Kirislin

thankyou. And just to make everything a whole lot harder, this afternoon I was laying on the bed playing with Neko and Penny got all silly and came at me all worn down teeth and her now breathy bark, the way she used to when I'd pretend I was a zombie. She hasn't done it for a very long time. Maybe she's saying not just yet Mum. right now she's having an omelette mixed up with her chicken mince and she likes it.

Here's the article about it. I wonder if Noel Potter is still breeding GSDs and if any of her progeny are still alive. I remember she was imported from Germany, she must have been one of the first since the ban was lifted on them. Wow that's awesome! I love the technology of the time, a telegram was sent to one person, who took it to another person, who drove all the way to Melbourne to tell the owner :laugh: yes, and before that my mother made several long distance calls, first to the council over there and then to the original owner. Back then phone calls like that were really expensive. I remember mum said the bloke gave her $10 for her trouble and effort but she said the cost amounted to alot more than that.

Here's the article about it. I wonder if Noel Potter is still breeding GSDs and if any of her progeny are still alive. I remember she was imported from Germany, she must have been one of the first since the ban was lifted on them.

Just 'cause it's cute, here she is puckering up for a 12th birthday kiss from a little girl at the park. She still looked amazing at 12 but it wasn't long after that I could see she was aging fast. She's had a good life though. Such a pretty girl.

thankyou all. I hate seeing these threads and often avoid them like the plague because they depress me. Penny's still with me. I'll go to the vet tomorrow and ask again about medication that might help her but I wont keep her going just for me, she has to want to continue or I'll let her go.

Bruno the doggy ambassador!!

I read that the dog was destroyed, but now it seems the owner has scarpered with the dog.

except that he's got his back to you, when I saw him here I immediately thought of this

this :D Come on really, why try to find him a better home than the one he's currently in.

Yes, and she was a big girl too, I'll find the newspaper article about it and post it.

I think some peoples instinct is correct in certain situations and some would be all wrong. After all I've read and been told, I suspect I would still just react instinctively as I did yesterday, even if it was the wrong thing to do, I actually had no control over my reaction to this big pup. Almost 40 years ago I found a GSD bitch lost in a park with 3 fat unweaned puppies. I could tell she was very stressed, I didn't know much about dogs but luckily for me, I must have done everything right. I instinctively squatted down and called her and she was barking very nervously and aggressively. I kept my head down and didn't turn as she ran around the back of me, I just kept the same postition. She came right up barking, I could feel her hot breath on the back of my neck and her voice was so deep and loud it rattled my brain. I kept very still and when she moved away a bit I just stood up, didn't look at her but told her to come. She was making a growly grumbly noise and I said in a firm voice for her to heel. To my surprise and relief, she did! Then her 3 little puppies all tumbled and waddled after her and we had to walk about a kilometre to my mothers home. Across the busy Princes Hwy with puppies all strung out in a row crying. :laugh: It all ended well and they got back to their owner. No one had told me what to do back then but I just knew not to look at her and not to move when she came up to me barking. Lucky for me what I did then worked. I cannot say I'd do the right thing in all situations though, and I dont want to be tested to find out.

All these responses came too late for what I needed but it was OK in the end....kind of. I visited the house where the dog of concern was. He arrived home after I'd been there a while. He's a big young pup who actually seemed quite mellow to me, but I was told he reacted well to me. Then we decided to take my dogs for a walk because they'd been locked in the car while I was visiting. I was very cautious about letting him meet them but his owner held him across the other side of the street and let him walk up to sniff them. He seemed friendly, a bit keen for Feather and Neko, he was in their face a bit but they kept fairly aloof and out of his way. His owner was going out but the father said he'd walk the dog with us as we went to the local park. We'd only taken a few steps when, too quick for the walker, he rushed at Feather and in an instant opened his mouth as if he was about to eat her. No sound from him, and I'm still not sure if it was in play, it would have been very rough and innappropriate play for a dog her size. I instinctively stepped in front of him and roared for him to get back. It was enough to break his purpose and gave the person on the end of his leash a chance to haul him back. And that was the end of the social walk to the park. He was put in the house and we had a lovely peaceful walk to the park.

Thanks. I just hope it doesn't happen.

wow, that certainly was not a textbook whelping was it. How are all the puppies now?

camera phones are amazing now. Can you straighten the horizon? I've got a bad habit of tilting the camera too, and always the same direction, it looks straight to me when I take the shot.

I just need to be reminded of what to do. I know I mustn't make eye contact or move suddenly what else? Can you ever go on the attack? get in before the dog does?

Exactly what'd happen at the Tibbie picnic. Tibs that'd never met before automatically 'grouped' like a family & accepted new arrivals. But, when, someone walked past with a kelpie that was minding his own business, he got ticked off. and exactly what the whippets do at their get togethers.

I'm not certain about the bolded bit. I'm sure she is stiff and achy, just as I am, but I'm certainly not ready to throw in the towel myself. I dont know how much pain she is in. I was so close to ringing the vet this morning but I just couldn't bring myself to make the call. I've been outside scouting for gravesites in the backyard and started on a patch with a pick. I wont be able to finish it myself and will have to call on friends to help me. I'm trying to convince myself that her time has come. If not quite now I know it will be very soon.

thank you all, I feel it's staring me in the face and I just dont want to make that final decision.

It drives me nuts to watch Penny doing it because I want her to get some nourishment, and all she does is eat dirt, then comes and looks at me with her beautiful eyes and grinds her teeth so I can hear the dirt crunching. I wonder why they do it.

I recently had to put down my beloved Kibah who seemed fine one day and bad the next. In a way it was and easier decision for me though, it was so clear cut with her and she was in alot of pain that wasn't going to get better, but Penny has been frail and needed nursing for at least 2 years now, it's been a gradual decline and I'm finding it harder to pinpoint the right time to get her go.

My Penny whippet is an old girl now, and very frail. She'll be 15 in May if she makes it that far. She's come to the stage of life when I am asking myself some hard questions, but I dont know the right answers. She's very wobbly, I think she might have some sort of paralysis in her throat because she seems to have trouble eating sometimes. It's as if she wants to eat but cant always get it in her mouth. I sit on the floor and feed her little bits sometimes and try to cook her extra yummy stuff to stimulate her desire to eat. Just now I heated turkey mince with some juices from a roast I'd kept for gravy. She ate a bit and then left it while the other dogs hovered like vultures because it smelt delicious to them. What she often does is go outside and eat dirt though. I think it's because she's senile, not lacking something, although I cannot be certain. She seems to eat more dirt than real food and she's a bag of bones. She gets restless and will wander the house for hours, coming up to me as if to ask something but she doesn't seem to know what she wants. I try to settle her somewhere comfy and she'll lay for a minute or two and then up she gets again looking at me with these confused and bewildered eyes, as if pleading me to do something for her. I notice her heart beats very quickly now too and she's incontinent sometimes. I took her to the vet a few months ago just for a check up and to see if there was anything else I could do for her but he said no, she's just old. Perhaps you would think from my description it's time to let her go, but usually, at least once a day she gets the sillies and wants to play with the other dogs. That alone is probably what makes me hesitate and keep her going, but there's the other part of me that argues, why wait until she's lost even that desire to play and her whole existence is just pain and confusion? I just dont know what to do. I wish someone could wave a magic wand and make it all better.

Here's an example of whippets at the beach. Alot of these whippets didn't know each other but they banded together and did the Meerkat thing of mobbing the golden. They didn't hurt him, just shouted at him because he was different, he chose to leave his owner to try to play with them, poor boy. No dogs were hurt here. IMG_3757dppt

I'm sure they do, my whippets are particularly racist, or is it breedist. They get very excited to see another whippet. It was also very noticable at the whippet beach days. All the whippets would band together and exclude any other breed.

awww that's sweet.