Eunice Marott's Comments

Eunice thankyou for the compliments on our Miss Molly....as Irish Setters are not found easily where we live we felt like we won the lottery when we were chosen to be owned by her!  ( they had a lot of applications for her ).  I read on your profile where you have lost your Irish...was that your Molly?  I am so sorry as I know how hard that can be...it's like you have lost a big part of yourself!  I hope soon you will have a new Irish in your life and will be looking for a note to that affect soon.  I love the pictures of your dog.....the one on the bed made me laugh as that is our Miss Molly...always ready for a belly rub no matter what we are doing or where we are at.

oops Eunice just saw that your Molly is one you are currently training....and she is a beauty.  Aren't they so much fun...keeps life full of laughter and joy and amazement over what the new trick is !

Our Miss Molly was formerly Heidi...but to me that is a German Shepherd and not an Irish...I had wanted to name our last daughter Molly...so husband picked Molly for our new Irish Setter...we call her Molly Dolly a lot, or Molly McGee McDolly.  She knows when she hears Dolly it's her as she is usually carrying around a plush toy.  Today her piggy was out in the snow with her but she finally decided to bring it back in.  Does your Molly hide things?  Always having had males before this is a new behavior here for us...but we do enjoy pretending to not see where she hides things and watching her move them over and over til she finds the perfect spot.  I have even woke up to find her biscuit hidden in my  pjs ..and under the blanket at that! 

Miss Molly loves the snow to play in but is not wild about it touching her feathers when she is needing to do her duty!  She will finally trample down an area for that or if snow is very deep we clear spots for her nature calls.  We are careful about how long she is out in snow....and have to defrost her feet where the snow freezes onto her paws with towels and warm water here....as soon as they dry she is ready to go out again so it is an ongoing process here. Worse is when it all melts and we have the mud issue going on for days on end!  Walks along a beach sound so lovely to me right now!!  Has the flooding affected you all much?  Do you show your Molly?  What sort of collar do you use for leash walking?  that is the one issue we are still working on here ...have been using a gentle leader here but want her off it ...can fool her by connecting to regular collar here in the neighborhood and just putting the gentle leader on but afraid to try out where other dogs might be running loose.  Our Irish have always been just companions..but would love to try for Pet Theraphy with Miss Molly but have to get her off that gentle leader to even begin.  Does your Molly play with other dogs? dog parks or ?  I have been rather afraid of dog parks here as so many have the pit bull mixes in them....she does play with two labs next door and a golden and lab who live behind us but it is so funny to watch as she is more interested in "birding" when they start to get rough....she just jumps over them and trots off!  Your Molly is about the age ours was when she came home to us...at that point she weighed 48 lbs...now at 60 -62 lbs.  She was so thin she could (and did ) squeeze between the fence posts ...we thought she jumped as one minute she was in our yard and the next the neighbors!  I set up the hose to catch her in the act but to my surprise she was going thru the corner post...even my pups never did that.....extra fence post solved that problem.  Does Molly jump ? 

Happy to be your friend Eunice...too bad we are so far apart or our Molly's might become playmates!

Hope that next year your whole family can be with you for Christmas.  We took Miss Molly to the kennel in July while we visited our oldest daughter and the grandsons in Texas...she loved the kennel but was only in it at night as we had doggie day care..fun play time thru the seven different play yards all day....she was so tired that when she came home she slept 24 hours!

Eunice,

   I believe our Molly is about a year older than your Molly.  What does your Molly weigh now?  Ours was very thin when she came home to us but is right where she should be now.  I do not use a training( choke or pinch ) collar on my setters either.  A gentle leader goes around the muzzle but allows her to open her mouth completely....that is what I am trying to get rid of using now so she walks only on a regular collar .  Just wondered what you used for training?  Weather here is beginning to act up again...rain turning to ice this pm and sleet an heavy snow they are saying for Tuesday thru Wednesday....worst winter storm we have had since 1982.  Thundersnow is the worse as it will bring heavy snow fall....just praying we do not lose electric...if I do not answer you for a bit it is because the ice took the electricity out.  Supposed to work on Wednesday AM but hoping they close as not worth going in for four hours!  plus not sure if on ice I could even get there. Have been following your weather on the news here and hoping they don't have to deal with the clycone on top of all that flooding.  Just want spring here so badly!

Wow....two hours away?  We have several within 15 minutes of us so we drop her off ourselves...have used the same kennel for years so they sure were surprised at how well she did after my Shilo who yodeled anytime he heard or saw one of them as he wanted their attention.  I did not kennel him his last few years as the Brittany we inherited had never been kenneled so one of us stayed home with our old gentlemen dogs as I feared the stress of a kennel would be too much for the Brittany.  We do have  a kennel who will pick them up and deliver them back but as they are in the middle of the county and not out in the country they do not really have room for them to have the play yards which we found helped keep our setters happy while we were gone.  I love the picture of your Molly with your cat....wonder how ours would do with one> but as she loves to chase anything that moves in the yard I would worry she might accidently pounce on a cat and hurt it. She is super fast when hunting and even grabbed two birds out of bushes last year .

Did you pick your Molly out of the litter?  That is a long trip home for her.  How easy is it to find an Irish there for you?  Sort of sounds like here....in the St Louis area you see very few Irish Setters ....they were more common during the Big Red crazy time here in early 1970's...our first one we got in 1973 right after we got married....we saw one running across a field and just fell in love with how beautiful he was...first puppy we knew nothing about the breed so we learned as we went along!:)  Reputation here from so many are that Irish Setter's are wild ...and then they meet mine and are amazed !

Got it...our spoiled baby is sleeping on sofa after her romp in the sleet here...still waiting on snow and taking some pictures of things as they happen here ...will post later.Not updating us newswise on your cyclone situation as all we are hearing is this monster snow storm.  I know so many people who tell me they had an Irish in the 70's but got rid of it (I never considered that an option even as I went thru my first experience of wildness).  Hubby said no more dogs here after losing the two old gentleman in 2008 but luckily I talked him into a "small rescue " dog in July of 09:)...then found our Miss Molly needing a home in late August of that year!  She has been just so easy to train for us I thank my stars everyday for her.  I just work part time and hubby is retired so she is not alone a lot but all she does when we are gone is sleep in the chair by the front door waiting for us to come back.  We just cover all the sofa's and chairs for her comfort here it seems. I am so glad you were able to find a new puppy as life feels so empty without an Irish Setter in your life.  I truly thought my Shilo was the last Irish I would ever have and hated the idea of going to a wee, bitty dog just to have a dog back in my life and then along came Miss Molly...you can see the video I saw that day on our baseball game here on youtube under Heidi the Irish Setter for Heartland Humane Society.as she would be about the age your Molly is now in it. We do think she may have been younger than they thought due to feather developement....let me know what you think if you can view it.  Wondered if feather developement is same in females as males?  Our first female and I am totally sold on them now.

Eunice we got her from a local Humane Society and they spay or neuter all dogs before placing with forever families.  That is why I wondered about feather development...in that video you can see how thin she was and what a small amount of feathers she had then....noticed yesterday we are starting to feather out nicely on her chest so thinking she will have a nice bib of feathers in the future.  You need a Diva collar for your Molly...then we could have twins.

Smiling here....twins at least in names!  She does tend to a wee bit of wooly on sides of legs but when I shampoo her I condition and condition here!  So far no bladder problems...but am aware that can be issue at times.  House training her just was a breeze...I was lucky as one of us were home with her or took her with us for that first all important month. Had one accident first night and that was my fault as I did not hear her cry...we went out with her all the time so now she air snaps at door to go out which is like she is trying to talk.

We have already had double our normal amount of snow this winter...in a lull now after about 4 inches of icey sleet...saying 6-12 inches of snow tonight.  That is a hard decision to make..but if you do not plan to show or breed is it just the wooly coat and possible bladder problem that stops you?  I was told there is a fairly inexpensive medicine for the bladder problem if needed by our vet....and that it would protect her from mammary cancers because she was spayed young...our vet did not think she had experienced her first heat.  I still wonder if she might not have been younger than they thought when we adopted her. Still trying to figure out how to post photo to profile and to download video here! We did have a white Christmas this year....and we do cook for it...but we do not have this much snow usually and streets are a mess!  Schools and lots of business's canceled today .  Snow is driveable if your careful but ice is scarey!

Got booted for a bit but so far only 4 inches of icey sleet and possibility of few inches of snow overnight so they missed on our forecast...which is more than fine with us,  Hope that Yasi does not do too much damage down there.  We are smack in the middle of the USA, outside of St. Louis,Missouri.  Glad you got to see some of the video...so now you know what our girl looked like at 14 months....is feathering similar to your Molly?  She was about 48 lbs in the video. Eunice we were so very lucky to be chosen as her forever family...they had a lot of applications for her but perhaps the fact I wrote an attachment to the application detailing our IS history helped us as they were looking for someone with IS experience....they had been expecting that one of the St Louis Cardinal players or someone in the news department would want her so we felt like we won a lottery!! We were told that she was purchased to help a handicapped gentleman as a puppy and for some reason he took her to his vet and told them to put her down....vet talked him into allowing him to contact Heartland Humane Society who spayed her and gave her her shots and then took her to that baseball game....just so happy I was not working that night and was watching the game here at home.  I had been sort of sneaking around for over a year trying to find an Irish who needed a home with no luck...would have just told my husband the dog found me!  My daughter, Angie just looked at your pictures and says your Molly looks like ours....especially the looking over the sofa one and the on her back in the bed one!  Let me know what collar you use for training...you said it attaches to her regular one? Just seems so funny that you are all so hot right now while we are at almost 0 degrees tonight.

If information we were given is correct she will be three years old this May. We thought perhaps she might have been younger then they thought due to feather developement and not having had a heat. What do you think after having seen the video?   Our Molly will wade in a lake or river but only put her toes in a wading pool here.  She has waded in a river out to it touching her feathers but not to swim....hoping this summer to take her to actually swim in a lake off lead. I hate that you all are having to deal with this cyclone on top of all the flooding and pray that all will be safe,  How long will it last?  That just has to be soooo scarey!  We had a tornado touch down mile from the house on New Year's Eve this year and the destruction from that was horrible to see. Warning on it was about an hour so at least we could go to the basement ..but found out silly Molly was afraid of the steps so have since made sure she can go down them on her own. Just lately seems like so much odd and scarey weather around our world.  I am following your cyclone on internet here and will be keeping you all in my thoughts and prayers.

I have been trying to download one since I found this wonderful site but would not work til today. Thanks for the comments on the pic's....what time is it there ?  It is about 12:15 pm here.  Looks like I am getting to stay home from work tomorrow so will miss the icey drive in.  Will be following your weather in Queensland and praying all will be safe...will you feel wind or anything where you are?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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oopsss it is 12:15 AM here not PM! duh!

Thank you and hugs to your Molly also...take care.