sandgrubber

I learned about a new version of NIMBY. It's COVE. Stands for Committee Against Virtually Everything. Sounds like a good issue for them to take on.

Cant you trust the person you are selling her to? Good question. I think I trust her, but I wish I had more trust in my own ability to judge character. I am a trusting sort, and a few people have violated my trust. By far the easiest solution is to let the pup go on the Mains and hope for the best. The pup has great health profiles as far back as I can follow her pedigree, so maybe I'm being overprotective. Gawd damn it's hard to find the balance between trust and doing your part to ensure that people do the right thing. Maybe I should give up trying to be policeman. In some ways I think the growing tendency to caution and 'accountability', aka officious behaviour, is a worse scourge than the occasional small scale breeder who tries to make money off breeding a bitch that shouldn't have been bred. I have a gut aversion to co-ownership as a way of exherting power after a pup once it placed.

Have you gotten a quote from Applecross. I had some frozen semen with them for a short time. I don't remember what the fee was, but I know it was annual, and I think it was closer to $50 than $150.

Probably cost a few hundred dollars max, and less time than people have wasted responding to this thread. Come on guys. This is a democracy. Open letter. BFD!!!!! People, and organisations, even misguided organisations, have a right to mouth off.

Agreed 100%. But for people who hit tyranny of distance on finding the ideal mate, AI is a godsend.

I want to transfer a girl on Main Register with No-Breeding until she's reached a year and had health tests as appropriate for the breed done. Unfortunately, as things stand with my breed, you have to do the tests before you can breed, the regs will allow breeding for a dog/bitch with bad hips or elbows. Sire and dam are both PRA clear, so genetic eye tests not needed. The obvious way to do it is a Non-Breeding Contract. That will require me to eventually do a secondary bit of paperwork to repeal the non-breeding contract once the tests have been passed. Is there a way I can get myself out of the loop, and set it up so that the Non-Breeding Contract dies if and when health tests are done and acceptable results are presented to the relevant Canine Association. p.s. I'm in WA, the bitch is going to SA. I'm thinking of moving back to the USA and would like to make things simple for the puppy buyer and open a channel for the breeder to require health testing even where the K9 authorities haven't been willing to do so. I'm no spring chicken. In th bigger picture, I'd like to set it up to avoid legal chaos that benefits only the [accursed] solicitors should I meet an early demise.

Where are you? Vitality is a great deal, but you can only get it directly from the factory in Naval Base WA.

An open letter is hardly a major investment I love watching CM, but don't find his advice is particularly useful for my own dogs. Hard to see him as harmful, however. I sense, from the amount of time the author spent on CM's rags-to-riches bio, that the author is a fan, and has an agenda other than neutral presentation of news.

I can see being worried about AI in a breed where natural matings are a problem. Eg, I understand that many Bassets have trouble cause the boy is too heavy for the girl, and I know of one girl who has to be AI'd every time cause she'd like as kill the boy. I don't like the idea of a breed that can only reproduce via AI. But where distance is the only obstacle to a natural mating (or perhaps the death of the dog), what's the problem?

The locking jaw might be something to submit to Mythbusters. . . . which I prefer to JJ. You might want to look at the definition of 'game' thread under BSL. APBT's are, apparently, bred to be highly tenacious, determined dogs with a fighting spirit. But if there's a locking on, it's in the mind, not the jaw.

I don't know why anyone considers AI second best . . . I have seen no evidence that there's a biological difference in the pups. I'm in WA and simply can't take the time to go to the Eastern states for a mating. I wouldn't do frozen semen with a maiden unless there was a strong reason to do so . . . it's a fairly invasive procedure and not cheap . . . I'd prefer to do it on a bitch I already know is fertile and a good mother. I've done chilled semen with vaginal insertion on three maiden bitches . . . I got 10 pups each time. Timing is critical. Progesterone testing is important. A good repro vet is important.

I'm boomer generation, raised in California. My folks thought that a few litters was a good way to help us learn the facts of life. I can't remember any of the neighbors having puppies or kittens: but people (apart from my parents) were pretty conservative in the 1950s and they wanted their children to believe that the stork brought babies. I guess we were protected from other facts of life, like dogs getting run over and puppies that couldn't be placed with good homes. I don't remember what happened to any of the family dogs except Tonka, who hamstrung a neighbor's calf and ended out getting deported to someplace hundreds of miles away. He came back, and eventually got put to sleep. Our dogs were never fenced . .. almost no one had fenced yards. Nor, can I remember, were any of them formally trained. A few kids taught their dogs to do tricks, but most didn't. Our first dog, and English Springer Spaniel, used to bring home the chooks from next door . . . unharmed but they went off laying for a few days. Kids and dogs both wandered pretty much freely. There was a big Afghan named Stupid (the sort of name kids remember) who always came to the bus stop with his kids. Dogs HAD to get vaccinated and to wear their rabies tags or the dogcatcher would take them.

I guess Australia doesn't have a monopoly on stupid rules. Why on earth would they make AI difficult if they want to increase genetic diversity? They also want both potential mates to have reproduced naturally before considering AI. eg they won't accept that the dog or bitch is 'not dog friendly' as a valid excuse to AI. The KC also don't approve of those mating frames used by some breeds. You could consider these rules as wanting to keep breeds with the ability to be able to breed naturally without the conformation and temperament of a breed preventing it. You don't need AI to increase genetic diversity. What do they think is wrong with AI? You don't NEED AI for diversity, but it sure helps, especially where a breed is rare and funds are limited. Say you were breeding a rare Japanese breed in the UK; there were only a few dogs to choose from, and the ones you like best are closely related to your girl (the equivalent situation is widespread in Australia, but we have to go through quarantine as well as international shipping). It would be a damn sight easier to import a few straws of semen than to find someone willing to sell a first rate dog and bring him over. And if you do bring over a top-rate dog and don't mind making him available, you're likely to suddenly find everyone using him . . . with bad consequences for diversity. If you had done AI you could use a dog who is so good the owner is unwilling to let him go . . . and if you didn't like the results, you could repeat the exercise with another dog.

I guess Australia doesn't have a monopoly on stupid rules. Why on earth would they make AI difficult if they want to increase genetic diversity?

Have a yarn with California fire fighters. Quite a few people do put their lives at risk to save their pets in fires, and a few actually die in the attempt. It's a nightmare for the fire crews.

In recent years, there have been several litters in WA where some (roughly half) of the pups were something like brindled (mosaic). I wouldn't call them black and gold, but someone might. In some cases both sire and dam were titled. Pamela Davol discusses this, and black and tan labs, at length: http://www.labbies.com/genetics2.htm Such pups are generally registered on Limited Register. I don't see how this undermines responsible breeders.

If you go to the Kennel Club website and follow the links on the story, you'll find a BREEDER INFORMATION section. Apparently this service is going to allow you to look up health records on any bitch or dog . . . and in time veterinary information will feed into it. Thus, in time, you may be able to look up sire, dam, and the grands and get hips, elbows, any major health conditions, cause and age of death, etc.

Labrador -- from a litter that seems to have given up biting flesh at week seven. Yazmin has already sat down with all 10 of them and had them jump all over her, so, fingers crossed, it isn't going to be one of the cases where the girl wanted the puppy and then gets the puppy and discovers it has sharp little teeth.

I had a welder custom fit a Ford Festiva with a separator . . . which allowed me to put up to four large dogs in the back without worrying about them coming into the front. No crate needed. No fuss.

So how does the Dogo Argentino and the Presa Canario fit into this theory? Or the Corgi or Newfoundland (both subject to BSL in Italy), or the Rhodesian Ridgeback and Golden Retriever which are both included in BSL in areas of the USA. Lots of devils lurk in details. Sometimes there's a mind-dead political process making legislation based on some incident or strong opinions from a powerful person. Sometimes there's a specific reason. Sometimes there's a false report and it will turn out that 'BSL' is just some do-gooder legislation trying to help when they would do better leaving things be. Eg, the BSL on Goldies could say that people could be prosecuted for cruelty if the didn't groom adequately. Sometimes there's an intelligent decision based on study of the breed characteristics . . . resulting in the opinion that there aren't many of 'em in Oz now and it will be much simpler if we don't bring in more. Unfortunately, such things need to be studies on a case-by-case basis.

Are Labs easy to train? Do they offer no challenge to their owner? Or is it, that once trained / matured / raised, they are biddable to their owner, family? where biddable = to do what is asked and when; obedient, tractable. The breed standard specifies that Labradors should be biddable. Some are relatively stubborn or independent, but yes, in general they are tractable. But I don't think it should be a military-style obedience . . . rather a cooperative style based on some understanding of the job to be done. My mother never did any formal training and was not trained at training dogs. Her Labs picked up 'out of the garden' to mean 'stick to the path' . . . 'bad birds' to mean 'you can chase those birds [even though you are not supposed to chase birds]' . . . and they learned to walk on the floorboards and avoid the Persian carpets. Excellent recall. Horrible gutsers. I tend to think that most dogs have a higher emotional IQ than most humans, and Labbies have higher emotional IQ's than most dogs . . . my very biased judgement. The point being that 'gameness' is not what is valued . . . it's something much softer. I was told that blind obedience (no pun intended) was undesirable in a guide dog. Eg, if you command a guide dog to walk in front of an oncoming car, it should refuse to do so. Not sure if it's true, but makes sense to me. I can see the 'game' word making sense for the ancestral Labradors, who, legend has it, hauled in fish nets in the Bay of Fundy. That would require courage, spirit and tolerance of a potentially dangerous and bitterly cold environment. The derived gun dogs need to be highly cooperative. Strong, enthusiastic, yes. But able to be recalled at any point in the retrieve, and not so carried away by getting the bird that they ruffle the feathers. Not to be distracted by other dogs . . . or to scare away the game by getting into a fraccus with other dogs.

Completely normal. I feed a lot of raw to dogs in a boarding kennel. Lots of dogs eat the raw and ditch the biscuits. Get lots of reports that the dog won't eat its biscuits for awhile after it goes home. Have converted quite a few owners to feeding raw.

I'm very confused by this thread. Pup looks adorable, but quite young . . . young enough that its joints are still mostly cartlidge and not well enough formed to show well in X-rays. Also young enough that things might change considerably as the bones form. Almost looks like a late swimmer. Sometimes, given the right support, young pups with potential problems can be shaped to come out right without surgery. I'm no expert, but agree with suggestions that it's worth seeking opinions from a vet who knows a lot about skeletal development and/or bulldogs.

Puppy pickup day is Wednesday. The family had done the traditional trip to the pet supply place to load up on supplies. Yazmin can think of nothing else. Looks like she's going to sleep in the puppy bed rather than the other way around

Actually, I think you could possibly use 'game' with Labradors. They are also bred to be retrieve fallen game in cold water, adverse weather conditions and to go through brush and uncomfortable terrain to get it. That tenacious determination to retrieve could be called 'game'. Yup. And those with tenacious determination to retrieve often make great working dogs, but not the best pets. As with, say, herding in kelpies. Labs generally have very high pain tolerance and thick coats . . . I once owned a wooss of a Labrador who didn't hesitate to retrieve from stream while there was still a lot of ice and snow about. Tenacious determination . . . no. Willingness to try, definately. I think 'drive' and 'game' should have separate meanings, though I'm still confused about what the distinction is.