Simply Grand

How exciting Cleo, congrats!!

Poor Riddick! And you, how scary. I can't believe the guy blamed you, what a d*ck.

Hahaha kiesha, she was totally doing an intentional backwards half walkover, doggy gymnastics!

Poor Chiquita So glad she is ok. I hope the other dogs are prevented from doing any more damage.

One of my fondest memories is when I picked Saxon up to bring him home. He was tiny, about 1kg, but a confident little fellow in the breeder's house with his mum and littermates and happily left the house in my arms with not a whimper. I put him in the carrier on the passenger seat - all fine - but by the time I walked around the car and got into the drivers seat he was shaking like a leaf and clearly terrified at suddenly being away from everything he knew. I picked him up and cuddled him under my chin for a while until he calmed down. He was my first ever puppy and that moment was when I realised how dependent this little creature was on me and what a huge responsibility I had to do the right thing by him, having made the choice to bring him into my life with him having no say. 3 years on and I think I've done ok by him :)

Hehe, there are alot of hard doggy heads in these stories, I swear they have skulls made of steel!

I'd be wary about an Aussie in a rental property, unless it's a pretty destruction-proof house (and garden)! I have scratch and chew damage all over the place, although mine is quite an "enthusiastic" girl. ETA - I agree with everything else you said tho Aussie3! I think a mini poodle would be a good choice, as long as you keep on top of the grooming. I do my own grooming for my poodle x malt and although he never looks perfect, it's cheap (after the initial outlay for clippers and scissors). Also, be aware that a 20-30kg dog could pull you around if it wanted to! My 23kg-ish Aussie Shepherd can pull me around and I weigh alot more than 45kgs ;)

Quinn likes to check in with me and show me how happy she is when she's playing. A few weeks ago she and Riley were having one of their regular chase each other round the house games, I was sitting on the couch and Quinn came bolting over, leaped onto the couch and headbutted me as she zoomed past - her big fat head connected with my cheekbone and her fur managed to get into my eye, knocking my contact lens and giving me a moment of panic because my vision was all blurry. I ended up with a bruised cheekbone and a blood spot in my eye for a week *(sore) eye roll*

I agree too Midol, it's just not realistic to expect other dogs to never run up to yours in a dog park and if your dog doesn't react well to it then you shouldn't take it in. It isn't fair on your dog the others. Another dog park danger I was reminded of today unfortunately is uninformed people who take their adult dogs with aggression problems to the park to "resocialise" them. Often they've adopted the dog as an adult, have been told it wasn't properly socialised as a youngster and is therefore aggressive so they think they need to have it around other dogs to get used to them. Obviously a bunch if unknown dogs in a park where other owners do not expect aggressive dogs is a terrible way to do this! I find it really useful (essential) to watch the interaction between the owner and dog when an unknown dog arrives at the park, you can quite quickly get a good idea of how much control the owner has over the dog. I also watch how the dog interacts with a range of other dogs before I let mine near it, and I trust my dogs instincts. Saxon and Quinn are not generally wary of other dogs so if they show wariness I worry - and their instincts are usually spot on, the dogs they are unsure of then cause trouble with someone else.

Also tolerance, which is often sadly lacking. Save the venting and raving for people whose actions are dangerous, not for those who are merely annoying. If you have to walk away from some situations, walk away. Lots of people out there are less than perfect :D. You're not going to bring all the idiots around to your way of doing things. One person's common sense is another person's twisted and warped point of view. Just wondering sg, do you think the situation I vented about above was a dangerous one, or an annoying one?

Oh how sad. I hope you can find some little foster siblings for the pup.

I'm a lazy trainer and am happy that they just go outside to toilet on the grass so I'm no help! Koalathebear has had great success in teaching her kelpies to go to "poo corner" though so she may have some good tips. PM her if you want, I think she'll be happy to share. If Kelpies can learn it Aussies certainly can ;)

Morgan the Bloodhound, sooooo gorgeous! What a clever boy. The guard dog stuff, well it was interesting but not true to life, the dog appeared to recognise it as a training session with his handler, not a genuine threat to its property. Still, the show acknowledged that beating a guard dog was not an easy feat!

Ooh, thanks! I'm recording, will watch after Can of Worms, which has 'do we spend too much on our pets?' as a debate topic tonight (and 50 Shades of Grey - worst book ever but I still somehow read the whole trilogy...)

*vent alert* I've just come from a lovely afternoon at the dog park (fenced, not shared use) with my guys but here's an eg of what NOT to do - A woman came in on her own with her three kids, ages 3, 5 and 7 I'd guess, and one dog. You could hear them coming a mile away as the kids ran screaming towards the entrance gate (Quinn went on lead). Kids open the gate and all 3 come running into the park yelling. Woman comes in, takes leash and slip collar of dog and lets her run off. Then kids all run off to one end of the park, the woman walks halfway along and stands there, the dog runs to the other end of the park. So their visit was spent with the woman standing still in the middle of the park, 3 kids and dog without even a collar to grab all unattended running around the park. Very luckily, there were no major problems, thanks to the attentiveness of other owners.

Oops triple post!

Dbl post

Just wanted to add, Quinn now has excellent recall, especially now I've introduced cheese and taught her the word - she will come away from running towards a kid at the word cheese but I get sick of yelling "cheese" like an idiot every 20 seconds when she wants to run back over to the kid.

Padraic, I find find it so frustrating when kids are running round the dog parks here in Canberra. Like you said, they are specifically dog parks, not shared areas and kids have their own parks to play in, as well as everywhere else that is on leash for dogs. I have a constant battle with preventing Quinn (10 month old Aussie Shep) from jumping on kids, who she may well accidentally hurt or knock over, in the dog park. She loooooves kids and I'm working really hard on teaching her not to jump up but it's so frustrating when she has to spend half our time there on leash while someone's kid runs around the park.

Rubyblue, have a look at the articles corvus linked, interesting scientific studies on doggy humping behaviour, possibly helping explain the Mal's behaviour in licking and rolling over in conjunction with mounting/humping.

In your experience, as detailed above, have you found that humping always leads to conflict between dogs? Or is humping within a pack accepted as normal behaviour by the dogs involved but not between stranger dogs? (or both, or neither...). From what I've read and observed, humping is a normal dog behaviour and most stable dogs can manage it, possibly with minor human intervention, so I'm interested in knowing why you feel it should never be allowed in a dog park.

Hi corvus! *waves* :) I thought there must be some research, I'll go read...

That's your opinion dogmad but there are plenty of entire dogs at my local dog park all the time and it doesn't make any difference to whether or not there are problems - some entire individuals may cause problems but some desexed individuals cause problems too. ETA - cherry picking an incident where 2 entire dogs attacked doesn't prove that no entire dog should ever be at a dog park, and I doubt the ONLY factor in those dogs attacking was them being entire.

So to put my question another way - as an eg (assuming homosexuality does exist in animals) could one tell by watching one male dog humping another male dog whether he was doing it because he was being dominant or because he was sexually attracted to it? ETA - or possibly because he was excited and the other dog happened to be there.

I know many people find humping the height of bad doggy manners, but it really is funny sometimes, some of these stories, hahaha!! I do stop Saxon when he does it to other people's dogs but he does look so funny doing it, someone said to me once he looks like a naughty teddy bear :) So there are a range of reasons they do it, which I did know but does anyone know or think they do it in a different sort of way depending on what their reason is? Like I was saying in the OP, I perceived Riley as having a different humping style with males (which I'm pretty sure was an attempt at dominance, based on a few things incl how the dogs he picked behaved) than with females (which didn't seem to be dominance). I'm not sure if it was just me thinking I saw differences because I knew whether he was doing it to a male or a female.