sandgrubber

Brave kid! and nice, for once, that the reporter didn't report (or misreport ) the breed.

Not sure I'd agree, even, with this as a list of trainability. Trainability to do what. If it's retrieving shot game, the retrievers are up there. If it's herding, they go to the bottom of the list . . . . born sheep scatterers. If it's going to ground, give me a terrier of some sort.

I got a good bite to the face at four years old (Irish setter . . . I was probably pulling its beautiful long read coat). It didn't harm me in the long term. I love it when kids want to pet my girls. They love kids, and I think it good socialization. I have to warn the parents that the young one is bouncy and enthusiastic, and may knock the child down (probably good training for the child). I think my dogs instinctually know that kids are like puppies . . . and they hold back and treat gently. If everyone pulls their dogs away from kids, where is the next generation of dog lovers going to come from? I was always taught 1. not to pat strange dogs - actually, not to go NEAR strange dogs lol and 2. to NEVER put my face near a dogs face...

As a breeder who might be buying, I'd be willing to pay twice as much for a pup with excellent prospects than for a pup with fair prospects. . . .but pedigree is important here, and most litters have the same pedigrees. As a breeder who has sold mostly pets and who has become pretty cynical about the 'pick' at 8 weeks, staying 'pick' to 14 months, I practice the KISS strategy . . . all pups the same price . . . in my breed, girls are more favored than boys, so I charge a little more for girls. If someone offered me some sort of premium for 'pick' I'd look at the offer.

They say . . . and I'd love to see some scientific study behind it . . . the average dog sleeps 14 hours a day. Mine zone out when nothing is going on. . . no particular pattern. One comes to bed with me when I go to bed. The other, having fallen asleep on the sofa at five or six pm, joins us in the bed some time later. Both would love to get up at 3 am if I wanted to. Mostly, I wait till 4 or 5 am. They are always eager for wake-up cuddles, and in the course of getting cuddled, someone usually manages to tromp on my bladder if it's full.

If you're rescue oriented, I'd say choose your shelter carefully, and make sure the one you go to understands your situation and will allow you to return the dog and get another if the first choice doesn't work out quickly. I'd say there are dogs of lots of breeds . . . and mixed breeds . . . that could work for you. If you're doing a rescue, go for a dog that touches your heart strings and don't worry about breed.

The count is in and an overwhelming majority think human names are fine. (The only human name I object to is my own. . . it's distracting to have your name yelled across a dog park :D ). Does anyone else find food names objectionable? (Ok, I've had chocolate Labs, and the tendency to certain food names gets boring).

I don't know anything about your breed. But I think the ease of placing puppies is highly breed specific. I know someone who ended out with 10 Afghans because she had a lovely, high quality, and very large litter, and she was unable to find buyers who she considered willing and able to keep up the grooming requirements. Price was one concern. But even dropping the price to a few hundred bucks didn't bring in appropriate buyers. If you find yourself in a like situation, be glad you have only one pup to home . . . and think twice about breeding again. Btw. I hope others are right and you are able to find a good home, willing to pay a good price.

I wonder if this will be followed by an expensive divorce

Bump Thanks for posting this I hope they get clear results.

After reading the petition I was turned off by wording/grammar etc. But I completely agree with the concept that desexing of pets should be the norm, and is unlikely to be achieved without subsidized spey/neuter for people with limited resources. . . and I think the RSPCA's cost/benefit ratio would be improved by spending more on carrots and sticks to increase the rate of desexing, and decreasing the numbers of BYB's and accidental litters. . . . without cutting into efforts to prohibit puppy farming. If anyone wants evidence, I'd recommend studying Santa Cruz County, California, where desexing became mandatory decades ago . . .along with a system of legal permits for breeders and subsidized spey/neuter for people of limited means, bans on pet shop sale of mammals and a variety of other measures. This is about rounding up support for the RSPCA to encourage (enforce?) desexing of all undesexed domestic animals (dogs and cats, presumably). "Sign or don't" would be an ignorant approach when there are reasonable questions that remain unanswered. The most portent question being what has been asked here but yet remains unanswered : Where is the RSPCA's evidence that mass desexing will reduce shelter numbers? Surely, if the RSPCA is condoning, encouraging and/or even seeking to enforce this, some sort of research on statistics will have been done before they spend our hard-earned money on a venture such as this?

X 1 I live in a county with 'mandatory' (with exceptions for breeders who register and provide annual vet clearance) desexing. It does help, especially because they have heavily subsidised spey/neuter programs. It'll cost me ~$30 to get my girl speyed.

Must have been a mediocre breeder. I've had seven chocos. Not one of them had a pink nose at any time of year. Choco's . . . at least in WA . . . are relatively scarce, and you're going to have to know someone to get pick. Prices are inflated, and some people are breeding dogs that shouldn't be bred to make $$$. If you want a Lab, you'll get a better yellow or black for the same money.

8:8 isn't good, but it isn't a disaster. Personally, I wouldn't breed from an 8:8, but it wouldn't scare me in a pet. I would not expect to see an 8:8 get arthritic in old age (ie, not show clinical HD) . . . and one vet's 8:8 reading might have been a 4:4 from another vet or from the same vet with a better positioned set of X-rays. HD is only somewhat hereditary. I can't remember where I saw it, but I remember a statistical study that showed that the chance of getting 'excellent' hips from a dog and bitch who both have 'good' hips wasn't a whole lot higher than the chance of getting an 'excellent' from two 'excellents'. If you really like the dogs otherwise, I try to get a read on the grandsire/dam and any siblings. If you can chase down information on the oldies in the line, and they are moving freely at 10 . . . and if there are no siblings or previous pups from the same dam who have had really bad scores, I wouldn't worry. As for other things, TEMPEREMENT. Some Labs are mellow from an early age. Some are lunatics through to old age. Health testing is a good thing . . . but when measurements are taken on only two health parameters, they tend to be weighed too heavily into the equation.

1. Teach 'sit'. 2. Teach 'sit'. 3. Teach 'sit'. 4. Use 'sit' when the dog is greeting people. Make sure the sit and greet is appreciated.

You are more likely to need one 1. If the breed has a thin coat 2. If the room isn't well heated 3. If the nights are cold. I have Labbies. The dam generally hates heating in the whelping box, and except in quite cold weather, manages pretty well with no heating. I generally stick a heat lamp up in the center of the box, so the dam can go to the edge and avoid it, and the pups can seek heat in the middle if they get cold. Best to have something available. But watch what's going on, and make sure the dam is comfortable as well as the pups.

Many Lab people use the term "blow coat" . . . many labs have one or two periods a year when hair comes out in clumps and you're better off brushing it out than allowing it to fall. My choco girl goes bronze before she blows coat. For a humourous description see the Lab Brats blog at http://dogblog.8pawsup.com/2008/05/agh-blowing-coats.html Really? I've never heard of my friends Labs blowing coat They don't 'blow coat'. But they do shed a lot and mess up the floors a lot. I actually find it easier to manage the shedding of my northern breed who blows his coat compared to my sister's lab who sheds all year all over the floor. I agree labs shed heaps i am forever vacuuming

for authorative treatment of Lab coat controversy see http://www.labbies.com/silver.htm The final answer seems to be "maybe". There ARE white labradors, apparently with colour genetics similar to Westies . .. the kennel clubs class these as yellow. See http://www.labbies.com/genetics2.htm#White

I'm no expert, but I'd guess there are a lot of 'ifs' here. In many places, and ACT may be one of them, people have a right to go to your front door. If your dog bites the JW's missionary or the local poli doing door knocking, it's not going to be a good scene. In my experience, most people with "beware of dog" signs don't have dogs. So the warning has a may be crying wolf tone to it, and may not be taken seriously. If you can do it, I'd say, keep the dogs in the back yard and let people approach through a door that does not go through the back yard.

Please translate. I gather something happened in NSW?

The Brazilian standard for the Filo brasilioro calls for aggression toward strangers. In specialty shows it is acceptable for them to bite the judge. The breed was bred for catching cattle rustlers and runaway slaves. Breeders who take the temperament standard seriously will reject a pup if it isn't growling and showing fierceness to strangers at 12 weeks.

I have a German friend who did Schutz with boxers (in Germany) to Level 5. He now has Labradors in Australia. He says they'd be hopeless as guard dogs. As for blowing coat . .. Labbies do . . . and they make an awful mess.

See if you can find one of those doughnut-shaped puppy feeding bowls. You'll be amazed how much cleaner the puppies stay . . .and how cute they look making a big ring around the bowl. You might need two such bowls by the time they get to 8 weeks.

I'll bet there is serious, well funded research out there showing conclusively that you can put a higher price on a dogfood if you niche market to breeds commonly owned by richer people.

Any chance he's ingesting pyrethenoids (insecticide . . . present in some cheap flea/tick preventatives)? They do nasty things to the nervous system.