Nushie

We have Best for Pet for our 2 dogs and 1 cat. Our cat is 14 years old. Every 6 months they check her bloods, kidney function etc all for free. So far they have checked her every 6 months for about 5 or 6 years and each time they say she is doing well and we walk out paying nothing. No vaccination fee, no consult fee, no testing fee. And it means that we dont need to worry about the $$ amount. Its designed as preventative care. So a lot of the routine year to year things are covered. If your pet gets sick, you get 10% of meds but the rest is on you.

I would not be putting any animal in one of those!

Ditto - haven't seen a flea on either of the pugs for many many years.

I have a Dyson handstick animal V-something (its about 5 years old now). Its good for quick vacuums on carpet but my Dyson upright still does a far better job. I use the handstick for during the week (I have 2 pugs so vacuum every 2-3 days) all over the house and then on the weekends I pull out the upright and do a "proper" job. Its amazing how much more hair the upright pulls out.

I think it depends on where you live. I used to live in Sydney and it was really hard to find parks etc that allowed off leash dogs. Even parks that weren't sporting grounds or had play equipment were mostly on leash only. The only other options were dog parks and I try to avoid them if I can, but even they were few and far between. Melbourne is fantastic and a lot more dog friendly. We live in northern suburbs and there are a number of off leash parks and their are a lot of creek walks that allow dogs which is great as it means we can walk in nicer places other then streets and the dogs get to smell new things. A lot of cafes will allow you to sit out the front with dogs and all the ones I have stopped at with ours will bring out a bowl of fresh water for them. I don't think dogs need to be in shopping centres or in restaurants. I am 100% happy with what I can do with my two dogs where we live. I do wish that there were more national park type places where you could go for really decent walks with dogs (onleash). But that's about it. Even rentals are more pet friendly down here :)

Generally you will find that if it is neighbourhood cats chances are they will be more likely to use it as a toilet at night when the dogs are asleep inside. At least they did with ours. We used to uncover the pit during the day for our dog to use and then cover it back up at night. Rarely (really really rarely) would we have a cat use it during the day as the dog would chase them out of the yard. That said, if it is your own cat or your dog is fine with neighbourhood cats in they yard, not much you can do.

My first thought was to put a non slip type material up the stairs but the OH was concerned about the potential trip hazard for us. Might head to Bunnings this weekend and see if they have something that looks suitable that hopefully wont cause us issues while trying to solve hers. She isn't a very spring-y dog either which also might be causing issues. We don't have a very high bed but we had to put an low ottoman at the bottom of it so that she could get up onto the bed on her own. So maybe a the fact that it is a little slippery and that she hasn't got good springs in her could be the reason for the problems. Might even try the stairs at the park and see if she hesitate with them. She hasn't had issues with concrete or other outdoor stairs before but they all tend to have more grip. So will be interesting to see if it is just the indoor stairs that she is reluctant to use. Thanks everyone. Any other ideas are welcome. Really helps to be able to talk these things through.

We have just moved into a new place which has wooden stairs up to the bedrooms. Brandy is now ~18months old and never really had issues with stairs before but most of the internal stairs we have used have been carpet. She was a bit hesitant when we first moved in about 4 weeks ago but with a bit of coaxing she was fine using them up until last week. Over the past week she has been getting more and more reluctant to use them. As far as we know she hasn't had an accident on them, however she did seem to "rush" them when she was using them. The last week we have tried to treat her or make a fuss of her when she does use them and ignore her when she doesn't and try and get her to work it out but it is getting worse. Last night she flat out refused to use them and spent 20mins crying at the bottom of the stairs while we were in bed. Eventually I went down, took her outside to distract her and then carried her up the stairs. We will probably set up a baby gate at the bottom of the stairs so that they cant get up to the rooms (the bedroom doors are closed when we are out so no reason for them to go up there) just in case she has had a accident while we weren't there. I tried to coax her up 2 steps yesterday and happily puts her front feet up but wont put her back feet up. Thinking a vet visit may be in order just to make sure there is nothing happening in her hind legs. But has anyone else come across similar problems? From a training point of view if I spend time with her slowly getting her up 1 step at a time etc. Will it be undoing it if I then have to turn around and carry her up at night? Looks like I might be spending a long time sitting on stairs with roast chicken :)

I'm a winter person and don't like the heat. So if I am uncomfortable outside then I don't take the dogs and having pugs, even on nice spring days we make sure that we avoid the main heat and walk early morning or after dark. But generally they will tell me. We have had about 3 days of 28-35 degrees here and both dogs who are normally crazy even with their daily walks are content to just be lounge lizards so they probably wont be going out today either.

Hi all, We have just started training with a bridge word. I have been using "Yes" with Jager but I cant find anything that feels right for Brandy. I want a different word for each as I have found it confusing when walking, my partner is trying to train Brandy to walk on a loose lead and has started using Yes but when he says it, Jager looks to him as if waiting for a treat. So I want to stop that. Can you throw some suggestions for what else I can use? I don't like Good as I use that quite a lot and don't want to confuse them. Perfect doesn't feel right. Just want something that always sounds enthusiastic. I know it can be anything, I am happy to use whatever feels right. But I am drawing a blank.

I use a park that allows dogs to be off leash but it isn't a designated dog park. Its a soccer ground that just allows dogs to be off leash. If you go down there during peak times there are stacks of dogs and we avoid that at all costs. But at other times there might only be one other dog there and we just stay at the other end away from them, but generally when we do go we have the place to ourselves. Only problem is that it isn't lit at night. So in winter if we stop there, we get there around 6am it is black. So we hang around the only lit area that is from the street lamp. Other than that, it would be nice if they provided some dog bags. We often get down there and there are a few bombs left laying around. Not sure how that goes over summer when they actually use the oval for soccer..... We used to go to a dog park in Sydney when we lived there. We avoided peak time, but even then there would often be 6 other dogs there and because it is fenced, so people just sit down and let them run around all crazy. It was nice in the fact that it had lights, water bowl, seats and shelter from sun and rain. But the area was far too small and the dogs just went nuts, so we rarely went there.

I do the same. Buy a bag and use it as treats. It is out of our price range to feed it as their whole diet, but they love them as treats!

So the last couple of days I have been feeding them both in the kitchen. Jager on the outside of the breakfast bench (in towards the dining area) and Brandy on the inside (in the kitchen area). Both seem to eat at the same time, Jager has been finishing first and goes around and stands at the corner and watches as Brandy finishes and then they swop bowls to lick. I have been watching them and I don't know, if I weren't there maybe Jager would muscle Brandy away from her bowl. But we will be there to supervise during meals so that shouldn't be a problem.

I was feeding it to my boy. He did great on it, small, firm stools, shiny coat, energy. He did really well on it. No one really local stocks it anymore so I changed to Black Hawk and have been feeding that with very little success. Have used 2 bags and he now poops a lot more and they aren't as firm. He is dropping weight despite the increase in food. So last weekend I found a place about 30mins away and I will go back to feeding Earthborn. I feed the small breed one or if that's not available I have used the primitive one.

We have bought a second wobbler so that they would have one each. Will try giving them a kong each and watch how they go.

Up until now Brandy has been locked away during meals in the bathroom via a baby gate. This has been the case for about 6 months and having a gate across the bathroom door is getting annoying. Jager has always been feed in the kitchen / dining area and has had a bob-a-lot or a kong wobbler so that he has to knock it about to get his dinner. Otherwise he scoffs the lot and is done in 2 seconds. I don't mind feeding them both in go-slow type bowls if they work, but am I asking for trouble if I feed them in the same room? Not next to each other but on opposite sides. Neither of them are food aggressive and they will be supervised all the time etc. Each of them currently gets a stuffed kong with dinner as well as it takes longer to eat. Also Jager has grown up with every time we leave to go to work he gets a stuffed kong. Since we have been leaving Brandy out of the pen during the day, we haven't done this in case it caused issues etc. Is there a way to incorporate something similar? At the moment they are each getting a denta-stick or similar when we leave but they don't last long and a frozen kong will last Jager 30mins. Would like to know how others feed their multiple dog households? And how you keep your multiple dogs busy while you are at work. Keeping them busy is less important. We have cameras set up to watch what they get up while we are out and they just sleep on the lounge all day.

Thanks for all the tips. I didn't realise it was so common in older dogs. It didn't even occur to me that it might be her food. She doesn't try and eat Jagers poop (he is fed Black Hawk). I will try the pineapple for a bit. See how that goes, but I was thinking of transitioning her over to an adult food in the next few months. So that may help as well. And seeing as she shows no interest in Jagers, maybe that deter her if that is the cause. She spent all afternoon the other day, burping poop burbs and then proceeded to vomit it up all over the lounge room floor. Dogs are so gross!! :)

Sorry if this is a double up. I have done a search on here for this but it didn't bring anything useful. Brandy is 7 months old and still eats her poop. When she was younger she ate it, but our vet said that was pretty common and she would grow out of it. She hasn't, yet. I generally clean up after her straight away to try and stop her, but that's not always possible. Especially as she now takes herself outside to toilet. I don't always know that she has gone #2. And she eats it literally as soon as she does it. Is there something that causes it? Is it just habit? Is there something that I can try to stop it? I have just started giving her a bit of yogurt as I thought it might balance out her stomach, in case that might have something to do with it. She has only be getting it for a few days. She is currently being fed Advance puppy dry food and Advance can food. Its what her breeder recommended. Any suggestions?

Just an update on this. We tried going out with her and slowly being further and further away from her when she goes. But she would still do her inside / outside dance and if we were standing at the bottom of the stairs she would go on the concrete instead of going off to the grass to go. So we ended up putting a square of fake turf on the deck. She now goes out and pee's on that and then races back inside for a treat (which she gets). She doesn't do the dance anymore except when she needs to poop but if we ignore her she goes out to the real grass on her own to go and then races inside for a treat. So she is slowly learning that she doesn't need to tell us anymore. I am hoping that once that is in place for awhile (it has been for about 2 weeks now) we can slowly move the turf out a little further and further until we no longer need it. Its nice not to have to watch her all the time anymore. And even nicer that I don't need to escort her outside in the freezing cold.

That's a good idea. We have been treating straight after she goes. Which is literally, she swats, finishes, takes a step towards us and treats get stuffed into her mouth. She is old enough to not need to go every hour on the hour anymore, so taking her out isn't an issue yet. I just don't want to get to her being a year old and still having to escort her outside to toile :)

When we first got her at 8weeks we would take her out every hour no matter what. And even now. If it has been some time since she has gone to the toilet I will still take her out to encourage her to go. I should also mention, that generally as soon as she goes out the dog door I am already up and making my way to the door. She doesn't always go through the whole in/out/circles routine. That only happens if we are distracted with cooking dinner or something.

Hi all, Brandy is about 5 months old and we have had a lot of success with toilet training so far and she tells us when she needs to go outside to toilet. This is usually done by, going in and out the dog door a few times and stopping inside to look at us, circling the lounge and then going back out the dog door again, and repeat. In which case we get up and take her out and treat and praise her for going outside. However as this has been happening for quite a while now we thought we might see what she would do if we don't go outside with her. And sure enough she went on the carpet just inside the dog door (failed experiment). She is watched constantly and taken outside regularly and treated and praised each time etc. So how do you transition from having us outside with her when she needs to go? As soon as we go outside with her, she races off down to the grass and waits for us. She wont go until we are standing there with her. We have tried to go out and just stand on the deck and see if she goes but she just comes back and stands with us or dances around until we take her down to the grass. Our yard is small. Deck is about 2m wide from the back door. 2 steps down to pavers and then 1.5m of pavers to the grass. I assume the answer will be to just continue on with taking her out and praising, which we will do, but maybe there are some hints to encourage her to go out alone? She goes outside on her own for other things. She goes out through the dog door to grab sticks or bark to chew on. She goes out just to sniff around. She goes out to chase birds. We watch her each time to see if she will go to the toilet, always ready to give her a huge mountain of treats but nothing as yet. We have some fake turf that we use in her pen to toilet on. I was thinking maybe we can put a square of that on the deck to get her going out on her own, but will that just encourage her to pee on the deck in the long run?? Should we be praising her every time she goes outside alone? Even if it is just to sniff around or sit in the sun? Will that encouragement of alone time help? She is still really young and I am not concerned, just would be nice to not have to watch her like a hawk all the time.

Jager used to sleep in his crate next to the bed. Now he sleeps on the bed. We taught him that the bed is a privilege and he would be allowed up when we went to bed. If he was calm, he was allowed to stay, as soon as he started to fidget or want to play, be it as soon as we went to bed or at 2am, he was back in his crate with the door closed. He learnt pretty quickly to just curl up and go to sleep = better then locked in a crate. Now he sleeps better than me and we are in the process of training Brandy to do the same. I am sure the same principle will apply to open crate door. If he wakes you for play, then lock him away.

I suggest to try it on a weekend night so that if he wakes you up a few times during the night then you can have a bit of a sleep in the next day. When Jager was allowed to start sleeping on our bed at 6 months old, he used to wake me up at 6am every morning, it was the time my alarm would go off. So on weekends there he was with his moist nose in my face. Every time he did that on weekends, I would get up, feed him and then lock him in the loungeroom (has access outside for toilet breaks) eventually he figured out that it was better to sleep in with us and wait for breakfast then wake us up and be locked at the other end of the house. Now he sleeps in longer than me. And on weekends when I do get up, he eats his breakfast and then goes back to bed with OH. I'm worried about Brandy. She is far more active then Jager was at that age. I think it will be awhile before she will be allowed to stay on the bed. Although she already naps next to me while I read at night so maybe she will be okay. Guess we will see.

I think she is just being a big sook. But she has always had her hot water bottle in her bed at night since we got her in Feb (except for the really hot nights) she just sleeps better with it, settles quickly and then didn't wake up until my alarm. So this is not normal for her. I bought a snuggle safe from Ebay, I guess we will see how that goes.