disintegratus

My dogs have never been kennelled, with 4 of them now it'd cost more for their holiday than it would for mine!! :laugh: So we just get friends to look after them. Last time my Mum's dog was kennelled (for 2 weeks when we all went overseas), he had such an awesome time that he didn't want to leave :)

Same here. We have several lots of drinking water for them (some are designed to be harder to stuff dirty paws into) and in summer, it gets changed (emptied completely and refilled, not just topped up) at least twice a day and the buckets/bowls given a scrub out at the end of the day to keep algae out- I wouldn't expect them to drink out of anything I wouldn't drink out of myself. Suggesting that water just be topped up seems not just unhygenic but potentially very dangerous for the dog's health. Considering some of the stuff I've seen mine eat, I wouldn't be too concerned about a dirty water bowl! :laugh: That said, ours get emptied and washed out at least once a day, more often if it's hot and the water starts to warm up. They also have several different containers to choose from, so they always drink out of the manky wading pool that they've been playing and splashing in with their filthy paws! :)

As far as I know, you are reinforcing this behaviour, and that will just make it worse. It sounds harsh, but don't view it as him being scared, view it as nothing more than him exhibiting an unacceptable behaviour. Our rotti Zehra was terrified of storms when we got her (we found this out when we came home after a thunderstorm to find no dog and huge sprays of blood across the front door where she'd been scratching, I felt awful ) I started slow, every time there was a little bit of thunder, I'd distract her, making her sit etc. Eventually we got to the point where we would actually go out walking in thunderstorms, and she's fine now :)

I was driving around the corner to my grandpa's house once (around the time the latest BSL crud was introduced) and picked up this gorgeous pitty girl, the sweetest dog. Found her owner about 20 mins later, he was out looking for her, and the poor guy (big tough Italian guy, from appearances it was very much the typical bad sterotype of pitty owner) was shaking like a leaf, almost crying because he couldn't find his dog. He obviously cared about her a lot, and she was a fantastic dog and a testament to the time and effort he'd put into her. It made me so mad that had a regular member of the idiot public found her, she could have ended up dead.

Oh, really? I had no idea dogs couldn't be in a playground! I regularly take Thundercleese to playgrounds, kid's play equipment is his agility equipment :laugh: Of course, he has his fear aggression issues, so if we're doing something like that it's in the middle of the night when no sane person would have their children at the park anyway (and when most normal people are in bed, not taking their dog for a play session)...

Ah, thank you.

What is ACV? I tried dog rocks once, I think they worked for a while, but our yard is mostly dirt now anyway, plus I refused to keep shelling out that much money for rocks :laugh: We used to have one large dirt patch, now we have two. One named "the colosseum" and the other is "the duelling patch".

Well, every knows that American Staffordshire terriers are evil, aggressive and extremely likely to attack you with great ferocity! To translate, replace the bolded words with adorable, gorgeous and cuddles Pretty pathetic Qantas.

She sounds like a stupid busybody with nothing better to do with her time than try to cause issues for people. I'm not at all sure of the legalities of it, but I imagine that being on public land, she is within her rights to take a photo. That said, if she doesn't know who you are or where you live, you should have no cause to be concerned.

No, Santa has to have reindeer, with greys he'd never get past the first house that had a couch!! They'd have to stop for a nap :p

I've never met a nasty rotti, though I do own a stupid one!! :laugh: My rotti x is dumber than a bag of hammers, but god I love her and her simple ways :) The discussion on this thread has brought to mind when my family and I were looking at houses, we get to this property with a massive gate, complete with "beware of dog" sign (one of those ones with a big snarling rotti on it) and this HUGE Rotti just lying on the front steps. The real estate agent was pooping his pants opening the gate, and everyone kind of filed past this humongous dog which hadn't moved an inch and was lying directly in the path to the door, I think he barely opened his eyes when the gate was opened. As I walked past him, I said "hey puppy dog" and moved my foot a little close to his face (very slowly, so he could have a sniff). And this lovely old boy got up and was glued to me for the whole inspection, wouldn't leave my side. He was a gorgeous old boy, I just walked around the house scratching his ears the whole time. One of the other people looking at the house actually said to me, "well, you must be a dog person then". :)

My poor Mum's dog (the lab x collie who's forgotten everything I ever taught him along with his manners) only got 6 christmas presents this year! There were heaps of presents under the tree, at least 30-odd presents, and poor hard done by Jack was only allowed to open 6 of them!!!

That's awful. Who the hell lets a child jump on a dog?!?! The part that made me the maddest was when the poor dog got up, removed itself from the situation, went to the owners for help, so they pushed it back to the ground and encouraged the child back onto it. Deplorable

That's really cool Itsmeg. It's quite different, I really like it.

Oh god, I feel so very sorry for all these poor mistreated puppy dogs. The horror!! But I'm just as bad as all of you. I had the audacity to clean up all the pig poo food in the backyard yesterday, and to top it all off, I threw out all the manky piles of god-knows-what super comfy beds in the backyard as well. Now they have to lay on clean bedding! I should be arrested for that!

:laugh: Mine all fit on the couch... unless there's a person sitting on it In which case, whichever dog is left off the couch wanders around aimlessly, stopping to stare at the offending person occasionally with super sad-eyes. Do we honestly expect them to sit on the floor? What kind of awful hell do we think they can tolerate?!?!?!

Thundercleese gets walked alone (or very very occasionally with Harley if the OH is walking with me) so that's not an issue, but I do feel a little bit bad that his reactivity has had an impact on the other dogs in that I'm a lot more wary of just letting them offlead at the park or beach etc, I get paranoid (even though there's no precedent or any real reason to be) I also feel bad that Thundercleese plays very roughly, and he's taught the new one Bones how to play, so now I think she's not very good at playing nicely, and instead thinks "playing" means the usual "beat the tar outta each other for funsies"

We had a similar issue with our next door neighbour, she'd made life hell for our grandma when she lived in the house, then when my sister and I moved in, she got even worse. We tried to do the right thing, but after many complaints (both directly to us and to the council, and the RSPCA, and the police, and my boyfriend's workplace when he stopped for lunch at my house and had the audacity to park his small truck on the nature strip outside my house) it eventually escalated to intervention orders, mediation and then we bought a new place and moved the hell away from the stupid woman and her good for nothing husband. Once, on a weekend, my sister and I went to the market, had been out of the house for 20 minutes when she called us to say that Harley had been barking nonstop for an hour and a half. That one ended in her being hung up on after she started screeching down the phone, which was then promptly followed by a council complaint.

My sister's got 4 cats, I hate it. They are allowed to wander constantly, and are constantly killing stuff. I've lost count of the amount of times I've taken prey from them and killed it myself to put it out of it's misery. Most recently, they caught a budgie from next door. I found it's head in our yard, that was someone's pet for christ's sake!! And she still lets them out. I've decided that when I move (to acreage as far away from suburbia as the boyfriend is willing to go), I will be trapping any cats that come onto my property. They'll be returned to their owners or dropped off at the pound ONCE. If they come back, they will be humanely euthanased. I intend to have many reptiles, a lot in outdoor pits, and I need to look out for my animals welfare first and foremost.

We have 4 medium-large dogs and a miniature pig, on a largish suburban block (about 750m3). We currently don't have council permission, but I'm not too concerned as our neighbours are just as bad as we are (one of them's breeding some kind of loud birds in the garage, someone up the road has a goat, and there's chickens and roosters everywhere around here) It's very much a "mind your own business and don't worry about other people" kind of an area which is awesome. That said, if there was an issue, I'd have no hesitation in packing my lot up and moving anywhere I had to so I didn't have to get rid of my pets.

I've got a hard top canopy for my ute. In fact, most of the reason that I got the ute was because we went looking for cars on a ridiculously hot day and I happened to stick my head in the back of a ute with a canopy (I was actually looking for a station wagon) and realised it was A LOT cooler in there than in the back of any cars I'd been in. I have sliding windows which get opened just enough to stick a nose out and are very stiff so can't be pushed open any more by dog noses. Aside from that, only Thundercleese is tethered because I learned the hard way that he will jump out of a moving vehicle. Luckily I was only going about 10km/hr at that point, but he always gets tethered now. I have found though that if I tether more than one of them, they get tangled up and that concerns me. I have rubber backed matting in the back so they don't slip around as well. ETA: Just for the record, having a dual cab ute with a harp top canopy is pretty freaking useless for anything except having dogs in it. It's not big enough to put anything in, I can't transport long stuff because I don't have roof racks either. That said, on my next car (I want a space cab with a bench seat) I would like to get the canopy sealed to the cab and the rear window removed, I think that would be much more practical.

Glad she's doing better BC crazy :) I know the feeling. The other day I took Thundercleese for a walk and he didn't flip out at anything. The worst he got was an easily broken stare at someone walking across the road. I was so excited I called my entire family and my boyfriend while he was at work to tell them how awesome it was that I went for what most people would consider to be a normal walk! :laugh: My Thundercleese is the same in that he tries sooo hard to be a good dog, his only shortcoming is his fear aggression. In everything else (except his short stabby fur that falls out everywhere) he's practically perfect, and I could honestly never ask for a dog more devoted to me.

I've only had my first rat cremated so far, she hangs in a little glass jar from the rear-vision mirror of my car. I find it very comforting. It's really up to you what you do with the ashes. Do you want them on display, or to scatter them in Fern's favourite place? You could do a little bit of both. Or you could scatter them in a nice pot plant, that way if you're ever likely to move house you can take her with you.

I have a hound house frame somewhere (dogs ate the hood and I don't think they're mature enough to have a new one yet :p) I also have a couple of the miniature ones they make for small animals. I'm pretty sure it's the same basic principle, you thread the 2 end pieces through the corner holes, then kind of assemble the frame inside it. As far as I could see, it's pretty much an exact duplicate of the original cover, so I don't see why it would be less sturdy. That didn't make any sense at all, did it? It did in my head

I work shift work, so it's easier for me to not have a set routine for them. As a consequence, one night I stayed at the BF's place but went straight from work so asked my sister to feed the dogs. The next day they didn't get fed til about 7pm, and that was the point when my sister told me she'd forgotten to feed them! I felt awful, but was very proud of them because even though they were hungry, they didn't destroy anything, or even make pains in the bums with themselves. Needless to say, these days I have to be absolutely desperate to ask my sister to feed them, if I can swing it at all, I just do it myself, at least I know it gets done.