a new fish ladder on the Yarra

When I read Slavenka's post today about salmon leaping up the River Tyne, I remembered how Penny and I have seen lots of work going on - for years! - at Yarra Bend, one of our favorite spots.

We also blogged some time ago about our usual swimming spot now being out of bounds for dogs.

It seems that it's all connected. Here's a video clip about the new Fish Ladder near Yarra Bend, at Dight's Falls.



I now understand why the little area has been fenced off - it's all part of the exciting news that native species are swimming back up the river, some of them for the first time in over a hundred years! As well as rebuilding the weir and putting in a fish ladder, the workers are regenerating sections of the banks.

Just the other day we wandered down that way to see the finished project, but we won't go there very often, because Penny has to be on lead. Also, I don't think she'll like walking over the fish ladder section, because it is a grill. She wouldn't like walking on the mesh. But I'm going down one of these days to try to see fish swimming up the river.

My all-time favourite native fish are using the ladder - galaxias. Here's a fantastic underwater video by  Greg Wallis of spotted galaxias swimming in the wild. (They're small fish, by the way, which is not obvious from the video.)

dogs and fish

Penny is a real city slicker and only eats fish if it comes out of a can, unlike Noah and friends, who enjoy all sorts of fish. Today I stumbled across a clip of a dog who accidentally caught a fish while trying to ear the bread scraps his human was tossing into the water.

I wonder what Penny would do if the same thing happened to her?

But this dog certainly wanted to catch a fish. I'd have loved to see what happened next. Did he eat the huge salmon he worked so hard to catch, or did his humans steal it from him?

persuading a dog to eat raw fish

The other night we had another try at broadening Penny's raw feeding diet to include fish.

What was this weird stuff her bowl? Hmm...she carried it over to her eating mat to examine it.

And then the human tried to convince her it was fun...it would be a good reward for obedience...it was worth guarding from food-thieves.




No luck.

In desperation, determined not to waste it, the human popped it into a saucepan with some hot water, lightly cooked it, and, hey presto! It must have tasted good.

Penny and the little fishies in her food

Penny won't eat much fish, as I've mentioned previously, although we try to get her used to it. The other day I sneaked some whitebait into her bowl, mixing them in with a raw egg - which she loves.

It looked as if the experiment was a success. She worked busily at her bowl, making sounds that seemed to indicate enjoyment. And then, when she looked up for a rest...there they were, a nice collection of little fishies, carefully licked clean of the egg.




Maybe she should have been introduced to fish early in life, like these little cane corso puppies, only five weeks old and dealing with their first big Indian mackerel.

feeding a dog a raw diet that includes fish

Penny found something weird in her food bowl this evening. While her humans were eating their fish dinners, Penny was busy at her bowl long enough for them to think she was enjoying her meal of rice, beef leftovers and sardines. But she wasn't, because there was a strange creature staring at her.

It smelled good, though. So she decided to get it out of the bowl and roll on it. Her humans all leapt up from the table, yelling, 'No!'

Hmm... What to do with it?



She carried it over to her eating mat to think about it, but one of the humans' hands came sneaking over her shoulder to steal it away (and put it in the rubbish bin), so she had to crouch really, really low to guard it.



Even though she studied it carefully from different angles, it still didn't look like something a respectable dog would eat.




In the end, she decided it wasn't worth the trouble and the humans stole it away. The house rule is, 'Eat it if it's in your bowl, because you won't get anything else.' So all she got tonight was some left-over rice and a teensy piece of old cooked beef.

The bad news is, another piece of fish is going to appear in her bowl tomorrow.
The good news is, there'll be nice things mixed in with it, to make it less obvious.
The even better news is that the next bit won't have eyes.

If only she could be like Noah and family, and enjoy a fish meal properly! I belong to the Yahoo rawfeeding group and I'm convinced Penny will benefit from more oily fish in her diet.

There's an interesting discussion about fish in a dog's diet at Dogster.