Wednesday 29 April 2015

The Spinone 'Lean'


As most visitors to my home will remember, Spinone are renowned for leaning on you (Cenzo especially) - I found this article the other day and found it interesting so I thought I'd put in on here :o)




Do you know what the canine hip nudge behavior means?

— by Roger Abrantes

The hip nudge functions as a pacifying behavior. It signals friendliness.
The hip nudge functions as a pacifying behavior. It signals friendliness (illustration by Alice Rasmussen from “Dog Language” by Roger Abrantes).

Dog owners often think their dogs are pushy or impolite when they turn their backs to them, sometimes even pushing them. Nothing could be farther from the truth.
A hip nudge is the behaviour a dog shows when it nudges another with its hip or rear end. Dogs often use this sort of behavior towards people, typically during greeting ceremonies when we show the dog passive friendliness by crouching down to it. The dog will then walk towards us, turn round and either nudge us gently with its hip or rear end, or stand passively with its back turned to us.

This dog shows a half hip nudge.
This dog shows a half hip nudge, still a sign of friendliness. Both human and dog are relaxed and show their peaceful intentions and that they trust one another (photo by Lisa Jernigan Bain).

The hip nudge functions as a pacifying behavior. It signals friendliness. By turning its back to us, the dog shows that it doesn’t intend to attack—it turns its teeth away. At the same time, it shows that it trusts us.
Dogs use the same behavior, though modified, during mating rituals where the male nudges the female.
I described this behavior first in the original edition of my book “Dog Language” in 1987 after having spent several years observing, photographing and filming the behavior of dogs (Canis lupus familiaris), wolves (Canis lupus lupus) and foxes (Vulpes vulpes).
Between dog and wolf, there are only small differences, which we can almost characterize as dialects. The fox is a different story, although displaying many behaviors common to the other two, probably because it is not as social as its cousins.

More pictures from new homes

Thanks to Richard and Alison with Luca and Trevor and Marie with Enzo




Enzo (Mr Green)







Luca (Mr Blue)

All the pups that have left so far have settled in really well and leading their new families a merry dance :o)

Little Enzo


Beautiful picture of Enzo, thank you once again Ann x

Friday 24 April 2015

Enzo aka Mr Black

Looks like Enzo has taken over his new home already :o)  Thanks to Ann and Maris for the lovely pictures of his first day with them.












A Few Extras

My lovely friend Lou came for puppy cuddles a few days ago and she's sent me a few pictures that she took of them so thought I would put them on here for you all.









Thursday 23 April 2015

Last day together

Well the time is nearly upon us - the pups start going tomorrow!!  Really can't believe its already that time, its gone soooo quickly.  They had a lovely day today playing in the field in the beautiful sunshine.  As you can imagine they had a LOT of fun and certainly didn't want to go back into their pen.  They're easy to bribe though and they were more than happy again when I gave them some lovely fresh bones to chew on :o)

Anyway, here are the last of the pictures of them altogether.













Friday 17 April 2015

More pictures

Heres some more pictures taken yesterday when they were having great fun running around the patio in the lowly sunshine.  They are coming along nicely with their toilet training and manage to run to the paper 75% of the time :o)

Cant believe they'll be starting to go off to their forever homes next weekend :o(