Not Nice
Yesterday I was out with our dog when I noticed another dog on the other side of the road. It was off its leash and appeared to have wondered into the road. The owners were a Chinese family, mother, father, and child in stroller. Unusual, I mused, you don’t see that many people of Chinese extraction with dogs.
Anyway, I continued, thinking for a moment that maybe a dog with a tendency to wander into the road should not be off its lead in a city. Oh well, it’s their dog, hopefully they know what they are doing, I hoped. Read more
Ron Howard’s Da Vinci Code Goes Down Well
This book certainly went down well with our 8 month old Manchester Terrier pup. I caught the little blighter demolishing the book this morning. He had stolen the tome from the bookcase. Only his reading skills are not all that strong (His is only 8 months old, after all) so the ripping story was, er, ripped.
I guess e-books are less vulnerable to this kind of attention!
Obviously the full effects of the dog’s recent castration have not yet fully kicked in. Apparently he will continue to produce male-hormones for the next two months or so, after which time, presumably, his tendency towards book destruction will diminish. For the moment though, he is still the mischievous pup he always was. Read more
The Unkindest Cut
Our peppy little Manchester Terrier puppy has been causing us a few problems recently. The other day he lunged at a child in a toy shop while I was looking at something with my son. I suspect that Atman, our dog, came within a hair’s breadth of biting the child. This was worrying. Then, on another occasion the pup escaped from our apartment and dashed upstairs where another dog lives.
The other dog’s owner saw our little terror and tried to grab him. Atman the nipper had a go at nipping her too.
Another slight problem, but pretty normal for a dog, is that he starts barking every time he hears someone passing our door, including in the depths of night.
In addition to these, er, behavioural problems, the little chap only has one testicle, and we are not sure if the other one is in there or does not exist. The vet has recommended that he be operated on to either find the missing ball, so to speak, or, chop the existing one off, citing the fact that single testicled dogs do not good fathers make. The emasculation of this little chap fair makes my eyes water. Poor little thing.
In fact this operation is worring me quite a bit. I don’t want the little fellows character to change too much, as I believe can happen after such surgery and I’m a little concerned that he is really only being subjected to this operation to calm him down a little and turn him into an animal more suited to city life. I know it’s not exactly a lobotomy, but in some ways it feels a little like it is.
The fateful day is almost upon us as he has been booked in for the op this coming Wednesday. And this surgical intervention does not come particularly cheap either at 400 Euros.
I think it may be fair to say that male Manchester Terriers are perhaps a little too lively for city life and would be much more at home in a house with a nice rambling garden, which we don’t have, alas.
Hopefully my most prolific commenter and fellow dog owner Gege’ Bau may have some advice to offer before the pup is subjected to his fate.
Ok, so I chatted with the vet
On the way back from picking up a few things from the supermarket, I decided to drop in at the vets and have a word about giving our pup raw meat. At first, the vet said it is not good, basically because dogs are no longer wild animals and there is potentially dangerous bacteria in raw meat that domesticated dogs cannot handle. But when I pointed out many humans in Italy eat raw meat, that dogs sniff dog excrement, and that I had a dog that ate wild rabbits etc to no ill effect, he changed his tune a wee bit.
He still maintained that the mass produced dried dog foods are specially studied and prepared to provide our four legged friends with a balanced diet blah blah, but seemed to concede that there is nothing that definately states that giving dogs raw meat can do them harm, although he seemed to think that there might be long term negative effects. What these effects may be, we did not go into. He did say that humans should not eat raw meat, because it can be dangerous for them. So no more raw sausages, carpaccio, and uncooked mince for us bipeds.
My other half, though, remains unconvinced despite my arguments, and thinks that giving our dog raw meat will not do him any good, even though I said that I only wanted to supplement his diet, which means one meal a day or so of raw meat and other meals using the dried dog food. My opinion is that the meat will reduce the possibility that our town living dog will end up with mysterious allergies and the other signs of poor health that come from living in our pollution ridden city. Alas, other half does not want to hear about the positive results of American and Swedish research into the effects of what are oft called BARF type diets.
What will I do? I shall go against the grain, even if the direction in which the grain runs is not too clear, and continue to feed our pup some good old raw meat. If this causes problems, and I really do not think it will, I will be happy to admit that I was wrong.
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