Within the first few months of having our Lab he had run into some bushes and got a thorn in his eyeball requiring emergency surgery to save it. That cost my insurance company nearly £2k.

PetPlan, while a tad on the expensive side, covers him for £7k per year for life… It is worth the £35 I pay each month to know that I won’t have to chose between my dog’s life and a new car/holiday/etc etc

I’ve got no idea if his isurance premium is going to go up this year because of that claim – so that may be the only downside…

Our dog walker is with PetPlan too and has an English Mastiff which is plagued with problems, their insurance ran out £1k ago – and she just went back to the specialist vet hospital. Without their insurance the cash would have run out £8k ago… I know what I’d prefer.

Some people never have problems – so they’ll tell you to save your cash and self insure. Others will have had problems, and will tell you that insurance is worth it. I’m the latter. For me, PetPlan have been great, pay up quickly and without argument and with very little paperwork.

@Muke:

Snap…

Border Terrier – Black Lab
iPad – Yep
Audi – Ford
Orange 5 – Marin, Cotic, On-one
Guardian – Daily Mash
Niche Razor – Gillette
Coffee Machine – Stove-top espresso makers all the way
Work in IT – International conservation organisation
Wood burning stove – Yep
Log pile – Yep

Amazing! I had no idea – and it gives me an excuse to post a photo of my favourite – homemade Pork Pie…

Mmmmm… Pie…

But what the chuff have you been putting off maintaining for a year on a V-braked singlespeed?

😳

Ummm…

Nothing that a few hours didn’t get sorted this morning…

*Goes off to hang head on shame having had pathetic excuse highlighted and ridiculed in public*

Ummm… Who picked the colour for outside? I couldn’t help but notice as I went past it today – not exactly subtle!

Looking very nice tho…

Rhodesian ridge-back cross staff

Anyone else concerned about the pure logistics of crossing a Ridgeback with a staffie? That’s a fair few copies of the yellow pages…

£150! Blimey. I knew someone who did this the other way round, putting diesel in a petrol. I He had to call a mechanic after my his car lost all power and pumped out shed loads of black somke and then stuttered to halt. Mechanic opened up engine by the side of the road and started taking gob-fulls of petrol and spitting them through the injectors and filters, pumped some clean petrol through the system, catching the contaminated fuel in a handy ice-cream tub and selling it on to a passer by… Cost me him £10. But then again it was in Tanzania…

Clearly Ted doesn’t think green is his colour…

Joolsburger – I don’t disagree. But i have to say picking Burns to contrast with Orijen isn’t the best comparison.

They’re approaching a healthy diet from opposite ends of a spectrum – but they’re actually both really good, and high quality foods. Burns chooses to keep protein content comparatively low, based on the belief that low-protein food is more digestible, and less likely to cause digestion-related problems. Orijen (and Acana, Canagan etc) think that high protein to vegetables ratio is the best approach, based on the natural diet of a dog.

I currently feed Canagan, a 60:40 protein to vegetable, cereal-free diet. But I’m coming to the conclusion that my Lab is actually sensitive to too much protein, and so if he doesn’t settle down on his current food I’ll be moving him to something like Burns.

I think the most important thing is to be informed, and to be happy that what you feed works for your dog.

Indy sulking because I hadn’t fed him yet…

Indy having a “sit-in” on the kitchen floor because he was on a 24 hour starve when he was ill

A rare photo as a puppy where Indy isn’t sulking over food – and instead is keen to be allowed to play!

adding to sharkbait’s body of evidence, mine was on Beta Puppy when we got him.

However – I think it’s horrible stuff that I would never ever feed out of choice. We took ours off it as soon as we could.

As others have said – stick with what the breeder has given you for a while unless you feel strongly that it is not the right food. Even then, move the pup over slowly to whatever you select, and try to keep them on that. Chopping and changing is bad.

The most important thing with food is that you’re happy with it and the pup is getting on fine with it.

Take a look at this site: Which Dog Food. It gives loads of reviews and details on foods, and gives information on some of the ingredients and things to look out for.

Personally, I’d never feed anything with added salt, or anything with cheap fillers like loads of grains or chicken fat. That means pretty much anything you can buy in a supermarket is off limits for me. You can get plenty of good food by mailorder, so don’t feel constrained by what you can buy locally. It’s just like everything else, you buy too cheap and you get crap. (Literally)

Also agree with the above, don’t let them graze, meal times help you bond with your pup. We found the most powerful training tool we had was his food bowl.

Rab ones are good, if you hang around some dodgy pubs or the backs of vans near where I live you can probably pick one up for cheap as mine was stolen last night. 😥

I’ve got an Osprey Talon 33. Can’t recommend it highly enough, well made, not restrictive, good harness, adjustable back, comfy while riding too. Only problem I have is if I overstuff it then (like most bags without a frame) it rounds out over your spine and can feel a bit unbalanced. Not usually a problem though as it’s pretty roomy and so I rarely carry enough junk around to overstuff it!

Anyway.

Have they replied yet?

Keep everything neutral. Boring yes, but it won’t offend anyone and its easy to add colour or paint over.

I disagree. Magnolia offends me enormously. Most of our house was Magnolia when we moved in. I still have to shut my eyes when I walk up the stairs because the torment is too much. I can’t express enough how much I hate it.

However – I’d also leave it. The new owners can paint over it themselves…

Our lab is a year now, and like you we got loads of conflicting advice. So to add to it:

With your night-time routine, if stuff works for you then stick to it, but I would seriously advise against encouraging him to have a crate which he also uses to toilet, or giving him free run of the kitchen to toilet. It is more stressful for you, and harder work – but i would be getting up every couple of hours to take him out, then put him back in his crate to sleep. Our lab took less than 2 weeks before he was ok to be crated from midnight to 6am with no accidents, and we built pretty quickly from there. You’re sending mixed signals at the moment that he is OK to crap and pee inside if he is desperate.

One thing we found: ours was crying each morning just before we got up. We had been feeding him pretty quickly after waking up, and he was actually demanding food. As soon as we started making him wait an hour or so after we got up before he got breakfast, the morning crying stopped.

I agree with you on not sleeping in the bedroom, and building up time alone. We’ve done this and ours is more than happy to be left (he puts himself to bed when he sees us getting ready to leave).

I’m a control freak about dog food. Mine gets fed obscenely expensive stuff called Canagan, because I like to know what has gone into his food and I don’t want him eating what I consider to be low quality junk which has been shoved in to increase the profit margin for Nestle and Mars… For that reason I personally wouldn’t feed Skinners, James Wellbeloved or Wainwrights. I also don’t understand why any dog food would ever add salt and steer clear of everything that does this. This is very much a personal thing though and what is most important is that you’re happy with what you’re feeding.

For final meal, I’d give it to him a little later, but not so late that he gets his massive energy buzz late at night and then won’t settle. You could try leaving him to about 8pm… We also leave water all night, but this is because Indy is really bad at drinking, so we want him to have it whenever he wants.

Enjoy him being this age which is stressful and amazing in equal measure – I wish I’d taken more photos and videos when ours was little…

What samuri said +lots and lots

big yim – Member

That was my suggestion really. Trouble is my oh is veryvery very over protective of the dog which I think has made the problem worse

While this is happening – good luck.

If you can fix this huge problem, then you’ll have a pretty good chance of getting the dog to socialise well – even if she never loves other dogs, she should be able to tolerate them and learn to ignore them. From my own experience:

My FIL didn’t socialise his dog, a combination of not really knowing how important it was and not having much opportunity to meet other dogs where they live. Their dog hated other dogs as a result, and had so few social skills that he was attacked a couple of times – as you can imagine this didn’t help the dog learn to get on with others. FIL respoinded by becomming over-protective, keeping dog on lead all the time, avoiding other dogs etc etc – reinforcing to the dog that all other dogs must be the ENEMY…

This situation was so bad that my wife and I put off getting a puppy for quite a while – because we couldn’t have taken it to her parents house.

Eventually, my FIL decided that with his dog now getting on a bit (9 years old at the time) maybe another dog would be a good idea – so he adopted a failed guide-dog, which was utterly bombproof and completely relaxed around the original neurotic one. The result, after about a month, neurotic dog calmed down, learnt to greet other dogs OK. A year on and he is like a different animal, yes he still gets spooked sometimes and doesn’t really like it when my puppy is too boistrous – but at least has developed enough social skills to be in the same room as other dogs and not react too badly.

I’d get her off the lead, with an appropriately calm dog, and let her gradually learn that it’s OK. I’d also head to training classes where she can work with you in the presence of other dogs, and where there is help on hand to work on problems.

Fjallraven plus a squillion… I love mine and want more…

You’re just a moron

Another idiot

Nice. Do you talk to your “patients” like that too?

Try a voodoo witch doctor… As reliable as a chiropractor, as many hours education, as likely to suceed, and more goat entrails – so you get a nice BBQ when he’s finished…

My back problems manifest as either an inability to breathe and severe pain in my left chest or the collapse of my right knee… So back pain, in my experience, doesn’t have to hurt your back… Hope the doctor comes up with something a little more helpful…

Arrghh… Pants…

I forgot again yesterday. This is the problem with spending all the hours of daylight sat in an office… Unless I start taking photos of the ever-growing pile of coke cans on my desk – I seriously lack any fun subject matter during the day. I can only take so many photos of the dog in front of the fire before they get dull…

Speaking of which, here is my effort from 31/01/13 – which had a geniune point to it, getting a black dog in a relatively dark room to be both in focus (on the eye) and with enough definition, without having the shutter open so long I end up with inevitable blurring…

MrsH is scared of flying – nearly scuppered our honeymoon as she refused to board the plane.

She went on the Virgin flying without fear course thingy – said it was really good, and has been loads better since. They explained loads of the physics of flying, and what all the noises were and about the safety measures on board.

She has their app now too and finds it pretty helpful. It has exercises and relaxation stuff on there to do with breathing.

These days I always grab the steward(ess) and explain she’s a nervous flyer. They are usually really helpful and come and chat to her and make sure she’s alright on the flight. Last time we flew Virgin together the steward got the co-pilot to come back and say hello and that was really helpful in calming her down.

I used to live in Tanzania, I was never a big fan of Kenya personally.

10 days is a long time on safari if you’ve got no variety. But if you break it up then it’s fine. If it was me I’d consider trying to get some big game safari in Kenya or Tanzania and then scoot off to Rwanda or Uganda to fit in some jungles, mountains and gorilla… Or try some of the more remote bits, like Turkana in Kenya or Selous in TZ… Both Tanzania and Kenya have decent beach bits too – so in 10 days you could do some safari and head to Zanzibar or Mombasa for a relax.

If you want to take a look at a few companies then i’d recommend Hoopoe Safaris in Tanzania which has some good options for ideas… My mate’s company is Summits Africa which is more focused on climbing and biking but you might et a few ideas there too…

I love that photo of Jasmine on the table, and of Brian as a pup.

@donncha: My wife and I are at work 5 days a week, so Indy gets left at home. We try to work from home whenever possible and have a dog walker in twice a day to give him company and fuss. I also manage to do flexible hours and get home early for him.

It isn’t my ideal – but he gets all of my attention the rest of the time – and to be honest whenever I work form home he just sleeps on my feet anyway. We make it work, but it is very expensive to have him looked after.

Edit to say we have no intention of this being the case for his whole life, and expect that after a year or two we’ll be able to change things round so that MrsH is home or able to be home much more often.

Indy sulking because I made him wait for his dinner tonight…

I can’t decide which made me laugh more. This:

I’m not racist but

Or the 4 exclamation marks in the thread title. Beautiful bit of internetting…

Oh – and I have no useful contribution to make

Daily Mash

Costa del Wales?

Nobeerinthefridge – Member

Use black silicone, problem solved.

Balls – posting this ^ was the only reason I opened this thread – and I was beaten to it!

We just redid our bathroom and stopped just short of full wetroom – we have a mahoosive shower tray, and a single screen which divides the tray from the door – because the tray is massive it catches the bulk of the splashing, but a quick wipe round after a shower and the floor dries easily too. Have no had problems with mildew even without underfloor heating fitted.

My FIL has a similar set up, but in a much smaller room, with a smaller tray and a smaller screen. You get way more water on the floor at their house than ours and it does take a bit of faff to mop it all up.

Looks like your room is pretty small, so maybe go with underfloor heating and a proper wetroom. We were quoted £650 to fit underfloor heating in ours for a 9m2 bathroom – running cost were quoted as “reasonable” which I took to mean “expensive” so we ditched it in favour of radiator and heated towel rail. I don’t really regret leaving it out, and I’ve never encountered the much quoted breezy-bits problem when showering without an enclosed cubicle.

When we do our kitchen (same size room) later this year – we’ll defo either have underfloor heating or a plinth heather fitted to warm the floor up – but it is downstairs and much much colder underfoot.

footflaps – Member

Depends where you are, I phoned a local stove company and he was booked solid for months, so it wasn’t that he didn’t want the business, just wasn’t able to take it.

^ This. The guy who installed our woodburner was round to sweep it a week ago – he told me he’d started working 7 days a week on installs in September, was fully booked until after Christmas by October, and had only just started quoting again in January. I booked him in to sweep ours back in early November, and mid Jan was the first date he had available…

MrSmith – Member

Often it’s a symbol of skewed fiscal priorities and debt.

Three pages late, but…

[pedantry mode] “Fiscal” pertains to taxation, it is not a synonym for “financial” [/pedantry mode]

The irony of this schoolboy error is that the owners of “proper” Chelsea tractors (ie those who actually live in Chelsea) have superb fiscal management and priorities, at least from their point of view: paying as little tax as possible…

glupton1976 – Member

Because that’s how people seem to perceive you.

No – that’s how people on here seem to perceive me. I dont really care how people on here perceive me – that would be “stupid”.

Guy I used to coach posted on Facebook today about one of his crewmates at the Danish indoor champs – pulled 5:56.7 – now that is brutal.

And yes, as above ^ resistance means bugger all…

+1 for Osprey – I took ages trying to find a backpack which fitted me properly. My Talon 33 is great – the side compression straps mean I don’t have to fill it to the brim for it to sit correctly when I ride…

Enough of this tedious crap about PP gift. This:

Stoner – Member

troglodyte – Member
I remember my first day on the internets….

wren was it?*

* one for the twitchers

Is absolute gold – Well Done Sir…

billyblackheart – Member

IKB 79

A fine choice – although I prefer IKB 3, because it means I’ll be getting a better quality glass of wine after seeing it.

Personally though, I’d have to say that Cezanne’s Lac D’Annecy is mine, in here, turn left…

http://www.courtauld.ac.uk/vr_tour/new/index.html?pano=room_05.xml