On Wednesday we did a short walk in the forest. Alfie stayed in this time, but Eddie & Otto joined me. The boys we running as usual and when we were very close home I could hear them barking heavily. I thought there’s some local dog that they had met.

When I arrived to the place of heavy barking I saw an elk attacking Otto!

Otto is an old dog with bad legs so he was laying in the ground and the elk was hitting him with his front legs. I started to make a lot of noise so that the elk would run away. Instead it seem quite provoked. It started to approach me and I went behind a tree calling Eddie who was quite close to the elk.

Finally the elk left. During this time I tried to take a videotape with my mobile phone but could not press the correct buttons as I was a bit scared about Otto. My first priority was to get the elk away from Otto who was laying in the ground trying to get up.

After this incident Otto was not able to get up so I called his owner and said that Otto was attacked by an elk. He was surprised and repeated “by an elk?”. We were planning for him to come over to the forest with a sledge so that we could take Otto home. We weren’t that far away from home but I did not want to leave Otto alone.

Before the owner came to the forest Otto finally got up and started to “walk”. At first he was dragging his hind legs but managed finally walking.

Otto is now fine and I guess the elk managed mostly to scare him.

Wednesday evening was my day 3/3 of the hunting course and I asked the instructor if it is common for an elk to attack a dog. It is not. He said that the dog got too close to the elk and irritated the elk. Normally they do not mind dogs at all.

Here is a video clip of the place afterwards when I went to see if the elk is still close by. Eddie was following the elk track so cleanly and made me very proud.

“I did it”

Yesterday Baxter passed the test for his Bronze Kennel Club Good Citizen Award.  Here he is with rosette and certificate.

The sit & stay had proved testing for us both as it is not as interesting as playing with the other dogs and following me!  We only managed to master it last week.

The boys have been visiting the horse stables quite often lately. Here in the country side the dogs are welcome, not like what I have experienced when I was living in the capital area and going to the local horse stables.

Yesterday the boys got to kiss some of the horses in the stable for the very first time.

They also enjoyed the horse turds….

Announcement from the Swedish FCR pages:

As many of you know by now several cases of PRA has been diagnosed in dogs with one and the same owner in the Netherlands. It could be as many as 5-6 cases during appr.8 years, most of them during the last 5 years.

Some questions have come to mind regarding this:

• Could it be an acquired form of PRA?
• Why only males?
• Why such a concentration of cases with one owner?
• Why only imported dogs (Switzerland and Sweden)?
• Why no cases in littermates/parents (so far)?
• Why not in combinations which are very much the same as the PRA cases or are similar?

These questions have caused us to consider that these dogs do not suffer from the “classic inherited” form of PRA as so far no littermates, progeny or parents have been diagnosed. Neither has this happened in lines with similar pedigrees or combinations of lines from those diagnosed. Far from all are examined but so far none of the littermates have got the diagnosis PRA.

We are considering inheritance, environment, parasites, toxicity or any other plausible cause.

A great number of experts in Sweden as well as abroad are involved in this and are very helpful regarding these thoughts.

We had to say goodbye to Tibby today.  At 17.5 years old he had a lovely life.  Baxter, Pip & I will miss him however I think that Finley the belligerent destroyer ‘s nose will be a safer place!

Michelle

Over a year ago Alfie had something special for lunch.

A sock and couple of staples.

The sock was already on it’s way out the natural way but the vet was a bit concerned about the staples.

It was 31/12 and not the best time for surgery. So she suggested that I would give Alfie asparagus because it will wrap the sharp objects and normally take them quite safely out.

This really helped! As you can see from the photo copy of the x-ray the other stable is open but this is now happened over a year ago and had happy ending.

I think that asparagus should belong to flatcoated first aid kit.