sandgrubber

My dogs are social and don't need pampering; they have no escapist tendencies. I don't mind them getting some different sort of food for a week or two, so long as they get quality food, and they are healthy. So I'd look for a place that provided group exercise, didn't keep them locked up during the day . . . some place to swim would be a big bonus. Willingness to treat dogs as individuals. Having someone in attendance is important, and that someone must be skillful in handling and judging dogs . . . ie, be able to recognize what dogs are going to have problems socializing, and keep them separate. Loving dogs is not enough. I've hired many young people who love animals, but are pretty clueless in terms of predicting behaviour. Grassed exercise areas. Clean and not at all smelly (including the kitchen). Well lit, well ventilated, doors to the back of the individual kennels that open directly onto an exercise area. Good if the kennel is well enough established that they can simply turn away. I prefer feeding twice a day, not cause the dogs need it, but because it requires that each and every dog in the kennel gets looked at twice a day. I started a boarding kennel years back. I found that there's a market for many sorts of kennels. You will find that it is expensive to maintain large individual exercise areas that do not allow contact between dogs. There are dogs who will have a go at other dogs through a chain link fence. You can double the fence, but it's expensive and you end up with an area where you can't cut the grass. If you have, say 20 kennels, each with it's own run, which is what a lot of DOL people would want, you'll go nuts trying to keep the grass mowed. Gravel or cement runs are awful, particularly in hot weather. Heating and air conditioning presents serious quandries. People with apartment-style lap dogs want A/C. It's expensive and to be effective, requires closed, insulated kennels, which makes both ventilation and cleaning more difficult. Evaporative cooling is bad. Dogs, apart from the flat faced breeds, have quite effective systems for cooling themselves through evaporative cooling, and if you put them in air that is humidified by evaporative cooling, it compromises their natural cooling systems. The best cooling system is cold water circulated through the floor, particularly in the sleeping area. This allows the dogs to cool themselves like they do in nature . . . by finding some cool dirt and lying there. Look into putting a radiant heating/cooling system into the floor. You can use the same system for slab heating in winter by piping warm water.

There have been many such studies, with similar findings. I think the briefest summary is being too anal and too uptight about exposure weakens the immune system. Justifies both keeping dogs, and being lax on the housekeeping :)

This is correct, but the end game with the modern purebreds was to create something to breed 'true' and consistant. DD's do not have this goal, only financial rewards. Therein lies the BIG difference! Breeding for true and consistent lines happened, eventually. I suspect that the dog dealers in Newfoundland who supplied 'water dogs' to English/Scottish buyers were motivated by the desire to make money, not a goal to create a consistent type. It's documented that they crossed to larger dogs when the market wanted larger dogs . . . hence the Newfoundland's giant-ism . . . and who knows what else they did. When the dogs hit England, there was a lot of experimentation, generally aimed at producing better gun dogs. It took many many generations before breed standards were developed and consistent and true breeds emerged. My guess is that some of the DD crosses will sort themselves out, as the F-N generations of the labradoodle are doing, and some of them will fall by the wayside. The landed aristocracy isn't what it used to be. The way that breeds are created and evolve will necessarily change. There is large demand for dogs of certain types. If 'the fancy' doesn't satisfy this demand, people will turn elsewhere. I don't think the purebred community has a reason to complain.

I think fighting DD's is a loosing battle, and doing so vocally generally alienates the purebred dog fancy from the general public. To someone who has their heart set on a particular DD cross, someone trying to stop a breeder from producing that cross looks like an arrogant snob. After all, many of our modern breeds were created through a lot of cross breeding 150 to 200 years ago. Eg, many gun dog breeds enjoy the benefits of introducing bloodlines from the lesser St. John's 'water dog'. The modern pug looks nothing like the pugs found in 17th and 18th century paintings. Half of Queen Elizabeth II's famous corgis are, in fact 'dorgis', ie corgi x daschund (information found on the Royal website). Better to reserve energy for breeding healthier dogs, who fit in well with modern lifestyles. If you want to pick on breeders, put pressure on those who use dogs with unstable temperament or known health defects.

From all the litrature I have read a 10 year old dog is the equivalent of a 53 year old human. .... That is roughly true when you're speaking about organs (including bones, skin, etc.), but cell mutation is different. At the cell level, it is thought that the probability of mutation of a specific gene is roughly constant per year. That is to say, a year in a dog's testes is the same as a year in a man's testes, and the probability of things going haywire is cumulative over time. Dogs, being shorter-lived, don't have as much time for mutations to accumulate. See, Mutation rates in mammalian genomes, S. Kumar, S. Subramanian, Proc. of the NAS 99, 803–808. 2002. My statement may be off, as presumably inherited mutations occur in the reproductive organs. Thus it might be more accurate to start the count from the age of sexual maturity . . . making a 10 year old dog (assume viable sperm created at 1 yr) somewhat equivalent to a 23 year old human (assuming viable sperm produced at 14). Science isn't good at establishing mutation rates. They vary for different alleles and different species, and are affected by environmental factors. But as far as I know, the concept that chance of mutation is more or less constant over time has not been seriously contested. . . . and all else equal, more years, means more mutations. Ie, longer lived animals are more likely to suffer from mutations occurring in cells of the reproductive organs. Bottom line: given a choice, I will always prefer an older dog. p.s. I have taken concepts used to try and translate measurements of genetic divergence between lineages to geologic time and used them on time scales of a few generations. There may be reasons that this shouldn't be done. I'm outside my field of expertise. Happy to be corrected.

Good article. Thanks for posting. I've been interested in the Belyaev experiments for many many years. This article presented them from a different angle. At one point I considered signing up for adopting one or more domesticated foxes. Turns out that the only sell them desexed and the adoption fee was around $5k, which killed the idea. Something Goldman didn't say is that the experiments were more successful than Balyaev expected. He originally measured domestication on a scale of 1 to 5. I can't remember how long it took, but it wasn't a huge number of generations before he ended up with all his foxes in the most-domesticated group and had to rework his scale. I personally think dogs also range in the extent to which they are domesticated . . . and ongoing selection for temperament is one of the most important aspects of "improving the breed". p.s. I think he's wrong about tail-wagging. I've seen wild foxes wag their tails . . . just not at people.

Oh yes!!! Mind you - the cartoon animals were still very popular - and cute , but we knew real ones were different! :) And you, like me, probably never had to ask for a puppy . . . animals were always there. Your parents were there to yell at you, or smack you if you misbehaved around animals. Modern urban/suburban kids see puppy on cartoons etc., and beg and wheedle until their parents buy them a puppy. Mum now works outside the home, so puppy is left alone for many hours a day. The better ones do 8 weeks of puppy preschool, but don't follow up with later training. The result is poorly trained dogs, adults with few dog-handling skills, and kiddies (especially those whose parents didn't buy them a puppy, and those who ended out with a small dog with soft behaviour) with naive, Scooby-Doo expectations. My parents weren't dog-stupid, just horse-stupid, and nobody in our neighbourhood was much of a horseman. Gene Autry & Trigger . . . Mr. Ed. . . I don't know where kids caught horse mania came from in those days, but my sister caught it bad. She begged until she got a horse. We played around the horses, without supervision. I ended out with a ruptured kidney. My sister was thrown and got a dislocated shoulder.

The problem isn't Scooby Doo, it's the absence of more realistic models. It's the fact that kids get 20 hours of Scooby Doo for every hour of realistic training they get about dogs. It's the puppy pajamas they are given before they can walk or talk. It's all the media hype about puppies, that gets kids to nag parents to get a puppy, even if their family setup isn't right for a puppy. Sometimes the problem isn't kids treating dogs like humans, it's kids being mean to dogs and using them to take out all their emotions.

If I understand the mechanisms, the amount of DNA damage per year should be more or less the same for all species. This means your 10 year old dog is equivalent to a 10 year old boy. So I wouldn't worry about it. At least your old guys give you info about how well the line ages . . . and greater protection diseases like epilepsy often show up at five or six years.

Worrisome. The following add is being spread around through the US equivalent of Gumtree (Craigslist). Might be worth doing the same in Oz . . . I have no love for HSUS, but some of the stuff they do is good. 5000 REWARD (DOG FIGHTING) Date: 2012-07-29, 5:21PM EDT Reply to: see below Help Publicize THE DOGFIGHTING HOT LINE FOR THE PUBLIC - 1-877-847-4787 - sponsored by Humane Society of the US. $5000 reward for information leading to the arrest of dog fighters. 1 877 847-4787 PLEASE COPY & PASTE TO EVERY CRAIGSLIST. DOG FIGHTERS ARE FLAGGING THIS ADD. THEY DO NOT WANT THIS INFORMATION OUT THERE. PLEASE HELP SPREAD THE WORD. THESE DOGS NEED YOUR HELP!!!

If people would keep their damn cats indoors, incidents like this wouldn't happen. I don't endorse spending on condemning a dog who has the wrong look, but I fully sympathize with letting the fire department -- who have the tools and often have nothing to do -- do the job. I don't know how high up the cat was, but the appropriate cherry picker would probably be a couple hundred dollars and hour, including transit time. Rescue organizations have enough to do without being responsible for getting animals out of trees. Let the owners pay it!

Good to hear things continue to be better. When you see your vet again, you might want to have another discussion about weight loss. In my experience, vets don't generally recommend canned food unless the dog needs a specialized diet . . . dry food is usually preferred for weight loss. Dry food is more condensed than wet food, which is mostly water. Thus, a cup of biscuits has a lot more joules than a cup of canned food. Whether or not it's fattier depends on the fat content of both, and whether you look at fat per volume or fat per unit dry weight. The better a approach to weight loss, at least as put by the vets I've worked with, is to use a very high quality of biscuit, reduce the quantity fed, and maybe move to a variety with lower fat content (ie, weight loss biscuits). Ad lib works with some dogs, but many will overeat; so portion control is required. Canned food is expensive, often not well balanced, and bad for teeth and gums. Others will advise about BARF diet. This can be good, but it's a lot harder to manage than biscuits.

Why bother shopping for a second opinion if the insurance will pay for it? And if you have insurance, be aware that you're paying for people who don't bother to get a second opinion.

I don't so much agree, I think you can have the healthiest, most well bred pet but in the end, things happen. . . . I was speaking about probability. Of course, some individuals with dogs from healthy stock whose owners did everything right will have serious health problems. But odds are, that their pet health bills will come out to be less than their insurance fees in the long run. If it were otherwise, the insurance companies would go broke!

Not all Lab puppies are hellians. I've raised at least a dozen of them and have never had serious behaviour problems. Ok, I have a big yard and allow digging in the field . . . I'd have garden problems if they were confined to a small yard. I suspect the reason Lab pups have a bad reputation is because so many first time dog owners get steered toward Labs. People who don't know how to raise dogs are likely to end out with behaviour problems no matter what breed they choose. The better known show breeders usually keep long waiting lists and do not advertize. If you find There are some fine breeders who aren't all that well known. There are many people who breed healthy labs with good temperament who don't much care for the show ring. If you want a working type, try going to some retrieving trials . . . or sitting in on some beginners retrieving training sessions . . . great place to look for pups who are easy to train. You say health and temperament. Get a better definition of temperament, and make it clear to the breeder what sort of Lab temperament you are looking. Labs can be lazy laid back or quite high drive. I think all decent breeders will say that aggression or the lack of an off switch is a temperament fault, and biddibility is desired. But past that there's a lot of disagreement. Do not fall into the trap of equating the things that are tested (hip and elbow scores, PRA, and EIC) to health. Make sure to ask about longevity, epilepsy, skin problems (alergies and hot spots), patella problems (according to OFA 5% of labs have patella problems), bloat, or cardiac problems. I wouldn't worry greatly about EIC unless they intend to work the dog really hard. Many (most?) EIC affected dogs never have an episode, and when they started testing a lot of people were shocked to find their favorite working dog was EIC affected. It's a bonus to be unaffected. But as we get more and more genetic tests, we're going to have to recognize that some of them are more important than others. A breeder who can follow health matters back into the pedigree, and out into half siblings and siblings of sire and dam is good. If they say no problems anywhere, don't trust them. Ie, I'd almost consider it good if they say the grandsire's half brother had epilepsy. It doesn't greatly increase the chances of epilepsy and tells you that they know their lines well.

I'm also in the put-money-aside camp. What I'd like to see i what fraction of the $ spent on pet insurance actually goes to paying for vet care, and what fraction goes to paying salaries, expenses, and dividends to stockholders in the insurance company. My guess is it's something like 80% to paying claims, 20% to the business. If that's a good guess, then, all and all, vet bills are inflated by 20% by people going the insurance route. But it's worse than that. Buying insurance is essentially a bet that your dog is less healthy than average and you are unskilled in selecting vets who give quality service for reasonable prices. If you select dogs from healthy stock, feed them well, and follow guidelines re exercise, etc., you should come out ahead of the curve. Especially if you are sensible about not prolonging life into the stage of rapid degeneration, low quality of life, and big vet bills. Worse still, more and more vet practices who are managed by a business administration type instead of a vet. Ie, they are keen on getting you to do as many expensive procedures as possible, they spend money on making their offices 'attractive', and they get big on 'reminders' about vaccinations that aren't necessary. Such practices LOVE pet insurance. The insured client has, in effect, already paid for vet care, and thus will not question extra tests, etc., and will gladly go the extra and unnecessary mile.

The question of purity can get silly in the case of East Asian breeds, such as poms, pugs, or shar pei, that have been greatly modified after being introduced to the west. From one perspective, a bonemouth shar pei is purer than most western shar peis . . . even if it doesn't have a kennel club pedigree. The same can probably be said of many 'primitive' breeds. See, eg. http://www.hkshar-pei.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=browse&id=114529&pageid=1

Congrads. Good to hear things are going well. Hope you get several more healthy years out of your boy. Wish I could get portion control down for myself . . . and take off a couple kg in a week :) I find it interesting that so many seem to hold higher standards for their dogs than for themselves.

Great story. Thanks for posting. If dogs can smell gunpowder and other chemicals, it's not surprising that they can smell bones. If they did more archaeological scent detection training, it wouldn't surprise me to hear dogs were finding sites that are many thousands of years old. I do wish they would stop distinguishing Labradors by color, though. Black, yellow, chocolate . . . they're the same breed.

One person's purebred is another person's mutt. If we want to look at the really fine points, we could ask whether pure bred and purebreed and the same thing.:)

Not really, however the breed I am seriously in love with/ dreaming of importing etc has a cross breeding program going currently. The aims of this program are to increase the gene pool and also to try and reduce a breed specific seisure disorder. Obviously the dogs won't be crossed with just any breed, the crosses themselves are approved before the matings take place. After 5 gens, the crosses will be considered a pure example of the breed. Although if the dog is a good example of the breed they can be classed as 'pure' sooner. A 3rd generation bitch I believe went BOB at the national championship. This is a recognised breed by the kennel club in it's country of origin so can be shown in champ shows along with all other recognised breeds. Personally, I'd be proud to own a dog whose health prospects were improved by a well-designed outcross-backcross program. It's the right thing to do. If people put notions of purity above health considerations, that's their problem.

You could say the same of any breed in any home setting other than those expressly bred to be lapdogs. Plenty of DOLers have herding breeds, plenty of DOLers have vermin hunters. Why ping the royals for what so many DOLers do exactly the same? Or maybe you do. I said I don't get it. No criticism. Picture half a dozen herding dogs walking around through polished marble corridors. I went to the official Royal website (http://www.royal.gov.uk/TheRoyalHousehold/RoyalAnimals/Familypets.aspx) to try and fill out the picture. Turns out I that the Queen has three Corgis and three 'Dorgis' . . . daschund x corgi crosses, all castle-bred. Oh my ! She's a BYB (with a very large and posh back yard). Now, I'd completely understand if she'd taken a few of those lovely Sandrigham Labradors as companions :)

No surprise. Pack encounter between two different groups of scrappy dogs. It's beyond me why anyone wants a pack of herding dogs, or a pack of vermin-hunters, in a palace environment. But . . . I don't get royalty.

The article I recently posted in "Studies About Dogs" may be of interest. A group at U. of Barcelona followed a dozen cases of pain-related aggression reported to vets. HD was the #1 cause. The article is one of those technical ones you have to pay for, but has been widely discussed and summarized online. Google "dog pain aggression Barcelona" to find various summaries/reports. The paper went into behaviours associated with pain and factors (eg. hunger) that may make the aggression worse.

Comments like this amaze me. The majority of Dolers refer to their dogs as their kids &/or best mates, as long as they are well trained, I can't see how people can make such statements. Do you think the dogs know the meaning of the words? Sorry, but I have very little patience with people who are so 'gushy' over their dogs that they 'humanise' them to the point where the poor bloody dogs end up with no idea where they come in the 'pack' order, and situations like this (as we are discussing) occur. Are you actually suggesting that dogs should have dominance over their owners??? Or perhaps people should not realise/accept that dogs have fur, not skin, have 4 legs, not two, and don't have the intellectual ability of a human child? Sure dogs are certainly clever and intelligent animals, but they are not human, and never will be - they are still animals and tend to do what is programmed by nature into them, as animals do. People may refer to their dogs as 'their kids' but treating them as such, ie: humanising them, is a recipe for disaster, as this idiot owner has discovered. Dominance theory, as advertized on TV, has been broadly discredited in animal behavioural science (ethology). I'd be willing to bet that more dogs have turned violent as a result of abuse than as a result of being babied. Of course dogs are of a different specie and not endowed with human intelligence. No one who talks of their 'fur kids' really thinks they are kids. And yes, I'm sure dogs are sometimes confused by misdirected loving attention. But there is no question that loving relationships between dogs and people, by-in-large, benefit both the dog and the owners.