melzawelza

I feed frozen in summer and sometimes in winter to give her something to work on, otherwise it's thawed.

Stressful!! If he's generally good with kids he's probably just nervous/freaked out by this weird little creature that is moving towards him jerkily and staring at him. If you get through this stage he'll probably be fine. Is he crate trained? Crating him when not able to directly supervised will go a long way to keeping him/your baby safe. I like the idea also of great stuff happening whenever she's moving around - stuffing him full of treats etc. Also like the idea of rewarding him for moving away. If he's generally a stable dog I have a hunch that he'll get used to her and be fine, but of course that requires lots of careful management in the meantime.

Sigh. Cos mandatory desexing always works to reduce pound killing (hint: it increases numbers coming in to the pound which are subsequently killed in many of the poorly run pounds and shelters around the state).

There's a number of shelters in the USA doing just that unless breed is known (i.e dog surrendered with pedigree papers). There's enough evidence around now to show that shelter guesses as to breed mix are generally inaccurate at best, so it makes sense. Those shelters are really happy with the choice and seeing increased adoptions. Interesting! But are they recording NO information about the dog in their database or just not putting it on the adoption pen notes - because that's a great idea. But what about dogs that are lost and found? Don't you need something to help people get their dogs back? The one I read about most recently was Fairfax Animal Shelter (awesome shelter, live release rate usually of 95%+), had a google and found this which seems to indicate they are removing breed labels from the software for adoptable dogs, but doesn't talk about strays etc. https://animalfarmfoundation.wordpress.com/2015/06/15/removing-breed-labels-easier-than-you-think/ I see what you're saying re lost dogs but the flip side is there have been numerous cases of dogs labelled by shelter staff as "X cross" and owner rings up asking if they've found a "Y cross" and the answer is no... but it was the same dog with two different breed labels given. To me it would be much less risk-fraught to instead ensure that all lost pets are listed online with good, clear pictures on the day they arrive.

There's a number of shelters in the USA doing just that unless breed is known (i.e dog surrendered with pedigree papers). There's enough evidence around now to show that shelter guesses as to breed mix are generally inaccurate at best, so it makes sense. Those shelters are really happy with the choice and seeing increased adoptions.

But people are trying to tell us what we can do with animals so we have to rail against any animal welfare push no matter what!! As long as you aren't literally striking them in the head with a blunt instrument then anything else is fair game and the AR nutters need to butt out /sarcasm

Another one agreeing with this! You really don't have much leeway in an apartment with a body corp/strata, so if your puppy grows up to be a yapper, or you've got a very intolerant body corp during the time where he/she is learning to be alone, you're going to get in strife. All dogs are individuals, and there's huge variation in behaviour within breeds (not really that much less than between breeds), so getting a dog of a specific breed isn't going to guarantee that it will be quiet/low energy etc etc If it were me I'd be getting an older dog with a known temperament that will be happy to sleep all day and have a couple of walks morning and night. The right Greyhound could be a good match, or a smaller dog that fits the bill.

Honestly, if we had a 24 hour cat curfew here we'd need at least another five people in my role just to deal with that alone. It's not possible nor is it an effective use of council's time and money. Education and promotion of containment as an option is much better but culture change takes time. Ten years ago you'd be lucky to hear of anyone who keeps their cats contained, now it's becoming much more common.

All of this. All it would result in is heaps of dead cats and completely overworked council officers that don't have time to do anything else. The vast majority of cats cause zero problems when outside. Yes containment is the ideal (my cats are fully indoors, and I put in a cat run off a window about a year ago that cost me $1500) but it isn't possible in many situations. As a Companion Animals Officer it would be a real nightmare to be spending my time catching and impounding cats that are causing no problems, or minor problems that can be easily sorted with some deterrents by the person who is bothered by the cat, instead of spending it on real, tangible proactive programs encouraging responsible dog and cat ownership (and dealing with off leash dogs, dog attacks etc). Also, I'd probably have to quit from burn out and compassion fatigue if I was taking cat after cat after cat to the pound to be killed. On top of that, I'm a huge supporter of TNR as the best and *only* effective way to deal with unowned cat populations, and that isn't compatible with 24 hr cat curfews.

Shooting on sight in a suburban area?! What the?? It's one thing if the dog is attacking livestock and it's the only way you can protect them, but just wandering dogs?? I'm so glad it didn't come to fruition. And yeah, any legislation that leaves room for abuse is a huge problem, as unfortunately there are people in ranger type positions that enjoy having power over others and will use what they can in the legislation to do it. Hell, I've spoken to plenty of people here in NSW with rangers doing things that the legislation doesn't permit them to do! The council area in question was not overly large but it is an area that encompasses several suburbs of a large town and then abruptly turns rural. The threats came because the ACO alleged that dogs wandering from the more built-up areas were moving onto rural land and causing trouble. In that particular area, there is not much farming of livestock, it's mostly vineyards and orchards. And personally, I don't think I've ever seen so much as a single wandering dog in the whole council area. To many people, it seemed a disturbing over-reaction to a "problem" that didn't exist- looking for dogs to shoot because someone enjoyed doing just that. Compare that to my council.. we had a wandering dog on our property (that we couldn't get near enough to to restrain it) and when we called our council, we were told that unless we had it on lead, tough cookies. They might send someone out to have a drive around ( ) but they weren't wrangling no cattle. Given the dog in question was a very large, agitated bull breed dog, our only option was to open up our front gates and herd it back out onto the street to become someone else's problem. It'd be really nice if we could have some sort of middle ground between those two approaches to dog control :/ Man, with you 100%. Both approaches are, well, unacceptable.

Shooting on sight in a suburban area?! What the?? It's one thing if the dog is attacking livestock and it's the only way you can protect them, but just wandering dogs?? I'm so glad it didn't come to fruition. And yeah, any legislation that leaves room for abuse is a huge problem, as unfortunately there are people in ranger type positions that enjoy having power over others and will use what they can in the legislation to do it. Hell, I've spoken to plenty of people here in NSW with rangers doing things that the legislation doesn't permit them to do!

To be honest I'm pretty horrified that some other states don't have the same provisions/protections. Our possible defenses are a bit different and don't include trespass, unless the dog is a guard dog- which, although not mentioned there, requires different licensing to a pet dog and cannot (as far as I can recall) be used to guard a residential property. The trouble with a lot of our legislation here is that things aren't clearly defined. We have no provision for dogs attacking vermin (which I believe most other states have?) and an incident outside of the very narrow range of defenses is considered to be an "attack", with the risk of a destruction order attached, even if the case was clearly just a dog doing what most dogs would do, such as chasing cats or rabbits. A dog that chases rabbits is not necessarily a man-eating monster dog. Yikes, that's actually really frightening :/ I thought our legislation was bad enough when it comes to not taking in to account normal dog behaviour (an attack on a cat off the property is not differentiated from an attack on a person, for example), but you're exactly right that yours is barely defined and very open ended. If you had a good council then great, but plenty of councils are not good councils. Thanks melzawelza, that's interesting. I guess as more places are starting to ban roaming cats the legislation might change to keep up. I'd like to see an offence added associated with a cat that attacks which carries a similar penalty ($550), and maybe the ability to put a containment provision on an individual cat that has attacked. I'd never want to see across the board cat containment legislated though (and thankfully it doesn't seem to be on the cards here in NSW as we can't implement bylaws and it's unlikely that it would be legislated across the whole state in the Act).

In my NSW experience, councils won't give a damn. Cats are royalty in their eyes and can do no wrong. Malcolm was attacked by a cat much larger than he is and council just spewed out the stock-standard "cats are allowed to roam under the NSW Companion Animals Act" spiel. This cat had been stalking him for almost a year and I was always very careful but it sneaked up on both of us one day. Good thing he didn't fight back as I'm sure council would have cared in that instance!! Also thankful that neighbours were around to help. I'm sorry your Grey was so brutally attacked. It's not necessarily that they don't care - the reality is under the legislation there is no such thing as a cat attack, so there's no action that can be taken. If the cat does it more than once we can get it under nuisance legislation for 'repeatedly damaging property' (it's a bit shady, but I think I can make a reasonable argument that your dog is your property and if a cat leaves injury it has damaged it), but the word repeatedly means it has to happen at least twice. Some councils are really unhelpful and don't even give you any sympathy or care though, so I can understand that that would be frustrating. As far as the payment of bills that's always a civil matter rather than a council one but if you pursued the cat owner civilly in court and had enough evidence that it did it, I think you'd have a good case.

It doesn't sound reliable to me. But I didn't end up posting it. Still got all the emails though. I guess I just can't fathom why they can't update it with my details? Can't notes be overlooked? I'd be beyond devastated if I lost her. (and there's the point of pride that she's my dog, i don't want someone else's name on her! What if she gets lost and taken back to the pound in NSW? :( ) But I guess on a re-read years later it is better than nothing... That is a really weird response from the OLG as the guidelines for us council officers specifically state that if a person moves interstate and sends a change of address/ownership form we should update the registry with their interstate address. The fact that she's on the NPR is helpful if she's ever lost in NSW as we've all got access to those private registries as well, but the worry I would have is that if the pound sees that she does have a NSW chip entry they may not actually search the interstate registries like they would if there was no data on her chip. On top of that, they probably wouldn't be able to allow you to reclaim her until she had done her 14 days in the pound because you aren't listed as her owner on the chip. Send me a PM - happy to help you get all this up to date and if you like I can just get you to email the forms directly to me at work and I'll update it all for you.

Thistle to change ownership the original owner needs to create a profile, claim the dog, then 'release' the dog (I'm fairly certain they put your details in when they 'release' it). You then create a profile and 'claim' the dog. If you can't get them to do it or you aren't in contact with the original order you can just go in to council and do a stat dec and fill out the change of ownership form without the NSW owner's details. With this new system it'll be way easier online to keep a NSW chip up to date if you're interstate :)

Meanwhile the poor person employed by council becomes, so is made, redundant. Another job gone, another person on the scrap heap, and the back up tech job outsourced to India. OR, the overworked Companion Animals Officer that has no time to be proactive finally has enough time to be proactive! Exactly! no the office staff at the reception desk do it, certainly at our council. so the companion animals officer isnt involved in that boring stuff fortunately I am a Companion Animals Officer. While we do have admin staff who enter the bulk of the paperwork (among many other things - this is in no way going to mean they don't have work to do and will lose their jobs), a large proportion of my time is still spent chasing up paperwork (because people can't be bothered to do something they can't do online), helping people complete paperwork, entering paperwork, posting paperwork etc etc etc Once the teething period is over and the vast bulk of it is being done online I'm going to have more time to do the kind of proactive things that I don't have time to do right now.

Not in NSW. If an animal trespasses on to your property and your dog attacks it, you're in the clear. As you should be. Further to this, now that I'm on a computer, here is the legislation (in part... there's other stuff about dangerous and menacing dogs etc in it, but this is relevant stuff): To be honest I'm pretty horrified that some other states don't have the same provisions/protections.

Not in NSW. If an animal trespasses on to your property and your dog attacks it, you're in the clear. As you should be.

Meanwhile the poor person employed by council becomes, so is made, redundant. Another job gone, another person on the scrap heap, and the back up tech job outsourced to India. OR, the overworked Companion Animals Officer that has no time to be proactive finally has enough time to be proactive!

Maybe it'll give industry participants an insight into how emotionally damaging it is to have to rescue their dogs; one after another, year in and year out, a never-ending stream of dogs, never enough space, having to turn dogs away knowing they'd die, being emotionally blackmailed by trainers, having to hold dogs as they die because they can't be rehomed but their owners won't take them back. And that's on top of the abuse copped from industry participants- being called a do-gooder, being told that our rescued dogs would have been happier dead (seriously) and all the while, being treated as a free dog disposal service. Maybe Lifeline could talk to some of the burnt-out and broken rescuers who gave up their lives/money/family just for the love of the dogs, if they want to hear about people contemplating suicide or having breakdowns Well said (heartbreakingly so).

Slap on the wrist. Great deterrent for all the others doing it.

That is a very different statement to what you posted above. Stop exaggerating and being ridiculous. And I'm no fan of the RSPCA. Their kill stats are abhorrent. But he did not say that every single greyhound that comes to them will be slaughtered no questions asked. Pointing to RSPCA kill stats is classic diversion tactics. Again the industry and its supporters try to just point the finger away from their own failings rather than accept the unacceptable issues from within. This is exactly why shutting down the industry is the only answer. Now, anyone want to provide any evidence of the move to erode pet ownership in the many countries that banned Greyhound racing long ago? Or is that all just scaremongering and sky is falling reactions from those who think that the level of 'wastage' needed to support people gambling is just fine and dandy? I think I know which it is... Could you please post the names of the countries that have banned grey racing? The USA for one has banned it in almost all States for some time. As for your quote - again, that is NOT what Asal said, which is that all Greyhounds will be automatically slaughtered without even being given a chance. I want a source for that quote (there isn't one, because it was never said). Some states in the USA doesn't count as a country so if we dont know what countries have banned it how do you expect us to answer your question? The USA is over run by PETA freaks who push for all manner of nutty things and just because the USA do anything regarding animals,trade wages, or people, presidents or wars is not reference for us following suit. USA pushes for desexing all animals and Norway makes it illegal. An assumption that things are the same worldwide are on par with an assumption that most involved here are the bad guys. If the facts point to a ban being justified then why the gag on parliamentary debate and natural justice being delivered. This isn't just about the greys its about how a group of fanatics have been able to press their opinion and will upon a group they dont agree with without due process. Actually that is misinformation by Baird and co... greyhound racing IS NOT banned in USA. I think according to reports I've read, only one or two tracks out of a dozen in USA closed down the tracks because of costs, not because it was banned, but of course the animal killing charities PETA and Greys2k jumped on and took the credit for the tracks closing down lol Seriously? It is not information that is hard to find. " Currently, 40 states and the territory of Guam have standing laws banning the practice, and 5 more states, Connecticut, Kansas, Oregon, Texas, and Wisconsin, do not practise greyhound racing despite the practice not being illegal there.[44]" From the Wikipedia entry for greyhound racing (yes I'm aware of the limitations of Wikipedia. It has a legit citation).

That is a very different statement to what you posted above. Stop exaggerating and being ridiculous. And I'm no fan of the RSPCA. Their kill stats are abhorrent. But he did not say that every single greyhound that comes to them will be slaughtered no questions asked. Pointing to RSPCA kill stats is classic diversion tactics. Again the industry and its supporters try to just point the finger away from their own failings rather than accept the unacceptable issues from within. This is exactly why shutting down the industry is the only answer. Now, anyone want to provide any evidence of the move to erode pet ownership in the many countries that banned Greyhound racing long ago? Or is that all just scaremongering and sky is falling reactions from those who think that the level of 'wastage' needed to support people gambling is just fine and dandy? I think I know which it is... Could you please post the names of the countries that have banned grey racing? The USA for one has banned it in almost all States for some time. As for your quote - again, that is NOT what Asal said, which is that all Greyhounds will be automatically slaughtered without even being given a chance. I want a source for that quote (there isn't one, because it was never said). Some states in the USA doesn't count as a country so if we dont know what countries have banned it how do you expect us to answer your question? The USA is over run by PETA freaks who push for all manner of nutty things and just because the USA do anything regarding animals,trade wages, or people, presidents or wars is not reference for us following suit. USA pushes for desexing all animals and Norway makes it illegal. An assumption that things are the same worldwide are on par with an assumption that most involved here are the bad guys. If the facts point to a ban being justified then why the gag on parliamentary debate and natural justice being delivered. This isn't just about the greys its about how a group of fanatics have been able to press their opinion and will upon a group they dont agree with without due process. You are missing my point. Many here are stating that banning greyhound racing will open up the floodgates for the end of pet dogs. 43 (I think) of 50 US states banned greyhound racing some time ago. There are only a couple of states left with an active industry. If one equals the other, where is the push to end pet ownership? Where is the slippery slope? What legislation has followed that took away people's rights to own pets? The answer is none because it is absurd to equate the two. Recognising that it is unacceptable for an industry to kill tens of thousands of dogs in a ten year period as 'wastage' so that people can gamble (not to mention all the other issues) and ending that industry for welfare reasons in no way relates to stopping people from owning pets. People can gamble on something other than living beings that suffer based on our greed. Thank you for your posts Anne. Heartbreaking,

That is a very different statement to what you posted above. Stop exaggerating and being ridiculous. And I'm no fan of the RSPCA. Their kill stats are abhorrent. But he did not say that every single greyhound that comes to them will be slaughtered no questions asked. Pointing to RSPCA kill stats is classic diversion tactics. Again the industry and its supporters try to just point the finger away from their own failings rather than accept the unacceptable issues from within. This is exactly why shutting down the industry is the only answer. Now, anyone want to provide any evidence of the move to erode pet ownership in the many countries that banned Greyhound racing long ago? Or is that all just scaremongering and sky is falling reactions from those who think that the level of 'wastage' needed to support people gambling is just fine and dandy? I think I know which it is... Could you please post the names of the countries that have banned grey racing? The USA for one has banned it in almost all States for some time. As for your quote - again, that is NOT what Asal said, which is that all Greyhounds will be automatically slaughtered without even being given a chance. I want a source for that quote (there isn't one, beecause it was never said).

That is a very different statement to what you posted above. Stop exaggerating and being ridiculous. And I'm no fan of the RSPCA. Their kill stats are abhorrent. But he did not say that every single greyhound that comes to them will be slaughtered no questions asked. Pointing to RSPCA kill stats is classic diversion tactics. Again the industry and its supporters try to just point the finger away from their own failings rather than accept the unacceptable issues from within. This is exactly why shutting down the industry is the only answer. Now, anyone want to provide any evidence of the move to erode pet ownership in the many countries that banned Greyhound racing long ago? Or is that all just scaremongering and sky is falling reactions from those who think that the level of 'wastage' needed to support people gambling is just fine and dandy? I think I know which it is... the quote was from some one else and I stated that when I pasted it. I also stated what I had actually heard. From who? If you heard the quote from an RSPCA spokesperson it shouldn't be hard to find?