Four Legs Good

Here's the place to talk about animals and pets, and the frustrations and fun of owning them. Blogger Nick Barnett is joined by pet experts and pet lovers who write about the animals in their lives and pet issues of all kinds. And though 'Four Legs Good' is true, we’re just as fond of animals with two legs, many legs – or none.

The Hutt: It's a great place for dogs

03:36pm 09 Feb 2010

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By NICK BARNETT

Do you know of the Hutt Valley, have you heard of its glories? A river runs through it, you know. And it's the river, or more correctly the strips of land just to the sides of it, that helps make the Hutt such a great place to be dog owner.

I'm a Huttie, bred and schooled, but not born. It's my stamping ground, though I thought I'd permanently stamped away from the place many years ago.

Now here I am back. And one of the compensations of being a long bus ride from my office is that it's superbly set up (by accident and by policy) for dogs.

Much of the length of the Hutt River's banks, both east and west, is an off-leash dog-walking area.

Phoebe eats something gross at Eastbourne beach And it's not one boring, unchanging strip of footpath, either. The riverbanks include leafy walks, gravelled paths, grassy paddocks and sunlit uplands where Labradors leap and dachshunds dance. (Well almost.)

Incredible expanding, contracting cats

12:06pm 08 Feb 2010

9 comments

By NICK BARNETT

No, I'm not writing about cat obesity again. Today it's all about a strange ability that cats seem to have: they're shape-shifters.

What got me thinking about this profound issue was finding a trove of old photographs at the weekend. Not in a dusty box rediscovered in a wardrobe, but in a laptop that hasn't been used for years and which my partner expertly got running again.

Pierre sits fat (Weird how a 10-year-old computer can be like an archaeological site, yielding up wonders, embarrassments and opportunities for time-wasting and blog-writing.)

On the laptop's drive were a couple of photos of my old cat Pierre, who I've written about many times, including a blog post on his last weeks and hours.

Well I thought I'd seen all the photos that existed of Pierre, but here were a couple of poignant surprises. One was the only photo I'm aware of that shows me holding Pierre, and the other was, I think, the last photo ever taken of him.

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The wild beagles of Long Island

01:56pm 04 Feb 2010

20 comments

By NICK BARNETT

The other day I wrote about the train-riding stray dogs of Moscow. Well, here's another example of abandoned dogs making their way without human guidance - but it's a sadder and probably more violent tale. Some beagles have gone wild in a district of New York state.

Gentle beagle There's been at least one attempted attack on a person - news stories here and here, TV report here - and staff at local dog pounds are familiar with the beagles. Some of the dogs are held in shelters right now, with the hope that they can be rehabilitated for living in a household.

Let's hope so, because they've suffered.

Here's the story, according to animal shelter manager Pam Green: the dogs started out as part of hunting packs kept for chasing down rabbits in the woods of Long Island; they were kept in crates and, to keep them hunting-keen, have not been neutered; when the hunter decided that a dog was underperforming in its role, the dog would just be freed in the forest to make its own way - or die.

So these dogs were raised roughly, and spent much of their lives hungry and cold. Hence the troubles with residents - though these may have been exaggerated. I can't see any consistent estimates of how many of these dogs there are.

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Oh no, look where the cat is!

03:24pm 03 Feb 2010

29 comments

By NICK BARNETT

It seems I'm always reading about cats that get stuck in places where they shouldn't be. Car engines, for example. Cats just want to get in there; they have to explore. It's just that they can't always get out again.

Take my dear departed first cat, Pierre. He was into everything. Lay a newspaper on the floor to read it, and he'd be right on top of the story you want. Leave a box or paper bag around, and he'd be using it as a temporary bedroom. Place a weed bag on the lawn as you do gardening, and pretty soon you'd see it palpitating as Pierre scrutinised every inch of it. From the inside.

Pierre checks out the bookshelf, and occupies it for a while Buy a new bookshelf, and before it's up against the wall he's investigating it (see right), checking every shelf and hopping between them like a parkour exponent.

I'm sure you've see cats do similar things - they're a curious species and they need to check out any change that's going on in their environment.

But Pierre pushed things a bit far, one day.

The dogs that catch the trains

08:00am 02 Feb 2010

14 comments

By NICK BARNETT

If you ride Moscow's Metro trains, you're liable to meet some unusual fellow passengers. A dog sleeps on a Moscow train A few of the city's 35,000 stray dogs, carving out a living in the city they share with 10 million people, have learnt to use the trains.

They board at the stop closest to where they sleep, take a seat or curl up on the carriage floor, and head towards central city stations rich with passengers who might be persuaded to share food with them.

Later, the dogs board the train again and head away, apparently fully aware of how the train system works (apart from the fare structure, presumably).

They're said to rarely relieve themselves in the carriages.

(Here's a Russian-language website where people share their photographs of train-riding dogs.)

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