Shame about the ears :(
Ear cropping is so pointless.
It’s evil, I love my rescued girl to death. But man I’d like to meet the assholes who cropped her ears in a dark alley.
Wait, people really do that?
They do, it’s unfortunate. We had an English springer spaniel growing up, and went to get him as a puppy. They had already docked his tail and didn’t want to give him to us before doing his ears, and we were just like “oh no no, let us pay for that”, they agreed, and then we never spoke to them again and his ears remained lovely and floppy.
He did have to wag his entire butt though because of the tail, unfortunately.
Yes, it’s pretty commonly done to some breeds of dogs with naturally floppy ears. They should look like the big guy’s ears in this picture:
You learn something everyday. My knee-jerk reaction : such a shame to mutilate pets so they look like what we want…
Your knee-jerk reaction is correct!
That is a horse.
Nay
That’s too big!!
A dog that can snatch food off the counter without jumping… I cannot fathom dog-proofing a house for that.
I mean I have a greyhound who can countersurf, you just put baby gates around the kitchen and food. Keeping stuff out of snoot height/range removes most issues.
Part of it is training them that it isn’t an appropriate thing to do. It usually helps that if they behave (and we’re eating something the pup can safely have) they get a bit of food as a treat.
Training is a must and especially with a dog that big you need to make sure they know what is expected and appropriate. Doing that sets them up for success and makes it much easier to care for them overall.
When my aunt had a puppy, she set up a barrier to prevent the dog from going upstairs. It was low enough for humans to step over, but the puppy couldn’t get over it. Amusingly, as the dog grew up, it never seemed to occur to it that it could now step over the barrier without much fuss.
We used to be able to put up a blanket “wall” across two chairs to stop the dogs from crossing. It took them a few years to realize they could simply walk through/under the blanket.
