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well almost...we have a pellet/multi fuel bio mass burner... in reality you can stick pretty well anything in it from logs to maize to pellets... so it is a little less fickle than the lounge stile pellet burners...even so... we have never bothered with all the sort of alternate bio mass products..,olive remains etc and stuck with pellets... and have three observations... you generally get waht you pay for... good quality italian, austrian and even had candadian have all burnt well with no probs regarding residue or ignition..the best places to buy ... if you can find it a trustworthy local... as we use maybe 5 pallet load year... we get a deal plus the fact that they want our order the next year so generally you get good quality...second best for us... cause only 60 or so bags can be put in the car is/are the local conad/leclerc chain do special offers ... castorama also sells them.. and my belief...maybe mistaken is that these sorts of companies rarely get caught by the illicit producer/sellers that will put anything in a bag and sell it to the nearest money grabbing outlet...  everyone knew Lithuanian pellets were too cheap... and yet they were handled by criminal organisations here and there and sold on without any thought of consequences... generally through less reliable outlets who were also out to make a quick killing..problem is now ... ex eastern european pellets were fine in our type of boiler too... should imagine most Lithuanian ones would be too.. now they are all tarred with the same brush... and their market and their workers will be hit by the greed of a few..happens here in Italy all the time... glowing mozzarella being the last... human nature .. hardly ever thought i would have a philosophical moment over pellets ...  anyway if you have a pretty lounge type pellet stove... go with best quality over mass.. we go for best deals because we have a sort of man eating lion type of burner... and i would think now could head east for the pellets for a while... as they are bound to be controlled more for at least the net year 

the slanging match ...i mean... knowing ram as well am sure he also enjoyed the debate ... and to me it just proves how difficult everything here can be...in the interpretation rather than the letter...for quite a while we followed the accepted form of poima/seconda casa rules until we went through it all with charlotte oliver... and she convinced us otherwise ...so now we give clients a choice... that is if they do not already own another first house in Italy...  against the tax purchase benefits you also have to accept that you will have to have a certain amount of funds in the bank and a health insurance policy in place... plus an ability to remain at the property whilst applying for a sometimes lengthy stay...i don't agree with Gromits opinion re local comune knows best... one client we were working with was having extreme problems with a comune until we put the point to the comune via a law firm... suddenly everything resolved itself and the comune official pretended to understand all the laws pertaining to purchase residence and eu rights... as if he was a modern day version of st paul...local comune does know best...unless their best is not right for you especially when they do not understand the law...in that case stick them with a solicitor ...anyway keep the arguing going...well i prefer to call it debate... it brings out for me a much the opportunity to clarify things in my own head... and i appreciate it more so when two people with good knowledge of their fields hold a debate of this sort

 not much i can say.... as your french vet said nothing is 100 % but the collar does offer a form of protection against the parasite...i would not feel guilty ... however... we all make choices and you can never know if one action will lead to another or not... the Med area is just a loose term as regards the endemic areas and really is to do with climate... we live near the Adriatic...and it also has the same problem... however...  we also live up high away from the coast and during the season this means there is a very low risk of our dogs getting bitten... my advice would be not to visit coastal areas with animals during the times when the fly is active...   my understanding is that human cases in Europe at least are very rare... however anyone with a problem with Aids is advised to be  very careful.... i presume because their immune system puts them more at risk...  and as regards the treatment that early ... very early spotting of the disease allows not a cure but  the possibility after the initial treatment for the disease to be controlled... by medicationall the above is no comfort ...  i do appreciate you telling us of your story and how hard it is to write these things down as it pulls the memories back of what Cassie had to go through... maybe it will help people realize that the choice of travelling with your pet outside the UK is one to think carefully over and save someone from going through what you and Cassie had to endurethank you

gala is pretty well right as we have clients that have used post office bank accounts here to transfer money...they just need an iban number for the receiving bank....the other point Gala makes is also valid re the payment at the act...it is pretty well the norm to have a certified cheque made out to the seller...in this case your mother which to my mind at least and you could check with her UK bank could be deposited direct by her.... and they would then handle the exchangethis type of cheque is non negotiable ... is guaranteed as to the amount and basically unless she looses it i would suggest that it would not carry any of the risks associated with carrying large amounts of cash.... which as Gala rightly points out would be illegal in any case due to money laundering regulations here in Italy ...the post office also issues certified cheques... almost like i guess travellers cheques of old... so she could pick up a pile of them... however once again there is a risk of loosing them.... apart from the worry of carrying it all around in any casemy favoured choice in regards security of it all arriving safely in a bank would be the money transfer.... without a doubt... 

for all your messages... read them back a while and didnt have to to say how much they meant before...  but today is a quite day..at least this afternoon...without wishing to add anything morbid to the thread... and its really because of advice from the vet as well just to say when you do bury a dog...that is if you have the space...... an important consideration if like us you have other dogs in the fenced garden and you are using land thats unfenced ...is to make sure you make a deep grave... the vet said no containers to allow natural things to happen quickly but to use a good deal of lime ... helps contain disease and smell and prevent intrusions.. i used that and stones...sorry ... trouble is if you have pets things have to be faced up to...sometimes far too quickly...anyway to my mind Chcco has a pretty good resting place and nothing to disturb him and eventually when autumn comes will most probably have a new young tree of some sort.... to shade him..  and mark his passing------------------------------enough... as regards adoption... the one from rome was via contacts via a forum and due to computer changes cannot get the info back... however there are a huge amount of italian pet/dog forums... and they are pretty well supported...very friendly and full of info...it was a small rome rescue centre... and i dont think that its exceptional to the italian rescue centres to use best photos on adoption sites... just good marketing...the abruzzo sheepdog we adopted from Teramo the canine defence league runs adoption days every six months or so and he was a puppy... abandoned on the outside of Teramo city...don't think it matters a lot via Internet or face to face..  in the UK the rspca allowed you to take dogs out for walks and become acquainted...  the rescue places here just want you to take the animal so less pre adoption formality... in the bonding sense.. but i reckon until you get a dog home for a week you basically cannot tell a lot about them ... most do not behave naturally in a crowded kennel anyway..  you have to take a chance and in reality i cannot see ever sending a dog back as an option unless there is something extremely dangerous about them..  both our shih-tzu dogs had been re-homed at least three times before we took them on.. one from england and obviously the one from rome... neither had major habit problems and were certainly not aggressive ...so Fiona remeber you mentioning your site before on the old place and in all the confusion of changeover forgot... will have a look soon ... am sure after your visit to see the dog things will go ahead... am sure you would not be making the journey if you didnt already have a pretty good idea that something about him means something to you... ------------------------------------there are many problems here in Italy with rescue/adoption centres... have written before on it ... the italian government gives a grant per day per dog to these places... for good rescue centres who want to find people to adopt dogs this often runs short of the cost... and they struggle to manage.. for others and there are far too many of this ilk... they use the money to maintain very overcrowded dog camps and will not foster out dogs because it means a drop in income.. they even let them breed on site to increase income... and do not report deaths... so a good law gets abused by the worst types and places of excellence suffer because these people have consciences and often use their own money to supplement care... working with vets that give their time for free as well...anyway thanks from all of us for your thoughts...  the other dogs are just getting used to him not being here... and they are back to how it was before Chicco came... am not getting another dog...it upsets the other too much ... the Abruzzo sheepdog has a character renowned for this in terms of introducing new members to a family... and am not going to unsettle him again...

thanks for a post that makes sense .... also to carol b...each year in Italy millions of wild animals are killed let alone a few humans... plus firefighters... in L'Aquila a canadair went down ... killing the crew...so the two sane comments with sound advice need a thank you... even if neighbours do it when its been dry for ages... then allow them their stupidity...in Italy its becoming more and more of an obligation upon land owners to maintain their land to avoid fire risks... which in essence means cutting all wild growth down...  and it does not mean burning it...  when there is a high fire risk...even in the UK ... on farms we were not allowed to burn straw as we used to in the old days...  setting fire to most everything around and allowing the fire service to have a practice run out...my brother is a volunteer fire man in Australia... even more prone than here ... and spends much of his early summer months with tractor and mower helping neighbours build breaks around their properties.... and that's what land owners here need to do... keep everything short....   ok if you have woodland... keep the undergrowth down around the trees... ...hegges... keep the growth up to them down...  wild areas for wild life make a fire break around...  it all requires work.. but its worth doing

we just had a dog die on Sunday.... Chicco...--------------------we adopted him when he was quite old... came from rome to the sticks of abruzzo... seems the romans didnt want him... skin disease, two teeth left and cataracts... met the adoption people in L'Aquila and  he was passed over to us ... his web photos were much better than the real thing but we ... well my wife had wanted another shiatsu(gala will correct my spelling)  after our last one died ... having made the move from the UK to Abruzzo... another old adoptee who was a wonderful dog------------------anyway Chicco made it through two maybe three years... loose count... couldn't do anything much with his teeth as he also had a bad heart... couldn't give him anaesthetic to take out the bad ones... he also had stones... sometimes cannot remember the English names of things... ah yes kidney stones... so a diet of 0 calcium food... -------------------- all sounds terrible and he was a particular sort of character... but i reckon he had a pretty good latter life despite all the probs and when it was time to go it happened in half a day...-----------the vet here has been excellent... cured him of the stones... for a week i guess we spent every morning at the vets ...drips and such scans and re hydration to bring him back from pretty well dead and when they were all gone he had a second lease of life... which maybe is why he dies about a year after... his heart couldn't take his new energy... but to us at least he had become a much happier dog...-----------------i think here in Teramo we have some pretty excellent vets... who seem to take that extra care as if they were almost their own... and compared to the UK costs and sort of treatments that involve very expensive machines seem a lot less money grabbing...---------------------------last Sunday evening we called the vet twice...first to see if we needed to increase his medication ... and got advice over the phone... next because he had collapsed and within fifteen minutes the vet was at his surgery and we were there just after Chicco didn't make it though...---------have three other dogs... mongrels thank god... so will be interested to read your interview...  hopefully for future reference...also am glad to see you in the pet circle............  and on the forum.... 

been away all today and didnt have a chance to look through old records but followed your link to the marche site and thats pretty well like the one i used to use or use in abruzzo     thought i had lost it.. so thanks from me too

same apat site but it allows you to zoom in on certain areas.... have pointed it to the marche... but am not sure what are you are talking about in terms of whats available on the site -----------the comunes throughout italy are supposed to hold risk assesment maps for the whole territory zoning from red downwards and red zones entail much higher technical engineering surveying regarding both new and restructuring work ... which usually involves much higher costs in regards to foundations will have a further look through various files as i had a much better mapping system but i cannot remember the name...  hopefully the above will help 

this is the italian earthquake monitoring site... you will notice a few hundred earthquakes in the last ninety days-----------------------------------map is clickable to give you details ...you can also refine the search to just your area and limit the time scale.. ie go to the shortest span to see if your quake is listed...although sometimes in busy periods lesser quakes are missed from published records.... it also reports other major quakes around the world...-------------to put this all in some perspective an interviewee from the civil protection centre that runs 24 hours a day all year getting reports in from  all around Italy suggested they deal with 2-300 per day regarding quakes... they co-ordinate the dispatch of emergency services etc to all major incidents of any type here in Italy... this was in the context of the smaller quakes before the larger one at L'Aquila...  when asked why the population had not been evacuated ... their answer simply is that more than half the population of Italy would never sleep at home if they followed that policy...