DeltaCharlie

She is a 14kg dog. Currently on 75mg phenobarb twice a day and 375mg keppra three times a day with diazepam used during clusters. She is also on 0.3 thyroxine twice a day for hypothyroidism. Her bloods were last tested in April so will be looking to test them again in the next few weeks. She is currently on day 5 of a cluster so I want to wait until all the loading doses are out of her system before we retest her. One vet is pushing for pexion which is fairly new in Australia but everything I am reading suggests that it won't help in her case and could actually make her worse as it is linked to increased seizure activity. I would rather try zonisamide as a 3rd drug if we need to as everything seems much more positive with it and it will work well with her current meds but the vet really wants to try the pexion. I will be speaking with my local vet (who is awesome and has dealt with her seizures from the start) tomorrow and will gauge her feelings. She has been off all week so I haven't had a chance to talk with her yet.

Hi all, I was just wondering if anyone has any recommendations for a canine neurologist in Sydney? My young girl has reached the point where we need to seek advice beyond what a run of the mill vet can provide. Her seizure clusters are getting much worse and I am receiving conflicting information in regards to medication schedules etc and am having drugs pushed onto me that all my research is suggesting will not be appropriate and could in fact make her worse. I would rather start dealing with someone who deals with seizure disorders on a daily basis and has experience to draw on when advising new medications etc. I have heard that Georgina Child is very good, I believe she works out of SASH and also consults for Sydney Uni? I will try and make some calls tomorrow to find out consult prices etc but thought I would ask for opinions here first :) TIA

While BCs and Kelpies dominate the sport you will always have a big 500 class. I'm not quite sure how you propose we change that? Other than running ABC comps here like they do in the UK :p The key is encouraging other heights to compete (rather than discouraging them as we are currently doing). It still won't change the fact that due to their structure, work ethic, and original breeding purpose the working dogs will always dominate the sport. As they do everywhere in the world.

The OP is not talking about a long term commitment to crating a dog all day every day. She is after a workable solution to an identified problem. One such solution is that the dog is crated for 5.5 hrs a day. In that position, it is exactly what I would be doing and I can tell you right now our dogs would cope with it just fine. At no point has she mentioned that the dog sleeps in a crate or is confined for long periods at any other time of the day. Presumably the dog will be active when someone is home and is not going to spend its life locked up. ETA: At no point has it been mentioned that the crate is so small the dog cannot even stand up in it. Forgive me for seeing the best in people, but I am assuming the crate will be big enough for the dog to stand up, stretch out and turn around if need be.

Happy to keep posting photos and updates, you may just need to remind me if I haven't posted for a while :laugh: Hype is such a fun little dog to train. Everything is a party and you have to be really on the ball to work with him. Repetition is NOT an option :laugh: Today we were learning to stand in a box, completely free shaped. Within a few minutes he had worked out exactly what I wanted and I was very impressed with how clever he was. Hype, on the other hand, decided that simply putting all 4 paws in a box was not clever enough so began to balance on the edges of the box, at one point he had a paw balancing on each side! I have no idea how he even managed to balance up there, but I think we can tick the "can independently move each foot with precision" box :laugh:

I see no issue with it. Our dogs have been crated for 8hrs through the day on many occassions and have dealt with it fine, they just sleep. Personally, I'd rather crate mine through the day than have an issue with the neighbours because my dog has been barking. ETA: Our dogs are in runs through the day on concrete floors and it is very rare to come home and find that they have toileted in there, even though they could have if they needed to. 5.5hrs is less than Charlie sleeps for in each session!

Yeh, I am finding many people own both breeds, I guess it makes sense given they were bred to work closely together :) The biggest problem I am finding is that nothing is in English :laugh:

Yep, thats the plan :) He will likely be a 400 height dog, both his parents are 412mm at the shoulder. At this point he is the 2nd smallest of the litter, all the brothers are about a kg heavier and 1 sister is about 500g heavier I think. The other sister is about 500g lighter, she is tiny. At the moment he weighs about 5.5kg.

I will have to share that, thank you :laugh:

Some fun in the garden, he is 18 weeks old today :)

You're right. That's a good time to brainstorm how to cater for dogs, both when you're at home & when you're at work. We did that when renovating across the back of the house. Made a big difference to the people's and the dogs' comfort & security. When renting, or when finances are a bit low, it's then a case of working around what's there already. I like threads on such issues as it's possible to pick up ideas from others who've done things differently. Ages ago, someone posted how to cheaply & easily make an upstairs toilet for dogs. Helped enormously after we found short-legged tibs couldn't get back up the stairs from a courtyard. The beauty of it for us is that the house we want to buy is due for completion in Oct/Nov so will be a completely blank slate. We can choose the fencing layout etc to suit ourselves :)

At the moment ours are doing it tough. 2.5m x 2.5m dog runs through the day and scheduled access to the small grass area for toileting (usually in groups of 2-4 at a time). The runs are on concrete so not the end of the world if they toilet on there, but they all seem to hang on through the day (the puppies excepted). The grass they have access to for scheduled toileting is only a small area (7m x 3m) and waaayyy too muddy at the moment to allow free running. It would be a cruciate waiting to happen. They do get to free run on the rest of the acre while supervised but the property is not fenced so they cannot access it at will. When we buy our new place (we are renting this one, hence the restrictions) we will have a few dog yards set up. We do not allow all our dogs out together as it is too big an injury risk with them all running together, and some don't get along at any rate. The plan is for each yard to have its own house access to either a dog room (semi-trusted young adults), the laundry (young pups and untrusted dogs) or the living room (older adults who just want to sleep in peace all day). The plan is to then be able to rotate them through for time with us in the house. The logistics have not yet been worked out :) ETA: Ours are generally left from 8-4 on weekdays, although I work on a casual basis so it isnt necessarily every day. Tailwag works about 10mins away so pops home for lunchtime feeds if we have young pups.

Neither Delta nor Charlie were that interested the first time. Someone suggested I run them together and by the end of that first run together I had created lure monsters LOL They have also been used to encourage friend's dogs to run that weren't keen to chase on their own. Running two together seems to make a big difference to some dogs.

We have decided our next black one will have Hairy Maclary in the kennel name :laugh:

Well, Hype turned 4 months old today. Time is really flying! We celebrated with a trip to the beach :) Before shot, when he was still a fluffball After adding water- the hairy stick himself :laugh: And simply being his normal, goofball self :laugh: And a video to show why you should never let the Pyr Shep steal the ball :) I really need to get the proper camera back out and stop relying on my phone!!!

I suspect he would, his coat is already tending towards it. Neither of us are particularly keen on cords though so he will be kept regularly brushed :)

Not sure if there is or not. The Pyrenean Shepherd was almost extinct at one point, until someone discovered them in a small country village in France and decided to breed them back. So, they are still very inbred (which I find hard coming from BCs where you ideally want COIs less than 1% :laugh: ). I suspect there is very similar heritage to Briards and other French working breeds (and very similar in appearance too). They are also very similar to the Hungarian Puli in many ways and left alone their coat will cord (mostly back end and front legs, not the whole dog). Otherwise they actually mature to look like terrier mixes :laugh: Not too sure about how the heritage interlocks with other breeds though as there is just not enough information about their history in that regard. They are a forgotten little treasure :) I'm anal about sharing photos that are not mine or Tailwags, but a quick google search will show the variations in coat type and colours. Some are corded, some are not. There is also a smooth faced variety that tends to be a little larger but the 2 are permitted to interbreed so you get variance there too. Sometimes smooths will pop up in rough litters etc. In France, showing is a very casual affair. You would be expected to show them in jeans, their coats would be corded (but not in a nice, neat manner) and bathing before a show is very much discouraged. Throughout the rest of Europe they are more like they will be here and in NZ, not necessarily corded but left to look as scruffy as possible and probably bathed but not necessarily. In the US you will find people with brushes in the ring making sure every hair is straight. So a huge difference in showing styles across the world, but I guess it depends on what judges expect to see. Hype is the curliest of his litter. The 2 fawn pups have very straight, coarse looking coats while the other 3 blacks have a similar coat to Hype but not as much sticking out around the face. At one point the breeder was questioning whether a few would be considered demi-coats (essentially what you would get if you crossed smooth faced to rough) but that probably won't be known until their adult coats come through.

Definitely not us LOL Most of ours are either very dark or predominantly black :)

He will be at ADC next weekend and the Aussie Shepherd Club if you are doing either of those :) Awesome, I will definitely be at ADC, so will keep an eye out for you guys :) I expect Leoney will be there with Wookiee too so the brothers can catch up (or try and kill each other.. only time will tell!)

He will be at ADC next weekend and the Aussie Shepherd Club if you are doing either of those :)

His favourite game is jumping into the beanbag. Either to retrieve a toy or of his own accord. He goes flying down the hallway at my friend's place and launches himself into the beanbag :laugh: His favourite toy is a cheap brush that we got from God only knows where...

We are all in NSW :) We are near Newcastle, his litter brother is in North Sydney and then there is an unrelated 10 month old male who has just been imported from the US living in Bathurst. I think Presto is a little more accomodating of strangers and has finished his US Ch so will be shown in Aus too. Wookiee was a little more confident than Hype but I haven't seen him for quite a while so not sure what he is like now. 2 of the litter brothers are making their show debut over the next few weeks in NZ, his 2 litter sisters (stayed with the breeder and her good friend) are more like Hype and not ready to handle the show ring yet. So, they all seem to be different :)

He really is. He is just the most happy-go-lucky dog I have ever owned. Completely bombproof with pretty much everything (except strange people) and not at all fazed by anything. He just lives in his own little world :laugh:

First Aussie beach trip (he had been to the beach in NZ as a puppy though). He would be about 15 weeks old I think. With me at Puppy School Graduation. He chucked the biggest tantrum about having to stay still and have his graduation cap put on. Anyone would think I was trying to murder him! We were actually going to repeat the class as he made so much progress but the timing just didn't work out with travelling to a few agility comps. By the end of puppy school he was interacting with the other puppies and trying to climb onto people's laps, it was great to see him come out of his shell and had hoped to continue it further but it wasn't to be. Another beach trip, about 16 weeks old. Anything is a toy to this dog!

Having a play with the tunnel (about 10 weeks old) 10 weeks old First night of puppy preschool (10 weeks old) With his bestest friend in the whole world, Boost (our nearly 10month old BC puppy).