poodlefan

An Infin8 is a halti with 'power steering' - ask its manufacturer. I'd not be keen to see one on a breed with a slender neck like a whippet. I'm not keen on them at all actually. I'd suggest you get some advice from a trainer. Dogs pulling on leads is a bread and butter issue for them and can usually be solved quick quickly with some instruction.

Where's the politics in self education?

If you want a cheap set of poles, buy 12 tomato stakes or electric fencing poles, 12 x 1 m pieces of PVC piping and an piece of string. Mark the string every 60cm with a texta for 12 marks. Then put a loop at each end. If you peg the string out, you can hammer in your supports and poles quickly and then remove the string.

Corvus: Its a fabulous method of learning avoidance or aggression, not trust. Dogs have three fear responses as far as I can figure... fight, flight or shutdown. None of those are something I wish to encourage in my dog.. EVER.

Corvus: But you do want them to trust you. How can insisting that your dogs deal with any threat from another dog make them do that? In my experience, trust is built on predictability of behaviour and reliability of safety as much as it is on "niceness". I have a friend with a wildly fear aggressive dog who is loved to death. She hardly disciplines him at all. He is severely on lead aggressive because she provides no leadership and is herself concerned about other dogs. What's "niceness" got to do with that. I own a dog who is fearful in new and unfamiliar situations. It's got nothing to do with me - that's her nature. Confidence and timidity have a genetic component that is not environment or experientially based. Were you to get another pup with different temperament, your experiences might be very different. If that dog had a tendency towards fear aggression, your practices might exacerbate it. If Kivi bit another dog hard in play, he'd be getting a pretty severe rebuke. Perhaps his "shock" at being disciplined by your brother was as much about surprise as it was about fear. You're clearly not a stupid person Corvus and you put a lot of thought into your interactions with your dogs. As you are clearly very interested in canine behaviour, why not spend some time with someone who deals with it for a living? Exposure to a wider range of dog behaviours and responses to every day dog on dog encounters can only enhance your knowledge of these issues. What I can assure you is that dogs with behavioural challenges are not assisted by simply being nice to them. They need boundaries, predictability and a sense of security that can only come from handler leadership.

I'm trying to reconcile your post with your practice of letting your dogs sort potentially problem dogs for themselves. Isn't that a trust issue that would make a withdrawal on their piggy bank? Shouldn't your dogs trust you to protect them above all else? I personally don't think that dogs undertake this kind of balancing exercise you suggest. They do understand the notion of consequences and boundaries for acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. They practice that themselves. If they're jumping on the dining table to eat the cake and you scream your head off at them, I don't think that creates fear. If screaming and hitting is all you do, some dogs STILL won't fear you. I do agree that your relationship with your dog is based on the sum of experiences you've had together. But appropriate discpline does not errode trust. I'd argue it promotes respect - also important in the relationship.

Corvus: Two reasons. As my dog's guardian, its my job to keep them safe. When the incoming dog weighs 10 times what my dog does, or if there are more than one of them, or at any time when I percieve that the incoming dog poses a threat, then I will act (and have acted) to step up to the leader/defender role. I don't chase away, I block or deter while keeping myself between my dogs and the oncoming dog/s. And secondly, because a dog aggressive dog hellbent on damage doesn't give a rats arse what your dog is trying to tell it or how non-threateningly it is acting. I've had my dog attacked while it was behaving in this manner and it was of no consolation to me that my dog went down trying to submit to the other one. You are probably unlikely to get a seriously dog aggressive dog in a dog park more than once, but who wants to be the owner of the dog that gets taken out on that one visit? Your dog does not have the ability to control the results of every dog-dog encounter that occurs. We, on the other hand, have the ability to control where and when our dogs interact with others in order to keep them safe. I opt to act in the interests of my dog's safety. I'm thinking more exposure to Basenjis will cause you to reconsider that view. I cannot but conclude that you have formulated your views about dogs only from observations of your own. I remain convinced that greater exposure to more dogs would cause you to reconsider your views. We have selectively modified the domestic dog to produce a range of degrees of sociability and of reactions to unknown dogs. Territoriality, dominance, pack drive and prey drive are all variables in domestic dogs. I think it pays to keep that in mind. Spend some time with livestock guardians and your conclusions about 'natural dog behaviour' would be wildly different to what you currently conclude. If Kivi wandered onto Lilli's property, he'd be killed by her dogs regardless of how appeasing his behaviour was. Lilli's dogs reactions would be natural for them - its what they've been bred to do. You don't see a lot of livestock guardians down the dog park but you do see a lot of dogs that have high degrees of dominance and low fight thresholds. .

Canned food is 80% water. It's very expensive for what you get. The general views here are to feed a good quality dry food (not usually available in Supermarkets), a carefully researched raw diet, of a mixture of both. Preferred brands here include Artemis, Royal Canin and Eagle Pack. A lot of people also like Advance Puppy. Some raw meaty bones like chicken wings are a good addition to a pup's diet and give them much needed chewing practice. There is no reason why a dog's diet can't be changed but it should be done gradually. A Bull Terrier/Boxer is a lot of dog.. I hope you'll be heading off to puppy classes and obedience training!

Hi Miranda, They aren't a breeder, they have two shar pei's that had a litter and sold them. They are really genuine people, in fact, they emailed me offering to pay for all his costs (which i refused, we will go halves instead). What would one do with the pups otherwise?? Id like to breed them one day... so what would I do with them? Not sell them? I would understand they need tacking and do it prior to selling, but if they're going to need extra TLC later on that's the new owners' responsability, right? Passing him on to anyone else is not an option. PB if you want to breed Sharpei as a longer term objective, I can't recommend more highly that you join your breed club, purchase registered dogs, exhibit them and learn as much as you can from an experienced mentor before you take that step. I'm sure there'd be folk here who'd help steer you in that direction. No doubt you've already learned that there's more to breeding healthy examples of a breed than owning a male and a female and mating them. Personally, I'd suggest breeding to decrease the likelihood of the issues your pup has experienced would be a worthy objective to consider. That would mean not breeding from your current pup.

She flopped 8 times in about 75 metres, but am stating to think it's tiredness to as it's at night, am gonna walk her in the morning see how it goes I'll ask again. How far/long are you walking her. Is it just to the Reserve?

How far are you walking her? A dog that keeps lying down would signal tiredness to me. It's dead easy to overdo it with a pup.

Corvus: Yes, lots of trainers do. Lots of trainers recommend controlled socialisation and get a lot of business from dog park related created behaviours too. Vets do a steady business stitching up the dogs unlucky enough to meet the types of dogs you have yet to encounter. If you can provide a refererence to a trainer who suggests that walking into a crowded dog park with your dog and letting it loose into a free for all is a recommended method of socialisation, then I'd love to see it. One of the most telling (and common behvaviours) in that video comes from the owners of the aggressive dog. They did NOTHING to control their dog.. not a damn thing, even when the smaller dog owner had her dog up off the ground. No doubt they shrugged their shoulders, made some disparaging comment about small dog owners and went on as usual. You are lucky Corvus, you have dogs that appear to be good diffusers of situations and they are large enough not to draw prey responses from other dogs. The only other Finnish Lapphund I have met had the same attributes. Your experience is not universal, as many of the dog trainers here can vouch for. Perhaps the differing opinions from yours are based on a wider range of experiences? The fact that you haven't personally witnessed a serious aggression incident in a dog park does not prove your assertion that their occurence is very rare. The experiences and anedotes related here attest to that.

Crikey!! I've only just read this.. what an ordeal for you both. The only useful suggestion I have is to add some Vitamin C to his diet (good for times of stress and an immune system booster) and some probiotics to counter the effect of the antibiotics on his gut flora. He's clearly a fighter.

What strategies have you used to deter Charlie so far?

Google is a wonderful thing

Having an entire dog isn't a reason to put up with unacceptable behaviour. This isn't sexually motivated anyway so there's no guarantee desexing will fix it. Make it non rewarding for the dog to do it. Don't tolerate it.

Even though it hasn't been pre-diagnosed as yet?? The issue with his eyes has been identified. You will be required to declare it to the insurer.

Most pet insurance won't cover known conditions. Read the fine print before you sign up.

I dont have a choice when Im part of an agility club Ask if they accept titres. Quite a few do. Whats Titres ?? A blood test to check immunity levels for a disease. Costs about the same as vaccinations though.

I dont have a choice when Im part of an agility club Ask if they accept titres. Quite a few do.

If you do a search in this forum on "mouthing" you'll find a raft of threads dealing with this puppy behaviour. The search facility is on the top right of the page.

Encouraging news Skwo.

Why don't you deter the behaviour, rather than managing it. Tell him to get off the other dog. Physically remove him if you have to and separate them. It's not homosexuality you're witnessing, its dominance. If the other dog gets fed up with it, you may end up with a dust up.

BARF doesn't suit every dog. I'd be wary of pancreatitis given the results you've been seeing. If you do wish to continue, feed lower fat meat cuts, only feed meat on the bone (or with bone) and increase the vegetable content in some meals. You shoud also include offal in a raw diet.

It's not unknown. Bichon and liver disease linky