Redsonic

Mike Baird in the ABC News article: I have to say I am astonished the government is doing this (against undoubted industry pressure), but I am very happy they've stepped up and taken the inquiry's report seriously. I wonder what is going to happen up here in Qld?

Sorry, fixed it to add the hyperlink in the OP.

Nice story about a pet Kelpie Bailey smashing the Kelpie high jump record at 2.915m, and winning the Kelpie dash and triathlon at the Casterton Kelpie Muster. ABC News

Here's a link to the Choice article for those of you not in Facebook: Choice Magazine Article re Petplan

Yep, the tears fell here too

Thanks for the links. The first one was really interesting. People have long tried to argue that domestication occurred much earlier than the fossil evidence suggests, and DNA research will, I think, finally provide the answer. The Wall St Journal article was written by Mark Derr. I tried to read his book: How the Dog Became the Dog: From Wolves to Our Best Friends, but I couldn't finish it. He is a journalist and the book seemed to me to be about conjecture and opinion rather than science and fact. He made lots of statements about the antiquity of the dog and how humans and wolves connected without revealing any convincing sources. If read as a hypothesis, I suppose the book would be OK, and the Wall St Journal article you linked to was well worth reading.

There are some intriguing 30 000 year old footprints preserved in a cave in Europe which seem to suggest that a boy and a dog were walking together. Modern man and Neanderthal man actually separated about 180 000 years ago. Neanderthal man was adapted to European conditions (pale skin, large nose to warm cold air, stocky body to help preserve heat) but went extinct approx 30 000 years ago, about the time modern man made it to Western Europe. Like the Dingo and the Thylacine, the new arrivals probably contributed to the extinction of Neanderthal man, although there was some intermixing, and non African people today carry about 2-5% Neanderthal genes. This is very true. Wolves alive today are likely to be far, far more cautious of humans than their predecessors due to generations of persecution and inadvertent selection for wariness.

So what happened in Australia? We know Aboriginies arrived between 45,000 and 60,000 years ago (depending which group you look at eg Tasmanians have probably been here the longest). And some of them brought dogs? Or were the puppies gifted to them much later by Indonesian traders? Because we know the dogs came with the humans. But when? Tho the relationship between aboriginals and dogs is not like owner and pet. It's more like flat mates. It is thought that the Dingo arrived about 5000 years ago via traders from Asia. Never made it to Tasmania, hence the Thylacine survived there until the arrival of Europeans. The Dingo likely contributed to the extinction of Thylacines on the mainland about 2500 years ago. Most people imagine early domestic dogs were valued as hunting companions, but it is more likely to be the "flat mate" arrangement you mention. Camp dogs provide an early warning system of the arrival of hostile neighbours, they scavenge up the garbage, and would even be a source of food when resources are scarce.

I would suggest a Border Terrier. I have heard them referred to as "a man's dog". They are rugged enough to do lots of things that bigger dogs do. Our BT goes to my partner's workshop some days, and loves to visit the mechanics next door and the coffee and kebab (hem) place.

Squirts his anal glands when I lift his tail during his daily tick check

I hate the whole "it's natural" argument. Hypocritical. Does the owner feed the dog commercial dog food instead of whole rabbits? Take it in the car? Does the owner use reading glasses/ computer/ pain killers? None of these things are natural, yet we are happy to use them. The "natural" argument is used very selectively. There are lots of bad things in nature which we do well to avoid. "Natural" does not mean right. And by the way, there is nothing natural about a cat catching a bird in Australia. Our birds have not evolved to avoid a feline predator. Rant over.

We had this situation near us with a large male Ridgeback who hangs over a fence where we are forced to pass very closely to enter a park. Fortunately, the dog is people friendly, as he could easily bite us as we pass between his fence and a barrier. Don't know what he would do to our dog though. One day, we saw the owner entering her driveway and my partner went over to have a word. He phrased it as concern for her dog's safety: "I would hate to see your lovely dog out on the road". Her initial hostile reaction softened with this, and she has now leant a door (!) there to block her dog.

"from a friend to a friend, you don't smell fresh" I have often thought it is just as well dogs can't talk!

Not if the jaw is severely overshot as the OP has described. The teeth are digging holes in the roof of his mouth. My puppy had this and had to have his puppy canines removed. The top jaw then continued to grow and the bottom jaw got worse. Once the lower canines have dug into the palate, not only is the dog in pain, but the lower jaw is never going to catch up in growth as it is anchored in place (relative to the top jaw). The first step is to remove the puppy canines to stop this happening.

An horrific experience for the owners of 2 small dogs walking past the yard of a dog that had already been declared dangerous after killing a Maltese. Broken fingers, amputated finger, and the poor little dog needed a leg amputated. This happened in Springfield, a relatively new suburb between Brisbane and Ipswich. The owners sound so reasonable. There is a quaver in their voices when they talk about their little dog Lilly and the attack, but they sound so sensible, just asking that a dog like that be well restrained I can't figure out how the attacking dog got out of its yard, but it obviously wasn't contained to dangerous dog requirements. If anything good has come out of this report, it got my partner and I talking about how to (safely) protect our terrier if something like this happens to us. 9 News Brisbane

Re the rough play with you, can I suggest that you divert her play towards interactive toys? Tug, fetch, hide and seek etc. She may mouth or scratch the wrong person one day (thin skin, immune compromised or not a dog lover), draw blood and be in trouble.

Agree with the previous posts re a crate. Once they are crate trained, it really is like a doggy den for them, and they are happy in it. All night should be no problem. Make sure he is getting plenty of exercise and mental stimulation during the day. You counter condition this behaviour (as Papillon Kisses suggests), but initially it would involve being with him at night every time he sees a possum, so probably not practical. I would definitely contact the neighbours to let them know you are working on the problem. Far better to placate them than to have a complaint to council. As annoying as his barking is to you, multiply it tenfold for the neighbours, as he is not their dog!

I investigated using the rubber for my home made seesaw, but found it was hard to get and way too expensive. I think the cheapest option was child's playground coating. I ended up covering the plank with heavy duty PVC tarpaulin (pop riveting and gluing it down), and then dribbled on polyurethane elastomer, which you buy as a 2 part liquid and mix together. The result was very grippy, even in the wet. Here is what it looks like:

Probably no surprises here, but this article on ABC News finds the reasons are multifactorial, and warns against buying a dog from backyard breeders jumping on the bandwagon of rapid popularity. The article has lots of photos I couldn't embed here.

I used to skydive, and the crows (Ravens?) during the breeding season would get very territorial towards the canopies as we came into land. I have never been swooped by a crow as a pedestrian/cyclist, but when these birds saw the parachute in the air, they used to go ballistic swooping at them. So much wasted energy gaining altitude so they could strike from above. I wonder if the Raven is mobbing the bear because it is outside the bird's experience of "safe"? In a similar vein, I investigated some mobbing noisy miners to find them swooping a poor koala. Normally it is a snake or cat, but koalas are now so rare here, that the birds saw one as an unfamiliar threat.

Steve: that link didn't work for me. I totally agree with Steve's argument that the onus is on registered breeders to ensure that they are not breeding to a standard that compromises the welfare of the dogs they produce. The fact that back yard breeders are producing rubbish and breeding to no standard at all is not something pedigree breeders can directly control. Only by breeding superior dogs and educating the public can pedigree breeders shift the demand away from BYBs and pet shops/puppy farms. By superior, I mean 1/ healthy; 2/ sound temperament; and 3/ appearance/conformation to standard. IN THAT ORDER. If the breed standard is not encouraging selection for healthy traits, then the standard needs to be changed/ clarified. I understand that heredity is not straight forward and carrier states exist, many diseases are multifactorial, and testing is not always available for heritable diseases etc etc. We are not talking about that here. Blind Freddy could hear the breathing struggles a lot of brachycephalics go through. Pin hole nostrils and nasal folds rubbing the cornea don't take a veterinary degree to detect. Public awareness of these welfare issues is rising, and pedigree breeders can't miss the boat here. I am reminded of the convulsions the production animal industry goes through when various suspect husbandry procedures are publicised. Think live cattle export, sow stalls, docking of dairy cow's tails etc. Pedigree breeders should be leading by example, not kicking and screaming "it is not us" as public pressure forces change. Edited: spelling mistake

It would be very, very rare for me to withhold a reward as I pay any try. The dog would pretty much have to piss off to not get a reward. Then how does the dog know that the latest try was further from your goal than the others he/she had offered you?

The best way to understand the terminology is to think of positive and negative as maths symbols: +,-. + you add something - you take something away Reinforcement and punishment refers to the behaviour you are trying to encourage or extinguish. Reinforcement makes a behaviour more likely to happen again, and punishment makes it less likely to happen again. Unfortunately, punishment has all sorts of bad associations, and people don't like using the term, but in the context of classical conditioning, something you do acts as punishment if it means the targeted behaviour is less likely to happen again. People who practice positive dog training are actually using negative punishment all the time. Every time they withhold an expected reward they are using negative punishment.

My favourite breed, the Burmese, which always used to be such an elegant, athletic breed is currently being ruined by the trend for short, snub faces. It's heartbreaking. Yes, cats are the next species we are going to ruin

That was my whole point. Breeders get first pick, and presumably they choose dogs with more open nostrils, nasal folds not rubbing the eyes etc. The rest of the litter goes out to pet homes and we are seeing problems with these dogs. Registered breeders are producing brachycephalics with problems, it is not all the fault of backyard breeders. The selection pressure towards healthy brachys is obviously weak or non-existent because this is a trend that is worsening, not improving. My picture of the "show quality" Dogue de Bordeaux a case in point. Edited: spelling mistake