Mrs Rusty Bucket

There is one dog that has attacked my grovel dog and failed to back off despite all the "you win" signals being made. And it was a whippet. I then had to work pretty hard with my dog to persuade her that most whippets aren't like that. There's one other whippet that likes to bite dogs (hard) to get a chase going, it now wears a muzzle in public. It still gets the occasional chase going without having to hurt the other dogs so isn't totally deprived. I don't agree with Hugh Wirth RSPCA on anything much. Bugger BSL - lets stop puppy farms and feed lot (grain fed) beef.

My dog has played zoomies with a deer hound. Deerhound was faster but mine was tighter on the turns and lasted longer. Both enjoyed themselves. I don't know don burke but your descriptions remind me of show I saw on ABC docos recently http://www.abc.net.au/tv/geo/documentaries...ve/ipsychopath/ control freak runs people down absolutely unbelievabley charming and persuasive when wants something

Maybe ask one of the newer breed clubs that is there already. Bull Arab maybe. And I know cattle dogs have been around forever but not as show dogs - so they might know.

I walk with two boxers every morning, not the one that never gets out. I've met another that the owners bought thinking they were getting a couch potato. They have no back yard to speak of now. And they've enlisted help getting the dog walked enough. I mentioned ari.g's dog's situation to my dog walking friends and what they said was the same as what I said - except ruder.

Diva So your dog hasn't had a taste of your beer or coffee if you left it where s/he could reach it? Pretty sure mine couldn't pay a drug dealer, and she leaves the poisonous plants alone, but she knows how to cadge treats off friends and strangers.

I dunno if I'd like my stuff being used to make something fraudlent. ie promising something it isn't. That could harm the reputation of a lot of people they claim association with. You might want to email the CCCQ about the use of their logo so they can check... And depending who the ISP is that hosts the website, they might take action on the copyright stuff if you notify them. Though I wouldn't hold my breath if it is bigpond/telstra or a web hosting service based in Russia.

Mine has worked out how to get the DVD player to eject. And how to turn the fan heater on and off. I'm just glad she's not so keen on exploring when I'm out.

Darien I'm sorry about your daughter's dog, that's so sad. About the vet practice overcharging - glad you got the money back. If you had been overcharged and they had refused to refund, and you paid with a credit card, you can write to the credit card company (not quite the same as the bank) and explain what happened to them, and ask for your money back through the credit card company. I was charged one time for stuff I didn't buy - it was on the register before my sale was rung up and the shop assistant obviously hadn't reset the till. Deliberate or not I don't know. And I didn't have time to check because I was at an airport and my flight got called. So I wrote the credit card company and months later - they refunded the amount I was overcharged. Better than nothing. It also alerts the credit card company to potentially dodgy practice by that business which is bad for them. My vet sells kittens and puppies. The kittens are usually accidents or finds of his customers. Ie it's like a rescue. The puppies are not - he's a registered breeder. And they're not kept in the waiting room. So I'm not totally against the idea of trying to find homes for unwanted kittens. And I think the puppies would all have homes before the bitch even meets the dog.

My dog, acd x, definitely likes exploring. She probably would stay home if I was there, or she didn't know where I was, but if we're out on walks she will explore to the limit of where she can see me. Wasn't too keen on her idea of exploring in the creek today, managed to persuade her not to do that. Every new place we go, she checks the limits of it. And she loves being up high with a good view. Which is fine on the club balcony, but not so good where the sand dunes are supposed to be being rehabilitated at the beach. Sometimes she will tell the new thing - it shouldn't be there - like the beach umbrella. But she seeks out new things. And she is easily bored. Fortunately she mostly deals with that by sleeping.

ari g it's a wonder you don't have craters in your back yard and you do have a couch to sit on. The boxers I know would destroy things if they weren't exercised enough. I think there is one sad boxer around the corner from me who doesn't get enough exercise. She barks all day and trys to kill any dog she gets near - which explains why she doesn't get out much. Not easy to do agility with a deer hound - they don't fit so well in the tunnel. So there are limitations.

It is a breach of copyright. Whether or not you get value for money trying to enforce is another matter. I'm beginning to think that the website owners doing the theft - are a bit light on morals and ethics and they do puppy farming maybe. RSPCA might be interested and copyright breach might be a way of making what they're doing uneconomic. Though people don't go to jail much for breach. This explains it fairly well. http://www.templetons.com/brad/copymyths.html Mobs like Disney have extended the time that copyright applies so that they don't have to give up the money on their movies like Snow White. It used to be 50 years but it's a lot longer now. And under the F trade agreement we signed with the USA, we basically have the same copyright law as them. China doesn't seem to have any copyright law, which is why you should not send your manufacturing contract to them. They'll put the brand name stuff out the front door and the pirate copies out the back door...

yes but cutting and pasting the whole article is illegal (breach of copyright) and pisses off Rupert Murdoch. Consider cut and paste the first para and then put a link. Then we can use that to google where the article went. And put the date and the name of the paper it was published in. Though I do admit some sites, the articles get archived.

Boxers need 1 to 2 hours energetic exercise a day, and obedience training. I imagine anyone who thought they were getting a couch potato like a bulldog would be sadly mistaken. And those dogs could end up in rescue. Boxers are great jumpers and love to run. I've seen a few doing agility and they do ok. Standard poodles on a "do my own thing day" now that's a tricky dog to train.

It's breach of copyright whether you had a copyright notice on your website or not. Just send them a bill for whatever you think is reasonable ie an hour of your time. Ie grant permisson in exchange for $. If they argue and you can be stuffed, slug them with IP lawyers. But it's probably not cost effective. Most people don't have a clue about copyright and the internet. It does help as far as proof goes, if you have things like CD backups of the stuff from way back before their website. The "wayback" machine might be able to help you prove you had it first. You might also want to google a sentence of your stuff to see where else it has spread. Also - a really nasty trick for people who link your pictures without permission as opposed to copying them to load up on their website, is to swap the picture for something gruesomely shocking. And update your pages with the new picture location. You may aslo want to put a robots.txt that stops google from indexing some of your pages that you don't want copied. You leave the home page available but some of the other stuff, make it so they have to visit your home page to get the info eg your terms of service/sales statement/contact details etc. It's easy to find info on how to set up robots.txt - google.

Alternate method. Hand pull what you can, lay newspaper down over the rest in fairly thick wads from 3 to 10 sheets thick, though I will use whole sections and ideally - wet it first. Then put pea straw over the top, in biscuits about 5 to 10 cm thick. This stops the weeds underneath from coming through and makes the ones that grow in the pea straw easy to pull out. After about 12 months the pea straw breaks down and you have to get more, but all the breaking down is good for the garden. Of course you will have to teach the dogs to leave it all alone.

pump up water pistol? I know it's more water but at least it doesn't smell. I think I have a stray cat peeing on my front door. Not happy. Will start setting big rat traps if that keeps up.

There are instructions on the zero packet. And on the weed and feed type packets. How long varies with the weed killer. I saw a video of somebody drinking glyphosate (zero), to prove he thought it harmless. Well I wasn't entirely convinced, but I reckon if I could keep the dog off from 2 to 12 hours I'd be happy to spray with the stuff. Not too often, but occasionally. I figure spray on a calm sunny morning and then take dog for a long walk somewhere else. And then keep the door shut.

If he's not responding to food treats, he's either way too excited, or a bit too well fed. don't feed him until after the walk. Maybe skip a meal before the walk? Practice recall before you go into the park and before you let him off lead. check the park for new dogs, and do introductions on lead before you let him off. Practice recall immediately before you let him off. There are several dogs that visit my favourite dog exercise area, that freak my dog out, they like her and play too hard, so she's been trying to run home. So I keep her on lead until those dogs go home and she's ok. I'm lucky she doesn't rush any dogs as you describe. It's not her thing. But I do have the recall strong enough to stop her from offering greeting to aggressive dogs - the ones straining at the end of lead with all hackles, teeth and growling and the owner looking at you to back off. Frosty is starting to make that decision to keep clear on her own which I encourage and reward.

I wrote a great long reply, and the machine ate it. And I didn't have time then to write it again. Essentially I think every dog has between zero and 100% recall. 100% recall - I'd define as every time you call the dog, and it sees/hears the signal and is capable of coming back, directly at full speed - it does. I have actually seen the occasional dog that never comes when it's called - usually something like a beagle - the owner always has to go get it. I do know some beagles with very reliable recall. But I'd say that was a dog that hadn't been trained at all or didn't understand what a recall was. I'm pretty sure my dog knows what is required - all of the time and sometimes she chooses not to. We're working on the conditioning but clearly not all the way there yet. If I could use an ecollar here, I think I would, because it would speed things up, as far as learning coming to me would be more rewarding than staying away. Is similar to children or wayward hubbies with selective hearing. They know what the words they hear mean, and choose not to act. Probably for similar reasons that dogs sometimes choose not to. I lose count of the number of people who scold their dog if it comes back slowly and wonder why it comes back even more slowly if at all, the next time they call it.

Is it just me - I looked at the discussions and it said "no discussions". I couldn't find a bit that I could make for "add friend" either. Weird. If I do connect up on Facebook, my profile photo looks like an itchy rat.

Yep, Steve definitely called her a pitbull or a pitty - frequently, especially when making his point about scary looking dogs not necessarily being actually dangerous or scary. Pele is a perfect example of not fitting the popular although misguided stereotype about that kind of dog. That's why I asked you why you didn't correct him and you said about porky bottomless pit. I don't reckon she's that porky either. Maybe a little bit cuddly? As for the toy - and losing interest - that's one reason why I didn't get one for Frosty or try her out with one. She's never interested in the same toy for very long and has no favourites. Same with food. She likes variety and novelty and new things. Or maybe it's me that likes all those things. Not sure. Novelty in manageable but not overwhelming levels. Otherwise, puppies wouldn't get bored "paddock bashing". K9 facebook page. Will have to check it out.

Yes I think the best solution to this would to be to devise a strategy for stopping her from wanting to eat rocks. And plastering rocks with chilli will just get you a dog who likes chilli coated rocks. Not sure how you'd go about training a dog not to eat stuff that is not it's food or what you give it but I'd be interested to find out. It's one of the things that Utitlity dogs must do. Refuse food that is offered/available to them. And it's something that all competition dogs should be able to do - because it makes sabotaging their performance a bit too easy if they stop for every yummy treat (or possum poo) around the ring. Maybe a post question in the training section about how you'd train this? And in the meantime for the dog's safety and the health of your wallet, I'd confine her until she's learned not to eat rocks. I guess a basic start would be, let dog out, if she puts a rock in her mouth, you put her on lead, remove the rock... wait 10 seconds, release, then repeat, for 20 to 30 sessions? Same for any other unacceptable behaviour in the back yard. If she goes 5 minutes without trying for a rock - reward with a yummy treat. I like that carrots go straight through, it's a nice chewable thing that adds nothing to the dog's waist line, and doesn't clag the works up, it's softer than sticks or rocks or bits of bone. And hopefully it goes somewhere to keeping her teeth healthy but I'd have to check with a vet about that.

Yeah, I kind of winced when jesomil made some unfounded assumptions about my dog's recall. Her recall is a lot better than "no recall". It's a lot better than most dogs we meet off lead in open spaces, dog exercise areas like cricket ovals and beaches. But it's not yet 100% Does she call the shots? Sometimes. I want her to feel free to try initiating stuff, whether I choose to respond or not is up to me. Usually I make her work for what she wants. It's a bit hard when she's 50 to 100m up the beach but in fact that is one of the easier places to recall her even though I can't make her come back. I'm there 19 times out of 20, and 20 out of 20 if I run away from her and hide. There is a balance between her never getting what she wants when she wants it (calling the shots), and me having to tell her what to do all the time. If I wanted a totally me focussed dog, I would have got a kelpie. But I'd rather have a dog that is capable of entertaining itself in acceptable ways, when I'm busy doing something else. I'd also rather have a dog that makes it's own decisions about how to deal with strangers than looking to me for instruction. She's better at picking bad guys from good guys than I am. However I don't want her to eat the stranger, and so far, no problem, she keeps her distance and barks a lot. I want a dog that will run and explore some of the time. And I reckon I can have that and 100% reliable recall - ie if she's capable of coming back and sees/hears the signal, she comes back at full speed with joy. I'd be interested to know how Jesomil made the extrapolation from "intermittant recall" to "no recall at all and she's calling all the shots".

Steve likes a challenge. At the consult, He didn't really love it when Frosty wanted to climb up on the bench next to him and lick his ears. It's the dogs that play hard to get that are more interesting. I risked an off lead run with Frosty after Kei and Kenz but she decided three's a crowd after two zoomie laps and went off to sniff for food and dog trails and possum poo or whatever's going. I had no idea anyone was talking photos. Just as well though, cos the ones where I know I'm being photographed are generally horrible. I thought it was a bit weird that Pele got called a friendly "pitty" a lot, and then he refered to Adolescent Tigers as dogs that must never be trained with food. Definitely not breedist. All dogs and tigers and elephants and monkeys are the same to Steve. Well he did seem to have a massive soft spot for GSD - but I can understand that.

Serket If you worry about what marrow bones would do to your dog's teeth - rocks are usually harder and more likely to break teeth. I had problems you describe when my dog ate things that clagged the system up, bits of marrow bone with sharp edges, or bits of any raw beef bone, and the occasional plastic peg. She'd vomit everything and then move on to grass - because nothing could get past the blockage. Eventually she'd vomit whatever was blocking things up. Usually a big piece of bone - about the size of a 20 cent piece. Happened with a chicken wing once. Sheesh - chew your food already. So no more bones unless they're the big marrow bones, and the second she starts trying to break up the hard long bit of it - I take it away and put it in the bin. If the bone wasn't so big to block everything up, it caused considerable discomfort at the other end. Another reason to cut bones. I feed her pieces of carrot instead.