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Archive for February, 2019

Happy birthday TLBDB

Posted in Behaviour, Dog training, Dogs, Uncategorized, tagged , , , on February 26, 2019| 1 Comment »

 

Little Bear on sofa with his teddy

Little Bear’s first blog picture in 2010

Wow! The Little Bear Dog Blog is (drumroll please) NINE years young!  How can that possibly be?  But yep, sure enough, my very first ‘Hello World’ post is dated 21 February 2010 which means Little Bear was just two and a half when I started. Happy belated birthday little blog!

While I’ve not been the most consistent blogger over the years, I love that so much of our journey has been recorded.  Living and loving reactive dogs is a massive challenge and human nature means that we’re great at remembering the bad stuff, but not so great at remembering the good things.

In the early days I was definitely on the quest for the ‘cure’ – the training method, diet, supplement, harness, magic talisman (I added that for effect, but I got really close to being tempted!), that would transform my highly strung super-sensitive nutcase into the chilled dog I had so wanted.

It took me a long time and a lot of learning to be okay with the fact that he would never be a ‘take-anywhere dog’, not because I’d ‘failed’ in some way in not finding the holy grail of dog behaviour modification or scrimped on his training hours or socialisation, but because that’s just not how he’s wired.

I certainly made plenty of mistakes along the way, but looking back, I think we’ve done okay.  Suzanne, a very dear friend of mine who, thanks to her own journey with her own super-reactive dog is now a brilliant trainer, joined us in the woods for a walk the other week with her chilled Cockapoo Barney.

Watching LB meet lots of new dogs (pre-vetted by me obviously), play in puddles, carry sticks and clown around with her lad, she gave us the highest compliment ever, “Wow, he’s just like a ‘normal dog’, she said.  Now THAT I’m going to remember. Well done Little Bear! x

 

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Little Bear with his pals 2019 

 

 

 

 

 

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Brexit – A dog’s tale

Posted in Dog ponderings, Dogs, tagged , , , , , on February 3, 2019| 3 Comments »

 

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‘Wotcha mean they may run out of biscuits?’ 

With just 54 days to Brexit, it’s still hard to believe how we got here. I had to drive to a client meeting on the morning of the referendum result and even though the traffic was much lighter than normal on the M25, everyone seemed to be crawling along as if in a shared daze of disbelief.

 

As John Humphrey wittered away on Radio Four, I mourned the freedom of movement that I’d not yet gotten around to enjoying and the dream of one day retiring to somewhere quaint and arty in Italy.

A dogs dinner 

But what then loomed largest in my mind was the fear of the utter bloody chaos to come. We’ve been braiding ourselves into the fabric of the EU for over forty years; that untangling ourselves without having to get the big scissors out and chop off a few limbs seemed to be a blindingly obvious reason why most people would vote to remain. Oh foolish fool that I am.

The dogs have taken it all in their stride of course. Bear doesn’t care for the heat so never fancied Italy anyway and Annie doesn’t like long car trips, but on the subject of interrupted supply chains they are far more animated.

Pet prepping 

And that’s why our garage is now like a pet shop. It’s also why we’ve got enough of their essential medicines squirrelled away for the next six months too. Next on the list is a nutritional supplement, just in case we have to resort to home cooked food – a contingency measure I dare say they’re crossing their paws for.

They also relaxed a bit more after I mastered a few batches of bake-your-own dog treats, though to be fair, the acceptance bar is pretty low as they even scoffed the ones I nuked to a near crisp.

But I’m not alone in my ‘prepare for the worst and hope for the best’ approach. When I joined the 48% Preppers Facebook group a few weeks ago there were 3,000 members – today there are close to 9,000 and looking after our fur babies if it all goes south is a hot topic.

While our two are somewhat mollified by my preparations, if asked, I’m sure they’d have just one word on the topic – ‘BrexShit’ – and I really couldn’t agree more.

On that note, I’m off to order them some new collar tags

 

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Thanks Growlees for the picture – please look out for my order!   

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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