mumof3

That's a lovely story. What wonderful people. Lucky Kassy.

Pipsal, I remember you earlier posts and you are doing a terrific job of raising AND socialising these pups. I really hope you are able to place them as they will probably be good pets. I'd like to warn you about something that the bitch may try to do at some point. She may try to take the puppies for a walk. I realise that you have them contained, which is great, but still think you should be aware of this possibility. She may take them for long walks to weed out the weaker pups. She won't come back until one drops off or gets let behind. If this happens you could look to her diet, I am not sure if it is dietry stress on the bitch which causes this behaviour, or something else. I believe this toughening up and weeding out is part of nature, and this bitch is likely to be quite in touch with her natural instincts.

Husky or similar

I don't even get a once a year checkup myself - let alone the dogs! As I live in a remote area, if I am going near the vet, and can easily take a dog, I do, because if the vet has a relationship with us and our animals, they can more easily help us by sending medications to us rather than us having to travel an injured or very ill animal. Like when I pick up our new puppy in a few weeks, she will get to stop by and meet our vet on the way home, then the vet will feel comfortable about sending us out her next vaccinations, rather than us travelling to the vet for it. Living in the bush you become quite self reliant and capable of handling routine issues, especially with a vet who knows your animals on the other end of the phone for advice. Only once have I had an animal that needed emergency veterinary attention from a real vet and I flew her in a helicopter to a vet because the roads were cut.

Furballs, I think you have raised an excellent question. I am not a breeder, but a person who is awaiting delivery of a puppy from a breeder. I particularly like Steve's answer to your question, and thought I would put forward what I did to put my mind at ease on these issues. Having chosen a breed (Brittany), I started looking for availability of pups. This is a somewhat uncommon breed with only about 20 registered breeders in Australia (listed on DOL anyway). I rang a small breeder who had circumstances similar to mine (family shape and size etc) and discussed the merits of the breed and what I was really after. Buying a kids pet, temperament was formost on my list of "wants". I discussed this with this breeder and she was happy to direct me to a few breeders who had an excellent reputation for breeding dogs with great temperament. Some further research showed that one of these breeders in particular, often supplies pups for breeding to other registered breeders. I took this to be quite reassuring - she was breeding breeding quality pups. On other breeders websites I found quite a few mentions of how valuable this breeder is to the breed and how supportive she has been to various people. Talking to this lady on the phone, I found we "clicked". I started to get the sense that the investment I was making was not just paying for a dog, but paying for this lady's lifetime of knowledge and experience. Her personality, reputation within the breed and many years experience was guarantee enough for me. I decided that I wanted one of her pups, because I had faith in her as a breeder. I did speak to other breeders. Perhaps not surprisingly, I found one breeder who I was warned did not have the very best temperament in one of her lines, to not have the best temperament herself when I spoke to her! Other breeders were helpful and friendly but did not have a litter scheduled in my time line. In the end, having chosen an excellent breeder, and having every confidence in her, I have waited quite a long time for my puppy (about 4 months - not that long in purebred dog circles, but it seems like a long time to me!), but the experience has been very reassuring that I have made the right choice. Also, during my research phase I discussed the merits (and demerits) of the breed with quite a few breeders to discover if I was choosing the right breed. Opinions varied, but I often got a sense of the person behind the opinion. I understand why you ask these questions. While I researched it did seem to me that there are breeders (in all breeds) who are breeding show dogs, to the breed standard, or trying to improve the breed, but that this does not necessarily produce the best pet. I chose purebred because I wanted predictability in temperament and suitability / activity level etc for our family. I chose registered because I think unregistered purebred is the most dangerous choice health wise. If I were located closer to a shelter, I would have seriously looked at adopting from a shelter, but due to my remote location this was not feasible. Buying your purebred registered dog should be pleasant, empowering and should fill you with confidence. If you are not getting this experience, find another breeder. I also don't believe in guarantees re health. All anyone can do is better the odds, and have the right repuation, personality etc to step in and help if there is a problem in the future.

to the RSPCA for the mail out I received yesterday, directly attacking the puppy farm industry, with real life stories and photos of a dog seized from a puppy farm near Townsville (one of over a hundred dogs seized that day on that farm). I know we don't always agree with everything the RSPCA does, but I agree with this. The mail out asked for donations to their fund directed at stopping puppy farming and handling, treating etc animals seized from such terrible places. If half the people that get one actually read it, that'd be great. I'd love to see them do something broader along the same lines, as I suspect I only got this cause I am on their database, and not everyone got it. I'd donate towards advertising educating people about the puppy farm industry if I could.

When I was a kid we used to sail lots, with our golden retriever riding on the bow. He never quite got the hang of a sharp tack or jibe, and landed in the drink several times. Of course this was the eighties, before any normal person would have put a life jacket on their dog, but he was fine. He still loved the boat, even after getting pulled out of the water by the scruff of his neck. If I did it today, I think I'd use a life jacket for my dog. A nice bright one - easier to see. I might also consider doing some gentle tacking up a river on a nice day so the dogs can get used to the "ready about, heave ho" routine (don't know if everyone does that, but we used to. Also think about wether your deck will be slippery for your dog when the boat is on a bit of a lean, and what you may be able to do to give him better grip. My GR used to lap up the salt water at every opportunity, which of course made him sick. Just something to look out for. Sounds like great fun.

Yep, it really is another world. In so many, many ways. Never lived in one, but have good friends who lived at Port Keats / Wadeye for about 5 years. We had a holiday there, and at Ngukurr in Arnhem Land. Plus we lived and worked throughout the Territory on cattle stations in the nineties. Well, good on you. Hope you find the solutions you are looking for. Someone mentioned vaccination. I wouldn't bother. Somewhere between natural immunity (a vet once counselled me not to bother vaccinating a mature dog because he likely would have some immunity having got to 5 years of age without vaccination), and the idea that sooner or later animals will die, and are unlikely to be humanely pts, I just don't think it would be worth the money. Can't imagine desexing her would be of negative impact, if you can get it done (tricky when the vet is a long way away, perhaps he does a run now and then). The bitch is unlikely to have been travelled in a car, except maybe in a ute, or piled in the back of a unregistered vehicle with about 10 'lations...., so be prepared if you take her to the vet, that the journey may be traumatic for her. Perhaps you can have a word to the next people to occupy the house, make it quite clear that the house comes with a resident... Life is hard for animals in these communities, good luck helping this animal have a happier ending. Remember though, that her idea of happy ending, and yours might be quite different. Try not to impose your ideals onto this dog who really does come from another world. Enjoy the rest of your stay. Take some art work home with you. I regret not picking up some nice artwork direct from the artist for about $70 for an A3 sized original unframed painting. I've seen much lesser work sell for hundreds of dollars in touristy galleries. Hope you get to see the good side, as well as the bad side, of community life.

Pipsal Can I ask, are you in an Aboriginal community, settlement or town camp? Much of what you say rings bells of familiarity (about isolation and lots of unloved and not desexed dogs running around). And is this bitch a camp bitch? If so, I admire your attempt to make things a little better and wish you all the very best. If she is a camp bitch, you will have a hard time containing her, and trying to will only distress her, personally, I wouldn't try (because I understand the nature of being in a town camp). Perhaps nearby station people may consider giving the puppies a home, or other government employees like teachers, police, council etc. Anyway, good luck. I am also in an isolated area in NW QLD.

Bravo being a young person with a desire to work. It is wonderful to find something that you want to do, many of us go our whole lives before we "click" into something that makes us happy. My first advice would be to finish school. Talk to Hanrob and explain how much you enjoyed working there, how you'd like to make a career in (whatever it is that Hanrob do), and ask their advice. Maybe even take some part time work there. You could possibly do some sort of school based traineeship. But stay at school. Take the time now to finish school, because that will give you so many more choices later in your life. If you leave school now, you really limit the avenues open to you in the future. Sorry if my assumption about you not having finished school is incorrect. I wasn't finished school when I was 16, I still had another 2 years to go. Good luck with it!

I wonder how the blind go about spotting that sticker....

Agree - I've seen the damage these wild dogs do and it is not a pretty sight, certainly not a nice way to die, in fact some of the stock they attack are badly maimed and are still alive - this is a farmers livelihood, they will shoot where they can, but don't get them all. They are a horrible problem - imagine if they got into an area where there was a child. While I don't like the idea of baiting (though I have rat bait under my house and I'm sure many of you do as well that are opposed to baiting), there isn't that many other ways of getting rid of these dogs. They are very skillful at being elusive! Trapping, getting professional shooters in, are possible other ways. Where we have our farm, they have used traps, the dogs learn very quickly to avoid them, while in the meantime will go through a flock of ewes with lambs and selectively kill and maim half the flock. Baiting is also risky to pet dogs! Not for it AT ALL! If the dogs are that elusive what makes you think they're going to attack a child? Besides which, you wouldn't leave a child on his own in such areas anyway, would you? there can be other risks for small children, like dams....from what I'm hearing there are far more deaths from children drowning in dams than being attacked by wild dogs...in fact, I cannot recall a child being attacked by wild dogs. I do stand corrected if I'm wrong...but whatever the case it is hardly a common occurrence. I didn't say it was a common occurrence, just stating what can and could happen. Yes dams are a big problem with children on farms however that is not the issue at hand. Pet dogs on farms are most times kept in a house yard and are in the home. Most farmers know the risks with their dogs and working dogs are either penned or chained up when not working, pet dogs are in the house yard. I know of several pet dogs that have gotten out and went into other properties only to be shot, this is the rule of the land. Farmers cannot afford to have their stock maimed and killed. Until you see the carnage that these dogs do to innocent stock, then by all means offer up some other solution to the farmers, but in the meantime, there is no real alternative, so they will do what they have on hand. Just like the councils in most areas will bait for foxes, rabbits etc in parklands and I don't see too many people up in arms about that. The councils leave notes in the areas where there is bait and will usually advertise in the local paper advising when the baiting will occur. These are pests and cause a lot of damage and while I agree with you that baiting is not a nice way to go, I'm sure the ewes and lambs would also agree that having limbs ripped off, their stomachs ripped open, throats torn apart etc etc is not a nice way to go either. The threat wild dogs pose to children is real, and while it is remote, farmers must manage the threats to their stock and to their families. Several years ago we were involved in the rescue of a two year old child who had wandered away from the farm house when his mother was asleep. The eight month pregnant mother had laid on the lounge to put her feet up for a few minutes and just clean fallen asleep. The child somehow managed to get the supposed secure house yard gate open and went for a walk with his pet cattle dog bitch, who was on heat. We were on the neighboroughing property (in an area where the properties were about 200,000 acres) and had a reputation as owning a good nose dog (used for pig hunting - this was in our youth). The SES had searched for the child for 8 hours, and lost him when his tracks left the dirt road about a kilometer from the house. We were asked to help and we arrived in the middle of the night. There was great concern for the child because the bitch was on heat and might actually attract a wild dog. The region has lots of wild dogs which regularly destroy stock, and make running sheep impossible as the losses are too high. Our nose dog led us in a line straight to the kid, naked and cold in the middle of the night in the scrub. I gave him my coat and carried him to the search party vehicles. Our dog was not trained to rescue people, and was only following the scent of the bitch (we think), but he became a hero that night and made the paper. It only took us about 20 minutes to locate the child. We've had dingo's attack working dogs. I've seen a pack of wild dogs pull down an old dairy cow, and kill her calf and chew her anus out while she was alive. I've seen wild dogs kill for fun, just killing calves and not eating them. We see many calves with no ears or no tail. In large properties in particular, aerial baiting is used as the only effective way of controling dog pests over such a large area. Yes, working dogs get killed too, which is a terrible shame. A working dog is a valuable and important asset to the farmer, and often a mate too, and most would take precautions to protect them, but sometimes something just goes wrong. Baiting is an unpleasant thing, but so are wild dogs. Biological controls have been used with other pests with disastrous results (remember the cane toad). Trapping can have some impact on smaller farms but is impractical over larger areas. Same goes for shooting (which can have it's own cruelty due to the fact that not every kill is a clean one). At least baiting works and saves the lives of thousands of livestock, killing the wild dog reasonably quickly (compared to lieing gut shot in the scrub), with minimal collateral kill (a few crows and working dogs). People really should walk a mile in the farmers shoes before dismissing them as dimwits.

I can see ACD there. I think in the shape of the jaw / muzzle, I see some sort of bull or mastiff in there too. Not sure what exactly, but she has the same shape jaw etc as a dog we used to have as a pig hunting dog when we were teenagers. He was a mastiff cross something else. Her tail looks short in the photo. We had a ACD with bulging eyes once. What sort of moron would tell you your childhood dog was ugly? Looks like a great dog to me.

Great minds think alike, hey. Yes. GM. And I can't remember what they call it, but where they GM plants so that the seeds they produce are sterile. Anyway, we are getting further and further OT.... And I don't qualify for the appropriate forum yet!

Thanks, longdog. The vertical integration of your butchers' enterprise would make a (possibly) otherwise unprofitable grazing property an important part of a profitable business. Those people who find a way of earning a good living doing something that they believe in are truly blessed. I love to hear their stories. I saw a story once about a similar, organic enterprise near Brisbane where people could come out from the city and see the cattle grazing happily and choose one, which was then sent to the local small slaughterhouse and slaughtered and butchered for them, as per their requirements. People had to buy a whole beast though, which is quite a bit of meat (it takes us about 4 months to eat one and we eat alot of beef), but a couple of families could share. Bring back the small farmer, I say. The bloke with freerange chooks, who lets the pigs turn over the fields between crops, keeps his own bees, a handful of cattle and sheep and a field of pumkins or tomatoes or potatoes and a field of corn or barley. Rotational, permaculture systems with lots of love and care going into the mix. Gosh I'd love to do that.

WOW! The monkey part is a bit much, isn't it! I'm sure (I hope) that your many experiences included some wonderful ones too, not just these horrid ones! Thanks for the interesting story.

I think this is a fantastic idea, but also I think that it is largely marketing. I'd be sincerely interested to know how he manages to slaughter stress free. To me, stress free is happily grazing one moment, bullet through the head, dead on the ground the next (and this is how the kangaroo harvesting industry tries to operate). As far as I am aware this is not permissable for meat for sale in AUstralia due to our food safety laws. As far as I know, it is necessary to bring the meat to the abbattoir (even if it is just a small on farm abbattoir). At the abbattoir, the animal will become stressed because he can smell the death around him. Secondly, stress causes meat to become less tender. Stress causes chemicals in the blood stream which cause the muscle tissue to become tough. For this reason large cattle handling and slaughtering facilities have invested millions of dollars in trying to minimise the stress to stock as they are killed. Producers also work on reducing stress from when cattle leave the paddock to when they arrive at the works by ensuring that they are handled quietly by competent staff, not left without food or water for too long, not hit or traumatised. Its all about the mighty $. I have long hand in mind a business idea similar to the farmer you write about. I think organically grown, humanely slaughtered type meat has alot to offer, and many people are prepared to pay extra for added food safety, and greater ethics.

Just on the idea of writing something like "deceased" on the papers. Be aware that someone half handy with a colour photocopier, or with photo editing software can remove something like this from a document without too much difficulty.

Bet that lab reckons that that whippet is a bit of a tool.

I agree, it is more important that good animal welfare practices are used in the raising and slaughter of meat, than what species the animal is. And yes, some species are more easily handled with good animal welfare practices than others. I don't like intensive farming of most species, pigs, chooks, cattle, sheep. This is for both the animal welfare point of view, and due to my concern over the use of additional chemicals, anitbiotics etc in intesively farmed stock. Personally, though, I think I'll stick with normal western foods and avoid eating dogs cats and horses. I'd like to put forward the idea, too, that ideals of high standards of animal welfare are linked to a society being reasonably wealthy, and that the evolution from seeing animals as stock to seeing them as living creatures who have rights is something that our society has been through, and continues to go through. It is always good to see another country moving towards consideration of animal welfare. We should remember too, that in many countries, the plight of women and children is much worse than the plight of animals. Human rights matter too (though of course, this is a purebred dog community forum).

As others have said, recovery from burns is slow, and set backs are common. Jed is going to need lots of love and support for a long time, most especialy when she wakes up. I was once a part of a forum with other people who were grieving a particularly difficult loss. One thoughtful gesture that many bereaved found a lovely and touching memento was a beautiful pencil drawing of the deceased. I'd just like to put the idea forward, and I'm sure that those who know Jed better than I would have an idea if this is something that might be nice for Jed. Love, and best wishes to Jed and her family and all of those wonderful souls who are helping out. Thanks for the updates Toohey.

jack russel? mature rescue jrt.

I'm so pleased that Jed is stable. I know she may be only at the very beginning of a long and difficult healing process, both physically and emotionally. Jed, I hope that the love and community that is being demonstrated here in support of you at this dark time, bouys you up and keeps you going through the difficult times to come. You have obviously touched many people - even me with your sensible and practical advise to a newby. Sending love, prayers and peace to you and yours.

Jed and her family and animals will be in my prayers tonight.

How about just blaming the low lifes that attacked the dog. If Jack wasn't accustomed to being inside, then placing him inside would be stressful. Perhaps Jack preferred being outside. Perhaps he had the run of house and garden so he could go outside to pee - and he just liked being out there. Who knows.