Little Gifts

Is he playing tug with Trouble or just trying to entice some piggy and dog play time? In that first photo he's totally got his photo bombing face on!

My SBT girl Stussy loves having her inner thighs rubbed. She will pretzel herself into very unladylike positions to achieve this, even with strangers. This happens multiple times a day and her eyes start to bulge the minute your hands enter the correct zone. Tempeh our Shar Pei likes me to rub softly all around her eyes and cheeks when she first wakes up every morning. Should my hand fall from the bed while I'm still asleep she will give herself a DIY session. My sister on the other hand is in charge of butt scritches and these are generally requested at night. We are not able to swap roles or time zones, even accidentally. My sister's dog Wolf is not big on being touched by people but she likes to touch her own bits on all our furniture. She rubs her face along all the lounges and down the sides of our bed and she likes to sleep with her butt hole pressed against a wall or piece of furniture. It doesn't look like a very comfortable sleeping position but it seems clacker contact is more important than what you do with your long in the way legs and tail. But should you try and give her a scratch under the ears she moves away giving you a dirty look for disturbing her. So what about your dogs? What makes them don crazy face or go weak at the knees?

You've got to wonder what the hell she was thinking. It doesn't look that easy to get a bra on over your head and your back leg at the same time!

Number 2 for me as well. I love how she has one front paw curled in each pic. Does she use it as a rudder?

She's like "No one just loves me for me anymore! They all just want to look at my belly!"

Oh how could you! Look at that suffering! :laugh:

Happy Birthday Fluff! My naughty girl will turn 8 later this year and I am nowhere near close to bored or sick of her. The time has flown and I've loved every nano second of it. Oh I wish she would live forever!

Apologies if I have a different opinion to others. Having experienced a prolonged dog attack once (also on the premises) I'm probably a little more cautious these days. I understand livestock lives freely in paddocks and that even penned animals can be killed without surprise by predators. But personally, if I had invested in a lovely petting zoo with calm, healthy animals (which takes time and money) I'd be concerned about providing a little extra safety, especially if I didn't live on the premises. This is simply because I would want to negate as many risks as I could. For instance I'd hate to think of some idiot taking a liking to one of my pigs or goats and knowing no one was there overnight, coming back, cutting the wire and taking them. I'd worry that I had a business based around this lovely idea and imagine how horrible it would be to turn up to work and find death and chaos awaiting you. Should the onus be on the victim to ensure protection? No, but it's just a peace of mind thing for me.

Rascal for me the issue is if there is no one living there who can respond immediately if the animals start making a racket then perhaps reinforcing the closure gives some peace of mind. Dogs and foxes could dig under and snakes might also get in if the wire holes are large enough. Plus what's to stop some human idiot cutting the wire and stealing some of the animals if no one is on the premises?

Oh Ruffles of course it was enough - it was all you had. He may have been troubled but he let himself trust you and never lost faith in you because he knew that whatever you gave him was from your heart and always in his best interests. Don't doubt that he knew, even when he was scared, he knew. You gave him peace that he may not have otherwise found. Move on lighter and be free now Loki.

Dave-O I have a couple of issues with ANY pet store selling puppies so while I agree threats by activists are unacceptable (although a DOLer was at the protest and they said there was no threats) I believe it is absolutely the responsibility of a pet store owner to ensure they are sourcing, keeping and selling live animals responsibly. I didn't know is not an acceptable excuse. She should do her research. I personally don't think ANY puppy farm or puppy wholesaler is capable of breeding a sound pet. They do not keep the puppies with the parents for long enough. They do not stimulate, socialise or expose the puppies to a range of people, animals, sounds or activities. They are focussed on volume and not the betterment of the breed. But the worst thing a pet shop knowingly does is sell pets without health and behavioural guarantees for exorbitant prices. There are also many examples of misrepresenting the breed. The staff are not pet experts. They don't provide any support services to ensure that live creature is going to a suitable home either. So I don't care if she didn't know where those puppies were really coming from. Selling companion animals in pet shops is wrong for the animals for many reasons. The fact is she knew they were coming from a farm type environment where mass breeding was occurring and she knew her product was not as sound as it could be and she sold less than perfect products for as much money as she thought she could get. Companion animals should not be sold in commercial pet shops period.

Don't put any animal products (including diary but eggshells are ok) into the compost heap. Add some newspaper. Add some grass clippings but don't add tons of everything at once. Air still needs to circulate. I also add a little bit of soil from the garden to assist composition as it is getting closer to being ready to use. I've never had a problem with odour or flies or wrigglies outside of the bin using this approach. I also haven't needed to buy or add anything extra to get amazing compost. An elderly person told me about making sure no animal products went in and not compacting it all too much and my compost has thanked me for it ever since!

Does someone live onsite? As gorgeous as that setup looks in the photo, if the owners value it they have to make it safer so that people or other animals can't break in while there is no one on the premises. I've also been in a situation where a neighbours three dogs broke into my chicken pen, killed all the chickens and harassed our Nubian goat for hours. We were asleep and kept hearing a wailing noise that we thought was coming from the guinea fowl next door. Eventually we got up to investigate and it had been our poor Nubian goat jumping from structure to structure inside the pen to escape the dogs, screaming for help in a way we had never heard before. It was horrible. Our goat needed a lot of care but survived. Only one dog was caught by council. Imagine being trapped in an enclosure and being attacked and unable to hide or escape from a predator who is doing it for fun. The only way to avoid that is reinforce the enclosure unfortunately but if no one is onsite overnight then even a snake could get in and eat a couple of chickens and no one will hear any ruckus.

Our three have always been fed in separate rooms (but within view of each other) and we used to let them check out each other's bowls after they were finished but we had an unexpected fight last year so have a very strict routine now. They get fed in pack order, still in the same places but the last one to be fed is outside and the door stays closed now until everyone is finished and has walked away from their bowls. Bowls are then picked up in order of being put down and only then can the outside dog come in and join the other two. One of us watches the whole time. Treats are dispensed similarly. Ours were not food aggressive but the youngest one just happened to pee off the middle one while she was still eating that one time and both ended up needing surgery for wounds so we don't want to put them in the position of it happening again.

He's just so freaking funny! Does he trip over centipede when he runs with it too?

I cannot believe puppy farmers have the audacity to have their own lobby group! I'm going to see if they have a facebook page I can get thrown off of.

I'm glad you were able do what needed to be done without too much second guessing. I'm sure your house will be strange for a bit without her there. Run free beautiful old girl. XXX

I've just caught up on the thread (with my heart in my mouth!) and I wonder if these oldies have any idea how much they scare us? So pleased he is mostly back to his old self. There is no point him spending 24 hours a day in an unsafe daze on the off chance he has is going to have another seizure. Let him be Mac for whatever time he has left.

Poor Tempeh just got locked on the front verandah. I am operating in a daze at present, came home and left the front door open as I had so much stuff to bring in. Brought it all in, closed the door, got changed, had a pee, put stuff away and then thought I heard some crying out the front. Called all the dogs and one was missing. Luckily Tempeh is not the running off kind as I hadn't even latched the front gate on the verandah. Plus it's raining and she believes she would disintegrate if any rain touched her. She'll spend the rest of the day plotting her revenge on me now.

I don't know who I love seeing more - Don or Smoke. They each have their own beauty!

Government housing clients are often unable to source other types of housing for a variety of reasons. I do agree Housing has a responsibility to visitors to the property but this sounds like a house and not a housing complex and the dogs sound like they were roaming and not on the property. What's a bet the reason they needed approval to have pets is because the fencing is not appropriate for all types of pets? Having dealt with client issues briefly for that department here in QLD I know that tenants regularly breach all kinds of aspects of their tenancy agreements and getting them out of government housing is extremely difficult because the only other place many of them could go would be their car or the street. I do believe housing staff would've known about dogs and probably didn't do a whole lot about it because there was probably other significant tenancy issues they were managing. They would have to issue warnings and breaches and it could go on for months. The onus would still be considered on the owners of the dogs after being breached to rehome them or find other accommodation if they wanted to keep the dogs but I honestly can't imagine Housing getting approval to terminate a lease for this reason or pursuing legal action to have the dogs forcibly removed so the tenants could remain in compliance. They certainly would've had more push with DAS than neighbours so at the very least this should be an important learning from this horrible incident. Tenant occupancy shouldn't be at the expense of neighbourhood safety.

See I'm not so sure about Housings level of fault here because they don't have legislation to enforce anything regarding pets and they certainly have no powers to remove pets from someone's property. All they could do is refer it to DAS for action or evict the tenant for non-compliance. I think they could've put more pressure on DAS to help resolve the situation but apart from that it is the tool who did not appropriately contain his dogs that is at fault. Why do we want to dilute the blame and let this arsehat get away with it? But what an awful range of injuries that child suffered.

For me it depends on the type of dog. A dog that looks cared for with tags I would endeavour to find the owners details and reunite the dog directly but if this didn't lead to a result in the first half hour (ie phone number not current) I'd be off to the closest vet for a microchip scan and if that didn't work then it would be to the pound. Once the dog was dropped at the pound I'd put photos and messages up on FB and talk to my neighbours as well as call the RSPCA. How are people supposed to find their dogs if the most logical place to send a lost dog isn't utilised? That doesn't mean you can't also use FB but don't hold on to the dog for hours because private houses are not the first place a worried owner is going to check! If the dog looked unwell, was aggressive and had no collar or tags it is unlikely I would try to catch it myself as I'm not very good at doing it. I'd call the pound but I would also take its picture and put it on FB. I've done that twice before and found information about the dogs and their regular wanderings from neighbours. Really you can do multiple things but be sensible about it. Sometimes dogs turn up a long way from home and as has been mentioned not everyone uses FB or is even aware there is a pet lost and found network!

He is just so beautiful - even when he is being a total goober!

Thank you Kitty!