Leah82

I occasionally look at the cocker spaniel puppy listings (dreaming of course) and came across this corker :D

and thank you for alerting us to the dangers of some foods :) glad Maggie is doing so well, she's a little cutie

Sarah wasn't a fan of water, not even getting her paws wet, understandably given no access to creeks, rivers and beaches for her entire 7 years. We like going to the beach and camping near creeks, as well as kayaking so I was hoping it would be something she could get over. The week before Christmas we went camping near Beechworth and spent a lot of time by the Reedy creek while my OH was panning for gold. Collie just goes exploring and doesn't mind getting wet in the process so Sarah was going to have to cave eventually. After a few days of whining and trying to find the dry path across the creek so she could join in the fun she eventually got accidentally wet so many times that by the last day she didn't hesitate walking across the shallow rocks to get to the other side. Still away to go, she still doesn't like swimming despite me putting her in the water while kayaking a few times :p baby steps but I think we'll get there :)

Wow, I didn't know macadamia nuts were poisonous to dogs! It's pretty surprising considering the small amount needed to cause a reaction, many other known poisonous foods need to be consumed in such large amounts to cause a reaction but according to a website I found only 2gs of macadamias per kilo of dog is needed. Luckily they're not one of my favorite nuts. Fingers crossed for Maggie, hopefully she's feeling better soon.

well we went up to sky high, it was pretty busy but still enough room to lay out a picnic rug. we had the dogs snuggled under the blanket for about half an hour before the big event. You could see lots of fireworks going off in the city but I only heard a couple of not so loud bangs. If your dogs are fine with crowds but not ok with fireworks I would recommend it. There were a few other people with their dogs that seemed happy enough, although there was a German Shepard that showed up just before midnight that clearly wasn't having a good time, was letting out a few whines and barks with his halti on.

what a load of crap the reason most of the 'disasters' you speak of are from people that work full time is because..... most people have to work full time we're not living in the 80's here where families can live off one income. I haven't had a puppy for a long time but we have a 6 year old cocker who we had to get a friend for because he suffered from separation anxiety when he was alone. This is a dog who spent the first 10 months of his life with his breeder and after that always had another dog around to play with. Can't help but think he'd be better off if he spent more time alone in his younger days :p

Not sure, I haven't been up there for New Year's Eve before. I checked the website, entry closes at 11.45 and the place closes at 12.45. Dogs are allowed on leashes as well

Lol, thanks guys, she wasn't too happy about being posed and sitting on swivel chairs but she was oh so cute :p

Ours don't seem to care about fireworks luckily bit we're still heading to sky high in the dandenongs tonight so we can watch them go off through the city without necessarily hearing them

make sure you keep an eye out for residual issues with your BC, the behaviour won't necessarily go away with the ACD we had another dog living with us for a couple of months and she used to sniff around our cocker spaniel while he was eating so he started to urinate near his bowl. Now 3 months later if we don't keep a close eye on him he will wee near our other dog's bowl at dinner time, or as close as he can get as they are separated for meals.

I'll keep it pretty simple as this is my first year so will be doing 52 weeks of Collie and Sarah. And while it's not 2014 yet here's a couple from camping last week.

As we are pretty much into the last week of 2013 I thought I'd pop in and say how much I've loved seeing all your doggy pictures over the last 6 months. Gertude: I noticed you had a goal of improving your photography skills and you have done outstandingly, I wouldn't believe only a year ago that you said you would never be great at it. I really appreciated you using your new found skills at kepala as well :) Hankdog: Jake is such a little cutie, It's been great seeing all the mischief he gets up to TLC: congrats on managing to take so many photos of your dogs all together, no doubt they are truly sick of one another by now :p and I've no idea how you keep their hair the same length all year round, Sarah is always looking different after my experimentation's with the clipper and scissors Weibritty: Clay is a very handsome young man, who would have thought only a year ago he was a helpless furball of cuteness, you manage to capture him beautifully and Impatiens: as a recent cocker convert it's been wonderful seeing Harvey's adventures from across the ditch I'm currently anticipating the new 52 weeks for dogs thread so I can join in and hopefully improve my skills in the process. I did manage to capture a few nice moments on a camping trip last week but you will have to wait to see them :D

I was forced to work yesterday because no-one else could work the late shift. As there was only going to be 4 people in total in the office I decided to bring Sarah. Then this happened :p

We found a cover letter detailing us and the dogs works well also. One thing I did as well was call the property managers before the open for inspections and ask if they are open to pets. This will save you a lot of time, there are just as many ads that don't say 'No Pets' that are very anti pets as there are places that don't say 'Pet friendly' even though they will consider them. And generally the more family orientated the house the more likely they will consider pets. I wouldn't bother with townhouses and apartments.

OT I know. I don't like the insinuation that cockers are not very intelligent dogs, I've heard it a lot but from my experience this is not the case. Cockers are also found in the same group as Weimaraners and Collies in the list of dog breed intelligence being excellent working dogs. Yes, they take a long time to mature Yes, they can be very excitable which makes it hard for them to concentrate and yes they often require an intensive to work but they are far from dumb Generally "sharpness" in reference to a working gundog refers to how hard it's nature is (and potentially to levels of aggression) not how smart it is. A sharp dog is more volatile, but not necessarily smarter. My bad :) it gets my goat when I feel the lovely cocker is being misrepresented :p volatile the cocker is definitely not.

I love my parents kelpie x huntaway but would probably be too big, Seeing as my OH insists on always having a cocker spaniel, a 12kg fairy kelpie would be perfect ;)

OT I know. I don't like the insinuation that cockers are not very intelligent dogs, I've heard it a lot but from my experience this is not the case. Cockers are also found in the same group as Weimaraners and Collies in the list of dog breed intelligence being excellent working dogs. Yes, they take a long time to mature Yes, they can be very excitable which makes it hard for them to concentrate and yes they often require an intensive to work but they are far from dumb

dammit, more happy tears :) kinda awkward at work but oh well I've decided in my next doggie life time I want a kelpie, preferably a little cutie like Juniper

I clip ours, I don't really have much of a choice as they both get pretty wooly otherwise You can tell if your dog is cooler after a clip, a lot of people will notice on warmer days that their dog is more active and is not flaked out on a cold tiled floor for hours at a time.

I might be interesting in purchasing such a dog in the future :) although we're probably looking at 10 years down the track. What's the difference between a field spaniel and field bred cocker spaniel? From the descriptions and pictures I've found they're both slightly larger than a show cocker, ears are higher up and they have less feathering.

I got some comfortis and pinetarsol. then this happened... :p

what were the staffing requirements in the previous code? I don't remember. I do know that the previous exercise requirements were 10 minutes twice a day and now it's 30 mins twice a day plus they now factor in enrichment and socialisation so that is definitely an improvement. I have a dog that was a breeder at a puppy farm until she was 7 so I understand what these establishments do to dogs. Personally I would like the number of fertile cats and dogs to be restricted across the board in order to elimiate the cost benefit for large breeding establishments and have all breeding cats and dogs to be part of a loving home, however the above code is progress and I'm not going to argue with progress.

a definite improvement on what they had before although there are a few areas which could still be changed, half an hour minimum handling per dog seems low and would be nice to have relevant genetic testing for breeding animals to be mandatory but it's probably unrealistic at the moment. At the end of the day DEPI have to set a minimum standard otherwise there are plenty of people out there that will do the wrong thing to make a few bucks. I imagine most breeders registered with dogs VIC won't have to change what they are doing in order to comply with the code.

PUPPIES!!! so adorable, congratulations on your grand furbabies

I'll let you know how long Collie remains spotty for. Poor little guy isn't having a fun time of it lately, last night when everyone else was trying to get to sleep he was still scratching up a storm I sprayed some PAWS lavender and jojoba conditioning spray onto his itchy spots hoping it would relieve some of the itching, he eventually got to sleep and stayed curled up until about 7am this morning. Can't wait till after work so I can get him something to relieve his itchiness as well as some comfortis to knock out any remaining fleas hopefully he's all better by the weekend because he does love camping, although the weather in Beechworth doesn't look particularly inviting as yet.