DOGS

all you pitbull haters are full of shit.

Some pit bulls were selected and bred for their fighting ability. That means that they may be more likely than other breeds to fight with dogs. It doesn’t mean that they can’t be around other dogs or that they’re unpredictably aggressive. Other pit bulls were specifically bred for work and companionship. These dogs have long been popular family pets, noted for their gentleness, affection and loyalty. And even those pit bulls bred to fight other animals were not prone to aggressiveness toward people. Dogs used for fighting needed to be routinely handled by people; therefore aggression toward people was not tolerated. Any dog that behaved aggressively toward a person was culled, or killed, to avoid passing on such an undesirable trait. Research on pet dogs confirms that dog aggressive dogs are no more likely to direct aggression toward people than dogs that aren’t aggressive to other dogs.

buying into media lies and savagery and contributing to the enormous population of pits in shelters. just astonishingly bad critical thinking taking place on this issue.

oh snap water dogs!! i told about this once before but it's one of my fave dog stories so lucky y'all get to read it again!

back in the 60s the russian navy wanted the perfect military water rescue dog so they crossbred newfies + a couple types of fiercely protective shepherds and created the Moscow Water Dog, who would swim out to drowning sailors and bite them, oops lol

Any dog, no matter their apparent breeding or temperament, is capable of attacking a person. They’re animals who run on instincts, not reasoned-out decisions. But it’s pretty easy to reduce the chance of an attack ever happening to zero if you’re a responsible dog owner: don’t let your dog off leash outside your secured yard, don’t leave your dog unsupervised with a child or another dog, teach your children how to act responsibly around dogs (don’t fucking approach and/or touch strange dogs without asking the owner if it’s ok, don’t loom over them, don’t touch their heads, don’t grab them), get to know your dog so you understand their triggers and signals.

When I was a kid, a child had his face savagely bitten by a friendly and charming Labrador. The dog was in a car parked outside a party, with the window rolled all the way down. Kids were running around and one popped up suddenly in front of the open window and startled the dog. He reacted on instinct and attacked.

Yep, we fostered an adorable little JRT once. Took our eye off her for a second around a small kid, small kid tried to pull the dog onto her lap, dog got a fright, nipped small kid in the face. It was all fine, the child had forgotten all about it by the end of the visit, but it could all have gone a very different way.

they look marvelous d-mac. Makes me glad my dog hates water and mud though.

Have I told the story about the woman I met one day with her pure-bred cocker spaniel? She keeps him in show-dog condition at all times. I said "but is that not very impractical around here, with the beach and all?" And she said no, he hates to be dirty, and won't go in the water at all. She looked at my four wet, sandy dogs and asked me "how do you keep your house clean?" and I said, "I don't, my house is absolutely manky." Which is true. I don't think she believed me.

Deems, that is an awesome dog picture.

my dog had an early period of jumping in the canal and wading through mud, but soon decided this stuff sucked. And I'm glad.

Poodles (the clue’s in the name, comes from pudel which means ‘to splash’ in German) are really German water dogs. The French water dog is called a Barbet.

how do you keep your house clean?

keep towel at door, got a robot vacuum, gave up besides

fuckin saving up like mad for washable paint mind

love cat's russian dog tale

I never seem to have the foresight to buy some mudsplash coloured paint.

dmac wins the dog photo competition.

It's one of those little miracles of the universe that we were born in different time zones xyzzzz__, so I don't have the opportunity to actively engage in your foolish posting lol. Go get a dog, it'll make you happier

Also sorry I engaged in my bit first dmac, but yes i concur, wonderful doggo who clearly knows a think or two about exfoliation

In awe of any dog owner that keeps their house clean. Peach isn't a dirty girl, but the daily beach trips brings an ungodly amount of sand into this house.

Witnessed a jack russel going turbo speed trying to catch a seagull at the beach today, really didn't know they had that energy in them. Can absolutely see how they could tear through anything the same size/smaller than them that doesn't have wings.

guys its ok i was just tryin to distract the scrapping posters

all the dog pics are good, all the dogs pictured are good dogs

Depends on the owners.

fuck off, good lad

You don't sound happy. Get a cat

lol touche tbf

It's alright, will leave the thread. You all behave with the cat posting, though. Peace.

He came in like a bulldozer, but left with style and grace. Peace returned

My anxiety around dogs has eased in middle-age, perhaps in inverse relation to my anxiety around ppl, who knows.
Anyway, I've encountered some charmers recently...

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Recovering-dog-with-too-much-energy has taken to barking desperately from downstairs beginning at 7am

I drowsed awake thinking that her cone had turned her into an autophonograph, a fusion of both dog and phonograph from the HMV logo

I did sit and think “I wish in the mornings I was dealing with an ‘I am your hat’ cat, or a ‘kneady-paws’ cat, anything but this desperate ‘look at me now’ alarm clock dog”

our young one has a physiology that predisposes him for this vomiting syndrome, so I have to feed him a snack and take him out before 8 most mornings unless we want a pile of bile on our rugs. i wake up early so don’t totally mind, but February cold makes it especially yuk.

Have you tried a little snack/treat before bedtime? Widget gets a treat right after we come back from last call, so no bilious voms in the morning.

Oh! Good idea, suzy— yeah, he is a foxhound mixed with something, so has similar physiology to a whippet. I will try late night snacks! The problem is that his older sister is an AmStaff and will also want a snack, but she definitely doesn't need one lol.

wife and I inherited a one year old kokoni spaniel who wasn’t really getting the structure or amount of exercise he needed… he’s an absolute sweetheart and he kinda resembles chucky from the rugrats.

Super intense separation anxiety, poor thing whines and hollers even when I just go take the trash out. Also an absolute champion tugger on the harness, full on world’s strongest dog under 20 lbs.

I am getting way more exercise than I have in a long ass time. Going to have to take up running again to take care of this bad(ass) boy. Lots of great places to take him through/to where I’m at, though.

I’m looking after 2 adorable but terrible corgis for 3 weeks

https://imgur.com/a/XuOAXZx

They bark at every little sound, the little one needs her ass wiped after every poop, the bigger one has intense anxiety.

Xp that's so great. Dogs such a great way to force yourself into doing that stuff we all know is a good idea for us: getting outside + exercise. Nice to have an accountability partner whose judgements of you are so sincere that they pierce right through to the heart. Have fun with your spaniel! He's young top, the separation anxiety and crazy-energy will probably recede over the year (maybe)

Good luck just1n3 lol

Nara, the little girl, has a hole in her heart and sleeps 98% of the day, the other 2% is spent going absolutely wild: humping and ankle-biting her brother, pouncing around like a kitten, generally being a tiny terror. Tsunami sits and stares at me a lot, likes to carry a sock around in his mouth but sometimes the sock-carrying triggers an anxiety attack and he has to come up beside me on the couch or bed, shivering and crying, and bury the sock in the cushions/pillows. Then I have to ASMR him with a soft whispery voice till he calms down. They don’t appear to like each other very much but if you try to separate them, they absolutely freak out. They also can’t be separated from me or my husband - they follow us around very closely and have to be in our room at night. Tsunami freaks out if he sees us even cuddling. Oh and Nara has to take 4 medications 3x a day.

:(

All my love to zara and tsunami.

Nara

My sweetie Roux has had varying degrees of separation anxiety since I adopted her over a year ago but about a month ago she started getting incredibly nervous and destructive in the middle of the night trying to escape. I took her to the vet and now we're a few weeks into weaning her onto doggie prozac (flouxetine). It seems like it's helping some and she's at least not being destructive at night even if she makes a racket whining and trying to get into inaccessible places. I'm really hoping that when we wean her onto a higher dose it helps her calm down and be happier, though. She shouldn't have to be nervous about anything, poor thing.

Do you let her sleep in your room?

I bought a white noise machine, not for my dog but it has reduced his barking by about 90%. It's half term and he has been barking at noisy kids all week and driving me insane. The industrial fan noise works perfectly, he was so zoned out(or zoned in?) he didn't even notice the noisy bleeping bin van doing the collection - that is a first.

Widget forfeited evening meals twice last week because he counter-surfed a) a pack of unopened pitta breads on one afternoon and b) an entire brioche loaf a few days later. Twat.

It pisses me off when I've cooked extra veg to mix with his dog food and he pays me back by emptying the contents of the bin all over the floor looking for bits of stale pizza and greedily plotting to steal my food the second my back is turned. He's basically a fucking arsehole.

Mine tried to eat a tampon today (fresh, not used!!) He's really more a himbo than an asshole

Somehow we've had two dogs in a row where you could leave like a whole pizza on a coffee table and walk away and they would only stare longingly at it, not go eat it immediately.

The first one definitely got into some trouble in his early years, though. He was a Great Dane and ate entire plastic bags of food, including the bags. He also got into a bag of uncooked rice once with very unpleasant results.

our girl will not touch food she knows/understands to be destined for humans and will leave food if told to

but if she gets to something on the ground before the chance to order her against, she will devour absolutely anything, as several instances of three day constipation and one almost fatal stuffed toy event have proven

those vacuum cleaner dogs are a flippin' menace! i had to pry a rotten fish chunk out of a dog's gullet one time, getting stabbed under the fingernails by fish bones in the process. you'd think i'd at least gain some zombie werefish powers but no, all i got was a lousy infection (and what kind of person is just strewing fish parts through the park like johnny fishyseed, that is extremely uncouth)

and there are dogs who eat rocks!?

we are once again contemplating placing our younger dog back in a rescue.

while he is a silly lovebug and very affectionate towards all people, none of the training we have done has helped with his dog aggression. this means, in essence, that we cannot bring him anywhere— every time we leave the house, we have to check around to make sure there aren’t any dogs within a block or two. we cannot travel for more than a day or two without placing him in expensive dog boarding, and when we do travel with him, we need to bring a portable crate and tons of dog sleep aids because he will growl at every sound if we stay in a motel.

he is also strong enough that when he pulls, he has started hurting me— i am an active 39 year old, athletic and “jacked” even, and this motherfucker has really done a number on my shoulders.

weighing the positives against the negatives is just becoming more stark.

we also initially got him because we wanted our older pitbull type dog to have a friend— but now he is her only friend, because we can’t meet other dogs due to his aggression.

that's so sad.

have you seen a behaviourist at all? we did for our dog's aggression issues with mixed results but i do know other people for who it has been a game changer. we were also lucky our pet insurance covered most of it.

i'm so sorry, table, that's really hard. wish there were some surefire fix for traumatized dogs (and animals, and people), especially when there's so much love in them that gets short circuited by that fear response

sorry to hear that table, I can sort of relate, I hope it works out for you and the doggo.

it makes my doggo problems seem as trivial as they are, also wish you + the doggy gl, table.

yesterday my dog found a bone in the park. I was furious that there was a bone in the park - like what kind of scruffy bastard discards a steak bone in the park. Once he gets a bone I have to cut the walk short because there is no way he is going to relinquish that bone and he will growl at anyone who approaches while it is clamped in his gob. Which makes tying him outside the onestop while I get an ice cream milkshake not really an option and he becomes so hyper focussed on guarding his bone, the walk is effectively finished for him. I had to drop him back at home and venture back out again, after reminding him that he is not a vgb, he is in fact a bit of an arsehole!

I am fortunate that any bone Widget grabs in the park can be prised from his mouth in seconds, because he won’t listen to ‘drop it’. At this point I don’t even break stride during a removal. But this does mean that he can’t go off lead in our local garden squares, because they are full of people with picnics/lunches, who either litter or throw away huge amounts of food, which crows, foxes and gulls pilfer from the bins and wind up strewn across the park. Or there are bread morons leaving crusts for birds, who can’t read the many signs forbidding it.

We need to work on his selective reactivity on lead: there are a few local dogs he HATES and two of these dogs are owned by complete schmucks who think leads are for other dogs, or that it’s OK to follow us when we are obviously trying to avoid an interaction.

"Or there are bread morons leaving crusts for birds"

disgusting savages, I have nothing but contempt for these idiots.

"I am fortunate that any bone Widget grabs in the park can be prised from his mouth in seconds"

used to be able to do this, but now I could lose fingers - I guess he has won, but I'll get the last laugh when I finally drop him off to vets for castration. It has taken me way too long to make this decision but it is DEFINITELY happening now.

that pair of swinging troublemakers are history!