sandgrubber

Whoa! You guys are talking past one another. Lo Pan states: "Suppose I had 10 lollies in a jar, 7 were blue, 3 were green. Suppose I were to stick my hand in the jar and retrieve 1 lolly at random, my chance of selecting a blue one is 7/10. After having selected the lolly and describing it, it could be said that I have a 1/1 chance of having a lolly with the characteristics particular to it." The point is that each breed is its own bag of lollies. If blue is DA and green is dog friendly, some breeds will be 7 blue to 3 green, while other breeds are the reverse. Someone breeding for fighting dogs in a breed that's 7:3 in favor of DA might end out with, say, a 9:1 distribution in their pups. Someone trying to breed out aggression may get the distribution down below 5:5. "As such, whether or not someone else's APBT plays the harmonica while jumping through hoops of fire and juggling has no bearing on my particular dogs particular characteristics, even if selecting a dog from the breed with the aforementioned characteristics is more probable than not." You don't tabulate the odds after the lotto draw. As you state, after you draw, your chances are 1/1 of having what you have.

I have a low opinion of breeders who put conformation above temperament. They exist, and some of them win trophies.

See the reference in the post by SkySoaring Magpie in 'Studies about Dogs' above (reposted below). Scientific work seems to show that pups that get a lot of exercise are likely to end out with better hips. . . . though stairs weren't good. The study was based on questionaires to owners of 500 dogs and followed their histories over 10 years. http://www.scienceda...20326112842.htm Quoting from the article: "Puppies born in the spring or summer [in Norway, where winter-born pups stay indoors] and at breeders who lived on a farm or small holding, had a lower risk of developing HD. After about eight weeks, the puppies began life with their new owner. The opportunity to exercise daily in parks up until the age of three months reduced the risk of HD, whereas the daily use of steps during the same period increased the risk. Overall, it would appear that daily exercise out in gently undulating terrain up until the age of three months gives a good prognosis when it comes to preventing HD."

As usual, there's a combination of genetics and environment. With Labs (and goldies, cockers, pointers . . . etc), I wouldn't blame the breed, but I sure hope people take a careful look at the breeding. Please add breeders to your rant, especially gun dog breeders who are willing to breed from dogs with unstable temperament or DA/HA tendencies. Gun dogs must be dog social. A dogfight is totally unacceptable in shoot. Temperament faults are at least as serious as faults in physical conformation! The show ring has a lot to answer for . . . in my opinion, failure to root out unstable / aggressive tendencies is at least as bad as encouraging extreme conformation. My personal rant is about Pedigree Dog's Exposed. JH is obsessed with photographs. I'd guess as many dogs die early deaths and live unhappy lives due to unstable temperament and unsocial tendencies than due to brachycephalic heads or wrinkled faces. I don't give a hoot about whether a Shar-pei is a bonemouth or a meatmouth (a la http://pedigreedogse...style-icon.html ). I'm very concerned about whether some lines of shar-pei present behavioural problems. Seems to me that pugs, Cavies and Bostons (favorite PDE targets) have succeeded cause they are easy dogs to live with, especially on a small property or in an apartment. You need to breed FOR the successful characteristics as well as against the unhealthy ones.

I've never seen the DOL community so strongly in agreement on a question. Guess there's no need to feel embarrassed about getting a grin and a chuckle from pictures of dressed up dogs :). Maybe we need a new thread for displaying dogs in a different kind of show.

Yeah dogs! Yeah Labradors! Great story. Thanks for posting.

I was impressed that the news story above simply refers to 'large dogs'. I doubt there was a reporter on the scene, and the police often keep silence. Rumors abound, cause people want information and sometimes there isn't much . . . or what there is is confusing. It seems that the public has an appetite for breed specification, and some parts of the press cater to it with speculation.

That rumor has been around for many years. Personally, I think the Banjup kennel zone is in more danger than Canning Vale, as there are a lot fewer kennels and they're on 5 acre parcels, as opposed to mostly 1 acre parcels in CV. In theory, Banjup is protected because it's on the margin of the Jandakot Water Mound. But the water mound isn't well mapped and I'll bet a little scientific measurement could show that suburbs on sewer systems would be no worse than large kennels on septics. With land prices where they are, a 5 acre parcel is a nice holding, and I suspect many of the Banjup crew would be happy to sell out if they got the right price.

A Pit Bull is just that , same as a kelpie is a kelpie. There are bull breeds other than APBTs , is that what you meant? The definition of pit bull varies geographically. In some California counties, a Staffie is legally classed as a pit bull. Where bull breeds are common and not commonly on any pedigree register, the distinctions get blurry. Where I live, all bull breeds are commonly referred to as 'pits'. Some 'pits' wouldn't meet the APBT or ASBT breed standard, others would. I don't hate bull breeds, but see both APBT;s or SBT's as part of a breed group that often have issues with other dogs, and if of the wrong bloodlines or in the wrong hands, can be dogs that require extremely good containment and a strong collar/leash/handler. It amazes me that SBT's are SO popular in Australia, while pit bulls are banned. Pitties, like Staffies, are, for the most part, sweet, funny, loyal, cheerfu, waggy dogs. Except when they aren't. Very few of them go bad. Those who do are a problem. In this particular instance I see the BIG NO NO as a pack of dogs allowed to roam. Sorry. There's no excuse for that. Doesn't matter what breed. I don't care if your fence blew down in a cyclone. If you have multiple big dogs who will act as a pack, you MUST keep them contained. Full stop. If you're not prepared to create accident-proof containment, restrict yourself to dogs who are unlikely to do real damage to other animals or people. If your dogs get out and do damage, you deserve the full force of the law . . . if not worse.

Http://totallycoolpi...ressed-up-dogs/

Especially tragic for the guide dog's owner. We all love our dogs, but loosing the animal you depend on for sight must be devastating. With respect to laws, it might make sense to regard free roaming packs of two or more dogs as dangerous, regardless of breed, regardless of prior history . . . and to encourage public reporting.

I am merely sharing my opinion on the situation........should I just agree with what other's are saying.......sorry I don't You need not agree . . . I agree with some of the directions you are coming from. But more thoughtful and civil language would result in a more productive -- and less inflamed -- discussion. Don't bait 'em and they won't rise to the bait.

Is that what you had in mind m-sass? I think not..... Fighting fire with fire may work in fire fighting, but only if you set a backfire to work against a normal heading blaze. In a dog fight or argument, it tends only be more like adding one headfire to another headfire . . . resulting only in more flames. Harmless enough here, but indigirl, why waste your breath . . . and m-sass, unless you're angling for confrontation, why not choose your words more carefully? There are reactive dogs . . . and then there are reactive people. I'm on the reactive side myself, and I'm probably making an ass of myself trying to stomp out flames, but what the hell.

"Birdseed exclusions extist so that people get insurance early." ????? meaning????? Maybe I'm a grumpy old woman, but I don't see why people no longer save 'for a rainy day'. If you kept a buffer fund of, say, $10k -- this can cover car break downs and a hundred other little mishaps, so long as you replenish it after you draw on it -- you'd still be better off self insuring. How much do you pay for pet insurance premiums each year? How much over the life of your two dogs? How much did your premiums go up after the two claims you described? I don't know if pet insurance companies presently class people as a 'bad risk' after they submit a few large claims, but if they don't now, it's only a matter of time before they do so. btw, If a moldy lunch cost you $1000, I would question whether your dogs are healthy. A dog with a healthy immune system can eat quite a bit of garbage without worse consequences than bad farts and irregular bowel movements.

A well written and clever article . . . but I did my PhD in conjunction with NCAR, one of the leading climate institutes in the US and the world. I must say, I resent the author's use of the debate over climate change as a Trojan horse to push what is an opinion -- albeit one backed by quite a bit of evidence -- about the value of positive methods of dog training -- followed by a strong and not well founded condemnation of the prong collar and aversives in general. There is no question that positive reinforcement is a powerful tool, and experimentally proven to be effective. That doesn't give positive methods the same sort of first principals and evidence-based credibility as the 'greenhouse effect'. I like positive methods, but I see no solid evidence indicating a need to throw aversives out, entirely. I think the explicit condemnation of the 'toolbox' approach to dog training is dogmatism, not science. To date I've not seen anyone demonstrate that positive reinforcement is as effective as a good fence for keeping a dog in your back yard. And if your back yard is several acres, I see no harm in the strong aversive of an electric fence. It works. It's certainly better than having your dog run free and get run over or get shot for running livestock or suffer any of the other ill fates that can happen to an free-roaming dog in our modern world. The bottom line of the article is anti- prong collar. I would love to see a serious scientific study that demonstrates that positive methods are as or more effective than light aversives for un-training a dog who has learned to pull hard on a leash. In my limited experience, the prong collar can be a lot like the electric fence. I no longer have my prong collar. I used it only twice. The girl I used it on was wont to dislocate my shoulder with pulling hard on the lead before I used it. The prong collar got the message through immediately. She didn't react as though the collar hurt. When it was on her, she walked happily . . . she simply stopped pulling. And five years later she still doesn't pull. Likewise, the single electric strand that I ran around my 13 acres was only powered for a few weeks . . . since then the dogs have made no attempt to go under my deer fence.

Have a search on Consumer Reports website. They agree that pet insurance is a con and recommend that consumers will generally be better off selecting to try and get a healthy pet and keeping a buffer fund to cover unexpected veterinary expenses. True, people with unhealthy or accident-prone dogs sometimes get value for money from their insurance. That is how the insurance business works . . . the premiums of people whose dogs don't get bloat, rupture their cruciate ligament, etc. are used to pay the claims of people whose dogs do have such problems . . . and to pay for high salaries and expensive office space and advertizing.

+1 Vets find it distressing to pts a loved animal. I have no doubt your vet is quite happy to have you DIY. When I was in Australia I tried to use the mobile vet, cause she was kindly about the euth and it's nicer to have it done at home. She also did her homework and found the cheapest crematorium. I don't remember what it cost. I do remember that sometimes, when the vet came out to do something like puppy vaccinations, she was very glum, having just come from having to pts a much loved dog. . . . or a healthy dog that the family found inconvenient.

I think the problem is reactive and unstable people misreading nuance -- or deliberately doing so -- and other people using provocative language. If everyone stuck to the real issues and didn't get roused by phrases like 'crap dog', the discussion would become relatively dull and academic. I suspect that the human equivalent of a dog fight often occurs cause people just like to argue.

I disagree. If I decide to, say, put my Labbie bitch to a kelpie dog, knowing that the F1 cross of Lab and kelpie are generally good dogs, more placid than kelpies, but better in hot weather than Labbies (they were preferred dogs for scent work in Vietnam), I would not have a written, exterior standard, but I'd have a clear set of expectations and I'd know which dogs were duds. (I wouldn't do this cross, but in my time in Australia, I had several requests for pups of this cross). Likewise, those crossing pit bulls to mastiffs to get greater gameness in the mastiff have a very clear standard they are looking for . . . a pretty dangerous one in my books. With respect to purebred dogs, far too few cull the temperament duds. Not hard to find a titled Lab who doesn't retrieve and doesn't like water. Nor do I believe all attacking dogs are unbalanced. Some are steady dogs, bred to attack and sent into attack mode by some signal . . . perhaps an unintended signal. A friend of mine rescued a schutz trained guard dog. They had to confine it when people came to the house cause it interpreted some specific hand gesture as a command to attack . . . and it would do so if someone unintentionally made that gesture. This dog wasn't unstable. It was trained to a dangerous behaviour.

Anybody know if there's a good test for rabies that doesn't require brain tissue? If so, how long does it take for the disease to show up? Can a test, if conducted properly, be used for screening?

I agree that it's best to get experience first, but not on waiting to do a kennel as a retirement project. Why not aim, instead, to take over a retirement project in which someone else has built up the capital, but gotten tired and lack the energy to work through online marketing and have allowed a few things to go to seed in their kennel business. I left my kennel in the management of a younger couple. They've been doing a great job managing. Yes, they've made some mistakes. But they've had the gumption to work through them. My property includes two houses as well as the kennel, and it's 14 km from the CBD . . . so the pricetag is above the $1M level. However, they have been working very hard and doing a much better job building the business than I did. I'm quite confident that they will be in a position to buy me out within a year or two. Such opportunities may be hard to find. But retirement-project kennels are out there, and their owners generally hold on for 10 to 20 years, then choose to sell or put the place under management. If you can build skills and help with management in a good kennel whose owner has health concerns, you may be able to work into a position of working to buy. " I personally wouldn't leave my dogs with someone so young. " may be an attitude among older dog owners, but it is not shared by young urban professionals . . . the group who are most likely to be well-paying clients. They may well be drawn to the kennel with the best website and online booking system . . . or the most convenient services for pickup and return-home . . . or luxury heating and air conditioning.

Ummmm are you for real... this maybe possible with some breeds, Again what's with the "crap" dogs comments? do you even like dogs as a whole? Socialising dogs is the smart way to help your dog become socially acceptable to the masses who put certain criteria on them. What do you think will happen if you take a dog that was bred for stability then, you didn't socialise it, mistreated it etc.. do you think that dog has the potential to bite? of course it has. I've seen "byb" dogs that are rock solid around strangers, no issues with food, good with kids etc... but one dog didn't like the sound of plastic bags... fireworks didn't set her off but shopping bags did, this certainly didn't make her a poor dog. How many pure bred dogs do you know that are rock solid on fire works night? guess all the ones who are scared must be BYB or something..? I don't much like the phrase 'crap dog', but I don't see where you get that m-sass is saying the 'crap' comes from cross breeding or BYB's. There are unstable dogs out there. Poor temperament with genetic origins isn't the whole problem, but it sure doesn't help. Good BYB's, including those with mutts, may decide to have a litter because they have a healthy dog with good temperament, and they want another like her (or him). The whole breed registry system is only a few hundred years old. Before that, many breeds working dogs were products of back yard breeding, and many involved in the process had no compunction about using a different type of dog to try to get the sort of pups they wanted. Ie, we love this girl but it would be good she were a little bigger . . . so we'll cross to a good working dog of another breed who is an inch or two taller. For all we know, the dog who killed Ayen Chol was rock solid, bred via X-breeding, for low bite threshold, great strength, and high drive, and trained to go for dark skinned people.

I would say it is Roger's story. He doesn't attribute it to anyone else, and he spends much time diving in Thailand. I should have added a © Roger Abrantes to the annotations. Am doing so momentarily.

No, I sold out. I developed bad tendonitis in one of my legs and all the work on concrete was too much. Also the 24/7. Don't ask about the average kennel. They are all over the place, from people who take in half a dozen dogs to people who have capacity for 200+. The two are very very different. On the economics, if you work on a medium scale and are able to keep occupancy fairly high, kennels can provide decent income. But its hard to get there. if you want to build a kennel, you need land in a good location . . . generally not cheap the kennel itself, if you do it right and go for a medium-sized kennel (say 50 dogs) is going to cost around as much as new suburban brick home. If you are able to average 50% occupancy, or say 25 dogs, and you spend, say $7/dog/day on dogfood, labor, insurance, and maintenance, and getting $22/dog/day, you're taking in around $2500/week. Say you invest $500k and are able to get 6% interest. Your borrowing costs are on the order $600/week . . . . So potential cash flow is there. The tricks are (a) coming up with money for the investment; and (b) getting to 50% occupancy. That's hard to achieve for a start-up unless you're in an area that is chronically short in kennel capacity. Costs could be much higher . . . eg, if you're near a major city, land will cost a lot more . . . you may make some mistakes initially and find they are expensive to fix . . . you may have to pay 7.5% interest . . . and so on. Unless you really know how to do marketing, or have a really strong network in the local canine community, the first few years are going to be very rough . . . it takes time to build a client base. As showdog states, it's lovely working with dogs, but it's 24/7, holidays can be hell, especially

Ditto all those who say, poor kid, it's not the time to blame, we don't know the facts, and if the neighbours have settled it among themselves, good on them. Much better if such matters don't have to be handled by governments, cause governments generally do a bad job. It would be interesting to know the details, but the people involved might not find it interesting to have the general public discussing their personal stuff. I am disturbed by those people saying guard dog aggression should be tolerated in these circumstances. A guard dog that cannot be taught to know the neighbours and to recognize that kids are not to be attacked is a dangerous dog and should not be in suburban or urban neighbourhoods . . . at least not with extreme controls. I'm not sure it's a typical 'kid gets bitten' case. In the classic case, the kid and dog are on the same side of a fence, they aren't adequately supervised, and neither has adequate training/experience/maturity to respond appropriately to the other. Full time supervision of and eight year old in the back yard is an unrealistic expectation, as is full-time supervision of a dog in the back yard.