DeltaCharlie

Is anyone else going to be at Castle Hill for the mock comp tomorrow? I will have Charlie there, he only started flyball a few months ago but he should be ready for proper competitions soon so tomorrow will be a good test for him. We are with Parramatta (green and black). Come up and say hi if you see us :p

A few places in the united states are looking at restrictions on labs, a friend of mine is worried she may lose her dog. It has come about after everyone has started registering their pitbulls as staffy x lab. The poor labs have now been sucked into the whole BSL issue over there so how long would it take before people start ruining that breed as well? As for the Thai Ridgeback, I don't actually mind the look of it. Cant say I love it or think it is gorgeous, but I like it alot better than many breeds. They dont compare to a border collie though I couldn't see myself ever owning one.

Haha that sounds like me with poor Delta. Its a good thing she sits and watches the other dogs before her. I dont know how many times I have got annoyed that she didn't go where I wanted her to then realised she had it right and I had it wrong! The poor thing has learnt to jump horizontally because my signals are really late when I am lost I wont be around the circuits just yet, Ive got newish dogs at the moment. The one that was ready to compete (Cody) was hit by a car last year, Delta is only 14mnths old and Charlie wont go back to agility until his flyball is 100%. Don't feel bad lol. You are easy to remember- the only one with AmStaffs. I am just one of a billion competitors out there with border collies and similar mixes

I have heard about one at Werrington somewhere, Sunday mornings I think. If not I know there used to be one at Penrith Paceway and there is one at erskine park but I dont know the details on those sorry. Springwood is thursday nights but thats probably a half hour drive. Why not get them to give Dogs NSW a call? They will be able to tell them more exact info and contact details for each club.

My dogs do a whole range of sports but Charlie absolutely loves flyball and Im sure Delta will too when she starts. I think its because he doesn't have to think too much, just run, jump, and carry a ball. The atmosphere is unbelievable aswell. Dogs just go nuts- barking and lunging and getting really really excited which makes them all even more excited! As for the handlers, well it is much easier than any other sports. No commands to worry about, you dont have to worry about getting lost on a course, you just stand there and the dog does all the work for you!

so i just ask for "pet mince" from the butcher? i'm just a little suspicious about butchers because the couple of times i bought "doggy bags" from the local butcher, she had diarrhea (though she had no problems with their marrow bones). I cheat. I buy it from a guy at supply place and he is the one that deals with the butchers. So, I dont know exactly what to ask them sorry. I buy things like organs from the butcher though. They charge about 50c for them. Where do you live roughly? Someone might be able to point you in the direction of a good place to buy.

Thats it! I knew it started with an 'S' and had something to do with sulphar lol. Just couldn't remember the exact name of it

I would never feed them to my dogs. You also have the added risk that meat packaged as pet mince is allowed to have extra preservatives added to it which can actually be harmful to dogs (does anyone know of the top of their head what its called? Im drawing a blank). Better off sticking with pet mince from the butcher. Hardly costs a thing and is better for them. Basically they just mince everything that people don't want to eat rather than throwing it away.

Im hopeless with where places are in Sydney (where is matraville?) but I do flyball at parramatta. There are heaps of clubs around now though. Charlie has done hardly any obedience. Before flyball he had done 3 lessons of obedience and and about 6 agility. Id only owned him about 3 months but I knew he wouldn't go too far if I had ball with me. Pretty much a recall is all that I would say was needed. Jumping is pretty natural to a dog if there is an obstacle in front of them, but if he is used to looking for jumps rather than avoiding them it will probably help.

We work on passing by putting 2 jumps next to each other (remove the vertical sides from the centre so it looks like one really big flyball jump). Try to get the dogs crossing on the jump, do it slowly at first if you need to. Gradually bring the jumps closer together so that you have both dogs crossing on a single jump. The idea of the exercise is more for the runs where timing is out of whack and you end up with dogs crossing at the first jump. Its better to run one dog again than to be carded for aggression. It will still get your girl used to passing another dog very closely so Im sure it would help with your problem too.

Come to think of it I probably took it much slower than that. I think it started with being able to pat her bum without her growling, then progress to patting her head, then lightly brushing the bone while patting her head, then touching the bone, etc. Mind you she was only about 4mnths old so it is a completely different situation to tempting things with an adult sibe.

I cant remember exactly what I did with Delta but basically it meant if she wouldn't share she didn't get it at all. Any aggressive behaviour when I went near her bone and it was taken away for 5 mins. If she still growled/ snapped when I returned it then it went in the freezer and didn't come out until the next night. After a few days she let me take it and I returned it straight away. She soon realised that I would either give it back, move it to another place for her to chew it, or trade up for something even better.

I used to give Delta heaps of cold things to chew when she was teething. Frozen chicken necks, iceblocks made with a touch of gravy powder or stock, frozen kongs, etc. They seem to get much mouthier when they are teething (well so do humans) and the frozen stuff seems to numb their mouth a little. Delta stopped biting me once I started to give her lots to chew and the teething only lasted a month or so. Make sure you give them to her when she is not biting though If she starts biting and you distract her with a reward it can set you up for pain once those adult teeth are well and truly in!

Count me in if you get it organised again. Cafe Bones sounds good, at least I know where that is lol. I have a tendency to get lost easily...

Hahaha, yes I have often been told I am cheating by owning border collies Apparently it is the easy way to get through life with dogs lol Im thinking a fair bit in the future. I have split the dogs for now, both do herding, Charlie does obedience and flyball, Delta does agility twice a week. Charlie just couldn't handle agility and flyball at the same time- he would completely forget what he was doing at flyball (which is a fairly straightforward sport lol) so in the end I stopped his agility until he is 100% with the flyball. Delta had already done some obedience when I got Charlie so that is on hold for her at the moment while he works at it. She can learn flyball once Charlie is reliable with it. So, they both have many years of training for those sports in them but they love learning new things so Id like to keep teaching them a range of sports throughout their life rather than do the same ones.

As some of you know, I have Delta the Border Collie and Charlie the Kelpie/Cattle. We currently do obedience, agility, flyball, and herding. When Im a bit fitter Im looking at doing the Endurance Test with them. We have our hands full learning these at the moment but Im figuring that somewhere down the track Id like to do different sports with them and if I could do some foundation work with them now it might make it easier when the time comes. Im thinking frisbee would be the next step but I have no idea where that is held in Sydney. There are so many sports around but I have no idea what ones would suit a border collie or kelpie. Which sports do people see these breeds at? - I dont think either of them even realise they have a nose so tracking could be frustrating. - Delta would possibly chase a lure but I cant see her coming close to a sighthound. - Charlie would probably love dock diving but I dont even know if that is done in Australia If it is- where? What other sports are there? Some they cant do because of their breeds (earthdog, schutzund) but there must be others around.

He has become a teenager Some dogs go through it worse than others (like ppl I guess) but they all go through it. When Delta started formal obedience at 4 months she skipped the first 3 classes as she already knew what to do. By 6 months she was worse than the beginner dogs. She knew what to do, but she was starting to realise that there was more to the world than being glued to me. At about 8 months I lost the ability to call her if a dirt bike went past. She stills tears after them and is impossible to catch but at least her recall is reliable again so I can call her to me if I hear one coming. She is 13months and has just started to settle down again and do what she is told. Some dogs settle down sooner than this, others later, depends on the dog. You just have to ride it out. Keep working on the training and making it clear what you want and that you wont put up with nonsense. I found doing some backyard agility worked well with Delta at that age as it was something fun for her to do with mum. If she was good doing obedience for 10 mins she got to do some agility which worked better than treats. No jumping at this age, just tunnels, walking along planks of wood, etc. If he likes fetch you could do that instead (Delta isn't really a playing dog... she loves agility more than anything though). As for the everyday behaviours. I know of people who give dogs their own pillow to hump. Ive always had mine desexed by 6 months so I don't know how well it works. Pulling on the lead means no walkies. Many times I have made it as far as the letterbox before turning around and going back. You can try working on it in the backyard first. With the horse you might need to have him on a long lead when you are near horses. That way he cant chase them and he is close enough to give him rewards for not chasing them. I dont know of anyone who has had problems with desexing big dogs earlier than 12months. All the GSDs I know were done at 6 months and had no growing issues.

I get kangaroo from a local pet meat place. He gets it from a butcher (he has some deal where he gets all their off cuts and frames/necks etc that people dont eat for next to nothing). He minces all the kangaroo stuff. I sometimes get kangaroo tails from either Petbarn or my local coles but it is expensive so I don't do that often. No idea about rabbit though.

Was this it? Fido's Fleatrol

LOL, I knew we would get great info out of you. Do you base the diet on the Lonsdale's book? Sorry ;) Do you train your dogs? What food rewards do you use in training? To tell you the truth I have never read his book. I learnt everything from some good websites and by talking to nutritionists and breeders from America that I know through a different site. Mind you, I think they have gained their knowledge from Lonsdale's book so yeh that's where the info originated. My dogs do obedience, agility, flyball, and herding. Im going to turn into a slight hypocrite here but I actually train Delta with good quality dry dog and cat food! She goes mad for the stuff- I think its all the preservatives. Or I use frankfurts, cheese, cabonossi, bacon, etc. Usually my treat pouch contains a mixture of all these things so she has no idea what on earth is going to come out next. If dogs know what the reward will be they can decide whether or not it is worth working for. Charlie won't work for food, he is a pain in the arse. He works for a tennis ball although Im slowly transitioning that to a game of tug with a tennis ball attached to the rope. Obedience isn't easy to train if the reward is a game of fetch Back on topic... if you want to know more about it I can PM you. Im actually thinking about putting all the info onto a site so I don't have to find the old posts every time someone asks It has never occured to me to just save it somewhere but it is too much to retype every time.

Well, if we are getting into recommendations I agree with what most of the others have said. Usually I have people getting stuck into me for trying to educate people on food so I didn't this time, no matter how much I disagreed with the diet. I also missed the part about the dog being a puppy. For some reason I was thinking it was an adult who had been fed this diet its whole life. That changes a lot as puppies really need a good diet to be able to grow properly and healthily. I would never feed my dogs anything that is commercially produced. I would never feed my dogs the diet that you have described. I would never feed my dogs a BARF diet. Dogs do not need vegetables, they do not need pasta/rice/other such grains, and they do not need the preservatives that go along with preprepared food. Their diet should consist of 75% muscle meat, 15% bone, 10% organs (liver and kidney- the heart is a muscle). They should get fish once a week, raw egg once a week, and a tablespoon of yogurt every couple of weeks.

One thing that alot of people don't consider but has a huge impact on the information we receive is that commercial pet food companies sponsor the university courses for vets. So, what are they going to be taught? How bad commercial food is? I don't think so. They are going to be taught how balanced the diet is that is provided in the commercial, processed food. So, many vets then pass on the information to pet owners about how good it is to only feed commercial food. Basically, your vet probably believes that a mixture of dry and canned food is the best option. In saying that, if you buy a good quality brand, then I would rather feed the canned food than the kibble. If you buy a poor brand then your yard will quickly fill up with poo. My dogs are fed an entirely raw meat diet (prey model diet) but when I see the vet I tell them I feed them "mainly dry food, some raw egg sometimes, and the occassional bone" because I am sick of trying to argue with the vets. They are always telling me how incredibly healthy my dogs look and how wonderful their teeth and coats are. Thats all the reassurance I need to continue what I am feeding them. If your dogs are doing well with what you are currently feeding them then keep doing it.

Our christmas party was for both those who do flyball and those who do agility, so why not combine the 2 for some fun and games? We had so much fun we didn't even bother setting up any other games- just ran backwards and forwards all night Charlie is the black dog running around in a santa outfit. He is also at 29secs. There are none of Delta running but she is the border collie waiting impatiently in the background while the little brown santa and Polly the 3-legged pom are running. A big thank you to Terry for making the video and letting me put it on youtube.

If I absolutely had to feed my dogs something that was commercially produced I would feed them Eukanuba. It incredibly expensive but IMO the only one worth feeding.

I get the homebrand mackeral too! As well as tuna, salmon and sardines. Mine get fish once a week (cat included), occassionally more if I was too lazy to go to the butcher when the freezer ran out of meat.