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Absolutely. Many of us show more than one dog in each breed. More often than not I will handle each of my dogs in their classes and then hand them off to other people for Challenge or Best of Breed etc.

If they are a dog who has naturally "mucky" ears, then I always pluck. If the ears are relatively clean then I don't bother.

Leave them be. If it is going to drop, it will drop. The last thing you want is for him to suck it back up and for the opening in his belly to close at the wrong time and keep it there! I don't believe in supplementation, massage or anything else. If the cord is too short, or the opening closes at the wrong time, then that is in the hands of Mother Nature. About the only successful thing I've found is to ignore them and to pray!

I worm everybody as soon as the girls look like coming into season. That seems to hold them and ensure the puppies are relatively worm free until their first worming at 3 weeks. Folate I give to the girls all the time. 1/2 tablet every night (which I think is about 200mcg). May not help but shouldn't hurt either as I'm told they will wee out any excess. Some only give it for the months prior to a season but I'd never remember if I did that. I'm not a believer in puppy food for girls. Most of the good dry foods are perfectly suitable for a pregnant or lactating bitch. Feeding girls puppy foods was popular a while ago before feeding dogs became quite sophisticated. Now I believe that a good quality dry, whatever else you feed and naturally sourced calcium rich foods like chicken carcasses, necks, wings, plenty of meaty bones and of course yoghurt and cottage cheese are perfectly adequate for good nutrition.

:D Semantics, semantics.... You're all saying you don't crate train. But by confining the puppy/dog to a smaller area, you ARE crate training. Just not using a physical crate. However the process and end result are essentially the same!!

Well, I have to say that having had many dogs over the years, yes, it IS possible to put an adult dog in a crate and have it stay there happily but that is not necessarily the norm. And whilst a dog may stay there happily, there is a huge difference between it being happy and quiet and CLEAN and happy!! It has been my experience over the past 15 or so years at least (out of the 24 since I started breeding/exhibiting) that crate training a puppy is a lot less stressful on a family than having a puppy underfoot. And GayleK even your suggestion of of confining the puppy to a small area of the house is STILL basically a diluted form of crate training.

Glad you got it sorted. This is precisely why I don't send "individual" pupdates to people. I send all photos of all puppies to everybody on a generic type of email for at least the first few weeks, sometimes longer because quite often, I don't know until the last couple of weeks which puppies are going to which person anyway. I always get to choose first and I don't do that until they're up on their feet and I can see what they've got!

I remember not crate training years ago too. But then the memories come back to me about how much work it was having a puppy and how toilet training was always one of those negatives thrown up by parents doing their best to forestall the cries of "I want a puppy". :D I've just reared a litter of 9 Staffordshire Bull Terrier puppies....the four that have gone to new homes are happily sleeping in their crates with very little fuss at night. If I hadn't crate/pen trained them, I'd STILL be cleaing up after the little monsters. The five puppies still here come out of their pen in the morning, head straight to the back door, empty and run over to the day pen and wait for me to let them in for their breakfast. No stopping to make a mess in the house, no getting underfoot. It's a lot simpler and safer than "the olden days" that's for sure! :D

I'm too lazy NOT to crate/pen train puppies. The small amount of effort it takes to crate/pen train a puppy becomes miniscule compared to following a puppy around and making sure you have eyes in the back of your head and sleep with one eye open alert for toilet sounds and mischief. I also think that puppies that aren't crate trained have a distinct disadvantage at various times in their life, for example if they have to go to the vet and be confined in a cage for treatment. Or if you have allergic or dog-hating friends/relatives visit and the poor dog has to be shunted outside. If you travel - for safety dogs should be confined in a moving vehicle for their sake, the sake of the humans travelling with them, for the sake of emergency services if there should be an accident and for the sake of other traffic if there is impact of some kind and the dog should escape.

Nothing "extra" here either for the girls other than Folate and lots of naturally sourced calcium.

She shouldn't have to pay to lodge a dispute of parentage I wouldn't think. That is a very serious matter, especially given she already has proof of the incorrect sire. She needs to contact the CC in a calm, concise manner with all current documentation and they will take over. It's not a matter of causing trouble for a breeder so whilst I can understand she might feel uncomfortable, it is VERY important that the matter be given to the CC to deal with. They SHOULD contact the breeder and demand that all other puppies, the dam and any possible sire be tested so as to ascertain correct parentage in order to correct the records. If the correct sire cannot be determined, then the litter will more than likely be deregistered. If I were your friend, I'd be returning the puppy to the breeder for a refund or at the very least, asking for reimbursement for the cost of the DNA testing that has been undertaken to date. IMO DNA testing for colour is a cosmetic thing and not necessary so should be borne by the owner, DNA testing for genetic defects is necessary but should have already been done for the sire and dam of the puppies so should be the responsibility of the breeder, but DNA testing for parentage is a completely different thing altogether and the onus is on the breeder to sort the entire mess out!

Puppy is 9 weeks old. I use the cages as well. Mostly outdoors, anchored with tent pegs, but did use one indoors until I moved the whelping pen into the lounge room. Provided you can anchor it some way, they serve the purpose very well.

Yes and I would think that the CC has the power to demand that the breeder organise to do so or the entire litter can be deregistered.

In all honesty, probably not much that will benefit anybody. Although if too much noise is made, it will probably make the airlines tighten things even further so that puppies of any breed cannot be flown within Australia under a specific age limit. This isn't the first time a dog has died as a result of an air flight and it won't be the last. I know of situations where some of the top dogs in certain breeds have perished DIRECTLY at the hands of airlines, and not just possibly as a result of the treatment of airlines and nothing happened. Editing to add: Whilst the situation is tragic and I feel for the puppy and the parties involved, the responsibility isn't ENTIRELY with the airline. Many lessons can be learned from this for anybody who is considering freighting a puppy within Australia during summer or any other extreme weather period.

The guy who collected his puppy from me yesterday learned that the hard way today. He had thought he was doing a good thing by buying a soft crate and one of those soft sided playpens for his puppy. He woke to find a puppy smiling at him and the crate and playpen shredded. I did warn him but he said he was happy to take the risk! He went to Bunnings today and bought a compost cage and has borrowed a wire crate from a friend until he can buy one of his own.

http://www.dragonflyllama.com/%20DOGS/Writing/confstack.html

Grass is a natural part of a doggy diet. It could be that your dog is telling you in the only way he can that he needs some vegetable matter in his diet, particularly if you feed a dry food based diet with no "extras". Dogs are omnivores. They function best on a varied diet. A dog in the wild will go straight for the stomach of the kill. And will find lots of vegetable matter including fermenting grass and other delights.

Interestingly, the AKC have just introduced a new campaign whereby if you pay (I think it is) $495, your dog can be included in an email of the top 20 dogs which is sent to ALL AKC judges weekly. I know that for some judges, advertising doesn't matter a bit, they'll still judge the dogs on the day no matter who is handling them. But I am also aware of a situation where a judge interstate recently got "lost" in her group the first day, went back to the motel and spent some time Googling that night and "found" the top-winning dogs/handlers on the second day of her appointment. And this came to me from one of the judges on her panel that weekend. Ethical, smart or otherwise? You be the judge!

That is a dilemma Whipitgood. To be honest though, in line with my "new" "less is more" intervention policy, I don't think I'd bother breeding with the girl who has hard labours any more. What are her daughters' labours like?? If they too have "hard" labours then that would be something I think I'd work at eliminating from my lines. I'm walking a fine line with Koda in that regard. I was fully prepared to have her speyed on the table when my vet did the section this time, but he honestly felt that she should be given another opportunity. I'm happy to be guided by that but if she even LOOKS like having the same (or slightly similar) issues next time then that is it for her.

Well, you've already seen how badly Bad Alice needs socialisation! Her personality is already bigger than she is!!!!!

Ummmmm....not yet! I AM going to the Huon Parades though to give Bad Alice a whirl. Unfortunately the Stafford babies are too young by two days.

If they ever do it again, I'm hoping to be there next time. I'm itching to get out and about again now that the puppies are all older and I can leave home for more than a couple of hours at a time!

Congratulations on the title. Didn't you ever title any of the Amstaffs?

My greyhound would rather be sunbaking flat out on the lawn on a 40 degree day than laying inside on the cool lino with the others. I on the other hand don't "do" heat!

I probably have even less choice than most of you when it comes to flights. Getting in and out of Tasmania can be quite interesting at times and very few places with the exception of Melbourne and Sydney have direct flights from here. BUT, I would far rather put myself to inconvenience or expense to have puppies put on a very early, or very late flight than have them starting a flight in a hot place at midday. Especially since that means sitting in the airport usually for around 1 - 2 hours after lodgement and prior to departure. My puppy that flew to Cairns a week ago was given two flight options, be at the airport at 4.30am or be at the airport at 12 noon. Originally after I paid, they sent me the confirmation and I saw that the flight was the 12 noon one. I immediately contacted them and asked why it wasn't the 4.30am flight that I had originally selected. His response was that he thought I would prefer the midday one because "everybody else does". Quickly mended and it was back to the disgustingly early start. On other occasions when I have flown dogs long ways such as NT and a previous Cairns puppy, I made arrangements for the early flight and the puppies were then boarded at the Dogtainers kennel close to the airport overnight due to my inability to be at the airport at the right time in the morning. Added a bit to the bill, but the peace of mind was immense. I've also paid Dogtainers in the past to give dogs in transit a visit and a "comfort stop" and in one case, paid $55 to have the dog sit at the Dogtainers Office for a couple of hours between flights so that he didn't have to sit in the freight office the entire time. What price life?