I want to get a dog but I have to work, how does everyone on broadway market do it ?

A 7am walk could work but that's normally a pretty quick one, more of a toilet break because Crumpet refuses to shit in the garden. Weekends might work a bit better for me if we can get something together!

Your dog refuses to shit in the garden?! This is the dream! My dog refuses to shit anywhere else if they can possibly avoid it.

That makes more sense.
I guess there are also so many variables. In the last 6 months, Ada's gone from wanting to play with any dog she encountered, to really only being interested in playing with dogs she's already friends with + generally preferring balls or sticks. With the exception of bully type dogs who she's usually happy to have a wrestle with still.
I still tend to think most of the time it's best to let dogs sort out stuff amongst themselves as long as no one's getting picked on too badly. Seems like with bigger groups there's often some initial snapping and snarling and then they just figure out their place in things and they'll then peacefully co-exist. Annoys me when people panic and pick up their dogs the moment there's any tension as that just seems to be guaranteed to create a reactive dog in the future.
Though obviously it's easy to say all this when I have a relatively indestructible type of dog. I'll still pull her out of any interaction I'm not happy with.

I clearly don't have a dog science GSCE but when Nori's been the aggressor it's always been one on one situations. However she's been attacked several times when joining in with other groups. Being that she's the bull breed and fights back it's nearly always viewed as something she's done wrong or that she's the problem. We discussed this and the pack thing came up. There's a nice guy local to me who has a mountain dog that hates Nori if she comes near the pack the dog is part of. My only suggestion would be to keep it positive. This guy clearly feels bad about it but we try to avoid it being a thing or him telling her off as his dog is clearly uncomfortable (Nori doesn't really pick up on this stuff until it's nose to nose).

generally preferring balls or stick

Lucky bastard, Nori has zero interest in stuff like that! Ada looks lovely and sounds like most Staff's i know that have had good owners from pup years. There's lots to be said about owners making things worse in these situations but we're still learning to trust her to work it out!

Yeah it's a tough one to manage, particularly because it's only behaviour that she exhibits when she's with the walker. We'll meet up with friends with dogs but it's not the same thing as being in that bigger, familiar group that she's with for a few hours a week. It makes it quite difficult for us personally to do much about and it's not the walker's responsibility to train our dog for us at the expense of the experience of the other dog's she's looking after. Hopefully it's a blip and doesn't develop in to anything that needs more urgent attention!

I'm a bit bored of the balls tbh - it's good for getting her to jump over things, but I preferred when she was more up for playing with other dogs.
Am aware that I'll get blamed if anything does kick off. But she just seems to have an ability to get on with most dogs, which I put down to really socialising her well when young (and letting her get firmly put in line by larger dogs). She generally gets on really well with whippets, but unless I know them I won't let her play now, because I had too many of the owners panic when they see all the face/neck biting, even though it's obviously just play if you're actually paying attention.
The closest she's come to a proper fight was another staffy stole her ball and it got a bit angry as neither of them wanted to back down, but even that didn't actually escalate to anything serious (but looked pretty terrifying).
I ocasionally walk her best friend as well, who's a greyhound/saluki/whippet type thing and it's amazing how many more people come up to talk to me. Dog politics are weird.
Am just mentioning this as an excuse to post my best dog picture ever.

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Great picture!

Does he have two Bernese mountain dogs and a big white beard?

We may soon have a trump card soon ;-)

Forgot to post last weekend but first "gotcha day" with Rupert the ex racer. Boy are things easier now than 12 months ago, feel like we've all come a long way.

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So yesterday my youngest received a match for an assistance dog, Shadow!
We should take delivery of her in a couple of months.

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Awesome! Congrats

Benny won't shit until we're at least 150m from the house. now we have a garden with a lawn I was hoping he'd break the habit so we don't have to take him into the industrial estate at 2 in the morning because he woke me up and urgently needs a shit.

when the weathers better and i can cut the grass shorter I might try putting some of his deposits from when we walk out there for a day or so and see if it helps him make the connection.

we plan on splitting the lawn to be half fenced off flower garden and half normal grass so we wouldn't be sacrificing use of the nice bit if he did start.

This is great

I would just like to ask you a few questions.

1. When the fuck we going for a walk
   
2. It’s 8.30 in the morning why are you not up?
   

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HA!

Last couple of days Bailey has been meeting a couple of regular dogs, on the lead then being taken off for mad running around and play. It's been a lesson for me to see how dogs play roughly but back off and check all the time, and Bailey has been doing that. So yesterday, big dog play. Then in the afternoon met another puppy and did all the same stuff off lead, but backing up and checking. Then came back on the lead quite easily.

This morning someone had dumped a load of kibble by the park entrance so I ended up walking round with 4 other dogs all off lead and being dogs. Bailey pushed one in the pond....

Thanks, Shadow is the shining light amongst the shit show that is H’s EHCP.
Anxious, excited and can’t wait for her to get here! Visit again in April.

Sorting a new harness this weekend. But the real reason for taking this picture is: there’s a golden retriever in that pond easing five ducks. Looks like it’s having a time of its life. How do I both encourage and discourage this behaviour or do I just accept chaos is in my life.

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there’s a golden retriever in that pond easing five ducks

Teasing? Eating? Rearing?

Chasing

Just fucking swimming around in the words of Harry Redknapp

You're in a battle with millions of years of evolution. I think you either accept it as the natural order of things and hope your dog is dumb as a stump and has no chance of catching wildlife or keep her on a lead all the time.

Our dog, who is as dumb as a stump in all other things, is a cunning and devious little bastard when it comes to hunting squirrels. But, the interesting thing is, he only does it when I take him out on a walk, so I'm clearly part of the problem.