Bailey and Riley

Bailey the Golden retriever spent a couple of weeks with us recently and as lovely a dog as he potentially is, two things stood between him being a great dog and him being hard work! Yes my soap box subject of castrating male dogs! Right from the start I realised that it was irrelevant what I did as until he had those hormones removed from him, nothing was going to work!

Granted he was being treated for mange and so he had to be kept from other dogs which didn't help, but even so he displayed all of the usual traits of the non neutered dog, being headstrong, difficult to recall especially when he sees something he wants to investigate, gets involved in spats with other dogs due to his hormones and attitude and when out he ran ahead without looking back and had to be on a long line as I just couldn't trust him to come back, which has only happened to me twice with over 60 dogs that I've cared for!

that said he could be a top dog and all it would take is a small operation to solve the problem, within weeks he would be a different animal and training would start to take effect. In the house Bailey was always looking and thinking, he took a long time to relax which is typical of a stressed dog! After this operation he would settle much more quickly and be more relaxed!

Riley waiting patiently for his dinner!

Riley the Springer Spaniel is a lovely dog that had issues until he was castrated and most have now gone, particularly the humping of other dogs which was quite an issue at one point! He is typical of Spaniels in that they display an amazing joy of life which is infectious. They will explore everything and go anywhere, Riley would have made a fabulous police sniffer dog with his drive and motivation he could have been a cracker!

I was walking him in the woods the other day when I saw that he was stuck by his ear, something that is not uncommon with them getting trapped in Stingers etc. As I got nearer I realised that he was stuck by the ear on barbed wire! After 10 minutes of trying to unravel him and with no tools on me and no help around, I checked that it was only hair holding him and not through his ear, so I decided I to chew it off and spent a pleasant few minutes biting through ear hair and spitting it out! Anyway job done and Riley freed! The moral of the story is to perhaps consider bringing a leatherman or Swiss army knife with you on the run so at least you have the option to do something if your dog is trapped!