Beyond Adolescence and General Chit Chat - part 3

[SpanielsGalore]

Not tagging anyone. I'm sure you'll all find your way here if you want to join in. 😁

Yes he is happy and just barked to go out and do another poo! I think the real test will be seeing if he goes at bedtime. I don’t fancy having him wake me up to go in the night but might be a necessary evil until he gets the message.

@YorkshireFelix did he go at bedtime?

Someone was sulking in our house last night after being told off, multiple times, for being a dirty little pervert. But eventually he realised that refusing to snuggle his humans was only harming himself and so he allowed pats.

Adorable. Love a sleepy face.

He is sooooo gorgeous, despite the pervertedness!!

Yes he did go for a poo at bedtime but still hasn’t done another wee. I am busy working today so going to persevere with toileting in the garden and do his big walk this evening. Hoping it will click for him if we keep doing it!

@Silverbirchleaf @YorkshireFelix he’s a very handsome boy - literally the only reason he gets away with such nasty acts!

DDs weighed his head the other day (made him ‘chin’ on the scales whilst he was laying down) and his head is 8kg 😩 a miracle given there’s nothing in there except his one single brain cell. I imagine that with a lab, @Silverbirchleaf you probably feel my pain about how heavy it can be when they sleep on you!!!

@YorkshireFelix sounds like V is slowly cracking it! Bet he still does a huge pee on his evening walk though! When do you start your new job? Or have you already started?

@TheHungryHungryLandsharks Unfortunately not. Dog has sadly never been one for laying across your lap. The best we get is that he lays along side you, or will occasionally rest his head on the side of your legs.

However, talking of weight, we think we’ve slimmed him down a little. He’s looking more trim. Unlike me, who has put on weight, after our trip to Scotland, even though I tried to be good ( within reason).

@TheHungryHungryLandsharksnot until 27th so a couple of weeks yet! I am worried about being out of the house 3 days a week especially with what’s been going on with dd but we will just have to get on with it.

He’s still not gone to the toilet again!! It’s been almost 24 hours since his last pee. I feel so mean and now worried I might cause a medical issue if he’s not peeing? I don’t know what else to do though. Do I just need to suck it up and accept he will only go on a walk?

Part of the reason I’m doing it also is that I’ve been talking to a new trainer who I’m thinking of doing some sessions with, and he says about not ‘walking’ him and just taking him somewhere for game play/training as I need to build up his engagement with me outdoors and when I walk him he’s just pissing off and going self employed. He can still pull a lot on his toilet walks and has been bad recently for lunging to sniff things so I want to change the way I approach it all. But if I HAVE to walk him to go to the toilet he’s still able to practice the behaviours I’m trying to train out of him. I don’t know if I’ve explained that very well and probably sound a bit nuts but hey ho 🤣

I relented and took him out as I was worried it had been so long. He peed about 400000 litres worth and did a million poos. I think I just need to accept this is my life!

Bill is the same. I didn't want to say anything before as you had enough on your plate, but he once refused an evening walk and gave himself a UTI because he held on to his pee so long. He will use the backyard for a poo if he absolutely has to, but only if he's basically about to burst, and then it's usually about 4am. So I'm okay with taking him for a walk three times a day!

Has V been neutered? I noticed in the first few days after the chemical castration implant that Bill was miles more pully and scent-driven, so I'm hoping he's more able to engage once it kicks in.

I am actually impressed at how long he can hold it. Bladder of steel over here!! I don’t know why I’m complaining really because DH walks him first thing in the morning and before bed 😄 But it’s just an annoyance having to traipse around the block when you don’t really want to.

How is Bill getting on with the implant? V isn’t neutered, I don’t think I’ll bother unless there’s a medical reason for it. He is such a wuss that I think he needs all the testosterone he can get.

@Silverbirchleaf being good is over-rated. I just bought a new cake from Cutter and Squidge as I had 15% off and it was Pen's birthday a few days ago. Not that dogs can eat cake. But any excuse and all that. Will upload a photo when it arrives tomorrow!

I didn't realise your boy wasn't a cuddler! I suppose the benefit of that is not being crushed under his weight 😁

@YorkshireFelix Ohhh V. I suppose this is evidence that he will hold it until he absolutely cannot. Poor thing. And poor you being resigned to late night walks. I hope he appreciates all that you do for him...

I think I know what you mean about building up engagement, although I have no idea how I would do that with my bunch. Although tbh they engagement with me all the time anyway as I am the treat-producer and to ignore me is to miss out on pockets full of roast beef and chicken.

Will keep my fingers crossed for your new role!! Hope everything is okay with your DD and the school are doing something constructive to help❤

Hope everyone had a good morning walk. I am loving this beautiful weather - dogs and I got up super early for a sunrise walk which was bliss even with the rabbit chasing that happened (and subsequent collapsing in excitement from Twatdog). All my HR bits are done. DH is in the office, DDs are back at school, DWS is looking a bit less sorry for herself although still keeping close to me and the rest of the dogs are digging holes. I have cake arriving tomorrow. Life is good 😍

If you have cake to spare, I’m not too far away…

New development in the toilet saga is that he was out in the yard this afternoon, DH went into the alleyway to put some rubbish in the bin, V followed him into the alleyway and did a wee then ran back into the yard. So there’s obviously a forcefield surrounding our house which I can’t see 🤣

@Silverbirchleaf but if I gave you some that would take away from my own portion 😂It's due today and I am very excited.

@YorkshireFelix perhaps V is just taking his 'I am a clean boy and I don't shit where I eat' quite literally?😁Irritating, but also quite nice in a way so have such a clean dog.

I, finally, decided I'd give the Yumove tablets a try. I'm not expecting anything given all my dogs are fine (Hen a bit stiff when she gets up from the floor but walks it off after a pace or two), but I'm interested to see if it has any effect on that stiffness in particular.

At their size they apparently need 6 tablets a day! But six tablets a day for four dogs is 24 tablets!!!! (DWS not allowed any as she's too little). So a £90 pack of 300 tablets only lasts me 12.5 days. So only Clem and Hen are going to get any 😂What a fortune to spend.

@TheHungryHungryLandsharks Are you members of Costco? They sell it there. The online Costco price is £39.99 for 2x 120 packs so a lot cheaper, but currently put of stock online.

It’s just been announced that Maidstone could be getting its own Costco, but still very early stages. No more trips to Lakeside (or occasionally Croydon). Went last Thursday, and it took us an hour to get from the roundabout on the edge of Lakeside retail park to the other side of the QEII bridge. The whole journey usually takes less than an hour.

Good afternoon all.

@TheHungryHungryLandsharks I hope TD is behaving himself and DWS is feeling a bit better.

I hope the YuMove makes a difference. I think it works for some, but not for others. Have you gone for the YuMove +? Is 6 tablets a day the loading dose or the normal one? Everything is so expensive these days.
P has Kater4K9 KineticFlex Ultra - Hip and Joint Formula. I have no idea if it helps or not. The vet said get her on a supplement and this is the one the nutritionist recommended.

I hope you enjoy your cake. What flavour have you gone for this time? Hopefully you haven't ruined a good cake by adding nuts.

@tizwozliz Very belated happy birthday to Little Pup.

I wouldn't be able to walk my three together if they had to be on lead. I can manage two, if one of them is N. I tried P and K together and it was a nightmare. I suppose if they had to be on lead, I'd have put more effort into training them to walk nicely though. Are you allowed to use expendables or long lines? Or is it strictly short leads?

Glad I wasn't talking complete nonsense about having to train dogs to retrieve. Just because dogs are bred to fulfil a human purpose, it doesn't mean they'll do it instinctively.
K will eat anything that she finds that is already dead. When she caught a live duck, she came running up and presented it to me beautifully. P would have killed it and eat it.

@Bupster How's Bill doing? Is he calming down any yet after his testosterone surge?

@YorkshireFelix I don't think I could cope with a dog that won't toilet in the garden. It must be such a pain.

The gundog trainer was saying you shouldn't let the dog off lead from the start. I think the logic is if they have had their freedom, they won't work to earn it. Or somethìng like that.
The other trainer I go to is force free, reward based training. And advocates getting the dog's consent for things like grooming and putting their harness on. His off lead philosophy sounds like the trainer you are talking to. He says he never 'walks' his dogs. They have a garden to run around in to burn off energy. Every trip out of the house is a training exercise. He takes them to woods and fields, but he spends the whole time training. He doesn't allow them off lead until their entire focus is on him. He posted a video of his 7 month old doing sit, stay, retrieves in the woods last week. She's off lead, but working. She doesn't get free sniffing time.
I also have a dog trainer friend who specialises in dogs with high prey drive. I think her two cockers spent the first two years on long lines. She hasn't take her youngest to the woods yet, as she says she knows he will chase deer and she doesn't want to set him up to fail.

I can see the logic in it, but I don't have the dedication to the training. I enjoy wandering through the woods, doing bits of training here and there. Training for the whole walk makes it seem an arduous task.

Must admit, I am really enjoying my solo walks with K. She's doing so well at the minute. She did chase a deer yesterday, but that was a two minute slip out of an 80 minute walk. I can live with that. The rest of the time she explored in circles around me, keeping an eye on which way I went. And when we reached a junction, she stopped and waited for me to tell her which way to go.
I am fully aware this good behaviour will cease once big sister is back out with us and she has someone else to follow.

It was lovely weather here yesterday. (Wet and miserable today.) So lovely, I was inspired to clean my windows. Does anyone have any tips for cleaning without leaving 100s of smears all over the glass?

I have been cursing my shite vacuum cleaner lately. It keeps shutting down and telling me the filter needs cleaning. I keep telling it it's a useless piece of shit and I have cleaned it already. In a last attempt to get it to work before giving up and buying a new one, I watched a YouTube video on how to clean the filters. Imagine my surprise when she magiced a third one up out of the depths of the body of the vacuum. It took me half an hour to clean 3 years of dirt out of it. I am expecting great things when I vacuum later on. Hopefully it will actually pick up some dog hairs now.

Hope everyone has a good day.

@SpanielsGalore - flexi leads are very common. I'm not sure how strictly people stick to the rules. We saw a couple of off lead dogs in places where strictly they shouldn't be and ours might have been off lead one or two places that aren't technically allowed too but most places dogs are on lead even when they don't have to be. I had to double check the beach rules as everyone else seemed to have dogs on lead. I suspect most dogs don't have a very reliable recall as they simply don't spend any real time off lead outside of the garden. We also met very few dogs who were what I'd consider neutral when walking past ours.

We've had some lovely crisp sunny mornings the last couple of days, now it's warmer but dull. I got little pup's 3rd birthday stump photo taken for my collection. 3 months v 3 years

Loving the light evenings, so much less of a rush when not having to worry about fitting walks in during short daylight hours.

Back to Hoopers next week, it'll be interesting to see how that goes as we've done nothing much in 6 months. I am also not dedicated enough to do nothing but training on walks and I'm fully of the belief that dogs need some time to just be dogs. One reason I like woodland walks so much is we can all just potter. We do the occasional go around, or sit on a tree stump or jump a fallen branch, or sniff out a hidden ball but it's a fraction of the walk.

Adorable pictures.

But where’s the cake picture @TheHungryHungryLandsharks ? (Stamps foot in anger!)

Still no cake picture! @TheHungryHungryLandsharks Have you scoffed the lot already?!

The bluebells were looking lovely this morning, but the picture I took was too large to load (not sure what I did differently). We are fortunate to have lovely woods and orchards on our doorstep, and this is my favourite time of the year for walks - bluebells, apple blossom, birds twittering etc.

@tizwozliz Little Pup was a very cute little pup. 💖

I think I'd have been tempted to have some sneaky off lead times in quieter areas too. Must be difficult to teach recall if the dogs are rarely off lead. But you'd have thought loose lead walking and neutrality would be a priority.

I fully agree with dogs being allowed to be dogs. Our walks are for them to enjoy and (within reason) do as they please. Obviously I would prefer they didn't chase deer. Now I am walking K on her own we do some training, but I doubt it totals 5 minutes out of the hour.

@Silverbirchleaf Landsharks must be in a cake coma.

I love bluebells. I have fond memories of playing in 'the bluebell woods' as a child. No idea what the woods was really called. We've had the occasional sunny day up here recently and I've been surprised at how much difference it has made to my mood. I actually get things done instead of sitting on MN all day.

Training went really well last night. Mainly because we didn't do any retrieves. 😂 We did sending them out to hunt - which in our case meant lobbing a treat into long grass and sending K out to find it. Other people used balls or dummies, but they hold no interest for K. And we started learning a stop whistle. He teaches it by getting them to walk to heel and stopping walking. So the dog stops and sits when you stop. Start with saying sit. Then add a hand signal. Then a whistle. So eventually you drop the verbal and hand cues, and they stop and sit on the whistle. We finished with sit and stay, recall towards you and get them to stop half way. We've been working on stop at a distance to a hand signal, so K was good(ish) at that.

I did this course with P a few years ago and we only ever did retrieves. So I am really glad he's mixed it up a bit this time. I suppose when half the class can't/won't retrieve, you have to shake it up a bit.
K will now retrieve in the house and garden, but not on a walk. And I know the trainer will tell me it's because she's had too much freedom. Why waste time fetching a dummy, when you can be in the estuary hunting ducks?

Some bluebells from today’s walk.

Not the best picture , but some photos are coming out as ‘too large to load’. Wonder if it depends whether I use ‘photo’ or ‘portrait’ mode.

And yes to cake coma!

Forgot to say, glad the training is going well, and real ducks are definitely a higher value then a plastic dummy!

Can confirm I was in a cake coma. It's a very good cake should be for the bloody price. Photo below. We're currently seven slices in and only halfway through as even though it's not big, it's really rich. I am sorry to say that it's White Chocolate & Hazelnut Praline - so @SpanielsGalore wouldn't like it (which is fine, more for me) 😃

@Silverbirchleaf I grew up near Croydon and have to say I avoid it like the plague! Purley Way is my idea of hell. But we don't have a Costco membership...perhaps if the tablets work I'll consider it. But I am so weak I'd end up buying other things as well. I frequently go out to get just 'milk' or 'yoghurt' or something very simple and come back with about £20 worth of other rubbish.

Hope you enjoy the cake photo and sorry it's taken so long 😁

@SpanielsGalore He's very much behaving himself and DWS is back to normal.

I've not noticed any difference in the YuMove yet, but I'll give it a month just to be 100% sure. 6 tablets is the loading dose then it goes down. But you're right, everything is just so so expensive. The dog's food is all going up in price as well, or has done recently. Between the five of them it's an extra £60 a month.

Why waste time fetching a dummy, when you can be in the estuary hunting ducks? I must say I agree with K on this. Why, indeed?

How is P doing? Maybe once she's 100% you should just walk her separately to K anyway...keep your steps up so you can eat more cakes, like me 😂

I absolutely love bluebell time of year. It doesn't last long enough, but it's so beautiful whilst it does. 😍Beautiful photo @Silverbirchleaf - you'll be giving @tizwozliz a run for her money soon!

Let us know how you get on at hoopers @tizwozliz

Other than cake, it's bene very quiet my end. Twatdog has a new sex toy and Satan stayed the night last night (on the bed...which put everyones noses out of joint, particularly mine as her rear end stinks and I woke up to find her bum literally two inches from my nose). She's being collected shortly and I can just see my lot waiting for the moment she leaves and they can be free from her ruling iron fist again.

It does always amuse me that one so small can install such terror in others. Twatdog was being a bit wanky last night (nothing awful, just jumping up and mouthing) and DD2 squealed and Satan was straight there. She didn't touch him at all but as soon as she ran toward him and barked at him his bum hit the floor and he froze. Then she shoved her head up toward his and waddled off again after a few moments. She really is a very good (and very restrained) dog. Even if she stinks and is evil.

Phew! @TheHungryHungryLandsharks is alive! I was beginning to think I’d have to come over and do a mercy mission (not that I know where you live), and confiscate (and eat) any remaining cake, for health and safety reasons, obviously (and not because I’m a greedy cow).

The cake looks delicious!

We saved money by changing Dog from Butternut box to Forthglade. It’s cheaper, partly because initially he put on weight, so we had to reduce portions to lose that extra kilogram or two. Its also so much easier than having to defrost food all the time, and our freezer is no longer full of dog food.,

I keep seeing forthglade asking for product testers - I'm not sure "my lab loves your food so much she ate a kg in one sitting and had to have her stomach pumped" is something they'd be looking for 😂