Diva

My dogs refused to eat it.

I’m so sorry

Mine don’t care. They don’t pay any attention to other deliveries either. They don’t care about any stranger who comes during the daytime unless I appear to. Also a breed thing, sighthounds.

I haven’t followed this closely. Perhaps/probably they should be penalised in some way for taking him in in the first place rather than calling wildlife folk? Maybe part of any money they make should go to wildlife rescue. And I’d hate to see the publicity and social media encourage others to do the same, I think that is a real concern. But taking the bird now feels like a poor welfare decision for the bird. If it can’t be released why not leave it where it is and advise on how to maximise its welfare in situ. It feels like taking it is to punish the humans but not so good for the bird , particularly if it comes and goes now at its own choosing.

We recently have had wild dog/dingo sightings. Local govt people who should know tell me the wild dogs around here are 75%-85% dingo by dna research. They have only come since the feral pig and deer numbers have kicked up. And I have decided to resist peer pressure and not let ‘my’ shooter go after them. Only cattle on our place, and hundreds of kangaroos, wallaroos and wallabies. I reckon the dingoes are doing their bit to control total grazing pressure. We abut hundreds of hectares of state forest and national park. Closest neighbour with sheep is several kms away and has great double fencing all round. I don’t know if I am doing the right thing or how long I can hold out, if neighbours start losing stock I will have to shift probably. But it’s an ecosystem out of balance, and a top predator has its place.

The traumatic effects on the owners of attacked dogs seems to be vastly underrated or uncared about. My own dogs are big, but watching two German Shepherds, running loose in my suburb, trying to get ‘get’ my on-lead six month old pup left me with lots of trauma - if I hadn’t had an older dog with me that fought back hard they would have had her, for the attacking dogs paid no attention to me trying to stop them. It was just the scariest of several attacks in suburban streets over the years, twice we even had passing motorists rescue us, as the owners of attacking dogs were so useless. These days I doubt I would stay on my feet in the face of that assault, so we don’t walk locally anymore, I drive to walk which is crazy. We ‘should’ be safe walking on a suburban street. But nope, entitled p***ks let their dogs off lead everywhere. Just keep your dogs on lead in on lead areas, it’s not much to expect.

I got kicked in the face by a dog that was jumping off the bed, and got a black eye. Was a bit hard to explain convincingly to non-dog people. But most big dog owners just nodded, .

That’s a scary prophecy, I once minded a Chi for a weekend. Too much dog for me!

I’ve tried hard to find a smaller dog I’d want to own to make the practicalities easier as I get older, but there isn’t one. I really only want to own Borzoi, which I have had for decades, and Belgian Shepherds, which I used to own but don’t have the lifestyle for these days. So I guess once I age out of those breeds I’m done with dogs.

They exist around here. They are not restricted in the ACT. I don’t think they are in the NT either. You wouldn’t know they were banned in adjacent areas of NSW either by how commonly I see them. Whether they are completely ‘pure’ I can’t say, but they look it.

It’s pretty hard to give advice off a short description and not knowing how hard she is biting. She might think the play is too rough, she might be worried about someone getting hurt, or jealous, or she might just be overstimulated by it and acting out. Some dogs do act like the ‘fun police’ and break up rough play. I think the owner needs a good behaviouralist to make a home visit and observe what is going on. They will probably recommend management to remove the risk in the immediate term and desensitisation to reduce the arousal level and teach alternative behaviours. But with kids involved it needs expert help.

Maybe try calling Dogs Victoria and asking if they know of any. Or if you are on Facebook there is a group called Australian Dog Show Newbies which is good for such questions. I believe that Peter Frost used to run some at Bulla, and I think Ashley Reid used to give lessons somewhere not far from KCC Park. But I am not Victorian and haven’t shown for years, so am a bit out of touch.

Well I’m not really ‘starting’ with anyone. Just expressing some thoughts as the thread asked. I didn’t know that transcervical can’t be done with older semen but it is heartbreaking if so. That genetic material is so precious.

I can’t answer the club question from an Australian perspective - the breeds that interest me are too numerically small, so are the clubs and they don’t have that kind of capacity. A question for the bigger players. I don’t think a test for heterozygosity is an answer in itself though. How to best use the diversity within a breed is a bigger question than that. Some US breeders did get together to get a population genetic diversity study done for my breed- through UC Davis and Better Bred. It found a healthy breed despite - or maybe because of?- limited haplotype diversity, including as I recall some unique in their database at the time. The first report was disappointingly poor to me - suggested that Australia had a genetically distinct population. Based on my dogs. Which at the time were mostly direct Scandi and USA imports. No-one checked their origins with me before writing that significant conclusion. It affected my personal view of the credibility of the study. Final report a bit better but still felt detached from the coal face. I don’t think the study has been used much if at all to influence breeding decisions. I still test. I no longer subscribe to Better Bred, not worth it for me, but I did run the numbers on potential matings before dropping it, and I might join again to use the program at some point. But my experience with that study is partly why I think a lot more science interpretation is needed for real impact. For context, I have a science degree and a lifetime of working in the public policy:science interface. Pathways to influence and end user adoption are issues in many public good type areas where there are lots of small actors. It is a skill in itself. Not unique to the dog world.

I agree with selecting away from physical extremes that harm health, and changing the show emphasis on those extremes. It’s already happening and has for a while, but in a patchy way. I also agree with Rebanne about breeding to older dogs, especially in breeds where issues aren’t testable. Arbitrary breeding regs work against that. I don’t think selecting for less extreme types will trickle down to the wider population of pet dogs being bred though. Not anymore. Just take a look at the extreme Bully industry. Plenty of pet dog breeders have embraced unhealthy extremes and are not influenced by the traditional show world - they just call them elitist snobs and get social media applause for it. Double Merle long coat teacup Frenchie anyone? They are so ‘special’. But back to the purebred world, I would like to see more education for show breeders on how to manage genetic diversity and how to best use current science to improve population health - need some genetics educators that can look holistically at all issues and opportunities, not just test by test. However that kind of knowledge brokering needs resources, and the purebred world as a collective, at least in Australia, doesn’t have the kind of money people assume it does.