colliepaws

Great photos everyone...I'm sorry I missed it. :D Choco's Mum - OMG! Choco is HUGE - what are you feeding him?!? He looks gorgeous and definitely looks like he had a great time... And I love the photos of the shar pei puppy! He is such a little cutie!

Yay! Titan! He is such a gorgeous boy....and he's definitely got a gorgeous personality to match. I love the photos of him on the couch and the arm chair...he looks like he was made for the life of luxury! :D

My baby boy Luka turned one today! I can't believe my little fluffy baby puppy is one year old already.... Here's some pics when he was just a little fluffball... :D And some pics I took when we went to the beach tonight.... My gorgeous happy boy..... :D

Hi kman and welcome to DOL! I'm in SA too and I also feed my dogs a raw diet... You should check out this thread which has lots of helpful people and heaps of info about the raw/natural diets that people are feeding their dogs. Hope that helps!

Wow what an awesome thread! :D I have been feeding raw for quite a while and my two absolutely love it. That's the main reason I feed them raw because they seem to really really enjoy it and also because it makes poop pickup so much easier (and more pleasant!...well as pleasant as an unpleasant task can be anyways! ) When I first started I did the whole weighing out exact portions and everything but I'm much more casual with it now! In fact reading the fabulous menus some of you guys are putting together is making me feel positively ashamed! Ooh! I'm definitely interested! if you could please PM me the link that'd be great....although the last thing I need is yet another addictive forum! Ah well....anything for the benefit of my doggies! Anyway I'm off to feed them their dinner (duck frames tonight! I was so excited when I found these at the butcher today it was quite sad! )....

Wow! Thank you so much Heidii! It is absolutely stunning - I love it! :D

Wow you guys are so talented and make such beautiful signatures! I'm in awe! and Heidii I absolutely love the siggies you've made! They're gorgeous! If anyone has time I would love a new signature since my Luka boy has grown up since my last one was made. If its possible to put their names in there too that'd be great. Molly Luka Dash Cosmo

Luckily my two collies are very good at chewing their bones BUT I used to have two greyhounds who were massive gulping raw bone eaters. They would do just what your staffy boy does and even if I gave them something huge as soon as it was gulpable size it would be chomp chomp down the hatch! I used to worry heaps just like you that they were going to choke and kill themselves but when it came down to it they were dogs and they knew what they were doing and never choked on any bones no matter how unchewed and huge it looked to me! And of course there were the odd occasions when after eating a nice large chicken frame (and gulping what looked like an unchewed quarter of it!) they would hork it back up for some more chewing... Really really lovely to watch that happen on the lounge room carpet I can tell you! Oh and depending on the nature of your boy I would be careful with the assisting while eating thing just because I found with my greyhounds when I did that in an effort to slow them down it actually seemed to make them a little nervous and made them eat faster and therefore gulp more! But try it and I hope that it's a workable solution for your boy. I'm a huge worry wart when it comes to my dogs too so I know exactly how you're feeling but the more you feed raw the more comfortable you'll be with it...eventually! Best of luck with it all.

Very interested to read this thread. I use epiotic but I don't really like the smell...although I have to say it does always seem to do the job. The Bayer Clean Ear Solution sounds really good. I think I'll be buying some of that when I run out of epiotic.

Ewwwww! :D Although I have to say that is one happy and beautiful looking grey! What a gorgeous shiny coat! Do pig heads give dogs shinier coats??

I've seen pig heads for sale at the supermarket and I just can't quite screw up the courage to bring one home for the dogs! *grimaces at the thought of my dogs eating pig eyes!* I'm sure if I did buy one Luka would give it a good go but I'm sure Molly would be horrified! She's a bit of a princess when it comes to food. I love all the fishy ideas...I really had no idea what fish to feed beyond sardines. Off to the fish market this weekend I think. Maybe I'll even pick up something for myself!

Gretel - That's okay...I can laugh about it too....now! I certainly wasn't at the time!

I just have to say that I tried feeding a couple of prawn heads to my dogs earlier this year and they weren't at all interested in eating them. Instead they decided that rolling on them would be great! They came inside reeking of prawn and with their big white fluffy collars all stained fluro orange from prawn innards! I was not impressed! and I can tell you that's the first and last time I ever try feeding them prawns!

I feed sardines maybe once a week....sounds like my dogs are missing out compared to others! They would love to get them every night! They love tinned or fresh or frozen sardines...as long as its fishy it's all good.

The bitter spray is great for saving your furniture. Nearly everything from knee level down in my house was coated in it when we got Luka. ;) I also had (and still have!) cardboard boxes all over the place particularly next to favourite chewing pieces of furniture. Luka loves chewing cardboard boxes and punching holes in them and shredding them into little pieces. Luka was never a particularly mouthy pup but when he did try and take a bite out of me I would yelp or grizzle and then ignore him. When he looked a little ashamed of himself I'd grab a toy and play with him and encourage him to chew that instead of me! Maybe also try playing with him with a soft stuffed toy - they were always Luka's favourite to really sink his teeth into. Remember he's only a baby at 9 weeks old so be patient and consistent and he'll learn. :D

Oooh...that Hide a Squirrel looks so cool! But I think my OH will kill me if I buy anymore dog toys right now so I think I'll have to wait...maybe for Luka's birthday in September. ;)

Well, I'm certainly no DOLer of great doggy knowledge! But for what it's worth I've started at the Holdfast Dog Centre at Hove with Luka and am really enjoying it. They run Saturday morning obedience (and Monday nights but that won't work for you ) and also agility on Tuesday nights I think? Check out their website here and see what you think....Maybe I'll see you there sometime soon!

Oh no, poor Chester.... RIP Chester... :D Hugs and collie cuddles to you yellowgirl.

I am such a complete newbie at this whole going to obedience classes thing. Luka's the first dog I've ever taken to classes so I really didn't know what to expect and just assumed that you had to stay in every class for the whole time. Obviously I was wrong! Thanks to all you guys it sounds like it is completely fine for me to let Luka have a break mid session if he is getting tired/bored. I will definitely just take my cue from him in future and stay at training as long as he's still finding it fun. I think he's doing pretty well because for the first half he is really focused and attentive it's just when we've been going for what seems like forever he seems to say 'seriously? this again! But we've done this like 10 times already! Let's go sniff that tree!' Thanks heaps for the advice everyone. You've made me feel a lot better about taking him to obedience classes and I will definitely persevere and keep taking him to classes (even if it's not at this particular club).

Erny - I am sure you are completely right that some dogs will not be able to be 'lured' into a down - I'm certainly no dog trainer! I guess I am quite lucky that Luka is an easy to lure puppy and learnt drop quickly and now drops on a hand signal. It sounds like you 'guide' the dogs you are training which sounds like a very effective method but it's definitely not what this instructor demonstrated. I think you are spot on and that it's not the method so much as the handler/instructor. The thing that really bothered me about this instructor was that she didn't seem to think that luring was even an option! The only ways she told the class to drop their dogs was the above (plus an even worse method of kneeling next to the dog, grabbing their front leg furthest away from you and pulling it towards to while pushing your dogs body away from you to get him/her to fall over! ) and it made me cringe to watch these owners with their young dogs being jerked all over the place by owners who thought this trainer knew what she was on about. Poor dogs hadn't a clue what was going on and it really didn't look like 'learning' to me.... Yep Luka would have gone home with you and your sausages in a heartbeat! :cool: He loves people who admire him and will be happy to soak up any cuddles you have for him on Sunday. I didn't actually put it together that you and Bomber were DOLers until I saw your post. I'm so clueless. You should have just started calling me 'fluffypaws' then it would have clicked that I knew you and Bomber! I thought the guy we had on Sunday was pretty good too...and the other instructors seemed fine from what I saw of them...I think I will go back just because I think there's the potential for it to be quite good there but if I get put in her class again I think I will just go home! Don't know if I could bite my tongue through another hour with her! I really felt for you when she was hassling you to roll B! What a shocking instructor she was....I agree with you - I don't think rolling a dog has anything to do with obedience but after she'd made us all do it she kept carrying on about how everyone's dogs were doing so much better afterwards. :p What the?...... And yes it worries me too that the other people in the class will think her methods are the right way to train a dog. Poor people who don't have the wonderful world of DOL to fall back on when they have questions! I just love DOL! :p If you let me know when you're going to talk to the head instructor on Sunday I would be happy to come with you to back you up...just so they don't think it was just you who thought she was teaching inappropriate things in an obedience class..

I was in that class with you Melbomb! I completely agree with you! I thought that the 'alpha roll' thing was completely inappropriate! I just gently pushed Luka onto his side and gave him a belly rub instead of grabbing his scruff and muzzle and forcing my weight onto him! :p That instructor was terrible and even before I saw you post I was planning on speaking to someone at the club the next time we go about her. I also thought her method of teaching 'drop' was completely inappropriate....not sure how grabbing hold of the dogs front legs and pulling them out in front of them or her alternate method of grabbing their collar and jerking it hard down to the ground is 'teaching' them to drop! :p I am going to give the club the benefit of the doubt that this instructor was perhaps just one bad apple. Hopefully I can change classes but if not then I'm certainly going to be changing clubs...looking around at the other groups none of them seemed to be using the same methods as this instructor so perhaps there is hope. Best of luck with Bomber whereever you end up training with him. There's a good chance I might see you there! :cool:

Thanks for the replies everyone. :cool: I do want to persevere with going to classes and Luka seems to enjoy and be really good at it for the first half hour but his attention span really doesn't stretch to an hour! To be honest my attention is started to go by then! :p Also from what others have said about puppy classes at obedience I think that we may be placed in the wrong class. It is pretty much a whole hour of obedience with practically no socialisation...We were in a pretty much adult or older adolescent dog Group 1 class. There was a class of younger puppies which I think we should probably be in as they seem to get more socialising and fun in between the heel work and so on....Unfortunately Luka is pretty big for his age and half the instructors that I talked to thought he was a big adult sheltie! The look on their faces when I said 'ummm...no, he's just 4 months old and a rough collie'. :p It's good to know what other training classes are like...I think I will either talk to the instructors about changing classes or at least letting my little one have a break mid session - thanks for the suggestion lab lady! claireybell your class sounds great! Wish I was in Vic.

I have a 4 month old rough collie, Luka, and have just started taking him to an obedience club for training. Since I got him at 9 weeks old I have taught him some basics, sit, down, come, stay, wait, leave and touch (nose bopping my hand). I usually do a few 5-10 minute training sessions with him every day and try to keep training short and sweet and fun! The main reason I started at the obedience club was because I've never done any formal obedience classes with a dog so had pretty much come to the end of my dog training knowledge (which I'll admit isn't really all that much! :p). Plus I thought it would be better for me to learn how to teach him heel and other things the right way to save me having to re-train him out of these things later because I taught him wrong. At the obedience club I go to training sessions last about an hour and I've found (although I've only been to two classes so far) half way through Luka starts to drift off and get a bit bored with the whole thing and much less cooperative. I want Luka to continue to really enjoy training with me and see it as fun bonding time (which he does at the moment) and not see it as an hour long slog of not so much fun at all... Should I wait until Luka is a bit older until I go back to doing formal classes with him? I think I've picked up the basics for Grade 1 training and can continue with this at home with him - in fact I think the classes were more about training me than training him! :p Any advice is much appreciated.

:rofl: Thank you soooo much Harminee! It's so beautiful! I am so hopeless with this kind of thing that I'm so in awe of your work! iltby - I'm sorry, I forgot that I had posted my photos in here until I got Harminee's PM! If I had remembered I would have taken you up on your offer. The signatures you made are lovely!

Thanks KBZ. Of course, I think they're gorgeous but then I think I may be just a little bit biased! I completely agree about how much the coat colour and patterns change...I look back on their 'baby' kitten photos (only taken a year or so ago) and I am amazed at how different they are now....even their change from the winter to summer coat is amazing! Cosmo used to an absolutely pure snowy white when he was a baby with just little smudges of seal points....so cute! Here's a couple of baby pics. ;) And that's my other collie Molly in the background looking folorn because the little fluffy creatures have taken over her bed! I'd feel bad but she has four other beds around the house she just happened to want to lie near that one looking sad. Oh and I found one more pic of Luka and Dash... I'm sorry maximum - I feel like I'm hijacking your thread! Please post more pics of your cats...we haven't seen a pic of Sly yet! Well if it's any consolation Dash didn't stick around for long! He stayed still for one moment of outrage when I took the pic then he was off! I've just flicked through all my backyard photos and I only have one pic with the cat fence in it...and it's this one! My apologies for the absolutely terrible photo! Totally out of focus but if you squint you can kinda just make out the cat fence attached to the top of the regular fence....Oh and if anyone is wondering what that weird contraption in the middle of the yard is - my cats both use this big dirt pit (where a tree used to be) as their 'litter tray' the weird wicker thing (a relic from an old piece of furniture) propped up with patio chairs is to keep the dogs from bothering the cats when their using it and to keep them from eating the cat poo! Blech.... I'll see if I can get a better pic of the fence in the morning. ETA: Doh! shoemonster I just remembered what the company's name was that did my cat fencing... isn't it always the way! It's called Secure A Kat and they have some waaaay better pics on their website of the cat fencing I've got. Secure A Kat - Cat fence Hope that helps!