ANXIETY - SEPERATION

A friend of mine recently had to have her dog put to sleep. I read somewhere that some people like to think that when their pet dies it goes over Rainbow bridge. Rainbow bridge leads to a meadow where your pet dog plays, waiting for the day when you join it and together you both go to heaven. I can see how that can be comforting to know that you join up again in the after life with your faithful friend who has no doubt been a part of your life for between 10 or 20 years. My Spice was 19 years young when her time ran out. That is a fair old age for a dog to live. What is more remakable was that she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer when she was 9 or 10 and the vet told us at the time that she had maybe 12 months left to live. Spice was a great dog, a medium sized brindle coloured cross breed. Extremely intelligent. Back whe we just got her from a rescue home, I knew very little about canine behavior or obedience training. But she managed to teach me enough for us to form a good relationship. I never understood her in the same way as I understand the dogs I have now. And that was because I never knew anything about how dogs think. So looking back, and knowing what I know now I have to marvel at how she was able to get me to understand her. They say in all the text books I read that dogs dont have emotions like people, and that we shouldnt try to give them associate them with human traits. I am trying to sell my house at this time and I'm reminded of the only time before when we were selling our house. Same thing happened we had the house up for sale for months, with viewer after viewer trudging through our flat with not one taker. This lasted for six months, it was the most stressful time of my life. It was coming up to the summer holidays and still no takers. So we decided to take the house off the market whilst we went on holiday. Spice went into kennels for two weeks and off we went. The kennels she went to were really good and knew spice very well so she was happy to go there and usually ended up in the kennel owners house with her own dog for company. When we came back we imediately put the house back up for sale. My wife was pregnant with our first child and we had to move from the one bedroom flat to a house with more rooms and a garden for spice. The first week we put the house on the market we had a viewer on the Monday night. Along they came and seemed very interested. Next day the called and asked could they bring their parents to see the flat on the Thursday. Great a genuinely interested viewer. On the Thursday I came home from work as normal, however not normal was that I didnt take Spice out straight away. The thought was that I would wait till just before the viewer came and then I would take her out whilst my wife showed them round the flat. We lived above a newsagent and as luck would have it we had no milk. So I nipped downstairs telling Spice that she wasnt going out yet, amd I promised her I would take her out for a lovely long walk when the viewers came in about an hour. I shut the door and went downstairs. I was litterally only five minutes and when I came back up I opened the front door to the hallway and a foot wide strip of carpet had been torn from the front door all the way back to the wall. The viewers were due in 30 minutes. Now all the books will tell you this was not Spice saying `and thats for leaving me in here and not taking me out`. But it certainly felt like it. Dogs dont have human emotions, they dont hold grudges, they dont wait to get you back. Wouldnt life be a whole lot simpler if we as humans learned a thing or two from our canine friends. There would be less fighting over trivial matters. Bye for now.......

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

WHAT IS THE BEST DOG FOOD?

Are you aware of what it is your feeding your dog when you feed it branded dog food? The commercial production of canning meat and cereal food for dogs began in the 1930’s by the Chappel brothers. Since then a lot has changed and legislation has been introduced to regulate and provide rules and guidance to the industry to help them fulfill their obligations to make safe pet food. www.pfma.org According to the Pet Food Manufacturers Association the Pet Food Industry is “responsible, efficient and at the forefront of Technology.” The key statement in this article for me however is, “This means that it can minimize the use of resources whilst maximizing the safety standards.” If you look at the PFMA web site it is worth noting that it has many articles about Legislation, Sourcing of Raw Materials and Animal By Product Regulations. On the face of it the industry does seem to be a responsible industry. However the devil is in the detail and just like human foods there is good
Read more

ANOTHER DOG ATTACK

        Yet another child’s life lost as a result of a dog attack. The latest is a baby only days old, attacked in its home by a huge dog, an Alaskan Malamute. This breed was originally bred to pull sleds in the arctic region. The males can grow to just under 40 kilos. The breed are reputed to be fond of people and children making them ideal house dogs. They bond quickly with their owners are intelligent but can sometimes be difficult to train. They are great with children old enough to play with them. So what went wrong? Reading more into the story it turns out this particular dog was ‘acquired’ by it’s owner from someone in a pub. The previous owner was going to have it put down, and the new owner was a dog lover and no doubt thought he was doing the right thing by saving it from being put to sleep. There is no information on why the previous owner was considering having it put down. Was it being ill-treated ? Had it already bitten? Did the new owner get a full history of the animal
Read more

PREPERATION FOR A NEW ARRIVAL

Image
Our house has been blessed with a new arrival in the last few months. My new grandson has moved in just as he’s starting to move around. Its been some 20 odd years since our house had a wee one crawling around the floor, getting into everything, picking things up etc. We had let our house become child unfriendly. Despite knowing he was coming we hadn't really prepared properly. So I was intrigued when an article appeared in the August issue of Your Dog about how owners go about preparing, selecting and bringing in a new puppy to their house. The emphasis of the article was more related to what research owners put in prior to getting a puppy. the article was written based on research carried out by Adaptil - The pheromone calming product range for dogs. The research took the form of a survey of 2000 puppy owners and some of the questions and answers were very interesting. 1 in 10 people thought that getting a new puppy was just like raising a child. 59% admitted that they wer
Read more