Skip to main content

Choccy

 


I looked back where he'd been running 

wasn't expecting a legacy in the sand 

of his journey 

my little dog 

sprinted there 

digging his paws in 

to turn 

leapt there 

to race on.

I took a photo 

before the sea washed present 

into past.


Ursula Linton 



Acknowledgements
Thanks to Choccy 
Thanks to Tricia for suggesting I write it

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Dogs Sniffing - it's even more important than I thought

 The first blog I wrote was 'The Importance of Sniffing on a Dog Walk' . Please check it out if you haven't seen it already. I've been inspired to write this further blog on sniffing because of information I've learned recently from an online talk 1  by  Shay Kelly BSc   (Canine Behaviour Consultant and author) and a webinar 2  by  Katrien Lismont   (International Pet Dog Behaviour Trainer). I knew that through their sniffing, dogs get interesting information about the other dogs that have passed that way – things like their age, health and so on. Generally interesting stuff for dogs. They also love investigating non-dog related stuff of course – things like discarded food wrappers for example! What I had never considered before Shay Kelly's talk is that dogs can smell the emotional state of other dogs 3  (and people). They can smell stress chemicals, for example. This will form part of the information dogs are assessing when they are out...
2 comments
Read more

Taking a curved route when walking towards your dog

Walking towards your dog, taking a curved route rather than a straight approach, is a nice thing you can do for him or her in your everyday life together.  Why would we do that? Dogs have a preference for non-direct approaches. Going straight up to another dog (i.e. direct route, body orientated straight-on, face to face) is generally not the way dogs go about things. Dogs who possess competent canine social skills, when going about their business, will communicate lack of intent towards those around them through the use of the direction they walk, the way they orientate their bodies relative to others, lack of direct eye contact etc. In addition, should socially competent dogs want to engage in a greeting, it will be a reciprocal arrangement involving curved/indirect approaches. If a dog is being aggressive or a dog wants to intimidate another dog that's when they are likely to use a direct approach. Alternatively, a dog may be over-excited and not have the social skills to put c...
2 comments
Read more

Dog Play - Part 1

 Dog play is a big topic so I am going to discuss it in two parts, like I did with 'Petting Dogs'. In addition, I will suggest some further reading in case you are really interested in this topic. Let's start by looking at what  isn't play Play between dogs has to be fun for each dog involved. It has to be voluntarily entered into and a dog has to be able to leave any time they want to . A dog won't play unless they feel safe,  both mentally and physically. They won't play if, for instance, they are afraid or if they are ill or in pain. This is really important and helps us to identify situations that might look like play, but may be something else entirely.  So when we think of a dog's need to feel safe as being an essential prerequisite for play, we can see that those 'play' episodes we sometimes see are not actually play. For example, one dog is bouncing happily round another dog and, although the other dog is responding, they are doing so...
Post a Comment
Read more