New harnies! and – the domesticated Podenco

I hope you all had a wonderful Christmas and that Santa Paws brought you lots of goodies. Luckily the reindeer mail service brought our harnies in double quick time so I can proudly report on them.

They are made by Dog Games, a UK company, which Misery found extremely helpful.

Obviously with Misery being stupid, she couldn’t work out what size or type to get for us, and as she is also extremely tight careful with our dog biscuit money, she wanted to check that the company would not charge VAT (Gib is exempt) before she placed her order.

So she subjected the firm to a barrage of emails, and a very nice man patiently answered all her inane pertinent questions.

They do a fleece lined harness, and one called ‘perfect fit’ which is also fleece lined. They come in lots of different colours, and you can get matching leads too.

The nice man suggested Misery buy the Perfect Fit ones for us and told Misery which sizes we would need. Master told her to buy nice green ones to match my Landy.

Can you believe that she ordered them on the Friday and they arrived in Gib on the Tuesday? so she went hot-footing it down to the parcels office on Wednesday to collect them.

Here I am wearing mine.

Wandering down the arroyo with my nice new harnie (I cropped Little Rat out of the picture!)

Here are some more piccies, and I have even included Little Rat on one of them.

Rat and I modelling in the tunnel at Wellington Front, Gibraltar

No, I don’t think want to be in this pic. My harnie looks good though

Close up of my chic new harnie

Pippa Review:

Comfy, very very comfy, and for poor old dogs with arthritis, extremely good as I don’t have to lift up my paw to put it on, it just clicks around my girth with two clippies. Excellent. The fleece means it is soft and gentle and doesn’t rub my fur at all. As the leads are also fleece, it means it doesn’t hurt Misery’s or Master’s hands either.

They are very strong which will keep Little Rat under control, although also sadly means I haven’t much chance of chasing cats.

Stars:

Service – 5/5, or maybe 6/5

Quality – 5/5, and – they are made in the UK, which is a GOOD THING.

Design – 4.5, colour choice is excellent, mine is indeed a perfect fit, Snowy has a little extra room in his front piece (there are three components to the harness) but we figure he will grow into it. The different pieces and sizing can be confusing but the helpfulness of the staff easily compensates for that. The good thing about Snowy’s is though that if he gets any bigger we can just change the relevant part of the harness without having to buy a whole new one. And as he is getting even fatter we have already started to extend the webbing around the girth.

Cost – they are not cheap, but if you want a comfortable and secure harness for your dog, surely you would be willing to pay for a quality product?

Overall Pippa rating – 5/5.

They ship all over the place and also have outlets in other countries. They get a big PippaPaw of approval from me.

Next, I will be doing a couple of food reviews as we have not been able to get our normal Waggs from Morrisons all the time, so Master bought a different one for us.

Over to Snowy for more of his diaries.

September 2013

Snowy’s Diary – 8 – The gardener

The next day BFD and NM left us.

Boooooo. Just me and LW again. I miss them.

What to do? Apart from play with my toys. I have so many toys now. A ripped vest, corks, my rope toy made my NM, bits of cane, plastic plantpots, kitchen towel and the cardboard inserts, and two bouncy balls. And her toes of course. I wouldn’t call my people mean but they didn’t exactly incur a huge debt at Toys R Us. But does it matter if the toys serve their purpose? I think not.

Rope toy

I’m busy, what do you want?

I want to play with those shoes

All eyes and ears. No, I am NOT Piglet

I have decided to emulate my person so I have taken up gardening.

I was gardening from an early age

Apart from turning over soil by digging for Australia in what used to be the spinach patch, I have taken to inspecting the seedlings and the herbs.

This involves climbing onto the garden, and checking their strength by lying on them. After all, if they can’t manage a few pounds of Podenco puppy they are going to be rubbish crops.

I like the herb garden. It smells very nice. I climb up there too. There is basil and parsley and oregano and what should have been cilantro but has morphed into parsley. [PD: more cilantro has been sown] There are lettuces as well. For some reason my inspection of said plot with my tiny dainty feet meets with being lifted off.

I also prune the spinach, the cacti, although I did get a nasty spike in my paw with that one, [PD: cacti have been moved out of reach], and the hibiscus. Apparently hibiscus makes good tea. I can recommend them to eat. And the yellow pollen looks very pretty on my forehead.

I’ll post another gardening update later when I have found more plants to inspect, prune, remove and generally put under Podenco Control.

Checking the integrity of the supports and netting

Looking after the plants

Looking at those plants

Podenco investigation nearly completed

Wait, perhaps I could have a little dig here

September 2013

Snowy’s Diary – 9 – House-proud Podenco

I have also taken on some domestic duties. Primarily this involves tidying my rugs and blanket, tugging and pulling them by their tassels so they meet standards of Podenco Orderliness.

I am training my person (she’s not limping so much now so I need a new name for her) to be cleaner and tidier too.

I bring in dead plumbago flowers on my feet and sometimes to chew, so she has to sweep up and mop out. I still do the odd pee and poo inside, so she needs to clean that up and mop again. I like a clean and tidy house and it keeps her on her tasty chewy toes.

I must be doing a good job with her training as Nice Man commented on how clean and tidy the house was on his visit with BFD.

I also check all furniture within jumping up reach. Soon I hope to be able to jump up fully to carry out a thorough inspection but for now I just have a look. The BFD told me he has a sofa to sleep on. I have tried to get onto her very large bed which has plenty of room for a litter of Podenco puppies let alone just me, but it is still too high.

One night one of her pillows fell on the floor and I lay on it. I like my rugs and blanket but this pillow was very soft and comfy. It was white too, like me. I think when I am bigger it will be a good bed for me. NM won’t agree with it, but he didn’t agree about Dogs on Sofas. BFD soon sorted that out.

Shoelaces, trying to take her for a walk

What else do I do? Oh yes. We have a nice lace curtain over our patio door to stop horrid buzzy flies entering. I always give it a firm tug to make sure it is correctly in position. As for the cleaning duties, I chase around after the mop and the sweeping brush to make sure she is doing a good job. I think that is all. Pretty impressive for an eight-week-old street puppy I think though.

Pippadog:
Well that’s enough from the Rat. More interestingly, here am I.

Me. With MY plantpot.