blissirritated

http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2010/...mania-news.html and http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2010/...mania-news.html * Pics of Zara available on Mercury website.

http://www.themercury.com.au/article/2010/...sofjustice.html

*bump*

Shelle you might find this article interesting --> http://www.canis.no/rugaas/onearticle.php?artid=1

What? What "media spin"? Minimal effort seems to have been made by the owner to locate it. It's also another method of identification. What alternate methods of identification do you propose? What do you mean by "illeggal" to do what any other way? Or maybe some of them are human beings who feel just as disenfranchised by the hoops they have to jump through? They have a veterinary clinic euth the animals because to do it themselves *would* be inhumane. If the staff trained in humane euthanasia are treating the dogs inhumanely then that's an issue with the clinic. NKA you seem to be intent on 'discovering' some sort of hidden agenda or drama here - what's yours?

Why is this thread still going? It's not even a 'proper' news article. It's an emotive story, full of omissions and failings, written by the woman who failed to care for her dog and is now looking for someone else to blame. Steve, as one of the founders of the MDBA I would think you would put a little more thought into the source of the threads you make here. All this thread is doing now is making "us dog people" look like aggressive and gullible idiots, especially in light of the comments and loaded questions being directed at "Cr Andrew Antoniolli" (if he is indeed a member of the Ipswich council and in a position to put forward our comments and ideas for possible change).

You could try bluffing and quoting this at them in an email: http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD/pc=PC_310525 Or try reporting them --> http://www.acma.gov.au/WEB/STANDARD/pc=PC_311464 Probably be easier to add the address the "newsletters" are coming from to your block/spam list though. Edit: for words and stuff.

Aside from this particular line, I don't see how the Ipswich Council was at fault?

And I'd be thrilled - because it would mean that my cat had escaped and instead of being alone and at risk of serious injury or death, it was safe and I would know where to go to collect it. [/high horse]

RIP little Gav.

Ta Pokes. I'm not sure I'll bother if nobody else has heard of him outside of "he writes this stuff" (which is all I can find anywhere). That he's at all connected with Urbandogz in my mind is enough to put me off but I was willing to ignore that if people had some sort of other experience with him -- that make sense?

Has anyone ever worked with / heard of Aidan Bindoff? AND Is what I would expect from him to be anything like what one would experience through Urbandogz? I realise questions like these have the ability to put people in 'uncomfortable' situations, so you can PM me if you would prefer.

Thanks anyway PW. She's been cleared of a UTI and been given the onceover by the vet who said "she's in perfect health, it's probably just incontinence" and then charged me $84 for a bottle of Propalin. The same vet couldn't tell me what she thought had caused it, couldn't explain what the Propalin actually did or how it worked... Basically I came back feeling very defeated and flitted about on the internet looking at alternatives/causes/side effects of Propalin. Read somewhere that a low purine diet could help and it clicked that on Tuesday and Thursday nights (both nights she's been 'wetting the bed') she had a diet of food that was unusually (for her) 'high in purine'. She'll only be 4 this Christmas and I just think she's too young to go straight onto a lifetime of drugs without giving anything else some thought. Obviously if she gets worse or becomes distressed I'll be ramming the drugs into her quicker than she can blink , but she's young so I wanted to give a more 'management' based approach a try first. It's only happened twice so far (Tuesday/Thursday) so I'm prepared to test a few things out (provided she isn't too distressed in the meantime) before I put her onto medication without knowing the 'exact' reason why. Just wanted to ask the people here if they've tried the 'low purine' way or anything else. (In hindsight I should have put all this in my original post ;) )

Has anyone had any success with controlling urinary incontinence with a low purine diet and restricting water intake (taking away access to water an hour or two before 'bed time')?

Ah okay, I understand now Cosmolo -- the wording in your first post threw me (easy enough to do ). It is hard to explain how they work without actually 'seeing' it in action. I think they're a good tool, though I've not used it on Gypsy in quite a while.

I have used the Halti version of this (their body harness) and found it good with pulling (without the fight of a headcollar) but wanted to comment that the strap shouldn't be so low that they can pull or interfere with the movement of the dogs leg. The front strap needs to be high so the dogs leg can swing forward freely and the 'body' strap needs to be firm/tight so that there is no hang or too much movement. If there's pressure applied it would applied up behind where the leg joins onto the body -- the idea not being that the dogs legs are pulled up or off the ground, but that the straps around the body and the position of the D ring at the front pull the dog around. It can't pull forward because the lead is attached at the front centre. Imagine a barrel on wheels at the top of a hill. Attaching a lead to the top centre of the barrel and it could pull you down a hill. Attach the lead to the front middle and as the barrel started to roll it would turn on that front point and end up facing you (before it probably went down the hill backwards ) Essentially it acts to swing the dog around if they try to pull.

My male cat still looks intact. Mind, he was pretty well endowed to begin with - so even with shrinkage he's still 'all man' lookin' ;)

Oooh! This'll keep me busy. (a "cat condom" bed can't be any harder than a sock monkey, right? :S ) Now I've just got to find some 'snuggly' material...

Zack, my brother's elderly poodle shi tzu crossbreed's last treat were schmakos. He'd starting having fits, refused to eat, only drank from an eye dropper... I went to say goodbye and bought him a packet of schmackos. He hadn't had any in about 5 years -- but I got them for him, tore one up into little tiny pieces (small then then end of your little finger) and he gobbled them down he it was going out of fashion.

Ah well, I'll have to keep working on weezling her into our place then. She's beautiful girl, we puppy sat her for nearly 3 months when she was about 2/3 the size of our GSD. 1/2hr would be more than she's getting at the moment She'd never seen a leash before we sat for her.

Ha, if only everybody said that. "Stop talking about your bloody dog woman". *blush*. You wouldn't be interested in a large dobe cross would you? Beautiful girl, been jumping fences so she's tied up. The owners have probed us to see if we'd take her (I would in a heartbeat)-- can't in the property we're in. Be an excellent Agility prospect...

Sorry that Ivy had to go somewhere else Fang. That's a hard decision to make and I know you wouldn't have taken it lightly. I want to comment here that I personally found Urbandogz to be very expensive for the service it provided. We took the 'problem dog' course and while I could see how it could work for a 'fear agressive' dog, it had the opposite effect on my girl -- I don't think her reactivity is based out of fear. The course that we took wasn't terribly flexible. Having said that, if someone wanted to learn 'purely' clicker training and didn't have access to it elsewhere -- go for it. In the end I paid a fortune and got a dog that I then had to work even more of that reactivity out of. *sigh*. I can understand Fang's frustration. That said, they *do* sell their Kong toys cheaper than I've seen down here. Mornir, how do you find the HCOC w/regard to reactive dogs? (are they in any way related to the group that's on the eastern shore?) I know that before we got Gypsy (at about 1.5) she was taken to two lessons "somewhere" where the solution to her barking was to alpha roll her and pin her down. Given that we spent the first 6 months of her life teaching her that it was okay to be sitting/laying anywhere within 5 feet of us, I don't want to see that approach taken again -- are they more flexible?

Eesh, I'd love it if Gypsy was obssessed with food like that -- have you tried randomly leaving food out of the equation then? Instead of sit, food, drop, food trying sit, good boy, drop food.??

That is EXACTLY what Gypsy was like when we got her! We've gotten past that now, she can relax again, is friendly, happy now -- but we haven't gotten past the 'evil dog aggression' part yet, in short, what I'm trying to say is that I do *get* how big an achievement it is and I'm just quietly thrilled that somebody else has gotten over it, so to speak -- because it means that we can too!

Okay, so when will this Steve be cloned and sent to Tasmania to help with my big girl (who is 'dog aggressive' in the sense that she is as socially inept as I am)?? Hrm??? *pouts* Or does his clone already exist down here in the form of some other trainer who is close to the Hobart area? [please, take this as a small thread hijack and pm me with a trainer recommendation down here as I can't quite find what I'm looking for :D ] That said, (and I don't know what she was like to start with, but if she was anything like Gypsy, then) Woah. That's excellent. I'm sitting here beaming for both of you.