Best Friend Holiday Retreat

We recently had a 2 day break at Tarra Valley, and stayed at the Best Friend Holiday Retreat.  It was magic.

Here are some of the things Nikki, Robyn and I liked about it:

  1. It was fantastic to be able to take our dog, Nikki, with us on holidays for the first time.
  2. The six off-leash areas were not just flat paddocks, so Nikki was able to get exercise running up and down slopes.
    Dog paddockDog paddock - Nikki running
    There was even a selection of dog toys at the entrance of each of the off-leash areas.
  3. A place so quiet that you can hear the bird life though-out the whole day. It was an experience to wake up to bird calls, not having heard them for over 20 years. Nikki was puzzled by the sounds, because she’s a city dog.
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World’s fasting eating dog slowed down by new dog food bowl

Eat Better Bowl by Alpha Paw Weimaraners can suffer from bloat.  Bloat occurs because Weimaraners like Nikki try to stuff as much food down their throats, as quickly as possible.

And their stomachs swell up with gas.  Bloat can be a fatal condition for dogs.  So it’s a good idea to avoid it.

I’ve always been worried about Nikki and her vacuum cleaner feeding antics, so I’ve been looking around for some way of slowing her eating down.

Enter the Eat Better Bowl, by Alpha Paw.  As you can see from the photo, the Eat Better bowl has a “wishbone” at the centre of the bowl.
What this does is divide the bowl into three parts, which prevents the dog from opening their mouth fully (ie. gulping).

Which means the dog has to take smaller mouthfuls.
With Nikki, she’s gone from finishing her meal in under a minute, to now taking five minutes.

The downsides?

Availability
Not very available in Australia, I purchased mine from Veterinary Companies of Australia.  You can also buy them on eBay and Amazon.

Bowl size:
Didn’t know what bowl size to buy, so had to ask the seller.  Here is a handy little table which gives you an idea which bowl to buy

Size Best for
Mini (16cm diameter) (I’m not sure).
Petite (22cm diameter) Miniature Schnauzers, Silky Terriers, Cocker Spaniels and Shelties etc.
Jumbo (31cm diameter) Weimaraners, Golden Retrievers, German Shepherds, Dobermans, Beagles etc.

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Little Sick Weimaraner

Nikki the Weimaraner, in the kitchen, sleeping. Nikki is back from surgery to remove the rest of the mast cell tumours, and has been sleeping most of the day.  The Vet said that she didn’t react well to the anaesthetic, and needed a tranquilizer to settle her down.

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Well the good news is …

that Nikki the Weimaraner only has Grade 1 Mast Cell Tumours.

I noticed one when I took her to the Vet to get her yearly vaccinations.  And the vet had a look, and after some wallet lightening, we decided that we needed to confirm the severity of the tumours; one way or another.

The first operation was to remove some of the tumours for biopsy.  Now we know they are only Grade 1 tumours.

The bad news is that she now needs to get the rest of them cut out.  That will happen Thursday week.

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For the love of dogs

It’s a cliché, but the world’s best Vizsla passed away in my arms today.

Super Vizsla didn’t have an easy life, having had sarcoptic mange as a young dog, then a thyroid condition, and finally arthritis in his old age.

Vadar rekindled my love of dogs, and I’ll miss him terribly.

      

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Heroic alternatives.

Vadar the Action Dog One of our dogs is wearing out, due to old age.

He’s 14.

He’s developed a bit of a cough, so he’s been off to the vet.

First, the vet thought “enlarged heart, let’s get an x-ray”.

X-ray came back, no, heart looks normal, but “we’ll try him on some heart medicine in any case.”

No difference in cough, or behaviour.

So back to the vet.

“Well since you don’t want to consider heroic measures … “

Heroic measures.

The first time I heard about heroic measures was in a (fictional) book titled “Goshawk Squadron”, by Derek Robinson.  One of the characters was talking about using an axe to remove a patient’s limbs on the battlefield.  It was that, or the patient dying.  Heroic measures.

Strange to hear a vet say that.  And as soon as I heard that, I thought “No, we’ll be letting the dog enjoy his old age while he can.”

update: for the curious, the tablets were Vetmedin & Flusapex.

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Time running slow.

Proud Vizsla Beautiful Sunday morning, out with the dogs.  The old male Vizsla is slowing down in his old age.  Tremendous heart, wants to keep trying to walk along side us.

Used to be that he’d wait for the Wonder Weimaraner and myself to catch up.  Now we wait for him.

Which I don’t mind.  One of the few examples of time running slow, which I like.

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Dog-friendly dog training.

A good, and at times, very funny video on dog friendly dog training, by Ian Dunbar.

The above video was from the TED Entertainment Gathering 2007 conference.

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Some (more) Shared Items

Previous post -> Some shared IT items

Today’s Front (Newspaper) Pages – 609 front pages from 58 countries (and growing)
Every morning, more than 500 newspapers from around the world submit their front pages to the Newseum via the Internet to be part of Today’s Front Pages.

WorldTimeZone.Com – Australian timezones

wtz-australia-map

Weimaraner Club Of Victoria

Weimaraner-web-logo 

VOPT Hard Disk Defragger
This is the other disk defragging tool I plan to evaluate.  You might remember my PerfectDisk evaluation.  This’ll be similar.

Vopt8

 TrueCrypt – Free open-source disk encryption software
I use this, not because I’m paranoid, but because my employer blocks the use of EFS and I can’t use Bitlocker.
I used to use PGPdisk, which was equally as good, but not free.  TrueCrypt is free.
xp_main

Password Manager XP
The commercial version is being evaluated by a work colleague of mine.  He’s impressed.  Password Manager is a password storage system.

mainpm_full

Learn Chinese – Learn to Speak the Mandarin Chinese Language Online Free

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