montall

Thanks for your kind thoughts. Realistically the poor little blighter probably never stood a chance because of all his other problems, (looong story), but they gave it their best shot. Still I can't help but think - maybe if I'd found it sooner?

RIP Monty 2006-2014 Passed away on 16th December from tick poisoning. I'll never forgive myself for not finding that bloody tick sooner. Thank you to the staff at the Animal Emergency Service and Veterinary Specialist Services who tried so hard to save him. I'm so sorry little buddy I don't know what else to say, deep inside my heart I know I let you down, and the part that hurts the most - I know you'd love me anyway. If you had the chance you'd chase away my frown. You were always entertaining with your funny little ways, always at full speed wherever you would go, and I hope you're running free now in some doggy 'after days' but I'll miss you more than you will ever know. I could beat myself up endlessly but that won't bring you back so I'll have to find a way to carry on. My tears for you will lessen somewhere further down the track but you'll never be forgotten though you're gone.

Talk about terrible dog's names, it was two out of three for me. Monty is registered as Mantassi Archiballs. The breeder was pissed off at being forced to register him (so I was told) and gave him that awful name in revenge. His original call name was Archie. I changed it to Monty because he is a true hairless, so therefore - the full Monty. Tallulah is registered as Dooettes Runtie,(because she was the runt of the litter apparently), original call name Runty. That's just awful, and Tallulah suits her to a T - she is the prima donna of the three dog pack. And then there is sweet gentle Effie with the big black hair and soulful eyes. She had been Effie for four years and I thought it suited her so I kept it. Her registered name is lovely too ... Belachi Midnight Magic. So, Effie for the hair and Midnight Magic for the eyes - perfect.

Cujo?

Aahh, I remember his Quasimodo; he was a star. So sorry to hear of his passing. RIP sweet boy.

Aahh, that is the question isn't it? I would think that if a place is being run for the keeping and breeding of animals for commercial purposes then it is a farm. So if the 'farm' animals happen to be dogs does that make it a puppy farm? I guess in the strict sense of the word it does. If it is kept clean and tidy and complying with all the relevant rules and regulations then it is a perfectly legal business and attacking the 'farmers' just makes us look like fanatics in the eyes of the general public. I don't really know the answer to the question to be honest, it's a bit like - what is a backyard breeder?

Uumh, the conversation I was reading was between someone called Debbie something or other and the owners (I think) of the place, and it was Debbie who had the potty mouth. So ... did the owners remove similar comments from them and leave hers there? If that's the case, that's not playing fair, it leaves Debbie looking like a total nutjob and them reasonable. I have to say if that's what happened they did a good job of the editing, just leaving enough responses (and her ranting about them not responding) to make it look genuine. I might go back and see if I can find it (if it's still there) and maybe PM it to you. oh okay i knew debbie met her on facebook from that page, she was one of the people i was talking to privately and yes some of the things she says is really bad i know but he was responding to her in the same manner and sometimes worse. but this is going back about 3-4 months ago now im talking about, i didn't seem to see him talking now he's shutup. but yes it would look like she's a nutjob if he has removed his own responses. Oh ok, this conversation took place on 25th September so obviously he has learned to keep his side of it calm, probably no editing required. Pity Debbie can't do the same because while she has a good argument she loses all credibility (as do we all) when it degenerates down to name calling and bad language. I hate puppy mills with a vengeance, but sadly over reactions to what we perceive as a puppy mill, but others see as a perfectly legal commercial enterprise, do more harm than good.

Uumh, the conversation I was reading was between someone called Debbie something or other and the owners (I think) of the place, and it was Debbie who had the potty mouth. So ... did the owners remove similar comments from them and leave hers there? If that's the case, that's not playing fair, it leaves Debbie looking like a total nutjob and them reasonable. I have to say if that's what happened they did a good job of the editing, just leaving enough responses (and her ranting about them not responding) to make it look genuine. I might go back and see if I can find it (if it's still there) and maybe PM it to you.

Well I dunno, sometimes I think I must be living under a rock. I had never heard of Billabong Creek Farm or Oscar's Law either for that matter, but this thread piqued my curiosity and as Google is my friend I ended up on the Billabong Creek Farm facebook page. Oh dear. It's pretty apparent which one comes across as the nutjob. Potty mouth indeed. Edited to add - Kudos to you Steve, fighting the good fight must be frustrating at times.

I've already got my old age dogs. Little couch potatoes that they are. :D

I've owned a dog aggressive dog in the past and I never saw any signs of aggression towards people. Actually he was super friendly with people, but I am talking about adults or older children, I was very very wary with him around small children. He would go on alert when small children were around, the same sort of alert I saw before he would try to launch an attack on another dog. I never gave him the chance to act on it so never knew for sure if he would attack a small child but I didn't trust him around them. I don't know whether I would have kept him if I had any young children (mine were grown) or grandchildren that were around regularly. Thankfully I never had to make that decision. I'm not sure what the problem was (if in fact there actually was a problem) maybe it was because they were on the same level as him so therefore eye to eye or something, thankfully once again I never had to address what may or may not have been a problem, but I would be hesitant to ever own a DA dog again, especially a relatively big powerful one, the risk is just too great. Incidentally he was a dalmatian.

Uumhh, I thought I noticed a ridge along his back in one photo. Edited to add .. just had another look and it might have just been the light.

Yep, had a look at the video, but had to turn it off about half way through, couldn't cope with the loud music. I admit they are awesome dogs and I totally agree that when dog attacks happen owners are more often than not more at fault than the dogs but unfortunately these dogs appeal to a certain type of owner. I don't know what the answer is, and I get that banning a particular breed probably isn't the answer either, but my point was that it feels a little hypocritical to say that we shouldn't have designer dogs because there are so many nice pure breeds to chose from and then fight like mad to hold on to one breed that rightly or wrongly is seen as being dangerous when once again we have so many other nice breeds to chose from. I used the term 'pit bull type' rather than just 'pit bull' because it seems to me that whenever these serious attacks occur they are usually mixed breed dogs, but if we can believe what we hear one of the mixes is nearly always pit bull. Maybe if we no longer had pit bulls these sort of owners would just turn to another breed, like someone mentioned, but there must be something about the breed that other breeds don't have for people who like to fight dogs to chose them over other breeds in the first place. I dunno, just thinking aloud really.

My partner made the comment that he couldn't understand why anyone would want 'that kind of dog' and I have to agree with him. We often say on here that we don't understand why people go out and buy designer dogs because there are so many lovely pure breeds to choose from. Well I don't understand why people insist on fighting to keep the pit bull type breeds when there are so many other lovely breeds to choose from. No one wants to see their lovely docile pet pitbull type dog put down because of some hastily prepared legislation, but banning the breeding (at least) of these dogs and therefore allowing the breed to eventually disappear doesn't seem unreasonable.

Yep, another doggie Mum and Dad here too, and our dogs are definitely not furkids. :banghead:

I have no idea if your boyfriend's dog has separation anxiety or not, but for what it's worth I'll chuck in my experience with one of mine that certainly had 'issues' being left alone. I would leave Monty for a couple of hours to go shopping and he would be fine about my leaving, or so it seemed, and would greet me excitedly when I came home, but not particularly over the top. But ... one day I decided to leave one of those voice recorders running while I was gone to see if he stayed as calm as he appeared to be. What a shock. He howled and yelped the entire time I was gone, and only stopped when he heard me coming back. I had always intended to get a second dog, I like to have at least two, but his behaviour hastened the purchase of the second one a bit. Having a little friend (Tallulah) worked like a charm for him, but I didn't get a puppy, although he wasn't much more than a puppy himself, (he was only six months old when we got him, about nine months when we got the second dog). Tallulah is about the same age, only a month between them. Later on I got Effie who is three years older than the other two. I'm not sure I would go for a puppy as a companion for an nine year old dog, but that's just me.

The operation cost a little over $2,500 but some of that was the meds. Not replacing the lens was never discussed so I have no idea what the difference in price would have been but the lens itself cost $800 so that gives you a bit of an idea. There would have been other bits and pieces of equipment used to insert the lens that would also come off the overall price if the lens wasn't replaced. The invoice is fully itemised but I don't know what bits would be purely for the lens insertion. The technology involved is exactly the same as is used in human surgery. They cut a very small incision in the eye and use some tool (a laser I think he said) to break the old lens up and sort of siphon it out, so they don't need a big incision. Then they pop the artificial lens into place with some special injector tool. Apparently it goes in sort of folded up really small and springs out into shape after it has been inserted. There is very little pain involved and with humans there isn't even any need for a anaesthetic, but it is better to knock an animal out because it would be difficult to keep them perfectly still. I'm curious about not replacing the lens, surely that would mean the animal would still be blind. Is that done just to avoid ulcers or further damage to the eye? The specialist did say that if cataracts are left untreated long enough they can damage the eye to the point where nothing can be done to restore sight. Effie's eye was a little inflamed before the surgery and she needed drops for a fortnight before they could do the op, and he said that would have been caused by the cataract, so they obviously can do even more damage than just cause the loss of sight. Edited to add a bit more information.

Effie is home from her surgery and all went well, the only casualty is our credit card. Her eye is a bit squinty and runny but they assure me that will go in a couple of days. She has to have drops put in her eye four times a day for the next week, then the tablet regime will lessen. Her eye looks perfectly normal, (apart from the squintiness and runiness ) nothing to suggest she now has a plastic lens. Both eyes look the same. I am assured she now has perfect vision but given that she still had one eye working we haven't at this stage noticed a difference.

The supermarkets sell an exelpet monthly one that is just for heartworm.

Tallulah had this surgery at the same time they did her broken and crumbling hip (almost three years ago,) and she still doesn't put all her weight on that leg all the time. When she is in full flight or walking she uses all four legs but I notice her hopping on three a lot of the time (mostly when the grass gets a bit long) and when she jumps up on you with her two front feet that back foot is more often than not off the ground. I don't know whether it's her knee or her hip that she is favouring but I suspect it's the knee. She doesn't appear to be in any pain and it certainly doesn't slow her down any but she definitely favours it. Another thing I have noticed with her is that she sort of leans and her balance is not too great. Again I don't know if that is the hip or the knee but for this I suspect the hip. I reckon one leg is slightly shorter than the other now, and again that would be the hip, but that might be why she just finds it easier to use three legs a lot of the time. She was only about 10 months or so when she had the surgery. Hopefully your dog will recover completely in time. Swimming is good exercise I was told to stop the leg muscle shrinking a bit. Unfortunately Tallulah hates the water and even if she didn't we don't have a pool. In the early recovery days I used to put her in the spa bath (not turned on ) and make her paddle for exercise but like I said she hated it so I gave it up.

Thanks Staranais. It's a bit of a mystery as to what triggered the cataract, no sign of glaucoma and the vet that I saw before going to the specialist tested for diabetes (that was his first thought) but the blood test was negative. I think that's why the specialist just said the cause was bad genes from the parents and that it is something that is in the breed. Obviously he's seen it before in the breed, but he made the point that you can get into just as much trouble with a mutt. So no breed bashing from him.

When people ask you could say what you said here - it's a mutt and a bloody good one at that. Nothing wrong with mutts, had some bloody good ones myself over the years.

We had some painters in to do quotes a little while ago and one of them was quite excited to see we had cresties. He went on to tell us he had a crestie too. I asked if it had a pedigree (because I was interested to see if it was related to ours) and he said that it did, because both parents were purebred, crestie and maltese. At least he didn't call it a crested malt or something. I have to say that when the DD names first started being tossed around I also thought they were just cute nick names for cross bred dogs, and most people back then that I spoke to used them like that, but now there are so many people who really believe they have pure bred dogs just because the two parents were pure bred. It's scary that people can be taken in like that. Obviously they only think 'crossbreed' when there are so many breeds mixed in there that you can't reasonably pick one.

Effie (the black one in my signature) is booked in for cataract surgery next Tuesday. She has gone blind rather suddenly in her left eye. It surprises me that a full cataract could grow so quickly that we didn't notice it until a couple of weeks ago. I would have been prepared to swear it grew overnight but for the fact that in certain lights it wasn't so noticeable, but even so it can't have been there for more than a few days. The eye specialist says that there is a 70 to 75 percent chance the other eye will go the same way so we agreed to the surgery. She is only seven years old and if the other eye goes when she is older (and maybe not a candidate for surgery) at least she will hopefully still have one good eye. They will be totally replacing the lens with a plastic one. So .. I was wondering if anyone else has had this kind of problem, fast growing cataracts, and if they had surgery how it all turned out. The specialist reckons it is genetic, but I'm not sure I fully believe that, surely a genetic problem would manifest itself before the age of seven. I hope for the sake of all the people who have her puppies and her puppies puppies he is wrong.

My vet mentioned something similar after Tallulah's patella surgery but also suggested OsteoEze Active as a supplement instead of the injections if I wanted to go down that path. He stressed that it had to be the Active type which has Chondroitin (shark cartilage) added to the Glucosamine. Apparently the injections are pretty costly. I went with the OsteoEze.