DesertDobes

Oh also, my male dobe is substantially taller than his brothers and is less muscular so even at 9 months it has altered his physique.

My male had one undescended, I left him till he was 9 months and then he had the surgery. The other testicle was very internal and was not going to descend on its own and so the surgery was expensive and invasive. I would have left it even later except our only vet surgery were removing their desexing subsidy for dogs over the age of 5 months so I was looking at a $1000 plus operation if I hadn't had it done when I did. I don't think early desexing makes any difference to behaviour, leave the desexing until later so your pup can grow properly. What breed is he?

Update, Puppy was wormed and treated with maloseb and advocate for 2 weeks and she has rejoined the other camp dogs while I was away on holidays. She put on a lot of weight and is regrowing her hair which is better than I was expecting although I am ready to take her back into our care if she stops recovering.

No thats our vet, I'm a bit confused!? Anyway I have ordered some advocate in the post and the vets will see the dog in a couple of weeks at which point they will probably prescribe the ivomec. I've noticed that the puppy has a bad eye so that will be another issue, euth is still on the cards. The other lady who is going to look after the puppy has possibly found the owner who has no less than 10 dogs.

I spoke to the vet yesterday and strangely as we live in a town with 2 town camps but not strictly an aboriginal community, they do not cover the costs of treatment for camp dogs although they will visit and provide treatment if I cover the cost. I know I've spoken to you before StaffnToller about amrric, do you still have the contacts for Darwin (the vets that visit me are in Katherine)? Anyway that aside, I have spoken to the vets about ivomec and that will be the next step when I get back if the advocate doesn't work. They said that the dose rate was critical and that it is easy to overdose. If someone comes forward as the owner then the ivomec treatment is out just because finding the dog on a daily basis is impossible. We'll see what happens in a month, at least in the mean time she will get fed properly and be safe from other dogs and people, she is a very sweet little thing, I got a little tail wag this morning when I took her some food.

Update- the puppy is now in our quarantine stable and has been given frontline which is all we had. My husband was asked to put the dog down but his off-sider and I decided to give the dog a chance to recover. My neighbor is going to care for her while we are away and give her another dose of frontline in 2 weeks and also a malaseb bath. I'm going to bring back advocate and more malaseb and if that fails to help we'll have to consider what the other options are. If an owner turns up at least the advocate treatment is pretty easy to give every couple of weeks while I understand that the ivomectin is a daily dose. The puppy is also more like 6-12 months I am guessing, she has very clean white adult teeth and has been through a heat I think.

And the vet is an amrric member

Thanks for all your responses, will do what I can if I see it today or tomorrow and then when I get back I can attempt to do a more extensive treatment. We do have a bush vet who visits every three months to desex and treat injuries in the camp dogs, they have not long been and we have no animal rangers in our local council. It is not for me to euth the dog, desex it or anything else that would be obvious to the owner. It still belongs to someone despite the state the dog is in and sadly there is a whole different standard of animal cruelty up here.

Thanks, might have to try and address it when I get back then. I think its sarcoptic, worst I have seen around here for a while. Can they die from it?

Just wondering if there is potential for me to treat a puppy I have seen wandering around town, has nearly no hair from mange and the skin is very red and inflamed. The dog is not mine, RSPCA/ council not interested and I'm about to leave for a month so I can't do much other than try and make the dog more comfortable I have Malaseb but not sure if I'll make the skin worse by washing with that. Can dogs recover from very bad mange? I'm limited in what I can do treatment wise other than giving the poor thing a quick wash or applying a soothing cream of some kind and the bush vets have not long come through here so won't be back for a while. Any ideas would be appreciated

Sounds like you are on the right track (and very dedicated to getting your pug to settle into the household, not just kicking him outside like a lot of busy families do with a dog once it's past the cute little baby puppy stage) My boy dobe cocked his leg on the TV when he was about 9 months, this was after an exemplary toileting track record from 3 months to 8 months, and he too decided that when we had a week of rainy weather that he would rather pee on the concrete at our back door than go out in the cold rain!

I have an ezydog harness for tracking, used to use a step in harness but I didn't like it as it twists to the side if the dog pulls that way. The ezydog one has some sort of hard stuff inside what I call the saddle of the harness and this prevents it from rolling- as you can see my dog has a big pointy chest but the new harness is very adjustable so we have the chest strap sit on top of his pointy bits!

That is so awful, I hope they find the person who did this and throw the book at him. My hubby is a police officer and his off-sider recently charged an man for slamming a dog head first several times into the wall of a service station. Despite two witnesses who have given statements we will all be very surprised if any animal cruelty charges stick because in the territory that's a minor crime The mans reason was "I own the dog, I'll do whatever I want to it", seems some people still think of animals as personal property with which they can do whatever they want I have contacted animal welfare previously about the appalling conditions and treatment of dogs in aboriginal camps, but seems too taboo to do anything about it

Aww I love Aussies, what a gorgeous baby- congratulations!

I've heard anything with ammonia in it can smell pee-ish to a dog and encourage them to toilet there. Never tried vinegar but sounds like a nice cheep solution

I've just had a look at the requirements for hemopet thyroid testing, as it needs to be centrifuged 30 mins after collection I don't think my mobile vet will be able to take the sample to send to them. Its hard to tell sometimes if they are in physical pain if there isn't anything obvious, but he does seem to be back to normal now we are home. It was very hot at the show and these are dogs used to being inside under the air conditioning during the day so maybe he was dehydrated and just feeling off, but he is booked in to see our vet soon so will let you all know what turns up.

If I were you I'd have the thyroid blood tests done through Dr Jean Dodds (Hemopet) in USA. Aussie tests aren't as thorough and a "negative" result wouldn't necessarily rule it out, especially as your dog is so young (which indicates - if thyroid is an issue - that the thyroid tissue may not have had enough time to degenerate to a level that is detectable by our Aussie blood tests. O.K thanks, how would I organise that? I would have to have a vet collect the sample and then request they send it to Hemopet?

I haven't seen the second part before, god where do you even start teaching that kind of stuff!!

Well the boys issues are on hold to be dealt with after my bitch recovers from a staking injury : sigh : my doggies aren't having the best week

I've trimmed whiskers off the Dobes since I was advised to by another successful dobe owner/ handler. Then a rotty owner told me I shouldn't do that, although I haven't found anything in the standard that says you shouldn't unless I'm not looking in the right part. I think the Dobe outline looks "cleaner" without the hairy face, and Judges have never commented on it but I do wonder if I should or shouldn't

Thanks, actually in my frazzled state of mind since it all happened I didn't even think about thyroid issues but it does make sense. I think my mobile vet can take samples from home so will get them to call in and check him over.

We attended a long weekend of dog shows and my 2.5 yo male dog seemed to be behaving different (and in a bad way). He seemed very short tempered with my bitch if she got in his space, and then lunged at a man who tried to pat both of them on lead. He had barked and lunged at a lady who stuck her arm into my car to pat my bitch while I was paying for fuel the day before (I had to leave the windows down because it was so hot). With that incident I believed he had acted appropriately because I was away from the car and he was guarding it and I told the lady she was lucky he didn't bite her, but on a lead at the dog show is definitely not on. He has been showed and trialed fairly regularly since he was a puppy and has never showed any aggression before and has met a variety of strangers at our home. My male dog was not eating properly over the weekend and seemed depressed so I scratched yesterday morning and went home. Since we got home he has eaten a bit but not as much as usual and has had a few runny poos but otherwise is running around and happy to be home. Now I am going to rule out any health issues before I treat this as a behavior problem, but what should I ask for with a health check? How thorough should it be before I can rule out health issues? We live remote and have a great mobile vet that visits every month or I can take him into a fully equipped vet clinic 6 hours away I don't like or trust much depending on what needs doing. Secondly, does anyone know or recommend any behaviorists that will be able to give advice at a distance if nothing health related turns up without seeing our dog?

Exactly, why does it matter if they get exported? For every puppy they export there are at least another 1000 that are baited...

Seems a bit odd that an oldy would be straying if his sight is bad isn't it? He's not a surrender I'm guessing

Also with crate training, I've never crate trained an older puppy, but you can leave him in there to sleep and whenever you can't supervise him. Start with short amounts of time and if food is his thing then portion out his ration of daily food and give him some whenever he goes in the crate. Ian Dunbar has a good how to book online for crate training and other general puppy business http://www.dogstardaily.com/blogger/4