TangerineDream

I wonder if it was an attack of pancreatitis Sammy had? if the bone had a lot of fat on it that's a risk....

Something in my eye too..... Hedds, this thread is a beautiful tribute to a wonderful soul..... The memories never leave us

With fleas, I've never flea bombed a house but been able to get rid of them quite easily.. every night, lie dog on back armed with a small bowl of hot water and eucalyptus disinfectant....go over dog, picking individual fleas off and dropping into bowl...feel a sense of achievement every time you do - particularly if you get the fat juicy ones full of unlaid eggs Buy a can of "Raid Flea Killer plus eggstoppers" (purple can) and spray the house every morning as you leave if Flame doesn't stay inside....spray around the areas that she sleeps..... repeat the above processes till success... I try very hard not to use chemicals around my dogs so this method has been tried and proven over the last 20 years....I never worried about the yard because my dogs seemed to pick fleas up from being at shows and the yard never seemed to become very infested, even though one of the houses I rented had the mongrels hatching in between the floor boards from a previous inhabitant....... this way works..just takes a bit longer...but the dogs love you picking the fleas off them while they lie basking in your attention with their feet in the air...with a black Dobe, have a desk lamp next to them obliquely so that you shine through the hair...as most of them will be in the groin and around the tail, under the arms...it's not too hard...

SM, be pleased that you have a pup that likes to eat.....Tango has been listening to Shek's boy and has now taken the "why do you need to eat food" baton over from him... as an aside, just wait till your boy hits sexual maturity and starts waving it around like a red wand :p (because he can :D ) You'll pass Biology then because the lesson will be right there in front of you (did I mention boy dogs can be gross )

Tango's shots were a fortnight behind schedule so he didn't put a foot on the ground outside his yard till he was 20 weeks old. .....however I had taken him to the vet for his shots (yes, I carried a wriggling, squirming GSP and didn't put him down till the vet had disinfected the table - yes, you can call me paranoid ), and I took him everywhere with me in the car so that he could see what was going on around him and people could pat him through the cage........he has grown into the most confident, sociable and happy dog you could ever want to meet so I don't think that you can blame not having them on the ground for those first weeks for everything...Tango's proof of that .

I treated one of my Dobes as a puppy many years ago and washed her in (I think it was called in the 80's) Ectodex - smelt like sheep dip and would have killed anything at 10 paces...but only had to do it once and then follow up with topical appication for 2 weeks...never recurred.

DA, what are you feeding now? (always interested it what works well for others)

.....it is totally unacceptable for a puppy to growl at you....for any reason at all. The method you use to train the pup depends on the temperament of the pup and there's some good advice here, but you need to tell the pup "no" instantly in a l ow and gruff voice as Shek suggested if it growls at you so it understands from the start that it is behaviour that you won't accept for any reason whatsoever....

I work 55 hours plus 10 for trevelling every week, so Tango gets any training that I can fit in...usually in short spurts and at any time of the day or night depending on weather and time of year (neither of us seems to want to work outside when it's 2C with a windchill of -7C for some reason ;) ) I have yet to take him to obedience (he's only 15 months old - can't rush into these things :p ) but has all of the basics and it wouldn't take much to have him working at close to novice level. The hardest thing is getting him to 'single task' rather than 'multitask' so focus continues to be the challenge with him.....but we're getting there. I don't think that there'd be much difference if I worked half the time I do, except that i would have managed to get to formal obedience classes.

The correction needs to be suited to the dog and you may need to try a few before you find one(s) that work for your dog...the ones I use now took me a lot of trial and many errors to discover, and are different to any that I have ever used before on either GSP's or Dobes. with Tango (now 15 months and as strong as an ox with springs in his feet and no fear in his body, and no pain threshold either) , the correction which is the most effective is to put my hand gently but firmly on the far side of his neck just behind the ears, and growl in a low rumbling way.....stops him in his tracks if he's considering being a lunatic, but I do have to catch him a split second before he starts. If I've missed the opportunity and he's already hit lunatic status, I stop, stand still and silently and steadily tighten the lead until he's against my leg and really has nowhere to go........that extinguishes the behaviour without a word from me (a good thing because I sometimes get annoyed and get loud which doesn't help). I don't do the alpha roll, but I'm happy to do an 'alpha liedown' if Tango is already on his back on the couch next to me...I just restrain him from getting up till I'm ready to let him up, and that helps too.

I train every day in very short sessions depending on location, mood and purpose.. the other night, training consisted of throwing a knotted rope (working on stays, find, recall) last night we worked on 'take' and 'give' (while I was sitting on the loo) and on our walk we worked on focus and long downs. Each of these only takes a few minutes, but I've found it the most effective way to teach a 'multi-tasking adolescent' with the brain of Albert Einstein and the attention span of a gnat Eventually (probably when he is old and spends more time at ground level) we will get our show title, a CD and do agility and I'd like to get into tracking too....

Why do you want to keep the ovaries?

I've been reading Cesar's book and decided to try and put some of it into practice and see if it made a difference...so I've been practicing being 'calm-assertive' (has been difficult, but I've had some very interesting results in a very short time!!!) I'm also walking Tango (all enthusiastic 31kg) of pure muscle on a leather collar and 6' lead and have found that he's not pulling like he does on a check chain - I've found that walking past the 3 labradors who have to live behind electric fences, (because they'd shred you otherwise) this afternoon was a completely different experience to normal. Tango's very dominant and has a habit of setting 'iffy' dogs off just by eyeballing them......today I made him walk past them and stay focussed on me...and that left 3 rather confused labradors with nothing to shout at..... and if I ask him to 'look', he will now focus on me for longer.....in 4 days, these little things have made a huge difference!!!!! All I have to do it to remain 'calm-assertive' (that'll be the test.... ), but I've got a much better behaved dog!!

Thanks t(AD)pole, look forward to the diagrams... (are they on your computer as files? you should be able to upload them the same as photos if they are) I know what Tango's getting for Christmas!!!! now...how do I make a tunnel???

My bitch Tegan used to ferment some dry foods and bloat......check the side panel and see what's in it - anything with wheat can sometimes cause a problem, particularly if they have drunk quite a bit.......also how much does the dry food swell if you put it in water and leave it for a couple of hours? some expand a lot more than others.. Pleased Rex is OK!!!!

I've always taught my dogs to drop at fast pace, and to do it fast - as I say 'drop' I also drop my left knee to the ground and go right down with the dog - doing this fast and repeating it a few times makes it a game and gets the speed up. Once the command 'drop' can be executed at fast pace with the dog next to you, try doing it with the dog facing you and as you give the hand signal (I use the sweeping over the head and down with my right hand), step forward with your left foot and bend down at the knee again....when that has been learnt thoroughly and internalised both next to you and facing you......try it on a recall and step forward and go donw on the knee till you have proofed it...as your dog becomes steadier and more reliable you can lose the overexaggeration..... This one can be a fun game ;) and I've found that its one of the exercises that the dogs really enjoy because it's fast and furious....

t(AD)pole, what diameter is the piping? Looks good!

Tango does it but it's more to get my attention that anything........he brings a rock inside with one of those "I'm innocent" looks on his face - I used to take them out of his mouth, but have stopped doing it because it was becoming more frequent with the attention. He doesn't do it during the day when I'm not there....

Yes please t(AD)pole!! I'd like to make them!!

I ring, describe it to the vet and then take their advice and if they are happy with the healing, then I remove the stitches myself....

Agree that it depends on the dog - and the things that you do and the way that you handle it is an individual thing... out of 3 Dobermanns and 2 GSP's....2 of my Dobes would ask first before doing something if corrected just once (Kai never did anything without raising an eyebrow to ask permission), Cadence (previous GSP) gave up challenging me when we had a discussion the day he turned his back on me when I called him and went and climbed into the pond.......after 20 minutes having to stand on his hind legs being stared down by me, he gave up and always did what was asked of him from that day til the day he died. Tegan (Dobe) was a challenge till she jumped out of the car at obedience one night, flew across the carpark and stood bristling at one of her daughters...she got frog marched back to the car muttering under her breath all the way and had 30 minutes of solid and very fast heel work... she never argued again... Tango (maybe I should call him Sinatra).....his middle name is "I'll do it my way" ....is the most challenging (and dominant) of them all....everything is a battle that I have to win, even down to the 'if you want to get in the car you have to have a piddle first' 40 minute standoff (I won ), so with him it's I go through doors first, I regularly tell him to get off the furniture or out of the car (and make him do it), take his toys away and give them back, and on walks, he runs on a 10' lunge line, but I intersperse obedience through it - sometimes he sniffs and piddles, then I will call him to me, he'll wander off again, I'll call him to heel and do 3 minutes obedience, he'll wander off again (the release word I use is 'ok'), I'll get him to sit at a distance......that sort of thing - so with him, there's obedience sprinkled through everything he does. What sort of character does your dog have? How often are you challenged?

When Tango was little I washed him in the bath, then I washed him in the shower, then last time he decided he'd just jump into the bath on command and that solved that problem.....he stay's stiller in the bath than the shower too.......nothing harder to wash than a rotating dog

Asked the vet the same question about Tango yesterday as he 'gets hot' if it's over 18 and she suggested that he was one of those dogs that just 'runs hot'....he'll go and stand in the pond in cold water if the sun's out but even though he's shortcoated is quite happy in 2 or 3°C...hate to see how Tango's going to be in the height of summer.........

YAY!!!! Go Shek!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Go Daegon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

..you can now welcome Tango to the "I'm not going to eat breakfast" club.......and he's like Daegon - drops weight overnight . He changed his morning routine at the beginning of the week and that's when the problem started....so this morning he got force fed...will eat tea ok but just not as enthusiastic about food as usual....don't feel alone - I feel your stress....