sandgrubber

My new place is great, but the gardens and orchard show the effect of six months of neglect. The girls are getting their first exposure to sheep...The neighbors have three of them in my small paddock, securely fenced. I hope they soon decide sheep are boring. They've barked a few times, but don't seem THAT interested. Pictures to follow next week when I get my internet installed.

On the ferry. Should be on South Island in a bit more than an hour. I thought I could stay in the car with the dogs, but no...Had to leave them. It's been a rough crossing. Hope they're not Sicky. Tomorrow we'll be at my new place... At last.

Have been visiting the girls in quarantine for the last few days. NZ quarantine is not all that bad or that expensive. It's all the testing before and the transport costs that get you. The facility is as it has to be . . . dogs never leave easily cleanable surfaces, kennels are pretty large, but there's no access to exercise areas. But the people are nice and pretty informal, and they obviously love dogs. You have to wear white coats when visiting, but it's clearly a beaurocrat's joke. My dogs jump all over me and unbutton the white coat and generally max out body contact, so the silly white coat wouldn't do much good if a disease was lurking. I guess they get something serious once in a blue moon, but mostly, everyone is healthy. I want so badly to let them run and get some exercise. Only two more days. Then we drive four or five hours, stay overnight, drive again, take the ferry, and about an hour later we could be to the new place!!!!

The girls are now in quarantine. Jane, at Auckland quarantine writes that they are doing well, though my old girl looks confused. I'd say she has every reason to be confused. I'm still in the US packing (ugh). Miss the girls, but they wouldn't have been much help packing. I fly out on Sunday . . . arrive Tuesday. Thanks Baronia for the info/link and thanks everyone for the support. I'm not getting any younger and decided if I was going to move back to Oceania, I'd better do it while I have the strength to move.

The first leg was a grand mess, though the outcome was ok. The pet transport company worked really hard on the import requirements but totally forgot about domestic travel requirements. So I showed up at the loading dock at 7:30 am and they say: "Where's your health clearance?" Turns out a vet has to sign off within ten days of a domestic flight, but no one warned me. I was 2 hours away from home, in a city I don't know well, fortunately, with a friend who is a good navigator. Lots of calls to lots of vets. They all have surgery in the morning and can't see us until afternoon. Meanwhile we miss two possible flights. Finally get a veterinary booking at 1 pm, and a booking for a flight where they load at 2 pm. The vet charged $240 for taking temps, looking in their mouths, and listening to their chests, then filling out a simple form. Took all of 15 minutes. Horrible flight. One stop, with 2 hours lay over. But the dogs did make it to LA, and the pictures I've been sent look as though they are reasonably happy. On to Auckland in another hour or two. That's presuming no one has screwed up on the very complicated paperwork..

After all the months of vaccinations and blood tests and wormings and paperwork, it's finally happening. My three fly to New Zealand on Tuesday. I follow five days later. It's a long flight. The dogs get to overnight in Los Angeles before flying on to get put in quarantine in Auckland. I know, they'll be fine. They are three generations, mother, daughter, grand daughter, and very close. So they'll have one another. Or so I keep telling myself. But I'm so unnerved, and my stomach won't settle. Not much I can do about it, though.

No one can answer this question without knowing the actual medications used. If it's Ivermectin, as in Heartgard, and your dogs are not intolerant of the drug (unlikely with rotties, and if they are, they'd probably be dead by now) then there's little harm done by additional doses. The DIY heartworm prevention measures, using feedstore Ivermectin, often end up giving doses that are five or ten times the dose in Heartgard, with no ill effect. However, showdog is right. No advantage to doubling up. And really, no need to worm monthly unless you are in some unusual environment where worms are extra abundant. In the long term, I'd ditch the annual heartworm jab and just use the monthly dose. It's not unknown for dogs to have bad reactions, sometimes very bad reactions, to the annual heartworm. Btw, what meds for worms really depends on what worms your dogs have. Tapeworm does not respond to many wormers.

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what you can get out of ultrasound depends greatly on the equipment and the training of the techs. Back when I was breeding in WA, Murdoch vet school was letting well trained techs use top quality equipment and their counts were good (my girls typically had 9 or 10 pups . . .they generally came within one . . . sometimes they would say something like 10, but two are poorly attached and may not make it. Murdoch stopped offering the service. It's hard to find a good radiographer for this procedure.

Are you saying that locomotion is fundamentally different between dogs and horses? My gut feeling (couldwi be wrong) is that angulation close to 90 degrees has a physical advantage. Physical as in physics. I can't think of any naturally evolved animals that have the peculiar rear end conformation of the modern show GSD. Even the bitch you show looks, to me, like a building that on the way to eventual collapse because the stresses are all wrong.

I have Labradors. THEY LIKE EVERYTHING The more the merrier.

Sorry if this offends . . . or is kicking a dead horse . . . but I think it's clever BUGGER . . . the formatting won't post. Here's the source. http://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2017/02/lets-do-to-horses-what-we-did-to.html takes the skeletal changes in GSD conformation and applies them to a horse.

One tip. If you have multiple dogs, DO NOT LET THEM LICK EACH OTHER AFTER YOU APPLY A SPOT-ON. I ended out with a dog having horrible seizures and longer-term neurological problems (periodi focal seizures) after she licked her pup after application of a spot-on containing synthetic pyretheroids (as does advantage).

I've always walked (or run) 'momma dog' . . . but been careful to walk in areas where I've seldom if ever seen other dogs. I hate the idea of depriving a normally active bitch of exercise; I doubt if anyone has ever did any study of this, but it seems like old fashioned and now debunked notions of 'confinement' for human mothers. My impression is that exercise helps the bitch settle into her role as mother.

Hmmm? I'm logged in and I can't seem to edit my last post. Anyway . . . the uTube speech in the last post is a great sample of MRW's bias on judging the breed. She has strong opinions that disagree with much of what you hear in the Labrador community today. I appreciate both sides. I love the breed's adaptability; but the cold water focus of the dogs MRW talks about is clear and pleasing....though not the least bit adapted to Australia.

It's expensive because it's out of print and Labbie fanatics still want it. In economics terms, inelastic supply, growing demand. You may also want to look at

http://www.labbies.com/dysp2.htm is worth a read, though there may be more up to date sources. Here's a quote relevant to your question: 3) Other external factors influencing hip ratings...What day of the week the x-rays are reviewed?!?! Subjective methods of evaluation can lead to unintentional bias and inconsistency for reproducibility of results. A study conducted at the University of Pennsylvannia revealed a startling amount of variability for hip interpretations among non-OFA and OFA board certified radiologists. When these radiologists were asked to grade hips based on the OFA rating system (excellent, good, fair, borderline CHD, mild CHD, moderate CHD or severe CHD), non-OFA readers agreed with an OFA reader in fewer than 50% of the cases. The most disturbing revelation was that when each radiologist was asked to rate certain cases a second time, each radiologist gave the same rating that he had given the first time on less than half the radiographs.

Whoa! It is expensive now. I bought it years ago and I don't think I paid more than $20. Note, the same book is published as Reaching for the Stars (a later edition with some added material). It's a classic, and well worth a read. Lots of interesting breed history from someone who spent many many years as a breeder and judge. However, the science in the book is well out of date. I haven't read this one . . . but I would assume it contains much of the same material and also gets good reviews . . . https://www.amazon.com/gp/offer-listing/0720702429/ref=tmm_hrd_used_olp_sr?ie=UTF8&condition=used&qid=1486980459&sr=1-1 Come to think of it, I think I saw a copy in the little library at Dogs West. I'm sure some of the Lab Breeders in Perth have copies they would lend.

Geez, these prices make me feel like I'm getting a steal. I'm paying around $US10k for three Labbies from the East Coast of the USA to NZ . . . and that includes an overnight kenneling and various health checks and parasite treatments before the flight to NZ.

I started a kennel in WA. That was 12 years ago, and rules may have changed. WA had prescriptive rules regarding space per dog, slope and surfacing of floors, and drainage. These were mindless in a way: they made no allowance for the fact that a tiny lap dog requires less space than a high energy herding or hunting dog or giant breed. They did an annual inspection. Not really adequate, as kennels knew in advance about the inspection date, giving them ability to move excess dogs (very common with mixed breeding/boarding kennels) and make sure things were spiffy clean. There is a lot of room for improvement in such regulations. There are bad breeders and boarding kennels who routinely violate the standards that would seem to rise out of common sense. It's hard to legislate and enforce common sense. For example, putting a severely DA dog next kennel down from a shy dog may be torture. Senior dogs on the decline require special treatment, but it varies greatly with the individual dog. Sanitation is easy for some dogs, and a BIG problem with the occasional dog that insists on pooping in its bed or feeding dish. While there are some breeding and some boarding kennels that do things wrong,re There will always be some bad actors. Many of them know how to dodge regulations. Codes of practice with occasional inspections may prevent some abuses, but mindless or over-restrictive codes (eg., rules that legislate against keeping bitch and pups in the house, rules that demand the same space for a chihuahua as for a Dane) are going to drive out some of the best and bring down quality of care. In some places the RSPCA may be decent . . .in other places, ideological and dogmatic. Would add, that the worst abuses in kennels take place over Christmas break. If anyone is serious about curbing abusive practices, snap inspections over Christmas would be a good way to do it. They'll have to tolerate a bit of mess here and there . . . cause very few kennels can keep 100% clean when at full capacity.

just hit it a few times with a meat clever . . . then it doesn't matter which. For that matter, hit frames several times and they're good to go as well.

no photo for me either

U.S. Animal Abuse Records Deleted—What We Stand to Lose http://news.nationalgeographic.com/2017/02/wildlife-watch-usda-animal-welfare-trump-records/ By Natasha Daly PUBLISHED February 6, 2017 Two weeks into the Trump Administration, thousands of documents detailing animal welfare violations nationwide have been removed from the website of the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), which has been posting them publicly for decades. These are the inspection records and annual reports for every commercial animal facility in the U.S.—including zoos, breeders, factory farms, and laboratories. These records have revealed many cases of abuse and mistreatment of animals, incidents that, if the reports had not been publicly posted, would likely have remained hidden. This action plunges journalists, animal welfare organizations, and the public at large into the dark about animal welfare at facilities across the country. The records document violations of the Animal Welfare Act, the federal law that regulates treatment of animals used for research and exhibition. The USDA Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service (APHIS), which has maintained the online database, cites privacy concerns as justification for the removal. ....refer to the link above for full article IMO . . . yes the AR community goes overboard, but, provided that reporting is factual and not axe grinding, there is a reason to make reports public.

When I had a cattery in WA I used to use talcum powder to interrupt / erase scent trails. It worked well. Water works even better but it gets messy if you have dogs like mine (Labbies).

As Possum Corner, unfortunately, you can't avoid being 'PC' As someone with financial constraints, it's hard to understand those who count $5k as lightly as I count $50. I wish I could afford to fly first class, hire a large suite at a five star hotel, and eat at any restaurant I choose...or donate $100k to some worthy cause. Compared to such expenditures, $5k on rescuing a dog is no big deal. I just hope the folks that make that purchase are also giving to some worthwhile charities.