donna frankland (uk)

when i had sheep i shared grazing at my friends farm with her sheep (the 2 flocks grazed together, her 70 odd and my 10). my friend would sometimes move them with her dog, (tikki moved them for me sometimes too, though it was never pretty to watch!) every time i went to the farm when she had moved sheep she would say that mine were still out on the hill! sam (her dog) is a damn good dog, but my girls were horrible! i'm sure the only reason tikki was able to do much with them is because he is a 'driver'. he learned that at the goat farm. but in a rush the easiest way to get my sheep in was to stand at the gate and yell 'COME ON ALONG GIRLS!!!!!'. they all came running. or waddling if they were nearly due. my sheep were horrible and used to harrass anyone walking dogs through the fields. gods i miss em

aw mate, i'm gutted for you!

yep, definately. especially with the new board rule of a pic in every post

' like a bat out of hell i'll be gone when the morning comes.... when the night is over'.......... i'll get me coat now

um exweeze me, it is true that some sell-outs make a vile added sugar etc vinegar tasting pi, er, urine and sell it as cider over here but.......... i live in somerset! we invented real cider. we are famous for it. no additions except the odd unfortunate rat and any bugs that were near the tree at harvest

double post fairies or summat

sorry bout that, i just realised how abrupt i sounded that is what i would do, however.... if you arent comfortable with that idea let me share with you the tale of guzzi. guzzi was my 1st dog, a mess of a yellow lab. we got him at 6ish he was badly displastic in both hip, by the time he was 12ish he was diabetic, had cushings disease so many lumps and bumps and had completely lost his sight due to catarracts. none of it bothered him in the slightest! he was the happiest dog i have ever known. he still played fetch with a noisy toy, still never went on lead cos i had bells on my boots and he followed me everywhere. heck when the day came for me to let him go (cancer in the spleen), he dragged me into the vets wagging his tail and held up a paw, bless him! as the lumps werent cancer we never opererated, he had pain meds and insulin. so the moral of the story is; if they arent in pain, i truly believe that dogs dont bother about the other stuff!

i can tell you what i would definately do, and that is get in contact with my classical homeopath. for fear of sparking the 'it doesnt work debate' i will simply add that she saved tikki's life and my vet who could do nothing for him agrees with me. if you want her details pm me (she works via 'phone or email). you then still have the option of surgery or letting it be if you so wish ps tikki was diagnosed in sept 2005 with hepatocutaneous syndrome, which has a life expectancy of 4.5 months after onset. he's still here and showing no symptoms

thanks all! i'm going to pop down the council offices tomorrow and find out what the laws are. i'm sure it cannot be legal to ride a motorbike on a bridalway :s

HAHAHAHAHAAAAAAAAA! i was going to post a link for mendip magic cider, but apparently it doesnt exist anymore! good job too, that stuff was lethal. i have been know (not proud of it) to drink an entire bottle of whiskey mac and not be hungover. 2 and a half pints of mendip magic saw me stand up and pass out. then spend 2 3/4 hours getting home from a pub 15 miles away, having to get the driver to stop every few minutes so i could be very poorly! suicider is for tourists. if you can see through it, its not cider. if ever you are over here and want some, go to a farm selling scrumpy and buy it by the gallon bottle, and dont blame me in the morning. and bulmers cider? have you seen that stuff? crystal clear and you put ice in it?? wtf???

thank goodness for that! bill isnt a drunk then! as for the tea thing in the uk. brewed for a minute or so + milk + sugar if you want to = tea brewed for a minute or so + lemon and or honey = who do you think you are kidding, you're not posh cold + no milk ie iced tea = wrong. too many different kinds of wrong.

you drink suicider for breakfast??? oh my gods! or am i being really stupid and cider is just apple juice for you guys? you cant really mean fermented apples and rats at breakfast? can you

which, as you can all imagine, is the very worst thing that can happen my mate and i went for a really nice long dog walk through bridal paths and field to get to the woods. said woods are public footpaths and public bridal ways. NOT a scramble track. we were walking up one path and heard the annoying little whiney buzzing of mini moto thingies. came to a crossroads and saw them. did they slow down? no. did they turn around? no!!!! we put the youngsters on leads and carried on (i do NOT take my dogs out for their excercise for them to have to go on lead, the point of going to the woods and fields is for them to be able to run!). now possibly at this point i was being pig headed but i refused to go off the path, hell i dont train my dogs to stick to the paths for years to then have to do the opposite! i train them to stay on the path ESPECIALLY in the woods so we dont disturb wildlife. damn kids keep on coming though dont they? oh yeah! when they got to us, they were about 6! there is no way in hell that is safe! the parents were way up the end of the track and unable to see there kids. the track looks smooth enough but is riddled with hidden holes etc and fallen tree branches are at the sides. gods know what injuries would happen if one came off anyhoo, we carried on, kid comes back past. at this point we can see the parents who are at the next junction of paths. so we decided to take the path going left, away from where they are buzzing up and down. where do they send the kids next? oh yeah, down the path we have taken. 1/2 a mile away is a scramble track!!! why not take them there!!!!! dont get me wrong i'm not against kids having fun, but the local woods are not the place for this! can you imagine what would happen if they came round the corner into horses?? would it really have been that much effort to get the kids to stop for the 3 minutes it took us to go up the path. did they really then have to change paths to the one we went on to avoid them???? GGGGGGGGGGRRRRRRRRRRRRRRR!

i taught tikki to 'shake' to get the water off his coat before getting in the car, and also (because i am that horrible) to get payback for the hundreds of times he gets asked to give a paw. tikki doesnt know paw, i never taught him as for some reason i have a dislike for that trick (i dunno why!) he can do 'high five' and 'wave' and 'stomp it'. but people dont think of those commands. so the scene goes; 'oh hello doggie! what are you called?' 'his name is tikki' 'hello tikki gis a paw...' blank looks from tikki 'give a paw! go on! paw paw paw paw paw!!!' still nothing from tikki. 'oh ok, how about shake? can you shake hands???' you can picture the rest, tikki fresh out the river and being asked to shake! wooooo hoooo we score another point for another soaking wet random stranger!

i know its hassle but the ignoring till they sit really does work. brighid used to be a git for jumping up and it was a lon hard slog to get her to realise that she had to sit if she wanted attention. thing is though, when they do work it out, it becomes almost hardwired in their heads. i remember walking through the fields and literally walking into a bunch of kids. i was mortified! brighid LOVES kids and dashed up before i had realised what was happening (my fault for not spying the land out properly). i thought she was going to knock these kids for 6 when she reached the 1st one and SLAMMED her butt on the floor in front of them. no command from me at all! i was sooooooooo proud! she does it automatically now every time she meets someone, with absolutely no prompting! except for my bloke..... but he wouldnt listen when she was little and i was explaining what i was teaching her and why..... (oh but she's sooooo sweet and my ickle girly!!!!!) so he deserves a pogoing red maniac untill such time as he works out what he needs to do, cos i'm not explaining it again!

i was shocked looking at those pics of the US suffolks! if it hadnt beed stated what breed they were i would never have guessed, and where i live its almost impossible to take a walk withouts seeing a field of suffolk sheep

all hail dr bronners pure castille soap! (lavender flavour ) yup i bathed my doglets in my dreadlock shampoo! soap em up rub rubbidy rub rub for 10 minutes and rinse the little DEAD buggers off! wooooooo hooooooo! i forgot that you can suffocate fleas with bubbles! now i know this isnt going to last, but i figure if i can bath them once a week, flea comb them everyday and dust the house with de powder i should be on a winner! anyone want to help me bath the cats? no? i guess i just dust the cats a flea comb them daily!

my dogs all have brown eyes, and theirs reflect green. my friend has one with one of each and the blue eye reflects red, the brown one green. she has another with 2 blue eyes and his both reflect red. how strange, i've never seen any animal reflect blue!

when i was just doing a simple foot trimming, i just tipped them, but for a novice like i was, if there was something that needed a little extra (ie a really good look to see if it was foot rot or scald) or if i was injecting or summat at the same time, i found it really helpful. to get mine into it, i just lined up up so their butt was just touching the front of it and one hand on the chest and a decisive step forward, whoops straight in the chair! if the saggyness (i think i invented a word lol!) was right they would just sit there with their feet out. like i said for a novice who might have to compare real feet with the sheep vet book, twas kind of handy. i wouldnt bother for the odd toe trim though

i had one of those for my sheep, i thought it was fab! mine had the canvasy stuff instead of netting, so it was nice and comfy. i used to raise it up a bit after i finished doing the sheep and sit in it and have a cup of tea the height of luxury!

oh no, thats just plain sick though i must admit i was waiting for the llama to go on a stomping spree. when i had my sheep we had a fox visit the paddock that the chickies went in. till the day the alpacas were moved there. i actually felt sorry for the fox. the alpacas kicked seven kinds of s**t out of it. i happened to be walking into the paddock as it happened as i was wondering what on earth could be screaming like that. i shooed the 'pacas away as i could not bear to watch and that vixen took forever to get up but on the plus side neither she or any of her friends came back. so aside from feeling really bad for the stock in that video, i can hardly believe that some a***hole owner would put their dog in that position i made sure to keep mine away from the 'pacas, cos i know if i hadnt showed when i did, that fox would have been dead. i've been given warning kick from the 'pacas and i swear a kick that was meant would easily snap my leg

i dont use the crates for the dogs any more, but the 2 girls are bed eaters so in their plastic doggie beds they have, lets see *takes a quick look round the room* in the purple bed we have nothing save an assortment of small rocks/pebbles/lumps of mud which are brighids collection, in the brown bed in the corner is the sides of one of those posh plush doggy bed things. they chewed the bottom out of it so in reality there's just plastic to lie on. in the grey one we have an old blanket that has been smooshed into a heap and then bare plastic. (on closer inspection the heap also contains the remains of dinner, which is now half a leg of pork. must remember to take that away later! in the turquoise bed is an old curtain that oddly is still covering the whole of the base?!? then tikki has his armchair with an old duvet and a towel and a blankie tikki doesnt chew his bedding so tikki gets luxury and will defend his chair mightily against any foe who may even look at it as if it may be worth a chew. tikki is wise i dont know why i bother though, brighid would gladly sleep on mud if i let her, and squirrel spends most of her time on the windowsill. though of late tikki has allowed her the honour of sleeping on the patch of blankie that hangs off of his chair onto the floor. i dont think she realises just how honoured she truely is. lol!

hi! i've only just got back online properly a few days ago, so have missed any previous info you may have posted but.... are you sure its an infection? could it be ear mites? when my cat used to get them all the time (till we switched to raw hurrah!) the gunk would appear so quickly i swear we had ear gunk fairies at large in the house! the best thing i found to relieve the mites till the raw did its stuff was a powder called thornits. i dunno if you can get it where you are, and you would want to check with the vets 1st before you used it, but a tiny pinch in each ear daily for a week was enough to do the trick!

is de powder safe tou use around fish tanks? i kind of assume it would be, but i thought i best check thankies hun!

see, the horrible situation i am in is i agree with you. but i cannot get rid of the little blighters. it seems the cats are the ones bringing the damn things in. brighid never gets them, squirrel gets a few but poor tikki is a magnet and reacts terribly to them ticks arent the problem for me its the bloody fleas. but please please please if you have another method of getting rid of them trust me i am ALL ears! i have held out for the 2 years since tikki was diagnosed, and would gladly chuck the stuff in the bin! in fact, bugger it. the stuff is going in the bin anyway. perhaps weekly baths and the daily grooming and de powder and any suggestions you can think of will allow me to win. at least winter is coming up, that should help too i hate chemicals and have been holding off for this very reason. any suggestion would be very much appreciated, thanks