Yesterday we spent over at Elanor’s mostly, having done some shopping for essentials like pasties on the way. Part of that shopping was another visit to the excellent The Butcher, The Baker and The Ice Cream Maker at Barton Marina. As well as meat for ourselves, we bought a cooked bone for Sally.
It looked enormous, being a chunk of the pelvic girdle of a bullock, but in the course of the day, Sally reduced it to a piece about six inches long, after some dedicated gnawing. We’ve had dogs for most of our lives, but never one with the jaw power of this one.
On the way back to the boat, we stopped off at a remarkably remote field just outside Burton, where Sally was given a chance to run about and rummage. The sight of her coming back towards us, afterburners on, ears folded back for better streamlining, and hind legs coming well forward of the front ones at each bound, was quite awe inspiring. Fortunately, these days she’s getting a lot better at aiming off and stopping when told (mostly); the first few times Elanor tried it, Sally would leap in the air on arrival and hit Elanor’s chest with both front paws.
At around 32 kilos of speeding dog, this meant Elanor lying down on her back quite quickly.
It was gone five when we got back to the boat, and I had to stow the shopping, get a shower and then cook dinner, hence the decision to miss out on the blog.
Today, we had a serious lie in, not rising until after nine. This second adolescence stuff is just great. After breakfast, we ambled over to the marina reception, where there are some recycling bins, and then on down the towpath to buy a paper from the newsagent at the far end of the village, thus combining exercise, a nosy at who’s around and purchase of said paper.
Back at the boat, we’ve had a quiet day, pottering about and watching other boats coming and going; there’s a fair bit of activity today, I suspect with boats being winterised mostly.
We spotted an unknown Braidbar, Sorbier, the other day, and today I managed to get a view of her BW reg number. This proved her to be the boat formerly known as Rowan, number 65, so we’ve been able to update our master list of Braidbars.
3 comments:
Love reading your blog and hearing about Sally. However, I don't think cooked bones (or any kind) are recommended for dogs. Ours get "treats" of raw chicken wings which you can get in most supermarkets. With not having many butchers now, it is very hard to get nice raw marrow etc bones. I try to feed my dogs as natural a diet as possible but the raw minced dirty tripe has to be done without when we are boating :-)
Ann.
I'd heard the same thing about not giving dogs cooked bones because they can splinter - occasionally I will give my two rat dogs (aka small, yappy dogs) leftover bones from chops etc. but always watch incase they choke. I have also heard about the raw chicken wings being good for dogs, but have not tried them with mine (yet). Sally looks a really gorgeous hound.
Regards
Anne
Hmm... Ann(e)s with and without an 'e'; all tastes catered for on this blog. Sally says thank you for the kind words, she agrees about being gorgeous ;)
I know what you both mean about dogs and bones, and the guidance on the web is very confused. I'm certainly always very careful in this area.
In this case, it was a very solid bone and Sally is not a gulper, but it is always anxiety making. Chicken wings wouldn't be on for her – just too small, she'd swallow them whole.
You have to trade off the risks of bone chewing with the dangers of dental caries, I reckon, but it is an area to take care with, I agree.
ATB
Bruce
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