or An Expert Avoids Most of the Issues.
Every so often we glance at the doggie search questions people use to find this site. Alarmingly, some of them are quite serious ones. We’re just people who live with lurchers and longdogs. I may have to post a photograph of me in a white coat, like in the adverts, saying “I am not a veterinarian, but…”. Pictures of me in a grubby khaki jacket with a poo bag in one hand and the leads tangled around my legs are not inspiring, that’s for sure. So let’s forget that ‘expert’ word.
However, we thought that Lurchers for Beginners might look at some of the top searches and see what we could make of them. Today’s brilliant photos come from Lurcher Link forum member Ann, and are of her gorgeous deerhound/greyhound cross, Roxy.
Here are the seven most commonly asked questions, and they are all genuine, taken from the last four weeks:
1) What’s the best way to get a lurcher fit?
Haven’t the faintest. We walk ours twice a day, stop Django eating discarded Greggs pasties from the pavement (and the contents of every other food bowl), and run them as often as possible. The running really does help (them, not you). And we feed raw, using meat and bone that isn’t too fatty and some blitzed fruit or veg now and then, but that’s optional. If you want to know, the approach is called BARF, which is what people do when they see you hacking up raw carcasses with a maniacal enthusiasm. Just don’t let your pups trough on endless kibble and cake, whatever you do feed them. When we’re exhausted and we’ve settled down, our dogs like to keep fit by jumping on and off the bed, playing bitey-face and generally exercising themselves – and our patience. It works for them.
2) Why are lurchers a funny shape?
This is down to God, evolution or human breeding programmes. Possibly all three. They are designed to run, with deep chests, very flexible spines and skeletal articulations which make them good at it. The sighthound crosses run in what is called a ‘double-hung’ suspension gallop, with all four feet off the ground a lot of the time. Lurchers have large hearts – they pump up on the old oxygen and charge at up to 45 miles an hour for short periods.
They’re not built for marathon-type stamina running, but for bursts of hyper-speed. They are built for dead-legging you, hitting trees and overshooting into rivers (see ‘muddy lurcher’ below). With a low body fat and wiry build, they can also look very leggy compared to other dogs. Chilli has at least eight legs, like furry stilts, which stick out all over the place, often in our faces. Or maybe we accidentally rescued a gigantic spider on a diet. It’s hard to tell. Django, on the other hand, resembles a kangaroo with identity issues, especially from behind.
3) Do sleeping lurchers growl often?
The best we get is the occasional excited set of whimpers and a frantic kicking of one or more legs. This is presumably when they are taking down the Squirrel Army on their fantasy hunting trip. See Lurchers v Squirrels – the Battle of Dork’s Drift:
Or they’re finally teaching next door’s cat a lesson. In Chilli’s case it may mean that she’s having a dream about how to reach the liver treats, thus becoming an even more independent girl than she is now. Many lurchers and longdogs make very little sound even when awake, unless they’re taunting each other to run across the coffee table and see what they can knock over.
4) How do you deal with a muddy lurcher?
By covering every surface of your house in cling-film and polythene sheeting, then hosing the place down once a week. You can try bathing them, at which point they look woeful, thin and distinctly put-upon. We don’t bother. Fox poo gets a quick wet scrub in the appropriate area, everything else gets a towel-down and ‘let’s hope the vacuum can pick up all the dried mud tomorrow’. Twiglet gets a towel-down even though she doesn’t go out much, because it annoys her to be left out. But we’ve had too many dogs for too long to care much nowadays. The world is, after all, primarily mud in one form or another.
5) Why does my lurcher sleep so much?
Because he or she is a lurcher. Almost every dog charity seems to have posters up trying to correct people’s views of lurchers and sighthounds. The dogs are seen charging around wildly, and people go, oh, I couldn’t deal with one of them. Lurchers and longdogs are famous for kipping – as long as they have had their burst of exercise a few times during the day. Chilli dozes for twenty plus hours of the day, and is fit, slim and one of the fastest dogs we’ve ever seen. When she’s not being fast, she just wants to cuddle and sleep. Although – have we said before that lurcher puppies are insane? They may bounce off the walls quite a lot for the first couple of years. So you’ll be asking ‘Please God, why won’t my lurcher puppy just go to sleep?’ instead.
6) What equipment do you need for a lurcher?
A rocket-pack for catching them, chainmail gloves for interrupting bitey-face, and American football-style padding for impact damage. Numerous sofas, cushions and comfy dog-beds, because lurchers are usually low in body fat, short of an undercoat and thin-skinned. They do not appreciate sleeping on hard surfaces, and will point this out to you. Repeatedly. If nothing else is available, they will use you as the required padding. You’ll learn eventually.
Alternatively, for lead and collar issues, we refer you to our post Lurchers for Beginners 2:
with the addition that if you muzzle, be sure to use an open basket muzzle of some form. These allow the lurcher to drink and pant, which are very important given their love of charging about at high speed. Don’t use a closed or constrictive muzzle whatever you do.
Basket muzzles are also a good way for your lurcher to bring more mud back into the house. Or snow. Or stinky water. Lurchers and longdogs are tool-using animals, after all.
The seventh and last question for today has no funny answer, because of what might come of it. So we’ll take this one seriously.
7) Does my lurcher need a bowl off the ground?
Again, we are not a substitute for proper advice, and studies are still mixed in this area. Deep-chested and large dogs tend to be more prone to bloat, or gastric volvulus, a terrible condition which is often treatable if caught early but can also be lethal. It may sometimes be genetic, but there are some indications that raised bowls can increases the risk of bloat, maybe because the dog eats more quickly or takes in more air. Basically they’re not sure. We feed on the floor, in case they’re right. However you choose to feed your dogs, to reduce the risk of bloat ensure that you portion food out over at least two meals a day, never one big one, and don’t exercise too soon before or after feeding. Small meals and sensible exercise rules, basically. Those might help.
Bloat needs immediate veterinary treatment. This is not an area for dithering or home remedies. If you have a large or deep-chested dog, look up the symptoms and familiarise yourself with them. You may never encounter it, so don’t start stressing out. We know what people with medical dictionaries are like. It is simply better to be prepared.
####
So there you have it. Another addition to the encyclopaedic Lurchers for Beginners series, bringing you everything you needed to know about your lurcher and some rubbish which you might want to forget immediately. That’ll teach you to look things up properly in a real book.
Next time: Some of those weird, dark pictures that make you feel peculiar. It’s for your own good, you know…
Yet again – absolutely SPOT ON observations of the Legendary Lurchers! Please keep ’em coming – they always have me laughing and agreeing like a demented nodding dog!! Thank you :))
Thank you too, for the kind comments. You can see why I had to write about lurchers and longdogs, just to keep my site really weird. They’re often so much stranger than fiction..