Gayle.

Forgot to mention, my dogs live happily with two indoor cats. Two of my dogs came here as adults and didn't gave a problem getting along with the cats. We also have chooks. My departed boy would chase them and kill them, my young boy chases them but hasn't a clue what to do once he catches them, the others take no notice of them. To be honest, if you like Bordr Collies and do your research well, you'll find one who'll suit. Plenty of Border Collies live in suburbia and never see a paddock or a sheep and have happy, fulfilled lives.

Maybe an Australian Shepherd? Mine lived happily in suburbia before moving to the country. Most would be happy with the lifestyle you describe.

When we had to let Benson go, the vet was absolutely wonderful but I could see she was visibly upset and said that he was the second one that day. Both dogs had been operated on and were found to have conditions that weren't compatible with life so had to be let go while on the operating table. She was so, so sensitive to our feelings but gee, some days are just shit no matter what you do for a living.

I have an entire male and female here, and yes, it's about managing them. I was going to get Dusty desexed when I stopped showing her as I am not breeding from her, but then I thought.....why? I like her the way she is, she's the EASIEST dog in the world to live with, she has the most gorgeous coat and as long as her seasons are reasonably easy to manage, I've decided to keep her entire. My old Lhasa Apso was never desexed, she lived to a ripe old age with no health problems ever, and she was never bred from. In fact, a lot of the behaviours that neutering is supposed to fix, is displayed by my already neutered dogs. Shae was desexed as a baby puppy and is the only one of my dogs that fights. She will start a fight and by god, she will finish it too. Ripley was neutered at the age of 3, in the past few weeks he's been escaping regularly from a very secure yard. I don't like "spey coat" on coated breeds.....my son bought an absolutely beautiful 18mo orange belton English Setter, promptly had his nuts chopped off and within a few months his coat had gone from glorious, silky flowing tresses to a shaggy, scraggly mess. The dog was groomed daily and cared for beautifully but his coat never came close to regaining it's former glory. We had Benson desexed at 4 months, as requested by his breeder and he had an awful coat......it was harsh and wiry, and never had the silky soft easy care properties my entire dogs have. Ripley's coat is very cottony, although him being neutered later in life meant that he did actually grow the full Aussie male ruff that early neuters don't grow. Shae has a LOT of coat....loads of it in fact. Far more than an Aussie Shepherd bitch should have, it's pretty but it's far from correct for the breed.

He's just a baby, keep the sessions to around 10 minutes or so then give him a break. It's a HUGE ask for a puppy to concentrate longer than that, and on hot days even 10 minutes is pushing it.

It's inside. It's very wet underfoot there at the moment.

The list of non-shedding dogs includes a Westie. A friend of mine had one, a very, very nice pedigree boy who shed more than her 3 Aussies combined.

I don't think our pound is a no-kill pound either, but they post daily pics of the current inmates and they DO scan for chips and ring the owners if the dog is chipped. If it isn't, they don't leave without being microchipped. I am confident that if my dog gets out again and gets lost or ends up in the pound, I will find him even without him wearing a collar. The only instances I can think of where I wouldn't find him is if he got completely lost out in the bush and no one else found him, or if someone from out of town decided to take him and keep him, and it wouldn't matter if he was wearing a collar or not, that doesn't prevent dishonesty. If someone decided they wanted him, they'd just take his collar off and throw it away.

It's drizzling rain here and very damp. I'm almost 2 hours away though, hopefully it will be dry and fine by the time I get to KCC. I'm not bringing a gazebo as I'm coming alone and can't manage it on my own. I can go indoors or under a verandah somewhere I suppose and just arrive at ringside when it's out turn.

We would never have figured it out if we hadn't seen it. We were fairly close though.....we thought he was standing on a brick planter that runs the length of our courtyard, one side of which forms part of the fence dividing us from our neighbours. We thought he was standing on the rim of the planter and jumping til he hooked his paws over the fence, and spider-walking his back legs up then going over to the neighbours yard and out their front gate. We've cut off that escape route anyway, just in case he gets other ideas. We've had 5 Aussies at this place, and he's the only one that has tried to get out. I thought he wasn't the sharpest tool in the shed but I think he was hiding his light under a bushel cos it took a bit of brain power to work that one out. It's not like they don't have a lot of space, we live on a very long 3/4 acre block and they have almost half an acre as their backyard. I think he just wanted to go sightseeing.

Not necessarily. My dogs are all fairly unique looking, especially the blue merles, and none of them have tails. That alone is a point of reference. Schools are great places to get the word out that a dog is lost because kids know everything that's going on in the neighbourhood, including what new pets someones recently got. Radio stations will often run free ads for a lost pet, and vets can keep an eye out or an ear to the ground for you.

Oh, I wouldn't wait for the pound to call me. I'd call them if I hadn't found the escapee within a few hours. As well as all the vets in the area, the radio stations, the local school and anywhere else I could think of.

Didn't a bull terrier (tri colour) win at Crufts or Westminster a few years back?

To be honest, while I think your heart is in the right place regarding making shows more interesting or inviting, I don't think that's the place to start. While it will be nice for people who already attend the shows to have extra attractions or different judges or bells and whistles, you'll be preaching to the converted. It has to start outside of the show ring, it needs to be a concerted effort by breeders, show people, registries, breed clubs and even pet owners of pedigree dogs to start banging the drum for quality pedigree dogs. Get people back to wanting to own a pedigree dog and be proud of it. Be proud of what you're breeding and selling, encourage people to want to breed their own puppies and show dogs they've bred. It took about 15 years for the "designer" dog to all but kill off the pedigree dog pride and they had ONE avenue.......television. And mostly one voice doing it. Turn the tide the other way, someone somewhere needs to get the ball rolling and get the word out the pedigree dogs ARE BETTER PETS! And the show entries will rise of their own accord because once people have quality pets, a lot of them want to do something with them. And shows are a good place to start.

Not true. When we lived on a major highway, Benson got out one day and went for a walk down the road. He was only gone a few minutes before I realized someone had left a gate open and I went to look for him. He wasn't wearing a collar but someone out going for a run had hold of him and was trying to coax him to walk back the way he'd come. Each time Ripley has gotten out, he's been found with people concerned for his safety. Once he was being brought back by someone, another time a girl had put him in her backyard and was out actively looking for his owner, other times he was at the general store being held onto by some caring soul. Not one single person has let him wander because he didn't have a collar. Dogs in this shire have to be microchipped to be registered so most people are aware that animals are likely to be chipped.

Garden stakes could be a hazard, so could low growing tree branches, taps, anyhing fitted to an outside wall that causes something to stick out or stick up. And then as someone pointed out, there's the other dogs. Some of my dogs are very physical in play and drag each other around by the neck ruff. A lower jaw or tooth could easily get snagged on a collar or something dangling from a collar.

Or wanting to know their lineage for obtaining more good dogs from the same ancestry. Pedigrees have lots more purposes than just allowing you to show, I am often referring to my dogs papers for various reasons.

Our entire village us getting to know Ripley and where he lives. He's an unusual and striking looking dog, so if someone decided to keep him, I'm sure there'd be questions asked by neighbors etc about how they came to adopt him. He is not your everyday run of the mill mutt and he'd be fairly hard to hide. A breakaway collar would be useless in this situation as it wouldn't be around his neck once he's escaped the yard. And he doesn't need ID in the backyard, we already know who he is and where he's supposed to be. Dust Angel, he's more than just a character, he's the most gorgeous boy and he's my husbands best mate. He's always really happy to see my husband arrive in the van to collect him and he's happy enough to come home, and he walks in like he's just had the adventure of a lifetime.

Do your research on the breeds that interest you, talk to breeders, ask their advice for the right pup for your situation and get the breed YOU think you can best live with. If I had listened to people about how active and energetic Australian Shepherds are, i'd probably never have got one. Middle aged couple, not very active, work fulltime.......completely the wrong owners for the breed, but we have 4 of them, they have a fantastic life, they get heaps of exercise and activities and they have changed our lives. For the better. And the dogs aren't half as active as what I was led to believe.

The topic is about why numbers at shows are dropping, and people feeling insulted by their fellow competitors is a very valid reason as to why they no longer show, and could be, in part, one of the reasons entries are falling. Just because you aren't upset by it, doesn't mean someone else isn't going to be and it doesn't mean their feelings are less important than yours. I don't personally think it plays a big part as I suspect it's always been like that, the same as "face judging". My husband used to come to every show with me, now he flatly refuses, he absolutely hates it. Hates the atmosphere and hates what he hears going on around him. I asked him one day why he hears so much more than me and he pointed out that he is usually sitting reading a newspaper, minding his own business and not talking. People assume he's not listening so they say all kinds of things in his earshot.

I don't interpret labs as awful; yes they are hard work though....work that i'm willing and able to commit to. I don't think their reputation of being great family dogs is misrepresented...but it takes a great deal of work to develop the pup to the great family dog. Perhaps the hard work isn't adequately represented by the media? It wouldn't be the first time the media failed to represent a breed adequately or truthfully would it? And like you, i've experienced other breeds that weren't half the work. I don't know how the media represent labs, I've never really taken much notice. But I am in my 50's and in the neighbourhoods I grew up in labradors were about the most common household pet. Families were large with lots of kids close in age, the puppy/dog played with the children unsupervised, there were no obedience classes or puppy schools and we considered the dog clever if it could sit on command and a veritable genius if it could shake hands. They were great dogs, and there was no paranoia over whether they'd knock the kids over or nip them.......they did because they were puppies and the kids dusted themselves off and got on with play. I can't recall anyone being warned off from getting a lab because their kids were young......in fact quite the opposite.

If lab puppies are so awful and such hard work, how on earth did they get a reputation for being such great family dogs? I've had 3 Aussie pups in the past few years and I can honestly say that not one of them was even a fraction of the work that's described here.

A few times in the past week, we have come home from work and done a quick head count and come up one short. I now know what it's like to feel your blood run cold. It was always Ripley, our newest dog. He was escaping a VERY secure yard.......in fact we couldn't figure out how he was getting out. We have adequately high fences, equally high gates and no spots he could dig out and there was no evidence of him even trying to dig. He was just gone. Fortunately he was easily found......we live in a small, quiet village and he headed straight to the general store to mooch pats from anyone who was out front. Yesterday my husband was driving home from work, happened to glance over at the general store and yep.......there's Ripley, waiting at the bus stop. So he did a u-turn, opened the door of his van and Ripley jumped in, then he had chat with him about the dangers of not being in the backyard where he's supposed to be. Ripley just leaned over and gave him a lick on the nose. So much for the chat! Last night we were having dinner when we were treated to "The Great Escape". Outside our dining room window is a path that leads to a 160cm picket gate that separates the front from the back. It blocks the narrow gap between the corner of the house and the side fence. The gate is solid and has square tubular metal bracing on the inside. Ripley was pacing up and down the path, gathering momentum as he paced. When he'd worked up enough momentum, he took a run at the gate, leapt up and grabbed the top like Spiderman then scrambled over using the metal bracing for a foothold. One second he's securely in the backyard, next he's trotting down the driveway to freedom. And no evidence of how he'd done it. Now that we know how he does it, the gate has planks nailed to the back of it to cover the bracing and take away the footholds. The fences have been heightened with latticework and the whole place looks like Fort Knox. And I am still doing a panic if I can only see three dogs. None of our dogs wear collars. They are all registered with the local council and all have tags, but they live on the collars that are attached to the leads that live in the laundry. After seeing Ripley get out, I am SO SO SOOOOOO glad we made the decision to not put collars on them at home. It could so easily have ended up with a dog hanging from the pointy end of a picket. The fine for a registered dog at large not wearing it's council tag is $61. I'd rather pay the fine.

It's interesting that the decline in show numbers has happened quite rapidly. When I first started to show, just a few years ago, there were regularly entries of 1100-1200 in Vic metro shows. Today I got my numbers for a show on Saturday and there's 770 entered.

I live in SE Vic, but none of my dogs came from this state. Two came from SA, one from Perth and one from WA.