Ice222

If you really do decide on raw, with frozen food there's k9 Naturals, Woofies, and Raw Essentuals and Jimbos that I know of off the top of my head. K9 Naturals also makes freeze dried raw which is pretty handy. The bag says you're meant to rehydrate it and feed it as a meal, but I used them as training treats and to stuff my dog's kong wobbler instead. It's expensive, but I've tried using grain free brands as treats, but even with great brands like Orijen, I notice a huge difference in his stool quality, raw just seems to work better. Personally, I tend to buy cheap chicken, duck, pork and organ cuts from Asian grocery places since chicken necks/feet/backs are about $5 per kg, vs. buying raw essential chicken necks for around $10 per kg. If they're deemed safe enough to sell to people to eat I don't see why dogs would have any problem. Otherwise I sometimes buy whole chicken and chop it into meal sized portions before freezing it, and that works out pretty cheap. Hearts and tongues are particularly good to buy too, since they count as a muscle meat, but is as cheap as the boney cuts. The main reason I still buy branded pre-made raw is for the more exotic meats, so that I can introduce greater variety to my dog's diet. I tend to get possum and rabbit from Raw Essentials and green tripe from k9 Naturals. I used to buy mackerel too and feed eggs as well, but my dog doesn't like them so instead I occasionally give him fish oil capsules, and he gets 1-2 quail eggs when I buy packs for myself to eat. I'm actually thinking of raising some quail for both eggs and meat. Eggs for me, meat for him, but first I'd have to actually build a quail pen. I've even bought the materials, just haven't done the building part.

Even though i think raw feeding is great, i think it would be hard for his dog to keep it down due to his condition.plus op had said they tried blended raw chicken etc and that didn't work. Last time i heard, he was getting a little better though, so if he'll well enough to keep it down. Raw might work well to help him get more weight and keep it on.

Just the stuff underneath the post with the pics. Also literally just started him to "point" like a hunting dog this evening. Since we just started, he doesn't get it yet, but he is standing still and letting me arrange his paw and tail into the correct pose (one arm up, tail pointing out), so I think he'll get it pretty quickly if I keep it up. That way I can teach him to point instead of lying down when he gets a scent he wants to go after and he'll be just like a mini doggie detective !

Does the proximity sensor work well? I wish it was feasible to GPS track dogs via their microchip. But all GPS dog tracking things I've seen are collar ones (ie easy for a dognapper to remove) or not sold/done in nz . Sherlock's just so friendly and tiny that it's incredibly easy for anyone to pick him up and run off with him while I pop in a dairy or to order takeaways on our walks. But I can't imagine not getting takeaways while on our walks either, since I normally hate walking and wouldn't go out for food if I have to go by myself, and I never have much food at home since fresh ingredients spoil too easily when I'm just feeding 1 person (myself) so I kinda need to get the food somehow. I've just seen so many "dog stolen" listings on TM that I can't help being a bit paranoid about doggie thieves.

I just read/watch vids on free sites like this (http://www.dogstardaily.com) for dog training tips. Most of them work really well. Only thing didn't work for me is the leash walking tips. I think it's because dachshunds were originally hunting dogs, who are independent, has a really good sniffer, a strong prey instinct to chase anything that moves (including leaves), that walking nicely on a leash is the hardest thing I've had to train. Even though I've been training him on every walk since I got him at 9 weeks, he's still easily distracted. It's just so hard to get/keep his attention when he's so short, stubborn when he doesn't want to do something, and hard to get his eye contact. As for not picking stuff up off the ground without permission. During good Friday this year, he picked up an agarpanthus seed pod while on his walk. I knew they were toxic so i told him to drop it (and he did straight away), the pod didn't look chewed, but even then he had a reaction to it. I had to take him to the after-hours vets, which cost me $200. His face had swelled up, and even after he seemed all better, the threw up several times over the next 5-6 days. So not only was it pricey, and scary, I also had to clean up a lot of doggie puke. That's why I'm trying so hard to get him not to pick things up without permission again. What amazes me is that I'm so super careful with him, and he's still had 2 chances where he could have died. One is the agapanthus, if I hadn't known it was toxic and just let him chew it instead of making him drop it, or god forbid EAT it, it most likely would've been fatal. Another is last week when he chewed a vacuum cleaner cord to pieces, thank god it was turned off at the wall. Honestly, considering that I'm borderline OCD in terms of being careful with him and still had a few near misses to death, I really wonder how regular dog owners manage to keep their dogs alive.

I completely agree that there should be unbiased information on both sides, and I feel like I wasn't able to make a informed choice just because all the information I got on neutering was biased. Mine being an indoor city dog, my only worry would be when he has off leash time in parks, which is still pretty low risk, since I'd assume owners with unneutered bitches would know better than to bring them to off-leash parks. He'd be 100% supervised at all other times, so I really could've gone without neutering him. Main consolation for me now is the reduced reg fees, he doesn't mark much (and never indoors) and that he's completely stopped trying to hump anything. Either way, I still love my dear doggie to bits. As my friends say, I may not be very good at taking care of myself (messy house, skipping meals, etc) but I do try my best to take perfect care of him. He gets raw meat twice a day, food stuffed toys when I'm out during the day, 2 walks a day and more if I am going out somewhere eg. a pet store where he's allowed to tag along. I don't exercise him because I HAVE to, but because I want to. When it rains, we play chase/keep-away in the house. The above pictures are over exposed since he likes to chill out in the sun, you can see he looks a lot more grown up, and has a much longer silkier coat than he used to. He's doing well with his tricks too, even though I've had less time to teach tricks since uni started. He currently knows: sit, lie down, hand, other hand, play dead (bang!), roll over, crawl, back (take a few steps backward), speak, stay, (go into his) crate, drop it, take it, leave it, calm (to stop moving when I pick him up), ok (release from command), toilet (prompt him to pee). Then there's tricks that he knows, but aren't so good at, like walking on a leash. He still pulls a lot on the way out, but is almost perfect on the way back. Fetching (ie. Bring), he only brings the toy about 20% of the time when I ask him to, but when he does bring it, he doesn't just run it over, I've taught him to bring it right up till it touches my hand before I tell him to drop it, so one day when he's better at it, he might drop it straight in my hand . Another one I'm teaching at the moment is for him to leave food on the ground when we go on walks, I've taught him to lie down if/when he finds food on walks so that I can check it before i decide if he can have it, and he does it about 20% of the time now. This trick also works well with my sniff command, I'm teaching him to sniff for stuff when I give the command, whether it's food, or a lamp post that's been marked by other dogs, so I've been chucking food on our walk route, telling him to sniff for it, then lying down next to it once he finds it. I just wish I could teach him to 'point' the way hunting dogs do when they find a scent. Then he'd REALLY look the part (and fit his name). Essentially I'm focusing on behavioral training to correct or prevent bad behaviors rather than actual tricks now, and I'm training a tiny bit each day as part of his normal daily routine rather than actual training sessions. It's a lot slower, but puts it more in context for him, and context is so important to dogs (eg. finding food on a walk is quite different to not eating food on the floor when at home).

Indeed, what's done is done, even thought I kinda wish I didn't have him neutered now, but there's nothing I can do about it. All I wanted to do is do right by him, and I hate that I missed something like this when I did so much other research before getting him and deciding on how I wanted to raise him. I always grew up hearing through word of mouth that neutered pets live longer, have less health/behavioral problems and other such claims. Since I have never heard anything negative about neutering - only that it is encouraged - I didn't look too deeply into it before deciding to go through with it. I only looked at the top few results in googling "benefits of neutering a male dog" and thought it would be worth it. Although, I didn't find anything about them living longer, I only saw health and behavioral benefits and the only negative was the possibility of weight gain if you don't watch their intake. So I didn't know there were any other negatives to consider. As for raw feeding, bones haven't been a problem for my dog at all. When reading about raw feeding, it seems that all bones are fine as long as they are raw, even without fur/feathers. Even chicken bones are no problem. I used to watch him like a hawk when I first started him on raw, and I could see him chew through each piece thoroughly before swallowing. Never seemed to have any discomfort from eating bone, and nothing bone-like ever came out the other end so I assume he's had no trouble digesting them. Comparatively, I did try to use good grade kibbles (eg. Orijen) a few times as toy stuffers since you can't really do the same with actual raw meats. But I found that it would give him very squishy stool, or simply a larger volume of stool than he had on pure raw. His stool quality while on raw (and freeze dried raw as toy stuffers) was definitely firmer and less smelly, which I personally think is a good sign. It's pretty depressing feeling like I made a bad choice for him, especially since all I wanted was to do is what's best for him. He's all I really have to hang onto at the moment. I can't imagine how I would've gone through the last few months of loneliness without him, and I don't even feel like I can make it up to him. After getting dumped 10 days ago, I can't even say I've been a good doggie mummy lately. I've been so emo that I don't even make a good playmate for him, and now I feel like I owe him even more.

Honestly I had never heard of abnormal bone growth before, but had always heard that neutering has health and behavioral benefits and that it's the 'responsible thing to do' if you don't plan on breeding. My main reason for neutering is simpler than that though, I like to take him to off-leash parks and I can't trust him not to go around humping other dogs while there. Once he is older, and better trained with his recall, I plan to take him to a offleash park at least once a week (we go about once a month atm but he stays on leash mostly). Plus I wanted to join the Auckland Dachsund club so that he may meet and play with others of his own kind. Owners in clubs with their purebreed dogs may not appreciate me running around with a unneutered cross-breed male that's trying to hump their dogs. If I had heard anything about abnormal bone growth beforehand, I probably wouldn't have done it, since the risk would outweigh the benefits to me. But I don't believe that obesity is a problem - from what I found online and heard from our vets neutered dogs don't become obese without overfeeding. They just need less food. So as long as their intake is adjusted accordingly, there shouldn't be a problem with weight gain. I can update with some pics later, but I think he's looking pretty fit, so I'm not worried.

I have one I bought off trademe for my cat, it seems to work pretty at taking off loose fur, I always get a huge pile of fur after using it one her, only thing is that my cat hates it. She's fluffy but not a long furred cat though, so I don't know if it'll be effective for a dog like yours

Yea when I get these calls I try and waste their time as much as possible. Hey the more time they spend wasted on me, the less time they have to be scamming the more gullible people. As for antivirus, I've tried almost all the free ones, and never found them very good. Either too many pop-up messages, not enough protection, useless interface, or just plain slow. I'm currently using NOD32, honestly I can't really tell how good it is since no problems have come up, but since it seems to be used by both UoA and AUT, with many comps to protect, it's probably pretty darn good. The one I used before NOD32 is Quick Heal, apparently it's not well known because it was an Indian Antivirus, I don't know why people care so much about where it comes from, but it was the best I've used. It's really darn good at catching the "autorun" virus, even if I don't manually scan the drive. That virus had pretty much infected all our computers and USBs (since my dad didn't know about virus scanning) but Quick heal fixed it all. Only reason why I didn't get Quick Heal again this year is that the closest comp place to me didn't have it in stock. Note: Quick heal's full scan is not actually very fast, but the advantage is that you can tell it to shut off your comp once it's done, so you can run it before you go bed and it'll automatically shutdown when done to save power.

I had a female fighter jump too (must be something about those females), I thought she was dead, since she was completely still when I picked her up and covered in dust/fluff. I had been out all day so she could've been out of the tank for hours for all I know, but I saw the tiniest movement from her so I plopped her back in the tank. She lived a few months after that ordeal too before dying to some other illness.

Aww Mothra is such a cutie !

Anyone in Auckland got a gum tree in their yard and wouldn't mind having a few critters on them ?

Cute . I like border collies, damn clever dogs. Sometimes too clever even :sml2:.

By the way it's still alive, I intermittently hear flapping. I've also discovered 4 of what seem to be eggs. I found online that the eggs tend to hatch in 7-10 days, but have no idea what they eat. I don't know if they're considered a pest or not, since caterpillars eat leaves i assume. But if they're not considered too harmful, I'd love to let them hatch and move them somewhere with suitable food for them.

This one's 13.5cm. It's no longer reacting even when touched. Only know it's alive cause it's moved one of it's legs a little. Their feet have amazing grip tho. When it was standing on my hand earlier it felt like I had duct-tape on me

Weird, it's working now, guess i must have pressed it at the wrong time before :dunno:. Anyway SOPA does affect us, since even if we don't own a website, we still use a lot of the sites eg wiki. Anyway back on topic: mothy's still alive. I could hear it flapping around a few minutes back. I hope it does lays some eggs. Would love to see those caterpillars irl and I think these moths are awesome even though their exisitance seem kinda pointless how they just stop eating and die when the become adults :facepalm:

ESC didn't work for me, maybe cause I'm using chrome to browse? The stop button that looks a 'x' by the address bar works for me tho.

Just read the wiki of it (yes i know wiki is down, but you can cheat it by stopping the page before it loads the black screen) this one should be a female since it has thin antennas. I guess it's just on it's way out, I'll give it a nice quite place to die peacefully then. What a shame, such a beautiful moth .

Found this stunning moth while out on a walk with my pup half an hour ago. Poor thing doesn't seem to be able to fly, not sure what's wrong since I can't see any real wounds, only part may be where the body (thorax?) joins the abdomen. It is the biggest moth I've ever seen. I've put it in a paper bag in a dark cupboard for now, just hoping that'll help it calm down and rest, might put a little dish with a soaked paper towel to see if that might help it? Let me know if you have any ideas, all i know about moths is that they often fly at/around lights .

Bumblebees are pretty docile as long as you don't touch the nest, how come you were picking pieces up? I used to sit next to honeybee nests just watching them come and go with no probs, and they are generally more agressive than the bumblebees, but as soon as you spook one of them enough for them to attack you, then others will come too. They somehow sense the troubled bee and join in.

So he just got his last shot yesterday, vet said he's putting on weight well, and everything's looking good . I also took him on a play date at my friend's house to meet her 2 dogs. He started off apprehensive of the border collie (so much bigger than him!) and the Chihuahua mix never warmed up to him, but Sherlock became best buds with the collie . My friend and I were both surprised, since the collie hates the Chihuahua mix, we both expected her to think "omg not another small hyper thing", but it liked mine straight away. It was amazing to watch them play too, collies are already known to be pretty agile dogs but mine literally ran circles around her, doing torpedo spins and even jumping up to play bite at her neck :gigl:. Only thing is once the collie got tired, it started asking for human attention, and while she had her back turned, he started playing with her tail, then sniffing her tail/bum and progressing to trying to hump her :sml1:. 1st time I've seen him try hump anything, but just so hilarious, since the collie's so much bigger and didn't even notice a thing. Poor boy, that's probably the closest he'd get, since he'd be getting neutered in 2 months :gigl:. Anyway here are some updated pics. With him sleeping in his harness, him enjoying one of his Christmas presents, and giving me a confused look as I whistle at him. Last pic is of him looking dashing in his new blue collar and tag. "See, it's blue! I'm a boy!".

Haha looks like a lot of people utilized the boxing day sales to buy new phones. I was going to get a samsung galaxy ace, since I just wanted a cheap android so I can look stuff up off the net on the go, and have working GPS. Ended up getting an LG optimus black since I saw it for only $80 more than the ace (ie it was $399). It's really quite a bit better, lighter, slimmer, bigger screen, better screen, better video quality, faster processor, same specs for the camera but Optimus black has 2MP internal camera while ace has none and most importantly, I've read that optimus black will be getting ics, while ace most likely will not. Then again, LG is really bad at providing the actual updates. Optimus black is supposed to have gingerbread, but LG keeps putting off the release. Still a good phone regardless though, and I definitely prefer the bigger screen.

Aww he does look like an amazing dog. By the way, although it sounds quite rare, is it a condition that bruce developed or was it something he's always had? He looks so healthy in the photos that I would not have even though for a second that he is a dog troubled by such a condition.

That's fantastic news! So glad he's doing better. I hope he;ll just get better and better. Also, merry Christmas to both you and Bruce .