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Retsdon

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Everything posted by Retsdon

  1. Retsdon
    Many years ago I lived in Bow, and behind our block of flats was an old disused works that was just hotching with cats. One of the families on the estate had an Afghan that would lie out at night on the grass between our block and the works, and it would nail any cat that came over the wall. In the time I lived there it must have done for tens, if not hundreds of them.
  2. Retsdon
    Ha! I was 63 three days ago, and this pic suddenly out of a clear blue sky brought back the childhood memory of resting my head like that on the sleeping dog listening to her stomach gurgling. It was always full of noises. I'd forgotten all about it! Thanks
  3. Retsdon
    Tried it yourself? Actually it works very well. But there are a couple of points. It's not some random tups in a field, it's a single tup in a pen - and the tup needs to be mature, big, and of a moody disposition (that's why I suggested a Suffolk). Also the pen should be small and have corners (so not a round pen). What happens is that the tup will immediately back himself into a corner so the dog can't get behind him, and then launch his attacks from there. As I said, in less than a minute the tup will be chasing the dog around the pen. It's a gimmick that works very well. But like mos
  4. Retsdon
    It's too bad that you don't know a tame farmer because the best way to cure a young dog of an unwanted interest in sheep is to drop him into a small, strong-sided pen with a big old Suffolk ram. The whole lesson will take less than a minute, and when you've finally taken pity on the dog and fished him out of there he'll never so much as look sideways at another sheep again.
  5. Retsdon
    “The first person who, having enclosed a plot of land, took it into his head to say this is mine and found people simple enough to believe him was the true founder of civil society. What crimes, wars, murders, what miseries and horrors would the human race have been spared, had some one pulled up the stakes or filled in the ditch and cried out to his fellow men: "Do not listen to this imposter. You are lost if you forget that the fruits of the earth belong to all and the earth to no one!” Jean-Jacques Rousseau
  6. Retsdon
    That is one hell of a handsome dog!
  7. Retsdon
    Beautiful country. Bet there's fish running that river too.
  8. Retsdon
    How much?!? Here in Thailand I was quoted 230 quid for a full MRI chest scan for myself. Sure, the cost of labour, rates, etc, is higher in the UK, but not 6 times higher. An MRI machine costs the same wherever it is. £1500 is an outrageous price.
  9. Retsdon
    My four year old from the backseat the of the car....we're waiting at the lights to turn right. Him: 'Daddy, why don't you like the builders? Me. 'Oh, it's not I don't like them, they're a bit messy maybe and I don't like the way they... Him...interrupting: "Is it because they're a pack of f*cking cowboys? His 6 year old brother in the other back seat...bouncing with glee and pointing: 'Daddy! Daddy! Doozie used the F word! Doozie used the F word!'
  10. Retsdon
    There, in a nutshell. Anyone following this thread, read and learn. The easiest and best way to train a dog is to maneuvre it into a position that it really wants to do something, and then allow it to do what it wants to do while giving it a command at the same time. Eventually the dog will follow the command regardless of its own motivation. There's never ever confrontation.
  11. Retsdon
    That's my point. Every 8 year old kid on the planet could learn to tie laces in 2 minutes. A three year old might take weeks. Unless you genuinely need to teach early - why try and force the pace when waiting a while will cut a load of work.
  12. Retsdon
    Dogs are like kids - they mature at different ages. With kids, you get parents wanting them do do this or that at 3 or 4 years old. and they becomr absolutely distraught if Johnny next door is tying his laces, or spelling his name before their own little Kevin. The reality is that -with a bit of encouragement - they can ALL tie their laces and spell their names before they get to 8 or 9. Likewise with dogs. Everyone is in a fearful hurry. Fine to play around teaching a 10 week old pup to chase you when called, but at the end of the day it's far easier to train a dog at 5-6 months than it is a
  13. Retsdon
    There's such a beast?
  14. Retsdon
    That would be a pity Blaise. As I commented months ago - last year even?- I have really enjoyed this thread and am grateful for the knowledge and information that I've gained from it. Never having put a dog to ground in my life, your thread has opened my eyes to the sport of badger hunting and blown away a whole bunch of preconceptions and misconceptions. Don't listen to the snipers. What you have to know is that one of the less attractive traits of modern Britain - and it's a recent one that's grown up over the last 20 years or so - is that every Tom, Dick and Harry genuinely believes
  15. Retsdon
    It sounds like your bitch had a lucky escape. That stuff is dangerous. https://www.dogsnaturallymagazine.com/blue-green-algae-risks-to-dogs/
  16. Retsdon
    No, haven't had a dog of any kind for years. It's the chief minus of having itchy feet. To be honest, now I've satisfied the urge to travel I'd love to come back to the UK and if I did, the first thing I"d do is get myself a dog. But not having a spare 60,000 quid to put up as a bond for a visa for the wife, thanks to Theresa May I'm basically exiled abroad for the rest of my life - unless me and the kids were prepared to leave their mother behind.
  17. Retsdon
    I'll stand corrected - it just seemed a bit strange is all.
  18. Retsdon
    I'm writing this from Thailand - been going back and forth between here and the Middle East for 16 years. It's OK, but there's nowhere to run a dog.
  19. Retsdon
    Sorry, but that doesn't sound quite right. Dogs don't break their bones easily at any age, but especially when they're pups playing around and their bones are still green. Unless his garden is full of rat holes...
  20. Retsdon
    Dog training is 90% conditioned response, so like training a dog to do anything, the most important rule is to only give the command when you're in a position to enforce it. That doesn't mean you should bash the dog, but if you tell him to come, he should come at once - there should be nothing optional about it. And it's a slow, step by step process over a month or more. So to begin with, only tell him to come when he probably wants to. Then make a fuss of him when he comes. When that gets entirely predictable, tell him to come when he might not want to, but isn't particularly distracted. If y
  21. Retsdon
    There will never be a repeal of the ban. Most voters have never ever even seen a dead rat. A rat to them is a blood relation whatsisname - sorry, the name of the kids cartoon escapes me- but basically a furry cartoon whose killing other than by humane injection is tantamount to blood-thirsty murder. It's how the country has become. Ironically, on the continent they seem better able to resist the ignorance, aa evidenced by Blaise's excellent thread over on the digging dogs forum (see below).But in Britain the country is lost, and the hunting ban is just a symptom of that loss. I can hear my ol
  22. Retsdon
    In which case I suppose it could be argued that provided the resulting dogs meet the breed's weight and size specs, then a smattering of greyhound blood might actually improve the whippet breed by making the dogs faster and stronger and widening the gene pool. I don't know about whippets, but I do know with border collies that if the dog in question had won a specific number of ISDS sanctioned trials, the International Sheepdog Dog Society would, at one time, have allowed for the registration of an unpedigreed dog - thereby giving it kosher breeding papers to let it into ISDS registered linea
  23. Retsdon
    Curious about this. Do you mean introducing whippets without papers into the line, or dogs that aren't whippets?
  24. Retsdon
    Sheep don't run themselves into wire like that on their own...
  25. Retsdon
    Some beautiful dogs on this thread. I'm just a bit jealous of their owners.
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