The brakes don’t drag under normal riding, disc is true and secure, hubs are fine. Given that no one can suggest an otherwise mechanical explanation for this I grilled him on thinking about which brake he relies on; he sheepishly admitted that he uses his back brake predominantly.

We’re going to work on his braking technique before he sets fire to yet another set of pads and rotors!

My mrs did just this about 2 years ago when she essentially burnt out. She is now a residential care worker for children unable to be fostered. There is quite a lot of stress, particularly emotional as she’s dealing with kids who have been in some cases seriously abused, but she works in a large team, gets lots of training and support, and more importantly she’s paid for every hour she works.

She’s found it hugely rewarding as she’s 100% hands on with the kids and because they live/stay in the house for many years (ideally) she has very close personal relationships with them and sees them grow up and develop.

(Also added problem; I can’t eat dairy (gastro) and I’m a vegetarian )

You might have an issue if the wife’s diet is anything to go by!

My mrs suffers from a serious thyroid condition and has in the past struggled with her weight, IBS, joint pain, migraines all sorts of problems. She used a completely insane American LCHF diet in the run-up to our wedding a few years back and it worked wonders for her weight (she lost about 3 stone) but wasn’t that sustainable or all-round healthy. She’s tried loads of diets in the past but their either don’t work with her condition or actually make it worse. She recently decided to go back to a keto diet (slightly less insane) and it has definitely been life changing for her. She’s lost 2st (so far), she no longer gets IBS, and she’s much more comfortable in terms of joint pain and headaches. It’s definitely the diet because if she strays too much the symptoms return.

Like others have said if it works then great – I can’t follow it, I like bread too much! 😆 She also had success with an intermittent fasting diet but unfortunately a change of jobs made that unsustainable.

@redthunder – I’m sure the box used to have a lancaster in it as well but that seems to have gone by the wayside. I really don’t remember throwing that away 🙁

Not officially xmas airfix but I was tidying the study in prep for a house valuation and came across a long forgotten box that I’d never got round to properly unpack (actually the wife said ‘over my dead body’ to displaying any airfix 🙁 ).

Anyway, these two now dog fighting above my desk:

And this poor guy who needs a bit of TLC before I can properly display him as he’s missing a propeller blade and one side of his undercarriage:

Now where did I put my model making box…?

Oh stop it, there were two puppies at training yesterday (a spaniel and a little brown thing of high pedigree that I’ve forgotten). My dogs are 18 months and 2 years and I’m not allowed a new puppy!

*flounces off to look at puppies on Dogs Trust and the RSPCA website*

(he(?)’s gorgeous by the way 🙂 )

I’ve skimmed the earlier stuff so sorry if this has been covered but if you fancy a new activity for all the family and the dog have you thought about agility training?

I have a 2yo rottie who was amazing till he was 12-18 months old and then slumped into a serious juvenile delinquent phase; aggro at other dogs, running off; losing basic commands. Like you I got to the stage where he was a pain to have around. We started the agility at the recommendation of a trainer at Dogs Trust and 6 months on he is a completely different dog. I can recall him away from anything and if he’s pissing about I only have to get through the first couple of syllables of “excuse me…?” and he’s sat looking at me sheepishly.

All of the foundation training for agility is about focus, and making the dog think and make the right choice for its reward – in the ring that means taking the line you’ve indicated but out of the ring that means not doing things you’ve taught the dog are wrong; mouthing/snapping/running off. The thinking bit is what keeps it fun or them and wears them out.

He’s only just, after a solid 6 months of daily training (just small snippets at a time – 10-15mins including time out play, a spaniel might be able to handle more but he mustn’t get bored), stepping up to full agility exercises so it takes time. There’s a video on my instagram[/url] which shows him running some speed-bumps if you want some aaaahhhh factor.

Persevere with the training, but it will take everyday dedication and several months.

PS. this thread is distinctly short on photos!

At 14 weeks:

At 2 years and a bit:

Anyone ridden the Hornet? Is it just a gnaaargh machine or could you ride it as a ‘do it all bike’?

Mrs Handsomedog left teaching two years ago having pretty much burnt out as a young head of department in
a high flying school with grand ideas. She also left uni (french and german) straight into teaching so her CV was a tad light for anything else.

She moved into residential children’s care after a short break doing supply. Astonishingly, even though she is frequently punched/sworn at/spat on etc, she loves it. She gets to spend 100% of the time working with kids that really need her, she gets to go on all sorts of activities (being paid to go to a theme park FTW), and seeing her kids make progress is clearly hugely rewarding. She also gets paid for EVERY hour she works and we have calculated that if she picks up one overtime shift a week she gets paid slightly more than she did being a head of department.

On the negative her kids are often in a very bad way and she often gets punched/sworn at/spat on etc, the shifts are long (14 hrs), and she spends a lot of time dealing with police/social workers/schools when her kids fight/go missing/take drugs etc.

That may not sound like your cup of tea, in that case take it as an example of a successful world beyond teaching.

f they don’t respond, then be firm with them – deep voice and make them come back EVERY time! They’ve got to know you mean it and it’s not optional. Don’t be afraid to go after them and drag them back. If they’re so bad you need to go after them then you want to be doing this in a reasonably enclosed space (field sized) so they don’t just keep running away and think it’s a brilliant game!

Oh, and train them separately if they’re encouraging each other.

+1 for this. My Rottie was a nightmare for running off, particularly around rabbits/deer/woods etc and particularly with our other dog. These days my recall routine works like this (on the advice of our trainer):

– gets called to a toy/ball (as above make it exciting)
– if he doesn’t come straight away he gets his telling off command (which in his case is “Excuse Me! WHAT do you think you’re doing?)
– Then I will either go in and get him (he gets collared and a stern but not angry telling off following by some simple training – sit, paw, touch etc)
– Or if he runs away I run after him with my mean face on

This latter technique is a new one to me but is surprisingly effective. He’ll start running, look over his shoulder to see me coming after him obviously not in the mood to play and immediately crap himself. He stops 99% of the time and sits waiting for me with his sad face on.

“Oi You” or perhaps “B%@*&!d Dog” – that’s what ours are called.

But maybe Penny?

I did almost exactly this nearly 10 years ago, ended up riding 60 miles on it on a loaded touring bike. See a physio about it and get the right exercises for sorting it out. I didn’t until way down the line and the ankle still gives me bother on occasion. Once I did see a physio the exercises he gave me had it largely sorted in a month.

@ScottCheg

Her farts must be spectacular…

She does get veg as well – actually she barely farts at all now. When she was on kibble she was capable of clearing most of the downstairs of the house, let alone a room!

@SlackAlice

Your dogs are either Timber Wolves or Spiney Back Terriers (nee Alligators) and you can have my £5

Sorry, a Rottweiler and a staffie-cross. It’s the staffie-cross who does weird things with her food.

I’ve got one (bought second hand recently) and I’m getting there in terms of loving it, but I’ve never really ridden a full suss before, I always dreamed of having one so ended up impulse buying one for sale down the road.

It has had:
– new front wheel bearings
– new frame bearings (expensive but very easy to extract and fit)
– new shock bearings and bushing
– new stem (the adjustable oversize one)
– very wide bar
– complete fork strip
– dropper post

– all new 1×10 setup (taken off a previous bike)

It has the alpine link which significantly slackens it and drops the BB. With all that work it is just starting to feel like it rides well 🙂

I’m very light and don’t do anything foolish so I don’t notice any of the squirminess or flex that reviews had a go at it for. Even with a cheap back wheel it is pretty light (for the amount I paid for it). I love the 6″-4″ switch on the back which comes into its own with the alpine. I also love the fork. Once you get the hang of it it strips to pieces in minutes and having done that it now feels buttery smooth. I do long rides and some trail centre stuff. It’s brilliant for both, giving me the confidence to blatter off/through trail centre stuff that always put me off on a hardtail but climbs and pedals fluently and quickly.

It’s been a project that’s kept me busy, it’s taught me some new mechanical skills, and riding it is increasingly fun.

I was doing well until I sheared a fork damper rod bolt putting my fork back together after solving a clunking problem. I think it might have been fatigued because I didn’t put that much force into it. There has been much swearing, although I did manage to rescue the sheared section.

Hopefully the shop can source a spare by saturday or thats two days of biking over the bank holiday missed. 🙁

My dad had a rash of these 5-10 years ago; 3 in quick succession I think it was. It was exactly like a mini-stroke, dropped side of body, unable to speak properly, he thought he was completely normal. He was otherwise healthy and very fit and didn’t fall into any of the usual risk groups (the only two risk categories he sort of fell into were blood pressure and cholesterol but neither serious). Like you he had loads of tests and scans which showed nothing. He’s on blood pressure and cholesterol meds now to be on the safe side and hasn’t had another occurrence since (fingers crossed).

He was fine within a couple of hours of each of his. In fact, on the last occasion it happened at home, the out of hours doctor threatened to call an ambulance and he snapped out of it in 30s (it was very weird, from PHHHAARRNNNUUURRRGGGHHH speech to ‘oh no you’re not calling an ambulance, don’t you dare!’ in literally 30s).

@deadkenny – I just don’t wear them often enough so they irritate my eyes, and the monthly subscription is a drag.

@IHN – that’s an awesome service. I can get my current oakleys reglazed maybe.

Had our second dog for a year today (or so the wife tells me). It’s been interesting but generally positive. We went to get an older dog to teach our young Rottie some sense but ended up with an 8 week old staffie-cross bitch.

She’s totally devoted to him and they play like crazy all the time. He’s dead protective of her which can be a pain as she sometimes starts fights with other dogs in the sure and certain knowledge that her big rottie brother is going to finish them. She sits on him when she’s feeling unsure and can get a bit anxious on her own.

We have to train them apart as they just want to play/fight if you try training together. Individually they’re brilliant off-lead but if you let them off together pack instincts kick in and they just go completely crazy – it’s the one big downside for us.

If they’re being left for any time they get crated separately, mainly to give the rottie some peace. Short leaves they get turned out in the living room and left to their own devices. I’ve not so far had any disasters.

We don’t feed ours separately, they don’t steal each others food or fight. Raw bones we feed outside and she tends to run off with hers to the end of the garden. He will sometimes bully her off hers and hoard both both I’m always around and I’m boss enough that he meekly accepts a telling off and the bone being returned.

I certainly wouldn’t be without the two of them now.

No photos linkable but plenty on my instagram, including some of their idea of ‘play’.

+1 for the honeys real dogfood raw food. Our Rottie has fungal skin problems and our staffie cross terrible fart problems and both are clearing up on the raw food. Honeys will offer you no-expectation, vet-led advice and quotes as well.

@Scapegoat

We have the raw meat delivered in 3lb bags at £1.50 each and she goes through one in a couple of days

Where do you get this from? We’re looking at going more DIY and looking around for options.

The onus is on you to take it out – probably more often that it needs – to try and minimise accidents – that will still occur from time to time.

This is the key. I took ours out every 30 minutes when they were that young, unless they were in their crates; just set an alarm on my phone (although I had the benefit of working from home).

Very good Jamie, had to read that back twice 🙂

@dannybgoode – I’ve got a Nespresso that I’m about to put up for sale if you’d be interested. It’s one of these from few years back; used but in good nick. Unsure of price (not very much I think) but drop me an email (address in profile) if you might be interested.

Cheers folks, I thought as much!

We had this problem with our Rottie. Had to have a stair gate on for 6 months I guess. Then kept an eagle eye on him and coaxed him down to begin with and then got sterner and sterner in ordering him down. He still goes up there occasionally even now at 18 months, in fact he had the fag end of the cats dry food last night for which he got a stern bollocking, but it’s rare. Your younger one only needed the gate on for a few weeks.

If she won’t come down your treats aren’t tempting enough – plenty of cooked chicken or similar scattered over the bottom steps and then leave her to it. She’ll come down eventually.

@Spaniardclimber – we haven’t got as far as accomodation, I’d just picked a name from the map which was around the area we were thinking about.

I’ll drop you a line.

@spaniardclimber – we were thinking of staying Biescas and maybe venturing over to Zona Zero if we were feeling brave! I’ll drop you a line for those GPXs, thanks.

@Northwind – shock grease? Do you have a link to something suitable? I’m a newbie on rear shocks…

Sorry, this took me a couple of days.

I’m guessing it’s an RP3…?

@simons_nicolai-uk – if you’ve got a kit could you drop me a line? edward.rollason[at]hotmail.co.uk

Thanks

Ed

Lidl for us, although we have an Aldi and a Lidl next door to each other. They’ve just refitted ours and its now light and airy and nice to be in. In contrast the Aldi is dark and miserable and stacked to the rafters; I prefer the no choice that Lidl gives me to the random possibilities of branded goods and no other choice that our local Aldi specialises in.

If you’re after branded cleaning stuff and toiletries try adding Home Bargains onto your shopping run.

@Johndoh – oh they do all of that, including a home visit to check on your property and garden. However, there was definitely a degree of flexibility and a willingness to work with prospective owners rather than dismissing people out of hand.

Loads of great dogs there but only one mention that many rescue centres won’t home dogs with families with small children. Check with your local ones before you go down and fall in love with a particular dog.

Our local Dogs Trust kind of has that as a blanket policy but if you go in and make the effort to speak to the trainers/staff they’re actually very flexible. They want dogs to go to the right homes, so if you can show you know what you’re doing and you’re going for a young dog without too much history they’d be fine.

Staffie or staffie mongrel. The rescue homes are full of them as idiots think they’re a mean fighting machine when in actual fact they’re fluffy sweeties.

Don’t get a staffie-collie cross. We got one ‘by accident’ (it wasn’t obvious it was collie when she was tiny) when we were after a companion for the rottie. She’s nuts, completely nuts, and can do a full re-charge in 45 minutes; hard work is an understatement.

Rottweiler for the win. We rescued ours from Dog Trust at the age of 14 weeks. He’s completely crazy but as soon as a small person comes towards him he’s as placid as anything, just sits there and lets them play with his ears and muck about with him. He’s sat next to my 1 year old nephew while he (my nephew) emptied his toy box and handed him each of his toys one by one. Dog just took them really carefully out of his hands and made a pile of them, it was soooo cute.

Pluses – capable of good exercise but will happily settle on the sofa and sleep for hours, easy to train, super sociable.

Negatives – stubborn as a mule with training/recall when he’s not in the mood, very strong, eats absurd quantities, people cross the road to get away from you, you’ll need a bigger sofa, goes through toys like a industrial shredder

Lots more on here

I think our university doesn’t class that as plagiarism but does consider it against the rules.

EDIT: found it in the handbook[/url]:

1. Assessment irregularities take various forms including:

a. plagiarism: Defined in General Regulation VIII Examinations C as unacknowledged use including quotation and close paraphrasing of other people’s writing and ideas, amounting to the presentation of other person’s writings or thoughts as one’s own. This includes using material which is available on the world-wide web and in any other electronic form, and “contract cheating” i.e. obtaining an essay from an essay writing site or equivalent source and submitting it for marking, as if it were your own work.

b. Multiple submission: the inappropriate submission of the same or substantially the same work of one’s own for summative assessment, in connection with an academic award.

Be slightly careful if you’re submitting things you’ve submitted before for marking to a Turnitin (or similar) system. We use Turnitin and it scans both online sources and also any work that has been submitted to Turnitin from other universities that use Turnitin. So if your previous work is already in a database somewhere it will flag as 100% copied and you might end up arousing unwanted interest in your submissions, which is a huge hassle even if it ends up not being against the rules.

This is a helpful link for compatibility checking: https://www.nikonians.org/reviews/nikon-slr-camera-and-lens-compatibility

As an alternative, you could consider a slightly older but more ‘high end’ body that incorporates an AF motor, which would then give you AF capability with a whole load more lenses

+1 for this. Although the newer bodies ARE smaller and lighter, particularly vs. the D300 which is pretty weighty. so thats worth thinking about. I always like to drop into a shop to have a feel of them.

+1 for a Wileyfox. I’ve got a Swift (about £120 off Ebay I think or Amazon link below) and its great.

I used to have a Ute but had to sell it when I moved to a place with 10 steps down to get in the front door.

I’ve recently been lusting over something like the elephant bikes but just found this on ebay: http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Vintage-Trade-bike-Trike/322279332167?_trksid=p2047675.c100005.m1851&_trkparms=aid%3D222007%26algo%3DSIC.MBE%26ao%3D2%26asc%3D39012%26meid%3Dd57e282f52d64a20885f46ba13133993%26pid%3D100005%26rk%3D1%26rkt%3D15%26sd%3D152263836729

Are we doing pics?

What is the point of a thread about dogs if we don’t? 😉

Amazingly people don’t react well to a 6 stone Rottweiler running up to them and putting their entire hand in his mouth!

In support of cinnamon_girl we’ve found it’s very dependent on what doctor you get. Mrs Handsomedog has Hashimotos Hypothyroiditis (somewhat different to regular hypothyroidism but treated in the same way) and it took 5 years and at least 4 different doctors to obtain any kind of diagnosis and that includes several hospital consultants.

She’s now with a doctor who is more concerned with her symptoms than her ‘normal’ blood levels and is ok with some experimentation of dosage.

On the ‘rescue dogs are bad’ thing; some rescue dogs are bad/hard work in the same way some pedigree dogs can be bad/hard work. Our local dogs trust regularly gets in litters of puppies which are often hand reared and rehomed at 10ish weeks. We’ve now had two from them.

Here’s dog one when we got him (we got him at 14 weeks as he’d been rehomed and then returned 🙁 )

and now

He’s a massive softie who’s amazing with kids and other dogs and whose only vice is a tendency to get very very excited and suck on peoples hands, which is slightly disturbing if you’re not expecting it (we’re working on it).

Here’s dog two who was a straight rehome at 9 weeks. She’s part collie and loves hugs, also great with children.