koalathebear

Heh heh. It's interesting to hear everyone's car experiences. We were worried that Elbie's car anxiety would 'infect' Hoover, but Hoover seems very happy to sit/drop/play with a toy in the backseat and doesn't make a sound. We can't fit one let alone two crates in the back seat unfortunately and putting him in the front footwell isn't an option either. What helped a lot for Elbie has been getting an attachment that gives Elbie a little more 'give' so that he can turn around, look out the window, drop, sit down etc. His favourite thing is to stand in the back seat and look out the front window - that's when he's calmest. We need to somehow desensitise him to the sound of the indicator. The problem is, it's not every single time the indicator comes on - just some parts of town, presumably where the turns are the sharpest. It's a challenge but he is getting better. Thankfully he has never been car sick and on the trip back from Bredbo, he actually dropped and went to sleep for a bit. It was just when we got back into town and the sharp turns were back that he went nuts.

The original post in this thread with its bizarre conclusion makes me Peevish. About loose-lead walking ... if I had a Big Dog like an Akita, I'd definitely be using a harness. Elbie's not that big but when he lunges, I feel like he's ripping my arm off and he's definitely injured OH's hand a few times when he wasn't expecting a lunge :D I'm not too fussed about Elbie walking directly on my left. I'm a really slow walker and it's not at all fair on him to have to walk on my left the whole duration of a walk. Our Saturday teacher has told us many times that working dogs like Elbie want to walk quickly and you have to walk quickly, too. I'm happy for him to walk at the end of the leash as long as he's not pulling and there's still some slack. For instance, for most of today's walk he was pretty good and I was able to hold the leash with just a finger - just an example. I wouldn't be walking around just holding the leash by my finger in case there was a Sudden Lunge. As usual, he was a bit pull-ey walking to the oval, once we got there, I got his focus and he walked at my side very nicely and on a loose leash very nicely. On the way back, he trotted at my side looking up for treats as if he was a very obedient dog. When we first set out though, I couldn't get him to look at me, listen to me anything! Still, we're making progress, albeit slow progress! OH and Hoover were sitting out the front of the house when I came back with Elbie today and he was very impressed with Elbie at my left looking so docile. Elbie's teeth were scraping against my hand when he was taking treats, though. Ouch! He's normally quite gentle but when you're walking at the same time, I guess it's hard for him to be gentle. KA: the photos of Kuma are so cute and that first one - he is so puppy-eyed there. In the close-up, his eyes look human. Your yard looks great!!! We should hire you to help us out ... OH and I have black thumbs so we're having to engage a landscaper to fix up our horrible, horrible front yard which all the neighbours are commenting about. He came around today and gave us a quote Ah well. The new oven and stove were expensive enough and now the yard. Meep! Also, OH saw some flat weeds in the yard yesterday and thought that the hot weather had made them wilt. Then he looked out the window and discovered why the weeds were flattened. From memory, Niques posted a similar photo of foliage that was flattened by a doggie. Also, I wish I could get one of my doggies to smile like .

If only it was so easy to diagnose illnesses in such a simplistic manner. My two dogs are both working line dogs. Elbie's Kelpie/border collie cross and he didn't really like the car at first and used to bark, then he whined and he's generally fine now except for the occasional whimper when the turn indicator comes on. He has never been car sick. Parentage totally unknown. Hoover, is a purebred Kelpie - grew up on a farm, never rode in a car until his 30 km trip to be picked up by Dog Movers then travelled overnight from Kempsey to Sydney and then Sydney to Canberra and he goes every where in the car these days and is placid as a cow with no sign of car sickness. I really think it's a matter of luck who gets car sick - my brother and I had exactly the same upbringing and he gets car sick and I don't Crossbreeds in a rescue situation already have the odds stacked against them, they don't need to have unsubstantiated allegations made against them which will make them even more difficult to rehome

It's a deal! He can have a trial run to see what he thinks of everyone this Thursday evening. It seems that a large number of us will be at the Dog School Assessment and BBQ. I am still having guilt that poor Hoover will be at home in a crate, though since I want to watch Elbie's assessment but OH thinks that having Hoover with me would be distracting.

Ah, what a pity you can't attend. :'( Another time perhaps ... We also have a spare room. ETA: Although, I just saw this photo of a Canberran spider. Also, this . A 10 plus minute Japanese short film about a girl Mika and her dog Marimo. It comes from the compilation of short films named All About My Dog (2005). It's a little repetitive but it's quite touching.

Elbie was desexed at 10 weeks and so far is fine. He is definitely a little lanky but his coat seems fine and he seems well proportioned and healthy. We would have preferred to wait until he was older but as things were, because he was going to have anaesthesia administered because of a cut to his paw anyway, the vets recommended that he be desexed at the same time to reduce the number of times he had to be put under. Hoover is scheduled to be desexed at six months. He is a bit humpy sometimes so it would be great if he outgrew that bad habit Elbie was a bit humpy when he was younger but thankfully no longer disgraces himself.

Heh there will be lots of photos, I can guarantee it. We better have an agreement beforehand though that any photos that end up with me in it will be either discarded or cropped in photoshop *is not a fan of photos*

Heh heh perhaps. Elbie gets a happy look where his mouth hangs open sometimes - that might be the best I can get. If he showed his teeth like that he might look a bit scary.

I don't think it's right to say that dogs of known parentage are less likely to get sick. They're living creatures after all and subject to all sorts of variables in the environment. Plenty of purebred dogs get sick, plenty of crossbreeds get sick ... Car sickness also shows up in all sorts of dogs. There are a lot of people here whose dogs got car sick as puppies but eventually got over it - I think it would be sad to deny a rescue pup a home just because it gets car sick ...

We can bring more food if you let us know what you might like. Our dog behaviour classes finish at 10.30 to 11 so I'm trying to decide whether we duck home first or if we buy an esky and bring the food with us. Hmmm.

is so cute. The man is telling the dog: "smile - one more time. Stop smiling" etc and he refers to himself as 'dad' so it's 'smile for dad'.We have no idea how on earth you would teach this kind of trick!

you definitely don't have to start from scratch. It's always good to mix up rewards anyway. We mostly reward with food but we also reward our two with toys – hold them up and make them do their thing and when they do them they get the toys. We reward Elbie with tug. Elbie would even work for his hot water bottle. Food is the most powerful motivator for our dogs but they will definitely work for other things, too. If you like I can ask HH our behaviourist if she will do a 'distance' consult i.e . you take videos and describe behaviours and talk on the phone. It's not the same as being there in person but it's probably ok in the interim and as you mentioned, you might even be making it to Canberra at some point :p

He doesn't do any of these things, except drop when you get really tough with him I think that would make for a great comedy video Especially with a baffled Ava in the background

I love doggy excitement so much. Every morning when we open Hoover's crate, he comes wiggling out with so much happiness and enthusiasm it makes us laugh. He does the whole body wiggle, he's looking around, he approaches with extreme concentration: "I shall be cuddled!" is the expression on his little face. Also whenever we get home in the car, the dogs come running to the gate and there are two paving stones near the gate and Hoover always puts his two front paws up there as if to rise majestically against the sky and greet us with grandeur. Then he gives us a very happy wiggle greeting. Elbie is learning that he must sit for pats but it is so funny because he will plonk his butt on the ground but he puts his ears back and you can almost see him imploding from the strain of not leaping about as he sits there and tries not to wriggle too much. I look down at my little agonised seal with his piteous 'pat me' eyes and it's a bit hilarious. He's still at the point where he will sit for only so long and then *boing* he'll be up in the air again ;) "Stand" is one of those deceptively easy but incredibly difficult things to teach - well for us anyway. For a while, we were wondering if we'd ever get Elbie to stand on command because his default position is always to sit – especially if someone is going to pat him. We also had difficulty with his stands because he'd take a step forward. He is now at the point where he stands on the spot and can mostly stand for pats and his stand is quite nice-looking. It was such a lot of hard work, particularly for OH who has run through stand with him over and over and over again. Also, one interesting thing that Elbie's Sunday obedience instructor said was that given that Elbie likes tricks so much and is so good at them, we should try to make heeling a 'trick' for him. He gets lots of praise/reaction for getting tricks right and we should make a big fuss about him getting heeling right, too. Last week, the class started with heeling and Elbie's focus was all over the place so if we can find a way for him to find heeling engaging, he might like it more. His loose-leash walking during class around the obstacle course is good and he ignores the distractions so we're hopeful he'll do well in that for assessment on Thursday. Like Ava, our two are always hungry but Elbie is initially very distracted during the early parts of obedience class and gets very distracted at the start of walks. So far, Hoover seems to have very good focus. The only time Hoover's focus is 'bad' is when Elbie is there so I have been working at calling them when they're at play and rewarding them when they come. Weirdly enough, recall is almost 100% perfect for the OTHER dog i.e. if I call Hoover, Elbie comes and vice versa!!!! I can't help thinking they're just nosy and wondering what I want with the other dog. As for the urban LLW – OH and I love walking and we'd love our dogs to be able to share this experience with us so as soon as the pulling behaviour stops, they'll be able to do heaps more walks. wuffles, you do realise that we now MUST see a video of the reclusive yet incredibly famous Satch … ;) Including go to your mat, drop and roll over! ETA: Wow - this thread is now 37 pages! :p

I didn't look at the thread because I've seen those threads before and the topic and tone always goes a certain way - chances are if people started getting insulting or the conversation was devolving into meaningless and circular arguments, it would have been locked. If it's been deleted altogether, perhaps someone posted something very offensive. Don't worry - there are heaps and heaps and heaps of other posts on DOL about pet shops, DDs and BYBs - if you do a search you can find some good ones (that haven't been deleted) pretty easily.

Hi ♥Bruno♥'s 2009 thread is here, but she was looking for a black and tan, which is a lot easier to find. Also, my thread from last month is here in which I was looking for reputable breeders for a red and tan Kelpie. I had to start my own thread because you can't post to threads that old. I ended up speaking to a lot of breeders, show and working line but probably the most useful conversation was my chat with WKC.

I am so sorry to hear about the loss of your girl. It must have been horrific. I also recommend that you talk with Barbara Cooper from the Working Kelpie Council. The contact number is 02 9899 9224 - she spent ages and ages talking to me on the phone when I was looking for our little red and tan Hoover. Just a warning though, given that the two tones seem to show up more often in the litters, they will caution you away from choosing for colour. If you keep an eye on the Breeders Notes page here, some of the breeders list the colours of their litters. Also, the breeders listing page here has contact numbers - you can phone them to ask if they have reds. Given that you want the dog as a work dog you'll probably find it slightly easier than I did - I was looking for a pet. Sure you wouldn't like a little red and tan? They are the most gorgeous little bundles of Kelpiefulness ever. The solid reds are gorgeous but having a red right now might bring back sad memories for you and you'd be more likely to compare her to Jess ... Finally - good luck. I really, really hope that you can get the pup/dog that you're looking for and Kelpies really are the most gorgeous, affectionate and loyal of dogs.

Yes, she's very helpful. If you make it to Canberra for the flyball and want to have a chat with her about Max, I could set up an appointment for you. She likes all dogs but has a soft spot for border collies. We actually had a behavioural consult booked with K9Pro in Sydney and we really wanted to go (paid and everything) but we weren't able to make the trip to Sydney in the end because Hoover came along and we couldn't make the long drive at that point. We're intending to go next year but he's quite booked up for months and months and with my father's health being so incredibly precarious right now, there is no way we can commit to an appointment so far in advance. The appointment with K9Pro wasn't for problems so much as wanting to get a temperament assessment and ideas about best ways to train Elbie - hopefully taking the edge of his hyperactivity and making him less distracted when walking down the street. Anyway, we'll see what happens. Hoover is a very interesting contrast for me - so chilled and focussed on us. It's very easy to get his attention even when we're surrounded by other people and dogs. Today, I had a fright because when I got home from work, I opened the door and both dogs dashed past me. Elbie immediately went back inside but Hoover ran a few steps down the stairs and stood in the front yard. I had visions of him running onto the road and getting run over before my eyes but we called him back and he immediately came back and ran into the house after us. I was very relieved. I've been working with his recall over and over and over but would never have dreamed of testing it in the Big Wide World but looks like we've had our first test. wuffles: love the videos, especially wigglebum ... I can't believe how vigorous her wiggle is. Hoover could give her some competition in the wiggling but she also runs forward fast while wiggling and that's hilarious. lilli_star: for peekaboo, you could just start with standing in front of Roo and luring her through your legs. The only danger with peekaboo is that she might do it unsolicited - Elbie peekabooed one of our classmates at Dog School one day. It was very embarrassing. Also, still on the topic of the Evil Loose Lead walking, hopenfox on the kelpie thread gave this suggestion: I'm determined to get Elbie walking nicely on a leash by the road if it kills me. He can do it - he does it so nicely in class! Also, if cars get too close or are very noisy he lunges ... This is not good and makes me extra determined that he is never going to be an off-lead dog ...

We only learned that Elbie would crawl recently - before he'd always just run along with his butt in the air and his nose on the ground. For weaving, it seriously is just a matter of sticking the food in front of Roo's nose and luring her under each leg. I am not sure how tall you are though - if Elbie tried to weave through my legs, I'd probably topple over. Also about loose lead walking? Grr! OH and I have put away the Easywalk harness and we've gritted our teeth and made a pact that we're going to master that darned LLW if it kills us. The harness is great but it's not a real fix but as OH points out, he feels bad because the fact that Elbie can be such a serial puller means that we're less inclined to take him out for a walk. This is sad. Tonight I used the leash on both Elbie and Hoover around the backyard and the house. They were both perfect. Leash was as loose as you can imagine and they were constantly checking back with me. If only I could get this focus Out There by the road!!! ETA: On the plus side, our two are not barkers. The dogs next door are sooooooooooooo loud. There's one that has a massively deep bark that goes WOOF WOOF ****WOOOOOOOF**** and then their smaller dog kind of howls and wails along. Our two hear this all the time and don't bark back. I frequently hear a dog barking and worry it's our two and OH has to shake his head and ask me why I don't recognise our own dog's barks Then I go to the back door and our two are sitting there staring up at me, quiet as mice with limpidly innocent eyes. It's always very funny and I always feel guilty for having falsely accused them. Here is Hoover and his favourite toy - Monkey. He usually only gets Monkey when it's bed time and he loves playing with Monkey so much!

Alas it's just a lure - you lure doggy through your legs with treats ... it gets to the point where he trots through quite happily. An easy one is - just one lure through your legs and they peek up at you and it's a very cute trick. Or you could do crawl where you get Ruby in a drop and lure her along the ground with food. Elbie crawls on grass but not on the floor of the kitchen etc. Or spin - it took just a few lures to teach Hoover how to spin. I'm impressed that you can get Roo to select a certain toy - we haven't tried teaching Elbie to pick up particular toys yet and have no idea if he'd be any good at it. Good luck! Let me know what you decide to do

I have googled this. Dooley the Lab looks so cute and happy doing flyball.

CleoJ: I blame the latest BDOC newsletter! It got my brain travelling down memory lane again Thursday should be lots of fun. I am still tossing up about whether or not I can bring Hoover and pop him in a crate so that he can have a little bit of fun or whether the baby gets left at home while we're at assessment. Congratulations to you and Shandy about the Delta Therapy Dog assessment. That sounds like something that would be amazing to do and if my dogs weren't quite such active little jumping beans, I would be wanting to pursue. lilli_star: OH was very unimpressed by stories of red backs and then I showed him scary youtube videos about funnel web spiders. ;) Fortunately we don't really have funnel webs here in Canberra but the ants are certainly pretty annoying in summer. Like waffles, for indoor stuff that's out of the reach of doggies, we have been buying the little ant bait in plastic containers that the ants take back to the next to kill the other ants. OH loves the birds here – they're very colourful and interesting and he likes the wildlife, too but I think he misses squirrels I am going to look like the biggest scab on earth taking all of yours and KumaAkita's discards To be honest, Hoover isn't a puller so we're going to continue to work really hard with him on a flat collar and hope that he stays as a non-puller. With Elbie, we've got the Easywalk harness but we're redoubling our efforts to get him to walk with a flat collar without pulling. I get very dizzy. He's actually ok in an oval where there's grass everywhere and I can change various directions easily and keep the lease loose. The tricky thing is getting him to the oval from our house without pulling, though ;) Also at dog school when he knows that there's only one place we're headed – to the training field so even if you change directions, he knows where the ultimate objective is so he will hurtle in that direction. Anyway, we will persist because it's actually the trickiest thing with him – he's so good at loose leash walking in class but on the road etc he's so bad at it. Urgh, I hope I didn't prompt the morbid thought. So sorry! Fear not, all of our doggies are still young, healthy and chirpy. Thanks. I spoke to the behaviourist this morning and we'll have to do a few things but the desensitisation is something that we will definitely be continuing with. That's how I feel. I know that on DOL, I am probably regarded as a Bad Dog Parent, but I really think that my dogs have a good life and are happy … We at least do our best by them and put a lot of time, effort and love into them which is really all we can do! Elbie is perfect at going in the direction I point or even jerk my chin – but he's still a bit suspect with the verbal command. I haven't quite been able to make him understand what right and left mean yet. All my fault though because the last time we did it, *I* got left and right mixed up so spent 20 minutes saying "left" and telling him to go right. ;) As to Max's barking and the not liking being pulled around by the collar … I had a fairly long chat with our behaviourist about Elbie today. She is the instructor who teaches behavioural classes every Saturday morning and she's the person who came around for a consult when Elbie was being an absolute snot when he was a younger puppy. With her help we were able to get rid of his obnoxious behaviours but we always knew that with a smart and high-strung dog like Elbie, as one issue was resolved, another would rear its furry head. It's possible that her conclusions for Elbie might not be the same as for Max because she knows Elbie very well – has known him since he was 5 months old. We will also talk to her about the issue further on Saturday before or after classes. To summarise, she said the following: There are some dogs that just don't like being pulled by the collar/picked up. She said that given Elbie's age, this is about when he would be starting to challenge more. She said that by all means we could and should continue desensitising Elbie to being pulled by the collar and being picked up because this is helpful for vet visits etc BUT this should only be done when he's calm and not as part of a confrontation. At present, Elbie is totally fine about being pulled by the collar and picked up when it's not in the context of being forced to go out of a room/the house. The issue is that if we've told Elbie to get out and he doesn't want to do it and he growls, we have to pick him up and toss him out because we don't want to back down because he'll see that growling can get him his way and he'll resort to the tactic again in future. By pushing confrontations, we run the risk of pushing him into biting us, which is what we do not want. She said we have to divert him – get him outside with food or a toy or calling him etc. Basically, we do not put him into a position where we tell him to do something he doesn't want to do, he tells us he doesn't want to cooperate and then we have to follow through. We won't look 'weak' if we can lure him out using other methods. She also said that OH and I were not going to be good 'punishers' so it wasn't a good idea for us to be trying to punish Elbie because we risked doing more harm than good. Knowing Elbie and knowing OH and me she felt that diversion was the best way to address the issue. It certainly worked with the 'bed attacking' he used to do as a younger pup. He used to attack the bed and then when we told him not to, he'd growl. We started diverting him. After a while, he stopped attacking the bed and on the very rare occasion when he attacks his bed, we can tell him to stop and he will without challenging us. I've talked about the above with my OH and it makes sense to us. Elbie's a cross-breed, we know nothing of his background except that he's from working lines and as the behaviourist puts it, he probably would have been totally fine and relaxed on a large property with lots of work to do, but plonked into a suburban setting he has to have some sort of outlet for his energy. It's part of the surprise bundle we got when we got our lovable cross-breed ... I was a bit anxious but not as worried as I have been previously i.e. Oh My God The End Is Nigh Build An Ark You And Your Little Dog Are Gonna Die kind of thing. I've realised after meeting lots of experienced different dog owners that sometimes the picture I see on DOL is a bit skewed. If you look here, whenever someone posts about their dog growling/nipping, they're frequently made to feel like their dog must have serious behavioural problems that can never be rectified, only managed. It makes people less likely to ever post about their dogs doing anything negative like that in case the pitchforks and "PTS now!" chorus starts up. I guess there might be a lot of dogs out there that go their whole lives without growling or nipping at their owners, but there are a lot out there who do and in many cases, it's because of miscommunication. If people were less judgemental about it, there might be more people 'confessing' to it so that it's possible to get a real sense of what is 'normal', 'a bit bad' and what is 'truly bad'. Forced into 'the closet of shame', a lot of people probably try to deal with it on their own and that's when things go from bad to worse. Anyway, sorry for the waffle. :p I'll let you know how we fare. I'm pretty optimistic because Elbie has always been pretty good about corrections once we understand what on earth is going on. He is a scarily smart dog sometimes. As for that photo of Max on the kitchen table – that is soooooo cute. How on earth does he get up there – chair to table or can he leap that high? Post it nowhere else on the forum though lest ye be judged ;) Finally - Niques that photo of James is beyond adorable. He is clearly Plotting Mischief.

Elbie slept in our lap as a little puppy - at our choosing not his. He's now far too big to do it although sometimes do still plonk him in our lap for a cuddle. I actually wish I'd held him in my lap more when he was a wee one so am making sure we cuddle Hoover as much as possible before he becomes too big. We wouldn't have done it if it was at the puppy's insistence though - Kelpies are notoriously manipulative so play and cuddles always have to be initiated by the humans and not the doggies. Both our two are totally fine sleeping in their crates, dog beds and mats - or just on the floor.

That's fine if there are no other dogs around but throwing a ball in a group of dogs encourages competition to get it and that can lead to aggression. Well I'm quite paranoid about my doggies. We only go to the dog parks when there are no other dogs there. We've only ever let our dogs socialise with other dogs at puppy class, at BDOC during class and in the off-lead area after class when other owners are also supervising play and also with friends/other DOLers whose dogs we already know ... On walks, if we see another dog coming, we normally pull away to the side and only permit a 'greeting' if the dog looks friendly and the owner is willing. I've just read too much about how difficult it is for a dog to recover once it's had a very negative experience with another dog. I was just a bit puzzled about the ball thing because I wasn't sure what else you'd actually do at a dog park if not making the dog chase around after a toy.

From memory, the Forde dog park in Canberra has a sign that says no food or toys to be brought into the dog park. The day we took Elbie, we were the only people there so we had food and toys but if anyone else had come, we would have left. I understand the rationale for no toys but it did seem a little bit odd because I thought that it was natural for people to be throwing a ball around for their dog etc.