Mrs Rusty Bucket

well all I can say is next time the guy from the RSPCA says "is the dog hurt" - you say yes. And if you want the ranger to come get the dog pronto - say it's menacing people. Sigh. He'll figure out it's not true when he gets there but he will have to do something about the dog then. Reminds me of very old story/joke (I hope it was a joke) about man who rang police to say there were two kids robbing his shed in the back yard and getting reply from police that they were too busy to come right now. And he hangs up and then rings back a few minutes later and says - don't bother coming - I shot the burglars. And five minutes later - 10 squad cars show up, a swat team and a helicopter, and a dog team and they catch the burglars still going through the shed. And the sergeant says to the home owner "I thought you said you shot them" and the home owner says "I thought you said you were busy". A pity rangers are not more dilligent like parking inspectors. Though I know a few places that are neglected by parking inspectors much to the dismay of mums with toddlers who need the parking spaces when the students at the local high school do not.

I can't believe SAODC start is 7am for helpers. 7am on the first day of Daylight savings. I think I will be late. Sigh. I made anzac slice.

Hi Blue7 Why don't you contact a couple of breeders - before they have puppies available - to see if you want to do business with them (or they with you). It's possible that the breeder you like best - would have all puppies spoken for ahead of time and they never get listed as available. In an ideal world from the breeder's point of view anyway. Also - I second what some people in here have said about considering a puppy from the ACD rescue. I got ACDx from AWL as a 10 week old puppy. She was never listed on their website or anywhere else as "available". As a puppy she liked biting everything that moved on the ankles but it was fairly straight forward to teach her that this is not ok. If you want her to herd cattle - you will need to find someone who does cattle herding lessons for your dog. Ideal situation involves puppy meeting some cattle that are used to dogs chasing them, and also an older dog who is experienced at herding cattle - because puppies often learn from their elders. And their elders often "explain" what is and isn't ok. ACD are often known as "blue glue" ie they will follow you around with their nose stuck to the back of your knee. Just in case you were thinking of going somewhere with out them. And some take violent exception to certain types of machinery like lawn mowers and chainsaws and will attack them when they're in operation with bloody consequences. So if you're planning to operate a lawn mower when the ACD is around - you may need to shut the dog up, or spend time explaining that biting lawn mowers is not ok.

Are there any dogs in Australia - still openly and legally bred to be aggressive to humans or other dogs? So theoretically - it's all down to nurture. I've got a gorgeous ill bred dog of unknown parentage. Not an aggressive bone in her body. Well - unless you're a cat, but she's never hurt one of these either.

My mum got minced chicken for pets from a butcher who no longer has his own shop. He neglected to mention to her, that it was minced chicken carcass and she was making casserole dog food out of it. And yes we had to take that dog to the vet to unblock the impaction caused by the chicken bones. Not happy with that butcher at all. So I tend to get mad at butchers or pet shops that offer me minced chicken carcass. Even raw chicken bones come back to haunt my dog and I get to clean up the mess. Blech. Mind you, I haven't tried again for a year or so. She's a bit older now.

Fetch obsession You could believe it's dog wanting to please you until you refuse to play and dog takes the fetch to someone else who will. Our family dog used to approach complete strangers with gigantic sticks. She had no reason to want to please them.

We can get wunterlichs pigs ears here - that's the company who makes the metwurst I like - so I know they have loads of pigs ears supplied locally. They can be a little bit smaller than the O/S ones cos we kill our pork when it's still relatively small. My vet did say they are loaded with fat though - that's when I thought they'd be good on an upset tummy and found out the hard way they're not. Dog loves them, but eats them way too quickly. I only feed her food made from the same (human grade) ingredients I'd eat myself. And I don't tell the butchers it's for my dog - though with the very occasional (fully supervised) marrow bone, it's hard to pretend. But I could get osso bucco instead. And it's handy if I decide I want spag bol, I can use the roo mince and buy some more later for making her dinner. I also use chicken fillets when they're on special, or gravy beef or chuck steak on special though I like mince cos I don't have to cut it up. One of our supermarket chains is much much cheaper on all meat than Coles or Woolies. In fact Woolies in particular - is extremely expensive for all meat except roo. I don't know why.

You could show up for class a bit early, there's often others there early. Then you practice your moves far away from everything and reward - all good. Then sneak a bit closer, as soon as he notices anything but you, you're slighlty too close so walk a bit further away and practice your moves again. If there is an instructor around, or another doggy person, ask them to cruise past "far away" and gradually work closer - depending on how your dog is doing ie paying attention to you, the loves of his lives can come a little closer. Loss of focus, and they move away... Ultimate reward for paying attention - he gets to play. You can practice this with meet and greet before class too - ie he doesn't get to meet or greet unless he can display a calm sit and watch me(you), first. If he gets that right - he gets to say hello. If he doesn't, walk a bit further away and try again. Ideally you want to make it super easy for him to get it right, so if he gets distracted - you fail (not him) and work a bit further away or go back a step or two to where he got the last thing right. I also practice with food distractions eg - tell dog to sit - stay. stand next to her, chuck favourite food treats everywhere - but she must stay (I hold her in position if necessary). If she does a good stay (start off with short times like a few seconds), she gets released so she can go find and eat all the treats. My dog's stays and recalls improved HUGELY when I started working "Triangle of Temptation". I made her "stay" before she got to eat her dinner, in front of her dinner. And I upped the standard - she has to recall - going past her dinner to me, before she gets to eat her dinner, etc. Now she will do a three minute drop stay with her tail wagging the whole time, even when another dog comes and invites her to play or sits on her. However - Possum poo is still a major distraction for us and it's everywhere.

I've stuck a compass needle through my finger and didn't flinch or automatically twitch. I understand if you electrocute your hand it will grab the wire automatically and then you die. Or something like that. Like the spasm is involuntary and makes the problem worse. It is possible to learn and practice over riding panic impulses. It's a bad idea to scuba dive if you can't learn this. Hence freeze is a better option than flight, ie freeze - think - act works well in a lot of situations. But not all. You just don't know how well you've trained yourself until it happens though. And it's almost impossible to train little kids to stand still and quiet, instead of their automatic or even deliberate response to run away screaming like a wounded rabbit. I had to explain to two oblivious parents on our off lead dog park how dangerous their kids deliberate teasing of a dog was. My dog was freaked out by their squealing and ran the other way, but other dogs have been known to eat children that behave that way. I also think the parents didn't realise that a dog has a defence if it attacks as a result of being teased.

Hi all I'm going to help out at the obedience trial too. If they let me out early - as I can only help set up and not steward as far as I know, I might make it but otherwise - we're not very far from where you lot will be anyway...

When my dog gets a tummy upset she fasts for one day (skips a meal) and then gets small amounts of boiled chicken and rice (eg 250ml tub) twice a day or maybe three times. She will up chuck breakfast if I am dumb enough to feed it to her too close to an exercise session. At the moment I feed her about half an hour to an hour (depending on what I'm doing) after her evening walk. And she doesn't get a lot of exercise after that apart from the occasional high speed patrol of the back yard checking for cats. I also find nutro doesn't work well as a dog treat when she's on lead and pulling - which has happened a lot lately as various things she must not have or go near show up at our local oval. It's very hard to avoid a SWF with a nasty owner when SWF loves my dog to bits and keeps jumping on her in an attempt to get her to play. And my dog wants to play. But I don't want the mean owner to hit her. Life is hard sometimes.

I'd say they didn't wash out the shampoo properly. I've never heard of a dog getting dandruff from stress and the Nutro has loads of oils in it so I can't imagine it drying out the skin. I get dandruff when I'm stressed so that's how I made that jump. The hydrobath was a freebee gift - done the day before I picked my dog up, and it would have been her first ever, unless they did them at AWL when she was tiny. So she might not have been all that co-operative when it came to rinse and blow dry. Though I can hose her off with cold water after a beach run - no problems. I don't think she got brushed a lot while she was at the kennel and if she ever needs to stay a while again - I will make sure brushing is on the list of things she gets.

There is a slight risk with a chicken bone that it could pierce something on the way back up, so it might be best to have that vomit supervised by the vet. There are a bunch of different ways of getting a dog to vomit - some don't always work on a given dog. My dog has had the morphine thing and antidote - worked but she was very groggy for a long time after. She's had a single granule of "washing soda crystal", which also worked - to retrieve glad wrap sandwich (not chicken bones). And she was much more perky after. And one time I thought she'd eaten some plastic peg - which had caused problems on the way through last time... anyway, I fed her about a table spoon of very salty (like sea water) down the hatch and that made her vomit successfully too, though it turned out she had only munched the peg not swallowed any. However - she hasn't touched any pegs since - and I hope she remembers that. Eating pegs is bad. The salt water trick was a bit scary because she coughed a lot after and eventually I flushed her mouth out with fresh water. I will be more careful with how I give it to her next time. I thought you needed a lot like two cups but a tablespoon full was more than enough. So next time I will dose one teaspoonful at a time. Bondi vet got a dog in that had swalllowed the owner's g-string... and they wired that dog up for possible surgery if it choked on the g-string on the way back - so that's also a risk. But I think I'd just reach down my dog's throat and pull the whatever out at that point. She's good that way.

My dog had some dandruff after being at the kennel. She was fed nutro and sardines and casserole while she was there which is the same as she gets at home. So I could only guess the dandruff was a stress thing (there was a bad thunderstorm and she shredded her bed that night) or related to the hydrobath she got at the boarding kennel. I've given her a few good brush outs, and a few trips to the beach and it's all gone now. Didn't change her diet at all.

I wonder if you could get it by free shaping. Ie send the dog out and then click for any direction change, work on getting that repeated maybe with a bridge word or signal, and then you've got it reliably, give it a cue word or signal. Ie get the dog to offer something up and reward that.

Nice photos, Ker Thankyou for sharing. (Frosty's mum).

take dog to beach, find it a doggy friend who loves water, encourage lots of play and when they both get hot, the water loving one will go for a swim and the beagle will follow. At least that's how I'd try it. My dog also likes to chase the water out the hose around the garden and paddle in the clam shell (which I have located to catch rain water). Some vets have hydrobaths and walkers and heated swimming pools for dogs. I find a dog that is cold and not warmed up, prefers warm water and will get phobic about bath time if you use cold water, and yet is happy to be hosed off with cold water at the beach after a good run (ie toasty dog). At our local oval, in summer, the dogs will seek out puddles and the oval sprinklers. And sit in it. Thinking of getting a clam shell for the cricket oval to encourage them to cool off in that instead of the soft cricket pitch.

I like the brunswick sardines - currently from canada. Sometimes my dog gets some. Otherwise I try to get local fast growing fish like gar or whiting or farmed fish like salmon, ocean trout, barramundi or marron - sometimes you have to ask. King fish - while farmed is a bit of a risk because if it isn't today or yesterday's catch it tastes and smells horrible. Tuna is pretty much impossible to get now that is environmentally friendly or tastes better than cardboard eg skip jack does not taste as good as blue fin but blue fin is endangered. And I get really angry when monk fish is on the menu. You know that extremely ugly looking fish with the little light for catching tiny fish - that's a monk fish also known as a deep sea angler. Originally they were chucked back as "by catch" for something else like prawns, but now they're targetted, and some of those fish are 100 years old, they are extremely slow growing, live about 3km under the ocean surface where there is no light and bugger all food...it's completely unsustainable and so wrong it's not funny. Deep sea anything is likely to be slow growing and unsustainable as a commercial catch. Sardines are small and fast growing. Theoretically they should be sustainable. But climate change is not helping them. But I still eat them.

Dogs with white noses can be prone to sunburn and skin cancer. What about a brown one?

http://www.peteducation.com/article.cfm?c=2+2102&aid=727 Coccidia - looks very unpleasant. Incubation is 13 days so if that's what it is, then the breeder is responsible. She should have warned you, especially if the puppy had tummy upset before she handed him over. Stress (eg rehoming) aggravates the problem. I don't think abuse of a customer is acceptable either. If you wanted to do something about it, consider having a discussion with the breeder association about what to do next. I'm not sure she should be liable for costs if you didn't give her the opportunity to supply you with treatment for the puppy, but all the same - I would have done what you did and gone to the vet.

One of our local councils had a dog day at the beach yesterday. And my dog got harrassed and bitten repeatedly by a kelpie x something big. I caught my dog, the kelpie x owner tells me to let her go so my dog could "bite" his dog and put him in his place. WTF. 1. his dog was bigger than mine. 2. I don't want my dog to think it's ok to hurt other dogs. I know what happy dog play is and this wasn't it. His dog was playing way too rough for my dog and wouldn't leave her alone when she made it clear she wasn't interested. And the owner thought that it was all ok. He even admitted his dog was "harassing" mine. It was then that I pointed out that every dog ranger the council has was up there on the square overlooking this bit of beach and that he should get his dog away from mine. So that's what he did. But he was really keen for my dog to put his "in it's place". Sigh. Incidentally - the rangers' idea of dog under effective control (in all situations) on the beach - was a highly trained dog like a police dog. Pfft. Like they enforce that.

http://www.dogstardaily.com/training/errorless-housetraining http://www.dogstardaily.com/videos/sit-stand-down Find a good puppy pre-school in your area and go. They will teach you how to train your puppy.

Phone the vet before you go to check. Or ask when you get there. I'm sure they could find another spot if they need to.

I just didn't see SBT as the endurance kind of dog. More as a sprinter. I should know better, my brother has one and she's only just started to like sitting by the fire instead of barrelling around the house. At 10 yo. And I think thats only because her joints are starting to get sore. Sprinters are althletic too, just built and trained for short bursts of speed in intervals, instead of all day running. And the 100m sprinters (humans) tend to carry a lot more muscle and body mass than the triathletes. I found an endurance article on the web about someone who trained their cavalier spaniels to do the 20km doggy endurance test. I think from the description, it was harder on the humans than the dogs.

We had a good time. Any drool Earl did on Frosty would have blended right in with the Deerhound drool from the other day. Imagine giant shaggy dog running with Frosty and slobbering on her the whole way, and when he ran out of slobber, going for a drink and then coming back and slobbering some more. I had to towel her off before I let her in the house when we got home. Then again, she did go swimming yesterday so that would have washed it off. Ker - I thought you posted something about kiddies not going swimming? I guess you will know for next time - until they hit puberty - they will not notice how cold it is, until they get out and feel the wind on wet trousers. I think my hat saved me from sunburn mostly. Frosty had a good sleep for an hour and then we hit the local park...for a second run.