dancinbcs

Thanks for the info. do you happen to know if they are all happy to score x-rays, not done under GA?

At that age I would be enforcing strict rest. If he has torn the shoulder or elbow cartledge he is at real risk of OCD developing. Rest now may allow to heal completely and not cause any further issues.

Once dogs are fighting I only ever grab tails or back legs, well away from the bitey end but I have been bitten on the hand four times. Twice while trying to prevent a fight. Each time I grabbed for the one about to launch into a fight but wasn't quite fast enough and ended up being the first one bitten. The bite that ended in 11 stitches was not nearly as painful as the one where I just had a couple of small punctures, but the soft tissue damaged caused the hand to swell to about 3 times it's normal size. The dog obviously spat out my hand when he realised it was me because the punctures weren't deep, but he still did some damage. The other two were accidental play bites. As a child, both my dog and I grabbed for a bouncing tennis ball. Neither of us got the ball but he got my hand. The other bite was a deep puncture in the centre of my hand from a very excited obedience dog, learning jumps. He was having a great time barking with enthusiasm, I held out my hand to indicate the jump, he jumped, barked and managed to catch my hand in his mouth accidently. He refused to look at my hand after. I'm sure he knew he had caused it and didn't mean to.

The absolute high value treat and food to entice a reluctant eater is cooked rabbit. Just boil up a whole rabbit and then remove all the meat from the bones, discarding the cooked bones of course. I have yet to find any dog that can resist cooked rabbit meat unless it is at deaths door. I mainly use it for sick dogs that have lost their appetite but it works well as a training treat when desperate measures are called for. My dogs go nuts as soon as you start to cook it. Expensive, unless you have someone who likes to go rabbiting and very messy to bone out, but it isn't messy to handle and dogs love it.

Steak or Chicken cut into 3cm cubes, cooked in the microwave, then torn into shreds, are my standard training treats and show bait. Drain on paper towels as they cool to avoid it being too wet in your pocket. If we have leftover sausages I use them as well occasionally.

There are very different levels of being a regular vet client. I have been using my vet for about 20 years, have multiple dogs and over the years have paid out $1000s to them. They know if I run up a bill I will pay it and continue as a client with my other dogs. The average pet owner usually only has one dog at a time. They may be a regular as far as vaccinations and an occasional ailment but if the dog is bitten by a snake then dies, they are then no longer clients, so there is no incentive to pay the bill if they no longer have the dog. This is the risk vets take with allowing credit for anti-venom. Each time a vial is used the vet has to replace it immediately and they have to pay for it up front. It is only fair that clients do the same. My vet would not charge me up front but I would expect if I had to go to a different vet because I was in another area, they probably would. Same applies to treament for ticks. Most vets also require up front payment for any surgery for new clients. Same applies to private hospitals for humans. Try going to a private hospital for surgery and asking them to bill you. They all require payment at the time of admission. If you have health insurance they take that with any required gap paid on admission. If you don't have insurance you have to pay the whole lot up front before they will admit you.

I can tell you from experience it will buy you a few hours.My dog was bitten on the lip twice by a 6 to 7 foot dugite (brown snake).Vet said becuase of capillaries this is the worst place to get bitten.I saw her get bitten and injected her intravenously straight away and then an hour later.It was 2 to 3 hours by the time I got a vet and got to the surgery.I am talking about a 60 pound dog,so there is no way a dog that size bitten where it was could have survived that long without it.Vet administered antivenine and dog was looking good but the inexpereinced vet gave her an atropin injection straight away and stopped her heart so I lost my best mate and still had to pay $900.All he could say as I carried her out the door was are you going to pay now or later.He is very lucky he still has his front teeth. Our vets have tested it (with owner permission) on dogs, where the owner simply says they cannot afford the anti-venom treatment at all. I think about the longest time they had a dog survive was about 4 hours after a brown snake bite. If it is black snake, you generally have a few hours to get to a vet but if you are more than about 20 min from the vet, and the dog is bitten by a brown, it won't make it as far as the vet to seek treatment. With many clients 40-60 minutes away, our vets recommend the Vit C as a stop gap measure.

Our vet supplies their rural customers with intravenous Vit C and teaches them how to administer it. It must be given very slowly into a vein and can buy you up to a couple of hours with a snake bite to give you time to get to the vet. Apparently it does work, but not as well, if given into a muscle in an emergency but it will cause painful damage to the muscle it is injected into. Regular breeder clients get accounts so don't have to put up the money for anti-venene straight away but casual clients do. If they are having trouble working out if they can afford it the vet will administer the Vit C to give them more time to decide. Occasionally the Vit C alone will work if the dog has only gotten a very small amount of venom in it's system.

We pay breeders rates of around $30-$35 for a C3. Can't remember exactly how much the last ones were. No idea on C5 because I never use it. That includes a check of temp, heart, feeling all over for lumps, etc but the cheaper rate is because the vet doesn't have to go through all the questions about how the dog is doing with her breeder clients. She knows we will ask if we have any issues, so the visit is usually just a few minutes not the 15-20 minutes she spends with the average pet owner when they come in for vaccination. This is a breeder vet with mostly breeder clients in Sydney.

Edited to add - if your dog is bitten by a snake you don't ring the vet, you just turn up unless you can get someone to ring while you are on the way. It is an absolute emergency. With a black snake you usually have a bit more time but with a brown, sometimes you will be lucky to have 15min to start treatment.

Most vets require payment up front unless they know you really well - as in very long term client that they have seen a lot of, not just someone that brings one dog in once a year or so for a vaccination. You are paying for something the vet has actually had to outlay a lot of money for, not for their service. Many vets will let you pay off a bill for services but not for a product. The vets cannot risk outlaying that sort of money to treat a dog, have it die despite their best efforts and then have the owner decide they can't pay. Multiply that many times over a summer for both snake and tick treatment and you can see why they do it. If you own dogs in an area where ticks or snakes are a potential problem you need a ready source of cash or a credit card on hand for emergencies like that.

Oldfields Dryers are all but indestructable. Mine is about 25 years old and still going strong. Good dryers and great value. As far as I know you can run any dryer off a generator, provided you have a powerful enough generator. All dryers use a lot of power so a generator just designed to run lights and small electrical appliances wouldn't run any dryer.

The breeder here actually has Toy Aussies. They have three sizes in the US - Toy, Miniature and the normal larger size. Only the largest size is a recognised breed but there are dozens of breeders in the US with the two smaller sizes, registered with one of the alternate registries they have over there.

While Border Collies always come out as the top breed on any list , most of those lists come out of the US and Europe where Australian Cattle Dogs are a rare breed. There are many ACDs as well as some Kelpies that rival Border Collies for high intelligence, they are just not usually included in the studies. These breeds are all highly intelligent (to varying degrees) and should have a very strong will to please their owner, making training easier. Poodles usually come in second but there are individual dogs of some other breeds like JRTs that are also extremely smart. Trainability is different to straight out intelligence. The more common service breeds like GSDs, Goldies, Labs, etc are all highly trainable and often more reliable once trained because they don't think up as many variations to what they are supposed to be doing as BCs and Poodles tend to do if they get bored. Some other breeds are actually quite smart but with no desire to please anyone other than themselves, they come across as difficult to train and get labelled as dumb. Even in breeds that are generally considered pretty thick, there will be soem that are smarter than others.

I have a friend that used to breed, show and obedience trial her Maltese. Very smart little dogs if you treat them like dogs. They don't learn like working dogs and can be very stubborn, rather than just wanting to please you, so they can be more challenging to train, but if you can work them out, they can be good at obedience and agility. They are wary of strangers and will bark at visitors but I found when I went to her house, that if I ignored them, they would gradually sneak up and sniff me and provided I didn't do anything to startle them, they would then be quite happy to be fussed over. They just needed to be able to make the first move.

I have always done this as well and never had a problem but all my dogs have been raised here from babies, so know the pack rules. Don't know how I would get on though with bringing an adult dog into the situation. I think it also depends on the breed as well. My BCs are a pretty biddable breed where most of us run several of them together. They are not really prone to fighting and when they do it is mostly noise and spit until one gives in. With more tenacious breeds that have more serious fights, feeding together could be a different story.

The best answer to when you should get a second dog, is when the first one is trained to a high standard and has no health issues that need to be resolved first. If the first dog has a terminal illness, that is different but if there are issues that can be resolved you should concentrate on the first dog. The very worst reason to get another dog is because you saw a cute dog and fell in love with the look of it. This is the problem with pet shops selling puppies and why so many people come home from places like the RSPCA with a totaly unsuitable dog for their lifestyle. Getting a new dog should be something that takes time to work out what the best dog would be for your situation, well before you look at any that are available. Personally I wouldn't get a JRT with a Sheltie. The JRT might look placid where it is but they are full on hyper terriers that play very rough and the males can be very difficult to house train. I really don't think the two breeds are a compatible combination, especially when you girl is recoving from patella surgery. You would never forgive yourself if she was injured playing with the a new dog. Edited to add, 2-3 years between dogs is a better idea because then you don't end up having two geriatrics so close in age and you are less likely to lose them together.

I would ultrasound from the tied mating. All the others were probably too early and that is why you weren't getting ties. The ultrasound will tell you how old the puppies are then maybe a second ultrasound later could confirm they are developing at the first estimated rate. No need to x-ray as well, the only thing an ultrasound can't tell you is exactly how many puppies there are. Sometimes one or two are hidden but the numbers are usually reasonably accurate. If you really want to pick the whelping date, you could prog test at the end to see when the level drops.

Do you know if Dr Lavelle will score the x-rays, if they aren't done with a GA?

Great news. So glad you found a really good specialist that was prepared to give rest and time a chance to heal him. He should be over the riskiest growth stage but good idea to monitor him carefully until he really is finished growing.

God, don't get them started on that as well. The maximum age should be decided on an individual basis by the breeder and their vet. 8 or 9 is common in my breed for a last litter and some even produce well at 10. These ages would be positively geriatric in many breeds and even in some bloodlines in our breed. If a bitch is fit and healthy, not showing her age and has not already raised large numbers of puppies or had a lot of litters, there is no problem with breeding her, no matter what her age.

Why would you need a minimum for dogs? They don't have to carry and raise a litter. If they need to be hip/elbow scored they have to be old enough for that but many of the breeding problems these days stem from using males too late for the first time. The old breeders used to use males around 9-10 months for a first mating and had much more reliable studs as a result.

I didn't think there was anything more destructive than a Lab. Labs are more destructive than the worst BC and don't grow out of the destructive phase for years. Their size and strength means they can do some incredible damage if they feel so inclined. Maybe I have only met the destructive ones but when I read the book "Marley and Me', I just thought it is a normal Lab with a clueless owner.

The groomer thought your dog was a girl even AFTER grooming him? Did they miss something???? Not very observant at all :D

The bitches behaviour was perfectly normal if she was in season but not ready to mate. They tease the males then snap at them and the males know to keep just out of teeth range. It should never escalate to a fight. It is all part of the courting ritual. You boy would have been interested but not enough to be distracted from you if she was in the early stages. What does worry me though is the owner letting you bring an entire male near his when he has the female kennelmate in season there. It could have ended in a massive dog fight with the other dog trying to protect her. I never risk allowing an entire male near another entire male unless you know the dog really well and the dogs have been very carefully introduced. At times we have been able to run 5 males together but these dogs all knew each other well. I have selected males I know that I allow my boy to say hello to but have seen too many fights between entire males over the years to ever risk a strange dog getting near enough to attack. My current boy loves all dogs and I am not going to risk that temperament by letting something attack him. Oh, BTW it is actually against the law to walk a bitch in season in a public place, except at a dog show.