dancinbcs

I know many retired show dogs who have been rehomed to members of the breeder's extended family or their close friends. These dogs go back to the breeders regularly for boarding when their new owners go away and some of the males come back for stud duties. They seem to cope fine with the two homes arrangement. I think it all depends on the individual dog so you could try having your friend mind the dog for a while and see how he goes. Otherwise look for a house to rent near the city, even if it means having to share a house with someone else.

I have sold Borders puppies to families with very young children but the parents have been super organised, Dad has been happy to be the dog trainer and exerciser and they have been experienced dog owners. Also there is often only one or two puppies in an average litter that suits this sort of situation and sometimes there is none. The right puppy is much more important than the lines or the breeder but the breeder needs to be able to recognise what a suitable puppy is for different stages of the lives of families. What I have never done is sold a Border puppy to anyone as their very first dog. To me this is like learning to drive in a Ferrari. I have always had plenty of experienced homes to sell to so have never needed to consider a complete novice dog owner but really doubt I would consider selling a puppy to one. If your friend is planning on being the one to raise and train the dog as well as look after two toddlers then I really think this is the wrong time for her to get a puppy of any sort. Better to wait until her youngest child is 3 before getting a dog and then consider a young adult dog with some training, perhaps a failed show dog, if she really wants a Border. Otherwise look at easier breeds and Aussies are not much easier and have the added disadvantage of liking to play much rougher than Borders, so are likely to send a toddler flying. Raising Border puppies is easy if you know what you are doing but a nightmare, especially for the dog, if you don't. They read your body language all the time and respond to it, so you need to know how to act around them. Some can be incredibly destructive and others never destroy anything, regardless of how they are raised and trained. They are a breed that needs to be with the family and are not happy shoved out in a yard on their own.

By the time puppies were 4 weeks I was giving those that were most likely getting a puppy weekly updates. Anyone else on the reserve list was told I would contact them if I happened to have something available. Because I only bred a litter every 1-3 years I didn't keep a waiting list but once the litter was advertised as due I kept a list of names with as much detail as possible. When the litter arrived I rang them all and advised who would most likely get a puppy, if there was one suitable for their situation and that could not be determined until 6-7 weeks. Everyone else was advised they were on the reserve list in case anyone dropped out or there wasn't a puppy to suit them. I also started my puppy buyer visits from 4 weeks and hoped to have them visit at least twice with all the family before they collected their puppy. It gave me a chance to observe how they interacted with the dogs, gave my dogs a chance to let me know if they didn't like them and allowed me to assess what they needed in a puppy and if I had one to fit those needs.

I have never seen them discounted but when I worked at a shelter one large pet shop used to dump excess puppies on us regularly. If they were healthy and there was room for them they were rehomed, if we were full they were pts.

CAA amendments State lifetime registration is staying with a small increase in price and to indexed to inflation. Most of the rest refers to the new term of "menacing" dogs as well as dangerous and restricted dogs. I particularly like the part about it being an offence to allow your dog to rush at, chase or attack any person or animal except vermin. Hopefully this will be enforced with all the idiots that think it is ok to let an untrained dog off lead to rush at any dog or person it sees. Off lead area or not it is not ok for any dog to rush at another person or dog and now we have a law against it. There are some bits in here that will not be popular but it could have been so much worse. These amendments have been passed and everyone should read them. There is more re breeders to be discussed and decided in 2014.

I just saw a photo on FB of a BC in Canada that has been clipped off but still has about an inch of coat all over with the head, tail and legs feathers left alone. He actually looked pretty good. He is desexed and grew a huge coat the owners cannot cope with so the breeder clipped him off for them. It wouldn't make him any cooler, wouldn't help with ticks but he wouldn't need as much brushing. The downside is that he would now have to be clipped off like this all the time as the coat will just get thicker and thicker. Personally I just would have given them a good grooming lesson and and advised them to get the right tools for the job. Desexed Borders often have awful "woolly" textured coats that are a lot harder to groom than the entire dogs but with the right tools and technique they are still not really a difficult breed to groom.

The only reasons to clip off a BC are for tick prevention in a high risk area or in old dogs who are past being groomed. Clipping will not keep them cooler and could actually take away some of their protection against snakes. Clipping short exposes the pink skin in their white areas to sun damage and any exposed skin is more likely to react with contact allergies. No one can predict how a clipped coat will grow back but it is usually with a much thicker undercoat. Farmers tend to scissor off the feathering and trim long manes and pants to reduce the number of grass seeds picked up. Personally I hate to see them clipped off but if it is for health reasons then it may be for the best. I have no idea how I would cope with them in tick areas but I have plenty of friends who manage to do it.

Are there new studies that confirm the bolded part of your statement? Could you share them please? Perhaps my information is not so up-to-date, I was of the impression that Pugs do not have the allele for tan points in their library at the A locus. My copy of Clarence Little certainly does not give Pugs that allele. A alleles explained. This link explains the A locus well and since it was written genetic testing seems to be confirming the existence of just the 4 alleles of aw, ay, at and rarely a, in all dogs of all breeds. Solid coloured dogs have any two of these genes but they do not show due to the K gene. I did ask earlier if tan point Pugs were ever seen to try to work out if Pugs do in fact have the at allele causing the look of shaded sable ayat or if the allele aw is the one responsible for the dark overlay. If black and tan is never seen in Pugs then aw is more likely but this could really only be determined by testing lots of Pugs to find out what alleles they have. It is only recently that the existence of aw has been found in the Border Collie breed but the a allele has not been found in them. Your desciption of a silver Pug being like a Wei colour is also puzzling as that should only be possible if the nose and other pigment are brown dilute, not black. More likely is a modifier of the aw gene. The proposed Chinchilla gene dilutes the yellow hair, not the black, so that wouldn't explain it either. I do wish they would hurry up and work out genetic tests for all the colours and patterns but as so many variations are now thought to be caused by modifiers not genes, that will pretty much be impossible. In the mean time, while breeders should understand the genetics of colour in their breeds coming up with the "correct" description for a shade of a colour or pattern is pretty low on the list of priorities. As has already been said, conformation, soundness, health and breed type are much more important than colour and markings in breeding better dogs.

I would definitely rehome Leroy as he is a liability to Daisy and will eventually injure her badly. Sorry but he was a really bad choice and this comes under the category of "what on earth were you thinking" when you selected a dog like that. For a companion dog Daisy need an older easy going dog that is not going to do her any harm. As for Daisy I would try T-Touch therapy and training with Raelene Koerber who is out Yass way and try to get the fear under control as well as the pain.

All dogs have the genes for sable or tan point and the K locus determines if the the pattern at the A locus shows through or not. Dogs that are KBKB are solid black and unable to produce patterned progeny. Dogs that are KBky are black but able to patterned progeny. If they are kyky then the pattern at the A locus shows so all sable (fawn) Pugs are kyky. The A locus also has a recessive black gene "a" but it is rarely found in most breeds. Bi-colour Shelties are caused by the a double recessive aa kyky.

What an incredibly long winded way of saying black or sable with a black mask, as genetically they are all one or the other.

Breed standards have all manner of colour descriptions for dogs because they were written before anyone understood anything about genetics, let alone the complicated colour genetics of dogs. To add to the confusion the same colour name can describe different colours in different breeds and any specific genetic colour has many names in the different breed standards. Depending on the breed, fawn can mean ee yellow, sable or dilute brown. Red can mean ee yellow, brown or sable, again depending on what breed you are talking about. Gold, apricot, etc can be ee yellow or sable and often both within the same breed. It is better for breeders to learn the genetics and work out what genetic colour dogs are, regardless of what the breed standard calls them. All dogs are basically the genetic colours of black, brown, dilute black or dilute brown and these are the nose, lip and eyerim pigment colours. If the coat does not match those pigment colours it can be ee which ranges from the white of a Samoyed through all the yellows and golds to deep chestnut and the red of an Irish Setter. Anything else has a coat pattern or patterns and these can be tan point, masked, sable, shaded sable, wolf sable, brindle and or merle and it's variation of harlequin. Modifyers can affect most patterns and colours so not everything can be explained by genetic testing. White markings make other various patterns and that pretty much covers all dog possible colours and patterns no matter what they are called in the breed standards.

Vitamin C administered intravenously definitely buys you quite a bit of time to get to the vet. It does destroy muscle tissue and is painful if given into a muscle or under skin and I have no idea how effective it would be. When one of my dogs was having intravenous Vit C for cancer treatment, the needle moved one day and he reacted straight away to the pain from it getting into his muscles. My vets teach their more rural clients, who are too far from a vet to get there fast, how to give the injection intravenously. They have trialled it on dogs who's owners cannot afford or do not want the antivenene and it does buy anything from an hour to several hours depending on many variables but it will not ultimately save a dog that has received a decent bite. Also keep in mind that dogs do not always collapse straight away after being bitten. With brown snakes it can take up to 24 hours for them to show symptoms and with red bellies, up to about 3 days. So always keep a close eye on any dog who you think may have been bitten and keep them quiet.

The first pug looks to be genetically clear sable "ayay" and the second one shaded sable "ayat" or wild sable "away" or "awaw" depending on what A series genes lurk in Pug genetics. So if you only ever breed from clear sable then it is impossible to get shaded sable. Clear sable can vary from completely clear to a few patches of dark overlay but the full body overlay is caused by the dog having one "at" tan point gene or one or two "aw" genes. Does anyone know if black and tan pugs are ever produced? If they are then the "at" gene is present in the breed and the likely cause of the shaded sable colour. This page is very informative about dog colour genetics in the A series of genes. Dog coat colour genetics More important though is to breed the very best Pugs you can regardless of colour.

He looks to be the same colour as a seal Boston or Border Collie. This is believed to be caused by incomplete dominance or a modifier to the KB genes that should make a black dog a solid colour but sometimes they allow the A series of genes the dog has to show through. Seal is usually the sable pattern ayay showing partly through the black. Fawn pugs are actually sable genetically so the genes for fawn are there in all dogs but for it to show as fawn the dog has to be kyky. If it is KBKB or KBky the dogs should be black but sometimes they are seal. There is no genetic test for seal yet.

I don't think it is ever ok to keep a dog that belongs to someone else especially of the dog escaped while being cared for when the owners were away. Yes the dog should have been microchipped but what if it had been and the chip fell out? Also why did the council register the dog without a microchip number? There is no way to compare 9 days to 7 years of ownership. In this case the RSPCA should retrieve the dog and return it to the original owner.

Another report I just read about this, said it is believed the dog bit the boy on the neck, getting the main artery. All it takes is one bite in the wrong spot for a dog that size to kill a child. There was another case in the US last year of the family dog spooking at a child running past and biting him once on the neck. The poor child bled out before they got him to hospital. Such a tragedy for everyone concerned in these cases.

I wish more vets would say something to owners but it puts them in a difficult position. When I worked on reception for the AWL, I had a lady call to report her vet for cruelty. The vet wanted to take her Corgi in and starve him for a week, on fluids only. The dog was about 20kgs, so nearly double what he should have been. I tried to explain to her that it was a well known treatment for extremely overweight dogs and asked her what she fed the dog. She told me exactly what he got and it didn't sound much at all. I checked that no one else in the house, or the neighbours could be feeding him, definitely no. Then I asked if she was sure that was all he was getting for the entire day? She replied "no, that is his dinner, he has breakfast as well". What did he get for breakfast? - Goodos, how many? - A BOWL FULL, like they showed on the ad. I told her that two Goodos a day would have my dogs rolling in fat and they were twice the size of a Corgi. she had no idea she was feeding doggy junk food. She had omitted to tell the vet about the Goodos as well, so I sent he back to the vet to let him know and see if he could come up with a suitable diet, minus any Goodos, and not have to fast the dog.

The chance of finding a small cute fluffy puppy in rescue is pretty much nil. Anyone breeding them has no trouble selling them and therefore they do not need rescuing. The only exception would be where a pregnant rescue comes in they raise the litter but then you have no idea what the sire is or how big the puppies will grow, if the parents had any health issues or how healthy the bitch was during pregnancy. If she cannot be swayed to one of the more reasonably priced small registered purebreds then she is better to look for a BYB of crossbreds that just occasionally breeds their bitch to their or a friend's dog because they just love puppies. Not ideal but better than a puppy farm and at least she can meet the parents and see where the puppy was raised and a crossbred is less likely to have inherited problems than an unregistered BYB purebred. There are a lot of people who breed small breeds like this because they love having puppies around and never have any trouble finding good homes for them. They do not contribute to rescue problems because they can always sell the puppies themselves.

Oh goody. More for over worked and under paid teachers to do because another "problem" has reared its head in society. Where did Alison say that teachers need to do it? Why the need for sarcasm? There are "responsible pet interaction" programs already in schools and it would be good if they were extended. They are run by volunteers, not teachers. Thanks Megan, I didn't know they already had those programs in schools, I'm a bit out of touch. : ) The Pet Education Scheme in schools is run and funded by the state governments. Dogs have to be temperament tested and if they pass, their owners go through a normal job interview process. If selected the owners undergo an intense 4 days of training, are then mentored at their first school visit and assessed by one of the trainers once they have done a few sessions to see if they can continue. They need a police working with children check and have to be able to deliver semi scripted information sessions that have been carefully worked out as suitable for children's ability to learn at that age. The kids then get pamphlets to take home to their parents and we ask them to teach their siblings what they have learnt.

There are programs run in Vic, NSW and SA covering exactly this for both pre-school kids and their parents and primary school kids. http://www.pets.info.vic.gov.au/ http://www.pets.nsw.gov.au/ http://www.dolforums.com.au/topic/248905-parents-teaching-their-children-how-to-approach-dogs/ Thanks I had no idea, that's very impressive. Yes, I have worked as a Pet Educator in schools, teaching 5-7 year olds about dog safety and the kids take info pamphlets home to share with the family but we really need to get to the parents of newborns and get the message out from the very start. Most kids who are bitten are under 5 so parents need to take more care and make sure they instruct grandparents and other relatives who may mind the child about dog safety. Most serious dog attacks on children under 5 seem to happen when they are in the care of others, rather than with the parents. The attacking dogs usually belong to someone else as well. Usually a family member but in this case it was a neighbour. Kids get bitten by dogs all the time in many situations and the fact that dogs, not having hands, have to use their mouth to push a kid away means bites are a fact of life with dogs but most are minor nips or the odd puncture mark. They all count as dog bites in the statistics but are no more serious than a lot of cat scratches. The danger with a large dog and a small child is that it doesn't take much of a bite to do an awful lot of damage and a more serious attack can cause life threatening injuries.

Where does it say he was left with the grandfather? It says it happened in his home. The only adult mentioned in the story is the Grandfather so he must have been caring for the child alone or surely other family members would have helped when the dog bit the child. The child was left unsupervised with the dog who was being minded for a neighbour, who is overseas. Apart from the poor child who was bitten, I really feel for the owner of the dog who may not have known that his dog would be in contact with a small child, let alone left alone with him.

Try private dog trainers. The best one here in Sydney is run by a professional dog trainer at her property. Much safer than at a vets and much more use than having a vet nurse teach the class. Personally I wouldn't bother with a vet nurse run course, unless the vet nurse happens to trial dogs with numerous obedience titles. Some dog clubs do run a good puppy school as a lead up to their normal classes but a private professional dog trainer would always be my pick.

When will people stop leaving little kids with grandparents when they are also minding a large dog that belongs to someone else? The script for nearly all of these attacks is always the same. So many children scarred for life or even killed and so many dogs pts because they are put in this position. All of these attacks could so easily have been avoided with a little common sense. The basic rule is never allow a dog that isn't yours near any small child. Total separation is the only safe solution.

My Border Collies have been a average of 6-7kgs at 8 weeks with a few making 8kgs. The first puppy I bought was only 4kgs, the second 8kgs and another I bought in later, just 3kg. They all grew to normal size and puppy size is no predictor of final adult size. The size at 8 weeks depends on the size born as they gain a percentage of their birth weight per day. BC newborn puppies can vary from 120gms to 600gms depending on litter size and the lines.