Neal
-
Content Count
2,569 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Gallery
Articles
Gun Dealer's and Fieldsports Shop's
Reloading Room
Blogs
Calendar
Store
Classifieds
Everything posted by Neal
-
Thanks, that makes sense.?
-
A racing whippet breeder I once knew said that the only "whippets" she'd ever had with bad feet were the ones with racing greyhound blood. I didn't realise this was a widely held view but, judging by the question in the initial post, maybe it is. Her reasoning was that both coursing and racing bred pure whippets were produced to run on a variety of surfaces whereas, with greyhounds, it was only the coursing lines which were bred to run on a variety of surfaces. As a result, she felt that although racing greyhounds were (obviously) not bred with no recourse to the quality of their feet, it wasn
-
I would have thought it would have caused the opposite i.e. more white on pups. I always thought you were supposed to add black genes to strengthen the merle colouring...if that's what you're after. I'm not saying your wrong Mush, just that I'm surprised that they do that. Some people eh.
-
Curs were pastoral types. Cur is simply an abbreviation of curtailed i.e. tail was shortened so that (in the opinion of the gentry) they could herd livestock but not catch anything which "belonged" to the aforementioned gentry. It was a type of dog described as a cur which was taken to Australia and mated to dingoes to produce the original Hall's heelers and Timmins Biters: NOT collies as is usually stated. That's why the original dogs could be either full or short tailed. The reason people think Australian cattle dogs all have tails is because the bloke who wrote the first breed description d
-
No offence to 3/4 collie 1/4 greyhounds, as I personally like them too, but I think the original poster meant 3/4 greyhound 1/4 collie...as he mentioned them being all-rounders. As I said, I like them, but I wouldn't necessarily call them all-rounders for most people.
-
I always thought that too. However, my wife bought me a book for my birthday called "The Dogs Which Made Australia," and I was amazed by how much stuff I'd always assumed was true about heelers and kelpies was simply made up by Robert Kaleski. By the end of the book he'd been made to sound like the Australian version of Plummer...but much worse. He was one of those people who based his assumptions of what breeds were in a dog purely on physical appearance with no evidence from how they work, temperament etc.
-
There was a similar slant on my local radio station this morning (Wave 105). He was talking about recurring vandalism in a Gosport cemetery and how that gets reported on, but nobody reports on all the locals who come out and clear it all off. He likened it to how we all heard about what happened in Bristol recently, but few people reported on the locals who came out with cups of tea for the police.
-
Thanks. Will do. ?
-
I'd gladly swap you the space at my house for the chance to walk on Dartmoor regularly.?
-
Good point. It's just like the dogs we choose to keep: whatever fits or suits you best. I preferred castrated hobs but if we all had them there'd be no more ferrets. I got most of mine from a local ferret rescue but you can't always guarantee what's happened to them before.
-
I always had my males castrated, simply so that I could have them in the same court all year round with no problems.
-
I no longer keep ferrets as there are not enough rabbits near me to warrant keeping them, but I found the hobs generally calmer and preferred working them too. The only negative was that they were more likely to get stuck in the nets sometimes.
-
I've got several of his books but not got that one. Brilliant writer, very poetic rather than just matter of fact. I'd highly recommend all the ones I've read.
-
I think most people on here would disagree with you but my favourite ever ferret was a polecat marked hob I bought from a pet shop in Fratton in Portsmouth. They had them all in a big aviary out the back of the shop and were cleaning them out when I arrived. They were all in the bottom of a black plastic bin and the bloke said, "Take your pick," so I stuck my hand in and picked him up. Friendliest ferret I ever had.
-
That's why I like it.? Nothing like a walk in the dimmitt.
-
Did I mention that I often walked home after work (c. 8 miles) as the buses were so crap that it was only marginally quicker to get one and I begrudged paying that much money.?
-
I'd say 8 to 5 was an average day when I was teaching...often closer to six. I regularly had the caretaker walking past my room, whistling, looking at his watch because he wanted to lock up....and then you get home and sometimes spend another hour or three finishing off the planning...and then there's the stuff you catch up with at the weekend because you don't get time to do it during the week...and then...
-
I know exactly what you mean. My old kelpie bitch Scout was forever finding things I couldn't see and then embarrassing me when she proved me wrong. Just like you, there were countless times when she marked a tree, I walked around it, couldn't see anything, called her away, only for the squirrel to emerge when we'd walked far enough away. I've often found that pretending I'm going to climb the tree can panic the squirrel into making a jump for it. Two other incidents, one when she was a young pup and I saw a rat on top of the coal bins by the back door from the kitchen window. I shouted a
-
I beg to differ...that's NOT useless information. ?
-
? I worked in education for over a quarter of a century and retired from teaching last January...just in time to take two months off before starting home schooling my two kids. There are lots of things which make teaching hard but the two hardest are a) arseholes further up the tree who've been out of the classroom for years and wouldn't know a decent teacher if they saw one as they're too busy ticking boxes, telling me what to do when they plainly have less respect from the kids and parents than I did and b) putting up with negativity from people who don't know what they're talking about
-
Fuji IX...as recommended by Bob Mortimer. ??
-
I've got a degree in Fine Art and you can tell her from me that's extremely good.?
-
Yeah, they could be. Because they were imported into the country because of their working ability as opposed to their looks, they're a mixed bunch. My smallest was Scout but I've heard of some being up to 24ish" and although the coat colour is always a particular one of several different varieties, the coat itself can vary a lot. Rusty had a ruff like a Highland collie, moulted like a husky and a bottle brush tail like a fox. Scout had a short tight oily coat and a tail like a whippet lurcher and Noggin's is a couple of inches longer and more like a German shepherd. I think about 1/4 have flop
-
As has been said above, but with the addition of Aussie Whip's "ignore the behaviour." Just turn around and walk in the opposite direction and make a fuss when they come to you...no matter how much you want to do the opposite...else you'll be reprimanding it for coming back. I've never known this technique to fail, although you have to make sure there are no eejits around who insist on making a fuss of your dog when it's ignoring you...and then apologise by saying, "Sorry, I probably wasn't helping was I?"...and then they do the same thing again the next time you meet them. What gives you the
-
My "whippety" bitch was only about 18" and (if memory serves me well) only 26 lbs. In comparison, my current males are both about the same at 22" and 43ish lbs.
