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Neal

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Everything posted by Neal

  1. I switched off when I saw the name Gove.
  2. Until about ten years ago, the only time I ever saw red kites was when we went a little farther north (I live in South Hampshire). Now I see several every year. Also, two species which I always thought of as West Country species were the buzzard and jackdaw. When I was growing up I very rarely saw them until we went on holiday to Cornwall or Devon. I always found that, the farther west we drove, the magpies petered out and were replaced by jackdaws. While I was at art college in Falmouth in the early 90s it was all jackdaws and virtually no magpies. Now, although the magpies are still com
  3. I think it's a male as the females have a black line down the back...or have I got that the wrong way round? I know the males sometimes have blue spots too. No, honestly!
  4. Apologies for going off topic: did you ever find out, conclusively, what caused the blood from nose and mouth? The reason I ask is because the same happened to my second kelpie. It was literally dripping from her nose and around the gums. Never seen anything like it before. We (the vets and I) never found out what it was. The only thing I could think of was that she may have been previously bitten by an adder. (Went into a patch of brambles where I saw an adder a couple of days later and a mile later I had to carry her home as she went all drowsy and kept falling asleep standing up.)
  5. Thanks everybody, that's pretty much what I suspected.
  6. Genuine question: I've heard GWP lurchers mentioned a lot, off and on, over the last thirty years or so...but never GSP crosses. Any reason for that? Is it simply because the wire-hairs have more of a reputation as general vermin dogs?
  7. When I used to work lurchers I always kept quiet about what they were used for. Now that I work kelpies (or to be honest, now that I'm older) I tell everybody who asks about them what I use them for. I'm amazed at how many people let their pet dogs chase deer in particular. I've heard everything from 'I can't call him back' to 'it's completely natural' with a huge dose of 'I'm not worried because I'm sure he's not fast enough to catch one.'
  8. There was a feature on the national news yesterday lunchtime about deer numbers and saying we should be encouraged to eat more venison. You'd think someone would put two and two together and come up with the obvious solution.
  9. I had one particularly large one (not as big as a dog though) which frequented my garden for a while. It made a guest appearance in the middle of my son's birthday party about fourteen years ago. Fortunately, only one of my neighbours spotted it, but she renamed it "the wallaby." The kelpies eventually cornered it inside the potting shed. It had climbed up the sloping side but was unable to get out again. When I went into the shed in the morning I opened up one of the drawers and saw something move. I initially jumped back in shock, then said to myself, 'don't be daft, that was just a thi
  10. Thanks. That makes sense.
  11. What's with the weird posts on the photography section? There were several yesterday which all had titles connected to writing a thesis and then another this morning in Russian.
  12. Neal

    Cockerdales

    Straight after reading this yesterday, I was looking for something else on either preloved, freeads or pets4homes and saw an ad for two nine month old pups bred this way. I think they were only £100 each.
  13. I found a high backed corner one and wedged it in place with a couple of bricks.
  14. Neal

    RIP Steve

    There's nothing left, all gone and run away...
  15. I've not kept ferrets for about eleven years now, but, of the various types of accommodation I gave them, the best was always a shed with a mesh door. On my second incarnation of this I put a baffle in front of the door but the little buggers worked out exactly which rocks, logs etc to climb on so that they could take a flying leap just as I opened the door! No matter how I moved the interior decor around they'd work out a new plan for escape within a few days. Edited to add: the mesh panels were simply aviary panels with a door which opened from a foot or so from ground level.
  16. There's a litter of ACD crosses on freeads at the moment. Not sure what the cross is, as it doesn't say in the advert.
  17. Re the retrieving, are vizslas maybe more like curly-coated retrievers than labs i.e. they can't see the point in simply retrieving for the fun of it even though they'll do it rigorously when needed? My first lurcher was the same (beardie x greyhound) I couldn't get her to retrieve at all in her puppy training so I gave up. Then, when she started working she brought it back naturally.
  18. I very nearly bought one of these when I got my last dog. However, although I'd heard they were calmer than the smooths, all the ones I'd met were still far more excitable than I'd like...so I chickened out and got another kelpie. Better the devil you know and all that jazz.
  19. My worst-most-hair-raising example of that was when my family and I stopped at Lyme Regis on our way to Dartmoor. I'd taught a previous kelpie to jump by saying 'over' or with a hand signal. We were standing by a sea wall about fifteen feet or more high when my wife pointed into the distance and asked, 'Is that the Cobb OVER there?' Next thing I know I'm holding one end of the lead while Ned is hanging by his neck on the other side of the wall. I had no alternative but to drop him and hope he landed like a cat. Fortunately he did. Edited to add: needless to say, he's the one I rehom
  20. I remember watching Tarzan back in the 80s. I can't remember if it was the TV series or a film. Something about it didn't look quite right to me, with regards to the fact that it's based in Africa. Then, in one scene, where a boat is going past on a river, the scene is shot from amongst the trees and there were a couple of woolly monkeys in the foreground.
  21. Is that the one that's based on Frankenstein?
  22. What do you know about the ACD which was used to produce the sire or dam? This question is aimed at anybody from this thread or the other one with related dogs. The reason I'm asking is because, although I've always liked them, the main thing that's put me off is that for several years all the ones being brought into the UK (apart from the first one or two) were show bred and looked like barrels on legs. However, over the last few years I've met a couple of slimmer examples with a more laid back temperament and I've also seen several advertised which claim to be used for herding.
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