ellz

Actually KC incubation can be from 2 - 14 days....most commonly around the 10 day mark. I've got two with KC at the moment. Either the Kelpie picked it up at the Royal and brought it home (but isn't actually ill herself because she started coming into season and was isolated), or the Stafford picked it up at a show the following Sunday and brought it home to his mother (who hasn't left the property for well over 6 months). I'm thinking it is the show. On about the 10th day after the show, he started to get a little bit more quiet and sleepy than he normally is, refused a couple of meals and just wasn't himself. Then on the Sunday night (14 days after the show) he started coughing and so did his mother. Benadryl, honey and plenty of rest and fluid and keeping them quiet and both are on the improve. Gone from that dreadful choking coughing, retch every time they moved to just the occasional raspy cough. It's a nuisance, but thankfully both are very fit and healthy so the risk of them getting secondary infections isn't quite as high as if they were very young, very old or not in good health. I'm not entered for any shows anywhere for the forseeable future and none of the other dogs has caught it so we might be lucky enough to get over it quickly.

Yes you are right Jaxx. Moment of weakness :D oh me too i was with you me three. I had actually promised myself to leave any thread that Moselle posted in....I slipped up. Won't happen again.

Yet you appear to have issues with breeders breeding to the standard???

So sorry for your loss. Take it up with the airline. Sadly, you aren't the first person to have this happen and unless I am sorely mistaken, you won't be the last.

This is probably because when the standard was written people didn't know that genetically it was impossible to get a blue dog with black pigment. There is that, yes. But as the UK KC have recently stopped registrations of the merle colouration in Staffords, I'm surprised that they haven't altered the nose colouring part of the breed standard to reflect the blue colour that IS allowed. Perhaps I'll ask 'em The KC do not change standards. The breed clubs change standards.

The problem is that you cannot control what people do once they own the dog/cat/horse or whatever. Written agreements can help, but only really work in favour of the people who you would probably have trusted enough to work with, without one. And of course, nobody has a fully functioning crystal ball. Things change, people change, circumstances change. In my case, I had worked with the couple for some time prior to them even getting their first dog. And he had flown over from Melbourne for just a few hours, hired a car and collected him in person. And I received lengthy, almost weekly phone calls with updates, questions and anecdotes for the four years between the time they got their dog and the bitch puppy was born. They were showing actively, doing obedience competitively and STILL keeping in touch until the bitch was about 2 years old and then they dropped off the radar. I have a feeling from reading between the lines of the information that I have discovered about them, that they split up and he went overseas. How could anybody foresee that? And why refuse to sell people who had done EVERYTHING right a quality puppy just in case they did the wrong thing? Apart from the fact that they had a litter (and aborting isn't always a reasonable solution in a bitch which you may want to have a "planned" litter from at a later date...many litters that are aborted are done at the time of a spey and that wouldn't have been an option in this case), if another person whom I had been working with under similar circumstances contacted me and said they'd like another puppy....I'd probably do the same again. And actually, I'm currently considering it. A young couple have a puppy from my November 09 litter. They are located in Townsville. When the puppy was due to leave home, they were overseas on a pre-wedding honeymoon in Japan so I was happy to keep Chilli here for a while longer. His parents were travelling around Tasmania on their motorbike early this year and dropped in to see the puppies and meet me. His father is a cynic by nature and I was very pleased to have received a report to tell me that he was perfectly satisfied with me and the puppies and when Chilli arrived in Townsville, he was so proud of her, you'd swear she was his puppy. He said then that if he weren't travelling on the bike so much, he'd have taken a puppy home with him! A couple of months ago, at the age of 53, he had a stroke and for a while, the prognosis wasn't good. But when he started to improve, they would take Chilli into hospital to visit and the sight of her really cheered him up AND has helped him to get mobile again. He's walking now and on the verge of going home and the family have contacted me to ask about the possibility of a puppy. The only litter I'm considering at the moment is a repeat of the November 09 litter, mostly in an effort to get a bitch with those bloodlines to go on with because the bitch I kept from the litter was stolen. I would be MORE than happy to send the family a puppy from the litter if it happens. Although as with Chilli, it would be on LR and if they want a male, it won't matter because Chilli is going to be desexed shortly anyway.

Why not sell them a full sister? They weren't "pet people" wanting a companion for their dog, they never would have gotten a bitch from me if that was case, let alone a full sister....there was 4 years in age between the dogs, so it isn't as though I was selling them littermates. They wanted something that was as good as, or better than their first dog, which this bitch was. They had proven themselves to be incredibly trustworthy up until that point, had followed every instruction that they had been given, had participated actively in obedience and conformation shows and at that stage, had good facilities for their dogs, including a "safe place" (ie mother-in-law's house) for a bitch in season. As is recommended many times here, they had started with a male, got the taste of showing and wanted a good quality bitch to perhaps start out with. The pedigree was a "known entity" to them....even if it was prior to the days of DNA testing so at that stage, the L2-Hga status was unknown. I had absolutely NO reason not to trust them.....then.

I was going to suggest you contact Steve!

Ahhhh...welcome to my nightmare! I currently have two dogs with kennel cough. Incubation is from 2 - 14 days, usually around the 10 day mark. Dogs can show some lethargy, loss of appetite and just not being "themselves" even as much as a few days before they start to cough. The cough may be a true "cough" or it might sound like the dog has something caught in its throat and is choking. Often followed by a good old-fashioned retch when you're sure the detached lung is going to appear in a gooey heap in front of the dog. Being vaccinated against Kennel Cough is much the same as being vaccinated for the flu. It still won't stop you from getting a different strain, but may lessen the severity of the effects. Kennel Cough isn't necessarily dangerous in itself but the secondary effects if severe can be debilitating for very young, very old, or ill individuals. In my case, I took my Kelpie to the Royal on the Wednesday and then the Kelpie and my Stafford puppy to a dog show on the Sunday. The Kelpie doesn't run with the Stafford at the moment because she's finishing her first season and she is not coughing. The Stafford started to look a bit "off" and was a lot quieter late last week and knocked back a couple of meals. (Around 10 days from the dog show). On Sunday night, he started coughing for Australia (14 days from dog show). A couple of hours later, his mother started coughing as well. All are vaccinated. I've kept both isolated from my other dogs, have been putting Benadryl down their throats, keeping the water up to them and taking their temperatures regularly. Both seem to be on the improve at the present time, if their cheekiness is any indication. But I'm still not happy that they caught it in the first place.

And again, it comes back to the "pick of litter" question. EVERY litter has a pick puppy, but whether that pick puppy is a good enough specimen of the breed to grace the show ring or be selected to pass down genes to offspring is an entirely different thing. Sadly, selling puppies to homes where you either know, or have a good gut feeling that they are going to be bred from no matter what, is tantamount to setting up the next generation of puppy mill farms and "oodlers". You may decide to upgrade the registration of a puppy to later allow the owners to breed from it, but can you be sure that they will maintain good ethics and standards and not allow your puppy to become the start of yet another "food chain"? I am disgusted that a pair of puppies that I bred and sold to somebody who I trusted has possibly done just that....I sold the people a Stafford puppy on Limited Registration for obedience with the condition (in writing) that if after a period of time, they wished to try to show the dog I would consider upgrading him to Main Registration. Because they lived in a different state, I made it a condition of the upgrade that a trusted friend of mine who is a judge and has many years of experience in the breed would have to evaluate him first. And if he agreed, then I would write the necessary letters to apply for the upgrade. This was done. The dog was shown a few times with moderate success, but the owners felt that they wished they had started sooner because it would have been fun to show a youngster. So I agreed to sell them another puppy around 4 years later. A bitch from the same breeding. A really, really lovely puppy and one I would have been happy to keep myself. They said at the time they were not interested in breeding but that if I ever wanted a litter from her, I was more than welcome to lease her back to have one. At the time, it was not possible to put notations on pedigrees from dogs here in Tasmania to say "not for breeding", it was LR, MR or nothing. So I decided to trust them. Over the years they moved and we lost contact although they could have easily found me but they didn't bother. They stopped going to obedience and dog shows. Recently, I was looking in an online International pedigree database and I was absolutely amazed, shocked and if I'm truthful, DISGUSTED to see that these people had had a litter of puppies. With the full brother and sister as parents. I'm still trying to find the people, I believe at least one of them has moved to the USA and from what I can ascertain they are no longer involved with dogs. I keep trying to tell myself it may have been accidental. But the litter were all registered on Main. And although there are no puppies listed with any of them on the database, all it means is that they have never been entered which is more than possible. OK, so what you say? Well, those dogs have now probably well and truly hit the murky breeding gene pool, if not as legitimately Mains Registered individuals, then almost certainly as BYB tadpoles. And the BIGGEST issue that I now have is that whilst the dam line is clean, the sire is a carrier of L2-Hga. So the reality is that a couple of those puppies could be L2-Hga affected and most will almost certainly be carriers. I am not proud of this, I worry about it constantly. And now, I have done everything I can for now, without resorting to juvenile desexing to prevent it. And this is one of the reasons I rarely sell puppies for show or breeding purposes to people I do not know very well. You may be able to rely upon the honesty of people for a little while, but even those you trust the most can have brain farts that can bring it all crashing down.

Seriously, when you have had a certain level of experience with a breed, there are some things that are absolutely crystal clear from a photo, whether sitting, standing or playing dead! People may not be aware that the Stafford is actually shown facing 3/4 on into the centre of the ring, not in profile like other breeds. His head is one of the first things seen and his head and front assembly are seen the MOST by the judge. Based upon the photo alone, there are things about the puppy, which at 6 months would need a LOT of improvement to be seen as even a show "prospect" in my eyes....colour immaterial. At 6 months of age, you'd be expecting to see certain hallmarks which just don't jump out at me from the photo. And there are certain things that I can see about the dog's front assembly which can be corrected on the stack by an experience person, but which are more "honestly" seen when relaxed and which couldn't ever be hidden on the move. So yes...I do think the dog is rather cute, but he'd be LR cute and in a pet home...again....colour immaterial.

Been there done that too. In fact, going through it at the moment. My pick bitch was stolen. I'm increasingly reluctant to breed from her mother again. But it doesn't for one minute mean that I should breed from one of her siblings (all of whom are on LR with spey/neuter) because they are still only second best and I don't believe in settling for second best. I agree with that Ellz but my thoughts were more along the line of "What if the puppy that has been 'restricted' to 'Show Only and Not for Breeding' turns out as good or even better AND the line is under threat for whatever reasons. Under that situation it would be a pity not to be able to use him or for the Original Breeder to make that decision to change the amendment. I still don't agree. If I lose my line, then it's my doing. Given that I keep my picks for myself, even if another puppy is potentially super, if it is sold to a companion home, then it stays a companion UNLESS it has already been prearranged that after a certain period of time, if certain conditions are met, the registration will be upgraded. I've done this too. I really don't like the idea of giving a purchaser mixed messages by telling them that "yeah, the puppy is on LR or with a Show Only or Not For Breeding notation but if I feel like it, because I just happen to have lost my line, then I'll remove the notation and I'll breed from it.....but you can't". That would really leave a good taste in a purchasers mouth now wouldn't it? No, I'm sorry but after many disappointments and the unreal expectations of show people, I rarely, if ever, place puppies in show homes OTHER than my own! If a dog is SOOOOOO good that I can't bear to part with it, then it stays with me. I've sold quite a few amazing puppies (definite show prospects or even show winners) to companion homes because that is what I choose to do with them. I breed to keep and not to sell.

I also got a reply from them. ;) So now we know. Told you so! ;) :D

I'm another satisfied customer! :D

Been there done that too. In fact, going through it at the moment. My pick bitch was stolen. I'm increasingly reluctant to breed from her mother again. But it doesn't for one minute mean that I should breed from one of her siblings (all of whom are on LR with spey/neuter) because they are still only second best and I don't believe in settling for second best.

Another vote for Cass....or alternatively Tania Hudson from Tangarlee here in Tasmania. Tania has based her Kelpie breeding program on Cass' dogs. I have one of Tania's bitches here now. She's a typically "wild" Kelpie puppy but is loving and very obedient. I would highly recommend Tania as a breeder and I know that she has a litter at the moment and possibly a 6 month old dog as well (litter brother to my girl). PM me if you would like further details. This is my girl....her 2nd show in Minor Puppy. She won Bitch CC, BOB and Minor In Group.

First lesson...do NOT listen to what other breeders say when it comes to rules and regulations!!! Seriously though, VicDogs is a business like any other. If you don't get any joy from whoever answers the phone, don't hesitate to ask for her supervisor. And if all else fails, ask to speak to the CEO. As a member, you are perfectly entitled to prompt and accurate information about registrations and transfers. As an aside....I've had a dog registered, de-registered, progeny de-registered, dog put on Limited Registration, dog put on "not to be bred" etc etc etc all at the whim of the person behind the computer terminal with absolutely NO supporting paperwork provided other than a bad attitude and a major grudge. ANYTHING is possible!

Yes....agreed....very cute....but I PERSONALLY wouldn't be considering showing him no matter what colour he was. Others would have their own opinions of course. I daresay he'd be a fabulous cuddler, incredibly funny and a real character. And that, at the end of the day, is EVERYTHING!

Google Dilute Gene Alopecia. Lots out there to be read! But yes the INCREASED appearance of skin issues in the breed is indiscriminate breeding....the scurge of every popular breed unfortunately. For MY part, I've never experienced skin issues in Staffords since my involvement with the breed commenced in 1997. But then, I also don't have "suspect" bloodlines.

Oh yeah, ive been told that before, but i cant find any brindle on him whatsoever, not that it would make any difference if there was, i love him for who he is, not hes breed or colour. Doesn't matter if you can't see it....genetically it's still there!

Not that I am aware of.... I would think that if you, as the breeder, wish to change the endorsement that it could be done in a similar fashion to the way in which a Limited Registration can be upgraded to Main Registration.

But sadly, cute is just cute. Cute doesn't make a dog a good specimen of a breed....any breed. I've seen cute "oodles" and I've bred "cute" Staffords, but it doesn't mean I want to see them in the show ring any time soon!

In a nutshell...blues CAN be shown. BUT...and this is a HUGE but!!! They do not fit the standard because the standard calls specifically for a black nose and genetically, being a dilute (or double recessive as some people know them), they cannot have a black nose. On blues, a black "looking" nose is called slate. And this still isn't black. You can show whatever you like. But just don't expect to win much under judges who know the standard. The skin issues are a result of the dilute genes. They are not part of the breed standard and are "technically" nothing to do with the reason why blues do not do well in the show ring and should not be shown. There is also the matter that ideally you want good specimens in the show ring and sadly, there are very few very GOOD, and TYPICAL Staffords that come in the blue colouration. Sad but very true. Open to debate of course, but I think you'd be hard pressed to find many true Stafford people who disagree.

Hi You don't say how old your puppy is, but from experience, Cockers can be wild children and you just need to continue persevering. Bathing is such an important part of a Cocker Spaniel's life so the more it is done, the easier it will be and the nicer it will be for all concerned down the track. Don't treat indiscriminately though. Only treat when she behaves herself so that she is clear on the fact that it is a REWARD for good behaviour and not a BRIBE for good behaviour, if you get what I mean. Now, when you say third eyelid, I take it you mean that she has cherry eye? This isn't actually the third eyelid, it is a small gland in the corner of the eye that pops out and is bright red, hence the name. I would suggest you consult a veterinary opthalmologist for this. If it hasn't receded now, it possibly won't and may require more "aggressive" treatment such as tacking back in place surgically or even removing if it is severe enough. Be aware though that removing the gland completely could lead to what is referred to as "dry eye" and can be a very painful and debilitation condition. Oh and lastly....photos are essential here!