Tails from the Bark Side

Right. I haven't done a post about my amazing new diet yet but, basically, I'm not eating any grains and it's better for me. It's going to be better for dogs. No arguments there. Didz has got fussy since not living with Floyd, due to lack of competition I think - Floyd isn't going to steal it so he can afford to be a fussbag. I'd love to go back to somehow giving him higher-protein food before he hits his senior years. He will no longer eat bones and veg and all the lovely BARFy things both boys grew up on - they'd devour whole chickens (and bunnies - fur and all) in about a minute. Now he'll only take really easy-to-eat, smelly, flavoury meat. He prefers it cooked, of course, the awkward git. He'll eat scraps of raw meat when I'm cooking me some bacon, but he can't be arsed munching a bone. Weirdo. I bought him some huge venison bones and they were just wasted. :(

When we moved here we went back to the cheapest of the cheap complete foods for cost reasons. He hasn't suffered, but it's like a human living on nothing but biscuits every day. Junk food. There's so much crap in it and he didn't eat it with as much excitement as he does with 'wet' meats. At the moment I'm giving him tins of Chappie and/or those horrible stinky Webbox sausage things, which he loves - but dog meat contains so much unnecessary bulking cereals, sugar and of course, it's mostly water. He also has an oat-based working dog food, separately, so that is a lot of carbohydrate for one collie wally. His weight and his coat are in excellent condition, but his teeth aren't as white as they were when he was on a proper BARF diet, and he proper stinks. Fishy mingarrr.

So, we need to go back to proper meat. Most dog meat suppliers charge megabucks, require one to buy bulk, and/or don't supply my area. I don't have a big freezer, so I'd have to buy it weekly, which is fine, because I buy my own food weekly, and yay for walking round the market buying local fresh food, yay, yay. I don't currently do that, because of costs. But I will be better off from March (fully booked Mutts & Mops is fully booked!) and will hopefully be able to afford to have some posh organic habits. Lol. That's assuming local butchers and farmers are much cop, which they're not. If I go in ANY butchers or farm shop, here or in Southampton (tried them all over the years) and ask for bones, chicken necks, wings and any offal-y bits for dogs, they look at me like I'm insane, or they don't have any (?!), or they charge a damn fortune, or the market ones will say, 'I'll bring some next week for you' and never do. The fruit and veg man down Salisbury market didn't know what kale was, and the farmers that did have kale/any dark leaves at all looked at me like I was mental because I wanted to buy a shedload of it.

At the moment I get all of my food from the supermarket, £20-30 a week, which includes:

- One chicken/horse (cheap as poss, but I do try not to get 'omg cruel' ones);
- One beef/horse (cheapest and most manky);
- Bacon/horse;
- Things that aren't meat but could possibly still be horse.

So I would love to just add Didz's food to this weekly shop too, maybe feed him the same beef/horse that I eat, (the one I get is under £2 for 500g) but I'd have to buy about six a week instead of one, and there isn't really enough organ meat in them to provide enough vitamins for bad-ass muscley canine bodies. And I'd end up with so many plastic trays to throw away (dog food tins are easily recycled). So, maybe we should stick to dog food...? There's Type 1 (expensive and in annoying little plastic pouches), Type 2 (contains oats, rice, is in non-recyclable plastic and also expensive) and then of course there's the absolutely disgustingly anger-inducing uber-expensive grain-free kibbles that are just a gigantic con - just found one online that was £70 for a 15kg sack, which (hilariously) contained rice and beet pulp which is just as bad as wheat. That leaves the small frozen blocks of meat you can get from pet shops but I'd have to squeeze them in the freezer because they go manky in the fridge within a few days.

And then, getting more into things, there's the issue of what the meat we eat was fed on - if I'm avoiding cheap grains, why am I eating and giving my dog meat that's been fed on cheap grains? Which leads to -> I want to buy grass-fed free-range but it's so expensive. I wish I could afford to buy a weekly grass-fed meat box for the two of us. I think I worked out that it would be £150+ a month for me to eat like that, so I stuck to weekly Sainsbury's shops... buuut, when I add 'wet' dog food costs, that's easily another £45... maybe I could go for a Riverford solution that could feed both of us? Maybe I could become a valued customer and persuade them to give me lots of cheap, old offcuts and offal for His Doodliness?

Bah. Maybe for now I need to go and chat up the market meat man...

I thought I'd better carry on the rant over here. I'm so bleedin' tired of the negativity and taboo surrounding dogs in this country at the moment. Yes, I understand they can be a nuisance. They can attack people, they can interrupt your picnics, they can be noisy, they can disturb ground-nesting birds and of course the poo can be a problem. But you know what, litter is a problem, so are bike riders who think they are above slowing down when they zoom past another person, so are human scum with no regard for any other person's right to a life, let alone our rights to be able to walk through a park without being harassed...

Why do dogs need all these separate rules? Why not just take each case on its own merits, or lack of, and punish crap dog owners under all the other antisocial laws? All this anti-dog legislation does is turn people against dogs. It makes humans unnecessarily cautious, which means they react to dogs differently, which means dogs react to humans differently... 'Oh well, if the council's banning dogs from everywhere, they must be dangerous.' What happened to staffies (stigma = fear = status dogs = fear = accidents = stigma...) will happen with all breeds. Contempt breeds contempt.

When I was a kid, everyone had dogs. Our extended family had them, our friends; every other house had a dog barking away all day in the kitchen, left alone while the humans went to work and school. When my dad was little dogs used to roam the streets (just like cats are still allowed to do!) We wouldn't be here, as a society, if it wasn't for our partnership with dogs. How comes they're suddenly being ostracised? You can't have a dog if you work more than 4 hours a day. You can't have a dog if you live in the city. You can't have a dog if you can't keep it on the lead. You can't possibly rent any sort of property if you have a dog. No waaay. You can't have a dog if you live in a flat. Any flat. Negativity. Dogs a massive inconvenience for everybody, don't bother.

Then there's the unnecessary fear of fouling. Yes, I know it's not pleasant to step in dog poo. I remember stepping in it hundreds of times as a child, and it was disgusting and frustrating; we'd walk looking down at the pavement at all times, just in case. 'Mind the poo!' But it really isn't as dangerous as people seem to think. There was one or two cases of toxocariasis in young children years back, something of which there are 1-4 cases a year (and most of the time those cases occur in children who have been digging around in soil in the garden) and suddenly dogs aren't allowed on any beaches anymore, they're not allowed in shops, restaurants, parks, and HOW DARE you bring a dog into a children's play area?! What if you have children AND dogs? Oh no, that's taboo as well. When you have babies you're meant to get rid of your dog, aren't you?

I feel like I need to do more to get the message across. I'd love to maybe run some classes, a club for dog lovers or something; introduce dogs to children, and give them some true lessons about what dogs have done for us. As for the hygiene thing, I live with two male dogs, and have had TEN in my house, all together. Raw meat gets flung around the kitchen, the garden, there's been, let's just say, countless accidents in the house... there's been a few disagreements and incidents between the dogs, but I have never had so much as a dodgy tummy as a result of my life with dogs. The over-nannying uber-concern about dogs is ridiculous, and it will only breed a cynophobic generation of people who will probably end up banning them altogether.

So shut up.

My LJ experience is suddenly ten times busier.

lsheasby: why is the board so quiet? :s
thebarkside: 'cause I'm not there. :)

You'll like this one:



This is Raz. Raz had two kittens, and Eva had six. Razcat decided she didn't really want to be a mum any longer as she missed the single life, and so unfortunately rejected her babies.



This is Eva, who has plenty of space in her heart for all the unwanted kittles in the world. She let them join her own brood.



This is Didz's mum, Crazy Daisy Dog. Never one to enjoy being left out, she decided she wanted to help too. They are now the cleanest, most looked-after kittles in history:



Yep, she's actually started lactating too. Dog milk for all! We hope the kittens will grow up thinking they're dogs instead of cats, which would of course be best.

You know what, I really want to go see Faith No fucking More. There better be tickets left tomorrow. SO MANY DOGS. Amazing. I am going to have MONEY WOOHOO. I really, really, really want to go shopping and buy loads of things. I give up on trying to record music. The universe obviously doesn't want me to. Dentist later, omg. I don't reckon I'll be able to have the first half of my filling (£150) done today 'cause it's still a bit infected. SHAME. I want the sunshine back! littlefloyd's bum smells.

Boring, amirite? I have nothing else to report.

Went to a doggy show today, for our sins. After a heavy night I might add (more on that later). Took my boys and Max who's staying with us for a couple of weeks. I didn't know he'd be here so we didn't enter him, but I reckon he would've won. Gorgeous collie-flower.



You have no idea how long it takes to get these pictures. The bastards never sit still. I think I'm going to seriously start training my boys properly. Especially Floyd - he's a liability!






My Didz was 3rd place Best Crossbreed Dog. Floyd only got commended in his Purebreed class 'cause he's a rubbish schnauzer. His fur is clipped instead of stripped, he has patches of white hairs, he has a broken ear, wouldn't let the judge touch his beard and he kept sniffing the ground instead of standing stacked and looking pretty. I think he would do far better at agility than ringcraft, bless him. When I tug his lead impatiently and get him to stand up straight, he looks at me as if to say, "I'm a dog, not a car. I like RUNNING, not looking pretty, you dumbass."

Tam's old Deutscher Schäferhund has died at the grand old age of 12. Bless him.



Poor Saxon. He had a tumour that ruptured, and so he was put to sleep. I got a text from Tam on Monday and I cried lots. I've known him since he was a tiny pupple, when he and my dogs Pippa and Macca used to play together. One less good dog in the world. Run free, dude.

Yesterday I pet-taxi'd a couple and their dog Muttley to the vet, and it turned out that he'd had a stroke. If he's shown no sign of improvement by tomorrow, he has to go back and be put to sleep... and I'll have to take him. I've only known him for fifteen minutes but it still breaks my heart. Damn dogs. They say 'a dog is for life', but 12-14 years is just not long enough.

What a wonderful dog.

Albert the search & rescue schnauzer
Al's story

:)