TYLER23

Did some further reading and found the following suggestions, butter, baby oil, vege oil and wd-40. Any recommendations?

I think before we give hopefully helpful comments,what else are you feeding? How old is your pup? Also are you up to date with worming? Pup is 4 months old, kibble in the mornings and a variety of rmb in the evenings. He also gets raw egg, yoghurt and vegies. Yes, worming is up to date.

Sorry to drag up an old thread, but our pup has softer and sometimes runny poos on the days he gets sardines (in springwater). He absolutely loves them, so should we persist given the health benefits or look at alternatives? Will other tinned fish such as mackeral be likely to cause softer poos as well? should we be looking at omega 3 supplements?

Staffords are very prone to skin allergies, it could be anything in the grass causing it. Our pup has the same problem and our vet prescribed an antibiotic lotion to apply when it flares up. Some days are worse than others, depends where he's been. You could try Bepanthan as well.

Every now and then our Stafford pup gets small spots of sticky clumps of hair which i can only assume are from tree sap or something similar. what is the best way to remove them? i tried brushing them out with warm water/shampoo but that doesn't work, the hair almost feels like its glued together, very sticky.

Heartfelt condolences from one sbt owner to another... not fair, way to young

i just had another thought, could it be the sardines giving him the runs? He gets sardines twice a week, at first i was giving half serve (60g), but he now gets the full 120g tin just to avoid storing smelly sardines in the fridge. is a full tin too much for a 14 week old pup, and does sardines cause the runs or is definitely the roo?

3% of what? Bl%%#y Fat of course, LOL. If you want to get weight off use Roo, if you want to get weight on use a rich fatty meat like Lamb. Ok, that makes sense, i thought you were talking about feeding 3%... He is an ideal weight at the moment, so no need to put on or lose weight. i might try pork, lamb or beef mince with a tablespoon or two of roo.

3% of what?

So instead of 250g of roo mince, should i do say 50g roo/200g beef or lamb mince and slowly increase the amount of roo?

last night was only the second time he's had the roo mince, can't remember if it gave him the runs last week. If i persist with it, will he eventually adapt to it, or will it always give him the runs?

Does roo mince commonly cause the runs? Our pup gets roo mince (human grade from woolies) with veges once a week, and every other day his dinner includes bones (chicken wings, carcass, lamp flap, lamb neck, roo tail). Normally his poos are firm and not smelly at all, but he had the roo mince last night, and all his poos today have been wet and smelly. I have also been changing over his dry food to a new brand over the last week, but i think it's the roo mice that is causing the runs and not the new dry. He is having chicken wings tonight, so i should have a fair idea by tomorrow. The roo tail didn't seem to upset his tummy, but 250g of roo mince may be too rich? I want him to have a meaty meal at least once a week to balance out the bones from every other day, so what would be the best alternative to the roo mince?

SBT123 is spot on! We have a 12 week old Stafford who is an absolute nutter... he goes bananas at approx 9pm every night and runs around the room non-stop smashing into everything in sight... best to stay out of his way. He too was VERY nippy, but after getting some good advice from puppy school and some very knowledgeable folk on this site, he is really starting to settle down and has developed a nice soft mouth. We are now working on stopping it all together. I always have treats in my pocket, and randomly ask him to sit, stay, drop and roll at different times throughout the day. The most important thing we found to teach the pup is the "leave it" command. He has started to catch onto the idea, and i can now ask him to leave an object he has in his mouth (usually the kid's socks) and more often than not, he'll let it go and i swap it for a treat. Hang in there, it does take time, for the first two weeks we saw very little progress, however this last week has seen him take big steps in the right direction.

I have the puppy on Advance, the feeding guide says 230g/day for a 3 month old pup with an expected adult weight of 15kg. i want to keep him on dry for brekky and raw in the evening. Yes, he does look like a healthy weight and very active. What do you mean by the legs turning out?

Evening All, Just wandering if we are feeding our 12 week old Stafford pup enough food? The breeder had him on 1/2 cup dry (60g) for brekky and 3/4 cup dry (90g) + 100g mince for dinner, for a total of 250g/day. We've since changed him to 1/2 cup dry (60g) for brekky (with occasional sardines/yoghurt/egg) and 200g of raw for dinner (either chicken necks/wings, lamp flaps or roo tail). The thing is, it just doesn't look like enough food...He looks about right though, no ribs showing. He weighed 5.5kg at 10 weeks. He will probably end up being on the slightly smaller size as an adult, say 17kg, so 1.5% of 17kg is 255g, which is what he is approximately eating now. Does this sound right? Obviously as he grows we need to feed him more, when do we increase his intake, and buy how much? The breeder has her adult dogs on about 700g/day, which sounds like a lot. Thanks in advance.

Thanks for the reply Warley. I was hovering over him, only cause i wanted to make sure he was ok. i am in the habit of touching/patting him during his meals at the moment so we don't have any problems down the track if one of the kids were to stick their hand in his bowl. I have lamb flap sitting in the freezer ready to go, but i thought i'd give him chicken all week, and then introduce the flap next week. The butcher cut the flap into smaller pieces approx 10cm x 10cm. i haven't been able to find roo tail as yet. Should i stop feeding the necks now that he's 11 weeks... stick to the wings, carcass, flaps etc?

Morning All, I've introduced chicken necks to our little 11 week old Stafford over the last few days which he woofs down in seconds.... so i thought i'd up the ante and gave him a nice big juicy chicken wing yesterday. He spent a good 15 minutes chewing/eating the tip and smaller part of the wing, then he moved onto the more meaty section. He chewed it for 5 minutes, then decided to swallow it whole, he coughed it up twice to chew it some more, then on the third attempt to swallow it seemed to get temporarily lodged in his throat. He gagged and cried for 5 seconds then eventually managed to get it down himself. I was supervising him the whole time and sh!t myself when he started gagging. A couple of questions; is he ok to handle big chicken wings at 11 weeks, is the gagging fairly normal, and god forbid if he were to start chocking do i simply reach in and try to get it out? Can you use the same choking technique for dogs as you do with humans? ie. light upward thrusts on the back to try and dislodge the blockage?

Well, i tried another stint in the run this morning after talking to one of my neighbours. he cried off and on for ages, and has now finally fallen asleep on the grass rather than his nice cosy kennel. he doesn't know that i'm home, i've been spying on him from the back window. With regards to going out and praising him when he is quiet, won't he just then realise that i am in fact home and start crying again the minute i go back inside? I might just let him sleep for now...

We are in the exact same boat, a very bitey 10 week old SBT. We had our first puppy class last week and the advice we were given was not dissimilar to what others have said. - Be consistent and correct the biting the same way every time she does it - Only play with her in short sessions with regular time out to contain the excitement levels - Always supervise play with your child. Perhaps let your child interact with pup when the pup is winding down and getting tired, ie less likely to bite. - Yell "ouch" or "yelp" in a loud high pitched voice like her littermates would have done, and withdraw your hand for 10 seconds - If she still bites. then give her no attention for 10 seconds, either turn your back or leave the room - Give her plenty of alternatives, chew toys, and meaty bones to grind her teeth on. We have been practicing the above for a week, and there is very slight improvement, but i guess Rome wasn't built in a day Good Luck

Quick question, i want to introduce our pup to sardines with his dry food, and the tin i bought says Sardines (72%), Water, Vegetable Oil (Soy Bean Oil), Salt. Is the soy bean oil ok? i read that soy products should be avoided. Also, the tin is 125g, how much should i be adding to his meal? Cheers!

Spoke too soon... crying again after only 20 mins of sleep...

SUCCESS! i took him into the run just as he was falling asleep in his crate, he cried off and on for an hour, but he was just too tired to keep going. He dragged his soft toy out of the warm insulated kennel with nice bedding and has fallen asleep on the grass in the sun.

I pretty much tried exactly what you described yesterday, but being a sunday morning, i didn't want to make too much of a ruckus for the neighbours. I played with him in the run for 1/2 an hour, put his bedding in the kennel, filled the kong and left him there... he cried off and on for 30 minutes before i decided to bring him in before the neighbours knocked on the door. i'm working from home tomorrow, so i will give it another go. i might try and bribe him with a few chicken necks.

Thanks for the replies Tilly and Sandra...certainly makes sense.

um, isn't a crate a form of confinement? His crate is inside the house... i'd rather have him in the open air (with shelter) when we aren't home.