Lollydog

I have recently been roundly told off by our trainer for feeding our dogs 'too much carbohydrate' - Hills Science Diet, rice and carrots, with the odd egg and occasional sardines. I think she had a point, so have been making a lamb stew (lamb, mixed veg) and serving it with just a little Science Diet. In the interest of economy, I today bought some minced chicken carcasses. Apart from smelling like part of the human anatomy that probably shouldn't be mentioned here, it seems to have crushed bone in it. (Well, duh! - it's a carcass!) But, are the bone bits safe for the dogs to eat?

Well, the 10-day visit went swimmingly! Our Lolly was, generally, very well-behaved with Our Lucy the 20-month-old dog-loving toddler! Of course, there was the occasional jumping-up-for-a-kiss behaviour from Our Lolly. By day 5 Our Lucy had learned to firmly tell Our Lolly 'off!' when this happened -to surprisingly good effect! Our other dog (an adult FNQ Lurcher) also did quite a lot of baby kissing - much to Our Lucy's delight.

Well, the 20-month-old dog-lover is here! Very little jumping and no nipping from Our Lolly the JRT! (Guess I ought to have had more confidence in Lolly's 'oh, it's a baby, better be nice instinct, huh?!

My mother's Rotti used to love eating expensive smooth white pebbles. So much so that sometimes they could be heard rattling around in his little tummy! He was discouraged in this behaviour, but he was a dedicated pebble eater for a few months. Didn't seem to do him any harm.

We have two dogs - a 2-year-old 'Townsville Lurcher' and a 16-wwek-old Jack Russell. The Lurcher has always slept on her mat in our bedroom and, since the JR moved in, she has happily shared it! Neither dog is allowed on the bed (nasty, nasty Mummy and Daddy).

I see OP lives in Queensland. Perhaps they, like me, live in Townsville which, according to my vet, has the highest incidence of Parvo in the developed world due to low rates of vaccination and people taking unvaccinated puppies to dog parks and the like. (I certainly have noticed, when taking my older dog to dog park, quite a lot of very young puppies running about. ) Apparently, the virus can live for up to 18 months in soil here, so even were all Townsville dogs vaccinated, we would still have a Parvo problem for a couple of years! My vet does work in surgeries in Victoria and NSW as well as Townsville. In Townsville he sees 2 or 3 cases of Parvo a day, in Vic and NSW he has not seen a case in about 5 years. His recommendation - at least in Townsville - is that puppies not be taken in public until 3 weeks after the 16-week vaccination.

Our Lolly is a 16-week-old Jack Russell. While not aggressive, she still tends to mouth - sometimes painfully. She has met small children before and, while friendly towards them, she does tend to overwhelm and frighten them by jumping and mouthing. For short visits, we can deal with this. However, my 20-month-old grandaughter will be visiting for 10 days next week. Although she is used to dogs and loves them to bits, I can't imagine she will be very impressed by being constantly jumped at! We don't want to be growling at Lolly, as this would probably be upsetting for my grandaughter who is too young to understand such discipline. Does anyone have any ideas of a strategy we could try? I've already decided that, when first introduced to each other, we will have Lolly controlled on a lead. Isolating Lolly in the bathroom seems to have been effective in stopping her bounding all over the furniture - do you think it would work to stop her hassling the toddler?

I reckon it's a dominance thing! My mother has a female terrier of doubtful parentage and a younger, but fully-grown Rotti. The terrier spends at least 5 minutes humping the Rotti every afternoon just before dinner time. Rotti just stares off into the distance...

We have an 11-week-old JRT, Lolly, and a 2-year-old rescue dog, Kammy. Kammy suffers Lolly's youthful exhuberance and lack of social skills very well. However, our Lolly loves to latch onto Kammy's back legs, notably her knees! Poor Kammy's legs are rather fine and she has very short hair, so Lolly's biting has, on occasion, actually drawn blood. Kammy puts up with the assaults upon her legs with great stoicism but I can see from her face that she finds them tiresome. It's one thing getting a puppy to stop biting people - nearly there with that one - but how can I stop her nipping poor Kammy's legs? I've tried growling at her when she does this, but she simply takes no notice, obviously thinking it is just none of my business!

This is Our Lolly, a JRT born 11 July 2009. She gets on really well with Our Kammy, a rescue dog of rather vague pedigree! For the first couple of weeks, Lolly spent quite a lot of time happily suckling Kammy, but, as Kammy is spayed, no spontaneous lactation occurred!