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Thank you, Deeds!! What a horrible human !! His poor little daughter has a lot to deal with I am glad he went to rehab , and also that his wife is now safe.

https://9now.nine.com.au/a-current-affair/nathan-mckeown-fronts-court-after-leaving-his-dog-to-die-while-on-bender/0df4aff0-1f31-4ba0-a70f-b9bdc94678f9 The list of offences deserved a much harsher sentence. So many lies no wonder his wife left him. That poor dog . His death was totally unnecessary. What a pathetic human being.

I AM harsh! - I hope his life is VERY messed up from his actions!!!

Agreed. At least everyone knows who he is - hopefully this enables some sort of feedback from people- and some exclusions perhaps from things he enjoys/places he goes. Poor poor Arnie

Don’t get me started on this!! Saw it on the news last night and definitely not happy with the outcome at all. Call me harsh, or whatever but he should be charged for a whole range of offences and a conviction recorded!!

What is the point of disqualifying him from driving for 8 months... when he was already driving while disqualified?? And driving so drunk and drugged up that he forgot where he parked the bloody car to boot! Those offences alone should have attracted a heftier punishment, let alone he caused the death of his dog during the whole stupid incident. 240 hours community service and no conviction recorded is nowhere near enough of a penalty for him to learn from his mistakes. It appears the court of public opinion is punishing him more effectively than the justice system has... not that I agree with vigilantism, but at least he's suffering some sort of consequence I suppose. Our justice system allows judges/magistrates to exercise a certain amount of discretion in sentencing for most crimes not regarded as major (like murder or rape), but maybe there should be some bare minimum sentences for things like this that actually equate to the level of stupidity/indifference displayed by the offender. At the very least this guy's conviction should have been recorded, if only for the driving offences, as by driving while disqualified/intoxicated made him a repeat offender on that count alone. T.

Very disappointing. I know his life is now quite messed up from all his lies, but he deliberately broke multiple laws and cost an innocent animal its life. He needs to be punished in a legal sense for that.

Of course. It's America. They do the same to Giant Schnauzers.

Sensible ABC link https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-05/arnie-the-dog-owner-nathan-mckeown-sentenced/106307612

Pricked ears and docked tail.

Just saw this taken from Brisbane Times: "he was sentenced to 240 hours of community service, with no conviction recorded." from the Moreton Bay Lost and Found Pets (Brisbane Northside) FB page https://www.facebook.com/share/p/17s6spah9L/

sadly, he won't get what he deserves

https://redlandbaysidenews.com.au/court-appearance-for-man-accused-of-accidentally-killing-dog-and-inventing-stolen-car-story-as-cover/

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-04/doberman-pinscher-named-penny-wins-westminster-dog-show/106305290

This is spot on and so many people don’t get it, having experience with numerous breeds it’s really interesting how different breeds are more or less in tune with your body language, for instance my kelpie and border collie x react to every move I make often before I’ve made it but our two chis and two maltese x shihtzus take a lot less notice and the bearded collie is somewhere in the middle. It also amazes me how a very closely bonded dog picks up on illnesses, part way through last year my kelpie started staring at me making really weird high pitched whistling noises at random times, if I fell asleep outside of normal bed time hours she would paw at me and cry, couldn’t work out why it all started then months later I found out I had breast cancer, since having two surgeries (haven’t started the rest of my treatment yet) most of her odd behaviour has settled down, it appears she knew I had cancer long before it was detected.

An amazing story! Thank you Deeds!

These were my thoughts too. The poor little guy hasn't had much of a life so far from being the runt of the little (horrible expression ) to being picked on by the other puppies. He has to do a 180 in terms of understanding what he is "allowed" to do. Although you are doing it out of concern and kindness, try to stop with the handfeeding . Little dogs love that to the detriment of their human's back !!! Please update us. We would love to know how you are going. He looks gorgeous, but a bit more JR than Chi, I think.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-02/today-in-history-february-2-balto-nome-serum-run-of-1925/106200774 Interesting story I thought some of you may enjoy.

https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-02-02/how-your-dog-is-reading-you-muster-dogs/106135294

In NSW, rescue pets and pound rehomes are given free lifetime registration, so maybe that could be used to estimate the number of rescue/pound rehomes that have occurred since that came in. I'm tipping that the database (pet registry) might not have been set up to extract that sort of data though. I'd be more interested to see how many animals have been rehomed via any method (private/rescue/pound/shelter) more than once in their lifetime... which is supposed to be one of the reasons why all the new legislation around breeder/rehoming id's has been created. If that works as planned, it will hopefully highlight where the poor rehoming practices are coming from... still I'm not holding my breath waiting for anything positive to come of it. T.

I had another kick in the guts from them yesterday afternoon T. The discharge notes said to book a dermatology appointment or an internal medicine consult. No dermatologist available till the end of March and since I still need the punch biopsy results to confirm current treatment is the right one I rang to organise an internal medicine one. No appointment for a whole week. I asked if I could book that but also go on a waiting list for an earlier cancellation. Got a call back later in the day to say it had been reviewed and the appointment in another week was fine. Noone even asked how he was going and whether I felt it could wait a week. Then yesterday I get a call to say the appointment next week is now cancelled and I will just have to wait till I can get into the dermatologist. Wha? So I had a dog who was critically ill, discharged to my care on a treatment plan that they hoped was going to work, no clear diagnoses of what happened or why but now the only pending issue in their eyes is his skin? He became ill on Thursday night and the pustules didn't form till Saturday night. They are just one of his problems. I was livid to be honest that without even a quick phone check on how he is going someone decided he no longer needs an appointment and his case is all over. I still don't have the answers I need and I don't feel informed for the future. I don't even have the results of all the tests I paid for! What point is there is seeing a dermatologist a month after the event unless I know what it was and whether it will remain with him and need ongoing management? To me that is like going to a specialist for an undiagnosed illness you used to have but are not sure you will ever have again. I'll be making an appointment to see my own vet this week and have him look at the notes from them.

The simplest explanation is that the market for rescues has saturated. It would be interesting to see even very crude estimates on of how many rescues have been placed vs how many likely pet homes there are. Given modern expectations for pet care and rising Vet costs, the number of people/families with enough disposable income, time, and space for a pet would seem to be shrinking.

I think we are seeing more pathology (mainly bloods) being done more regularly as an early warning system. Most vets are now suggesting that annual bloods be performed as part of a pet's routine checkup... ostensibly to alert to issues before they become symptomatic. All well and good when that sort of thing is covered by Medicare in human medicine, but most people might not have the extra couple of hundred dollars to do it for their pet every year. Diagnosing illnesses in our pets is not very straightforward, as they can't talk to describe their symptoms, and unless the vet has experience with certain issues/illnesses, they are running blind most of the time. Some diagnostics can be very helpful in helping find the root cause of a problem, but if you aren't sure where to even start looking, maybe the reliance of a whole raft of tests in case one of them gives a diagnosis is how they choose to do things nowadays. Personally, I think that too many vets are relying on the diagnostic tools way too much for fear that the owner may slam them all over social media for missing anything... unfortunately, they then get slammed for being overly cautious and ordering all those tests that cost money to provide... they can't win either way, can they? As for Albert's recent hospital stay, we'll never know what other emergencies came in during his stay, whether they had plenty of staff to cater to those emergencies AND any animals in for hospitalisation/treatment, whether their shift changes were sufficiently appraised of all patients in care and what stage their treatments were up to. I'd say that in an emergency clinic setting, the main focus is on the animals requiring urgent care at any moment, and everything else may have been dealt with secondary to that. Obviously that is not necessarily optimal when an animal is in clinic for longer term care than a relatively quick turnaround situation of stabilise and move out to general practice care, like is done in human medicine emergency departments. I must say that communication should be a priority when any animal is in care however. Too often we hear that owners are left clueless for long periods of time, and like LG experienced, there seems to be no communication between staff about patient care, especially when owners are trying to find out what's happening with their pet. Some clinics have specific staff just for liaising with owners, but even then, they can only go with what's been entered into the pet's records... and sometimes that part is not completed in a timely manner if other emergencies are coming in steadily and require all hands on deck so to speak... records get updated when they have the time to do it, and hopefully the charts have been recorded properly, or the person entering the info is relying on memory to fill in the blanks. @Little Giftsyour regular vet can request copies of Albert's patient records from the emergency clinic, so you could have them go through it all and talk with you about what was done and when, and what follow-up is required and at what points, OK? T.

Some time ago one of our part-time pathology lab workers was a very student. He said you only use pathology to confirm a diagnosis. I wonder if that method still applies? Or are there more unusual conditions and diseases now pets are living longer (same as humans). Since my vet retired, I haven't yet had to use a vet when I don't know what the problem is.