dancinbcs

Still sounds like discospondylitis to me. It is pretty much impossible to positively diagnose in the early stages but is more a matter of ruling everything else out and seeing how long it lasts. If it is this treatment will be required for at least 6 weeks.

Don't feed her earlier, feed her later. A puppy needs approx 9-10 hours to digest a meal before they need to poop, so feeding earlier makes the problem worse. Most will be stimulated to go just after a meal 15-30 minutes, then not again until 9 or 10 hours later. In older dogs the time frame extends to about 12 hours so the worst thing you can do is feed any dog in the afternoon if you want it to hold on through the night.

I suggest trying Dr Ann Neville at Sth Rd Animal Health in Bentleigh. I know she is the other side of Melbourne, but at least she is still in the same city. I have consulted her from Sydney in the past. She is a vet that uses alternatine treatments, especially Chinese Medicine, as well as conventional medicine. She has had a lot of success with cancer treatment but is also excellent for treating many other complaints that don't respond well to conventional treatment. Pain and swelling often responds well to acupuncture and there are no side effecs from it. Same applies to Chinese herbs used to treat inflammation.

she barks when first gets out of the car at obedience but not during the classes. she just wants to play with the other dogs and i see her eyeballing them sometimes for a play but i try and move her attention away. she just doesnt really concentrate on me at obedience, she does listen, sits etc and is very food orientated. but she is known for the one with bad recall at obedience, no matter how good she is when its just me and her, it all goes out the window at training when other dogs are around to play haha This post tells me that you have attended an obedience club but no one has taught you how to train a puppy. So back to my original statement, the dog is basically still untrained. Learning how to sit is not being trained. Learning how to concentrate on the handler is being trained.

Absolutely find a new club then, because the current club have not taught you how to deal with a working breed. Barking at dogs or people when out walking is just not something that should be happening with a dog that has been trained correctly in the presence of other dogs. Teaching them to ignore all distractions when working should have been the most important thing they taught you. Find a good club and ask advice from the head trainer, not just whoever is assigned to your class. The barking at people looking over your fence or gait is perfectly normal. Dogs guard their territory and while most learn to accept that we allow people to enter our front door, most dogs with any guarding instinct will not accept anyone approaching the house from the fence or gates. Teaching a good reliable come to heel and drop can help you control her more in these situations but don't reprimand her for protecting you and your property. If a burglar decides to try to get over your fence I'm sure you would want the dog to stop them.

Just sounds like a completely untrained dog to me. At 7 months she is getting big and strong and having not been trained right between 2 and 6 months, she is now becoming a problem. You need the advice of experienced trainers, her breeders, a professional trainer or experienced trainers at your local dog club should all be able to help. I suggest you contact the breeder and visit the local obedience club to ask for help and recommendations for good local trainers. It will probably only take a few sessions with a trainer for you to learn how to train her. I don't think the dog needs a specialist behaviouralist, you just need to learn how to train effectively.

Where abouts are you located. My doctor of Chinese Medicine at Austrl NSW, has some remedies for the coat loss and for the hormone imbalance that is causing her to miss as well. One of my bitches had 2 false pregnancies every year, mated or not, and dropped her entire coat after each one. She was only showable for 6-7 weeks twice a year but this was before I knew about the chinese medicine. Another bitch we bred was having fertility problems, phantoms and coat loss that meant that every time her owner thought about entering a show, she dropped her coat. Chinese medicine fixed both the fertility issue and the coat loss.

There has always been a risk of side effects with these drugs, mainly related to the digestive system, liver and kidneys but the stroke risk seems to be the one they have just made the connection with. The liver and kidneys have to filter any drugs in the system so it makes sense that many drugs may damage those organs. All drugs have possible side effects because every person or animal will react to them in their own way.

I had one of my dogs recently with discospondylitis, an infection of the disks in the spine. No idea what causes it but the symptoms where similar. My girl went from perfectly healthy one night to lethargic and not wanting to eat the next morning. By lunchtime she could hardly walk, had obvious back pain and her head felt hot. Temp was 40.5. The vet took blood and gave a large antibiotic injection straight away and then followed up with ab tablets. Next day temp had dropped a little. We did x-rays to check other possibilities and the blood test came back normal apart from a raging infection. Still working on the assumption of discospondylitis, in the absence of any other diagnosis, we continued the antibiotics and used acupuncture, rather than anti inflams for the pain. She started to pick up within 2-3 days but wasn't back to normal for 5 weeks. We continued the anitbiotics until 6 weeks just to make sure.

Sure looks like a Crestie crossed with a Dachie to me as well. That first picture looks like a dwarf Crestie. You would need to talk to a Chinese Crested breeder to find out about their skin issues. I know the skin can be pretty high maintenance and people who get one thinking they won't have to groom a coat, get a shock when they are faced with keeping the skin in good order.

If your dog is being distracted enough to ignore your commands, he is not ready to be let off lead in a training situation. Until he will give you 100% attention and ignore the other dogs, keep a lead on him.

Always sad to lose a puppy but nature never intended for them all to survive. Full marks to the second vet for diagnosing the cleft. Most vets wouldn't know to look for a cleft in the soft palate and even if they do think to look, it often cannot be seen in a live puppy. Sometimes it is only found on autopsy as it isn't possible to open the mouth of a live puppy, far enough to see right to the back of the palate. My vet did her PHD on puppy mortality and after doing 1000 autopsies on puppies that had died from a variety of reasons, found that clefts in the soft palate occured much more often than expected. Many of the affected puppies has failed to thrive and died in the first few days, but there was no diagnosis until the autopsy. I remember her giving lectures at breed clubs complete with the photos of the defects she found. Nothing like autopsy photos to make you feel like enjoying supper after the club meeting.

Me too I have owned several entire males and females and have never had a dog hump anything except when allowed to do a mating. Maybe it is a breed thing because I have never had heard of anyone with this problem in Border Collies.

I'm going to go against the trend and recommend you wait another 6-12 months. It is much easier to explain to a 3 year old, how to behave around a puppy than it is to a 2 year old. I don't generally like to place puppies in homes with kids aged 18 months to 3 years. Before and after those ages seem to be fine but the real toddler stage before they are old enough to understand why they should or shouldn't do something, makes it much harder for the parents to manage a puppy as well. If you want a puppy you could start looking for the right breeder now but with the plan to get a puppy next year.

I wouldn't leave her for longer than 2-3 hours just in case there is another tick that you haven't found yet.

Contact any show breeders you can find as well. They often run on more than one puppy from a litter to show and then decide which one to keep at 1-2 years, selling the others as pets. These are already trained and socialised as show dogs but you probably would need to have your name down with some breeders to get one. Lots of people want a Lab that is full grown rather than a puppy so the older ones are quite popular.

If you mean Echuca on the Murray, it is not a paralysis tick area.

Always hard to tell from photos, but it does look like one. If you are in coastal Qld then it is very likely that it is a paralysis tick. Don't forget to keep searching in case there was more than the one you found. Hopefully it is just the one and it looks like you got it out early as it isn't fully engorged. Fingers crossed there are no syptoms from it.

Details sent by pm. If the dog is still reasonably well in himself then now is a good time to try chinese medicine. It won't work if the the cancer is really advanced as it works on the theory of fixing the imbalance in the body that allowed the cancer to survive. Balancing the body means that the cancer cannot grow but it takes at least a few weeks for the body to recover enough to stop the cancer.

Original Sin Mortal Sin

3 breeds 50 dogs, they really are taking "to improve the breed" to the extreme!! Don't understand why any ethical breeder would need to have 50 dogs and keep breeding them Me either. To me that is just too many dogs. I know of one breeder that manages three breeds beautifully. She constantly wins Best In Group and Best in Show with her dogs and can often win two groups at the same show. With her main breed she seems to have about 3 litters a year, her second breed only about 1 litter per year and the third breed a litter every 2-3 years. So three breeds can be succesful but I can't imagine anyone keeping up with more than that. Some breeders have about 20 dogs at a time, including youngsters they are running on and plenty of oldies and this seems to be a reasonable number. These are breeders that still only have 2-4 litters per year, breeding their girls only 2-3 times in their lifetime. Of course others with 20 dogs could possibly be producing 12 litters or more a year, so it is not total numbers that count, but the numbers of puppies produced. Remember those with long lived breeds are likely to have a lot more oldies living out their lives with them than breeders with short lived breeds. Numbers also depend on how demanding the breed is to live with. With my breed the upper limit for those on acres, seems to be 12-15, but most breeders I know, prefer to keep numbers under 10 if they can to allow more time with each dog. Our breed has a lot of co-owned dogs out in pet homes to give the breeders more options but allow the dogs to lead normal lives with their own families, rather than keeping large numbers at the breeder's house.

Just treat him normally but with a bit more spoiling than usual. If you change the routine too much it may distress him. I would also be looking at trying Traditional Chinese Medicine on him. One of my dogs and several friends dogs have all lived much longer than predicted with cancer, after being treated with chinese medicine. My dog had three years but others have ranged from one to seven years beyond veterinary predictions of terminal cancer. I have no idea if they were cured or in remission but they were happy and healthy with no treatment side effects and that is all that really matters. If you are interested I can provide contacts for you.

Good news. Hopefully a few more weeks will do the trick and you will be able to take this puppy home with no worries.

I don't like the sound of this contract at all. I would not be parting with one cent unless the dog was going to be in dual names. With him in just the breeder's name you have no rights at all. For $1800 I would insist on dual names and if you don't want to breed with the dog yourself, the breeder should be paying for the health tests. I would definitely not be paying the extra $800 for papers you don't need.

With a male that is otherwise being kept as a pet, the arrangementsI have seen work best are as follows: The dog is either sold at full price or sometimes just placed for free. I suppose some would sell at reduced price but everyone I know seems to go for all or nothing. The breeder pays all health tests and either brings bitches to the dog or takes the dog home to do matings. The owner pays all normal costs to keep the dog and has nothing to do with the matings except to make the dog available. The owner is not expected to board bitches. With stud fees the fairest arrangement is for the breeder to use the dog free of charge for their own bitches but for stud fees from outside bitches to go to the owner, if the owner paid for the dog. If the dog was placed free of charge then the breeder usually keeps some of the stud fees. If the breeder wants to show the dog they make arrangements to collect, wash and groom the dog, take it to the show and return it to the owner, unless the owner gets interested and likes to prepare the dog and bring him along to the show. If you intend to show and breed from the dog yourself then you should pay all, part or nothing for him, pay for all the health tests and keep all stud fees, except the the breeder should be able to use him for free over their own bitches. Co-ownership/breeders terms is very common in my breed and a couple of others I am very familiar with and most never have a drama with any of the arrangements. If the breeder's main concern is retaining the bloodlines then things usually work out fine. If the motivation is making money at the owners expense then the arrangement is bound to fail. With a Bernese I would not be too concerned over keeping him entire or him being overused. They are still a pretty rare breed so there are not a lot of litters register and most dogs would be lucky to be used a few times in their life. They are also an easily trained fairly placid breed so keeping an entire male should not be a big problem.