6 Practical Life-Skills You Learn After Being a Dog Parent

While you spend hours training your dog, you probably never realised that your dog was actually training you. The daily challenges of keeping a dog healthy and happy indirectly teach dog parents to do a lot of things. Even though dogs don’t live as long as humans do, the little time they spend with us changes us as people and grants us skills we never had before. Without much ado, the following are 6 practical life-skills you learn after taking care of a dog. 

How to Browse the Internet to Find the Best Pet-Product Deals: 
Providing proper nutrition and creating a safe space for the dog are the two basic pillars of pet care. Achieving those can prove to be expensive. From buying pet beds to finding high-quality pet food, you need to constantly look for deals and discounts to save money on pet products. While you struggle at first, you slowly learn the trick of how to order discount pet items online. You become a pro at finding coupon codes and special offers online to find the best value for your buck. If that’s not a skill, what is. 

Cleaning Up Yucky Stuff Like a Pro: 
Someone who has never owned a pet before may find it impossible to clean up something really disgusting. Veteran pet parents, however, face no problem cleaning up nasty messes. Best of all, seasoned doggie parents are always prepared with poop bags and cleaning agents.

How to Multitask When Walking: 
Walking the dog takes a good 30 minutes every day. Now, if you are a busy person, finding that 30 minutes every single day often proves to be impossible. Working pet moms and dads, often bring along Bluetooth headsets so that they can take care of important phone calls while they are walking their dogs. 

Cooking Nutritious Meals Quickly: 
Buying expensive pet food is not something that everyone wants to do. A better alternative for many is to buy cheap yet healthy ingredients and then cooking them to make nutritious meals for their dogs. The home-made food is not only more nutritionally dense but also cheaper than buying expensive dog food products that offer the same nutritive value. Seasoned pet parents usually learn the skill to use few basic ingredients such as minced beef and veggies to quickly make meals for their dogs.

Reading Food Labels Like a Boss: 
As a pet parent, you are responsible for your dog’s diet. This means you need to be ever-vigilant when picking dog food and treats. One of the skills most pet parents are forced to learn is to read product labels. Instead of being swayed by the fancy marketing claims upfront, dog parents know that the best information is usually labelled in the back. 

 Administering Pills and Shots:
 Administering pills to dogs is a skill that takes a lot of effort to master. Even with special pet pill tools, you need steady hands to ensure the tablet is not spat out. You also need to calm your dog and secure it in position. This is a skill that comes in handy when administering tasteless tablets to any small animal.

*collaborative post

Bowled over: a Christmas gift for my pup

With a very special pup in the house, she deserves very special things and so I was really excited to take a look at some gorgeous personalised pet products and receive this absolutely beautiful bowl from Pets Made Personal, part of the House Nameplate Company. It has pup's name on it BOO and a stylised drawing of her - the ears are just so Boo, her signature puppy look, all floppy and slightly jaunty to the side lugs. Perfect.

The bowl is really substantial, made of ceramic and heavy so that when Boo over enthusiastically eats her dinner, the bowl doesn't skid about the tiled kitchen floor like her plastic one did. It looks lovely too, a classy bowl for a classy pup and keeps with the country style of the kitchen.

You can choose the text that you want in a range of fonts, personalising it with your pet's name - this was the large bowl and there is a small one too for a cat or a toy breed doggy. You add the text with the nifty ordering system on the website, position the text as you like and it will display a preview of how your bowl will look.

Then you choose the pet motif - there are cat images, lots of dogs (like below), also silhouettes, paw prints and a few other animals, even a birdy so perhaps budgie could have a small one as a bath. They'd be perfect for bunny bowls too. All text is black on a white bowl. The large dog bowls are £25 and the small £20. They are delivered within 5-7 days. I'm really pleased with it and it's ideal for growing pup's big dinners of kibble and meat - Boo is such a greedy-gobble dog at the moment, eating so quickly that she gives herself hiccups!

There are painted steel bowls too which are equally as lovely. I'm totally in love with the cute dog drawings that you can choose from, they would make such a great present for a friend or relative with a precious pet.

Pets Made Personal sell a lovely range of items, I love their personalised glass jars to store doggy treats in and the slate lead holders. Some really great ideas for the pet lover for Christmas. My dogs are my life so gifts for them would really make me smile. They also sell fab Christmas pressie sacks for your pet, also personalised - how great would that be for your beloved cat or dog (or horse or hamster.....) to have their own santa sack stuffed full of toys and treats.

The company are best in Wrexham, North Wales (hoorah, one of my favourite places), not far from me really, in Cheshire. Part of the House Nameplate Company, a family run business for 25 years.

More from Boo again soon, I think she will be a regular on the blog with her antics.

A house feels like a home with a dog

My terrier rescue dog

My first friend growing up was a dog - Spud. A collie that looked more like a fox with his burnt orange coat and bushy tail, I must share some pictures of him one day and he deserves a post of his own for there is so much to say about my childhood dog. We have always had dogs as a family, I've grown up with daily walks to the park, learning how to care for them and been through many sad times too.  

Suffice to say that as an adult I've had pet dogs too, with the first being an unexpected 17 year old collie that came into my life through the sad circumstances of her elderly owner passing away. Fen was an energetic dog for her grand age in dog years and for a couple of years she enjoyed her walks until she got older and a bit confused. Her last year was spent truly retiring and I was devastated when it all got too much for her.

sofa snoozing

We carried on rescuing older dogs and for their shorter stay with us relatively speaking they become our world and complete the home. My son adores them and with his communication difficulties he gets a lot of joy from spending time with them where words do not matter and he laughs at their antics of which there are plenty. When he is upset, a nuzzle and a snuggle with a wag of the tail can often cheer him up.

My older dog, my lady, had a growth on her paw a few years back that turned out to be malignant but luckily we had dog insurance and she had an operation to remove a toe. The veterinary care was amazing but of course expensive so we were glad she had cover for all the tests for the pre-op and for testing the growth afterwards. A few weeks with a pink bandage, some hobbling and she was well recovered. Today she is as nimble as ever despite missing a digit, especially when our terrier starts barking and she joins in too, it's like she is the 7 year old I took home from Cheshire Dogs Home. These days she likes a lot of sleep and her face is really greying, so she has extra special cuddles and gets wrapped up in blankets at night to keep her warm. 

Our terrier has had a couple of minor problems like sickness and spraining his leg from his jumping in and out of the window, barking at the post lady and certain dogs that pass by the house. Some days he gets so wired that I find myself telling him to shush all day long, he's a terrier through and through - persistent, feisty and a naughty run away. 

Argos Pet Insurance contacted me to discuss their insurance for dogs which covers older dogs too and as they say help when they're paw-ly which was particularly appropriate in my girl's case. 

My girl enjoying the spring garden

I absolutely can't wait for spring again as both dogs love spending time in the garden, especially my lady (above) who likes to warm herself on the patio and watch the bees buzz by and listen to the sounds of the neighbourhood. It's very comforting having dogs around the house, you never feel alone and their pitter pattering of paws is a noise that means home to me. Plus there is no welcome home like that of a dogs, even if you've only popped out for half an hour! 

Helping your dogs and cats with Bob Martin Vetcare

I've always had dogs, grown up with them as family pets bounding around the house and have them now - two scruffs that sleep on my sofa and want to have copious amounts of cuddles and belly tickles. Both my dogs are older, I take on dogs age 6+ from the dog's home and have had a few seniors now. With age in mind, I like to make sure they are as healthy as possible and treat them to great products. With that in mind I have had a look at the new website Bob Martin Vetcare to see what they offer. Bob Martin is a well recognised name for pet health care that I have used products from before for my dogs. In fact Bob Martin have been running for over 120 years and now has their new website as the go-to place for cat and dog care from flea treatments to shampoos and combs.

An easy to navigate website helps you find the products that you require and there is a handy search facility too. The categories make sense and you can quickly find what you are looking for. I would say there isn't a huge product range under grooming but there is enough, sometimes having too much choice of dog shampoo for instance gets overwhelming. Conveniently Bob Martin have their own grooming products in handy packs so you buy Cleansing Shampoo and Ear and Eye Wipes together. 

The site has lots of articles and videos in the Advice Centre. I enjoyed reading one on making healthy snacks for your dog and an article around arthritis in dogs which I've experienced before with one of my older dogs. You can request free advice from a vet by filling in a form but this is for general care and not for anything urgent of course but nice to know that the company does have this expert professional input. 


I was interested to see that you can order your pet's medication through the site too under Presciptions, they have a list of available one in alphabetical order. This is something I didn't know was possible as for anything more complex than ordinary medication I've always taken it away with me from the vet. But I have learnt, after all these years of having pets that you can in fact ask for a prescription for your dog or cat's medication and obtain it elsewhere such as this online service from Bob Martin. My old arthritic dog had Metacam drops so I could have obtained a prescription and ordered them here. Simply scan or photograph the prescription, a vet from Bob Martin checks it over and your important order is dispatched straight away. A quick check online showed me that Metacam would have been cheaper this way than buying from my local vets. 

Checkout is extremely easy and what's brilliant is that there is free delivery when you include any Bob Martin product in your order or spend over £25 -  standard delivery is by Royal Mail 1st class and takes 2-3 days. 

I was surprised at the huge amount of Healthcare and Wellbeing products available - digestion products, dental care like Plaque Off which I have used before, all at reasonable prices. There are some great offers on products I've used with my dogs before and with the free delivery I'd really be making a super saving. 

* I received some dog care products for the purpose of the review, words are my own honest opinion.

Benefits of pet fish for autistic children

This week has been a tough one for my son and I will tell the story at a later date but what I will say is that his anxiety levels are extremely high and now we are seeking to try and reduce his stress levels and are looking at ways to do this.

He loves watching fish in aquariums so it has got me thinking about the benefits of aquariums for autistic children from my point of view in my experience with my own son's sensory needs.

Image source: boy and fish tank Shutterstock

Garden Chickens

Back snooping around my parent's garden. Feeding the chickens and tending to the older poorly chuck that has her own separate pen as she was getting picked on. The rabbits live in here too.

Dad built the pen himself and what an accommodation it is for these lucky chickens. Dad's been keeping chickens for about 6 years and this is the second flock now. I'm lucky too as I get all my eggs for free which equals LOTS of cakes to bake....

It's quite hard work. Dad spends a lot of time cleaning them out, tending to them and letting the older chicken that gets bullied walk around the garden, accompanied of course. They used to have one chicken that came inside to watch tv every night. 

Mum's trinkets and treasures balance Dad's more working areas of the garden. This is my childhood garden and it used to be quite different with a stripy lawn and rows of marigolds. Funny how our gardens change over time to suit our interests.

I told you....plenty of ornaments......
An old sink with herbs growing and cat nip and cat grass for the two feline friends that live here.

Mum has claimed this area outside the side door as her own. Painted the veg storage shed and planted her flowers and herbs here. I think it works that they have their own separate areas although they do both enjoy helping with the chickens together. Feisty bunch they are, poor mum got swooped off her feet whilst feeding them veg scraps last week :)