Greytmate

That is quite challenging and provocative. It really raises a few questions.

I am really surprised that a vet would put something like that in writing at all, so specific. They would have to be very sure of themselves. I wouldn't really want a document like that being around without going to the effort of clearing my own name. The RSPCA use vet reports to prosecute people don't they? Aside from that, the old vet needs to know that there are serious problems that he has missed.

Rescues take dogs out of really bad situations and find them new homes. They have no obligation at all to listen to what the previous owner may want. Rescues are under-funded and run by volunteers. It would be pretty disgusting for somebody who can obviously afford to keep their dog to expect help from rescue, let alone suggest that they then try to tell the rescue who they can rehome to. They have proven themselves to be the type of person a dog shouldn't be sold to, not the sort of people a rescue should take any advice from or be involved with at all. If this dog needs to be rescued, I hope rescue can help, but if rescue does take this dog the last people that get a say in what happens should be the people that dumped the dog. What a horrid attitude. This person has not neglected or abused their dog in any way & is trying to make the best decision for the dogs welfare. I was not meaning for them to dump the dog on a rescue person & neither was anyone else. I know some rescue people that will see if anyone wants a particular breed & help those who need to rehome while the dog is still with the owner. It may be that some people have an illness & have to move for treatment & cannot take their dog but have a few months to sort things out or other scenarios where they can keep the dog for some time & get organised. I doubt very much that the person posting would or wants to put their dog into rescue. We all know how long they get to live, if any time, in some of the larger rescues. That is a lot different to somebody that chooses to take on a pet, and then just decides they want an exciting new lifestyle that doesn't include a dog any more. I think it's horrid that you would compare somebody forced to relinquish a dog through illness with somebody that just chooses to move away and get rid of their dog. No ethical rescue would list the dog under their name unless they were able to assess it themselves. And doing that takes resources away from all the other dumped dogs they have to rehome. It isn't appropriate to dump a dog on a rescue org and then expect to have any say in how they rehome it.

Well said. Thank you Erny I hope and pray that things can get fixed. Kelscats, if you need $ to help with vet fees please call out. I will be honoured to contribute a little. There may be others willing to help. DOL is a mighty and wonderful community! Thanks HonBun, i have an email from my vet that i have just recieved and have posted it below. A donation would be wonderful if you would like to donate please email me for the DCH bank account details on [email protected] Thanks HonBun its muchly appreciated Dear Kelly Re Pearl: Female entire bull dog: Problem list: Chronic unmanaged skin infection: Pyoderma Bilateral untreated aural heamatomas. Chronic ear infection. Right cruciate rupture untreated leading to arthritic changes in the right stifle. Open draining pyometra ( cystic endometritis, or infected uterus) - likely to have been made worse with use of steroid with no antibiotic cover. pendulous vagina due to slack ligaments - likely due to numerous pregnancies. OK I think Carlo needs to take this in writing to her old vet and ask him why another vet diagnosed "untreated" when they are all things Carlos pointed out to the vet as being problems. I don't think it was appropriate to treat the haematomas yet, as that can wait until the dog is ready for desexing surgery. But I think that Carlo should take the rest of the list further. I would be furious beyond belief if a vet had put in writing that a condition wasn't being managed, when treatment had been sought several times. If the new vet is prepared to actually put all that in writing, that is something you could put in with a complaint to the AVA, if you think the old vet was negligent.

We often had parents tell us at Greyhound displays that their child was very frightened of all dogs, but seemed not to be scared of greyhounds. It is because greyhounds lie still and are not very reactive to things going on around them. They don't generally bark at things and are not jumpy and on alert like many dogs are. They lie there doing nothing. Many small dogs can be a bit scary to small children because they like to jump up on people and their paws can scratch. I don't think it is reasonable for him to accept dogs barking at him for attention. I certainly wouldn't appreciate that at all and would want that dog right away from me. I don't think this family should get a puppy at all. It will probably make the child more fearful, as puppies demand lots of attention and move around quickly and clumsily and unpredictably. But they could go to a greyhound display to see if the child can be relaxed and happy around adult dogs that just lie there, quietly accepting pats. If they know other people with very calm dogs that don't bark at people or jump, they could also spend time with them. I think it is cruel to make a small child put up with jumping and barking if the child is scared of those things. There is nothing you could say that makes those behaviours any less scary than they are, and I think it is important that the child feels safe and that their fears are believed.

Rescues take dogs out of really bad situations and find them new homes. They have no obligation at all to listen to what the previous owner may want. Rescues are under-funded and run by volunteers. It would be pretty disgusting for somebody who can obviously afford to keep their dog to expect help from rescue, let alone suggest that they then try to tell the rescue who they can rehome to. They have proven themselves to be the type of person a dog shouldn't be sold to, not the sort of people a rescue should take any advice from or be involved with at all. If this dog needs to be rescued, I hope rescue can help, but if rescue does take this dog the last people that get a say in what happens should be the people that dumped the dog.

They are friendly in general. But their play style can be overwhelming to dogs that don't like too much body contact.

In my opinion, a dog like a GSD will cope with three months in quarantine better than it will cope with losing it's owner of seven years. Is going to Amsterdam what you wanted to do when you bought this dog? Your post doesn't make much sense. If working overseas is something you always wanted to do, it would have been easier for you if you had done it before committing to a dog. Taking a dog to live in Europe isn't too difficult, but it will cost you more money than going alone. This is the information you need to bring a dog into Australia. You might want to read it before getting rid of the dog. AQIS

This is the silliest idea I have read on DOL for a very long time. Good luck finding a politician willing to take you seriously. :laugh: Nice dogs will move their head away if somebody puts a hand in front and they don't like it. The dog that snapped at you sounds like a very nasty piece of work, and the owner sounds like a moron.

We can expect the same from people. If somebody surprises you by touching you lightly on the back or head in the street, or accidentally bumps into you, and you retaliate and injure that person, you can be charged with assault. While it might give you a big fright, and we would expect you to have a startle response, it is not acceptable for you to retaliate with violence. We don't tolerate people reacting in extreme or harmful ways to minor annoyances, and we shouldn't tolerate it in dogs either. Dogs should be allowed to be dogs, and you should muzzle your dog if it is aggressively reactive to people.

I answered "depends on circumstances". If the dog is in the street, it should be able to accept people touching/patting/bumping into it without biting as a response. If the owner is worried that their dog will bite they have an obligation to muzzle it. The dog is very dangerous and the public shouldn't have to tolerate that sort of danger in the streets. If the dog is on private property and a person enters the dog's yard without permission, they should fear being bitten. That's fair enough I guess.

I had somebody interested in adopting a greyhound. From what they told me on the phone they seemed to have put some thought into it. However they called me the next day telling me they had been to the pound and their two year old daughter had fallen in love with a cattle dog and so they had adopted it. That was the only person like that I have come across, but no doubt there would be other people allowing toddlers to call the shots in their family.

Well done on going to the extra effort to improve Pearls condition. I'm not surprised they want you as a carer. So many rescue dogs just need that bit of polish from a good foster carer to turn them into dogs that people really want to adopt.

Yes, she knows the procedure for NSW. You need advice from somebody that knows.

Exactly. This dog was given to the parents, therefore they are now fully responsible for its welfare. It is their dog. If they get the dog desexed, nobody will stop them or do anything about it afterwards.

People that buy animals and then dump them on their parents are mildly annoying to me. The ones that then carry on as if the dog is still their own make me feel nauseous. Desex the dog, chip it, and make a family decision about the dog without consulting your selfish brother. Work out whether the dog is to be owned and kept properly by you or your parents, or whether you need to prepare it for rehoming. Unless your brother comes up with some cash to cover every day your parents have kept the dog and to cover all other expenses, he should be told to go away and mind his own business. He has abandoned the dog and has lost any right to her.

While I agree that this didn't seem like a sustained attack (I can't imagine the owner not immediately dropping the dog away from her face), the fact that the dog bit the face hard on being picked up instead of biting at the hands is an indication that the dog was very serious in its attempt to hurt. An attack like this shouldn't be downplayed. If a serious effort is not undertaken to work with the dog with professional help, this dog should be considered very dangerous to be around.

I just get the impression that the owner isn't interested in this, and has left it to a point where the aggression has escalated. All she is prepared to do is to keep the dog isolated, which doesn't sound very practical. On that basis I say PTS rather than pass the problem on to others. However if the owner really does want to find a solution they should take the dog for a physical vet check, and then get behavioural advice. You are right about that. If they don't want to do that, then they shouldn't just ignore the problem or manage it half-heartedly as they seem to be doing now. Because this topic is about somebody else's dog rather than the OP's dog, I doubt anything we say here will influence what happens. If the dog's owner was asking for help, I would be the first to advise that they get the dog seen by professionals rather than an internet diagnosis. For people reading this topic and wondering what they should do about their own dog's milder aggression, I would agree with you Huski. Get help from an experienced trainer, before you are bitten on the face. But the owner has to be absolutely committed. While it is unfair on a dog to PTS without getting proper help, I have yet to find any trainer that will provide a real guarantee that a dog that has bitten somebody like this will never bite again if it ends up in the wrong situation.

I am not being unfair. I am arguing that putting resources into adopting out healthy dogs will result in more dogs being rehomed than if unhealthy dogs are sourced by rescue. I have no problem with people doing this, I do have a problem with people throwing up bullshit reasons to justify why they do it. I know you will keep throwing up examples of dogs that have been saved that would be dead if not helped. That doesn't mean that a greater number of dogs are being helped. It means a lot of time and money was put into that particular dog. I'm not going to tell people what dogs they should rescue, as long as they have the resources to do it properly. But if people are going to back up this practice using an argument that more dogs will be saved overall, they can expect people to pull them up on that. Unhealthy dogs cost more to bring up to rehomable standard than healthy dogs do. You would have to be rather stupid at maths not to understand that. Rescue what you want, but don't try to mislead people that fewer dogs would be euthanasia if rescue took the sick ones and left the healthy ones behind. I'm not sure why the topic has changed from the one that Muttrus has started. How about a few of you actually look at your own activities and rehoming rate rather than have a go at me. It might be unfair that sick dogs take more time and resources than healthy ones and this has an effect on a rescue's rehoming rate, but it's what happens.

We don't live in an ideal world. I was responding to your question as to whether we expect too much from dogs. The right thing to do is to supervise children with dogs so that they are not to rough, and so the dog always has a chance to walk away. It's just the right thing to do. If people do the wrong thing, a dog gets tormented and it can't escape it might bite. That is very sad because it means that the dog has learned to use aggression to harm people, and regardless of whose fault it is, the dog is now a lot more dangerous than it ever was before. Just because it isn't the dog's fault doesn't make that dog any less dangerous to have around. If we lived in an ideal world all dogs would be nice, people would be nice to dogs, and all parents would supervise. But we don't, and and dogs will be euthanised as a result. You can't turn back the clock, if people ruin a dog and it turns aggressive, it's dangerous to have around.

Those advertisements might be for dogs that simply prefer to be with adults than with children. Dogs that move away when kids are rough. Dogs that when given a choice will be with adults and stay away from kids. Dogs that have never shown any aggression. These dogs can make fantastic pets in adult homes. It would be wrong to rehome them in a home with kids. That is what ethical rescue does with foster dogs, it matches them to the right sort of home for that dog. Ethical rescue would not rehome a dog that had bitten children to anyone. I don't think we expect too much of dogs. Pets should not be a danger to the family. A good dog will just get out of the way of children who are too rough. Adults can supervise to ensure the dog is never cornered by kids and can always walk away when it gets tired of them. Some dogs will bite instead of moving away, and that is a problem. Once the dog has bitten a child, there is a chance it will bit a child again, and it is a risk to have that dog around children.

I'm not sure what the stars mean, but here is what you said. Nowhere in your posts have you been been very clear about anything. You don't make it very clear that the dog you have is not yours or who is responsible for its vet care. It seems as though you chose to take a dog from the pound with health issues, you used a rescue org to obtain it from a pound, the rescue org then spent money on vet bills, and now you are keeping the dog. So you are going to cover all her costs by reimbursing the rescue group for all of the dog's vet costs to date? That is a lot of resources put into one person getting one pet, especially if you are having setbacks. But if it is your own money I have no objections to that. My point is that the same amount of time and effort could have been used to rehome a higher number of healthy dogs. There is a large market of people that want healthy pets. But my guess is that the overall number of dog being PTS is not as important to some people as being needed by one 'special' dog. That is fine for you to feel that way, but I strongly object to you using total numbers of dogs put to sleep as an argument for people to choose to rescue unhealthy dogs ahead of healthy ones. There is no shortage of healthy dogs needing homes and they are not all in HP. There is not an unlimited amount of money that the public will donate to rescue, and not all dogs can be saved. It is beside the main topic which is basically about people taking on way more than they are able to without knowing how they are going to meet their obligations. Putting dogs at risk. Unless you are asking people for donations to help your dog, I am not sure why you are using the dog you have as an example in this thread.

You said "There are so many dogs that end up at shelters that need some sort of vet work, I would hate to think rescues would stop rescuing them because they might be costly.. I lot more dogs would be PTS if that was the case." I am arguing that fewer dogs would be put to sleep. Not more. In the post where you wrote "Her vet costs are quite high and we are still having set backs every now and again" You said that this dog was your dog, so I assume it isn't a dog that is available for others to adopt. If not you paying the high vet costs, who is? How is this relevant to the topic? Of course. But you can estimate whether you are likely to be able to cover the costs before you choose to take a dog in, and if it is unlikely you will be able to cover the costs, the dog's welfare is very much at risk. Pleading afterwards for funds is not a very efficient way for a rescue to operate. And as PlanB asks, if the fundraising doesn't work, what happens then?

Just because a dog might need costly vet work doesn't mean it is not worth saving.. There are so many dogs that end up at shelters that need some sort of vet work, I would hate to think rescues would stop rescuing them because they might be costly.. I lot more dogs would be PTS if that was the case.. I disagree. I think fewer dogs would be put to sleep, not more. There are finite resources available for rescue, and so if thousands of dollars are spent on costly vet work on a few dogs and extra months of time put into their rehabilitation, many healthy dogs will miss out on a place in foster care. There is also a risk with some health problems that spending money won't fix the problem anyway. There will always be vets willing to take money and offer hope to rescuers. I don't like to see people that have chosen to take on dogs with expensive problems begging the public for help. It promotes the perception that rescue dogs have problems, and that can deter a lot of people who may be looking for a good pet. A dog that is healthy has a much better chance of living a happy pain-free life, and it is these dogs that are being killed if too many resources are directed into treating unhealthy dogs. It's not helpful to use emotive terms like "not worth saving". Rescuers choose who they can save. You choose who you save. Would you describe all of the dogs that you have not rescued as "not worth saving"? Or are there other reasons you have not taken in every single dog from your local pound and found a home for it? Yes rescuers, choose who they save, so if they save dogs that have health issues and the public are willing to help with the costs if the rescue group can not fund it themselves, what is the big issue. The big issue is that the money raised could be used to rehome a greater number of dogs. The big issue is the numbers of dogs being put to sleep. And so that is why I think the available resources should be used to cover as many dogs as possible, and not concentrated on a few unhealthy dogs, while so many more healthy dogs are euthanised. Your argument that a 'lot more dogs would be put to sleep' makes it sound as though you care about numbers being put to sleep, but if you think that taking in unhealthy dogs in favour of healthy dogs is the way to do reduce the numbers PTS overall, you are wrong. Most people wanting a permanent pet do not want an unhealthy dog or a special needs dog, and so if a rescue group is primarily concerned about getting as many dogs into good homes as possible, they will want to put their efforts into taking dogs that have the best chance of being healthy, happy pets. This topic isn't about what you are prepared to spend personally on your own pet, it is about rescueorgs taking on more than they can handle and then desperately begging for outside help in the hope that they can fulfil their own obligation to provide for the dog's welfare and fulfil their own obligation to provide sound and healthy dogs to buyers. It's just irresponsible to take on a dog without knowing in advance whether you are likely to be able to meet all obligations.

Just because a dog might need costly vet work doesn't mean it is not worth saving.. There are so many dogs that end up at shelters that need some sort of vet work, I would hate to think rescues would stop rescuing them because they might be costly.. I lot more dogs would be PTS if that was the case.. I disagree. I think fewer dogs would be put to sleep, not more. There are finite resources available for rescue, and so if thousands of dollars are spent on costly vet work on a few dogs and extra months of time put into their rehabilitation, many healthy dogs will miss out on a place in foster care. There is also a risk with some health problems that spending money won't fix the problem anyway. There will always be vets willing to take money and offer hope to rescuers. I don't like to see people that have chosen to take on dogs with expensive problems begging the public for help. It promotes the perception that rescue dogs have problems, and that can deter a lot of people who may be looking for a good pet. A dog that is healthy has a much better chance of living a happy pain-free life, and it is these dogs that are being killed if too many resources are directed into treating unhealthy dogs. It's not helpful to use emotive terms like "not worth saving". Rescuers choose who they can save. You choose who you save. Would you describe all of the dogs that you have not rescued as "not worth saving"? Or are there other reasons you have not taken in every single dog from your local pound and found a home for it?