Puppy survival thread! All welcome!

[VanGoSunflowers]

Running on from our last one…

I won’t tag people because I will forget someone and then feel awful 😂

@Struckbylightning ah, I sympathise! I thought I had cracked the poo eating thing after switching his food but alas, I now think I was a fluke. Or lack of available excrement to feed his habit as he was back on it earlier 🤢

Glad he's on the mend @VanGoSunflowers

Even Princess Perfect (aka Briellezeebub) eats poo. Rabbit currants are her first choice, though she also enjoys horse and can detect it from a fair distance away.

K eats her sisters'. I turned round this morning and she'd brought one into the kitchen to eat. Which is slightly preferable to the time she dropped one in my lap. 🤢

@SpanielsGalore @Houndymumma yes very lucky! It was a big bunch too so would have required a trip to the vets I think! God knows why you’d leave a bunch of grapes lying around, even if just because they’re expensive! Although it was just in the carpark so cloudy have called out of someone’s shopping 🙈.

My absolute nobhead ate a whole slice of a Colin the Caterpillar cake that someone had dropped on the pavement (the entire cake). I spent the whole walk desperately googling for how much chocolate cake a dog can eat before you have to rush them to the emergency vet (which we could pretty much see from our walk in case you think I was being reckless). It turned out he's such a chonk he could have eaten the whole cake before any ill effects from the chocolate, but I didn't tell him that - little sod kept looking for more for weeks though.

@Bupster I remember obsessively googling the exact same thing after Pablo ate one solitary Jaffa cake. There is a tiny amount of chocolate on one Jaffa cake and he is also a little chonk so luckily so ill effects 😂

@Bupster yes we’ve been there too with my late boy. Furiously googling if a slice of chocolate cake would kill him! We realised he was fine too, one of the kids left it in a silly place.

My sisters Jack Russell ate a whole chocolate orange one Christmas and suffered no ill effects whatsoever!

@VanGoSunflowers glad you find my ramblings useful! I do think that with dogs that are large and/or prone to joint issues that the added calcium and protein in puppy food is really important.

I’m sure it is a coincidence, but none of my dogs have ever had any joint issues or arthritis. Hen is 13 and can do 7+ miles a day still (across two walks) at my speed which is about 4mph. Most Goldies can’t do half that by about 10. She is slowing down and getting stiffer, but I think that’s age more than anything else!

In other (sadder) news. Eris has discovered a love for the snippy snappers. Which twatdog used to do and is incredibly irritating. She suddenly lunges, snarling, with her lips pulled back over her teeth. It’s a horribly vicious look. Then when she catches what she wants, she bites down so gently you can’t even feel it. I had hoped she’d have more brains than Twatdog. But I fear the one brain cell he has is now a shared one. It’s not really an issue for me as I know there’s no harm there - but I am not looking forward to the busy-bodies telling me I have a vicious puppy again. No. She’s not aggressive. She’s a Goldie. Sadly, this is what the brainless little twits do

@LandSharksAnonymous it makes logical sense to me now to keep him on junior food for as long as possible so thank you!

Ah bless Eris, surely people can tell the difference between a puppy being a puppy or being actually vicious?! Or am I giving people too much credit? 😂

@VanGoSunflowers below is a screen shot from a video of Twatdog doing it to Dsis when he was a baby (apologies for the little logos - I had to feed it into a photo editor to get it a size I could upload it!). He (and now Eris) then launch forwards and bite down, except they don’t really bite, just sort of hold and suckle. Weirdo. It’s a v. nasty look to be fair…but it is a Goldie thing.

Twatdog used to do it if anyone patted him and I was forever having to explain that, no he’s not dangerous, he’s just a Goldie.

Sadly, people (even v. Experienced dog owners) can be terrible at reading doggy body language.

It does look quite scary @LandSharksAnonymous .
Two of our dogs have "smiled" as a greeting but I don't know if this is the same or not. We do know a dog locally that does this full-on wrinkle nose thing but is very friendly.

I think you've made a good decision about keeping Pablo on puppy/junior food @VanGoSunflowers , as you know, Brie is still on it at 17 months, and we feel it has made a huge difference. I hope P is fully recovered from the tummy upset.

@LandSharksAnonymous That does look fairly scary to be fair! Bless them. There’s a lot to dog body language isn’t there? I don’t know too much about it but I do find it interesting. I have been following this dog body language guy on instagram and he sort of breaks down videos of dog reactions and explains what they’re doing. I don’t know if he is a true expert or not but some of it seems like common sense to me. He showed one video of a woman throwing her arms around her Rottweiler and kissing him all over his face - he was clearly not happy about it - snarling and growling etc and she’d posted the caption ‘the Rottie grumble’
It didn’t look like a Rottie grumble to me! It looked like she was about to get her face bitten off.
I think I can always tell when Pablo isn’t happy about something. He has never growled at us but I had to tell DS a few times not to ‘hug’ him - especially when he is trying to sleep - because he looks at me as if to say ‘can you get him off me please’. DS does listen to me and doesn’t do it anymore thankfully!

@Aubrielle he is completely back to normal now thankfully! But I will still give it a little while before trying those samples on him that you kindly posted (thank you again!)

I have a question if I may - Pablo is starting to really shed now - he has that lovely thick stripe of fur down his back - I’ve been brushing him regularly but am still using the same brush I first bought which is like a puppy starter brush. It doesn’t seem to be cutting the mustard! Any recommendations for a new brush please? He doesn’t mind being brushed at all - probably because I hand feed him kibble at the same time 😀

Vinny does this when he’s over excited! He pulls this exact face and will lunge at you ‘snapping’ but it’s not a real bite as he’s just playing. Thankfully he’s stopped doing it as much recently so he’s finally growing out of it 😄

@Aubrielle @VanGoSunflowers - Agree! It looks very scary but as @YorkshireFelix it's very much a game to him. Sadly I think at nearly 3 he won't grow out of it...and given Eris seems to have learnt it from him I doubt she will either (given their shared singular brain-cell)!

There is loads to doggy body language @VanGoSunflowers and the (unfortunate) thing is it varies massively from dog to dog. I agree though, I do sometimes see videos of people winding up their dogs up or clutching them and all I can think is 'you are one inch away from a bite' - and the dog is so clearly uphappy that there is no way they can't tell that. But people will do anything for views. Sigh.

With Twatdog (and with Eris), they flash their teeth and snarl (as Vinny does!) but their bodies are completely relaxed, and their tails are wagging (and not the 'angry' wag either). So, if you know your dogs body language (as you do with Pablo) you recognise the signs of them being happy. I know if mine aren't happy as they lick their lips.

On a brush, I use a ferminator, a de-shedding tool and also my old hairbrush. My dogs have quite bony spines so ferminator and de-shedding tools are a bit too painful for that, but my old hairbrush works wonders 😀Best of luck with the shedding though, it's only downhill from here...

I agree @LandSharksAnonymous about body language varying hugely from dog to dog. I'm also with you in regard to the "look at me" videos, I hate the showing off, particularly with the larger breeds and even some of the training video people are guilty of that. No names, but you know the one 🙄

I don't know if this is the same thing Twatdog and Vinny do or not, but all four of our girls have done "crocodile" in play, where they show their teeth and audibly snap their jaws shut. None of the four boys did it, which I find really odd. But really they've all had very individual traits and habits and some have had a far more subtle body language than others.

I think I'm starting to read and understand Brie better. The one thing I am noticing is that with noisy rattly vehicles she will now stop and look up at me for guidance, rather than just panicking. So I just quietly speak to her and if she has that moment of eye contact it seems to help. She still gives me wicked side eye before she kicks off with lead ragging and I swear she's laughing at me.

For grooming we have a long toothed rake for the undercoat and a large slicker for the top coat but I'm pretty sure that is of little use for a short coated dog.

We had torrential rain yesterday so Rory only got 2 short lead walks. I was sorting out my emails this morning before heading to work and I noticed I hadn’t seen him in a while so went into the garden to call him and he came running in with his entire snout and front legs up to his elbows covered in mud 😭. He must have been digging. So I had to hurriedly clean him with a towel while he tried to eat it and clean the floor before going to work, while he went back into the garden for zoomies Note to self: make sure he always gets a run! I wish I’d got a picture but I wasn’t going into the living room to get my phone with him like that! Luckily he’s had a really good run and visit with my friend/ neighbour while I was at work and is now fast asleep and snoring 🥰.

The rain meant we got a couple more puddles in the kitchen. My pup is a fair weather girl! 🙄

Oh my! Puppy witching hour just hit again, always between 5pm-6pm. Feeling exhausted and my age!! 😂

@Idstillratherbepaddleboarding its hard to dodge the rain isn’t it?? Pablo will plant his paws firmly on the ground and refuse to leave if it’s raining outside!

@Houndymumma did she conk out afterwards? Then they look like butter wouldn’t melt 😂

@VanGoSunflowers yup, water on the ground = most fun ever, water coming out of the sky = big nope 😂.

We've discovered a stream and some shallower parts of the bank that mean B can get close to it. He's got as far as putting his nose to the water and a quick lick so far so I'm hoping he resists getting right in till he's had a haircut and is easier to dry off!

In other news he met the Tesco delivery men yesterday as he's learned to jump the bedroom safety gate. There's not even space for a run up there, he must have found springs in his paws!

Oh wow this sums it up perfectly!!!

W is exactly the same. We got caught in it yesterday and he pulled me all the way home……. All our usual rules and manners went completely out of the window……sigh

Ours have been the complete opposite. Stuff coming from the sky is fine - be it rain, hail, sleet or snow, they just seem oblivious to it. But any sort of standing water is a big no. They have all daintily tiptoed around puddles or mud. If the grass is wet, they won't walk on it so we have to traipse down the road at midnight just to get them to do a wee 🙄 It's embarrassing coming off the nature reserve paths with a gleaming white spotless dog; I'm sure people think they never get walked and imagine that we bath them every day 😬

Yes it’s like a switch! They go from being an absolute Demon to me looking at her sleeping like an Angel thinking ‘did I imagine that’? 😂