[SallyintNorth]

If the pink isn't foxglove it's probably rosebay willowherb, or possibly broad-leaved willowherb depending on where you are.  Rosebay willowherb was discussed recently, it's good fodder, apparently.  Here's one thread about it.

[SallyintNorth]

Worming - yes, we dont worm our dogs at all (unless they get an infestation or if their health appears to be affected).

Please consider worming them for both round and tapeworm every three months, irrespective, unless you *never* take them on anyone else's ground. 

[Fleecewife]

Sorry, I was updating my previous post while sally was also posting.  I think the umbelifer (it's a class of plants with those flat seed heads made up of lots of small usually white flowers) is hogweed - not the giant one you have to destroy by law, just the good old rabbit feed one.

[A Guest]

Please consider worming them for both round and tapeworm every three months, irrespective, unless you *never* take them on anyone else's ground.

Sorry I didn't quite understand the second half of that. I have considered worming many times over many years and I won't do it, not routinely anyway.

[SallyintNorth]

Dogs pick up tapeworms.  Dogs poo tapeworm segments.  Sheep eat the tapeworm segments, sheep get cysts in their tissues. 

Dog tapeworm affects farmers' livelihoods.

Any dog which walks on farmland should be wormed for round and tapeworm every 3 months.

[A Guest]

Thank you for the lesson. I wasn't aware of which law dictates your last sentence. Could you enlighten me some more by telling me? Or was it your own little personal law? If so, I don't submit to it.

1. My dogs dont walk on anyone's land but mine.
2. Routine chemical poisoning, vaccinating, or any other invasive routine treatment poses health risks to the animal who is subjected to it, and nice profits for the proponents of it.
3. I care about "farmers' livelihoods" about as much as farmers care about the run off water which poisons all the fish in the local beach near me, screwing up the sexes of the fish, genetically damaging all sorts of stuff, and making my two young toddlers very sick last year after they sat on one of the UK's cleanest beaches playing in the "lagoon" which we now know is run off water from commercial farmland, containing a whole host of chemicals and toxins. The day they stop using it because it harms other life, including human life, is the day I will give a damn about their income.

Like I said, I have considered it, at great length, many times and for many years. I have argued with profiteering vets and people like you many a time, so I am not going waste my time giving a mountain of medical detail about the various harm of routine chemical ingestion to prevent this that and the other, been there a hundred times and dont need to go there again. Reason - IT AIN'T LAW. It's your opinion. You are entitled to it. When you tell me what I should and shouldnt do, you are also entitled to stick it somewhere dark and no doubt completely devoid of worms.

[SallyintNorth]

I am a farmer and I am fed up of getting lab reports of tenuicious cysts in the livers of lambs we send deadweight because tourists walk their unwormed dogs on our ground.

As you do not take your dogs on anyone else's ground I give you my permission  to not worm them.

We do not take kindly to flaming and aggression on TAS, by the way, but as you are new please take this as a friendly warning.

[Dan]

Thank you for the lesson. I wasn't aware of which law dictates your last sentence. Could you enlighten me some more by telling me? Or was it your own little personal law? If so, I don't submit to it.

"Should" != "must", A Guest. I didn't see any mention of law.

Please tone it down a notch or two. There are ways of disagreeing and projecting an opposing view that don't involve the use of capital letters.

Thanks,

Dan

[A Guest]

Ha ha, incredible.

I am a dog trainer and I am sick of people struggling with sick or usually behaviourally sick dogs based on advice of vets who only give said advice in order to profit from it, neutering for example to "reduce aggression" which in turn does the exact opposite but as if the vet gives a damn, he has his money already. we can all be sick of something, i am sick of commercial farming practices, but I can't change it as you have a right to do as you wish, and so do I. I didn't tell you what you should or shouldn't do, you took that role on yourself. I merely defended my right to do as I please too within the realms of what's legal and within my opinion on what is morally acceptable.

Admin -
I didn't see a mention of law either, I asked if there was one.
Capital letters, how long did you have to hunt for those? Is bold red ok, but capitals isn't. Must make a note of that, and see if you remember that one.

[A Guest]

Re dogs walking on farmland, I couldn't agree more, I have tourists who trespass across my fields too, and if one of my dogs was out when they do it, someone would get severely maimed as the dog is beyond help and is now just living out his days with me. I have signs up everywhere which stops some, but not others. Maybe you could try signs or leaflets or something?

I do wonder how much is due to dogs, I am sure you know far more than me, but in my quite large experience of UK dog owners, 95% believe the utter BS spouted by vets and the dog "industry" as a whole (which is of course mainly pet companies, food makers, and vets, all in bed together quite often too) and have their dogs vaccinated against every possible "risk" and wormed, health checked, MOT'd as the vets so 'cutely' call it, etc etc etc. I rarely meet a single dog owner who has any ability to think for himself while standing in a vet's practice, let alone actually investigate the advice they are given and think twice about following blindly. Therefore I would say at a guess that the great majority of dogs walking on your land ARE vaccinated (sorry that should have been bold red, not caps, I am not shouting, its just a key depression). I am possibly wrong of course, but would love it if you could actually magically find this out, as I would hazard a guess that much like many vaccinations, most wormed dogs still cause you these issues.

Just one very brief example of the type of point I am suggesting MAY (read bold red again) be occurring.....

"In 2010, the largest outbreak of whooping cough in over 50 years occurred in California. Around that same time, a scare campaign was launched in the California by Pharma-funded medical trade associations, state health officials and national media, targeting people opting out of receiving pertussis vaccine, falsely accusing them of causing the outbreak.

However, research published in March of this year paints a very different picture than the one spread by the media2.

In fact, the study showed that 81 percent of 2010 California whooping cough cases in people under the age of 18 occurred in those who were fully up to date on the whooping cough vaccine. Eleven percent had received at least one shot, but not the entire recommended series, and only eight percent of those stricken were unvaccinated. "

[SallyintNorth]

I think you may be confusing vaccination (against diseases such as distemper, parvovirus, etc) with worming, which is a different type of medication.  There is no vaccination for worms, unfortunately.

So whilst I agree that probably the majority of dogs which are walked on our land are fully vaccinated, that does not mean that they are not carrying worms.  In order to be sure that they were not carrying worms, they would need to have been wormed for all relevant types of worms, including tapeworm, within the last 3 months,

Unfortunately we are not at liberty to prevent people walking their dogs on our land; they are not trespassing, they are using rights of way.  Some tourist-y areas do put up signs about welcoming 'wormed dogs under close control' but hereabouts all we are allowed to do is show gentle reminders about leashes for one month at lambing time.

I think you may also be assuming that Dan's note was directed only at you.  It was I that used the red bold letters, so I took it that some of his 'tone it down please' was also directed at me.  I wouldn't dream of taking offence at that gentle reminder; this is Dan and Rosemary's website, which they run as a public service at no cost to the forum users.  We usually try to behave as though we are chatting with each other in Dan & Rosemary's living room, and show them and each other the respect that situation demands.

I am not aware at all of telling you how to behave with dogs which you keep entirely on your own land.  My opener was phrased:

Please consider worming them for both round and tapeworm every three months, irrespective, unless you *never* take them on anyone else's ground. 

'Please consider' is hardly dictating, I'd have said?  Plus, as you say you never do take them on anyone else's ground, then it would not apply to you anyway.

I apologise for the bold red; I was trying to emphasise a fact and was not meaning to shout. 

BH and I are commercial farmers, in that we make our living (such as it is) from farming in the uplands of Cumbria.  We are also humans making our way in this world.  We try to farm with sensitivity to the environment and attention to the welfare and happiness of our livestock, and to the needs of other users of the space which we occupy and use.  We try to treat our livestock, the environment and other people with respect and do expect the same.  You won't want to agree with me, but so do most of the farmers I know - small family farmers, mostly, ekeing out an existence on the fells and uplands in the beautiful but harsh north of England.

You clearly feel very passionate about environmental damage, overuse of chemicals in medicine and agriculture.  That's no bad thing.  You'll find me speaking up against prophylactic routine use of antibiotics in many discussions on this forum, and taking part in conversations about how to control harmful weeds on farmland using means other than persistent and damaging chemicals.  We've recently been considering the use of invasive fertility treatments, and whether they are ever justified, or only to save a bloodline or breed, or whether their use should be unlimited in agriculture, dog breeding, and other spheres.  (I'm in the "natural is best" camp, myself, on the whole, but I do see the drivers for using these techniques to save breeds.)

In my own experience, over a lifetime in varied occupations and interests (it's BH is the lifetime farmer, I've only been at it for the last decade), it is generally unhelpful to make assumptions about people's beliefs and behaviours based on broad categorisation.  Even when it is true, ranting and proselytising changes few, if any minds, where thoughtful, dignified and respectful discourse may influence.  Just my opinion, of course, and you are entirely within your rights to disagree.

[Fleecewife]

Well said Sally, and rationally argued.  You are one of the most helpful posters on TAS, as well as a great farmer   

I hope this is the end of this thread now.

[A Guest]

No I wasn't confusing worming with vaccination, I probably didn't phrase it well, I was relating the two points of routinely doing anything because vets say so. I understand worming and vaccinations are very different.

"Please consider" - yes those words are very polite, hence why you selected those. I was referring to the slightly more pushy "Any dog which walks on farmland should be wormed for round and tapeworm every 3 months." - This, considering it's context and the prior immediate posts where i said I didn't worm, was taken no doubt as it was intended to be taken, you telling me what "should" be done. I didn't miss the point or rant, I merely suggested you have no right to tell me what should and shouldn't be done with my dogs, which is what you were doing whether you choose to rescind now or not.

I got a bit lost after the downtalking "i am oh so rational" part, which sits so well next to the bold red and the "all dogs should be...." - obviously the interjection of an administrator caused a need to pull a bit of rank, and again take some moral highground only this time with nice long words instead of shorter red ones.

Plate glass window.

[twizzel]

Oh dear. Aside from the existing comments on tapeworm etc and livestock, all I'm going to say on the worming subject is I hope your dogs never get lungworm!

[Me]

You have made some very broad statements about those in the Veterinary profession A Guest. They are in part (I feel) a little offensive and are certainly inaccurate. That being said you may be interested to read Thomas Lonsdale's little manifesto for election to the RCVS on the subject of pet food. He got a fair few votes.