Pride, resistance and imperfection

So, it's 10:30pm and I'm standing in the kitchen, making puppy stew ;) with pork mince and goulash - what a spoiled poopy. It's a lot of extra effort I guess, but I just love doing it! And our puppy made me so proud today - twice! First of all she was doing great at the show training classes - didn't growl or act silly once and she did everything the way she should PLUS she stood like a PRO! While we prepared for the show pose a hadeda shouted in the distance. Jenni's ears picked up and then I said "where's the bird?" BIRD!!? She was looking straight in front of her, poised, ready to run, but frozen like a hunting dog - PERFECTION!! Everyone who knew anything about showing was VERY impressed :) Ahhh :) so Proud of our baby!

The second even more proud moment was when Hunny's nieces came to visit and our little hooligan at some stage realised they were small and stood dead quiet for a hug and kiss from the 2 girls - it was SO precious. She just stood there, all frozen,submissive - totally CALM...?? How did this happen?? She was a star and the kids stroked her for several minutes! I have very rarely seen her standing still for such a long time. It was just too sweet!

 

160 Snails

This dog that doesn't want to eat her food is driving me up the wall! :P She's a happy, healthy and playful 8 month old pup, but even though she's getting a super meal with specially cooked chicken mince and very nice looking Woolworths pets mince (plus rice, lentils, little veg etc) twice a day, she still doesn't really want to eat it!?? Not even if I put milk on top?! I really have no more ideas regarding her food preferences. And sometimes she'll eat it later in the day, so it's not something she deems inedible... ??? I weighed her at the vet's the other day and she's already 27 kg, now probably even more. I thought the breed (Irish Red setter) only weighs in at about 28 kg as an adult bitch? But clearly I must be wrong... this means that I have actually been feeding her slightly too little. She often doesn't eat all her food though, so feeding more wouldn't have done any better. The amount of Royal Canin pellets she should get is calculated according to her expected adult weight... the breeders haven't got back to me about how much her mom weighs, so I can get a better estimate. I had one last plan in mind for puppy stew, which I cooked last night, and if that doesn't work she's just gonna get straight pellets every day.

This morning while doing my round in the garden I came across the aftermath of Tuesday night's massacre. I wanted to serve the freshest peas for dinner that night and so, headed out with my raincoat and torch in hand to discover a gazillion snails all over our wonderlawn, then all over the cabbage, the stairs, the walls - basically everywhere! The snails were out having a feast on all my hard work and so I decided to squash all of them. I lost count at around 160 snails and I am quite sure that there will still be more of them. With so many snails in our garden I am VERY surprised that there's anything edible left in our garden!! Clearly the other tricks/gimmicks (beer traps, copper steel-wool, egg shells... etc.) don't quite work. Yesterday I saw the most cutetest little chicks ever! I so almost bought them, I'm sure they'll be very entertained by the fine dining on my snails;) I had specially gone out to buy Organic snail bait yesterday but now I might not need it ;) I think I'll put the bait around my next lettuce and cabbage beds, those seem to be the biggest target for our slimy friends. But WOW! I was really dumbfounded by the amount of snails out in the drizzle! Definitely the easiest way to get rid of those buggers.

Miss Fussy eater!

Genevieve is up to her old tricks...not finishing all her food. She's certainly not her Mom's child in this respect ;)

First of all she seems to have a very sensitive stomach, but even when it's all 100% she sometimes still refuses to eat all her pellets even though her ribs are starting to show! :(

Where's that ball, I wanna play fetch!

 

 

 

She's growing up so quickly... and getting a little on the lean side :(

I am trying everything I can think of - short of feeding her out of my hand, which she will gladly do by the way!... So she will eat it, she's just not interested in eating it out of her bowl on her own! I am not too certain what to do about this and have written to an expert or 2 for some advice and ideas, since the problem pops up every now and then and I'm quite sure this won't be the last of it.

Puppy dreams and hiccups

This is so cute, Jenni's having a very animated puppy dream and her little paws are pacing the air along with soft yelps to encourage them... it sounds almost like when she has hiccups (which happens when she eats her breakfast too fast). Speaking of which, I've been having some trouble with this little food connoisseur...

Sleepy-ness

The breeder gave us a recipe for their "puppy stew", cooked with beef/chicken/tripe mince, rice, lentils and a little green veg. I lovingly made a whole pot full with the beef and tripe mince, cabbage and very little carrot, but little Genevieve had NO interest in eating it. So I made another batch with chicken and beef mince, some spinach, beans and carrot (very small quantities) finely chopped and she still wasn't keen on it.