dancinbcs

I think there was 3 or so days where all roads in were closed and people couldn't access their pets or horses. It just wasn't safe. I could be wrong but that's my recollection. Particularly if you were in the Kinglake area and you were on the hill, you stayed, if you'd left you could only go to containment lines until the wristband id system was up and running. Not talking about livestock and those animals that were left - plenty of people took their animals with them when they got out and went to the emergency centres and there was no problem. Were animals allowed indoors in places like the Whittlesea centre? The animals were taken out with the owners then placed in kennels, shelters and with foster families if the owners didn't have anywhere they could be with them. I remember the call for kennels in safe areas to take as many as possible and the appeal for people to foster them until the owners could take them back. But at least they got them out of the danger area with the owners. They don't need to have in people shelters but they do need to get them out of a flood the same as they did with the fires.

Fair enough if there is not time to get everyone out safely as happens with a sudden fire but these towns had many hours advance notice to evacuate them before anyone's life was anywhere near being in danger. With multiple big dogs there is the weight problem but what possible reason could there be for not letting the older lady I saw interviewed, take one little dog with her?

I would flatly refuse to leave without my dogs. Several people did this a few months ago during the floods in Vic. It does serve as a warning though to evacuate early and on your terms if you have pets in a natural disaster area. Don't wait to be forced out because the authorities don't care if your pets die or not. What I don't get is why floods are treated differently to fires and cyclones. Pets are evacuated with their owners during these disasters but the emergency services seem to think it is ok to leave them to drown. After Cyclone Tracy dogs were even flown to southern states with their owners in the passenger area of the evacuation planes. This is why we ended up with heartworm in the south but at least they got the dogs out. And WHERE THE HELL ARE THE RSPCA while all this is going on. Not one word from them about pushing the authorities to take the pets out or making accomodation arrangements for pets. This is the type of thing they should be doing, not harrassing dedicated breeders for minor rule breaches.

I agree with your breeder. Far too risky to take her out the front and all people coming into the house should be removing their shoes to reduce the risk of walking it in as well. If your back yard is not suitable for her to run around in, where are you going to be letting the puppies run in a week or two? When they need access to grass, depends on the breed, but my babies need running space on grass from about 3 weeks. Smaller breeds sometimes are not ready to venture into the great outdoors until 4-5 weeks.

I finally tried your calendula tea on my dog and it did help a bit but it dyed him bright yellow . So beware of using it on a white dog or white markings. I prefer my Borders to be black/white not black /yellow.

Have to ask. Why on earth would you clip a GSD? because the heat was really getting to my oldies I did not clip the younger Coat insulates against the heat and protects from sunburn. I can't see any point in clipping off a coat that is not long anyway. I find the dogs that fair worst in hot weather are the realy short smooth coated ones. They feel it far more than my long coated BCs. I know a few people that clip their very old BCs but they leave more coat than a GSD would have anyway. The clip is just to avoid having to put them through grooming when the coat goes woolly on an old desexed dog and once they start they have to continue each year. There really isn't much advantage heat wise for them at all. And all the groomers, please go and fight about clipper brands in another thread. You have wandered a long way from the OPs original questions here about whether the dog should be clipped or groomed out.

None of the vets I have used have ever charged more than one consult fee if the dogs are taken in at the same time. My current vets don't charge a consult at all to breeders if the visit is just for vaccinations or ultrasounds, they just charge for whatever procedure they do. They also never charge a consult for follow up visits for the same condition.

Contact your breeder for advice on coping with the puppy. Weis are a very needy breed so your breeder would no doubt have some tips on how to live with them and keep everyone happy. Whenever I have attended puppy classes, it is always the Wei puppies that find it hardest to cope in the first few weeks. Once the owners learn to handle them they go ahead in leaps and bounds but there are always Wei tantrums in those first few lessons. The only other thing I can suggest is to keep up the crate training and only leave the puppy alone if it is in it's crate to start with. A crate acts as a secure place to a dog and most dogs feel safer in them. They also learn that they cannot escape from the crate so there is no point trying. Start with the puppy crated near you then work up to leaving the room for a few minutes at a time. Gradually increase the time until you can move to another room for longer periods. Then move the crate to different areas and repeat the process. The puppy should learn that it is safe when left anywhere in the crate and that you will come back for him. If you must shut him in another room, use a baby gate rather than a closed door. Most puppy's will panic if you shut a door on them and completely isolate them. Better that he can hear you and catch glimpses of you moving around while learning to stay confined. Also do not tie him up at this age for more than a minute or so and never if you are not watching him. A stressed puppy is at risk of strangulation if it panics when tied up.

At least 50% of Border Collies will chase anything that moves and makes a noise. Cars, motor bikes, tractors, mowers, whipper snippers, vacumm cleaners, brooms as well as animals, if it moves they will chase. More to the point they actually try to head off whatever it is with deadly consequences if it is a vehicle. The leading cause of death in young Border Collies would have to be getting run over and I make a point of mentioning this in my puppy notes, advising that Borders should never be off lead anywhere near moving vehicles. With work, they can be trained to ignore these things in the presence of the owner but I would never trust a dog that has been a chaser to not chase if the owner isn't with them. Most owners simply make sure the dog is never left loose where chasing any of these things is possible. Undoing hundreds of years of instinct to chase and head off movement is not an easy task. It is like asking a scent hound not to scent. An e-collar could be the only thing that may work. I have never used one but have seen them used to stop dogs chasing livestock. The only problem with them could be that some Borders are very soft and the collar may be too much for these dogs, simply scaring them without making the connection to the activity.

None of my dogs would ever dare take anything from a table or bench. They are never allowed full run of the house as puppies unless I am watching them and the very first time they put a paw on the table or kitchen bench, I slam my hand down on the bench as loudly as possible and growl at them. This usually only needs doing once and they get the message loud and clear that the benches, tables and all they contain, are mine and not to be touched. You have to really sound like you mean it then praise straight away when they back away. As adults they all have full run of the house and never touch anything they shouldn't. I don't tempt them by leaving anything really tasty out if I leave them unattended because once it becomes a learnt behaviour it is harder to fix. My dogs will stand on their back legs to look at what is on the bench but will not put a paw on it.

Have to ask. Why on earth would you clip a GSD?

If you don't own a force dryer you may be better off investing in one of these instead of clippers. You will remove far more coat with a good dryer than by any other means. Using a very wide toothed comb, like a Collie Comb with the dryer will loosen and remove the hair more easily. A rake with blades or a Mars Coat King is also useful for stipping undercoat if used in layers, rather than over the top of the coat. If you really want to shorten the belly coat and pants, they can be scissored back to a more managable length, without the need for clippers. Just make sure you keep a comb between the dog and the scissors to keep it neat and avoid accidents.

The only one I ever had was on Gripe Water as recommended by the vet and circular tummy rubs. It took a week for my baby to settle down.

I raised a litter in an extreme heatwave and had to have the a/c on 24/7 in the adjoining room. There was no space on the room with the a/c to put the whelping box. They were still screaming with the heat, so I put flat ice packs (the sort you can wrap round bottles), wrapped in towels over part of the box. They still had drybed for traction and to give them a warm alternative surface. They were very fat, verging on being swimmers, so taking the bedding out wasn't an option for mine. Anyway, they would feed then go belly down on the ice packs and sleep peacefully. Once cooled down they could crawl off onto the bedding.

The registry is Tenterfield Terriers. They were not allowed to Register the breed name as Mini Foxies because they look nothing like a Fox Terrier.

I think the most surprising to many people would be the Border Collie. Yep, first registered in the UK but developed as a pure breed in Australia. The first breed standard was written here and our ANKC dogs are recognised by all international registeries (including the English KC) as the dogs that the pure Border Collie breed was developed from. The breed was developed here as a working breed along with the Kelpie and Cattle Dog, to supply our pastoral industry. The breed was first shown here in about the '30s but not in the UK until 40 years later. Border Collies were not shown much here until about 1980 and it is only over the last 20 years that they have become popular as performance dogs and pets. This means that breeders can now opt for performance/pet homes where puppies will be treated as one of the family, rather than tied up to a 40 gallon drum kennel. This has led to a decline in the number of ANKC registered dogs being used for work. Some rural ANKC breeders still supply farmers in their local areas but the urban Borders tend to go to show, performance and pet homes.

Our vets recommend 6 months as the final cut off to allow the teeth to come out on their own.

If she is a large mixed breed (which she looks like she will be) there is a good chance that the only significant breed was rottie. You're kidding aren't you? 5.5 kg at 5 months is a very little dog. My Border Collies weigh that much at 6-7 weeks and by 5 months they weigh 13-17kgs. I imagine a 5 month old Rottie would be more like 20-25kgs than 5.5kgs.

Sounds like a perfectly normal Lab to me.

Where is the ignore option?

You can do it easily then - just go back and start with the dogs that have test results, profile them and do CBP down the generations. Sylvia Impossible if the tested dogs are dead which is the case for many breeders. The LRL for Border Collies were voted in by the Border Collie owners and breeders before the ANKC came up with this new list of rules and therefore should stand as they were. If those ANKC rules had been in first we would not have even bothered with the LRLs. As someone that worked for over 20 years on the development of the tests and over two years to get the LRLs introduced I am extremely angry that the ANKC could shift the goalposts after the event and stuff the whole thing up. The whole point was to have the results put on the pedigrees with each generation marked clear by parentage where appropriate. This was to eliminate the need for breeders to keep having to test any clear dogs for disease or parentage. If a registration application is good enough to register a litter it should be good enough to declare an animal clear by parentage and that dog should then be treated the same as a tested one. During the development of the CL and TNS tests hundreds of samples were checked for parentage as part of the research. There was not one case of wrong parentage so where is the justification for requiring profiling now? We will still have to test progeny of carriers forever and that is going to be expensive enough but there was never any intention of trying to eliminate carriers from the gene pool. To do so would be idiotic and destroy the breed, so the point about populations being clear of a disease is stupid beyond belief. Whoever wrote these regulations, clearly has no understanding of DNA testing and how it should be used to preserve a gene pool. We were given a proposed set of LRLs by the ANKC that were similar to the new rules to take to our breeders. These were unanimously opposed by the breed clubs so we were told to write our own set of LRLs. After much consultation between clubs, this was achieved and voted in. You have no idea how many times they were re-writtten until everyone agreed with them. With these new rules overriding everything we voted for, we have wasted huge amounts of time. Why did we bother. Unless profiling can be done by any lab and the results accepted by all other labs, then it is not appropriate for the ANKC to demand profiling (unless there is reason to believe a breeder has lied on a registration). As you would well know, Sylvie, this is not going to happen because the commercial labs are making sure it doesn't happen. Those of us involved in the test development will never support compulsory profiling in the current situation.

I took my two Borders on a 4500km, 16 day road trip in May last year. I chose May because of the mild weather but would be more careful about travelling in summer. I also picked an out of season time so I didn't need to book anywhere more than a day ahead and we could stop wherever I felt like stopping. We went from Sydney, through Wagga, Echuca, Bendigo, Ballarat, Melbourne, round the Great Ocean Rd, into SA, Adelaide, the Riverland and back through the Riverina, Batlow and Canberra. For 10 of the nights, we stayed in dog friendly, houses, guesthouses, cabins, motels and caravans or with friends, where the dogs were allowed inside. The other 6 nights were in motels with the dogs in their crates in the car. Only the two houses had fenced yards but one of those had a low section so I had to be with the dogs when they were outside. Tariffs for two people and two dogs ranged from $60 - $140 per night. Apart from the fact that we couldn't leave the dogs to go into some places, they were no trouble at all and thoroughly enjoyed their holiday. Travelling at Christmas time is a lot harder though. Many places are booked out or have minimum number of nights and some places don't take dogs at all during school holidays. Hot weather also makes travelling with dogs very difficult as well. Winter holidays with dogs are great, summer ones more challenging.

The ANKC do not require profiling to prove parentage for any dog as the registration application is a legal document. If there is a discepancy they can order profiling be done but otherwise they take the breeders legal signature as proof of parentage for any dog. This will still apply when DNA testing is introduced. Any progeny of clear/normal parents will be clear/normal by pedigree and DNA profiling is not required. They are still working on putting the results on the pedigrees but have not been back to us yet to advise exactly how they plan to do this for Border Collies. We are the first breed to have compulsory DNA testing so are the guinea pigs as the ANKC work out the best way around all this. The regulations for Border Collies actually state that profiling will not be required. Most of us know exactly who the parents of our dogs are and therefore should not have to pay a lab to prove it. Anyone buying in new stock would be wise to have them tested, for your own peace of mind, if you have any suspicion that there may have been an error at some point in the pedigree behind that dog. Otherwise there will be no need to test dogs that are descended from all clear/normal ancestors.

With a young dog that size,I would try teaching her to jump first. Try to set up some obstacles that she can learn to jump onto with increasing height. Start low and gradually work up to slightly higher than the car tailgate over a few weeks. Use her favourite food treat to entice her to jump and reward her for doing so and make sure she is on a non-slip surface to both take off and land. Some dogs just jump naturally but others actually have to be taught, step by step and let their muscles build up until they are confident. In the mean time teach her "paws up" onto the tailgate and then lift her rear in.

It is pretty normal for lots of dogs to bark aggressively at anyone passing by their front fence, especially if they have a dog with them. They are just guarding their property. Some Borders have a guarding instinct and others none. Often it develops as they get older. The problem here is that the dog isn't contained. Sorry, but leaving the gate open so your dog can rush out is just irresponsible and stupid. What did you expect him to do? You really need to keep the dog fenced in securely. All Borders are capable of jumping 4' rural fencing but most don't realise it and many stay safely contained in these fences. If you have a jumper you need to fence off an area with higher fences but otherwise, always keep the gate shut whenever the dog has access to the front yard. It probably would be safer if the dog was fenced into an area that prevented him getting to the front fence at all. If you don't want your dog to bark at the front fence, don't give it access to that area. Border Collies should never, ever be left in any yard they can escape from. When not under direct supervision they should be safely confined. The one thing you cannot teach them is road sense and many get run over trying to head off cars and motor bikes and tractors. Also in rural areas there is the very real risk of them taking off to herd the neighbours stock, ending up with them getting a bullet. Just because they are a breed that doesn't "run away", it doesn't mean they don't need to fenced in.