disintegratus

I don't know if it's helpful, but about 7 years ago I used "Pets in Heaven" for my rat, and I found them exceptional. They even had a stationwagon done up like a hearse. service was fantastic, they guaranteed individual cremation (how true this is I don't know, but I can vouch for the fact that there's a chunk of rat tooth in the jar that I put my rat in, so there's definitely at least some of her there.)

3 in crates in the lounge room, 1 on a dog bed in the lounge room. The only thing I regret about my relationship with Nathan is that I made the mistake early on of kicking the dogs off the bed for him. Bad idea, it set a precedent and now I miss having dogs on the bed I must admit it is nice not inhaling dog hair/being covered with dog hair/being stabbed by tiny stabby dog hairs/finding dog hair in places that dog hair has no business being... Not worth it though I do envisage HUGE fights in the future though, because Nathan's called dibs on choosing the next dog, and I have a sneaking suspicion that the outcome of the following arguments will result in both of us sleeping on the couch while 5 ginormous dogs get our bed :laugh:

It would be nice to get stopped all the time because people want to compliment my dog/s. Unfortunately, now that Bones has lost her puppy-cuteness and looks more like an idiot than ever, we rarely get stopped. I also can't see Thundercleese and I getting stopped any time soon, as not only is he large and fear aggressive, he's ugly too! (I still love him though, and think that underneath all his outward ugliness, he's got a beautiful soul :p)

Yes, but the RSPCA as usual are hiding behind legislation to avoid having to potentially pay compensation to either owner. Bet they're kicking themselves that they didn't euthanase, would have saved them a world of hassle.

"A strong smell" des not necessarily mean a smell of decomposition. Blood has a very distinctive smell, and I imagine that there would have been a fair bit of it around.

I know it's not the case here, but sometimes it's unavoidable to leave dogs at home alone for long periods. Recently we had to leave the dogs without anyone home, they ended up being unattended for almost 29 hours because we'd only just moved to the area and with Thundercleese's issues I couldn't ask any of the neighbours to check on them because he'd go ballistic, but my Grandpa was dying in the middle of the night, so we were kind of stuck. I do feel for her owners, I hope whoever did it copped a good bite from Bella, and that said bite wound goes septic.

My sister and I discussed this at great length after we adopted our rotty x from the shelter as she was an unchipped stray. I think it depends on circumstances, I like to think I would at least try to be impartial and base my decision on what's best for the dog. Generally speaking, no I probably wouldn't give the dog back, and definitely not if it had been dumped at the pound. In this particular circumstance, I think I'd end up letting the new owners keep the dog, because I would kill whoever had been housesitting for me and not bothered to inform me that my dog had gone missing, and I'm pretty sure they don't let you have pets in jail.

nope, only on 3, but it was excised off the original farm, so still falls into a farming zone :D I can also build sheds/other structures (within reason and as long as they're not near roads etc) without a permit :D

Oh, it's also quite rural, I can't see them building huge apartments and developments any time soon!

I second Wellington shire area. I'm in Won Wron (not far from Yarram) and I love love love it!! The only problem for me is that the fencing here is not great and my dogs are not yet stock safe, but we will fix it (and that's not a council issue:P). In terms of council regs, I know that you can have up to 5 without a permit, and up to 10 without a lot of hassles. I think it *may* be slightly different if the dogs are entire, but mine are all desexed. And the properties are fairly cheap around here too :D

Also not a company, but I'm down in Melbourne every weekend but live near Yarram. For a bit of petrol money, I'd be more than happy to do the drive for you seeing as how I'll be heading that way anyway :)

Glad they're okay. My guys once raided the bin just after I'd cleaned out the fridge and happened to find half a cake in there that had been there for so long that it was just a cake-shaped lump of mould. They were fine :D

I also don't understand the shock-horror aspect here. I actually want to be processed and fed to my dogs when I die, but apparently that's illegal Realistically, once a person dies, their body is a potential food source for their potentially starving pets. How is that any worse than being worm food?

Wow, that IS disgusting. All members of Animals Australia should be banned from owning any kind of recording device. Idiots. I saw nothing wrong with the dogs in the video, they behaved surprisingly well for dogs who have been woken up in the middle of the night by some dipshit breaking in and shining a light in their face. I urge AA to come to my place and break into where my dogs sleep with their torch and video camera, see if they make it out with enough hands to carry both those things. Stupid animal rights idiots. Bahhh!!!!

Another thing that might help is some of those "armchair training" techniques, which are entirely positive reinforcement. Perhaps if she sees how effective positive reinforcement can be, and how much more fun it is compared to constantly reprimanding the dog, she will be more easily swayed against "dominating" :)

Full story please, :laugh: Bones, AKA Stupidface, was a pup (apparently a husky x rotti) of around 6months old when I found her wandering around our street one morning. As usual, because I can't help myself, I brought her home. I couldn't get her down to the vet any sooner than about 6pm because my car was at the mechanics, so we got her microchip scanned and contacted her owners, who turns out had re-homed her to a family friend (who lives in my street) just the night before becase they couldn't handle her anymore. I started work at 7pm, they were going away for the weekend, so I said we could look after her for the weekend. On Sunday, I called and had a chat, they were trying to rehome her, so I agreed that we would take her on and find her a new home because she wasn't desexed and I couldn't let them rehome her to someone who would potentially just breed the life out of her. They came over on the Sunday to hand over her vaccination cards etc and they gave us a small reward (it's the first and probably only time I'll have gotten paid to take a dog! :laugh: ), and the first thing they said was "oh wow, she doesn't bite anymore!" She ended up staying mostly because Thundercleese has massive fear aggression issues, but from the moment they met, they've been best friends. I love her dearly, but she really has earnt the name Stupidface!!! She is not a very bright spark :p don't worry, she would've wanted to by the time your mum had starved her half to death :p My Mum's dog Jack adores me, but he HATES staying at my house, because he gets appropriate portions of food :laugh:

NO!!!! Don't do it!!!! I picked up a stray almost 8 months ago... ...she's still on my couch He is a very cute looking barreldog though :)

No problems here :)

You just know. :) The bond I have with Jack (now my parent's dog as they wouldn't let me take him when I moved out of home), is very special. Even though I don't believe our bond will ever be as strong as it was (I broke his heart a little bit when I moved out of home and took our bed), Mum says she always knows when I'm coming over because Jack gets super excited about 3 minutes before I arrive. Every time I see him being so happy to see me, my heart leaps a little bit :) Of the 4 that I have now, I love them all dearly, and would be devastated to lose any of them, but Thundercleese is special. He is MY dog, he is completely, utterly, 180% devoted to me, his only goal in life is to make me happy.

Update: My Mum's going with the DeAngelis (using 500lb Ligafibre) on her dog Jack (who after years of issues with his legs has finally been properly diagnosed), as his not a straight snap of the ligament but a degeneration over a long time and has a lot of associated joint damage, so the DeAngelis is the less invasive option. I'm still not sold on the DeAngelis for Zehra though. They said this fan-dangled Ligafibre is comparable to the TPLO, but it's only relatively new, and the best I could find claimed similar results to the TPLO in a 6-month retrospective study. 6 months is not a very long time, and is not really long enough to be a proper indicator. But on the other hand, the recovery time for the DeAngelis is a lot shorter and it is a significantly less involved surgery. It's also about 2/3 the price of the TPLO, but that's neither here nor there. Zehra's not so much a "running" type dog as she is a "bounding around breaking her legs like an idiot" type dog. Do you guys think the DeAngelis will be alright for her in the long term? Or will the extra strain she puts on the Ligafibre with her idiocy make it more likely to rupture and have to be repaired again?

To play devil's advocate, I think under the right circumstances, it can be appropriate. For example, if you have a herding/livestock competition, and one of the prizes is a working breed pup, all the entrants are going to be aware of the prize and it's not just some competition that any random Joe could win, as in any person that won would be obviously capable of looking after a working breed pup and aware of their requirements etc. Just like I don't advocate giving live animals as gifts, unless the person is a) aware of it, b) actually wants one, c) it's not an impulse in any way. That said, the raffle is a disgrace. I'm glad to hear it's been removed.

Mine get excited when I come back from anywhere, and get a little bit excited when my sister comes home, but are pretty self-controlled, no jumping up, no barking, just excited tail wags, sniffs and maybe a couple of little half-jumps. A little while ago we both went away for 10 days, and my partner Nathan stayed at home and looked after them. After being almost knocked over at the airport by Nathan being excited to see me, I went home and walked straight into the backyard where I was literally knocked to the ground and trampled by 4 of the most excited dogs on the planet!! Not something I would ever put up with normally, but it made me so happy that they were so excited to see me that they completely forgot themselves :) For almost 2 weeks afterwards, if Thundercleese could see me, he had to be touching me.

Thanks, you've all confirmed what I was thinking. Same clinic as last time, but not sure about whether it would be the same surgeon. I also spoke to Lost Dogs home clinic, who agreed that it sounded very strange. I'm going in tomorrow morning to talk to them and find out what's going on, I'm a bit disappointed to be honest, as last time they were fantastic, though this kind of misinformation leaves a lot to be desired.

She looks like she swallowed a giant football!! What a gorgeous girl :)

So about a week and a half ago I took Zehra (rotti x something) to the vet as she's been limping. Turns out she's ruptured her left cruciate ligament. about 2 years ago she did the right one, and we had that one fixed using the TPLO method where they put the plate in, as at the time we were advised (and all my research agreed) that the deangelis method, where they tie it with surgical twine, was not really appropriate for a dog her size (about 35kg) This time, I took her in this morning to get her preliminary xray done so they could measure her up for the plate, and the vet told me that she didn't really want to do the TPLO on Zehra and thought that the Deangelis would be a better option for her. She said that they're using some new fandangled kind of fibre that's much stronger than the old stuff, but I'm a bit confused because you would think that they would have mentioned this a week and a half ago when I took her in. The vet did say that she was displaying some signs of arthritic movement in the right leg, that was the main reason she didn't want to go ahead with the TPLO. So at the moment I'm doing a bit of research of my own to see what I can come up with, and if I'm not happy with that I'll call them a bit later to speak directly to the surgeon if he's available, but in the mean time I wanted to get some opinions from the fountain of knowledge that is DOL :) So, what are everyone's thoughts? Have you had a dog that's had its cruciate repaired? Were you happy with the surgery? Why or why not? Thanks everyone!!!