Staranais

Wandering dew?

That's a reasonable question - but, the problem is, how are you sure the meat & milk you buy at the supermarket are from animals who are kept & killed humanely? I've worked on several farms, visited many more, and I can tell you that some nasty things go on in the livestock industry. And it's not just on bad farms - many nasty farming practices are legally permitted. Dairy cow inductions, with the premature babies left to gasp and die in the fields. Bobby calves sitting for hours in boxes by the roadside. Castration without anesthetic (would you do that to a puppy?) Calf debudding without anaesthetic. Battery hen cages. Sow stalls. Organic farms that turn down antibiotics or epidurals for their suffering cows because the withholding period is too long to be economic. Pigs killed by "blunt trauma". Kosher killing, where the cow has its throat cut when it is fully conscious. Are these things "worse" than hunting? They all occur daily on commercial farms and slaughterhouses, with full legal sanction. You're supporting them with your money when you buy meat or milk at the supermarket. Plus, there are the things that aren't really supposed to go on but that we've all seen happen on bad farms. Dairy cows getting their tails broken for being "naughty" in the shed. Cows getting their pelvises broken from inside when the farmer decides to try to pull a stuck calf out with a tractor because he doesn't want to pay the vet. etc, etc. At least if you grow or kill your own meat, you know you have done it humanely. If you rely on strangers to grow and kill your meat, you have no idea how kindly they treated it.

Have they considered clipping the tip of an ear to identify a dog that has been done, like in some speuter programs? I wouldn't think paint would stay on that long. It's ouch for the dog, but heals up & is not worse than a lot of things we do to livestock. I too think they should be trapping & culling to reduce the feral dog population, if the population is too high to vaccinate and they can't speuter. It's sad, but little kids with rabies just doesn't bear thinking about. I've seen videos of people with rabies and it was atrocious.

Bugger, really? That's going to end in tears.

God forbid we should actually cause the deaths of the animals we eat. Perhaps if more folk killed their own, there'd by less abuse of animals in intensive farming situations. The more people connnect with the animals they farm, the less likely they are to abuse them IMO. Yes, I 100% agree. IMO hunting or homekill is usually much more humane than most commerically farmed meats or dairy products. Farms have only gotten away with battery hen farming, dry sow stalls, dairy inductions, etc, since people like turn their heads and pretend these things are not happening.

Perhaps you are all posting about different things? I would never teach a competition heel using a correction collar, but would be quite happy to teach LLW using one. The two methods can co-exist quite happily in the same dog (at least, they did in my last dog, he had a great LLW and was getting a lovely competition heel). Dogs know when it's time to work for a reward/work in drive, and when it's just time to mind their Ps & Qs on leash. Like Aidan says too, the Koehler method is pretty specific. I'm not sure I'd want to train a dog that way, it's pretty correction heavy & not very flexible, but it's also worth noting I think, that most people I've met or talked to who say they train Koehler certainly aren't following the method outlined in the book (TKMODT). They're just yanking and cranking their dog around.

What exactly is Cesar Milan's background? Is he ex-police or ex-MWD trainer or something similar? And, where do the dogs he treats ends up? Has anyone done a follow up study to see his long term success rates? Sorry if these are questions everyone else knows the answer to, but I don't know a heck of a lot about the guy.

Thanks guys! I'm in NZ. Yup, the bailing twine or wool idea was all I'd come up with (except for perhaps canabilising a couple of kitty collars for their breakway components?) The fishing line idea is a good one, I might investigate that too. Pity it's patented, but that explains why I can't find any dog size breakaway clips in the shops here. ETA: Kelpiehoundmum, that's a really generous offer, but I can't pay you for postage unless you have a paypal account, so might be a little impractical? Thanks very much for the thought!

The book is good, but even better if you can join a tracking group I reckon, depending on what sort of tracking you want to do. There is a lot that is only touched on in the Johnson book, things like how to read the dog's negative & positive indications, how to handle the line to really help the dog, how to strategically refind the track when you lose it. These are the things I find hardest, & I've learned them by watching good handlers & getting them to watch us. Let us know how you do!

Just what the title says - you apparently can't get one in this country for love nor money, and I'm not rich enough to import at the moment! Has any clever DOLer made their own before?

Yes. :D Although I count the release command as a reward for some purposes.

I'm glad you aren't using electric collars on your dog if you don't have any accurate knowledge about them. :D Although incidentally, a good trainer who sometimes posts on this forum once said that in his experience, for many dogs a very low level on a shock collar was less aversive than the vibrate function. I should think it would be reasonably easy to teach a dog what the vibration meant, same process as conditioning the dog to a clicker or to his name. If you wanted the collar mainly for a recall then you could probably use the really reliable recall system (by Leslie Nelson), only using the vibration instead of the recall word.

I haven't watched much of his stuff at all, since I don't own a telly. I've seen people do silly things like poke their dogs and go SHHHHT before, but didn't realise it was a Cesar Millan thing until I read about it on DOL. The dog just looked rather confused. :rolleyes:

Have you told the original vet what the specialist said? If they don't get feedback, they won't change, and will recommend the same thing to the next puppy buyer (possibly in good faith that they're doing the right thing). Also, did the specialist say the original vet was actually wrong or incompetent in their diagnosis & recommendations (rather than just saying they would recommend a different treatment option?) If the specialist thinks the original diagnosis was wrong, you can write to the vet council & complain about the original vet almost costing you a lot of $.

That's very sensible. Do you do that in the warmer months?? I am very careful not to leave my dog in a warm car, but obviously you have managed the temperature for them ok. Nope, it has never been an issue when leaving her overnight. I would be more concerned she would get cold in the colder months.

No, but when I've been to motels I have my car set up with a crate & grills so that the dog can sleep in the back overnight safely. I figure it's not their business what's in my car!

Wouldn't you teach a Sch dog both styles of heeling, though, if you wanted it to also be a pet? I've not done Sch, but I've done a little comp ob, and my dogs learn both how to LLW and how to heel in drive competition style. I don't want them only knowing how to do a competition style heel, since I'm not going to walk them to the shops like that. If I did Sch, I'd still teach the dog to LLW as a different exercise. From the BHs I've watched, most people do competition heeling in drive for the first part of the BH that is done on the field, and more casual LLW or heeling for the second bit on the road. I don't know what the rules require, though.

Depends where you live, I guess. Very few people around here keep their cats inside, there is no legal obligation to do so, and most people would think it overprotective to do so. And if you impounded a pet cat belonging to a neighbour because it entered your yard, the ranger would think you were a bit loopy. It's just a cultural thing, I guess. I've been to & lived in places where dogs are allowed to roam freely & people would consider it a little strange to tie your dog up all day or fence it in. Whereas here you're considered very irresponsible if you let your dog roam. Same with cattle & chickens. Perhaps it will change here over the next few decades. There are already calls to ban cats from certain areas here which have higher than normal native bird life, which makes sense to me (so long as it's grandfathered in!)

I wish ALL vets would charge a little less... not because I have a problem paying them, but because there are many people out there who are not rolling in money and often, the animals don't get desexed because of how expensive it is. $200 to someone making $400 a week is a LOT. I wish mechanics would charge a little less. I have to save up to get my car serviced each year. But since it is my choice to own a car and i dont know enough to do the upkeep myself I accept that they need to make enough survive and make a profit. Yup. For the people who do want spays to be cheaper than a "regular" surgery of similar size, I'm wondering, where do they want the subsidy to come from? Do they want vets to scrimp on monitoring & materials to make speuters cheaper (& owners should just suck it up and accept any additional risks that goes along with that)? Do they want speuters to be subsidised by making other procedures at the vet a little more expensive (which is what ultimately happens at many practices - but is it really fair)? Or should vets & vet nurses not be paid to do spays?

That is absolutely fantastic work!

Yup, I agree. A good working dog breeder is miles away from a designer dog breeder. They take breeding very seriously, and bred towards a performance goal, and are recognised by their peers as producing good dogs that do a good job. Their dogs are proven in the work they do. This is very different from randomly throwing dogs together in order to make some cash. Faintygirl, your Tilly is gorgeous!

Interestingly the top level agility trainers don't use physical corrections It would be kind of interesting to start a poll on what level people here have reached in their chosen discipline, and do they ever use corrections on their dog or not. But, I don't know how to do it. Both sides will use accomplished people & dogs as examples for not needing, or needing corrections in various disciplines. I'm not sure if it's very helpful. e.g., most SAR dogs get trained in scentwork using reward only methods - but many dogs get washed out of SAR due to low drive, so can we really say that because SAR dogs are trained this way, it's the most suitable method for pets? Same for police work or bitesports - most of these dogs are corrected physically, but then again, most pet dogs couldn't do police or bitework, so can we therefore say that most pet dogs should also be corrected physically? & all of the best agility handlers I know don't correct their dogs duing agility training, but then again, most pet dogs aren't going to ever make the agility nationals, so can you always extrapolate this to pets? etc.

No, but thanks. I'm glad it wasn't, since the little doggy was quite an exciting anaesthesia in several ways - definitely kept us on our toes the whole time & made me glad we were so well supervised!

Really? Eek! I'd hate someone to PTS my dog if she just happened to escape the yard one day & get caught on someone's property - or is the law only for cats for some reason?

That's very funny! I am budget, I just drop dog hair to determine wind direction.