RuralPug

Drool! She is totally gorgeous!! My Mastiff was my heart dog, and if I could afford the feed bill, I'd have another in a heartbeat!!

From pedigree Dogs breeding point of view, the "recreational breeder" backpedal isn't a backpedal at all, just lip service: I quote, from Steve's link above, Minister Pulford: "Recreational breeders will not be called a domesticanimal business but will have to comply with the same legal requirements as a domestic animal business — thatis, they will need to, firstly, register with the local council and, secondly, comply with the mandatory Code ofPractice for the Operation of Breeding and Rearing Businesses 2014 by 10 April 2018." Talk about lip service! .And all that crap about this government meets its election commitments (only when they want to, obviously, and to hell with consequences that ruin the intent of the commitment.). Always fun to watch politicians in-fight, especially when the outcome affects us in our homes. Sigh.

I really don't think that the yard size matters if the owners are dog savvy and will take pains to provide the dog with daily enrichment and exercise suitable to the breed. That said, it is true that a bored Akita is a destructive Akita, so if you have any doubt of their commitment then you are well within your rights to refuse permission.

It seems pretty clear what amendments to the Bill will be introduced on the 22nd, judging from this. Time to fight it in the Upper House.

To be honest, I would not agree to take the pup but instead I would point out to the breeders that sending pups to new homes before eight weeks is AGAINST THE LAW. It is their responsibility to keep the pups in the nest until 8 weeks of age and they are liable to be prosecuted if they don't. If they continue to insist that their holiday is more important than the well-being of this litter, then I would report them - to the State Govt dept responsible for the laws. to the RSPCA and to the ranger in the council area they live in. You might end up being a hero to the whole litter.

https://www.google.c...iw=1920&bih=971 so? Tibetan's don't have short hair on their ears like the breed photos? and that maltese looking thing is actually a Tibetan Spaniel is it? asal it appears that you have misunderstood. mita was not questioning your statement that the dog pictured was neither a Tibetan Spaniel or a Chihuahua. She was quite clearly pointing out that Tibbies could indeed become matted if not cared for, despite the quote about easy care coat that you posted. I think it is important that fallacies or misleading information about our favorite breeds is corrected, don't you? Edited to say I've stuffed up the quotes, sorry but I think most people will sort it out....

Basically, only thing you need to do when introducing new members of your furry family to each other is supervise, supervise, supervise. Puppies especially tend to be full on, so a playpen, as tdx mentioned above, is an easy way to keep them safely separate but well aware of each other for those times when you cannot put 100% of your attention to supervising.

haha no not a teaspoon at a time...that was the total size of the treat food before cutting it up!! So like 2cm of sausage or a cube (1.5cm) of cheese cut up into smaller pieces, i assume similar to a stock cube? (cut up into very small pieces so at least 8 pieces from those) Phew!! That sounds much better!

Exactly right. This why it is shortsighted for Dogs Vic to be campaigning for exemptions for their members. Instead, they should take the reasons they believe their members are better breeders than Joe Blow public and puppy farmers (reasons limited to community good and animal welfare, forget the 'purebred' angle in this case) and campaign for the bill to be redesigned to disallow puppy and kitten sales from anyone not trained to breed and rear litters ethically. The Bill goes wrong in treating puppies and kittens like merchandise and forcing breeders to factory produce as a business. Instead, breeders should be licenced after demonstrating a knowledge of basic genetics, animal husbandry, the correct methods for rearing well socialized puppies and/or kittens and what information to give to puppy/kitten buyers and in what form it should be given. The cost to be covered by a once only test fee and then an annual or multi-annual licence fee (similar to drivers' licences). Dogs Vic breeders already have to pass an exam, lets do it properly from a community point of view. Being unlicenced, or losing your licence for proven infringements will mean you are not permitted to sell puppies or kittens under 12 months of age. Additionally, a broodstock fitness test should be designed for each species and breeders MUST have each potential sire and dam undergo this test (probably best administered by vets) at their own expense. The purpose of certifying each and every sire and dam would be to exclude breeding from stock with deformities of structure or temperament. The devil is in the details here, but that is another battle. The most important factor of all, the cost of implementing these laws (which the current Bill passes to municipal government) could be minimal if certified rescues were permitted to seize and rehome any puppies or kittens produced by unlicenced breeders. The likes of RSPCA and Lort Smith etc. would eagerly do all the investigating and happily report the unlicensed one to be fined heavily by the court system. Those members of the public currently frustrated by the deaf ears their attempts to report infringements of current legislation - advertising of underage and unmicrochipped puppies for example - would simply report to a certified rescue instead, who would leap to seize cute saleable babies. Genuine accidental litters would still be seized by rescue, but no court case and fine for the owners (unless it happened more than once. ) That is what I think should happen. As stated, the devil is in the details but get the correct framework going and fight the details afterwards.

And for when you ARE at home...baby gates are truly your friend, sometimes you will want toddler and puppy on opposite sides of a gate. Get two or three. If you have an open plan house ,just buy a couple of extra panels (really not expensive) when you buy your vebo pen and it can double as a indoor fence, keeping toddlers and puppies away from fireplaces, audio visual equipment etc.etc. Maybe I'm old fashioned, but I still train puppies that if they must go indoors, to use newspaper. I have for small puppies, a puppy pad holder that I line thickly with newspaper. For bigger puppies, an underbed storage plastic tub, which L line with a couple of large puppy pads (the cheap ones from Spoils) and then cover those thickly with newspaper. The one time I tried puppy pads in the puppy pad holder they were ripped to shreds... newspaper is much less attractive to play with! To give puppy the idea, you wipe a tissue over where they have just weed, and place the tissue under the newspaper. It is best to wipe over any accidents that are in the wrong spot with vinegar and water and then spray with an enzyme cleaner such as Urine Off or similar. The light puppy pen will suit your puppy when a baby and would be fine on tiles, or even on carpet with a large bit of floor vinyl offcut underneath. While your puppy is very small, in the pen indoors when you are out. By the time puppy is a few months older, you might have wired off a sections of the huge yard to be his/hers alone, complete with a shelter of some sort and a plastic clamshell sandpit.... Of course, we are all hanging out for pictures of puppy once arrived!!!

A teaspoon at a time>>>>> that would be a huge training treat for a Mastiff even! Find a stock cube, and cut it neatly into four equal pieces. Study the size of one of those. Memorise it. That is the maximum size I would be giving her....

It is my understanding that Facebook commerce refers to not buy/swap/sell groups but to FB pages with the F-commerce app, where you click on the FB page itself to purchase from the business running the page. It doesn't work very well by all reports, whch is why there are not very many pages with the app!

Thank you! I needed that laugh!! It is worth watching the whole eight plus minutes!

RSA, have you tried cat kibble as a reward treat? Comes highly flavoured, in very small pieces and fat content is usually around only 10%. These days you can even get grain free varieties if your dog is sensitive to grain. And it's not expensive to buy - if the dogs don't like it, wild birds will eat it so it won't be wasted!

Firstly a vet check to make sure that his digestion is okay. If it is, then it might be simply hunger and you might be able to stop it by adding calorie free additives to his meals to bulk them out, such as green beans or pumpkin. If he still persists you can try adding bromelain to his meals. This is available in fresh pineapple, more conveniently in meat tenderiser powder, or better still from your vitamin store (check with your vet for correct dosage).

There are a couple of ways that I secure crates. I use doggy seatbelts to extend the seatbelts so they fasten around/over the crate, for small and medium crates on the back seat. I have a wagon with a dog barrier so larger crates are secured with bungee straps to the dog barrier. If you have airbags in the front passenger side, it is best to avoid placing a crate on the front passenger seat. The back seat airbags are not such a problem.

If the wound is not completely healed, I personally would think twice before I took the dog out anywhere much, entered at a show or not. Once it is completely closed, with no scabbing I would show, whether or not the coat had grown back. Ethically, if surgery was to correct a fault in conformation, patella luxation or dysplasia etc. then one would desex the dog and no longer show. If however, the surgery was due to an accident, e.g. swallowed a foreign object or injury, then there is no problem.

It kind of depends on the door whether installation will be easy. Hollow core doors are quite messy - leave it to the experts! If you have a solid wooden door though, it should be fairly straightforward, most commercial doors usually come with installation instructions. If you have sliding glass doors to the back yard, then those Pig In Mud type dog doors are excellent. What I used for my darling Mastiff girl, was one of those old fashioned half wooden, half-fly screen doors in the laundry. I simply removed the bottom panel and added heavy plastic strips to deter insects. When I want the dogs kept out of the laundry, I simply close the solid door, which normally stands open and they enter and exit through the screen door. I do have to replace the fly strips occasionally when I am fostering a particularly naughty pup!

Have you tried the rapid zigzag walk? Throw in a few random U - turns as well. For some pullers, this works like magic as they suddenly realise that they'd better keep an eye an what you're doing or get constantly left behind! But if he is not so pulling so much as simply lunging at distractions, then possibly you need to concentrate on changing his response to distraction. Look up the "Look at That!" or LAT training (there is plenty of info if you Google), this may help.

Agree with previous responses. Plenty of mixes scruffies in rescue! If you are after a small dog with that look, check out the Affenpinscher - but be careful, they are a LOT of dog in a small package!

It looks like an abrasion - have you seen him rubbing or scratching it? I can't see any swelling or I might have said an allergic reaction to an insect bite or something. I would keep it clean until the vet visit and keep an eye on him.

You're still missing my point. The pug's extreme head shape causes it problems, the greyhound's extreme head shape benefits it because it occurred "naturally" (as in, was not selected for specifically) as a result of selecting for a certain function. No one wants pugs changed just because they look extreme. Looks have nothing to do with it. In fact, I think most people would agree that the squished faces of the brachy breeds are pretty cute. What is not cute is the resulting health problems. Claiming that it's all AR conspiracy to do away with purebred dogs doesn't help because it's ignoring that there are massive welfare issues that need to be addressed. The AR movement may well want dog ownership done away with but that doesn't change the fact that many brachy breeds suffer health issues as a result of form. My italics. I keep saying that it is quite possible to breed Frenchies, Pekes, Pugs, Bulldogs, Bostons etc that don't have breathing problems and you keep saying that it is impossible - that it is inherent in their construction. Do I really have to list the flyball and agility champions etc to get this fact through? The truth is that popularity and careless breeding to cash in on popularity, plus that percentage of show breeders who do not put health first have exacerbated the potential potential problems which can occur with this popular head shape. You are sounding like a person who is saying that if the head shape wasn't allowed, then the problem wouldn't occur, therefore disallow the head shape. I keep saying this is throwing the baby out with the bathwater. Should we change the GSD standard because of the high incidence of dysplasia? Should we change the standards of all the giant breeds because of their short life spans? Change the standards of long backed breeds because of their propensity to spinal injuries? Or does it make more sense to concentrate on breeding for good health within the standards? If you insist on changing standards, that is the road to eliminating individual breeds until you are left with no extreme anything, no different anything. It is harder, but certainly not impossible to select for breeding stock which neither display nor produce offspring with extreme brachy syndrome and this is what should be happening. I suppose we could tackle it the same way we tackle dysplasia, heart problems, inherited eye problems etc etc. - although health testing for these things doesn't seem to be very popular outside of the ANKC. (which, remember is only a small percentage of puppies bred in Australia in any given year.) Why not sort out a simple fitness test across the board and hit ALL the problems, (or as many as can be tested for in a breeding age adult) including extreme brachy syndrome, and make a pass a requirement before any puppies are permitted to be sold - by anyone? Whether you are a puppy farmer, a BYB, an ethical breeder or anything else, if your broodstock has heart problems, loose patellas, breathing problems or hip or elbow dysplasia etc etc etc - it will not pass the fitness test. Better minds than I can sort out carrier, severity and clear by parentage genetics for problems where full knowledge is available. Yes it will cost breeders money to have their stock tested. Ethical breeders are already doing these tests and ensuring that health problems are not perpetuated. Perhaps this is a chance for them finally to be recognised for that. Concentrating on extreme brachy syndrome won't necessarily cut down on the numbers of puppies being produced with colour dilution alopecia or hip displaysia. If something needs doing, let it be done across the board and not singling out any one group of breeders, or any one group of breeds - or any one health problem. I can't figure out any other way to say these things. I am really just repeating myself, and won't comment further unless I have something different to add.

And thank god for that. Laws concerning animals need to be based on science and our understanding of their behaviour, not on personal preferences of people who don't know enough about the breed but still claim to know what's best for the dogs. I stand corrected. I hadn't realised that had not gone through. I know you think it is best because of the high prey drive of greys, but there are many dogs NOT greyhounds that have just as high a prey drive and there aren't any muzzle laws for them, unless they first demonstrate a problem. Not all greys are unsafe in public, whether or not they have undergone the GAP green collar program. I don't understand why you think that it is fair for one high prey drive to be singled out, and others (plus greyhound crosses) to go scot free. And I do worry also that some public think the muzzles mean that the greys are human aggressive due to muzzles and there go some potential good homes. But this is not the right thread to discuss this I apologise for off topic.

Run free at the Bridge, beautiful boy. My deepest condolences Maddy, your love for him shines through in your tribute. Thank you for giving him the best life possible.

Maddy, please read my posts again. I am not denying that there is a problem. I am denying that changes to standards is the way to approach it. I am saying that the problem will not be rectified by concentrating on ANKC breeders, and banning or barring entire breeds. What I am trying to say, and obviously too clumsily to be understood, is that if your let the AR mob get their way and bar particular extremes then the precedent has been set to bar other extremes. The end of that road is undifferentiated breeds. You can stick your head in the sand all you like and say "my breed is safe", no one can stop you - but don't complain later if you hear "I told you so". The best breeders can achieve a brachy that fits the standard without health problems, just as the best breeders can do in every breed. The answer to the problem is to ensure that ALL breeding stock, no matter what the breed or cross, passes fitness tests. Why would you find that a problem? Surely you feel that your breeds can pass with flying colours? AR people have had success with the "divide them to fall" strategy (the PDE show proved that). Saying that all brachys suffer from extremes of brachy syndrome is akin to saying that all pitbulls are vicious and untrustworthy - the same principle applies. It is the individual fitness that should be the measuring stick and not generic typing.