Title: Police K-9 Open House & Pet Dog Walk-A-Thon
Location: Stratham Hill Park, Stratham NH
Link out: Click here
Description: Sunday, September 25, 2011 Stratham Hill Park, Stratham NH.  Visit www.workingdog.org. Actvities, Police K-9 Demo, Vendors, Games, Dog Training Tips, First Aid instruction.  Rain or Shine walk at your own pace including a limited mobility walk course.  All dogs must be on a leash at all times $5.00 per person to benefit the NH Police K-9 Academy.

Vendor space still available – visit website for details

Date: 2011-25-09

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Title: Milford Lions Dog Contest
Location: Keyes Field Elm Street Milford, NH
Link out: Click here
Description: The Milford Lions are sponsoring our 2nd annual “Not Just and Ugly Dog Contest” on September 17th 10-3 Keyes Field, Elm St, Milford NH. Contest is open to all breed and ages. Dog entry fee is $3 for each category entered. K9, Seeing Eye and Service Dog demonstrations during the day. For more information visit us online at: www.nhlions.org/milford

Start Time: 10am
Date: 2011-17-09
End Time: 3pm

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Title: Natural Remedies & Green Living with Essential Oils

Description: Our animal companions are at risk for the same things (chronic disease and compromised immunity) as humans when exposed to chemical toxins.  Attend this workshop to learn how to protect them from the dangers of environmental, home and medicinal chemicals and how to support their health naturally.  We’ll discuss using oils for:

•Repelling pests
•Kennel cough
•Ear problems
•Calming anxiety and stress
•Orthopedic problems
•Cleaning
•Digestive problems
•Neutralizing odors
•Skin problems
•Air purification and more….

The workshop will include an introduction to essential oils, the history of essential oils, why you would use them for cleaning and natural remedies with your pets, the dangers of chemical toxins for your pets and specific ways to use the oils to protect and care for your four-legged companions, your home and family.

This workshop will be co-facilitated with Denise Page, Canine Nutrition Specialist.  Denise has 23 years of experience breeding, training and raising Golden Retrievers and has used whole food nutrition and Young Living Essential Oils to create optimum health for her dogs for years.

Date:       Saturday, July 30, 2011
Where:      Bedford Safety Complex, 55 Constitution Drive, Bedford, NH
Time:       10:00 pm – 12:00 (noon)
Cost:       $ 20 per person (includes multipurpose green cleaning sample and handouts)

RSVP: Yvonne Fulciniti, Certified Health Coach, 603.494.3317

Start Time: 10:00
Date: 2011/07/30
End Time: 12:00

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Title: Working with Dogs and Children
Description: For Anyone interested in learning more about working with dogs and children.

The importance of outreach to child-related facilities and how to use fun and games to prepare our dogs and teach the family.

Contact: Dogs@nhdogs.org or nhpetsonline.com

Date/Time: July 30, 2011 from 9am – 12pm

Location: Whipple Free Library,  Community Program Room, 67 Mount Vernon Rd, New Boston, NH  603-487-3391

Cost: $15 without a dog, $20 with dog (limit one dog per registration and ten dogs total at the clinic).  Dogs must be well behaved and under good control to attend. There will be a break with light refreshments

DOGS July 2011 Educational Seminar

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Seacoast Cat Club Cat Show

Everett Arena 15 Loudon Rd Concord, NH

Seacoast Cat Club, an affiliate club of The Cat Fanciers’ Association (CFA), is proud to announce its annual event to be held at the Everett Arena in Concord, New Hampshire, on April 30 from 10am to 4pm and May 1 from 10am to 3pm. If you drop by either day at any time, you will find something of interest.
Contact person/Show Information: /603-526-4688 or ttlluu@tds.net Seacoast Cat Club.

Admission $7 for adults and $4 for children and senior citizens. Any donations of cat food collected at the door will be donated to local shelters. Food will also be collected for the NH Food Bank. Free parking.

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By Nancy Holmes 1/2011

Dog nurse II Originally uploaded by overdrive_cz

Many children love animals and will happily approach any dog they see, wanting of course to pet or play with it.

Some parents grab their children and pull them away in fear telling the child to get away from the strange dog. Sometimes this gets a reaction from a dog that might otherwise have been fine with a child. Sometimes the dog’s owner feels badly about the parent scaring the child and teaching that dogs are to be feared.

Some parents encourage petting a friendly seeming dog as a part of their child’s experience of the world. Some dogs like this and some do not.

Some parents tell their children to ask an owner’s permission before approaching a dog to pet it, even if others are already petting the dog. I’m always delighted with such requests and carefully thank children who ask before reaching out to my dog.

I’m out and about with my giant dog and she is quite attractive to children and adults due to her size. I meet many who are delighted to pet her , and some who pat her only after being reassured she is safe, and because she is trained well she handles most situations, including all sorts of people and enjoys the attention she gets. Even so, she sometimes can get a little overwhelmed and look to me for reassurance when it’s a big crowd of kids or someone stands on her tail by accident!

Things I see that commonly disturb dogs, and that parents and children appear to not know is a problem, include petting the fur against the ‘grain’, bonking a dog on the top of the head as ‘patting’, grabbing a body part and pulling (usually really small children do this out of curiosity), and often a child will hug a dog around the neck in excess of affection.

Most children understand about a parent combing or brushing hair the wrong way and it being uncomfortable, so typically I explain to children that petting the fur the wrong way could hurt like that and might make a dog react if it hurt too much. I show them how to pet the fur the way it grows to be most comfortable for the dog.

As for head petting I suggest you try this – tap the top of your own head with the flat of your hand, then do it a few more times. Notice how fast it goes from nothing much to not very comfortable. While petting is nice, for most dogs bonking is not always appreciated. Using their own hands on their own heads children can usually see how the bonking might not be such a great idea if they want to be friendly with a dog.

Senna and Martijn (en Lennen) Originally uploaded by Jilles

Then there is grabbing and hugging. While my big dog is carefully trained to permit grabbing, and simply looks to me for help if something is uncomfortable, for many dogs it is startling, and upsetting, and may cause a reaction as if the child was an attacker, or as if wild rough play was being instigated, which can lead to too much of a rough reaction for a child to handle.

One day I watched my big dog figure out what to do when a toddler insisted on trying to grab her feet and toenails and pick the foot up.  As my dog was on her leash she could not leave so that solution was not available. After moving the foot that was being grabbed away a couple of times, to no avail, my dog settled down to the ground and tucked her feet out of sight underneath her and completely out of reach of the curious toddler. Not all dogs would react that way. Training, plus a personality that simply likes humans and even the ‘short people’ she meets when out, makes her much safer than many dogs might be in a similar situation. Parents need to watch their children to see how they are handling the dog and how well the dog handles their interest.

Neck hugging is particularly dangerous with a dog that is not accustomed to this as affection from a human.  A grip around the neck can be construed by the dog as an attack or as an attempt at dominance. Commonly, in a dominance situation between dogs, one dog will put a leg up over the shoulders and neck of the other indicating superiority.

A child who hugs a dog may accidentally trigger a reaction in a dog that has a high level of self esteem and a low level of training to permit handling by any human. So while your pet dog at home may simply roll its eyes, or wag a tail, at being hugged again, a strange dog might react with bared teeth in rapid reaction at such an unexpected insult.

Teaching your children dog safety with strange dogs as well as their own pets is a good option to limit chances of a negative encounter between your child and mans’ best friend.

www.safekidssafedogs.com is an excellent website to help you improve your child’s and your own safety with strange or family dogs. The author Karen Peak, of Westwind Dog training, does speaking engagements and was on Dogs 101 on the Animal Planet station last October along with her children and her Shetland Sheepdogs.

Karen’s site is full useful information on why dogs bite, how to read dog body language, picking out a family dog plus more, and has some neat quizzes at the bottom of the home page to see how much you and your children know about safe dog handling. There is an e-book available for you for free and some other printouts which can be printed for personal use. Its an excellent resource for you to help your children learn about safe interactions with dogs.

As with anything else in life, practice makes perfect and working with your children so they know how to safely handle a doggy encounter is an excellent choice!

Boy and dog praying - Claimed by Flickr user marcelosells

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Our sympathies go out to Officer Scott Pearl and the Portsmouth Police.

Portsmouth police K-9 Wess, shown with his handler Scott Pearl in this file photo, was put to sleep Tuesday, Jan. 18, 2011.  Elizabeth Dinan file photo

January 19, 2011 11:55 AM

PORTSMOUTH — After a short career of tracking crime suspects, sniffing out drugs and bridging the police department to the community, 5-year-old police K-9 Wess died Tuesday after suffering from an intestinal disorder.

Wess was the sidekick and partner of Officer Scott Pearl and the pair was repeatedly honored by the Working Dog Foundation.

“He’s devastated,” Chief Lou Ferland said about Pearl losing his police partner. “They ran together every morning and spent almost every waking moment together. I’ve been around a lot of police dogs and this dog would definitely not have hesitated to defend Scott if someone tried to attack him.”

via Police dept mourns loss of K-9 Wess | SeacoastOnline.com.

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Cats are notoriously hard to photograph, but the results can be well worth the effort. This was certainly the case for Morris Animal Foundation’s first Happy Healthy Cat Photo Contest, sponsored by Sergeant’s Pet Care Products and judged by longtime foundation trustee and actor Betty White.

Hundreds of funny, outrageous and adorable cat photos were submitted to the Happy Healthy Cat Campaign’s and Sergeant’s contest websites. Only the best of the best made it to the final round and were sent to Betty White to be judged.

Brittany Carper of Seguin, Texas, took the grand prize for her picture of two kittens drowsing on a blanket. Her photo will be the cover photo of Morris Animal Foundation’s publication, AnimalNews, and she will receive a gift card to Petco and an assortment of pet products from Sergeant’s. Runners up were a photo from Jane Kirkland, of Downingtown, Pennsylvania, of a happy-go-lucky cat and dog enjoying an afternoon in a canoe, and a quintessential image of the bond between cat and man from Lauren Parry, of Riverton, New Jersey.

Happy Healthy Cat Winner

Two Peas in a pod!

Brittany Carper, Seguin, TX

My Favorite K9 Winner

Ms. Beanz and her BFF Bodhi

Jane Kirkland, Downingtown, Pennsylvania

My Favorite Human Winner

Nose nuzzles

Lauren Parry, Riverton, New Jersey

via Morris Animal Foundation | Celebrity Judge Betty White Chooses Winning Cat Photograph for Contest.

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On January 18th at 12 in the  lobby of the Legislative Office Building, a commendation from the Governor will be presented to Leslie Frank, the New Hampshire breeder and owner of the Australian Shepherd that won BIS at the 2010 AKC/Eukanuba National Championships.

This shines such a positive light on dog breeders and everyone is welcome to attend. It’s a great way to support dog breeding in NH

If you know you will be there in advance please rsvp by email.  Hope you can make it.

For more information about Leslie and “Reckon,”  see this Foster’s article:

Local Australian Shepherd takes Best in Show

Sunday, January 9, 2011

Courtesy photo Leslie Franks with Italian and American Champion Propwash Reckon, seated, and two of his male puppies at their Kensington kennel.

The annual American Kennel Club Invitational Dog Show was held on Dec. 4 and 5 in Long Beach, Calif. (The show will be televised here Jan. 23). Best in Show was awarded to a dog bred and reared within 25 miles of Dover, by a woman who has been devoted to this breed since long before they were recognized by the American Kennel Club.

Leslie Franks of Kensington has lived with and loved Australian Shepherd dogs since 1975, when the family kept a small herd of sheep, and she decided that a Herding dog would help manage the sheep. Her first Aussie was a dog from California (where 12 generations later, her many-times-great grandson won in Long Beach). Due to her hard work and diligence, now people around the world who seek exceptional Aussies come to Frank’s Propwash Kennels.

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The Lakes Region Kennel Club will be offering training classes at both the Meredith Community Center and Gilford Youth Center. Training your dog is one of the best things you can do.  Studies have shown that dogs which are trained are much more likely to stay with their owners for their entire life.  For more information about the classes and the Lakes Region Kennel Club, please visit their site.

They are offering classes in the following:

• Obedience
• AKC Star Puppy
• AKC Canine Good Citizen
• Therapy Dog International
• Rally Beginner – Advanced

Their flyers for both classes are below and we have added the classes to our calendar.

LRKC Gilford Taining Classes

LRKC Meredith Training Classes

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