SpotTheDog

Just a note on that part - you should never assume that the only animal that'll be injured will be the cat and your dog may have a few scratches on his nose and that's it. My neighbours dog dug my fenceline a few months ago and my DA cat (yes, yes I have a dog aggressive cat) went under her fence. He had a spat with her mastiff x bitch, a dog who appears around 40kgs. My cat had a deep but clean puncture in his groin, extensive bruising and a scalped patch on his outer thigh - but I can tell you his back claws were *thick* with congealed blood when he came home, and it wasn't his. I'm pretty sure the dog caught him and he ripped her up so she let him go, he sprinted under their raised pool and hid from her until 11pm, then came home of his own accord. I'd called into the neighbour saying I was worried he was in her yard, so she penned the dog and once it was about an hour past bedtime, home came the cat. My cats don't roam - I've a cat-proofed yard and oscillot on order to be installed to further cat proof it, so the cat wouldn't have been out if her dog hadn't dug the fence line. The cats have escaped my yard three times in two years, and each time it's through an under-fence hole dug by my neighbours' dogs twice and my own dog once. Next day when the neighbour and I spoke again I told her the cat was home and asked her to check her dog over for injury, explaining what happened. However I think she may have thought I was looking for money for vet bills and denied there was a mark on her dog (who's all black and I worry may not have been checked all that thoroughly). In fact I was going to offer to pay a vet consult for the dog because judging by the cat's back claws, he would have bunny kicked in with them repeatedly and potentially really torn the dog up and after all it was my cat on her property - and you can damn sure if her dog broke into my yard and attacked my cats I'd be screaming blue murder over it.

I am indeed in Vic, but I'm up reasonably high so last night it was probably 20 overnight inside the house - in other words not hot enough to make me uncomfortable in my bed, but that's not to say he wasn't feeling it, he might well have been. I changed recently from feeding Gus in the morning to feeding him in the evening. Normally he got a meal in the morning and some sort of snack when I get in from work, e.g. pig's ear, stuffed kong etc. Perhaps the combination of a large feed at 8pm and a hot night just meant he felt like death warmed over (I know I would!) Might go back to a morning feed.

Thanks, folks - it's the close-mouthed thing that was bothering me, it's years since I've owned a dog and while I'm used to the open mouthed, tongue-lolling pant when they're hot, this close-mouthed puffing like a train through the nostrils freaked me out totally.

Right, Gus sleeps on his Snooza D1000 in my room. He's my 8 month old 26kg bull-arab-ish puppy. At 2.30 this morning I was woken up by the noise of him breathing heavily and rapidly. I switched the light on to see what was up. He didn't want to get out of bed. I persuaded him and brought him outside. He urinated just fine, then back into bed. There was no sign of a reason for his reluctance to get up. Even on days where he feels well, if he's comfortable and sleepy he'll make a real fist of getting out of bed - rolling out of it literally and crawling along the floor with his tail wagging before getting up, the big ham. Back in his bed, I looked him over - no hardness or tenderness in his abdomen, no caginess about being touched anywhere. His heartbeat appeared rapid, but then I believe pups (because he is only 8 months) can have heartbeats up to 180 bpm? He felt a little warm to touch but I don't have a thermometer to take his temperature and I know that feeling warm isn't an indication of a temperature. He was lying comfortably in his bed in his normal awkward puppy positions, so no sign of holding a posture to ease discomfort. His gums were a good colour. Once I got him to get up and come outside, the heavy close-mouthed rapid breathing turned into an open-mouthed pant. When we got back to my room I turned the fan on to cool him - wouldn't have been that hot in the room, but certainly warm. The breathing eased a little but it was still rapid. Given that he had no other signs of issues - had eaten a normal dinner that evening, urinated normally at 2.30am, no abdominal tenderness, and really no outward signs of distress other than this peculiar breathing, I decided not to sprint to the OOH vet and figured he may just be too hot, so I left the fan on and he went back to bed, back to lying in his usual position, but then back to the close-mouthed, heavy, fast breathing - less than before, but still there. Going with the 'hot' thing, since the breathing had eased some after I put the fan on, I moved him and his bed into the laundry with a pot of cool water and left him in there for the rest of the night (cooler, on tiles) with the door opened to outside so he could go out if he needed to wee, poo or throw up, and the cool night air was breezing over him. This morning he was bright and fine, possibly a little tired but then we were up in the middle of the night. I didn't feed him before I left for work, just left him water. Yesterday evening, before all this, I came home from work and took Gus out for a bushwalk and a swim in the lake near the house. He had his first proper swim, but drank a bit too much pond water and threw it up when he got out of the water. Once we got home he ate a large dinner happily around 8pm - he's raw fed. He was fine for the rest of the evening and went to bed happily and it was all hunky dory until 2.30am (at which point: scroll up.) Any ideas? Overly hot? Possibly a bit bloated and sickly after scoffing too much food on top of a pond-water empty gut? Any of these symptoms ringing any bells with you guys for a possible underlying major issue? If I get home and he's breathing rapidly with a high heartrate again I'll go straight to the vet with him, but if he's just fine again is there any point going this evening? If we have a rerun tonight I may take a cameraphone video and head to the vet on Saturday morning so I can show them precisely what I'm on about if the symptoms have stopped again in the morning. (And I'd rather be called a crazy madwoman who's a hypochondriac about her dog, than a lazy owner who left it too long.)

That's fascinating, and it makes so much sense. Personality often attracts you to an animal as well as its appearance. Boisterous dogs who are jumping six feet up the gate of their run are offputting. Frightened cats huddled in their litter tray at the back of a wire cage are offputting. I worry sometimes about one of my cats, Eric - he's intelligent (for a given value of intelligent in cat terms) but was feral up to six months of age. He is an attractive looking cat, and he's an affectionate, mischevious, heatbutting boofa who'll climb into your lap at night and flip to have his tummy rubbed -assuming you're me or my other half. But put him in a shelter environment and scruffy him up a bit and you'd assume from his behaviour that he was a hopeless feral who stood no chance whatsoever of being tamed - he'd be up the walls of the cage in a blind panic and shrink away from any offered hand. There is a chance, however, with the sanctuary of a box to hide in, he might calm down somewhat.

Double check on the semantics: If the average age of a dog in Australia is 3.5 years, that just means we have lots of young dogs. If the average lifespan of a dog in Australia is 3.5 years, that means we have a problem.

Gus started playing with buckets and I had to stop him - the water source in his pen is a bucket. I came home from a trip to the shops one day to find him in his run, with shade yes, but it was 33 degrees and he'd tipped his bucket out in order to play with it so had no water. I'd been gone three hours, which wasn't too bad, but I wouldn't fancy that on a day where I was out 8-10 hours. The obedience trainer I use is very helpful, she'll lend particular toys out for a week and you can see if the dog takes to them instead of spending your money. The staffy ball was a total fail in our house - Gus isn't interested particularly in food rewards so he nosed it about two or three times and then ignored it. He wasn't interested in the hard plastic. It's weird with dogs - I'm astonished that folks have had the black kongs demolished in minutes. I still have two red kongs that are nearly good as new and they're used daily, but it must be the way Gus plays with them, because I had a black plastic compost bin from Bunnings - you know the large ones with four clip-together sides and a lid, and Gus has literally eaten it. He's chewed ends of it, cracked the panels in half and half again, put teeth punctures marks through it, and it's a heavy duty, very hard plastic that'd I'd have considered would have a lifespan far in excess of a kong - yet it's in pieces and the kongs are intact. Anything with fabric or leather on it - so stuffed toys, tennis balls, so on - destroyed in seconds. The big achievement of the holiday season was the discretion and delicacy with which Gus managed to put perfect puncture marks in three of my christmas tree baubles without them shattering his mouth. (Naturally that misadventure was undertaken in a 20-second-period where I wasn't watching him like a hawk. )

If you've tried a red kong and it was destroyed, the black kongs are worth a go - they're much harder rubber. I also only ever hand mine out with one filling - they get packed with fresh beef mince and stuck in the freezer overnight and then handed out frozen solid. I've also discovered the joy of supervised temporary toys - empty coke zero bottles with the labels and lids removed, used pizza boxes (nought to confetti in three minutes) and a plastic takeaway carton filled with minced raw chicken carcass and then frozen. <--note the use of both 'supervised' and 'temporary'!!

If you see anything made by Europet Bernina in the pet shops, buy them - they're solid, heavy rubber toys - balls, spiky balls, bone shapes, barbell shapes, hoop rings. Black kongs. Dried treat items - roo tails, pigs ears, chicken rolls, that sort of stuff. Everlasting treat ball is an expensive waste of money, though the dog may still like to chew the ball itself, which can take a lot of chewing. Large knotted rope toy. The rope, the kongs, the europet bernina toys and the treats keep Gus entertained - and even at eight months he can reduce a tennis ball to two bald halves inside of 90 secondscvxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx \ ...see that last contribution? That was his big head on the keyboard, so yes, he agrees.

The Captiva is a SUV right? Most likely it would tell you a large size, the difference between that and the medium is only 10cm in length. I had a medium in my Pulsar and moved it into the Xtrail, pretty much still covers the back seat. Try Vet Products direct for a better price. Thank ya kindly

I'll be involved if you'll have me? Canine good manners are really important to me because I've got a rude dog. I do try, but often other owners won't give me the chance to correct him before they're cracking the shits and hauling their dog away in disgust and my lad's left standing there with a big dopey 'What'd I do?' head on him and I'm mortified. (Or I'll correct him and he'll start to play nicely and they'll haul their dog away in disgust anyway.) If this also ties into the whole concept of people learning to understand dog body language so they can distinguish good manners from bad, then yes I'm definitely up for it.

The PetHaven site is just giving me SQL errors when I try to load it up. Same with the car size guides for the backseat buddy. Definitely want one of these - anyone any idea what'd fit in the back seats of a Holden Captiva? I'll measure it when I get home, but if anyone knows off the top that'd be useful...

English bulldog and schutzhund obstacle course!!! <__< >__> Who said that? /runs away

"Fixed your post"

FYP.

The only problem with that approach is that Irish isn't that straightforward. The accented letters, prefixes and suffixes are very important in the language, affecting both meaning and pronunciation - so in your case it's Ildánach, making the pronunciation Ill-dawn-ock, with the emphasis on the aw of dawn as a long syllable. I have no idea if you can register accents (in Irish the accent above a letter is called a fada, and makes the vowel sound longer, so í is pronounced eee, á is prounced awww, é is prounced a, as in a for ape, so on.)

Read this thread. Went to the pub. Listened to 'When I bred Rottweilers, man, they used to range from 13kgs to 18kgs tops.'' So conversation goes something like this. 'I'd love a staffy.' 'Yeah, they're great dogs.' 'My friend's got a big staffy man, ace looking dog.' 'Staffies aren't supposed to be big you know. If it's the size of a labrador it's not really a staffy.' 'Oh yeah, I know man like, people don't realise that about dogs, you know when I bred Rottweilers, man, they used to range from 13kgs to 18kgs tops.' '...18kgs? For an adult Rottweiler?' 'Yeah man coz when you show them, like, you're supposed to be able to see the ribs.' 'At 18kgs you'd be able to see more than their ribs. There's no way you bred 18kg adult Rottweilers.' 'What man? Yeah I did!' /calls 8mth bull I arab pup out from under picnic bench where he's snoozing: 'This is my dog, he's 8 months old, he's 26kgs. Were your rottweilers bigger than him?' 'He's 26kgs but?' 'Yes, he's 26kgs.' 'Oh right okay, maybe I meant 28kgs.' '...' 'What's that look for?' 'You never bred a Rottweiler in your life, did you.'

While living on acreage is pleasant for a dog, I don't believe that living on a large property is a substitute for accompanied exercise. I know plenty of people who live on acreage with dogs and in some cases the dogs are overweight and unfit and bored, because unless you have a boundary guardian like an anatolian shepherd, very, very few dogs will take themselves off solo away from your house and head off into the depths of your acreage for some exercise. Dogs are social - so while leaving them in a postage-stamp yard with no input all day is obviously bad for the dog, I believe leaving them with no input on your 2 or 20 or 200 acre property is equally bad for the dog. In every case I know of dogs on a large property, they hang near the house unless someone is working on that property, in which case they tag along, get some exercise, head for a swim in the dam or whatever. I have a beef with a relative of DH who criticises my dog ownership because I work 40 hours a week. For the 40 hours I work, Gus is on his own in his run with food, water, and toys - and usually something he can destroy like a pizza box or an old towel or something he can pull to shreds if he's frustrated. The rest of the week he's either indoors with me, sleeping in my room, or has the run of the full yard for a couple of hours if I've to go to the shops. I walk him every other day, but not daily - but when I do walk him I discovered a nice bushwalk near my house, with a public lake where he can swim paddle and bite the water. I walk him for between 45 mins and an hour (he's only 8 months now). The relative has two JRTs and lives on a one-acre property, so the dogs have about a half acre of very developed garden and live on the back deck. They are never indoors. They are never taken for a walk. They have no toys. Days will often pass where the most human interaction they have is about one hour per day, encompassing the half hour in the morning outside to feed them and the half hour in the evening it takes to do similar (feed them, water them, let the chickens in and out while the dogs zip about the yard). I would estimate there are days every week where the most interaction they have is the time it takes someone to top up their dry food bowl. However their owner believes her dogs are better cared for than my guy, because there are two of them and they have each other for company. I know my set up isn't ideal, but I think I'm doing my best and my pup isn't suffering for it!

Oh man that's scary... It reminds me of an incident many, many years ago when my dad was still alive, back in the day when neighbourhoods had 'latchkey' dogs. My neighbours had a labrador, a gorgeous dog called Rusty. He was friendly, exuberant and loved to swim. Dad took him to the beach most evenings (his owners never walked him). One evening on the beach, the dog runs up to dad with a large kid's plastic sandcastle bucket in his mouth. He loved to fetch, so dad threw the bucket into the water for him. After it he went, grabbed it, fetched it back. The water wasn't rough and it was a calm, warm evening. Dad was throwing the bucket further and further out for the dog to give him a good workout. He didn't realise there was a crack in the bottom of the bucket, which is why it had been discarded in the first place. He throws the bucket out to sea and the dog goes bounding after it, swims out, grabs it - but then something weird - the bucket had some water in it and had started to sink some, and the dog dove for it and as he was pulling it up with him the water pressure opened the crack in the bucket's base, and Rusty's paw got stuck in the crack. Dad said he watched the dog dive, kept watching, but the dog wasn't coming up - his arse and his tail were above the water, but no head. He watched for 10 seconds. Worried. 20 seconds. Eyes wide. At 30 seconds dad realises there's a problem and races into the water - he has to swim out up to his chest to the dog, drags the labrador to the surface and holds him across his torso and backstrokes to the beach (dad was a merchant navy sailor for 20 years and while I've no idea if he was formally trained, did his fair share of swimming and lifesaving in the water). He got out of the water, the dog is coughing and vomiting water, dad's helping him with some sort of cross between a reassuring hug and a heimlich manouvre, and he takes the bucket off the dog's paw. Shaking with adrenalin, with the coughing, vomiting dog at his feet, dad hurls the bucket out to sea in a rage. And Rusty bounds off into the water after it...

I think people just don't use their brains sometimes. A good friend of mine was at my house last week, and she loves dogs and wants to own two or three when she gets her own place with a garden, but hasn't had a dog since she was a kid. Gus is nearly 8 months old now, with a fine set of bull-breed jaws on him, and he was lying on the floor gnawing on a pig's ear. Now, my dog is a soft sack if ever there was one - he's friendly, never makes strange and loves attention. STILL though, my friend approached him while he was eating, hunkered down on the floor beside him and patted him on the head while he was lying there chewing his pig's ear. I nearly died. Not because I was worried for her safety - she could have stuck her hand in his mouth and taken the pig's ear off him and he would've just looked at her to say 'oh hey, can I have that back?' More that I was astonished that anyone would do that to a dog full stop, whether or not they knew them. Interestingly, when I told my 77 year old mother the story, she gasped in horror when I got to the part about my friend hunkering down to pat the dog on the head, and justabout all my mum knows about dogs is one end has teeth and the other has a wag.

The problem isn't crossbreeds per se. As long as dog's and bitches are left with their reproductive systems intact past the age where they can breed, we'll have 'oops' litters, and those 'oops' pups need homes. Those 'oops' dogs can be excellent dogs - historically most of us have probably owned some sort of 'oops' dog at some point in our lives - a mongrel who had as many good points as many pure breeds. The problem is muppets who intentionally cross two separate breeds, repeatedly, to generate puppies that they then sell, claiming hybrid vigour, a blended temperament, and some unfounded superiority over pure bred dogs, with no care or respect for the health of the dogs in their care, or the future of those puppies, or the law, or anything other than money. THAT is what is filling the pounds to overflowing - and I know plenty of people who will buy a BYB mongrel and have been sucked in by the claims. Plus the more BYB mongrels that fill homes for 10-15 years, the more oops mutts who die on death row through no fault of their own. If they outlaw back yard breeding, perhaps by outlawing the sale of puppies and the advertising of puppies for sale by anyone who isn't a licensed breeder (or something similar?), then maybe our pounds and shelters will empty out some and we can all go back to having the occasional fantastic oops mutt alongside any pure bred dog we want from a responsible, licensed breeder. I think the bit I really can't understand is how someone pays big bucks for a mongrel. These really are the ultimate in home accessories, not dogs - you're paying for a cute puppy with no regard for anything else at all. Like buying couch cushions - and probably as disposable when you're tired of them. When I was getting my dog, my boss recommended I go for a maltese-poodle cross because she had one and knew a lady who bred them. I asked her why I'd pay a woman who deliberately added to the problem of unwanted dogs. She poo-pooed my response, so I made her sit down beside me and I called up Mildura Pound's website (because it was the only pound site I knew) and I scrolled through the pictures with her - puppies galore in there at the time, three or four litters, and a large number of highly miserable looking dogs including a couple who were tethered and were really cowering before the camera. My boss isn't a bad person by any means - she's just clueless, but she's enough of an animal lover that the pictures spoke for themselves and she was very silent indeed by the time I'd stopped scrolling.

. Edited - PH melts my head, better to stay out of it.

Gus is getting a large bone from the pet treats stall - and various other treats. Most importantly, however, his present will be wrapped in about 12 layers of paper, and on Christmas morning he'll be joining in the destructive game involved with tearing those layers OFF his present.

Please note, I have never tried this myself. I've been told this by someone who, frankly, is mad enough to have tried it. And probably with some degree of success. To break up a dog fight, (and you need to be swift, accurate, and a bit mad): identify the aggressor, lick your thumb, and in one swift move, step in, grab the aggressor by the base of the tail and pop them in the butthole with your lubricated thumb. ...look, okay, I know it's mental, but when you think about it, if someone did that to you would YOU keep biting what you were hanging out of???

I was starting to feel that Gus was being neglected because of my job, plus his interactions with me weren't good - he started to ignore me, wouldn't look at me when I spoke to him, no recall, so on. Part of that was puppy teenaged badness, the other part was lack of time together. Gus now sleeps on his own bed in my bedroom. In the mornings, I get up at 6am and bring him out to the toilet. Then he stays in the house with me during my morning routine, while I let my cats out for a run in the yard. He follows me about as I shower, dress, unload the dishwasher, so on. Our relationship has improved mightily with the increase in time spent together. Before I leave for work at 8.20am, I bring all the cats in and then bring Gus out to his run with his breakfast. The run is basically the area of my yard behind my garage, fenced off - so about 6m wide x 10m long, plus access into the garage where his bed and water are, and it's cooler in there during hot days. I make sure he has suncream on his white nose. I check his water, and make sure there are some toys in his run. He settles into his breakfast as I leave for work. When I get home at 5.15pm or so, I let Gus out of his run through the garage door, and then into the house. While he's in the house with me, the cats go out again for their evening run in the yard. Weeknights, this is when i try to bring Gus out for a walk - round the block, or the bushwalk up the hill if I can, while the cats are out chasing grasshoppers. Then home again, and he gets a treat like a pig's ear, and the cats can come and go freely for a few overlapping hours while he's in the house. The cats are in before it gets dark, and all of us are in the house for the evening. He interacts with the cats during this time. The only time he then goes out in the evening is when he's brought out to the toilet. At bedtime, the cats get put to bed first, and Gus gets a traditional lick of the cat food spoon (they get fed as they're put to bed in their room and they love it). Then he's out to the loo, then in, locks up the house with me, and off we toddle to bed. Just like we're about to do now. Weekends, he's more likely to get an early walk - 6am etc. Then I spend the day in the garden and he and the cats are with me or near me most of the time. I was tempted to get him a companion pup, but I think my OH would kill me if I pushed the animal quota up to eight...