Athene

Good luck with it! You could pick up a dropper from the vet and give your cat water this way. Our elderly cat lost the ability to lap and I did not want her to die of thirst. So we gave her regular top ups and she did not object as she seemed to know we were trying our best for her. He looks a most beautiful pussycat from the picture.

Well you can never tell with these companies! Our company let us down on Thursday night and we are due to travel out on Tuesday. It would have been a real nightmare had not the original company who we first contacted to price the job were not able to shuffle round their work and take out stuff!

I would go back to the vet as he/she will probably be able to give you this in a liquid form then you can use one of those pipette thingys they sell to swish down his throat! MUCH easier than tablets (you might be able to grind up the tablets and mix with water to use with this)! Our vets would have happily administered tablets for us each day if we had wanted. We found them to be very obliging and they charged very little when we needed to see them on a daily basis at the end of our pussycats' lives!

We called our puppy Socks! However afterwards the joke was that we should have put Mademoiselle Brutitia Brute Babe on her passport for the fun it would have caused when we went through customs! I think maybe Bebe would be a sweet abreviation of this!

Can anyone recommend a TV/aerial expert near Jonzac SW France

Hunts provided a nightmare quote for us - £7300! for a bed house! We are using a Leeds company who are charging considerably less than that! If you would like their web address please email me. Contact details removed by a mod. To contact the poster, please use the PM or Email button on THIS post.

Yes I have started clicker training with my 4 month old puppy and she is doing well. We are 50 mins North of Bordeaux.

It all sounds great fun! Where is this to be held please?

Hello Christine, Athene and Sibyll had a variety of fish and meat. I would mix in a few well mashed veg and it had to be well mashed because any lumps they would pick out and leave! I used tinned tuna that had the brin washed right out - I emptied it into a sieve and washed it through and through. We never gave cows' milk just occasionally Whiskas milk not that it was good for them but Sib particularly loved it! They were lovely animals and I still really miss them! It was hard when in August last they died 7 weeks from each other. Daughter went first then her mother. The farmer across the road warned me that this would happen when the mother went and I was prepared - not ready- they were so close to me. I had them through all my bad times, through a horrendous divorce, they were a great comfort! Now when I am re-married and happy they have gone, I would have liked them a while longer to share my good times.

Rejoice with me, she now has stopped picking up stones! She has learnt 'drop' at home in ball games and if she ever reverts, we now have the command to use. Yes, as someone here said, it was just an inate, immature stage she was going through but it did worry me! Thank you all for the replies.

I agree with you it is very important what we give our pets to eat. We had two cats who sadly died at the remarkable ages of 22 and 24 years (human years which puts them in their 100s in cat years I think!) this summer.The vet put their long lives down in large part to their diet. We now have a puppy who is thriving!  Before I made any decisions what to feed her, I did my research and looked into what is put in all 'off the shelf' dog foods.I did not like what I saw -  ie E ingredients, preservatives sugar and what on Earth is reconstituted meat? etc etc! So we give our puppy for lunch and dinner a mixture of proteins both meat and fish ( what we are eating ourselves) and a mixture of veg (no tomatoes, onions, garlic or leeks) with a carbohydrate eg rice, potatoes or pasta. We give scrambled egg and wholemeal toast for breakfast. The bread is wholemeal and homemade with no additives. She has a quarter teaspoon of marmite added to her food for the yeast. She also has half a teacupful of probiotic yoghourt a day. She has some dog biscuits to add to the bulk and look after her teeth. We give her the odd piece of apple or pear but only when we have it ourselves. Obviously we feed nothing with sugar or chocolate. Our vet has weighed her and says she is perfect in every way in weight/ state of her coat and general health. Yes, it would be easier to throw a handful of granules from a bag than feed what we do but the reward is in the way she looks - a healthy dog in every way with breath that does not smell putrid as some dogs' breath does when fed on the dreaded granules!

Thank you Mossie for the letter it is good to know that she is not on her own with this problem. It was just the stark way the vet said, "You'll have to get her out of it or sure thing one will get stuck and if you are lucky we will have time to go in after it if not...!"

Thank you all for the advice. We are in Essex at the moment getting our house ready to be rented out before returning to France. As you say she is not focused enough to carry a toy or ball whilst we walk or this would be a good solution! We have both extending and short leads. We use the extending when she is being walked on a nearby field but as this is bounded by a fairly busy road, we would not dare to let her off. She is timid soul and is in fear and trembling of other boisterous dogs and if she came across one, she would just run and run to get away and maybe onto the road! I am not sure whether she would come back when we called as in this house the garden is not fully enclosed as there is a stream at the bottom, so she has never had the freedom to wander in an enclosed garden like she will have in France. So when the field is not just a mud bath and it is walkable in wellies, I take her there but on days like today when it is rain and more driving rain, she gets a 30 minute walk round the village roads and this is where the stones are as lots of people have drives with these stones and they spread out onto the pavements. Today, I did this walk and kept her on a short lead and had my head fixed firmly on the ground making sure she had no chance to put her head down when the dreaded stones were there! It is not much fun for me as normally I really like to look at the gardens we pass and see what people are having done to their houses etc! Also it is no fun for her as she must feel my anxiety and she has to be kept tightly at heel! Still I suppose this is my only option and I must just focus on her safety for the time being!

I wonder whether I could ask any of you if you have had experience of a puppy who picks up stones on her walks and swallows them? Our lovely puppy 4 months old does this and, when I try to extract them from her mouth, she promptly swallows them! This is the second night that she has been really ill with them. The first night, two weeks ago, she sicked them up and had diaorrhea and last night she had diaorrhea and they came out with that! I took her to the vet tonight to seek his advice but he had no ideas on what to do to help. I asked about muzzling her for a while but he said that it would prevent her from panting and that would be dangerous in itself! I try to keep her head off the ground on walks but it is difficult to do this all the time especially when she is on a long lead! Any advice anyone can offer me would be much appreciated!

Sunday Driver you are a star! You have helped me so many times, I am really grateful! xxxxx

Hello Sunday Driver - "Happy New Year" please can I ask you to explain what the DRIRE is and where it is located and what exactly they would provide? We are in Dept17. We need to get something that will do for a cert de conformite for our 1994 Volvo.   Getting a certificate of conformity from the manufacturer for older vehicles Just a note that Peugeot UK would not provide one of these when we phoned them and spoke to export, sales and technical depts in turn. They said there was no such thing for their cars over 10 years old (this was 2 years ago). They said try asking Peugeot France if I really wanted one. It was easier to ask DRIRE which took just a couple of weeks when we sent of the application form and UK reg document. Seems a more reliable route to ta

Has anyone seen the Caesar Milan, 'Dog Whisperer' programmes? They are being screened on Sky3 each day at 18.00 UK time. He has a pack of dogs that he has rescued from being put down, some of which are Pit Bulls. He has one particular Pit Bull called Daddy who is huge but very gentle. The programmes show Caesar visiting people who have issues with their dogs and he helps them come to terms with these. In most of the cases, the problems lie in the owners who are not the pack leader in their dog's eyes and they pass on their negative energy to their dog. Now I am not an experienced dog owner but some of the techniques he uses have been really useful in training our sheepdog pupppy. More so than the classes in our local dog training school that involve you trudging up and down bent double with a treat 2 cm from your dog's nose in an attempt to learn him or her to walk to heel! So from my experience training schools here are not great but if they were manned by Caesar Milan devotees they would be most useful! Do they have these training schools in France?  If they were good, it could be that they were an obligation for all so called dangerous dog owners to enlist their dogs and for them to obtain a pass certificate in dog discipline.

I have not found these Bob. Have you an item number for them please? I have had a go at bidding for the German ones but am not sure if they are right for our 1994 car as they say they have a fog lamp incorporated in them and the original ones have a seperate one. I am lucky I have a German son-in-law who was able to translate the auction description!

Many thanks all! I am looking into this matter with your help! I would hate to abandon  our old Volvo in the UK! She is not the most beautiful of cars but she is certainly sturdy! Yesterday a woman backed into me in Sainsbury's carpark. Her new Micra was badly dented but Big V was not even scratched. AND then this woman having backed into me, drove off at speed - don't you just love these characters? 

Happy New Year all! We have an elderly Volvo estate that has done few miles and is in really good order that we would like to bring with us to France. We have sorted out where we can get the certificat de conformite. BUT I believe we would have to change the headlights to pass the controle technique. Has anyone done this? I think it would be very expensive to have this done in a Volvo main dealer but I was wondering what the chances were of picking up these lights from a French scrap yard? We will be in Department 17. Are there any on-line French scrap yards that anyone has used?

Oh what an adorable little rescal! Thank you for sharing this!

Hello Sunday Driver! I have a very good friend who has lived in France for three years now. They were invalided out of teaching through having a nervous breakdown and they are 52 now. They are in receipt of a UK teacher's pension through this illness. They have been fine up-to-date in France and they have had an operation all paid for on the French Healthcare scheme. With the new arrangements, will they have to now pay for their French government healthcover or the fact that they are in the system mean that all their cover will stay in place? Or is it the case that they will have to now be re-tested in France to see if they are fit to work? This friend is very worried about this and dreads to make the appropriate enquiries in case their case is highlighted and they have to undergo a reassessment of health to work. So far no-one has contacted them about this. I would be grateful for your comments.

I really agree with you Katie in that  happiness is found within. However some people have restless spirits and nothing and nowhere ever pleases them! I know, I used to be married to one!

Take plenty of photos of him. You will need them! Hope he keeps well and you get to have more  special time together!

It's English shops I miss - not supermarkets as they are better in France - produce is fresher!( eg milk and carrots! English carrots go soft so so quickly and fresh milk lasts only 2 days!) Also, with the exception of English sausages and golden syrup, all we would ever need is right there on the shelves now! It is clothes shops and M and S and the local farm shop and farmer's markets and all those little craft shops that have special things in for a different birthday gift! I do use the Internet to buy things on now more than I ever would living in the UK! We are in a rural community but I have found French and English friends here in Charente Maritime and enjoy a reasonable social life playing cards and eating shared suppers. At the end of the day, life is what you make it! You have to be bold and invite people into your home because if you just sit there behind your shut shutters, life will pass you by!