dancinbcs

I feed puppies the last meal one hour before bedding them down. When her tummy settles after changing the food she should only need to poop straight after her dinner then again 9-10 hours after that last feed. Feeding earlier means she would need to go in the middle of the night so feed later not earlier.

Ethical breeders of the best quality dogs sell them all for the same price regardless of colour. Most of the really top quality show puppies only sell for about $1000 so anyone charging $1500 is not an ethical breeder.

That breeder's only motivation is money. They breed large numbers of inferior quality coloured puppies just for the pet market and sell them at hugely inflated prices. They don't main register anything they don't keep, so can call the colours whatever they think will bring the biggest profit. They also have very little knowledge of colour genetics from some of the claims they have made in the past. The so called "silver" puppies in question are just ordinary blue merles. They are the only people I have ever heard refer to blue merle as silver. Solid blues are sometimes described as silver to distinguish the preferred pale silver blue from the darker blues but they are all still registered as blue.

Luci Ellem at Camarna is in the South West. Only about 15-20 min drive from Campbelltown.

Actually, for a blue to be a good colour as an adult they have to be born pale silver. Any darker blue than that and they end up looking like a faded black. Solid Blues are much more common than blue merles in Border Collies.

Why not suggest that she takes the puppy to herding training at Erskine Park on weekends. Then she can learn how to control the dog around the sheep and use it to move them when she needs to. Puppy training classes with Luci Ellem at Camarna Kennels at Austral would also be a good idea. This is one of the best puppy schools in the country.

Maybe in Pugs but they are fine for bigger breeds.

Chicken necks are meat on bone so why would you get rid of them. They are fine for a Goldie puppy. She is quite big enough to grind the bone in them herself without them being crushed. She could also have whole chicken wings at this age as well as lamb riblets.

I always include an all in one puppy lead with an adjustable collar section, like I have been lead traing them on and make sure the puppy is wearing it when they leave. Toy breed show leads are great for this. Most buyers don't come with a crate to transport the puppy and the risk of a wriggling puppy jumping out of a car as soon as the door is opened is very real. Having a lead on makes it much safer so they have hold of the lead when they are ready to open the car door and they don't lose the puppy on day one.

Two or three times on consecutive days usually.

I think a Brittany could be at least and possibly more active than a lot of Border Collies but could work. There are plenty of placid BCs as well as very active ones. You just need to specify what activity level you can cope with and have a breeder match you to the right puppy. I would avoid terriers and hounds because most like to hunt and poultry would be fair game. The gundogs like spaniels and retrievers wait for the birds to be shot before they retrieve them though . Herding breeds like BCs and Aussies are usually fine with poultry but do like to herd them around, given a chance. Shepparton is only 2 hours from Melbourne so you have all the Melbourne breeders to choose from. A 2 hour drive isn't far to go and choose a puppy.

Border Collie, Golden Retriever, Australian Shepherd, English Springer Spaniel in long coats. Cattle Dog, Kelpie, Labrador, German Shorthaired Pointer in Short coats would be my suggestions for breeds that would fit into your lifestyle.

Personally I think much of the "calmness" attributed to desexing probably more to do with maturity. I don't. I have even noticed a calming down in a dog desexed at 9 years so he was pretty mature already. Forgot to mention that desexed dogs are far less likely to be attacked by roaming dogs when out walking. Most roaming dogs are entire males, who will often ignore a desexed dog but will almost always attack an another entire male that enters what they deem as their property, which may be the entire street or park.

Not all bitches ovulate around days 10-14, some are as early as day 4 and others as late as day 26, so if you are doing AI you need to know exactly what is going on. Also once the prog levels start to rise they can be as fast as just a couple of days or longer than a week before hitting the required level.

Everyone I know still uses Breedmate and they also have the availability of their World Pedigrees site as well. Excellent program at a great price.

Males desexed as adults are generally calmer in attitude and the risk of testicular and prostate cancer is very real. In my lifetime I have had 3 entire males of different breeds into older age. One of those had testicular cancer and another died before his time from prostate cancer. 2 out of 3 is not good odds in my book. I now desex them if I will not be needing them for the breeding any more, the same as I do with bitches. Prostate problems in older entire dogs are just as common as they are in older male humans. Unless a dog is specifically needed for breeding I see no reason to not desex him as an adult. I am however against early desexing.

As a breeder a think autopsies are very important whenever you lose a dog or puppy from unknown causes. It is often the only way to get answers. My vet did her PHD on puppy mortality and did 1000 puppy autopsies to gather the data for it. She found many possible causes of puppy mortality as a result. All her breeder clients had every puppy that died over a few years autopsied for free to help her study and now she still does them quite cheaply because she wants to know what happened as well. I also had an adult dog autopsied after he attacked me and was pts. Thankfully the vet has the same breed and was curious and I think I was only charged for the pathology but we discovered he had irreversable brain damage caused by meningitis. It didn't bring the dog back but it gave me an answer about what happened and justified my decision to pts and that would have been worth any cost to find out.

I used to have a bitch of similar size that sometimes had grape size swellings in the lymph nodes in her back legs. Happened regularly on and off throughout her life without causing a problem of any kind and we never did work out why.

Sandra Hodgins at Summer Hill Village Vet is an excellent vet. http://www.truelocal.com.au/business/summe...ian/summer-hill Sandra has worked for my vet at Austral for many years but only works one or two days a week there now because she has set up her own new practice at Summer Hill. She is a good all round vet and very good with repro work for breeders.

I grew up with a few crossbreds including a very smart Samoyed/Corgi cross (we think), that I loved teaching tricks to. We also had next door's pure bred Labrador move in and stay. After finally losing the Sammie X in my early 20s I decided I wanted a dog to do obedience trials with. I had recently bought my childhood dream horse that looked like Black Beauty then decided fo find the right dog for me. I started a list of what I wanted and didn't want in a dog and narowed it down from there. I loved the look of giant breeds but knew they didn't suit my situation or wallet. I wanted high intelligence, faithful, easy to train, medium to large, long but not excessive coat and no dog odour. Preferred colour was black. My list of what I didn't want was much longer and ruled out most breeds. Not small or giant, didn't want an excessively shedding, doggy smelling dense coat like the Lab. I hate having to worry about keeping a dog warm so no short/smooth coats. I hate the look of any squashed faces, so no brachy breeds and am not fussed on really long heads either. Even though I wanted a long coat I didn't want to spend hours brushing so a huge coat was out. I can't stand drool, hairy faces or ears that dangle in their food so that eliminated a lot more breeds. At the time I had no plans to breed and even though I would have preferred a breed without a docked tail, I settled on a black male Standard Poodle and started my search. A new work colleague took me to some dog shows to meet some Poodle breeders. I love Poodles in puppy or working clip, do not like the show clips but found the dog shows fascinating. Showing was not something I had not considered before but it looked like fun and I quickly decided that if I wanted to show as well, a Poodle was out of the question. Far too much grooming to get a dog ready for the ring in a show clip, for me. So back to the drawing board. My next breed of choice was a Border Collie and that proved to be the perfect breed. An ex boyfriend had a working Border from show lines that I had adored so I decided to find a male to do obedience and show if he was good enough. After a 6 month search I found a puppy that went on to gain his Ch and CDX and win BIS at a breed specialty from an entry of 170. The rest as they say is history. 28 years later I still have the same breed, have bred Champions, a Grand Ch, numerous obedience titled dogs, a few workers and many treasured companions. My retirement breed will be Japanese Spitz because of their smaller size and the fact that they are a lot less demanding to raise than Borders.

Yep, a dog cannot sit and jump at the same time. Teach a lightning sit and the problem ceases to exist. Always teach what you do want, much easier than teaching what you don't want.

Borders vary enormously in their activity levels and you can get everything from an "everready bunny" that never stops to a couch potato in the same litter. This is why they should never be chosen on colour and markings. You need a Border that suits your lifestyle. I have owned all activity levels and currently have two that are happy being couch potatoes if nothing is happening so long as they get exercise and company but will be very active if there is something worthwhile going on. Borders tend to have two speeds, flat out and stop. The thing that varies is how long thay spend at each setting. Edited to add: I have never had a truly lazy or low drive Border that didn't want to work/trial etc but have heard of them occasionally. I have also never had a stubborn or strong willed dog either. These are all traits I will not accept and believe a very strong will to please and be ready for whatever challenge is asked of them, it vital for a correct temperament for the breed.

There was nothing to stop them selling her to a dealer for export, puppy farmer, etc so if you put the welfare of the dog first, I think you did exactly the right thing. Sometimes you have to fork out money to do what is right by the dog you bred. We all expect our precious babies to be returned if the owners can't keep them but the temptation is always there for them to on-sell them, so I think breeders need to offer some sort of financial incentive to get them returned. This may not apply to all breeds but there is still a big demand in Asia for my breed and some countries offer big money and do not require papers. Getting a dog back before the owners work out they can get 10 times their purchase price from a dealer for a dog they no longer want is vital.

Border Collies, Collies and Shelties have no doggy odour and neither do the smaller spitz breeds. I have owned a Lab and found that all dogs with that type of short dense double coat, so GSDs, Cattle Dogs, Corgis, etc, have the same dog odour. The Dobes I have met also have it and leave a smell on your hand after patting them (even straight after a bath) as do most short coated dogs unless the coat is really fine coat like a Greyhound or Whippet. The breeds I have most noticed a dog smell in the owners home are Goldies and Cavs. Most of the Gundogs and smaller Spaniels have a waterproof oil in the coat that smells. What you feed can make a difference. Almost any breed fed on canned food seems to stink and a friend with a German Pincher mentioned that she can keep his dog odour at bay by using Missing Link supplement. For the breeds that don't really have an odour, it doesn't seem to matter if they have dry food or raw though.

If you were going to rehome her not keep her, the fair thing to do is sell her for whatever she is now worth, and at that age it is less than a puppy. Then deduct your costs for keeping her, re-advertising, etc and return whatever is left to the original purchaser. I doubt that would be anywhere near 75% of the purchase price, it would more likely be closer to half, so you have been quite generous. I once had an 11 month old returned because the owners life fell apart and she was losing her house. I didn't get all the details because she couldn't stop crying enough to tell me. I took the dog, trained and rehomed him at a lower price then sent the original owner a little more than half what she had paid. She had never asked for any sort of a refund and was more than happy with that because her main concern was that the dog went to to right home when she couldn't keep him.