Gayle.

I had a look at your website and just realised I met you at a herding clinic at KCC Park about 18 months ago. You had Kulta there, and a Keeshond and I had my two Aussies, Dusty was just a puppy (around 4 months old, I think). I don't expect that you'll remember, but I thought Kulta was one of the most beautiful dogs I'd ever seen.

Awww, how gorgeous! Just this morning I was telling my husband about white Lappies and how beautiful they are. And little Snowflake is a perfect example.

If it's so hard to leave the dogs, why not just go where you can take them? There are lots of pet friendly holiday places.

I don't have a Lensbaby, but I buy all my lenses from the US.

Yes, I think that's the trick in the beginning, My two Aussies would be a massive handful now if I'd not spent time grooming them daily as puppies. They have a relatively easy care coat but parts of it are as prone to matting as the schnoodledoodles (the pants and behind the ears in particular). It was just a matter of patience, rewarding for good behaviour and making the whole deal a peaceful and pleasureable experience. Now, when I walk out with a brush in my hand, I have two eager doggies presenting themselves to me in the "groom" position.....lying on their sides, ready to be brushed.

Can I ask a question of the groomers? For those of you who are taking the time to talk to your clients and explain basic coat care to them, are you seeing at least a few are heeding your words and presenting non-matted dogs back for a regular bath, trim etc? For some people, this might be the very first dog they've ever owned and they just might not know how to care for the coat, or that it even needs caring for.

I used to keep kids socks and jocks in the freezer. They were folded up and stacked on the lid of the freezer with the expectation that the owners would collect them and put them away in a timely manner. If they were still there when I needed to open the lid to get something out for dinner, I'd just dump the whole lot in the freezer. Many a time, my boys wore frozen socks to basketball cos they had to fish them out of the freezer in a hurry!

It sure does. And I didn't even have to train the butcher, someone else must have. Both the butcher and the chicken place we go to have a whole section dedicated to body parts for pet food, most of it is $1 kg or 50c a piece for pigs trotters. The chicken shop sometimes has a big tray of wing tips, and as soon as I spot them I buy the whole tray for my oldie, a 15yo Lhasa Apso who can't manage larger bones, but she adores these and crunches away happily on them. The butcher minces muscle meat with offal because "it's better for the dogs"....his words.....and it costs $2 kg. I add eggs, rice and veges, bag it up into meal sized portions and it's far nicer and healthier than any tinned food.

Today I sorted and packaged the meat I bought for the dogs last night. As I stacked it in the freezer, I realised we store a large variety of body parts in there. We have: Legs Wings Necks Thighs Feet Ribs Spines Tails Carcasses Hocks Liver Hearts Kidneys Brains and an assortment of muscle meat minced with offal. All of it's for the dogs. I think they could probably go 10 days without eating the same body part twice. What strange things are in your freezer?

Sunlight soap would work. I use it on my dogs whites to get them sparkling and they come up great. It also removes the grey mark left by their collars. Rub it in and lather well, leave it while you shampoo the rest of the dog, rub again then rinse and shampoo the white bits with your favourite shampoo, then give and all over good rinse before conditioning.

My dogs have chicken necks a couple of times a week. I have to watch my girlie, she tries to trot off with them and hide them around the house for later. Kinda gross to find a chicken neck under your pillow at bed time. She does the same with other raw bones, so I make sure I stay near her and herd her back to the bowl if she looks like she wants to "bury her treasure". I try not to give my guys too many chemically enhanced chew things, so I don't buy greenies or rawhides. Their favourite chewable is a pigs trotter or tail (fresh) or a piece of brisket.

You asked for opinions, I gave you mine based on your post. Did you just want everyone to agree with you?

It sounds to me like she has an obedience problem, if she can't behave herself while she's being groomed. While sitting and shaking on command are admirable traits, they can also easily be taught to 8 week old puppies but that does not make them obedient, or obedience trained. $35 is fairly cheap, I'd think....I would expect to pay more for a fullgrown medium/large breed who's coat is shedding and has never been professionally groomed before. You are making excuses for her. At 22 months, she should be able to stand quietly while being bathed and brushed. She's been allowed to get away with bad behaviour so far, and she probably thinks it *is* all a big game.

Keep in mind that most actual working dogs, live in kennels, or on a chain tied to a kennel (farm dogs etc). I don't think it's the size of the dogs environment that matters so much as how involved in your life the dog is. I have one dog, Dusty, who could easily live in an apartment or a very small house with a very small yard, as long as she could be with me as much as possible.

Dogs as pets just aren't part of some cultures and they probably aren't used to being so close to dogs, or having them as part of the "lifestyle" that we're used to. In the book Mao's Last Dancer, the author writes about going to a bbq at the home of a US politician when he was studying in the US. The family had a dog, and the author writes how he was simply amazed that the dog was allowed to be there at all and hadn't yet been eaten by the family.

My elderly Lhasa gets Chunkers balls when the big kids have bones or chicken pieces......Madame 15 cant chew bones as she doesn't have enough teeth left. I give her about 12 balls for her one meal a day. She likes them, but likes the mince/egg/vegetable/rice mixture I make up more. She won't eat the 4 Legs balls though. She's so old that I just give her whatever she'll eat and I'm not above cooking some eggs just for her but the big kids go hungry if they get picky about din-dins.

I'd really like to see something scientific to back up this "theory" which to my mind sounds like nothing more than "someone on DOL said it so it must be true". Bone and meat digest at different rates, meat and vegetables digest at different rates, fat and muscle digest at different rates. If a dog eats an entire small animal, all the parts of the animal, including the contents of it's digestive tract will all digest at different rates.

I'm not sure that it's the mixing of trhe foods they don't do well on, as much as a particular component of the mixture. For example, if you gave a dog chicken and rice kibble, and added some minced lamb and the dog didn't do well, you might blame the fact that it's a mixture without further investigation. It could be that the dog is sensitive to raw lamb. Swap the lamb for beef, chicken or fish and the problem might very well go away.

Depends on the butcher. One with a small premises in a country town doesn't have the space to store "pet" meat as a seperate item, and so just minces the offcuts, offal etc from the human grade meat they are butchering. That's what my butcher does. He is part of an undercover "market" and his space is very small. I get bags of mince from him and bones, offcuts etc as well and I'm very confident it's all excellent quality, just not aesthetically pleasing for humans. The only fresh pet meat the local supermarkets sell are offcuts....it's pretty easy to tell they are of human grade. In fact the ones Safeway sell just look like poorly cut lamb chops so I'd say they are the ends of whatever they butcher the chops from. Their pet mince comes from third party petfood manufacturers. I've never seen fresh pet mince in the supermarkets that has been prepared by their own butchers.

The breeder appears reputable, she's registered, she shows her dogs......who she sells her pups to is her business, not the OP's business.

They might be from the same litter, but they are still individual pups, and each one has their own immune system and how one pups immune system reacts, might be totally different to the next one. Why do some children catch every cold, flu, bug etc going around and yet their brothers and sisters barely miss a day of school due to excellent health? Same thing. I think there is something in this. I have used less chemicals and preventive "measures" on my two Aussies than I ever have with past dogs, and I'm finding less problems. I rarely use flea preparations, but they don't have fleas. They share the same backyard that my previous dogs lived in and they always had fleas....despite regular applications of flea repellant chemicals. I rarely worm them, but they don't appear to have any problems with worms (I do worm them, but I leave a lot longer gap than recommended).

Yes, pet grade doesn't mean humans can't eat it, it just means they probably wouldn't want to.

I prefer the pet grade mince our butcher does, as it's not just muscle meat. He also adds offal to it, which makes it more complete for the dogs.

I did that before I posted, and I found really very little current info, and not many pictures of long haired koolies. Some of the links didn't work, some sites were very out of date and some breed koolies that clearly aren't suitable for pets.....they appear to be hardcore working dogs and not the type most people would want as a pet.

But where do you get them from? Australian Shepherds are relatively easy to come by these days.......there are almost always litters advertised on DOL, and the state breed clubs could probably help potential buyers out with other litters available. All in all, you wouldn't have to wait long, even if you were quite specific about colours and markings (I was with my girl and I waited a few weeks for her to be born, then another 8 weeks til she came home) . Koolies aren't a breed I've ever seen advertised anywhere. I realise they aren't yet ANKC recognised, so how do you source a good breeder?