fat over hard bones can feel like its just bones, and its not! If its muscle, that will feel smooth and in flat sheets, on the thighs and bum and either side of the spine. If its fat its slightly bobbly. As amusing as it is to say a dog is cuddley (And we all do it im no different), dogs are not meant to carry excess fat under the skin, if theres fat under the skin, think how much is wrapped around the internal organs! I am the evil queen of doggy diet camp (praps is cos i keep all the pies for myself) - whatever you feed, cut it down by at the very least 1/4, preferably 1/3 - bulk it up with chopped up chunks of veg so poor diety dogs dont feel starved. Keep back 10 pieces of kibble if you like to give treats, use those as treats. Im about to have a big rant at my friend whose dog has a cruciate ligament issue at 3 years old, shes 6kg overweight, she was only 5kg over, i got her down to 1kg over (by having her live here with me!!!!! as whenever she went home she got given CAKE).... and friend took her back, noted how much better her leg was and her coat and her energy........ and went back to feeding her fatty curries and cake. Grr doesnt quite cover it! (and no WAY does she have the dosh for the surgery required to repair the cruciate ligaments!) Em - Doggy Fat Camp

I fink you could do wif a bit of a diet Bert..... its not your fault though matey, its just a bad case of Pie Retention, and im a fellow sufferer.... retained pies are the bain of my life!

Houndzrus ill go and have another look in my inbox for you! panic not! Its not there - i only have the one email from you for the 4 seasons class - send it to me again and ill sort it out for you!

Mmm, you are right Jo, i cant 'know' for certain i can only base it on my own experience... At 4 months though Pteppic was still an extremely nervous puppy.... i actually wouldnt consider neutering ANY pup at that age, the time i start to think about if a dog will benefit from neutering is around 12 months to 2 years for 'normal' size and around 3 years for giant breeds.... I have heard of a study done on pre pubertal neutering but i cant find it yet (will go and ask the person who told me about it again), i think this study is purely aimed at looking at the behavioural issues. I think there should be heavy penalties for breeding.... or allowing ones male to breed. I dont see that one has to have compulsory neutering to achieve this though - in fact i think the 'whip everything off' attitude creates ignorance around normal behaviour, and the natural processes a bitch goes through and so whilst ok, those who have neutered at 6 months wont creat unwanted litters we still have thousands of litters from those who didnt yet get round to it, and had NO idea what to look out for and how to keep their bitch safe and secure. Being honest here, how many people here, and id class all of us here as sensible, intelligent people, know the signs and symptoms of a bitch coming into season, how long that season lasts, how long and when she will be receptive for....... etc Very few id guess and thats not cos anyone is stupid, its because you have never HAD to know - and now apply that to the thousands of not very clever people who own dogs and havent yet saved up sufficient to get the bitch neutered....... I think there is a whole sphere of people who dont want to neuter for whatever reason but COULD keep their bitch safe if they knew how. Im waffling and probably entire off the point now! Em

No. Pteppic isnt ready to be neutered even now nad he is over 2 years old. Neutering him could be the absolute worst thing possible for him - in all honesty (and no im not being silly Jojo), if he was mr and mrs averages dog and had been done at 6 months, he would have bitten someone by now and either be up for rehoming or be PTS. He is THAT nervous and fearful of some people.

Ive been raw feeding for um,..... a scary 5 or 6 years now..... cor doesnt time fly! I personally favour switching them over straight away - you shouldnt mix raw and cooked in the same meal so if you do intend (and if you suspect problems caused by the complete stuff then id recommend going completely raw at first) to go completely raw, its not oging to make much difference. If i have a dog thats used to complete food, whilst we go straight to raw food, i keep the diet quite bland and stick to only a few new foods for the first week. If there are no problems, add in more, if there are some issues, assess the situation - its possibly a case of just getting used to the food, you may have the amounts wrong, dog may need to learn to chew - dogs with skin problems will often initially worsen, this is because they are ridding themselves of toxins built up through the skin and will clear up. If it doesnt then suspect an ingredient you are feeding and eliminate that to see if it helps (and the great thing about BARF is you can feed in such a way as you are fully aware of what you are feeding so its much easier to eliminate one element of the diet). Ive raised two pups on raw now - scary with Dill who was 6 weeks old but he showed me just how good a puppies teefs are when he could after a week, demolish a chicken wing as big as his own head (he was tiny!), even if it did take him nearly an hour to do it. He was a remarkably quiet, not very bitey puppy........ I personally do not like handling raw meat - i dont eat much in the way of meat myself and if i do it tends not to resemble meat at all! I cannot STAND teh smell of fish - in fact i am so bad i retch and heave uncontrollably and quite alarmingly if you see me doing it (or people think im taking the weewee...), but i have got to the point where i can feed the dogs a tin of fish, or hand out raw chicken wings without throwing up over them all. It does take a bit of determination (especially if you are retching so hard yo cant really see what you are doing) but its perfectly possible. My dogs mostly eat AMP mince, which i just squidge out of the packet and personally I think even the tripe ones smell less offensive than tinned dog food and also doesnt have that greasy oily smell that a lot of dried foods have. They get wings or legs or ribs of some sort several times a week - i must admit i cant look for too long as they crunch things up and if they have large meaty bones for chiewing on they have them in the garden where i can look from a distance (somehow, i can manage the crunch OR the sight, but not both together). On top of that, they get blended veg - whatevers cheap and cheerful that week on the market based mostly on leafy greens with apples, carrots, garlic and other goodies thrown in as i feel like it. Try to keep the bitter stuff balanced out by teh sweet carrots or apples at first, it does help tempt them. They get a large tablespoon full per serving, usually mixed in with either tinned fish, or mince/chunks of muscle meat and they get it most days if i remember to defrost it. If i dont remember thats ok. As i say, most of what i feed comes from AMP, and thats a good mix of chicken, turkey, beef, tripe, offal minces and chunky beef, heart etc so they get sufficient offal (note---- a lot of dogs wont eat offal especially liver and kidney whole, but they will if you blend it. Only blend offal if you can really stand the smell of blood it is disgusting - and you will get some vomitworthy stringy bits around the blender blades too...... this is why i feed it from AMP!) After that, they get the occasional raw egg - dillers gets some supplements for his skin such as EPO, Vit E etc, abby gets some stuff for her joints cos shes tatty and old. It can be as cheap or expensive as you make it really - if you can find a proper butcher you may get things extremely cheap as a lot would be thrown away as waste, us people being extremely fussy about what we will eat these days. I buy chicken wings in bulk off the local market and that saves me a lot of money - in fact last time i worked it out, i feed all FOUR dogs here on what it would cost to feed ONE on a premium commercial food... around £40/50 a month, and they certainly arent eating poor quality rubbish either!

Im disturbed to see that the rubber chicken appears to actually be bleeding.............

I am so annoyed that they set the dogs up to fail wtih the food. I DONT think Caspar is particularly afraid of Huey, i think he finds him hard to read sometimes but i also think if he really DIDNT like being handled the way Huey sometimes does (which is only because Hueys own dog likes that type of handling), he would have bitten him. You can see that Caspar DOES like Huey, he chooses to go sit on his lap, he isnt running away from him ever, hes always trying to understand what Huey wants. I think its a bit harsh that Huey has the only dog in the show who actually has real problems, unlike Chump who is just a big puppy, Cookie who is just a staffie, etc etc, Caspar is a funny lookin crossbreed WITH extra issues as well as his natural dogness.... seriously tough challenge there for any handler and even harder under the live studio conditions. That aside, im annoyed about poor Cookie, clearly frightened by the cameraman and thats put down to her breed which is rubbish of course.

Lots of dogs wont eat raw fish, and of the ones that do, a large number of them will vomit them back up...... Try tinned fish, i use glenryck pilchards in tomato sauce..... my lot love this (i dont really love them till the fish breath wears off though).

Um i havent really been sending confirmation that ive recieved photos - just dont have that much time.... i have confirmed for those who mailed and asked me.... My list is Class 5 wandawoof alexis jackysian phoenix21 Pboae Wickychoo Madmerle reddevil Reds muckyhen sanrossscot kittycat houndzrus reds vodaka999 isobel wilkinson rykat phoebejo Class 6 Tzumit Rachaelpirate Emma Pen Stripey Phoenix21 Pboae Wickychoo madmerle reddevil muckyhen bebe sanrossscot kittycat kats and greys poppynvader vodaka999 Isobel Wilkinson rykat phoebejo If you are not on that list i do not have your photos.

Cor...... no, you are joking....... you couldnt possibly be keeping that floppy chopped squishyfaced ole fing, nooooo..... :circle: :partytime: :partytime: :partytime: :partytime: Moohahahahaha, told ya he was staying the day you said 'ooh i might foster that'........... s'the eyes innit, hes got hypnotic eyes...... lookintotheyesnotaroundtheeyeslookintotheeyes 'you ARE keeping me, this is MY home now'.......

Just a thought..... But id guess all dogs, rescue or not, care way more about a safe warm home with food and exercise and not being abused, than they care about who breeds and who doesnt and personal ethics. Is this not about THESE dogs, the dogs in the here and now..... for me, these dogs in rescues and pounds, coming up to their last day before pts..... they are more important than the potential future dogs. That being so, ill take help off ANYONE for rescue dogs and i couldnt give a monkies where that help comes from, as long as no dog is harmed by it.

Got a class 6 one from you Alicia.... Reds......... i have some from you and i dont know which class....

Erro - yep im doing them in batches and sending the batches of pics off at the end of the day - otherwise i get confused with where im up to!