The Bad Voodoo Canine Support Team

30/11/2023

We miss you, Stella. ###

17/11/2023

Hello hoomins. Long time no post!
Mummy and I have been together three years today!! ♥️♥️

We have been busy lately as we're doing a real lot for Inclusive Norwich, but also mummy has been quite sad because she kinda feels that the heart of this page died a little when we lost Stella. It will be a year to the day on the 30th of this month.

Mummy is still doing her photography over at Rae Andrews - Soft of Sight Photography but even that is kinda fading a little as earlier this year mummy had some new eyesight issues that mean she can't focus at any distance even in the little bit of vision she has left. It's making things really hard for her and making her sad.

So - is everything sad, you ask?
No, it's not all sad. We get to do really impactful and useful things with Inclusive Norwich and meet lots of people. And everyone loves me, because... Well they would wouldn't they? I am handsome and awesome and mummy loves me more than anything.

Here is a picture of me at our recent charity afternoon tea, which was really lovely. One of our guests came round with sticky labels to stick on everyone so we woujd know each other's names. If course this didn't work for mummy but everyone else there can see! I am looking at up mummy with a white label on my head that has "Biggie" written on it!

17/07/2023

Warning - opportunist thieves operate in this area!

Ajay laying on the hoomin bed looking across at mummy's floral breakfast tray - where a plate of banana and chocolate spread on toast is sitting!

05/07/2023

Here we see a very tired and d***y Jackson. He has had surgery to remove a fatty lipoma lump from the muscle in his right shoulder. He's now home and laying on the living room floor - even though the hoomins have brought a low dog bed in here specially for him but he doesn't want it.

He retired from being a guide dog on Friday just gone. There's quite a bit of sad around here now as a result.

Daddy has been on the waiting list for nearly a year already but the average wait for a successor guide dog now is two years.
What will daddy do now ?

Little spud boy Jackson will stay with us as a pampered pet boy, just as Stella and Otto did before him. And he'll get lots of walks around the local area with daddy on the lead - which is why daddy is learning to use his long cane. He hates it but he'll do it for roast potato boy.

But for now it's rest and recovery for Jackson. We love you little potato. ❤️

28/06/2023

Happy birthday Jackson. ❤️

24/05/2023

Hello hoomins. Ajay here.
Today would have been Otto’s eighteenth birthday.
I never met him but I would have liked him. I like everyone. Here he is, close up, laying on a a very pale pink blanket. His black fur looks almost silvery and his eyebrows - for which he was famous - have little white flecks in them and his black nose is shiny. He is a scruffy sort of handsome.

Sometimes he could be a bit grumpy with dogs he didn’t know who gave him to hairy eyeball, which is the opposite of me. Mummy says I am too dippy to ever take offence.
The hoomins had fruit cake in his honour. This is because he stole a loaf fruit cake off the kitchen surface once and mummy had to chase him round the house to get it off him. Fruit cake is bad for dogs. But luckily he was fine !

Cheers Otto. I bet we would have been friends.

26/04/2023

Today is !

So here is an iPhone shot of the two guide dogs currently in our lives. Golden yellow Labrador Jackson on the right - my husband’s dog - and Biggie, aka Ajay, pale yellow lab cross golden retriever on the left. Both curled up on the furry brown blanket on our sofa, with their heads together. Jackson is asleep but Biggie is awake and looking slightly perturbed, because I was waiting for a parcel that didn’t turn up yesterday when I took this shot. When I get concerned so does he.

Jackson will very likely retire some time this year. He will be ten in eight weeks. He won’t want to retire and neither will my husband want that, but guide dogs need to step down from their roles when they get older just as people do, as their ability to guide safely and without stress to themselves gets less robust as they age. Like my beloved retired lady Stella (now sadly missed) he will stay with us as a pet dog. And his successor will turn up … at some point.

Currently the average waiting time for a new dog for an existing guide dog owner is around two years. So that’ll be two years of no independence for husband. He’s really no long cane user and he’s been used to a guide dog for thirty years. He’s also completely blind with not so much as light perception. So - he won’t be able to leave the house unless it’s with another person.
That’s the bald facts of it.

The finer points are that his wing man, best mate and partner will no longer be working with him, and eventually he’ll have to learn to work with someone new, and rely on that dog for his safety and independence.

He’s been a guide dog owner nearly thirty years and has never known the wait for a replacement guide dog to be so long. The longest he’s ever had to wait in the past after one dog retires to a new dog coming among has been two months. There’s a lot wrong with the charity in my opinion that I could witter on about, but I won’t. Despite some of my views I am extremely grateful to have the dogs we’ve had, and hopefully will have in the future. Without them our lives would be very unpleasant.
It’s going to be a very hard and worrying time for him during his wait, and for the rest of us too.

Having a guide dog is like a marriage - you have to work hard at it, there will be bumps along the way (sometimes literally), and sometimes it doesn’t work out. But there’s nothing more precious than the bond between the two of you when it does.

So it’s your day today, boys. We love you more than words can say, but I think you know more than words in any case.

26/04/2023

18/04/2023

“No, not ready for morning. I am sleepun.”
Jackson, curled up on the hoomin bed, with his nose tucked into his front paws. Looking like a little sleepy roast potato, mummy says. Because he’s golden yellow with hints of brown.

08/04/2023

Hello hoomins. Yesterday we got a scary thing happen to a doggy friend of ours. Stop reading now if you don’t want to be upset, but just to say upfront he is - and we are - okay.
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We have a little dog friend who comes to greet us when we walk past, through his garden gate. He’s a little ginger fluffy poodle cross. Sometimes his dad lets him out especially to see us if he sees us stop at the gate to see if he’s there. We’ve been doing this for a couple of years almost.
Today his dad let him out to say hi so I was kissing him through the gate and mummy was bending down to cuddle him. It was all lovely.
Then all of a sudden he got his collar caught on a curl in the iron gate. Then he panicked and twisted it and it got really tight.
This was really bad. Mummy swooped down immediately to try and free him and shouted to his owner, who was standing at their front door.
But she couldn’t free him.
The owner came over and tried and he couldn’t either. Little doggo was struggling and showing the whites of his eyes. His collar was so tight ! mummy tried to undo the collar buckle but it was so tight she couldn’t pull the leather tab out of the buckle prong.
In the end the owner held the doggy up and still and mummy had to dig into his fur to grab the twisted collar and guide it along, up and then down off this iron curl.
It was very frightening !
Doggy is okay and once he’d recovered he ran away to play but he won’t come near the gate now. And that’s good.
His owner is going to alter the gate so that can’t happen again.
I whined throughout but stood totally still like a good boy. Mummy’s camera - which is new this last few weeks - hit the pavement when she swooped down to help him, but she didn’t even think of that. She was just scared he would really get hurt.
But he’s okay. Thank Dog !

We continued our walk but mummy does admit she had a bit of a shocked cry at the tree plantation where there is a bench to sit down. It was scary !

Here is a picture of me from a previous walk, sitting in a field with my harness off, cos we were having a snack. I’m getting a bit of satsuma from mummy’s left hand and it’s about to disappear into my mouth. yum yum !

06/04/2023

If you like guide dogs you can follow my friend, Guide Dog Stormy Boy !

06/04/2023

If you live in the UK and have reactive hoomins you might like to read them this post about the upcoming government alert message system test.

Sunday the 23rd of April 2023 sees the first UK wide test of the new government Emergency Alert system to mobile devices.
Smart phones and tablets will receive a test message with a loud siren which will last approximately ten seconds, even if the device is set to silent.
It’s strongly recommended that you allow these alerts if your device can receive them, but what if you want to opt out of these messages, for safety, health or other reasons ?

If you have an iPhone running iOS 14.5 or above, here is how to do that. Steps may be slightly different depending on the version of your operating system.
1. Go to Settings.
2. Go to Notifications.
3. Go to the end of the list (this may be long depending on the number of apps you have installed).
4. Find “Emergency Alerts”.
5. Toggle the switches for both “Extreme Alerts” and “Severe Alerts” to off. A blue button is on, grey is off. Screen readers should speak “on” or “off.”

For Android devices the steps may be slightly different, due to the large number of Android versions and phone manufacturer variations. But broadly speaking-
1. Go to the settings app of the Android device.
2. Search for ‘Emergency Alerts’ using the search bar at the top of the screen.
3. Click or tap on the first option that pops up.
4. Once in the device’s Emergency Alerts settings page, turn off Emergency Alerts by toggling all the options to off. A blue button is on, grey is off.

Image shows a red warning triangle with a white inner, and a black exclamation mark ! inside it.