Beyond Adolescence - part 2

[SpanielsGalore]

No point banning coffee, as it didn't work last time. 🙄
Haven't had any cake updates from a while. @VanGoSunflowers Have you stopped baking already? You still had 8 cakes to go to make it economical.

@tizwozliz oh no bless her, I hope it clears up quickly. You’ve done well for it to be the first in 3 years!

V has been a pain in the arse the past week. I know he is just bored out of his mind as he’s only getting short walks on lead.

On walks he’s pulling constantly, not listening to me and pulling towards every person or dog we see (which he hasn’t done since he was a small puppy!). It’s highly annoying and making me dread his walks. In the house he’s being a nightmare and jumping up, mouthing, just generally being a pain.

I’ve been trying to find some activities to do with him in the house but he gets frustrated quickly and nothing seems to tire him out like his usual gundog training does.

I feel bad for getting so annoyed at him because it’s not his fault really but he is testing my patience. I guess it explains why he chewed the rug!

It's looking a bit better this morning. She's fine in herself anyway. Little pup runs and hides when the eye drops come out, but big one is a star about anything like that. And she loves the vets, so enjoyed her trip out 😂

Meant no off lead walk for either of them as I spent my lunchtime on the vet visit and it's only me at home at the moment, but they handled that gracefully.

@YorkshireFelix - can you do some gundog stuff in the house.

We practice hold, sitting whilst I throw dummies, heelwork away from a dummy and then sending back for it (I'm talking 2m sort of distance ) inside.

Yes we possibly could. The only reason why I’ve not done anything like that in the house is we have hard wood floors throughout so I’m really worried about him sliding about on them, even if we only do very short distances. I will see what we can do, as I can at least practice some steadiness etc at least.

@Bupster I've never thought of claiming on the insurance for a behaviourist. I might look into it if all the supplements she's on don't help. I'm just not convinced anyone can help, because it's all so random. But maybe an expert will see patterns I can't. 🤷‍♀️
She'll stand and watch me carve chicken and accept bits. But if I put that chicken on a plate, she won't.

I'll grill sausages and she'll refuse them. But she'll eat them on a walk.
She plucked up the courage to lick a plate in the dishwasher the other day and I was ridiculously happy. 🙈 😂

I know people say it all the time, but I don't believe pet insurance premiums increase in relation to claims. I have claimed £1000s every year for P. One year I exceeded the £7k limit. But her policy has only gone up by £4 or £5 a month. This year it went up by £8, but I think that's age related.
K's went up by just under £5 a month and I only claimed about £150 for her for the blades of grass in her nose.

@YorkshireFelix Sorry V is being annoying. I've been lucky with P in that she's never minded missing out on walks. I think K would be an absolute menace though.
I've had to stick rugs down in my kitchen to stop the dogs from slipping. I need to replace the vinyl flooring, but I'm having difficulty finding something that isn't slippy. Might have to carpet it, which everyone tells me is wrong.

Glad your girl's eye is improving @tizwozliz

Sorry it's a bit of a struggle keeping Vinny occupied at the moment @YorkshireFelix

We have carpet in our kitchen @SpanielsGalore , always have done because heavy dogs and slippery floors is not a good mix. Never had any problems with kitchen carpet although I know some folk have a downer on it.
The tiled floor in the extension/orangery isn't ideal for her, but we have rubber backed dirt trapper mats down. When it's very wet I lay washable puppy pads on top - not for toileting (she never toilets indoors) but just to absorb the water off her paws and stop her slipping. If we moved to a house with laminate floors, we would have it fully carpeted just for the dogs. It's not worth the risk of injury.

@CoubousAndTourmaIet That's interesting. What sort of carpet do you have? The carpet people have waffled on about foam or gel backed, which means nothing to me.
I can't have what's in the other rooms as my back door won't clear it.
Ideally I want those carpet squares, they did back in the day, so you can lift them up to clean dirty marks. 😁

Yes I think I’m going to have to buy a load of (ugly) non-slip mats but will have to wait until I am not totally skint. We do have two rugs in the living room but could do with another runner in there at least, as that’s where he spends most of his time.

@SpanielsGalore I agree re the insurance premium thing. We’ve never claimed on ours and it’s gone up from £512 last year to £731 this year 😖 Seems very steep!

I'm not totally sure what gel backing looks like @SpanielsGalore , but it's not foam backed anyway. It has no underlay - it's just laid straight on the floorboards. We used to have big carpet tiles but now just get one fully laid, because the tiles were too easy for people to dig up 😉 We have wool carpets in bedrooms and living room but the kitchen has a man made hard wearing one, and we always go for a twist finish because it shows stains less than a plain solid for inevitable food spills.

To be honest, I wish we'd had carpet in the extension because I hate the ceramic tiles, they're so bloody hard and cold underfoot😬Good for the dogs on hot summer days, but aside from that, nah. 10 months of the year it's freezing. So yeah, kitchen carpet is great, we love it.

@YorkshireFelix Blimey! That is a lot. They do say entire males are the most expensive to insure.
Both of mine have just had their renewals through.
P (age 4) has gone up from £369.11 a year to £465.08.
K (age 1) has gone up from £266.88 to £320.26.

I've claimed at least £10k for P, so I'm not going to complain.

I will caveat this with saying that I did go for the max cover I could get (20k lifetime) because I am paranoid!! And now I am glad I went for that just in case his leg issues get worse further down the line. So that’s probably why it’s so expensive to start off with, but I do still feel like the increase is a bit steep…

@YorkshireFelix Ohhhh. Mine's only for £7k, because I naively thought that would be enough.

We're only on the 7k cover and it's over £64 a month with no claims in the first year. It still went up by £10 a month for year 2. So about £770 for the year.

@CoubousAndTourmaIet - I don't know whether you've ordered from Essentials recently but they seem to have started offering the same products, but one produced in the UK and dne in Europe at different prices. Just something to look out for

Eeek I dread to think how much yours would be for 20k cover!

Thanks. I'm due to order a bag in the next week or so. Just had a look and the website is making no sense now; can't order a bag of working because there is no choice of kibble size.
The prices have gone up considerably - now £75 for UK made or £65 for European, whatever the difference is exactly... It was £55 for working dog UK before.

I'm glad you gave me a heads up on this change. Thanks.

I managed to find what I normally order and have paid 56.25 for 10kg (I get a discount for ordering 2 bags at once)

But I had to click to a different part of the site, it wasn't just listed at the bottom like it used to be.

I didn't think there was ever a choice of kibble size though, other than the small bags being small kibble and the big bags being big kibble.

We had presumably European made stuff bought in Denmark and I didn't notice any difference.

I live in a rented house that I chose in part because of the beautiful original varnished wooden floors in several rooms - now covered in rugs! I got some brilliant cheapo ones from Dunelm and Argos, under £100 (which for rugs is cheap, especially given how huge one of them is). Didn't want to pay more than that when he was a puppy and liable to poo all over the place. I supplement them with extra bathmats and doormats - he still slips a bit here and there which I think is partly due to the cleaning stuff my cleaner uses so I've bought some cleany stuff to try to make it less slippery for him.

Okay, thanks @tizwozliz , I'll go back in and have another look. When I clicked on Working Dog, it had 10kg listed three times, but whichever I clicked it just redirected me to the standard page at £75. Hopefully I'll fathom it.

In the current bag the kibble seems drier and more porous than it has previously, but it definitely says UK.

Does this link work?

https://essentialfoodsgb.co.uk/products/estate-living-10kg-working-dog-uk

That shows at 62.50 for me, but if you click on any of these bits it takes you away from the working dog food

It has gone up in price too, I paid 49.50 with discount in September, and now it's 56.25

@tizwozliz
It's still taking me away from working dog and showing £75, but if I go to working dog and click 'add to cart' without actually going to the product page, it goes in the cart at £62.50. Very confusing. Thanks for helping me figure it out.

@Bupster Mine's covered in cheap shit, £14 each off Amazon rugs. Which I had to tape to the floor to stop them from slipping. But I knew the vinyl was going to be replaced, so didn't want to spend too much on them.
N is lying on the door mat, which can no longer go by the door as I put an off cut of the living room carpet there.
Once those walls are Parrot Flight, I'll get the flooring sorted.

Lovely walk through the woods this morning. Crisp winter walk (had my thermals on).

We have wooden floors and I wince when Dog slides on them. We do have rugs down as well.

People are stupid.

Men with chihuahuas that yell out 'Bentley! BE NICE!' as their dog races up to your dogs, snapping at their faces, jumping up, snarling and latching onto one of your dogs jowls, are even more stupid. Don't tell your dog to be nice, stick it on a bloody lead. That way it would not end up trampled into a pancake - and injured - by my dogs, in their haste to escape it. (Mine are all fine - only a little bit of blood drawn from Pen). Prior to going for my lot, it had raced up to several other dogs and attacked them!

What a morning 😤

@SpanielsGalore your girls are looking beautiful in that photo ❤

Insurance is a painful topic in my household. All are fully insured up to £20K. Even Twatdog is £70 a month. Git. I've not had a huge claim with any of my current dogs but I couldn't face the thought of something expensive coming in and not having the money available to pay for it - particularly for Hen.

@YorkshireFelix sorry that V is having issues with being the dog we all know he can be! How is he today? And how are you?

@Silverbirchleaf we have similar issues with flooring. Wood everywhere except in the kitchen which is tiles. But like you, we have rugs everywhere. They're reasonably smart though, only Twatdog will lay on the floor - but his one braincell probably doesn't understand laying on the wooden floor is stupid.