sandgrubber

Not necessarily. Many Master Hunters are relaxed, laid back dogs-- until someone pulls out a gun. And you can find show labs who are manic even into adulthood.

You'd have no trouble finding the lankier Lab build with narrower head if you were in the US. Australia has relatively few people who use Labs to hunt, and most breeders go for show conformation. I don't know them personally, but I think Kadnook Labs in Victoria would be a good breeder to start with. They are more into functional Labs than show Labs. see, eg http://203.89.193.82/kadnook/Pages/Page_Frames/history_page_frame.htm

+1 The bottom line is the bottom line. I'm sure you'd be much happier looking after her dog if she paid you fair market price . . . which is not a small sum.

Personally, I'm bored with righteous indignation about BYB practices. This sort of thing has been going on since the concepts of 'purebred' and 'pedigree' took root. Fat chance of getting rid of it. And given the many abuses in show breeding, I think it may be good that a few people, at least, are breeding their 'nice' dogs. If there aren't a few people breeding non show conforming dogs, there's going to be nothing left to recover traits that may be lost through show breeders overemphasising a few phrases that happen to be in a breed standard that was written before much was understood about genetics.

Because BYBs are known for producing sound, health-tested dogs, right? :rolleyes: If you actually feel this site is a waste of time.. why exactly are you here? The only thing I can think of is to troll. Also.. for someone so bothered by "do gooder dog rescuers", you sure do spend a lot of time in the rescue section ;) I sure do saving worthy dogs. Not trying to save every impounded dog at any cost. Not all rescuers do that and most of the rescuers here are good people doing the hard work to help where they can. Nice to know what you think of their efforts though, my under-bridge dwelling chum ;) This is getting absurd. Totally off topic. I'd suggest you guys thrash it out personally and not bother us with this . .. or do it in general, not news.

A genetic dissection of breed composition and performance enhancement in the Alaskan sled dog Heather J Huson1,2, Heidi G Parker1, Jonathan Runstadler2 and Elaine A Ostrander1* They're starting to work toward understanding of the genetics of athletic performance in dogs. See: http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2156/11/71 Fascinating article on genetics of performance-selected mix-breed dogs. I found lots of things interesting about this, including charts of degree of heterozygosity comparing 141 AKC registered breeds (conclusion, sprint dogs are more inbred than distance runners . . . and strangely, a few purebred dog breeds show levels of genetic diversity that imply considerable outcrossing). One thing I didn't expect comes from the pictures . . . the sprint racing dogs show sloped hindquarters that approach those of the much maligned modern GSD. p.s. I didn't put this in studies about dogs cause that part of the forum doesn't permit Topic Titles . . . which greatly reduces its usefulness.

This is a bit off topic, but Consumer Reports studies conclude that pet insurance is rarely worth the cost . . . the better way to insure your dog is to put the money you would have put toward insurance into an emergency fund. See, eg., http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/money/insurance/pet-insurance/is-pet-insurance-worth-the-cost/overview/index.htm

Wish we had more science news and less politics news :)

Some dogs have a great sense of direction . . . one of the dogs we had when I was a kid (a GSD x) killed a neighbor's calf and my father gave him away to some people who lived a couple hundred miles away. It took him about a week to come home. Other dogs get hopelessly lost. I agree with others, the best solution is to keep your dog within your fenceline. If you walk around your neighbourhood with your dog on a regular basis, it makes it much more likely that it will be able to find its way home . . . if it doesn't get run over or stolen or turned in to the rangers.

I've heard that the vermicides they use in worming tablets will wipe out a worm farm.

So I need to crawl into a hole for providing a solution to avoid getting bitten by a leashed dog You may get away with sticking your head in the sand.

Property managers play a huge role here. If anyone wants to change the situation, I'd suggest they look into better ways for the landlord who likes dogs to end out renting only to responsible pet owners. I have an axe to grind here. I will never forgive the property manager who rented my place out to the nutcase who burned my house down -- with his dog inside. He clalimed that Jennifer Lopez told him to do it . . . also, apparently, he did it to get rid of 'evil spirits' who lived in the house. After the fact I learned that various neighbours had complained about the guy, but the property manager didn't see fit to pass the complaints on to me. For this I pay 10%, ie, $30/week?

I wouldn't have objected to posting this in the main News section. I think the abuse section was created for sensationalised and tittilating (sp???) abuse cases that were cluttering the main news area. This is a legal precedent that may be of general interest.

This is self-contradictory. If you don't have to disclose, why bother with references? Also, note that to a property manager, 'references' are just a slightly extended credit check. I can't remember the details in WA, and they probably vary by state, but as I remember it, if you're not explicitly blacklisted and you've paid on time, the reference check will come out clean. I don't know if there are any property managers that read this forum. If there are, I'd love to hear how you handle the 'pet' thing.

If you want a healthy, full size golden, I'd recommend taking the breeder up on the offer of a replacement . . . unless the blood tests reveal something that points otherwise. With Labs, I figure a weight gain of a little under a kilo a week. The breeder may be perfectly honest . . . and still some other dog managed to get in there while the bitch was in season without anyone knowing. It's possible and not uncommon to have more than one sire in a litter. btw. to my knowledge, 10 weeks is too early for closing of plates and X rays are not likely to be useful. A paternity test would be more relevant.

It's probably less hassle to just try another mating and send the girl home after, unless you've got excellent vet service in your area. I've never had a girl who tied twice over a period of 3 or more days fail to end up in pup. Where I live now, by the time they sent the blood to the lab and got the results back (2 days), the girl may well have gone over the peak.

I sent a note to the sire's owner, who had never heard of the condition and checked with her her Vet Opthamologist. Her eye-guy also said it's not hereditary. Tempest in a teapot, but tends to make me a little skeptical about required health tests. If they're gonna stamp health certifications for trivial conditions with dubious genetic components . . . jeez . . . we've got much bigger things to worry about.

Article was interesting but I couldn't get passed those horrible cropped ears in the photos section. shudder For photos of extreme dogs, I recommend: dogshowpoop.blogspot.com Personally, I'm more grossed out by coiffure than ears that have been tampered with. But then, I'm not into cosmetics and I would never own a long haired dog.

Where I lived in South Fremantle, wandering cats often disappeared. Rumor had it that someone was using them as bait in cray pots. Where I lived in a Perth kennel area, I had neighbours who had Akitas . . . who were quite skilled at cat killing. Where I live now, in a mountainous area of California, we have great horned owls, bobcats, coyotes, and grey foxes (only distantly related to red foxes) who have no trouble taking on domestic (or feral) cats in rural areas, and I rarely see cat prints on my property. I'd applaud this guy for posting a warning. My guess is the warning was a bluff . . . but wandering cats are a PITA. Worse in Australia where there are so few natural predators.

I don't know how many 'the papers haven't arrived yet' posts there have been on DOL. Bloody Neanderthal K9 associations. Why the hell don't they put pup registration on line!!!!! It would take so much less time. It would avoid so many errors. It would make things more transparent. And it would reduce their costs. Aren't entrenched bureaucracies wonderful :D:)

By Ella Davies Reporter, BBC Nature 12 Jan, 2012 [/url]http://www.bbc.co.uk/nature/16426276 Dogs can keep warm on frozen ground, thanks to a specialised circulation system in their paws, say scientists. Researchers in Japan used electron microscopes to study the internal structure of domestic dogs' paws. They found that heat was transferred from the artery to the network of veins, meaning that cooled blood could not return to the body. The system has been recognised in many other animals' extremities, including penguins' beaks and dolphins' fins. The findings are published in the journal Veterinary Dermatology. Arctic foxes and wolves are well known for their adaptations that help them to regulate a constant body temperature in cold conditions. Continue reading the main story COLD-PROOF PAWS Arctic foxes have dense and rigid fur on their feet which keeps the pads away from the freezing ground The pads are connective tissue and fat which is more resistant to freezing They have a "rete mirabile" or "wonderful network" of veins in their feet and legs that works as a heat exchanger where cooled blood is warmed up to maintain a constant temperature (Additional research by Dr Arnaud Tarroux from the University of Quebec, Canada) Previous studies showed that the canines can keep the tissue in their feet from freezing even in temperatures of -35C. Dr Hiroyoshi Ninomiya and his team at the Yamazaki Gakuen University in Tokyo, Japan, set out to discover if this ability was also common to domestic dogs. Using electron microscopes, the researchers were able to examine the internal structure of dogs' paws. They found that the very close proximity of the arteries to the veins in the footpad meant that heat was conducted from one blood vessel to another. So when blood in the paw's veins cooled on contact with the air or ground, warm blood pumping from the heart - through the neighbouring artery - transferred its heat. The blood was therefore "warmed up" before it returned to the body - preventing the dog's body from cooling down, whilst also keeping the paws at a constant temperature.

In that case, it would make sense for shelters and breeders to look very carefully at people's rental contracts before selling them a dog or pup. Do you really think someone with a dozen cats and a few dogs should be able to withhold that information on a rental application? Do you really think it should be illegal to ban pets in a large, hi-rise apartment complex with no parks nearby? Do you really think a community where the grounds are unfenced and a gardener is hired to keep them stunning should be forced to accept digging puppies who get the zoomies and trample the flower beds? Remember that story back a few months ago where three APBTS kept in a 3rd floor apartment in a drug-ridden slum killed a toddler who was saying the same apartment. A variety of neighbors stated that people had been pressuring slumlords to ban pet ownership because the slum dwellers tended to go for fighting dogs, and didn't pick up the dog pooh. "You break it, you pay for it" sounds great, until you try to enforce it. Lots of renters have the means to skip town, but lack the means to pay. Plus, someone with a dozen cats probably can't smell l'eau de catbox that tends to permeate everything where a large number of cats are kept in a small house . . . so in their books they have done no damage, while the landlord ends out with a house that is going to need a lot of work to get rid of the smell. I'm hoping, in my next transition, to end out with a semi-rural property with two rentals specifically set up for people with dogs . . . washable wainscoating, concrete floors, lockable doggie doors, and large secure yards. Where such an investment hasn't been made, I would only rent to people with very well trained and low energy dogs, or people without pets.

The better response to this is "SHOW ME THE NUMBERS". They are worth knowing! I've been looking all over the place for insurance statistics on vet costs by breed . . . to make a case that the much-maligned pug is actually fairly healthy. The only thing I can come up with is PetPlan's 10 most expensive breed list, which is US based: http://www.mainstreet.com/slideshow/smart-spending/10-dogs-priciest-vet-bills (The ranking from most to least expensive of the top ten is: American Bulldog, Burnese Mountain Dog, Rotweiler, Samoyed, AmStaff, APBT, Frenchie, Basset, Akita, and Great Dane . . . the costs seem to be skewed by the high cost of a few procedures . . . eg, cancer treatment, bloat, removal of foreign objects from stomach/intestine, HD surgery, and cruciate ligament surgery . . . breeds that aren't prone to any of these are likely to have lower vet bills . . . mutts . . . depends on the mutt).

yes. It literally means 'place', by inference drop in place, which has a nice precise feel if you like competitive obedience. Sit is 'sitz' . . . which adds a little emphasis to 'sit'.

You can and should consider random stats because the set of base pairs you are selecting for is much smaller than the set of base pairs you aren't selecting for. If a dog has the equivalent of the condition I have that yield a biological false positive to the Wasserman test (the old test for syphilis), apparently a recessive gene whose expression often causes problems in the immune system, you'd never know it. Or, say there are three different recessives, all of related to the development of the mouth, but you only know about one of them. In the process of breeding out the two you know, you may be increasing the probability of the other three. Eg, hypothetically, you may half the probability of undershot jaw at the cost of doubling the probabilities of missing teeth and the probability of cleft palate. Very little of a dog's genetic code controls things like body dimensions and colour, that we select for. A large amount of genetic structure governs things like biochemistry (hence, potentially affecting things such as allergies, cancer, foetal development, hormonal imbalance, pancreatis, etc., sometimes in a polygenetic mode). Rare, random deleterious recessive mutations can hide for a long time before a double recessive will cause a mutation to be expressed. Probabilities for double recessive of a rare gene increase rapidly with inbreeding. You won't be aware of a doubling of probability if it means the incidence of a hereditary disease goes from 1% to 2%. At least that's the way I understand the theory.