Horse Stalls by Amylee76 at flickr

Horses are a love of many people around the world. Investing time and money into the horses include providing suitable horse stalls. A great width for horse stalls is twelve feet by twelve feet. This 12′x12′ area is perfect for Quarter Horses, Warm Bloods, and everything in between. It is important when building a horse barn to be sure that the stall width is laid out as 12′ as this is something that is impossible to come back and change later. Many barns use a 10 foot width, but this can cause problems. The two biggest dangers in stabling a horse are, one injury to the handler, and two injury to the horse from getting cast. The smaller the area of the stall the less room the person has to work around the horse. One of the main purposes of a stall is to have an enclosed area for the horse so that it can be groomed and worked with. A narrow horse stall design makes it much easier to have your foot stepped on or pushed into the wall. The second reason, casting, is a big danger to the horses. “Casting” is when a horse rolls all the way over and gets its legs and hooves penned against the wall. In this locked position they are trapped. Sometimes they can roll back over and get out of trouble, but many times they get scraped up or even twist an intestine. A twisted intestine results in colic. Colic in turn many times can kill the horse. Even though horses are large, they are fragile. So play it smart and design your horse stalls with enough room to accommodate the gentle giants we simply dub “the horse”.

photo credit: ret0dd

I have been following the paper training method for some weeks now, and I’m very satisfied – It really works! I decided to take this as an experiment and call it “Paper Training Puppy”.  I would say that a key element in following this method is having perseverance and patience.

First I had to choose a confined area for my dog to eliminate.  I bought one of these dog pee pads and put it in there. Then I had to take my puppy to that area at given times, when he woke up, after eating, napping etc.  After a while I got used to the times he goes to eliminate.

I kept the area cleaned and now little Scott eliminates in the designated area.  It’s just repetition!

For almost small children, any opportunity to play with a puppy or kitten is a great treat. For some lucky kids out there, this treat is a year round experience if their parents happen to have taken on dog breeding or rearing as a career. When I was growing up my mother, fresh from writing a book about beagle puppy care, decided to take on a new career as a beagle breeder. While I came to learn that for her this was indeed hard and back breaking work, for us kids everyday was a dream. We would often be awaken by little beagle puppies licking our faces and we often fall asleep at night cuddling up next to this dog or that. When the weather is nice, we would spend hours outside running around the yard with quite literally 30 to 50 dogs at a time. The only hard thing was parting with the pups that we would grow so close to as so many of our dogs moved on to private homes and new families.