Mrs Rusty Bucket

PICNIC - when did that term get coined. Back in my day, when XTs were all the rage or even before that - we called it PEBCAK = Problem Exists between Chair and Keyboard. Won't tell you what FOOBAR means (and it's properly spelled FUBAR). But I laugh every time I see it being used in plain sight. Especially for sample product names. Doggy equivalent DIMITO - Dog is more intelligent than owner.

I would like to add thanks to Ness for organising, KHM for the fantastic lunch, and Steve for all the knowledge. The workshop put the consult in context for me, and also gave me a much better idea of what "training in drive" looks like, with a couple of very inspiring examples from the brown and white bc. I now know what a "heel flip" looks like too. Not what I imagined either. Frosty showed me up again - by being a faster learner. And being the class clown.

Hi Westies Mum I know that vet. Tell him or the staff hi from the Kalgoolie Tart - my dog Frosty - not me.

It's the bright orange jacket that does it. I was thinking of wearing my hockey umpire's jacket tomorrow to blend in. Or not.

I can only talk about human acl repair... There is a limit to the number of repairs that can be done because there is a limit to the amount of tissue available for use in reconstructing, which basically involves grabbing a piece of tendon from somewhere else (and weakening that spot) and attaching it to the bit that is broken. So for humans, there are two patella tendons and two hamstrings that can be used, and maybe two bits of IT band (part of the quadrucep muscle system). And yes, one buggered leg can lead to compensating with the other leg and stuffing that up too. And the regrowth or re-attachment of the new tissue feels strongest straight after the operation and is weakest, some time afterwards - about the 6th week post op, the graft is at it's weakest and easy to bust again. Tendon aslo takes years to build strength compared to how muscle builds. And some athletes have managed without an ACL repair. It does help if they build up the surrounding muscles to compensate, and have no tears in the side (lateral?) tendons. But I imagine it would be very difficult to get a dog to spend the required time in the gym. The pool is a great idea though. I found not swimming but walking in the water, with water resistence was the best help. If the whole joint is buggered ie not just the ACL was damaged - then trying to rebuild muscle and live without a repair is extremely difficult - best just to get the op. I think this would definitely apply to dogs - because you can't make them do the gym work, or use their legs evenly inspite of the injury. The weird thing is, in the 80s, I'd never heard of dogs doing their ACL, let alone vets trying to repair them. It must have still happened. I do wonder what the treatment was then. this info is good. http://www.sportsinjurybulletin.com/archiv...on-surgery.html

Jesomil Sorry if I gave you the impression she had no recall whatsoever. If that was true, she would not be home with me now. Or I'd never let her off lead. She will come back - no matter what - about 19 times out of 20. I have called her away from dog fights, exciting new things like horses, families having picnics, playing with her friends, new puppies. About 4 times out of 5 she will give up that yummy disgusting thing for something I have. I got some sort of bird skull off her today. Maybe an emu skull, no idea what it was doing on the beach but I really didn't want her to eat it. It's that 1 in 20 - that I'm trying to get. There were sand trucks on my favourite beach this morning and there will be for another month at least, and while they try to co-exist with pedestrians, anything that big and loud going faster than 10km/h gets her attention. So I couldn't walk there or let her off lead there. I want recall in the presence of a small quarry truck I guess. At home I've been experimenting with the nyah nyah, from never playing it and going back inside without her and playing on the computer for a while, or playing it for a little while and turning it into a game of heel work obedience, which gets her where I can reach her and stopped in a stay. The fastest way to get her to do what I want, is to do what she wants for two minutes and then she just lets me walk up to her and put the lead on. I've got no idea what's going on there. I know she's got me well trained but it is a mutual thing. I like to think of it as team work or a partnership where both have some input and both get to say what they want. And neither of us always gets our way. Although ultimately, I always get my way in the end. Or we'd still be at the beach or she'd be dead from eating something life threatening. I suspect some of the current theory on how to manage a dog, isn't quite right. Or why would she play the game for a little while and then give up so easily. Another thing she does, though she knows perfectly well it will end with her on lead - is go up onto balconies of clubrooms with me. It's a usually narrow space so I can always catch her, but it also has a commanding view and she loves being up high. So we get to the top of the stairs, she lets me put the lead on. We spend a minute or so (or not) checking the view and then go home. When she first figured out that going on the balcony would get her caught, she stopped going up there and I had to use other ways to catch her, something different every time. But now, she just lets me. Sometimes, we don't even get to the balcony. She lets me catch her before we even get there. I've done a lot of research and reading on different dog training methods successful and failures - but I haven't found anything that explains what is going on here. I've had other dogs, who were much easier to train for me, even jack russells.

http://www.austlii.edu.au/au/legis/nsw/con...8174/index.html that's the state rules. Local councils can add their own slant on it if they want. You would need to look up the council website.

For my dog and yours SkySoaringMagpie, I'm pretty sure that freedom is a reward, and going on lead is a negative/adversive. So if each time your dogs as puppies were naughty or behaved unacceptably, you got out the blue lead and put them on, there goes the freedom, and that would be sufficiently unpleasant to impact on the long term memory. I have taught my dog that "shutting the door now" means if you don't come inside right now, you're going to be stuck outside by yourself for at least 10 minutes, but maybe hours. And yelling will not save you. Gets me a fast recall. And if it's ever slow, we just repeat the 10 minute exercise (or as long as it takes for her to stop yelling or me to remember I left her out there, or get home after going out). Unfortunately I can't shut her out at the beach. I have tried getting in the car and shutting the door without her, but that didn't seem to bother her all that much. Even cranking up the car had no desirable effect.

there is a marine paint called "Deck Tread"? which makes decks non slip for sailors. Ok maybe it's called "tech tread" but you might ask in a yacht supplies shop. http://www.acrytech.com/store.asp?pid=14118&catid=19771 I read somewhere that dogs can see blue and white colours best, and somewhere else that they can see yellow too. Not sure if they can figure out for themselves where the colour change is. I thought part of the agility challenge was dealing with every club having a different surface on their scramble or high walk. The stuff at the mock trial last weekend, was very slippery on the scramble A frame. Several dogs slid off backwards. The high walk at my club is made of metal checker plate, like used to make trays and steps around cars. It weighs a tonne. And some dogs find the cold feel unpleasant. And I saw one club had covered everything with something that looked like very short pile carpet. Our club uses plain white cross bars - similar to electrical conduit pipe. The mock trial had black and yellow bars, which my dog had no problem with. My agility poles are bunnings green bamboo support poles, with white dots painted on them to catch the eye. I reckon the best colour would be blue and white stripes, from a dog's point of view.

I know one GR puppy I could probably get anytime I wanted by running past him and waving a big tug rope. He loves food but he also loves chasing things and games of tug. Sometimes it is very difficult to leave the park with this puppy attached to the end of my dog's lead. Conditioning with games or treats is the way to go. Get the DVD, it makes it very simple to do.

I can't just go get my dog when she doesn't come back, because then we go into a nice game (for her) of nyah nyah, can't catch me. I hide. I try to be less predictable. I run away, she chases. She likes to know where I am and comes looking all by herself if I'm not where she looks for me. I have one other method that works very well. I have a large white beef chip, that she only gets on special occasions. It takes a little while to eat and is "hard to get". I wave that at her and she's right back with me. This is slightly better than hiding when there are distractions that might get upset with her looking for me through a dog competition ring. And I've just trained her to roll over, and if she does that for the beef chip, I can get her back on lead. Worked this morning. I let her enjoy the beef chip and then had a game of tug. Being on lead sucks (from her point of view) but not so much as it used to.

I imagine my front fence and most front fences in my burb would be inadequate because my dog can jump mine, and the others are too short to stop a big dog standing up and leaning over, or sticking a paw through. So it wouldn't be ok to leave my dog off lead out the front if she was likely to chase or attack over the fence. And kiddies reaching over the fence is just asking for trouble, best prevented. The back yard, has 2m high corrugated iron all round. And my dog doesn't jump that but there are dogs that can. So adequete for my dog, and not adequete for jumping dog. If there was a hole my dog could reach under and pull things through - that would not be adequete either. Don't know enough about this particular event to say one way or another about the fencing. I agree with the council person who said the big dogs were not at fault. Their patch was invaded.

What I'm whinging about is owners who allow their dogs to be rude and reward them for being rude. I don't like rude dogs. It's not that hard to train them to behave (most of the time) and still play well and have a good time.

mason's mum I don't know your lab, he must be special. I think there is a good chance a dog can tell the difference between a soft toy and a cat or kitten. My dog is extremely gentle with small puppies, she mostly just lies down while they jump all over her and grab her ears. But she kills soft toys. I've also heard of, but never met, labradors that are not motivated by food treats. They're out there. But they're not most labs I know.

Depends on the dog. Between two friends, especially farm dogs, stalking is part of a play game. It often goes with a bit of crawling, a drop, a bow and leaping zoomie ambush. Some other dogs - use it as an ambush for a fight. So you have to know the dog. It's most likely play when it comes to the farm dogs but not always.

Ah I think Frosty would be ok. She'd be much faster and quick on the turns than a Saint Bernard if there was trouble. She's also a big groveller so any dog that wants to be boss, doesn't have to beat her up, she just offers it immediately. We have had a problem with being roughly swatted and punched by a very friendly but rough playing mountain dog before. So she tends to keep her distance from those. We haven't met a Saint Bernard, but I think it would go a lot like the Deer hound did - zoomies. Mind you Deerhound was as fast as Frosty, if not faster, but couldn't turn the inside corners to keep up with her, and she used that to keep a safe distance. They did do some polite sniffing too. No wrestling though. Will be interesting to see what Steve thinks about it. Frosty got all excited and actually trembled when we saw the boxer come through, I didn't notice but Steve did, he was looking at her and I wasn't. But we've met that boxer before, not to mention it looks like one of her friends, so I think she wanted to go say hello and see if there as a play in it. I think that boxer pretty much ignored her last time after the greeting so maybe it was more she wanted to say hello to her friend (which it wasn't). It's funny how she can't tell her regular friends from dogs that just look like them from a distance.

OMG I agree with Corvus on this one. I think it's the malamute guarding resources, including his people. There are a number of different ways of addressing it. The main one would be to make sure he doesn't get rewarded with the very resouce that he's trying to protect by behaving unacceptably. At the same time, you don't want to make him feel more insecure about it. So if he's going to herd the greyhound and that's unacceptable, put him on lead and prevent him. And while one person pats the greyhound, maybe the other could feed treats and distract the malamute, so he eventually associates the greyhound getting a pat with "good things". I wouldn't put the malamute on lead and let someone else pat the greyhound without rewarding the malamute for behaving nicely though. Or his worst fears would be coming true in front of him, and that could make him act worse. Theoretically the malamute should have priortity to resouces & pats in his own household over a visitor so it may help to make sure that happens, but only as long as the malamute behaves politely. If the malamute can't behave, it may require separating them. I'd be thinking time out (from his precious human resources) in a crate and then making him work to earn his rewards/resources. But this is tricky to manage well. It may be more reassuring/rewarding for the malamute if the greyhound gets limited access instead and the greyhound would be protected by being separated. But this may re-inforce the obnoxious behaviour on the malamute's part. You'd have to do some careful dog management and watching to figure out the best path.

Yes, I wouldn't leave stuff out overnight, but is Mr Quill going to be stalking the grounds at 5:30am? Nothing before 6am (and there should be an "after 10pm" or something like that) is to make stopping overnighters easy. So if you stake your space out at 5:30, but don't put the poles up till 6am, would that be ok? Is overnight camping "the problem", or greedy staking out of all available space "the problem"? Is setting up where the club needs to put the show rings "the problem" in which case I think Mr Quill would be pefectly reasonable in taking your stuff away. Might be worth an email and discussion about setting up early and where is acceptable. If you're not setting up in the way, and not camping overnight, then would he really have a problem? This would be what you need to find out. Setting up and pulling down and setting up again when you can't camp there anyway, isn't really a big deal.

Lo Pan That's a very cute photo. I'm surprised the toy still has a face. My dog would eat it. So would most labs I know. Hetzer I second - big dogs can play with little ones, as long as they know how to play gentle, and the little ones know to back off when they've had enough. It helps a lot if the big dog is very agile or slow, not fast and clumsy.

Hi Secretkei I don't think it's ok to put the address in here. Um. too bad if it is already. maps.google.com.au put in the first street and the suburb and south australia and it will show you the map. The side to be on is the beach side. For the private consult. And the other side for the saturday - I reckon though it won't matter much.

Leaving gazebos up to be hit by an unforecast (or a forecast) storm over night can be a problem. Unless your gazebo is cyclone proof, I don't know why you'd want to leave it up. We had a hockey carnival last year, where all the small tents and gazebos were trashed by storms. Only the gigantic ballroom hall tent survived. But it got flooded. Just find a gazebo that is quick to set up. Mine takes less than 10 minutes solo. And I'm sure you're not going to find a council enforcing the no gazebo before 6am rule, if you do see a council worker at 5:30am on the weekend (impossible to imagine) just say it isn't yours. The dog club might ask you to wait but chances are they'd be too busy setting up to notice. Our councils enforce the no camping rules very intermittantly and the dogs on lead in this park rule - not at all. You'd be really unlucky to find anyone complaining if you set up in an area that you have checked is not required by the club / show setup.

http://www.dogstardaily.com/training/digit...aining-textbook Ian Dunbar's digital dog training book including all the puppy stuff. And then there are all the training videos linked on the site. And Lesley Nelson's Really Reliable Recall http://www.dogwise.com/ItemDetails.cfm?ID=DTB810P I'm a big fan of puppy preschool at your favourite vet, when the puppy's vaccinations do not allow for socialisation in public, and play dates with dogs the owner knows are vaccinated, then the local dog obedience club, and as many different dog exercise places as possible. So the puppy can't get territorial.

Hi Bluestaff You might want to get the schnoz xrayed. My mum headbutt a bull terrier x labrador, ignored it for 40 years or so, and then decided she needed a nose job as age and gravity combined with a bent nose was making it difficult to breathe. I've seen plenty of people and dogs skittled in a bad case of zoomies. My dog is very good at dodging but the dog she's herding isn't always so agile. I've seen a labrador at full speed, slam his shoulder into the side of a park bench, brought on much doggy screaming and owner stress and an instant trip to the vet. It took months to heal up. The dog has learned nothing. The owner checks the fence line for park benchs that have been moved too close.

Cassie When you say Hudson is a pain around other dogs... Is he aggressive - wants to kill them? Scared - wants to kill or run? Overly friendly - will kill them with loving thumps around the head? Something else? Frosty can't help the aggressive kill all dog kind of dog, but she's great with the fear aggressive and the "as long as I'm boss" kind of dogs. And she copes fairly well with the overly friendly ones too. I guess we find out tomorrow morning. Kynan, glad it went so well for you.

Live and let live. That would be nice. I'd be happy if all the bouncy dogs of this world didn't bounce on me and my dog without invitation.