Posted on 11/14/2008 7:22:18 AM PST by yankeedame
Let your dog check the weather. Allow your dog to step outside and feel for itself that it's too cold or stormy...Instinctually, the dog will understand why it has to come back inside where it's safe.
Don't let your dog manipulate you. Dogs can learn to use that open door as a means to control you. When you let your dog do that "weather check,"...you decide when the assessment is over.
Don't rely on natural protection from the cold. Some dogs do develop thicker fur and maintain their fat as a natural protection from the cold...But many breeds...do not have this natural resistance... If you're unsure...consult your veterinarian.
Gear up! If you have a breed that's not built to handle cold... [get] the proper gear to handle it, such as doggie boots, winter jackets, and even paw waxes that protect your dog from the cold and aid its grip on slippery surfaces...
(Excerpt) Read more at pets.yahoo.com ...
for later
Our first dog was a Norwegian Elkhound that adopted us - he just showed up one day.
That guy absolutely loved cold weather and snow, and kind of suffered in the summer months.
I hear ya .... to see Huskys and Malamutes in a hot clime kills me.
Joe 6-pack has the doggie list now. :~)
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Other articles with keyword “DOGGIEPING” since 12/29/04
No thanks.
Joe 6-pack has the doggie ping list now ~ you can PM him to get on it.
You’re part of the litter now!
Last month my old dog passed away. He was over 11 years. So many Freepers were so kind when I posted about him that I wanted to take this opportunity to tell you that I am in love!!!! I work at Petco and we had an adoption week-end. I picked up one of the dogs that was available and my heart melted. She is a 3 year old rat terrier. She was at the dog pound for over a month. They had taken her to many adoption days with no success. She was so quiet in the pound that they thought she had been de-barked. She promptly told off my neighbors GSD the next morning. She is beautiful and fits perfectly in that hole in my heart that my Bruce left. I am blessed and grateful.
With one exception, every dog I’ve known LOVED diving into snow. I foster momed a young border collie years ago. The one snow she experienced, she went as far as four feet to pee right on the deck, then immediately wanted back in. Beat everything I ever saw to see such a prissy dog, LOL!
My labs have been indifferent to rain, but the boxer mix doesn’t like it hitting her eyes. We have a deal that I step out under the eaves in a fedora so she can come back in as soon as she’s taken care of business.
There are days I truly miss my old collie. She was trained to shake off on the porch instead of right in front of my puter.
You give that dog (or those dogs) a great life! What a happy lab he must be.
My girls did the Hunt Test thing this weekend. My young dog got her Started title in 4 straight passes - my older dog and I got wisdom running in Seasoned for only the second time. Saturday was freezing rain, high wind, very cold, even some Labs funked the water blind (including mine - she is not very good on blinds). But Sunday she seemed to have figured it out and had a splendid run on a very difficult test, including a 60 yard water blind across a muddy-banked pond and 20 yards uphill into an overgrown field -- but I had to cast her twice to a land mark that wound up in a puddle and a hole, so she DQ'd. But that's just the luck of the game, given the difficulty of that test she should get her Seasoned title without any difficulty.
They never met a mallard they didn't love . . .
My older dog met a pheasant for the first time about 2 months ago and was enchanted by that lovely object . . . .
All chocolates today have back of them an early English dog, Buccleuch Avon (whelped 1885). He was a black dog but carried the chocolate (or "liver") color gene. Almost all chocolates today got the gene through another British dog, Dual Ch. Banchory Bolo (whelped 1915), who also passed along the interesting trait of a large white spot just behind the big paw pad on the front paws. These are still known as "Bolo spots", and my chocolate has faint ones.
The gene for chocolate/liver color is separate from the gene for a yellow coat. Basically, the yellow recessive gene is like a switch that turns off the HAIR pigment (but not the SKIN pigment). If a dog has two of the yellow genes, he'll be a Black Lab with a yellow coat. EXCEPT if his parents happen to throw the chocolate gene . . .
Then what you get is a Chocolate Lab, but with the hair pigment turned off. So you get a somewhat odd looking dog with the brownish-pink skin (especially the nose, paw pads, and eye rims) of a chocolate but a yellow coat. This is called a "Dudley" by the show people - not to be mistaken for a regular Yellow Lab who has "snow nose" - fading pigment in cold weather.
A Dudley is disqualified from the show ring, and that's the real reason the Chocolate Lab is the rarest - most show people didn't want them in their bloodlines for fear of having a Dudley crop up. That's also why people say that chocolates are crazier or more hyper or wilder than blacks or yellows -- it's just because most of them have been bred by field people who are looking for a higher energy dog.
Now the show folks are breeding chocs, but they keep their choc and black lines separate.
Labs are permitted to have a little wave down the spine, but my Chocolate overdoes it a bit - her hair down her back is almost (but not quite) curly.
One of the other byproducts of Chocs mostly being field dogs is that they just got bigger and bigger over the years.
The American style field trial puts a premium on a big, fast dog. So you often see a male Choc that will go well over 100 pounds.
The problem of course is that such a big dog is fine for a technical field trial, but useless for actual hunting. That's why the UKC/ARC invented Hunting Tests for Retrievers, to try to duplicate in tests problems that occur in actual hunting situations. My older Lab is unusually small - 43 pounds - but she has the heart of a lion. Plus, she won't tip your boat over or knock you out of the blind when she goes out on a retrieve. Nor will she knock you off the sofa or out of bed. My young Lab, the black, is on the small side - 55 pounds, no taller but much longer through the midsection than my Choc. Hubby calls her "the Black Stretch Lab".
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