Getting a dog

So we got a dog. Been a long time coming.

A few things happened in the latter part of last year, and those, combined with confirmation that both our companies were going to be adpoting some sort of flexible working policy meant we finally able to make the move.

Step 1 - Picking a Breed

The cat, last time we checked, is still not dead, so that meant getting a rescue was not an option...most rescue centres will not rehome into a cat household, and we knew Lily would not be great with a dog. A puppy would give her every opportunity to assert some dominance. For breed, I knew it was going to be a working/gun dog of some sort. I knew up with terriers, and while they are lovely household pets, they are very hard to train, and have a real Napoleon attitude streak. The short-list was;
1) English Springer Spaniel - anyone who met Leo, a Springer I looked after in Glenrosa and Burghfield a few times, will know why. He was a lovely dog.
2) Border Collie - Always had a soft-spot...as a youngster we were on holiday at a pub that had a failed sheepdog in the bar area. He'd play chase with a ball for hours
3) Labrador - the "Ford Fiesta" of dogs. Gill's sister has a lab (called Rafiel) who is a very relaxed lump, and a cycling friend got a lab last year who has settled in very well.

For advice, I had a long chat with someone I met on RideAcrossBritain in 2010 who has bred various working dog breeds. We had a good chat over our circumstances, situation and experience with dogs, and his (fairly blunt and to the point) advice was "get a lab". I always knew border collies were an exceptional amount of work, and if they are not given a job and loads of training will end up bored and destroying the house/reprogramming the central heating. Springers (in his words) "expand to fill all available space". A lab, on the other hand, will happily take an hours walk, and then settle down and sleep/eat all day. Decision made, we were getting a Lab!

Step 2 - Finding a Puppy

Covid and Lockdown has driven the puppy market insane. Absolutely bonkers. Prices have shot up, and the market is being flooded with poorly bred, farmed dogs, often from Eastern Europe...or worse yet stolen. I knew most pedigree breeds had a number of medical issues that needed to be checked in the parents (for Labs there are a number of DNA checks, hip and elbow checks, and eyesight checks that should be carried out on both parents). The market is such that puppies born from parents with none of these checks (or with checks that are completely un-acceptable) are being sold for insane amounts of money. I saw several puppies for £5k+ with zero/poor parnet medical checks. Reputable breeders are seeing waiting lists in the years right now, and they are having a huge stress with hundreds of emails and phone calls within an hour of announcing a litter.

Fortunately we lucked out massively here. The same chap who walked us through the various breeds was a member of a well-organised breeding group run from a stud kennel in Suffolk. The lady who runs it will not allow her dogs to stud with any females that are not fully checked/certified to her (very high) standards. She's also kept a control of litter prices linked to her dogs, as she thinks the current climate is "insane" (it is). Even moreso, he happened to know of a planned litter occuring fairly locally very soon, and the breeder was dreading advertising, as she didn't want the hundreds of emails and having to tell so many people "no". So, on the 6th January we were able to sneak onto a list for a litter that was not even concieved, and fingers crossed that we had good news. A Puppy Whatsapp group was formed with regular video and photo updates...then on the Easter weekend we were able to go down, meet the breeder and litter, and pick our puppy (this was very easy...we were handed the boys one-by-one, and the fattest one started licking my neck immediately. I just turned to Gill nad said "we've bonded").

Step 3 - Sort out the House

On the 2nd March we had the good news. A litter of 6 had been born, they were all looking strong and healthy, and we could have a boy (which was our first choice). The genetics of the parents meant that the puppies were all black...which was great, as that was our preference (hides the dirt better!). This gave us 8 weeks to prepare the house (and ourselves) for a bundle of chaos!

First up was re-designing the living room. This was to be the dog-room, and we'd need to get it fully puppy-proofed. We'd been thinking about replacing the sofa and carpets, so that's been delayed and now they are sacrificial. We did want to increase floor-space...so we ended up wall-mounting the TV. This was a bigger job than expected. First off we had a joiner it to build a stud-wall extension to flatten a wall off and add some shelving in (as well as flip a door so that it wouldn't smash into the new TV point), then a plasterer to level it all off. We did the painting one weekend, and then finally an aerial installer to move a satellite point. This meant we could then move the sofas to the other side of the room, and create a large clear floor-space. As an added bonus, there was just enough space beside the sofas to fit a large dog-crate. We could hide all cables/wires remaining behind the sofas (which have no access), and we kept the Ikea shelving unit to put some stuff up high.

We also needed to patch up the garden borders. I had a "fun" day digging through the hawthorn at the bottom of the garden running some new chicken wire fencing along the old, patchy chainlink fence that made up the old school boundary (as the local cats can tell you, there were plenty of large holes and escape routes).

Finally, there was a lot of generally tidying, de-cluttering and junk reduction to make some cupboard space. Some stuff was eBayed, a reasonable amount went to the tip and a few things were just binned.

On the tech front (there is always a tech angle) we are both new to the concepts of crate training...back when we had dogs you'd leave them in a room, and typically come back an hour later to shredded everything...but the idea of locking a dog up in a cage for a few hours would have seemed cruel. These days, however, it is the standard and recommended practice. So we have a lab-sized crate in the living room. To make life a little easier on this front, to allow us to check on the puppy without disturbing them, I installed CCTV in the crate, and a couple of other areas of the house as well. I could have gone with a subscription service...but similar to my reticence to pay for a music subscription service, I galled at paying a company to store a few Gb's of data. The answer, the same as the music, was an in-house server, and again it's a Raspberry Pi doing the work.

I got 4 indoor IP Cameras that support RTSP and ONVIF (not all do, the linked ones are really good), then got my spare Raspberry Pi (which I was using to test updates to Plex, whicle I was bedded the media server in), and linked that up to an old 2.5" HDD from an old Laptop (250Gb) using a USB3-SATA cable. I installed MotionEyeOS, which is a dedicated OS for monitoring and storing security camera footage, and then configured the 4 IP Cameras into it. A little bit of tweaking, and I had all 4 doing real-time streaming at 800x480 at 5fps, and motion-triggered recording at 1080p/30. This has the Pi at approximately 70-75% load (it sits at about 55-60'C with only passive cooling). Recordings are stored for a week, and thats currently putting about 15-20Gb on the HDD...so plenty of overhead.

I can already say that this has been amazing, and worth every second. We have a camera in the crate, and can quickly check if he's settled, playing, whining, thinking about needing a poo etc. without going into the room and disturbing him. We also have visibility of the kitchen, the rest of the living room and the cats favourite sleeping point. I can do some improvements, but I think that would involve re-building the server to run a Debian OS, and then install MotionEye as a service instead (MotionEyeOS is a very lean install, with all the un-needed gumf chopped out...this means that I can't install the scripts to use the ONVIF capabilities of the camera...such as pan and scan). For now, it's perfect. At some point I'll probably add outdoor cameras, though that will need a Wifi Extender, and probably a second Pi (or possibly 2, with a second Pi handling more video feeds, and then a 3rd one acting as an aggregator hub for the interior and exterior feeds, as per the Multiple Devices with a Hub scenario).

Step 4 - Education

As I said above, crate training is new to me, it simply did't exist 30 years ago. These days there are (literally) hundreds of dog training sources you can follow. It's pretty amazing how many people don't follow any!...but at the same time, you need to be consistent. We are going with the Wylanbriar approach, which is a little less flowery than some others (the lady who runs the group is also a trainer, and has won Crufts for wokring dogs, so probably has some credentials at least). It's very much "it's a dog first, then a member of the family". I can say even now at 48 hours in that can be hard sometimes, as the bloody things are so cute...but also very destructive!

So we have a series of videos to cover the basics, and the Wylanbriars owners group has plenty of other resources...Diana offers up free advice very quickly (most of it is having common sense affirmed), and once we are over the first few days of trauma and settling in, we'll start the slow business of manners and lead training. The dogs we had when I was young were never propelry lead trained or taught recall, and thats an area I definitely want to get right. We live in an urban environment, even if we have Dinton Pastures and various parks less than 10 minutes walk away, he'll need to be confident and comfortable walking by roads, and coming when called. I'm under no illusions this will be anything other than a long process, but I want to do it right

The cat...yes, the cat. She's not happy with the situation, however right now she has the upstairs to herself entirely, and most of the downstairs apart from the brief times the puppy is awake and active (maybe 3-4 hours a day right now). There has been one long-distance staring match, but no actual meeting yet.

Step 5 - Bringing him Home

We picked up (Death)Reaver (the "Death" is silent) on Saturday. There was a bit of whining on the hour-long car journey home, but he's settling in OK. He gets a little stressed when he's alone right now (which is understandable, as for the last 8 weeks he's been part of a permanant bundle of 6 puppies), but has really taken to his crate, and in particualr loves his Kong Bear. He's remarkably well house-trained...so far we've had one wee accident (and there was whining beforehand), but he's asking to go out etc, so all good there. Nights have been OK, with typically 7-8 hours sleep and very little bedtime drama. Daytime has been a little harder, as he needs to get used to being awake and alone (we've had a couple of temper tantrums when someone has gone to make a cuppa...response is a no drama time-out in the crate, where he typically whines out after 5 minutes and sleeps). Today is the first day of "work" routine, so we'll see how it goes!

Comments

This was a lovely read, thank you Pete! Death Reaver is such a little cutie. Since as long as I've known you, you wanted a dog and it's bloody fantastic that flexible working is a side-effect of all this horror.

brainwipe's picture

Cheers. It's been a fairly weird few months...firstly waiting to hear the results of the stud meeting, then on the litter size and composition, and then a manic couple of months getting everything sorted. There were so many places it could have fallen through (right down to the last minute, if the breeder decided not to let a puppy go for any reason, or if the final vet check showed an issue). As a result we've been keeping it off social media, and it's been confined to work teams mates, and the very small number of people we speak to face-to-face at the moment.

We've seen loads of stories about people going to pick up puppies, only for prices to be rasied to insane levels (pre-covid, a well-bred lab puppy would be £1-1.5k tops, for reference). We have paid more than that, but not excessively so, and Reaver is very well bred (not that you'd know it right now, as I can see he's destroying his bed). Prices over £4k are not uncommon right now though, and we've seen plenty of people who have been hunting for over a year, while we sneaked onto a list based on having a good contact.

Then you get the "silver" labradors, which are even more expensive. Only labradors cannot be silver, so they are typically lab x weimaraners, and loads of health issues with them.

So yeah, exciting, but a bit stressful. Now it's exciting, but a bit stressful, and nervous about doing it well.

babychaos's picture

I think you're going to make a fantastic dog owner. Your energy and dependability is perfectly suited to having a furry family member. When things lift, I would love to come and meet Reaver. Perhaps you could meet my animals. The bigger one is hilarious these days.

brainwipe's picture

So I'm about to start Phase 2 of the CCTV project in the house...this time covering the outside and rear of the house.

It's unfortunately one of those ones where I have to increase the overall infrastructure to meet needs. the first batch of kit arrived today. We have;

1) 2 new Raspberry Pi's + 2.5"SATA HDD's + SATA>USB Adaptors + Case + Power Adaptors
A Raspberry Pi can handle 4-5 video feeds (from observation they run a System Load of 3.2 for 4 cameras), and this will increase the camera count to 6 for now. I'm going to implement a Hub model, with individual Pi's handling the cameras, and then a separate Pi handling the aggregation and display. This should stop any one Pi from getting overloaded.

2) 8-Port Network Switch
I've filled the back of the built-in Switch with the Wifi Router (Hive Hub, Powerline Adaptor, 2 Pi's currently (Plex and CCTV), so I'll move to running all the Pi's in the house off the 8-port switch...this will also clean up the cabling in the living room.

3) 2 Outdoor cameras + fittings
These will cover the garden and back-doors (they will both be mounted on the garage, behind the house). This is partly for security, and partly for dog monitoring as he gets some more freedoms. At some point I'll add one inside the garage too, to cover the myriad of bikes in there. I can run power-cabling inside the garage, and then come through the underhangs to the cameras.

Still to come;
Wifi Mesh/Powerline extender - Wifi coverage in the garden is patchy, so I'll add a Powerline/Wifi extender in the kitchen. I already use one of these in my office, and it's exceptionally good. This should provide reliable network links for all the cameras I put outside

Power bricks - mainly for the garage, I'll need to add some more plug sockets up high in the garage for the cameras...I also want to add some floodlights (turns out trying to spot a black dog at night is pretty hard, even in a small garden), but that can probably wait until after summer now. My plan is to have them app activated (using a smart plug inside...again via wifi)...we already have a couple of those, so as long as the signal strength is there, some LED floodlights should be fairly simple.

babychaos's picture

This looks ace!

I've been enjoying the dog training videos on FB. It's amazing that at such a young age that they can learn so many tricks. I can barely get my 4 year old to sit and fucking eat something when hungry.

brainwipe's picture

Eating is one issue we've not had with Reaver. Labrador Retrievers have a genetic mutation that means they never feel full. I've already watched the little chap throw up his meal and then eat it again with exactly the same level of enthusiasm. The guests watching were less thrilled than he was.

This is why they are so trainable...they can always be bribed with food, and they are smart enough to quickly associate Action A with Treat B.

babychaos's picture

Spent a longer-than-expected weekend getting phase 2 of the home-camera system sorted. Partly took longer as some bits required a lack of puppy, and partly as I completely suck at anything vaguely like DIY.

I now have what can probably be considered an excess of Raspberry Pi's plugged in downstairs, along with an 8-port switch. I need to sort out the power...the power requirements of a Raspberry Pi4b are not massive, so having 4 separate plugs is probably just excess cabling, and makes the entire thing (even) messier. 3 of the Pi's are handling the cameras, the 4th is my Media Server with just under 2Tb of music, TV and film loaded onto the attached 2.5" HDD.

The setup is fairly simple...I currently have 6 cameras (inside and out...primarily where pets may be, and also covering the rear entrances to the house)...these are all Wansview Wireless IP Cameras that support RTSP and ONVIF protocols. One of the biggest pains was getting the outdoor ones installed, and more specifically power (the battery cams that you get from Ring, Blink etc do not support true video streaming, and use low-power onboard AI to work out if they should transmit or not. There are plenty of reviews and reports where people have "forced" true streaming, only to have the "6-month battery life" be burnt through in less than a week or two). My answer was to run some power cables through the garage, and out through the eaves, then mount the cameras there...this allows me to cover the side and rear of the house, as well as the garden.

I dusted off the drill, and went through the random assortment of drill bits to find the right masonry bit, then dodged the rain to get 2 cameras and a load of power cables sorted...I'd already setup the camera Wifi and access credentials, so fortuntely the rest could be done inside. A Powerline Wifi Extender was added into the kitchen to provide rela
iable wifi to the garden, and the 2 new Pi's had MotionEyeOS installed. One was linked up to the 2 new cameras, and also took one of the existing inside cameras to balance the load. The other (the access hub) then simply had to be pointed to the 2 Pi's handling the cameras, and select the individual camera feeds. Finally it was moving everything into the cubby-hole by the router downstairs, with the new 8-port switch. This all had to be done while Reaver was outside (it's all sealed away behind a sofa so he can't chew the many, many cables down there). There were a few anoyances...the SATA HDD's I had bought would not format initally...they had to go to exFAT first before NTFS (Pi's/MotionEyeOS support NTFS, not exFAT). MotionEyeOS is exceptionally lightweight, so doesn't have stuff like (and this was relevant) an admin password reset process, so after mis-typing the password during the setting process, I had no choice but to reinstall from scratch.

As I said, a couple of tweaks. I'd like a single power source for all the Pi's (and redundancy be damned...they are all coming out of the same power-strip right now anyhow), and I'd like to get a doorbell camera to cover the front of the house (that will probably require an electrician to install power lines and a converter) that supports RTSP etc etc. I think the current setup can support 8-10 cameras, though expanding would be much easier now I have a central hub, it would just be a new Pi/HDD to handle the camera feeds, and I have spare network ports now. I should probably come up with a Pi/HDD rack that hold them vertically to save space and increase cooling surfaces. At some point I should make the hub accessible outside the home network, but I want to make 100% sure that I do it properly/securely rather than just crack open a port.

babychaos's picture