Wordless Wednesday. Cody reading with Mum.

Dogue de Bordeaux welfare.

I've just started work for the Dogue de Bordeaux welfare as a volunteer. I'm really looking forward to being part of a great team and helping out to rehome this great breed.

As with any job I've got to start at the bottom of the ladder but i don't mind the main thing is team work and everyone working together.

I'm the driver helping to transport the dogs around. But you never know what other opportunities may arise

The nice thing about being a volunteer is i feel I'm doing something worthwhile, and at the end of the day money's not everything i think job satisfaction is and what can be more satisfying than working with dogs especially one of my favourite breeds.

Without volunteers a lot of these organisations wouldn't be able to survive which would be bad news for all the homeless animals.

My first bus ride.

Yes you have read the title correct i will be 4 years young on February 14th 2013 or if i was human nearly 28 years young, and i finally get to have my first bus ride. I'm usually in Dads car but he had to drop it off at his friends house who's a mechanic to get the MOT done, so today we took a nice long walk to the bus stop which had me confused because we took a route which we don't usually walk and than sat at the bus stop i thought Dad just wanted to rest his legs and let me greet everyone getting off the bus, when the bus pulled up Mum got on it and i thought she was leaving us until Dad followed with me.

It was great with lots of people to say hello to i was on my very best behaviour so that i didn't embarrass my staff and it worked in my favour   because it made all the passengers smile and they gave me a stroke when they were getting off the bus which was nice of them. I like to prove to people that big dogs can be nice dogs if they've got the right handler.

Me being good on the bus.

After we got off the bus we had another long walk to pick the car up AKA my taxi. On the way there we stopped to take photo's of  the boulder this is no ordinary boulder it's got a story to tell it was carried down by the ice during the ice age 12,000 years ago all the way from Scotland.

I hope you can read the write up ok.

Dad and I standing proudly beside the boulder.

Another couple of views of the Boulder.

And now we're off on the last leg of my adventure.

We're finally home and I'm worn out. As they say a tired dog is a happy dog i don't think anyone will get anything out of me tonight.

Goodnight

I hope you enjoyed.

Dad's car passed the MOT, after paying for the MOT and work that needed doing his wallet is a lot lighter but at least I've got my taxi back. I will have to get them to take me on a train next.

ps I thought it's about time i got a new post up seeing as my staff took over the last couple of weeks, i did enjoy the break though.

Oh just one more thing before i go we're off on our holidays next month to the Lake District so it's a good job my taxi's mot'd and serviced only the road tax to buy now. I'm glad I'm a dog and don't have these expenses.

I will let you all know before we go so you don't miss me to much. I hope the staff remember the camera as there will be a holiday post going up when we get back, Cody's going into a cattery for a week though we will all miss him, but I've been reliably informed by the staff that they know were to get good ice cream up there yum yum.

I really must go now my eyes are getting tired and my paws are all over the keyboard making spelling mistakes. The spell checker is smoking with working to hard.

Goodnight again sleep well i know i will dreaming about buses.

Think before breeding. Raising awareness of dogs in the pound.

I've just seen this post on the Your Dog forum that I'm a member of and have had permission to share it here. To help and try raise awareness of all these poor animals in shelters. I think the biggest problem is puppy farms and people just breeding for money without any concern for the welfare of the animals.

Please take a moment to read it.

From a pound manager:

I think our society needs a huge "Wake-up" call.

As a pound manager, I am going to share a little insight with you all...a view from the inside if you will.

First off, all of you breeders/sellers should be made to work in the "back" of an animal centre for just one day. Maybe if you saw the life drain from a few sad, lost, confused eyes, you would change your mind about breeding and selling to people you don't even know. That puppy you just sold will most likely end up in my pound when it's not a cute little puppy anymore. So how would you feel if you knew that there's about a 90% chance that dog will never walk out of the pound it is going to be dumped at? Purebred or not!

About 50% of all of the dogs that are "owner surrenders" or "strays", that come into my pound are purebred dogs. The most common excuses I hear are; "We are moving and we can't take our dog (or cat)." Really? Where are you moving too that doesn't allow pets? Or they say "The dog got bigger than we thought it would". How big did you think a German Shepherd would get? "We don't have time for her". Really? I work a 10-12 hour day and still have time for my 6 dogs! "She's tearing up our garden". How about making her a part of your family? They always tell me "We just don't want to have to stress about finding a place for her we know she'll get adopted, she's a good dog". Odds are your pet won't get adopted & how stressful do you think being in a pound is?

Well, let me tell you, your pet has 72 hours to find a new family from the moment you drop it off. Sometimes a little longer if the pound isn't full and your dog manages to stay completely healthy.

If it sniffles, it dies.

Your pet will be confined to a small run/kennel in a room with about 25 other barking or crying animals.

It will have to relieve itself where it eats and sleeps.

It will be depressed and it will cry constantly for the family that abandoned it.

If your pet is lucky, I will have enough volunteers in that day to take him/her for a walk. If I don't, your pet won't get any attention besides having a bowl of food slid under the kennel door and the waste sprayed out of its pen with a high-powered hose.

If your dog is big, black or any of the "Bully" breeds (Pit bull, Staffy, Rottie, Mastiff, etc) it was pretty much dead when you walked it through the front door. Those dogs just don't get adopted. It doesn't matter how 'sweet' or 'well behaved' they are. If your dog doesn't get adopted within its 72 hours and the shelter is full, it will be destroyed. If the shelter isn't full and your dog is good enough, and of a desirable enough breed it may get a stay of execution, but not for long.

Most dogs get very kennel protective after about a week and are destroyed for showing aggression. Even the sweetest dogs will turn in this environment.

If your pet makes it over all of those hurdles chances are it will get kennel cough or an upper respiratory infection and will be destroyed because shelters just don't have the funds to pay for even a £100 treatment.

Here's a little euthanasia 101 for those of you that have never witnessed a perfectly healthy, scared animal being "put-down".

First, your pet will be taken from its kennel on a leash. They always look like they think they are going for a walk happy, wagging their tails. Until they get to "The Room", every one of them freaks out and puts on the brakes when we get to the door. It must smell like death or they can feel the sad souls that are left in there, it's strange, but it happens with every one of them. Your dog or cat will be restrained, held down by 1 or 2 vet techs depending on the size and how freaked out they are.

Then a euthanasia a vet/vet nurse will start the process. They will find a vein in the front leg and inject a lethal dose of the "pink stuff". Hopefully your pet doesn't panic from being restrained and jerk. I've seen the needles tear out of a leg and been covered with the resulting blood and been deafened by the yelps and screams.

They all don't just "go to sleep", sometimes they spasm for a while, gasp for air and defecate on themselves. When it all ends, your pets corpse will be stacked like firewood in a large freezer in the back with all of the other animals that were killed waiting to be picked up like garbage.

What happens next? Cremated? Taken to the dump? You'll never know and it probably won't even cross your mind. It was just an animal and you can always buy another one, right? I hope that those of you that have read this are bawling your eyes out and can't get the pictures out of your head I deal with everyday on the way home from work.

I hate my job, I hate that it exists and I hate that it will always be there unless you people make some changes and realise that the lives you are affecting go much farther than the pets you dump at a shelter.

Between 60 thousand animals die every year in UK pounds and only you can stop it.

I do my best to save every life I can but rescues are always full, and there are more animals coming in everyday than there are homes.

My point to all of this; DON'T BREED OR BUY WHILE SHELTER PETS DIE!

Hate me if you want to. The truth hurts and reality is what it is. I just hope I maybe changed one persons mind about breeding their dog, taking their loving pet to a pound, or buying a dog. I hope that someone will walk into my pound and say "I saw this and it made me want to adopt".

THAT WOULD MAKE IT WORTH IT.



From a Pound Manager

Please feel free to share and help raise awareness of the poor animals that are suffering because of peoples ignorance. The poor animals can't speak for themselves so it's up to us animal lovers to be there voice.

The extreme pet Bloggers Blog Hop.

Welcome To The Extreme Pet Bloggers Blog Hop.

I am proud to be taking part in the Extreme pet Bloggers Blog Hop in helping to raise awareness and promotion of animal rescues and shelters around the world. There will be plenty of giveaways  to be won. For more details please visit Two Little Cavaliers who is hosting this event.

For any new visitors visiting my Blog for the first time i will introduce myself and the pets in our care.

I am Ian and live in Southport, United Kingdom with my partner Anne. I'm a dog lover and Anne loves her cats so we've always got to have at least one of each in the house.

First up is Sheba.

Sheba thinks she's a diva.

Sheba was born on the 14th February 2009 Valentines day, she was definitely sent with love. Sheba is a Dogue de Bordeaux X Rottweiler we have owned her since she was 8 weeks old, now she likes to think she owns us. Sheba has passed her Kennel Club Puppy foundation and Bronze and Silver good citizen awards and is working towards her Gold award. She loves her walks and swimming.

Next up is Cody. 

Cody's quite happy to let us share the house with him as long as we keep paying the mortgage.

Cody is a Maine Coon cross so we've been told, we adopted Cody when he was 12 months old off a lady who had 25 cats and had to rehome some of them due to a change in circumstances. Cody settled in straight away and wasn't bothered by Sheba and vice versa which was good, Cody now rules the house and Sheba. When Cody meows jump everyone jumps especially at tea time he lets you know in no uncertain terms that it's feeding time and won't shut up until he's been fed. His stomach keeps better track of time than my watch. He loves his food. His favourite thing at the moment is scratching the wall paper for attention, which is becoming a bit annoying.

Sheba and Cody geting to know each other shortly after bringing Cody home. Who says cats and dogs can't live peacefully together.

Anyone is free to get involved in this Blog hop whether you have a Blog or pets or not.

If your pet has their own twitter account or you tweet mostly about pets leave the link to your twitter account so we can all follow each other. Don’t forget to follow back!!!!

Wordless Wednesday. My Mum loves me.

My Mum loves me.

How to make a blog button for your blog.

I know a few people who have been having trouble trouble making Blog buttons for there blog, due to the coding me included until i found a site that would generate the code for me.

First off you will need a photo or some other graphics or logo.
Once you have your photo, graphics or logo sorted you will need a photo editing software program i.e Photoshop, Gimp etc. Gimp is a free software download.

Once you have your photo editing program sorted you can then mess around with different effects to customise your photo or whatever you decide to use for your button. When you have it to your liking resize it i think about 125px X 125px is the right size so it doesn't look out of place in your sidebar.

Then upload it to Photobucket or some other photo hosting site i always use photobucket, you need this hosting site so you can get the image url.

Than go to this site http://www.mycoolrealm.com/sandbox/gbgen/ enter your blog name, photo url from photobucket or whatever program you use and your blog url. You can preview your button before generating the code.

And then you will have your code to paste into your sidebar.

This is my button that i done.

You could do something more fancy but I'm just trying to get used to photo editing. I hope that helps people out.

One Dog at a Time ( Book Review )

I've been meaning to do these book reviews for a while now but never got round to it, so i thought i will make the effort now before i end up with to many to do, plus i think Sheba's enjoying having a break away from blogging.

This is another of my favourites and another true story this time featuring dogs.  It's about British Army sergeant Pen Farthing serving in the Royal Marines on his tour of Helmand in Afghanistan. A lifelong dog lover not only does he find himself fighting against the Taliban but also the stray dogs of Afghanistan.

His task wasn't made easy by the fact no pets are allowed on army grounds and the Afghanistan's love of dog fighting. So he had to try and hide the dogs and work around his army duties and caring for the dogs and also keeping the dogs safe from the Afghan soldiers who wanted the dogs for dog fighting and also shared the compound with the British Army. So he enlists the help of his wife in England to help in getting in touch with rescue centres in Afghanistan to try and arrange transport to get the dogs out of the Army compound and to safety. It's a lovely heart warming story but will also bring a tear to your eye. Be warned when you start reading it you won't be able to put it down it's addictive.

Sgt. Farthing with a new friend.

British Army sergeant Pen Farthing, now retired, first deployed to Afghanistan in 2006. He had no idea what awaited him, beyond fighting the Taliban. He found the living conditions in Afghanistan shocking: “There was no electricity and sanitation was non-existent.”

Apart from the heat, Farthing decided on first impression that the worst aspect of Afghanistan was the dust. This was notorious even in 1897, when the dust on Dr. Watson’s clothing caused Sherlock Holmes to observe, as his first words in Arthur Conan Doyle’s first Sherlock Holmes story, “You have been in Afghanistan, I perceive.”

Farthing soon perceived the stray dogs of Now Zad, the town where he was stationed. They were “hard to miss,” he writes, “especially during the dark hours as they roamed the town and perimeter of the compound. There were dozens of them, all types of breed of dog. All had one thing in common: they all looked bedraggled and unfed.”

Soon afterward Farthing saw Afghan soldiers among a crowd cheering on dogs as they tore each other apart. The Taliban suppressed all forms of animal fighting, which was forbidden by Mohammed. Since the end of Taliban rule, however, animal fighting may be more popular in Afghanistan than ever. Cockfighting and songbird fighting are again common; transporting birds for fighting has contributed to the spread of the H5N1 avian flu.

Traditional non-lethal Central Asian dogfighting, in which herding dogs rush at each other until one dog knocks the other one down, has largely been supplanted by western-style fights to the death between “bully kuttas,” the regional pit bull variant. Bred in Pakistan for more than 200 years for use in dogfighting and bear-baiting, bully kuttas are at least partially descended from fighting dogs imported by British troops.

Canine adoptees in the military compound.

But Farthing knew nothing of that. “I wasn’t going to stand by and watch the dogs fight. No matter what someone else’s culture allowed,” he recalls. Though pushed, shoved, and threatened, Farthing broke up the fight, and saw the dogs run away. Eventually the British compound became home to 14 dogs. The first arrival was named Nowzad. Tali was named after the Taliban. Jena gave birth to puppies. Farthing and other soldiers build a special area for the dogs, including a fighting dog they bought from a local Afghan. For the first time the dogs ate regularly, slept on discarded bedding, and were treated with kindness.

Unable to leave the dogs behind when his tour of duty ended, Farthing enlisted his wife Lisa to help rescue them. Lisa eventually located a shelter in northern Afghanistan, more than 700 miles from their base. With time, effort, and lots of luck they found a local to drive the dogs to a mid-point where volunteers from the shelter picked them up for transport to their shelter. Two of the dogs later flew to England with Farthing.

Farthing since his retirement has devoted his life to the street dogs of Afghanistan, heading a charity called Nowzad dogs.
–Debra J. White

There is also a follow up to One Dog at a Time called No Place like Home. I haven't read it yet I'm saving it for my holidays in September if it's anything like the first one I'm realy looking forward to it. And will do a review when i get home after Sheba's told you all about her adventure.

A Street Cat Named Bob. Book review.

Hi everyone Sheba here. I'm taking a break this weekend & letting my Dad take over my blog, i think it's about time he earned his keep.

I have just finished reading this book, A Street Cat Named Bob by James Bowen.

I thought i would share this book with everyone, as it's a true life story & heart warming. I couldn't put the book down and i usually prefer reading about dogs but this one comes highly recommended & just goes to show how special Gods creatures are. You will never find an animal starting a war only giving unconditional love.

This book is about a young man who was down on his luck, he is on a methadone program fighting heroine addiction after living rough on the streets of London he moves into sheltered accommodation for the homeless. Where his luck begins to change thanks to Bob, One day after returning home after busking to make enough money for food and to keep a roof over his head. He bumps into a ginger tom lying in the doorway of one of the flats, after making enquiries to see if the cat belonged to anyone in the flat and drawing a blank. He came to the conclusion he must be a street cat as he had no collar so he took the cat into his flat to feed him some tuna he had in and noticed he was injured possibly through a fight. So he takes the cat to the local vet at the RSPCA centre to get his wounds checked over and also found out he wasn't microchiped so couldn't trace an owner. So being an animal lover he decides to look after the cat who he names Bob and nurses him back to health not realising how much it would change his life. 

After James nursed Bob back to full health he thought Bob would want to go back to the streets but Bob had other ideas, and wouldn't leave James's side even travelling on the bus with him when he went busking. Eventually James started selling the Big Issue to earn more money so he could support Bob. The two of them found each other at the right time when they were both down on there luck and probably saved each others lives.

This story proves you don't need loads of money as long as you've got love and compassion.

As the saying goes a picture speaks a thousand words, so i thought i would put up some YouTube clips of this amazing relationship.

I hope you enjoy them.

Wordless Wednesday. My dog training BBQ night.

It was my dog training club BBQ night last night, that the trainers put on every year. Here's some photos that the staff took.

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Two of Sheba's trainers Ken and Paul.

Sheba's other trainer Tony.

 I didn't forget about Cody i got a chicken leg for him.