Staranais

Old family red nose is the name of a famous line of pitbulls. The fact that a pitbull has a red nose doesn't mean it's from OFRN lines, though. A lot of less informed pitbull owners think their dog is special or from certain lines just because it has a red nose, which isn't the case. Lots of pitbulls that aren't from OFRN at all have red noses. Just like although all dalmations have spots, the fact your dog has spots doesn't necessarily make it a dalmation!

I'm so sorry. They're pretty careful to try to keep side effects to a minimum with chemo for pets, especially palliative chemo, since extension of the pet's enjoyable life (not merely extending their life at any cost) is the goal of treatment. I'm sure your derm will give you good advice about the treatment options, and I know you will make the choice you feel is best for him.

Yup a dog run is your safest bet. You can get a portable one to take with you if you move house. If she is likely to attack a human I'd also get a behaviourist in, next time you can afford it, that's not normal behaviour for a stafford. Although, perhaps you just mean "attack" as in rush up to or jump on (which many councils will rather stupidly call an "attack").

"Drawing on the Right Side of the Brain" is an excellent book you might want to borrow from the library. Can't remember who wrote it right now sorry (possibly a Betty someone?) but it's pretty famous, so you should be able to find it easily.

My girl sleeps on the end of my bed, but clipped onto a short leash attached to the end of the bed (she can jump on & off the bed, but that's about it). That prevents her getting into any possible mischief in the middle of the night when I'm asleep. So that could be another option for you, if the crate doesn't work out.

Exactly. Slitting a dog's throat is not in any way a humane way to PTS, shooting with multiple bullets even worse, let alone the fact that he allowed the other dogs to watch while it was done. He should have the book thrown at him, with whatever animal welfare charges they can make stick over there. I don't care if his workplace told him to do it, he was the one that did it.

Tee hee, mine's yellow and people still avoid us! Mind you, she does have a black face. Her lovely white teeth show up very well against her black mask. ETA, my granddad would never bet on a grey racehorse, he reckoned they always lost. I think it's the opposite situation to the black greyhounds. A grey racehorse stands out since it's so rare, but tends to lose (just by the fact that most horses do!)

Salmonella in raw food (or even improperly stored cooked food, for that matter) can cause bloody diarrhoea, although the blood work should have given a clue if this was what was affecting your dog. There are lots of other reasons for bloody diarrhoea too, though. And on the other hand lots of dogs have salmonella in their faeces from eating raw foods without showing clinical signs at all. ETA, so far as I'm aware they're not yet sure precisely what causes HGE. I'm glad he's doing so much better! ;)

Yes, revolution spot on does ear mites. Advocate too, I think. Please don't put anything down the ear canal without having a vet check that the eardrum is intact.

She might need you to make her or buy her a run. Otherwise, I believe it's sometimes possible to electrify the fence using ping tape (as you would on a farm to keep the stock in). Welcome to the forum. :D

Haha, you must have a lot of dog stuff! My girl's things are mostly in a box in the car.

Good qualities in a tracking dog? I'd say primarily the ability to be easily motivated, either by food or a toy on the track. The very best tracking dogs I know also seem to love to track for its own sake, regardless of the reward, like they have a real passion for the track itself, but that's not something you can really test before teaching a dog to track. I don't know if there is any relation between that and with liking just sniffing around for random things as you describe. I'd suspect that a dog that naturally uses its nose a lot has an advantage over a dog that doesn't, but haven't trained or handled enough tracking dogs to really know for sure. Also, so much is down to the handler, how well they handle the line, how well they read the dog, can have a huge influence on how well the dog learns.

I've answered in the other thread, but yes, I'd happily deal with someone with no formal qualification. Some of the best trainers I know in their own field have no qualifications - or to put it another way, their qualifications are the things they've achieved, and the dogs and handler they've trained over the years. If I'm impressed by what someone's achieved by with their dogs and with other handlers, and they seem competent & compassionate, I'll listen to them. That doesn't mean I'd employ any old trainer without qualifications. If I didn't know the trainer from a bar of soap, I'd put much more weight on qualifications since they're one way of telling that the trainer might know what they're doing. In your position, I think it's a good idea to do a qualification, or at least an apprenticeship if you could find one with a trainer that you admire.

Creature Comforts in Manawatu, New Zealand, are excellent, I'd recommend them to anyone. Not really a story, though. I think that's a good reply by the kennels too.

Does the dog still lick its feet, though, or has it stopped the licking also? If the dog is still licking, I'd worry that the low dose Ab may have stopped the staining, but perhaps the feet are still itchy or sore as a result of e.g. an undiagnosed allergy? And to me, that is a more important problem than whether the feet are yellow.

I'm intrigued. What's the antimicrobial in the product? Giving a small dose of antibiotic daily to an animal is pretty much the text book way of going about getting a resistant population of bacteria, if you for some reason wanted to do that! The theory is that by exposing the bugs to a dose that doesn't kill all of them, the sensitive ones will be killed off & the resistant ones left. The resistant ones are therefore a higher % of the population (a problem in itself) and as a result are likely to share genetic material with each other (= development of superbugs, bacteria with several different resistance genes). Same principles as with underdosing an animal with anthelmintics, really. How much of a problem that is depends on factors such as which antimicrobial it is, the dose you're giving, how long you give it for, & the route of administration, etc. ETA - I think I've found it, do you mean Tylosin? I've never seen Tylosin used in smallies before, in any clinic. IMO this product isn't as bad as it could be - it's not as dangerous as giving small doses of really important drugs like gentamycin or 4th gen cephalosporins every day to the dog and fostering resistance to those drugs. Having said that, I still don't know how smart it is. We do use Tylosin quite often in production animals, plus I'd think there's a possibility that Tylosin resistance genes that develop or become widespread as a result of this product could cause cross-resistance to the macrolides we do use in smallies (e.g. erythromycin), or even to macrolides used in human medicine. I'm kind of surprised the product is available without a prescription, for that reason. Can you just buy it off the shelf at pet stores, etc?

I'd be happy even seeing a study showing a good correlation between moderately sized flop ears & ear infections. I'm not talking extra long droopy basset hound/bloodhound ears, just to be clear, just regular medium sized folded ears like an uncropped dobe would have. Incidentally, if one could show a strong correlation between dobes with natural ears and painful or chronic ear conditions, I suppose that would be some support for the legalisation of ear cropping.

Not obvious to me - I've seen plenty of ear infections in prick ears, and plenty in folded ears too. Some breeds are definitely more prone to ear issues than others, but I've never seen anything showing that a moderately sized folded ear (like your dobe) is more likely than a prick/cropped ear to develop ear infections, all other things being equal. I was (genuinely) hoping you'd seen a study or something, since you told Rebanne you were following the scientific method.

The training forum has some info on this, as well as some trainers that don't come into off topic, so you might get a more helpful response there. As for the question, I'd happily deal with someone without formal qualifications, so long as they have proven experience at what I'm consulting them for and they appear competent & compassionate. I know several trainers who are truly excellent in their own field & who don't have formal qualifications in dog training. On the other hand, you don't want to be the type of trainer that only knows one way of doing things, or can't communicate with other trainers since you don't know the technical terms they use, and getting a qualification can help with those things. I also know some trainers who are excellent at what they do but (IMO) would be so much better if they just opened their eyes and got a bit of an education in different methods, different tools, and even just in basic learning theory.

My understanding of this type of product is that it just burns the tissue away, much like applying an acid or perhaps liquid nitrogen to the area. I guess one of the biggest benefits of doing surgery instead of using this type of thing is that you can send the excised tumour to the lab, & they'll check the borders to see that the cells are microscopically normal & that all the cancer was excised by the surgery. If you just put a caustic salve on top, you really don't know if you've got all the tumour, or if you've left some cancerous tissue there. Although, if you're just after it for palliative means (i.e. if the hemangiosarcoma is in spleen or other internal organs & can't be cured), then perhaps that would be different? I've had a look on VIN, & a few vets in america are using it with mixed reports of success (some anecdotal successes for skin tumours, some cases where the dog is left with a large & painful non-healing wound and/or the tumour recurs locally). They also say that the application can be painful for the dog.

Indeed. To be significant however, we're going to need a sample size greater than one person's experiences... It kind of similar to what cigarette companies do, in that they claim that because they know of someone who smoked and didn't die from it, cigarettes can't possibly be bad for you. Yay for scientific method to help us see the forest from the trees. I haven't seen any scientific studies that show that (all other things being equal) dogs with flop ears tend to suffer from more ear infections than cropped or naturally prick ears. Can you post a link?

After the Michael Vick arrest & case, I was appalled by the number of people posting on internet forums & commenting on news articles who seemed to think that what he did was OK, or at least that it was trivial and unimportant. I don't know if you'd call them normal people or not, since I have no idea who they were, but I was shocked by their number & their opinions. So I don't think it's OK to have a game that glorifies or trivialises dog fighting, especially when a significant minority of people clearly still think it is an acceptable thing to do. You don't need to agree with my opinions, of course, but I simply can't think of a clearer way to explain them than that, so I won't post any further.

It's not as safe to desex when she's on heat, since there's a higher chance of blood loss during & after the operation. By the time you notice her showing signs of coming on heat it's really too late, most vet clinics won't want to take her for elective desexing. 6 months is a good time to desex if you want to desex her before her first heat. Most dogs will come on heat for the first time between 6 and 12 months (although there are always variations!) so if you leave it too much longer, you may be too late. Or another option is to call your breeder (if she's from a breeder) to ask when their dogs typically come on heat for the first time.

I don't know if this type of game would encourage anyone to get involved in dog fighting that wouldn't get involved anyway. I don't know if anyone has studied the risk of that happening. But it worries me that it might. I also don't like the video games that involve the player shooting or beating random people, by the way. But this seems different to me, in that I think most people know that killing random strangers is not condoned by society and that murderers are likely to be found & severely punished. Whereas large segments of society still seem to view dog fighting as no big deal (witness all the comments on the net after the Michael Vick incident, where so many people couldn't understand the uproar about what he'd done). I hate to see anything that could normalise the idea of dog fighting further, since it already seems that many people regard it as normal and OK.

Main risks of leaving it longer are increased risk of mammary cancer with each of the first two seasons she has, main risk of desexing early is the increased risk of spay incontinence with desexing before the first season. There are other risks & benefits resulting from the time of desexing, but generally small compared to those two things. Most good vets I know will recommend desexing just before the first season, or after the first season, for a female pet dog.