kelpiecuddles

Unfortunately it is one of the few contact mediums that my husband is able to use regularly when he is posted overseas with the defence force. I also live interstate from all my family and many of my friends. Facebook for me is just a spot for me to put photos of the family, etc so that those who are far away can see it. At the moment, stuck on my own with three children, a full time job and a long way from everyone it's nice to see what every one is up to since I basically never get to go out as the sort of places my friends go aren't usually kid friendly (Saturday night drinks at the pub, etc)and I'm basically the only one with kids and no one to watch them. The majority of the people I have on facebook don't post meaningless crap, they post photos of their latest hike through Europe or a night out with friends.

What about some homemade beef jerky bits for training. It's dried not cooked technically....

Following on from what dancinbc said I have often teken both my dogs for a walk and stopped at the local park in a quiet area and tied one dog up and worked on obedience with the other and then swapped them. that way both dogs get a walk and both dogs get some one on one, has worked well for me. Also teaches them to wait and watch patiently when it's not their turn as they get no attention for carry on but they can see you right there and they learn that it will be their turn for fun soon. :)

She was devestated. Holly was only 5 months old at the time and wasn't even interested in playing with or approaching other dogs, just wanted to chase the ball and was running it back to mum when this other dog appeared with it's owner and the dog lunged out and grabbed her. Owner of course didn't have time to click the lock on the extending lead(and really it wasn't likely to have stopped 45kg + of mastiff on a mission). When they managed to drag the dog off her the guy just disappeared, didn't even ask if she was OK. Thousands of dollars later at the emergency vet she passed away. Neighbours actually offered to drop some baited meat over the fence that was how strongly they felt about it, they were scared to go in their own yard. By all accounts the owner was a rude, arrogant scumbag so no surprise he raised a dog with issues. That was 16 years ago now so i don't know whether the results would be different now but it cetainly made my mum very nervous taking her next dog to the park.

Maybe quintessence but if i put 'canberra pound' in to a yahoo search the first two results that pop up are for TAMS/DAS, the second of which is titled 'lost, found, impounded and wanted dogs'. Not really that hard to find.

Yes but if the maths is correct then the owners had atleast 24 hours notification that the dog was in the pound before he was put to sleep, surely enough time to at the very least make a phone call and say they were coming but needed to borrow a car/get someone to look after the kids/get the impound fee out of the bank. I don't discount the possibility that the news report isn't accurate but if it is then even if the pound stuffed up here the owners had the opportunity to rescue their pet and chose not to for whatever reason.

Also might be a good time to work on sit, drop and stay! Put a bed on one side of the desk for Odie and a bed on the other side for Hank and send them both to their own beds. He isn't too young to learn this and it might just mean he gets in to the habit of knowing the difference between play time and quiet time a little sooner for you, which will make your life easier. Don't underestimate the power of a pigs ear or other suitable bribe for 'quiet time :D

The whole thing is weird The dog had previously been the subject of a number of complaints and yet all the neighbours loved it??? If it went missing on the 19th and was put down 'ten days after it went missing' then it was put down on the 29th, which means she recieved the letter on the 28th but didn't attempt to collect the dog or contact the shelter until the 30th??

I tend to agree with you Steph. My parents dog was killed by a DA dog in an offlead park. Mum's dog was offlead and didn't even approach the other dog, just ran past it about 5 metres away. The DA dog was a large mastiff cross that had been trained as a guard dog and was on an extendable lead! Even though it was an offlead park and the owner was clearly stupid and couldn't control his animal nothing could be done because mum's dog was offlead at the time and the other one was on (a completely inadequate) lead. After much investigation my father managed to track the DA dog down to it's address and it turned out the neighbours were terrified of it and yet the owner got off scot free.

My old lab X used to retrieve the chickens. He'd pick them up ever so gently and carry them around and hide them places such as in the long grass or his keenel where they would sit quietly for a few minutes before quietly sneaking back to the flock

All seems a bit weird to me, dog went missing on the 19th and they checked with the pound then but what happened in the seven days after that, surely if you had lost a beloved pet you'd be calling the pound every day or better yet going down and looking yourself in case it had turned up there? I'm sad for the dog but if the family made no further effort after that first day to track down their pet i'm not sure what they expected to happen.

Homestly your pup is 13 weeks and it's a golden retreiver, this part of it's life was always going to be very busy, it's like having a newborn baby. I would just focus on lots of training to have calm time and maybe enforce a crate time nap for an hour or so in the middle of the day so you can work for a bit and then let them out together to run off some energy.

Does the lanolin spray have a smell? I just don't like the strong smell of the WD-40 I deliberately bought a lead with a large swing clip rather than a sliding clip as I felt it might hold up better

She is a doggy foster carer m-j so she's not doing nothing. One of her friends has actually agreed with many of my points on the latest one and it's turned in to quite an interesting discussion on the pitfalls of some of the current animal welfare legislation and the way it can limit some agencies capacity to assist animals so all is not lost :laugh:

Well it seems like it's probably nothing to worry about. The vet actually thinks she might have copped a tooth there when playing and that it's actually a bit of a blood clot/bruising. So we'll wait and see if it disappears over the next week or so :)

Not leather. I have had leather ones in the past but they just don't dry quick enough

LOL, the latter is pretty much what I have been doing :laugh: She banged on about one of the food companies that had their flags stolen and used at a dog fight, but she had some crap from somewhere saying that they had approved the use of the flags, etc, etc. When i pointed out that the company had no idea she basically told me that they should have known beforehand and stopped it rather than distancing themselves after the fact. Not sure how they were supposed to know that someone was planning to secretly use their promotional material without their permission LOL

Thanks Diva :)

Thanks, it felt quite mobile and distinctly round, could move it around with my fingers like it was a tiny marble. None of my critters have ever had any lumps, including my 21 year old cat, so this is a first for me! One of the vet nurses there is my neighbour so if she's there tomorrow when we arrive I'll have a chat to her before we see the vet and i'll decide whether we need to extend the visit or whether I wait a few weeks to see if it changes at all.

I had the dogs down the beach today so i've just bathed and brushed them. While drying Josie i've found a little spherical lump in the piece of loose skin that runs between her belly and her rear leg. It's smaller than a pea and this is the first time I've noticed it so at this stage I'm not too worried but I'll keep an eye on it obviously. At what point do you worry? I'm seeing the vet tomorrow for the dogs to get heart worm tested but it's only supposed to be in and out for the test, the appointment doesn't include a 'consult'. ETA: Obviously I am worried or I wouldn't be making this post LOL, but when do you REALLY worry...

Problem is that she also posts family related stuff so it's not that simple. I need a 'block posts regarding obsessive animal lib crap' button LOL

My aunty is one. I don't want to have to ditch her from my facebook but I'm a little sick of being bombarded by links to, often exagerated, animal liberation type pages. I've just felt the need to defend my local shelter over a post she put up about a recent situation that went through the courts up here. the link she posted was the typical hard core animal lib type page with the details carefully chosen to shed a very bad light on the shelter and the work they do, talking about high kill rates, etc, whereas the truth is that our local shelter is one of the few that doesn't euthanase rehomable animals and put a lot of effort in to keeping the shelter clean and giving the dog exercise and stimulation in their large fenced grass area and walking in the surrounding streets. She's what I could only describe as rather gullible and she always seems to believe whatever crap these mobs are spewing. I do believe animal welfare is important, I choose free range meat, grow my own eggs, etc, etc but I don't buy in to all the sneaking around and semi-legal crap that these mobs tend to use.

Fair enough, that's why I mentioned the breed, different for every breed.

I use a furminator type brush on my double coated kelpie when she blows her coat, it makes a huge difference to her.

Just wondering if anyone has any tips? i try to keep the leashes off the sand as much as possible but despite it sitting on a clean rock and then hanging around my neck it still had sand and salt in it when I got home. i rinsed it in freshwater and then squirted some WD-40 into the clips on the leash and the splitter but wondering if anyone has any better suggestions to keep them nice? I've always just used cheap $2 shop leads since they walk well but I just lashed out a bit and bought them nice pretty new collars and a new matching $30 lead plus a $25 splitter so i'd like it all to last a fair while.