fainty_girl

Tilly (Kelpie X): -Loves laying along the top of the lounge and she also likes walking back and forth along the top of the lounge. If she sits up there, she has one back leg on either side of the lounge, she looks so funny when she does this. -Tilly loves giving her paw to you and loves her paw being held. If she is laying on her back and you put your arm above her, sometimes while she stays on her back she will use both of her front paws to drag herself closer to you to cuddle and play. Jessie (Stumpy tail cattle dog X): -Years ago when I was teaching Jessie to roll over, she rolled over all of the way, so I used the clicker and called it a "commando roll". She's been doing them ever since. -Jessie will pee outside on command if she needs to...if you ask her if she needs to go she will either go to the door to be let out or if she doesn't need to go she will look at you like you're an idiot or even do a little bark.

I think dogs are a pretty good judge of character mostly...

I don't think dog parks are an ideal place to take children. If a dog owner had no choice and had to bring along their baby or child, I would say that if bringing a young baby the best option would be to carry them in a sling or if bringing along a toddler, use a stroller. When I used to go to this particular dog park, I would always cringe a little when i'd see babies playing in the water, where I would regularly see dogs doing their business.

Jessie (stumpy tail cattle dog X) bonded with my mum and has been her shadow ever since we rescued her. We went to Canberra to pick her up and on the car-ride home, Jessie was annoying me by standing on my lap in the car (she is a solidly built dogn and was full-grown) so I swapped seats with my mum. Big mistake ...Jessie was meant to be "my" dog, but she chose my mum that day. With Tilly (kelpie X) fortunately my mum didn't come in the car that time , and I was the first one to take Tilly for walks and have always fed her etc, so she had always had a bond with me. Tilly isn't a one person dog like Jessie though and she will bond with anyone who pats, plays or feeds her.

My childhood dog brought an almost liquified possum crawling with maggots into the house in the middle of the night. I was glad that I was 12,000 miles away when that happened! My dad has a pretty strong stomach but even he found it hard to clean that mess up! Jessie used to have a thing for possums and brought a dead one into the house :D . At a dog park that I used to go to, Tilly would go and jump into this Mangrove swamp and come out covered in mud and absolutely reeking. It started happening often enough that I started leaving a bottle of dog shampoo in the car, so a few times I had to wash her under the tap before i'd let her set foot in the car. Having her swim in the salt water afterwards for ages was not enough to clean her off, so a cold shampoo under the tap was essential!

I suppose you have to think about what you would do if Ivy didn't appreciate having another dog around. I also don't think that it would allow you to have more of your own life...quite the opposite actually. When I was waiting to hear whether I would be able to adopt my second dog, I remember someone at the dog park telling me that 2 dogs really are twice the work, and I think it is true. There is twice the mess with dog hair and them getting up to mischief. Taking them out together can also be more complicated. My two get along much better than they used to in the beginning though...when they go out together now they play a little bit, when they used to pretty much ignore each other before then at the park. It has taken them about a year to get along better.

Awww I just read this...Cesar Millan's dog "Daddy" passed away http://www.cesarsway.com/news/daddy-memoriam

:p Your husband should video it and put it on youtube.

Tilly tries to catch flies...it is just a bit of fun for them I guess. Tilly also likes torturing christmas beetles by pressing and batting them with her paws and picking them up with her mouth and spitting them out.

My kelpie X Tilly loves other kelpies...her favourite is a huge purebred kelpie boy who is being looked after by my brother. Apparently the kelpie boy doesn't play with other dogs, but Tilly gets along very well with him. They play fight together (something i've never seen Tilly do with another dog) and will try to play fetch 24/7 when they are together. Tilly also cannot resist playing with a ball-mad border collie or staffy and will spot either type of dog from quite a distance, and will run over there full speed and keep a tennis ball in her mouth the entire time while running with the dog. In the past she has also played well with both miniature and standard poodles. Tilly doesn't get along so well with dogs that are in her face. My stumpy tail cattle dog Jessie isn't the playful type but a few times at the park she had great fun playing with another stumpy tail...they played fetch together in a very similar way (eg. both would only go out so far in the water, only where their paws could touch the bottom). An old local dog (who was PTS because of old age ) and was a Border Collie X lab (I think) was definitely Jessie's favourite dog. She still remembers his name and will look towards the front door if she hears it because he used to visit every few months and hang out here.

It's a bit hard to mistake a cattle dog When walking my stumpy tail cattle dog X Jessie on the lead, I just get random people saying "allo bluey"

I don't know what mix of breeds Tilly is, but I don't mind hearing people try and guess. The pound and our vet thought she is a Kelpie X Coolie. One time I had someone guess Husky and another person guessed Staffy Quite often I get people thinking she is crossed with a border collie or cattle dog. Who knows!

Jessie does occasionally seek out and follow someone with treats. but she will normally just walk behind the person with her nose in the air. I call her away when I see her try this, but in the past she has been given treats by strangers. That doesn't bother me, but once you give her a treat she'll want to stay with you.

I'm going to print the info about the snub lead and show it to her tomorrow see what happens I just remembered that vet-n-pet direct usually have a minimum amount that you need to spend to do an order (think it was around $20 from memory). So if she wants to buy the snub lead it might be better to order from black dog directly on their site: http://www.blackdog.net.au/index.php?page=...rt&Itemid=5

Cute photos . It is nice when they surprise you in a good way. Jessie surprised me yesterday at the park...she is not a very confident or persistent dog and she does not normally choose to go in very deep water at the park, but yesterday she was really determined to fetch the tennis ball when it went in the water. She was being quite brave! A while back at the beach she did a similar thing when her favourite rubber frisbee went in the surf and we couldn't see it or get to it in time when it came rolling in towards the shore. It was getting really dark and the surf was big, and my mum and I couldn't see the frisbee so we started walking back. Jessie would not leave, and I don't know how she did it but she got her beloved frisbee out of the surf. I jokingly call Jessie a "nanna dog" at home because she is a pretty quiet and sooky dog, and I used to get random people at dog parks thinking she was old because she'd sometimes choose to just lay down and watch everything, so it is great when she shows some confidence.

Could you make some suggestions? Eg. "my friend had that same problem with getting her dog to come back, so she tried X". Or maybe suggest that she buy something like this: http://www.vetnpetdirect.com.au/BDLSNUB ...or if it is really bugging you then buy her one and say you had it laying around at home and didn't need it anymore.

I'm crap with knowing all the dog breeds, but before we got out the car yesterday my dad commented that he thought the dog was an Asian fighting breed of some sort, but neither of us could come up with a name. When I searched for info about the Jindo, the pictures that came up looked just like the dog that attacked Tilly. I just tried searching for pictures of tan akitas, and found a picture of a dog that looked like the dog from yesterday too, except the head of this dog looked more like the head of the jindo picture I posted above. Maybe it was an Akita X ?

The dog that attacked Tilly looked just like the dog on the left, except this dog was heavier and more solid looking. What would the ranger do, given that I don't have much info? Would they just log the complaint?

How do you respond when an off-lead dog is aggressive with your dog? How would you protect your dog? I went to the dog park this evening with my dad, taking our two dogs. It is a really quiet park where we normally only encounter a couple of dogs at most strolling past us. When we parked in our usual spot, my dad and I saw a man who was there smoking and having a beer with his two dogs (a border collie & Korean Jindo). While were in the car my dog Tilly (Kelpie X) started getting excited when she saw this guy's border collie running around, because BC's are one of Tilly's favourite types of dogs to run around with. My dad suggested putting Tilly on the lead until we walked through to the next section of the park, away from these two other dogs. When we got out of the car, both dogs approached Tilly. The BC seemed friendly, but the Jindo went for Tilly aggressively straight away. My dad was holding Tilly's lead and straight away on approaching Tilly, the Jindo put its front paws around Tilly and attacked her. While pulling Tilly away my dad gave the Jindo one kick to the side and it got off Tilly. The owner just stood there in the distance and did nothing, he didn't even try to call his dog away and he didn't leash his dog either...my dad called out "it was your dog, mate", and still this man did nothing to try to keep his dog away from ours. It was a very strong looking dog, much bigger than Tilly. I wanted to leave the park because I didn't want that dog to go for Tilly again, but my dad was gutsier than me and suggested that we walk through to the next section keeping our dogs on the lead (which is out of view and a good distance from where this dog was). The Jindo tried to follow us and its owner was just there in the distance staring and doing nothing, my dad firmly told the dog where to go, and fortunately it did. It was so frustrating that the owner did nothing though, had he even attempted to call his dog away then I would have respected that he at least tried to control his dog, but he did zilch! It was really lucky that my dad was there and that Tilly was on the lead, because there is no way that I would have been able to physically get this dog off Tilly, and the useless owner would have been no help as he didn't even attempt to control his dog. So back to my original question, how do you respond when an off-lead dog is aggressive with your dog? How would you protect your dog?

When Tilly wants her dinner, she will look at me excitedly while standing in front of her bowl. Quite often she will alternately lift her front legs like she is walking on hot coals while waiting. If she's particularly hungry she'll make a little crying type noise while looking at me as well. If I ignore her she will lay down by her bowl looking rather sooky. If Tilly or Jessie are tired and want to leave the dog park or if it starts raining they will stand by the back of the car and look at me. Jessie is very vocal, so if she wants something she will cry, 'talk' or bark and she'll also stare at me.

When I saw Tilly's profile on the pound website it said 1-2 years and we were looking for a dog that was about that age. The pound couldn't take her out of the cage the first day we met her, so it wasn't all that easy to tell how old she was. On the day we picked her up we saw her out of her cage for the first time and one of the first things my dad and I said to each other was that she was just a puppy. At that time the girl at the pound said she was about 8-9 months old, and we were asked to pick her birth date to go on the form. When Tilly was desexed by our vet about a 10 days later, after operating on her the vet said that she would have been no older than 8 months and that she'd never gone into heat before. When we first got her, a guy working at our house said that her coat was 'puppy fur'...i'd never heard this, but Tilly's coat changed colour and texture. Her first day here: Can't remember exactly when this was taken...maybe a few months after but you can see how much her coat changed: Physically she changed quite a bit...to me she looks very much like a pup in the older photos that I have her in comparison to how she looks now.

I disagree...I think if your dog reacts aggressively towards all dogs and you could not stop a fight from happening if another dog simply approached, then yes I think they should be muzzled. If either of my dogs consistently showed dog aggression to every dog that approached they would definitely be wearing a muzzle when out. My dogs don't love every dog they meet, but I know what kinds of dogs they play best with, I also only take my dogs to a very quiet off-leash area, where they may only see 1 or 2 other dogs at most. For me I know that Jessie is OTT with trying to round up small dogs so I now leash her around them if she is too interested in them. Jessie normally has good recall (especially when i've remembered to bring treats) so that is very easy to manage. For Tilly I know that she doesn't tolerate boisterous in your face dogs or anxious dogs, so I try to move away at the park or i'll get Tilly swimming instead, and by the time she paddles back the dog is normally gone.

I've been told the same when I was trying to get Tilly to behave when a dog was bothering her. I don't want Tilly to think it's ok to snap at a dog when it won't leave her alone and give her space. She's already a handful for me, so I don't want to create another problem to deal with!

I agree megan_ about kelpies being sensitive to their owners feelings. I also find that with my kelpie X I have to try and be one step ahead of her when I take her out. Eg. She likes to chase skateboards sometimes, so if I know that there is somebody skateboarding in the distance or walking along with a skateboard (especially when she hasn't seen/heard them) it is much easier to get her to sit down and focus on me and redirect her attention if she looks at the skateboard, than it would have been if I wasn't paying attention and hadn't seen the skateboarder. It's not always possible to be one step ahead of Tilly because she obviously has better hearing than I do and she is an alert dog and a fast runner, but it definitely helps! That was probably me! My Kelpie X who I got from the pound as a pup is dog aggressive, and one thing I have learned from this experience is that not all dogs enjoy dog parks. From my experience, working in a dog daycare and watching interactions there, and talking to lots of other Kelpie owners, I don't think Kelpies in general are good busy dog park candidates, as they tend to like their space around other dogs. Yes i'm pretty sure that it was you Kavik, thanks . Tilly does like other dogs to give her space and isn't keen on boisterous or anxious dogs who try to get in her face. She does like her space but then she also likes to round up dogs (especially when they are playing fetch) as well. She does enjoy busy dog parks, but it is way too exciting for her which results in her not listening and being quite difficult so I refuse to take her to busy parks. Quiet parks definitely suit her way more, then only downside is for me because it is a longer drive .

On this forum there was another kelpie owner who used to say that busy dog parks aren't always the best place for kelpies and this is certainly true for my kelpie X Tilly. Tilly isn't an angel, but i've found that she is much better when she is exercised in quiet places where the odd dog might stroll through with its owner. Busy dog parks are just way too much for her and I stopped taking her to them when she was starting scuffles with certain dogs. So I only exercise her in quiet places and I work on her recall by rewarding her with pats & praise (which she loves), a game of tug-of-war, or sometimes calling her over to me and giving a jump command for her to jump over a bench. For Tilly things have to be exciting and she tends to ignore an even slightly grumpy tone of voice! Tilly was about 8 months old when I got her from the pound and she had zero training to begin with, so she has improved since we got her, it is just a gradual process. It sounds like you definitely need some help from a professional. I hope things get better for you soon!