sandgrubber

I gave up feeding raw when I moved from Oz to the US. I find it MUCH MUCH easier to control weight with dry food than raw cause you can measure out the amount easily, and the fat content of the food is on the label.

I'm not content to be fat, far from it. What makes you think, from the people who have posted about being overweight, that they are content to be fat? Edited for detail. Haven't read the entire thread! I'm not saying that people are necessarily 'content' to be overweight, but the fact that their dog's health is of import but their own isn't strikes me as odd. I can open the fridge door, my dog can't. Much easier to take weight off your dog than yourself.

Yes, I can feel his ribs. I'm wary of the weight creeping on, like it does to me ;) So would I be correct in saying that feeding amount is something that's in a constant state of flux depending on life stage, activity & food type? Something that needs to be continuously monitored? Better to under feed than over feed, especially with pups. You'll have no problem getting it back on, but it will be hard to get it off. I find manufacturers recommendations are generally enough to make a Lab fat...unless the dog is very active.

I have loosely followed ANKC registration stats for some years, especially with regards to most popular breed rankings. Last time I looked, Staffies were set to overtake Labbies in first place. Today I went to check the ANKC website and could find no data on breed registrations. Searches on 'registration' and on 'data' turned up no results. Have they stopped publishing this data?

If you do heartworm meds, you may already be worming every month. Check your labels.

It's been 15 years since I've had less than two Labs. I'll be going to three, so when the old girl gets too old, the young one will have company...and my own grieving will be less when she goes. I've never had problems with Labs being too crazy. Mine are calm and unflappable. Sure, puppies can be excitable. I think having an older dog around helps keep the younger dog in line.In your situation, I'd say either adopt an older lab, or wait a few years before getting another pup. Two young Labs will have a lot of fun together, but they will also cooperate in projects like digging holes. Also, if you have two young ones together, ten years from now you'll have two old ones, and prospect for high vet bills and heartbreak in the next five years or so.

Nightmare as an employee PD. I could not/will not work with that at all. In my kennel days, the kennel across the street did this. They also sometimes left dogs in the grassed exercise areas overnight, especially during school holidays. One Xmas three dogs dug under the fence and got killed on the highway. For some reason they had VERY HIGH staff turnover.

Killing vermin is a time-honored occupation for dogs. In my family, we've all encouraged our dogs to kill rats and mice, and to eat them. This may spill over to killing wild rabbits or wood chucks (larger rodent, much-hated by farmers). No problem. It may not be a nice way to go, but it's less cruel than setting out rat/mouse poison. Killing vermin MUST not be allowed to spill over to killing chickens, chasing sheep or horses, etc. I'm not a particularly talented dog trainer, but keeping prey drive restricted to vermin has not been a difficult thing to teach with any dog I've owned. The dog park I go to has a sign up that says "Fastest Squirrels in Alachua County". A large fraction of all dogs chase squirrels, and the sight hounds occasionally catch them. Natural selection. Squirrels get faster and more dog wary. We have a big local AR crowd. Never heard any complaints about dogs going for vermin.

Another effect, should this one get a lot of publicity and Grommet's owners win their case, will be that kennels will get much more conservative about letting dogs exercise. Accidents are waiting to happen at a lot of kennels. Unless each indoor run is attached by a gate to its own private outdoor exercise area, and there are no gates between exercise areas (a set up that creates a nightmare for lawn mowing), there's a lot that can go wrong letting dogs out to exercise. It's hard to know when one of your helpers is going to do something stupid . . . or for that matter, when you, yourself, might do something stupid. I would imagine that a few DOL members have had one of their dogs seriously harm, if not kill, another because a gate was poorly fastened, or someone took their eye off the dogs at the wrong moment. I know nothing about the kennel involved, and I'm not saying the event is excusable. For me, the very high responsibility, hard work, and lack of time off that go with running a kennel were good reasons to get out of the business (not to mention the low return on capital investment). I'm glad to have left it behind. I'd expect that the kennel's insurance company has instructed them to say nothing to anyone . . . so it's going to be hard to find out what happened in this case.

It's peak flea season here in Florida. My vet has suggested alternating flea treatments to get higher kill rates and avoid building up resistence. Comfortis is popular, and also seems to work to prevent heartworm. But it's expensive. The active ingredient in Comfortis, spinosid, is widely sold as an insecticide. It's ok with organic standards, and isn't toxic to any of the mammals it has been tested on except in absurdly high doses. And it's cost per g of active ingredient is more than a hundred times lower than the cost per g in dog flea meds. Has anyone tried making their own flea repellant from the pesticide version? What would be the dangers of doing so? (Spinosid + Ivermectin has proven to be a bad combination, but I don't use Ivermectin).

I am attaching the Finnish Kennel Club's vital statistics for the British Bulldog. See http://jalostus.kenn...x?R=149&Lang=en Finnland seems to be the only kennel club in the world that collects and publishes death statistics. They often show much shorter average life spans that most of us would expect. They put the average lifespan for a bulldog at 5 yrs.

Attached are vitals from the Finnish Kennel Club database. See http://jalostus.kennelliitto.fi/frmTerveystilastot.aspx?R=312&Lang=en (Finland may seem like an odd place to go for stats, but it seems to be the only kennel club in the world that keeps and publishes mortality statistics for registered pedigree dogs).

There are 700+ BMD lifespan reports in the Finnish Kennel Club's database. I've attached the cause of death statistics. Unfortunately, cancer looks like it's still a very big concern. Average lifespan, 7 yrs. Otherwise, they seem like a lovely breed.

This description doesn't do justice to Svartburg's extremely interesting research. I recommend going to the original article at Breed-typical behaviour in dogs—Historical remnants or recent ... homepage.psy.utexas.edu/.../Animal%20Personality%20PDFs/.../Svartbu...‎ For one thing, this is probably the largest temperament/breed study ever conducted. They did temperament tests on 16,000+ dogs covering 31 breeds (>40 dogs per breed). They also looked at the differences between working and show lines. Attached is their summary table on breed temperaments (ignore the file name, I got the author's name wrong).

Like so many questions, the answer is 'it depends'. I keep only Labs, mostly mothers, daughters, grand daughters, but ive brought in different, unrelated lines, and sometimes kept a dog or two. I've never ended out with dogs that don't like each other. More often, I've ended up with dogs who are tightly bonded....I'm now working to go from two to three cause my pup and my old girl are 6 years apart in age, and I worry about what the pup will do when the old girl gets too old to play, and eventually goes to the rainbow bridge.I'd say: 1. Let the dogs have a say. If your two like the possible new girl, great. If not, your asking for trouble.2. The age thing is important in the long run. I prefer to have dogs of very different ages, so as to avoid ever ending up with oldies only, high vet bills, and too much heartbreak in the span of a few years...or an excess of puppy craziness with no older dogs around to teach them dog manners.3. I wouldn't worry about the new house being finished ... So long as your present landlord is ok with three. I've lived with three dogs in a space under 20 sq m. It was impossible to keep clean, and I couldn't have guests over....but the dogs weren't the least bit bothered.

I'd say MOST dogs have genetic problems. Would I breed a Lab with EIC? Sure. It's not a good thing, and I'd prefer not to have it, but most affected dogs go through their entire lives without showing it. Would you breed a dog with allergies? Personally, I wouldn't, but many many pedigree dog breeders do. They just choose not to recognize that many allergies are hereditary, and no one is offering genetic testing....so the problem is ignored. How about a compromised immune system due to high homozygosity in the MHC/DLA? This is extremely widespread in breeds that descent from a very small founder population, and consequentially a high degree of inbreeding if you go back many generations. In some breeds, like Flatcoats and BMDs (both genetically predisposed to horrid cancers) it's hard to find dogs who are free from heritable genetic disease. As for breeding the 'nice girl' .... I wish more pedigree dog owners bred for temperament as strongly as they breed for looks. I'm not saying its ok to breed willy nilly. But this image of us, the pedigree crowd, as 'educated' and the rest of the world as 'ignorant' is pretty arrogant. I read quite a bit of genetics, and Im coming to understand about SNPs, microsattelites, etc. The more I learn, the more ignorant I feel. We have a way of paying attention to some genetic problems and kicking others under the rug. With the tide of popular opinion running against pedigree breeders, I don't think it's a good time to ride a high horse.

I consulted with my vet. Her advice: Virgin bitches are often tight and chances are good that whatever the breeder felt will ease up in the weeks before whelping. If I do anything, she suggested doing a digital exam and an x-ray (to count pups) just before the pups are expected.

Unfortunately, equally true in the USA. And true for many breeds other than the APBT. Show breeders are often as bad as the BYBs when it comes to temperament. See www.svartbergs.se/pdf/Personality_in_dogs.pdf for an evidence-based study on differences between show line and working line dog temperaments.

Unfortunately, equally true in the USA. And true for many breeds other than the APBT. Show breeders are often as bad as the BYBs when it comes to temperament. See www.svartbergs.se/pdf/Personality_in_dogs.pdf for an evidence-based stud on differences between show line and working line dog temperaments.

I'd just like to address the bolded part above. Just how do they expect a dog to know the difference between a child trespassing to retrieve a ball and a burglar or someone of 'malicious intent'? I'm sure all dogs couldn't make the distinction -- act differently yes, but not know the intent of the trespasser. Are they expecting dogs to sit a course on human profiling now? They do not expect a dog to recognize malicious intent. Nor do they expect kids to have good judgement. They were hoping that whoever frames the law in its final form will allow the judge or some other authority to consider the public interest. That is, it is in the public interest to scare off the bad guys. It is not in the public interest to have dogs put their teeth into local kids being naughty. Did you never trespass when you were a kid?

Reproductive success in female wolves has been studied. Seems to show that reproductive success declines slowly from an early peak (~3 yrs), but is heavily influenced by nutrition and support from pack. I'd read that to say that mating after six years is fine, given good nutrition and adequate care. see http://www.youtube.c...d&v=B95eb-M4XPI

sounds like a hymen. that was my immediate reaction, too. Do bitches have maidenheads?

I'm fine with having a country vet recommend benedryl for bee-sting. Or say that aspirin can be used in a pinch for a dog in pain. Or help breeders adjust dosages to let them use much cheaper livestock meds with same active ingredients for use on dogs. Or, for that matter, point out where dog meds can be used by people. I've encountered all of these with good results. I agree that the nurofen for a cat probably isn't good and if there's a basis for making the recommendation (eg., nurofen does relieve pain and if you keep the dosage small enough, does no harm), it should be accompanied by stern warnings about not OD'ing. But most of us don't have our wits about us 24/7 and all of us make mistakes. There is a lot of crap in the official veterinary pharmacopia. I'm glad some vets don't buy into it and continue to think critically. Eg, having owned a vineyard where the dogs scoffed up ripe grapes to their heart's content, and having discussed this on vineyard forums, I'd say the extreme cautions about dogs and raisins are alarmist. A small percentage of dogs probably do have horrid reactions to grapes. But many many vineyard people have dogs and let their dogs eat grapes. No one in the networks I've traversed seems to have problems with this. Another example: extreme cautions about not letting your dog eat bones. Oui vey!

Came across a great video based on a study of reproductive success of wolves in Yellowstone National Park. The background includes lovely photography. See: http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=B95eb-M4XPI They found body mass of female and pack size / number of helpers were best predictors. Interestingly, they found greys have more pups than blacks, but black pups seem to thrive better than grey.

I hate chaining. The only study I can find comparing chaining to penning found pens were no better for the dog's welfare. See http://www.naiaonline.org/uploads/WhitePapers/Cornell_study_on_tethering_and_pen.pdf. I'd be interested to see any objective evidence that chaining makes dogs vicious. Dogs vary enormously in their needs for confinement and their talents at escaping. Chronic escapists are routinely kept in runs with fencing over the top and concrete below (to prevent digging out). I would hate to see people with friendly, harmless dogs with no ability to climb fences held to the same standard of fencing as people with dogs that are HA / DA and good climbers. Do you want someone policing to ensure that you don't keep your dogs in the garage, on concrete? Do you want someone inspecting the way your back yard is connected to the garage? Or a gate between the garage and the street. Being housed in a secure back yard and garaged when weather was bad, or at night, would probably pass most tests used for secure fencing.Much better to worry about confinement for dogs who are truly scary, and let confinement rules be lax for most.