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

We just had thunder and heavy rain here too. I’m drinking coffee and waiting for it to stop before walking SquirrelDog.

Did you manage to get out Squirrel?

We did 30 mins of ball throwing after which BiteyDog was shattered which was good as the rain started just as we got back in the car. Looks like it's going to be a mix of sticky warm weather and heavy showers all day.

Training’s been cancelled this morning because heavy thunderstorms were forecast here ... teatimetoller and I are sitting in the garden in blazing sunshine

He was ok with the storm last night - no panting or obvious signs of anxiety - but he did want to sleep on our bed which he never normally does so he must have been feeling a bit worried...

That's a shame about the training teatime.

Maybe he was thinking you needed reassurance in the night and slept with you to keep you safe

@Biteyshark considering this is the dog who uses me as a human shield to help him get past the scary cat on the stairs, that must be the answer

Yes, it stopped raining after about half an hour, and hasn’t rained again since. It’s really really hot now.

Yes very muggy and sticky here now. At least I don't need to water the plants today as they got a good drenching earlier.

teatime mine barks to protect me from anyone passing the house but as soon as they stop and want to stroke him he runs behind me for protection

It's so hot here. Will have to wait til evening to go for a walk.

We had thunder last night and a shower this morning - I'd abandoned all plans for the laundry as its supposed to have been pouring with rain, but it's currently 24 degrees and blazing sunshine. I'm crocheting under a parasol with only my little fat legs in the sun, and Radiodog is baking in the sun until she apparently stops breathing and explodes.

Cocodog is due at the groomers on Tuesday , she is feeling the heat but despite two cool walks in the woods today and a mad play with snakey and a couple of yoghurt popsicles is still patrolling the patio windows in the hope of spotting bunnies or the fox that is around.

BiteyDog felt the heat today. We limited garden ball play to a couple of minutes each time to avoid heat exhaustion. Wonder if we will get any storms again tonight to help cool it down.

Indy has been in a lot today. It's just too hot for him

It's going to be a very hot one today. We have already been and come back from a run before the temperatures rise and at 6:30am it was warm. Contemplating whether to get the doggy paddling pool out although he tends to just drink from it.

Really hot here too - we were out at 7 & I was too hot in t-shirt and gym capris. Luckily the house is cool (old cottage with thick walls and tiled kitchen floor), although that does mean it’s bloody freezing in winter!

Radiodog has found a lovely cool spot. Unfortunately its right on my freshly laid and watered turf.

DH helpfully opened the blind in the sitting room which overlooks a footpath, so when not basking in the sun today she has been perched on the sofa on lookout (which is why we keep the blind shut, as she throws a histrionic 100db fit at passers by).

She spied two imposters in quick succession and blew a gasket, and is currently patrolling the garden barking viciously into all the corners. If I were a better owner I would give her some other means of self reward, but I'm just the poor fool that indulges her.

Mine found our ensuite floor was nice and cool today. Have to say it was too hot for me so it must have been unbearable with a fur coat.

Radio ours hates anyone walking past the front of the house so we have to keep the blinds closed as well.

I took Teatimetoller to a park with a river running all the way through it first thing this morning and he had a lovely time jumping in and out of the water after his ball and then spent a long, happy time ball-bobbing under a little bridge. He didn’t want to get out so when we started walking back to the car he was doing his best impression of a dog who could barely put one paw in front of the other ... so much so that passers by were commiserating with the ‘old’ dog . I pointed out that he’d been gleefully leaping around two minutes earlier and that he was staging a protest vote at having to go home....

I’m not going to take him out this evening though - there’s lots of rumbling thunder and he does get so hot on days like this

Cocodog welcomes all visitors enthusiastically but she is used to it....we live on a rural corner that borders woods and many dog walkers give her a pat and a fuss over the gate so no barking. She has started to bark at a couple of dogs that walk past, this is quite specific but they always walk past at a certain time of day and are reactive so I can avoid her being in the garden or am playing with her so she is distracted from the stimulus!
She went mental at lunchtime at bunnies in the garden and wouldn’t settle so I put her in the kitchen on her own for a while...she is still on bunny watch but quietly now...and is drifting off to sleep.

OMG at bunnies in the garden . BiteyDog would go crazy as it's bad enough when we encounter a warren as he likes to stick his head down the holes and typically loses his ball down them

teatime laughing at the 'old dog routine'

Errr the last time she came across a wild bunny in the garden at my dad's house, she, er, caught it.

She was a working dog before her accident and her job was keeping the fields bunny-free (and the feed sheds rat-free) - so it was just instinct. It was fairly awful - DH was in charge of her working persona so I basically yelled for him to come and sort it. Or, get her to release it, and then humanely dispatch the poor thing. I was distraught, but DH sees her as a working animal (and she'd killed dozens at work) so was unfazed.

I genuinely fear the day she catches up with the neighbours cat - damn thing keeps taunting her.

Anyway, my dangerous terrier has tonight been lounging in my lap between bouts of trying to ferociously hump me. She needs a hobby. Which doesn't involve killing or humping anything.

Wouldn’t mind if she caught and dispatched bunnies much in the manner of our much missed tabby cat...but she just wants to chase and I have been actively discouraging that since she was a pup. The only thing I allow her to chase is a ball in the garden and only the garden, balls on walks send her demented.

You're not wrong there, even before her injury we had to abandon ball-throwing on walks. Made her absolutely crazed.

How nice. SquirrelDog has just brought in the chew I gave him last night, which he buried in the garden. Now it’s covered in mud. He’s not flipping chewing it either, he’s running around whining and looking for another hiding place, as though I’m going to steal it from him.

Oh, now he’s stalking it, bum in the air, barking. I think I should stop buying him these (some kind of fancy cranberry and sweet potato vegetable thing). They seem to cause him a lot of problems!

Every now and then teatimetoller gets it into his head that an item - could be a chew, could be a toy - is ‘precious’ and that Unknown Persons are plotting to steal it . So he’ll run round the house like a little lost soul with the precious thing in his mouth, trying to find the perfect hiding place. He’ll put it somewhere like his toy box or behind the sofa and relax for five minutes thinking it’s safe. Then he’ll suddenly start worrying again, retrieve whatever it is from its hiding place and start all over again....

The other day I came into our bedroom to find the covers all messed up and there was an ear sticking up from under the duvet - he’d decided that our bed was the safest place for his toy badger. Unfortunately Badger’s previous hiding place had been the flower bed so our sheets and pillows were covered in earth ....