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

Our dogs are more expensive than my Rapha habit.

My views, for what their worth (probably not that much):

On letting your dog off the lead - don't unless a) you have absolute confidence in its recall, b) you have absolute confidence in getting it to sit, down and wait until you reach it, c) you can see everything is clear around you, d) you can run faster than your dog or e) you're on your own private estate. Too many dogs running loose with owners reassuring me that they're friendly, just want to play, etc. I don't give a fuck, keep them away from my dog unless I say it's OK.

On leaving them during the day. I now work from home, but used to only do that part-time. My dog was ok at home two to three days a week, crated, as long as he was well walked before I left and when I got back, and as long as gave him the attention he wanted when I was around. I think it's much better now that I'm around pretty much every day, but I don't necessarily think it's bad/cruel to leave a dog alone for the day from time to time. I'm sure not everyone will agree though.

Too many dogs running loose with owners reassuring me that they're friendly, just want to play, etc. I don't give a fuck, keep them away from my dog unless I say it's OK.

Exactly this penny dropped when my owner training kicked in last weekend - why should my dog and I be put through stress because of other peoples' idea that dogs should be just left to 'socialise' without any control. We wouldn't do this with our children!

Suddenly I'm very forthright if I want someone's wandering dog to be controlled, and it's liberating.

Partner and I came to same conclusion, didn't want to commit to an entire dog lifetime and have previous had an older rescue dog.
Old dog was a border collie, picked him up when he was ten, turned out to be twelve, lived in very happy until almost 18. He was a very big border collie too, so unusual he went so long. Very happy chappy, only problem he had until the end was deafness in the last year, came on over a few days.
So started looking for the right dog, took 6 months or so and ended up with a lardy 8 year old Japanese akita / collie cross, we live in a very green part of a green city so couldn't be anything too energetic. Had over a year now, quickly got her down to the right weight and got some good training in.
Does everything very well apart from small appetite for small yapping dogs

Well holy shit, we're getting a puppy in three weeks.

Amazing. Crate & mat, puppy pads and baby gates were my first purchases before the dog. (Hazel came with food.)
Register with the vet too.

It's at this point I'll mention that we have white carpets throughout our entire flat. They were there when we bought it and we are going to get rid in due course but I have a feeling this is going to speed up their demise a little!

Be aware that most petfood is utter rubbish! The raw/kibble brigades have lots of opinions on this, but just so you know: Ingredients below 4% don't need to be stated, and it's legal to put anything (plastisizers, for instance) in pet food provided it doesn't kill them within 6 months. So 7 months is fine then.

/shudder

Cheers mate. I learned that over years of cat ownership. The quality of food you feed them makes such a difference to activity levels and overall health. I can imagine it is even more pronounced with dogs.

You can generally trust higher meat content foods a little bit more but not even then totally. It really boils down to what food suits an individual cat best. I have a huge amount to learn about dogs but I guess I'll have to get dog food savvy fairly quick.

One of the few things DJ and I would agree on is the benefits of feeding dogs a raw diet - read up on it and talk to some people. Not all vets like it, but then many of them are taking bungs from Eukanuba, Purina and Royal Canin.

Those carpets aren't going to last long! Watch out for the underlay - every dog I've had has got a taste for it. My staff took up the whole hall carpet and destoyed the underlay in about 20 minutes. My Corso has done the bottom stair on four out of the five flights in my current house.

Just pad everything, twice.

I'm on the cold-pressed food for Hazel and she loves it. Dog food review sites love it. Schnauzer forum people love it.
http://www.gentledogfood.co.uk/

Raw food, I just don't have the capacity for it.

On the toilet training front, we have trained our recent puppy without pads or paper, essentially because you then have to train them twice, once to use the pads, then again to use outside. Not sure what sort of outside space you have but we made essentially a giant litter tray 2m x 2m which is filled with bark and mulch, and as over the first few days as soon as she looked like she was going to go we ran outside with her under the arm and put her in the middle of it. Within three days she was pretty much trained (still get the occasional accident of course) and as soon as she is on her bark\mulch she knows she has to go...

I'm sold on the benefits of a balanced raw food diet but the logistics seem to be the biggest issue.

One big question for us would be how easy is it to travel with raw food? We tend to spend a fair few weeks of the summer each year in the mountains. would seem like a massive ballache to prepare several weeks of raw food and drive it to the Alps and try to find an apartment with a freezer big enough to handle all of the food.

I'd rather pick a high quality diet that we can easily transport to provide continuity for the dog...

We have a utility room dedicated to raw feeding, it has a freezer filled with green tripe, tracheae, pigs trotters, pigs skulls, game, whole fish, ribs etc. A lot of it is not human grade food so we keep it entirely separate.

I'd also recommend rawtdoor on facebook

They sell ziplock bags of minced offal etc that sit perfectly in a freezer drawer for convenience- also as they are relatively flat they defrost in a few hours.

Our routine is that each time we feed the dogs we have to pull their next meal from the deep freeze.

Just buy fresh ribs chickens etc when on holiday.

I feed my dog raw. He hardly does any poops, which is nice. Not sure if there is any correlation ...He's also very small tho!

He only eats 200g of it a day.

I have noticed that cats shit less when eating high meat content diets...and it smells less too.

There are perfectly good kibbles out there. Just not the ones owned by Mars/Unilever/GSK etc

Our dog does well on a mix of kibble and wet food, plus occasional stuff we cook up. Chicken/rice/sweet potato/egg is a favourite.

Chicken skin is wonderful for training.

Sadly we don't cook bacon so much as the smell drives him absolutely wild. It's too much.

For toilet training, use newspaper and not pads, much cheaper, plus ours just ripped up the pads. Good point above about training once to use the pad/paper and once to go outside. I would try your hardest to combine the two into one move as much as possible - worked for us, he was basically trained within a day or two. We would just run out to the landing of our flat and put the paper down. Means a bit of occasional scrubbing on the landing floor but it worked.

As he got older we moved to a house with garden but I would say a whippet could work in a flat with a park nearby.

I should add he absolutely loves Butchers, especially the original tripe.

So much anger. Maybe people would take on board what your views are on their dogs coming up to yours uninvited if you weren't such a cunt about it. Some guy screaming at them about it in the park will only serve to leave them thinking "don't fancy being like him much" and ignoring your 'advice.'

There's no screaming going on, you just threw that in for effect. My dog has been attacked three times by dogs off the lead in the last 18 months, and its cost me over £500 in vets fees. Each time my dog was on the lead and minding his own business.

If telling people to keep their dogs away unless I know it's not going to kick off makes me a cunt, so be it. Less of a cunt than people who can't control their dogs off the lead though.

I'm having a massive panic about getting a dog now. Things like:

• I work at home now and will be for the forseeable future, definitely until the dog is well on the way to adulthood but what happens if/when that changes? Is a dog walker enough? Will the dog be happy?

• What if our whippet gets separation anxiety and howls on the occasions we do leave him for short periods at home and the neighbours complain?

I swing from being total convinced and excited that we decided to get a dog and deciding that it would be much safer all round if we didn't.

I wasn't expecting to find this such a nerve-wracking decision!

It's not always easy to be so zen-like when someone's irresponsibility with their pet threatens your safety. Pulling apart fighting dogs and getting bitten for your trouble is zero fun.

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