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This weekend there was a big fair on at the next village to ours. We thought we'd take Squidge along to see the sights. It's mainly stalls of tat lining the streets, plus some tents for displaying different animals (last time, we saw some stunning golden pheasants), a few demonstrations and...

I saw this video earlier. It's in French with English subtitles, but I think it really describes well how a harness should fit an individual dog in such a way that it doesn't impede the dog's movement, which we all know is very important for joint health.

Willow and Shadow had a vet appointment this morning for some blood tests. It’s always a bit of a worry because Willow is still afraid of travelling in the car, and they’re both stressed out in town. I had to carry W to the car because she knew something was afoot so didn’t want to leave the...

Two years today. My little Squidglington! How did that happen? She’s a total monster and angel rolled into one beautiful package. Love this lady with all my heart. The cake will have to wait until Daddy gets back at the weekend, but she had roast pork this morning, favourite!

I saw this today. I find the differences between "chocolate" and "not chocolate" dogs to be interesting/worrying. eg, median longevity for "not chocolate" is 12.1 years, but for chocolate, this falls to 10.7 years (obviously over a much smaller sample size). Labrador retrievers under primary...

One thing I did right with Squidge was teaching her to walk nicely from the start. That said, she’s a normal slow-maturing lunatic who gets very little socialisation because of where we are. The last five weekends, we have taken her into a neighbouring town, working towards her being able to...

Wilson, Squidge’s daddy, just earned his third CC today, meaning he is now officially a Show Champion! That’s so exciting! Such a handsome boy :inlove:

This is a game that's great for getting some zip into your recall. The idea is straightforward. We start off, as ever, in a low distraction environment. You want the ground to be relatively flat, because you'll be bowling treats and you don't want them to get lost in long grass. Count out ten...

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this before :giggl: but Shadow is a dick. Yesterday, I was sat on the floor next to the bed, stroking Willow as a storm passed overhead. He could have moved a couple of feet to the side and got on the bed normally, but no, he attempted an epic leap over us...

I was pondering on this on my walk this evening. We often use the words "reward" and "reinforcement" interchangeably, but that's not necessarily accurate. Case in point: I've mentioned elsewhere that Shadow is very scent-driven at the moment, and is ranging farther than I'd like. He gets a bit...

I briefly mentioned this before, but it happened again today. It's really weird: Shadow is terrified of beef scalp chews! I think I know why; on our recent diabolical journey to the UK when the van broke down, I popped one in each dog's crate partway through the journey. He was the only one who...

I'm not entirely sure how I came to have this in my Audible library except that it says on there that it's by "Kim Brophy/Raymond Coppinger" so I probably got overexcited when I was exhaustion-buying recently. It's a bit like shopping when drunk; you have no recollection of it until you fall...

Weirdly, I’ve never taught my lot to stand on cue. It’s just not something I’ve ever needed. Squidge has a “stand still” stacking cue from conformation but she has no sit-to-stand. I’m taking a cooperative care class that starts on 1st October and thought that a stand would be useful for that...

I took Shadow into town this morning. I'm taking him "on the road" as far as our settling work is concerned, and this was our first outing to a car park to practice. Most shops are closed here on Sundays, so it was empty - although just as we rocked up, a father and his two young daughters also...

I had a bit of a scare with Ginny last night. She was laying on the tiles at the top of the stairs then got up to come over to me, but as she walked it was obvious she was in a lot of pain and she was crying. She stopped and looked pathetic as I rushed over and down to her level. I held onto her...

I bought some of this to try out as training treats when I need something other than their regular home-made food pureed in a squeezy tube. The Fish4Dogs food I have been using is really too big for lots of things, so thought I'd give this a go. Alpha Spirit The Only One Fish The dogs all go...

Shadow has had two lots of Suprelorin and the second one has definitely worn off now. I remember @Beanwood saying how Benson had a big surge in testosterone when he came off of it, and Shadow is going through the same thing. He is sniffing everything at the moment, has gone completely deaf and...

Share your rubbish dog jokes here! They can be as funny as you like - or, in this case, not at all. Sorry, I just saw this on FB and had to share. For Sale: Golden Retriever. Have had her 9 months, has yet to retrieve gold. Should have just bought metal detector

I've been thinking about this a bit recently, and wanted to bring it up here for discussion. The matching law states that if there is a choice between two behaviours, the relative proportion of responses matches the relative proportion of reinforcers that are earned by those behaviours. In...

I'm putting in a Zooplus order and I needed to get my order over £100 so I can get free shipping to Spain (yes, I know there's a Spanish site, but it's cheaper to buy in the UK, and I can only pay by bank transfer on the Spanish site!). So I was browsing round to see if there was anything that...