RuralPug

Great advice has been given. I really, really recommend a veterinary behaviourist, this is a job for a specialist, no matter how good your generalist vets are they will be the first to admit that a specialist is better in their speciality. In your case I would not recommend a non-veterinary behaviourist. Agree with PK about getting a basket style muzzle, wire or plastic, which will allow the dog to pant, to drink and to take small treats while wearing the muzzle. Soft muzzles are fine for indoor restraint for grooming o examination but really are not suitable for while the dog is exercising. There are excellent descriptions of muzzle types here. Let us know what the vet behaviourist recommends. Best of luck and I admire your determination to instil trust so she isn't constantly triggered to keep you safe from every other living thing.

It may be the coat and markings, but my first thought was Chin or Chin cross, but when I looked closer, Chin body shape and head shape is not really there and I'm more inclined to think the coat and pattern are from a Papillon ancestor. You can usually pick Tibbie crosses by the foot shape. You have been given great advice already re the belly band and anxiety. The only thing left to say is give it a bit of time - displacement anxiety is quite common in foster dogs and may clear up quite quickly once a routine is established and of course having a happy Billy right there will also help, even if they don't interact much at first. About not comforting an anxious dog - my own experience is that the more you can show that you are in control of the situation and are not worried yourself, the less anxious the dog will be and the sooner trust will build. This doesn't mean that you ignore the anxiety - but your body language and tone of voice should indicate that you are a bit surprised at it, because there is nothing to worry about. I like to give a quick reassuring pat, and a comment like "You doofus, there's no problem!" which acknowledges the emotion without supporting a cause. Well done for venturing into foster care!

The greek yoghurt IS a mild probiotic. :) If you want a stronger one, then either choose one specifically designed for canines or ensure that the major culture used is one of the bifidos as those are the most common good bacteria in the canine gut. Edited to add - if you can change her diet to eliminate most carbohydrates and simple sugars the yeast will die back much faster. Yeast blooms need to be treated inside and out. There are any number of home made starve-out-the yeast diets if you Google, they are similar in many ways to raw feeding.

I agree that not all Amstaffs have skin conditions and most will act as alert dogs and bark when someone comes. Being a decent size bull breed, that is enough to deter most would be intruders. One would hope the OP does not want a dog that guards the property by rushing people - it is not unknown for police officers to fear being rushed and shoot the dog. In Victoria, where the OP is NOT, Amstaffs are legally considered pitbulls unless they have a certified ANKC pedigree (rolly eyes here at stupid BSL). There seems to be a growing trend up north, where the OP is, to include Amstaffs in pig dog breeding, so I would think that they would cope reasonably well with the climate there.

Sorry, Gremlins.

Some lines are more laid back than others. She will need to avoid the working lines. No puppy or adolescent is really laid back, so she does need to be aware that she will have to wait 18 months to 2 years before she gets a nice laid back companion. Cockers do need regular clipping or thinning. Once every 6 weeks keeps them looking neat with a daily brush and comb in between times. She does need to talk to breeders, saying that wants a laid back one and they should be able to let her know the right place to start looking. I am thinking if she wants the spaniel look, but less grooming and a lesser wait to a laid back dog (toy breeds mature earlier) then she may want to consider a Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. Significantly smaller, but with less coat and a reputation for being a calm house dog.

I would be trying the medication (don't assume that the dog will need to be on it for the rest of his life - it is likely, that with the right sort of very gentle and gradual exposure to anxiety-provoking stimuli, he will become confident enough to only need medication when a major change is anticipated). Also I would be working closely with a vet behaviourist. Dogs in panic mode are not going to respond to treats or reassurance, they need to be taken further away from what is causing the panic. The medication will suppress brain chemicals that result in anxiety which will give you a chance to demonstrate to him that the situation is not a problem after all. This can be a long slow process but is so worth it! This might mean that before he ever goes out in the car again uncrated you will have to sit with him in the doorway and watch the road. It will take a while, but once he is happy and confident in the doorway, then next time you can progress a few paces onto the front lawn. Once he is confident there, next step the driveway, then to sitting in the car etc. It might take doing each step a couple of times a day for a week or so before moving onto the next step. If he is anxious even at the first stage, the doorway, then work on duration. Start with 30 seconds in the doorway, ignoring any symptoms of anxiety and then reward him at the end of the 30 seconds. Repeat this a couple of times every day until he remains calm for the entire 30 seconds, then increase the duration to 45 seconds. You get the drift. If he is already quite okay to walk out of the house and into the car, you are ahead of the game and things are not as bad as you think! Good luck with your boy. It will take a lot of determination and study on your part before he ever becomes the dog who enjoys going out on a walk with you - he might always prefer to be the dog who stays home. But it is really important that you work on his anxiety re the car. For his own sake he needs to be worked with until he feels safe in the car, so that you can take him places when necessary.

Actually I would trust a random greyhound with chooks before I would trust randoms in a LOT of other breeds LOL but I just wanted to make the point that in many instances, rural dwellers need the dog to have access to the chooks to protect them from feral cats and foxes etc. The ferals have been known to enter "secure" chookyards and wreak havoc while laughing at the madly barking dog locked outside.

No, they are certainly NOT mutually exclusive. The training that you are doing will mean that your dog, although happy and excited to see you, will wait until you are ready before giving that excited greeting. Trust me, if you are entering the house with an armful of groceries or a package of fragile items you do not want an over the top jumping madly welcoming dog until you have had a chance to put your packages down safely! +

The best family dog is a well trained, well socialized one! Which of course begs the question, which breeds are the easiest for the average family to manage so that (given a good start in life from a good breeder) they will end that way? The answer will depend on the family's lifestyle and willingness to commit to a level of interaction with their dog(s). An active family, willing to go the extra mile to include their dog in all their activities and ensure that the dog has plenty of mental stimulation and exercise CAN manage high prey drive/high work drive and/or highly dominant type breeds. A family with full time work and school commitments is more likely to succeed with a lower needs breed that will be reasonably content with a walk or two each day and a couch to snooze on while awaiting the family members to return home. Many breeds will not reach this stage until adulthood, so it is important for families to realise that puppies and especially adolescent dogs will have higher needs than adults. Another factor in choosing a family dog is that many breeds do much better (in the full time family scenario) if they have a companion pet. Therefore whether or not there is, or soon will be, other pets in the family needs to be taken into consideration. Lastly, what some people do not want to hear, not every lifestyle is suited to having a family dog. They may need to wait until there is time in their lives - it is unfair on a dog to be treated as a back yard ornament.

Shape is more important than weight. If she has a visible tuck up she is probably not overweight at all. From your description she is certainly not obese, and just because she is loaded in front and not rear doesn't mean that she is too fat. Also remember that muscle weighs more than fat and a strongly muscled dog may bow the scales past the breed recommendation - which for some reason, is all that some vets think about.

Agree with Roova, make sure that the diet is a balanced one. Chicken necks are great as part of a balanced diet. For a baby puppy they can be given whole, as a chew, but always supervise. For pugs six months or older, they are better chopped into several pieces for those that like to inhale their food. Chicken carcassses, also great when included in a balanced diet, will encourage some chewing even from the most dedicated inhalers. Marrowbones are great for recreational chewing, but too much of the rich marrow can sometimes lead to digestive upsets so if your butcher has split the bone lengthwise, scoop out most of the marrow, freeze, and add it in small quantities to their meals. Roo tail is absolutely wonderful if she can get hold of it, the vertebrae make great chews and you pick the size to suit your dog. :)

Must resist....must resist...do not pretend your Pug has a leg injury just so you can apply the sock bandage. pug socks

Exactly my point! Seeing a tiny percentage of a breed will does not give a basis for making statements about the entire breed. Even if we assume that any diagnostic scores have been eliminated from the statistics, then you are still stuck with the problem that the percentage of breeders who choose to hip score is unknown. Because we know that testing and scoring costs money, it is only likely to be done for one of those two reasons: diagnosis of injury or scoring for a certificate. In how many breeds would that mean a majority of dogs are scored? I was active in the dog world in 1974 and hip scoring for assessment was not commonly done, as it is by good breeders today.

Same thing again. Not a survey but data collected from "Breeds having at least 100 evaluations January 1974 through December 2015" Notice that less than 1000 bulldogs and same with pugs were tested over that 50 year period. Compare that with almost 250,000 labradors, 145,000 goldies and 115,000 GSDs. I think it is very reasonable to assume that, especially in the first couple of decades in that time frame, when hip scoring of potential sires and dams was rarely, if ever, done as a matter of course, the x rays were for diagnostic purposes. So I'm reading those stats as saying "Of 774 LAME Bulldogs, 73.4% were rated dysplastic. Of those 774, 126 were born in the last five years, of which 69.8% were rated dysplastic." I see from the inclusion of Rat Terrier and Toy Australian Shepherd that those stats originated in the US which means that the Bulldog mentioned is what we call the American Bulldog, not to be confused with the British version in the newsreel. The two breeds are quite dissimilar in size and structure. And did you notice that Tibetan Spaniels have worsened from 10.8% dysplastic over 50 years to 38.5% dysplastic for those born in the last five years? My goodness, are those US breeders breeding FOR dysplasia?? I would accept that the Finnish data quoted by Sandgrubber did indeed refer to the British Bulldogs, however in my opinion both sets of stats don't reflect dysplasia in the breeds, rather the chances of lameness in those breeds being caused by dysplasia.Quite different from what percentage of an entire breed is lame. Now if someone did hip scores on say 1,000 totally random dogs of each breed I would be much more impressed with the resulting statistics! Or if someone took those US stats and amended the number of dogs scored by the popularity of the breed (I'm not quite sure how that could be done) then we might look at the result of that as being breed representative. Edited 'cos I can't count.

I don't have a vested interest here but I just point out that if you have reported those stats correctly, out of a group of over 1,000 only 32 were hip scored. That is something like 3% and I would have to suspect the selection factor - I would guess that the only reason that they were xrayed and scored was a visible limp or impairment, I.e. the xrays were for diagnosis, not scoring for breed factors. Common sense tells us that if you at only going to look at scores of dogs visibly lame you are going to skew the data. On the flip side, if I am wrong and there were 1116 bulldogs hip scored and only 32 did not have A grade hips then this breed obviously does not have a problem with hip dysplasia. I have no problem with the mortality data, only 16% living to healthy breed expectancy is very sad indeed. Longevity and health should be on every breeder's list of aims.

You mean misusing it. Someone has been carefully studying corporate motivational gobbledegook. I have mixed feelings about what is happening at Petrescue. They certainly do provide a service, a good one. And they provide it to both rescuers and adopters free of charge. I have absolutely zero qualms about them raising funds to continue to do that, or to extend or improve those services. But I admit to being somewhat afraid that they will abuse their own hard earned reputation by becoming one of the big money hungry charities that become so top heavy that they lose sight of their original goal. Donation gathering ability is highly prized in the charity executive employee resume as is the establishment of expensive projects. Not saying that that is the case here, but there have been so many changes lately, and it is not always clear to me how those changes are going to improve things for pets or adopters or rescuers.

Ah yes, I found their website. Enjoy your new puppy!

I didn't realise that you could show mini Foxies Rozzie - or can you only show them at breed club events? I know you can show Tenties at all breed shows.

I'm not even in a border town and I don't travel with Malcolm, but seeing posts about dogs who went missing or were stolen and wound up in other states, and even hearing from my own vet about people bringing home lost dogs found on holidays, I didn't want to risk it. I did some research on DOL and Central Animal Records came up as a good option. I also liked that I could change my details online. I'd still keep them on the NSW database even if it's not a legal requirement (I feel like it might be?) as I can imagine some NSW people not bothering to check other registries if they couldn't read the chip. Edited to add that I've seen recommendations not to add dogs to all/too many registries as you may forget to update them all. Yes. This one is my favourite as well, I recommend it wherever I can. :)

This stinks really. If you're travelling interstate with your NSW dog and there is an accident and he gets lost, his chip won't read. If you move interstate, ditto. QLD has a state run registry too (Homesafe ID) but they do share their data nationally. NSW own site recommends registering a NSW chip on one of the national registries if you live near their border! Link didn't work sorry, it is www.olg.nsw.gov.au/content/should-you-list-your-dog-or-cat-privately-operated-national-microchip-database

LOL I saw a lady with a lovely unclipped Griffon (rough) and complimented her, only to be told by her that it was a Pug x LC Chihuahua- she was certain of that because that's what she was told by the RSPCA (gippsland somewhere) when she adopted it! Unusual to have someone with a purebred argue that it is a cross!! I suggested she get an opinion from Griffon breeders online, it definitely was a Griff! I have been known to be wrong - one day I was admiring a gentleman's dog in a pet store and asked him if she was a Rottweiler cross? Um, no - she was a titled purebred Tibetan Mastiff LOL

Thistle my recommendation to anyone outside NSW who owns a dog with a NSW chip is to transfer the details of that chip to one of the national registries. Central Animal Records is my favourite, they are very responsive and won't change chip details without trying to contact former owners. There are also Australian Animal Registry (not too bad) and National Pet Register (wouldn't recommend them). Of course, what we all want is a single national registry...

Please don't shape your enquiry to fit what you think the breeder wants. You may have decided on your chosen breed, but bear in mind that the breeder is most likely to have a LOT more experience with that breed than you. They want to hear your expectations - then they will either fix your misconceptions or praise you for your depth of research. An honest breeder will tell you whether or not the breed is suited to meet your expectations. Perhaps a puppy would not be best for your particular circumstances, but an adult might suit. A good breeder wants to know how you heard about them, and they want to feel that they can trust you to be honest and forthright. They want you to actually LISTEN to what they are saying, or to absorb what they are writing. Show respect and be honest and you will find the breeders are willing to help. Phoning up at 5.30am and squawking "Ya got any pups?" will not win you many friends at all. (That is a general observation, I'm not accusing the OP of doing that!) If phoning, start with "Is this a good time to discuss with you the process for getting a [insert breed here]?" Most will be happy to arrange a time for a call if right then is not convenient - we all can talk the head off an iron pot about our breed once we get going!!

Powerlegs where are youuuuuuuuu? Just about the right size for those you tend to take on. :)