Gayle.

I found it very easy to teach Benson to run next to the bike and not pull, just using a flat collar and leash. My friend bought a Walky Dog attachment, but found a collar and leash a lot easier. Stick to bike paths and stay off public roads and you'll be within the law. In some states, it's illegal to run the dog next to a bike, but only on public roads. Benson and I trained for our ET on the local school oval, the bike paths around the town and the old rail trails.

Don't teach him to speak, I did it with my dog and it was the worst thing I could have done. A treat for barking escalates to loads of barking.

When I was a kid, this is how my parents bought our Old English Sheepdog.....the litter was advertised in our local paper, the breeder was in our town. But I never see VCA registered breeders advertising there now. Lots of Malti-shits, loads of staffies, labs, JRT's and an abundance of crosses, but very rarely anything with a registered pedigree. Same in the Herald Sun......mostly pet shops advertising their current stock.

Until 4 months ago, we lived on a major highway. It never ceased to amaze and horrify me, the amount of people who'd walk their dogs offleash along the roadside. Not only was there the very busy road, but also a railway track with very regular trains. I wouldn't even let my dogs go unleashed from the car to the front door.

But you aren't everyone and it's not logical to a lot of people. Loads and loads of people wouldn't even consider using the internet to find a puppy and if they did, they'd more than likely try sites like the Trading Post first, to see what's advertised in their area. And a lot of people don't know what they want, or have a general idea.....staffy type, or a small fluffy type, or one of those woolly non shedding types....all of which are available in abundance in newspaper ads, pets shops and the Trading Post online. Why would they go further when what they want is right there?

Optimum and Supercoat are not bad, and readily available in the supermarket. Either would make a decent supplement to some raw foods.

Do the neighbors know their dogs are barking? My son was met in his driveway by a neighbor a few weeks ago, when he came home from work. The neighbor asked him "Do you know your dog barks the whole time you're not here?" And my son pointed out that if he's not there, how on earth can he know the dog is barking? Now that he knows, he has taken steps to make sure the dog doesn't bark.

He is a totally gorgeous boy with the very best temperament, but you wouldn't find his chat funny if your ear drums felt like they were gonna burst. He is LOUD but like a lot of herding breeds, his bark ends on a high, piercing topnote that is hard to describe but you'd know it if you heard it. He has quickly learnt that he can bark softly at the door to be let outside without getting a zap, but once that collar goes on, he has to be quiet. Funny story, in our previous house, we had floorboards right through the house so it was very "echo-ey". Benson slept in our bredroom most nights and one night he needed to go outside but no one would wake up. So he sat facing the corner of the room near the door and barked really loudly. It was so loud, the sound bounced back and frightened the life out of him, he dove under the bed and he's never barked loudly in the house again.

Benson only has his collar on when he's outside and he has this huge, thick ruff of hair about his neck so I can't see it's even going to rub at all. This morning, he was in the rumpus room when I got up and I picked up his collar and showed it to him then called him to me to put it on, he stood there with his head forward so I could fasten it, so it clearly doesn't bother him at all, either that or he's too dumb to associate the tickle on his throat with the collar. But he gets a handful of treats when I put the collar on, so his tummy probably over-rides his brain. It's very peaceful here now. Stopping him barking means we basically don't have any barking dogs at all because the others are no longer being incited to follow Bensons lead.

I have Isaak on Supercoat puppy, he is doing really well on that.

They are filled with water soaker crystals, the stuff you add to pot plants to retain water. The fabric is a ripstop nylon outer and I think a polycotton inner. I made the mats with a plain colour, then made a removable patterned cover so they'd be easy to clean. I soaked the inner mat, then placed it in the dry outer cover.

I made my dogs cooling mats, they are quite easy to make if you're a novice sewer. However, when I tried them out, neither of them would have a bar of them. I put them in the bottom of the crate, they dug them aside and lay on the base of the crate. I tried them on the floor at home and told them to "Lay on the rug" and they each put a paw on it and decided they'd rather disobey me. The mats I made don't feel wet to touch, even though they are soaked in water, but there was something about them that the dogs didn't like and they ended up being a waste of time and money.

I would not like that contract if I were paying for the dog, however I might agree to it if the dog were given to me to care for and show.

And that is why the pedigree dog world needs to get off it's collective bum and start promoting itself properly, to the public. They do a great job of promoting the benefits of purebred dog ownership.....to their own members. We are not the ones who need converting, we already know. Rather than continually diss the "opposition"....the pet shops, the backyard breeders, the puppy farms....they need to positively promote correct breeding practises, good ethics and the benefits of owning a pedigree pet. And do it with a friendly, welcoming face.

We got the anti-barking collar today when we collected the mail, so tried it out this afternoon. It works. It is fantastic. I now have a lovely quiet boy who barked once, looked a bit surprised, barked again a while later and looked surprised again and has barely uttered a sound since. Not barking while I was putting the chooks away was hard for him, cos that's when he does his best "bark, run at the fence, bark, bark, bark, god this is fun" and drives me absolutely crazy. But he rang along the fence and didn't utter a sound. Lovely. The chookies and I appreciated the silence. And because he isn't barking and sending himself into a frenzy, he has been much calmer this afternoon.

I have a pup that I co-own with the breeder. She lives in another state and I have never met her. I suppose it's a similar arrangement as if this little dude grows up to be as special as anticipated, he will go back to her for stud-muffin duties from time to time. However, there are a couple of big differences.......this is the second dog of mine from that particular breeder, so we have a bit of background there. I would never have gone into any breeders terms with someone I had no history with. But I know with the puppies breeder that I can shoot off an email and know for certain it will be replied to that day. I can ask questions, they'll be answered immediately. When he was at her place, she sent me weekly photos of him, just as she did with the first puppy I got from her. When she asked me to co-own this pup with her, I had absolutely no hesitation in saying yes. But we already had a trusted, if distant relationship built on already owning a pup from her.

It's not obvious to everyone, and if a person or family isn't involved with or all that interested in dogs in general, any and all publicity about where pet shop puppies come from might just pass them by. We notice it because we're interested. We see the page 15 newspaper stories, we make an effort to watch the TV segments and the dog culture is very, very much in our awareness. But we are not everybody and we are not even "most" people. I am not interested in football. Not in the slightest. I live in Victoria, where the footy scores take precedence over any other news, and football stories generally take up the first and last 6 pages of the daily paper plus the middle liftout. But I could not tell you who the most popular players are, I couldn't tell you who's likely to win the grand final, for that matter I can't even tell you when the grand final even is. Apparently there was some big scandal recently involving drugs.....Ben someone or other? Don't aks me, I wouldn't have a clue. I'm not interested. It's not that I go out of my way to bury my head in the sand, it just doesn't cross my awareness and football in Victoria is VERY in your face at this time of the year. So goes it with dogs, pet puppies, pet shops, puppy farms, breeders etc. If a person isn't interested, they won't notice and believe me, stories about dogs are much, much less common and take up much less news space than stories about football. If and when someone like this wants to buy a puppy as a family pet, they head straight for the nearest pet shop, as isn't that where you buy pets? They don't know where else to go. It might not occur to them that there even IS anywhere else to go. And as for wondering where the puppies come from, that's a thought that wouldn't even cross their mind. That doesn't make them potentially bad pet owners, in fact that could very well be the start of a lifetime love affair with dogs, but I dare say that's very much the case with lots and lots of people who are buying a family pet for the first time.

People buy puppies in pet shops because they don't know any better places to buy them. The pedigree dog world needs a better publicist.

Try an Oster undercoat rake. I use one on my big black woolly bear aka Benson, and it removes the undercoat easily and in massive volume. I tried a Furminator, it just slipped over the surface. Standard rakes remove some of the undercoat but not a lot in one go. The Oster does the best job with the least amount of effort on my part.

They would be considered a type of heading dog, Kelpies, ACD's, Aussies, BC's are all "heading dogs" of some sort. If you google heading dog, you'll get pics that look like the dogs at obedience. They are gorgeous looking dogs, I would have one in a heartbeat if I didn't have Aussies. And yes, these ones are the same colour and markings as Dusty. Highly intelligent too.

A lady at our obedience club has a dog she calls a NZ border collie. She got him from the pound. He doesn't look like the BC's here, not even the smooth ones, he has a completely smooth, very short coat, a smaller face with a rounder muzzle and he has quite a light frame. About BC height though. She said when she went to NZ for a holiday, she saw ones like him everywhere. Recently she got a puppy of the same breed......apparently from a breeder in Tas. She said it took her ages to find someone that bred them, but the pup looks just like her other dog.

My neutered boy has a very thick woolly coat, especially in winter, and he doesn't do a seasonal coat drop like the entires do. His coat is a totally different texture to an entire Aussie and his feathering on the front legs is very woolly. I tried a Furminator, it was useless. It skimmed the surface of his coat and did nothing about the thick layer of undercoat that causes most of the woolliness. The best tool I found is an Oster undercoat rake. It gets right down to the skin and removes the undercoat in huge swathes. In fact, given a good workout with the Oster, he can go from looking like a tubby black bear to a sleek and handsome dog. The Oster also does a decent job on his feathering, although it is always going to be a different texture. The only parts of the coat that I scissor are the ears, the paws, the hocks and the dock of a bobtail. There is no way I would use clippers on an Aussie.

I started Benson on Eagle Pack as a puppy and he had dry flaky skin the whole time he was on it.

The thing with the "non-shedding" coat is that a lot of people who don't own dogs, or are looking for their first dog, assume non-shedding means no work. They do not know that all non-shedding coats need very regular brushing and clipping to stay nice. That particular fact needs to be more widely publicised.

At our most recent club graduation, I entered our girl Dusty in the class one trial. I'd been training her at home and she really hadn't had any class time for over a year as her handler....my teenage daughter....lost interest in dog obedience. Dusty works better for me anyway. She did great in the ring, and did some beautiful heelwork and was very sharp on the commands. Then came to the group stays....the undoing of many a good dog. She sat nicely and stayed. The greyhound next to her broke and the young handler danced around saying "Mia, STAY....MIA STAY....STAY, Mia, Mia SIT..." the whole time he was huffing and shuffling and stepping towards his dog then stepping back and I kept wishing the judge would tell him to stand still and shut the hell up because every other dog in the lineup was getting antsy and shuffly. But my girl held her stay, thank goodness. Then the exact same thing happened in the drop stays...the greyhound broke immediately and the kid talked and jumped and leaped around and made her drop again and by the end of it I wanted to wring his little neck. But Dusty didn't break and she not only passed, but won the class. And that is the sort of experience you will never get by training in a backyard. The distractions in a class are far more valuable than any fancy tricks you can teach at home and it's definitely worth sticking it out just for that.