Paulp

In some ways it is easier to do a left about turn with the dog backing up and swinging around as you don't lose contact with your dog as it goes around behind you, some dogs go AWOL and the handler marches off back up the field without realising the dog has gone. Our club teaches the finish but only after leaving the dog and stepping in front, never from a recall to avoid the dog learning to anticipate.

I only started playing tug with my boy at flyball as a special treat for a successful run, his special tug is a kong frisbee that has now had the middle torn out so is more of a donut. The only issue with this is that it puts my fingers in mortal danger!

Sounds like a reaction that both my dogs have had to vaccinations in the past. I just held a heat pack on for thirty seconds and then a cold pack, do this five or so times in a row and do this a couple of times a day. Settled my dogs reaction down in a few days.

Ebon runs like a tap whilst waiting for food, we joke that one day he will collapse from dehydration if I make the wait too long. Everyone at obedience gets a good laugh when he starts drooling during a sit stay as he knows he is going to get a treat at the end of it.

There was an article on Catalyst a while back talking about this. Researchers had found that dogs with long noses and eyes on the sides of the head had focal regions of the retina arranged in a band across the back of the eye so responded to movement all the way across their field of vision whereas flat faced dogs with the eyes oriented more forwards had circular focal areas more like humans with the same poor peripheral vision so seemed to respond to things they could focus on in the centre of their field of vision like movement on a TV. The theory is that the long nosed dogs are better at hunting, because they can see prey clearly right across their field of vision, whereas the short nosed dogs, generally bred as companion animals, may be better at focussing on and reading human faces. You can find the transcript of the article here.

Ebon doesn't really look at the TV at all but will respond to sounds coming from it, when the world dog games was on and he heard the flyball EJS beeping he leaped to his feet ready to go! Princess on the other hand really responds to images on the TV, especially dogs. The funniest was when she decided she wanted a piece of a tiger on the TV!

When I took my boy to his first obedience lesson at about 6 months of age there was another dog there that looked similar to him but 2/3 his size (so I assumed much younger) that he really responded to. A conversation with the other dogs owners led to the realisation that the other dog was actually one of his littermates.

I use grated carrot to bulk out food

I take my dogs there as well and agree. The other vets there are good as well if Zoran isn't available.

I use sentinel spectrum monthly as well with capstar as a backup in case fleas are ever brought in from outside the home

I talked to someone from guide dogs vic about this a while back and she said that the lab/GR was in favour because of their even temperament and that it only works for a first generation cross from pure bred parents.

My white labs hair sticks to everything which is a bugger as I wear black pants and usually dark shirts to work. My other dog is a lab X GR and his hair sticks to nothing. There is still copious amounts of it drifting around the floor but it is like teflon. There is none on the furniture and none on clothes.

Did you have Ahsoka at the nationals last year? I think I asked you if he was a husky or malamute I did the same thing at the club yesterday and it turned out the dog in question has the same parents as Ahsoka (came up because I commented not many of them in flyball and she should come over and have a go). No Soaks was in season during the nationals but I was there. She also wasn't trained up at the time - she had only been in training for a few weeks. The only other lappie there was only 3 months old and is not related to Soaks. So not sure who you are speaking of... ??? The dog related to Ahsoka is a chocolate coloured pup called Finn that joined up at our club on the weekend. Three months old sounds about right for the one I saw at the nationals.

Did you have Ahsoka at the nationals last year? I think I asked you if he was a husky or malamute I did the same thing at the club yesterday and it turned out the dog in question has the same parents as Ahsoka (came up because I commented not many of them in flyball and she should come over and have a go).

I am not sure that dogs have the same issue of loss of electrolytes as humans. We lose electrolytes through the copious amounts of sweat we exude to cool down. The salts end up dried on our skin. Dogs don't sweat through the skin to the same degree as us, they rely on evaporation from the airways and tongue and mouth meaning the electrolytes stay in their bodies. They just need plenty of cool clean water rather than electrolyte solutions. A cool coat helps as well. I give my lab a double feed of his usual advance active dry food the night before a flyball competition in the belief it may help with glycogen levels in the muscles. I have toyed with the idea of trying something like carb loading in humans, feeding a couple of feeds incorporating high carb food (maybe boiled potato or white rice) in the couple of days leading up to competition but the chances are he would just burn it back off zooming with my other dog the day before anyway.

I wash my 2 in the spa bath in the bathroom. Ive just screwed off the aerator/filter on the end of the tap (most modern taps have them) and used an adapter from Bunnings to fit on an outdoors type snap fitting. I use a nozzle that I bought from BigW ages ago that is a ring of jets that focus in to a point about 10 cm in front of the ring. This really gets in under the coat to rinse out any residual shampoo/ dirt. Think they were called a vortex washer or something.

Depends on the size of your hands, I have used regular sized ones but have now moved to a large one as I find it easier to get treats out in a hurry. We sell a lot at our club and mostly they are regular sized ones.

That's a crack up, the poor labs heart doesn't really seem to be in it. For lab pride are my two lure coursing, that lure line is supposedly 300m.

Are you coming to Berwick? Yep? Are you? I am entering my 2nd ccd trial. On the first one we scored 84 but it was a NQ because we only got 13 for heeling. I am not competing (I can't brag about Ebons obedience at the moment!), I will be stewarding in the afternoon. I've been at a flyball comp all day today so need a sleep in in the morning! Good luck.

Are you coming to Berwick?

My boys mother was a chocolate lab and his father a GR. Never been hip scored but he is now three and a half years old and competes in flyball running under 5 seconds and I have seen no physical issues. He looks like a big black lab but if you take a second look he has long thick straight legs, more feathering around his legs and tail and a lovely silky coat. His temperament seems to be a mix of both breeds, he has the huge unbridled enthusiasm of a labrador but otherwise is completely laid back, he will just about drop and have a snooze in the flyball ring when we are the reserve dog. He has an incredibly soft mouth, he once somehow caught a wild duck and returned it to me stunned (as was I) but otherwise unharmed. He is a very good trainer, I was just about to start entering obedience trialling when he was about 2 years old when we discovered flyball instead.

At one stage my lab figured out that banging the back of a persons knees as he ran past at full tilt would collapse the said person like a deck of cards, I had to put a stop to that very quickly before he hurt somebody!

There was an article on catalyst a while ago that was about how dogs with flat faces have different visual structures in the retina to those with long noses (from memory those with flat faces had the cones concentrated in a circle like humans whilst long nosed dogs had them in a band), I would not be surprised if the breeding that changed this in the flat faced dogs also effected other visual structures as well (what colour do pugs eyes reflect?).

There are a million and one threads here about people going to off-leash parks and other dogs running up into their dogs faces while the owner says "Oh but he's friendly". Those threads never end well, regardless of the dog's intentions. I'm interested in this, and taking it ever so slightly off thread, does anyone here believe there is no way in the world their dog would not attack (ie provoke an attack) another dog ? I am pretty sure most of us feel like we know our dogs well enough to say that it would simply never happen to us. Put it this way, there aren't too many threads on DOL of dog owners who come in to tell stories of their dog ripping apart another. That said, we'd kinda like to assume that people who let their aggressive dogs off lead with awful outcomes, never thought their dog would attack either. So, given our dogs are animals, do you feel that you could 100% guarantee your dog would never provoke an attack on another in 'everyday' circumstances (ie no injury, bitch on heat, bitch defending pups, whatever) ? Or perhaps it's not that simple. I don't think either of my two would agressively instigate a fight but by their nature they could and, if I'm not careful, do push other dogs too far and get an aggressive response (it is hard to get through their thick heads that not all other dogs are labs). My female will just back away if this happens, my male will initially back away but if the other dog presses the issue he will respond. For this reason I rarely let them both off lead at the same time in the presence of other dogs and recall them if I feel they are getting too boisterous (or just take them home if the arousal level of all the dogs is getting too high). If I see another dog getting in their face then I leash and take them away before the situation gets out of control. Fights can and do happen and it is often not as simple as saying that a specific dog started it, the causative factors are often complex and interactive so it is up to each owner to manage their dog to prevent arousal levels increasing to the point where you get a fight. Unfortunately many owners are insensitive to their dogs arousal levels, don't recognise the signs, or just don't care.

Technically, this is not right. Although admittedly it is the current days' common consensus of opinion by most of those who take their dogs and use the off-lead areas for exactly that purpose. But effective control is what each and everyone of them is supposed to have before they exercise the privilege of being allowed to let their dogs off-lead. Unfortunately, because so many people have the attitude of "if you don't want dogs running over to you in an off-lead area then don't come here" it's too hard to battle it without risking it being at the expense of their own dog's safety and that's exactly what a lot of people who are conscientious about the problems that can and do occur at off-lead parks do - they don't go. Even though they too are entitled to their share of the park and peaceable enjoyment of it. You are right, should have thought more first (a new baby in the house is messing with my head), it is really up to all parties to respect the rights of all at off lead areas, at BODC we have given priority to small dogs in one of our off lead areas on club days because an area full of big dogs puts off small dog owners from entering when they have just as much right to use the areas.