I need your prayers

Awh I love that dogs have those instincts. I'd like to have an alsatian, but as you said, they are so much work to train. English shepards/border collies are gorgeous, are they hard to train?

 

Any dog you get is going to be a lot of work to train, less intelligent breeds need you to constantly go over training techniques and more intelligent worker breeds need firm but fair handling so they don't walk all over you.

Personally, I think Border collies are the hardest to look after out of all the Shepherd breeds, unless you plan for them to go EVERYWHERE with you. Plenty of families cope well with them but they can turn very nasty/hyper/destructive if they aren't worked 95% of the day.

German Shepherds are slightly different because although they were originally bred for herding, they're more of a security dog so they don't need to be worked 95% of the day. They are just <3 Sadly after Shadow I would never get a German Shep again. Too painful even though they are the only breed I want to live with.

If you do decide to get one, do your research and go with a fab breeder, there are lots of back yard breeders out there and you don't want to get a dog from them.

 

no it's not easy at all it's always worse when it's sudden too - my kitty just didn't come home one night, he was only 1 year old, i thought he would be with us till i was at least 35. i'll never stop missing him, but i learnt to think back and smile about the time we had with him, instead of being sad about the time we didn't have.
how old was your poochy? and how are you coping now? <3
love the tattoo idea (think i read somewhere you're getting a tat?), i put a black and white wrap in one of my dreads for alfie.

 

He was 22 months he'd be 23 months old today. Honestly I'm not coping well at all probably because we had SUCH a strong bond.

I just want him back and I wish so badly that I could turn back time.

Yeah I'm getting a tattoo that says "The light that burns twice as bright burns half as long".

I'm so sorry about your kitty, I too though Shadow would be with us until we were in our thirties.

We now believe he had some neurological condition that couldn't have been detected.
Just some things he did make us think they were linked, although we thought he was just over excited that made him a lil clumsy.

We had spoken to a previous vet a long time ago about it and they said he was probably just giddy.
He had frequent bouts of diahorrea in his puppyhood and his breeder put it down to nerves and his diet, so while he did grow out of most of it, whenever he was doing a lot of running he'd always have bad diahorrea.
Again, down to excitement of running around, we believed but we think it was all linked and this was just a ticking time bomb waiting to happen.

 

So young

 

I know, just don't know how to carry on with out him. I want to move so I never have to go into the garden again.

 

*hugs* for you hdh.... losing someone close to you is never easy (and dogs are someone's too!)