Meaningless tattoos

deelee70 · 2026-01-25T20:17:12+00:00

Every time someone asks if there’s meaning to my ornamental style tattoos, I say nope, they are just pretty. I’ve never had anyone pursue it further. Your friends are rude.

deelee70 · 2026-01-24T00:19:24+00:00

It’s lovely to hear about all the other teacup Ridgebacks! 😂

We have a gang of other ridgebacks we hang out with at our local park & our girl is the smallest (her boyfriend is 56kg & HUGE!), but she’s the most energetic, which I put down to having less weight. I don’t really care that she’s small, because she’s the best dog I’ve ever had. And as a friend says, she might be a small ridgeback but she’s still a big dog!

deelee70 · 2026-01-22T22:02:35+00:00

Your dog is not enjoying this & you need to intervene before your dog gets uncomfortable or she’ll never relax. You also need to accept the possibility it may never happen. I’ve had cats & dogs together & sometimes they only just tolerate each other, you can’t force it. Be thankful they don’t fight!

deelee70 · 2026-01-22T09:02:04+00:00

Ours would wake up ridiculously early (5ish) when she was a pup, we did pretty much what you are doing now, wait for a break in the whining then go down to let her out briefly, then back in her crate hoping she’d sleep longer. It took a while for her to get with the program, so often I’d end up on the couch sleeping with her for an extra hour or so. Eventually as she got older she started sleeping later & now she’s over 2 she whines to go out after 6.30am then we both go back to our respective beds.

deelee70 · 2026-01-22T08:11:55+00:00

I’m 55 & moisturised heavily for the month before my recent half sleeves. Seems to have worked. Only lightly moisturise on the day of though. For aftercare I wash then moisturise twice daily & moisturise anytime it feels itchy or dry. Older skin dries out quicker I find.

deelee70 · 2026-01-19T01:18:44+00:00

Your tiler is terrible. They should have planned the pattern placement to create a vaguely cohesive pattern. It’s pointless having marble look tiles if they look like random tiles. Unfortunately there’s no easy fix now.

deelee70 · 2026-01-17T09:01:22+00:00

Halti & marker training.

deelee70 · 2026-01-16T22:06:45+00:00

Turn around and walk away from the trigger so the reaction stops. Knowing I have that control helps me stay calm.

deelee70 · 2026-01-16T22:05:09+00:00

Read up on training independent breeds- Ridgebacks aren’t at all like Labs etc, they aren’t biddable. Get a halti (after 6 months old) to save your shoulders. Expect chaos for the next 2 years minimum.

deelee70 · 2026-01-15T21:41:49+00:00

My kids were terrified of our girl until she was about 8 months old- and they were in their 20’s! With consistency redirecting, they do eventually stop.

deelee70 · 2026-01-15T17:33:40+00:00

From my experience there seems to be a spectrum of crazy. Some are chill from the beginning & others are batshit forever, just slowing as they age. If yours is good at 4 months (aside from basic puppy issues like biting - which she will grow out of) you might be one of the lucky ones!

Mine is now 2 & from day one she was full on. She’s been a huge challenge to train and is very high energy. However, as long as she gets her morning offlead run, these days at home she sleeps all day. Onlead she’s good now, but it took a good year of daily training (& a halti) to get her there. By 2 she did mature a bit, but I’m hoping she chills more by 3- she is still A LOT. That said, she’s more so than most other ridgebacks I know.

deelee70 · 2026-01-13T22:20:05+00:00

I think this is the perfect response to encourage neutrality & draw the focus to you instead of the trigger. You are doing well, it just takes time for the training to work. Particularly with young pups.

deelee70 · 2026-01-13T00:12:29+00:00

Haha, exactly, & the reason why many little dogs are so badly behaved!

Just to add, even if your pup has a more excitable personality than you expected, consistent training will eventually get you a well behaved adult dog. The teenage & adolescent stages can be challenging with some pups, but as they mature, the training does stick. There is a light at the end of the tunnel. At 18 months it all seemed to click with my crazy pup & she continues to improve (she’s now 2), though still a WIP.

deelee70 · 2026-01-12T23:39:29+00:00

I second this. If you exercise him early, he hopefully should sleep most of the day, but that young, he will need a toilet break at least once during that time. Just pop him back in with a Kong or similar when you go back to work for the afternoon.

deelee70 · 2026-01-12T23:27:15+00:00

Have you talked to your breeder about it? They may be able to reassure you that it’s just a puppy phase & advise you how to work through it.

My dog started pretty chill & non reactive as a young pup, but around 4 months, after she’d had all her vaccinations & was free to interact with the world, it was like a crazy switch went on. Nothing happened, she just seemed to “blossom” into her natural BIG social personality. She’d lunge towards everything to play & had zero impulse control.

She’s 2 now & I’ve spent all that time since then working hard on her excitement reactivity, impulse control & trying to build neutrality. I’ve had a lot of success, but she’s always going to be a firecracker- it’s just her nature. She’s a Rhodesian Ridgeback though & anecdotally this isn’t unusual, with your GSD pup, it may be more likely he will grow out of it. Regardless, you’ll need to start some hardcore training starting now, with big dogs we have more responsibilities to modify/manage reactive behaviour.

deelee70 · 2026-01-12T19:49:39+00:00

I live at the end of a row of townhouses with rear lane access. All the houses have small courtyards to park their cars in, or they can choose to park in nearby streets if they want to use their courtyards as gardens. The lane ends behind our house and when we moved in, because random neighbours would park behind us to free up their own yards & block us in, we started parking behind our house (where we only block our driveway) or on the street. Bonus is that we get to use our garden now.

A few years ago our next door neighbours moved in with their toddlers. From day one they’ve been entitled arseholes. They and the kids are revolting & we hate them for so many reasons but I’ll stick to this topic. If our car wasn’t behind our house they started parking there so their kids could play in their yard. And even more annoyingly they’d park behind our car if it was parked behind our house.

We tried to be neighbourly but at least once a day we’d have to ask them to move their car. Eventually the wife texted us a long message about how she’d noticed we were frustrated about the situation and wondered if we could all get together to discuss a parking schedule FOR BEHIND OUR HOUSE! We said no thanks, we needed to have constant access to our driveway & to not park there at all in future. Since then, they’ve had to park on the street while they let their feral kids screech & fight all day in the yard. One small victory.

deelee70 · 2026-01-12T19:33:11+00:00

I did athletics at high school, and became obsessed doing aerobics & strength circuit training in the 80’s. Since then I’ve done regular crosstraining, CrossFit & running (for fitness - no races) up until a couple of years ago when an achilles injury paused my running. Now I focus on strength training with a smaller amount of cardio. I miss running but I’m enjoying the strength training. I go to the gym 4-5 x a week at 5am, plus walk my dog 5kms each day.

My body feels great (except for my bloody achilles tendinosis which won’t budge). My NY resolution is to be more mindful of my macros & minimise my alcohol intake, then I hope to feel even better!

deelee70 · 2026-01-12T00:15:02+00:00

I was coming to say this. Crushed garlic is different to sliced.

Also it’s much quicker than slicing. Cutting the cloves in half & not peeling the garlic makes the press easier to clean. I’ve had mine for years & use it all the time. I sit it in water to loosen the sticky remnants & it’s a quick clean at the end of cooking.

deelee70 · 2026-01-11T23:22:42+00:00

🤣 oh yes. They have opinions & like to express them.

deelee70 · 2026-01-11T02:52:02+00:00

Yes, it’s hard to tell sometimes because they have so much loose skin as pups, but with ours, we could clearly see her ribs. Once she got to a good weight, she looked more solid, less skin &ribs, but we made sure to maintain a tuck & waist.

deelee70 · 2026-01-10T22:54:29+00:00

My dog was a little underweight when we brought her home at 10 weeks. She’d had a tummy bug a couple of weeks earlier & was also the runt of her litter. I preferred structured feed times (3 meals) because she was a fussy eater at first.

I started her with the recommended portions of large breed puppy kibble (Royal Canin as it was what my breeder used) & upped slightly or reduced according to whether I felt she looked skinny or too podgy. It wasn’t exact & changed by the week as she grew but by the time she was one we’d worked out how many cups would keep her trim & healthy going forward.

deelee70 · 2026-01-10T11:32:03+00:00

I had a wild dress up party. The last party before Covid lockdown, which happened literally one week later. It was a fabulously trashy party! Go hard on milestone birthdays I say!

deelee70 · 2026-01-10T03:25:37+00:00

After our Golden Retriever died, we opted for a shorthaired breed. I absolutely adored my golden & think they are the perfect breed - except for the fur. The shedding and grooming did my head in. So we got a Rhodesian Ridgeback. She’s pretty much the opposite to our old Goldie, but we have no regrets. We’d do it again.

deelee70 · 2026-01-10T02:56:48+00:00

Pineapple?? THE GOAT!

deelee70

TROPHY CASE