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montall

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Everything posted by montall

  1. Tallulah has a weird contact allergy that manifests itself with bumpy skin which goes patchy as the bumps subside. It usually happens if I wash her with a new shampoo and don't rinse her off thoroughly. I just use pure soap now (on the recommendation of a crestie breeder) and as long as I rinse her really well she is fine. Anyway recently it happened again and nothing had changed with the way I bath her, or anything else except the water. It happened right after they added the flouride. Everything I read about flouride says that it shouldn't cause any problems for man nor beast but nothing else has changed. The only other thing I can think of is the fact that our water here (Ipswich) has been in the news lately because of it's strange taste and smell. Personally I haven't noticed it, but I can't help but wonder. Either way I still suspect the water. Could the build up of various minerals in the water have an effect on susceptible dogs? So I was wondering if anyone else has noticed anything since the change in the water. Do you have an itchy dog, and has it been worse lately? I don't want to sound paranoid but I can't think what else it could be.
  2. Hey, I've got an owl one. It's a video not a photograph so it's a bit off topic but it's funny anyway. Barking Owl. http://au.youtube.com/watch?v=GESrnHr-SjU&...re=channel_page
  3. I have a couple. A dragonfly on my fish pond. Brown marsh frog eggs in same fish pond. Not quite wildlife yet, but they will be one day if the fish don't eat them. Actually my fish pond is a source of unlimited wildlife. Not sure if I caught something hiding in this water lily or not, but it looks as though it could be a tiny little lizard or something.
  4. Oh that poor poor boy, what an awful thing to happen. I missed your original post about this and I am sitting here shaking my head at the fact that you weren't told the truth immediately so this poor boy could be treated accordingly. Hope he heals well and isn't in too much pain.
  5. I'm another one who uses peanut butter. I have one that needs a tablet twice a day and the peanut butter works even though she isn't really all that food orientated. I have to really cover the tablet though, not just a little smear. I think maybe the fact that the peanut butter is so sticky makes it hard for them to spit it back out even if they do detect it. They used to call peanut butter peanut paste and paste is about right.
  6. I recently put my three into boarding kennels and you have to have proof of their up to date C5 vaccination to get in there. I was talking to the vet about it and he mentioned that in his opinion yearly vacs aren't entirely necessary but when dogs are going into high risk areas like kennels he would recommend it. He mentioned that you still have to vaccinate against kennel cough every 12 months and the nasal application can be a bit difficult to administer properly. He owns an old dog himself and he wouldn't vaccinate him yearly, more like three yearly, but with young ones it's probably ok. He also mentioned that he doesn't approve of the yearly heartworm vaccination; monthly or daily tablets are fine. I just love an honest vet who isn't trying to sell you stuff for the sake of it. The bottom line seems to be that there can be reactions to the vaccinations but it is reasonably rare (just like human babies I guess) but the vaccination will actually last longer than 1 year in most cases. Personally I only vaccinate my dogs if I am putting them in kennels and then only because I have to. I am happy with the kennel I use and I'm not sure I would want my dogs in one that didn't insist on vaccinations being up to date. As for the titre test, I have no idea how much vets charge for that but it could well be another money grab couldn't it? You end up paying anyway whether your dog gets the vaccination or not and then if it does need it you pay twice. ETA .. Just read Kavik's post and at $150/$200 a go the titre test is quite a lucrative little money grab.
  7. I have a dog who the vet suspected was suffering from this (the middle one in my signature). I say suspected because the circumstances were a bit muddied. I will explain. She slipped from the lounge chair and fell awkwardly. I thought she had broken her leg but when the vet x-rayed her he found a crumbled hip socket. His educated guess was legges perthes although because I had only had her for three weeks we didn't have any early history (lameness etc.) so couldn't be 100% sure. In his opinion the hip was too damaged to have been the result of the fall. Previous owner was less than helpful, going on the defensive and denying all knowledge of there ever having been a pre-existing problem. As the vet also found a luxating patella and in his opinion occasional lameness would have been evident just from that, we felt that any information coming from that source was probably not going to be much help. At any rate the hip was completely shattered and I only had the one option .. to have her operated on, because she was in terrible pain. Well I had another I suppose to have her PTS but that wasn't really an option. He removed the hip socket and ball and at the same time did a repair to the luxating patella on the knee of that same leg, poor little girl. He said that small dogs coped quite well without the joint. I think a bigger dog would need a hip replacement. She has recovered really well and now uses that leg to run around and jump quite normally although it took quite a while for her to get to this stage. She hopped around on three legs for quite a while. That caused some muscle loss in the affected leg but now that she is using it all the time it seems to be pretty much back to normal. I believe swimming is good to prevent this happening, but she hated that. She does have a slight limp. I suspect that may be because one leg is now a bit shorter than the other but I don't know if that is true or not. I have to give her supplements daily, but they are just osteoeze active from the supermarket (at the recommendation of the vet) so that's not a huge problem and that's more for the repaired patella than the hip anyway. She has shown no sign of it appearing in the other hip, and the vet seemed to think that was unlikely. In his experience this nasty thing usually only occurs in the one hip. I have noticed that she is a little unsteady on her feet if she is not the one in control. Like if I am bathing her and giving her a good rub down she is a bit more wobbly than the other two, but when she is in total control herself you wouldn't know anything was wrong with her. She was 10 or 11 months old when this happened and is just over two now. I don't know what her long term prognosis will be, no doubt there will be arthritis somewhere down the track, although there isn't actually a joint now, so maybe not. Anyhow we will cross that bridge when we come to it. At the moment she seems to be happy enough and from the way she runs around like an idiot I would say it is unlikely she is in any pain. Hope this helps somehow, and if you are facing this awful disease, I hope it all works out for you as well as it has for Tallulah.
  8. Ear plugs for hubby maybe. That sounds flippant but I don't mean it to be. Sorry you are faced with this. It's difficult isn't it. We have faced it in the past. An old cat and a year later an old dog, both with dementia setting in but otherwise they seemed happy enough. That was our rationale but eventually we still had to make the decision. By then it was unavoidable, the cat had started to pace uncontrollably and eventually jumped off our very high verandah. It's a miracle she wasn't killed in the fall. The dog developed cancer finally and went down hill really fast but if we had made the decision sooner we could have saved him some pain. I often look back on those days and wonder if they were really as happy as we wanted to believe they were or whether we were keeping them alive for us and not for them. Only you know if that's what you are doing or not, but if you are really convinced that he is happy enough then all I can think of is ear plugs for hubby or maybe a stronger sort of sleeping pill of sorts from the vet. Something that will make him sleep through the night.
  9. I picked up a great idea on here when this topic was discussed a while ago. If you have one of those round caps on the outside pipe that leads from your toilet to the sewer pipe you can undo the cap, drop them in, replace the cap, and next time the toilet is flushed away they go.
  10. Hell yes pebbles, couldn't agree more with your first statement. Definitely toooo much information and toooo many books etc. etc. And I do remember those days when life seemed a lot simpler. I often wonder what will be considered normal practice in the future. Today's certainties have a way of becoming tomorrow's old fashioned out of date practices. Mind you having said that, I would never rub my dog's noses in 'it'. They would probably just wipe it all over me. And in the end I would be the one having to clean it off them. :rolleyes: So I guess we will have to go and bag our heads together because I'm an old fuddy duddy too. Couldn't you tell.
  11. Sure did. Her name is Effie (Belachi Midnight Magic) and she is 4 years old, a retired show dog. There is a thread about her here .. http://www.dolforums.com.au/index.php?show...57&hl=effie Sorry for the hi-jack, back to the capstar. Yeah it's good stuff but I was always a little worried about what it might be doing to my dogs. That and frontline. Both my dallies died of cancer and I had never had that in a dog before. Probably nothing to do with the flea treatments but I will always wonder. They did live to a good age though. Still it's one of the reasons for the breed I have now. My OH was paranoid about fleas and the poor dalmatians were being dosed all the time. We had a cat at the time and we have lots of possums, impossible to keep fleas at bay. So this time around he said get one that doesn't shed and doesn't have fleas, silly man. Just as well he has a sense of humour. He reckons that if anyone had told him that he would own bald dogs one day he would have told them they were crazy but he loves them to bits, all three of them.
  12. I noticed that extra scratching too blacklab. ETA .. Should mention I spose that this was with my previous dogs (dallies) don't really need them for hairless cresties.
  13. This subject is very topical for me. Only last Saturday I had my little girl Tallulah back at the vet in obvious pain. She had major hip and knee surgery back in February of this year. We were very lucky at the time and found a good vet who did the procedures for a whole lot less than $11,000 and no I wouldn't have had it done if it was going to cost anywhere near that much, I had only had her for three weeks. On Saturday she woke up and was in obvious pain, walking slowly and just not herself. She had hurt herself again somehow, not sure how, and needed an injection for the pain. She is fine now but we have to face the realisation that this may become a regular thing. My first thought was that she had done some damage to the operation site that might require further surgery but thankfully that turned out not to be the case. Even so my OH has said that he would probably spring for one more operation if it became necessary but we will have to make some hard decisions somewhere down the track. He's right, not only is it not an option because of the money, but it wouldn't be fair to keep subjecting this poor little girl to a life of pain. No doubt if it comes to that I will be thinking along the lines that I made a mistake in having it done in the first place and should have just let her go then, but it's hard to make that decision when you can see some hope for them.
  14. They are 48cm x 40cm and about 4.5cm high, just measured them. The frame that fits over the top creating the lip is rounded that's why the measurement is 'about'. The pads do have a plastic back from memory (don't use them anymore) but it doesn't matter because the base is solid anyway.
  15. I use them for my two overnight when they are locked inside. They don't always use them, sometimes they make it through the night but it's good to know they're there if they need to go, like if I sleep in. They're good for when it rains too, mustn't get our precious little feet wet by going outside in the rain, no siree. I got them from Kmart and they are a tray with a frame sort of thing that goes on top over the pad and clips into place with clips on the bottom tray bit. They cost about $15 or $16 I think, can't remember exactly, but somewhere around that. I don't use the pads, just newspaper. I tried newspaper on its own but the little buggers ripped it up and it was strewn all over the laundry. It didn't take them long to get the idea. Tallulah had already been used to using newspaper so moving to the tray was no trouble and Monty will pee anywhere Tallulah does so that made it easy.
  16. When I was in highschool, a long long long time ago, I had a friend who's pet pig would herd the chooks. We thought that was pretty unusual at the time but obviously since then we have learned that herding is in the breed, remember Babe.
  17. I have just opened up an account with YouTube and to test it out I uploaded this video of Tallulah after her bath. I thought it fitted into this thread really well. Yep, she's mental as well. She actually manages to flip her bed completely over a lot of the time.
  18. What's the problem with this one Roxiekda, why is it horrid? I hope it's only because your dogs didn't like it and not because there is anything harmful in it. My dogs seem to like it. I chose it because it had no preservatives and it also contained small amounts of glucosamine and chondritin which I thought would be good for my little dog who has had knee and hip surgery. ETA .. I have only just changed their diet to this as a main meal, they get chicken necks and bits and pieces of other stuff as well.
  19. A lot of small dogs seem to suffer anxiety. Chihuahuas are a breed that comes to mind. You see a lot of those that are clingy. I suppose that's not all that surprising really, everything must look so BIG to the poor little things.
  20. I use one of those K Mart specials. The one with the tray that you clip pads into but I use newspaper in the tray instead. It's cheaper and they don't rip it up if I clip it in properly. I just put it out at night in case they don't hang on until I get up to them and sometimes they use it and other times not. Mostly they go outside, unless it's raining. My girl was trained to use newspaper by the previous owners so that helps a bit, she is comfortable with the tray. At first I just put paper down by itself and they would rip it to pieces, had great fun. The tray seems to put a stop to that.
  21. I'm another two dog fan. My two are only one month apart in age, and both just over 1 year. I bought my boy from a breed specific rescue when he was 6 months. Then three months later I bought a 10 month old girl from a breeder who said she had decided against breeding anymore. The fact that they were that little bit older probably helps but they can be a bit destructive. Who am I kidding, more than a bit. My backyard looks like a battlefield but IMO the pluses outweigh the minuses because they are twice the pleasure, and watching them play together is just magic. The very first "second" dog I got, years ago, was bought chiefly as a companion for the dog I already had but when I discovered the joys of double dog ownership I decided then and there that from now on I would always have at least two.
  22. Every dog I have ever had in the past (and there have been a lot of them) has had milk from time to time and never had a problem. I never fed it on a daily basis but often enough and they all loved it. One of the two I have now just can't keep it down. He loves it but every time I have fed it to him he throws it back up. So I guess what I am saying is that I think that if your dog was going to have problems you would be seeing it by now. I don't think milk can cause any long term damage but I could stand corrected. All I know is that it didn't cause any problems for any of my dogs, they all lived relatively long, and mostly healthy, lives.
  23. My dogs like the Purina one with the milk essentials. It's Lucky Dog minis made for small dogs so it might not work for a bulldog as a complete meal but as you are not feeding it exclusively it would probably be ok. The flavour (if you can call it that) is Minced beef, vegetable and pasta flavour with milk essentials. Might be worth one last try. It's the milk essentials (whatever the hell that means ) that tip the balance for mine. I do what you are trying to do leave a bowl out for the times they refuse other things and sometimes they actually seem to prefer this, no accounting for taste. ;)
  24. :D My little guy does this too, or he pees on her as she is weeing. I doubt it's dangerous, just gross. It sounds like you are getting it under control though, good luck. My guy only does it when I'm not looking, he's like that, sneaky. :D
  25. Just to answer that question. Yes I would agree that it sounds like too little. I wonder what food she is feeding, because if her dog doesn't look underweight one would have to assume that it is enough. You've spiked my curiousity now Pink Panther. I'm just a sticky beak at heart. :p Did you actually see the dog? You say this advice came from a lady at luring; was she someone participating or just some "helpful" spectator giving unasked for advice. A lot of that around it would seem.
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