Banjoman

What a sweetie!

OK, so when & why did you then get Paige? She's the second dog that TeriD needs to know about.

Baby enjoyed her last day with you and her friends and left on a good note. While hard, you know that you did the right thing for her and no hound can ask for more from the owner she loved. Run free Baby!

As always, you did the right thing for Henry and no houndie can ask for more from the humans he loved.

Even with my whippets I have told every neighbour with a cat that if it comes into my garden I cannot guarantee its safety. I do my best to ensure that any cat has fair warning before I open the back door but recently there have been a couple who seem to have a death wish, sitting under the Jasmine right outside the back door, waiting to catch the birds or the Field mice. In my daily newspaper recently there was a letter requesting greyhound owners to put a muzzle on their dog when letting it out into the garden 'cos somebody's cats had be caught and killed by some greyhounds. Whilst sorry to read about it I thought it was a bit cheeky considering the dogs were in their own garden!

My whippet was always tearing his one, (accidentally left on) dew claw and the nail would get torn off or injured about once a year. i suspect the quick will dry up and shrink back and the nail will come out. The main thing is to keep it clean and antibiotics should help with any risk of infection. I have used the Pawz on him for another injury but found that a plastic bag tied round the foot & leg sufficed for trips out into the garden. The Pawz are OK if there is a dressing on a wound but would be difficult and uncomfortable to put on an already sore foot.

Because I would not risk anything happening when out on a walk i keep a muzzle on Chancey whenever we are out unless i am in a part of the forest where it seems we are less likely to meet other dogs, but I carry the muzzle with me. My concern is that if Chancey caught and injured a cat or another dog, especially something small & fluffy, she would be considered a "Dangerous dog" and could be put down and I am not prepared to take that risk with her life. There is nowhere locally that is safe to let her off lead so she stays on all the time. She walks happily with 20+ greyhounds when we do a regular monthly sighthound walk but can still be excitable when meeting other dogs out in the forest, yodelling and leaping high in the air to go and play with them. I say "better safe than sorry" and keep her away unless she is quiet. My whippets have always played by chasing and biting the back of each other's neck but I can imagine the whippet you met could have been scared when a greyhound tried to do that!

While you make up your mind what to do, I would keep a muzzle on her while out walking, then if a small fluffy does come within reach she cannot 'chomp' on it, causing her to be called a "Dangerous dog" and getting into trouble. My Chancey lives minutes away from forest walks so stress from transport, noises etc. have never bothered her but she is still, after 18 months, on the alert for anything moving when we are walking around the quiet streets of my housing estate. I keep a muzzle on her to account for unexpected meetings with cats or small dogs. Out in the forest when she sees another dog she can become a screaming banshee, leaping straight up in the air, twisting in her collar, trying to get to the other dog. This morning I got her past a couple of dogs successfully by making her stand, with me hanging on tightly to both her martingale and tag collars, then we met a little brown terrier who always comes rushing up to us (we walk with friends most mornings). It was impossible to keep her quiet under those circumstances and I was hanging on to a bucking bronco of a greyhound until the owner of the terrier finally managed to catch her & pick her up. That is dangerous enough on a sandy path, I would hate to be coping with that on a busy pavement! Good luck with whatever you decide.

Mikey, run fasssst and freee....................... Chancey and Miss. "England" Carol.

Tin, i expect you feel as shocked by this sudden turn of events as I did with Banjo but you both know in your hearts that it was the kindest thing for Master, so in that way it makes the decision easier, I think. Run free Master. Miss. "England" Carol and Chancey.

Chancey still does this after eighteen months but will walk perfectly quietly when I take her out with other greyhounds / sighthounds on our monthly walk. During yesterday's walk she even ignored a little Yorkshire Terrier that ran off ahead of us, I was really pleased with her! She wants to meet the dog next door through the hedge but when they met outside the house she's a leaping screaming maniac again. She has never been growling or aggressive with other dogs but her jaws have snapped within the muzzle until the other dog has told her off, an older greyhound bitch as it happened, and then stood perfectly nicely until the other owner and I finished our conversation. I have not yet found any treat that is more interesting than another dog but I am gradually getting her to 'stand, stay' when we meet other dogs out walking in the forest. I believe she just wants to go and play with them but until she calms down around other breeds of dog she won't be allowed to greet them. (She has to wear a muzzle due to Pet Insurance Company conditions & I wouldn't trust her with small fluffies anyway!).

I would give her a really good day then ask the vet to come to the house and let her run with the wind. Why wait until she tells you she's had enough and cannot do this any more? Better to let her go with a happy day.

Chancey wasn't very happy about going out into the garden in the dark when I first had her. Even now at night she will more often than not just run out the back door, stand and look up the garden then run straight back in again. I imagined that was because when in kennels the dogs were shut up for the night & she wasn't used to being out loose in the dark. The second evening she was with me I took her out there a couple of times after she had whined & I thought she might need to go to the toilet but she didn't do anything, then within a couple of minutes I found her doing a wee in the hall. I took her straight out again and that was the only time since that I've found her doing anything indoors, she got the message that you did a wee outside even if I was on the end of the lead! As she came to me last January, when the weather was wet and windy & had blown down one of the fences, I had to take her out on the lead every time until the fence was replaced. Thankfully my neighbour repaired it after a couple of days - he didn't want to risk having a whippet & greyhound trying to catch their cat!

My whippet will eat cat poop, horse poop, other dogs' poop, rabbit poop, deer poop, in fact anything he can grab quick before I've realised what he is doing. So far the only stuff he leaves alone is his own and whatever dog he is living with, unlike a previous whippet who would eat his "brother's" poop only if I had fed him a meal of a certain grain based dried food. Brushing teeth & fresh breath biscuits help with personal issues!

I found that as Aida (Japanese Chin) aged & her senses deteriorated, especially her hearing, she would come and sit beside me on the settee, it seemed that as she couldn't hear me anywhere around, she needed to feel me beside her.

I think she is slowly improving, today we met a few other dogs & she was fairly quiet for a couple of them but if one is running around (whatever size) that just winds her up for the rest of the walk. Most of my walking is done in Forestry Commission land so the odds on seeing other dogs is quite high but I usually have space to take her to one side of the path. I have thought about a behaviourist but need a veterinary referral here and I'm still hoping we can work through it! If she was being aggressive to other dogs it would be more important but at the moment she just needs to calm down.

I have had Chancey just a year & she is still dog reactive on our walks except when we do a monthly greyhound walk when she just does the equivalent of "Oh we're walking with greyhounds, OK!" & walks as good as gold until we meet non greyhounds and then I 'm back to hanging on to her while she leaps in the air screaming with excitement, although if there are enough greyhounds around she doesn't always see the other dogs so easily and i can get her past them OK. I have tried "Look at me" but have yet to find a treat that is more interesting than another dog and as she wears a muzzle whenever we are out walking it isn't easy to get food to her quickly. On the few occasions she has stood still enough for another dog to greet her her jaws have started snapping in the muzzle and the other dog has shied away or growled at her. I am sure she is just excited at seeing other dogs and is not aggressive but she still has the chase instinct and play bitey urge. She is permanently alert when we are out walking and spots cyclists, pedestrians, cats, birds, anything that moves. We regularly walk with another whippet and an Italian Greyhound but she'll get all silly with another greyhound that we meet out in the forest. I think she is getting better but I never know when she'll over react. I've tried playing with a ball in the garden but she just runs after it then leaves it, it doesn't seem to occur to her to pick it up and play with it! I've been told it will take anything up to 2 years for her to calm down - at least I'm half way there!

Steve, no doubt you said "Goodbye" & made a fuss of her when you left home so although you could not be with her at the end you did at least have that chance to say a farewell, many owners don't have that opportunity. Sorry that it had to happen this way, thinking of you. Carol.

I have had Chancey for 8 months now and even after finding a food that mostly produces solid poop, the last ones are still a bit sloppy by the end of the day. I believe several others have said the same.

If you have an infestation of fleas you will find the flea 'dirts' in the fur, you cannot miss them! The odd flea is removable with a pair of tweezers, make sure they 'crack' & die. I hate using chemicals on my animals & this is the method I use. Also use a household flea spray on bedding and floor just before you take the dog out for a walk then air the room out when you return. Many years ago we had a kitten and found she had fleas but being so small we couldn't use much flea spray on her. A couple of weeks after she arrived we were due to go on holiday. The day we went away I gave her a spray & brushed her out before taking her to spend the week with our next door neighbours. When we returned home we found the living room carpet full of fleas that jumped on to the children's socks & immediately returned to the kitten when we brought her back home. My in-laws were coming to visit the next day & I was horrified what my M-i-law was going to think! Thankfully the same thing had happened to her once and she spent her time with us going through the kitten's thick fur picking out the fleas, rolling them & 'cracking' them in her fingers or drowning them in a cup of water. I think our top total was 33 fleas in a single evening session of flea hunting! We beat them in the end!

When one of my whippets started to get frightened at thunder & fireworks I started playing music CDs to "disguise" the sounds, the only trouble then was that when I played music at any other time he started showing the stress signs - he had learnt that music = bangs!

She snaffled up kibble & fish this morning so that she had something in her tum before I gave her the tablets (they smell disgusting, even I can smell them!), which got stuffed down her throat with a handful of fish after each piece. I don't think I need to contact my vet at the moment but I'll see what she is like at lunch time. Now I need to go shopping for another packet of frozen fish, I like to keep one in stock!

After refusing any lunch & spending most of the day curled up on the settee looking subdued, at the end of the afternoon Chancey came out into the garden where i was working and spent most of her time trying to catch the field mouse that lives in the plants around the pond. I took the dogs out for a walk but she didn't do a wee and seemed to have wanted nothing to eat or drink all day. This evening she took no interest whiie i was getting their supper ready until I put Banjo's dish down & then she came trotting out to the kitchen. I put down half the amount of kibble i usually give her & that was eaten pretty rapidly so i put some fish in her bowl, that disappeared so she got some more which also disappeared. Then she went out into the garden wit h Banjo & did a wee , came back indoors and polished off some more soaked kibble. It seems her appetite might be returning, I'll see what she is like in the morning. I tried to hide this evening's tablets in some apple but she was having none of that so i had to stuff them down her throat so she is not too pleased with me, although I gave her a quarter of an apple afterwards. At least she is pooping & weeing now, which was worrying me a little, I didn't want her to get dehydrated or have the worry that her kidneys might not be working properly. Thankfully no d & v yet.