sandgrubber

Yah, it cuts both ways. There are guns all over the place in the US, and a lot of people hunt birds. So there's lots of call for real gun dogs and field work is a reality for lots of US Labs. There are quite a few breeders who specialize in working labs and sell pups after training them the basics . . . from that perspective Australian standards have, in general, declined. The 'seen on the street' Lab here is lankier than the norm for Australia and has a narrower, triangular looking head. What I meant by 'deterioration' was that pictures of pups who don't even have Lab colouring can be advertized to the general public as Labs. There's 'standard' in the show ring . . . but also 'standard' in the everyday use of the word. You can find fine labs here as well . . . and pedigrees stemming from the same peripotent dogs as you find at the root of many of Australia's leading Labs. One thing that's surprised me here is the current craze for 'white' Labs. Some are stunning . .. . apparently Mary Rosylin-Williams, in Advanced Labrador Breeding (book) was premature in bemoaning the disappearance of the snow-white dog with strong black points.

I'm not big on the show ring . . . but things can get out of hand if there's no enforcement of standards. This is a set of puppy ads I found browsing the internet in the US awhile ago. I can't believe they're advertized as Labradors.

If they tested with cats and chooks, half the dogs, of any breed, in Australia would fail. The GAP VIC green collar only means that dog has been temp tested with small fluffy dogs and I think if they are extremely good with small fluffy dogs they then get tested with cats and chooks are another thing again.

Lots of news about it on many sites. Those of you who like following the mushers might want to go to Google and check in on this year's twists and turns. GO MUSHERS!!!!!

microchipping isn't required in WA councils pay poorly. turnover is high. there are some great, and some pretty average Rangers, and quite a few are new to the job and not so cluey about dogs. Depends on the council and history and who knows what else.. Given the iffy way the legal system works, owners of serious guarding breeds need to be extra cautious. Not nice, but I think the system needs to make an example of someone from time to time. I hope others learn from this unfortunate case. I'm glad to be out of WA and in a place where there's no BSL, but you need a license to have an un-neutered dog or bitch and they hit you with big fines if an intact animal is found wandering. Lots of pit bulls here. I find them much less frightening than Akitas. I hope the poor guy who lost fingers is getting some compensation.

Thanks SwaY. I've done the Draminski thing and sold the equipment cause I couldn't make it work. A vet showed me how to do the cytology thing and I concluded I'm not good enough with a microscope. This seems to be a different option that does an approximate reading of LH based on a blood sample and results can be interpreted as ng/ml . . . it is intended for use by veterinarians or others with skill level that permits them to draw blood. In otherwords, it looks like a less precise equivalent of the prog test that would cost me $90 here and take so long it's hardly worth doing. I tried using search, but can't find any discussion of similar options . . . seems to me that a kit that allows your everyday small animal vet to do a test in house would be a great option . . . If you have pointers to equivalent tests, I'd appreciate more specific references.

If this criterion was applied across the board, there would be no social justification for BSL. So long as we tolerate HA dogs, society is going to use what means it can find to try to control them. BSL isn't a great mechanism . . . but breed is not irrelevant. The bull terrier breeds seem to be most at risk cause they are so often named in HA/DA events.

Form follows function. In theory, conformation as shown in the show ring, should be a basis for determining what dogs are true to the functional breed standard. Alas, the ring is a corrupt judge and has become more of like a fashion parade 'cat walk' than a serious way to evaluate solidity and competence. Not to mention that 'function' has changed for many breeds. Leaves breeders without solid guidance. If there's blame, I'd lay it on the k9 pedigree/judging establishment . . . though blame is less important than the question of 'how do we produce healthy dogs that will fit into modern dog roles'. Edited to correct typo. This bloody system doesn't allow me to correct as I write. Am I alone in this problem?

I would never encourage indiscriminate breeding, but show is neither the only, nor, for some purposes, the 'best' way to discriminate. Yes . . .of course you can breed without showing. As a human, you can have sex and reproduce without enduring the cat walk. With dogs we don't generally accept 'love' as a basis for mating . . . and it's good if sire and dam are coupled with an eye to good health and desired temperament and conformational traits. Show culture is corrupt in a lot of ways [eg, if the dog with the most perfect conformation belongs to someone who doesn't like to show or isn't able, that dog will never get titled. . . .while a show nut can title any half decent dog]. Showing should not be THE ONE AND ONLY criterion.

http://www.equitainer.com/Canine/Target-Canine.htm#comp I find the above link provides prog measurement tests but are short on details at this point. Looks like it will allow an ordinary vet to do a quick and dirty prog measurement after doing a blood draw and cut out the expensive and time consuming step of sending the sample off to a distant laboratory. Has anyone had experience with such kits? Are they good value for a country person who wants to do chilled semen AI?

I don't think anyone's noted, urban SAR, as in looking for people in a disaster, is quite different from tracking or scenting (or scenting/tracking, as many dogs use both approaches). And a dog trained to find live people won't generally locate cadavers. There isn't a lot of urban SAR training for civilians in Australia . . . probably not in the police or army either. I was told that the Australian army, in Vietnam, favoured kelpie X labradors, although they took many breeds. The cross generally gave high intelligence, less excitability than a kelpie, and more heat tolerance than a labbie.

It made the news because it is news. China is trying different policies in different cities/regions with respect to pet ownership. There are hard decisions to make. This is a significant change for Shanghai . . . as it would be a significant change if WA decided to go from a two dog policy to a one dog policy. Its specially interesting that they seem not to be being heavy handed . . . if you have two registered dogs you can keep them . . . rather than making people get rid of #2.

Clipping from the article . . . some of which I understand and some of which is over my head (I'm a scientist, but not a geneticist): "Dog have several genes in their Class I region, one of which is very diverse, with lots of alleles. They have three haplotypes, or groups of alleles, in their Class II region, which are called DLA-DRB1, DLA-DQA1 and DLA-DQB1. Each one of these haplotypes is polymorphic, having many variable genes. There are more than two hundred different alleles that can be present in each Class II haplotype, and they find more of them all the time. Class III is much less well studied. I think it's great that they're beginning to understand what sequences that lead to weak immune systems. Computational genetics is advancing furiously cause computer power has grown astronomically; the ease of gene sequencing has advanced almost as fast. I believe the time is coming when gene maps will be able to guide us in understanding of important dog traits, including inherited behaviours, intelligence, muscular-skeletal strengths and weaknesses, etc. The problem I have with maximum difference type tests and breeding strategies is that, taken blindly, they logically lead to advocating cross breeding or at least finding the dog who is least least-similar to your bitch. If you are trying to perpetuate some specific attributes of your dog and/or bitch, going for maximum heterozygosity is not a good strategy. Yes, it may resolve some immune problems, but say you've worked hard to end out with strong hips and elbows and good endurance . . . dogs/bloodlines that are outstanding in these traits come about because the gene pool has been narrowed. Broadening the gene pool is likely to throw the baby out with the bath. I don't think I've said this very well. Maybe someone else can do a better job. And I've totally messed up the quotes . . . sorry.

Should note, how good is more important than how many. My girls have tended to have much more milk in the back than the front, and by the time the pups are three weeks old, they hardly bother to compete for the front positions . . . . while the double nippled back teats almost always have two pups on them. I've notice other people's girls seem to have much bigger boobs in the front than mine do.

When my guys play indoor mouthy games they often make loud, non-barking noises that are pretty hard to describe. I'd love to record these and start a thread where we could share the various sounds our various dogs make. But I don't think we can attach sound-format files. Does anyone else want to share recordings . . . or have a suggestion about how to do it?

Most of my girls have had 9 or 10, or 11 or 13 if you count the double back teat as two. Good thing bitches don't wear bras . They'd need a huge variety or they'd all have to be custom made.

I'm happy not to be in the boarding kennel business any more. It's a huge amount of work and lots of responsibility for not much income. I don't like the idea of government meddling in kennel standards any more than I like the idea of government meddling in breeding standards. It may be a good idea . . . but it seem likely that rules will be framed badly. When I was in the business I found the guidance toward 'cover your backside' contracts came from the Companion Animal Boarding Association . . . which handed out a 'generic' lawyer-developed boarding contract that relieved owners of responsibility for illness, loss or accident and gave them power to dispose of animals at will if the owners were absent for more than 2 weeks after their supposed pickup date. This was around the time of the Tsunami disaster and we had quite a few clients in Bali . . . I dropped the contract around that time and went without contract. But that is risky. Steve mentioned checking daily. We got in trouble with that one once. We watched our dogs pretty carefully, and we were good about picking up behavour changes, limping, etc. but we didn't do a daily feel-down. How closely we monitored was determined, in part, by the dogs. A few wouldn't allow a 'strange' person to touch their front/flanks/rear unless they were restrained . . . checking for ticks on such dogs would have been a nightmare (fortunately we didn't have paralysis ticks in our area). Ok, if they were in for several weeks, they learn the routine, and most get so that they tolerate 'feeling'. But a lot of dogs are in for a week or less and unless you're a dog whisperer, some of them are difficult to deal with. The dog we got in trouble about was a one year old male Weim who wouldn't tolerate touching. He was in with his dam and a male sibling. We let the three play together. They loved running but were mouthy about their play. One boy got a tooth into the other boy and ended out with a pretty good puncture wound, which was little visible. We might have caught it if it weren't Xmas, but it was Xmas, and everyone was overworked. So the wound got infected and the vet bill got expensive . . . we paid out (or reduced the bill, can't remember exactly). The client never came back. I still feel bad about it. But shite happens. We were charging ~$14.50/day for the dog . . . great price competition in our area . . . and economics wouldn't support hiring enough staff/staff with adequate skills to do a systematic check of every dog every day, especially not at Xmas. There are also problems, such as bloat, that just happen, and are hard to guard against in a boarding kennel setting. And if you are rural in that sort of area, snake bite may be a possibility. In the ~5 years I had the kennel we had two or three incidents where an individual dog got a serious tick infestation. I don't know where this came from. Bandicoots? A dog that came in with first instar ticks and they became highly visible at the time it went home? A dog who was a tick-magnet? No idea why one dog would get hit while the other 20 in the yards seemed to be fine. If the government gets involved in such things, we'll all be spraying on a regular basis with highly carcinogenic chemicals to kill ticks. Though laissez faire has some bad outcomes . . . I think it may be better to let the bad kennels get kicked around by lawsuits and people badmouthing them than to try to legislate standards of care.

If I remember rightly, the average building height downtown Shanghai is around 10 stories. Sounds like a sensible policy. Too many dogs per acre makes for big problems. Good on them for allowing people to keep the dogs they already have.

True, in the short term. But if Mars is funding research, over time, it will affect what the universities study . . . sadly, money attracts research, and it's hard to do decent research without funding.

Thanks guys . . . glad to know it's not unknkown behaviour. Doesn't worry me, just weird. K9 sexuality is so different from human . . . or maybe it isn't . . . we just repress much more than they do.

Doesn't take a PhD to see this thread is seriously off topic.

Why not take it a step further and really maximize heterozygosity. Choose breeds that are a maximum distance apart on the K9 family tree, as established by DNA sequencing. Ie, breed the Asiatic group to modern hunting dogs. It's so sad that we're on the verge of understanding the genetic basis of many diseases, and the powers that be have decided that the key to health is mix-em-up with no regard to what genes cause what strengths and weaknesses.

Wonderful! I'll bet Ms Beatha Lee does a great job!

If that's scientific, I'm ashamed to be a scientist. I'd welcome a test that avoided doubling up on segments of code that carry risk of harmful recessive traits. But aiming to maximize the potential genetic heterozygosity, irrespective of what the genes do does makes no sense. Say, for example, some bits of code make for a healthy heart or strong immune system or low risk of HD. I'd like low heterozygosity in those regions of code, thank you very much.

I have a 7 year old entire Lab bitch and her 13 mo old granddaughter. They are good mates, play together, sleep lying on one another, etc. The old lady humps the pup from time to time. But the weird one, which I've only seen twice, is the pup occasionally goes for the old girl's teats . . .it really looks like she's trying to nurse. While she does it she pumps her hips and spine in a sexual sort of way. The old girl puts up with it for awhile, but eventually tells the pup off. What the heck is going on? Does anyone else get this behaviour?