Mrs Rusty Bucket

I thought we've lost when the PM is getting a spaniel x

I don't think distracting a dog eg hand clapping is the same as yelling at it or hitting it (examples of positive punishment). I confess I do hiss at and sometimes "oi" at my dog to interrupt a behaviour, and then follow that up with asking her to do something she enjoys and I can reward her for and that I find more appropriate than barking at high flying crows (for example). Just hope she doesn't back chain - do something naughty so I can do something fun. Badly excuted reward based training is much easier to re-train and fix up than badly executed punishment based training, in my opinion. And I'm not all that co-ordinated with these things so I prefer to use the tools that are more forgiving on trainer and dog ie rewards and absence of rewards. Ie one badly delivered punishment (eg hitting or hurting a dog) can have long term fallout resulting in undesirable behaviour that is hard to fix. Especially if the dog fails to connect what it is doing that the trainer doesn't want, with the punishment. And you haven't taught the dog what you do want it to do instead by using punishment ie you're not increasing the behaviours you do want.

http://www.charlessturt.sa.gov.au/site/page.cfm?u=750 Just got an email from Charles Sturt council promoting their dog day at the beach. Technically it is dog off lead on the beach but they prefer with a big meet up that we keep dogs on lead especially for the Jetty to Jetty walk. You can score a free lead if you pretend you had no clue about this... The bits that are not on the beach are on lead, of course ie the square and grass area. And last time there was a free sausage sizzle and some other fun stuff. Frosty got most of my sausage, she likes them more than I do. And I had a good time. And they'd like us to "register" for catering purposes. Hmm. It does rather clash with Hockey Grand Finals. I will be at Goodwood oval between Fairfax and Chelmsford Streets, just west of Goodwood road from the Capri from around 12:00pm ish to watch (I play somewhere else later). And there is a nice football oval there too for walking dogs around. Dunno if there is a football final on as well. I could do an early beach walk like 8:30am Anyway if DoLers are thinking of going to one of these and want to meet up - post in here...

I always thought this meal pushes the last meal through... and you want that to happen early. 4 hours was also my vet's recommendation about feed gap before car travel to puppy school, cos my dog would get car sick and upchuck everything if i didn't fast her for hours before the car ride.

I had a four hour gap between last feed and bed time so around 6:30pm. And we'd go outside a couple of times between and then just before bed - and she wouldn't get back inside until I'd seen something out of her at the 10:30pm pitstop. And until she was about 14 weeks, I would get up again at around 3am for another pitstop. I'd stand around being boring and wait for her to perform and then straight back inside. She didn't sleep in a crate so midnight accidents would have been in my bedroom - yuck. Until she could last all night - she slept with a lead attached to the far side of my bed with me on top of it. A friend attached her puppy's lead to her toe but I roll around too much for that to be good.

Pretty sure the NSW dog and cat management rules say dogs in a public space are supposed to be held by a responsible human over 16yo. And the Australian road rules say no attaching the lead to a vehicle (includes treadlys), or holding the lead from a vehicle. So I guess he got that bit right and the dog rule wrong. I know someone who used to attach the dog with no recall to one with good recall...

Angelsun In Victoria, the rules are like no other state/territory. http://www.dpi.vic.gov.au/dpi/nrenfa.nsf/LinkView/817CFEF9C1AEDE27CA257521001ADF8418CDE14E012AB3A0CA2573FA000E0AC8/$file/POCTA%20Regulations%202008%20V1%20Dec%2008.pdf No prong collar but e-collars are allowed with certain restrictions on potency and with trained supervision. I haven't been able to figure out if QLD has rules on this.

Shannon Lush says if you put a couple of drops of lemon oil on the broom that you use to get the cobwebs off, the spiders don't come back. I don't have the heart to do that to my car spiders... But it would be great to relocate the redbacks that are in the wrong places.

My experience of alarms going off when they shouldn't one went off every night during moth season. ie there was a light near one of the sensors and it would get set off by light seeking bugs. one got set off by cockroach crawling across it. Another by wind flapping curtains when someone forgot to close a window before going out. And my fav - the one that went off because the sensor was faulty. The dog was blamed but it wasn't her. Ie it did it when she wasn't home. And the alarms hurt my ears. Nearly killed mum's cleaning lady because she wouldn't stop cleaning so I could shut the stupid thing off.

Are there any studies that compare different dog training restraints like flat collars, choke chains, e-collars, pinch collars, martingales, various harness configurations etc? My vet thinks that choke chains do no harm but my dog hates it. She's fine in a front attach harness or off lead. The physics of a choke chain do not look pretty to me. Ie a lot of pressure and leverage (power) can be applied using of these in a way that other collars with wider contact on the neck and limited slip do not. I've heard of a study that says that e-collars correctly used result in less stress hormones, but I've never seen it. I'm sure choke collars can cause neck injuries and sometimes death - but I've never seen a collected report on it that I could show my vet and club president - so we can have more leeway in training tools allowed. It doesn't help that competition obedience allows flat collar or choke collar and not much else (and this would be the main reason why ANKC affiliated obedience clubs don't allow anything else much).

My dog gets a rash this time of year if I let her commando crawl on the grass (especially if it's freshly coated with dynamic lifter and burrs and cape weed etc). She does love to commando crawl. So certain ovals are off limits for off lead at the moment. If the rash is bad - I go out to the garden, cut a leaf off the aloe vera cactus, split it lengthwise and wipe the goo over the itchy red bits. Stops licking and chewing too. If it gets really bad (doesn't go down overnight), I guess I'd be off to the vet for something from them and we'd be restricted to the beach for walks.

It's only legal on private property and "non road related" areas. Eg It is illegal on roads, footpaths, most public bike paths, and areas adjacent to roads - to lead an animal from a vehicle which includes bicycles. This is the Australian road rules and is included in the SA road rules. PITA - I was really looking forward to exercising my dog with bike. I have noticed that an SA endurance club does the dogs and bikes things out of the West Beach club some mornings. And they seem to get away with it. So it doesn't seem to be something reliably enforced.

http://sydney.edu.au/vetscience/lida/dogs/search/breed/117/Samoyed That's the list of known hereditary diseases in Samoyds. It is mostly data from the USA and gradually being supplemented by Australian data. It would be good if the owners of this Samoyd get their vet to send in the info about the dog to the LIDA. It doesn't mean it would be automatically added to the list but it would be useful information in deciding whehter it should be.

Surely the Adelaide story would be incorrect to identify the dog on lead as a "Pitbull". The SA dog and cat law declare them "prescribed" and required to be muzzled in public - so option 1 - not a pitbull option 2 - muzzled - so could not have bitten owner. option 3 - owner should be in trouble for walking an unmuzzled restricted breed. The owner of rottweiler would also be in trouble for allowing a dangerous dog (it's dangerous because it attacked a human and an animal) - to wander unleashed and unmuzzled. If they can find the rotti. page 6 and 26 are relevant or search on "prescribed breed" http://www.dogsncats.asn.au/webdata/resources/files/Dog_and_Cat_Management_Act.pdf

Dr Patricia Stewart obviously has not talked to the vic AVA president Bill Harkin http://www.ava.com.au/newsarticle/new-dog-laws-victoria

You could probably ask Farrier to collect some from any horses that haven't been done in a while... What about a purple squirrel dude loaded with kibble from the dinner ration? Keeps my dog busy for a while. She also did alright with a nylex bone - until she make the end of it spikey. You can boil them in stock (or water with stock cube) to give them flavour.

I have friends with horses, the hoof trimmings are fun chews for dogs. Don't seem to last very long tho.

I'd tell her to get the dna test. It's not likely it would be true pitbull because there were so few in Australia originally. And lots of cross breeds of other dog types look like that.

http://www.humanesociety.org/animals/dogs/tips/crate_training.html RSPCA There's no one article. There's a little bit about crates for travel and for destructive dogs. There's a mention of crate needing to be big enough for dog to stand up, turn around and lie down. And there's a meniton about making sure that a dog has enough time for adequate exercise. Ie not crated continously forever. And there's a mention about training a dog to be comfortable in a crate. Each mention is on a different web page.

I think any thing that the dog can't destroy by chewing, is likely to be harder than the dog's teeth - ie if the chew doesn't break or wear - then the dog's teeth will instead. Like the old scratch test to determine rock hardness. Ie glass won't scratch diamond but diamond will scratch glass. I get a bit of peace loading up a squirrel dude with kibble from the dinner ration. Until a piece of kibble rolls under a lounge chair and then there is quite a bit of noise until kibble is extracted (by me) and eaten (by dog).

I just sent to the minister for tourism in victoria that I'm not coming to do the agility training course any more. [email protected] key bit in my email You cannot judge a dog or predict their behaviour based on appearance alone, any more than you can for a human. And reference links Reference links NSW bite statistics. http://www.dlg.nsw.gov.au/dlg/dlghome/dlg_generalindex.asp?sectionid=1&areaindex=DAIDATA&documenttype=8&mi=9&ml=10 Pick the pitbull visual ID pages - can you pick the pitbull? http://www.pitbullsontheweb.com/petbull/findpit.html and a pdf poster of pitbull look alikes - can you pick the pitbull? http://nationalcanineresearchcouncil.com/uploaded_files/tinymce/Pit%20Bull%20ID%20Poster.pdf And an international dogs' owners trainer, Dr Ian Dunbar's opinion http://www.dogstardaily.com/training/breedism Ian Dunbar's qualifications veterinarian, behaviourist, and founder of the pet dog trainers associaton. http://www.dogstardaily.com/blogger/4 "The weak link in the chain lies in the identification of the breed of the biter." and "As a long-term solution though, dog owners must be taught, how to teach their dogs bite inhibition (so that they cause no damage) and how to socialize dogs to people (so that they feel no need to bite People)." For a more local opinion - also academically qualifed and teacher Paul McGreevy - author of "A modern Dog's life". http://sydney.edu.au/vetscience/about/staff/pmcgreevy.shtml in "a modern dog's life" on page 300, Paul writes "the most dangerous thing about a pitbull is the owner".

I'm thinking I'm going to have to cancel plans to do agility training in victoria. My dog fits the description posted. ARGH. two pick the pitbull links http://www.pitbullsontheweb.com/petbull/findpit.html and a pdf from the nationalcanineresearchcouncil http://nationalcanineresearchcouncil.com/uploaded_files/tinymce/Pit%20Bull%20ID%20Poster.pdf And what Ian Dunbar thinks. http://www.dogstardaily.com/training/breedism

My dog who can munch up marrow bones into splinters, did ok with deer antler, but it was still messy - despite the marketing, there was red goo everywhere. So I don't know if that meant it was her blood or the insides of the antler are a bit messy and not as clean as promised. I couldn't find a cut inside my dog's mouth so I don't know. Cows hoof went better though it was quite smelly being chewed. It did allow me to watch a whole Susan Garrett webinar without interuption. I guess - try a bit of deer antler and supervise. And limit the chew time - the first time. Ie five to ten minutes maybe.

My dog is usually fine after 1 or 2 days of chicken and rice, and fine back on her normal diet then - but if the problem comes straight back - you need to either stop the scavenging or change the regular diet. My dog can eat a small amount of bird poop and be fine. It's large amounts of rancid bbq fat mixed with dirt, or dumped takeaway scraps found at the local football club that is bad. She's gradually getting the idea that she does not have permission to eat this stuff. I put her on lead as we approach the zone of temptation and let her off again as we clear it.

Given your dog has been having recurring problems - I wouldn't be considering returning to the "normal" diet any time soon. I'd try something completely different. Eg if it's chicken based - maybe try lamb based or turkey or beef etc. And if that doesn't work - I'd be going back for the tests as the others suggested. If my dog gets the runs, I think about what opportunites she's had to eat stuff that would upset her tummy eg the bbq fat dump at the footy oval (argh). If she's eaten something bad - I try to fast her for a day (24 hours) and then start her on normal diet. If I've got no idea why she might have the runs, it's fast 24 hours and then boiled chicken and rice for the next three until the poo is normal. She was on Advance dog food, and she was getting the runs every couple of weeks for no apparent reason, so I felt like I wasn't really feeding her advance at all really - more like a steady diet of chicken and rice but every time I started up the advance again - even introducing it gradually over several meals - she'd get the runs again. So I tried an "elimination diet", and elminated the advance. Just went up one level to almost the same stuff - Nutro natural choice - which she's been fine on - ie all tummy upsets are explainable and do not recur when she goes back on the nutro. Nutro have a few varieties if I decided chicken was bad for her. Other dog food brands also have other varieties so if you think the regular food could be the cause you can change to something completely different and see if that sorts it.