sandgrubber

Western Union is simple and immediate, the receiver incurs no costs. There's an active scammer community that works using Western Union. I think it was forged checks. Look at the warnings all over eBay. Mostly happens for multi-thousand dollar items, like commercial machinery.

Not necessarily. Most breeders try to do the right thing, but they aren't all saints. Many who are devoted to showing will overlook a potentially serious, but either uncertain or not obvious, health problem when they are blessed with a stunning dog with the sort of dog charisma that wins shows (eg, you hear things like, his asymmetric hip or elbow score is a result of jumping out of the car when he was puppy . . . . And I'd imagine that many, if their multiple BIS dog started having epileptic seizures in his later years would simply cover it up. It would be awful to go back to the large number of people who use a popular sire and tell them that there's a chance that the pups they bred have increased probability of being epileptic.

The US press loves wacky lawsuits. So? Very few wacky lawsuits become precedent.

I'm with you I'm not. If it becomes law that animals have rights, where do you expect the boundaries to be drawn, period? It is already law that dogs and cats have rights in most European-derived cultures. You are legally required to provide food, shelter, and a minimum standard of care for your pets. The question is what direction the push for further rights goes. This lawsuit is just one tiny skirmish on the edges of this evolving area of law. I don't see any reason to get excited. There's a good chance the woman will loose her suit, but the newspapers won't report that. There's little question that any mammal is more like a human than an inanimate object. Does that mean rats and mice have rights?

Anything secure. Large deposit. Shipment on demonstration of payment in full. For some reason I've ended up selling to the families of executives working for multinationals in Asia. These guys known how to do direct deposit in $AU without huge additional cost.

For those of us who know nothing about dog legislation in Ireland: No who haven't what?

No problem showing a speyed bitch. You just don't mention it. Who is to know if she's speyed. I only support cheating regulations when the regulation is absurd. This on is absurd. I lost a good friend of mine -- dog friend -- at nine years because I didn't spey and she got some horrid uterine cancer.

Breeding for colour has a long tradition. How do you think the golden retriever or the red setter/Irish setter ended out with their colours. I have little doubt people were paying double the normal price for pups of the 'in' colour 200 years ago.

In California people have given up separating the bull breed types and call them all pit bulls. 40% + of the dogs coming into the LA County dog shelter are classed as pit bulls. I don't think these numbers are overestimates . . . though few of the dogs are purebred. Bull breeds generally have lower adoption rates than others in shelters . . . thus if the intake person has a choice between, say, calling the dog a pit bull X or border collie X, the dog will be a BC-X.

This should not be the case with an experienced breeder . . . who should have a baseline of experience raising dogs and seeing the outcomes. There is genetic research being done on this . . . unless they have folded for lack of funding. See http://www.k9behavioralgenetics.net/updates.php One thing they found is that Border Collies are more prone to noise phobias than GSD's or Aussies.

I remember Snake Catcher saying something about dogs that go for lizards are likely to go for snakes . . . and training dogs off lizards is likely to train them off snakes. How about some aversion training with lizards as they show up? You should get anti-snake training at the same time.

We hear a lot about autosomal inheritance . . . also about popular sire syndrome. I found the following story interesting. It goes into both sex linked inheritance and sire lines into detail by example. The author traces his two dogs, and the top 30 winning border collies' pedigrees back to the time the stud books closed and speculates a little about it . . . thoughtfully . . . with a message, but without gloom, doom and judgement. http://www.astraean....sire-lines.html p.s. I found a good -- at least for me -- tutorial on sex linked chromosomes at http://www.ksu.edu/biology/pob/genetics/xlinked.htm It doesn't look like many dog genetic diseases are sex linked. Haemophilia, perhaps some vision problems. But who knows about complex genetics.

oops . . . answered without reading carefully.

Scary! I don't understand the statement: "There's no rabies in Australia other than bat rabies . . ." In the US, bats get the same rabies as all other mammals, and picking up a sick bat is one of the most common way the disease is transmitted to humans. Is 'bat rabies' just baby talk for Hendra virus? The Torres Straight is only about 150 km wide and has islands in it's middle. I'd think transmission by bat would be a real concern.

Murdoch Uni Vet School used to have a pet-oriented poison garden, with labelled plants, to teach people about things to avoid. Don't know if it's still there . . . it may have fallen to building expansion. Anyone know of similar gardens elsewhere? Seems like a good thing to suggest to some of the botanic gardens.

The puppy tooth fairy comes and takes them ;););)

I have gun dogs and I would not breed from a gun shy dog without a damn good reason.

The fireworks woke me up, but the dogs slept right through them. They're used to target practice . . . we're rural and not a no shooting zone and have neighbours who provide a wide variety of booms. I think they like it. One advantage of a well bred gun dog.

Good luck with the litter! I can't remember which antibiotics are ok and which endanger teeth, but I'm pretty sure some ABs are safe. Amoxicillin and Clavulox are ok if I remember right. But don't go on my advice. I'm just kicking the can down the road. Someone else will have more info.

Sooo cute! I've never been around a pup who was blind from an early age. Looks like she has a little hesitancy about things . . . but enjoys life like a normal pup.

Rehoming is a bit like divorce. Sometimes it doesn't work out and all are better off if the sides part. I agree with the sentiment, but where the dog is happier in the new home than the old, I think rehoming is good. Sure, some people should never have gotten a dog in the first place. But you can't turn the clock back. We all need to be grateful to shelters, foster homes, Gumtree, breed rescue orgs, and all the other institutions that help with difficult transitions for dogs who ended up with the wrong family. And breeders need to be careful in screening puppy buyers.

Ehem, like my ex neighbours... They had a Rottie. They stuck it in the back yard and ignored it. One day I had a knock on the door from a guy from the council. The neighbours had called and reported they found a stray dog and shut it up in their back yard, can someone take it to the pound. They weren't home when he came around so he came over to ask me about it. I looked over the fence, "no, that's their dog" He left without taking her. A week later the dog was gone, a week after that they got a new puppy, a staffy cross. Because, "The old dog destroyed the yard" What lowlife wankers

There's a lesson here: Dogs can be really stupid about going over cliffs. Do not allow them off lead around severe drop-offs, and for dog's sake, don't throw anything over a cliff when there's a dog nearby Some 25 years ago I went walking with my mother, her Lab, my Lab, and a GR I was looking after in a large area of public land in Pennsylvania. Suddenly we had only two Labs. After much looking and calling we found the GR had fallen over a cliff face. When I scrambled to the bottom I found the poor girl drawing her last breaths. Much trauma. It's bad enough seeing a dog die. Worse to explain what happened to the owner of a dog you were looking after.

And then there's the tragic story of the old Labbie who was taken to the vet because she bit one of the kids. After he gave her the green dream, the vet noticed that she had a number of staples through her ear.

The local parks department is holding a dog walk, in one of the local on leash parks. It's billed as teaching lessons in dog etiquette! I hope they get good attendance.