Mrs Rusty Bucket

From when I came over in feb 2012 I stayed in mahogany motel Cranbourne and really wished I hadn't - it was feral and expensive. Some other South Australians stayed at the fourth furlong... http://fourthfurlong.budgetmotelchain.com.au/ which looks feral but in fact was much nicer and quieter and cleaner than MM. And they allow dogs. They're not supposed to be in rooms but the lady that manages the place doesn't fuss if there's no extra work for her. She smokes (or did when I visited) but the rooms don't smell bad, unlike MM... If I was going again, I'd stay there. It's opposite the racecourse but with easy access to Western Port Highway via Hall road or Thomas Road. Traffic going to Melbourne starts getting slow around 7:30am - I was a bit surprised by that. If you can be on the road to KCC park by 7:15am - it was quick otherwise - you'd blow your 8am setup time...

If it walks like an ostrich and quacks like an ostrich- it must be not happening. http://www.theage.com.au/victoria/man-charged-over-dog-thefts-20130621-2oopm.html http://www.parliament.nsw.gov.au/prod/parlment/hansart.nsf/V3Key/LA20130502062 http://www.nbc15.com/home/headlines/Dog-fight-leads-to-arrest-and-citation-218711901.html

I think it's a bit hard to tell. Unless the dog was surrendered to them with the papers, they usually list it as a whatever it looks like most + cross. And the phone answering people do seem to be very hazy about what is actually in the pound, and sometimes what sex it is. I drove 2 hours out to wingfield to look at a red heeler bitch listed on their website. I phoned first to make sure it was still there. And when I got there, it was gone already... they said half an hour before I got there, though I think that unlikely given how long it had been on the website. And it turned out to be a boy dog anyway. I left with a blue cattle dog x puppy that wasn't ever listed on the website and I was not told was there. I've seen plenty of dogs at the park that were from rescue and probably misidentified. The latests looks like a kelpie x something GSD like and it was listed as a JRT x. It's the same size as my dog was at the same age... so I think it's going to be a bit bigger than a JRT. It's kelpie shape and temperament, mostly light brown with a faint black saddle like a beagle.

My dog will work for anyone who has food. As long as she knows where I am. After that it gets a bit interesting. One of the boarding kennels I've left her at - love her. But the other one - not so much. She's embarrassed several great dog trainers. But she embarrasses me more often. My fave was a certain dog trainer testing her out with the "its yer choice" game with a view to using her as a demo dog the next day (forgot to tell me that), anyway it only took one lesson and my dog could not be fooled with the same trick again... if only it were so easy to stop her from counter surfing.

Wildthing I think you're doing a good thing. I guess it would make it easier for someone to dispose of their neighbour's straying cat, or the cat from down the street - who comes and picks fights with the neighbour's cat... if feeding it was all it took. My council has declared that all cats should be registered and microchipped so they obviously think there have been some complaints and problems. However - when it comes to enforcing, they're not really interested unless you have already caught the cat.

I think if you cover the trap, they feel relatively safe... When I helped my friend - what we actually used was a crate, covered in some towels. My friend made the mistake of taking the towels off when she put the crate in the car. Would have been better if they thought they were somewhere defendable and fully enclosed. I watched the guys on verminators, and I thought their skunk trapping job would have been a lot easier, if they'd wrapped the traps up all except for the door, with skunk proof plastic... But no, they left the traps out in the open and then they had to get the skunk proof plastic on after the skunk was trapped and angry.

Yes - this is what AWL said. I haven't found this law anywhere tho. I've looked in the dog and cat management act, it isn't there, and those laws vary from state to state anyway. I doubt that "you feed it, it's yours" would apply to anything else. Hmm, I like that racehorse, I wonder if it likes carrots...

Thanks Kirty That will make my friend a little bit less confused. Not sure what is going on with the AWL or if she just misunderstood.

http://www.examiner.com/article/the-true-killer-ill-informed-professionals-lacking-critical-thinking-skills (there's a graph comparing different methods too)

Hi all This is carried over from the do you feed stray cats survey posted in general (dog) discussion. Would like some rescue orientated opinions on how you catch stray feral cats - if you don't feed them? Or why feeding them (with a view to catching them) is bad. It's pretty obvious to me that just feeding them - makes it easier for them to make more kittens so neither my friend nor I would do that. http://www.dolforums.com.au/topic/250961-have-you-fed-a-stray-cat-lately/page__view__findpost__p__6268737 I recently helped a friend catch some kittens that she'd lured into her home with food over a couple of weeks... And my friend took them to AWL who told her off for feeding the kittens at all. I'm wondering if your survey friend knows what we're supposed to do with stray cats if we don't catch them and take them to the RSPCA or AWL. And how we're supposed to catch them without feeding them. These cats definitely were not owned, the mother cat had a litter somewhere in a housing trust community and nobody there owned any of them. Don't know where the mother cat has gone now.

Personally I prefer to use the reward/no reward method of training. My timing is often crap. I don't think I could successfully use the ecollar. I'd trust Steve C with one but not me. As for who is a dog trainer... everyone who owns a dog is a dog trainer with varying degrees of success. In my case - I suspect my dog is slightly better at training people than I am at training her. And my dog is collar smart - it would be extremely difficult to get compliance for anything trained with something as chunky as an ecollar if it was not on her. She knows what different training gear means. And I can't imagine there would be any useful transfer of value with the ecollar... apart from blaming the snake for the buzz/zap. So if Bob Bailey can train dolphins in open water to do bomb disposal with rewards only, then I can surely train my dog to ignore a snake or at least indicate it from a safe distance. The main problem would be having a snake in lots of different habitats to practice with. We've got varying degrees of success with the local cats. From lunging at them, to letting them have a pat while she sits there. A lot of it has to do with working the threshold of able to learn and completely over the top C A T... (too close too quick).

Trouble with e-collar is you still need to do some training. Ie train the dog what to do when it feels the zap. Otherwise you may find you get a dog on being zapped runs in a straight line until out of zapper trigger range or further. Or blames the zap on the snake and attacks it. If you can train a dog what to do when it gets zapped, you can also train a dog what to do when it sees a snake - without the zapper. I do think someone who knows how to do the training, and someone else who knows how to safely provide some snakes (or other critters), could be a big help. Pretty sure my dog would bark at a snake from 2m away and not touch it because that's what she does with every other critter (except insects).

I'd probably start with Greg Derrett's handling DVD "Agility Foundation Training" http://www.gtagility.com/training.html to get an idea of some foundation exercises like shadow handling and start line stays... And a lot of handlers are using Silvia Trkman's system http://www.lolabuland.com/training-videos/agility-foundations/ I suspect it may involve less running than Greg's system. The main thing is to develop a super consistent way of letting your dog know what you want to happen next. That's handling. And you also develop your dog's ability to negotiate the obstacles without you helping, so the more "body awareness" and strengthing exercises the dog gets as foundation, the better. Not sure if there is a dvd for that. Susan Garrett is talking about doing a handling course online this year. Greg Derrett also runs online courses.

This was probably a good thing given how many of them they have killed. Their baggage staff are notorious for leaving the dogs out in the open which is not good in Australia on warm or hot days.

TSD I recently helped a friend catch some kittens that she'd lured into her home with food over a couple of weeks... And my friend took them to AWL who told her off for feeding the kittens at all. I'm wondering if your survey friend knows what we're supposed to do with stray cats if we don't catch them and take them to the RSPCA or AWL. And how we're supposed to catch them without feeding them. These cats definitely were not owned, the mother cat had a litter somewhere in a housing trust community and nobody there owned any of them. Don't know where the mother cat has gone now.

I have watched one extremely unfit but heavy woman fail to hold or control her cattle dog. And I know how hard mine can pull. Fortunately mine rolled over and the other one was happy with that. I suggested wrapping the lead around a pole or tree for extra leverage - or just standing on it. The woman would have outweighed the dog by at least 5x. She didn't get a front attach harness or learn how to get her dog loose lead walking. She just stopped taking it out because she was too terrified about what it would do to other dogs.

Orca for a black and white Chihuahua?

Ah two dogs "askim" and "guess"... Trouble. Pop pop pop - sounds enough like pup pup pup to get most dogs' attention. Of course my dog answers to anything that sounds like a treat hand out. There's quite a few dog owners - you swear their dogs' names were "Treat" "Treat" - "Treaty"...

My dog just LOVES being up high. dog walk, scramble, sand dune, balcony. Hard to keep her off them... flat out too. My main problem is stopping her from taking flying leaps from the top. Another dog that started on those the same day as us, was completely freaked out by our club dog walk... we had to put the plank flat on the ground and play games on it.

I swear - I've never called my dog "Bucket" on course. I have stood out there going "lost, lost... lost...". But nobody can hear what I say because by then she's barking at me as if that helps me remember... maybe I should change her name to "this way dis dis way - arrrggghh". Is yelling BEAGLE - like an alert warning - "BEAGLE - coming through"...

Wonder if it is the same thief who tried to nick some huskies from Aldinga beach... White van may have been a hire car (common to have vic plates on hire cars in SA).

try to pick something that doesn't start with the same consonants or rhyme with your command words... So anything that rhymes with sit, stay, okay, are probably out for me. Some I've seen used... Fee (Fiona or Phoebe) Pea Wag Cor Gee Spy Tee Ash Mee Bell Beau Moll My dog is Frosty. Next one might be Smokey, or Sooty (tho that sounds a bit like Sit), Stormy, Snowy... Names you can repeat for attention eg Bea Bea Bea Bea are quite good. But you can always have a pet name and a competition run name...

I think it's a bit of a worry that councils don't seem to have any money or inclination to enforce their own rules - from parking cars safely without obstructing roads, to letting dogs run loose crapping everywhere. Our council is down to one ranger for dogs, illegal parking, litter dumping - everything. And one footpath sweeper for the whole area and a lot of other stuff like weeding and tree lopping contracted out.

This one is a little tricky If it was a faulty tv - you'd return it to the place of purchase for a refund or exchange. There's no way a tv shop would give you several times more than the value of the original tv to get it repaired. And if you're not going to return the faulty goods - then I don't see how you can get a refund. Your breeder may as a gesture of goodwill - return some of the money or offer you another puppy but unless you return the faulty puppy, I'm not sure they have to. Meanwhile your vet specialist can submit the details along with the puppy's ancestry to the LIDA database at Uni Sydney so they can see if there is a breed pattern with the problem or not. http://sydney.edu.au/vetscience/lida/dogs/

I think the council has a lot of trouble with this particular house, so they really don't want to bother. Front of the house is full of old trucks, cars, boats and motorbikes, and driven by crazy kids who do double the speed limit on our streets (having driven behind them a few times). I was of the belief that if a dog rushes another dog, it should be classified as a dangerous dog but was told by the council worker that it was only if a dog rushed a person. And that the council workers definitely couldn't go onto property. Don't know how they'd catch the dogs though, as I pulled over on the other side of the road when I saw it loose. When it saw me stick my camera out the window, it quickly ran back and hid under a truck. Knox council, FYI. No slander here because this is what happened and they'd have it on file. I'd hope. This outlines the Victorian rules. The thing about dog attacks is that the dog is guilty unless the owner can prove it innocent (eg at a dog event interstate at the time). There's no way the Knox council people are right. I would be contacting your state parliament rep or even your ward councillors - and pointing out that their staff are not enforcing the state law to the detriment of their residents' safety. http://www.depi.vic.gov.au/pets/dogs/dog-attacks-dangerous-and-menacing-dogs/dog-attacks-faqs There isn't an exception for attacking an animal vs a human. The rules are pretty much the same.