Adolescent Dog Survival Thread - welcome to the teenage wasteland

[Bupster]

Buckled (under instruction 😄)

On the topic of walking in new places - I imagine this is one of the big differences between a puppy and a teenager? 😂
Pabs sticks very close to me if we are somewhere unfamiliar at the moment. If he’s walking ahead, he’ll stop every few seconds to check I am still there. It made me quite emotional the other day when we went for a walk over some new fields ❤️. I imagine that will change massively when he grows up though 😂

@VanGoSunflowers Yes for M this was a bit of a shock when he reached the teenage stage. I had been warned though!
On the other hand, it shows he has increased in confidence enough to leave my side. One of the dogs in the agility group (a cocker) is glued to her owner’s side as she is so nervous of other dogs and people. The agility class has helped her confidence, but it may be because she knows all the other dogs and people so isn’t so scared. She still can’t be a bit snippy if dogs get too close.

It's gone quite surreal over there this morning @VanGoSunflowers 🙄
She's just had a go at me for admitting to having a breed with dodgy recall but I'm not rising to the bait. Oh and apparently you can "train" a dog to be food motivated, wish I'd known this 30 years ago 😉

@MonCoubousMonTourmalet I can see you are getting drawn into that thread! It’s not worth it. Some people just want to argue and won’t be happy unless they have the last word.

I haven't seen the other thread yet today. I shall go and have a read.

@VanGoSunflowers I am 'shocked' you haven't heard of e collars before. They used to be called shock collars, but they've had a rebrand so people can pretend they aren't cruel. Pets at Home used to sell them. Hopefully they don't anymore.

I used to be on a springer FB page, but had to leave. It was full of people recommending aversive training tools - rattle tins, shock collars, spray bottles to name a few.

We are suffering from hormone overload here. P is on day 12 of her season. K is a teenage hoodlum. We had handbags at dawn over a training dummy last night. I have two, so thought they could retrieve one each. Unfortunately K likes to claim everything and for once P was having none of it.
Lesson learned - only one dog outside at a time for retrieves.

I was talking with two like minded people on there @Nella68 , one that has a LGD breed and is against aversive training, the other also anti who has a non-food motivated dog, as I do.
I won't be responding to e-collar person again, she's already backed herself into a corner and her fellow HPR people who don't use aversive methods have far more clout than I do as to "training" methods.

Totally @VanGoSunflowers – some of the stuff on that thread is quite eye-opening. If you can’t manage the breed of dog you’ve got without having to resort to such extremes then is it the breed for you I wonder, etc. No shade, some types and breeds are really hard work.

I can’t imagine a world in which I would solve chasing deer (or anything else) by using an e-collar, and we see deer on our walks virtually every single day. A spaniel is a differently wired dog to the breed mainly referred to on that thread, and much smaller and therefore less likely to have a realistic chance with a deer, but we have (more or less) solved our deer and hare trouble by working together on making better choices not by giving her electric shocks.

In other news, I am without dog today as pupsy is back at the vets for further investigation into a mystery swelling on the leg she had an operation on in June. God knows what it is. Hopefully just the migrated grass seed they couldn't find last time but if not, the vet isn't sure which is a bit worrying. They're on a fact-finding mission today with the potential of a CT scan referral if they don't find anything. Quite frustrating and upsetting. Thank god for insurance.

Trying to think of the vets today as very expensive daycare so I don't worry further.

Oh my gosh @brushingboots . That sounds worrying...I hope she's okay and they can sort it out easily. It's going to be a stressful day for you.

Will keep my fingers crossed that everything is okay with pupsy @brushingboots!

@brushingboots I hope they find what’s causing it. Is it causing pain?
Since being a dog owner I have realised they are just as worrying as children. That’s one aspect of dog ownership that has really surprised me.

@brushingboots Poor pupsy. It must be very worrying for you. What are the vets going to do to try to find out what's wrong? Seeds don't show up on x-rays, do they?
Hopefully they can get to the bottom of it and it's something easily resolved. 🤞

@SpanielsGalore No, they don’t so they’re x-raying to see if it’s anything else first and then if it isn’t she will probably be referred for a CT scan. They don’t want to go digging around for nothing as they didn't find anything last time. It’s super swollen and we’re all hoping that it’s a grass seed that somehow can just be popped out the top of the swelling.

@Nella68 I didn’t think she was in any pain when I took her in on Wednesday morning, having spotted the swelling the night before for the first time – it wasn’t hot, she wasn’t limping, and I was prodding it and she wasn’t fussed. But then yesterday she started limping so I think she is in a bit of pain and has been masking. I had intended to do a nice long walk last night with some swimming for her as her last proper walk for a few days but she was limping too much to go any further than down the lane in the village for 15 minutes on the lead.

Selfishly, I really hope it’s just a grass seed and it can be sorted super quickly. I’ve got a really big month coming up in September with my book coming out and a lot of travel for events and radio and other stuff associated with that and I just need her to be OK and able to either be in London with her dad or travel with me normally and lie under my chair quietly like she always does.

Oh the irony. Just managed to make myself look like an idiot yet again

🙄😕😵😳🤐

Really hope she's okay @brushingboots Somehow, these things always seem to happen at a difficult time, when we need our focus to be elsewhere.

I hope that's not in relation to my comment on the other thread. It was just my interpretation of the other post. I could be wrong.

@brushingboots It's not selfish to want the simplest solution to Pupsy's leg swelling. Regardless of everything else going on. No help to you at all, but I have skipped x-rays and gone straight for scans with P when we thought she had a foreign body that wouldn't show up in x-rays.

Just delurking to say Buddy's grass seed was only spotted deep in an abscess using ultrasound and a very skilled operator! Fingers crossed for Pupsy!

Sylvie had a massive abscess on her tail that turned out to have been caused by a grass seed, it's a very common thing.
She didn't have any scans simply because it had come to a head, so the vet just lanced it and squeezed it out like a gigantic pimple, without even sedating her😱She had antibiotics and a cone collar after.

@SpanielsGalore i appreciate a pun on a Friday morning 😂 I’d have known what they meant with a shock collar but when I have seen e-collars mentioned I think I naively thought they were like a GPS tracking device 🤦‍♀️
Hope things settle down for you on the hormone front!

@brushingboots I think sometimes I forget that people have totally different challenges to me and Pabs- the chances of seeing deer knocking around my local town are next to zero so utmost respect to you and anyone else who has to manage these challenges and do so without resorting to cruel methods!

I really hope pupsy is ok! Keeping everything crossed for you!

@VanGoSunflowers I bet you have squirrels though!

Ha @Nella68 well you now know where I live so yes, we have quite a squirrel population in certain parts of the town centre - I tend to avoid those 😂

Oh poor pupsy, I do hope it’s the other grass seed and it’s a simple fix for you both @brushingboots. Please keep us updated!

Have everything crossed for a quick recovery @brushingboots grass seed is another thing I will ban when I rule the world 😆.

Thank you all <3 I'm going to get her at 5 o'clock. The vet has been fantastic and has called twice since she went in – first to tell me that they'd found no bone dramas, and that having shaved the area he could see a lot of fluid so he would incise and have a look but not, and I quote, 'furtle around'. And then again to say that she had come round and was in her kennel all fine, and that he'd update me on what he'd found at 5pm.

I will update when my precious baby is in my arms again. So much for lovely sunny weekend walks! Maybe it's come at a good time though, looking at the forecast for early next week.

@brushingboots Glad to hear Pupsy is alright and there's no bone damage. Be interesting to see what his furtling found. Hopefully something that has solved the problem.
Wishing Pupsy a speedy recovery and good luck with trying to keep her calm.

I know it's only 7 minutes past 5...but how is pupsy? Was she happy to see you? @brushingboots

Glad to hear there's no bone damage! Will keep my fingers crossed for pupsy.