Enjoying Canine Hydrotherapy

At the end of last year I decided to try Alfie with some hydrotherapy as he has always adored water but seldom gets to go in it with the cool temperatures in the UK.

Plus he cannot go offlead as his nose rules his head in true beagle fashion :-) so the hydrotherapy gives would give him a good cardio-vascular workout.

So A friend recommended a local hydro-therapy pool called Adams Canine Hydrotherapy

Adams Canine Hydrotherapy

At first he was a little unsure what was going on but after a few sessions he soon got the hang of it - he quickly learnt the word swimming and now if I say the word he gets all excited which is really lovely to see.
Its so rewarding knowing it makes him so happy

About 4 weeks into him starting I started taking my other beagle Star with me just to watch but she was very interested in what Alfie was doing she would wander around and peer at him as he was having his swim, so after a couple more weeks passed we decided to let Star have a go she was a little more reluctant than Alfie when she first went in the water but after a bit of splashing she settled into it really well.

Quite early on Alfie started to get distracted when the water went in his ears and it would really disturb his swim he'd spend more time shaking his head than actually swimming, so I looked around online for some kind of ear protection eventually I came across an american company that made a product that sounded absolutely perfect - its name Aquabandit


I measured his head and followed the instructions on the website and within a week it arrived, to get him use to it I got him to wear it for a few mins at a time around the house - giving him treats to make it a positive experience - then came the next swim session I got him ready put on the band and he was fine - he had a totally un-interrupted swim no water in his ears no head shaking fantastic product and he's not swam without it since.

When Alfie first started he swam for 2 minutes in total with several rests in between

1 minute of swimming = 1 mile of running on land

Almost 4 months in to it for Alfie and he is upto 8 minutes with just one rest in between
Star is doing really well too she is now upto 5 mins - but they swim totally different Star works really hard in that 5 minutes whereas Alfie takes it more laid back but they both really enjoy it and it gives all of the muscles a good work out!!

Finally Links to both Adams Canine Hydrotherapy and Aquabandit can also be found on my Links page

Please Help this lovely Basset get its much needed eye surgery!!!

Food Allergies in Dogs!!

Star is now 3 yrs and 6 months old, she has always suffered with pink looking skin - but over the last few months it has got much much worse we took her to the vets and they said she had a skin infection on her back legs where she'd been nibbling the skin - she was put on antibiotics and steroids and it cleared up lovely, her skin in general looked so much better and she had completely stopped scratching and biting herself - but then as we reduced the steroids the scratching and biting started again and her skin looked so terribly sore, she just couldn't settle down at night - we decided that enough was enough and took her back to the vets who asked if we had considered Allergies and did we want to get her tested - using the allergy test "The York Test," we wanted to get to the bottom of this so we agreed and went ahead, the vet did the test there and then took the blood and filled in the form then off it was sent with the results guaranteed to be back within 2 weeks - in the meantime we just kept everything normal.

On Monday evening we recieved a phonecall from the vet she had the results already - it had only been a week!

The results show that Star has No allergies to anything in the environment either indoor or outdoor But she does have several FOOD allergies

These are - Chicken, Turkey, Duck, Lamb, Beef, Potato, Oats, Corn/Maize and Cows milk

So then came the fun of searching foods that were going to be ok for her - after hours of looking at dog food ingredients online - theres is only ONE diet in the UK suitable (apart from prescription diet) and that is James Wellbeloved Ocean White Fish and Rice - obviously the same will have to apply to the treats that she has, luckily Fish4dogs treats are 100% fish - But we have to be strict and exclude all of those ingredients from her diet to enable her skin to heal - another symptom was her skin always smelt very cheesey another symptom of an allergy I now know, but until you are aware of allergies and their effects its difficult to know what is wrong.
We are so glad that we went ahead with the test as now we have the answers, we know what has to be avoided to help star enjoy life.

We have a visitor for a week :-)

This week we have our Grandma's dog Sally visiting us whilst Grandma has gone to New York
We Love Sally she is a 15 yr old Jack Russell and she is most definately in charge of us youngsters!!

We've enjoyed going for little walks together just taking things at a slower pace - we share our treats with her but she doesn't share her yummy smelling dinner with us - I think Me and Star will have to work harder on this one, may just have to make cute beagle eyes at mummy!!

How nicely we sit and wait for our tea x
(Only becacause there's food involved) BOL

Look at me aren't I cute :-)

Ughh I do hate this wet weather!!!

Now mummy I'm looking at you all cute and sitting nicely, please can I have some of Sallys food??

What do you expect the boy Alfie moved!!
So I got the BIG bed hehehe

And I got to Snuggle up in the Tiny bed Awwrroooooo - thats what I wanted all along really!!






Grandma comes back soon so we only have a couple more days together but its going to be a fun couple of days for sure!!!

Nottingham Beagle Walk 4th Sept 2011

For the last 3 years Claire Buckels has organised a Beagle walk in Nottingham to raise money for the charity Beagle Welfare - no easy task!!

This year as part of the day to raise some extra money we decided to do a raffle after the walk, but for this we needed some raffle prizes so Claire wrote an e-mail for some help - I then set about finding companies to send the e-mails to and filled in online forms too, we got quite a good response and some companies gave quite generously these include - Nestle Purina Pet care, Naturecare, Twycross Zoo, Wagg, Johnsons Veterinary, Ancol, Lily's Kitchen, Butchers, The Bespoke Dog Bakery, the netpetshop and Chudleys - Fish4Dogs also provided us with free samples of treats and bags that we gave out at the end of the walk - special thanks go to all of these companies and for everyone who donated items on the day without you the raffle would not have been possible... You can find links to all of these companies on my links page!

The wonderful products donated by the companies

Lily's Kitchen and underneath
Christine's Beagle Cards

The raffle table with the Wagg food and Hills donated by Naturecare.

Goodies from - The Bespoke Dog Bakery,  Ancol, Netpetshop
and Johnsons Veterinary

And no raffle would be complete without a few bottles







The walk

We started setting up for the walk at 9:30am in the rain luckily we had plenty of Gazebo's for shelter once they were up of course, there was Beagle Welfare merchandise for sale, A Lucky Dip, The Raffle and Beagle cards to sell produced by Christine Hartland which you can find the link for on my link page, all proceeds to Beagle Welfare
As the morning went on people and their lovely beagles started to arrive what a wonderful sight it was despite the wet weather.

At 10:30am the walk Started and we were off on our hours walk just after we set off the rain stopped and it suddenly went warm - even the sun made an appearence

All of the beagles had a wonderful walk lots of good sniffs all the way around

When we arrived back to the start it was time for some food and a drink for 30 minutes and then we had some novelty classes it was such good fun and at 50p per entry even more money raised for such a good cause a special thank you goes out to Nicky Stewart for kindly making the beautiful rosettes for the classes.

Here are the novelty classes

All in a days work for a beagle 

Decisions, Decisions!!!

And here with just two weeks until her 10th birthday is one of the winners Lizzie - looking very proud and rightly so!!




After the classes were complete it was time for the raffle we had so many lovely prizes that most people went home with something it makes taking part all the more fun

Here are two of the lucky winners winning a Kong toy







After the raffle people chatted, took photo's and exchanged beagle stories - it was a wondeful day the day itself raised £560 from Donations for attending, the Lucky Dip, The raffle, sale of Merchandise and the Novelty classes - currently people have also donated £177 on the walks JustGiving page which can also be found here should anyone want to donate Claire Buckels is fundraising for Beagle Welfare
So all in all thats a wonderful total of £737 which will go towards caring for and rehoming beagles in need.
Maybe after reading this you would consider joining us on next years walk details of these will be on the beagle welfare website, next year for all beagle welfare events please take a look you can even become a member of beagle welfare and recieve 2 issues of beagle welfare's magazine "In full cry"
which is always a lovely read - but don't take my word for it just follow the link and explore all you want Beagle Welfare

Thank you and hopefully see you next year for more beagle fun!!!!!!

Picnik

Thanks to a friends blog and their clear intstructions I've finally managed to edit a photo taken at the weekend of Alfie the light was on the camera and there was absolutely no shade, so was quite disappointed by the outcome of my pictures after reading a great post on this blog
this is me sarah mum of 3
Here is the before and after so if you have photos that you've not been too happy with its well worth taking a look at this blog on how to put them right

Before

After

Silent Sunday