Miss Danni

What Gareth said And wait. Give him a good quality zinc additive such as Value Plus (the one with 33mg of zinc, cant think of the name sorry) and be patient until at least 9 months. And make sure he isn't overweight.

Dogs can get respiratory problems just like people and they also get hay fever.

Jean Donaldson is excellent, I highly recommend any of her books. Get her books from DogWise online and they ship very quickly.

We love our Wubba, but it isn't for unsupervised use, only for play interaction with me. I like the look of the Cuz tho.

Global Pet Products are the importer of Innova and they are the wholesale arm of Pets Paradise. Bates are also part of the PP group, he holds the master franchise for the ACT.

Clicker training is great fun and best of all, it's hard to do any harm when you are using a clicker. So even if you stuff things up, and reward or mark a behaviour that you didn't mean to, it doesn't matter. Cant say that about the old traditional check-chain methods. Here's a tip to get your clicker timing - I trained my handlers to do it before they were ever allowed to start clicking a dog! Take your clicker outside and have a friend with a tennis ball. Get the friend to toss the tennis ball straight up in the air and you try to click at the absolute top of the parabola, at the moment that the ball is in suspension. Most people are way out to start with, but after a few goes, they get better and more accurate. If you then apply that accuracy to your dog training, you wont go too far wrong. And for your puppy, a great way to start is 101 Uses for a Cardboard Box. You encourage creativity in your pup with this game. Put a large cardboard box (appropriate to the size of the pup, large enough for him to be able to get in it) in the middle of the room and then sit in your favourite chair and let the pup in. (I am assuming that you have already "charged" the clicker and the pup knows what the click means). You then click the pup for any interaction/behaviours that he offers with the box. Great fun. I hope that you enjoy clicker training as much as I do.

You cant "diagnose" HD through any other method than an X-ray. There are really no external "symptoms" that are HD specific, including lameness or reluctance to rise etc, that clearly indicate HD. Many dogs with severe HD show no symptoms whatsoever. Some dogs with mild HD carry on like pork chops. And the way that a dog walks is NOT an indication of HD. If the vet is talking about the hip "growing" into the socket, it might be that the x-ray showed subluxation, which can sometimes be improved with exercise such as swimming and diet. If the vet is talking about any other kind of "growing" int the socket, I'd change vets. And get an expert opinion from a vet with experience in the field, as the others have said.

Hi Stormie, we buy Biotin in tablet form from the Chemist or Go Vita health food stores. One tablet per GSD per day. The brand we use is Natures Own and you get 100 tablets in a bottle for around $13. We also supplement with Zinc. Biotin is used a lot in Germany to maintain coat and also to bring coat back faster after molting. We are happy with the results that we have had and on one of our bitches it made a marked difference.

Ours also love banana, we have to be very quiet when we peel one if we aren't intending to share it! They are also quiet partial to raw zucchini. But they will eat just about anything, we haven't really found anything that they absolutely refuse to eat, although strawberries need to be "just right" :D