Paulp

What did the vet suggest was wrong? A vet should be able to tell from a physical examination whether hip dysplasia is a possibility and would advise investigations. I took my lab in to the vet limping with an injury to the foot but the vet on examining her picked their was something not quite right with her hip and x-rays confirmed hip dysplasia.

I use performa S for my dogs. It is marketed as a supplement for horses but is great for dogs as well. Being for horses you get it in big lots (5L +) but is much cheaper and you could share it with someone else.

Just remembered we have a shiba inu in our club at the moment. Burnese Mountain Dogs are getting a few mentions, we have several in our club and I saw one today on the street. We also have a couple of Russian Terriers, like big shaggy bears.

A few months ago we had an alpine dingo come through our club.

Well done, isn't it great when when one your dogs kicks it up a gear and smashes thier PB. Are you coming to the nationals with Ahsoka and Jedi?

My 3yo lab just had x-rays done last week and it cost $300. She was limping and had an injury on a toe so she was booked in for x-rays. A senior vet examined her before she was x-rayed and decided he was happy an x-ray on the foot was not needed but suggested doing her hips seeing as she was already sedated. Turns out she has the beginnings of hip dysplasia and it will be much easier to manage seeing as we found out so early so there was a definite benefit to us of getting her hips done while she was there. The anti-inflammatories are quite strong and will greatly reduce limping alone so the vet will still want to go ahead with x-rays even if the limping has reduced..

It is up to the local council, in Casey We had by-laws officers give our club a talk a while back and "under effective control" means that the dog must stay within 3m of you.

When I was carting my dogs around in a sedan I used BD harnesses. Once you are used to it the buckle is easy and I think it is far stronger than other types of attachment you find on car harnesses. I would highly recommend them. If your dog is a puller using any sort of car harness to walk a dog gives it a great amount of leverage to pull against and encourages it.

My little lab female is a humper, she jumps Ebon whenever she gets excited (Ebon is definately the dominant one so I don't think it is a dominance thing). In the home I will try to distract her from what she is up to but don't forbid it because I think that will "just drive it underground" (ie she will still do it when we are not around) and not really achieve anything. I do not allow her to do it to dogs away from home as I don't want a fight on my hands.

Thank you I appriciate these ideas as I didn't even think of all the fun stuff like flyball competions even if it's just for them to watch. I have planned to go to a dog show in October just to have a look in the hope that the children will get excited and perhaps will have a new focus. I will look into flyball or agility. Do you have the flyball contacts for your state? My kids think its the coolest thing ever and we havent even started yet! Hello Chewbacca, I don't know anything about flyball. I just assumed I'd have to call Dogs NSW ? if not, can you tell me who I need to contact? Thank you You will find all the info you need about competitions and contact details for clubs here

If you want to stimulate his drive for chasing the Ridgeback club do lure coursing at KCC park September to May

This ones been kicking around for a while, it probably hasn't been photoshopped but the photo has been taken in a way to exaggerate the dogs size, check out the size of her hands on the dogs legs, gives a better idea of the real size of the dog.

An Albury club regularly send flyball teams down to Victorian competitions

My boys favourite toy in the world is a kong frisbee, it is used more as a tug nowadays to motivate him for flyball. As you can see from the picture below they aren't quite indestructible but they are very durable. The only other thing about them is they are quite heavy and require a bit of finger and wrist strength to get a good throw but when you get it right they hang nicely.

I'm embarassed to take my dog to classes at the moment, it is not a good look when an instructors blue class dog won't sit in the mud

Just a few of the many photos we have of my two snuggling, we have two kennels for them but usually only one gets used and they usually snuggle together inside as well

Both my dogs have resting HR around 55-60. One is a 24kg female lab, the other a 31 kg male lab X GR. I think both are reasonably fit, they are certainly very active during the day doing frantic zoomies and Ebon competes in flyball and is quite quick for a big dog. What gets me about their pulse is the variation with breathing, it is like three quick beats, three slow beats. I would expect pulse to vary with size of dogs, smaller dogs will tend to have faster pulse rates (this is a trend across all mammal species) and also with fitness. As an animals fitness increases the amount of blood the heart pumps with each beat increases so it does not have to pump as hard to maintain a given blood flow. There would probably also be a relationship with the function for which a dog is bred, I would expect greyhounds to have slower pulse rates, even unfit ones, as selecting for improved aerobic performance would be selecting for hearts with larger stroke volumes.

A study was done looking at patients admitted to hospital with lesions attributed to white tails. I think there were 11 or twelve patients and only one of these patients was actually able to recall being bitten by a spider and it was not collected so could not be positively identified. The causative factors for all the other lesions were identified and none were the result of spider venom. Just found the abstract

It is a shame, I was looking forward to coming down to check out an agility trial. If you have seen the grounds though you would understand why. In the 3 years I've been training at Berwick I've never seen the grounds like this, what isn't under water is just slush. It has been very unfortunate that heavy rain several weeks ago water logged the grounds and there has been just enough rain each week since to stop the grounds drying and deepen the mud. Obedience is challenging but still possible but there is no way you could run dog sports there at the moment, the only way we are getting any flyball training done is to retreat to the top of the adjacent embankment.

It is a bit south from you but there is a coin operated one at the car wash on the corner of Heatherton and Springvale Rd

If I don't brush my black lab for a while in bright sunshine he starts to look chocolate in patches but a good brush will have him glossy and black again, I presume it is dead loose coat causing the change in colour. Any chance it is the same for your boy?

To the casual observer it would appear that, if either, Princess is the dominant one of my two labs, she jumps on Ebons back and humps him, in play he will roll over on his back and she will stand over him or even pin him to the ground (she is about 2/3 his size). They share food no problem and toys, they eat pretty much side by side. They sleep together. It does not happen very often but sometimes there is a resouce Ebon particularly wants (I don't give them rawhide chews anymore) and Princess will back right off and steer clear (early on before she learnt his cues there were a couple of scufflles) and we see who the dominant dog really is.

is a whole team of flyballing huskis

I don't give my labs tennis balls at home, one of them strips and pops them in minutes. I buy tennis ball sized rubber balls, they are hollow so have just enough give to make it hard for a dogs teeth to penetrate them. BigW sell them for $2 each. For some reason my dog prefers the yellow to the blue and red, probably they contrast better against the background.

Pretty sure Clive was a judge at Berwicks last obedience trial so anyone who was there might have had him (I wasn't competing)