Staranais

I'm sorry, I can't help. There is a thread about this in the news forum at the moment with a couple of other owners in a similar spot. Maybe have a look there in case some of them know more?

No. Only pedigree certificates or a certificate from your vet is sufficient. However, the AVA does not support BSL and is recommending that vets have no part in this. The issue is though that many dogs will suffer as a result of them not participating. How are vets supposed to tell if a bully-x-type dog is part pitbull or part stafford either, though? It's not like they have lectures on it at vet school! So not surprising that the AVA have wanted vets to have no part in it, beyond saying that they don't approve of BSL. It could only ever blow up in their faces. That's not to say that individual vets aren't still allowed to certify dogs, however, just that the AVA won't have their back if they decide to do so. That is an avenue I would pursue if I was in Cosmolo's situation, and had a good relationship with my vet.

Show ring people probably have good ideas. But, if you speed him up, he will likely trot instead of pace, unless he has a conformation issue.

The majority of vets I know are pretty relieved if they find out a client has insurance, since they are then free to forget about trying to scrimp and save, and can just concentrate on giving the animal the best treatment possible. That's different to inflating prices, though, IMO.

Nominations complete! Thanks Steve.

Yeah, it had a canopy, she ate the entire inside in about 4 minutes unsupervised time, while amping up waiting for work to start. I have never met another dog that will use a truck as a tug toy!

LOL, tell me that again in a year. But in all seriousness, if you've got support, crapload of time, and a job for the dog sorted - I say go for it! Your life, furniture and garden will never be the same. Mine has eaten the back of a ute too. But overall she's (mostly) worth it.

Most of the policies I've looked at have a limit ~ $3000. If you do get insurance, read the fine print. Sandgrubber makes a great point, read the fine print. When I was insurance shopping, lots of the companies had limits on the amount of $ you could claim for certain conditions. e.g. look at Ellenco's "base plan", $4000 of cover sounds really good, right? But there is a limit of $100 for dentistry (won't even cover anaesthesia!), a limit of $400 for imaging (that will get you one or two sets of radiographs but not a CT or MRI or myelogram), $800 for cancer (will hardly cover lab tests let alone chemo or surgery). Pathetic! http://www.pet-insurance.co.nz/base_plan.html

My old dog got hematomas on both ears. Like your dog, we couldn't ever figure out an underlying cause! One ear I got surgery for, the other I just let heal. The one that we left alone was a bit more disfigured - like a cauliflower ear - but it didn't bother him any. Nekhbet is right, don't keep draining it yourself. It's not just that it can cause an infection even if you are careful, but it also won't do any good in any but the tiniest haematomas, as it will just refill with blood as quick as you drain it. Take it for surgery, or leave it alone.

Is it an offchance, though? I'd guess that nearly every dog will have a big bill for something at some point if it lives long enough. The only question is how you'd prefer to pay for it. Although, perhaps my judgement on the matter is clouded by the fact that most dogs I meet these days are ill...

Do you mean for hip dysplasia? Costs about $2500 last time I looked into it, and they haven't yet done clinic trials proving that it actually works. Can't wait for them to actually do proper robust studies on it - I hope they do. I might take a chance on it if I owned a seriously arthritic dog and some spare cash, but couldn't recommend it yet to anyone else.

What she said. Also, depending on why he was in hospital, I wouldn't personally be starting a dog on raw right now. A healthy dog's system is good at handling the bugs on raw food. A sick dog, sometimes not so much.

Very much worthwhile, unless you have always have a couple of thousand in the bank that you can get out at very short notice, or you have someone that you can reliably borrow a couple of thousand off at very short notice. Plating a seriously broken bone, surgery for a GDV or obstruction, chemo or surgery for cancer - these things can easily cost $1000 - $2000, sometimes even more. My pet insurance is about $40 per month, so $480 per year. Definitely worth it for me at the moment, since I have very little free cash or savings.

If it's a WL mally, you'll need lots (lots) of time to devote to it, an actual job for the thing to do, and someone good to give you training help when you need it. If you have all those things lined up, then I say go for it if you feel inclined. If you don't have some of those things organised yet, I'd recommend waiting until you do. Mine came spastic, and is still spastic. I hear some come with off switches, but as far as I'm concerned those are mythical beasties. Although my girl has a job, and we train for it 10 or so hours a week (plus regular exercise/obedience obviously), I still often feel like I'm seriously underutilising her. She is only really alive when she's working. The rest of the time, she's just waiting for work to start. She's damn good at her job, though.

Unless, they jump the fence when your friend is out and take it back. I'd warn them to keep the dog inside when they are out, until this is cleared up.

Depends why you are not ready.

Back beach, to my knowledge, is an off leash area. The big dog was allowed off leash there, although it obviously should have been under better control. IMO, taking a chihuahua puppy to a busy offleash park is daft. Taking a huge dog that has been in fights before to an offleash park is more than stupid. Poor chihuahua puppies.

Is a good idea but I don't think that would work except possibly during proestrus/estrus/diestrus (which is only 4 or 5 months of the year), since the ovaries are quiescent between heats? And then, you can usually tell that the dog is entire anyway by the way she is acting. Could be wrong though, I don't know for sure.

Thanks Espinay, you are obviously less lazy than I am! According to the USDA nutrient database, liver is approx 2 or 3g/100g carbohydrate as fed. Weirdly enough, they did not have placenta listed. Interesting that the study only had two extremes of carbohydrate included (none, or 44% of calories - a huge amount). Would be fascinating if they repeated it with a 3rd group eating the amount of carbs from calories you would expect a wild canid to get, so we could see if this was a sufficient amount to replicate the positive results from the high carbohydrate group.

Which leaves the question... why are pregnant & lactating bitches apparently more productive and healthier with carbohydrate in their diets, when it was apparently not available to them for most of their evolutionary history? Perhaps it will just have to remain one of life's mysteries.

Shave the belly from the belly button down & if you look really closely you can sometimes see an old desexing scar if they've been spayed in the last few years (see a scar there, you know she's had some sort of recent abdominal surgery, probably a spay. But not seeing a scar means nothing). Ultrasound can be used too, although you need a good ultrasonographer to be sure (& even then they might not be 100% confident calling her desexed). If you don't have the dog's vet records, then opening them up again is sometimes the only way to be 100% sure.

Agree. I often watch dogs training or competing now and cannot tell whether they are rewarded with toys or food. Although, I've never seen a SAR dog I'd want to own that was trained with food as the sole reward. I'm not sure if that is the training methodology, or the reward, but I've seen a few that are food reward dogs & none were really hugely impressive.

I've read that too, and it always confused me. What did pregnant wolf/dog bitches do for their carbs before they started to live with people? And why weren't they better adapted to their natural diet? My dogs eat fallen fruit......plums, peaches etc. And Benson used to pick it from the trees, he'd test it for ripeness with his teeth first then pull off the ripe ones. Yeah, I've seen videos of wolves doing that too in one of the National Parks in America, they looked like they were having a pretty good time too! But, fruit is pretty seasonal, and it's not the same season that wolf puppies come in?

I've read that too, and it always confused me. What did pregnant wolf/dog bitches do for their carbs before they started to live with people? And why weren't they better adapted to their natural diet?

Too diluted, probably? Diluted urine with higher than normal urea in the blood suggests kidney issues. Hopefully you get good news from the ultrasound.