Miranda

blacklabrador, I have just noticed that you refer to a 'Vet chiro', are you referring to a vet who is also a chiropractor? If you are I am pleased to inform you that we have some brilliant veterinary chiropractors in Victoria. We also have a large number of people who call themselves chiropractors, some are very good and some aren't. Taking a dog to a veterinary chiropractor is completely different to taking a dog to a layman for treatment, sure some of them are great musclemen, but when it comes to treating major structural problems such as HD, ED and PL there isn't much they can do and treating a dog with severe lameness without first having an accurate diagnosis of exactly what is causing that lameness could be very dangerous as any form of manipulation may inadvertently exacerbate the problem instead of alleviating it.

Well said cavNrott. Once the dog has been examined by a vet and any major problems have been ruled out then is the time to seek the services of a good chiropractor. Hind leg lameness in any large breed is always a worry and if this were my dog I'd be wanting hip x-rays done before seeking any form of alternative treatment.

I doubt that an ordinary obedience club would be suitable for a dog like this, I think you would need some one-on-one training, at least to start with. I would also recommend K9 Force, he's brilliant and would be well worth the drive. Personally I wouldn't use any of the franchises.

Just a suggestion but try them on a little scraped beef or premium mince (human grade). I start weaning my puppies at 20 days, I offer little balls of raw meat and I have never had a puppy refuse to eat. Then you can introduce some commercial dry food if you wish, Advance Puppy Rehydratable is a good starter food, if they're reluctant to eat it mix in a little puppy milk.

Why have you separated them from their mother? I always leave the puppies with their mother and let them wean naturally. The mother will provide less and less and you provide more and more. Let the puppies be with their mother, she will probably tell them where to go and there is more chance that they'll eat solid food once they realise that the milk bar's closed. What are you feeding them? Try mixing it up with some Pedigree puppy milk until it's semi liquid and then gradually decrease the milk, make sure that the food isn't cold or served direct from the fridge. You have two weeks to wean them, the puppies shouldn't be leaving home until they're eight weeks. BTW the breeder's comments are ridiculous, I can't imagine any decent reputable breeder coming out with a comment like that

Like the others I don't believe that it's necessary to remove a dog's food once it has started eating. I assume that you are a follower of what I call the 'wolf pack' training methods. Ok if you feel the need to pretend to eat from your dog's bowl before you give it to him or nibble a biscuit before feeding your dog that's fine, but no alpha wolf will eat its fill, let the other wolves start eating and then go back and chase the rest of the pack away from the kill just to show it's the boss. I believe that a dog should be able to eat its meal in peace without being hassled by other dogs or humans, taking bowls and food away when the dog is eating doesn't make sense to me and I think in some circumstances may be counter-productive.

If you have fleas on your dog you need to use a spot on treatment like Advantage. Flea shampoo will kill any fleas that it comes in contact with, but has little residual effect and any fleas in the environment will jump straight back on. Ordinary shampoo may wash out some of the fleas, but it won't kill them, any fleas that do die are likely to have drowned in the water. Bathing your dog, whether with flea shampoo or ordinary shampoo, certainly won't keep your dog free of fleas.

Raw is best, but cooked is ok. Most dogs like cooked meat, mine eat raw, but if they were offered raw or cooked I reckon they'd choose cooked every time. If you cook the meat and serve it in its own juice you should retain most of the nutrients, of course cooking will destroy some, but I know lots of people who feed their dogs cooked meat and they're fine. As long as you're not feeding cooked meat as the sole source of nutrition I can't see a problem with it.

Grand Champion? Puppies? Maybe pull her out and do something else for a while till her coat comes back in, I've been doing some obedience. No I haven't been showing the boys, they hit the ugly fuglies at about nine months and are just getting it together now.

I absolutely Love Drape! BTW I hear congratulations are in order

I am currently using Laser Lites Lanolin shampoo and a mix of Laser Lites Drape and Silk conditioners.

Agree 100%, feeding separately is the way to go.

Are they desexed? Desexing usually lessens the tendency to mark everything.

What breed is the puppy and how old was it when she got it?

You are really asking a lot of a 7 month old puppy expecting him to behave perfectly while he's left alone all day, I would never leave a young puppy unsupervised in the house for hours at a time and expect to return home to a tidy house. Your dog is bored, he's only very young and of course he's going to try to entertain himself while you're gone. He isn't being deliberately naughty and doesn't know that he's done anything wrong, when you come home he's either reacting to your negative body language or is associating your coming home with punishment/unpleasantness. If you are telling him off after the act you are simply confusing him and you have a good chance of making him wary and frightened of you, walking in the door and yelling at your dog is not a good thing to do. You appear to be under the impression that dogs behave and react in the same way as humans and this is totally incorrect, do some research into dog behaviour and how they interpret the world and you may see things a little differently :p Join an obedience club and start training him, give him more exercise, both these things will help. In the meantime I would be building or purchasing a dog run and leaving him outside with his favourite toys and a bone, then you know that he's safe and can't destroy anything or make a mess in the house. Good luck

I would recommend Eagle Pack Holistic, Nutro or Royal Canin.

All my dogs are fed twice daily.

Every week if they're being shown, every few weeks if they're not. I have a hydrobath and use Laser Lights Lanolin shampoo and LL Drape and Silk conditioners. I always use a conditioner as my dogs have long coats and the conditioner helps to keep them free of matts and tangles.

Bloss K9 & Katz Kitchen have it advertised on their website. Maybe give Judith a ring and see if they still have it in stock, she also does free delivery in metropolitan Melbourne.

In addition to the loose poo mine were also losing condition on the EP Large Breed Puppy so I switched them to EP Power. Of course the Power contains even more corn than the Large Breed Puppy variety and they got even worse, even their energy levels were dropping and I was starting to panic thinking that they may have a major GI problem or something like that. Anyway after reading all the good reports of Nutro on DOL I bought a bag of the Lamb and Rice and saw an immediate improvement. Needless to say that I no longer feed any dry food that contains corn

This happened to me, my two youngsters had exactly the same reaction, in their case I found that neither can tolerate corn. Try switching her to the Eagle Pack Holistic Large Breed Puppy which doesn't contain any corn. Some of the Nutro varieties are also corn free.

I generally find that my puppies decide when to drop the lunchtime feed, one day they're either reluctant to eat it or only eat a little and that's when I cut back to two meals a day. My dogs remain on two meals a day for their entire lives, they are a breed that can be prone to bloat and feeding twice daily is recommended. Make sure that you keep the midday meal plain eg. dry food only, if you feed meat or something your dog really loves he will continue to eat it regardless of appetite whereas dry food is likely to be refused if the dog's not hungry and doesn't really need or want the meal.

I agree.

Corn is not easily digested by humans let alone dogs. Dogs have a totally different GI tract to humans, one that is designed to deal with flesh and bones and only a bare minimum of carbohydrate, unlike humans they don't even have the enzymes in their saliva that begin the process of breaking down starches. Cereals, corn, dried beet pulp and tomato pomace are all fillers and are included in the food mainly because they are cheap and readily available and secondly because they are a source of fibre which gives the dog a feeling of satiety and stops him feeling hungry. The greater the proportion of fillers in dog food the more food the dog will need to eat and the more poo will be produced as the fillers pass through the dog's digestive system virtually unprocessed. This is why cheap foods cause gas and loose faeces in some dogs, the gas is caused by the bacteria in the dog's gut trying unsuccessfully to digest the excess fibre which eventually comes out the other end as a light coloured, nasty smelling, sloppy mess. Of course pet food manufacturers are going to tell you that they've scientifically tested all their foods and that all the ingredients are highly digestible, they want you to buy the product. I've got a suggestion for you, go out and buy yourself a bag of Supercoat and a bag of Eagle Pack Holistic, feed your dogs on each product for a month and then tell me that you didn't notice any difference in a) the condition and energy levels of your dogs b) the amount of food you had to feed c) the amount of flatulence produced by your dogs d) the amount of poo produced by your dogs and e) the firmness of their stools. There is no dry food that is 100% good for your dog, they all contain fillers in some form, but some contain more and cheaper fillers than others. Personally I wouldn't feed any dry food that had a cereal product as its first ingredient, contained meat by products, soy, tallow or corn or any artificial colours, flavours or preservatives. I also wouldn't feed any dry food preserved using citric acid as this has been implicated as a causative factor in bloat. Regarding vegetables, some vegetables are fine for dogs, green leafy vegetables, carrots, pumpkin, sweet potato etc. Legumes and corn, mashed, pureed or whatever are extremely difficult for a dog to break down and if you feed them you'll almost certainly notice an interest in the amount of gas produced. Dogs certainly don't absorb the amount of goodness from vegetables that we do, but feeding them in moderation does no harm although too many vegetables will have a laxative effect.

I'm not sure if I'm remembering this correctly, but didn't Lea Cogley give private lessons in agility on Saturdays out at Hampton Park?