MissMedusa

Hi Labraork...I have a 2 year old lab and have recently invested in a Sporn halter and love it. We both relax and enjoy our daily walks now. If it works fou you and your lab, that's great. Don't worry about what other people think :-)

We keep a small container of kibble in our cars and a leash on the gate post for my lab who will escape if given the chance. We stop the car, call her, she sits for her biscuit, the lead is put on and she is hooked to the gate post. We then drive in, walk back to the gate, tell her she is a good girl, give her another biscuit and let her off after closing the gate. This works well for us.

Hi All Thanks for all the suggestions and advice. From tonight we will be bringing her inside once she has had her dinner and I'm sure that will help as she always settles once she is in the house. Dogmad, im not sure where the 10 minutes of exercise has come from?? We Are very aware of a young labs exercise requirements and potential stress on joints etc and we have built up to 45 mins to 1 hour each day. Thanks again.

Hi all, I'm hoping for some advice on what we can do re our lab who barks every night after she has had her dinner. She doesn't bark at any other time of the day. We live on a half acre block and some nights she will be at the front gate, some times at the back fence or other times she will be running around the yard. She is always very aroused, tail up and barks and barks and barks! She is an inside dog but I do like her to spend time outside when it suits us as in when she has just eaten and when we are having dinner etc. We have been members of our local dog club for the last 12 monts and she has done really well and we are moving up through the classes. She is walked or run daily (depending on who takes her) and we try to keep her stimulated with training and games so I don't think we can blame boredom for this behaviour. If any one has any suggestions for us we would love to hear. Thanks in advance. Ps she is 19 months old.

Pet Chef in Midvale sell 'BARF' including meaty bones, chicken frames, turkey necks and some beef mince blends. They don't use any preservatives and I think it's all free range. They deliver all over Perth. They also have a very informative website if you want to check them out.

Hi just wanted to add my 2 bobs worth to this dilemma. We have always had a dog in the family and each one has slept in our small laundry with their bed/open crate at one end as puppies and some newspaper on the floor at the other end. The first couple of nights they would always cry/scream, as expected, which we completely ignored. Then from then on it would realize it was time to sleep. For the first few weeks a radio was left on VERY low vol but we never left a light on. For the first months we always got up at around 6am to toilet the puppy but never got up during the night. The newspaper was mostly used but night time toilet training was learnt pretty quickly. It didnt seem to take any of them too long to sleep in until we were ready to get up...we are fairly early risers tho even on weekends. Hope some of this helps.

My old lab girl started to wet her bed when she was 13...the vet put her on a hormone replacement medication which stopped the incontinence..she then went on to live to 15.

Many years ago when I was 19 and renting I bought a 6 week old puppy. He lived with me until he died of old age at 16. I knew nothing about dogs then so it was a real learning curve but i enjoyed it and he had a great life.Hopefully it will be a similar outcome for this girl and her puppy.

Wow lilli your dogs must have thought they had won lotto

My first dog, a male BC weed on a ladies back at the beach....dog no 2 a beautiful lab used to stick her nose in everyones crutch. This was really embarrassing when i was talking to tradies etc who had come to our house when we were renovating. My current dog a 12 month old lab embarrasses me every Tuesday night at our obedience class when she repeatedly get the end of the lead in her mouth and drags me all over the oval!

We have a 12 month old lab. She has a cup of kibble for breakfast, mainly because it's easiest first thing in the morning. Before I go to work I give her a roo tail or a fairly large meaty bone and then for dinner she has either a chicken frame or 250 grams of BARF. Occasionally I'll add a raw egg or sardines to her dinner. Her weight is good, I like to keep her on the lean side...hope this helps.

This year our lab has eaten 2 pairs of glasses ( not just chewed, actually swallowed) a diamond ring, lots of snails, a few dead and rotting bobtail skins and last night she ate a gecko!

I don't think you should worry...6 weeks ago my lab pup hasd eaten a pair of my glasses including the lenses and also swallowd my eternity ring and suffered no ill effects whatsoever. I checked her poops everyday for a month hoping I'd find my ring but have given up all hope now!

Haha...makes my 8 month old lab look like an angel..

She could be playing as it is a bit like tag...it's not the sort of nudge that i would think she wants a pat as she usually does it on the run!

We have an 8 months old lab girl who bumps/nudges us with her nose while we are out walking and occasionally at home she runs up behind us and bumps our leg and then keeps going. I'm very curious to know if this means anything?

Keep her and love her! We lost our lab last year, she was diagnosed with HD when she was 12 months old and was 15 years old when she died. She never needed any treatment or medication for HD or arthritis. She lived inside and was exercised regularly. We now have a new lab puppy aged 16 weeks. Good luck with your puppy. I really hope you keep her! It might not be as bad as you think!

I suppose i think it was a little naive to buy a pup from a breeder that was awaiting PRA results for the parents (and really unethical and stupid of the breeder!) and with a hip score of 7/7 (well its really 9/10) which is around the breed average, so not a dog that really should be bred from (they really should be well under the breed average). But yeah, i recognise it is unhelpful to dwell on the past....and i prob sounded like a b*tch, i apologise. i understand how stressful these things can be- my own dog is an allergy dog. I'm sorry if i sounded mean. But it sounds like you really love your pup and you've made heaps of progress with her training and socialisation . It would be a shame to give all that up for something that may or may not be a problem. My dog is from guide dog lines (very strict with their health testing) and has allergies Her parents haven't had allergy problems, yet several of her litter has been affected. They also never breed from dogs with less than 0/0 elbows, yet i know of several dogs that have had elbow dysplasia and subsequently been rejected. So there is no guarantee with these multifactorial diseases.... sometimes it is just really good luck or bad luck that a dog gets affected