The Official Pets Discussion Thread

jamcc wrote:

(He's looking a bit fat. )

Sounds like such a simple thing, but we have reduced Nala's food portions by a third over the past month and the weight has dropped off her. Obviously dogs tend not to get as much exercise in the winter, so I might need to up the intake again once she gets more off-the-lead walks.

On the training, she is a totally different dog. We walked past probably about 20 different dogs at the weekend, and each time we were doing the stuff the behaviourist told us to, and she ignored them all. Some of them were sniffing her arse, and when that would previously have merited a fairly fierce warning growl, she just didn't react.

Ridiculous that such a small change can transform her behaviour.

Don't get me wrong: she's not at the point yet where if we weren't waving chicken at her, that she would behave well, but the improvement is crazy and has already reduced.

Oh that's great. Thanks for going my into that. I will tell my parents about what you've said. My parents are weird with the dog though. They're really strict in some ways (hardly ever letting him on the sofa) but too soft in others (always giving in when he begs for food).

The main reason he's out on weight is, I think, because they've moved to the country and don't have any parks nearby to throw the ball for him. And that's doubly a shame because he loves fetching the ball; Vizslas are known to get obsessive about things like that!

Labs get fat really easily, it seems to be a breed trait.

jamcc wrote:
The main reason he's out on weight is, I think, because they've moved to the country and don't have any parks nearby to throw the ball for him. And that's doubly a shame because he loves fetching the ball; Vizslas are known to get obsessive about things like that!

Aw, bless. We see quite a Vizslas around here; they're such lovely dogs. I always find the countryside is a bit deceptive - the assumption is that you'd have loads of space, but so much of it is farm land that you can't always find decent places to let a dog go crazy. I always make this mistake with the Lake District: in my head, it's dog heaven, but in reality there's sheep in literally every field.

Forestry Commission places are usually my favourite, because they're fenced off and therefore don't have livestock, but usually sprawl for miles, are well-kept and there's tonnes of variety.

Just weighed Zazu and she's back up to 15kg two weeks after getting out of the hospital when she was 10.5kg :slol:

Turned out she had campylobacter in the end, so was on a feeding tube and drip & antibiotics to get over it. Thankfully back to full health:

We've done two obedience classes with her and it's really quite amazing how quickly pups can learn things. She can pretty consistently walk to heel already - occasionally has a mad day where she listens to nothing though!

Annoyingly it looks like we might have to get rid of the cat we're looking after. At the start it was telling the dog when it had had enough, give it a dig up the lips or hiss and run away. Now it seems to have some sort of learned helplessness thing where it just lies there and lets the dog do whatever she wants, whilst it doesn't look particularly bothered the dog is eventually going to hurt it I'd imagine. Bonus cat with arm stuck in toilet roll pic:

Corazon de Leon

I left a puppy three weeks ago and came back to a full sized dog.

Bonus herp-de-derp picture of me and the dog

Awesome pics. The little guy looks so happy. As does the dog, etc.

Awwwww.

Corazon de Leon

Ad7 wrote:Awwwww.

could you have mounted that tv any higher?

Yes, actually. :lol:

The state of that facial hair.

No comments on his carpet? Are you feeling ok Ad?

The female chosen location of the TV being so high up the wall that people on the ISS have to crane their necks less to view it, overrides the choice of carpet for me.

People in ISIS can't watch TV mate - it's cos of the tellyban.

Ban request.

I agree with Tomous, Poser really needs to be banned for that post.

The (so called Islamic) state of that pun.

Ban away, mofos. You'd miss this gooseberry fool if it was gone.

Absolute eejit has decided that the beanbag is the only option for napping in the living room.

She's starting to get way more confident which is both good and bad. Good because we obviously want her to be unafraid in most situations and not running away terrified the whole time. Bad because she'll now run 3-400m away to see other dogs when she is off lead, and won't recall at all once she has started playing with them :fp:

Get her her own cushion like we did for Jack, he knows it's his own space and loves it like a second bed. Also we were letting him off the lead at 6 months but apparently even if they seem to recall really well, they'll be off and just won't come back at all if the mood takes them, as you've found out, so he's staying on the lead until he's older.

He's going in for the chop this Friday :dread:

She's got her own bed in there which she normally sleeps in, but has upgraded herself now that she's found the beanbag :lol:

With off lead she's absolutely fine with recall unless there's other dogs nearby then she doesn't give a strawberry float about coming back. There's a forest round the corner from us where we go for one of her two walks and she's fine there as we very rarely run in to other people - it's just the local park/field that we have issues with. Will probably just try to work on her recall rather than keeping her on lead as she absolutely loves haring around the place.

Finished the third week of training class this weekend. Made some fishcakes to use as treats this week and it was absolutely hilarious how much she was focusing in order to get rewarded with them.

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