kamuzz

She doesn't like poodles apparently. They do always seem to be "fussed" a lot, but maybe that says more about the owners!

One of my colleagues is ready to buy her first dog. She looked after a friend's groodle puppy and is smitten. After a couple of conversations on the topic (thanks for this link), she is willing to look at other dogs. Her question today was: 'So what pedigree dog is like a standard groodle?'. What breed would you suggest? - Not as big as a Golden retriever or Labrador - low shedding - good with kids (she has one daughter, near the end of primary school)

Thanks @Thistle the dog have ordered the one you suggested. We have a Subaru Forester and the backseat buddy slides around terribly. Hopefully this one will be better.

We have the V6 Absolute, and I have no complaints about it. Great for doing the stairs and other "touch up" jobs. We have tiles downstairs and I've never had the sort of issues that animallover99 is reporting. Oh - unless the dogs have decided to bring in mulch. Neither of the vacuums seem to like sucking up mulch chips very much. However, it does fine with bird seed; long Setter hair; piles of GSD hair; random mud and grime; the odd twig... But I don't think I would want to vacuum the whole house with it. I'm sure that would be slower than using the barrel with its wider heads.

And how much damage has Crufts done? "Why would you want to buy a pedigree puppy when they can't even walk?"

Since the "bags on board" refills have disappeared from Coles, life has not been the same. The Coles own brand bags are useless in so many ways, and I need an alternative. What are you using to pick up poop while on your walk?

Why is chopping them out bad?

If you are thinking of a robot, this article is good: http://tenrows.com/robot-vacuum/

A wiser DOLer gave me these rules for Separation Anxiety a few years back. The 3 main things the uni vet told us to do were: 1. set up a place where the dog would spend time alone (or with the other dogs) even when we were home, with water, toys, kongs, whatever. And we had to put items that strongly had our scent on them there. This was so the dog could learn to be confident & happy not having its owner in its presence. 2. ignore the dog, only give attention when it was quiet & not trying to make demands by screaming, whining, barking, being physically pushy. This was so the dog could learn that the 'bad' behaviours did not bring what it wanted...good things from the owners. But 'good' behaviour would. 3. specially ignore the dog for 5-10 minutes before leaving home....& 5-10 minutes on arriving home. This was to hose down the owner's coming & going being a big emotional thing. 4. teach the dog basic obedience of obeying 'Sit' to get all good things (food, treats, pats etc) & make it stay & wait when a person was going thro' a doorway or gate. This was so the dog could learn who was the boss...which helps relieve anxiety. And also learn what the 'good' behaviours were, that would earn good things from its owner.

We have three dogs and I have my suspicions as to the culprit, but no proof. About every 10 days or so I come down to a pile and a puddle. No noise during the night to indicate anyone asking to go out. And I'm blaming Veli, a 4 year old, desexed male. The door is shut at 9 pm and we get up at 5 am.

My boss has one - didn't seem to take them long to find a pup.

And another question for @twodoggies2001 When you say "frozen", do you literally mean you give them to the dog straight from the freezer?

Thanks. One of my Setters doesn't seem to make it through the night, and I wondered if we were feeding too close to bedtime. But it would seem not. They get dinner around 6 and the door is shut at 9. Maybe I should throw them all outside at 8:30. Oh the wailing!

My setter is totally bird obsessed. When we are out walking, he often goes smack into a street lamp or tree because he is not watching where he is walking. However, he never has trouble finding food!

For those of you who shut your dogs in at night, what is the time period between when you feed your dogs and when you shut them in?

My vet suggested my oldie should be having fish oil added to his diet, and the only fish oil she trusts is the PAWS brand. The kind PAWS advice line people helped me calculate the correct dosage for a 30 kg dog: When I was telling one of my breeders about this, she laughed at me and suggested getting fish oil capsules when the expensive stuff is finished. Now I have my fish oil capsules (with both EPA and DHA). Do I give one capsule once a day or twice a day? Or perhaps it doesn't matter?

Is the Yulin festival real? Also see here

Not sure if these things work, but worth a shot? https://www.change.org/p/rspca-nsw-stop-the-sales-of-animals-parklea-markets?recruiter=2953749&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=facebook&utm_campaign=autopublish&utm_term=mob-xs-share_petition-reason_msg

Whereabouts are you? That might help us with suggestions.

We adopted Chocolate in mid December. At first I was a bit hesitant because of her age, but the person recommending her was dead-on with their assessment of how her energy level would fit in with my existing boys. (And that was without having met any of us. She had an teenage GSD for sale and asked many questions.) There are generally quite a few advertised here. Over three months or so I had lots of conversations with different breeders. They were all very happy to hear about my dogs, what I was looking for, and to offer advice. You must be prepared for the breeder to say 'No, that's not the home I am looking for.' (Personally I think that is a good thing.) Prices will vary with age. ETA Chocolate came for a three week trial, and I am sure we could have extended this if it had been necessary.

Yup. The last time I looked, the only one not with Hollard was Petplan.

We used to have Petplan and they were great. Paid out on all Mazda's surgeries and Veli's tummy issues with no fuss. Really easy to deal with in terms of making claims and paperwork. Then their premiums went through the roof. (And they got a new computer system and their claims department fell apart.) Nearly all the other policies are underwritten by Hollard, so basically all the same under the covers with different "skins". We are currently with the one that our people health insurance sells - Bow Wow Meow - and it is worse than useless. If you google this forum you will find plenty of threads. To help you google, 'cos I know how much you love computers: Go to google.com.au In the search box put in the following text pet insurance site:dolforums.com.au Hit enter That tells Google to look for "pet insurance" but only on this website. You'll have to scroll down past all the paid ads, but then you should get to all the DOL threads. Let me know if you get stuck.

@sas Waves at Sacha...

One of my adult dogs may now be shut in his crate overnight. Just curious as to how people feel about providing water?

We recently had to let our GSD go. (He had suspected DM.) The vet said to me that sometimes people regretted leaving it too long. But he had never heard anyone saying they did it too soon. Coda reached 10 years and 10 months to the day. This is my email to the vet on next day: