sandgrubber

For the rat phobes . . . dare you to watch this (clicker trained rats doing tricks you'd have a hard time teaching a dog)

If you're bothered by people's reaction to your dog, try walking down the street draped with a pet snake!

+1

Good on you. As it should be. It's not just dogs that get anxious in clinics. Sometimes, especially when there's a serious worry and a long wait, the owners get pretty strung out as well. If having their dog on their lap helps keep their blood pressure down, and generally makes the waiting room a calmer, more relaxed place, I'm all for it. Where the chairs aren't suitable, I've been known to sit on the floor at the vets to be next to my dog. I'm sure some people cluck with disapproval. But that's their problem.

Doesn't help that you can easily buy Service Dog ID stuff. Try looking on Amazon under Service Dog ID. Methinks they should require proof that you have a genuine service dog to get the stuff. eg, http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=service%20dog%20id

First year vets can be great, but it's best if they have an experienced vet around to fall back on. I would imagine it's pretty frightening for a vet to have attended one Ceasar in vet school, perhaps a dog, perhaps a sow, and to be thrown in to doing a Ceasar solo for the first time. Same with a lot of other procedures. It's even worse if they get put in an environment where they lack support and face pressure to meet revenue expectations . . . as is likely to happen in a franchise. The good side is that they tend to be up to date on newer findings, more open minded, and in many cases, better trained in communication.

Whatever you decide, you should thank the pound for being honest with you, and for cooperating. Xmas is an awful time for dog pounds.

In Florida, airlines aren't allowed to fly pets if the weather for the day is forecast to go over 85F at any point in the day. This basically eliminates flying from June through October. Vet check required within 10 days of boarding. I'm surprised that the same sort of rules aren't in effect in Oz . . . Florida is anything but a Nanny state (eg, it's allowed to use dogs to run game, no BSL, restrictions on breeds and numbers only found in urban areas).

I'd think they'd encourage it. A dog that's on a seat is a dog that's not wandering around on leash end, trying to sniff cats' bums and generally causing havoc.

I have doubts. Dogs in fights don't go for faces so much as neck and, if they can get it, belly. Also, legwork is important for fighting. Bitey-face is as often as not played lying down. With mine, the most notable thing about bitey-face is the volume. They are so loud that phone, TV, and radio are all drowned out. I often have to take the phone outside when the dogs get going.

What was/were the active ingredient(s)? Is it possible that one dog licked the other after the stuff was applied? Have you read the sheet that came with the stuff? Was itching mentioned as a possible reaction? Some flea/tick treatments are nerve poisons, and can make animals quite sick if they ingest what is supposed to be topical. That said, when I had this problem, the reaction was seizures, not itching.

Vet West has eight clinics. My experience with them was bad: vets newly hired out of vet school with inadequate supervision. They did a C-section for me (uterine inertia) and 3 of 9 pups died. Serious mistakes made, plus they told me to come on in and then kept me and the girl waiting for a couple hours because they had another surgery going.

Do you have ticks in your area? Of all the pests, they are the hardest to treat, and if you have paralysis ticks, the most dangerous. If present, tick prevention should be the cornerstone and the other meds selected to complement the tick prevention program. Btw. monthly heartworm is also overkill. The parasite takes about four months to get established and its lifecycle can be interrupted at any point during those four months. Every two months, therefore, is safe. And you may be able to drop the winter months if there are no mosquitoes in your area in winter.

I would call it shallow science. Correlation without causation. As for the causation . . . if your sample is heavy on small terriers and other breeds selected to kill vermin . . . a situation where gameness is of high value . . . you're likely to find you get a pack of aggressive little dogs. If your sample is heavy on pugs and Frenchies, you're likely to come to a different conclusion. McGreevy seems to have a propensity for shallow science. A few years back he and associates did a much-quoted study showing that the brain layout in brachy breeds was different from that of other breeds. Hardly surprising. Change the skull shape and the grey and white matter has to go somewhere. The conclusions say something like: the next step is to find out if this has any behavioral consequences. But so far, the next step hasn't been taken.

There is every reason to expect a lot of variation among dingos. Australia is a big place with many different ecosystems. Dingos in the wet north should differ from those in the dry interior or southern coastline. Add differences in history of association with people and differences in inbreeding with domestic dogs, and I'd expect huge differences in behavior. We had one dingo x in boarding kennel who would jump the fence to get out: she didn't especially like the other dogs. But she'd jump back in for dinner and sleeping. Another who was just a sweet and gentle dog, a little on the quiet and shy side. I'm sure there are problem pet dingos as well, but I'd guess they tend to die young.

+1 3 dogs who love storms

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2013/12/10/police-investigate-babys-death.html A baby girl was killed by the family dogs yesterday morning while her father slept on the couch in their West Side condo, Columbus police said. Mia Gibson, who would have turned 3 months old this week, was pronounced dead at Nationwide Children’s Hospital at 7:45 a.m., after she was taken there from her home at 1467 Lake Shore Dr. Apt. C, police records show. Mia was on the couch with her father, who was asleep, when she apparently fell from the couch and the dogs caused injuries that led to her death, said Sgt. Steven Little, of the first-shift homicide squad. Little said the dogs — both Shiba Inus — didn’t attack the baby, but rather appeared to be playing roughly with her. Little said it appears as if the death was caused by the dogs, although the baby had no major trauma visible. She did have several small puncture wounds on her body, he said. The Franklin County coroner will conduct an autopsy to determine what caused Mia’s death. “It looks like the dogs were probably playing with the baby, thinking she was a toy,” Little said. The dogs have been taken by animal control, Little said. Shiba Inus are a Japanese hunting dog and range in size from 17 to 23 pounds. Mia’s mother, Sabrena L. Gibson, 34, was in her bedroom when one of the dogs at the bedroom door woke her, Little said. She went into the living room and found her daughter injured. Mia’s father, Chris Kusumi, 33, told detectives he had slept through it all. Little said detectives spoke to both parents and will not charge them. The case will be forwarded to the Franklin County prosecutor’s office to further decide whether there should be charges. “It’s just an unfortunate situation, and it’s a sad situation for the family,” Little said.

The price drops rapidly if you ship more dogs. I was originally going to bring four. I think the quote for four was around $6000.

Small change compared to the cost of shipping them to Oz from the US

I agree with others, it's natural and not to worry. It's interesting how different chocolates bleach, fade and regrow. My three tend to get bronze streaks and turn a bit redder everywhere. Then blow coat and darken, starting from places such as face, legs and underside, where the topcoat is thinner. One of them gets a weak mask

I used JetPets to bring two Labradors from Perth to SFO a couple years ago. I think it cost me $4400. The paperwork is a pain in the bum, and it's worth getting a company to do it for you. There are export vet checks to do. However, as others have said, there is n quarantine, and you can do the rabies shot in the US if you agree to a 30 day home quarantine. The dogs were surprisingly ok with the transport.

http://well.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/12/02/new-strides-in-spaying-and-neutering/?emc=eta1&_r=0 Todd Bruce, a herd manager on a farm in Oregon City, Ore., had long resisted neutering his 5-year-old Australian cattle dog, Cody, for fear of losing the extra set (or two) of legs in the field. “I just wanted him to maintain his working abilities,” said Mr. Bruce, 28. “I’ve had other dogs neutered that have had a lot of weight gain, and their bodies go through huge changes, and I didn’t want that to happen with my dog this time.” Then Mr. Bruce’s sister, a veterinary student, told him about Zeuterin, a drug that sterilizes male dogs without the removal of the testicles, thus preserving some testosterone production. In June, Mr. Bruce volunteered Cody for the procedure, performed by veterinarians as part of a training program at a clinic in Portland. The next day, Cody was back at work, enthusiastically rounding up livestock. “It was quick, painless and super uninvasive,” Mr. Bruce said. “He’s mellowed out a bit, but I haven’t had the problems I had before.” The 40-year movement to convince Americans that they should spay or neuter their pets has been nothing short of a triumph: 83 percent of owned dogs and 91 percent of owned cats are now spayed or neutered in the United States, compared with only about 10 percent in the 1970s. But surgically removing the reproductive organs of every pet is still time-consuming for veterinarians, unpopular among a subset of pet owners and ethically troubling to animal welfare advocates. It is also an impractical solution to sterilizing stray animals, which constitute the bulk of America’s nuisance animal problem. “Surgery is definitely a bottleneck for humane animal control,” said Dr. Julie K. Levy, a veterinarian at the University of Florida who has researched the problem. Now, a handful of nonsurgical sterilization treatments are emerging — led by Zeuterin, which could be commercially available in the United States by the end of this year — that could reduce or even eliminate the need for traditional neutering. “The truth is, we may have maximized what we can do with surgical spay-neuter,” said Joyce Briggs, the president of the Alliance for Contraception in Cats and Dogs, a group advocating alternative approaches. “Nonsurgical sterilants could be a game-changer for animal welfare across the world.”

As I understand it, it's healthier to desex BEFORE the first season. Lowers chances of various cancers. If they intend to desex and she has attained full stature, why not go ahead?

I don't much care for articles that take points from another article and append their own interpretation to each point, along with removing the caveats and the original author's conclusions and discussion. Is the original article available (preferably without having to pay $30 or some such).

I think he should stop pussyfooting and point out: 1) That he kept his boy entire at the breeder's request, and he paid full price for the dog 2) That the need for a Ceasar has much more to do with the bitch than the dog 3) That he understood he was to receive a stud fee. If there have been two litters and one of them was two puppies, what happened to the other litter? It is always hard to figure out what is fair when terms were not made explicit. But it sounds to me like the breeder is taking advantage of the fellow's inexperience.