piper

I think it depends on if you have storage to buy in bulk. If I did I would be more inclined to travel out of the way. I know someone that used to travel a fair distance to get her dogs meat and bones - she would buy up to $200 worth at a time for herself and another friend and then they would spend an afternoon bagging it up into meal sized bags for their number of dogs and freezing. A fair bit of work but significant savings. I don't have the space to store so dont go out of my way to get it. THe places I mentioned are all no where near me but they are 1s that I will stop in at if I am in the area and get as much as I can store (only 1 to 2 weeks worth max, but hey it is a saving). I know my local Foodland marks down on Sunday afternoons or Mondays (depends on type of meat) so I will often stop in then, works especially well for getting offal. Other than that I buy mostly from my local butcher.

I'm from up north but some places that I now of that are good are: Central Market - in the arcade where there are a few butchers, can often get a good range at a good price. Rainbow Meats - South Rd near the Brickworks market. I haven't been there for awhile but they used to be really good quality and cheap also an excellent range of meats. It is a Halal butcher, so no pork but I have got chicken. turkey, lamb, beef and goat from there before. And they used to be happy to cut things to size - eg would cut the beef necks down to size. Also they used to give us extra bags of off cuts and stuff. Sometimes they would be too fatty but often there would be another meal or 2 for 3 dogs in the free bag they gave us. Rural Pet Meats - South Rd O Hallorhan Hill sp not that far from you. Heading south it is on the left hand side, just past the big pet shop - in the same block of shops. From there I have bought lamb, beef, chicken, turkey, kangaroo and venison. I got to Mt Compass for herding lessons and often stop in on the way back to get some good meaty bones from them Hope that helps. Wish I had some of those options near my place. The best place I used to go to up here now sells puppies and kittens so I have't been back for ages.

What is the suggestion for black and white dogs? I find that the whites on the face often over expose so I drop the exposure a fraction and end up losing the blacks Even worse if they have dark eyes. I have found staying in the shade helps but it can still happen a bit.

Fantastic explanation, very helpful

For anyone looking at the Oztrail Deluxe gaxebo - check out Bunnings. I was in our Bunnings today and they had a large load there of a gazebo, 3m x 3m for $169. I had a good look at it and could not see a difference to my oztrail deluxe. Same bag, pegs, frame, connectors for walls on the frame and everything. I had a good look at the connector bits where it folds and they look the same as do the button things that lock it into place. The canopy fabric felt slightly different but that could be to do with being new and mine being a bit worn. (felt stiffer)

When my dear old Reagan got diagnosed with arthritis at about 6 yeas of age we swapped the dogs over to a raw diet after I did some reading and research. Over about 6 weeks I noticed definite positive changes to his mobility and general attitude. He went back to being bouncy, happy and energetic. He is 13 now and it has only been the last year or 2 that he has required regular pain relief. Until then it was managed with diet, supplements and the occasional pain relief if he had over done it.

I buy the Kangaroo Mini Roasts that are in a herb and garlic sauce/marinade. About 30 mins in the oven then take them out, dice them up and throw into zip lock bags and freeze. BIG winner at our place and they are only about $10/kg which works out a lot cheaper than many commercial treats.

All I see is red xs

I always mean to enter but never get around to it. Tonight I went out the front and snapped some shots, thought i would get them in quick before I get scared off by the far better ideas that will end up in here. Our front yard is pretty boring but the roses are in bloom so for the first time in my life I took flower photos, my Dad will be amazed! lol. Here are my attempts. It was all manual settings - I got brave, even manual focus! THese were done at about 7pm as the sun was going down. f4.5, 1/80, ISO200, 135mm f9, 1/30, ISO200, 135mm f9, 1/200, ISO200, 110mm The last 1 is my favourite as I like the way the light is hitting it. The others were in full shade due to the house.

Took a bit of searching but I knew I had found this before... The Skamper Ramp" http://www.piginmud.com.au/joomla/skamper-ramps/4.html

They look like they are having heaps of fun. Jazz would love to run around there with them. Does the dam keep water in it year round?

Thinking about it, I remember now 1 of the reasons I went the Konika Minolta (Sony took over manufacvutring of the cameras about 3 months later) and that was at the time they were the only body in the price range with the anti shake feature in the body. The Canon and Nikon you had to get the lenses with it, which meant paying more for them. Not sure if that is still the case?

Hi Luvmy white shep I have been looking around and reading up on cameras as i want to buy one soon. The sony a200slr was what I thought was looking like the camera to buy. Then all the talk of cannon and nickon I am ever so confused once again. So good luck regards Iamgoldn I don't have the Sony alpha, but have the Konika Minolta 5D which was the predecessor and have had no problems at all other than the flash - but I caused that when the camera got dropped . The flash wasn't great anyway and when I got quotes for repairs it was around the ame price as an external flash so I got 1 of those instead. For action shots I have had no problems. And when I did my research, which was several years ago now, the kit lenses rated better than the kit lenses for canon and nikon. And I knew it woul be awhile before I could afford to upgrade the glass (and at the time did not realise just what a big diference it can make!) Until recently it was harder to get other lenses for it but there is an increasing range of sony, sigma, tokina lenses available for it. I bought a sigma 24 - 135mm f2.8 for it this year (while the $$ was strong) and definitely notice the difference with the faster lens. But saying that I still use the kit 70 - 300mm quite a bit as I often want the extra reach. So when the dollar impoves I will be looking to upgarde that lens as well.

Yeah, all that. lol We are hoping we may have some other stock we can access for next year, after my bit of a moan in the journal we had a few people contact us so we will talk further with them over summer to see what we can sort out. Otherwise there is a guy at Mt Compass - 3 sheep trialling man who also does ANKC herding - who gives lessons on a Saturday morning, it is where i go when I can get there. There is also a lady out at Burra - again does 3 sheep and ANKC. IF you want contact details for either of these PM me and I will send you their numbers. The SA Working Sheepdog Assoc also used to run once a month training days at Farrel Flat and somewhere else. Last I heard though they were not doing as many of these - fuel prices. stock access, available helpers impacting on these. There are also a few 3 sheep trialling guys around that do workshops - most of thse are country locations. Hope that helps.

Hopefully someone that currently uses a Mac will come along and help with this. I am going from my memory of using the Macs where I worked a couple of years ago. If I am correct Iphoto is basically a picture viewer - it holds thumbnails of the images for you to preview but when you click to open them, it finds them where they are saved and opens them in Iphoto. So - all of the pictures should be saved somewhere. You need to know where they are saved. When I used to download the work digital camera onto the Mac, I think it used to save them in a subfolder of Iphoto and if I did not say otherwise then it would create a new folder each time with that days date on it and put the images in there. If you can find where your computer is saving them then all you need to do is open photoshop, click on open and navigate to the folder where the images are stored. I hope that helps and makes sense. As I said - I am going from memory and a current Mac user may be of more assistance. eta: I was using a PC at home and a Mac at work and found that for quite a few things it felt like the Mac did things "backwards" - like using the scanner it scanned the image then asked where to save it, whereas my PC would ask me to select a location then select scan. First few scans I had no idea where things were going!

Great thread Ashnali, I love the pics of the kids that you did. This is a picture of Reagan and my dear departed Ricky. 1 of the first shots I took with my SLR, loved the picture of them but hated the background. And here is the after - which I have just had printed onto canvas as 60th present for my Dad as Ricky was his heart dog. I tidied it up befofe printing it - this version was 1 of my first photo shop edits. I used the colour selection tool to select 2 colours off of the wall behind them. Added a layer and filled this using the render clouds filter, blending the 1 colours I had selected. I then applied a layer mask and erased away until I had my boys. I think it worked well for trying to get around their coat as by choosing colours from the original background it was not too bad if I didn't got in too close around their coats.

I use the Herbal Whitening shampoo on the blacks of my border collies as well as the whites. It isn't a bleach as someone else said and brings the blacks up really well too. Kristen

Before I got my fored air dryer, I just used m hair dryer. I would say just go into some shops and look for the stronger 1s and the other thing ot keep in mind is a cool setting as hair dryers can get too warm. Mine has a little button I could push to change it to cool but I had to hold it down constantly which was a nuisance but did the job when the dryer started to get too hot. I think mine is a Schwartzkopf.

I attempted to reply, but tried to leave out the allergies 1 as this was not an issue for mine but it won't let me respond without answering that so maybe an n/a there would be helpful? I ended up not responding as if I said improved condition it inflates the result artificially. My experience has been that Jazz, the hyperactive skinny 1 has finally got some condition on Piper and Jessi get fed a fraction less than they used to and the coat condition on all 3 is great, but were already pretty good. I feed it in conjunction with Raw. For Jessi and Piper it would be less than 50% of their diet, for Jazz she gets it for breakfast every morning and then a main meal about twice a week, so a bit over 50% of her diet. No noticable energy difference in any of them. Jessi still sleeps all day, Jazz - well as mentioned above she was alrady hyperactive and no noticable change there, Piper may possibly be a bit more active but she has also had an injury and had chiro treatment a few weeks ago so that could be the reason for slight increase in activity - she feels better. Definitely nothing to complain about witb Orijen from me, and the price is comparible to Eagle Pack Holistic but without the grains so I will continue to use it. And shortly I will start cutting Jazz's breakfasts out and getting her back to 1 meal so Origen will be about 40% of the diet for all of them.

That's a disaster when you have puppes and I want to see puppy pics!! lol When is the Nikon due for release?

Without reading all of the replies... My answer is yes some dogs do seem to be targetted, and I put it down to the signals that they give out. My first border collie boy got badly attacked at about 12 months of age - another dog got him from behind while he was sitting at heel, looking at me. This dog charged over and picked him up from behind over the hip area and shaking him. Following this we had another few small incidents which caused hom to become quite wary of approaching dogs. This seemed to create a vicious circle - he was nervous and giving off these signals and became a target, I could have him and my other boy out together and it was always Ricky they would go for. The first attack was the only incident where he was injured, the rest to me were like school yard bullying behaviour - picking on him as he was an easy target and they could. We did lots of work on building his confidence, pulled him out of group classes as he had started shutting down in class (literally lay down flat on the ground and not move if another dog was behind him), I was doing formal obedience raining so we moved to ring work where he was on with high reinforcement. Stopped having him hanging about the verandah area where lots of dogs congregated and instead waited off to the side where I could frequently reinforce him for remaining calm without everyone too near and gradually moved him back into those group situations. I think I started agility about 12 months later and it was then that his confidence seemed to come back gradually. By the time he was 3 or 4 he was fine running with other dogs again and being back in group situations. For the rest of his life though he was the first dog to take off running at the hint of aggression - he lost the ability to stay for a few months after a dog broke to have a go at the dog next to him and took off out of the ring at an early agility trial due to an incident outside of the ring. So yes they can be targetted, but with time and work to build their social skills it can improve.

Veanna - an unofficial reply from a herding committee member. At the training days we request proof of OWNERS membership for insurance purposes. Having said that, we have not had much training this year due to the high cost involved with getting stock to SACA. If you want to PM me though I can give you numbers of a couple of ppl that do private training. Both are qute a drive though, as obviously herding is not a suburban activity.

For comparison, my adult beagle gets about 3/4 cup of Origen kibble on days being fed kibble. Some days to this I add natural yoghurt, sardines, egg or tuna but if I do add these then I remove a small amount of kiblle so it is closer to half a cup. Sh gets a kibble based meal probably 3 days a week and the rest gets raw meaty bones. I also have 2 border collies, 1 who could eat non stop and not gain weight and the other puts it on more easily. So the beagle and the BC that gains weight will get a chicken carcass split between them while the other girl gets a whole 1. Or they could get a lambs heart each or a half a liver, small piece of roo bone, small piece of lamb neck or small beef bone. I stopped feelin guily about how litle it looks as neither Piper or Jessi are lacking in any way - they have healthy coats, are active and are a good weight with just a slight covering over the ribs. As someone else pointed out, puppy food is higher calorie so 2 cups of that is probably equal to 2 1/2 to 3 cups of adult kibble in energy content.

Yes, my tax retrn came in at the perfect time. I got my lens and flash when then dollar was something like 98c so it was a huge saving.

It depends on the amount spent. I didn't with my orders. I am not sure what the limit is before duty is applied, I think it is close to $1000?