Dogs of Rof

Inspired by Tricky a thread to post pictures of the dogs owned by Rofers or should I say the dogs who own Rofers.

Mutters - he's an English Pointer/GSP/Lab cross from Cyprus.  Terribly polite, very efficient, will eat everything and you wouldn't put him in charge of a banking system.  Bits of harrier/collie/whippet in there too according to the DNA test.

Ronters - the ‘RoF insects’ thread will be interested in your praying mantis. 
actually v sweet. 
 

Coffers - that pic should be titled ‘hope for the best’. 

Sails, mine does this with the cat. Most of the time they politely ignore each other. Then sometimes the cat comes close by and the dog thinks ‘oh oh the cat likes me’ and drops her head and gets in close. Cat then thinks ‘ok that is fine - a glancing nudge is fine’ then the dog thinks ‘This is so amazing- I’m being let in! Watch me! Im gonna stick my nose right up her bum’ and all hell breaks loose. Knives and blood.  

The old dog finds the new dog tiresome: he’s 12 and his bouncy years are behind him, hers have barely begun.  At four months she’s already taller, longer and heavier than him, and is very, very tiggerish.  What he is probably thinking behind that door, is “can I get in, swipe one of her toys and take it back to the stash of previously stolen toys in the office without her knocking me over”.

This is extreme and holier than thou but interesting. FAOD I’m not advocating that people shouldn’t have pets any more than they shouldn’t have cars but the impact of cars generally recognised while impact of pets isn’t (cats slaughtering birds is a different issue)

“According to the authors . . . it takes 0.84 hectares [2.07 acres] of land to keep a medium-sized dog fed. In contrast, running a 4.6-litre Toyota Land Cruiser, including the energy required to construct the thing and drive it 10,000km a year, requires 0.41 hectares. Dogs are not the only environmental sinners. The eco-footprint of a cat equates to that of a Volkswagen Golf. If that's troubling, there is an even more shocking comparison. In 2004, the average citizen of Vietnam had an ecological footprint of 0.76 hectares. For an Ethiopian, it was just 0.67 hectares. In a world where scarce resources are already hogged by the rich, can we really justify keeping pets that take more than some people?"

https://www.google.com/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/environment/2009/nov/1…

I saw that article at the time.  It doesn’t explain how they compute landcruiser land usage, which of course will be very low due to the sources of the inputs and fuel.

The new dog is being fed a raw food diet, the old one dried kibble.  The raw food is bought in as stuff like minced tripe and bone, so mostly a by-product of the human food chain (which of course has its own environmental impact.  This is supplemented with stuff we mince up ourselves, and, mostly, raw chicken, bones and all, that is left over from the chickens we eat.  We rear around 20 table birds at a time and the new approach is to slaughter, skin, take the breasts and legs for us, remove the back end of the guts, and the new dogs gets everything else in two portions.  Her jaws make short work of this.

He’s a whippet, judo/minkie. I find Italian greyhounds a little too fragile. He’s actually a huge whippet, he’s much bigger than my last one - he’s almost lurcher sized. 
 

(mutters, we always had cockers growing up and I adore them, but we live in central london so dog has to be suitable for lifestyle and whippets are the BEST urban dogs around.) 

Mr coffee aaaah beautiful - Australian cattle dog? We had a blue heeler at one point growing up and he was amazing. 
 

I would love an Australian shepherd but as per above NOT a suitable city dog. 

Exactly, TC.

She's beautiful.  Happy absolutely all the time as long as she's with her people (and happy without us too - she just curls up and snoozes), very bright and affectionate, lightning fast and soft as a kitten.

For a working dog breed, cattle dogs are actually pretty happy just chilling out as soon as they're past the puppy stage.  No issue having them in the city tbh.  You need to give them exercise and attention, but they're not like kelpies or border collies which are just nuts all the time.

Blue heelers are lovely. But very very high energy. They are working dogs really and need lots of exercise and mental stimulation. 
 

Ah that’s interesting re cattle dogs mr c. Just wouldn’t suit us - the advantage of a whippet is that they really only need a good 30-45min run off lead once a day and the rest of the time they snooze or are happy trotting around after you.

I've known a couple of cattle dogs and they're actually not as much work as you might fear.  

ZG - a friend in the UK actually got one from a breeder in Wales, so if you change your mind...