German shepherd - Greyhound

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German shepherd Greyhound - Zoomies

Dear Sophie

May 21st 2011 07:26

The town of Nelson, in the north of New Zealand’s South Island, is surrounded on all sides by mountains and national parks. The mountains are snow-capped for much of the year. They also divert wind and rainclouds from the valley in which the city nestles, making it almost permanently calm and sunny in Nelson.

The mountains are magnificent. Every morning the city’s residents wake and look at the mountains and feel sorry for the rest of the world which does not share the privilege of this view.

The only residents of the area who do not wake each day to the breath-taking view of a circle of peaks are those who chose to live up amongst them.

They include Kate, John and Sophie. Sophie is a German shepherd, and Kate and John are her humans. They weren’t her first humans. The first ones beat her and starved her, making her life a nightmare which didn’t end until Kate and John found her in an animal shelter three years ago.

It took a long time, but Sophie learned to trust humans again.

This is a good thing because she meets lots of them. Almost every day new humans come to stay at Stonefly Lodge, as her home is called, and Sophie trots to greet them with a sniff and a tail wag.

Sophie has her own way of grading these visitors. Occasionally there are Wary Ones; they need to be treated with polite reserve, so they can see that Sophie poses no threat. Then there are the Friendly Ones who are happy to say hello. And then there are the Special Ones, the ones who are prepared to spend extended periods delivering what Sophie thinks of as comfort sessions.

The patters.

Some people can’t resist patting dogs, and Sophie is a particularly pattable dog. I know. I spent hours patting her.

Sophie, John and Kate live amongst the mountains in a large, luxurious, environmentally-extraordinary building with four double guest rooms. It overlooks a helipad and a fabled trout stream, and is quite possibly the most beautiful and peaceful place in the known universe, and perhaps beyond.

Kate, John and Stonefly were hard to leave. But it was even harder leaving Sophie.

PS For those interested in visiting heaven: Stonefly Lodge home page

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: German shepherd, Greyhound

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Poor Scratchy

May 21st 2011 07:22

Scratchy: Guys, we’ve just heard from Big Boss, and we have an emergency! He’s still in that New Zealand place and he says he’s in love – firstly with New Zealand but, secondly, with another dog!

Daisy: Would you calm down, you out-of-control canine. He likes all dogs. This one lived at a lodge he stayed at and they became good friends. She probably reminded him of us.

Scratchy: How could she remind him of us? She’s a German shepherd!

Daisy: Big Boss had two German shepherds before he had greyhounds.

Scratchy: But what if this one converts him? What he if wants to go back to his shepherd days?

Daisy: Good question, really. The way you carry on, it must indeed be tempting … Scratchy, I didn’t mean it Scratchy. Oh, do stop whimpering. Big Boss is not going to abandon us.

Scratchy: How can you be sure?

Daisy: Because he’s already put up with you for three years. You really need to work on your sense of self-worth.

Scratchy: Perhaps if I offer to eat less, he’ll like me more.

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: German shepherd, Greyhound, Dog News

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Pets, in sickness and in health

February 27th 2009 11:29

I have had some bad luck with dogs.

Murphy the German shepherd, a big, arrogant, obstinate dog who was incredibly handsome and knew it, had sensitive skin. All his life we tried to find out what caused him to lose hair, scratch constantly and suffer regular ear infections, but our money bought little except the knowledge that there are two general categories of skin allergies: food and environment.

If your pet has the first, you have some hope of discovering, by a process of elimination, what it is they are allergic to. If it is the second, it could be anything from your perfume to the fibres in your sofa, and pins in haystacks will be easy to find by comparison.

Murphy, of course, had the second.

Gentle Jumbo

The story of Jumbo, another German shepherd, was told in an earlier Zoomies post (link). Jumbo was even bigger than Murphy but he was a gentle giant. He had lived all his life outdoors as a guard dog, but it was probably a good thing he was never called upon to protect his patch of property from an intruder because I doubt he would have known what to do.

Jumbo was dumped by his owner when he got too old to even look like a guard dog, and I adopted him, aged 13.

Gentle Jumbo got to see the inside of a home, along with its warmth and comfortable sleeping places, for the first time. And promptly developed severe skin allergies to something in the environment in my flat.

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Scratchy

Scratchy is a greyhound of aristocratic breeding. Well, any greyhound bred from a famous Australian racing mother and a famous Irish racing father, with the semen from the latter introduced to the former after being frozen and flown, probably first class, between the two countries, surely qualifies as aristocratic.

Scratchy (yes, he has a sister named Itchy, for those who watch The Simpsons) was one of a litter of eight and he was both larger than average and slower than average. Scratchy was retired early and came to live with us and, I am pleased to report, two years later, there is no sign of a skin allergy.

Instead, he has epilepsy, and watching the violence of his periodic seizures is every bit as distressing as watching first Murphy and then Jumbo try to deal with permanent skin irritations.

So, you see, I have had some bad luck with dogs.

But nothing is perfect and taking responsibility for a pet means exactly that, in sickness and in health.

It might have been cheaper, and it might have been easier, living with Murphy and Jumbo and Scratchy if they had been perfectly healthy dogs, but it wouldn't have been better. It was (is, in Scratchy's case) a privilege living with these beautiful animals, and I would do it again in a heartbeat.

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Posted By: Chris Champion - Category: German shepherd, Greyhound, Canine epilepsy, Canine health

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