Purple Julie

Aww, I loved Tonka too. I thought he was so beautiful. What a shame he had to go.

Thanks for starting this post Tadpole - I just came in here to ask about a photography book and I found your post! How have you found the book now that you have it? Has it been useful? I was thinking about getting a book on Digital SLR photography, but there doesn't seem to be many good ones out there that are only on DSLR. I had a read about Understanding Exposure on the internet and it covers film and digital, so Tadpole, how have you found it in relation to the DSLR? Does anyone have any DSLR only photography book recommendations too?

Jyra hasn't seen Pussycat for over 3 years as we live interstate from Pussycat's owners. So she's fine.

Jyra's mate and her object of scientific observation was put to sleep recently. (Not sure when and what was wrong with him though). Micah was his proper name, but he was always referred to as Pussycat. Such a patient Pussycat, would put up with all Jyra's loving bombardments or stay out of her reach. Sorry I don't have any individual photos of Pussycat. Jyra is the object of my affection and steals the limelight in my photos! Some examples of Pussycat being a good object of scientific observation: Pussycat's patience almost running out.

I just heard recently that Jyra's father, Rambo was poisoned and died. I'm not sure of when this happened. Glad I'm not living in that town anymore! RIP Rambo

If you're willing to travel to Box Hill, then there are good cheap Chinese butchers there for buying your meat from and it's human grade.

I finally managed to get some mackeral today! It was the Seawall brand. I got it at IGA. It's about 50-70c a tin dearer than the homebrand mackeral though.

I'm expecting that my parents will continue to feed Jyra the raw food anyway. It is much cheaper than the commercial food, or so it seems anyway. I am just asking in case.

I usually feed twice a day. The main meal is in the morning and that is the raw meaty bones. Her afternoon meal is the muscle meat. On organ meat day, she has three meals - the usual two, plus the organ meat. I like to feed different meats at different times. I wouldn't mix chicken and lamb in one meal. On fish day, she has three meals, as I described above. 2xfish, plus egg. If organ meat day has fallen on the same day as fish day, then she has four meals that day. But the egg and organ meat are very small meals.

For all those people who feed their dog BARF/raw, if you were unable to continue feeding this way and had to switch to kibble (dry dog food), what brand/type of kibble would you buy? Has anyone tried Innova Evo? What opinions do people have on it? I plan to continue feeding Jyra the way I am, but I'm just looking to see if there are alternatives, as I am going overseas and it will be my parents who are organising the meals. I am encouraging them to stick with what we're doing now, but I just want to have an option for if/when they feel they cannot keep it up anymore.

I feed Jyra a prey model diet. Her menu consists of raw meaty bones, muscle meat, organ meat, fish and egg. She has her fish and egg once a week. Usually a tin of mackeral in the morning and a tin of sardines in the afternoon, plus her egg on the same day. She gets the whole egg, with the shell, but I cut it up in her bowl for her. Jyra's food for a day weighs 1.6% of her body weight. It was about 2% but she has put on weight recently, so I have reduced her diet by 100g. She has approximately 500g of food a day now. I buy chicken frames and other bits of chicken bone with meat, pork soup bones, lamb flaps and lamb necks for her raw meaty bones component of the diet, and these comprise 60-70% of her daily food. I buy ox tongue, ox heart, ox cheek and lamb heart for her muscle meat component, which is 25-35% of her daily food. Sometimes I buy pet quality beef or kangaroo steak for this. Everything else is human quality, but inexpensive. People on DOL often say something like, 'isn't heart an organ?', but the heart is actually a muscle, so that is why I give it to her as muscle meat and I haven't had any problems. For the organ meat, Jyra gets lamb liver, lamb kidneys, lamb brains and chicken giblets. This works out as 5% of her daily intake, but instead of giving her 5% every day, I will give her about 3 days worth at a time, which is only 75 grams at a sitting anyway, so it is not too much, as wylie said, you don't want to give too much organ meat at a time. I cycle through the organ meat, eg On Tuesday, she might have liver, then a few days later she'll have giblets, then after a few days she'll have a kidney, then she'll have brains, then the next time, she'll have liver again. It's not as complicated as it sounds!! I would include chicken liver in the organ meat, but Jyra doesn't like it. I have also tried spleen and clean intestines, which Jyra also won't eat. LOOK FOR A CHINESE BUTCHER! These are the best places to get your meat! I used to get Jyra whole chickens (minus the organs, head and feet) from a Chinese butcher for $2.20/kg. They were called 'boiling chickens'. I used to get them cut in half and give Jyra a half chicken for a meal. I don't get them anymore, because they were often too big and I have reduced Jyra's food intake. Hope that's helpful, and I didn't bore you too much with all my waffling!! Congratulations if you got this far!

Oh, no, it's just once a week on Fish day!!

Westiemum, Yes, I do buy the homebrand mackeral. I also buy the sardines. Jyra usually gets mackeral in the morning and sardines in the afternoon. Usually homebrand is the only mackeral that safeway stocks at all, but coles sometimes has the brand 'Seawall' mackeral, but they didn't even have that the other day. I usually buy six tins at a time, maybe I should empty the shelf next time! That seems to be what everyone else is doing!

Is anyone else having difficulties buying tins of mackeral for their dog? I have been to two Safeways and one Coles and none of them had any mackeral, just an empty spot where the mackeral should be! They had the mackeral in tomato sauce, but I get the one in natural oil. Is everyone buying them up in bulk for their dogs or something and leaving none on the shelves? I ended up having to buy fresh fish from the fish butcher and paid a lot more for it than I do for the mackeral (and I bought the cheapest fish fillet at $8.99 a kilo). I was going to cook it for Jyra because she won't eat raw fish, but I thought I'd give it a go and see if she'd eat it raw this time. Lo and behold, she ate the whole thing raw!!! Wow!!

OMG!! I am so sorry for your loss and disappointed with you. I have been following him on the websites and was looking forward to seeing him grow up. I am so sad for you.

So sorry for your loss. I remember meeting Max at herding. I don't know what to say.

Cheaper SLR would be better. There is nothing lacking in the quality of the Pentax K100D Super - all the expert reviews say that. It is just as good as the dearer SLRs I think. I prefer cameras which take AA size batteries - that includes the NiMH rechargeables. So you can use regular AA batteries or rechargeable NiMHs.

Nah, go for an SLR, in two years time you'll wish you had and then you'll be looking for a new camera again, so get one now.

I think the colour also depends on whether they've been eating white meaty bones (eg chicken) or red meaty bones (eg lamb).

If I weren't feeding Jyra BARF, I would go with Nature's Gift. Saying that, I gave her a can of NG once to see if it were suitable for me to feed her when travelling, and her poo was big and all rather liquidy. I think that is probably because her system is used to digesting bones, and if fed on NG regularly she would probably be fine.

Thanks Nat, I do have my Dad's 75-200mm zoom lens too, which has a minimum aperture of f2.8, but it has manual focus only, so I could use that, but Dad says that I would need to focus on a particular spot and take the photo when the dog gets to that spot as it would be to hard to adjust the focus while the dog is running. What do you think on that? I took some photos of kids playing in water yesterday at 1/1000 and got the water droplets frozen which I was happy about :D

SLRs have interchangeable lenses and more manual functions such as aperture and shutter speed, though I *think* that some compacts have some manual settings (rather vague, I know!). I have a Pentax K100D Super, it is a digital SLR and it takes SD cards. It is very good and costs about $700. Edit: Typo!

My Ricoh Caplio G4 doesn't have focus options, so I don't know about them. Maybe there is something that you could do with them and still have hope that you will get nice blurry backgrounds. Otherwise, take macro photos of your dogs body parts, eg. eye, ear, paw, blade of fur, etc!

On behalf of Hopenfox, I believe she has an excellent Ricoh point and shoot camera and won't be able to adjust aperture. Hopenfox, you need to do what I did and buy a digital SLR camera to get blurry background shots , then follow Persephone's instructions on aperture. My Ricoh P&S takes excellent macro photos with blurry backgrounds, but I couldn't get normal pictures with a blurry background.

What are the best settings to take lure coursing (or other action) pictures on? I have been experimenting, but Jyra doesn't run on command, so it's hard to practice really. If you were limited to a 18-50 kit lens, what would you have as the ISO setting, shutter speed and aperture setting? What settings do you usually use for action pictures? I have been thinking that ISO of 800 would be good, a high shutter speed and the aperture as open as you can get it. I found that I only get dark pictures with a shutter speed of 1/500 or 1/1000 and the aperture open as far as it will go (and not using the flash). The flash limits the shutter speed to a maximum of 1/180. Depending on the zoom that I use, the minimum aperture is different. Sometimes I can go right down to 3.5, but other times I can only go to 5.6, using the manual settings.