What I did at the Weekend, by Edward aged 2 and three quarters

One minute I'm sat in a garden wondering what on earth I did to end up there and the next I'm in a car - and then another car - then a van picks me up and the next thing I know, I'm fast asleep under a nice warm red glow. My skin feels itchy but this cushion is so soft I can't help but have a lay in the next morning when all of a sudden I realise there's lots of other dogs around me and they are all barking furiously, I sense a door open and all the dogs become really excited but for some reason I'm not let out. I hear a voice say "don't pick that pooh up, I need to test it" - UH? Where the bloody hell have I landed. THEN this woman comes in to my room and starts scratching my arm with a sharp thingy - then she leaves? Next thing I know I'm back in that van, I don't mind telling you I was scared - surely I was going to get at least one more sleep under that nice sunshine thing that hangs from the ceiling? Another lady starts prodding my belly, looking in my ears and THEN she sticks a needle in my neck. Apparently it's an anti be-or-atic or some such thing but the other lady with the plats whispers in my ear that it's to make my skin better. So if I've had an anti be-or-atic to make my skin better why on earth am I stood here now having all my fur shaved off, can they not see that if I have to go back to that garden I need my fur to stay warm??

So after all that excitement what on earth else can happen? Visitors - that's what. Oh I have had so many lovely visitors including the very nice lady that first saw my advert on the interwebby thing AND she brought me presents!!!!

Today I had a bath, well I think it was a bath - it smelled blooming horrible and then I went for a nice walk through the woods - I did get some funny looks though - I don't think dogs are meant to be bald. I'm having such a lovely time, I hope I can stay here a bit longer, but I really really hope my fur grows back, I feel so naked!!!!

ARE YOU SITTING COMFORTABLY?

THURSDAY 24th MARCH

Today is the first day of the rest of Edward's life. And boy what a sweetheart he is. Thankfully he's tested negative for both parvo and giardia but sadly positive for demodex which to be honest didn't come as a suprise. He sat in his bed this morning whilst I scraped skin from his leg and licked my face the entire time. He's weighed in at just over 19kg and has the stinkiest, stickiest nose wrinkle I've seen in a long long time.
So, once armed with the test results it was off to the vet to get some anti biotics and some Aludex for the demodex
He thought the trip was far too tiring (despite the fact that he'd slept through the night without a peep) and decided to have a little rest

But once back home he was able to finally mix with the other residents which he enjoyed very much indeed.

We now need to start his treatment which will involve shaving his fur off so check back soon for some funny pics of a bald bulldog

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ORIGINAL POST
Then we'll begin.......

This is a blog you'll need to check back to often as it's the story of "The Stunning Buster". Maybe he was stunning once, but sadly not any more. The worst part is, he's for sale on the internet for a staggering £750.00
Yesterday the campaign began to get him out, one of the bulldog forums contacted me and asked if they could get him, could we take him. Within only 2 hours enough money had been raised to purchase him, by this morning we had almost £1000 in the kitty to cover his purchase (which was £600 in the end) and hopefully much of his treatment. Forgive me if I'm being cagy and if the owner read this - yes we gave you money because we didn't trust what you were going to do with him.


On collection the poor wee mite looked even worse and I'm currently waiting with baited breath to meet him and see if we can work out exactly what's going on with that skin, apparently he smells like a cheesy wotsit, bless him.

His long journey down from Bradford comes to an end in just a few hours so check back here tomorrow for an update.


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It's now just gone 8.30pm and Buster has finally arrived at the kennel, and what a mess he is. His name has now been changed to Edward - new start, new life, new name and he is completely unaware as to what a mess he is in.
A massive thank you goes to all the people that helped get him and transport him today, it's certainly been a very long day for him and he's now fast asleep under his heat lamp recovering from all the excitment. I'll examine him properly tomorrow and report back.

The good the bad and the ugly

How many people, when purchasing a dog they've found on line, would even check the missing page - let alone compare every single inch of it's markings? Well Daniel and Lauren are the "good" to this tale because that's exactly what they did when they found Winston on Pets4Homes yesterday. They recognised him as a dog that had been stolen from Derbyshire back in September 2009. They agreed to go through with the purchase and along I went with £700 of my own money acting as Lauren's mother. Obviously the "bad" are those that had him, making out they'd bought him from someone who'd had him from a puppy they even said they could get us his "papers" if we wanted them. We've said yes but I doubt they will ever materialise. Oh and we were offered the chance to stud him to their pitbull if we wanted too and go halves on the pups!!! Today his nanny and aunt came to collect him as his Daddy is in the army and currently posted in Wales (does compassionate leave reach as far as getting your stolen dog back?) and despite my fear that he wouldn't recognised them he knew exactly who they were and jumped in the car as if to say come on lets go home. Winston is now on his way back to Derbyshire and a very happy little dog he is too. Oh and the "ugly" - that'll be me undercover with no make up on LOL

All the information has been passed on so it can be given to the Police and this nice happy ending is a very nice way to celebrate 10 years in rescue.

The Freak Show starts again

Crufts starts today, sadly it's looking highly unlikely that I'm going to make it but if you are reading this before 4pm on Thursday 10th March I've decided to give my 2 complimentary tickets to whoever bids the highest donation to Bulldog Rescue - so if you want them, tell me how much you are prepared to donate via bulldogrescue@btinternet.com

With Crufts comes the usual rounds of Pedigree dog bashing, something that has really riled me is an email I received from the RSPCA this morning - please correct me if I'm wrong, but surely the job of the RSPCA is to help animals that are mistreated or need rehoming? Here's an extract from the email:

Dog shows like Crufts, which starts today, use breed standards to describe how a ‘perfect’ example of each breed of dog should look as the main judging criteria.

We believe these standards encourage the breeding of disabled dogs with exaggerated features. They also encourage breeding from closely related animals, which can result in puppies that have a higher chance of suffering from inherited diseases.

Is this really what they are on this planet for? Bearing in mind that this could open the flood gates for many more pedigree dogs to suddendly find themselves homeless, I bet they are still more than happy to keep any pedigree that makes its way into one of their shelters and sell it for several hundred quid rather than ask the breed rescue to help.

I'm sorry but I really don't think this is within the RSPCA's remit, there's several journalists out there that I'd expect nothing less from but the RSPCA? Surely their job is to rescue and rehome abused and abandoned dogs? Not to put themselves on a pedistall and start creating panic amongst pedigree dog owners.

What do you think?

On a lighter note, our Mabel is 10 years old today, it's a bitter sweet birthday for us as we tend to lose our bulldogs at 10, but fingers crossed the madam and her nappy continue for many more years to come.

Bulldog or Cross?

Something that is becoming a real issue these days is the subject of cross bred bulldogs. We've known for a number of years that it goes on but in the last three or four months it's starting to become a real problem, to the point that where as before we were seeing maybe one in 25 dogs we were asked to rehome turn out to be a cross its probably now as many as 1 in 10. With the dog breeding laws as lax as they are its a problem I can only forsee becoming worse.
I think there are several reasons why it happens, apart from people jumping on the "bulldogs are unhealthy" bandwagon I think the main reason is simply money. Put a bulldog male to a staffy bitch and the result is a free whelped litter that look a little like a bulldog with no up front c-section or stud fee costs, a bitch that's much more likely to rear her own pups and a price tag of anything around the thousand pound mark. These dogs are now finding themselves homeless with owners who really think they have a bulldog. Ann Warwick at american bulldog rescue has helped us out with a few but she's also snowed under with problems far worse than ours and it is now starting to become a genuine issue and I'm not entirely sure what we, as breed enthusiasts can do about it. Some of these dogs are very difficult to tell and long gone are the days when all we had to go on was a leggy bulldog. A combination of long tail, button ears and lack of nose wrinkle is usually how we go about deciding but we can all think of at least one known purebred bulldog that has at least one of these features. Thankfully it is still fairly easy to spot a long bulldog tail against a full staffy tail but having said that we did have a dog with a very long tapered tail, who, if his kc papers were to be believed, was pure bulldog through and through.

For Dana ;o)

For the first time since I took over Bulldog Rescue, I'm seeing people gift in several dogs on a regular basis, this was something that had only happened once before when a family gifted in their entire breeding stock before emigrating, but in the first 2 months of 2011 we've already seen three breeders decide they can no longer continue and ask us to find homes for their kennelled dogs. The increase in dogs will no doubt be reflected in the end of year figures which are due at the end of March but I can't help but feel that we've lost some very caring people in a breed that needs all the caring people it can find! As a direct result of this increase in dogs Annie is now in every day as opposed to three days, long gone are the days when I could run this rescue single handedly and if things continue to grow as fast as they are I'm not even sure I can continue to do what I'm already doing around a full time business and a choice may soon need to be made ....

In the meantime, I've spent this morning shaving all the fur off a poor little scabby girl. Although she looks twenty times better than she did when she arrived, she's now as bald as a coot. Thankfully she doesn't seem to mind and very much enjoyed her bath. It'll be a while before she's looking for a home but she seems to come out of herself more each day and she's is a real pleasure to have around the place.

Very quickly, I'd like to thank everyone that has supported Reggies Den's move into VPS products, I was very concerned that after all that training there's be no extra custom but I'm pleased to say that things are ticking over reasonably nicely and remember that if you are a member of Reggie's Newsletter there's currently a 5% discount running on all VPS products until the 5th, so be quick and join up at http://pets.groups.yahoo.com/group/ReggiesDenNewsletter/?yguid=82641684

Thank you all again for supporting Bulldog Rescue at this very busy time and this blog is dedicated to Dana who very kindly rang and asked if I could update just for her .... so I did ;o)