koalathebear

A few weeks back, we rescued Eddie the Kelpie cross puppy from Gundagai Pound. This was him at the Tuckerbox Here he was a few days ago - check out those ears :) I made a short video in honour of his ears :)

Awww, thanks so much Danny's Darling One of our carers who lives 15 minutes from Hornsby would love it. She is fostering little Sparky. Will PM you now.

Oh carers are always looking for crates! Is it a soft crate or a wire crate? I will ask and get back to you (once I know which type it is :) but I can guarantee someone will want one :) Thanks so much

We have all our dogs trying to pile into the crate because they associate it as a place of treats and good things! That's usually after training though. Some of the dogs don't like it at first but they come around. Nutmeg loved it from the beginning and I remember we had the crate there with door open and she was the one who kept wandering in and lying down. We always lend out a crate with our fosters for their two week trial period and when I mentioned to the wire crate to Miller's family, they actually flinched. We ended up lending them a soft crate since we had very quickly crate trained Miller and he's fine in the soft crate and psychologically the soft crates are easier for non-crate people to cope with :D I think they've been converted though because they're ordering their own crate online for him, as did Baxter/Nova's family. I also mentioned that it's really handy for enforced quiet time post any surgery, especially if they are a multiple dog family. It's can be really hard to keep a Kelpie or a BC quiet even when they're injured and supposed to be resting! :D

Wow, Bronte is huge! So gorgeous - she looks very sweet! I think I asked you in the other thread, but is Heidi one of the Kelpies who was at Cootamundra pound? We are foster-free right now ... I think Dodge is really missing his buddy Miller!!

In terms of my own fosters, Smudge and Ollie were the two that had no applications for a really long time and then they all came at once. Smudge, because she's a black dog and I'm still not sure about Ollie. When the applications came in though, while there were some bad ones, I also received some awesome ones. These are the videos I did for them - you'll see that I try to make sure they convey cuteness, smartness, trainability, off-switch, dog friendliness, people friendliness etc/ Ollie video: Smudge video: Hope it helps!

You already see my dog spam on FB so you probably know the sort of things I do to try to make the dog more appealing. I put up lots of video links to training that has been done with the dog and also video footage of the dog interacting generally so that people can better imagine how the dog will fit into their home. I've found that while you can describe the training, people love being able to see the dog actually doing stuff - tail wagging, eyes alert etc. A lot of profiles make certain claims but sometimes they are a bit creative so it's nice to have proof to show people :) I have photos and videos of the dog with other dogs and photos of the dog interacting with children. I do videos for other rescues/carers and for the dogs that are big and might be seen to be a bit intimidating/scary, I make sure we have photos of the dog interacting with small dogs and children e.g. this is Delta the pit bull cross This is Blossom the huge brindle crossbreed who was languishing in care for months and months before a video was put up for her This was her video and she was adopted pretty quickly after that ETA: It was only my second dog video ever so it's a bit crappy :p But it's got the small dog, young child in it :) Having children in the photos/video is also helpful for puppies where parents might want to satisfy themselves that the dog is calm and behaved around small children.

I'm allergic to dog saliva, too mixedupup. I just don't let them lick me ... and if they do, I quickly go and wash it off with pinetarsol

Miller's off on trial adoption. Such a sweet boy. It was love at first sight. In our usual tradition, for his last night with us, he was allowed to sleep on the bed :) We will miss you, little Miller!!

The wire crates do look like cages and a lot of people find them a bit repugnant because of that. But our fosters all love them. Little Nutmeg LOVED hers - Hoover kept trying to get into the crate, too :D You can see in most of the images that the crate door was actually left open during the day. We only closed it at night for sleeping or if we needed the pups contained while we were doing something e.g. feeding the other dogs/didn't want them underfoot

True, and some naughty dogs can even unzip a soft crate. Lasareina you can buy a wire crate from dealsdirect. Arrives in a couple of days and they regularly have specials. ETA: In the link I gave you about crates, you can see the training we did with Nova. Out of all our fosters, he was the most crate-resistant but he was crate trained in just a few days and sleeps in one now at his new family's house :)

You just made me think of "Grandma's Feather Bed" by John Denver :D It was nine feet high and six feet wide, soft as a downy chick It was made from the feathers of forty 'leven geese, took a whole bolt of cloth for the tick It'd hold eight kids 'n' four hound dogs and a piggy we stole from the shed Didn't get much sleep but we had a lot of fun on Grandma's feather bed Same, being on the bed is an privilege - abuse it and it's back to the Crate :p

Yes. I don't recommend using soft crates for rescues because a lot of them are quite anxious when they come into care but if your dogs are calm and well-behaved, there's no reason you can't crate train them using a soft crate. Just start earlier in the day and don't try to zip them in until you are sure they won't freak out. For instance, our foster dog Miller has never been in a crate before but he's such a lovely, chilled and calm dude that we've had him in a soft crate first time with no problems. I only say don't use a soft crate with a first time nervous dog because they can break out and sometimes with a new foster, you need to contain them during the day/mealtimes etc for their own safety. If your own dogs aren't likely to need to be crated during the day, you can leave the soft crate open during the day as you train and probably even at night as they get used to it. For a calm dog it's pretty easy - you just stick their bed or mat in the crate and they'll often just go in there of their own accord and lie down :) ETA: Here's an example of what can happen if you try to put a dog who hasn't been crate trained into a soft crate

Interesting. We don't let our foster dogs sleep on the bed just in case their new families don't want them on the bed - we don't want them to develop bad habits. We usually let them on the bed for their last night with us though because we will miss them :laugh: Smudge we let sleep on the bed her whole last WEEK with us, but I double checked with CBD (her new owner) that that was ok first Our dogs get to sleep on the bed for part of the night on weekends and and whenever we feel like it. Having three dogs on the bed can be tough and Hoover is the biggest bed hog on the planet :)

Hi lasareina - why does your obedience instructor have anything to do with where the dogs sleep? :D As long as they only sleep there when permitted to by you, it should be fine! We let our dogs on the bed but they are total hogs so we usually boot them off partway through the night. About the soft crates, they're great. I've got a blurb all about crates here as well as links to where I bought the crates.

I'm sure Kaos would love to do both :) Elbie and Hoover will keep doing agility and Dodge will keep attending obedience classes, but (as you will have seen from my FB haha) I'm trying to set up nose work classes here in Canberra and will be bringing Hoover and Dodge to those classes to start off with to see how they go. Rally-O has never interested me much because it seems like a modified version of obedience which is of course useful to do but isn't particularly interesting to my dogs (or me) the way other activities are. I mean they enjoy obedience, but they don't love it the way they do agility. I'm almost positive that they'll love nose work! We don't trial in anything though - everything's just for fun.

Miller and his BFF Dodge Miller and ear malfunction Miller post-Bath

More photos of Miller. Heaps more here, but some of my favourites below. Calm car traveller Miller meeting DOLer clastic's doggy Pepper and DOLer wuffles' doggy Ava Miller and Felix the Schnauzer Miller at Belco Pets getting a new collar and toy for his puppy pack. He also hung out with Belco Pets store dog Benji Miller sharing a crate at bed time Chilling out on the day bed

The Costa Rican marketing campaign is highly unlikely to resonate with breeders or exhibitors of purebreds but if you're in rescue, you are more likely to understand the difficulty of trying to find homes for an endless number of discarded, unwanted dogs that are almost indistinguishable from one another by their sheer volume. As anyone in rescue knows, a huge part of the battle is just trying to get someone to click on and notice one dog out of thousands just like it - to be interested enough in a dog to want to read more about it and know its story. It's hard to care about something when you don't know anything about it. Giving them funny 'breed' names under the circumstances is no different to giving them a funny name or making a funny video for them or sticking them on Big Brother as a guest ... I see it as quite different from deliberately cross-breeding and purporting to create a new 'breed' like the labrawhateveradoodle or the cockphooeypoo etc. In any case, this thread would best have been in the rescue forum if anywhere and probably didn't really belong on a purebred dog forum all things considered. ETA: I thought it was an interesting way to generate interest and totally understandable given the volume of abandoned dogs there and the extent of the problem.

.

That's odd because he's adorable. Still, it's all about finding the right home and you only need one perfect application for that! I got zero apps for Smudge, then three unsuitable ones - then the perfect one :D There was also a dog recently who had seriously languished for months and months without a single nibble but now he's gone to a home where they love him soooooooooooooooooo much it's hilarious :D

CBD have you heard Smudge's strange kind of bark/yodel yet? It kind of goes boo woo wooooooo!!!!!!! and she does it when she's really excited and running along. Kind of like a war cry. Lupin's eyebrow markings are wonderful

Of course! Lupin is such a cutie!! :)

Miller's meet and greet went very well but the dad gets back from deployment Wednesday and will need to meet him, too. So just in case, I've put together a music video for little Miller :) He is such a beautiful little dog with such a lovely nature - I hope he can find his forever home soon.

Reading all of this, I guess I've been pretty lucky. I live in Melba in Canberra. We have three dogs and rarely encounter aggressive off-leash dogs. I see the occasional off-leash dog but there has never been any issue. If I see a dog approaching, depending on which dog I'm walking I might walk in a different direction but generally I'll just keep walking. Then again, we've been going to the Casey dog park every week for three years without incident whereas if you read a lot of posts here, you'd assume that dog parks were canine massacre-grounds. We bring all of our non-puppy foster dogs there for careful socialisation as well. I guess we just try to be vigilant, keep an eye out for uncomfortable situations and exit the scene if things don't seem right. I only walk one dog at a time which makes it easier to be flexible. My dogs have only been attacked twice - and neither times was while out walking or at a dog park. Both times were during an agility class, which isn't where you'd normally expect to see that sort of thing ...