The Labraventures of Carbón, Spanish (ex-) foster dog extraordinaire
- Thread starter Emily_Babbelhund
- Start date
Hello from me and Rory x
- Location
- Malvern Worcestershire
Thanks @snowbunny and @Emily_Babbelhund for the Leish explanation. Can humans get it? And if so, is it a life-time of medication for them, too?
@Emily_Babbelhund my condolences to you for Brogan and Duncan. I can see how everything—especially at this time of year—can be just a bit too much for any ordinary person to handle.
@Emily_Babbelhund my condolences to you for Brogan and Duncan. I can see how everything—especially at this time of year—can be just a bit too much for any ordinary person to handle.
- Location
- Andorra and Spain
Yes, humans can get it, if they are bitten by infected sandflies. It’s very similar in humans, can cause death in extreme cases if left untreated, but that’s very rare.
What I don’t understand is that it’s curable in humans, but generally assumed not to be in dogs. I don’t get it
What I don’t understand is that it’s curable in humans, but generally assumed not to be in dogs. I don’t get it
- Location
- Wellington, NZ
Oh Emily, no wonder this is the worst time of year for you. Please practice lots of self care to get you through - Christmas markets, dinner with friends, a crazy fun movie, good cake - whatever you need. I've got my fingers crossed Carbon, if he's just showing antibodies then yay, but if he does indeed have leish then you'll just keep on managing it like you have been. He's a very lucky doggy!
And WELCOME @RosieC and Curly from me and Xena down in Wellington, NZ. I'm glad you finally made it!
And WELCOME @RosieC and Curly from me and Xena down in Wellington, NZ. I'm glad you finally made it!
- Location
- Herefordshire, UK
- Location
- Argyll & Bute, Scotland
@RosieC welcome from us, Hattie 11 years and rescue boy Charlie 8 years. Good to have you with us. xx
@Emily_Babbelhund
xx
@Emily_Babbelhund
xx
- Location
- Andorra and Spain
Emily_Babbelhund
Mama Red HOT Pepper
- Location
- Regensburg, Germany
Hola toooodooos! It is I, your favourite Spanish gentleman dog. I have been quiet a long time and now today I have no - nada! - time to talk. Foster lady, she is not fair to me at all. First I take such good care of her when she is sick, then today she makes me run all over town giving out my special Christmas gifts.
First we went to my favourite Leshymaneesis vet lady today and I delivered chocolates and a very special - and if I may say so 'guapo' - plastic cup of my wee! Isn't that funny? Foster lady held a cup under my belly for my morning five minute wee and then we took it to the vet lady. Vet lady looked very happy to get it - more than the chocolates which are muy estupidos because dogs can't eat those anyway - and foster lady said it was a special Christmas gift from Carbon. Maybe I will give all my friends this special gift for Christmases to come? I have lots of wee and if it makes people happy...que bien! What better than to share the amor, no?
After that we visited my favourite antique store man who gives me treats every day. He got chocolates - again...why? - but sadly no wee. Then we went to visit my friends at the parking garage and they got a whole bag of yummy stuff. I thought foster lady should have kept some of that for me, but she says no, I can get other treats. The parking garage men like me a lot and always say they want me to work in the office with them. I think I would make a good office dog - I could guard that bag of treats, for one thing. Guard it in my TUMMY, claro que si!
All this made foster lady very tired, so I told her we should take a siesta. Spanish dogs know best about the siesta and we do it very well:
Now my special chihuahua friend Fine is coming with her human and we are all getting in our blue car and going to a Christmas market together. It is a special one in a town not here. Who knows why it is special - maybe they have special dog treats there? Maybe I will get to share more of my special Christmas wee? I do not know, but I will report back.
Claro que si, it will be after I have another siesta because a Spanish dog has priorities...but I WILL report back. Hasta luego!
First we went to my favourite Leshymaneesis vet lady today and I delivered chocolates and a very special - and if I may say so 'guapo' - plastic cup of my wee! Isn't that funny? Foster lady held a cup under my belly for my morning five minute wee and then we took it to the vet lady. Vet lady looked very happy to get it - more than the chocolates which are muy estupidos because dogs can't eat those anyway - and foster lady said it was a special Christmas gift from Carbon. Maybe I will give all my friends this special gift for Christmases to come? I have lots of wee and if it makes people happy...que bien! What better than to share the amor, no?
After that we visited my favourite antique store man who gives me treats every day. He got chocolates - again...why? - but sadly no wee. Then we went to visit my friends at the parking garage and they got a whole bag of yummy stuff. I thought foster lady should have kept some of that for me, but she says no, I can get other treats. The parking garage men like me a lot and always say they want me to work in the office with them. I think I would make a good office dog - I could guard that bag of treats, for one thing. Guard it in my TUMMY, claro que si!
All this made foster lady very tired, so I told her we should take a siesta. Spanish dogs know best about the siesta and we do it very well:
Now my special chihuahua friend Fine is coming with her human and we are all getting in our blue car and going to a Christmas market together. It is a special one in a town not here. Who knows why it is special - maybe they have special dog treats there? Maybe I will get to share more of my special Christmas wee? I do not know, but I will report back.
Claro que si, it will be after I have another siesta because a Spanish dog has priorities...but I WILL report back. Hasta luego!
- Location
- Kinsale, Ireland
Thank you for the lovely warm welcome everyone. Curly and I look forward to getting to know everyone. X
Emily_Babbelhund
Mama Red HOT Pepper
- Location
- Regensburg, Germany
Hola todooos! Foster lady says I should say a big "Feliz Navidad" to all of you, even if I don't really know what that means. I know what Christmas markets are, though, because there are so many here in Germany. Christmas markets are where lots and lots of humans get together in one place and drop food on the ground. Yum, yum! Que rico!
When I last talked to you all, we were about to go to a special Christmas market. But you know what happened? Rain from above! Aye, aye, aye! As it turns out, Fine and her human Nadine also do not like rain from above. And even in my beautiful new @SwampDonkey purple raincoat, I did not want to walk in the rain. Two steps and I told foster lady, "I need a cookie to suffer like this!". Then she would give me a cookie and I would walk two more steps and forget the first cookie and say - again - "I need a cookie to suffer like this!".
Foster lady just shook her head and said, "Carbon, you are full of beans!"
What does this mean, mis amigos, "full of beans"?
So between my suffering and Nadine and Fine also complaining about the wet from above, foster lady made what she calls an "executive decision" (this means she puts on her own grumpy pantalones and gets bossy) and said, "We\re going to my favorite restaurant instead!"
At first I was oh so feliz, because this restaurant smelled soooo deleeecious. And do you know what, they bring dog water bowls on a silver platter along with beer for humans! There were lots of other dogs in the restaurant, too, because I could hear them 'woof' every once in a while, plus I could see the servers bring out the silver trays with dog bowls. What a great place!
Of course Fine got more attention than yours truly, the handsomest guapo-est Spanish gentleman dog. Really, there is no accounting for taste. But I think it is because Fine was in a chair in her backpack.
Vale, that IS pretty cute. It is hard to fight the cute that that is, no?
But even from my spot on the floor, I could see all around...and SMELL all around. Dinner, here we come!
And then the dinner did come. Aye, aye, aye. Bavarian food is ALL meat. Do you see those sausages just for ME?
Except that they weren't! No, no, no! Because Fine was sitting right next to her human, she got all the food! None for me! Fine's human is all smiles, but she gave me NO FOOD.
Evil, I tell you, diablo.
So I had to get up a couple times and try to convince the table next to ours that I was a poor abused dog who never ate a day in my life. I got some pets, but foster lady - horrible human that she is too - told the nice people not to feed me. Que horrible, que bruja! I do not love her anymore!
And Fine ate so much that she couldn't even sit up straight in her backpack anymore.
After our dinner in the restaurant - ha, ha, dinner for SOME but not ALL! - we had a walk through the old town to take Fine and her human home. I did get lots of special treats from foster lady and she told me how guapo and inteligente I am, so I forgave her a little. And de verdad, the truth is that she fed me a very big tasty dinner BEFORE we went out to the restaurant, so MAYBE I wasn't exactly starving.
Still, next time I want my own backpack so that I can sit in a chair and be hand fed too. Maybe for Christmas I will ask Santa Claus if Fine's human can adopt ME. She seems much more reasonable about food than foster lady.
Que? What? What was that?
Oh, vale... foster lady tells me that Santa Claus has already come today and that I'll just have to stay here with her instead of going to live with Fine. But foster lady DID give me lots of special treats today and I had a two hour walk with some good dog friends and even a swim in the river. So I guess I will just stick it out with foster lady for a leeeetle while longer. I do think she is trainable, so vamos a ver, let's see how it goes!
Un grande grande feliz navidad to all my Labrador friends and dog friends and human friends and even cat friends like baby Stoli. I hope you had a big dinner like I did and got all the presents you wanted!
When I last talked to you all, we were about to go to a special Christmas market. But you know what happened? Rain from above! Aye, aye, aye! As it turns out, Fine and her human Nadine also do not like rain from above. And even in my beautiful new @SwampDonkey purple raincoat, I did not want to walk in the rain. Two steps and I told foster lady, "I need a cookie to suffer like this!". Then she would give me a cookie and I would walk two more steps and forget the first cookie and say - again - "I need a cookie to suffer like this!".
Foster lady just shook her head and said, "Carbon, you are full of beans!"
What does this mean, mis amigos, "full of beans"?
So between my suffering and Nadine and Fine also complaining about the wet from above, foster lady made what she calls an "executive decision" (this means she puts on her own grumpy pantalones and gets bossy) and said, "We\re going to my favorite restaurant instead!"
At first I was oh so feliz, because this restaurant smelled soooo deleeecious. And do you know what, they bring dog water bowls on a silver platter along with beer for humans! There were lots of other dogs in the restaurant, too, because I could hear them 'woof' every once in a while, plus I could see the servers bring out the silver trays with dog bowls. What a great place!
Of course Fine got more attention than yours truly, the handsomest guapo-est Spanish gentleman dog. Really, there is no accounting for taste. But I think it is because Fine was in a chair in her backpack.
Vale, that IS pretty cute. It is hard to fight the cute that that is, no?
But even from my spot on the floor, I could see all around...and SMELL all around. Dinner, here we come!
And then the dinner did come. Aye, aye, aye. Bavarian food is ALL meat. Do you see those sausages just for ME?
Except that they weren't! No, no, no! Because Fine was sitting right next to her human, she got all the food! None for me! Fine's human is all smiles, but she gave me NO FOOD.
Evil, I tell you, diablo.
So I had to get up a couple times and try to convince the table next to ours that I was a poor abused dog who never ate a day in my life. I got some pets, but foster lady - horrible human that she is too - told the nice people not to feed me. Que horrible, que bruja! I do not love her anymore!
And Fine ate so much that she couldn't even sit up straight in her backpack anymore.
After our dinner in the restaurant - ha, ha, dinner for SOME but not ALL! - we had a walk through the old town to take Fine and her human home. I did get lots of special treats from foster lady and she told me how guapo and inteligente I am, so I forgave her a little. And de verdad, the truth is that she fed me a very big tasty dinner BEFORE we went out to the restaurant, so MAYBE I wasn't exactly starving.
Still, next time I want my own backpack so that I can sit in a chair and be hand fed too. Maybe for Christmas I will ask Santa Claus if Fine's human can adopt ME. She seems much more reasonable about food than foster lady.
Que? What? What was that?
Oh, vale... foster lady tells me that Santa Claus has already come today and that I'll just have to stay here with her instead of going to live with Fine. But foster lady DID give me lots of special treats today and I had a two hour walk with some good dog friends and even a swim in the river. So I guess I will just stick it out with foster lady for a leeeetle while longer. I do think she is trainable, so vamos a ver, let's see how it goes!
Un grande grande feliz navidad to all my Labrador friends and dog friends and human friends and even cat friends like baby Stoli. I hope you had a big dinner like I did and got all the presents you wanted!
- Location
- Herefordshire, UK
Hilarious 
Fine, oh my word !!
Emily_Babbelhund
Mama Red HOT Pepper
- Location
- Regensburg, Germany
Oh no! Don't give him any ideas!
Emily_Babbelhund
Mama Red HOT Pepper
- Location
- Regensburg, Germany
We had an interesting Boxing Day/St Stephen's (the Irish name for the day learned thanks to @RosieC ). I got a call at 8am from my father letting me know his girlfriend's daughter and granddaughter had flown into Munich yesterday and were trying to get ahold of me. That's what I get for ignoring my Whatsapp for one day - surprise visitors!
The rest of the morning became a mad dash to try to sort out a visit, with it being 3pm before it finally got sorted and I was meeting them at the train station. I managed a nice walk beforehand with Carbon, but he was in a bit of Grumpypantalones mood and went for a couple dogs on the street. It's all just noise and bluster, but we simply can't have him doing that and just when I think he's conquered it, we have a 'back to square zero day'. Grrr!
Also I'm honestly starting to think that my mood bleeds out to him and he was grumpy because I was grumpy. That's a thing, right?
And not grumpy because I didn't want surprise visitors, just because it seemed like I spent most of our first sunny day in two weeks texting and trying to figure out what my visitors wanted to do.
Anyway, we got to the train station a bit early and low and behold, not nearly a soul was there. That NEVER happens. And I thought, "Well, no one is here and there is a perfectly good escalator. Maybe it's the day Carbon learns to ride an escalator!"
So with plenty of cookies in my pocket - always - I marched us up to the escalator and hopped on. Carbon's reaction was "Whoa!" but also "Hey, I want that cookie!" Unsurprisingly for my black hole bottomless pit Labrador boy, greed for the cookie won out. All four feet were safely on the escalator and he was riding like a pro! I helped him with the dismount - that's the most dangerous bit - and essentially 'jumped' for him using his harness, but he'll learn to jump for himself as he does it more.
My visitors got the patented tour of Regensburg plus Bavarian brewery dinner and are now back on a train to Munich. Carbon got two other practice tours on the escalator - up only for now - and by the third try was riding cool as a cucumber.
Now that he's getting the hang of it, we'll try it in different locations - both the department store and drug store have good escalators - and eventually brave the down direction. This summer I couldn't even get him within 3 meters of an escalator, so I'm very proud of my very brave Spanish gentleman dog. Now if we can just conquer the grumbly business... for both of us!
The rest of the morning became a mad dash to try to sort out a visit, with it being 3pm before it finally got sorted and I was meeting them at the train station. I managed a nice walk beforehand with Carbon, but he was in a bit of Grumpypantalones mood and went for a couple dogs on the street. It's all just noise and bluster, but we simply can't have him doing that and just when I think he's conquered it, we have a 'back to square zero day'. Grrr!
Also I'm honestly starting to think that my mood bleeds out to him and he was grumpy because I was grumpy. That's a thing, right?
And not grumpy because I didn't want surprise visitors, just because it seemed like I spent most of our first sunny day in two weeks texting and trying to figure out what my visitors wanted to do. Anyway, we got to the train station a bit early and low and behold, not nearly a soul was there. That NEVER happens. And I thought, "Well, no one is here and there is a perfectly good escalator. Maybe it's the day Carbon learns to ride an escalator!"
So with plenty of cookies in my pocket - always - I marched us up to the escalator and hopped on. Carbon's reaction was "Whoa!" but also "Hey, I want that cookie!" Unsurprisingly for my black hole bottomless pit Labrador boy, greed for the cookie won out. All four feet were safely on the escalator and he was riding like a pro! I helped him with the dismount - that's the most dangerous bit - and essentially 'jumped' for him using his harness, but he'll learn to jump for himself as he does it more.
My visitors got the patented tour of Regensburg plus Bavarian brewery dinner and are now back on a train to Munich. Carbon got two other practice tours on the escalator - up only for now - and by the third try was riding cool as a cucumber.
Now that he's getting the hang of it, we'll try it in different locations - both the department store and drug store have good escalators - and eventually brave the down direction. This summer I couldn't even get him within 3 meters of an escalator, so I'm very proud of my very brave Spanish gentleman dog. Now if we can just conquer the grumbly business... for both of us!
Well done, Carbon! Dogs aren’t allowed on escalators here either, unless assistance dogs are exempt from that?
I think it’s highly likely that Carbon picked up on your mood and felt a bit unsettled. It doesn’t sound like a very relaxing Boxing Day morning! He made up for it in the afternoon, though!
I think it’s highly likely that Carbon picked up on your mood and felt a bit unsettled. It doesn’t sound like a very relaxing Boxing Day morning! He made up for it in the afternoon, though!