stormie

Oh man now I'm worried our order won't make it through customs

I understand exactly what you are saying which sounds fairly normal behaviour as a dog matures where submission grows into greater confidence and some behaviours appear for the worse. All I am saying is so often the first recommendation is to desex or being entire is blamed for the behaviour change. Maybe being entire contributes to the behaviour, but the behaviour is trainable. Some believe unless the dog is desexed the behaviour cannot be improved which I disagree. I don't know if a dog running away from a potential scrap is always the safest option, as weakness and flight to a dominant dog becomes prey and can sometimes make the situation worse. Confidence can avoid fights often where the attacking dog thinks twice when the other stands it ground and a fight doesn't eventuate. With entire males that normally get on well together, the only time I have seen serious aggression with dogs that are essentially friends have been in the presence of a bitch in season. I just feel that too may behavioural problems are blamed upon entirety which many of these issues IMHO are more training and management problems. Well, in my experience, most fights come to and end when one backs down and submits to the other. So again, I'd rather have a dog who takes 'flight' from a fight with a dog I know nothing about, than want to take it on. Most dogs fight for hierarchy, not just to kill and I think in the moment of confrontation, if a dog was wanting to take on Orbit, him running away submissively is going to be the best course of action as by acting submissively, the other dog is more likely to feel its won by chasing Orbit away, and leave him, rather than seeing him as a challenge, and then suddenly as prey??

Spoke to Peter Hill (Derm at VSC) about the Sogeval range and he said he would like to stock it but I think having trouble getting it? Not sure how Murdoch's getting it in - I hope our lot makes it through. He said he believed it to be similar to the response you get from Alpha Kerri Oil. Goodluck with the new regime, Zayder! Perhaps if our Sogeval order doesn't make it, you can be our black market supplier

We do the 16wk shot because of what you mentioned also - have heard of puppies who contracted parvo at ~6months who finished at 12wks. Maybe those puppies were never going to seroconvert properly, who knows, but we'd rather be safe than sorry. so it's 8, 12, 16wks for us, then another 12months later then 3 years after that. Personally I only did C3's for puppy shots but I've never had to board Orbit and his obedience schools accepted C3's. He's had KC once but it was very mild.

Wow. I am of the total opposite. I'd stay clear of any breeder who puts all their puppies on main register. You only have to look at what's being bred by novice breeders in all breeds to see why it's dangerous to put everything on the main. There is variance in most litters and I think it's important to still scrutinize the litter to only pick 'the best'. I'm not sure how you can say that by putting some pups on limited, means the breeder isn't confident with their breeding. In one well planned litter, you could get a very high quality, well put together dog, but yet it's littermate may have different qualities which doesn't see it as well conformed, and thus should be placed on limited. Doesn't mean that it's not 'quality'. The others may still be of very high quality and better than many being shown, but to put them all on main with no restrictions on breeding will only see them end up in the hands of novices who will ruin the lines. To me, breeders who put restrictions on their dogs are being responsible for their breed.

Thank you for the update. There is a possiblity of a donation of BARF from Dr Billinghurst to help feed Jane's surviving babies however they asked where it would be sent to and I wasn't sure. If this is something that could be used could someone please let me know? Thank you....

What sort of glue exactly? We have ether at our clinic we'd try on stuff like that - might be worth a vet visit. Will probably eventually slough off but if its causing that much irritation I'd be trying to get it off asap.

When I say flight, I'm talking in terms of avoiding a fight/confrontation, rather than taking it on. I love that if Orbit encounters a dog in a park that wants to go him, he prefers to avoid it by leaving the situation. It's happened once - a Staffy X wanted to kill him and he was frightened and ran away from it. I'd much prefer this than having 60kg of dog to try and pull off another dog every time he's confronted - which being big, is a lot. But yes, in terms of personality, I would have to say Orbit is known for being a bit of a girl. He frightens himself with his own tail. But he's also quite social and not frightened of other dogs, unless they want to eat him. Orbit has always come to work with me since he was a pup. He's mixed with the boarding/hospital dogs every day and was always a polite puppy that was happy to play, but did meet submissively. But once he became sexually mature, he began claiming the hospital as his own. Not by marking, but just his attitude. He became cocky and loved trying to intimidate the other dogs. He enjoyed trying to wind them up from the other side of cages because he knew he was safe. His tolerance level for younger dogs also really lowered. I can't really explain it properly in words, but as his owner who is with him almost 24/7, I just saw his attitude change. And my vets who were also with him daily saw it too. We've seen it in a lot of clients dogs who've gone from puppies to adulthood and remained entire. It's a whole new attitude and in all the cases I've seen, there was never an entire bitch involved.

Our previous Golden was storm phobic. But I am sure I created that. As a young kid, I was petrified of storms so I'm sure I would have run to her for cuddles when I was scared, thus making her scared. My step dads Golden was the same and used to break out during storms. It was awful. I was nervous about Orbit's first storm experience because the last thing I wanted was a storm phobic Dane - I've heard of a few that were pts because of the damage they'd do to themselves trying to escape. Strangely, I now LOVE storms and go out chasing/photographing them. Orbit isn't the bravest, but I still remember his first storm. He heard the thunder and bolted upright and looked straight to me. It was hard, but I completely ignored him like it meant nothing (when actually I was really excited about the prospect of a chase ) and a few minutes later actually took him out chasing in the car with me. He loves the car and so I'm sure that made his first storm a fun, but normal experience for him. I think it's really important to make storms a positive thing. Towards the end with Millie, our Golden after I knew better, I used to take her outside or if it was safe, take her for a walk to try and change her negative association with storms into something more positive. It did help.

Julie what you are the MDBA are doing is amazing. And of course the support/money/help being offered by DOLers is just mind blowing. If it is ok with everyone, I would like to draw the attention of The Morning Show to not only this thread, but also to the amazing help and support of the MDBA. They took up Axle's story when he went missing so may be interested to see DOL at it again. It would be great for the public to see what the MDBA can and does do to help people in need.

Anything with oatmeal makes Orbit itch - both topical and food. I have used the pyohex condition with success - great for putting on pustules to make them dry up. Another to suggest the referral - see a Derm before the allergies get worse and you need stronger drugs - because if it is atopy, it's only going to get worse with age...

Lovely idea, Fran Thank you for the updates on her condition. I think one only has to look at the amount of people constantly in this thread to see how valued and respected Jed is. Wishing you a speedy recovery, Jed and hoping Magnus comes home very soon.

I can't believe it. This is like your worst nightmare. Donation will be made today. Let us know if there's any other way we can help

Why wouldn't they be valid? The "Skin" vet only comes out my side of town occassionally, and we waited over a month to see him (after our normal Vet had tried lots of different option to no avail), so he pushed me to do it at our appointment, and I figured it was worth a go. My understanding, from what 3 separate Derms have explained, is that you can only truly diagnose Atopy through a process of elimination. It was said that you could actually perform either the blood tests, or intradermal tests on completely healthy dogs with no signs of skin disease, and see positive reactions, however just because they're positive doesn't mean the dogs react via scratching, if that makes sense? So that's why I was told it was important to rule out every other potential cause for the scratching first, so that you know when you finally come to doing the actual testing, you can me more sure that the positives you get are going to be whats causing the problem.

Orbit gets this sort of thing relatively often - starts with them being itchy, so he chews them, makes them inflamed so he licks at them non stop and turns them into nice big raw superficial infections. He gives himself lick granulomas on his arm too, when his skin has flared up. You need to take away the inflammation to start with and also treat the infection. I use Neocort for the bad ones. Stopping them licking is the hardest thing too.

Yep, the consult fee part is discounted for each extra pet so you wouldn't be paying the full $110 for each. Will PM you

Erny - Thanks! Ian has been quite keen to move to the 3 year regime and offer titre testing for sometime - we went to Jean Dodds when she came to Sydney so has known about it all for some time. But up till 6months ago, he was working for someone else. But since buying this clinic and being his own boss, we've been able to finally start doing all the things we have wanted to do. What do you mean by price? How much we're charging or how much it costs us? It's no charge for us to open the account with VetPath in WA. Then we just pay the usual lab fee for each test. Getting the blood samples there is a bit fiddly, so I can imagine many vets would be reluctant to do it all through WA, particularly if they're not really for titre testing. It's much more convenient to just send the blood through our local lab, however literally costs twice as much. CavsRcute - will pm you our details. Can't wait to meet you! And Orbit's here every day so you can meet him too and tell everyone how NORMAL he really is.

Sorry, but disagree totally. My boy changed quite a lot once he reached sexual maturity and at no time did he ever encounter an entire bitch. He began to choose the fight over flight attitude and become much more confident and cockier around other dogs. Now that he's desexed, he's much more chilled out, however some of the behaviour has stuck. Given the choice again, I'd have desexed him around 12months, rather than waiting 18months and done him whilst he was still a naive adolescent. As for growth, Orbit has filled out and bulked up considerably since desexing. At 18months he was still quite light and one might say lanky, however now, another 18months on, and he's filled right out and bulked up. Personally, with the larger breeds I'd suggest waiting longer than 6months. But I'd also take into consideration temperament over aesthetics. No point having a bulky entire looking dog if he's a pain in the arse cause hormones got in the way.

Trouble is, we're seeing more and more clinics and large hospitals being bought out by these big companies who aren't even run by vets. Two of Sydneys larger 24hr/specialist centres are now owned by one of the big companies. They're being run more as businesses now rather than vet hospitals. There's financial targets to be met. The vets are under pressure to make money. If I had my way, we'd all be boycotting these big corporate chains!!!

What an absolute joke. Did you sign anything when you swiped your card? My boss and I just can't fathom this happening - it's just so unbelievable. The upfront payment I can understand, vets often get 'burnt' by people who rush animals in and request everything to be done, only to refuse to pay the bill if their animal dies, but to not give you back the money they clearly owe you is just ridiculous... I'd be taking this further for sure! Would you mind pm'ing me which clinic this is?

Just bumping this up to let those who were interested know that we're set to titre!

Jen - I'm surprised that you had the testing done before doing the elimination diet?? Usually everything else needs to be ruled out first and once you've done that, you do the testing, otherwise the results aren't really valid. Do you know which test you did? We did two different blood tests - the SPOT test and the Heska Allercept. We got stuff around a bit with the Heska test because prior to doing it, we checked with the lab whether there was a drug withholding period required before taking blood and were told no, so we went ahead and tested and ended up with all negative results. Turns out you are meant to withhold cortisone and antihistamines etc so thats why we got a false report. Thankfully though, whilst the results were classed as negatives, we still got readings on some of the antigens, albeit low ones, but they matched the positives that we got on the first test.

Clyde the order I got before my most recent ones, they were really thin - just the ribs with the meat in between and that was it. I'm assuming yours are like my current ones and almost an inch or so thick with meat and lots of fat. Thanks for the offer but I'm still trying to get through mine!!

Just get a bigger dog If my last order was the same as the ones you got, yep, they're enormous. Actually that was the reason I had to get turkey necks because the flaps were so fatty and made him sick. It's now down to 1 flap a week for us. Do you know anyone with an axe?

There are more strains of KC than just the ones we vaccinate for. And even the vaccination isn't 100%, but they say it can reduce the duration and severity. Erny I understand your reluctance to send people to the vet because of over prescription of AB's and I think it's quite warranted in many cases. But I think it would be more responsible in these cases to suggest a vet visit, but educate the owners that AB's aren't always necessary and that owners can discuss it with their vet and let them know they are ok with not having any AB's initially and only getting some if required. Probably in 9/10 cases, its going to be KC but 1 of those cases it's not, which is why I think it's wise to suggest a vet visit. The fact that KC sounds so much like there's something stuck in the throat is why we suggest a visit, because you can never really be sure there isn't! A vet can palpate the throat of the dog feel for anything potentially stuck. They can also listen to the breathing sounds within the lungs to listen to any abnormalities which may actually require. Some just look like standard KC cases on the outside, but on the inside might be much worse than you think.