sunny1shine

ahh you moved the mountain to Mohammed! nice idea, I'll have to remember that as it's something I only think of for cats.

did you hit the magical level of perfection with your lab? my 1st one doesn't shed much but has a very full on personality - so drive wise not a great match for 1st time owners (but exactly what we wanted a high drive dog) 2nd one - laid back, understands what no means is taking training easily- but sheds his hair to ensure our floorboards are carpeted daily, so not suited for someone who doesn't want to wear dog hair as a badge of honour. If they find a breed that clicks for them though - compromises will be made either in the cleaning department or in the training department - either way adding a dog will surely only improve things!

baby steps and break down the behaviours you want. If you haven't already started something like this you could try; take her out when she motions she wants to go, don't talk to her just stand and watch her go toilet, then come inside - make her come inside using the dog door then praise her once she's come in through the dog door graduate to opening the door- waiting for her to pee- once you see the pee motion, shut the door and be ready with the treats and praise when she comes in using the dog door next step is getting up and opening the dog door flap and waiting inside for her to go out and return through it before praise. edited to add my oldest will still sometimes bark to be observed peeing to con a treat. she will also make eye contact whilst peeing if im outside at the same time to try the telepathic 'give me a treat for this' trick

put the cat litter in a room with a door and make the gap in the door to that room only big enough for the cats to get through. A baby gate may help if the gaps in the rungs are large enough for a cat to slink through but not big enough for your dog to get through. sadly cat poops aka 'tootsie rolls' are the tastiest substance in the world for most dogs.

this may sound over the top but it really helped me and my partner to keep track of things when watching pups in shifts We kept a book by the back door and wrote in it every pee or poop and when the pup was fed. With a symbol for if the poop or pee was inside or outside. The best pattern we identified was pup goes toilet inside more on my watch as I'm the unreliable parent taking them outside. Have done this for 2 pups now and it really helped. I plan to put it on a spread sheet one day to see if there is any correlation or if it really is just pups go toilet whenever with no rhyme or reason. Made it easier to see when the pup was taking longer between toilet breaks and when they stopped pooping 10 minutes after eating. (and we had to take pup outside as we cant have a dog door as the cat would get outside through it)

fantastic day, the weather was perfect. My girl was happy for the trip home after having a good run. Thank you Kirislin for being there with the camera.

lovely

ours was 2 years young when she got a grey chin intenet wisdom suggests "Often you will see graying of the snout area or paws in a very young lab, and this is considered a throw back to that St. John's ancestry, which is a good thing."

if your dog isn't a sight hound you wont be racing against them, they are in a class of their own. I'm looking forward to this day, it looks well thought out and i'm keen to watch a whole heap of different dogs have fun running.

Thanks, easier to keep the dogs fit, they can't reach the donuts and beer and they enjoy running!

Not so much a caption for the out take but I bet what they were thinking was Brown dog: I have all the toys am posing for the camera and hmmmph all she wants to take pictures of is the little brat. Yellow dog: nyah nyah you can't photograph the streak. I was trying to get pictures of the boy dog specifically as I had ones or River at his age I wanted to compare to.

some recent pics taken this week of my two labs ms River - chocolate and Mr Wash - yellow they are our world, such complete opposite dogs its not funny, even though they come from the same breeder but different parents. 2 years and 4 months 4 months out-take

little known plan? It was one of their main points this election! also nice of them to take a snippet of what Sylvia said and twist it to make it seem like she was concerned people wouldn't be able to buy lots of puppies anymore. edited to add this article would have been better served letting people know how to look for purebred dogs if that was what they were after.

it's that magnet you have attached to you!

or get a sign writer to make up the numbers for you so you can just peel off and stick down

we've just finished 5 weeks puppy school with our second dog. We go for the socialisation factor and cause puppies are cute. The place we used had a largish class around 10 pups and there was lots of barking. The person running the session seemed to do their best by rolling toys towards the barking dogs or scattering treats and the owners were not really doing anything to distract their pups from barking and re-direct their energy. We used it to our advantage rewarding our pup for focussing on me, or for sitting quietly with a toy (which is really what the other owners should be doing). I've never agreed 100% with anything the people running puppy school say regarding feeding, training etc. But as long as they are good at picking up on which pups should be kept separate and not let off leash with other dogs I get something positive from the experience

3 pages of replies from one post by OP and no follow-up posts from them, no wonder forum communities get cynical!

we wanted a fox red as well but at the end of the day wanted a pup more from the same breeder our 1st one came from. when you enquire with breeders talk about dark yellow - leaning towards fox red. We got the darkest yellow pup (his breeder has no fr running through bloodlines) and were told normally her buyers are going for the lightest yellows in the litter, which made me think give it a year and people will be looking for dark yellow / fox red pups. Some of the American field labs have gorgeous dark yellow / fr coats tapua those pups look lovely!

When we picked our pup Wash up the breeder told us he was a 'thinker' and we'd see what she meant soon enough. Well we keep him in part of the lounge sectioned off with a metal puppy play pen. The pen has a door in it about 30cm from the ground. The latch is rather easy to undo. It took Wash 2 days to hatch an escape plan. Jump at the gate head first, the bump wiggles the latch open and the momento pushes the gate open and propels him through the now open gate and into freedom. The gate is now tied shut.

we're missing out on it this year, grumble grumble something xmas obligaitons. lure coursing was a def highlight last time.

I just discovered stuff for horses is usually cheaper and higher quality than stuff aimed at dog owners. I bought a small Leistner horse brush for my lab, made with horse hair and its super soft, and feels higher quality than anything I've bought at a regular pet shop.

we have the luxury of a treadmill which our lab happily uses (say 'run run run' inside and she goes and jumps on the treadmill and waits for it to be turned on)We are spoilt by having a dog swimming pool close by as well which is indoors and the staff there if we wernt able to actually walk her around laps would do the laps for us. Inside games like hiding a toy and asking her to find it is what we mainly do on wet days, or other indoor games, brain work can wear out pups just as much as physical work.

d&d, petfoodsdelivered and porkys are all the same mob, it just looks like there's lots of choice out here!

it's a 30 min drive in good traffic but seeing as its basically a shop for greyhounds i'm guessing you've tried http://www.porkyspetfood.com.au/ i'm getting my roo meat from http://prioritypets.com.au/ out in dandenong, the quality has seemed decent edit: porkys deliver to mornington peninsular, free delivery for orders over $30, they also have a shop in seaford

also done, some of the questions were a bit of an exercise in interpretations, like are there things owning a dog prevents you from doing that you would like to do. whilst I dont feel like dog ownership prevents me doing all the things I like to do, there are things I do that I would like to take my dog to.