Sandra777

I agree with everyone else, have the eye out. Shorter surgery, shorter recovery and you can immediately get on to helping him do what is needed (if anything is) for him to learn how to cope with one eye. I've lived with a blind dog, they are much less affected than we are by these things.

I think you will find that by law they are your dogs since they're chipped & registered in your name, but you have to be realisitic too - if you have discussed this already & decided what is going to happen (even 'theoretically') then if I was in your partner's situation I would expect you to stand by your word. Think this is something you are going to have to be adult about and discuss with your partner. Obviously the argument that he has less time than you for the dogs needs to come in to it. If the dogs are great friends then perhaps this would be another argument, but the idea that because they're his first pets he has less rights in some way just floors me. Yep, by the strict letter of the law I would agree you own the dogs, but that's not always what life is about. Personally I wouldn't bother with stressing about keeping the dogs together or anything, I assume they are young dogs (ie that you haven't bought a pair of 10 year olds in the past 2 years :laugh:) - they will almost certainly adapt to whatever your new arrangements are.

Very true angelsun :D Many years ago someone put a double-page spread in a magazine with several photos of the dog, lots of over-enthusiastic wording about it's virtues. Same advert appeared the following month with a little photo of the handler inserted. Never understood why........... :laugh: :laugh: Yes some judges will be influenced by advertising - people are influenced by advertising, that's why so many companies spend so many millions of dollars trying to convince you to buy their toothpaste. Yes I find it amusing the awful photos sometimes chosen - especially the movement photos showing a dog with three feet off the ground at a trot

In some council areas it is against the by laws to take an in season bitch out. Not saying I know anyone who's ever been prosecuted, but something to consider! Mine don't leave the property either - just too much danger of them picking up a stray bug.

It's your puppy - if you want to train him to stand on command he can practice this when the other pups are practicing sit. If the puppy school instructor has an issue with this then you're in the wrong class :) Lots of dogs do obedience and conformation, they learn the difference just by a different leash (and the sights and sounds of the 2 rings are different which helps) so your pup can certainly learn stand and sit and down. Don't make it boring though, babies should be having fun in the ring or they can very quickly get stale and hate the whole idea.

Buy a decent set of clippers and if you want to you can later sell them - I paid $299 for my Wahls, used them for 2 years then sold them for $250 so not a bad investment :-)

We have the standard compact too, not the deluxe. Hasn't caused a single problem for us in 4 years, copes well with the wind and is so easy to cart around and put up and down.

I don't show a neuter, I don't even own one - but there is a bitch I bred out in neuter classes and doing OK for herself. She is a good bitch, personally I think she would title in the entire ring however she doesn't have what we were looking for when we did the mating, isn't the piece in the jigsaw puzzle we wanted so there's no point in us breeding from her. We did do some enquiring around and there was no one at that time we would have sold her to entire (trusting them to do the right thing) then what appeared to be the ideal home came up for a pet. She was spayed and almost immediately it all turned to s**t and she didn't go to that home. Then along came a DOLer and it all worked out. I'm happy for her new owner to show her. I'm equally happy for her new owner not to show her - the bitch is in a fantastic home and that's the main thing. Ironically at the same time we had a very successful show bitch (specialist Res CC winner out of Junior) who was spayed for health reasons. She was not staying entire end of story but I would have loved for her to continue being shown & had we been able to shown neuters in Qld at that time we would have kept her and shown her, she's in a pet home spoilt rotten. Fine by me too - she has a fantastic home and that's the main thing.

Breeding good dogs isn't about eliminating faults - it's about creating animals with the virtues required in the breed standard. As someone who actually managed to breed world-famous dogs once wrote: The biggest fault of all is a lack of virtue. By saying it's about eliminating faults only reinforces my original opinion that you are certainly obsessed with faults.

Why bother with a judge at all - why not everyone just stay at home and run a show via facebook - the person with the most likes wins. I think you are obsessed with faults. Being disappointed isn't a hanging offence and neither is having a fault. You do realise that all dogs (even yours) have faults?

If I couldn't get their regular MEAT food for one meal they'd get an egg with dry food. If there was no DRY food they'd get meat with nothing else for that meal - or a slice of bread if I felt especially kind :) For a dire emergency I would be happy feeding them virtually anything - canned, dry, meat, bone, canned fish, egg, pasta with some cheese. Nature's Gift is OK for canned, use it when we're away for a long-ish road trip to a show & haven't had one get the runs or turn their nose up at it (unlike the Royal Canin experiment which didn't end well )

Thanks for the links - will have a look. Anne - that is beautiful, I'd certainly like to look at more of their range too.

As the title suggests - does anyone have links to a good variety of urns for sale? Had a peak on e-bay and some seemed quite good, but want to have a look at some others. We've had Squaw's ashes in the box that came from the crematorium for 4.5 years now, time to give her a final resting place.

Sorry conztruct this one is just killing me :laugh: :laugh: Staffords, locked and loaded. :rofl: Pump HANDLE tail :D

:banghead: :banghead: :banghead: Black and tan has never been a disqualification in the Staffordshire Bull Terrier breed standard in the UK so it has never been a disqualification in the Staffordshire Bull Terrier breed standard in Australia. The original breed standard (1935) had B&T & Liver Coloured as "not to be encouraged". The 1949 revision kept this wording. The 1980's revision changed it to undesirable. Black and tan has never been a disqualification in the Staffordshire Bull Terrier breed standard in the UK so it has never been a disqualification in the Staffordshire Bull Terrier breed standard in Australia. Ignoring the fact that white isn't a colour - eye colour is cosmetic. If you were a judge (god forbid!) and were presented with your perfect interpretation of the breed standard but it was a black brindle with yellow eyes would you: Non-award the dog? Award it Best of Sex but withhold the CC? Put it last in it's class to a bunch of inferior quality dogs with dark eyes? What part of COSMETIC fault do you have a problem with? Thanks for the compliment - don't think I'm capable of getting breeds out of whack all by myself, pretty sure I don't have that much influence, but thanks anyway You call that thinking? OK Since you lack to intestinal fortitude to name names or places how will we ever know. Yep, we'll certainly try to, despite your best efforts.

Depends on breed, line and breeder experience. Also in bigger headed breeds sometimes a pup can get quite knocked around at birth and sometimes are so swollen it takes a day or two to realise they actually do have a stop :laugh: I certainly wouldn't choose at birth if my decision was binding but I certainly get an idea of what's what then & it's very interesting to see how they grow. The one thing I have noticed is that if they are born with a prominent underjaw to the extent you can see the lower lip there's virtually no chance the pup will have a good mouth (this is with Staffords).

Not at all unusual IME - happens a fair bit as a dog ages. Probably a bit is wear and tear so the teeth just don't hold each other together as well as they did and probably a bit of tendon loosening.

Black and Tan is as in the classic Dobermann, Rottweiler markings - black with tan markings. Tan pattern, as has already been pointed out to you is a PATTERN which expresses itself in all colours - red & cream, blue & silver, black & brindle, black & tan are all the same PATTERN however the SBT breed standard specifically states Black & Tan so if you want to be pedantic it does NOT include any of the other expressions of the gene. I believe it should & I like ot believe the original writers of the standard intended it to mean all patterns but it doesn't. When the standard was changed in the 1980's it should have been clarified IMO because by then it was understood that the gene wasn't necessarily expressed as straight black & tan - but it wasn't clarified so the anomaly remains. The original standard didn't include any disqualifications any more than the 1949 standard did.

If the eyes MAY bear some relation to coat colour then very light yellow tinged eyes are perfectly acceptable on fawn dogs - so never say never. My point which you seem to have missed in your anger is that the colour of a dog's eyes is cosmetic and the standard only says that dark eyes are preferred - not that light/yellow/green/blue/purple or orange eyes are to be disqualified. Black and tan has never been a disqualification in Australia - the Stafford standard in Australia has never included disqualifications. You seem to believe dogs are judged on their faults - good judges judge on virtues. Edited to fix the quote

Cosmetic fault - bears no relation to the quality of the dog. Even the standard doesn't actually say it's an issue "Dark preferred" dark PREFERRED "Black and tan or liver colour highly undesirable" highly undesirable isn't a disqualification So you are saying the exhibitor had cosmetically altered the dog? - put your complaint together and prove it to the Canine Control. That said, again the standard only says highly undesirable - it's not a disqualification here as it is in the USA. And does the dog have brindle points or is it a true black and tan because as pedantic as it may seem the Stafford standard finds black and tan highly undesirable, not tan points. There's a lot of tan point Staffords out there fixer and I for one would love to see the DNA colour results for many of our more well known dogs world wide.

I've been showing since 1979 and I have never had a judge say that to me - Totally agree that in some instances the dog that wins is not necessarily the best dog in the ring for a sinister reason, but in all honesty how can one person have in-depth knowledge of more than a handful of breeds - in-depth knowledge to the degree of long-term exhibitors/breeders have. Yep, certain 'groups' of dogs are pretty much the same (or exactly the same except for size/coat) - Dachshunds (all coats, both sizes), Poodles (3 sizes), Chihuahuas (S/C & L/C), Fox Terriers (Wire & Smooth) so obviously indepth knowledge of Mini Long Dachshunds is going to stand you in good stead across 6 breeds there - but your ability to pick a good Mini Long Dachshund hardly means you automatically know the best Standard Poodle. Personally I think the idea of all breeds judges just bizarre - especially when many have been involved in the dog show scene for a relatively short space of time.

Not an option in Queensland.

Birth. 9 times out of 10 the pup we keep is the one we liked at birth. Obviously you can't tell stuff like eye colour & teeth at this stage :laugh: Otherwise it really depends on the breed and the lines. With mine, 6 weeks is almost always better than 7 or 8 weeks and after that time I would say 2 years old is a good time to look.

Stay safe everyone!

x2 Unbelievable. All the behaviours you described are normal puppy behaviours - sounds like the "trainer" was a very poor example of the breed :laugh: