Thanks Daniel He is a beautiful dog with a great personality and character. He tends to be a bit aloof with other dogs sometimes...kinda sits and listens to them barking and yapping as if he wonders what's to get excited about but most of the time at the moment he just wants to play and run around. He's almost 10 months old and I'll start him on more serious training soon.

I got chatting with an estate agent last week while we were having our cars washed, who's big into dogs (he has 8 boerbulls - see pic below), and you don't want to have them running around untrained. We got on well and had a lot to talk about because it turned out we both know a lot of the same folk from the Eastern Cape, so we'll meet again to chat and he wants me to take down a few trees for him.

I don't like them because they have a reputation of being killers and unpredictable. With some of them growing up to 90 Kg I certainly wouldn't like to try and fend one off.







He's trained them to guard and protect and has been great giving me tips on how to for example train not to accept food from anyone else or to eat thrown meat or food. My pooper is still too young for serious guard dog training...still wants to play too much and still too small. I don't want to influence his nature with too much aggression at the moment either.

Our Shelty would be a great guard dog if someone would try to break in, she would completely lick their skin off. Then she would show them where everything of value is so they wouldn't have to make a mess rumaging around for it.

I spent most of the weekend working on fencing down the one long side of my place to keep my doggy in. On Monday the guy I hired to do the fencing for me didn't pitch so I've been at it until Tuesday. Guess he realized what he was in for.

I must tell you, working with fencing has to be one of the worst jobs out there. Wire, especially heavy gauge steel wire isn't the greatest medium to work with. It's cold, hard and unforgiving and not having the right tools doesn't help...I'm using quite a big pair of pliers which is excellent for electrical work but not the greatest for fencing

Putting up a new fence isn't so bad, but reinforcing an old one with four new strands, buried deep in a thorny hedge, isn't even funny. The hedge is not thick enough to keep my poop dog in and he quickly found gaps to escape through. My hands and arms are cut to shreds because I had to prune the hedge severely before I could get to the fence poles and span the wire

Anyway, it's now done and it's not been nice seeing him trying to find a way to get to the open field next door that he's been used to playing since he was tiny. He can't get to be the horses anymore either, but they do come right close to the fence and graze there and he goes and sits with them.

It's really sad having to restrict him like this but I had no choice really...he's a wanderer even with his knackers gone. He hasn't gotten to the roads yet but I figure that was going to be just a question of time before he crossed the fairly busy road to get to another big over field in front or chased a rabbit or guinea fowl across the road without a thought to the traffic.

What we won't do for the animals we love eh Graham. You are surely a responsible dog owner.. even if your arms are torn to shreds.
Sounds like me when trying to pick the biggest raspberrys in the centre of the thorny bushes,

You hit that on the head JoAnn. It is amazing what we do for our pets. Just in the past 2 months I have spent close to $10,000.00 on my dog. Yeah, I will be paying for that for quite some time. She had bladder stones (about 20) and had to have surgery and check-ups to ensure everything was good to go. Because of this, she had to go on a SD(C) diet. Well, after about two weeks of that we noticed her not eating, throwing up, lethargic, lost about 20 pounds, and many other symptoms. The vet took biopsies last week and said to bring her back in yesterday. They kept her overnight when we took her in and she has been on a feeding tube (every 4-6 hours) and anti-biotics. Over the past few days she has gotten really better. Eating on her own and barking. We got a call from the vet today and come to find out she is allergic to the dog food.

Since we didn't feed her anything but Pedigree or Beneful we never had any problems. But something in the prescription Science Diet caused her some pretty bad problems. So now she will be on a hypo-allergenic, low protein diet. LOL.

@Graham,

I put up a fence once and was really surprised on how easy it was. But not having the right tools prolly would have made it much harder. I think we did an entire apartment complex in a matter of 16 hours. I was stunned. LOL.

Good Heavens Jason, I hope you have many many more years with your dog after all that.
I think I would go after Science Diet

Yeah JoAnn, one has to do what one can to ensure their safety. I must say it's a bit selfish on my part to want to keep him close to home but need him around for "an early warning" if there are intruders, mostly at night and in the evening.

Ouch Jason that's a lot of money! I'd probably have reacted differently to you faced with the same situation although now that my poop dog is growing up with really great character and personality traits it's easy to get emotional about something like that.

On Friday I got him what I thought was nice strong (fiber reinforced) but inexpensive football to play with. He loved right it from the start and it was inflated real hard and too big for him to get a bite on...or so I thought. After playing with him for half an hour or so I went inside to get lunch and he was running around pushing the ball around with his muzzle and paws.

In a while I heard this sort of "plop plop" a few times and went out to see. The ball was totally flat and he was grabbing it in his mouth and throwing it in the air

He must have got a tooth in somehow and well, that was the end of the bouncing football. It's still his favorite toy right now and he runs around with it but it's not much fun for me to throw or kick a flat ball for him. I guess I could find a proper leather football but they're real expensive I bet and probably won't last much longer.

I'll get another the same this week but will have to take it from him when I'm not playing with it with him, so it has a chance of lasting a bit longer

What a visual. What about wraping a thick rope around it, or glueing the rope to one end for him to grab onto? Probably need crazy glue or something. A thought.

At 11 months now, he's beginning to show some signs of maturity and it's real funny watching him display the beginnings of wanting to lift a leg when he has a pee Last week early one morning when I took him outside he lifted his front paw I think it was in an effort not to get it sprayed on but still. Then this morning he was close to a little mound of weeds and stuff I'd pulled out and gave a sort of a "practice" lift of his back leg and stood like that for a few seconds but didn't get to wee

He's good and healthy but again showing signs of growing physically...his head just seemed much bigger one day and about a week or so ago one day he just wouldn't eat all day no matter what I gave him and even gave a juicy chicken bone no attention at all. I gave him a bowl of milk to try and he went for that real enthusiastically. I had to hold it for him to drink as he was curled up in what I guess is a dogs full fetal position with his legs and head tucked in real close to his body. Soon after that he fell asleep on a sofa (which I cover with a blanket for him).

Early when I woke up the next morning, he was still lying like that and just not interested in anything and when I stroked his back and belly I felt he was completely wet...he'd just lay there and had a pee sometime during the night and just stayed lying in it I had to get the cushion cleaned but what the heck, my poop dog wasn't feeling too good and I had no idea what was the matter with him. When it got light I took him out and he was definitely not his usual self, but later in the morning when I had breakfast he went to his bowl which was still full of supper and finished it all, then went outside and drank a lot of water from the bucket I keep filled for him on the veranda. He was still subdued until later in the morning when he seemed to perk up and by that night there was no sign (well except for the missing sofa cushion which I'd left at the cleaners), that he'd felt untoward. I guess it was just a growing thing?

My poop dog is a year old today

He's showing signs of being a dog already as opposed to being a puppy, but is still very playful and mischievous. I hope he doesn't lose that...one of the funniest things he does is kinda mock stalk me, crouching down low and inching forward then charging. He's got a great sense of humor and one can see the laugh on his face

I encourage him when he barks at anything he's not happy with...and go and see what it is and praise him so he knows he's done the right thing. At the same time I sort of discourage "nonsense" alerts when it's clear there's nothing to be wary of, by not giving him any attention when he does that. He's turning out to be a good guard dog and quite territorial.

He's tall and skinny still but will fill out quite a lot over the next six months or so.