sandgrubber

Sure, precautions are required. True of most meds. Fortunately, there are genetic tests available. Still think it's worth celebrating the far-ranging veterinary benefits of meds developed to treat river blindness and elephantiasis. Admitted, I might be less enthusiastic if I kept herding breeds :)

Flame suit time again. People are asking about alternatives. Training: great if you can find the right trainer. A total waste of time and money if you find the wrong trainer . . . eg., a self-proclaimed 'dog whisperer'. I've hit trainers who recommend jerking on a choke chain or slip lead. The best trainer I worked with showed me how to use a prong collar and convinced me it wasn't a torture device. I don't want to train my dogs not to pull. I have a lovely tricycle and the dogs like to pull it. I just don't want them to dislocate my shoulder when some interesting critter crosses the track, or one of the neighborhood dogs hits the fence with ruff raised, barking messages that say fight. (I walk three 25-30 kg dogs together so they pull with some force). I find a prong collar does the trick wonderfully. (They are not only legal, but sold in most pet stores and feed stores where I live). The really big bonus is that the dog learns not to pull against the lead after a few weeks or months of use . . . but continues to pull against a harness if you want them to pull.

There is at least one example of a KC using the pedigree well. Finland. Have a look at this website (I think it will open to a specific dog's online records, but it's worth playing around with other features of the site . . . eg., you can get breed averages, lifespans, etc. Unfortunately, a fair fraction of the mortality data is recorded as 'unknown' . . . but at least there's a beginning for getting stats on cancer, nervous system disease, etc. You can also pull up pedigrees, often 8 generations, for any registered dog, and view the stats for any dog in the pedigree. Also check siblings, etc. http://jalostus.kennelliitto.fi/frmKoira.aspx?RekNo=FI12490%2F10&R=167

And yet, a relatively rare breed with few health problems is the oldest pedigree dog in the world with its bloodlines closely guarded for millenia. Go figure. Rare breeds are a challenge. Some have been recreated from a handful of dogs. But generalisation about narrowing gene pools is just that. Last UK survey of purebred dog genetics show that COI's are dropping. And yet kennel clubs have approved outcrossing programs and outside of kennel club breeders WHO is health testing? The number one factor in declining breed registrations is a no brainer. Breeders are breeding less. There has been a steady demand for pedigreed dogs which they cannot meet and I think that is the factor that allows BYBs to flourish. Again, outside of the pedigree dog world, who is health testing? Very VERY few breeders. The problem with these generalised statements of doom is that they don't bear up to close scruitiny but they get trotted out to suit the agendas of people from whom pedigree dog extinction is a goal. That's the only reason I commented. I know you aren't anti-purebred. Responding point by point is in my 'too hard basket' ....breaking up quotes within quotes is a PITA. But 'breeding the best to the best' can and does create serious problems. See, eg., http://cgejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40575-015-0027-4 (article titled: Trends in genetic diversity for all Kennel Club registered pedigree dog breeds). This has been most thoroughly researched for standard poodles http://cgejournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40575-015-0026-5), beginning from, and based upon, work done by poodle fanciers (http://www.standardpoodleproject.com/ ), particularly the late Dr. John Armstrong. For standard poodles, the link from inbreeding and autoimmune diseases is solidly established, and can be traced to a major bottleneck created by preponderance of the Wycliffe bloodlines among poodle breeders. Standard poodles, btw, are a fairly healthy breed. I expect, were other breeds subject to equally rigorous study of bloodlines and genetically-linked health problems, we'd find many other such problems. While I don't agree with this particular blogster on everything . . . I think he raise valid points on the dubious origin and dubious health of some 'breeds' http://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2011/03/italian-job.html I would expect lower vet bills and longer lifetime from a BYB puppy or a who-knows-what rescue than dogs from some relatively modern breeds, deliberately created from a very few individual founding sires and dams to satisfy some sort of romantic image of a dog breed, and then kept 'pure' by breeding among the descendants of the small founding population. But I'd guess, only a handful of breeds fit this category. Could spend hours on this . . . but really, the most important point is ]If you're going to 'breed the best to the best', or buy pups from someone who claims to do so, make damn sure that the definition of 'best' is not heavily weighted by show ring titles and does strongly include measures of health (particularly longevity) and temperament. The 'steady demand for pedigree dogs' is a complex picture. It is more apparent in some breeds than in others, and where it drives up price, it may bring in a lot of new breeders, imports, and improvements in quality (look at what has happened with chocolate Labradors in Australia, especially looking at establish breeders). It may also bring in less credible breeders and puppy farmers taking advantage of high puppy prices (Frenchies?, some choco Lab breeders). As someone who tried to breed for health and found health records poorly tied to pedigrees and very difficult to trace, I think the kennel clubs, with emphasis on conformation and lack of record keeping on morbidity and mortality, have a lot to answer for. The big picture is a complex mosaic. I'm often uncomfortable with PDE / Jemima Harrison's muckraking journalism . . . but there are real problems in the pedigree dog world and denying them isn't going to make the problems go away. edited to fix formatting errors and add further thoughts.

Putting on my flame suit . . . Narrowing gene pools are a problem with pedigree dogs. Some breeds much more so than others. Tables like the above bother me. Many experienced supposedly good breeders, and many breed clubs, are big actors in over use of popular sires, linebreeding to an extent that results in high COI's, and selection for extreme characteristics -- often with the loss of working ability. There are plenty of breeders who don't show and have no interest in their breed clubs, but are very concerned with health issues. The kennel clubs have brought the dislike of pedigree dogs down upon themselves by pushing purity at the expense of health in breeds with small populations, serious genetic problems, and limited opportunities to breed away from ill health. I am not advocating 'oodles. But I do think the declining registration problem in kennel clubs around the world is due to perceived, and sometimes real, emphasis on appearance (or 'type') at the expense of health and function. I don't argue with such people . . . I partially agree. But also point to examples (both breeds and breeders) where pedigree dogs are very healthy and have excellent temperament . . . or temperament suited for function. The pedigree can be important tool for improving health and temperament

I have forgotten the details, but when I brought my two to the US, it was a bit more complicated than this. You're supposed to do a rabies shot some time before you fly (I think it was a month). Not many vets do this. In some places you can do the rabies vaccination upon arrival and then do home quarantine. I think there was some sort of treatment to get rid of fleas and ticks within some specified time before travel as well.

When my girl had her first litter of puppies, my mother said: "If I'd have known that puppies were so much easier than kids, you guys would never have been born." I like older kids, but please, not full time. I'm pretty turned off by babies. I'm with others. Dogs are dogs . . . not a substitute for kids.

What's the secret? Is this just good luck? Did you / do you select for free whelping? What breed? If you selected for free whelping, how did you do it?

Vets I trust have told me something like: "Go ahead and use glucosamine + whatever. It's not expensive and there is no evidence it does harm and some (small) possibility it will help." Here's an attempt to review the veterinary and human medicine literature on glucosamine. Of course, make your own decisions, but I find it worth checking the evidence-based care literature http://skeptvet.com/Blog/2014/03/legs-glucosamine-study-sows-little-evidence-of-real-benefit/

I'm thinking of making a big move to NZ . . . that's coming from the US, so it means all the vet checks and quarantine and a heap of big bills. I think I'd like to buy a camper van and travel around a little before buying a property and settling down. North Island, probably north of Auckland. Is it realistic to think I will be able to find camping spots where I can stay with three dogs? Labradors. Very much accustomed to being on leash, but it would be great if they get a chance to run and play from time to time.

I've heard this form so many sources that I don't know which to site . . . but think it notable for the dog world that the Nobel went to the discoverers of medicine that most of us use for heartworm prevention/treatment, a few use for mange treatment . . . and a lot of people use for various worms in their livestock. Of course the Nobel was given due to the value of the drug for treating horrid tropical parasitic diseases that affect millions of people in very poor regions of the globe. Nonetheless, it's an interesting reminder that we, our pets, and our livestock have a lot in common, and advances in human medicine can translate into advances in veterinary medicine . . . and vise versa.

Bravecto (oral, good for 3 months) has worked wonderfully against ticks in our area. No way a cat could get the tablet . . . it's huge, and so expensive you're going to make damn sure the dog eats the whole thing. Of course, if you've got paralysis tick, you still need to keep checking . . . no medicine is completely effective.

Interesting. Sometimes I wonder whether the decline of black Labradors in favor of yellows, and more recently, chocos, has something to do with the difficulty of getting good photos of a black dog. Black is the traditional color . . . and genetically dominant . . . but it seems to be getting hard to find. BB studs don't get used much.

I've heard that re-freezing makes meat rubbery. My dogs love rubbery toys :D . Rubbery meat? Glorious. No, I wouldn't worry about it unless your dogs are in marginal health. A dog with a healthy immune system can handle stuff that would make most of us delicate humans sick.

Subsidized and cheap desexing is widely available in the US. My local has Operation Petsnip: https://www.facebook.com/No-More-Homeless-Pets-Operation-Petsnip-105298612843440/timeline/ The great thing is that they are good. The vet does 20+ spay/neuter operations a day . . . 10,000 a year. She's fast, she's expert at handling the complicated jobs like 'emergancy spay' (when the bitch is preggers). I'd trust these guys more than my regular vet when it comes to a spay or neuter because the vet has it down pat. They charge a modest fee to the general public, do a fair number of free jobs for rescue dogs and low income people, accept donations, run an op shop, and manage to chug along. There's a whole network supporting this sort of endeavor. This ad was sort of amusing: http://blog.adoptandshop.org/50shadesofspay/ I don't know why Australian cities don't seem to be able to support outfits of this sort.

The problem here is that reproductive safety tests are ugly and demanding and involve lots of compromises. Who wants to breed dogs and then slaughter the test dogs and their offspring. Use a big sample and the animal rights community is going to be all over you . . . they may do so even for a small sample. Use a small sample and you are vulnerable to the many doubts that come from small sample size. Many drugs simply aren't tested for reproductive safety. Merck would probably have been better off if they hadn't done this testing and could simply say that reproductive safety was not tested . . . so "not for use on ...". I don't know the ins and outs of reproductive testing, but they've gotta be complicated. Eg., the effects of giving a drug to a bitch are likely to vary from the first to the second to the third trimester, and then there's the additional concern of possible effects through lactation. I don't see that there's an easy solution to this problem . . . other than for breeders to use only absolutely necessary chemical exposure for breeding bitches . . . and maybe also dogs.

Sonny is good, especially if your are in the group that thinks of their dogs as furkids...and the dog has a happy disposition.

Sure, do your reading. But don't just read up on Bravecto, read reports on NextGard, Trifexis, Soresto, and the many and various synthetic pyretheroids. Flea and tick treatments are all poisons of one sort or another. All are suspect. All have reports of dogs getting severely ill, having seizures, and/or dying after being treated. Some of these reports no doubt come from individual dogs with high sensitivity. Some are probably dogs whose onset of illness happened to coincide with being treated. You need to weigh the potential problems of treatment with the potential problems from not treating; and you need to compare one treatment against another with regard to both effectiveness and potential side effects. This is extremely difficult to do because data are limited (they test on Beagles so does it apply to CKCS?). . . extremely subjective. If paralysis tick is a problem in your area, the equation is heavily weighed in favor of treatment. If you're worried about a flea or two, stop worrying. If your dog has flea allergies, the equation is weighted differently. In my situation. Frontline no longer works. Fleas are awful here and the do seem to carry tapeworm but we don't have paralysis tick. My dogs share my bed and, in addition to felling bad cause my dogs itch, I get no sleep when the fleas get bad. One of my dogs gets seizures from pyretheroids -- had a horrid incident years back from a spot-on flea treatment based on pyretheroids, and the Soresto collaar provoked mild nervous system problems. Moreover, our local fleas seem to have become immune to the Soresto collar. Bravecto has worked wonderfully for my three dogs with no side effects. At least for three months. I'm ready to continue with it for another three months. I would not use Bravecto or any other non-essential meds on a pregnant bitch . . . although the FOI report on Bravecto is not as clear as Fides reports. Twenty, not 10, pairs of dogs/bitches were used. Ten were treated, ten were used as controls. The sample selection didn't rule out inclusion of bitches with prior history of birth defects: "The dogs were healthy and had a breeding history of at least four pups weaned in at least two of the three previous litters with no congenital malformations in any pup." So some of the bitches probably had prior history of delivering pups with birth defects. Moreover two litters from the control (untreated) group had total litter loss, as opposed to one of the treated group. The lost litters may well have included high defect loads . . .and somehow the bitch absorbed the pups or otherwise failed to deliver because somehow her physiological systems detected that the pups weren't viable. The accusatory Facebook page can be found at: https://www.facebook.com/groups/411371212394679/ The FOI report can be located by googling: BRAVECTO FOI Summary - Food and Drug Administration Happy reading. It's complicated!!!

Pyrantel pamoate suspension is great. It's sold as a pinworm medicine for human infants, as well as a veterinary medicine. Puppies liked the formulation I bought, and it was cheap ($35 bought me enough for a lifetime). Many many breeders use it in the US . . . dosage recommendations are widely available.

I'd say the cost and unavailability of this standard is pretty offensive. What about transparency? Worth a note to your minister. Yah, I know. Most of them are hacks of one sort or another, but this is not a politicized issue so, who knows, someone may think there's a feel good, or a point score advantage to doing something about it.

We have just done this with our border collies. Ours are all 10-15kg so we bought the 20-40kg ones and cut them in half. Because there is no way of knowing if the active drug is spread evenly throughout the chew nobody in any official capacity will ever advise doing it (to cover themselves if your dog ended up with inadequate protection as you could go back at them if they did advise it). I spoke to many people who have done it themselves for a while now so decided it was worth the risk with our dogs. if uneven distribution of the drug through the tablet is the problem, you could resolve that by grinding the table and dividing the resulting stuff into parcels. The 'tablet' in this case is huge . . . as big as an $AU 0.20 coin, so there should be enough stuff to make it easy to split accurately. We have AWFUL flea problems here and fleas have developed a resistance to many meds. My three are on day 87 with Bravecto . . . so far no fleas and one dead tick. Very impressed with the product.

This is not true. Avocado (persin) WILL kill parrots and can be harmful to horses and goats, but they're harmless to dogs . . . apart from being a bit high in fat. See http://www.avocadofactsfordogsandcats.com/ . . . or the sources it quotes (Dr. Jean Dodds and the ASPCA). Swallowing the seed could be a problem . . . you need to watch what your dog does with an avocado to tell. An although there have been cases of dogs becoming deathly ill from eating grapes, most dogs eat grapes with no problem at all. When I had 7 acres of pinot noir, my two Labradors probably ate half a kilo of grapes a day at harvest time (at least . . they followed the harvest crew around and ate drops from dawn to dusk). They were fine. I asked about dogs being poisoned by grapes on a vintners forum. There were several replies saying, 'no worries' ... our dogs gorge themselves. No one reported a dog getting sick from eating grapes. Apples and pears are great. Dogs love them . . there's a little cyanide in the pips, but the pips come out whole in the poop so the concern is minimal. Parrots may not leave much for the dogs, though. Stone fruits, likewise have cyanide in the pits. There are dogs who might get in trouble eating a peach or apricot pit. I'd be inclined to caution. Most dogs don't like citrus . . . though I had a neighbor whose Goldies gobbled down lemons! All the berries are fine . . . apart from blackberry thorns and the damage the dogs may do to plants. But they must be netted. Figs are fine if the birds leave any. My dogs were not interested in passion vines and passion fruit when I had them in WA. The biggest problem I've had with dogs and fruit trees was the dogs fondness for blood and bone fertilizer . . . and manure.

Poor puppy . .. poor owners. The sadder story is that (quoting from the article): Ms Merry said she and Michael then came across a Facebook group dedicated to over 50 alaskan malamutes from the Sandown breeders who suffered the same or similar fate as Malla, and for the past 19 months, have been involved in a major campaign and court case against Gympie dog breeders Peter and Faith Dykstra involving up to 36 dogs. It's weak journalism that the author didn't verify this source or follow it up. But there are 50 other pups suffering from the same or similar fate, someone should be asking about who the sires and dams were, and whether or not they were hip scored. I hope the major campaign and court case is less scatter-shot than this article.

I did this a few years ago. Frankly it wasn't worth the hassle but didn't really have the option as the UK was changing its import rules to allow dogs from the continent over with the basic rabies vaccine and Australia had no vacancies. NZ quarantine kennels are privately owned and run so can charge whatever they want. I think it was about NZ$1600 four years ago. The other downside is that when the dog was reregistered here in WA they put IMP NLZ on his name not UK! Where's the hassle? The requirements before travel seem to be the same. For 3 Labbies I got a quote just under $NZ3800 (for everything related to quarantine in NZ). The equivalent in Oz would be around $AU5100. Plus the NZ facilities are much more generous about allowing visitation, and will be able to board my dogs together. I've never spent time in NZ and wouldn't mind a couple months there.

Two unfortunately common Boston health problems should be mentioned. 1. Hemivertebrae (spinal problems): can be very serious. Avoid dogs with a screw tail. 2. Inability to whelp naturally. A UK survey found more than 80% of Boston litters are delivered by Cesarian . . . they are apparently THE WORST breed in this respect. The US Boston terrier club says that there are 20 eye problems to look out for in the breed ... and there are also skin problems (including dermodex) are common.