Lovely rain

 I was beginning to wonder if we were slipping once again into drought, despite the predictions that La Nina would give us a wet autumn (or some such thing that I don't quite remember). But the lovely rain has come and is staying all week.

Which brings me to the subject of dog-walking. I remember our vet once saying a dog must at least 'leave the property' each day. Well, in a most unusual event, Peppa didn't go for a walk today.

We did walk yesterday, even though it rained all day. We went to LaTrobe University and walked around under the shelter of the raised walkways. I wouldn't normally go there, but it was a holiday - Easter Monday - and I thought it would be okay. 

Having no walk today has proved Peppa is adept at entertaining herself. She has spent the evening jumping all over us and trying to drag our jackets off, racing out the back and barking piercingly at any movement, chewing anything within reach and generally being annoying, to be frank.

I realised it was my fault for not giving her the opportunity to go out today. Lesson learned. However, it did also make me realise that we're not doing enough training to allow her to use her intelligence. So, later this evening, we spent twenty minutes training.

She surprised me. We revisited: weave between my legs/sit (and wait for the release word)/ walk nicely beside me on my left/ find a treat hidden at the other end of the house/ drop/and...best of all, free shaping where I put an empty cardboard box in the middle of the kitchen and praised any looking at the box or touching it with her nose.

I'll admit I've been underestimating her and forever comparing her with Penny, who was a delight to train. It turns out Peppa, too, wants to use her brains. It's just that she's not really in the business of trying to please the humans. She lives with us, not for us. I guess we should have known this, having read up on Lhasa apso personality traits before she came to live here.

Now I'm going to look back through my old posts to look at the training we routinely did with Penny. A great reason to revisit Penny's lifetime with us. It will be sad but worthwhile.

a cat and a lhasa apso

 Our neighbour has a cat. He wants to be near Peppa, and in fact wandered right into our house the day after Peppa came to live with us.

Peppa loves him. But the problem is that he won't let her come very close. One day, when Peppa was tiny, we went for an on-lead walk along the street and he accompanied us by walking alongside us up on the tops of the fences. 

Peppa had conniptions and it was pretty nightmarish trying to stop her strangling herself on the leash. 

Things have settled into a sort of truce, where he strolls around the perimeter of the house and she races around inside, looking out the windows or trying to bash her way through the screen door, if the wooden door is open. It's fun for her and entertaining for us. Sometimes I wonder what will happen when he eventually decides to let her approach him.

Well, today I discovered that she  can play happily with a friendly cat. We came across  a cat lying on the edge of a footpath when we were out for a walk, and these photos show what a lovely time the two of them had together:

So perhaps Mr Next-door and Peppa will get to play together sometime in the future.

Peppa is her own person

 We have to resist the temptation to compare Peppa's progress with that of our beloved Penny, because we need to remember Peppa is a separate individual, with her own life story to experience. 

Here are a few shots of her first two months with us:

 

Learning to be comfortable in her new bed.

Welcoming next door's cat who came visiting.

Chilling out.

Conquering the doggy door.

 

snoozing privately

In a busy household it can be difficult to get a few moments' private rest.

But Penny seems to have solved the problem. In an unused doorway that looks out to the street we keep one of Penny's many beds. This one is an elevated one and her preferred spot for sleeping or keeping an eye out for passers-by.

As I walked past, this evening, I did a double-take.

What? A closer inspection showed a canine outline inside the curtain.

Here's hoping she manages to get off the bed without tripping herself on the curtain. (You have probably guessed that we think Penny is more important than clean curtains.)

pet food with carrageenan in it - is it too dangerous?

Long ago, someone pointed out to me that our favourite canned pet food has carrageenan in it, and said that ingredient is reported to be carcinogenic. I decided not to worry about it, because I thought  ZiwiPeak, the brand I'm talking about, is ethically produced.

However, today I was reading a report by a cardiologist about carrageena. He says he wouldn't eat it himself. Reluctantly, I decided not to buy this terrific brand of food any more.

And then...

In researching this post I found they don't include it any more! Hooray!

Two things occur to me:
1. If they have taken the trouble to replace carrageenan with what they say is a safer ingredient - agar agar - then they must have concluded that carrageenan is indeed dangerous to our pets.

2. Why is carrageenan still listed on some websites as a ZiwiPeak ingredient?


I reckon it's worth looking at the ingredient list on anything you give your dogs - and on any human product - to check for carrageenan.

don't use Roundup if you have dogs

The World Health Organisation said in March that Roundup  'probably' causes cancer in humans.

If it is dangerous to humans, how much more so must it be to dogs, who walk 'bare-footed' on ground that has been sprayed!

I have previously posted about this pernicious substance. It's a dreadful product.

RoundUp is dangerous

We've been cleaning up our back shed over the last couple of weeks. Yep, it's a lo-o-ng process!

Today I was moving stuff around and noticed a container of RoundUp, and said to myself, in an organic garden there is no room for such a poison. But then I thought, what if a really, really hard-to-get-rid-of weed needs just a teensy touch of poison, applied carefully with a small paintbrush? And so I put the container back on the shelf.

What was I thinking of? It's a poison!

And, in a satisfyingly timely happening, Grace Elliot, a veterinarian, sent in a comment today responding to my post about the dangers of glyphosate (RoundUp). She mentioned the abstract of an article in the Journal of the British Veterinary Association. So I checked up the reference, and this is part of it:

According to the Centre National d’Informations Toxicologiques Vétérinaires (CNITV) (Burgat and others 1998, Berny and others 2010), the Italian Veterinary Toxicologic Assistance Service (SATV) (Giuliano Albo and Nebbia 2004) and the human Poison Control Centre of Milan (Centro Antiveleni di Milano, CAV) (Caloni and others 2012), glyphosate is the herbicide most commonly involved in animal poisonings. Since its launch, the Veterinary Poisons Information Service (VPIS) in London has received 1323 enquiries about dogs (n=992) and cats (n=331) exposed to glyphosate-based products (Bates and Edwards 2013).

Glyphosate is the herbicide most commonly involved in animal poisonings.

I remember my brother telling me about the time his neighbour sprayed the lawn with RoundUp and found dead rabbits lying there the following day. 

the lorikeets are eating the apples again

Penny was on duty today, guarding the house.

She was at the front door, ensuring no one passed by in the street unchallenged, no cats invaded our front yard, no strange people got in or out of cars, no dogs walked by.

But, out in the back yard, they were back. The apple thieves.

Where was Penny when she was needed for bird-barking duty?

I caught the thieves red-beaked, in the act of thievery.

rainbow lorikeets, mulch, apples and a dog

Penny and I strolled around the garden the other day to admire the apples. They were nearly ripe.

Penny takes her duty seriously to pop outside each evening to deter the inhabitants of this nest...

...who emerge at dusk to steal our fruit. We sort of scared off FOUR in the apple tree last night. I say 'sort of', because they came right back each time Penny dutifully barked them into retreat, and eventually even a dog has to get some sleep.

But these don't look entirely like possum tooth marks. Who else is stealing our apples?

Aha! A culprit is waiting for us to go inside.

We see you, and Penny is barking at you! Do you care? No.

Okay, so I'll pick up some of these bits of bark on the little path and throw them at you!

Penny thinks this is a great game, and now she knows that bits of mulch are really important, because her human has been playing with them, so she should take some inside the house and taste it and keep it and enjoy it in every way.

So everyone's happy now, with something to eat. Dog, possums, ringtail possums. A happy ending.

are our dogs companions or property?

Further to my post yesterday about how we think about our dogs, today I received an email from PetMD with a discussion of words we use to refer to our pets.

Is Penny 'it'? Or is the correct pronoun 'she'? (I think 'she'. She's as much a female animal as I am.)

Is she my 'pet'? My 'companion'? My property?

At the bottom of the PetMD article there are many interesting comments. Some hate the idea of pets as property, but one person says that the concept of 'owning' a dog gives him rights and means no one can harm his dog. On the other hand, to me the danger might be that it means only that if someone harms his dog they have to pay him recompense.

No money could make up to me the distress if someone harmed Penny.

fun game for learning about animal health

Human Number Two is out walking with Penny and I'm lazing around at home playing a game on the computer, a game I saw on PetMD.

It's fun. The game is released by the American Veterinary Medical Association. You are training to be a vet and working in a vet hospital. I'm just at the beginner level, and already I'm not keeping up with the influx of clients. I'll have to stop blogging and get right back to it...

grooming your dog

I always get tense about taking Penny to grooming. I've tried a few places over her lifetime, and always felt uneasy that I couldn't stay and see what what happening. However, I realise the groomer can't work with the owner looming over her shoulder, so I knew I had to leave.

Well, my problem has been solved.

A friend told me he is happy with a groomer who works in a large pet store not ten minutes' walking distance from home. I called in and browsed the aquarium equipment for ten minutes, peeking over the top of a display of fish food into the grooming area. The groomer, unaware of anyone watching, was lovely with the dog she was working on, encouraging and soothing.

Later I called in with Penny after phoning ahead and met the groomer, and primed her with lots of nice treats for Penny. Who, by the way, took one look around, tucked her tail between her legs and tried to squeeze out under the door. (Well, not literally, but metaphorically.)

Today I took Penny down after a muddy romp in a local park.

We walked down and, sure enough, Penny didn't want to stay. But I left. Right next door is a great little cafe with cakes and hot chocolate, and I sat there for a while reading a book. How nice!

I couldn't resist having a look to see what was happening, and entered the store at the upper level and discovered to my delight that from up there I had a great view of Penny standing calmly to be clipped, and I was far enough away that Penny couldn't even catch my scent.

Reassured, I went for a walk around the streets to enjoy the lovely gardens, which are showing signs already of spring. After less than an hour Penny was finished and Gaby, the groomer called me to come and get her.

Penny was relaxed and confident when I picked her up and we walked home in the winter sunshine.

I think she looks great.

Penny insisted on showing off her neat belly hair.

seatbelts for pets in cars

Slavenka posted this photo from Arbroath. I wonder if I could get Penny to sit up with a seatbelt around her, lol?

alfie dog publishing is named after a real dog

Finally I have discovered how Alfie Dog publishing got its name.

The website says it is named after their

patron, writer and family pet, Alfie Dog, who has written his diary as a highly successful blog since 2006. The smiling dog logo is in honour of this happy animal.

That's a year longer than Penny has been blogging! I'll have to keep an eye on Alfie's adventures. 

out in the wide, wide river

Penny hasn't built on her recent success at fetching two toys at once while swimming in the Yarra. It must have been an accident, because she doesn't appear to remember how she did it.

Yesterday she was, as usual, swimming in the river for her Whirl Wheel, but she absent-mindedly took one with her when she went for the other.

So, a problem. How to bring them both back to shore? She's a determined  dog, and swam in circles, trying to figure out how to do it, gradually drifting further and further downstream.

We weren't worried. Well, not yet. But she was starting to flag - we can usually see she's tiring when she sinks a bit in the water.

Here's a clip of how she solved it. You can hear us calling her to head back to shore with the first one. After all, we didn't really care if the second toy floated down the river and out into Port Phillip Bay, as long as Penny got back safely to shore. But as you can see, she wasn't going to give up. (By the way, the birds chirping in the background are bellbirds.)



After all that effort, it was time to shake the water off...

and roll on the toys.

a gorgeously groomed dog

Who is this lovely canine living with us?

Could it be the same Penny who used to look like this?

What a beautiful job the groomer has done - and it was all scissor-work, too, because I don't think Penny likes the clippers.

Dogs let us influence their judgments

Reading the comments by Curator and Bella on my previous post has reminded me to go back to PetMD and read the final installment of her summary of the study about how we can influence the behavior of our dogs.

It seems that the way to get your dog to choose a smaller portion of food over a larger one would be to handle the food, especially if you move it to your own mouth. Okaayy...if I'm going to try that one, it's going to be on a night when Penny's not getting ox liver or chicken necks or raw fish. (Oh, I forgot, raw fish is the only protein she refuses to eat, especially if it has eyes. I don't blame her.)

PetMD said the fact we can influence our dogs to go against their own judgment means we have a great responsibility towards them. I agree.

winter and spring in one day

Yesterday we thought spring had come to Melbourne, and I was eager to get a nice walk in the sun today with Penny. But winter came back!

After the icy rain and hail, Penny and I set off for Willsmere Park in Kew. I was all rugged up, but of course Penny jumped  into the Yarra for her usual swim.

She waited in vain for me to make my way down the slippery bank to throw sticks into the water.

We saw lots of other creatures also enjoying the park. (Please excuse the low quality of some of the pictures, but I want to show you the variety of park visitors today.)

The kookaburra kept an eye on us but wasn't too worried.

We walked past clouds of insects - maybe midges? They ignored Penny and she ignored them, because she was too busy cleaning her nether parts.

The grass parrots didn't care about us at all, unless we got very close, in which case they shot up into the nearest tree, waited for us to get a few metres away and landed once more nearby.

The ducks, however, were more wary of us, perhaps because they are slower to take flight. Or maybe dogs tend to chase them more often.

It's surprising to realise all this beauty and peace is right alongside a noisy, busy road. Thank goodness for the big wall that keeps most of the noise away.

Scruffy visits

It's been a long time since Scruffy visited us. He first came in 2009, and was an occasional visitor for a couple of years, but we haven't seen him for a while.

 When he visited  last week, Penny made sure to remind him that she's the householder and has rights that he doesn't have.

 Here she is sitting on the swinging seat with her human while he lies on the ground.

our new Safe Stix

At last the Safe Stix is available here! After I received an email newsletter from our favorite shop, Murphys in Hawthorn, saying they'd imported it, I called over there to get one.

I was excited, but Penny wasn't. She was more interested in the view of our rainy street.

Until we played tug with it,

 


and Penny gave it a good shaking.

 

 Now I've put it away, having piqued her interest. Next time we go out we'll try it as a throwing toy (though we have to be super careful with that, seeing she's had her cruciate repaired); and, best of all, as a floating toy.