RiverStar-Aura

Do you think the treat trick will work for my pup? He's keen to play fetch but once he gets the ball/toy/whatever he continues to zoom past me until he eventually comes back and of course then he won't give me the ball/toy/whatever.

For my Aussie Terrier Poochie I'd always use a wash high in oatmeal because she had really bad skin and smelled foul because of it (after 13 years we changed vets and he discovered she had seasonal mange mites the poor bugger). I can't remember off the top of my head what I use now but it's oatmeal and baking soda and it keeps my new pup smelling fresh for weeks. The lil mite hadn't had a bath for about 4 months because of the weather and I have no hose connection access to hot water and people were always telling me how clean he looked. But like some others have suggested, try bathing less and use a whiting shampoo. I know Perfect Coat does a black and white shampoo and it's available in Big W. Personally I prefer the more citrus smelling ones and when I had hydrodog come and wash my Zeus-ling I had him smelling like tutti-frutti!

I know my 13 month old puppy barks at night when I haven't exercised him enough and I've come to realise that it's stupid of me to expect a pup as lively and active as he to sleep through the night with all that energy burning away inside. He's an outside dog because my mum won't let him in the house but I'm curious about this "crate training". I've seen the term around the forums a lot and am wondering what exactly it is. Is it just like teaching a dog to sleep in a closed kennel (but made of something less solid than wood I assume) and is it as easy as it sounds? Zeus is pretty good though because at night we have him on a 10m long lead, which is attached to the wall and he knows once the lead is on and he's had his dinner that it's bedtime. He can reach water and sleep in his kennel comfortably, the only thing the lead does is stop him running to the side of the house and barking at everything that moves. Do you think the lead is overkill and that perhaps he shouldn't be "chained" at night? We all just feel that by stopping him from ratting around the backyard actually staying close to kennel is better.

I still find it amazing that in today's highly educated society, people still act like morons when it comes to animals. Just because an animal, dog or otherwise, has been domesticated, it doesn't make it harmless. Under certain circumstances any dog can become vicious (even those cute little fluffies!!) and from what I've experienced at local off-leash parks, it seems to be the small molly-coddled dogs who go after the bigger ones. Call it small dog syndrome or whatever, I trust these little annoyances less than the local bull mastiff cross and staffys who tend to be big sweethearts. Mostly I think all humans need animal education and to stop assuming that pet = friendly because that's not always entirely true.

Thank goodness I'm not the only one with this problem. I've probably spent hundreds of dollars replacing toys for my Zeus-ling. He absolutely guts stuffed toys in minutes of me giving them to him and I've tried rubber/plastic chew toys and he won't have a bar of them (I think it's because there's no 'snow' inside). I'm now best friends with the cheapo stores and I find he loves the $1 stuffed toys as much as the Big W $15-$20 ones and because the toys are cheaper, I can afford to buy him more treats! Is there a way to stop this destructive behaviour or is it just how certain dogs play? I've noticed he's not really a 'ball dog' -- he'll fetch one but gets bored easily. I just get tired of giving him a new toy only to have him destroy it completely in 2 minutes then be done with it; he won't even look at it once the stuffing's gone. *sigh*