Salukifan

And there's your answer. Why give a damn about what such folk think??

You really do not want to try to control an adult Ridgeback on ANY kind of harness. Agree with Nekbet - find a better trainer. This is bread and butter stuff for any decent dog trainer. You need a program to desensitise your dog to other dogs and work to build YOUR value to your dog. And some basic loose leash walking work too.

I hope those participating have the common sense to keep their dogs under firm control. A dog fight at such an event would be a PR disaster. Even even tempered family pets can get stressed and reactive in close quarters with a lot of other dogs.

AIHA has a range of causes and not all of them have genetic components. My friend's dog got it from a rare parasite. Not withstanding that, if there's a line with multiple incidences, I'd be inclined to avoid any mating with another affected line if I could.

When's the show?

Unless you are baking for sale, I'd really not worry. Just consider dog hair an extra special ingredient. :)

I have heard many assurances that dogs are friendly when their body language is signalling quite the opposite. Your average member of the public would consider any wagging tail is a sign of friendliness for a start. I do NOT welcome offlead advances from any dog when my dogs are on lead for a number of reasons: * if goes wrong, my dogs are at a distinct disadvantage in terms of self defence as their leads will inhibit them. * one dog in the midst of mutiple dogs on lead is still a risk of entanglement and fall * the offlead dog is out of range of its owner and it will be up to me to deal with any problems that arise. And I will, more often than not, do that with my boot. There is simple ettiquette that I cannot fathom why people struggle to grasp. ASK if your dog is OK to approach. If it isn't don't just say "nah, it'll be fine" (as I have seen happen) nor should you take offence. And if you cannot control your dog offlead in public then don't let it off around other dogs. It's really not that hard is it?? Roka, dont' walk your dog in a harness. They are hopeless for any kind of meaningful control and a significant number of them aren't wonderful for your dogs strructural health. You need to control the dog's head to control what it does.

I just looked up one of your boys! Interesting stuff. Oooh just spotted a new feature - colour distribution. Here it is for Australia

My dogs' pedigrees are part of a wonderful resource: The Whippet Archives. It contains the pedigrees of nearly 170,000 Whippets from all over the world and going back many years. It is free to list your dog and has some great features like test matings. Although my boys are not closely related, I like finding their common ancestors. They share a few ancestors back about 4-6 generations.

Could have been domestic violence or a relationship issue with dog taking the brunt. Wouldn't be the first time.

If I'm with dogs I avoid them. Otherwise, I generally try to catch them. Have caught two and rung a couple of times about others I couldn't catch.

Oooh mine wasn't on there. Email sent.

Raineth: Many sighthound people feed higher fat, higher protein diets. While sighthounds may not go all day, their exercise can be very explosive and they seem to burn through it. Perhaps it relates to how accessible the nutrients are in such foods? You definitely seem to get better muscle condition and coat condition on some diets than others. I know switching my younger Whippet onto his current diet (different to what his breeder fed) definitely sparked up his coat. I do believe that some dogs just run "hotter" than others. They feel hotter, they eat harder and they just seem to burn it. Just higher metabolisms. Wish I had that problem.

14 months is the minimum agility age at CDC.

Have you tried walking them at the showground?

Yep, I guess that's about it. And I guess there will probably more than one diet that can achieve that for most dogs. The points I listed are simply triggers for considering how well your dog does on what it is fed now.

I agree that heading to the social thread will probably be best for lots of tips but I'll give one here. Train a recall. Do NOT believe that it cannot be done but you have to start early and constantly reinforce it. It may save your dog's life. Whippets are just so fast that they can be metres away before you can even react. So be very very careful about where you let them offlead and do work on that recall!!

I've been thinking about starting a discussion on this for a while. We often say here in discusssions about canine diets that you should feed the diet your dog does best on. That's very true but how do you know?? So, can we please share ideas about how to evaluate diets? I'll start with a few of my thoughts on this. This is NOT designed to be a thread about what kibble is best or a raw v processed debate so please don't make it one. :) 1. Do you have to feed tons of food or hardly anything in order to keep your dog at a decent weight? If you have to shovel food into the dog or its constantly hungry (yeah I know that's nearly all dogs all the time) I'd say the fat content of the diet needs tweaking up or down. 2. Is your dog at the vets a fair bit for minor skin irritations, ear or other infections or hot spots? If so, I'd say that avoiding some types of food in the diet is worth trying. A lot of dogs are gluten intolerant and changing the diet can help with these issues. 3. What's going on at the back end? Does your dog produce firm stools? Or are they large mounds of mousse like poo (see this quite a bit) and are they foul smelling? I'd say a diet that sees your dog produce masses of soft smelly stools on a regular basis isn't ideal. 4. Does your dog smell? Teeth, anal glands, general odour? Diet can be frequent cause of these issues and making sure that your dog gets a decent amount of tooth cleaning via its diet and a decent amount of fibre can help with some of these issues. 5. Does your dog LIKE its food? Some dogs are just picky but what you feed should be enjoyed by the dog. If you're constantly having to spice up the main part of your dog's diet with additives, I'd say its time to try something else. Thoughts??

I think people who advise against the practice (personally I would NEVER do it) do so because of the risk to the dog. Theft is at the high end of those risks and probably fairly uncommon but I have personally witnessed dogs taunted, provoked to lunge and bark and tackled by toddlers (encouraged by a parent on one occasion). They can slip and break collars and chew through leads and if they get loose then anything can happen. A tethered dog is also at risk from other dogs and may also tangle itself. A common spot for doing it at my local shops sees a 1 metre drop on the other side - a dog that goes over that drop will choke to death without intervention. Then there is the urination and defecation in high traffic public areas that hardly endears dogs to the wider community. So my simple question to those who do it is why take the risk? Convenient to do it? Certainly. But is it wise or safe? That's for owners to determine having taken into account what might happen. All that has to happen is for a person to consider that your dog was aggressive (whether it was or not) and you can end up in a world of hurt. ETA: My pet hate is dogs tied by by head collars. Please don't do this. They were never designed as a fixed restraint.

It was never legislation Oso. It was an ANKC Director's motion. And its dead. It's not going to get enough votes. Indeed, it hasn't got any that I know of.

Nothing you can do quickly that I'm aware of. What's she been eating?

Speaking of "anonymous blowin" you joined only a few days ago so you fall into this category yourself. Unless of course you were previously banned and came back under another name, in which case you should probably be re-banned. Oh, cruzzi is jerry lee is steamboat under yet another sock puppet account. He's Dougie folks. No doubt about it.

It's only "silly" if you think a breed's country of origin should lose the ability to control what the breed standard is. No, it's silly because the KC made the amendments without consultation with the SBT clubs & despite their protests. Among others, they added "desirable" to the height & now dogs bloody near as big as AST's are being titled here. That's why it's silly. But of course it doesn't matter to anyone who has no affiliation or affection for the breed. And isn't affected by BSL. Silly to think you would give a damn anyhow, now that was really silly. Your breed is no more affected by BSL than mine are. What SBTs and BSL have to do with this thread sure beats me.

It's only "silly" if you think a breed's country of origin should lose the ability to control what the breed standard is.

Nope, bad idea.