I understand completely P&P. There was once a huge Alaskan Malamute down the road, must have gone close to 200lbs. Very loving guy, wouldn't harm anyone. We had trouble getting him in the wife's car to take him home when he wandered , but loved every moment we got with him visiting. His untimely death due to cancer shook us almost as much as his family.
Ithaca - I don't think anyone of us could have said it any better than you. Your words say it all.
Every Sunday, when we visited my mother-in-law in Assisted Living - it was "dog day". We would take our two little dogs - a 10 lb Poodle and a 20 lb Poodle/Bichen mix - we don't have kids and they were her "grand kids". Unfortunately, she passed away this past May 2 but we still stop at the Assisted Living now and then with the dogs. On Sundays, it was not just for her. On the way to her apartment, we always stopped along the way at others who loved to see them. The joy and smiles they brought to the residents can't even be described. And, like you say, you hear a lot of "life stories" as they tell you about the dogs they had. Once in a while, we would take them to the Alzheimer's section and on man times, you saw a smile and a spark of a memory the resident must have had in relation to the dogs - perhaps bringing a memory of their dog back and even if only for a few seconds, it was worth it.
My wife and I have had many dogs. Each of them have been very special in their own way. Yep, it hurts when you loose one but thee are so many out there that need love and a good safe and secure home . . . and their dedication and love for you can be seen in their eyes and their attachment to you. Over the years, we too, have taken in strays and lost dogs. We've made every effort we could to get them reunited with their owners and the reunions have always been happy ones. We've even kept a few that we couldn't find the owners and we couldn't find a new home for . . everyone was special.
A lot more could be said . . . but so many wonderful thoughts have already been expressed and I can add little more.
For those who have lost their "best friends" recently . . . we feel your pain and our thoughts and prayers are with you. Take the time you need to grieve and then I urge you to give another dog a chance to experience the love and security that you provided for the one you lost. Cherish the memories as they were truly "special" . . . and then make new memories with another one that will have their own special personality to bring joy in to your life.
I have often heard those that don't believe that dogs and animals don't possess "souls" and they do not go to heaven when they pass. Every one is entitled to their opinion and thoughts. Mine are simple. As a Minister, I don't have all the answers - I can only establish my thoughts from what I have seen and experienced whether it be people or animals. But, personally, I have no doubt at all in my mind that our animals . . . . our dogs, and cats and horses, etc. that we love and which God has provided for us here on earth and which show us love and dedication as we do to them . . . when we ourselves get to Heaven, they will be there to greet us. Their aches, pains and illnesses . . . the same as our own . . will be gone and we will be reunited forever. Until then, they watch over us the same as those who have passed before us do.
Bedbugbilly, my wife spoke with our pastor about the same thing concerning animals in Heaven. Here's his reply, (as best I can remember). He also really didn't have an answer carved in stone when he began, but made some observations, one of which is from the book of Revelations and the riders on horseback, "So, we know there are horses in God's kingdom in Heaven. He plainly tells us so." He thought deeply and said, "We can believe the animal sacrifices the children of Israel made to God will be there, after-all God wanted them. He instructed Noah to save the animals...a pair of each because they are his creation. I've never given your question much thought, but yes, animals must be there with God in Heaven."
Ithaca Gunner, I could not have said it any better or covered it any better.....thank you for your post....Paul
When guns are outlawed only criminals and the government will have them and at that time I will see very little difference in either!
"Within the covers of the Bible are the answers for all the problems man faces." President Ronald Reagan
"We must reject the idea that every time a law's broken, society is guilty rather than the law breaker. It is time to restore the American precept that each individual is acoutable for his actions." Presdent Ronald Reagan
We've been lucky with a rescue dog, a cheap petshop dog, casual breeders' dogs, and the daughter of my grandfather's Kerry Blue stud dog, who was a fighter of the fatal kind. I even have a friend who is now retired to Spain with Arabian wild desert dog, which probably hadn't been domestic in a hundred generations, but turned up in his garden in Oman saying "Give us a job?", and made a serious business of becoming a model house dog. All of these methods can work out extremely well, but some dogs end up being rescued because of health or behavioural quirks which don't show up immediately.
So when it came to what might be the last dog I will have health and strength to see through its lifespan, I decided to play it safe and go the pedigree route. It can be expensive, but you could still come out ahead of a free puppy and just one big veterinary crisis. I'd avoid any breed which is fashionable for showing, because they are so often bred in the maximum possible numbers at the expense of health, and doomed some breeds to serious congenital problems. Fashion, high prices and rarity are a temptation to excessive inbreeding. The Kennel Club in the UK, and probably the American Kennel Club, has breed information which should cover health and temperament. The probably have puppy finding service, including an assured breeders accreditation, and while with others can advertise, the out and out puppy-mills won't be using them.
One question we have to ask ourselves is whether to go for veterinary costs insurance. I would say if you can pay on your own, pick a particularly healthy breed, and don't do it. You would be paying for people who buy trouble in the form of notoriously unhealthy breeds, and if it is worth someone's while to assume the risks and pay business taxes and expenses, it is worth the other party's while not to let them.
It is a big advantage if you can see the puppies with their mother some weeks before pickup time. I don't think anybody can realistically pick a really good puppy at three weeks, but you can often see a bad one, and also whether the family are being responsibly looked after - and are a family, in fact. The puppy mills often have front men, advertising as private breeders. There is also a scam that some of them work, with fashionable and very expensive breeds. The breed associations impose limits on how often, and how late in life, they can breed from a female. So they combine litters, ostensibly from one young female.
My Lanty Hanlon's breeder was a veterinarian, and she told me people frequently register litters of eight or so puppies from a breed like the French bulldog, from which she believe more than four is unknown. Now good breeders have got rid of the only congenital health problem Irish terriers had, a painful cracking of the pads. It was found to be a recessive gene, and they simply banned breeding carrier with carrier by association members. But what happens with fake litters? Much worse things than sore feet can be perpetuated.
In my case I could trace descendants of the 1940s Lanty Hanlon, twenty or so generations on, in the United States Kerry Blue Terrier Club database. One was a Grand Champion of Russia not long ago. There are even photos of some of his much earlier ancestors. The database even includes Convict 224, the Kerry Blue Michael Collins named after himself. He wanted the Kerry Blue to be made the national dog of Ireland (the Irish Wolfhound being a Victorian confection of Scottish deerhound and Great Dane), if he hadn't died of politics first.
So one of my Kerry Blue distant relatives was a temptation. But they have quite a few health problems - not serious, but the point is that they are the same as they had in the 1950s. Breeders seem to have neither the gene pool nor the inclination to fix them. There are also lines I think you are meant to read between on temperament. So the Lanty Hanlon of 2015 is an Irish terrier, a very similar dog made of ginger cocoanut matting instead of soft smoky-grey wool. He is manic but loves man and beast of every description. A few days ago he went into his bouncing act on long grass and handed me a hamster-sized baby rabbit, alive and well. That was the size of rabbit my sister-in-law's Jack Russell in Germany swallowed - whole they say, which might be exaggeration - and made himself ill with. I just hope life was extinct on the way down. It is bad enough doing that to an oyster.
Border collies are marvelous dogs, not just intelligent but eager to learn, rather than just crafty. A good collie will feel uneasy when you use a word he doesn't know, and will glare indignantly for a whole second when you give him a hand signal a mere animal could see. But they are energetic dogs, which can't bear to laze around doing nothing like some. Gundogs from working strains are almost always good, and will know a lot of their job without training, Our Labrador used to steal kittens and run around the garden holding them, and the one we kept enjoyed that game till he was 3/4 grown. But purely show strains are very different. The American show strain of cocker spaniel is tiny and floats around in a fringe of silky hair, and show red setters hover on the fringes of mental subnormality. But a friend's deerstalking dog was a red setter from an Irish working strain, who would ignore shotguns and go all of a quiver the moment a rifle was handled.
The scruffy one is Lanty Hanlon at about six months, deciding that just because his friends the three Shih Tzus next door are barking hysterically is no reason why he should make a fool of himself. The other is the Dog that Came In from the Cold in Oman. She is a model of rectitude with Spanish dogs in Fuengirola, but sometimes seems to be thinking "I've seen! I've been!"
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Last edited by Ballistics in Scotland; 07-09-2016 at 05:11 AM.
Two of our dogs are Border Collies, the older is the one who walks the cemeteries with me in November collecting the flags. The younger is probably the best hunter I've ever had, nothing she loves more than groundhog hunting! Strange, but I'll except it...she gets all happy and jumps, twists, and barks whenever a scoped rifle comes out of the safe, (the Golden Retriever just looks on as if to say, "Ah, it's not a shotgun." and lays her head backdown on her paws).
someone in my town posted on facebook about this pheasant trained fella, he's chipped and up to date on shots...almost no other info, I sent a message asking for more details.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
“If someone has a gun and is trying to kill you, it would be reasonable to shoot back with your own gun.”
― The Dalai Lama, Seattle Times, May 2001
He looks like a Yellow Lab. Good hunters, smart and easily trained, good natured, loyal, about all you could ask for in a dog.
waOriginally Posted by Ithaca Gunner
My thirty shilling collie was exceptional even by collie standards. I had a shepherd tell me "Laddie, it's pure sin for a collie like that tae be raised an amateur." But she was a pacifist, with no hunting instinct whatever. She could catch up with rabbits, but she gave up when they didn't want to play with her. The little cairn terrier bounced up and down in horror, and wouldn't walk within six feet of her all the way home, in case people thought they were related.
I have never meet a man or woman that loved dogs,that I wouldn't consider a good friend.Most of our's have been rescues,or strays that adopted us.Sure gives you a variety..That said,all that have posted here would be welcome in my home at any time.
"The remedy for evil men is not the abrogation of the rights of law abiding citizens. The remedy for evil men is the gallows." Thomas Jefferson
I thought you all may like this.
There is sorrow enough in the natural way
From men and women to fill our day;
And when we are certain of sorrow in store,
Why do we always arrange for more?
Brothers and Sisters, I bid you beware
Of giving your heart to a dog to tear.
Buy a pup and your money will buy
Love unflinching that cannot lie--
Perfect passion and worship fed
By a kick in the ribs or a pat on the head.
Nevertheless it is hardly fair
To risk your heart for a dog to tear.
When the fourteen years which Nature permits
Are closing in asthma, or tumour, or fits,
And the vet's unspoken prescription runs
To lethal chambers or loaded guns,
Then you will find--it's your own affair--
But...you've given your heart for a dog to tear.
When the body that lived at your single will,
With its whimper of welcome, is stilled (how still!);
When the spirit that answered your every mood
Is gone--wherever it goes--for good,
You will discover how much you care,
And will give your heart for the dog to tear.
We've sorrow enough in the natural way,
When it comes to burying Christian clay.
Our loves are not given, but only lent,
At compound interest of cent per cent.
Though it is not always the case, I believe,
That the longer we've kept 'em, the more do we grieve:
For, when debts are payable, right or wrong,
A short-time loan is as bad as a long--
So why in Heaven (before we are there)
Should we give our hearts to a dog to tear?
Rudyard Kipling
"NUTS" A. Clement McAullife
JonB- unless his hips are going, you probably can't go wrong with that guy, or any lab. I've hunted with yellow labs for almost 40 years, they're amazing animals.
Here's my current one.
Most often yes, that is spot on. But I have know some that would have made better dogs than humans. Certainly being liked by dogs is a very fallible indication of a high quality human being.
When I hear of someone living out his life in fear, I think of the German soldier in a truck whom Adolf Hitler saw stealing his fox terrier, formerly British, in Flanders. Now there is a man who must have heaved a sigh of relief if he made 1945.
Labradors don't as often get hip dysplasia as some other breeds. It has been an uphill struggle, not won yet, to get it out of German shepherds. But labradors, unfortunately are quite prone to cancers. Some would disagree, but I think a labrador and a few others are just as intelligent as a border collie, but the obsession with obedience is rather more confined to his profession and specific instincts. No dog has a sly leer quite like a Labrador who is chancing his arm and knows he can get away with it. But a terrier just thinks you like him the way he is.
Last edited by Ballistics in Scotland; 07-09-2016 at 08:41 AM.
I don't know what it is, but that holds true for most people I've met as well. And personally think they have much higher tuned senses and can smell it out on some people. There's barking and alerting to let me know someone is at the door or creeping around, and a *very* different low growl when they sense something I don't. Not saying cat people/cat's aren't fun but they are a different breed. My stray cat has a purpose....in return for shelter and food in my garage I expect it to keep all the squirrels and mice away from the house. She earns her keep and I let her stay, just wish she'd stop pooping in the garage.I have never meet a man or woman that loved dogs,that I wouldn't consider a good friend.Most of our's have been rescues,or strays that adopted us.Sure gives you a variety.
Same goes for anyone I witness "abusing animals." I understand ranchers/cowboys have to break a horse and sometimes it looks cruel, but they have the best intentions of caring for their herd and co-existing. Some people are cruel just to be cruel and don't deserve the .10 lead investment I would gladly donate were it legal.
Beautiful dog. BTW, is that an Ithaca?
Yes, dogs can undoubtedly detect people's mood by smell - just as Al Swearingen in "Deadwood" did, although he might have been exaggerating. It isn't infallible, maybe because a lot of human misdeeds and wackiness are of a nature unknown to dogs.
Once while swimming in the Red Sea a cuttlefish came up and tried to converse with me. His language was bright colour changes along his sides, almost like flashing lights. But I stayed the same colour all over, and eventually he gave up, realizing that it was true about humans being stupid.
The wonder is that although the dog lives in a whole, coherent world of smell, he appreciates our weaknesses and strength, and deliberately sets out to combine them as a team. Some anthropologists believe wolves first started hanging around human encampments in the hope of scoring some scraps, or even a child. Then they started following the hunt (whose hunt I don't know) and the wolves realized that height off the ground, on a plain, was a fair swap for scenting powers. Jim Corbett the hunter of maneaters wrote that the tiger can be hunted because he doesn't realize that among all his prey species, man is the only one with a sense of smell no better than our own. So unless you surprise or pursue him, he will always come from downwind. You couldn't fool a dog that way.
Incidentally pure or nearly-pure wolves need knowledgeable training to be good pet dogs, but that will about do it. The risks are surely less than with a pit bull some peabrain has bred as a fighting dog for a few generations. People who have trained wolves report that they are a little worse than the average dog at understanding words, but very good indeed with body language. My desert dog friends in Saudi Arabia would stop jostling one another for food if I pointed a finger at them. They do not like the finger, which obviously imitates some canine body language. But with the impeccably-intentioned Irish terrier it took a long time for him to learn it was the prelude to a sterner talking-to.
Last edited by Ballistics in Scotland; 07-09-2016 at 01:36 PM.
Thanks, and yes, a 37 Ithaca 12ga. Serial says made in 1951. It's not original, though, was missing butt stock and stock bolt when I bought it. Found original butt plate and grip cap at gun shows and made a stock bolt, then made a new butt stock duplicating the factory dimensions and reblued the metal. Nice light gun to carry around.
Isiah 65:25 says that the lamb and the wolf will graze together.
Dogs are great judges of character
They are great at judging how good a dog you would make, but not so good on concepts, principles and devotion to logic.
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