huga

I have always removed our guys stitches myself - nail scissors work well as Puggles said. That said though, I have had a fair bit of vet nurse experience and am comfortable with it. Just check for redness, swelling and weepiness - if there is any go back to the vet.

We have chooks, so our guys get whole eggs a couple of times a week. Lola will crunch it till it cracks and makes a mess, but Harry puts one tooth through the shell and sort of sucks it out. But my dogs are weird...

Interesting - go the nutrience!

Heh heh heh. Hey Warls - you get pugged wench! How is it that you manage to make everything sound rood? :rolleyes:

My dudes get Nutrience Supreme - usually no one has even heard of it, so it's nice to see some fans. Harry eats 1 cup in the morning and 1 at night Teebs, but less if he gets raw stuff as well. Lolsie gets 1/2 a cup twice a day. They are healthy, their teeth and coats look good and there poos are pretty decent too.

Chuga chuga chuga chuga Woo -ooo...

I take our kids to My Pets Vet at Bald Hills coz they don't speak to me like I'm stupid, are pretty reasonably priced and are good to the kids. Although, touch wood, we have never had any major dramas...

Yep, Pet Food companies are like any other company - they are in it for the money, otherwise what would be the point? I have noted though, that it seems to be the lower quality dog foods sold in supermarkets that rely on the multi-million dollar tv ad campaigns to sell product, but not the super premium foods, why do you think this is?? The food I feed for eg. I heard about through word of mouth - because my dogs do well on it, I keep buying it. I have never seen/heard any advertising for this brand. It is not in the best interest of a pet food company to make crappy food - otherwise no one would buy it!! :D

This debate has been done a stack of times on this forum. There will always be the BARF people and the dry food people. Me? I fall somewhere inbetween and couldn't be happier with my dogs' diet, their health and the overall look of them. They get a mixture of Nutrience and whatever else is going (chicken mice, wings, necks, offal, lamb, sardines, old fruit and veggies etc). People shouldn't be made to feel guilty because they don't feed their dogs an entirely raw diet, and believe me, people will feel guilty when it comes to their dogs.

Yep, both Harry and Lola burp after dinner. I haven't heard the hound do it yet though - she is much too ladylike

Hey Rox, I give my two Nutrience Supreme, along with vegies every now and then, sardines a couple of times a week and eggs occasionally too (in their shells, its more fun to watch) :D They get a brisket bone at least once a week too. Hope that helps.

I think the amount in the shampoos etc is safe, but I wouldn't use them. Yep, it has a drying effect on the oils in the coat, and for this reason it can reduce the effectiveness of top spot treatments like frontline, advantix etc. When I was nursing we had an old man bring in his nearly dead cattle dog :D because someone told him that if you soak a shoelace in tea tree oil and put it around the dogs neck it repels fleas.

I also have a very piggy puggy. Beef allergy is very common, maybe try chicken frames - so she can't inhale them?? Personally, I have never had a drama with my girl. She eats a mixture of nutrience dry food, and then some BARF stuff mixed in, and she gets bathed in Aloveen - which smells awesome! Sometimes she gets a doggy smell, but only if I haven't bathed her for a few weeks. Good luck at the vet and keep us posted! :rolleyes:

I use a zoom groom (great on wet and dry dogs), a rake (good for gettting out undercoat) and a shedding blade (best for top coat). My two are both short coated, but have just finished blowing their undercoat (thank god!). But they do shed all year round. Oh and we have a Dyson too!

That happened to me when I was nursing too, we pulled it out of a cattle dog and it was absolutely HUGE! Then it slipped and (luckily) dropped into the bucket on the floor of the surgery and exploded - it was one of the grossest things I have ever seen. Give me a catfight abcess any day.

*sighs* oh, Dyson *looks at Dyson lovingly*

Clever owner

There is a huuuuuuge difference between my two dogs. Harry (gsd x pug) was toilet trained in a couple of days, sat, dropped and recalled relatively quickly. Lola (pug) I struggle to get her to sit, her recall is OK, but I can't for the life of me get her to drop or do much else.

Yeah, well Harry only weighs 18kg, the bit of pug thrown in the mix makes him a small shep x indeed. So I say small animal murdered in the yard, yours might be more comparable to a lion. But I do get the joy of Lola spreading his hair around the yard so all the birdies get their fair share. Everytime a clump comes off the rake, she pick it up, does some zoomies and tries to drop it, but that doesn't work. So I have to remove several hairballs from her face before she comes inside..... Yep, I live in a mad house.

Even though my Harry is a Shep x, he still has a short and very thick coat that is coming out in clumps at the moment (it makes for a charming floor covering). Anyway, I use the rake first, then the shedder seems to grab out anything bought to the surface - does that make sense? And then the backyard looks like a small animal has been murdered on it.

Perhaps a really silly comment, but here goes... Lots of people ring us at work when they get a new pup and say he's itching, and heaps of times its because the dog is wearing a collar for the first time and keeps scratching at it. I know my little girl did this for about 3 days after we got her.

Hey Poppii, I have had a heap of success with nutrience. My gsd x was shedding stacks and is so active that he always looked real skinny (people even felt that they had to tell me so in the dog park!). Anyway, he was on Eukanuba Puppy (he is 2 years old) and was still not putting on weight, so I switched him to nutrience active and he put on about 3 kgs, he sheds less and looks great! Now he is on maintenance and looks better than ever. My pug eats it too, and she has never had any skin issues like they sometimes can. Maybe something to do with the fact that it has no by-products? I dunno. But it is cheaper than Euk too. Just make sure you watch the feedind amounts, cause its quite concentrated. I feed my pug about half of what the pack recommends, cause she has a tendency to be a porker What were you feeding before?