SpotTheDog

Nekhbet, do you not think nine years old is a little old for a first litter?

This is interesting - I do some cat rescue and tattoos are absolutely invaluable on desexed cats. I hadn't really thought about it much with dogs, and when I read this thread I though 'oh hey my guy isn't tattooed!' I was so convinced he wasn't I rang home (slow day at work ) and asked hubby to go have a look in the dogs ears. Apparently he does have a tattoo, but it's been done quite deep in the ear so it's not immediately obvious when he perks his ears up.

I tried Gus this morning with his favourite, liver treats, under a plastic cup (a Harry Potter cup, actually, that we got free with a Maccas happy meal a few years ago). Showed him the treat and then covered it with the cup and told him to go get it. Mixed results. On the timber floors, it's too hard. The cup slides if he snuffles it. He gives up. On the carpet, it's easier - the cup catches and lifts and he can snake a tongue under it to get the treats. However once he's snaffled the treats and the cup falls over, it's a cup free for all - he'll kick it, nose it, pick it up and trot away with it - but he won't do any of that initially when the question is how to get the treat. Will try again tomorrow - he was enjoying himself. That is, until Husband announced that it was cruel to "tease the dog with food" (this was after his breakfast!) and basically behaved like one massive distraction until the poor dog didn't know what was wanted of him and became a little agitated, which Husband then seemed to think proved his point. And to think people wonder why we don't have kids. HAH.

I would say personally there was no suggestion, between the footage and the voiceovers, at any point, of anything that would confuse a puppy farm with a registered home breeder. Dave Hughes did make a declaration at one point that rescue dogs were the only way to go, but I think that's fair enough in the context of the piece. Trish Burke from Pets Haven at Woodend was also on the piece.

Whatever youse are all selling, if I buy two can I have the second one half price pls, chrstxbye. xx

Toilet training. Hah. I adopted Gus and brought him home on 30th July. My father died about 48 hours after I brought the pup home, suddenly and unexpectedly, and I left for Ireland for four weeks, leaving the non-toilet-trained, 13 week old, flea-ridden, ringworm-riddled puppy with my husband, who is "not a dog person". I did whatever I could to set him up to succeed while I was gone, but it's hard. He had no real bond with the pup because he's not a dog-lover - he doesn't adore dogs just for themselves, the cats are his thing. The first two weeks for him were just hell. The pup was restricted to our family bathroom with a babygate across the door so he could see out, but even crating him wouldn't have helped because he'd been so improperly confined in his first few weeks of life he was used to urinating and defecating and then having to lie in it, so he would even pee in his own bed. The place was like a urine-stinking launderette, husband was washing dog beds three times a day and rotating them - they were hardly drying in time to be swapped over. He ended up putting the pup outside in his exasperation and just because he couldn't cope with the toilet training, and the time outdoors bought him a break from the constant laundering. I had a brainwave, got on the internet in Ireland and ordered a trampoline bed - this means if the pup wets the bathroom floor the puddle doesn't soak into the bed because the bed is clear of the floor. That immediately reduced the bed washing by 100%. That helped calm husband right down. Proper training only really started when I got back though, because it takes dedication and persistence and the dog's my dog, not my husband's (and I can't and won't fault him for stepping up to the care of seven animals, four of which are mine, for four solid weeks). I'm back 21 days and I'm down to cleaning up one accident a day tops, and that accident happens when the dog is confined in his bathroom overnight so there may be poo or wee waiting for us some mornings, but other mornings the floor is dry and clean. I planned out meals per day and took the advice of the users on here - my pup was a bit older so started on two meals per day with free-fed kibble, he's now down to two raw meals a day. I figured out that my pup will poo about half an hour after eating, and then again about eight or nine hours later once the food has worked its way through his system. First thing in the morning he's out in the yard for a wee and a poo if needs be. I use that time to clean up the bathroom if I need to. Then he comes in and has his breakfast and about 15 minutes of attention in the house, and then goes straight out to the yard again. Then during the day he's in and out of the house on and off depending who's home, and he can be trusted to hold his bladder for four or five hours at a stretch and he willingly does it now because he understands that he'll be allowed out to pee and poo very soon. Scheduling the last meal four hours before bedtime, and taking up his water two hours before bedtime, made my life a lot easier initially. In the two hours between taking up his water and putting him to bed I took him out to toilet at least three, if not four times. It really made a difference. In the evenings, he gets his dinner, then time outside for the loo; then he's in the living room with us for the evening and I go out with him on the hour, every hour, using a 'toilet' command and coming straight back indoors as soon as he toilets. The very first time I brought him onto the living room carpet he peed on it - I had him on the lead and as soon as he squatted I made 'NAH AH AH!' noises and ferried him outdoors (he piddled his way out there but the message was very clear). He has never, not once since, peed or pooed inside the house unless it's a mistake that I have made in leaving him no other option. The most important thing about the above is the two lessons I learned - first, my method isn't perfect (I don't get up in the night to the dog - I only sleep about six hours a night anyway but I'm used to being an on-call worker and if I set my alarm to let the dog out I'd never get back to sleep - I've had clean-ups as a result, but despite that he IS learning and it IS improving). The second thing I learned is that I hate the puppy phase. Strike me down with lightning - adult animals are fantastic, and baby animals are gorgeous, but that stage when pups are pups and kittens are kittens - jesus WEPT it's a metric FORKTON of work!!! And you have to do it. You have to do the work. When you're tired. When you're sick. When you're going to be late for work because you've poo to clean up. When you're just about to go out the door and one of them steps in their own crap (even kittens in a litter tray) - you HAVE to do the work. You CAN'T leave them like that for the day, you have to take off your jacket and roll up your sleeves and wrestle them into the sink and clean them up and then clean it up. You have to take a deep breath, build a bridge and get over it too, because the more stressed you are, the more the animal picks up on it and now you're being clawed and shredded trying to wash your kitten in the sink because he's picking up on your stress (thank God for pups on that front - my guy loves warm water!!) The house will stink. The place will feel like the great ammonia laundry. You dare not have folks over to visit. If you're really lucky, there's hair everywhere too. Hair and pet dishes that have to be washed and toileted-on bedding and pet toys and you can't remember if you brushed your hair today (I have seven rescue animals but God saw fit to give me curly hair, so I'm destined to do this). So yes, it can suck. But it will pass - do the work, and it will pass, and it will be better, and you'll have a great pet.

For what it's worth, I totally agree about food aggression being hard wired into some dogs. When I chose my dog from a shelter, I was very aware that I wanted the dog to share its life with my six cats. My cats are not food possessive and eat from the same bowl, and I wanted to be sure that any dog in my home wouldn't literally bite the head off one of my cats if it bimbled up to him while he was eating. At the shelter, I was in a cage with three eight week old mastiff cross puppies. They were typical puppies, and even more typical shelter puppies - desperate for attention, hyperactive, wiggling, licking, chewing and barging each other out of the way for my attention. Knowing I was unlikely to be injured, I put my hand in their kibble bowl and handed out pieces of kibble as treats. There was one small female puppy, a sweet looking litttle thing, but at even eight weeks when my hand went into her kibble bowl, she froze like a statue for a couple of seconds before I took my hand away. She wasn't impressed with me offering the kibble back to her either. Some people don't believe puppies have it in them to demonstrate any aggression, but I think if you look hard enough you can see the foundations of the adult dog's personality even at eight weeks - it's up to you to then work around that and shape the dog you want, but I think it's there for starters. The dog I DID adopt has no food aggression - he isn't even possessive. And he was starved when I adopted him, all ribs and hips and no proper feeding. I make him sit before he gets his food and reward him with it immediately. If I interfere when he's eating, it's to give him something additional. I raw feed him and in the rare case that I'm unhappy with how he's managing something he's eating, I will take it off him but I reward him with something else at the same time. He is relaxed around food, but he came like that - I didn't train him to it. I can reinforce it with good feeding practices, but I didn't start with a pup that howled and bounced at the mere sight of the food bag. However I wouldn't 100% trust him not to snap at my cats if they go to mooch at his food bowl while he's eating - of course I wouldn't. I chose the dog I chose because of what I saw in his nature, which is overwhelmingly sweet and gentle, but I still wouldn't gamble with my animals or a child or even another adult while he's eating. It's unfair to him and unfair to them.

It's probably because he LOOKS capable of more exercise that I feel like he should be having more. You're right though, he probably needs more stimulation rather than exercise. What suggestions has anyone got for home-made toys and brain-teasers? This is a pup that can reduce a tennis ball to two bald hemispheres in about 25 minutes. His kong toy has doubled as an excellent fetch toy - it bounces unexpectedly, rather like a rugby ball, when thrown and he loves that! He also has a favourite rope toy and that takes a lot of abuse. Can't wait for puppy class to start in October...

I agree that a pup as a surprise gift isn't a great idea. However the consideration with a pup and an older owner - and I don't mean to sound brutal here - is the possibility of the dog outliving the owner. Yes, of course we could all get hit by a bus tomorrow, but the possibility of impending death becomes more of a probability as you get older. Before anyone calls me a callous bint, my own father died very suddenly on 31st July just gone - he was 76 and extremely healthy and active. He considered getting a dog at the age of 68 but my mum talked him out of it (she's not as much of an animal lover and didn't want to be tied back into the cycle of kennels etc - they travelled a lot to see my siblings). If dad HAD gotten himself a pup and he aged 68, the dog would now be left with my mum, who wouldn't be able to deal with it on her own. The dog would be eight years old - a nice age for a healthy, adult dog, but a disasterous age for a dog in a shelter looking for a new home. That said, virtually all problems can be overcome with planning - if you can come up with a game plan for what will happen with the pup if your parents can no longer care for it, for whatever reason, and you think they'd enjoy a pup, then discuss it with them and see what they'd like to do.

Thanks for that. Is there any set info on when I can start ramping up the exercise? My big fear is a bored dog, and trying to balance boredom / destruction / over-exercising.

Before anyone gives out to me, I DID do a search on this forum before I posted this thread, but I couldn't really find anything definitive, hence I'm asking at the risk of repeating an oft-repeated question. If it's been done to death, please feel free to link me to the thread and lock this one, coz I can't find it myself. I have a bull arab puppy, in as much as any dog is a bull arab, and 'puppy' for a non-specific age that I think is around 20-21 weeks (the joys of a rescue dog). He's currently tipping the scales at 14.1kgs, putting on just around 1kg a week still. He's making a magnificent segue into selective deafness, at virtually five weeks to the day, so I've thoroughly enjoyed reading the stages of development sticky on this forum. The question I have now is exercise. I don't know the origins of this pup, so all I know is I've a medium to large size pup who puts on around 1kg per week, and is 14 kgs at 20 weeks. So how big is he going to be at the end of it all, and how much exercise should he be getting now? I'm trying not to over-exercise him because I've heard all about the stress on the joints, however he is prone to puppy exuberence and I'm not sure whether or not to try tiring him out. To be fair to him, he's a sweet boy and he settles quickly with some attention. I don't let him jump in and out of the car (it's a captiva and he travels in the back so it's a bit of a jump in and out) but I do walk him nearly every day for about 25 mins or about 1.5kms I think, and if I haven't walked him it's because I've been out in our yard with him all day, doing some gardening (we've a relatively large yard, about 800m2 in total) and throwing a kong toy for him while I'm gardening so he's getting a lot of company and doing a good bit of running about. So what should I be doing? Walks twice a day? More walks of shorter distance? Am I hopelessly under-exercising this dog? He doesn't get off the leash outside the yard, I'm not confident of his recall yet. He's about as destructive as any puppy is though he loves his time at my feet in the evenings and snoozes very happily in his bed, ignoring my cats and the TV, so he's not quite climbing the walls yet, but I'm not sure when or how to ramp up his daily exercise. All suggestions much welcome!

Just watched Channel 10 news report on the march today, and they were very careful to emphasise that it's unregistered, back yard breeders, with dogs kept in very poor conditions, so on, so forth. They also mentioned Dr Chris Brown's upcoming piece on puppy farming on the 7pm Project, due to air Tuesday night - should be interesting...

I think the sentence that made the show's presentation wobble a bit for me regarding pure breeds was the voiceover while we were looking at a chi at a show; something like 'If human brothers and sisters have sex it's illegal and they're arrested. When dog brothers and sisters breed we call it pedigree and the best ones win a prize.'

ROFLMFAO

Dear DeShonko I'm in university and I don't have much time for a dog, because I'm either studying and out with my friends a lot like, but see, my housemate has this fantastic dog, she's a long-tailed short-faced agility breed called a Qat. I *REEEEEEEALLY* want one now, they're just fantastic!! She's been doing like, agility classes and stuff with her Qat since it was like, six months old? Plus there's like, no grooming because it does it all ITSELF!!! The one my housemate has is this brilliant colour, it's a brindle red. I quite like it, but I'd go either a brindle red Qat or a brindle silver, I think those are nice too. If you could supply me one I'd be very happy, can pay up to $3,000 (my grant just came in). I'm in a house-share, but like, the landlord doesn't mind. ETA Oh HEY, my friend sent me a picture so you know what I'm looking for!!! Here it is!!

I think we all need to try and begin to commence to start to calm down. Some people make typos. Some people can't spell. And some people are just dumb. Yes, yes, I said it, universal shocker: some people on the intermation superwebway are dumb. (Note to sheridan: "intermation suberwebway" is my affectionate terminology for the internet. Please don't quote it and declare that I'm some sort of ingrate. Honestly. I know some big words. Like marmalade, or wheelbarrow.)

...am surprised Sheridan hasn't come in and corrected the misspellings... <__< >__>

Been moving the pup to raw, but there was some VIP type dog sausage in the fridge so this morning he got that for breakkie. Didn't want much of it, so he left it and returned to it during the day. Dinner was a chicken wing and three or four chicken necks - been feeding the pup probably a bit too much since moving to raw over a week ago - trying a bit of everything that we have. Things have evened out some now, so we'll start over with better serving sizes tomorrow morning at breakfast. ;) Thus far he loves chicken necks, likes chicken wings, likes the thick piece of the chicken back including the tail, hates kangaroo (that's catfood in this house ) likes tripe, will eat heart and liver and egg but doesn't like the mouthfeel from what I can tell, and thoroughly enjoys a thick piece of oxtail.

Or even typing and impossible ... WHOOOOOSH (That's the noise of my joke going straight over your head) Methinks it only became a joke after I picked it up. 'That's okay. Nobody thinks jokes are funny when they didn't get them.

Or even typing and impossible ... WHOOOOOSH (That's the noise of my joke going straight over your head)

I think it means that it's virtually unpossible for the person who was typifying up the breed list to have failed English class.

Just on the whole 'the media wouldn't simply NOT report an attack by a non-bull breed dog would they', funny story. There's a woman in the west of Ireland who runs a bull breed rescue. Her name is Sarah Gunther. Years ago, in her own words, she was badly mauled by a dog in her care. She was contacted by a journalist who was desperate for the story - you can imagine, a real 'bites the hand that feeds it' headline. The dog that attacked her was a labrador. The story never ran.

Thank you. He's really a great dog - honestly, he's biddable and friendly and cuddly, and a real 'dog' dog, if that makes any sense. :p You can see a dark patch on his side in the tv-watching picture - that's the remains of one of his ringworm patches.

Pics of the Gus Puppy! Okay.... Here's the state of what I brought home with me. When I opened this photo tonight and looked at it I gasped - I'd forgotten what a bag of bones he was - and guys, this is AFTER I washed him so he looks better here than he did when I brought him home. This is him about two days later, toilet training in the yard, poor bag of bones. This is him this evening, in my kitchen: And finally, here is is this evening in his bed in the living room, watching telly. That's Turbo Diesel the cat on the couch - so as you can see, they can exist this closely to each other without a major problem as long as the cats are standing their ground. We don't allow him on the couch, which is helping to establish them as masters of the house. I really hope this all works out - he's a really great dog and the cats are pretty excellent too.

Just to add: the dog is never shut in the bathroom with the door closed. There's a baby-gate across the bathroom door and he can see and hear the whole house while he's in there - from his bed in the family bathroom he can see me sitting at the kitchen table - just in case anyone worries I'm utterly isolating the dog in the bathroom for hours at a time.