Braggin on the pets thread

“you might be right. I thought she might have stepped on a pebble. I did not want to take a chance so that is why i got out of there right away. I can only imagine if she was a larger dog. lord I would have died trying to carry her!”

“sometimes i wish someone would carry me out of the nastyscary woods

we saw a very pretty pooch wearing fashionable neoprene booties at the nordhouse dunes trip. that might be your answer - not neoprene but the heavier kind.”

“interesting.
maybe. she is getting up in years so her trips are getting shorter and shorter!

she did have a good trip.
had her own chair, her own sleeping bag and she had a steak dinner :)
but she is all worth it!”

“That must have been a tiny steak.”

“ok marko, she may be small but she is mighty!


now stop picking on her size you big bully!”

“We know small dogs, D.O.R.K.”

“Sliver or burr in the pad? Even a pine needle can cause that sorta reaction. I always brush out the pads first to eliminate that sorta thing. Rosey has pulled muscles before. Then of course, there's the whole cruciate ligament tear dealio...”

“You were named after a dog or vice versa?”

“Mutt will be so jealous.”

“She is my namesake. 12 y.o. and knocked out a 5 mile dayhike at 8K feet last Sunday.”

“The Mini Weener Dog is not a trail dog.

His ground clearance is waaaaaaaay low.”

“Get some stilts for that pooch!”

“Never thought I'd be saying this but...nice wiener MarkO.”

“Yeah, he's about ten pounds of whoop ass.”

“A wiener dog in platform shoes...now there's a visual.”

“Where are the pics of this hike?”

“LMAO @ marko 10 lbs of whoop ass and for nigal digging markos weiner...

as for pics, had to borrow a camera, as soon as they upload it you will see them”

“I got to play with a puppeh! My neighbor (the one who has all sorts of unintended adventures) rescued a puppy 12 days ago. She was maybe a month old, at most, and someone had tried to dock her tail themselves. Didn't work too well. A few trips to the vet, 10 day quarantine for some parasite, and all puppy shots later, she's a bundle of "gonna get in trouble and look cute doing it" that's still half the size of my cats. The vet thinks she'll be anywhere between beagle and boxer sized, when full grown. I'm not sure, based on the bone structure of her feet. They're wide, but lightly boned. She looks kind of like a boxer though, but her head is very different. Hold her upside down and she looks just like a chihuahua.”

“She prolly is a rat terryerist.”

“She's smooth coated and mostly brown with a pink belly. We introduced her to my cat Pinky. Pinky was not amused. She got disciplined by my neighbor's great Dane, for getting between his front feet while he was trying to eat and stealing his food. He got her whole head inside his mouth (didn't bite down or anything) and she started howling, while hear head was still in there. Apparently it echoed.”

“Out outdoor cat, Puffer, has been missing since New Year's day. He just turned up this afternoon, when I was getting ready to leave to pick Laurel up from school. He's skin and bones, and very dehydrated. I think he got locked up in someone's shed or something, by accident or whatever. I know I accidentally shut him in our garage a few times. He goes and takes a nap and doesn't budge. Laurel's incredibly happy to have him back, and is feeding him lots of treats. His coat (very long) is nothing but mats, too. The outer coat is in very good condition though, but petting him feels very weird.
Now, to get his knops nipped...”

“I just finished a 3 day course of medications for the pond fish. The water is now a nice, deep TY-D-Bowl blue thanks to formalin, malachite green, and methylene blue. Anything plastic or silicone in the pond is now blue too.”

“a fish pond must be cool...”

“It's quite a bit of work this time of year. This is when lots of parasites, fungi, viruses and diseases pop up.

Case in point I had to euthanize one of my oldest koi today. His name was Nemo; Laurel named him. We've had him 5 years, but he was about 2 years old when we got him. He's always had a green spot on his back, but the last couple of years it's spread tremendously. Excising it didn't work, it would just grow back. Chemical treatments, antibiotics, antivirals, and antifungals had no effect on it. It spread a lot this past winter, and he suddenly pine-coned (scales all sticking out) which means organ failure. I netted him in one go. Usually he puts up one hell of a fight. I slipped him into the exam bucket, added the clove oil suspension (normally used for anesthesia)and he was gone in 90 seconds. He was usually fairly immune to the clove oil, too. He's now under a honeyberry bush, and it's going to suck explaining to Laurel where her favorite fish is.”

“Awwww :(”

“The house I grew up in had a pond (after my mom had my twin siblings, my dad needed something to get him out of the house so he built a friggin pond) - I agree with treebait about the hard work and personal drama that goes into a pond (though, treebait, you sound a hell of a lot more knowlegeable about ponds than we were). Between the struggle to keep the water in good conditions, neighborhood cats, and a snowy egret that developed a taste for young koi, it was always such a pain in the ass.

But on summer afternoons, nothing beat sitting out there and listening to the waterfall, watching the fish swim around”

“tree sorry about the fish :(
I have to say you are the first person i have ever heard of having to euthanize a fish. interesting how you did it. how is Laurel taking the news? does the honeyberry bush bloosom? if so tell her it is the fish smiling at her :)

I still have my goldfish from two years ago. they did well over the winter outside..

on a happy note I am about to be a mommy again. yup going to adopt a cat. ever since daughter moved away and took her cat with her i have been missing a cat big time!”

“You can have both of the ones living at my house. Come get them.”

“oops.


last edited: 3/17/10 3:46:22 PM”

“Laurel cried for about 10 minutes, then refocused on the koi she still has in quarantine (read: 2 aquariums in the house) plus the fact that on the 27th we're visiting an NC koi breeder. She wants another "Nemo" (solid orange koi) but she wants to raise Snowflake (sparkly platinum koi) to be a show fish.

The honeyberry is a kind of lonicera (honeysuckle) that produces oblong blue berries that are very tasty, if you can keep the damn birds away from them.”

“Loki is now at 30 of New Hampshire's 48 peaks. She goes for 31 and 32 tomorrow. If her paws do OK on the presidentials, I'm hoping to see her complete in 2011.

July is day hiking month for me.”

“Wow, that's really cool, Pedxing.”

“Drift kittys!

http://icanhascheezburger.com/2011/01/17/funny-pictures-videos-drift-kittehs/”

“I need some help if anyone knows anything about biting dogs. I adopted a beautiful purebreed German Shepard from the shelter. Apparently she was a stray. Now we know why. She is a biter. Not like attack and bite but just jumping up on you and bitng like she is playing. But her mouth is big, teeth sharp, and she doesn't realize how hard she is biting down.

Short of giving her back, I want to try to work with this but don't know how. Does anyone have experience with training a dog not to bite? She is about 9 months.”

“you could start training her for Schutzhund

”

“she probably played a lot of mouth games as a puppy, with no-one ever stopping her. (why would anyone think that a teething puppy gnawing on your fingers is cute?)

it's going to take a long time and lots of corrections. absolutely ending any games with a sharp NO as soon as her mouth contacts your skin and no mouth games ever.”

“and maybe a muzzle if she's going to be playing around kids”

“Thanks Helinka! We start obedience training tomorrow night. If that doesn't work then it is on to behavior classes.”

“Glad to hear you are staying dedicated, sandyann. Every German sheppard I've met was trainable.”

“Roseymonster - I have yet to give up on an pet. We had a very loving Pitbull who would guard food very aggressively till we taught him there was plenty to share. He got to the point where he would nibble from his bowl all day until the other dog got impatient and ate it for him.

Nikita just hasn't been trained at all AND is still very much a enegetic puppy.”

“Yes, a shock collar can be used to stop this behavior. And also to prevent the dog from jumping up, one needs to step into the dog just as it is trying to raise up to jump doing so closes up the space they are trying to use to achieve the jumping”

“sandyann: (you forgot to say "short of torture")”

“Torture is probably happening as Bob, the cat hates her, and Ellie the little dog isnt much happier.”

“"Bob the cat" ... LOL. Nice cat name!”

“Hehe...Bob was rescued and that was his shelter name. It fit so we kept it.”

“Smokey the cat doesn't want the fries. He wants the ketchup, all to himself!

Yes, it's weird. All cats are weird.”

“I can't win. Up until 2 years ago we had 6 cats and 1 dog. Unfortunately 2 of our cats took permanent naps within a month of each other, so we've been down to 4 for the last 2 years. Two weeks ago my wife brought home a 5-week-old kitten for us to foster - the original owner was very allergic and had to find a new home. I agreed. Sure, we can do a foster.

Guess how many cats we now have - permanently? The new gal was too cuddly and sweet for any of us to resist so now she's ours.

I really wanted to keep moving the humans-to-pets ratio in the other direction. In a natural way of course. I can't win. I've learned my lesson - never foster an animal in my household or else it becomes a pet.”