WoofnHoof

Just a point re the child care ratios they are very much adhered to my mother and sister worked in day care for over 20 years never were children allowed over the ratio - granted it was more strongly adhered to because of the risk of legal action were something to happen to a child on the premises and that included family day care situations as well. I do like the concept of restricting numbers based on available carers.

Ooooh I love Badminton how do I find out how to get this station I only get channel 7, 10, ABC, SBS and a fuzzy 9. I know who wins though

Not to mention the extra stress on the dog as well constantly being corrected and having to adjust to each new 'management' technique. I agree that it shouldn't be a first resort but I don't know whether it should be a last resort either. Hard to say where to draw the line though.

That's the weird thing about centrelink when I was a poor student living off benefits I went to one of their info sessions and was shocked to learn that if you are renting you can get rent assistance but if you are paying a mortgage there is absolutely no benefit to help with that, not good to know that things haven't improved on that front. One thing that may be open to you is some banks will let you have a 'repayment holiday' not much of a holiday since they still gouge the interest but sometimes they can leave off the repayments for a while so it might be worth chasing up that avenue for assistance too. If you are still in need of a carer it may also be worthwhile chasing up disability services Queensland and HACC services as well you might be eligible for some other services that might be useful. Hope you can get to spend time with your own dogs soon, I can't imagine being away from my animals for this long

A bit OT, so apologies to the OP Woofn Hoof, that is VERY interesting about your comment about ACD's developing this disease, a lot... I certainly cnat disagree with you... I have had a young bitch PTS with this horrible disease at about 7 months of age ... Now if only breeders would admit to this disease, so we could start to see if this disease is as prevalent as I, (and I suspect you as well !!!), believe it to be. I tried my hardest to find out if this was an issue with other breeders, and I was met with a cold, stoney silence, leading me to believe the problem is greater than we all believe... It's not routinely tested for in ACDs as far as I'm aware and the prevalence in the studies I read didn't specify whether the ACDs with shunts were pedigreed or just identified as ACDs. Hard to know whether it is a sign of a significant problem in the breed but I would like to hope that any breeders who are made aware of the problem in a pup take good records because while the mode of inheritance is not known it's believed that heredity could play a part. It can be a hard one to diagnose sometimes dogs will show textbook signs sometimes they will only be a bit 'off'. Also not every vet is able to spot it, my sibe had textbook symptoms yet none of the 4 vets in the practice I took him to recognised it and they were all consulted. He fell into a coma and very nearly died if he had I probably never would have known what was wrong with him, it does make me wonder how many dogs have remained undiagnosed. The best way to spot it is to do a liver function blood test, it can be done from a young age and is often done in those breeds it is known to be a problem in.

I reckon go with the liver diet and see how she goes when i was reading up on liver shunts it seemed to be cropping up in acds a lot although at 12 its unlikley that it's congenital although not impossible from what i read. Hope she picks up for you but at least there are treaments and mangement strategies for liver problems so I'd see how she goes with diet and meds.

Cleanliness is a relative term you'll often find that the people who make the loudest noises about hygiene are often the ones that dont wash their hands after they go to the toilet.

Meg was very beautiful such terrible losses they are all such a credit to you and I'm so glad the rspca recognised how well you have raised and cared for your dogs too

So sorry

Not all vet nurses are created equal ;) Actually you could say the same about vets... Anyway I hope that Kazzie does go on to become a registered breeder and I hope that she improves her breed and I hope that she does endeavour to learn from experienced and knowledgable breeders along the way and maybe one day she might become a mentor herself and continue on the knowledge she has gained from all that hard work. If she doesn't well nothing ventured nothing gained

She came back at 11 though, I understand why she's defensive and I understand why others post the way they do I just hope she sticks around and learns to understand that too. If the OP is still around the place I learned the most from is the rescue forum, particularly the urgent threads, a flaming in general is a picnic compared to the pain you'll feel seeing beautiful happy dogs just like ours get the needle mostly because their owners no longer wanted them for whatever reason. ;) (btw joining 4 years ago doesn't mean much I've joined stacks of forums that I never get around to frequenting)

Good to hear Kazzie, there are plenty of helpful people here and I know that the criticism is hard when you don't know anyone here but many people here are involved in rescue and and heavily involved in your breed so like most enthusiasts they are enthusiastic in their defence of their breed! Have fun on your journey to becoming a registered breeder a good plan is to join your local breed club and go from there

I never said it wasn't I merely point out why I choose the way I do.

The 'others' were too late this time unfortunately Everyone has a closed mind to a certain extent, especially those who have already gone and bred their dog and are proud of their pups and suddenly after all their friends have told them how cute their pups are some random strangers are telling them they've done the wrong thing. Most people aren't even aware of the differences between registered and non registered breeders so as far as they know there is nothing more to learn about it, these days you speak to most people on the street they'll tell you their dog is purebred even if it's not papered because they've been told it's purebred and they've never been led to believe otherwise. I certainly don't expect any of those people to respond to those posts with something like "OMG have I done the wrong thing breeding these lovely puppies? Well thank you all so much for helping me see the light I'll never do such a terrible and evil thing ever again! Now lets all be friends " Nope I don't see that happening

Nothing worthwhile is ever a waste of time. Chasing a newbie out isn't worthwhile - it's not going to help the current litter, it's not going to help future litters and it certainly isn't going to help purebred dogs! Think on this: the people who changed their opinions here are the ones who stuck around, maybe they were smart and kept their mouths shut long enough to learn the ropes, maybe they just didn't happen upon a controversial topic while they were still new, but it's not often someone comes back after a thorough flaming right at the start.

Good point. Except in developing countries. They still treat their workers like Terry Guo treats his at Foxconn. I'm surprised more people arent taking swan dives off buildings. Now there's a question - how many vegans are buying ipads? I guess it doesnt really matter if humans are treated badly, does it. shove em out a toilet window and kid yourself it's ethical to eat silken tofu (that resembles a slug anyway). The upshot is, and Aussie knows it anyway, vegan diets are not natural for omnivores. Oops. I did too. Thanks Ash. Gawd human welfare is a whole other can of worms, animal welfare is political enough thanks! You know I rented an attatched flat from a hippie couple a few years ago the woman was fine with my dogs and horses (well sort of) but she told me that her partner "is more of a wild animal lover than a domestic animal lover" WTF??? I stayed long enough to find myself another place to live

Hey I'm not knocking you, Woof. I think it's great that fast food companies are getting people thinking. Good for you, but still laughing that people think they're getting 100% pure beef when they chomp into a 'two beef patty special sauce lettuce cheese pickles on a sesame seed bun. I think they're getting a little bit more than a company name that stamps it's product with beef, dont you? True, it's amazing what you can call a product and get away with it, although kudos for maccas they are very good at covering their arses being proactive in terms of welfare at least they audit their abattoirs so that's something. You do have a point. The way I figure it is that a "free range" chook may or may not have a good life, but I know that a cage one hasn't had one. We actually had an industry spin doctor from the (battery) egg chicken producers federation come to talk to my vet class last year & tell us why we shouldn't believe the hype from free range farmers, because cage chickens were just as happy as free range ones in their own way. His argument were... how shall I put this politely... not terribly convincing. Yeah there was a similar talk at the AAWS conference, it was interesting some of the points are valid re certain diseases and group size issues but overall definetly not convincing enough to justify the cage situation. I used to live down the road from a free range chook farm nothing nicer than riding past and seeing a whole bunch of chooks being chooks

It probably wasnt even free range. It's kinda like Maccas saying - 100% beef. Lol baby steps raz I guess I support the *ideal* of free range, we can iron out the details once it's more of a mainstream product I suppose. There are really no guarentees that the chooks in question had a better life, the only way to guarentee that is to raise and kill your own, sometimes I think it's more important to change consumer mentalities and get people used to paying more for what they believe is ethically farmed produce. It's a bit farcical but since I believe the consumer attitudes are the priority (and the most important indicator of long term success of the ideal) at this point in time I'm just happy to see something labelled as free range and actually getting a market share.

I don't know, most people I know that say they can't "afford" to buy free range eggs or free range meat do seem to manage to afford to buy ciggies, alcohol, chocolate, take away meals, cable TV, and other luxuries. So whether people choose to buy free range or not is in my experience less to do with what people can literally afford, and more to do with what their priorities are. Do you prioritise animal welfare over other luxuries in your budget, or don't you? It seems obvious to me that free range meat & eggs are never going to be as cheap as cage ones from the same species, since they cost more to produce. Not only does it cost more to house free range animals, but they take substantially more food to put on the same amount of carcass weight, since they use some of their energy for walking round & acting like animals instead of for growing. Those costs have to be passed onto the consumer, or the farmer won't make enough of a profit for free range farming to be worthwhile. Very true, ultimately the consumer choice dictates whether a method will be widely taken up, I had a free range burger from red rooster the other day it was delicious it was about $7 but a normal burger is usually about $5 so it's only $2 difference, sadly I don't think it will be permanent it seems to be more of a 'promotion' rather than permanently on the menu although I'm happy to be proven wrong I'd like it if there were free range options for all the products rather than just one type of burger. I noticed woolies had a free range cooked chook on their little hot bench the other day - the same price as the other cooked chooks! I love picking up a hot chook so it's awesome to have it available - hopefully this trend will continue I'd like to see ethically farmed meat across the board but this is one small step as they say

A little OT but I often wonder how much of the whole vegan/vego thing is influenced by the cost of ethically farmed meat? I find that when a lot of animal welfare arguments come up there are the red blooded meat eaters vs the tree hugging hippies and it's as though no middle ground exists. What I would like to know is how much does cost really put people off buying free range? I know many people who love animals but don't connect that with their purchasing choices in the supermarket. If push came to shove really there is no reason someone couldn't pay a travelling butcher to go and humanely slaughter a steer on the farm, if done well by a professional the steer is happily munching one minute and dead the next, you have fresh meat that you know has never been stressed by the travel and slaughter process and so that should really negate a lot of the ethical issues that arise from eating meat. I know that option would be out of the budget of many (most?) people but it's an area that interests me because studying animal welfare more often than not a lot of issue come down to money and how much people will pay for good welfare.

That's the thing I've noticed since getting my sibe his body language and expressions are so subtle that most other dogs simply don't pick up on it, I thought most dogs could understand each other pretty well but in actual fact there are a lot of 'crossed wires' (for want of a better word) in their communication with each other particularly between very different breeds. It actually made sense when I read the study which found that the more 'wolf-like' a dogs appearance was the more wolf behaviours the dog displayed as well, it suggested that those breeds further away from the appearance of the wolf showed more wolf pup behaviours whereas those closer to the wolf showed more adult wolf behaviours, the difference is really obvious when you see the sibe and the chi interacting which is why I watch them very closely but even then the sibes behaviour is often too subtle for me to understand! I also think we are so used to dogs being the way they are that we don't realise how truly remarkable it is that they are capable of communicating with an entirely different species with such incredible success, even taking into account the selective breeding element it's really quite astounding the level of communication that has been achieved between our two species and I think they read our behaviour much better than we read theirs! Sheridan don't you love that moment when you can actually see the cogs turning!

Welcome back

It's interesting and possibly relates to some of the stuff I've read in the past in relation to the dog-wolf differences, makes me wonder if the cognition is also related to the level of neotonisation that has occured in the various breeds. It would make sense if it did it's fairly common knowledge that the so called 'ancient' breeds are the ones which share the most DNA and the most wolfish behaivoural traits and of course they are very much the problem solving independent thinking types, which I personally believe is almost an oppositional trait to biddability which would correlate strongly with looking to humans for direction since the two rarely manifest strongly together in any one breed (at least as far as I can tell). I don't think one type can be called 'dumber' than the other both traits are desirable for very different reasons and while the more biddable dog may not be able to solve a complex problem his ability to read human direction so well is a talent and an intelligence in and of itself.