SpotTheDog

Yeah there's a lot to think about if you're going to commit your dog to SAR in conditions like the ChCh quake or 9/11. I read some of the handler accounts from 9/11 and it's quite harrowing. There's the danger to the dog - broken glass and twisted metal, many SAR dogs are fitted wtih protective boots for their feet. Then there's the depression. Some of the 9/11 handlers spoke of how their dogs became literally depressed with the work. Think about it - a SAR dog has to be really finely tuned in to their owner. It's highly stressful, highly upsetting work, and not just the owner but every single other human being working at the disaster site is stressed / full of adrenalin / agitated / upset. Put a highly intelligent, in-tune SAR dog in the middle of that environment and after a time it's not surprising that the dog would begin to feel very depressed. I think it's a big commitment from a person - not just for themselves, but remember when you choose to put your dog in a stressful, dangerous environment you're making a choice for someone who can't choose for themselves, and there's a lot of responsibility goes with that. /edit to add I believe there was no proof of long-term psychological effects on SAR dogs used in 9/11, so literally the dog can become upset when working but it will resolve itself if the dog is taken out of the working environment and back into a normal, loving family home for instance, but still. (Just goes on to prove they're more resilient than we are!)

I did the 6pm / 8pm thing with Gus, taking up food after 6pm and water after 8pm, then last toilet break at 10pm, then first morning break at 6am. Helped massively with toilet training and a lack of accidents. These days he has free access to water and drinks out of the cats' drinkwell fountains in the house quite happily (and quite messily) and we don't have indoor accidents, but restricting food and water in the evenings helped establish good toilet habits.

The saddest part about that is the 'red nose pit' being more aggressive is a complete myth. It's just a colour. A long time ago, before pitbull terriers were bred by every muppet with a desire to look 'hard', the red coloured dog was bred because it looked striking and came from a lineage where the dogs that were bred had a reputation as good fighters. These days it's just a colour. When I talk to people about pitbulls I try and get them to focus on the 'terrier' and not on the 'bull'. Terriers - say the word, and people think of tenacious litte ratters; obstinate, determined little dogs who just won't quit. Play fetch with a jack russell terrier and a tennis ball, and at some point you might expect to be able to pick the entire dog up by the tennis ball that it's holding in its mouth and won't release. However people expect terriers to be like that, and most terrier owners know what they're getting into and understand that they'll have to curb, train and moderate that tenacity. However, stick those characteristics into an average 23kg dog body, and you get myths, legends, accusations of bite pressure per square inch akin to a White Pointer, anatomically unfounded claims of 'lockjaw' (do JRTs have lockjaw when they won't let go of the tennis ball?) and basically a whole plethora of total bollocks that makes pitbull terriers into larger than life devil dogs, who attract the wrong kind of people who then work to perpetuate the myths. It's all about perspective. If people focused on the 'terrier' aspect of pits and staffs, we might not be in this state. (Similarly, if people understood that 'teacup' is a euphemism for 'runt of the litter', at least some of the BYBs would go out of business.)

There seems to be some cross-purpose posting on this thread, with folks taking other folks up wrong. I think we all agree: The dogs need to be destroyed and the owner needs to be prosecuted. It would be useful to know, simply on the basis of the anatomy of the dog attack, what prompted the attack, but nobody is laying blame at the feet of the young family. Many posters would feel far more comfortable with positive breed identification in this case, because all too often the media label any dog involved in such an attack as a pitbull, and subsequently the negative press for ALL bull breed types continues. That negative press perpetuates the problem of scumbags wanting a 'hard' dog, so they get their hands on a bull breed, backyard train it up to aggression, but then have no control if the dog slips out through a gate accidentally left ajar (even if they don't allow them to roam indiscriminately). Just wanted to clarify that, because while indeed it doesn't matter what the breed was in the context of the dogs needing to be destroyed, it most certainly matters that the breed is accurately identified in media reports now and in all future cases, to stop villification of individual breeds, which leads to futile breed specific legislation and so on. @ Tsarsmum: Just a point on your story about your nephew and the paperround and the staffy - by definition, as a paperboy your nephew was entering the dog's territory and that prompted the attack. Absolutely the dog is obviously a poorly controlled and badly socialised animal, but it's not uncommon for paper boys, posties, utility meter readers, so on, to get attacked by dogs when they have to enter the property (or be immediately outside the property and throwing something onto the property) - but to me your nephew's situation doesn't count as an 'unprompted' attack. Walking down the street and having two escaped dogs attack you when you're not even outside the property where they're kept - that is a seriously unprompted attack. I completely accept that your nephew wasn't doing anything like deliberately teasing the dog, but unfortunately many poorly-trained and poorly-socialised dogs consider the 'door to door delivery' types to be open season - so I'm not surprised that the same deal happened the following week when your nephew and his dad again appeared in the dog's territory. Still though - their appearance in the dog's territory to deliver a paper was what prompted the attack. It's not the same as unprompted and unprovoked aggression, as in the original story. Hope your nephew is okay and him and his dad got some result through the rangers.

I work at a hospital. Unless I can convince someone that my boisterous bull arab pup would make an excellent delta dog, it's never going to happen. :rolleyes:

Gus gets a lot of breed prejudice (even though he's a bitsa). Up to now, it's been all 'Is he a' or 'He's a xyz isn't he', but the words used have been american pit, pit, american bulldog, amstaff and so on, but always in 'that' slightly worried way. Other comments have included 'you can never trust a dog like that', 'dogs that like always turn vicious' (what, mongrels?), and most recently, 'Why would you want a dog like that?' We did get close to being in a fight at the weekend though. I took Gus up to my local cat shelter and a 600g orange and white kitten spat at him, inflated all his fur and carried on like a two bob watch. Gus stood there with this 'what did I do?' look on his face.

Conversely, based on this thread I'm apparently some sort of poor quality pet owner because my dog DOES dig the garden (with great gusto and enthusiasm), and it doesn't bother me because my garden is currently set up for my pets to enjoy so there are feral sections of long grass and herbs for the cats and the dog has dug himself a wallow pit in the middle of it and takes all his treasures in there. /sulks

I know that, they've been closed since 10 am this morning I think - but it's just the concept that has me baffled. I honestly believe, with the predicted severity of this storm, that if there were any empty seats on flights out of cairns and townsville between last night and this morning and the reason for those seats remaining empty was just that the prices had shot up too high - well, the airlines should be fucking ashamed of themselves to be honest. I'm not expecting anyone to give anything to anyone else for free - we all know the country we live in, we know its hazards, we know the pitfalls yet we still choose to live here. But if a loaf of bread is $4 on Tuesday, and there's a cyclone or a flood or a bushfire on Wednesday, I see no necessity whatsoever for that same loaf of bread to be $8 on Thursday, and I see no necessity whatsoever for the four people ahead of me in the queue to be buying six loaves each. That's really what I'm talking about - this is a cylone. It will be bad. There will be lives lost. There will be billions of dollars of damage. But this is not the end of civilisation as we know it - the rest of the country is on standby to step in within 24 hours, you're not going to be left like New Orleans for weeks with no assistance. Subseuqently it really disturbs me to think that somewhere behind the scenes, somebody's making a profit off the panic.

I can't get my head around the idea that Qantas are flying Australians out of Egypt for free, but in every story I hear about people trying to get out of the impact zones, there are tails of flight prices tripling and quadrupling on the announcement of Yasi's upgrade to a category 5 storm. I can't confirm or deny the stories but it's troubling to think it's happening. I understand the economics of supply and demand, but it seems to be sheer madness to think that transport, fuel and food can rise in price so quickly in times of crisis for a civilised country. How can anyone who claims to live by the Aussie ethics of mateship and a fair go move to profit from such misery? Why can't they keep prices affordable for everyone, but enforce rationing so nobody can panic bulk-buy?

Would I be right in saying that in layman's terms, 'predatory drift' is basically the 'any dog can turn' argument, but specific to own-species aggression? I can see why it gets people upset. We all want to believe our dog would never, could never, so on. I sincerely hope my dog does never! Still though, perhaps I'm just mean but I find myself naturally untrusting of my dog. I've posted here before that Gus is the first dog I've had as an adult, and unfortunately while he's a good dog mainly, he does exhibit tendencies that I wasn't prepared for (but have now accepted and am working on with him). All that is a part of the reason (outside the obvious) that I invested in pet insurance - for the million dollar public liability indemnity...

They could just call him Choco - which is an Australian military term for a reservist. (Chocolate soldier, he'll melt in the heat of battle).

I think it's an interesting subject. My dog will shake the hell out of anything he picks up, he's done it since 12 weeks, and I've often watched it and thought 'Jeez I hope he never does that to one of my cats'. However, in interaction with my cats, he's all about the chase. On the rare occasions where one of them and him end up in the yard simultaneously, he'll chase and they'll run... but then they stop and turn around to face him, and he goes charging past, or backs up and harries instead, bouncing about and barking. He also seems to get enormous enjoyment out of them then giving chase to him. It's a worry to me at the moment, but that's because Gus is nine months old today and appears to have embraced his teenaged months with great gusto this week and is being, to use a technical term, a right bollox.

It's not. It's forecast to make landfall as a category 4 storm, which is pretty serious, with in some cases up to a metre of rain over already saturated catchments. Here's hoping Yasi changes her mind at the last minute and goes for a cruise over the seas instead.

I thought my dog, identified by the vet as 'bull arab' (for a given value of mutt) could conceivably hit the scales near 40kgs as an adult. He started out rapidly - got him at 12 weeks and he put on literally 1kg per week up to six months of age, where he was 22kgs. Then it all stopped, and in the next three months he's put on 4kgs to hit 26kgs now at 9 months of age. I'd imagine he will max at 30kgs but won't get any larger, and may even stop shy of the 30kg mark. I've no idea if he's in for a second growth spurt. At the moment he's at precisely that size you dread - nose at crotch height and tail at did-you-want-that-thing-on-the-coffee-table height.

Medium to large bull arab x. My enclosed yard space is about 850m2. His dog run within that is 65m2 (the area behind the garage is fenced off for him). When I'm out, he's in his run. When I'm home, he's either inside with me or outside with the run of the garden and his run combined (for instance if I give him a lamb bone he has to go into the yard with it). I like to walk him about four times a week, but as he grows that requirement is going to increase. Currently, at nine months, he's doing well on his own during the day, but then taken into the house when I get home, he sleeps in my room on his own bed, and we go for a bushwalk with a swim in a dam four times a week. I think there's a balance between time alone in the yard, accompanied time in the yard, accompanied time in general, and time out for a walk. I'd rather see someone with a dog that was walked once a week on a Sunday, but lived inside the house with them mostly and spend the majority of hours every day with human companionship, than see a dog kept in a concrete / wire run 22 out of 24 hours a day with an hours walk every morning and an hours walk every evening.

Different lifestyle, different resources. If you can take your dog everywhere, it isn't that hard to take them out three or four times a day. Out for a coffee, bring the dog. Meet friends in a central town square, bring the dog. Go to the library, bring the dog. Dogs that aren't forbidden indoors - suddenly you can bring your dog to lots of places that you can't bring it to here. 'walking the dog' doesn't necessarily mean pounding the pavements, it just means taking the dog with you when you leave the house. The dogs in the yard thing isn't to do with the good weather in Austraila - it's to do with people here thinking that a pet is one of the natural life steps - you know the ones, get born, start school, leave school, start a job, meet a girl, get married, buy a house, get pregnant, have a second kid so the first one won't be an only child... except 'get a dog' is a routine step usually between meet a girl, get married and buy a house. So it goes: meet a girl, get a dog, she likes the dog too, hooray, get married, buy a house, get pregnant, when the baby's born freak out over the dog, leave the dog in the back yard and ignore it for the rest of its natural life, unless it starts barking, in which case leave it down the pound. There is a similar issue in Ireland and the UK.

Britain - a nation that would deliver death threats to a woman who put a cat in a wheelie bin, but finds it funny when a tiny yorkie attacks the postman... Until the postman punts the ratty little dog into the middle of next week. At which point the nation will issue death threats against him...

monique, it's a gorgeous set of pics and a great story!! Beautiful dog. Out of curiosity, has Nadsy got any plans for what he may do with the hound if he's deployed again?

I own a backseat buddy style seat cover thing because of you lot. Gus thanks you for it.

Mr & Mrs O'Carolan. [/smartarse]

While I lived with him, I hated my mother in law's JRT X. Eight years old, and the most belligerent dog I'd ever met in my life. Not just untrained and disobedient, actually wilful, obstinate, aggressive, stubborn, a resource guarding demon, snappy, dog aggressive, and sneaky - my God the SNEAKINESS!!! I'd never seen a dog actually sneak before - but if he knew the side gate was open, it would all go quiet and you might be lucky to spot him in time, crawling through the shrubs on his belly, clever little bastard - he'd have a look to see where you all were, and then in a serious of actual darts-and-hides, he'd be out the gate and gone. He killed chickens on one side, and one of the neighbour's kittens on the other - the poor kids were sitting on the verandah playing with the mother cat and her kittens and up he went and grabbed and shook one of the kittens (which probably died instantly, poor thing), and the father was belting him with a shovel and he wouldn't let it go, the kids screaming and crying, so on. Of course my mother in law should be roasted alive for her management of him, but he's an unlikeable little bollox either way.

...Gus!! How do you make your owner come home from work on a Friday and dive straight into a bottle of Penfolds Bin 28? Open the garage door. Oh noes!! Look at the damage from the rains! My garage floor has an enormous puddle of water!! Oh the mess... Oh the destruction... Oh look at that swathe of mud!! MUD!!! How the hell did that get in here?? It must have washed down the driveway... Oh the mess... But wait, why is this puddle of water and mud in the centre of my garage? Why doesn't it reach from either door? There's no leak in my ceiling. Did it come in - Dog forbid - under one of the walls?? ...here, there are worms in this mud! WTF?? Step up for your star prize, Gus, with a special nomination for minimum effort, maximum impact: He chewed the spigot off the worm farm.

I like big dogs. I've never been a fan of small fluffy dogs. I like tall, powerful, but intelligent dogs. I can't stand dogs that appear to be all instinct with four legs and a tail - the sort of behaviour exhibited by a dog who's jumped its fence - passing you, nose down, hackles half up, following a scent, won't even give you a glance if you call to it. I didn't pick a breed when I was adopting, I just picked a bitsa. I had a good idea that he was a bull arab bitsa, but I went entirely on his behaviour when I interacted with him. Gus is intelligent, but a 'soft' dog. He's responsive to training but a bit clingy. He is also an obsessive licker and it drives me bats sometimes. He's probably a good dog for me given that he's the first dog I've owned as an adult - biddable, and low maintenance. He loves a good walk and is starting to love swimming, but currently due to a change in my job circumstances, he's on his own in his run for eight hours a day, five days a week. I ensure he has toys and treats and bones and so on, but it's not ideal. However he's spectacularly good about it - not a barker, howler or whinger. However if you're home, he wants to be involved. He's most destructive if he's left alone in the yard while I'm home, even for a half an hour. So if I'm home, he's in here with me including sleeping on his own bed in my room. He's a bit clingy - you can't go from the couch to the fridge without an escort - but generally I count my lucky stars to have had just an easy introduction into dog ownership.

Could the cat have really hurt the dog today? Lots of Sas's slaps on gus are claws-in. The other cats hardly ever make contact with Gus - hissing is enough, or a threatening paw wave. Once or twice he'll get a smack but it's because he's pushed his big head up on the couch beside the cat, or shoved his nose in its tummy or something. But Sas appears to be the only one who's genuinely dog-aggressive out of just being a bastard tbh. (Much as I love the cat.) The issue I find is how my intervention is taken. Gus is an intelligent dog. Once or twice when I've gone to chastise Sas, Gus has taken that as an okay to form an insta-pack with me and start in on the cat as well. The upshot is I have this rapid-fire turnabout chastisement. Dog minding his own business. Cat claws him - I'm giving out to the cat as the dog is moving away from the strike, then whip around on the dog and tell him to 'wait' (his 'do nothing until I tell you' command) before he starts to join in, then I continue to shoo the cat away. I block with my body, getting between them, physically, and move the cat away from the dog by 'shuffling' the cat away with my legs. /Edited to add that the dog is sitting waiting for me to deal with it when I do this, and the cat accepts my intervention - I wouldn't be sticking my hand or foot in if they were extremely tense and it was a proper row. I'd be more likely to throw something at them - I'm a good shot with the couch cushions :D I have great hopes that the relationship will continue to improve. I've had Gus just over five months, and he's just over eight months old, so I see the next ten months to be really important in terms of cementing the positives in their relationship and trying to whittle away the bad until he reaches 'adulthood'.

Jeez, what is it with Burmese cats?? Out of my six cats, only one wars with the dog - and he's a blue Burmese cross!! But yes I agree you have to tell the difference between defensive aggression (a hiss or swat in response to the dog pushing his boundaries) and troublemaking (Sas clouted the dog the other day as he was just passing by minding his own business).