Mrs Rusty Bucket

Glad it all went well. I can't help thinking about the two men who have recently gone missing from the Stuart Highway. Makes me think of Wolf Creek. Camping out there, I've had dingos follow me to my toilet spot and watch and wait - glad they waited but it was disconcerting to have an audience. Hopefully I foiled their vitamin quest by putting a very heavy rock over the top when I was done. But not every camp site had rocks. One camp - I heard dogs sniffing outside my swag. And I was a bit worried about dog cocking leg on my swag. I did a lot of growling and swag flapping but I wasn't coming out. Didn't hear any water noise. Another camp - three bars of soap went missing off the back bumpers of three different 4WD. And one pair of rubber gloves. We were keeping an eye out for a dingo blowing bubbles out his back end after that. Ye old velvet yellow soap is pretty close to pure fat as far as a dingo is concerned. There was a lot of sniffing around my tent that night too.

Yes but culling (or attempting to cull) the bats makes them more infectious and makes the outbreaks worse or more likely. http://www.medicalsearch.com.au/News/Culling-bats-could-aggravate-Hendra-outbreaks-in-QLD-52924 And as I wrote and linked before - about 30% of the fruit bat population are carrying the virus. The CSIRO article is really interesting. Hopefully they will have a vaccine soon - though that seems to be difficult with the retrovirus types. Really need to prevent horses from being under bat roosting trees. Which isn't easy. And people don't get the virus directly from the bats - or we would have been having a massive problem nationwide already. It has to go through the horse first.

I'm glad they were given the time to learn about the dangers and make the decision for themselves. I've learned a lot from this thread too. Wouldn't mind the link to the csiro article because it didn't come up with what I googled. It would be nice if the politicians and department heads read their own info packs before they start spouting off.

Ok there is some sort of australian version of lyssavirus that the bats do have and keep to themselves. This has good info including how to reduce the chance of horses getting infected. It's about half a MB to download or 480KB. http://www.dpi.qld.gov.au/documents/Biosecurity_EmergencyResponse/Hendra-Virus-Info-Pack-072011.pdf

Lyssavirus is the family that rabies belongs to and I'm assuming that Australian bats don't have it. http://www.dpi.qld.gov.au/4790_11112.htm#Flying_foxes It seems humans (and dogs) only get it via horses. It is in all fruit bat populations across Australia. They don't know how the horses get it, or how to stop them from getting it. Maybe not allow horses into paddocks that have fruit bat trees? The link also includes a number to call if you have an injured or dead fruit bat. Someone on the radio said that they tried culling bats and the infection rate went up. Ie culling made things worse. Maybe stressed bats are more infectious?

I just hope that there is never any problem with possum poo. There's not much chance of my dog visiting our botanic gardens to try out bat poo. Someone else quoted something that said the bat virus has to go through a horse first to infect a dog, so if you haven't got any horses - you're probably safe.

http://www.pnas.org/content/106/33/13903.full?sid=0d04eea8-62fa-4b70-b9a0-cc74ad7e7ebc This article is a bit more vague about times of origin. And a search on Dingo - brings up some articles that suggest that east asian dogs are descended from an Indian wolf. I would take a punt and suggest that various different varieties of wolves may have been involved in dog ancestry. And that village dogs/scavengers probably lived through the ice age but closer to the equator where the winters didn't get so bad. extract:

Maybe - maybe that's why they're not used for breeding.

I'm a bit fuzzy on it but it might be 50/50 depending on how the grandparents scored. Ie if the good scoring dog had one bad scoring parent and the bad scoring parent had both bad scoring parents - then the chance of any given puppy having good hip score is more like 1 in 4. It's not like genetics "average out". I had no clue about my dog's parents and I don't know her hip score either. So far no sign of lameness and I hope she stays that way - or we might have to take up tracking... We might try that anyway.

I've heard good things spoken of these in your area Payneham Vet Clinic on Portrush Rd And Adelaide Animal Hospital - open 7 days (but not 24 hours) 301 Magill Road, Trinity Gardens SA 5068 Telephone: 8364 1577 http://www.adelaidevet.com.au/ I use Glenside Vet on Greenhill road or Colonel Light Gardens Vets on Springbank road both are good though at CLG some of them are better at explaining what they're doing and why than others. Dog seems happy - though she doesn't like the busy roads that they're both on. We haven't had any serious emergency (other than eating the occasional bad thing and going in for the vomit treatment). Apparently that's the true test of whether your vet is any good. And I might be going to magill road if that happens.

We have fruit bats in our Adelaide botanical gardens and occasionally in the burbs or where there are fruit they like to eat - so anywhere. They're also in Victoria. I think - could be wrong - that Tas and WA are the only places that don't have them right now. The fruit bats we have are ones from up north. And they say that 30% of them carry the virus or antibodies. My googling while avoiding wiki entries - on retrovirus defined those as virus that live in the RNA of cells not the DNA like other viruses. And said that HIV was one example and some forms of leukemia are caused by retrovirus. Rabies as best I can tell - is not a retrovirus. It's a Rhabdovirus. Ebola is not a very successful virus (in humans) because unlike the common cold - it kills too many of its victims too quickly to be spread and perpetuated successfully. Hendra seems to have a similar problem once it hits the horse/human interface. Nasty I know but it means the rest of us are relatively safe. This only includes info from the first outbreak... http://www.cdc.gov/ncidod/dvrd/spb/mnpages/dispages/nipah.htm According to that article - hendra virus in one out of three lead to progressive encephalitis which can cause personality changes - sigh. Hot soapy water is effective in killing the virus - but not so good if you've inhaled the virus or absorbed it through a cut or something. Personally the more I learn about it the less comfortable I'd feel about patting Dusty. Will be interesting to see how it all turns out. Ie are antibodies the same as carrying the virus - probably not otherwise everyone who has been vaccinated against anything would be able to infect anyone who hasn't. We really need more info generally about Hendra and we need a virus - and that was one thing I learned about retrovirus - because they are not DNA based - it's harder to develop a successful vaccine. So I still think we need the dog. But I still wouldn't wish a lab on it. But that's a personal thing. Some people think crating a dog is completely wrong even if the dog is willing to go of its own - as with Pavlov's dogs. They were pretty happy dogs desipte being lab dogs. Blech. Times and ethics relating to lab animals have changed a bit since then but it's still confronting.

The 7pm report did a quick story and interview with the owners of dusty the kelpie with hendra virus antibodies. The bondi vet said that he didn't think the dog should be killed and the owners agreed. Some else said basically the dog might become mad (eg like rabies) and attack people. Urm. Didn't seem likely from the visual. And I don't think anyone reported horses becoming killer attack horses either or the bats. I don't think Bondi vet knew it was a retrovirus. Even I don't know exactly what that means. Something like chicken pox that comes back as shingles? Bondi vet did say the dog should go to a lab for quarantine and testing (and experiments). I think I'd rather have my dog PTS if that was the choice. I hope they find a better way. It's not like they're going to kill all the bats and people that get or have it.

Now I have to look um Michael Ellis... Thanks for the update Kynan... Found him. One of Leerburg's friends. Uses other methods as well as reward based training, eg escape (pressure) training etc

If you're stressing too much and you want to stop, you've done all you can regards his care - and he's had a check up, and he's not showing any symptoms out of the ordinary - for him so you really have no reason to worry or even if you did there's nothing you could do about it because you've done everything you can. Starting at that point, when the annoying thought pops into your head - you have to imagine putting it in a box and blowing it up, not having that thought, done with that thought, rip it to shreds. There are times when I have to very carefully and dilligently not-think a particular thought - or I can't go scuba diving, or even for a drive in the car if I think about what might happen despite my best efforts.

I failed to graduate grade two because of the confusion me and the dog had about automatic sit, a stand, and footwork. Sigh. We got it the next time but sheesh. The way I taught "Stand" was to make the signal and verbal command just before or as I stopped, and then use the same hand that signalled to catch her under the flank to stop the auto sit on stop. If I was late with the signal+command - she'd be sat when I stopped. For the stay/hold stand, I'd start next to her and catch her if she went to sit without a cue, and work on duration very slowly and reward with treats, and as she got stronger with it, I'd move to directly in front of her (leading with the foot on the opposite side - as for a stay), and then reward lots for holding that and then work on distance. I found the best place for working on duration of stay in any chosen position - is in front of her dinner. But start with short durations - make it as easy as possible for your dog to get what you want right.

It might be that it's a lot more comfortable to sit with his knees relaxed if he has luxating patellas. Sitting properly would put more stress on the knees like for a human - squatting with your feet on the ground vs sitting with your bum on the ground with legs out in front. Squatting is more stressful on the knees. It might be possible to train up muscles to be stronger and compensate ie you start with lots of very short sits and build duration slowly as the muscles get stronger. I'd want to check with a vet or dog physio about that first though. It's also possible that asking for a squat-sit could make the knees worse - I don't know one way or the other.

and the rewards he gave through the middle of the routine? I wish I was that quick with them. Ah the joys of not having a two dog ownership limit or competition rules. Although I don't think I could put that show together either. I could maybe get my dog to commando crawl under all the jumps. That would be funny.

There's a couple of places around Adelaide that sell gear for shop fitouts, restaurants etc. So I got a couple of the 20litre food grade plastic tubs with the clip on lids for my dog kibble. Fits 20kg of dog kibble between the two buckets easily. Thats one of them, in a street just off Richmond road. http://www.adelaidemerchandising.com/ And the other is on South Road Edwards town opposite Castle Plaza roughly. http://www.menzelplastics.com.au/plastic-buckets.html (I have the 271 - I think)

I think I didn't explain that very well I am copying SG's targetting for nose touch on the hand method. So the food reward doesn't appear in the hand until after I've got one or more successful touches. SG has a system where she tries to lob the treat directly in the hand by way of reward (not lure), but I'm not that co-ordinated. So what I've seen done is when you've got nice touches to the hand, you then put a lid your hand and get nose touches on that - and reward (not lure) the same way. I don't start with the food in my hand. Though the treat on the grass is a lure. Except that first time she bee lined to the treat and ate it, when we did the run after that, I got contact but there was no treat until she got onto the table (we've been having trouble with that too). That was one of the best things I learned from SG - the difference between a lure and a reward. It is embarrasing to discover one does not have a dog who knows what "sit" means. She's still context specific on that one. I still get the "don't be stupid, oh all right then" look at the back door before I open it for her.

how can a dog cushion hump their way to a vet visit? Zipper injury?

bundyburger You might also want to spend some time every day desensitizing the dog to the car. My dog used to get car sick. So we used to do a short trip to the park every day, she liked the park. we could have walked but I wanted her to be ok about going in the car. So if my dog was like yours, I'd stick her in the car when it wasn't going anywhere, and take her out again straight away, and do that a couple of times a day for a week maybe, then I'd stick her in and see if she'd take the uber treat - you know the one for which they offer up every trick they know and then some? Currently it's dried beef lung cubes but it varies. If she will take the treat, we're on the way, but if she won't, she's still freaked out, more of the dog in, dog out, car stays put stuff. edited to fix @ whom name - oops

This depends a lot on the dog. My dog is collar smart - she knows what the agility collar means, vs the one with all the tags hanging off it for council. But my uncle's bedlingtons totally respect the "invisible fence" even though they haven't had their collars on for ages. It also depends on whether the collar is on when it's switched off. Ie this is recommended for dogs that are good at figuring things out. So that they don't associate the collar directly with the punishment. But I wouldn't want them to know they could bark and not get punished if this was the system I was using. I'd have to be pretty desperate to want to go that path with what I know about +r and +p now.

The "simple way" I'm experimenting with at the moment involves a small square of artificial grass that they were giving away at my local sand and gravel (and termiturf) retailer, with a piece of food on it. Previously I have experimented with treats on top of lids of varying sort. I like the cream pot lids because they're clear but they tend to blow away. Jam jar lids are better at staying put. But anything that involves a treat on top - is fraught with the problem of treat theft without the desired contact. Variation of the food on the lid thing is the nose touch - taught with food reward to hand, and then I could put a lid of some sort in my hand and get the nose touch on that and reward with the food to the lid in the hand... Anyway, I don't know of any way that doesn't involve the opportunity to do a few runs at a (flatter than usual) scramble, and rewarding on the spot when contact is achieved. And somebody to prevent treat theft if contact is not achieved. So that requires a negotation with my instructor. PS I watched someone else put a little bit of carpet out, with no treat, and she clicked her dog if it went in the general direction of the carpet, whether she got contact on the obstacle or the carpet or not. Which didn't seen terribly clever training to me. Ie she wasn't rewarding "average or better", and as I would expect, the dog got less reliable about going near the carpet or making contact. I couldn't figure out her criteria and neither could her dog.

Vermin Is well defined in most dictionaries. As best I can tell from doing a site specific search on .gov.au, vermin are critters that carry a public health risk, usually rats, mice, cockroaches etc. But can more broadly be considered to include critters that do damage to crops and property so also locusts, birds (especially feral introduced species), termites, etc. And rabbits and foxes. A bit like a weed - ie plant out of place. The word history derives from "worm" eg intestinal parasites... If a property has rats or mice - a council can require the vermin to be cleaned up.

dogs pick up bugs from sniffing other dog's poo. So if five dogs are walking or pooping on the grass on the verge - I'd consider avoiding it. I have been known to stay outside for 30 minutes or more with the dog out in the rain, until the dog learns it is not getting back inside until I've seen a 1 or 2 or both from it. On wednesday night she squeezed out the most pathetic tiny poo on command because she knew that if she didn't we were not going over to that fun agility class over there until she had. OMG she just FARTED. I knew she ate something naughty tonight. Sigh.