General Dog Chat Part II

[BiteyShark]

A place for nattering about our canine friends.

Old or new, feel free to come and chat any time

Arghhh frustrating morning. It's bad enough that BiteyDog wants to eat every weed I pull up from the garden but he also tends to stand right in front of me so I can't bloody see what I am doing . I have sworn at him a lot today

Blimey, SquirrelDog only went and came first in his level Full marks in the fastest time. I’m so proud of him (but my God is he frustrating - next class he’ll probably refuse to do anything at all!)

Well done SquirrelDog 🏆

Look on the bright side! Today he did great. Take the win. Well done Squirrel dog and Squirrel.
Bitey mine is mainly eating trees today.

Wolfie mine can't reach any trees, he has to settle for bits of grass at the bottom of them

Oh she eats grass too. It's a small tree and rapidly getting smaller!

Decided to walk cocodog a different route up to our local yesterday evening. Guess who wasn’t quick enough getting her back on lead when we happened upon a newly muck spread field🙄 When we got home I brushed her thoroughly and spritzed her with tea tree oil which I suppose gave me enough nose blindness. DH has just left for work and informs me that the kitchen reeks of manure. I don’t want to get up now😂

Sounds like Cocodog needs a good shampoo

The black stuff on BiteyDogs pawpad has finally started to grow back so we may venture out soon but one of the advantages of only playing in the garden is he stays clean . Fortunately doing some agility practice followed by ball play exercises him.

Does Cocodog smell fresher yet?

Ewww, Cocodog!
I was mildly annoyed when I took SquirrelDog to the beach this morning and he got his paws covered in mud, but I think after hearing about the manure I shall just get over myself...

So decided to go out today as his back paw pad is probably about 90% recovered. Picked a patch of open land with very little gravel/flint paths. Happily throwing the ball for him when he starts limping holding one of his front paws in the air . I think I was ready to throw myself on the ground and have a massive temper tantrum but fortunately I think he just trod on a thorny branch as he recovered quickly. I must have THE most accident prone dog in the world

Well, spent early morning washing all dog bedding, living room bed, day cushion by French windows and nighttime bed plus airing rooms plus diffuser pumping out rosemary in various rooms, We went for a long walk and then I went food shopping. Returned and bathed cocodog thoroughly, gave her a frozen Kong in the sunshine on the patio to dry her. DH came home ...we have late lunch and cocodog settled herself in living room window in full on sun and dried properly. Late afternoon walk was precarious because she knows where the Fox poo lives but refrained, we trotted home, chased the mower around a bit then her football. Collapsed after tea, perked up when dishwasher loading...now in living room bed sniffing suspiciously at the new clean smell. Night night Coco😁

I bet Cocodog is now dreaming of rubbing herself in poo again to remove that foul clean smell

Bitey, our old Labrador used to tread on thorny branches and hold her paw up forlornly. When one of us rubbed it briskly she used to forge ahead happy in the knowledge that we had indeed taken it seriously!
Are you managing a bit more road walking to toughen his paws up?

I have to say we haven't done much road walking other than a quick walk before he goes to daycare. I really need to get into the habit of doing some on a regular basis especially when I am working at home. It's hard because he doesn't appear to actually enjoy road walking much and always seems happy to get home even though I let him stop and sniff when he wants.

We do a walk from our doorstep through two woods and a track where cocodog is off lead throughout but I always take her onlead up the road and back to practise loose lead walking. Other walks are always offlead but we park and walk on a road to them and back or around our village off lead and on lead, footpaths, road walking and fields. We never do just a road walk but mix it up but then I work from home and probably have more time to do this.

If I do a long road walk it does tend to mean no long ball runs as I need to drive to the area that's safe on his paws. Playing ball in the garden is great but I do like him to be able to run at full speed as well. Such a shame there is no paw friendly ball playing area in the forest near by.

Feeling really ill tonight. I find owning a dog really hard work when I feel ill and want to curl up in bed instead of meeting all of BiteyDogs demands.

I know what you mean and am dreading feeling ill enough not to be able to walk etc. However, you have had biteydog off walks because of injury and he coped. So now his turn to curtail walks, can you provide mental stimulation instead or can DH. Hope you feel better soon💐

Thanks for the flowers. Whilst he can cope without the walks, I just don't have the mental strength at the moment for him being just him iykwim. For example he will throw himself at the door as he has seen a pigeon to chase in the garden so I stagger over to let him out before he smashes his way through it in frustration. I have a bit of a fever so normally I would just leave the door open but as I feel cold I close it after he runs back in. This then repeats several times whilst I am mumbling under my breath that I thought dogs could sense you were ill and would empathise be bloody quiet and still for a change

Fortunately he's now on the sofa asleep so I have a bit of peace until tomorrow.

I wonder if spaniels and spanielly types are just too busy to be empathetic or maybe it’s the selfishness of youth....cocodog is the same.

SquirrelDog is also the same...cheerfully oblivious

Hope you are feeling better this morning!

Temperature is down this morning and I feel vaguely human again which is good. Some interesting pains still so not 100% but enough to cope with BiteyDog

It does make me think though on practicalities if I was ever really ill and needed to go to hospital as an emergency. Whilst we would ask daycare who also does boarding I think I need a backup plan in case they weren't available for DH to follow as he doesn't get involved in that aspect of it and would be panicking about leaving BiteyDog he also works full time.

steppedog isn't very good at empathy ,but he does pick up on emotion.

Very emotional in our house last night, ds stepped on his phone and broke it. Very upset (he is normally really good at looking after his stuff, never even had a cracked screen until this.)
Then dd2 discovered steppdog had eaten one of her toys, cue mass hysteria.

Steppedog very stressed, drank loads and loads of water and then curled up on ds bed. Consequence was at 5:45 he was bursting for a wee and came and woke me up to go out

Hope you recover soon Bitey - teatimetoller is similarly useless at empathy... last week dh had a 48 hour bug and spent the first day in bed and the second languishing on the sofa. Teatimetoller’s attitude was ‘well, there’s nothing wrong with your throwing arm is there? Snap out of it hooman!’

We are veterans of many a cut pad here ... we try to make sure he does a bit of walking in tarmac every day as that helps toughen up his pads. We also put paw butter on a couple of times a week over the winter as cold temperatures seem to make the skin more fragile. However teatimetoller hates walking on the pavement - he’ll be bouncing around the woods, full of beans and then as soon as you start walking home on the road he goes into a toddler sulk and drags his paws, generally looking like he’s absolutely exhausted and can barely summon up the energy to put one paw in front of the other .... he is a big furry fraud

Indy isn't very empathetic either. If im cross he realises but I dont think he'd notice if I was feeling ill etc.