anthony mazzeri

I got the surgery for my old boy when he got cataracts. Two issues, maybe related, and possibly not a problem any more now as it was 6 years ago: 1. At the time, the replacement lenses didn't come in the larger size he needed so they didn't sit centred once in. Didn't seem to bother him as he could see again, and obviously not an issue with a small pooch like yours. 2. His pupils could no longer contract. Wide open all the time, even in bright sunlight. This could be related to point #1, but is also a possible side effect of the surgery anyway.

Monsanto rears its ugly head yet again. I'm going to hazard a guess that in twenty years' time Monsanto will be the most sued and prosecuted company in history. Right now though, they're still successfully going about their quest for world domination (and perversion) of the food supply through genetic engineering with unfettered abandon. And untested abandon. 'Corn derivatives' used in pet food - by-products of the Monsanto LY037 genetically modified corn developed for bio-fuel? Things that make you go "what the..?"

I personally would discard a method immediately if it results in exciting the pup into nipping/biting even more than if it wasn't used at all. And you can pretty much tell from the first attempt if it has the opposite effect to what's intended so you don't really need a week or two of further frustration and despair to come to the same conclusion. I'm observing from just my one pup that it is something they grow out of it so it only applies to young puppies. Now the younger one is around 9 months old, her behaviour is evolving into more adult form where they both use more grown-up dog body-language stances to initiate game play. When younger, the pup would just launch herself at him willy-nilly and the game-on would only be if he reacted and made a noise. Silence and no reaction from him would mean no game and so she would stop. I'm guessing now that a pup acquiring body-language reading skills as it matures is a likely explanation as to why some pups suddenly just 'grow out of it' by themselves anyway. The same principle is advocated by professionals to train pups not to jump up on people, ie, no reaction or noise, ignore and they'll stop. Push back, squeal, wave your hands around etc etc and it's 'game-on'. So I'm not advocating anything new or radical here. Just the same principle for one puppy behaviour applied to another puppy behaviour, which is essence is all the exact same behaviour anyway - it's all just a game.

That pretty much sums up most people/owners I think! Including myself. So when you were saying 'taking the hard line' to be firm you just mean consistent as in 'don't give in'? What breed is Max? I'm sorry I didn't pick up on it if you mentioned it earlier. And he's 5 months old? Catandgrant's pup is only 9 weeks old and I am concerned she is talking about her pup being 'dominant' and 'winning' and trying the growling suggestions on the little tyke. And I start getting really concerned when I see Clyde for example in the post before yours suggesting aggressive scruff throws and growling and teeth baring techniques which worked with a Staffordshire Bull Terrier but I literally gulp at the thought of a new owner with a sensitive 9 week old Cocker Spaniel puppy reading that as something that works and is worth trying.

I wish it was, but catandgrant is talking about the pup being 'dominant', so the trainer's meaning has been taken that way. Leading new owners to believe in pup 'dominance' is another bit of common wisdom I have a dispute with as well, but I'll leave that issue for another thread.

Okay, now that you know all the advice you have been given doesn't work for you, just as it all didn't work for me either, and for many many other new pup owners, may I direct you back to my previous post? Don't growl or yelp.

Will that change who you are? I mean, are you a firm personality to begin with or do you now have to become one? I have a dispute with this sort of advice for two reasons: 1) Asking a person to change their personality and maintain an attitude which does not come naturally to them will surely lead to them not being able to maintain it consistently. I can personally attest to this as a fact. And consistency is the key to success or failure. 2) Leading on from (1), it's very easy easy for a person/trainer who has success because they have a firm and dominating personality to tell a person who isn't the firm and dominating type to become firm and dominating - and voila the training will work for you too! Too easy in fact, which is why the advice is given so freely. Declaring that a timid person should alter their personality to suit your training style is a major flaw. Most of us aren't cut out to be Sergeant Majors barking out commands and demanding respect and discipline at all times, otherwise every army or organisation in the world would be all chiefs and no indians. There are other methods of training which don't require easy-going personalities to change themselves into hard-arsed disciplinarians. Clicker training is one example which requires no firmess/dominance to produce positive results. Every person's personality is different like a box of chocolates and that's all I have to say about that.

Don't growl or yelp. I've been closely watching my new Cocker pup with my older 18 month boy and any growling or any noise like a yelp/yap is a signal of of challenge = 'game-on'. The growl from the older one, the yelp/yap from the younger one. Distract instead. It's been quite interesting watching the older Cocker when he doesn't feel like having his ears pulled or getting into a wrestle when the little one starts jumping on him and sinking her teeth into him. He suddenly finds something in the grass or dirt that is tremendously interesting. Being a Cocker pup, she wants whatever he's got, so quickly switches from mouthy-mode to sniffing-mode to see what he's got that's more interesting than her. Works for him every time. Doesn't growl or make any noise at all when he wants her to stop. Just shows intense interest in something else. Quite the opposite, if he does growl at her it means he's up for a wrestle and off they go. So distraction doesn't mean getting the pups attention and waving a stuffed toy (or whatever's at hand) around in its face. It means totally ignoring the pup and playing with the toy/etc yourself with great gusto. Much more fun than what the pup wants to do with you! Also, my pup only ever did the teething and mouthing and wrestling with the other dog, never with me (unlike when I got him first as a pup, without another dog it was all focussed on me). It means your pup sees you as its play companion, not your partner, so I wouldn't take that as something to get upset about. Quite the contrary to you feeling like he hates you, he actually likes you better.

The price is about $2,500 per eye to remove the cataracted lens and replace it with an artificial lens to restore clear vision. Unlike human cataracts though, it's not covered by Medicare. A cost saving option is to do only one eye as being able to see out of even just one good eye is a vast improvement in quality of life compared to being totally blind in both.

Just re-raising this thread after speaking with a vet today, who told me that a small dog who was fed the Orijen cat kibble (not sure why, maybe a fussy eater) has been affected by the same symptoms as the cats. So it's specifically the cat kibble, not the dog kibble. It doesn't just affect cats but dogs too, whatever it is, just that cats were the ones being fed the cat kibble. Some ingredient in the cat kibble which is missing from the dog kibble, which is affected by the irradiation.

The visual evidence would back this up. Knowing that dogs 5,000 years ago already looked like Dingoes, you'd have to assume that those dog breeds which resemble wolves would either have had to have been isolated from other dog breeds for thousands of years to keep their wolf lineage intact, or have been recently cross-bred with wolves to reintroduce the genes. There are no wolves in South East Asia and Australia where the Dingoes are, but there are (or were) wolves where the wolf-like dog breeds hail from such as Scandinavia and the European Wolf. From what I've read of dog-wolf hybrids, it takes several generations to breed the wolf wildness back out of them again, which would indicate it would have been a concerted breeding program over time instead of a one-off accidental mating. And the need to continue to breed the offspring back with 'normal' dogs over the generations to dilute the wolf blood would also indicate that they are separate and different enough that the original neolithic dog ancestors weren't wolves but a relative to them as they still are today, ie dogs didn't evolve from wolves, but they both evolved from a now extinct common ancestor and then went their separate ways after that. Until crossed back together by humans at any rate.

I was going to write something about looking at the oldest known pure dog breed in the world, the Australasian Dingo, as an example or comparison to neolithic cavemen camp-dogs 100,000 years ago. But after a quick bit of research on Dingo DNA studies I've just learned Dingoes only arrived in Australia about 3,000 and not more than 6,000 years ago. Probably on Indonesian fishing canoes. Which is not neolithic at all. Around the time of the construction of the Great Pyramid in Giza. But they still provide a good example of dogs reverted to semi-wild state to see that they are nothing like Wolf packs. Look at the wild pack (for want of a better word) on Frasier Island, which is probably best known at the moment. Individual scavengers and opportunists, more like Coyotes than Wolves, if you ask me.

Do you think they might be feeding off each other's reactions and multiplying it? Maybe separate them when you're trying to teach them how to behave with the pup.

Okay, it's a galvanic response. Two metals creating a cathode (the tin) and an anode (the aluminium). The acid in the food acts as the conductor and 'eats away' at the anode. Basically, it's a very low powered battery. I've seen it happen with lasagna in a metal cooking tray covered with al-foil. In a glass or ceramic tray it wouldn't happen.

I'll make a guess that whatever it is is the reason they still use tin for food cans instead of changing to aluminium like they did with soft drink and beer cans. EDIT: Nope, not the same reason the aluminium foil corrodes.