Sammie & Coco Dunn!

[Sammie Dunn]

Hi, my name is Sammie Dunn. I am 18 years old and I live in Arbroath, Scotland.
I have a 15 week old puppy called Coco. He is a Staffordshire Bull Terrier x Labrador (my friend likes to call him a Staffrador ). So far he has had a difficult life, his breeders abused him and he recently had to get an operation on his elbow because it was fractured in 3 places. He is on the road to recovery now and with a loving caring couple who will spoil him rotten!

I have attached a photo of him xx

 

[tigerlily46514]

WELCOME, and good for you for helping this baby dog get a better life!!! He looks ADORABLE!!!

 

[Sammie Dunn]

Thanks. Your dog looks so cute, my partner wanted a Border Collie but there were none available near us so I bought the cutest pup I could find! xx

 

[tigerlily46514]

well you sure did find a cute puppy!! I didn't "buy" Buddy, i refuse to $upport breeders with MY wallet, nope nope nope...if i was queen, all breeders would be stopped and put outa business, we have severe severe dog overpopulation problem. So long as breeders can get cash from using dog uteruses to make a living, they will crank out litter after litter.

i got Buddy from a dog pound, after i saw him on petfinder.com <---GREAT place to find pets!!! to help keep those dogs on petfinder from becoming one of the six million killed each and every year.

GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR ADORABLE PUP!!!!

 

[Sammie Dunn]

Thanks. Well Coco was supposed to be £150 odd pounds but I managed to get him for free because I was going on about how Staffordshire Bull Terriers are bred quite alot and it would be a shame to breed him due to the fact that they are all over bred in my area.

well you sure did find a cute puppy!! I didn't "buy" Buddy, i refuse to $upport breeders with MY wallet, nope nope nope...if i was queen, all breeders would be stopped and put outa business, we have severe severe dog overpopulation problem. So long as breeders can get cash from using dog uteruses to make a living, they will crank out litter after litter.

i got Buddy from a dog pound, after i saw him on petfinder.com <---GREAT place to find pets!!! to help keep those dogs on petfinder from becoming one of the six million killed each and every year.

GOOD LUCK WITH YOUR ADORABLE PUP!!!!

 

[tigerlily46514]

YAY!! SPAY AND NEUTER!! GOOD ON YOU!!! I like you already.

 

[tigerlily46514]

was your pup's elbow broken from abuse or what? i see Staffordshires rank 13th out of 92 breeds for elbow dysplasia, with 16% of that breed having the problem. (freakin breeders do not properly check out health histories of BOTH parents prior to cranking out litters...)

is good your dog is mixed breed, might help him be healthier. I can't wait to see more photos of him!!

 

[Sammie Dunn]

No it was broken when he came to my flat. My partner was carrying him down the stairs and the puppy was moving about too much for my partner to hold onto and he umped out of my partners hand. He feels really bad about it all but the puppy wanted to attempt to walk down the stairs I guess.
He was punched and thrown about the room when he was a puppy. He had a few cuts when we got him but luckily nothing to serious and I reported the breeder to the SSPCA.

was your pup's elbow broken from abuse or what? i see Staffordshires rank 13th out of 92 breeds for elbow dysplasia, with 16% of that breed having the problem. (freakin breeders do not properly check out health histories of BOTH parents prior to cranking out litters...)

 

[tigerlily46514]

oh, the poor baby!!! aw, that is just sad. Ibet your pal did feel so bad, but, those things happen.

//"He was punched and thrown about the room when he was a puppy. He had a few cuts when we got him but luckily nothing to serious and I reported the breeder to the SSPCA."//
i REALLY like you even more now!! I think your lil baby dog is in some really good hands!! Lucky lil Coco to end up with you!!
Is he a rambunctious lil guy, or what? what is he like?

 

[Sammie Dunn]

Aww he's a great dog. Good with other animals (I have hamsters and a gerbil at home and some relatives have cats and dogs), great with the nieces. He is a really good obdient dog, listens well to commands and loves the praise for mastering the tricks. He is getting stronger and bigger now so its cute. I had a greyhound before who was a senior so we didnt get to play around with him but Coco is really playful. It's great. I love having him around. He is teething just now though so we need to watch when he is out of his crate as he tries to chew my couch and shoes. And the car keys! Haha. But he is great. How old is your dog? xx

 

[tigerlily46514]

SQUEAL!! that Coco sounds SOOooo cute!!! Ha ha, that teething stage, well, you will have your hands full for a while! there is nice video for that, by (of course) kikopup. I'll find it.
OH NO! the car keys!! A pal of mine's puppy ate her cell phone...pup is okay! wow, right? but 'mom' is upset, did not have her phone numbers written down or 'backed up'. Puppies, right? See, i don't know i'd ever have enough energy to raise a puppy again. But, i admire those who DO have the energy to raise a baby dog!! We always get adult dogs, maybe we are too lazy now for baby dogs! ha ha

We dont' know for sure how old Buddy is, i am guessing him to be about 3 now, 3 to 4. We have had him now for over 2 years. We decided, in hindsight, he was probably about 1 year old when they threw him out of the puppy mill, for being a trouble maker.
When he grows a gray hair, we will call him age 5 or 6 then, as his breed often starts up some gray hairs at age 5 or 6. But he won't tell us his birthday, ha ha. so we made one up, the day we got him = Buddy's birthday.

The vet said, Buddy was sooooooooooo malnourished when we got him, that that makes age determination very difficult, throwing off markers they often can use. The vet said, Buddy's level of malnourishment, was "life threatening", it was that bad. So we had to learn a LOT about dog nutrition, and then, we cringed realizing we'd fed our last dog crappy dog food...i just hope our last dog did not realize we were giving him crappy poisonous dog food all those years...

Buddy looked like dog skeleton covered with nasty fur. so we'll never know for sure how old he is. His teeth were BROWN when we got him, and we all thought he was elderly, (he was so weak and decrepit)
but, within months, oddly, they turned white, perfectly white, and the vet then said he was young. the vet thinks we went to a different vet and had teeth cleaned, but no, we didn't. We had trouble convincing the vet we did NOT go to another vet to have Buddy's teeth cleaned, and i still don't know if he ever believed us!! We think it Buddy's habit of gnawing on toys that cleaned them, plus nutrition. who knows?

so does Coco have a cast on his elbow, or what?

 

[tigerlily46514]

Sammie, here are some vids by Kikopup, maybe one or the other, might help you with your baby dog chewing stuff, but, Coco IS a teething baby dog!!

this one might help with what you can do if you actually catch Coco in the act of chewing up shoes: (dogs, have NO IDEA if they are "corrected" verbally when NOT directly IN THE ACT. LIke, if you get home, and your shoes are chewed up, your dog has no idea why you are annoyed at THAT moment, cuz he is not currently chewing the shoes at that moment.)
http://youtu.be/TBvPaqMZyo8

and this one, is more for nipping, and biting.
http://youtu.be/c77--cCHPyU

 

[Sammie Dunn]

aww thats a shame! Poor Buddy. I hate it when people get a dog and can't support it properly. Well this is the first puppy I've had. Been brought up around dogs so I loved it. When I got my own flat I got a greyhound however he got really bad problems with his back and legs and due to us living in a flat it wasn't ideal with the stairs so we got him re-homed to someone who lives out in the country and is experienced with the breed. She still sends us photos of him and lets us know how he is and we are going to see him next month. So we got puppy to try and see what it was like and I love it. I'm also training my friends dog at the same time so its good fun!
Yeah thanks for those videos. I try to not tell Coco off unless I see him do it cause it understand that he will clueless about what I'm going on about. If he's caught doing it he gets a stern "Eh-Eh" and its taken off of him. If he pees on the floor he gets the Eh-Eh and put in his crate. He's learning but slowly just now.
He's got some stiches in his elbow , some of which are getting removed on Friday (Just a week and a half after the op) so he is obviously doing good. Still on Antibiotics and Antiflammatary for it though. xx

 

[tigerlily46514]

wow, he probably heals nicely cuz he is so young! He sure is cute!!

oh, Buddy never had any family or home, he was kicked out of nearby puppy mill, for being a gangsta. He was either a pup that didn't sell, or was used as a stud dog. Ended up in the dog pound near the puppy mill, he bit ALL people, and fights with other dogs, they probably got sick of him being a brat.

Buddy had lived in a cage, 24/7, not even let out to pee, and had urine burns and stains all over him when we met him. He'd most definitly never ever been inside of a house, or even around humans, not really. A year or so after we got Buddy, that same puppy mill, which had been selling AKC border collies, for years and years, got shut down.

and when we read about those 108 other border collies, we recognized ALL their symptoms were same as Buddy's. it all finally made sense, his fear of the dark, his maroon stained legs, for example. that is how we knew where he came from. There is link to that puppy mill on my page, under "info" on my page.

YOU SOUND LIKE YOU ARE DOING GREAT JOB with lil Coco!! And you sound like you do understand dogs, too. Hang in there, that elbow will heal!!

 

[Sammie Dunn]

Cheers, well i love him to bits so i want him to get better and maybe one day when he has more training he can enter competitions and such to show just how great he is!

thats a shame about buddy! At least he has a good home now with caring owner!

 

[Simone Coleman]

your pup sound very lucky to have found you
I can't wait to hear about more of your adventures together as he grows up.

 

[Sammie Dunn]

your pup sound very lucky to have found you
I can't wait to hear about more of your adventures together as he grows up.

Thanks Simone. Well he is training just now as some competitions are going to be happening in my home town soon and I would love to enter him if the vet allows it.

 

[Dodge]

well hello there
I m in cornwall,quite a bit of a drive from scotland,I know,but nevertheless . . .Hi!!! I m very new on here,too (ok,you prob know that anyway)
One way I taught Dodge to not chew was with a "rattle bottle" . . . empty plastic bottle with dried pasta in it,well high tech stuff this,LMAO, you will have to see him do the chewing the stuff you dont want him to chew tough(like wires,furniture,shoes,well everything apart from his toys that he would be aloud obviously) as soon as you see him chewing,you make a sharp quick loud rattle noise with the bottle (you dont make eye contact with him,so he does not associate the noise with you) it really works,I only had to do this round about ten to twenty times with Dodge with various differrent things he tried to chew (mainly coffe table edges as they was right on eye level at the time! And shoes and wires,I was dead paranoid that he could electricute himself!!!) good luck,you sound like you are doing a grand job with your adorable pup
Best of luck for the competitions and really hope that his shoulder is healing well ))hugs((

 

[mewzard]

Hi Sammie!

Poor Coco and his elbow.
We are in the UK too, we have the big lump that is Oka <----- She is a Northern Inuit x GSD. Oka is 11 months now - Which is hard to comprehend!