kelpiecuddles

Just wondering whether snoring is something I should be worried about? I know is not good in the short nosed breeds as it my indicate issues but what's the word on longer nosed breeds snoring?

No matter what you get I would suggest very well supervised desensitisation to the small animals from day one. We have a lot of small animals here and my dogs have been around them from the time they walked through the front door at 8 weeks. We don't leave them unsupervised despite they fact that they are very trustworthy but at least I know that if for whatever reason one of the animals did get out it wouldn't be at risk from my dogs. It happened once where I left the aviary door open and my japanese quail flock got out, i found them lying on the grass....sunbathing, with the basset hound in the middle looking like a pig in mud looking after her little flock of quail LOL

My point is that if stats were displayed that way I suspect it would be found that the prevalence of bites was much more even across the breeds. Staffys are very popular dogs, hence there are lots of them and therefore more bites, but per 1000 dogs the number that are involved in bites could be exactly the same as the number of any other breed. I don't particularly believe in breed stereotyping full stop but if the media feels they must do it then that would be a much more telling way to examine the prevalence of bite likelihood across the breeds by removing the bias of numbers of individuals of each breed. Of course it would never make any difference with the unknown ones. Of course as far as the media are concerned bite stats shown that way would be much more boring because they'd probably just be a list of almost identical stats.

The one with the star next to it is crossbreeds

American Staffordshire Bull Terrier

Exactly Dxenion. My basset has been called a dachshund, a sausage dog, a beagle and 'What the blazes sort of dog is that?!' I'd like to see bite statistics shown as bites per capita per breed. So it would be displayed as X attacks/bites per 1000 dogs of Z breed. that would e a lot more accurate that way as it better takes in to account the popularity of some breeds

True. Personally I think the stats are probably skewed any way. I've been bitten by a couple of dogs over the years and haven't reported any of them, 2 out of 3 were from small fluffies. My daughter was also bitten on the face by a maltese last year and we didn't report that either.

Oh I have no faith in those stats, I was just more thinking about the way it will be percieved by the no clue general public that's all. Might make a few people realise how dumb BSL is.

The major advantage of a purebred over something like a cavoodle is the health testing that haredown mentioned, while there can never be a 100% guarantee health testing at least provides some assurance that the health of a pups parents has been checked to give them the best chance possible of being free of genetic issues. This is something that basically does not exist in the crossbreed world. When you add on that the benefit of a breeder who cares where their pups end up and will help you out with advice, etc for the life of the pup and it's no contest really :) It sounds like you are after a small dog but if you at any stage consider something larger I can recommend a basset hound as a breed that may suit your needs as well, they are renowned for their love of children and our Josie has certainly fit the bill in that regard.

Thanks, quite interesting. I didn't want to click in case it was one of those antivax propaganda type videos.

A back up in case none of the people who are considering adopting take it. Probably more common with the 'cute' or desirable breeds if you know what I mean. They might have had a number of members of the public looking at adopting a dog and this one was shown particular interest and therefore the pound feels it's quite likely to be adopted by someone and therefore won't need rescue.

Is this like vaccination gives kids autism?

It measn that people have been visiting to consider adopting the dog but that they want a rescue name as back up in case it isn't adopted locally after all

It's funny because I have two working bred dogs but most labs I've met are too much like hard work for me LOL

Is anyone else smiling about how much further down the list pit bulls are than even kelpies. :p

Haha, I was just thinking the same thing Jules. My kelpie just looked at me like i was a crazy person and hid her face under her paw when I tried to encourage her to get out of her bed and go outside for a while :laugh: We're pretty much exactly what that article says not to do. A kelpie and a basset hound, three young children, living in a suburban black.

I was just about to say what Mish said about the food. I bought a small bag of supercoat out of desperation a few weeks ago when i forgot to buy dog food in town. The weight just fell off my basset in the week they were eating it and I'll never buy it again. I'm now just getting the weight back on her. I know some people who like Supercoat but that's the third dog i have found did poorly on it so I won't bother again.

No luck on my part, recall is something I continuously work on for good reason, because as you say, the onus is one me to have my dog under effective control,yes I had a momentary slip which I owned up to in my first post but I was still able to call her back before she got close enough to get in to serious trouble. When I referred to them being lucky i was more thinking about it being lucky that my dog wasn't one of the most around here that just barrel up to any dog and don't have good recall.

I guess one could say they were a safe distance based on the fact that their dog couldn't have reached my dog when it was at the length of it's lead. Although I would tend to feel that 20 metres from an unknown unleashed dog if you are at all unsure about your own dog is probably not a safe distance, it's certainly not one I would risk. They were lucky that my dog does have good recall, very few I come across do. They did thank me for calling my dog back so there was no angst or anything but they did move quite a bit further don the beach after so I suspect they may have rethought whatever their intention was.

I get what you are saying there. To me it's a shame though that others can't be more understanding of things like that. I love my long leads because it means my dogs can still have freedom but i can alter the length to restrict them to an area that means I don't have to worry about others who may want to use the space in their own way too.

Maybe Snook. If that was the case it's a shame they didn't come and talk to me because I always go to places like the dog beach with a couple of 30 foot leads that the dogs can run on in areas where there are no people to bother but aren't actually allowed off leash or in cases where I need to be able to let them run but watching them 100% is difficult. If they were working on desensitizing and were worried about their dogs reactivity I would have been more than happy for them to be there and just put my girls on their long leads just for a bit of security

Have you checked how well she finds her way around in unfamiliar territory? Often blind dogs will still find their way around their homes perfectly well simply by memory and smell.

I don't find a mal to be an intimidating dog at all, infact they are smaller than the dogs I have had in the past. Most I have met have been delightful, I've worked with a few. A mal is also one of the few dogs that has managed to get it's teeth in to me, but in that case it was my own fault as he was very scared and I tried to hold his collar to get him out of a bad situation where he was about to be injured(the others were a maltese who was also acting aggresively due to fear and a toy poodle who was just poorly socialised and thought it was top dog). Just wanted to be clear that I hadn't mentioned the breed due to preconceptions about them, just to give an idea of the size of the dog in question. It wasn't just the behaviour of the dog, it was also the behaviour of it's owners that indicated that this was not a simple case of vocalising and wanting to say hello if you know what i mean.

As I said earlier it was growling when it jumped down and the way it jumped was more of a lunge, the owner followed quickly and instantly grabbed the dogs head to hold it's mouth closed and pulled it up and back. The two people who had the dog were also yelling to each other stuff like, quick, grab him, etc, etc and were trying very hard to drag him back up the sand dune. I've worked as a vet nurse and have been heavily involved with dogs for the last 15 years, I'm more than comfortable saying that the dog was acting aggressively, and I'm usually the first to point out to someone when a dog is behaving a certain way due to fear or other reasons rather than simple aggression.

Our local pound adopted out a dog as an amstaff but 6 months later the dog escaped through no fault of the owners, ended up back in the pound and now the same pound is putting the poor owners through an absolute nightmare because they listed him as a pitty cross when he was impounded despite him being chipped by the pound as an amstaff X. He's a lovely dog and they are having to keep him muzzled, penned and pay for a breed assessment out of their own pockets to reinstate the pounds original breed assessment!