sandgrubber

Heartworm infections are very slow to develop. It takes 4 months from bite by an infected mosquito to full blown heartworm, and meds at any point in the cycle will prevent the infection. So there is no reason to panic. Put them on some sort of treatment in the next few months and they should be fine. If your friends want to be ultra conservative, have them tested first. see (sorry, very US oriented) http://terriermandotcom.blogspot.com/2008/05/billion-dollar-heartworm-scam.html

The police deserve commendation. You need to remember they tend to get 'bitten' by public reaction when they shoot an animal. Although odds are good that the owner was irresponsible, and the dog was obviously a hazard, we don't know. The police pushed this into a process of law, and that's what should happen.

I'm quite happy for strangers to approach my dogs. My dogs are generally wagging their butts off when they think someone may approach, and they only jump up on guys whose body language clearly invites them to do so (thump thump with fingers of both hands on the chest, for example). Typical Labradors. They are allowed in the US equivalent of Bunnings. They go up and down the isles with me looking for pats. The dogs love it, as do the store staff.

The spokesman here doesn't seem to be a vet. He's called Mr Richards, not Dr. Richards, and described as a manager. Is this a franchise vet practice?

If it had been Oz currency this would have been much easier. Our notes aren't as tough as yours

Great for $10 If you have trouble with steering frontwards, try backwards. My mechanical sense isn't always right, but I think the front wheel is going to be a problem for steering.

I've run on pairs of pups to six months a couple times. Never was a problem. The pups do like the company . . . though they get into more stuff and dig deeper holes when there are two. Don't a lot of breeders do this?

I'm curious about what sort of weight ranges you find for pups of different breeds. And I'm not sure what is desirable. I have a litter of 9 Lab pups who turn 8 wks tomorrow and will be going off to new homes. A couple will be flying, so I've been asked to predict how much they weigh. My experience with Lab pups has been a tad under a kg / week, so I guessed 15 lbs or 7 kg. They are coming in on target, the boys at 7.25, the girls, around 7. The vet who gave them their jabs was amazed at how big they are. She said another Lab breeder in town's pups weighed about half as much at 8 weeks! Everybody always says "big, healthy pups". But is bigger really healthier? Am I feeding too much (they aren't fat)? Do some breeders end out with little pups cause they skimp on feeding?

Depending on how the wheels are set up, you may find steering a problem. I'd suggest trying to pull the thing with a rope before you go out and buy harnesses.

So awful. The buck doesn't stop with some vet nurse. I think the AVA should be revoking licenses for this. Signing a false death certificate sounds like felony-level malpractice to me, especially when the dog was being pts because it was vicious..

Most recent dog book, well, sort of, was a sci fi collection of short stories Resnick's Menagerie by Mike Resnick. Resnick, along with being a Hugo and Nebula award winning Sci Fi author, is a much titled breeder of rough collies, and, along with his wife, has run a mega-size boarding facility. He has an interesting take on animals in general.

I don't keep a separate account for the dogs, but I always keep a buffer for emergencies of any sort of $5k+. Sh#t happens. Bloat, car accident, blown engine on car . . . . there are hundreds of possible events that could put you in the hole overnight. Ongoing expenses can vary from $1/day per dog to $4/day depending on how you manage such things as flea meds, heartworm meds, vaccinations, and toys, and how expensive you go when buying dog food. If you travel and are going to need to put your dog in kennels, or you will need grooming, add this in, too. Giant breeds and high health risk breeds are going to end out on the high end.

Horrid . . . and better written than 90% of the articles you see in the newspaper. There should be a special place in jail (and hell, if it exists) for people who set their dogs on people or pets.

This. This is not unreasonable. What is unreasonable is to expect a dog to be 'fault free' like an appliance. We can't control DNA (outside of the tiny tiny part that we can do a DNA test for - in SOME breeds). We are dealing with living breathing things and just like human health and genetics, much of it is out of our control. We have as much chance of developing a 'fault free' dog as we do a 'fault free' human. Does this imply it conscionable to breed dogs with known late-onset illnesses that are likely to be inherited (eg, epilepsy, propensity to bloat)?

Yes! To report or not to report is your decision. At very least point out to the man that his dog's behaviour is not acceptable and the dog could be reported ... with drastic consequences.

I'm in a relatively inexpensive area of the US and those prices sound absurdly low to me.

Joking about this is very bad taste So is Monte Python. Huh? Humor, as a response to disgust, is a natural response. Think Dead Parrot. It's as stupid to slight people for making jokes in 'bad taste' as it is to make fun of someone for blushing. So if my friend got eaten by her dogs and someone cracked a joke about it then that would be OK? Just because people do it doesn't mean others can't be offended by it. The point is moot anyway as he said he wasn't being funny. How do you know he was joking? His dogs probably would eat him if he died and they got hungry. I was confused bu the huge grinning face and it came off as a joke. He said he wasn't so I believe that. Last thing I'm saying on the subject. :) For single persons that don't have a lot of family etc it is a very real fear that you will die and no one will notice for ages. Sometimes laughing about that is a defense mechanism. I will admit I couldn't help thinking about Bridget Jones' Diary and the 'Eaten by Alsatians' scene!! What comes to mind for me is interviews with people who suffer distress: families of suicides, people with horrible disfiguring injuries or diseases, etc., and the almost universal comment that the most awful part is people looking away, pretending nothing is wrong, and leaving them lonely in depressing silence. By in large, I think frank bad taste, so long as it isn't cruel, is healthier than polite silence.

I'm not going to take the trouble to look at the Facebook posts, etc., and the woman's looks or emotional reactions should be irrelevant to the question. My opinions would be clearer if I had evidence as to whether the guy set his dog on hers, or merely allowed it to happen. But I wonder how much press this would have gotten if she were a poor, overweight, badly-dressed middle-aged woman. Everyone deserves safety, both for themselves and their best friends, regardless of what they look like and regardless of the way they present to the media.

Lovely! I was talking with someone this morning who said one of their dogs (I mean bitches) got milk and started nursing a litter of KITTENS! btw the pups are looking great!

Joking about this is very bad taste So is Monte Python. Huh? Humor, as a response to disgust, is a natural response. Think Dead Parrot. It's as stupid to slight people for making jokes in 'bad taste' as it is to make fun of someone for blushing.

It also depends on your house. I have all tile floors, and no valuable furniture. An occasional accident or mutilated ballpoint pen doesn't bother me. With some pups it's necessary to put the toilet paper up higher, and if I leave clothes on the floor, especially underpants, they become playthings. The only real worry is electrical cords. The combination of training the pup off them and keeping as few as possible in harm's way (closing off rooms if necessary) has generally worked for me. I give them freedom from week 8 onward.

Joking about this is very bad taste So is Monte Python.

These guys raise and advocate a mixed breed LGD pack, some to work close to the animals, some to more directly confront and chase predators. I'd be interested to hear opinions from the LGD people on DOL I thought it was good, but I don't know much about LGD's <iframe width="640" height="360" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/obmBXCzTp2Q?feature=player_embedded" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe> https://www.youtube....mBXCzTp2Q#t=377 p.s. having trouble getting the video to come up. One of the links should work.

+1

Many inherited conditions aren't widely recognized as such. I suspect genetic skin conditions and allergies are widely ignored by breeders. These can be a result of homozygosity in the DLA ...essentially outcomes of excessive line- or inbreeding... and will be hard to breed out if your breeding program is heavily focused on type and you value uniformity. I know a lot of breeders ignore inability to free whelp (eg, as in 95% of Bostons, a high fraction in bulldogs and pugs), and I know a breeder who had multiple litters from a gorgeous bitch who was extremely aggressive toward her puppies and would have killed them all if they weren't taken away from her at birth. (They muzzled her and strapped her down for nursing . . . horrid scene). Propensity to bloat gets ignored because the mode of inheritance is unclear and it is easy to dismiss the possibility that it may be hereditary. Often, too, it is late onset. Some inherited conditions may be ignored because they seem relatively benign. I can't find the article, but I remember reading a vet journal article on epilepsy in Danish Labradors. They did a huge survey of registered dog owners and found around 3% of all dogs had epilepsy. Mostly it was focal seizures; full seizures were in the minority. Late onset (6 yrs or more) was common. I can understand why a breeder might overlook focal seizures and such a condition might persist in a population. 1. The mode of heredity is not clear. 2. The breeding occurred before the onset of the disease 3. People hear the word 'epilepsy' and they immediately think of full grand mal seizures. A focal seizure in which the dog remains standing, but merely goes into a spaced out, blank stare for a minute is relatively benign (eg, as compared to a food allergy or a propensity to bloat), especially if it occurs less often than once a month. 4. It's easy to hide. How are you to know that the stud dog you've decided to use has had a number of mild seizures? much less, that his sire or dam had the condition.