LizT

Sentinel needs to be given monthly continually to be effective. It is also monthly heartworm protection so don't double up!

I use Sentinel and found it took a few months to really "kick in" as the cycle needed to be broken. At first I thought it wasn't working. Renedering the fleas serile is a huge factor in breaking down the cycle because even if the flea jumps off the dog it's eggs are not going to hatch in your carpet or his bedding or cracks in your paving etc. etc. On the rare occassion that my dogs pick up a flea (I take the Cavaliers to Dog Shows and sometimes they bring home a bug) I give them a Capstar. This seems to work well. Our GSD is also on Sentinel and I have never found a flea on him or ever seen him scratching??

Same here. When I left home I had to make a decision and taking my poodle into a one bedroom apartment, away from my parents and my brother and sisters seemed very selfish. So with his best interest at heart I left him behind. Strangely within the year I had found a little stray MalteseX that was in a terrible state and I was taking her to the Lost Dogs Home but ended up keeping her (long story) as the place I worked in had a flat and yard attached to the back of the shop and I was allowed by my boss to bring her to work with me everyday!

When I was 11, I had my heart set on an English Setter. My parents were not dog people so it didn't happen. I left home, moved a lot, got into horses and didn't get my first dog until I was 37 - wish I'd done it sooner but its never too late. I waited till I owned my own home. I'd recommend that to anyone. Yeah, a bit like myself. I'd only ever owned a small X breed as a little kid and bought my first purebred Poodle at sixteen when I was working full time...WITH the blessing of the rest of the family. The important point here is that the WHOLE family has to be on board with any pet that comes into a home. I continued to have smaller types of dogs when I worked and rented and my next purebreed dog was a Schipperke. I was a bit peeved when my parents went out and got a German Shepherd because everthing they learnt about dogs they learnt from me. I read so many books and I was the carer, trainer, handler in our family and fortunately they had learnt from me and were able to sucessfully handle a GSD. But I had promised myself I wouldn't get one until I owned my own property. A few years after my first child was born and I was an "at home" mum I got my first GSD. That was 20 years ago. He was certainly worth the wait.

That's what I'm thinking...they could use a miracle right about now.

I will keep my eye out i'm always looking on rescue websites, just my mum is so stubborn . Is she subborn about you getting a dog in general or a Rescue? A Rescue can be a bit of a risk and needs to be well thought out but can be very rewarding if matched correctly.

I think the possums in our area wear Doc Martens on our roof!

It is illegal in Victoria to remove them from their area. Anyway if one possum thinks your place is a bit of alright you can bet another will move in quick smart. They also don't survive if relocated. They are usually killed in territorial fights by the local possums.

Well they have already turned people away from the evacuation centres and I believe the centres are in a safety area so there would not be anyone sitting outside during a cyclone (I hope!) There was much discussion of this after the floods and the sad fact is that there just are no provisions made for pets in these centres. One always hears of these stories of pets reunited with owners AFTER they return to there beshambled homes. But I imagine that for every happy story there would be countless sad endings for pets and their owners.

So.....did the"wolves"eat his homework too!!??

I so agree. I told my OH I would shoot my dogs before I left them to fend for themselves in a 300KM cyclone. His response was "No one gets left behind..bugger the evacuation centres. We take food, water, camping gear, crate the dogs and cats, we would just go to family or simply camp out until it was safe to return home." Of course we are just talking hypothetically and bushfires are the most likely reason to flee here in Vic. Stay safe all you people up North. Hold tight tonight and I pray it isn't as bad a it appears it will be.

Dogperson, I see you are from QLD. I can't stop thinking about all the climatic difficuties faced by QLd'ers at the moment. Tonight there will be a Cat. 5 cyclone and I'm afraid that there will be yet more catastrophic disaster similar to what the flooding has brought. I don't think anyone really knows the extent of what is to come and I hope and hope that things will not go as bad as they are expected to. There may well be a displaced dog that meets your criteria and desperately needs you after all this is over.

Oh please! What has the Harp Seal hunt got to do with this thread? And what "mentality" are you talking about? Agree with you 100% on this one. It is very disturbing to me, as a Canadian. I thought that might offend. Look, I love canadians, I married one and we did travel to some small towns that frankly when the tourist season is over they just become a handful of locals. People move on, go to their other job or other homes. eta: which might explain how this didn't come to light until a claim for distress was lodged. And yes it is a mentality: not exclusive to canadians. Harp seal, kangaroo, brumbies, dolphins - they may not be pets but deserve a humane death. We're upset because it's dogs this time but I'm guessing the person who decided a bullet and mass grave was cheaper had the kind of mentality I'm talking about. It's the mentality of an individual who doesn't value these dogs as anything more than a comodity and when the comodity began to become a liability..a clumsy cull was his solution. Poor things were not even afforded a humane ending which of course would have cost big big bucks in those numbers. As stated previously the same mentality that culled these dogs after an expedition rather than bring them home to keep costs down. And, may I add, done in BOTH hemispheres.

Sadly it's the same mentality that used to shoot the dogs after an expedition rather than bring them back home.

The person was ordered to kill these 100 dogs over two days by the company that had used the Huskies as a tourist attraction for a Dog Sled Ride attraction during the Winter Olympics last year has been awarded post traumatic stress disorder conpensation. Apparently this only came to light because he sought compensation due to the stress he felt after doing this horrific act.

My GSD is not allowed unsupervised play with my Cavaliers. I know that Clancy would not intentionally hurt them but he is a big boof and sometimes it seems like the girls are spending half of the play time on their backs saying "I submit" please don't kill me! So I always make sure I am there when they go play with him in "his yard". This probably stems from the fact that my parents GSD accidently killed their dachshund (broke his back) one night while shuffling around in the kennel they shared. They were great mates and it was really sad but they were a very bad match for buddies I'm afraid. Also a GSD I'd adopted and had for a month that seemed to get on really well with my other dogs suddenly grabbed and shook my Schipperke and threw her causing a tear in her scruff because she had dug up a bone he had hid. Life experiences makes one cautious.

Met a kid once in a Country Town when I was travelling with my sister from somewhere to somewhere else, many years ago. He had two lovely, wonderfully behaved dogs with him and he clearly loved his dogs - to look at them together, the bond he shared with them was almost tangible. His dogs' names where "Come" and "Here". I actually think "Dog" is a nice name - it represents (to me) all things honourable, honest and loyal. Surely we have all met a D'fer!! I've known a couple. Remember "Pig" in Babe! "That'll do Pig...that'll do." My baby Cavalier is called "Clover". It was her newborn nickname and I had no intention of keeping her when she was given that 'tag'. As a newborn her markings resembled a clover leaf from the top and someone I sent a litter photo to said she like the one with the "Clover leaf" marking. So Clover became her nickname. When I decided to keep her we went through a huge list of names for her but it was too late. Clover had stuck and it suited her somehow. I really love the name Clover now...it has LOVE in it.

I agree...I mean our cats don't speak "dog" to the dogs, they speak "cat". They walk up and "Meow" because that is their language. Since we don't really know dog in any clear understandable interpretation we use our own language. Some human lanugages don't even have words to explain certain things and often words are taken from a different language and used. I must admit I'm a bit silly about words I use for my dogs. I use German words for our GSD that I don't use for the Cavaliers. Ridiculous I know but I grew up with Austrian parents and adopted these words for my GSD as these were the words my parents used. I will use the german word for bed/your place for the GSD but have only ever used the word bed for the Cavaliers. We'll they are English after all. My Aussie bred OH thinks it's incredibly funny that I use Geman words for the German Shepherd. I think it's just a force of habit..I certainly didn't rush out and learn Flemish for the Schipperke!

i think we humanise dogs because the language we use does this, we speak using words that we are familiar with and that others understand...doesn't mean that this is bad for the dogs Not sure it is just language though. A trainer I worked with once told me never to use the word "No" on a dog. That our language was just flat to their ears and when repremanding to use a low gutteral "Ah ahhh".

While not "actively teaching" many years ago I was very amused to see my young Border Collie X ACD learn how to 'sit/stay' (for meals) 'heel' and "go bed" all by following the cues of the older trained German Shepherd. He didn't teach her but she learnt from him. She was the smartest dog I've ever owned and she was just "plucked out of a cardboard box" by me at 6 weeks when her dams owner was taking the unwanted litter to a Pet Shop and asked me, jokingly "Which one would you like?" I was just delivering some papers to this person and didn't really know her well, but I took the pup because a Kelpie X Border I was minding for a friend for 6 months had just gone back to his owner, who had returned from the U.S. and I thought my GSD was missing him abit and that a second dog had been nice for him. They turned out to be great mates.

Excellent! I met a man and his dog was called 'Please' Only works with one dog though! I once had a bitch I took on as a 18 month old (stray) that I called "Girl". Because she responded to "Here Girl"!

Recommended to be smeared on garden edging. I wondered about the vicks vapour rub getting on a dog's paws, if their curiosity got past the smell. And the dog started licking it off. It's got menthol in it. I looked up pets & toxins on the US ASPCA poison control page. They advised not giving dogs anything containing menthol as it irritates the tissues of mouth & gastrointestinal tract. I was a bit sensitive to this point, because my tibbie girls use garden edges as their walking tracks, the higher the better! Actually it's the camphor in it that's the real killer.

I dont ask what they want for dinner - they eat what I give them. If i had little kids they'd eat what I dished up as well. As for not saying your dog is happy - c'mon now corvus. Havent you ever watched your dog doing zoomies and thought to yourself, gee he looks happy. Same. I'm not sure if it's "Happy' or not but it sure comes under the heading of FUN! I believe animals definitely have a sence of FUN. Not an exclusive human emotion there.

Well yes, of COURSE animals have preferences! Dogs have taste ability..and can feel texture/temperature, so naturally, given a choice, they will choose that which they prefer.No choices here though .. That's a given. Parrots and goannas,and sheep ...they all have preferences , too .. it's just a lot of the time, what they eat is out of their control. I remember reading in a dog book that the reason an animal becomes a fussy eater is because it is given too many choices and should be limited in the variety of choices at mealtimes. My logic has been more along the lines of too much variety can have an unsettling effect on a dog/cats/horses tummy...you can't keep changing an animals feed on a daily basis or even suddenly.

I believe the moment an animal leave it's wilderness behind and becomes a domestic animal it has been "humanised" to some extent. To what extend we gloss this over with depends on the individual and to a great extent and on the "fashion" of the time. To say we allow our dogs to be dogs still depends on our personal views on what we consider acceptable behaviour and the level of interaction we have with them in our environment. Clearly some people go OTT. This may be due to a number of reasons. Some people are emotionally fragile and for a variety of reasons have an emotional tranferrance to their pets. Sometimes this becomes excessive and unhealthy. As with all relationships in our lives we should try to find that "healthy" balance that works for us. so...do I wuv my wittle snoomuks wookums...OR do I simply respect and care about my animals? Hopefully somewhere in between.