Plan B Forum

Bearded dragon, taken on a morning dog walk.

Why did you take a bearded dragon for a walk?

You arse!

Beardies make great pets. A few of my friends have them and they are very gentle and seem to love human company.

You can't take them running after roos though Gob.

You can hardly take Darth Vadog (aka Zombie Dog, OBD, Barney) running after Roos, it doesn't stop Gob though.

Many is the time I've had to climb into a ditch to rescue the Special Needs Dog. I consider myself his Seeing Eye Human.

It's funny really: Before he was blind it was Gob who he listened too. Now he is blind it is me he he follows. We have a whole new set of verbal commands going! (Which wasn't easy for the Dog Of Little Brain). He is me "special dog shell'. Sometimes you can hold you ear next to his head and hear the sea.

Speaking of special needs dogs ... we are looking into getting a dog cart for the oldest dog. His back legs are getting pretty bad, but he has strong front legs and is still alert etc. We have a vet appointment on Saturday and will be discussing it with the vet. here's a link to the place we found: http://www.aquapaws.com.au/?stg=12&view=12
They make different types depending on the specific needs of the animal (and they do other mostly dogs, but also other animals) - this picture is just so you know what I'm talking about:


He can still walk at the moment, but his back legs are barely taking his weight now and will just keep deteriorating more - this will just take a lot of the pressure off, and therefore the pain etc, and help him to keep up with the younger animals. It'll give him a bit longer with a bit more quality

Anyway, when I was researching it I found out about an American person who makes these out of PVC pipes and donates them to people who have pets in need that may not be able to afford them
He has a facebook page: http://www.facebook.com/awdri.com.au?re ... DogProject
The man's name is Jerry West and apparently there's been a few newspaper articles etc about him.
If this link works, it's a donations request picture that also explains about him a bit.: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid= ... nt_count=1
I'm passing his info on so maybe any of you people in America can remember about him if ever you hear of anyone whose pet might benefit from his help

Work computer not letting me into those sites, but I can see where it would be kinda simple for one to make themselves. I'll take a look when I get home and see if I can't draw up plans. I made my pool ladder and pool rack that holds the various pool tools and floats and such out of PVC. Couple of wheels and an axel is all that seems to be needed other than PVC. Maybe some kind o cushion for his butt.

Is he on any arthritic medication?

We have the blind dog on Caprieve. It helps somewhat.

The Hen wrote:Is he on any arthritic medication?

We have the blind dog on Caprieve. It helps somewhat.

He has Carprofen evry night - the dose has varied up and down over time. It's probably a simiar thing to Carprieve. And each month he gets a needle - I can't remember what it is but he's been getting that for the last three years or more. The two treatments come from different angles and between them have worked miracles. We also go to ridiculous lengths to keep him warm in the cooler months, and we massage his legs a bit -we'll try anything that we think will help. For a long time we were giving him glucosamine (sp?) as well - we only stopped recently because we were eventually led to believe that it wasn't as beneficial as it's made out to be. Sometimes we get conflicting advice, but we try to do what we can for him, to the best of our ability, financial and otherwise.
Three years ago we were having to start carrying him out for his toileting because he couldn't get down the two steps any more, and with the decline in his overall condition we thought we were going to have to make that dreadful decision. Luckily we have a fantastic vet - although Larry is crippled, he's now able to move around better than he could three years ago, and he's no longer got that 'given up' attitude. Looking at him now you couldn't imagine why we would have contemplated giving him the needle three years ago. He's 12 1/2, so we're mindful that he's in his senior years, but he still wants to walk with us and go everywhere wilh us, and he would just walk loyally by our side until he dropped, if we didn't stop him. it's so sad that his back legs are letting him down so badly. So we thought the dog cart would help him to feel that he was able to keep up with us and his doggy mate for a little while longer.

oldr_n_wsr wrote:Work computer not letting me into those sites, but I can see where it would be kinda simple for one to make themselves. I'll take a look when I get home and see if I can't draw up plans. I made my pool ladder and pool rack that holds the various pool tools and floats and such out of PVC. Couple of wheels and an axel is all that seems to be needed other than PVC. Maybe some kind o cushion for his butt.

That would be really appreciated, thank you.
There's only two of the kids at home now, and they're more than willing to try to make something, but would appreciate some direction. They don't want to do a shoddy job that's not quite right for what the dog needs, and we haven't really got anyone around here that we could ask for that sort of constructive help. They usually tend to try to do projects by trial and error - but the projects aren't usually as important as this one. That's why we were just going to buy one - it would be between $500-$600, but it would be properly made and fitted for him.
Afterward, when the inevitable happened, we would possibly keep it in case the other dog needed it (he's 9 - they're all getting 'senior'), and then ultimately donate it to a dog rescue/help organisation so that someone elses dog could benefit from it.

This is Larry - he's the one in the middle. The lab is Boof, his 9 year old mate. The fluffy pom pom now also lives with us - he was a rescue dog that my son's girlfriend took on. i think I may have mentioned that she's staying with us at the moment, so her animals have jojned our zoo.
That's one of my sons, by the way. Probably not his most flattering photo


... and now to bed (late again!!)

I can see how he is sitting "wierd" alice. My lab is going to have a problem with his hind legs in the coming years also. He already uses most of his front legs when he is getting up from lying down. But once he's up, he is off like a rocket. Didn't get chance to look on hte net at home last night. Will do tonight or over the weekend. Got a meeting tonight and have a double meeting and commitment tomorrow, so the weekend is more likely. Sorry it's not sooner.

Someone must be brushing that pom pom. I couldn't take a dog with that much fur.

Your son is the fluffy one on the left?

oldr_n_wsr wrote:I can see how he is sitting "wierd" alice. My lab is going to have a problem with his hind legs in the coming years also. He already uses most of his front legs when he is getting up from lying down. But once he's up, he is off like a rocket. Didn't get chance to look on hte net at home last night. Will do tonight or over the weekend. Got a meeting tonight and have a double meeting and commitment tomorrow, so the weekend is more likely. Sorry it's not sooner.

Please don't be sorry - I appreciate the help, and appreciate you trying to do it as quickly as possible. We weren't going to be doing anything in the next couple of weeks (I need to work the budget out, for a start!), so there's plenty of time. I'm really grateful that you're bothering with it at all.

Someone must be brushing that pom pom. I couldn't take a dog with that much fur.

I'm not a fan of them at all - nor are the boys. We tend to like cattle dogs (kelpies. heelers, koolies and the like) and other 'working dog' breeds (like the labrador).
My son's girlfriend took it in as a rescue dog about two months before her life situation changed and she ended up quite suddenly at our house - in helping her out, we also ended up with her two dogs, two cats and turtle sharing our house. So our 'zoo' nearly doubled overnight!!
He's a keeshound (sp?) and he's desperately eager to 'fit in' with the household. He's very affectionate, and we've become quite fond of him - but I'd still not willingly have another one as a pet. They're a lot of maintenance. It's highly intelligent, highly, highly active - almost hyperactive - and needs a high degree of attention and of course grooming. We've taken him to groomers twice in the two months he's been at this house, and worked on him ourself, and have got most of the tangled mess of knots etc out, but not all yet. He had never been groomed before and was quite bad. From a pride view, when you take them out in that condition, people assume you're the one that's been treating it not well, and that really 'cuts' me!! Apparently they have a double coat, and you shouldn't just cut their coat/s short (as I wanted to do) because it can grow back wrong and maybe create other problems - or something. So we have our designer-dog-fluffy pom pom trying to be one of the 'boys' with our rough and tumble breeds!!

Gob wrote:Your son is the fluffy one on the left?

I had to re-read my comment twice before I realised why you were paying out the sentence construction!!
My son ain't fluffy, but his mum seems to be