koalathebear

Yup, it worked Basically you should have (quote) at the beginning and a (/quote) at the end - but using square brackets instead of parentheses

Max#1: For quoting, hitting 'reply' will auto-quote the entire post. If you just want to quote specific sections, it's as follows. Delete what you don't want to quote and highlight what you do want to quote and hit the 'quote' button. Image below. Also: 1. dogs beds are horribly expensive but Elbie's bed has lasted forever. Looks like James has the same one. It's a Bon Fido Stay Dry Basket. For outdoors, he also has a trampoline bed (two - one for the kennel and one so that he can sunbake). We also bought him a dog futon. We spoil our dog absolutely rotten. It's a bit disgusting and I am ashamed of myself. 2. crate-training is awesome - makes life soooooooooo much easier. We can pop Elbie in his whenever we need him out of the way for a bit of or to 'calm down' for 5 minutes when visitors come before we unleash the kraken wizzle: Poor Elbie ... I think I would get in trouble in the "Dog Tricks" post in the General Discussion section i.e. exploiting my doggy and de-dogging him. niques: Awwwww... you're a good dog parent. No need to feel guilty. James is so smart, one missed week won't matter. wuffles: Elbie normally isn't one for poo but the sheep poo had him mesmerised, too when we took him for his first herding session. We want to take him out to Braidwood for herding with Heike's sheep at some point and I have no doubt that he will resume his love affair with sheep poo. Can't wait to see the photos and videos!

Max#1: Ahhh ... I don't know how to use imovie so would probably struggle with that one. MS Moviemaker has a lot of critics but it's pretty easy to use or at least to make basic movies. There is something very geeky about making music videos about my DOG though ... Is that one of those dog futons? Elbie has one of those and gnawed a hole in it the other day - stitched up now, but there was quite a bit of white fluff everywhere. Based on my understanding, when Kuma blows, you'll have enough fur to make your own shiba inu. Elbie sheds sooooooooooooo much it's unbelievable. You don't see it until you do the sweeping, though. It's everywhere. Boohoo, it's raining now ... I hope it stops tomorrow because we wanted to go to the dog park in the morning before all the other doggies were out ... ETA: Not sure why, but today Elbie is making pigeon noises.

tlc: I revisit this thread regularly to admire. Your four are so beautiful. Are they 'related' as such? The colouring of three of them is so similar. tokkie: LOVE your two fur kids to bits. How long will Nandi stay fluffy?

Max is sooooo cute. Look at that expression on his face - absolutely darling. Very impressive muscle-control to manage to hang upside down on the wall like that!

Tried to lighten the photo so that we could see the expression on James' face better. Gosh he and Roo are sooooo cute.

My puppy is shedding like a demon. The microfibre sweeper thing picks up his fur like crazy. The above is just the fur collected from part of one room. Is my dog part spitz? I don't understand how he can lose all this fur and not be as bald as an egg. ETA: Found the photo of Elbie being a greedy guts. The photo quality is a bit crap and he looks like a devil dog but you can see he has the chew toy and the ball in his mouth

Oh. You remember. Max#1: I'm using Microsoft Movie Maker ... that makes it very easy just to drag and drop and have different start points and add music etc. Just search DOL for "Hills" and you will learn that "people who love their dogs don't feed them Hills". It works for Elbie and it makes his poop firm and easy to clean up so we're sticking to it while he's a puppy ... If you read some of the raw/dry debates, you will seriously go cross-eyed and your brain will explode. Also, I already spend so much time and angst on my puppy that I don't want to be there painstakingly measuring out bones and calculating carbs and calories for him in order to make sure he's getting a balance diet. Seriously, check out this thread in which they were arguing about good vs bad dog food ... The forum moderator had to intervene and give warnings. The passion people can display you'd think that someone was trying to reintroduce capital punishment or national service or something. Whatever works for your puppy is what's important ... Sadly - he really IS that fast. When he has something in his mouth that he doesn't want to give you, there is absolutely no catching him. Yup ... Elbie does that, too. I have a photo somewhere of him with his cloth chew toy in his mouth AND a tennis ball and it's really hilarious - he looks so serious and yet so goofy. James is seriously cute ... I love labs sooooo much and I have a soft spot for the black ones even though I know the chocolate ones are Super Trendy right now. In other news ... wuffles (and Ava), Clastic (and Mars) are going herding tomorrow! We are expecting lots of photographs and videos of dog, sheep, mud and sheep poo.

Do you have adobe elements or adobe photoshop on your computer? I use that to resize my photos and then I upload them to http://www.photobucket.com where I created a free account and then link to the photos over there. You can also use online photo resizers eg http://www.faststone.org/FSResizerDetail.htm If you have adobe, then I can walk you through how to resize if you like.

Heh. It varies - sometimes he still looks very puppyish, sometimes he looks so big. We still love him even though he's gone all long-snouted and ugly on us Thanks He eats mainly Hills Science Diet puppy, which is much reviled by DOlers but works for Elbie. He gets devon, lamb flaps and other treats sometimes, but it's mostly the Evil Hills which is why I think he has a shiny coat ...

Since we're doing clam shell photos, here we have Elbie and clam shells that he has separated A very of Elbie playing today - just being a dork.

Gosh Tahli is so cute. The hiding things in the 'dirt'/carpet post reminded me of a funny thing that Elbie does before he lays down to sleep. I'd read about it before but it's funny to see. He kind of digs with his paws in the dog bed, circles around, pawing at the bed and then plonks himself down for his snooze. In the old days, we thought he was trying to rip up his bedding so stopped him but these days we let him do it because he paws at the bedding without making much difference to it and then falls asleep. Perhaps psychologically he feels better now that he has 'adjusted' his bedding. :p

So glad she's all right.

Hope Mindy is feeling all right. I was just pondering last night how desexing is much easier on the boys than the gals ...

;) I can't believe it either! It's the comfy corner of DOL. Absolutely ... clearly we need a Flying Cavalier King Charles photo now. Heh that would be awesome. Travelling with Dog adds an extra layer of complexity as we will have to find Dog-Friendly lodgings along the way. lilli_star: Sooooooo cute. Look at that face and that pose ... what is it about our dogs with their sad faces? They're probably the most spoiled and pampered dogs ever but they give these melting: "I am pitiful" looks. Maybe that's our next photo challenge ... come up with a photo designed to extract maximum sympathy from the audience. KumaAkita: That is kind but Elbie would annoy Kuma and Kuma would probably sit on him. ;) Elbie has a twisted Toe Fetish in which he likes to lick and sometimes even nibble on bare toes. It's a bit gross!

Max#1: Alas no - I am not quite sure what I'd do if Elbie manifested signs of Book Aggression. We were given one of those clamshell thingies - 2 shells joined by a rope? Elbie proceeded to gnaw his way through the rope and is now gnawing on the clam shells themselves. Clearly this demonstrates a Deep-seated Pathological Loathing of Molluscs which means he should never be permitted in public, or at least where there is marine life. Oh wow - he does look like Elbie's starry-eyed brother there!! My OH looked up at the screen and said: "That looks like Elbie!" He also laughed at Max's adorkable heeling - just like Elbie's wild leaps. :D I love how he's still back-chatting you - he seems so supple and springy. I howled with laughter at the photo of Mr Squeak ... his face ... so lonely ... did Max run away and refuse to cooperate or had he already flown away??? Niques: Yes... we had That Dog. The wriggler who couldn't keep still :D At least we didn't have Lloyd the Boxer who boxed everyone, wee'd on everything and always did giant smelly poos in the middle of playtime ... Urgh ... I share your anxiety. OH and I keep fretting about what we are going to do if we have to go on holiday. I don't think Elbie will like a kennel but he isn't used to sleeping outside and he can't stay with any friends and family. OH says we can't go on any holidays until the dog dies. :D I'm thinking we might be able to do the Great Ocean Road with dog ... lilli_star: Exactly what happened to us at our puppy class. Elbie had all these tricks up his sleeves but on the night when I was trying to demonstrate them to the class, he just wanted to sniff the floor where Lloyd the boxer had just wee'd :D I was mortified. KumaAkita: I really hope that Mr Kuma comes back to class at some point ... it's actually quite tough doing it on your own - lugging dog, mat, treats and bloody food dish. My first week without OH, Elbie was a wild thing and I had to ask one of the women in my class to get Elbie's card for me because I couldn't even get close to the card rack I love the photos you've taken with your new camera and of course Kuma is absolutely adorable and adorkable in that pose. Clastic: Same thing happened with us with the tape so we made sticky tape loops which were more distracting for Elbie. I also watched that video but alas there was no way we could peg anything to Elbie the short-haired mutt. Max#1 & Clastic: Re the clock on the 'wall' ... Are you accusing me of faking the shot?? It was OH's idea - he said: "Put the clock on the ground!"

OK, we didn't have any super glue but with a bit of golden syrup, we managed to get Elbie to fly up high enough so that we could stick him to the wall.

Kuma is soooooooooooooooooooo cute - look at that face

OH: "How does she get Kuma to stick to the wall?" Poor Elbie, inspired by your photograph, we shall try to stick him to the wall as his latest trick.

Yes, we were a bit snobby during puppy class when they were 'teaching' us how to get our dogs to sit and drop. Elbie already knew those by puppy class - although he was SHOCKING at being quiet and calm in class. In beginners and bronze obedience, the instructors were telling people to slowly stop luring - we had stopped luring with Elbie ages and ages ago. We still use treats to motivate him but the luring was gone a long while back. You'll find different strengths and weaknesses arising in the class to make the exercises still interesting and there is always the element of distraction. For instance, we had an interesting layer of difficulty in our class because one of the handlers brought her little daughter (whom we dubbed the Pink Ninja) and her favourite thing was pouncing out of nowhere and being distracting which was fabulous for getting Elbie to work around distractions. I'm trying to teach Elbie to spin and roll in both directions - he just does the one way right now. We won't be able to put his name down for agility until he's at least 12 months old so we'll also have a period of inbetween-ness. There will be lots of things you can teach Max in the meanwhile - 'touch' left and right 'in the box' walking backwards ... speak 'Go to your mat' can actually be quite tricky. Elbie has 'go to your mat' and 'go to your crate' and sometimes he has a tendency of going towards whichever one is closer. He is now good at out of sight stays where we make him stay while we vanish into a different room. The other thing is that when you call him, he should come and sit neatly in front of you. We have been trying to proof his stays - tugging on his leash, throwing things around him, dangling his tug toy in front of his nose. The thing that he found hard to resist was when we threw a ball past him ... he finds it hard to maintain the stay but he's getting pretty good.

I have nothing useful to say - just wanted to say that I hope Rover's all right. So scary and worrying for you both

I LOVE shiba inu. He is extremely cute.

Kuma's instructor (BDOC Santa) has asked my OH twice now if Elbie is in beginners. When OH said: "No, we're here for the bronze assessment". The instructor looked very disapproving ... kind of like a Yoda re Luke Skywalker: "this one cannot be taught" kind of thing... We felt very embarrassed If Elbie ever makes it to gold, I know he's still going to be asked if he's in beginners because he's so hyper. For Ava though - she is so much more calm and sedate now. There is no way she looks like she's in beginners! There have been now, no less than three occasions when I have posted about Elbie's problems and then felt that he must have Severe Behavioural Problems - probably as a result of his less than stellar pedigree and humble origins. OH wanted to ban me off DOL because I kept getting so anxious that our dog was a dud doomed to be rehomed or PTS Given that Elbie has grown out of pretty much all of the issues I was worried about, I'm a bit more sanguine about it now - I think the expertise and experience is awesome here, I just have to be a bit better at taking advice with a pinch of salt and not buying into the Doom and Gloom Mentality that can pervade the place. “Your dog dug a hole? In the ground? Oh ... my .... goodness ... this must mean that he is a DA dog (Dirt Aggressive dog) with Suppressed Repressed Dirt Aggression that although presently subliminated, could manifest itself into Severe and Acute Canine Dystopic Dysfunction. There is no hope for him, he must be sentenced to death by firing squad at dawn to avert this further deteriorating into Chronic Sound Vocalisation Disorder (barking)!” Sometimes, puppies really DO grow out of certain behaviours and it's not just being slack/apathetic/irresponsible to wait for them to grow out of it ... In other instances, steps can be taken to modify behaviours and it isn't always the end of the world. In any case, the owners I see here are for the most part very responsible and caring and all are doing their best. Max#1: I’ve posted this photo before … in hindsight, I’m not sure why I put the peanut butter so high on poor Elbie’s head. No wonder he looks so bewildered. A dab of vegemite on the side of his snout may be enough to make Max paw at his face and as soon as he does it, treat him even if he’s just thumping the ground at first. This is an excellent trick and makes even the 'tuffest' of people go: "Awwwwwww" and start cooing dotingly.

Oh she is so beautiful!!!! James and Roo need to have a music video together ... singing 'Especially for You' by Jason & Kylie!! Max#1: Nooo!!! Don't let him eat the sticky tape! Your reflexes must be like lightning - as soon as the paw swipe happens, you whisk the tape away before there is tape-consumption. I think I managed to pull most of the tape off before Elbie ate it. Have you tried peanut butter smears on the side of the snout instead? And yes, that GSD in that youtube video is amazing - she is the most calm and well-behaved dog I've ever seen.

Yes, you must never admit that your dog is less than Perfect. It's like our dogs are an indirect psychlogical reflection of their owners. *hides Elbie in a cupboard before anyone notices that I am bonkers*