nickyp

Thanks everyone for the compliments on my shots. I feel rather unworthy when I look at everyone else's work. :D PoodleMum, we did use a bubble machine. I picked it up cheaply during the year and had been dying for a chance to use it. The boys were starting to get a bit ratty on Monday afternoon so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to put it to use and it worked a treat! It goes through heaps of bubble mixture, though. OK, I've actually taken notes so that I can comment individually on all the photos posted since last night. It's the only way I can remember them all (old age taking hold I think ). terranik - love the mantis shots, the second one is my favourite bindi~boo - the mirror pics are great. I like the chi the best. iltby - your shots are fantastic as usual. I'm a little in awe of the quality of what you're producing each day. krisilin - love the whippy peering through the door. poocow - another great dog shot. Love the beagle in b&w. ravyk - gorgeous snail. I keep trying to take shots of my fish but they're always dreadful - the little buggers just won't keep still! tlc - I love your dogs (although I can't tell one from the other) they always look so happy. aquaticmal - great shots. I really love the two dogs passing on the bridge. jag - I like the 2nd bee shot a lot. I know what you mean about trying to focus. I'm getting long sighted and can't use manual focus on the camera unless I have my glasses on. I never remember them so I just use auto focus... :D persephone - that looks like a fantastic spot for dinner, so cool by the river! I hope there weren't any monster mozzies! clickingmad - I've been loving the b&w shots of your dally. They're always great and I really like the red of the strawberries. becks - the tree stump is great. I drive OH mad taking pics like that when we're out in the bush - tree stumps, bark, leaves, moss - he thinks it's all boring. Yay!! I think I got everyone!! Keep up the good work everyone, this has become my favourite thread on the forum.

I've been a little slack in the last couple of days ... I just forgot all about the photo challenge. I have a couple of shots for Monday. We set up the bubble machine outside for Finn and Leila and their cousin Dan. I like the first one because Finn looks so still compared to Dan. And in the second Leila just looks so happy that I couldn't resist putting it in. And I have 3 for today because I can't choose. The first two are of Cosmo. He was trying to have his post-breakfast snooze on our bed, but the window was open and the lace curtain kept blowing over him. I could tell it was bugging him but there was no way he was going to move. And finally I have this one of Finn with a Lego streetscape he's constructed. He wasn't really asleep, I just caught him with his eyes shut.

I knew going on an internet diet was going to be hard ... there are so many pictures every time I come in here that I have no hope of commenting on them individually - I'd have to take notes. They're all fabulous! Here's yesterday's shot. We went for a drive to a spot called Boar Gully in the Brisbane Ranges. I really liked the look of this tree stump. And I've got 2 for today. Leila is trying to put her shoes up on one of the outside tables here. For some reason it took a great deal of concentration. The she put her shoes on. Standing on her head is an integral part of the process.

Love the poodle, poocow. He looks just so happy and ... poodley! Here's my boy Cosmo, settling in for his after dinner snooze on our bed. Nothing done to this one, other than a little cropping. I opened Photoshop Elements to have a play and shut it again 30 seconds later. Don't have the patience tonight.

More and more fantastic photos! I'm loving all the moons, sunsets and clouds, iltby's ants, rocco's retro style (your sis photographs very well) and, of course, all the dogs. I didn't have a photo for yesterday - it was a bad day and nothing appealed. Today we went to Melbourne Zoo and were lucky enough to watch the keepers washing Bong Su, the male elephant. I took heaps of pics, which are in a set here on Flickr. At the end the keepers gave the elephant a pile of crushed up weetbix as a treat. It was fascinating watching the delicate way he worked it into piles and scooped it up with his trunk, so that's today's photo. Taken with our crappy little Kodak point n' shoot. No processing, other than a little cropping.

Here's my pic for yesterday. It was bloody hot and I've tried to capture that here. I've increased the exposure, brightness and contrast on this one to try to make it convey the way it feels to look at the sky on a hot day.

Not feeling very arty farty today so I'll just leave you with a smiley boy:

I'm not commenting on individual pics because there's so many every time I come into this thread that I can't keep up. They all look fabulous, though. I'm really impressed with the talent everyone's showing here. We went on an overnight camping trip yesterday to Blackwood (near Daylesford). Took the camera, just didn't take it out of the bag, so no photo for yesterday! We came home this morning but I had to wait until the kids went to sleep about half an hour ago to go and take some pics. I have two that I can't choose between. I tried to wash the colour out on these roses to make them look more faded than they are. And Em kept following me around while I was taking pics, trying to get me to play with her so I thought I'd get one of her and her ball. I made it b&w so that it's less noticeable that it's out of focus.

She is pretty, isn't she. Her sister is all black. I'd love to get a good picture of her but she's the more timid of the two and kept the shrub between her and me. Another time ...

OK, I'm diving in! I have two that I like for today. I'm using a Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ30 which I've had for 3 years. I have it just on auto setting - macro when appropriate - and just use the lense it came with. I use iPhoto on my Mac for processing. I've got Photoshop Elements but I haven't played with it yet - this might be my opportunity. This is a rose in my garden. I couldn't resist taking a photo of it when I was just outside. It seemed to be almost glowing in the fading light. I increased the colour saturation on it to maximum to try to make it glow. And this is Winifred, one of our new chooks. I'm posting it mostly because I'm so pleased with actually getting a half decent chook shot. We got two bantams from my brother's farm for Christmas and they're not used to people. They've only just stopped running away from me when I bring them food so I was very impressed that Winifred hung around when I aimed the big black thing at her. The other one, Timothy, kept hiding behind a shrub when I tried to shoot her. I just increased the colour saturation a bit to do Winifred justice.

Wow!! So many fantastic photos!! I've just spent hours wading through all 33 pages of this thread and I've enjoyed each and every one of them. I'm in awe of you all for your commitment and your creativity. I'm soo tempted to join in, but doubt my ability to keep it up and whether I'd think any of my pictures were good enough to post.

My girls are eating ProPlan Weight Management at the moment and they love it. One of them is prone to being very smelly and farty on a lot of foods, but she's much better on ProPlan.

Sorry you lost your fluffy-bum, Imy. I wouldn't say that I'm particularly attached to either of my chooky girls, but I'd definitely miss them heaps if they went to the bridge. In this heat I've been popping out 3 or 4 times a day to check on them. They have shade and 3 lots of water, but I feel so bad when I see them sitting there panting that I'd bring them inside into the aircon if it was practical.

If the breeder currently has the pups on Purina then you will need to start off on that and gradually change your pup over to whatever you decide to feed, whether it's high end kibble or BARF. I doubt the breeder is getting kick backs from the company. It's only prudent to give you the name of what the pups are eating to help you with the transition. If you swap straight from one food to another you're risking an upset stomach that could be very unpleasant and messy and not a great way to introduce a pup to it's new home. 'Well researched' is definitely key with feeding raw. You need to know what you're doing. Committment is also important. I've fed my dogs on raw at different times and I've currently gone back to kibble as I just wasn't keeping up with it and was spending far too much money buying commercial substitutes when I ran out. One of my dogs definitely does better on a raw diet, but I'm not unhappy with her condition on the kibble so I don't feel she's suffering. And I will probably give raw another go down the track.

My mum rang me today to tell me that she'd had her cat Froggy put down. Frog had a tumour in her jaw and my parents decided that at her age (about 14) it wasn't reasonable to expect her to go through a surgery which would remove part of her jaw and leave her with difficulty eating. My parents, being elderly, also felt that they would not be up to giving her the special care she would need to recover. My sister adopted Frog when she was teaching in country Vic in the middle of a mouse plague. The parents of one of her students offered her a kitten they had to help keep the mice out of her house. Frog was the survivor of a semi feral litter and had been hand reared by the farmer's wife. My sister called her 'Frog' because she was a tiny little thing with huge eyes. A couple of years later Frog came to live with me while my sister worked overseas. She was an amazing creature. Lithe and agile, with a feisty, take no shit personality, but at the same time incredibly affectionate. She would favour me with a few licks on the nose each night before settling down to sleep on my bed and then wake me the same way at 5am each morning to be let out. When I got up at 7am to get ready for work she would come in for her breakfast and then take off for a day out. At one point she brought me a dead rat every morning for a week. I'd call and she would come bounding over the back fence with a rat in her mouth, drop it on the doormat and stroll inside looking very proud. I also remember watching her chase a ringtail possum through the trees at the back of the yard - literally jumping from tree to tree. She was able to go everywhere the possum could and I was very relieved when she didn't manage to catch it. When I moved back to my parents' she came with me and stayed there after I left as she ahd become very much Mum's cat. She became obese for a while because Mum would feed her whenever she whinged and she whinged a lot! She would also jump on the benches and knock things off if Mum refused to feed her. Although she loved my dad, she would play too rough with him and gave him infections every time she bit or scratched him. She would hang out with my parents' chooks and when Mum and Dad got rid of them she wandered around for days calling and looking in the chook house for them. RIP Froggy you'll be missed.

I'm afraid my OH & I won't make it today either. We've both got a stomach bug. Was hoping it'd be gone by this morning, but we're both still unwell so we're staying home. I hope everyone has a great day and I'll look forward to the next time Steve's down this way.

I got the email, thanks. I'm just wondering are there any more spots available? I'm a bit concerned that the training may be a bit beyond me at the moment (I'm pregnant, have dodgy balance and am not very fit anyway) and my OH has offered to come and work with Emmylou for or with me. Another participant spot would be fine. We could bring Indiana as well, although I have doubts that training in drive is for her.

My dogs would certainly escape if they got the opportunity - if the garage was left open, for example. And I know exactly where they'd go. They'd head for the reserve at the end of the street which has a creek running through it with ducks in the water and rabbits living on the other side of the creek. Why would they do it? Because it's much more fun than the back yard, of course! Em would go for a swim in the creek - she can't resist a body of water - and Indi would go looking for the rabbits or the ducks. We don't let her chase them, but she knows that they're there and looks for them every time we walk through there. These dogs are not houdinis. They could get over our 8ft fences if they wanted to (they're kelpie xs), but they don't want to. They would walk straight out through the garage if it was open, though. The only dog I've ever known that wouldn't go for a wander if it had the opportunity was my parents' GSP x lab and, I can assure you that had nothing to do with training. He was just too scared to go past the gate without someone with him. There were heaps of times when people would forget to shut the gate and we'd come home to find Monty sitting in the open gateway.

TB I have much the same sorts of issues with Emmylou. It's always the smart ones... We had constant issues with weeing (never poo fortunately) until I started crating both dogs at night. Although I never saw who did it, I'm certain it was Em as Indi will hang on for ages to go outside to her preferred spot. If she's crated Em will wake us when she needs to go out. She even woke us last week when Indi was throwing up. If she's loose, though, Em won't even try to wake us. I stopped working in March and have had issues on and off with Em insisting on being inside all the time and just generally carrying on like an idiot. For the last 2 days she's been barking at everything and it's driving me crazy. I put it down to the changes in our lifestyle. I'd always worked full time before, but now I'm home most of the time, but do go out for the whole day here and there and OH is gone at all sorts of different times with uni, work and teaching rounds. With various things going on the dogs aren't getting walked as regularly as they were. The days don't have a set routine any more and I think Em finds it unsettling. Indi doesn't really seem bothered by it at all - when OH is home she hangs with him, when he's not she sleeps. I'm trying to do something similar to you. Go back to something like the old routine and stick with it. It means I'll have to get up at a more regular time and the dogs will have to spend more time outside, like when I was working. Walks and trips to the beach are going to start happening regularly again and I'm going to add some more training sessions to occupy her mind. I'm expecting things to get a bit worse initially, but hoping that Em will settle fairly quickly into the 'new/old' routine and we'll all be a bit happier.

I've had my dogs on both raw and processed diets and, fortunately for me, they seem to generally do OK regardless of what they eat. One of them gets smelly on processed food, but is otherwise healthy. At the moment we're doing a mostly raw diet with leftovers (my toddler's a fussy eater and I can't bear to just throw all the food he leaves out) and it's all looking good. They'll go back onto a processed diet for a while when the second baby arrives next year because my OH will be doing the feeding and he's not good at remembering how much of what, when. I try to avoid discussing diet with our vets. They sell a number of different kibbles and one vet particularly pushes Hills and ia appalled that I feed my dogs raw. My cats are on Hills because I saw her when one of them was ill and gave in to her insistence that it would settle his stomach. What I learned was that this particular cat, who is starting to age a bit, just can't handle change in his diet. He either throws up or has diahorrea (sp?) if there's any variation. So the cats have stayed on the Hills since then simply to save him the discomfort and me the mess of getting him used to something else. Discussions of diet are also to be avoided around family. SIL and my oldest brother feed a mostly raw diet, with one exception - they feed cooked bones. My SIL's dad is a retired vet and apparently he never saw an obstruction from a cooked bone in practice but saw lots from raw bones. One of my sisters has taken this as gospel and now feeds her dog the carcass from their roast chicken. My other brother feeds his dog only on cheap canned food and insists it's fine. The skin on poor old Boof's tummy is bright red and he scratches constantly, which could be due to any number of causes but the diet can't be helping. Any discussion about feeding just ends up in a fight about raw vs processed, cooked vs raw bones ... In the end we just have to agree to disagree and accept that each of us is doing what we feel is best for our animals.

Rozzie, I reckon there can be few better fates for an old dog than to have their final sleep at your place. It's wonderful that Miss Jenny had those last few months of love and care with you and I'm sure she knew and appreciated it. RIP Miss Jenny.

I have one dog who can be smelly on pretty much any kibble (although she was pretty good on Proplan). My other dog could eat anything from the cheapest supermarket brand to the most expensive premium brand and never smell or show any ill effects, I think - she's got cast iron stomach. What's does that tell us? Both dogs are currently on a mostly raw diet with our dinner leftovers added and doing well on it. The smelly one almost doesn't smell at all - unless she eats too much lamb and then she stinks! They both look better than they did on premium kibble but not so much that I'd rave about the difference. They'll be going back on kibble for a while next year when our second child is born because my OH is insisting that he's going to do EVERYTHING for the first few weeks to allow me to focus on the bub. Given that he'll be working full-time and looking after 2 dogs, 2 cats, 2 chooks and a toddler, I figure he's better off with 'half a scoop of this for each cat and a cup of that for each dog', rather than the weighing and deciding what to add that I'm currently doing. I don't think they'll suffer in the experience. And getting back to the poor OP: like others have said, I think you need to be a bit tough with your dachie. Maybe give him some of what he's happy to eat and some of what you'd like him to eat. He'll soon get the idea and eat the lot.

2tollers, the girl in my avatar is the one I'd want to bring. She's lovely, but we need a way to harness all her ... enthusiasm. My other girl is a far too gentle and timid soul for drive training, I think. OK, emailing this minute to make sure we're in!

Hmmm ... I'm definitely going to come, but the question for me is with, or without, a dog. I'd love to bring one of my girls, but I'll be 5 months pregnant by then... Have to think about it a bit.

I know exactly how you feel, jaybeece. I've had walks with my kelpiexacd girl where I've come home in tears of frustration or having hurt my back trying to control her pulling. She only weighs about 20kg to my 70-odd, but when she throws herself at the end of the leash she might as well weigh 100kg. I can't use a correction chain on her because I just don't have the muscle to correct hard enough to get through to her. My OH can, but I worry about the damage to her neck and throat from it. I tried a martingale, thinking, like you, that the noise might do the job and it would be easier on her neck, but it lasted 5 minutes before she had it sussed out. I've tried head halters (Halti & the Blackdog one), but she stills pulls - although not as hard - and she hates them. I only use them when we're in a situation where I know she goes going to be particularly excitable because it gives me at least a little bit of control. When she has a head halter on she whines constantly as well, which really grates on my nerves and winds up all the other dogs around. The only thing which has worked for me - and it doesn't work all the time - is using a flat collar and just stopping when she lunges or starts to pull. I tell her to come back or to heel and if she doesn't respond, I start walking backwards slowly and drag her away from whatever she's focussed on. As I said, it doesn't work all the time but, for me, it works better than the correction chain, for now. I'm waiting for K9 to come to Ballarat, so I can talk to him about a prong collar, or whether training in drive might help by putting her focus more on me.