BARNES PARK DOG SHOW

Warning: this post contains d-o-g-s.

Don't ask me when Barnes Park was first opened. I could find out but can't be bothered to look it up. I can tell you that the playing field, including the surrounding trees, has remained unchanged since I used it as child, either to play in throughout my childhood (I lived not far away) or walk through it to get to Bede Grammar School via the back gate from 1959-1966. I haven't, however, been there in a couple of decades and can't remember the last time but the park itself remains a nice place. 

The dog show was a modest affair, only a handful of stalls, one belonging to Animal Krackers, and a show that didn't last all that long -it was all over by 12.30. Still, those who attended seemed to enjoy themselves, the people as well. See for yourself.

 AK's table

Me with Sam, a canine friend of Susan's.

Susan and Sam

A dog rescued by AK with his new owner 

 Contestants

 

Sam failing to place in the Friendliest Dog Section.

Post Script.

I stayed about 45 minutes then went home. After pottering about in the house for a little while, the phone rang. An enquiry: have you got any cats for re-homing? Duh! Does the Pope say mass? Are  kittens the cutest things on the face of the planet? I told them where it was, they got lost (not unusual) but still turned up. A nice chatty couple with a nice chatty 9yr old or thereabouts granddaughter. Oh yes, I thought, very suitable. Sometimes you just know people are right as soon as you see them. They took Tink, a nice ginger boy. The granddaughter, after first wanting Bruce a big black boy, approved.

Altogether, what with getting a couple of packets from Amazon (book and DVD), quite a nice morning. Plus it was warm and sunny which always helps.

A SENSE OF SMELL

This is an addendum -which I almost called The Smell Of Death-  to the previous post.

When I called in at Animal Krackers shop to tell Susan and Andrea about what happened to the cat at Vet's Now (the PDSA's emergency vet service at Heworth), they had the little jack russell I'd picked up last week. As is my wont on seeing a dog, I bent to pet it and it backed away. It kept on doing this every time I approached it. I didn't terrify the dog; it showed no aggression towards me, it just didn't want anything to do with me.

Susan said, "It smells death on you."

I dismissed this immediately. Death doesn't have a smell and animals have no sense of their own mortality. Death is not something positive that exists in its own right, rather it's an absence. Of course the dog couldn't smell death on me, it was just a daft dog.

Then, yesterday morning while swimming, I began to wonder. Dogs do have an acute sense of smell and what it certainly, well probably, could smell were tiny flecks of the cat's blood on my hands, the remains of the smell of the sick cat's breath on them, a few molecules of various chemicals that would be in the surgery air, possibly even the those of the liquid which stilled the cat's heart. It could smell odours on me that were clearly, to the dog, wrong and that would be enough to make it wary of me.

I still don't think Susan was right, but she wasn't wrong either.

ANOTHER WEDNESDAY

Just an ordinary Wednesday morning. I get up as usual just after 5.30, get dressed, take the dog for a walk in the pouring rain. Here she is-

Dog? Did I say dog? I have 6 cats, one kitten which may stay, and a psycho cat in a cage in the garage. But I don't have a dog.

Nevertheless, I did get up at 5.30 this morning and take the above dog for a walk and, yes, I did wake up in my own home. This isn't a trick. Here's the full story.

On Monday, Susan and Andrea had taken a load of dog food to Westhall boarding kennels which gets a stipend from the council to take in stray dogs from the dog warden. The conditions in which they are kept is far from the highest of standards. On Monday Susan saw this dog which if you look carefully near her hind leg you'll see a tumour the size of a football. The dog, called Trixie, had been there nearly a couple of months and shortly after her arrival a vet said she should be put to sleep. But she'd just been left there.

Susan was so upset by this dog that she decided to take Trixie out and get her checked over at Vets4Pets which she did on Tuesday afternoon with my help. The vet agreed to operate on Wednesday morning (today), though did say she might die under the anaesthetic which was still better than going back to the kennels. 

We brought her home and the cats were terrified. A kitten is one thing but a dog with terrier blood in it, even it is old and tired, was just a bit too much. They all fled. I got a large cage from the shop, set it up in the dining room where no cats are allowed, and Trixie settled down in the large dog basket I'd provided. Just after nine in the evening I took her for a walk. In the pouring rain while Susan watched tv in bed. And, in the morning, I took her for another walk, then we took her to the vets. 

She has come through the operation and, as I write, Susan and Andrea have just gone to pick her up. (Me, I've just got back from the PDSA, having taking an elderly lady and her elderly cat with a broken leg for a checkup.) Trixie will recuperate here for a couple of days and then hopefully go to stay with a fosterer.

She's a harmless old thing and it's impossible not to feel sorry for her. But what this has finally proven to Susan is that no matter how much she might wish it we can't really have a dog permanently in the same house as our six cats. Which I'd been telling her all along but there you go.

LANZAROTE: ENCOUNTERS WITH ANIMALS PART 1

Lanzarote doesn't actually have much in the way of indigenous wildlife because it's a volcanic island and much of it looks like this-

The volcano erupted last in the 18th century destroying much of the vegetation along with hundreds of the islanders. Rainfall is low and winds are blowy and plants have a hard time getting established which explains why cacti are among the most numerous of plants. There are no native mammals, only those introduced by Europeans such as rabbits and cats. There may well be mice and rats but I've neither heard of nor seen any. Because of the lack of plantlife, birds, other than seabirds, are few. There are lizards but I've only just seen some on this visit and I've been here about five times and I only saw them this time in the grounds of the Guinate Wildlife Park which is located in the less arid northern region.

With the rise of tourism over the last forty years, local authorities have made efforts to transform the landscape from something which looks like, in my own words when I first arrived about fourteen years ago, "a fucking pit heap!" into something less arid. But it's a long slow process. Tourism has also brought another problem which is people coming to Lanzarote to find jobs in the tourist industry. No doubt they intend to stay for a long time but, in practise, this rarely happens and, as a direct result, cats mostly get abandoned to roam the tourist centres and holiday complexes; many aren't neutered, they breed and their offspring are feral.

Some cats get caught by Sara, the island's animal rescue charity (of which more later), where they are neutered, an ear clipped so that female don't have to go through an unneccessary second operation, and put back on the streets. I made friends with two cats which had been abandoned and neutered -one so recently as to still have stitches in its ear.

Both look as if they've been in the wars but aren't under-nourished in any way and it's obvious that they've been pets because, once they realised that I was friendly, let me stroke them, pick them up and even rub their tummies. True ferals won't let you get near them and will even hiss at you when you're putting down food for them.

Dogs are a different matter as, if left to roam around, they can be dangerous. So Sara takes them in and tries to get them rehomed. I paid a quick visit to the place on Wednesday morning to leave some books for their fund-raising sale and to leave a donation, and to have a look round the place.

To be honest, I expected to find it in the grounds of someone's house. Instead it's a large purpose-built (I assume) place away from residential and commercial housing. It's a well-organised and very busy charity and didn't get much of a chance to talk to any of the volunteers but I did get a good look round. Mostly its dogs, dozens of them and all of them barking incredibly loudly that it was literally deafening and all of them wanting homes. Here are just a few of the photos I took.

Heart-breaking, isn't it? But at least they are being looked after

Lastly, a few cats.

I'll add a link to their website in the near future.

TUESDAY 16th MARCH: DIARY

Supposed to be a quiet day.

Just after 11 in the morning I got a call from a young woman who was allergic to one of her cats which shed a lot of fur but she didn't want to separate him from his sister -both neutered, both friendly, both good with kids. She'd called the shop a couple of weeks ago but got a very snotty answer which upset her so she'd tried putting them on the net but no answers and finally rang me out of desperation. After 38 years of working with public I have developed, he wrote modestly, good people skills and quickly reassured her. I called Carol immediately, she could take them, and rang the girl back to say I'd be round shortly. The cats were as advertised and here they are at Carol's.

Mid afternoon I went with Carol to pick up a dog from Ferryfarm Kennels where we board most of our rescued dogs to pick up a -gasp- dog to take to Vets4Pets. This one had been re-homed with someone and twice it had been found wandering the streets and returned to us. There won't be a third time for this guy. He's a nice friendly middle-aged collie cross and here he is.

Back at Ferryfarm I had the opportunity to meet and photograph two lots of lurcher-cross puppies. Two were crossed with a saluki -we had the mother there, and the rest I've no idea as the mother is a lurcher and here they are. The lurcher mother first and then some puppies.

After dropping Andrea off at home I had to go round to Mark's house -he of the one-eyed cat (see recent posts)- to feed said one-eyed cat, Charlie, and change his litter. Mark had just gone into hospital that same day -the Freeman in Newcastle- for a triple bypass, so I'll be doing this for a while.

I would have been taking Kaiser the rottweiler back to the vets this morning (Thursday 18th March) but it clashes with a doctor's appointment. Pity because I'd like to see the dog again but I'm sure there'll be other times. Prior to typing this, I'd been swimming as usual and then up to see to Charlie who is an amiable placid cat. Must take a photo of him for the blog.

Tomorrow morning it's two cats to the vets for checkups (see recent post for last Friday). But today, after my trip to the doctor's and as Susan is at work and hasn't given me any jobs to do, my time is my own for once.

Damn, just remembered. Got to clean the cooker, one of my least favourite jobs.

DOGS: KAISER UPDATE.

The ab

The above is from Saturday's Sunderland Echo and is a piece about the proposed legislation against 'dangerous' breeds. Andrea and Susan were interviewed -like many, they think the new laws would only hurt conscientious dog owners and make no difference to those at whom the legislation is aimed. Tying in with this is Kaiser's story (he's above with Margaret -not Mary as I said in the previous piece- as an example of a so-called dangerous breed.

My view is, as a generalisation, that there's no such thing as a dangerous breed only a stupid owner. That said, breeders can force inbreeding on dogs which can physically and mentally damage them. But a normal healthy dog, irrespective of breed and properly trained, is not dangerous.

I also read a piece on the Daily Mail Online this morning where a rottweiler stopped a woman -not his owner- from being raped in a park. It chased off the woman's attacker then circled the woman and his owner guarding them against any further attack. Good boy.

Post script


This appeared first for some strange reason in my Freethinking blog. Don't ask me why because I don't know.

NO GOOD DEED GOES UNPUNISHED

That is a very cynical saying, albeit it has a degree of truth in it, but sometimes it's wrong. Today I received an embarrassingly large Christmas present from an elderly couple I helped with their middled-aged still mostly feral cat that they took in a few years ago. Basically all I did was get it in a cat carrier (admittedly not easy) and take them to the PDSA with it a couple of times. Today I was given a carrier bag containing a couple  of boxes of liqueur chocolates, a large tine of McVities biscuits, and if that wasn't enough, a full-size bottle of rum. Frankly, I'm embarrassed as I don't think I deserved it or maybe I'm not used to being appreciated. I've already given a box of chocolates to Ian F, the regular driver, who helped us out on one trip and will probably give the biscuits to the shop staff unless Susan wants them. The rum and other box of chocs I'll keep for myself. Hey, I'm embarrassed, I'm not daft.

Cat to Vets4Pets today for a checkup. It's Melba who's an elderly cat with diarrhea. I took her last week when Carol stupidly hadn't cleaned her up first and they were shocked by the state of her. Honour the vet still wasn't too happy today as she noticed that the shit had burned the fur of the bottom of Melba's hind feet, something Carol hadn't noticed. She'd also lost weight despite eating regularly and may have thyroid trouble (another one) so Honour took a blood sample and I'm bringing her back next Tuesday along with Hettie, who does have thyroid problems.

I waited nearly an hour to be seen because a local pug breeder had brought one of her dogs in needing emergency treatment. I'd met the breeder there before and don't like her. When she learned I was with Animal Krackers she asked for some cats to act as rat killers because they lived on a main road and her cats were always being knocked down. Like I said, I don't like her.

I don't like breeders on principle. Willow, my brother in law's Cavalier King Charles was rescued from a breeder as she'd been a puppy factory for six years and he now wanted new stock. While waiting to be seen today, I noticed the man opposite had a tiny Border terrier puppy nestled inside his jacket. He'd just bought it from a breeder for £350. It was supposed to be six weeks old when it was barely four. The dog he'd been shown as its mother wasn't. And two days ago it had started fitting and he rushed it here, believing it was going to die, but Honour had managed to save its life. I don't know everything that was wrong with the poor mite but he also told me it had ringworm. I hope it pulls through.

I don't believe all breeders are unscrupulous uncaring bastards but I have reason to believe that of most of them.