Dju

I know Pers, thankfully now I can't get that image out of my head either.

I buy Black Hawk from them. Cheapest available because of the auto refills. Good service. The shipping is pretty quick; it was overnight for me because I live in Brisbane but I don't know for other states.

You can get a sample of it too (to see if it agrees with your dog), but I forgot who you email. May have to pop into the Black Hawk Thread in the Health Forum and ask. Pretty big sample too, I got a KG of it :laugh:

I never actually realized there was a "thing" with tail spinning being a serious issue for some dogs, I just thought it was something random and crazy that they did in a spur of the moment. I laugh when Hugo does it every now and again (maybe once a fortnight when he's under the bed and his tail scares him because it's dark and he doesn't know what's touching him, haha). I will make sure to stop him when I see him doing it next!

Okay so we're getting some bamboo panels to cover the fence but as for reporting them in any which form--mum says no, no, no, absolutely not. She doesn't want to be in conflict with the neighbors and apparently she says that the pitty is inside the house for the majority of the time and "nothing is going to happen to Hugo". She also thinks that because their next door neighbors have a JRT, if something ever does happen, it'll happen to the neighbor's dog first and then the neighbors will report them, not us. So the bottom line, "Why are you always making a drama where there is none; nothing will happen to Hugo". It's so frustrating living in this house argghh!!

Willow that made me burst out laughing in the middle of the library. I wonder, I wonder.. :laugh: That is really stupid, Inevitablue! How could they make such a mistake?? Yeah I'm thinking the barking thing would probably be the best solution.. It's exhausting thinking about all this stuff, why can't everyone just be a responsible owner so other people don't have to literally and metaphorically pick up after another dog's (or owner's) poop? :|

Yeah, I guess if I reported his dog for barking, that might work. I may ask them to pretend that mine was reported for barking too, because Hugo is so well-trained not to go off his rocker anymore that he'd be very offended if I reported him for barking, haha. :laugh: But yeah, he fires off a few warning barks and then as soon as I step outside to see what's happening, he runs back quickly to me as though to say "Hey, mum, I wasn't barking, that wasn't me, that was the other dog, see him, see him there, look at him!". Hopefully the bamboo fence will stop the barks. Not before I report the dog or the owners for something though, just need to figure out how to do it without incriminating myself

Thanks for the sympathy, Pers.. I really quite need it, there are so many ways I'm being pulled on this issue, logically, emotionally, physically.. Of course I feel sorry for the dog (I'd be heartless not to feel that!) but Hugo is my precious and I don't want him to cop the flak because their dog got taken away from them. Can you actually report a dog for being a suspected pitbull? How does that process work? Obviously they don't have papers that say "pitbull" (or any other breed for that matter), so couldn't they just say he was an American Staffy or something like that? I've never understood how that process works. As for the solution--don't worry about it guys, we're gonna try the bamboo fencing and the skunk paste and see how that works. Hugo doesn't bark anymore (the little angel!) so that covers the noise and maybe the skunk stuff will cover his smell too?

Whatever I do, I'm damned--Don't report the owner, the owner might at least be apologetic when my dog is ripped to smithereens; Do report the owner, and the dog potentially goes away but then there's the risk that we're going to have some violent neighbors get very shitty with us and potentially take it out on Hugo when we're not looking. Or do report the dog and there's no proof of abuse, the RSPCA turns up, the neighbor gets shitty at us AND still keep the dog. There seems no win here. At the very least, it only seems to get hit when it does something "wrong"; five minutes after I took Hugo back inside after the barking contest with the pitty, the neighbor was back outside with the dog playing a game of frisbee with it. Sigh.. it's just very, very difficult, we don't want to get ourselves into the position where we're in dangerous conflict with the neighbors.

OHHHH! I think I just got what it meant when everyone was talking about "supervising" Hugo.. :laugh: We're at home pretty much all day, 7 days a week, there's always someone in the house and if we go out, we never leave him in the yard, we lock him inside a bedroom. Is that slightly better? At least if the dog attacks him, we'll hear it and it would take two seconds to get outside. The dog is terrified of humans so maybe it'll stop attacking if it sees us? Oh GOd, I hate talking about this like it's actually going to happen I think the brains have been smacked out of the dog next door by the look of how hard the guy was hitting him. I'll look for some bamboo fencing at the Reject Shop the next time I'm out shopping, maybe the dog will forget that Hugo exists, idk.. I'm stuck between a rock and a hard place, I want to report the dog/owner but some people in this world are truly crazy, and I don't want to experience my first dog being baited!

Purdie, we'd report them too, if only we didn't have a dog. We're almost fearful of reporting them and them knowing that it's us that did it because I've made comments about them hitting the dog. My mother hit me over the head when I told her I made that comment and yelled at me something about whether I wanted them to throw poisoned steaks over the fence and that they're primitive people and you can't reason with primitive people etc. Haha, do we know if they rent? We don't even know what their names are (actually I think the dog is called Voodoo, but that's about it). How would you go about finding their landlord anyways?

We tried; he's ininterested in training the dog and he can't afford fencing/puppy preschool. He also said it's none of our business what they do with their dog.

It's not bad but I mean my gosh, it's tiny. Like putting Hugo in prison He gets anxious if we close him inside a room, I can't imagine all the crying if we locked him up in that cell!Skunk paste.. that's not bad! I didn't know that such a thing existed. That would be a good idea, slick it onto the fence to keep him away from it. But I mean it still wouldn't stop him seeing Hugo, maybe a combo of the skunk paste + some metal sheets to obscure visibility.. I woul just hope that it'd work!

Yeah he does, he's delighted by other dogs and always wants a sniff and that's what sets the dog off. We have some spare metal sheeting that we used to construct the chicken house, do you think maybe if the dog can't see Hugo he won't know he's there? I'm just clutching at straws here; in the perfect life, I'd build a water-filled moat full of crocodiles around our house to protect Hugo. An electric fence might be an idea, do you mean to put it on top of the fence seperating our properties? More importantly, will it work to keep the dog out?

It is horrible We had the most beautiful setup/backyard, the most beautifully behaved dog, and the loveliest neighbors and now it seems like that's all changed within the last six months. I'll give Freecycle a look, but we have a pretty large back yard surrounded by about 80 metres of fencing, so it's quite a bit to cover! (It would be cheaper to fence the neigbor's yard, they have maybe about.. hmm.. 5x15x5x15 setup)

You don't sound rude, SecretKei, but it is quite difficult. If the run costs more than $150-200, we don't have it. We have enough to feed him premium food, to give him checkups at the vet, to give him flea/heartworm/whatever treatments every month, to buy him toys, and to feed and clothe ourselves and to pay the rent. There's no more money left, my mother is on the dole and I'm on youth allowance.

It makes me so frustrated because we shouldn't have to deal with other people's messes! :cry: Now it feels like the only real choice I have is give Hugo a good few months to romp around the backyard like usual before he gets eaten by the next door neighbor's dog, or lock him inside the house for the rest of his life so he can sleep himself to misery every single hour of the day that we're not playing with him. It's just not fair!

You can't draw blood from a stone, Pockets. We don't have money to put up 8-foot high fencing with concrete trenches, similar to how we don't have the money to build a concrete bunker in case the Russians throw nuclear bombs at us (just an example). It's a lot harder than it sounds, we can't just.. keep Hugo inside for the rest of his life and only let him out for potty or walkies. We have a gorgeous, beautiful backyard filled with his toys and bones and places to scratch and sniff, and he can spend hours out there playing by himself or sunbaking or getting the ball thrown for him by the neighbors.. Restricting his access to the yard would be like cutting his legs off. Aren't pitbulls illegal in Queensland?? Can't they be destroyed pretty much on the spot if they're reported? What's more is that it's an entire pitbull..

If we report them, they'll know it was us--we've commented that hitting the dog will likely make things worse, not better, and they told us "Is it any of your business? No.". Mediation out the window with that one. It just seems ridiculous that I have to shelter my dog and not let him back into his beloved yard when these people shouldn't even have gotten a dog in the first place. Puppy preschool isn't expensive; if you can't afford that, how would you be able to afford food and medication for the dog?? Why get a dog in the first place? They told us from the first day we saw their dog, "The neighbors will make trouble for us because people don't like dogs, happened to us the last place we were, too.." Well don't bloody let them make trouble, raise a well-tempered, behaved dog and there won't be trouble!

For the most part, I'd like to think we have okay, relatively entertaining neighbors. We have a good relationship with the people on our street, and both the houses next to us. But recently about six months ago, new neighbors moved in behind the house (not on our street, they share about two meters worth of our back fence with us). With them, they brought a pitbull pup. Back in the early stages, mum was making small talk with them and from what she tells me, they're philistines. They can't afford puppy preschool, and they think that rubbing the pup's face in his own mess is an appropriate way to teach potty training. We didn't give them much thought until now, though we've extended the invitation to bring over their snarling dog to introduce to Hugo in maybe the hopes that they'll make friends and there won't be a problem in the future, but theyve declined that invite and now I think there may be a problem. The dog sort of lunges at the fence at Hugo and we're really sort of worried that he's going to jump over it one day and attack him. Everytime the owner comes outside and catches the dog displaying aggressiveness and barking, they push his head again the dirt and slap him on the face a few times and continue hitting him while they drag him inside. Putting up fencing around our yard is not feasible. We're all on government assistance here, but even if we weren't, it's not our prerogative, they should contain their dog, not us. We've put up some two meter construction fencing against the area of fence that we share, but all surrounding neighbors have 4-foot fencing including us, it's only a matter of time before the dog figures out that he can jump the fence to the neighbors and then over again to us if he really wants to come over. I dunno, I'm worried I guess. He's not the friendliest looking dog and everytime he's let out and Hugo is in the yard, he's snarling through the fence at my dog. And these bogans next door don't want to train him, they don't want to socialize him, and they think hitting is the answer to everything. It's so frustrating, on the one hand I feel sorry for this poor dog and on the other hand, I'm really worried for my dog too! Argh!

Hugo is scared of taps being turned on (thanks mum) and getting something off an office chair (the ones that have wheels and rotate). I once threw his toy on top of a chair in another room by accident and he barked at it and I tried to show him where the toy was and even tried to put his front paws up on the chair so he could see it but he had his nails dug into the ground and he was just terrified of it! Ironically, his favorite place to sleep is right underneath my office chair with his chin resting on one of the cold metal legs.

Erny, I'm thinking you're right, I'll start reconditioning him to be okay with the finger splayed motions and try to use treats to get him to stay with me. Lead is a good idea though, because the poor bugger is off tail between his legs and his ears down, like a caterpillar crawling along the ground as fast as he can away from me as soon as I show him the gesture! I may also have to desensitize him to the bathroom, he cowers when I shut him in there with me and turn the taps on, even when I'm trying to "airplane" treats into his mouth to distract him. It's very annoying when people do the wrong kind of training on your animal and then you need to spend ages trying to undo the damage they've done

Thanks so much for all your input guys, I'll definitely try it out once I'm home from uni tonight :) I'm thinking that's possible, Pers, maybe when he stands up on his hind legs and I hug him I involuntarily cause him pain of some kind?? I should probably stop doing it, I was always doing that because he looked so delighted to see me and I wanted to reward him for being happy with a cuddle I guess :laugh: This morning he seemed 80% fine while I was rushing around getting ready, but that's only because he freaks out when I leave and so he was anxious to hang around me as closely as he could to try and prevent that from happening, I suppose. But again when I approached him, cooing, he did the same posture and hid under the table. I've been trying to isolate what specifically causes him to be scared, and I found he isn't scared of me with my hands behind my back or at my sides. He's only scared when my hands are outstretched towards him. SO I tried it when I was sitting, I stretched my hands out towards him with my fingers splayed and he was terrified then, too. So I think I might possibly maybe know what the cause of this is.. My mother never approaches him with her hands out, BUT she used to do something else.. when she was in the bathroom with the door open a couple of months go, I only just learned recently that he's been stepping inside the bathroom and she's been flicking water from her wet hands onto him, frightening him into leaving the bathroom. So this also explains that when I go to the bathroom and he flops down to watch ( :laugh: ), he stays there up until I get up and turn the taps on to wash my hands (he gets up and bolts). Does anyone think that might have some correlation, the positioning of my hands in a "flicking" motion?

I don't remember giving him a fright.. I would have thought I'd noticed if I had He isn't actively encouraged to sleep with me, he sleeps on the floor next to me but every now and again he'll ninja hop up onto my bed without me noticing. I haven't had night terrors of the violent kind as far as I know or my family members or boyfriends know, though. Gah, he's not listening to me when I call him now, either. I have to call him with a toy in my hand or it's a mad dash to put distance between us for him This is SO frustrating. edit: 1 year, 9 months and 4 days :p

It's so weird, just now I called him over into my lap and he settled down quietly into it for a little while for cuddles, then I moved him onto his bed, stood up, looked back at him, and his ears pushed back and his tail drooped and his whole body cried "I'm submissive!!". I don't know what's going on..