Irresponsible Owners

To be clear, I don't have an issue with dog coats, I was amused by the distinct difference between dogs in the immediate vicinity around me where only long dogs and clipped dogs have coats on (one of which of these used to be mine), and the posh market town up the road where there was a brand new shiny looking coat on every.single.dog.

I have a veritable collection of coats stashed away in a drawer because my westie is no longer here, they are mostly slightly faded with distinct signs of wear.
 
CorvusCorax said:
I trained today (and had snowballs thrown at me) but I do put my dog in a coat or jumper for the wet, rather than the cold. Mainly because I can't be bothered drying a whole dog and I won't put a dog away/to bed wet.
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Top dog-life hack - Short-haired dog with an adversion to water. You are welcome 😉
 
I’ll admit that the hooligan has equidry coats, a wax Barbour coat & equafleeces. (Sensible “proper” coats at least!) Their main purpose when it isn’t pissing it down is the keep his belly & chest clean(er) when he goes tramping through mud on an almost daily basis. (He’s rather close to the ground and mud is attracted like a magnet) He does also get clipped quite short to aid with mud control (he gets matted otherwise, literally within hours of getting wet / mucky sometimes!) so then needs the warmth when it’s icy out, especially if he’s merrily jumping in & out of half frozen streams and playing in slushy puddles.

He is also a drama queen about rain (despite his obsession with all other forms of running water)regardless of temperature unless he has a waterproof on. With coat in place he’ll happily go for hours in horrible weather. (Although I sometimes want to disown the resulting swamp monster!)
 
blackcob said:
I assumed it was more an observation on the habits of the red trousery types inhabiting the naice market town (and why do Barbour dog coats fit so badly?!)
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Indeed. Although to deliver you your dog fashion update hot off the press, there were actually more puffa jackets with stand up collars than Barbours on the dogs yesterday.
 
Titchy Reindeer said:
There's currently an extra dog in my downstairs bathroom.

He's a T lookalike, but slightly bigger. I called round to say hi to my parents and he was sat on their doorstep (before trying to throw himself under my car wheels). He'd been there since around 9 am (11am when I got there), it's -4°C and he was shaking. My mum had already tried taking him home and phoned me to ask what to do (I was out with the horses). We know where he lives, but not his owners. Mum and I took the dog around again, just in case. No answer.

So I called the Maire who tried calling the owner but got no answer. The poor Maire sounded a little overwhelmed, apparently dealing with some elderly inhabitants' broken heating, so asked me to hang on to the dog for a while. So here I am, with a stray dog in my bathroom for the second time. I think I'm going to start charging...

This isn't the first time this dog has been out. Dad has taken him to the mairie on a piece of string before. Some friends of mine have also found him before (and called me to see if I knew him and his owners - strange how that happens a lot). I have seen him out earlier this week and it's the second or third time he's been round to Mum and Dad's this week. I suspect his owners have gone away somewhere and left him in the garden, possibly with some calling round once a day to check on him.

Oh, and the best bit? His owner is the local primary school teacher! I despair!
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Update on the dog in the bathroom situation.

I got a call from his owner who was 3 hours drive away at the time. She said the dog had a cat flap into the garage, where he had a sofa to lie on and she didn't know how he got out of the garden. She asked if I could hang on to him a bit longer. Anyway, her mother and daughter picked up J (I asked his name) around 5pm yesterday evening. I told them that he was out on New Years Day as well (my parents had to stop him being run over by their leaving guests) and they said strange, they were home that day. They obviously hadn't noticed the dog had gone AWOL. I also told them that he seemed to like throwing himself at moving cars. They said they knew, he likes to chase cars.

J was back at my parents this morning! They followed him home and saw someone closing the door, so assume he has been locked back in. But poor J is going to be run over one day if they can't keep him in, with his propensity to chasing cars.

Mum is uncharacteristically worked up about it. Her and J seem rather attached to each other for the little interaction they've had (and mum isn't a dog person). She's fuming at the owner for leaving him alone at home for what appears to be several days, not caring about him escaping and sending family members round to pick him up so I couldn't give her an earhole full. Mum's muttering on about "should be prosecuted for animal neglect". While she's not entirely wrong, it's never going to happen here, and if it did, someone would have prosecute a good half of the village, including some counselors.
 
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