Greytmate

Rehomable is extremely subjective. But "not rehomable" can sometimes be more easily defined. We know that the best indicator of future behaviour is past behaviour. It's really up to the organisation rehoming the dogs to decide which dogs are unsuitable for sale as pets in the context of local laws and local community standards, and what they know or have been told about the dog's history of behaviour. Behaviour assessments are not a diagnosis, but a helpful tool in seeing how a dog reacts in a particular situation. Science has not given us the tools to assess mental health in dogs, but the lived experience of people interacting with these dogs can often give a good picture of what a dog is like. An ethical rescue organisation will be honest and prepared to put community standards ahead of their own wish to be a 'saviour' or their own hesitance to have an unrehomable dog put to sleep. As long as this is well-considered and basic dog non-verbal communication is understood by the people making the decision, a subjective assessment is much better than no assessment at all.

That's only one person's definition. There are no standards to ensure that animals are not being warehoused or that the shelter is being operated to particular standards. If shelters are working pro-actively, I applaud them. But the word "no -kill" isn't proactive at all, it's reactive to a perception that there are "kill shelters" operating as well as "no-kill" shelters. It's a very negative thing to say.

I do not like the term No- Kill. It is just a marketing buzzword, designed to give them the competitive advantage over shelters that do not turn dogs away. It says nothing about how the shelter operates or how well the dogs are treated. At it's worst it is a term used by hoarders that kennel problem dogs long term, which is detrimental to their chances of ever making a good pet. I would choose a dog depending on how suitable the dog would be for me as a pet. I will judge a shelter by what it does, not by what it says it doesn't do.

Sorry, but I can't stand that little saying applied to animals. It's only used by people so poor that the arse is falling out of their pants to justify why they have racing dogs when clearly they cannot afford proper care for them. There's food, parasite prevention, dental care, the list goes on. What else do these bogans' kids miss out on so they can continue to race dogs? Greyt, the TAB would get rid of dog racing in QLD and replace it another 1000 pokie machines in a heartbeat. Dog racing is the least profitable form of gambling for them. It is the state governments that regulate exactly what the TAB is allowed to invest in. It is the government that would need to be lobbied to see real changes in welfare rather than just getting an empty PR response from the industry. Unless things are made laws, and there is enforcement, people will continue to make money from greyhounds with no regard to welfare.

I don't think heirachy is fixed. I think its it's fluid and it depends on the who, what, where, when and why. Context. If there is a constant pack leader, it's only because there is a human who has a 100% success rate on motivating, outsmarting or overpowering a dog to get their own way. So we can use the old words or we can use the new words, but I think that some people waste a lot of time identifying patterns of behaviour and trying to analyse that according to dominance theory. All that really matters is that our dogs behave themselves each day, and we have to maintain a relationship to do that. You don't get a Pack Leader Badge that gives you special entitlements.

Fences change over time, especially when a fifty-kilo child muncher is slamming its body against it. You do not have to be an engineer to predict that a fence may be likely to fail sometime soon. Fear may be an influence in that assessment, as it should be. It's quite a rational fear, and it is normal to feel anxious if a dog with a mouth as big as your head is having a go at you. A high, properly installed chain-link fence (or pen) is appropriate for big strong breeds that may behave aggressively towards things on the other side of the fence.

I would report if I felt the dog could get out and attack because the fence was deteriorating. But if the fence is ok, I will leave it up to the neighbours of that dog to complain if the noise is excessive. I wonder how some people put up with living next door to some of these dogs. I wouldn't leave a dog in a front yard where it will feel that its territory is being threatened by people walking past in the street. Poor dogs and poor neighbours.

Some of the dogs that live in our area are trained, so if I tell them to sit, they do, and they shut up. Then I praise them. It's handy to try this if ever a dog is being noisy and annoying as you walk past.

If you live in Brisbane and the council thinks your dog might get out, it can issue you with a fencing notice and you have 21 days to comply or they can seize the dog. All it takes is one neighbour to do a written complaint saying that their fear that the dog is able to escape because the fence is too low or of inadequate construction. The fencing order calls for a similar height and construction as a pool fence. Where I live there are heaps of dogs in front yards who carry on very aggressively. I don't report them, but I would hate it if my dog carried on like that and disturbed the peace of the neighbourhood. I would be embarrassed to be such a pain to the people who live around me.

My dog would pass this test but she would fail in the situation that the OP was talking about. Wasn't the OP talking about a situation where a dog went past too closely? It is a usual thing that happens in an agility class, so it sounds like you have a dog not suited to a normal agility class. In any case, a temperament test will only rule out some dogs and some types of aggression. Of the dogs that passed the test, some went on to behave aggressively in class and their owners were held responsible. I remember one dog was banned because the owners refused to muzzle it or even accept that their dog was at fault.

Many years ago when I was instructing agility, we introduced a simple temperament test for participants. They were not allowed to do agility unless they could handle a dog running past them at close range. Agility can be an environment that encourages aggression in dogs that have that tendency, lots of excitement and resources to challenge other dogs over. And dogs that feel threatened by other dogs just for being there, they shouldn't be doing work in groups at all.

I don't think everybody does this though. I know a lot of people who don't do 'small talk' and I find it refreshing. It doesn't mean they're not warm and friendly. I think the best way to authentically relate to someone is to be honest with them. It depends on how social or anti-social a person is. What Aphra says is true, and it's actually a very important part of what a society is. The ability to engage in this way, without losing any privacy, is a positive character trait. To the OP, if you cannot walk dogs without tripping over, you have your hands full. If you disagree that your hands were full, you could have released the leads, asked the dogs to sit stay, and shown him "Look no hands". But you couldn't because you really did have your hands full. Maybe you should walk late at night where there will be fewer people on the street, and the norms for social interaction are a lot different.

Instructors will usually ask new people not to go to close to other dogs - but they can't make people do anything . It should have been made clear to her by the club that people with aggressive dogs are responsible for them and should muzzle them if aggressive. This should be reported in writing as an incident. Even if Zorro is ok, the lady needs to be given extra help and reminded of club rules. Thanks grey I think I will bring it up at the next club meeting it was hard not to walk past the dog as it was right on the entrance path :p I think you need to write down what happened tonight, and do it while it is fresh in your memory. Then send it in to the club along with the names of anyone who you know witnessed the attack. It needs to be filed as an incident so that the committee are forced to address what happened You could make a suggestion at the meeting for a bandana system, but that is a separate issue to what happened to Zorro. I don't know that a bandana system is a better idea than not taking dog -aggressive dogs into a group training situation where not everything is 100% reliable and predictable. It is probably an overwhelming environment for that dog, if it feels threatened enough to bite other dogs.

Instructors will usually ask new people not to go to close to other dogs - but they can't make people do anything . It should have been made clear to her by the club that people with aggressive dogs are responsible for them and should muzzle them if aggressive. This should be reported in writing as an incident. Even if Zorro is ok, the lady needs to be given extra help and reminded of club rules.

It looks a bit red doesn't it. Contact allergy maybe? Could be collar rub.

It would be best if you waited until your first pup is at least 18 months old before you get another pup, maybe wait twice that long. When you do get another pup, get the opposite sex to what you have now. These are words of advice to somebody who doesn't yet know how the first puppy will turn out. If you buy another pup now, you will have a lot more trouble training both of them. Many experienced dog owners would not buy two pups so close together because it can cause a few problems. Those that do know that they might be in for more than double the work of one puppy and that they may have not as much control over the dogs as they would like to. Young dogs can be a bad influence on each other at times. The breed you have chosen needs very careful management. Get one right (raise it to adulthood) before you take on a second. :)

That is a fine example of the Common Blue Staffy. :)

She sounds like a very dodgy sort of business person if she is so ignorant about liability and safety issues. As well as not giving a toss about the poor people who want to adopt a nice pet.

Why is silence better? (I'm not trying to be smart! I genuinely would like to know.) Because a mild verbal correction is useless, and a harsh one might scare poor little Milo. He's already anxious enough with Tonka munching on him. There are different ways that this could be corrected silently, but you have to know your dog's own threshold before deciding what to use. I like to use a water pistol for this type of training, but it depends on the dog as to whether this would be effective.

But all aggression is not based in fear. There are different drives that can cause aggression that have nothing at all to do with fear.

Yes, see a qualified veterinary behaviourist. I am a big advocate for desexing to improve behaviour in pets. But this dog's problems are not caused by normal testosterone. Desexing won't change this dog. There is no guarantee anything can change this dog. So you need an assessment to work out what if anything can be done, and whether it is feasible to try. Or if you cannnot do that, you could have the dog euthanised, it doesn't sound like a very happy dog that is going to make a good pet. Some pups are just not right in the head for various reasons. It would not be advisable to let this situation go on any further. There is massive potential for this dog to become very dangerous, and you would be liable for anything it did.

The houses people are building are not restricted enough. If sensitive areas are going to be developed there needs to be control to make sure that valuable land is used as efficiently and sustainably as possible. That isn't happening right now, people seem to build huge land-wasting McMansions wherever they want. And some areas should not be developed at all. The council knows this, they employ town planners and designers who know what can be done to develop areas much more efficiently and sustainably. But the more land is developed the more money council makes, and that is way more important to them than koalas are. But they ban dogs, so that people think they care.

I don't like this idea at all. The biggest threat to koala habitat is land clearing. It is easy for a council to ban dogs, but very hard for them to put controls on developers. It's all about the cash. Anyone choosing to build a big new house and land package there should be aware that they are doing way more damage to the koala population than people who live in smaller dwellings on smaller blocks and keep their dogs responsibly.

This subject has come up a lot over the years. I think it comes down to why people are involved with dogs. Showing, breeding, working, racing, trialling, hunting, whatever. Different people like to do different things and you can't take somebody who invests all their spare time into one of these things and expect them to be interested in doing any of the other activities as well. Somebody made an important point about slight geographical differences in terrain, climate, vegetation, which means that different conformations will be more suitable for working in different places. So it would be impossible to set up a standardised test for function, when there is no pure function, it's all about function in context. In the USA they run the greyhounds on shorter tighter tracks than we do here. This results in a beefier greyhound with stronger joints than the ones that have evolved here. So which is the true working conformation?

It's a bit disingenuous to declare some risks definite and some risks only potential. By definition of the word, all risk is potential and not definite. Sorry, what I meant by that was that if you desex as a baby you ARE risking certain consequences, which may ore may not happen. However your puppy buyer MAY or may not desex the dog when it has matured more but before it has any opportunity to breed, so the breeding risks are potential depending on what happens in the future. Hope that makes some sense! Unless you know how high the risks are, you can't really make a comparison. If an adult dog is being rehomed for the third time, there is a much higher risk (than average) that the dog will be unwanted again in future. These dogs are very attractive to unscrupulous breeders because it is much cheaper to get an adult dog and breed with it straight away than it is to buy and raise a pup. Desexing dogs before rehoming means that you can be sure the dog won't be bought just to be used like this. This topic is not about desexing as a baby. It is about desexing an adult dog that needs to be rehomed and is unsuitable as a breeding prospect.