koalathebear

Heh You're not after a Karrawarra Kelpie are you? I was looking at the WKC breeders notes page the other day (which I do from time time and saw that the name Karrawarra is still very much out there. Although Karrawarra Boozer is such an inelegant although adorable name ... You are right - the book is really interesting. He's not shy about his opinions, is he?

Resurrecting this again because the LGD crossbreed discussion in another thread made me think of this again. In "The Kelpie, Parsons goes back to 1920 and discusses Bantry Girl, arguably the most famous Kelpie x border collie trial bitch in Australian history. She was a yellow and white and although it was said that she was 7/8 Kelpie in breeding, her pedigree contained 4 crosses of Collie so she could hardly have been more Kelpie than Collie. Apparently "she worked more like a Kelpie than a Collie... " though and she was an important dog in the development of Australian Border Collies. So the 'purebred' Kelpie cocktail of today has a lot of Border Collie in it and is speculated to have some dingo in there somewhere. Accordingly, does this change the general 'rule' that crossbreeds are inherently unpredictable? The Working Kelpie Council told me that the Kelpie/Border Collie cross was a very common and very successful mix for working dogs which suggests to me that there might be some crosses that don't result in wildly unpredictable results? I know this is a purebred discussion forum so ultimately I do have a 'purebred' question in my mind about the above. For Kelpie/Border Collie crosses - if a farmer keeps breeding that dog with Kelpies, will it be possible to produce a purebred Kelpie again at some point given the closeness of the breeds? No I'm not trying to breed Elbie - he got the snip a long time ago. Just curious. I am guessing it probably happens in the working lines given the 'station bred' entries that show up in the WKC stud books. Perhaps this is why ANKC Australian Kelpie breeders aren't permitted to use working lines in their breeding programmes?

Mine are both harnassed. Neither is crazy about the harnass but they let us put it on them. Elbie hated his harnass in the beginning and it was a real ordeal putting it on him but he's resigned and calm about wearing it now. They can't guarantee no injury but at least it means they won't get flung about and they can't accidentally wander out the window - Elbie has been known to push the window down with his nose by accident if it's slightly open. We don't have room for two crates in our car. what do people who have 3-4 dogs do if they're in a normal sedan not a stationwagon?

She looks and sound like she was such a beautiful girl. I'm so glad that she was able to pass her last months in a happy and loving home. So sorry for your loss.

I'm so sorry for your loss, deek. My thoughts are with you and your family.

I forgot about that one Here is Elbie Ball with rubber steak in mouth and a ball to kick. This predates his 'head butting' variation, though.

Poor sweetheart - he looked like a gorgeous dog. What a horrible last few weeks he must have had, hopefully his last moments were peaceful, though.

The holding the toy in the mouth has always bemused us. He won't play the game unless he has a toy in his mouth - sometimes he miscalculates and the toy is so huge it makes it difficult for him to move and kick

Elbie would only do treiball if he was allowed to hold an object in his mouth at the same time!

Elbie's favourite game in all the world. It involves: 1. Holding an object in his mouth (usually a tuffy or another ball) 2. Kicking the ball towards a human 3. Preventing the ball from passing him when the human kicks it back Lately he has taken to using his head to bounce it back at his human. He developed the rules himself and he could quite happily play it for ages. I have no idea why it's so fun for him. Does anyone else's dog do this? Video below. Please ignore the dirty floor, that's Hoover fur - he sheds like a demon and even daily Swiffering and Dysoning can't keep up

It's far from ideal to have a pup that young but it's not the end of the world as long as you're aware of it, do a lot of research, ask lots of questions, socialise your dog with well-mannered dogs and manage the situation. Our family dog when I was a kid came home with us when he was just 6 weeks old and he was fine - never had any issues of bite inhibition or bad behaviour. A girl at work was forced to take her Dane puppy home at 5 weeks because the breeder had family issues, couldn't handle the litter and was going to put it to sleep otherwise - that dog has also turned out fine. Given that the puppy has already been separated from its mother and littermates, it's too late to do anything about that - but just be aware that there is likely to be some extra work involved. Once Archie has had his shots and it's safe for him play with other dogs, find some well-mannered older dogs for him to meet, also enrol him in a good puppy class. He looks very beautiful - especially the photo with his new friend Teddy.

Elbie has been weaving quite nicely at agility despite only getting to practise once a week - he seems to have finally understood that the objective is to weave so he's weaving on the slanted poles and also weaving on the long upright poles quite well. He has been weaving quite fast which is good although only when I'm on his right so I have been practising on his left as well and ahead of him. We finally got around to buying ourselves some tomato stakes, PVC and a mallet and set up the weavers in the backyard - just six. Elbie weaved through them correctly but he was very timid, very tentative, ears back and seemed very unhappy about them for some reason. He was also incredibly slow going through them. After lots of praise, treats and running around he was going through them at a slightly faster pace but definitely nowhere near the speed and confidence of how he does in class. OH thinks that perhaps he's a bit wigged out by six sticks suddenly appearing in his backyard and he's not sure what they are and why they're there. Has anyone else ever experienced this? Elbie's always been a bit of a sensitive emo!dog so it's possible he's put out by Alien Objects in the backyard. Should I have just walked him through two or three poles to start with? Thanks in advance! Hoover by contrast, has just turned one and hasn't received any agility training so I was just walking him around three weave poles to see how he went. He was extremely happy with them and by the time he had finished breakfast, he understood how to weave through three poles. He didn't seem fussed by Alien Objects in the yard at all.

Snoozy Dogs using human as a pillow ...

When Elbie was a very young puppy he used to enjoy gnawing on the wooden railings of the deck, his dog bed - one time we caught him gnawing on the corner of some bricks!!! Hoover we caught nibbling at the blinds and also both of them gnawed at the clam shell. Neither of them chew anymore (Elbie is 17 months and Hoover is 12 months). What's most important is that you find out what it is that occupies and entertains your dog. For a lot of dogs it's lots of walks and exercise and I see that given as advice a lot on DOL - most of the time it's probably good advice but I know that for my two dogs, they can play and run for AGES and still keep going because they just never get tired. They train for a whole hour during class and while they get bored at particular bits, they never lose focus towards the end of the class etc. You could run them for ages before a class and they'd still be full of energy during the class. Both of our dogs are high energy and from working lines. Elbie in particular is very drivey but we definitely don't walk them every day - maybe 3-4 times a week. I also don't walk my dogs in the rain. I'm sure it's fun for some but I don't enjoy it at all. What we do with our dogs is they get obedience once a week, Elbie does agility once a week and they get a 15 minute training session every day at dinner time. For breakfast, we scatter their kibble in the yard for them to retrieve which takes them about 15 minutes :p They also get chew toys in the yard and toilet rolls. If there's something that they do that's naughty e.g. drag dog pillow around, then we take it away and give it back several weeks later and usually by then they've given up on that behaviour. They have access to the kitchen throughout the day when we're not home and there's never any damage despite there being plenty of furniture and food in reach. After we get home, outside of their mealtime training, OH usually plays hide and week with them and they're randomly given little training sessions in exchange for treats. Some targeting training, some rear-end awareness training. Sometimes it's little stuff like just balancing a treat on their nose, doing out of sight stays, doing long sit stays/drop stays or making them drop on the way to food. I'm teaching them both to 'hold' a dumbbell in their mouth right now. These activities don't take long - OH and I both work so the dogs are at home for at least ten hours, sometimes twelve hours so in winter any training happens in tiny spots after work and teeny bit on the weekend. We definitely don't have huge amounts of time to spend on dog training and the dogs seem happy with the amount they get so long as they get to hang out with their humans. I'm not sure if any of that will work for your dog but it definitely does for ours. Like I said, the DOL advice of 'exercise your dog more' didn't work for us - nothing ever tires my dogs out - they could run for ages and still keep running and training but the above things seem to keep them happy and occupied so that even if they go for weeks without a walk, they never nuisance bark or show any destructive behaviours. Good luck!

Kavik - so sorry to hijack but could you please clear some space in your messagebox? I've been trying to message you for several days but it says your inbox is full. Thanks!

Heh. There is no doubt that my dogs are champion sleepers.

That is confusing! Someone needs to come up with a new nickname for the Australian Terrier! Pitiful, failed attempt at humour from me Actually, Australian Kelpie is usually used to denote the show/bench variety. The working line Kelpie is usually just called a working Kelpie or a Kelpie. Given that it's Australian, I suppose it's somewhat appropriate that its 'real' name already sounds like sort of Aussie nickname despite being named after a Celtic supernatural water horse ... Alas, here in Australia we are particularly addicted to shortening words although sometimes nicknames end up being longer than actual names. The problem with nicknames though is that it's usually what is easiest/most convenient/funniest so it tends to stick regardless of whether you like it or not. I friend who is struggling to make everyone call her four year old son Alexander by his full name and not Alex. They both have a long battle ahead of them ..

Does that mean you'll call my doggies Kelps? I have to say that the habit of shortening/adding 'y' to things does my OH's head in. He's Canadian and after being confronted with numerous Australian shortenings like postie etc, he asked me witheringly if Australians called the plumber the plumbie :p Tangent ... the whippet discussion made me look up the Chinese word for whippet because Chinese always has interesting translations of things (cinema is electric shadows etc). 小灵狗 is whippet - means small dog of great spirit/alertness/efficiency. Poor Kelpie, didn't even get its own name. See here, they transliterated it so that the name is Ka Er Bi Dog which is Kelpie spelled out in Chinese :p Border Collie is 边境牧羊犬 Border Sheep Herding Dog Rhodesian Ridgeback ended up being 罗德西亚背脊犬 - Rhodesian Back Dog Labrador is 拉布拉多寻回犬 La Bu La Dor Retrieving Dog ... My favourite though has to be the Chinese word for poodle 贵宾犬 ... which translates as expensive/costly/valuable guest/visitor dog! Clearly poodles are highly regarded

Isn't a puggle a DD variant? Given that pug is such a short name already, you wouldn't think that it needed a nickname!!! I've read that a baby pug is called a puglet though ... ?

I love red and tan Kelpies with a nice mask. Hard to get in show lines but extremely common in the working lines so there was never a problem about compromising on temperament because of colour. That is so interesting - what sort of personality differences are there? I've often wondered if colour has anything to do with personality.

OK I will believe the first one but is a whippet really called a whippy???

Oh that's interesting. I had always assumed it was a country-thing because all my North American friends always referred to their dogs as Sibes whereas over here, people I knew called them huskies.

Ha! I have to say English Springer Spaniel is such a long name, I have been wondering what they are called for short I met the cutest ESS pup on Sunday - he got along so well with Hoover. So it's just a preferred convention rather than a formal naming standard.

I have a question about 'nicknames' for breeds. We have Dobes, Tollers, Goldens, Borders, Cavs, Chis, Labs, Berners, Poms etc. Then we get to 'Staffy', which I've always understood as the common nickname for the Staffordshire Bull Terrier. Then I arrived on DOL and kept reading references to 'Stafford' being the "official nickname" for the SBT and "Staffy' denoting the crossbreed variety one finds at the pound. It's repeated so often and so emphatically it makes it look as though there is some formal reasoning behind it. This is made me very curious about what the basis is for the official nickname - is there a breed standard/kennel guideline/breeder code of conduct that mandates that the official nickname must be 'Stafford' and not 'Staffy'? Is it an international naming convention or is it just a DOL convention? While nomenclature is of course very important, I'd always assumed that as far as 'nicknames' and short names were concerned, these were informal appelations that arose from common usage and convenience. 'Staffy' is entirely consistent with other 'nicknames' e.g. Tibby Sheltie Rotty Westie Frenchie Coolie Kelpie Corgi Lappie Aussie Pitty Sammy Iggy Dally I don't think I've ever read a similar statement that any of the above has the somewhat pejorative connotation of being a crossbreed.

I must admit, I thought that your original question was fine - although perhaps I was just happy you didn't dismiss the Terrible Kelpie out of hand I have to post the link that KumaAkita posted in the Spitz Thread - . Truly awesome - and probably exactly the right speed for me I am one of those owners whose dog is definitely too fast for me ... When we got Elbie, we were just getting a pet and had no intention of doing anything more than basic obedience with him - I'd never even heard of agility or flyball. After we got him, he enjoyed tricks and obedience so much that agility seemed like a natural progression for him and he loves it. It's more stressful for me though because he is so fast. We had guest instructors one week who weren't really familiar with us and they kept reprimanding me for: (1) not keeping up with my dog; and (2) letting my dog get ahead of me. He is like a blur streaking past me sometimes. Fortunately our regular instructor is awesome and knows Elbie very well - last week, she showed everyone how to run alongside their dogs for the part of the course we were doing, but for me, she said - "You - you have to go and stand all the way over there (behind two obstacles) and call your dog to you because he is too fast." Luckily he does distance work fine and I can send him ahead of me to do the course while I take shortcuts but I must say I dream of the day when he's so familiar with the course all I have to do is stay put and yell out the commands to him ;) Oops, I'm also ambling OT - but I did post a link to Agility Akita up there :D