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simba

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Everything posted by simba

  1. WTF. People do that? I have been fortunate enough to find someone who runs dog "playdates" with supervised well-socialized dogs.
  2. Mum24dog's posts were always well worth reading. And I gathered she never missed an opportunity to stand up for what was right. I hope she is in a better place. Are there any charities or organizations she would have wanted donations to?
  3. Heather Houlahan's blog 'raised by wolves' has a post called 'it takes two to tension' you might find useful also. Can't link to it at the moment.
  4. She seems to be doing a lot better. It was tough for her because the vet said to take all the toys away and not let her hold anything until she was rested a bit. She resorted to, for example, pulling the bin over to get a piece of plastic wrapping (!) out so she had something to play with. Rubbish EVERYWHERE. But hey, at least I know she's not just miserable and sick and lethargic? But anyway, there was an object of roughly similar size in the bin and she managed to grab that and toddle out with it. So I think she seems to be a bit better.
  5. Vet couldn't examine her jaw (she turned into the Incredible Snapping Dog*) so she has been given a course of anti-inflammatories and if that doesn't clear it up she will go in for x rays and further investigation. It requires sedation and she is elderly and has a couple of things that make that a bit more risky. *Sore jaw, half-blind and hates her face touched at the best of times, so fair enough. we do lots of careful desensitization for treats but it wasn't enough.
  6. She is still leaping up at me to ask for the favourite ball but cannot take it when offered. Vet Friday.
  7. A bit quieter overall than usual. It also literally happened overnight. Last week she was scratching at me to go get the ball for her.
  8. I am more worried in case she has a sore mouth or eyesight trouble or something. Most nights I get bumped on the leg with the tennis ball, or she 'steals' socks, the phone, toilet roll etc and I have to chase her and then cuddle her as that is the game. It is out of character.
  9. I know, I know, this is one of those question titles you seeon yahoo answers about a dog bleeding from the ears. But seriously. My elderly dog will not fetch a tennis ball. We play fetch for her dinner and she will go to the ball, move at it, then look up at me. When I ask her again to fetch she pokes it and then looks at me. She will fetch socks and a small stuffed toy. No visible problems with the mouth. Vet or leave her for a week and see how she goes? 15 y/o dog, no other symptoms save some odd shaking that has been going on for a few months.
  10. Sorry about necroposting and not relevant to the topic- but I miss AK Dog Doc.
  11. Met a lovely 3/4 pug 1/4 bichon the other day. Looked just like a long-legged pug, like the old ones you see in oil paintings. Its eyes were prominent but not horrifying and it didn't make scary noises. I'd be very happy if suitable, sustained outcrossing could get the pug to that and I would consider getting one myself. Couldn't get one now, the thought of being unable to breathe petrifies me.
  12. Given how many collies are in my area, black and white anything is probably likely to be a collie mix. Collie -small terrier mixes look hilarious.
  13. They bred two lots of foxes and of rats- one for for expressed aggression of any kind towards humans, one for calmness/tameness. The increased flight distance ones look like that. The decreased ones look like this, with similar raising protocols for both (minimal handling- it's not a nice experiment, I have a lot of problems with the minimal handling and the environments from what I have seen). They started off breeding purely for flight distance. One of the things they wanted to do was isolate nature vs nurture, so for example the fearful or aggressive foxes would be put in litters of tame foxes, and vice versa, so that others around them modelled a behaviour they were not bred for, and to look at animals of different breeding in similar environments.
  14. My dog does that with eggcups or fragile things.
  15. Sorry if this has been asked and answered before, I can't find anything when searching the forums. My dog has a dislocated toe, and wounds to a leg. I live in a very humid, rainy area and need to find a way to keep the foot dry. Even indoors when it is dry, she is slipping on the cast as it doesn't have a lot of traction. An elderly dog with bad knees and hips can't really afford a slip here and there, to my mind. Any ideas? Do dog boots work? Are there any cheaper solutions? I was looking out for non-slip socks for small kids but couldn't find any.
  16. I had a dog very carefully climb under a (waterproof, washable) car seat cover to have a bout of diarrhoea. Then plonk herself back down on top of the cover once done. Could smell something awful, pulled over, dog was sitting there quite happily and nothing wrong. Only realized it once I got to our destination.
  17. https://denisefenzipetdogs.com/2015/08/30/its-a-puppy-not-a-problem/
  18. I get my old dog to stand up gently on her hind legs, leaning her front paws on me, regularly. I hope that it'll stave off the dreaded hind end weakness. I also bring her out everywhere. I mean, everywhere. She gets tucked into a backpack and I bring her around shopping. We go to the pet shop where she is allowed to poke boxes to ask for things (though she is not allowed to reach out and take them). We go to the park. We sit together under a tree while she sniffs the breeze. She goes on the train and comes with me to historic places. She goes to friend's houses and sits in the corner just chilling with her people. We all do picnics together. Not sure about her hearing status but my girl went deaf and it made a huge difference that she already had hand signals.
  19. At the moment she is only a baby and is much too young to be off-lead somewhere where she can run away. She's too young yet for off-leash in parks. Don't let her off-leash anywhere she isn't safely enclosed, for the moment. Start off with a short leash at the park. Then after a while move to a long line (not a 'flexi' or extendible lead, but a really long lead). You start off by holding one end of it and letting her explore at the other end. That will be more than enough freedom for a pup for the moment. And practice calling her back to you at moments when she is definitely paying attention to you and not distracted, and then giving her something delicious to eat.
  20. CptJack- it's good poured into pie. Smalahundur- so true.
  21. I sort of wonder if this is a resurgence of the days when 'beef tea' was the magical health food- possibly because of a desire to market imported beef in the days before refrigeration. And beliefs that you could distill 'essences' of meat that could sustain strong men for several days etc. Florence Nightengale talked about how people thought that beef tea was the most nutritive of all foods (and how it was wrong). I can't see it providing comparable value to meat. But I'm all for more stock in the world, even if just for flavour and having more gelatinous foods. Pig's feet are a much undervalued dinner. And maybe if people get into the habit of collecting and freezing and using bones, we might get less food waste.
  22. My dog and I play keepaway- I know some people have issues with this so be cautious about introducing it. She grabs A Thing (it has been a leaf sometimes), and I tell her I'm going to get her and roast her over a fire (big happy tone of voice), and she gambols away and runs around a table while I run after her. She's pretty old now and can't run as fast as she used to, but because I stopped playing whenever I got bored, she used to be pretty good about slowing down to allow me to 'win'. This might not be good for calmness inside though. More usual things are teaching her to discriminate between different toys (give them different names and use them consistently). Scent games- get a pile of sticks, handle them while wearing gloves, handle one without gloves heavily, then ask her to tell the difference. Or I used to get a little of something scented, put it on an item, and ask her to find the item (meaning she couldn't rely on shape but had to grab whatever it was that had the scent on it). Let's say you have a room full of items- socks in a bowl on the floor, a ball, a newspaper, and you'd scent one of the items and get her to figure out which one. I used cinnamon but I don't know how safe that is, it's just what I used at the time.
  23. An important part of the 15 foot lead training for my dog was that whenever she hit the end of the lead, I would make the noise my mother made when I was small and tried to, say, play ball in the house across fragile things. Like an "ah ah ah ah ah" noise, very sharp. With a big HEY! if it was repeated. Very clear, only done at the second the leash is taut, and talking quietly in a calm friendly voice when the lead was loose. Carrying things in the lead hand and having them drop noisily on the dog when it pulled worked too, though this was an accidental consequence of walking three dogs whilst reading.
  24. She doesn't need to exercise to lose weight, and I would ask my vet about running an overweight dog with hip dysplasia, particularly given the agility needed for fetch for an energetic dog. If she needs to eat a tiny amount to lose weight, then she only needs a tiny amount (barring disease which would affect this). Many dogs need to eat below the recommended amount. That said- try giving treats from your hand so there's no scented floor area to search for crumbs. Work slowly and patiently and gradually shape the behaviour.
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