Staranais

That's a good question. Referring people to the MDBA website seems like it should be a good resource to help people find good breeders, if all the member breeders are listed?

Thanks guys, I quite like it too. I'd be super happy with it if it was in perfect focus - I guess my next mission with the camera is to learn how to take shots that are crystal clear & not slightly fuzzy...

I trained my old stafford to be trustworthy around cats. He was rather high prey drive & had killed a kitten and several other small animals before I got him. From the first moment he came to live with me, I always supervised him when he was with the cat, and always interrupted him & removed him from the room immediately at any sign of interest in the cat whatsoever (however innocent that attention appeared & well before he went into any type of prey drive towards the cat - looking at the cat or giving it any attention whatsoever was simply not tolerated). Worked very well, I was amazed by how solid he was around cats in the end - in the sense that he was not just merely showing good self control, he was genuinely just not interested in cats, they were not a prey drive trigger even when running away from him. However, I have only done it once so not sure how well it would work for other dogs. Having a cat that knows not to run away & trigger prey drive initially was a huge help. Instigating the rules as soon as he came to my house probably helped enormously (new house = new rules seems easy for them to understand). Plus gave him an alternative acceptable outlet for prey drive satisfaction with lots of tug games & working in drive may have also helped? Nowadays, I'd probably use low stim ecollar as a P+/R- for looking at/away from the cat, as I suspect it would get the job done quicker with less risk of setback due to inconsistency, but I don't suggest you play round with that without professional guidance. I'd also wonder if you could use a counter-conditioning protocol to change the dog's feelings towards the cat, i.e. make the appearance of the cat predictive of (calming) food rather than of an (arousing) chase/bite, but I have never done so & think it might take a while to get really solid, especially if the dog already has a history of going into prey drive towards the cat. ETA, I suppose you could also just punish the GSD for any predatory attention shown to the cat with a correction collar or similar, but IMO the risk with that is that if you are not careful you may create a dog that really still wants to chase the cat, but is restraining himself from doing so in order to avoid a correction. That's far better than having a GSD with no self control, of course, but I feel it is inferior to creating the mindset that he genuinely doesn't want to eat the cat. I'd get professional help if you want to go that route so you know you're doing it right.

I quite like this one that I took the other day: It could be a little more in focus, but we're getting there!

They're lovely dogs. For a brief period I flirted with the idea of going with a standard type AB for my next dog when I couldn't find a amstaff that suited what I wanted, but ended up with a mally instead for a variety of reasons. She suits me (& what I do) probably far, far better. I still like the ABs, though!

It's hard since it's all so grey. If there was concrete published proof that registered dogs are on average substantially healthier than non-ANKC registered dogs (which as far as I'm aware, there isn't), or if all registered breeders were invariably ethical and all unregistered breeders were horrible to their dogs (which isn't the case), then it would be easy to just say "go find an ANKC registered breeder" to anyone who is interested in an ANKC-breed pet. Saying "go find a MDBA member breeder" gets rid of that issue I suppose, since all MDBA members are (theoretically at least!) held and policed to a high standard. However, a breeder can be very ethical and not be a MDBA member, so that advice cuts a lot of good breeders out of consideration.

Hmmm, interesting. I'm not sure if I agree, though I can see your point. For example, if I was new to dogs and I said "I'm thinking of getting a dog from breeder X!", I think it's good if my MDBA friend could say "well I'd think twice about that since breeder X doesn't hip score, and it's very important in your breed, also I've met her stud dog and it bit me". You know? A person who is your friend giving you private advice is different to someone ringing up enquiring about buying a puppy and half the conversation is taken up with accusations about why they shouldnt go to another breeder. Yeah that's very true - where do you draw the line with the MDBA COE, though? ETA - oh sorry, just read Amanda's post that it's an ANKC not a MDBA rule, so perhaps this question is in the wrong thread!

Hmmm, interesting. I'm not sure if I agree, though I can see your point. For example, if I was new to dogs and I said "I'm thinking of getting a dog from breeder X!", I think it's good if my MDBA friend could say "well I'd think twice about that since breeder X doesn't hip score, and it's very important in your breed, also I've met her stud dog and it bit me". You know?

Good idea but you also have to remember that part of your code of ethics is I shall refrain from making negative or malicious statements about other breeder's, their dogs or practices - so Im sure its not just because you might be sued. Really? MDBA members can't make negative statements about other breeder's practices? What if the practices are clearly unethical? Sorry for the double post, I'm just interested.

Well, to be fair, I don't either. I think your breeders are probably all great, but I've also met some great breeders who aren't MDBA members, and I wouldn't personally restrict my search for a dog to MDBA members (or to kennel club breeders, for that matter). Thats interesting - where else would you look for a good breeder? If I wanted a working dog, I'd personally be happy in some breeds to look at a non-kennel club affiliated breeder. ;)

Well, to be fair, I don't either. I think your breeders are probably all great, but I've also met some great breeders who aren't MDBA members, and I wouldn't personally restrict my search for a dog to MDBA members (or to kennel club breeders, for that matter).

I'd agree. I immediately lose respect for trainers if I find they don't have any clue how other methods work, especially if they are promoting their method as better. I particularly remember one trainer I consulted about my last dog who bad mouthed clicker trainers at length - but after asking a few questions, it became clear to me that he hadn't even a basic idea of how the clicker was used. Him having such strong opinions about something he clearly hadn't researched just made me doubt everything else he told me.

Don't think so due to the differences in canine & human pelvic anatomy, but willing to be proven wrong. True - and don't forget that risk of mammary cancer is far lower in a bitch that is desexed before the first or 2nd heat cycle compared to a bitch left entire. There's unfortunately no one right answer for all dogs, desexing and leaving them entire both come with their own of risk factors. Not sure, but I do know that your risk of pyometra sky-rockets when you use the drugs we have available to control estrus. I wouldn't give them to my dog.

Just like most people don't actually know what a dog's "papers" are. I've had people I know (nice, smart people) proudly tell me their new puppy has papers and then describe or show me things like vet vaccination certificate, pet shop receipt, or pedigree printed off the internet. They didn't know any different between these things and a kennel club registration certificate! As far as they were concerned, their puppy came with "papers".

Separate them when you're not present until you can get the trainer out. I wouldn't let the male bully the female. If she's new to your property, you're going to build your relationship with her by showing that you'll protect her. Letting another dog bully her is doing the opposite - it's showing her that you won't protect her. I'd especially feed them separately. Sounds like she might be too intimidated to eat, poor girl.

I don't think a great trainer necessarily needs to have done a formal training course either, Pretty Miss Emma. But on the other hand, I do think that if someone invents a method of dog training without even investigating what other trainers are doing or intensively studying all the already available methods and seeing them demonstrated, they're doing themselves (and their clients) a huge disservice. Even if their method works OK, they can't know if it's the best or if it has substantial gaps if they don't see what everyone else is doing.

Merely killing the dog achieves nothing - the owner will likely just go get another DA or predatory dog, and not necessarily contain it properly either. It's not like there aren't thousands of DA and predatory dogs out there for them to adopt - the majority of dogs would kill other pets if you let them roam. Even dogs that won't fight other dogs will kill cats or pet bunnies or chickens or chase sheep if allowed to do so. From what I can work out, the call to PTS come from people that think that their dogs would never do such a thing to any other animal, and so that any owner of a predatory or DA dog deserves whatever they get merely for owning such an animal.

LOL that this thread has come up again. I do have to wonder where these instant experts like Cesar Millan (and many other trainers) spring from. It sounds like (so far as anyone knows) he's never apprenticed to another trainer or gone through a dog training & behaviour course? So how does he suddenly know how to best train dogs? And how does he know that he wouldn't get better results using other methods if he'd never studied them before making up his own way of doing things? Imagine if a plumber or hairdresser or doctor wanted to start working without doing an apprenticeship or a training course, since they'd decided they were a natural "tap whisperer" or a "hair whisperer" or "surgery whisperer", and just made up their own way of doing things!

Stick your hand into the middle of a dog fight between any two dogs & you'll most likely get bitten. I wouldn't necessarily call that an "attack" on the owner, even if the newspaper does.

Yes. It's not anyone else's job to fence their property to keep your dogs out. It's your job to fence your property to keep your dogs in. Full stop. It would be prohibitively expensive to fence most farms to keep dogs out, plus it's simply not the farmer's responsibility to do so. It's your responsibility to stop your dog roaming. No matter how nice or "aloof" you think your dog is, it is your responsibility.

Yes. If your dog roams, especially in a rural area, you can expect it to get shot. Farmers can't be expected to put up with stock losses and injuries due to people letting their pets roam and chase stock. Even little dogs can cause huge damage on farms, by causing mismothering (= lamb deaths), stress (= production losses) or chasing animals into fences or over cliffs (= stock losses). Most farmers I know would have at go at catching a strange dog that looked friendly, that was on the property for the first time & was not actively worrying the sheep. But repeat offenders or dogs that couldn't be caught would get a bullet. It's the farmer's job to look after the stock, not to spend their time trying to catch and babysit roaming pet dogs. These dogs are very lucky they live in suburbia, where that is unlikely to happen! It's still the fault of the owner for letting his dog roam onto other people's property, though, not the fault of your friend for leaving the gate open. I'm not sure if the council will do anything just because your friend thinks these dogs killed his chickens, though, not if he didn't actually see them killing the chooks or have some other evidence that it was these particular dogs that killed them. They can't (or at least they shouldn't) convict dogs just on a suspicion.

Water from the hose or bucket does work really well, if you can catch the cat unexpectedly a few times.

It definitely still happens sometimes in small bitches, I've seen it several times - it's just supposed to be less common than in larger breed bitches.

I teach left hand pivots & left hand pivot about turns first before asking for sit/down at heel, also teach flip finish, these seem to prevent the problem.

They tell us that in dogs, 85% of melanomas that grow on haired areas of the skin are benign. They'll want to do histology though, to make sure your dog isn't in the unlucky 15%. Most melanomas that grow on or near unhaired skin in dogs (such as the mouth or nail beds) are malignant.