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Meet Bruno. The 7 month old who knows what. Coming to us from Ukraine at the end of November. https://postimg.cc/5Xr1y5Ct
Huey bagged his first reasonably high trig today, on The Wrekin. He's done a handful of coastal ones, but I can't really say they count. This one needed a brief sitdown
Frank (the Jack Russell) went to the vet last night to talk about sedatives for the fireworks period (which will be over two weekends this year) as he gets really stressed by the slightest bang - Xanax prescribed so we'll see how that works!
Snoopy (the Schnoodle!) - it's his first year experiencing them but he's a pretty chilled fellow so hopefully he'll be OK.
Woodie, aka Barky McDickhead, the probably Rough Collie/NZ Huntaway cross* was awake from about half two, grumbling and barking at the back door. Took him out three times, he did a couple of wees and a lot of frantic sniffing (I guess something might have been out there) but wouldn't settle when he came back in. I eventually gave up at 5:30 and just got up and took him for a 90 minute walk. I'm quite tired now, he's, obviously, asleep. Just checking, tying them into a pillow case and slinging into the canal is frowned upon now, right?
* the New Zealand Huntaway being a dog, we have latterly learned, that is bred specifically to bark like a b@$t@rd, all the time... Oh. Good.
Morning. Looking at doggy insurance. Is a lifetime a good idea? my feeling is that it is incase of an ongoing illness. I know it might never happen but never say never. He will be 8 months old when we get him.
Woodie, aka Barky McDickhead, the probably Rough Collie/NZ Huntaway cross* was awake from about half two, grumbling and barking at the back door. Took him out three times, he did a couple of wees and a lot of frantic sniffing (I guess something might have been out there) but wouldn't settle when he came back in. I eventually gave up at 5:30 and just got up and took him for a 90 minute walk. I'm quite tired now, he's, obviously, asleep. Just checking, tying them into a pillow case and slinging into the canal is frowned upon now, right?
* the New Zealand Huntaway being a dog, we have latterly learned, that is bred specifically to bark like a b@$t@rd, all the time... Oh. Good.
Lola has a bit of form for that type of behaviour. We give her food last thing at night. It helps alot. I don't think she woke up because she was hungry but if ahe did wake andd she was hungry she was worse. Still happens but now its occasionally rather than evey night. Great looking doggo though.
Can't comment on insurance at that age. But i bet its cheaper than what we got landed with adopting a 7 year old doofus
Just lying back contemplating life last night.
Bit of a rubbish pic of both dogs having capsized on the choppy sofa sea 🙂 There was a lot of snoring and one of them has smelly paws 😉
Woodie, aka Barky McDickhead, the probably Rough Collie/NZ Huntaway cross* was awake from about half two, grumbling and barking at the back door. Took him out three times, he did a couple of wees and a lot of frantic sniffing (I guess something might have been out there) but wouldn't settle when he came back in.
He may be operating on Antipodean time zones. Potentially the only way of coping is to go nocturnal yourself 🙂
Or just roll him onto his back so he feels correctly orientated
Bit of a rubbish pic of both dogs having capsized on the choppy sofa sea 🙂 There was a lot of snoring and one of them has smelly paws 😉
I'd just like to apologise on behalf of myself and Sprocket for apparently having triggered an avalanche of inverted dog pics. We're both extremely sorry 🙁
So, in the interests of balance...
6 out of ten for effort, that looks a bitto comfortable though. See above for a proper prawn.
And as we think of it "Ready to Shed" 🙂
We can do invertedness here too
(He'd been asleep like that a few secs previously, until MrsL woke him up)
Don't think i have read an information board since we got her.
Mum bought me a new toy. Will you throw it for me? 
Northumberland
Instead of starting a new thread might be worth asking here. I've got a 5 year old fox red lab who's as soft as shit and despite a mountain of toys only wants to play with balls, she's not a normal lab, given the choice between treats and balls she will pick the ball. Anyway we've had an influx of tourists to the area on one of my walking routes the past few months, you know the kind, walking around gormlessly seeming slightly lost with big grins on their faces looking for an unsuspecting local to chat to to tell them where they're from and how the areas such a hidden gem and if we know of anywhere good to eat meanwhile their dogs are running amok with no recall limited training and generally being a PITA.
Well this week was the 14th ball Pennys had pinched by tourists and their wild dogs in 3 months, 3rd time it's happened this week, usually the owners spot them apologise and hand the ball back to my dog who whines if she's on a walk without it, but today two westies appeared out of the brush suddenly and surrounded Penny, she laid down and dropped her ball as docile and submissive as you like whilst they had their sniff fix, then one of them grabbed her ball and as quick as they appeared off they f***ed back into the brush, I seen them run back to their owner on the beach probably 350 metres away before they went and mobbed another dog who was on lead nearby.
Cue a dog crying and moaning for the rest of the walk home acting like her entire world was crashing down around her and me finally out of all the balls we have in the house. Usually if I see someone who looks like they're not from around here approaching with a dog off lead with no ball in the gob I'll take it off Penny until we pass but this was yet another occasion where I didn't even get chance to react.
Any suggestions/advice on how to either train her to retain holding of it, or substitutes I can take on a walk that means I'm not bothered if she loses whatever it is but also I don't have to keep buying more of? I might already have the answer mind you with grabbing a stick from the garden.
Any suggestions/advice on how to either train her to retain holding of it, or substitutes I can take on a walk that means I'm not bothered if she loses whatever it is but also I don't have to keep buying more of? I might already have the answer mind you with grabbing a stick from the garden.
That's rubbish, poor Penny. 'Hell is other dog owners' as Sartre might have said if he was a dog person. We keep getting told by people with off-lead dogs with little or no recall that we should let our nine-month-old GWP run around off-lead. When we point out that he's a high-energy pup with recall that's not yet 100% perfect and we don't want him bothering other dogs or running off over the horizon, they look at us blankly. Frankly a lot of them are massive idiots.
My take would be that you have little or not control over the other dogs and if they're visitors to the area, there's not much longer-term mileage in confronting their owners, unless it's just to retrieve the ball. The obvious thing to do is probably to make sure you always have a spare ball or balls with you, so if the worst happens, your dog isn't disconsolate. I know it's annoying, but from Penny's point of view, which is presumably what matters most here, she just gets a replacement ball and carries on with her walk?
You can also, very obviously, make an effort to avoid routes and times which are likely to be infested with feral terriers and similar. Our guy Sprocket is almost nine months and still occasionally gets overwhelmed by multiple dogs so we avoid our own backyard tourist trap at weekends and Bank Holidays. I just reframe it as one of the downsides of being fortunate enough to live somewhere that people want to visit. Same with local Peak District summer-time traffic. Goes with the territory.
Is she carrying the ball just to carry something btw, or is it something you play with along the way? Sticks aren't a great idea as they have potential to splinter and injure the dog's mouth or worse, but you could always make up homemade rag dummies or balls from old scraps of material / dead boxer shorts / Westies etc.
With training her to keep the ball, dunno, but it sounds like training a form of resource guarding, which isn't a brilliant idea. I'd rather have a friendly, biddable dog. Could you train her to come into you automatically if other dogs approach? Put her in middle maybe, so you have a greater element of control and proximity?
Fwiw, Sprocket 'nicks' balls off other dogs, plays with them for about 30 seconds, then very politely goes back and drops the ball back by them. He's not particularly bothered about balls anyway, his preferred 'fetch'/'retrieve' toy is a Kong Wubba, so he can play fetch - brilliant toy, tugs, squeaks, has a sort of built-on ball to it, and is also throwable, so you can reward the retrieve with a game of tug. He also specialises in sniffing out lost balls from the undergrowth. Maybe we could start a STW ball-recycling scheme and send them to you 😉
But homemade dummies or balls from old rags might do it? That and reframing the situation, although I can see it's really annoying.
His first ever ball find from the undergrowth, NOT stolen 🙂
Well, we can wait semi-patiently outside Sainsbury's, if that's a suitable substitute?
@hot_fiat looks a pretty decent light up ball, does it stay lit for a while after you've chucked it or does it go out quick? I've got a glow in the dark effort but it's about as bright as a candle!
@eatmorepizza yeah tricky one, I always assume a dog will steal my boys ball and he only gets to get it at particular times when there is the space to play with it so I see dogs coming a mile away. I always ask him to drop which he does immediately and I pick it up and carry it past the other dog because equal he would drop it and let it be stolen without being protective of it. If she's not bothered about the quality of balls why not just get a LOAD and know that they're going to be fodder? My dogs favourite is the scooby balls from BnM and they're £2 a pop so I'd be bothered if I lost one once a week. I wouldn't want to train being possesive about the ball and instead just be thrilled that she isn't.
My dog is a ball thief despite our best efforts to dissuade him of this behaviour. If we see someone anyone with a ball, he's straight on the lead as, not only does he nick it, he then will not come back. Instead he hovers about 6 feet away doing a happy little tippy tappy dance much to our chagrin. It does not matter what we try and tempt him with, nothing is as a good as his new, stolen ball
I switched our fetchbot spaniels to training dummies, partly for ball thievery reasons:
Gundogs seem to be happy to carry/fetch these whereas they are far less desireable to dogs that haven't been trained to them.
Absolutely one of my pet hates, folk who can't get their dogs to let go of stolen balls, or any other object for that matter. My 10yr old Fox Red will also give up any object to any dog or human that asks her to, she's so submissive. The very last thing I would want to do is to train her not to. On one of our favourite walks I carry a spare because I just know we'll meet various thieves.
You may be able to shift her focus to letting you carry it. We'd need to know whether she carries it so that you can throw it for her, or whether it's simply to carry something as a form of comforter. If the latter, I'd use something really disposable like a plastic water bottle. It won't be as tempting to other dogs, and you won't miss them if they aren't brought back.
If it's the former, I'd spend a few sessions getting your dog to be comfortable with your carrying it. Here's what I do. My 7 month old knows I have one in my pocket whenever we're out. She only gets to play with it on my terms, which means I am the sole focus of her attention at all times when we're out. We get out of the car, she's allowed a few seconds to sniff and piddle, then we're off. I actually sprint away from her, playing a game of "can I lose the dog?" which means all her energy is spent making sure she knows what I'm doing. I make it random throughout the walk, changing direction, charging off into the undergrowth, and turning and running back the way we came if she gets more than half a dog-length ahead of me. After a minute or so of this she's usually glued to my leg, and I'll sit her down and the moment she does, she gets to fetch the ball. That reward for good behaviour also comes at random times. She knows that if she watches me and stays close, I could produce the ball, or a training dummy at any time. Energy levels stay high, and she remains switched on and focussed on me. Great in an environment where she could be distracted by deer, or pheasants, or other dogs, or scent trails, or piles of horseshit. After a couple of throws and fetches, we're back to sit, stay, wait, recall, close heelwork interspersed by random disappearances/sprints and even sitting at heel for five minutes to get used to doing nothing. This sounds a bit like we're not actually going for a walk, but rather an extended training session, but the dog gets all the mental and physical exertion she needs, and I'm not simply trudging for miles trying to wear out the dog physically while the dog is immersed in a world of sniffing and piddling. You've got to be confident that the dog will recall instantly, and preferably stop on a dime too, but those are things we should be training right out of the puppy crate anyway.
Absolutely gorgeous.
You’re in for such a fun time when you finally bring them home.
My bestie Oscar has been unwell for a little over a week and 3 weeks in total with break in between. Had blood tests done came back all good, faecal samples awaking the results but finally today he has been his normal self. So, we had a little afternoon out to a cafe and then a couple pubs to watch the rugby. I missed not having him by my side when I’ve been out and spent a few days in the house looking him, getting up through the night and I’m now a fair lump financially worse off. I wouldn’t have it any other way to have him back. He crashed out for an hour or so when we got back which he doesn’t normally do but not surprised after what he has been through.
They're my sister's pups, we're not getting one. My other half isn't keen, my kids are grown up and although still at home now are looking like being in Aberdeen next year which would leave me responsible and I have enough going on. My sister is keeping one and my parents have to decided to take one as well so there will be plenty of access. Christmas will be fun!
Ah! At least you’ll still have all the fun but without the work. They are lovely looking pups, I still deciding if I should get Oscar a friend. Trouble is he’s an incredible dog and I have some wonderful ones, plus after this week’s expense I have to consider the costs of having two.
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This is Tilly, my wire haired dacshund pup. She's 9 weeks old and totally adorable!
This is Tilly, my wire haired dachshund pup. She's 9 weeks old and totally adorable!
I'm totally biased, but wirehaired puppies of any breed are fab. You get the added bonus of playing 'guess how much facial hair they'll end up with'. Anyway, she looks fantastic, excellent jumbo-sized paws too. Have fun.
Oh Tilly is gorgeous.
Oscar before we set off for the Xmas lights switch on last week. 
Little tubsters
8 weeks this week so that was their last day together. Three have moved on and the other two will probably be gone in the next two or three days.
All gone now. This is the one my sister kept, tucked up with her mum.