sandgrubber

Jeez. Would be nice if there were such a thing as a qualified 'behaviouralist'. Lots of us seem to have a silver bullet, but no way to assay the bullet to be sure it's really silver.

In defense . . . many of our breeds were cross breeds at one time. I get oodles of oodles in kennels. Some of them are LOVELY dogs -- and some are disasters. If the best of 'em could be settled into type would be a great breed. Have a chocolate standard poodle Labradoodle in at the moment who moves beautifully, has great bone, and has super skill relating to both people and other dogs. Not a gutser like many (most) Labradors. Not as aloof as some poodles. I don't think breed is a museum piece. DD's for profit with no attention to health, etc. is a problem. But there has to be a way for new breeds to emerge to suit the changing needs of changing times.

Another possibility is that she was mated early and it took. . . she is prego but not five days overdue. I agree with others about seeing the vet. But the situation may not be dire. + 1

I have an all girls pack of six Labs, one desexed, two pups, three brood bitches. They have never had a minor, much less a major skirmish. They seem to sort pecking order out by who pees on top of who's pee and who scratches the most furiously after marking. I'm not advocating anything. Just saying dogs are quite variable, even within a breed, and when you have to speyed girls of different breeds, lots of things could happen. I agree with others .. . advice from an experienced person would be good. Given that 'behaviourist' is something anyone can call themself, I'd say pick and choose and before calling the person out, sound them out as per the situation on hand.

If interested, I'll be glad to provide a reference for a Perth + South behaviourist who is pretty new and trying to build up a clientelle south and far south of the river. In my experience she's not the best sit-stay-heel person, but very good with dog on dog questions. Im in Bunbury.... I seperate them by about 3 meters but will do one inside the other out from now on.

I have nothing constructive to add, other than loads of sympathy. No helpful advice. My mother had a lovely dog whose 'Achilles heel' was arthritis of the paw. I do sometime worry that we place too much emphasis on hips and elbows and pay to little attention to the whole dog.

something about DOL software and my browser is not working. Sorry about the duplicate post.

My girls crunch roo tails like they were popcorn! I've fed loads of load bearing beef bones . . . they hand around for a long time and become 'toys' after the marrow has been cleaned out. I've never seen a tooth harmed. But the vets always comment on how clean and white my girls teeth are. Mostly we do chicken frames . . . clobbered with a meat clever for little guys or pups. I have Labbies . . .but will feed chooks, chrunched or not to many breeds. For me the biggest concern is fat content. Lamb flaps are often disgusting in this respect. It's so hard to keep some dogs lean. The last thing they need is an extra kilo of very fatty bone.

I think the better test of the kennel, given that the dogs have been there for a stay, is whether your dogs are looking enthusiastic or worried when you drive back toward the kennel. I have many people tell me that their dogs get all waggy and enthusiastic when they get to the turnoff that they think means 'kennel'. Reason: my guess is they like doggy company, they get lots of play, and they think the food is great. Some of the dogs who are enthusiastic about coming back are also enthusiastic about going home. Some dogs are enthusiastic about lots of things.

Thanks for fixing the link I'd say Canada has a peculiar situation. Lots of problems where people -- presumably living on the land with their own culture re raising children and working dogs -- end out with lethal encounters between a young child and a pack of dogs. Looking at the list, I think it's interesting that Australia seems to have relatively few incidents with camp dogs and small children. Aside from that, I find it hard to draw any conclusions from the data presented . . . other than falling through the ice is a bad idea when there's a dog pack at hand.

In my book, statements like this entrench the widespread prejudice against APBTs and the people who own and love the breed. I don't see how answering the unanswered questions will prevent a repeat. There are idiots out there who harbor aggressive dogs with inadequate fencing . . . or allow them to roam the streets. There will continue to be ugly incidents. With or without BSL. Bull breeds will continue to show up, but so will lots of other breeds and cross breeds. Calling people 'bleeding hearts' for responding to a horrible incident simply tarnishes your own name.

You might see if your vet can have a chat with their vet. If both vets agree that the pup was not infected at the time it left, I'd say you're off the hook with respect to responsibility. I think parvo does have an incubation period, and exact understanding of what happened during shipping may be required. Eg, have other dogs been in the care that was used? Was the pup in a crate? What a nightmare!

Great to hear you're doing so well with the pups! Congrads for getting them through a rough patch. With respect to Mum: The dairy industry finds that mastitis has many varieties and can be very hard to treat. The choice of antibiotics, etc. varies with the infecting organism. I had a girl who had it really bad and did a lot of looking around to see if there were similarities between dogs and cows in this respect. The thread was 'really bad mastitis' . .. .you can probably find details by searching. You want to get rid of it entirely if you plan to have further litters from the bitch. Some varieties may come back for the next litter. You may want take a sample of the milk from the bad teat and either get it to a vet who works with dairy cows or freeze it for analysis by a specialist/pathologist at a later time.

I can't see anything funny. Were we watching the same video clip? It's awful that a pair of dogs are allowed to roam after they have attacked and been declared dangerous.

The first link seems to be wrong. It just gives me an error message.

btw, it's cheaper per dog when you do more than one. I'm shipping 3 adult Labbies and a 6 mo old pup from Perth to SFO. Jetpets quoted me something a bit under $7k. Not cheap . . . but not that bad either (shipping a Lab from Perth to Sydney will run over $800). So if you can join up with someone else travelling with a dog, you may be able to cut the price down a bit.

I'm planning a return to the US (I'm from the USA, migrant to Oz, returning to the USA). I'll be moving four dogs from Perth to San Fran. The US side poses few problems. They care that you're not bringing rabies into the country and the burocracy is smart enough to realize that there's no rabies in Oz. The various transport arrangements may pose minor problems for documenting rabies vaccination, AQIS registered vets, etc. Basic red tape where it's easier to pay out than fight. I find JetPets wants to give a rabies vac at $110. A local AQIS cert vet will do the rabies vac for$70. Technically, if you put the dog in confinement when you hit the US, you can have it vaccinated on arrival and keep it in confinement for 30 days. Rabies vac is cheap in the US. Bottom line ... take care of the Oz side of thing. Don't worry too much about the US.

I agree. But I expect most species are odd if you really know the species .

Yup. It's a cruel old world out there for dogs that happen to end out having been born to unfortunate circumstances . . . or bought by bad owners. And there are all sorts of dilemmas faced by those trying to make a bad situation better. Personally -- I think mandatory desexing is good where responsible breeders have a way out. But I don't think we need bandwagons. Just people taking effective action on their love for dogs. Rescue what you can. Bottom line . . . if there are more pups born than good owners looking for pups . . . some pups will end out in not-so-good homes.

I don't think anyone should rush to attack/defend in this case. But all should shed a tear. Seems like a relatively defenseless dog died, a kid that loved the dog had to watch. WHO CARES if it was 30 minutes or an hour and a half. I'm sure it was eternity for the poor kid. I don't think blame is going to get us far. Likely that the council has put an impossible job on the ranger and the ranger is not doing the hard parts . . . and will probably quit soon to take on a job with higher pay and less difficult responsibilities. We have a system that doesn't work in many Australian councils. If we don't fix the system, we're chasing our tails.

sexist. Why give the mother full responsibilty. Presumably the unfortunate eunich kid has a father. I'm an old lady, sick of a world that looks for one person to blame for complex system failures where many people shirked responsibility. What we need is more people taking responsibility . . . to make sure that when the first line of defense f*#&'s up, someone else is there to carry the bag. . . not a lot of people pointing fingers at someone else.

I run a boarding kennel. I will never allow DIY vaccinations. Whatever the requirements are, safety demands that the person administering vaccinations has official validation, reinforced by some sorts of police powers. At present, that means I want to see a vet's signature on the vaccination card. I couldn't care less if the vet nurse does the jab. It must be overseen and signed off on by a vet.

I work with one vet who loves sentinel and one vet who hates it. Apparently, the negative is that monthly treatment for worms may contribute to the evolution of intestinal parasites with resistence to vermicides. I have found cheaper ways to deal with various parasites . . . but I have several dogs, so costs mount up. Convenience makes Sentinel a good deal.

physics would say immersion in hot water is a good approach . .. the hot water has huge amount of heat/energy to exchange. The exchange will happen from the surface touched by the water and work inward, so generally heat the flesh more than the bone. The only snag if if what your dog really likes is warm marrow. In this case, a microwave may do the job more efficiently. I find that a 10 or 20 seconds in a microwave will often make the marrow soft and drippy without great effect on the bone itself. Great idea, Staranais . I have done this in the past to speed up thawing process when I've forgotten to remove food from the freezer (this was back when he would eat the meat raw). Never thought to do the same to warm up a bone. Cheers for that .

A few things to consider from the physics perspective: - your dog and most raw food are > 80% water and the physical properties of water (exceptional high capacity to absorb and store heat) mean its influence will dominate the heat balance. Giving a few hundred grams of warm, raw food will have less effect on the dog (via the temperature effect) than drinking a cup of hot coffee does for you. Who knows, it may have the nice warming feeling that we get from hot food. Hard to say what sensations dogs feel. - heating to, say 40 or 45 C, is unlikely to make bones splintery unless the way the heating is done means that the bony bits get hotter than the meat. Beyond me to work this out from first principles. If in doubt, try a test. Heat it and then smash a bit with a hammer. If you get long sharp shards, it's not safe. (In my family, we consider the knobby ends of chicken bones not-splintery, and allow our dogs to chomp them off the longer shanks when we eat cooked chook. Never had a problem. The problem is splinters, not cooking. The splinteryness and sharpness of bone fragments is VERY complicated. When in doubt, experiment.)