gapvic

Dogs (on lead) welcome at this event. Come and meet our beautiful greyhounds!

Greyhound Adoption Program Christmas Festival and Open Day Sunday 28th November 10am till 2pm EVERYONE WELCOME! Free adventure rides and games, animal farm, christmas carols, face painting, live music, market stalls, food vendors, and heaps of beautiful greyhounds to adopt. All dogs welcome (but on lead please) http://gap.grv.org.au

Can anyone point me in the direction of more balanced articles, that advocate the use of both positve reinforcement, positive punishment, negative reinforcement and negative punishment?? Or an article that questions the validity of using ONLY positive reinforcement as a training method? I'm so confused by it all :-(.

Our last litter (greyhounds) were born six weeks ago - five girls and three boys. We have a bathroom that is being renovated, so they were whelped in there (bathroom has been stripped so it's currently just a bare room with tiled floor). The pups were whelped in our heated whelping box, straight onto newspaper. After the bitch had finished we cleaned up, put fresh newspaper down and the fluffy vet bed on top. The pups remained in the same room until last weekend when they turned six weeks. We have now shifted them into a stable inside a shed, still with their heated whelping box on. We've just started to turn the box off during the day but back on at night. We'll slowly harden them off and then they'll shift out into a rearing paddock. Stable flooring is concrete and we put newspaper down over this. We had newspaper on the floor of the bathroom when the pups started to get out of the box. We also had a fan heater in there that was used during the first couple of weeks to keep the temperature up. I sleep with the bitch and pups the first couple of nights, and use a baby monitor after that. Pups were handled many times each day, and weighed daily till two weeks (then just weighed prior to worming). Dew claws removed before they were one week of age and nails trimmed a couple of times a week. They were given their first soft toys as soon as they were starting to play (can't remember if that was three or four weeks) and now have quite a collection LOL!

Here in Victoria it is illegal to let greyhounds off leash in ANY public place. If you want to legally and, more importantly, safely allow your greyhound off lead, just go to one of the slipping tracks . You should never ever let them offlead in an unfenced area, nor walk them offlead. Despite their couch potato status, they are sight hounds, can take off in persuit of a piece of paper (across the road), and generally have no road sense. You can train a greyhound to have excellent recall (I have) but that has taken a few years! You are best to suss out a local fully fenced cricket oval or local dog club that has a fenced area. As I said in my earlier post, exercise levels are dependent on the dog. We have a handsome young fellow in foster care at the moment who has 2 x 2 hour walks most days and he loves it. We have others in care who couldn't care less if they never left the house (so long as they to go on trips in the car). You need to remember though, that we are now in winter, and once the warmer weather comes, their excercise would need to be a lot less due to the heat.

Most racing greyhounds don't just sit in their kennels all day . Some days, they'll head off early to trial. If they are not trialling, then they will be walked or galloped almost every day. They will also be checked for injuries / soreness etc. They are also taken out of their kennels quite a few times a day to go to the toilet. And most kennels have a radio or TV going most of the time too . Sometimes I think that racing greyhounds actually get more interaction with humans than some pet dogs do.

last one. I love this little dog - he reminds me so much of one of mine we lost last year.

couple more!

I'll see what I can do - they will mostly be of greyhounds though LOL!

another pic

A huge thank you to Pet Rescue and Pedigree for allowing our greyhounds to take part in the promo on Hey Hey It's Saturday last night! Along with GAP there was also Beagle Rescue, Shar Pei Rescue and Blue Cross. All dogs behaved beautifully and did a wonderful job promoting adoption across Australia

The whippet babies are lovely!!

yeah, she's cute - her name is Quinn :-). The blue fawn girl is my favourite, but they are all just so sweet!

Our greyhound babies were three weeks old on Sunday :rolleyes: . Thought I'd share some pics with you.

Cockerlover, could you let me know the date your pups were born and number of girls/boys and I'll update the OP? Thanks! Jencol - haven't heard from you - hope everything is well with your girl! Ashanali, your babies are lovely! Mine are just starting to open their eyes now at 12 days.

Thanks Erny. Please feel free to forward onto anyone you think may be interested. It's a bit of a tricky one for us to fill given the location :-)

We have a casual, two day per week position now available for someone who is interested in training. Position description etc here: http://www.grv.org.au/General/PositionsVacant.aspx (it's the last one on the list) Kind regards Larissa

Hi gaawjustaffs, Firstly, suggest to your mother that she contacts GAP for advice. They will be able to assist :-). Secondly, bed or space aggression, while not acceptable, is not uncommon in greyhounds. It is fairly easy to correct and GAP will be able to provide them with the right advice. Doing some basic obedience is a great idea and will also help with the situation. Kind regards Larissa

Thanks heaps to Jay for sending me the link to the Brackett article! Link here for anyone else interested: http://www.kristari.com/brackettplannedbreeding.pdf

Thanks! I did visit the breedingbetterdogs website and found an article about Brackett, but to be honest I found it vague and not very well written. It also didn't go into a lot of detail. Someone has PMd me a link to the book online so if the link works I'll put it here too :-)

I'd be really interested to read Brackett's "Planned Breeding". I've been googling with no luck - does anyone know if it has been listed online anywhere? Or where I could purchase a copy? Many thanks!

Thanks Kanati, she's a keeper I think. We think she's a throwback on the dams side to a very good blue dog so fingers crossed LOL! The blue fawn is also quite pretty. A big thank you to Maddie for giving us some colour!

Wow Ashanali, what a wound! How is she doing today? Photos of our greyhound babies attached :-).