Maddy

Again, it reads as if you believe the laws don't apply to your dog because your dog is somehow special or better behaved than most. This simply isn't the case. Not only is it irresponsible, it also reads as being more than a little arrogant. The same laws apply to your dog as they apply to everyone else, you are not above the law.

Presumably Goldens. http://www.dolforums.com.au/index.php?show...=215168&hl= And that's a breed I've had problems with while walking my dogs. However.. I don't make a point of singling them out as a "bad" breed of dog, despite my own negative experiences with them as it's not the dogs I have problems with, it was the owners who let them run around off lead in an on lead area.

QFT As long as the "But my dog would never.." mentality persists, dog attacks caused by off lead dogs will continue to happen.

My experience has been (not surprisingly) entirely the opposite. The people complaining are the ones who walk their dogs on lead and have to put up with their dogs being constantly harassed by someone's wandering, off lead "Precious". In Launceston (I can't speak for other council areas but I assume most would have similar policies), your dog can only be off lead on private property or in an area signed as being off lead. If the area is not signed, you are expected to abide by the general rule that dogs be kept on lead. Boasting that you've broken the law and were complimented for it doesn't make your behaviour responsible. In ny opinion, it makes it even worse if you were aware you were breaking the law and continued to do it. Edited for typo

How do people know that the dog is under kels84's effective control? kels84 did not do the right thing they broke the law by having an unleashed dog in a leashed area. This is what bothers me. If someone is already breaking the law, why on earth would I assume them to be responsible owners with sufficient control of their animals? You're assuming that every dog attack is the fault of a bad owner. Even good owners have been unpleasantly suprised by unexpected behaviour from their own dogs. A good owner (in my opinion) wouldn't place their dogs in a position where they might harm another dog, simple as that. Edited to bold the bit I meant.

Frankly, I can understand his reaction. My dogs have been mounted, nipped, scratched and had their coats torn or damaged by off lead dogs and my dogs are at least large dogs (so I've never had to worry too much about them being seriously hurt by something bigger than them). The excuse "But my dog is so well-behaved and would never hurt another dog" just doesn't cut it. In my experience, it's the "Oh, he's just playing, he's very friendly" dogs who run at my dogs, tail up high, hackles up and looking for a fight (all while the oblivious owner stands around yapping on the phone or otherwise ignoring warning behaviours). If the law states dogs must be on lead (and this is the law in most areas), there's just no excuse to break it. If you can't see signage to indicate whether the area allows dogs off lead, assume it is not allowed. There have been so many threads on here about dogs (both small and large) being hurt by off lead dogs, I honestly can't believe anyone would try to defend something as irresponsible as breaking a very sensible law.

Requiring payment in advance would probably solve that issue. Although if the dog ended up staying longer or incurring additional charges somehow, you'd still be stuck in the same position (although you'd at least not be out by quite so much money if you'd already gotten the expected amount from them).

Steve, this isn't quite correct. A lien over property allows the person to whom the debt is owed to retain it until the debt is paid. The property can only be sold if the debt won't be repaid. Basically you don't get the dog back until you've paid. It doesn't give a right to seize a returned dog. I have to say I've never heard of it with regard to dog related businesses. I've never heard about it happening in regards to groomers or vets but I have heard of it happening with boarding kennels (animals being retained, that is. Not animals being seized back by creditors). I had a quick look at the web site of one local boarding facility and this was one of their terms- Presumably, this means the pet could not be collected until payment is made. Whether or not further fees would be charged up until payment or whether animals would sold to cover costs isn't mentioned. I'd assume that information would only be available in the actual forms signed to enter an animal (assuming, again, that they even have such a form).

Just found this from GRNSW, looks like the actual GAP NSW may not actually be able to hand out the new collars, only the GRNSW "GAP" group.

Presumably they'd be the bright green Black Dog collars with the GAP number of the dog on them to prevent people just buying them and chucking them on greyhounds that hadn't been through GAP. GAP NSW have a bit about it on their site- http://www.gapnsw.org.au/

The same could also be said for a lot of regular actors though. There are plenty of movies that make piles of money and the actors only see a tiny fraction of the profit. Also, I know this is quite an issue with musicians- record companies take a huge slice and shamelessly profit from the talent of their performers. The entertainment industry in general is set up in a manner that could easily be considered as being exploitative. But anyway.. yeah, off topic. Edit.. typos

See, I think you've missed the mark on this one a little. It should be a naked photo of Bear Grylls drinking his own urine, with a caption of " I'd rather drink my own piss wear fur than star in a PETA commercial". :) I get the whole money=power thing, but power to do what? Power to put down over 80% of their rescues? Money to spend on advertising to show the world how fantastic they are?t I don't actually think this is degrading to this particular woman. As someone mentioned earlier,this is a great career move for her, and she'll get a boat load of exposure. Fixed that for you. You're welcome

I honestly don't see why anyone would pay money unless they already happened to be a PETA supporter. You don't need to be some kind of porn addict to know that Google Images + SafeSearch Off + "Boobs" = heaving piles of porn. Free porn. Free porn that doesn't involve also having Ingrid Newkirk's lazy eye following you around the page from the top corner. If anyone actually pays money to PETA for porn (as opposed to paying to help PETA), they're probably thick enough not to realise they're getting crappy value for money. "Degrading" is a matter of personal taste. To one viewer, it might be degrading, to another, not at all. Undoubtedly there are women working in the industry who do it because their options are very limited but degradation, in my opinion, is something that comes from the viewer's reaction to the images, not simply as a byproduct of taking your clothes off for money. Assuming that a sexual act is degrading because you (the viewer) feels the actress should feel degraded to have done it is expecting others to have the same ethics and limits as you. There's a couple of really good interviews on the subject but probably not clean enough to post here

Personally, I think that suggesting pornography in general is exploiting women is far more damaging to women than the pornography itself. It's suggesting that a woman who makes money this way is incapable of understanding her choice and by extension, her own body. There's no better way to lower someone's self-worth than to insist they're so poorly equipped, they can't even make decisions for themselves. And this is the opinion of a female who was raised around a pack of rabid feminists. If a woman chooses to make a living getting naked.. good for her. Probably a better working environment than a lot of us have. The porn issue aside.. frankly, given some of the other highly questionable crap PETA does, this isn't even a blip of the radar. It's all in the name of getting attention and really, it got boring quite a while ago. If PETA wanted to get my attention, they'd need to do something totally crazy.. like.. coming up with rational arguments. Or doing some proper research. Or actually helping animals in some way. Edited to add.. Sometimes, getting people to pay for something else is the only way you'll get donations. Especially when your group is really only selling ideas. What they need to be selling, however, is something worth paying for. Naked photos of Bear Grylls, for example. Maybe a photo of him naked, eating a raw fish (because fish are totally okay to hurt, according to the logic in another thread where it was suggested that only things with nipples can feel pain).

Clearly, they're planning on cloning dog/dinosaur hybrids. Things like the Labrasaurus Rex. I think we all know how this is going to end.

Can't see how given a cage trap does not physically hurt them. The stress it causes them is enough to constitute cruelty, never mind the damage they often do to themselves trying to escape. We've had to catch possums in our yard before using humane traps and even though we put blankets over the cage as soon as we heard the trap, the possum inside was already bloodied and likely in a state of shock from its frenzied efforts to escape. Wild animals don't cope well in cage traps and we used them only as a last resort. I'd not even consider using one for a species of animal that can legally be disposed of on a residential property- especially when they can be disposed of quickly and humanely. That aside, there's still the issue of what to do with captured mousie. If you release it elsewhere, chances are, the displaced rodent will die, either as a result of the trapping process itself or from predation or starvation. This leaves one other option.. you kill said mousie yourself, as quickly and humanely as possible- which just happens to be what generally happens with the snap traps (especially the new plastic ones that only allow for direct approach to the bait). So, seems to me like you could eliminate the stressful, inhumane middle step and just use the traps. Also, Jazzy4.. Your mother really needs to monitor your internet use a bit more closely. Well, that law applies to where I happen to live and like it or not, the law is the law. I'm sure some people think the pot laws are stupid and pointless but disagreeing with a law does not give you the right to willfully break it. The law is in place for a reason- feral populations of animals need to be removed, not added to by "humane*" people. *Which is, by the way, a disgustingly insulting thing to say. I love animals, I gave over my house and yard to the dogs no one else wants to deal with. I have kept both rats and mice as pets and loved them just as much as I love my dogs now. To suggest that anyone who chooses to humanely kill mice is somehow inhumane because there "should" be ways to stop mice from entering a property in the first place is (if you'll excuse the profanity, this topic rather annoys me) bullsh*t. We have no piles of food laying about, we keep all the places that could attract mice clean. Our dogs are raw fed to ensure there's never any food around for mice to scavenge from. We put a lot of efforting into keeping rodents away from our house. Our neighbours, however, have a rubbish pile out the back. Short of hopping the fence and cleaning it up while they're out, how else should I be controlling the mice we get? In the perfect world, the mice should be living in a happy mousie place, well away from people and everyone could coexist in peace and everything would be great and awesome and puppies would cuddle with baby bunnies. The reality is, sometimes, despite all efforts, you get mice. Disposing of them quickly and cleanly is the kindest thing you can do.

This is what we do with our dogs. There is a sign on the gate but anyone entering our property can access our water meter, fuse box and front door (as is required by law) without any risk of coming into contact with our dogs. If someone went through the second and then third gate (to where the dogs are) and got bitten, I imagine they'd have a harder time complaining to the authorities about it, especially considering there's absolutely no reason for anyone to be back there- there's two doors before the third gate and no excuse for someone to be in our backyard without having first come to either our front or back door first (both of which, as I mentioned above, can be accessed without risking contact with the dogs). Dog attacks on private property seem to be a bit of a grey area so I'd not be taking any risks. That aside, there's also the issue of meter readers. I can't speak for other states but down here, if an Aurora meter reader sees a dog in your front yard (regardless of how friendly it seems) they won't enter the property unless they can see the dog is secured and of no risk to them. http://www.auroraenergy.com.au/my_home/bil...rs_and_dogs.asp

All those ACD breeders who get "red heeler" puppies out of "blue heeler" dogs are clearly involved in some sort of evil breeding magic. Next thing you know, horses will be coming out whales. Horses that aren't just healers but proper doctors. I think I'd find these ads somewhat less offensive if the people churning out these poor creatures actually took the time to learn a little about them. Back on topic.. given some of the other content on Facebook, I'm not surprised people are using it to sell animals. I probably still wouldn't be surprised if people started using it to sell their kids.

This article lost me at the inane list at the start but judging from what others here have said, I didn't miss a whole lot. The hell does this have to do with clicker training or the principles behind it?

No, my original comment was directed at the site in question for promoting training methods of that sort. Chucking a disclaimer on the end is not going to stop some people from trying to copy his techniques with their own poor animals. What I quoted was an example of what I believe to be very inappropriate methods of handling dogs and frankly, I wouldn't be linking to that site to demonstrate other things without also pointing out that the site in question contained advice that is questionable in terms of humane handling of animals and would probably get you charged with cruelty (and rightly so) if someone happened to get evidence of it.

I would never say never. Who knows what situation could crop up in an emergency, if I had to choke a dog to stop it from attacking a person or another dog I would do so, absolutely. In an emergency where it was to prevent injury to other dogs or people, sure, do what you need to do to make the situation safe with the minimal amount of distress caused to the animal as possible. However.. to take a dog and knowingly place it in a situation where the very intention is to make it bite and then punish it in such a way?

Also sounds like a great way to hurt your dog and do some lasting damage.. Taken directly from the page linked. I'm afraid I'm with Bisart Dobes on this one; if you have to literally hang the dog until it passes out (just to prove to the dog what a clever, big person you are ) in my opinion, you probably shouldn't have pets. Well you've taken that bit totally out of context. Did you read the "Extremely Handler Aggressive Dogs" title above it? I'd rather train an extremely aggro dog using "harsh methods" than euthanizing it.Besides that, it doesn't always have to be used in that way. As the comments say, it's used a lot for showing and even I have a collar that looks a little bit like that (or at least works in the same way) for showing my puppy. All because the collar can be used to strangle a dog, it doesn't mean it will necessarily be used that way. No dog should be hung from its neck until it loses consciousness. Period. Personally, I'd rather see a dog humanely PTS than treated in a way that would be very distressing to the dog and risks terrible permanent damage.

Also sounds like a great way to hurt your dog and do some lasting damage.. Taken directly from the page linked. I'm afraid I'm with Bisart Dobes on this one; if you have to literally hang the dog until it passes out (just to prove to the dog what a clever, big person you are ) in my opinion, you probably shouldn't have pets.

This probably isn't very helpful for people who live on farms or larger properties but keeping your grass very short, spraying/cutting down weeds and not leaving plant material (grass clippings and the like) about makes a big difference. In summer (assuming we still even have grass), everything is kept very short and clippings are buried to make sure there's fewer places for things to lay eggs. We also spray down the dogs and their bedding with permoxin and so far, we haven't had any issues with ticks or fleas.

Apologies if this sounds a little snarky but.. do you think that's appropriate and resonsible behaviour? The owner of the house might've been rude but it's a little childish to retaliate in such a manner and will likely only further colour that man's views of dog owners in general.