Neal
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Everything posted by Neal
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That's good to know as, at some point in the future, I'm hoping to retire to Dartmoor and raise some rare breed sheep so it's good to know I could add a smidgen of greyhound and still expect them to herd well enough to do their job.
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Love the video, great idea; you get a brief hint at some differences in temperament already...still don't know how you'd pick between them though.
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Thanks Arry! Still fine since keeping off the rawhide chews but I've decided to not even try the chicken just in case. Touch wood.
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There's also the unspoken added benefit of the fact that if I get one which is crap and "couldn't catch a cat in a kitchen" I can claim the lurcher card and say, "Well he's only a sheepdog."?
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Yeah, that's the thing I've found so odd; I've never had any digestion problems with previous dogs (the opposite if anything!) and, as you say, the inconsistency. He'll be fine for several days or weeks and then suddenly I come downstairs in the morning to a Shakatak (as we used to call it when we were little). However, because I'd not previously factored the rawhide chews into the equation, as I wasn't thinking of it as part of his diet, I'm hoping that could be it. I did suggest trying chicken again to my lovely lady wife but she wisely advised me to stick with what he's on now. Thanks agai
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Why do some people simply refuse to accept the fact that you don't have to have more sighthound blood if you want to catch something. Is it simply because, historically, some people produced rabbit catching dogs by mating greyhounds etc to collies etc and other people subsequently wrote books reiterating this fact so we now assume that, if we want to catch a rabbit, squirrel, rat, wood pigeon etc then we must have a dog which is half greyhound if we also want to go ferreting but three quarters greyhound if we don't? It's a good job God doesn't read lurcher books. He'd be saying to St Pete
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Thanks Gilbey. In that case (fingers crossed) I may have cracked it. I may try him on some dog grade chicken wings (with feathers still on etc) from the pet shop just to see.
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An update: I had intended to write an update about a fortnight ago to basically say something on the lines of "Thanks for all your advice, everything's fine now since I cut out the chicken,"...but then it happened again. I did the usual thing of going over everything that had happened the previous day but the only thing I could think of was that my kids said he's chewed on a stick for a bit in the garden. Then it happened last week...and then again last night. My immediate assumption was that yesterday he'd also been given some leftovers in the form of two tiny new potatoes and some cooke
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Poor kid killed by pit bull type dog
Neal replied to Apache...'s topic in Earthdogs & Working Terriers
I was reading in a book recently that the breed most likely to attack both strangers and its owner is...…..drum roll please...….the dachshund! I was quite surprised. I thought it'd be one of those silly little handbag dogs whose ruined bodies means no other dogs can read their body language properly so they end up thinking everybody hates them. -
With regards to collie build, when I bought my first lurcher (just shy of thirty years ago) I was forever looking out for racy, leggy collies. However, since I stopped buying dogs with any sighthound blood I rarely think about their physical appearance. Well, that's not strictly true, but it's definitely my second or third consideration behind a) the pups character and b) the parents' character. I personally think my current pup's an ugly sod but he's got a great character. I once compared him and his older cousin Noggin by saying that if they were Hollywood actors then Noggin would be Brad Pi
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Not wrong at all Black neck. To be honest, I've usually found the situation alters as a dog matures as you said. In an ideal world sensible males have one little scuffle when they first meet to see who's in charge and then remember it next time. Unfortunately, so many owners aren't as sensible as their dogs and either encourage their aggression or their defensive attitude (and subsequently their aggression again) thereby engendering a loose/loose situation. That's why I now try to keep my friendly and unfriendly dogs under closer control, simply because most other owners make the situation wor
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Completely agree with Skycat's comments above. As an example, my current pup is ten months old and is extremely "happy" he'd readily go up to every human or dog at full speed to bounce all over them and invite them to play. Unfortunately, because he's black and tan with pricked ears, many owners fear the worst and assume he's going to rip their poor little darling apart. While it's tempting for me to think that's their fault, my dog's fine, they'll have to put up with it etc I don't want to be that kind of owner. I simply lay him down if he looks like he's going to get overly excited and gauge
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Have you noticed any similarity between the dogs he's had a go at, colour, demeanour or anything else? Has a dog previously had a go at him for no apparent reason which could have started a negative association?
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Wow CollieJohn...I can't believe the amount of hostility such a topic has engendered! Must be that everybody's bored of moaning about Brexit and want something else to complain about. Personally, I think they look great and should suit you down to the ground. I've often thought about the potential of adding a smidgen of sighthound to my kelpies but I doubt anybody else would be interested so I just accept the fact that my dogs aren't nippy enough for rabbits in the open...but that they make up for it in other ways. Just ignore the pessimists, some people simply can't see the point in she
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As Bobtheferret said, they simply know better than us so, as a result, I wouldn't want to go ferreting without a dog. I no longer have any ferrets, as the farms I worked on have gradually been covered in concrete, but when I did I caught a lot more with my prick-eared sheepdogs. If it was a choice between dog or nets I'd choose dog every time: you may not catch quite as many but it's a lot more fun. To be completely honest, the only reason I had ferrets was to give the dogs a more definite "job" whereas now they're "just" ( for want of a better word ) bushing and mooching dogs.
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Thanks Sid and Will. Very interesting, especially about the human consumption chicken. The irony is that the human quality chicken is roughly half the price of the "frozen chicken wings" intended for dogs from across the road in the pet shop...ridiculous. Anyway, an update: since my last post he's had no more chicken in any way, shape or form and his crate has remained vomit and diarrhoea free! I've fed him on various combinations of minced beef and/or tripe with or without the Taste of the Wild. I've also tried minced venison and some lamb bones which I found in Morrisons. Next step will
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Completely agree on both counts. I've only met Phil a handful of times but if you take the time to listen to him for a few hours you'll get more genuine advice than from reading a whole pile of certain books. As for the forum, I only usually come on about once a month now and I don't seem to find as many threads that I want to read.
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Thanks for the advice. An update: he was fine for a couple of days but yesterday I tried him on minced lamb and chicken mixed with the dry and I had another explosion. I think it was from both ends this time but it's hard to tell as I've known him to produce vomit which looks (and smells) like poo! I'm therefore thinking it's either chicken that's causing it or possibly combining the dry and mince. I'll try mince only for a few days and post again later next week. Thanks again for all the advice.
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To be honest, I'm still not certain. I'm in the process this week of trying him on some minced chicken without the whole bones to see if that makes a difference...with a full bottle of stain and odour remover and plenty of kitchen towels at the ready!
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I had my current kelpie bitch spayed at around eighteen months (so around ten years ago). Ironically, on the morning that I took her in there was thread on here about spaying and Skycat's negative comments about spaying (re changes in temperament) almost made me change my mind at the last moment. I've found the main benefit is that I never have to worry about her being in season (obviously). I've found no weight gain problems but her coat has deteriorated and her character changed. She had been very outgoing, friendly and bomb-proof but gradually became easily slighted and "a grumpy cow"
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Thanks Socks; I'd not considered that.? MJenks: as it's a BARF diet surely it should be prunes...then he can shoot the neighbours' cat when he pumps out the stones!?
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I'm hoping somebody can help me with some advice. I've been feeding my dogs on a BARF diet for over twenty years (that makes me sound like Keith Fit on Gigglebiz!) without any problems. However, my latest pup (currently eight months old) is having one major problem with it. He house-trained really quickly but I still found that he had occasional accidents in his crate overnight. To cut an extremely long story short...after numerous trial runs on different amounts of different ingredients it always came down to the same thing...chicken bones within chicken portions e.g. wings, thighs, drumstick
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I've had three dogs with varying amounts of bearded collie in them during the 90s. All had their idiosyncrasies but no more or less than other dogs I've owned. The first was a first cross beardie x greyhound (so half beardie) she was very 'enthusiastic' and very intelligent. The second was 3/8 beardie 3/8 border and 1/4 greyhound and, like Shortstraw's, would go through gorse, brambles and barbed wire with no ill effect whatsoever. He was soft and soppy but very loyal. The last was 3/8 border 1/8 beardie 3/8 whippet 1/8 greyhound so the amount of beardie was negligible compared to the previou
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I think I got it a year or so before the book and it's basically an abridged version of the book (or rather the book's an extended version of the DVD). Although there's a little bit about kelpies in general it's more a history book in that it looks at a number of the theories about how the kelpie came about and, with a hell of a lot of research, comes to some conclusions. I think I read in there that one of the Scots who supplied some of the early dogs to Australia was she same gentleman who gave Queen Victoria her favourite collie and that either his or someone else's collies contributed
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Great article. One of my favourite ever articles from either the Countryman's Weekly or (as I think it was then) the Shooting News was an article in the 80s or 90s by someone called S Merrell about using pure collies and collie crosses for various fieldsports. It was that article that gave me the wish to one day move from collie etc crosses to pure breds for working. I think there was a collie x Bedlington in the article called Sally.
