Maddy

Perhaps you would prefer for them to be referred to by obvious breed type- which would be bull breed? As an aside, I can recall a thread on here about how three dogs, who appeared to be greyhounds, attacked a person. They were named by breed and nobody batted an eyelid. Nobody heehawed over whether or not they were definitely purebred greyhounds or if they were maybe actually whippets. But if a bull breed is responsible, suddenly we have to call them "mixed breed" or "unknown breed", even though we can clearly see that they are a particular type of dog? In my opinion, if it looks like a duck and it quacks like a duck, it's probably a duck, regardless of what a dodgy DIY DNA test kit says. The reserve was an on-leash area, that doesn't make it a dog park. If your dog is a risk for running up to and severely mauling small children, maybe it doesn't belong out in public.

I don't know about skin discomfort but there is definitely the issue of skin pH. Bringing down skin pH may kill off resident bacteria, creating a niche for more pathogenic varieties to move into. I'd be wary of any advice from Mercola. There is the odd bit of common sense but mostly, it's very questionable "science".

Change in sodium intake? A lovely young vet at the clinic we use was the one who worked out Bosley's original dosage and it was a disaster. Even though I brought up the fact he was raw fed and had a much lower sodium intake than the average, she still considered a 1600mg ( ) loading dose for several weeks, followed by a regular dose of 800mg, to be correct. Needless to say, he turned into a drugged wreck who could barely walk, let alone function. I weaned him back down by dropping 200mg from his dose each week until he finally reached a dose without the more severe side effects- 100mg a day. That worked for about 6 months and then seizures started creeping back so we slowly went up until we got seizures back under control again at 400mg a day. At that dose, he's still hungry/thirsty a lot and a bit prone to falls but it's as close as we can get to good. The dose I had calculated myself (from working out average sodium content of his diet) was roughly 300mg. I think some vets don't realise how much type of diet can impact on the KBr levels.

Mostly with medication- Phenomav and Epibrom. Idiot Dog (greyhound) is on a large dose of the Phenomav but he's very sensitive to the Epibrom so he's on only roughly half of what the usual dose for a dog of his weight would have. The medication took a LOT of tweaking- espeically the Epibrom- and was not a fun process. It can also require occasional adjustment and keeping levels correct can be frustrating. That said, it depends how bad the epilepsy is. Without his Epibrom, Idiot Dog would have a seizure at least once a day on just the Phenomav. We had peak/troughs done and both numbers were theoretically perfect- it just wasn't enough to keep him under threshold. For a dog with less severe epilepsy, I imagine it'd be much easier to deal with. Besides the medication, we also avoid things that will cause him excessive stress or excitement- limiting unfamiliar visitors (they stress him out quite a bit), limiting exciting things like other dogs visiting, etc. If we've had a really hectic day, you can safely bet that Idiot Dog will have a seizure between 8pm and 11pm that night, it can be incredibly predictable in some cases. Not that I've ever noticed. Idiot Dog gets a great raw diet and it hasn't helped in any obvious way. He gets a daily gallop for maybe 10 minutes but I avoid too much exercise because it can trigger seizures for him. For a while, we had to cut out even just short gallops because he'd stop halfway through and have a seizure. Epibrom has fixed that though. Phenomav- 100mg morning, 100mg night. No longer works on its own to control his seizures though. Epibrom - 200mg morning, 200mg night. Controls seizures really well but tricky to balance and tends to compound side effects of the Phenomav. Idiot Dog has also had a few minor bouts of acute pancreatitis and fairly severe ataxia. The side effects have been difficult to adjust to but they reduce seizure to just minor focal seizures and they're no longer an event you can set your watch by. When he does have grand mals, they're usually quite bad (he's done himself injuries a few times because I couldn't get to him fast enough) and his temperature absolutely rockets- which means leaving him home alone wearing his fleecy pajamas becomes a big risk. Or leaving him unattended at all, if he's going through a bad patch. With regards to some of the other issues.. it's probably an individual thing. We're lucky in that Shitty Whippet was raised with Idiot Dog so she knows when a seizure is about to happen and we've never had any problems with aggression between the two of them. He's only ever wigged out once after having a seizure and luckily for the other dogs (and not so luckily for my leg), I was the only one around him at the time. The other issue is regular, consistent dosing- if you work erratic shifts and can't be home within an hour or so either side of regular tablet time, the dog may end up having seizures regardless of the meds. This is especially true of things with a short half life, like the phenobarb. I think it also involves a fair bit of patience and understanding. Idiot Dog wets himself if he has a bad enough seizure, his meds make him wobbly and very prone to falls (his hocks are covered in scars) and on top of that, they sometimes cause polydipsia/polyuria, which means we spend a lot of time cleaning our carpet. Having said allllll that though.. I don't regret Idiot Dog at all. He lives exactly the sort of life most greyhounds enjoy: stays home all day, sleeps on the bed, generally slobs around. His only job is to not get stressed. His dosing is high but he's far from a zombie and seems to be a very happy dog. I have to admit, I find the idea of euthanasing dogs just because they have epilepsy (for their "welfare") to be pretty disgusting. If it gets uncontrollable and the dog is suffering, that's a different story (of course) but otherwise, why wouldn't you attempt to treat it like any other medical condition. I have a close family member with epilepsy and attitudes towards the disease and people who have it can be appalling, even from people who mean well :/ If he is a zombie, it'd be one of those super fast ones from Dawn of the Dead 2004- the ones that can move like Olympic sprinters >.>

I suspect for the greyhounds, it's going to depend a lot on which shelter they get surrendered to and how proactive that shelter is in rehoming dogs or moving them out to rescues. Having said that, I've seen the first list sent out to rescues and my concern is actually they're going the other way to what you've experienced- passing everything with a pulse for rehoming suitability (to go to private rescue) and that as places fill up with dogs that are actually not rehomeable, healthy/rehomeable dogs will die for lack of space. From the list I saw, which was only fairly short, there were dogs already on behavioural meds, there were dogs with SA, resource guarders and a few high drive dogs. Some of those things might be fixable but from my own experience, fixing things like resource guarding can be a lengthy process and they'll easily take twice as long to rehome because of considerations that have to be made for their issues. and as for the high drive dogs.. accidents waiting to happen, I think.

As much as I dislike wandering cats and agree with the many reasons for keeping them contained, cat laws aimed at keeping them in would just result in a lot of dead cats. Cat gets outside, council picks up cat, cat owner can't afford the fine/impound fees to get their cat back so it is PTS by council. Cat owner goes out and gets a new cat, rinse, repeat. In fact, I think the only group who would benefit from this sort of thing would be the dickheads who BYB cats. The trouble with those sorts of laws is that while they sound good in theory, cats are difficult and expensive to contain. I can keep my dogs contained with just standard residential fencing. Try keeping the average cat contained with that. Even with the changes we've made to our fences, we still have cats getting in because they can climb and jump and squeeze under/through things in ways a dog can't. In some ways I'm kind of glad I don't own cats because keeping a determined-to-escape cat inside sounds like fresh hell to me. That said.. many cat owners around here don't even try to keep their cats in- apparently it's "unnatural" for their cat to be safely tucked up at home, not being mashed under cars, mauled by dogs, lost, injured, poisoned, etc- and to bring in containment laws would require massive amounts of education and resources which most councils aren't keen on spending.

I also agree, if it can get happening I think some competition could be healthy and a good thing. PR could definitely use some competition. They have a huge chunk of the market and they know it. And that seems to have led to some very questionable new "features" that rescues can't opt out of if they want to use the service. Having said that.. this new site seems to want quite a bit of information from rescuers, while not seeming particularly transparent themselves, and that sort of approach, before they've even launched, concerns me. I left my information mostly blank because call me cynical or whatever but I'm not all that keen on providing personal contact details to a site with no track record.

Shooting on sight in a suburban area?! What the?? It's one thing if the dog is attacking livestock and it's the only way you can protect them, but just wandering dogs?? I'm so glad it didn't come to fruition. And yeah, any legislation that leaves room for abuse is a huge problem, as unfortunately there are people in ranger type positions that enjoy having power over others and will use what they can in the legislation to do it. Hell, I've spoken to plenty of people here in NSW with rangers doing things that the legislation doesn't permit them to do! The council area in question was not overly large but it is an area that encompasses several suburbs of a large town and then abruptly turns rural. The threats came because the ACO alleged that dogs wandering from the more built-up areas were moving onto rural land and causing trouble. In that particular area, there is not much farming of livestock, it's mostly vineyards and orchards. And personally, I don't think I've ever seen so much as a single wandering dog in the whole council area. To many people, it seemed a disturbing over-reaction to a "problem" that didn't exist- looking for dogs to shoot because someone enjoyed doing just that. Compare that to my council.. we had a wandering dog on our property (that we couldn't get near enough to to restrain it) and when we called our council, we were told that unless we had it on lead, tough cookies. They might send someone out to have a drive around ( ) but they weren't wrangling no cattle. Given the dog in question was a very large, agitated bull breed dog, our only option was to open up our front gates and herd it back out onto the street to become someone else's problem. It'd be really nice if we could have some sort of middle ground between those two approaches to dog control :/

In my area, we have a pretty apathetic council who don't generally enforce laws unless they realllllly have to, so we're probably lucky (if that's the right word) in that respect. Our nearest neighbouring council is very proactive in enforcing the act though and for a while, there was talk of a shoot-on-sight policy for wandering dogs. Presumably until someone pointed out that it was illegal for them to just drive around, shooting dogs in a suburban area. The legislation definitely leaves a lot of room for abuse though and that's the biggest issue. When it comes to reporting attacks on animals, you can dob in someone else's dog for an attack provided the victim is.. "any live vertebrate animal other than a human being". Srsly.

To be honest I'm pretty horrified that some other states don't have the same provisions/protections. Our possible defenses are a bit different and don't include trespass, unless the dog is a guard dog- which, although not mentioned there, requires different licensing to a pet dog and cannot (as far as I can recall) be used to guard a residential property. The trouble with a lot of our legislation here is that things aren't clearly defined. We have no provision for dogs attacking vermin (which I believe most other states have?) and an incident outside of the very narrow range of defenses is considered to be an "attack", with the risk of a destruction order attached, even if the case was clearly just a dog doing what most dogs would do, such as chasing cats or rabbits. A dog that chases rabbits is not necessarily a man-eating monster dog.

huh???? How on earth is that policed? In practice, it relies on someone reporting it. Which itself leads to an even trickier ethical question.. if my dogs killed a cat in the yard and it had a name tag on, would I return the cat (or maybe just its collar, depending on the condition of its body) to the owners and be honest about what had happened, risking prosecution and all the implications of that, or do I just bury cat and leave the collar somewhere like hanging from a neighbour's fence? Personally, I'd be devastated if I lost a pet and never found out what had become of it so I think for that reason alone, probably option one. But it makes me wonder about what choice other people would make in the same situation. Plenty of dogs will kill cats given the chance and judging from the amount of cats listed as missing on local Lost and Found pet pages, even if only a small fraction were killed by dogs, that'd still be quite a few cats. And that is part of the problem with the existing laws- if your dog kills a neighbour's cat, there are many practical reasons to keep your mouth shut and really only moral reasons to report it. Another part of the problem is that many people refuse to accept that dogs are predatory animals, not living teddy bears. All dogs are dangerous to some degree. I share my home with four large (and one smallish) carnivores, they sleep on my bed, they wear cutesie coats and have silly names and all of them would happily chase and kill cats. As my chem tutor once said.. "Labs (the facilities, not the dogs) are inherently dangerous places. But if risks are assessed and managed, they are one of the safest places to work" and the same is true for dogs. I had my hand down Idiot Dog's throat this evening and while poking around in there, it occurred to me that I was not at all worried about where my hand was- halfway up to my forearm in very large teeth and totally complacent about it. We expect these predators to cuddle with bunnies, take adorable photos with our newborn babies, play perfectly with every other dog and when they don't, we are horrified. Risks often aren't mitigated because to accept there are risks means to accept dogs for what they are and it seems not many people are comfortable with that idea. The end result of that being more people and other animals being hurt by dogs in preventable accidents. I've harped on this particular issue a lot with greyhounds and the people who refuse to muzzle them or believe they are capable of harm but I honestly believe things would be better for everyone if we were just a bit more realistic in our expectations. My dogs are predators, I recognise this and do whatever is practical to prevent them hurting other animals. If I wouldn't live with the amount of risk involved, I'd probably just own rabbits and be done with it (although one of my rabbits kills birds so.. can't win there, either).

Troll for a fight elsewhere, Sheridan, I'm really not interested.

Given the reach PR has now, I can't see a new site working without huge amounts of effort and advertising but it'll be interesting to see how it goes, anyway.

It is a very interesting ethical question and we went through the same thing with neighbouring cats. Because neighbours have overhanging trees, the only way we could prevent cat access to be to literally rig up some sort of huge net across our entire property- which is obviously pretty absurd. But legally, a wandering cat killed on our property would be an offense under the Dog Control Act, despite all reasonable measures being taken. Which leads to the obvious question.. how far does a person have to go to secure their property before they could argue that they'd done enough? This isn't just about small dogs, either. In Tasmania, it is an offense (unless the dog meets certain requirements) for a dog to kill any animal, even if it is absolutely a prey species, such as a feral rabbit. I have to admit the wandering cat issue really peeves me because not only do I not want my dogs taken from me and destroyed, but I like cats and it'd be horrific to see my dogs doing one harm. But if people would just safely contain their own animals and take some responsibility, this discussion wouldn't even be necessary :/

I'm aware of that, which is why I've gone to quite a bit of trouble to prevent something like that from happening. And it's not that I'd think it "okay" for my dogs to kill another dog- but at the end of the day, the only way I can 100% prevent someone else's dog being injured or killed in my yard is to never let my dogs outside again, unless they're muzzled and on lead. And to be blunt about it, they shouldn't have to suffer those sorts of restrictions when we have made every effort to exclude other dogs from our property. If one does get in, it was not for lack of care on my part. Prey drive is not an excuse but equally, if you let your dog wander the streets, my dogs are probably the least of its concerns. And the responsibility for the dog's fate lies solely with its owner.

I have to admit.. I have actually tried socialising in an attempt to at least lessen the issues up close with small dogs but the outcome seems to be much the same as the questionable groups who use things like punishment to "rehabilitate" greyhounds- what you end up with is greyhounds who know they can't express their drive in front of people, which ends up being more dangerous than an openly drivey dog. About two years ago, I was testing a lovely blue brindle girl and although she was doing everything right, the test dog was worried. He was skirting her widely, slinking around her and generally not behaving like his usual outgoing self at all. I gave the grey a bit more leash and began a casual conversation with test dog's owner, looking away from the grey. A few moments later, the test dog got within range of the grey and the extra bit of leash she had and she struck with the speed of a snake. Prior to the pounce, the leash was loose and she appeared totally relaxed and disinterested in the test dog. Unfortunately for the grey, this is why I use UK yard muzzles for testing- stool-guard is moulded in and the strap can be looped around the collar before buckling, just to make it harder for the extra sneaky ones to pop the muzzle off. This particular grey had come from a woman who likes to "help" rescues by taking dogs in, punishing them when they express their prey drive and then palming them off to anyone willing to take one. I suspected this girl wouldn't be safe with small dogs anyway (found out who her breeder was before we even collected her) so I knew not to take her drive at face value but.. someone less experience might have taken the muzzle and leash off to let the two play together and the story would've had a very different ending. The grey in question was very lucky in that her trainer was the only trainer to ever take a dog back from me, after a polite suggestion he not give her away again.

Couldn't agree with you more Maddy. Mystify you can't leap onto a forum you have not previously joined, lash out and vent your anger, then sort of apologise the first time you are called out on it, and simply delete it when you insult people again. Well, you can I suppose, your choice, but it has done your arguments no good. As opposed to what generally happens which is DOLers jumping all over the newbies? The only difference I'm seeing is that mystify hasn't backed down. He wasn't jumped on because he was a new member and to suggest otherwise is pretty insulting to the people who were debating the issue of racing with him. The only point at which his time on the forum was brought up was where it was actually relevant to the conversation. But thanks anyway for stopping by to derail the thread with more petty bickering :)

Prey drive is what drives predatory behaviour. And predatory behaviour, in itself, is not aggression. When we kill a cow to turn it into hamburgers, it's not that we feel hate or anger or another other negative feelings towards the cow, it's just that cows taste good. To a highly driven greyhound (for example), the small dog in the distance is not a dog, it's a prey item and by the time they realise otherwise (if they even do at all), the small dog might already be dead. Even close up, some greys just fail to see the difference between a small prey animal (like a rabbit) and something of the same size that just happens to be another dog. They show no social body language when interacting with small dogs because to them, it's not a dog. The sad thing is, many of the high drive greys I've had, have actually been very dog-sociable with medium to large dogs. Sally (the old girl in my sig) was not small dog safe but was a perfect role model for other foster dogs with her social skills- she was incredibly reliable, sensible and a very sweet dog but the sight of someone's white, fluffy maltioodleshitkie in the distance and Sally went from reliable, sensible dog to quiet, careful predator. In the case of your neighbour's dogs.. hard to say. But if Sally had been put in a yard with a small dog, it would've been dead before it even got a chance to harass her. And that is the difference between prey drive and two poorly matched dogs.

Two of mine are absolutely not safe with small dogs, another is questionable. If they're out in public, they're muzzled and on a harness. We've had to stand in vet waiting rooms with them before, with small yappers within nomming distance but appropriate management means it's not a big deal and we've never even had a near miss. If a small dog was to get into our yard.. well, tough cookies, unfortunately. Having said that, we did actually put measures into places to provide a safety net for intruding yappers- even if they manage to get over the boundary fences, along all the boundaries except one smallish stretch of fence, there is a secondary fence with large enough wire that if a small dog got over it, it could get back through the wire in a hurry. It's saved a couple of wandering cats so far, so I'm pretty sure it would give a small dog breathing room to reconsider its choices. Of course, there's only so much we can do to protect our dogs without it impacting too much on the amount of space they have, and I consider we've taken reasonable precautions, so if one still got nailed after that.. sorry to the owners but.. I keep my dogs contained safely and I can't be responsible for their failure to do the same

If a dog on Dol was anywhere close to as bad as Hellyeah Tom was, people on here would be horrified and that dog would be reported to the RSPCA. As it should be, because leaving a dog in that sort of condition is unacceptable, disgusting cruelty, regardless of breed. I don't want anything both ways, by the way. What I would like is for welfare issues to be addressed- don't kill young, healthy, rehomeable dogs, don't leave chronically ill dogs to suffer and die slowly. You wouldn't think this is a particularly difficult ask but apparently for the industry, it really is. Maddy I want the same thing you want but I just don't happen to think that this particular example is indicative of the industry. All reports are that the participants in the industry are more likely to kill them than keep them when they are not up to the job. I agree it was the wrong thing for him to do but I'm saying that it happens regardless of breed and its only national news because of the push on greys. It's news because it's a particularly bad case of neglect. You can't blame this "push" to end the industry on every news article that pops up about greyhounds. Someone down here did something that was shitty but significant enough to make the news in its own right, it's as simple as that. If the media were interested in really raking through the shit, it'd be as simple as going through weekly steward reports. You could have a new headline for every day of the week and some of them would run a hell of a lot murkier than Ricki's incompetence in caring for his dog. If anything, the media down here has been very careful in how much of the issue they will present and whose side they present it from. Very careful. This isnt worth an argument and you know more about this than me but all I know is that I personally never saw any of this type of reporting regarding greyhounds up until very recently. That's why I think it's more aggressively reported now than it has been in the past and more likely now to make headlines than any other dog or owner at this time. If its not that then I assume its an isolated incident that has been reported because its so bad and no grey people have been guilty of such things enough to report them as aggressively prior to now. Perhaps because nobody was really paying attention to it. Teddie Medhurst down here got a lifetime ban for shooting his dogs and lying about it (later reduced to no ban at all because.. reasons) but nobody much cared. Wally Tusyn's dog was found half dead at the tip and after much blame-slinging, nothing ever came of that, either, despite it being in the news for quite a while. Anthony Bullock, doping dogs, reported in the paper, ignored by everyone. Trainer after trainer after trainer swabbing positive for caffeine or narcotics, in the paper and duly ignored by the general public. Whatsherface out at Carrick, bits of dead possum scattered around her trial track, published, ignored. And so on and so forth. All before the 4 Corners story, all available to find online through The Examiner, The Mercury and The Advocate newspapers. The stories were there, it's just that no one gave a shit about them except for those of us with an interest in the breed. As an aside, to say the current stories has been "aggressively" reported on is misleading, I think. The newspapers were very sparing with the details of Hellyeah Tom's case and to read the newspaper article, you wouldn't think the dog was that bad off. They reported the bare minimum of details of the dog's condition and it paints an entirely different story to Ricki's inquiry records. One is just the RSPCA and stewards picking on an old dog with a spot of cancer and his loving owner, the other is.. a very disturbing example of why cleaning up the industry is easier said than done.

Couldn't agree with you more Maddy. Mystify you can't leap onto a forum you have not previously joined, lash out and vent your anger, then sort of apologise the first time you are called out on it, and simply delete it when you insult people again. Well, you can I suppose, your choice, but it has done your arguments no good. If anything, his apology was more of a "I'm sorry you misunderstood something". Not that I care too much, it's a discussion on a dog forum, not the Legislative Assembly.

If a dog on Dol was anywhere close to as bad as Hellyeah Tom was, people on here would be horrified and that dog would be reported to the RSPCA. As it should be, because leaving a dog in that sort of condition is unacceptable, disgusting cruelty, regardless of breed. I don't want anything both ways, by the way. What I would like is for welfare issues to be addressed- don't kill young, healthy, rehomeable dogs, don't leave chronically ill dogs to suffer and die slowly. You wouldn't think this is a particularly difficult ask but apparently for the industry, it really is. Maddy I want the same thing you want but I just don't happen to think that this particular example is indicative of the industry. All reports are that the participants in the industry are more likely to kill them than keep them when they are not up to the job. I agree it was the wrong thing for him to do but I'm saying that it happens regardless of breed and its only national news because of the push on greys. It's news because it's a particularly bad case of neglect. You can't blame this "push" to end the industry on every news article that pops up about greyhounds. Someone down here did something that was shitty but significant enough to make the news in its own right, it's as simple as that. If the media were interested in really raking through the shit, it'd be as simple as going through weekly steward reports. You could have a new headline for every day of the week and some of them would run a hell of a lot murkier than Ricki's incompetence in caring for his dog. If anything, the media down here has been very careful in how much of the issue they will present and whose side they present it from. Very careful.

Oooh, so you didn't register? I'm so sorry, I put the link somewhere in one of my posts but didn't realise it's not in this thread. http://rescuedpets.com.au/ Nope, had never heard of the site. I had a look at the group I assume is behind it (what's doing with the soviet/communist theme anyway, it's.. not cute) and actual information seems pretty scant.

If a dog on Dol was anywhere close to as bad as Hellyeah Tom was, people on here would be horrified and that dog would be reported to the RSPCA. As it should be, because leaving a dog in that sort of condition is unacceptable, disgusting cruelty, regardless of breed. I don't want anything both ways, by the way. What I would like is for welfare issues to be addressed- don't kill young, healthy, rehomeable dogs, don't leave chronically ill dogs to suffer and die slowly. You wouldn't think this is a particularly difficult ask but apparently for the industry, it really is.

exactly Just doesn't make for such a good helaine right now. Which is why it is a headline. The inspection was over a year ago (and has only just reached the courts) and Ricki's dog was in a severe enough condition to warrant criminal charges. This is not some beat-up of the industry. He may not have currently had dogs running but he was a licensed trainer with twelve greyhounds on his property at the time of the inspection. It's not as if he was a retired trainer who had kept a retired dog or two. Several of the greyhounds on the property at the time were pups. As an aside, Sara Richards, one of the stewards who attended the property, is one of the few I've ever met who was actually interested in improving welfare for the dogs and in sighting dogs marked as retained (for breeding or as pets) to ensure trainers/owners/breeders weren't exploiting loopholes in the retirement forms. As for the poor dog himself.. Not an acceptable condition, regardless of pet owner or greyhound owner. But if it was a pet owner, you can bet people here would be howling about the cruelty. A greyhound trainer does it though and.. "Oh, but pet owners let their dogs linger too long, too" as if that makes this cruelty okay. The dog was PM'd at AHL in Launceston and path results were released. If you read them alongside the attending vet's notes, they make for some very sad reading: Path Attending vet: This dog was not a beloved family pet and Ricky Donaldson was not some innocent schlub being used to defame the industry. He admitted during the inquiry into his conduct that he knew the dog needed veterinary attention and that it was suffering. His excuse (because he copped a seven year ban) was that having the poor dog euthansed would upset his kids- as if the sight of his dog, limping around the yard, crawling with fleas, with open, weeping cancers spreading outwards from the dog's penis and spreading infection was somehow a better thing for his children to see. I'm afraid I have a little bit of trouble buying into his excuse.