sandgrubber

Hope you get to breath sighs of relief soon . . . and that the event helps in training OH.

Hope he's going ok. Please update us.

Hope Nelly's back to full wag. Here's a link for cold tail. http://www.woodhavenlabs.com/coldtail.html Sounds like that's one possibility . . . but your vet's guess also sounds reasonable . . . eg, spider bite.

I've got a couple dogs in kennels whose owner supplied Royal Canin Jr for them. They are very happy pinching the ProPlan small dog that I've given the other small dogs in their exercise area.

Some foods produce loose poohs, particularly those with a lot of (undigestable) grain in them. Try a high-end dry dogfood, if you're not using one already. Avoid canned food. Alternatively, try a BARF style diet . . . BARF dogs generally have hard little turds that turn white because they're so full of calcium. There are differences between dogs in what they digest and what they don't . . . but if your present dry food is rich in maize corn it's a likely culprit. Corn meal goes right through a lot of dogs.

As noted in a previous post, some 'chocolate', particularly cheapo varieties, doesn't contain much chocolate at all . . . the dangers are in eating large portions or small portions of dark stuff. I do wish they wouldn't make those dog chocolate drop treats, though. It gives people the wrong idea.

I have four labs under two years of age. It's very convenient to have five acres of what used to be a sandpit and they have a ball digging. One got good at digging under fences, though, and I eventually had to put up electric fence to keep her from digging out. Electric fencing doesn't sound nice, but it does work when everything else fails. The dogs learn fast, and it's rare for them to get shocked more than once.

An experienced breeder might be more help than a vet. I'd try posting something on the breeder's forum (you can post things there and read other people's posts, but cannot reply to threads) asking for urgent help and give your location. Note, some breeders are very down on breedings of non-pedigree dogs, so you may get some guff, but there are also some very helpful and knowledgable people. If I were you I'd be aiming for a heated location, and trying to set up a whelping box of some sort. Puppies are very succeptible to cold in their first three or four days.

As I understand it -- and my understanding may be wrong -- a PROPERLY vaccinated dog is protected, full stop. However, pups that have been vaccinated at six weeks often do not develop immunity because the maternal antibodies attack the vaccine. The window between the first and second vaccinations is a dangerous time. And there are occasional cases where the second jab doesn't take either. One of my vets said that the first annual booster clinches in the protection.

It would be great to have some science-based advice on the exercise question. Has anyone seen any peer reviewed studies on the subject? I always end up confused when I advise puppy buyers. The vet I trust most on the subject is at odds with run-of-the-mill breeders advice. The worst skeletal problems I've had were a pair of lovely girls who played hard together but were not walked until they were older. But other pups who've had playmates have been fine. And several pups who have been walked from four months were fine. But I don't walk dogs hard and a lot of it is off lead. Maybe the anti-walking advice came from experiences of power walkers???? Eight months is past the main period of bone calcification, and in the way I understand it, is near the time when you can begin shifting from building bone to building muscle. Or are newly calcified bones more fragile? I don't know.

Sounds like time to get a new dog to me But I don't know your situation, so that may be out of order.

I run a boarding kennel. From my observations, your dog is perfectly normal. Most dogs will eat dry biscuits ONLY if they are hungry and they can't find anything better to eat (a few, including most Labradors, will eat anything put before them in almost any quantity). If you enjoy watching your dog enjoy eating, find some healthy treats. You'll find lots written on raw food diets. Most dogs love them and they can be very healthy. But if you don't like that sort of thing, use a premium grade dry food for small dogs and dress it up a bit with healthy treats. Milk and cheese are fine in small amounts (less than, say 10% of diet), especially if they don't give your dog the runs or make it fart a lot.

You've probably done a lot of reading and talking by now and this may be old hat . . . but in case you haven't picked up on it, epilepsy is hard to diagnose. I had a girl who had one tremendous grand mal seizure (at about three years old) and then never had another. I'm sure it feels good in a way to have a positive diagnosis, but keep an open mind. If he doesn't respond to meds as expected, it could be because it isn't classic epilepsy.

I second chicken frames. I pay $7 for a 10 kg box. (I buy around 200 kg/week . . . some for my dogs, some for others, some for the boarders). For smaller dogs I just hit frames with a heavy duty well sharpened Chinese meat clever (using end grain wood for a cutting board). Takes about 10 minutes to chop up a 10 kg box and is better therapy than a punching bag. For alternate meats, check around for pet meat suppliers. I have one who sells a general ferral animal mince (mostly roo) for about $1.50/kg and HUGE sheep necks for $0.70. I also buy horse carrots. A 20 kg bag costs $5.50 and lasts me a couple weeks. I add whatever else is cheap for veggies/fruit. Often you can get blemished apples, cracked cabbage, etc. cheap at the markets.

Depends on when you'd like to see the bigger pooh :p . I don't think it matters otherwise. If you have Labbies, they want the bigger meal twice a day, thank you very much.

Another thing to look for is tucked up and VERY tender tummy. Parvo is painful for pups. My crew have never had it, but had a bad scare (the puppy had eaten a LOT of sand). The vet (not very experienced one) suspected parvo because of the acute gut distress.

A friend's dog (Labrador) apparently did this. Not sure what the swallowed object was . . .could have been foam rubber . . . could have been a meat absorber thingy. He developed a blockage and all the symptoms (vomiting, wretching, obvious discomfort) and got put into emergancy. They put a barium tracer through him and Xrayed hourly to try and find where the blockage was (the thing didn't show up well on Xray). It eventually passed without surgery, but I'm sure the vet bill was horrid.

Don't worry so much about weight as profile and feel. If you can feel the ribs and see a waistline, you're pretty much ok. 23 kg sounds like a mid-range weight for an 8 mo lab bitch, presuming she has a fair amount of bone. As for the exercise thing . . . I sold a lovely Lab pup to a family with instructions to constrain activity until about a year . . . gentle walks only . . . blah, blah, blah. What did they do? Of course, took him out horse back riding, on a regular basis, starting at around six months. I was horrified and shocked. Sent him in to be rayed at 1 year. Guess what. 2:1 hips and 0:0 elbows. As good as any of my dogs. I asked our vet, who has a history working with Guide Dogs. He said, straight ahead exercise generally doesn't do harm and may do good. Twisting and bumping and jumping are what you need to avoid

Honey is good for dogs, so long as you don't feed it by the kilo. But it's not good to give them lots of bread, so maybe better not to give them the sandwiches.

Note, it looks like you're getting a lot of possibly useful advice. Try things one at a time, and give them enough time to work. You may already be alert to this, but I think it deserves stating: Trying lots of things at once is not generally a good strategy because: -- you'll never be able to work out what is working -- two things may interact, causing further problems -- some of the things you are using are probably doing nothing, and others may be doing harm.

If you're worming regularly, what's the problem? If they get worms, you take care of them. The odd parasite isn't a problem. It's when you get a build up that they do harm. I let my mob loose in the bush and I'm sure they also enjoy roo, bandicoot, rabbit, and Lord only knows what else.

My labs (nine at the moment) like the curry-comb style "brushes". Rubber nibbly things rather than bristles. If they're at all itchy, they love getting combed and scratched. And they like it otherwise. Maybe you just need to be patient. Some puppies don't like to stand still for anything.

I use a dietary supplement called Selvita, which is very high in selenium -- also has many vitamins, rare amino acids, Omega 3 and 6's, and minerals. The recommended doses are small and it's reasonably cheap. See http://www.vetnpetdirect.com.au/catalog/Se...gs-p-16405.html

My theory is it's a natural sort of pro-biotics . I've never met a dog that doesn't love kitty crunchies. I'm a little more worried when I see loads of vermiculite (which is what I use for kitty litter) show up in the dog poohs . . . but it seems to go through them with no harm .

In my experience, we use some human medications on dogs (eg vallium). Where meds are developed specifically for the veterinary market they give them a different name (and a different price, and with different description sheets). But there may be times when the vet specifies the chemical name rather than the drug name given by the drug company. . . in which case human and dog meds with the same active ingredient will be called by the same drug name.