~*Shell*~

I just bought mine in k-mart. Everyone i know has an i-click and i wanted Zero's to sound different. I love it and Zero's eyes light up when I bring it out!

Lol - you should've seen Zero with Jedi's!! It was so insanely cute i think i want to get him a smaller one! Broad jump - he already seems to know what to do with it and I haven't taught him. He just loves jumping and will wait till i tell him he can jump. His change of positions tend to be a little sluggish. I need a second dog to play them off against each other!

I wish my computer was up and running - if the stimulus package comes through I should be able to participate in this one! I took enough photos last month to join in on the march challenge but my laptop is so old and crappy that i can't upload anything, let alone edit it!

I love my wahl KM2s! They've got through every type of coat I've tried them on without a problem (including my brother's hair when his cheap clippers died when he was cutting his own hair lol).

I dry my friend's mini and toy poodles with my forced air dryer all the time (I have a double k airmax dryer) and I've never had a problem. They have quite short coats (I give them a lamb clip, with quite short wool left on the body) so they dry very quickly and I use the low setting on my dryer for the head which gets through it easily. I do them on the table (literally on the kitchen bench) but have done them on the floor before. I use one hand to hold the dog, and one for the dryer and then once they're nearly dry, i can either get someone to hold the dog while i brush or turn the dryer off, brush them out, dry them some more and then brush again. If i can get through a siberian husky coat (while the dog is in full coat) with a dryer, I'm sure it'll get through any poodle coat without a problem!

How is the artemis for cats? I've recently changed Zero over to artemis and he seems to like it - too early to tell if it'll improve his coat or drop the weight off him yet but I'm hopeful!

Look at it this way: You may have stopped one more mallie from ending up in the pound and dog knows that's nothing but a good thing. As a breed they're very willful and the simple fact that this woman changed her mind on the advice of a total stranger is proof that she's quite indecisive - the dog would've walked all over her. There are plenty of "fluffy and cute" smaller, less willful dogs out there. You have done a good thing.

For my husky, who would have a very similar coat, I use a wide toothed comb, slicker brush, furminator and pin brush. The wide toothed comb gets the loose hair out of the long areas of coat (backs of the legs/bum, ruff of the neck, behind the ears), the slicker polishes the coat (all over brushing), the furminator takes the dead heair out of the shorter coat (on his sides and down his legs), and the pin brush gets the knots of out the longer coat (like the legs and the ruff of the neck) quickly. The best thing to get rid of the shedding coat though is a forced air dryer - it blows the loose hair out of the coat and Zero pretty much stops shedding for about a week after i use it on him.

Zero went through a stage like this Ruthless - except his fascination was birds. We gave him other things to do in the yard, like a kong with some food frozen into it straight after the walk so he would be occupied with something that was cool to eat (that he couldn't eat quickly) and that would hold his attention. I tried correcting but he just wouldn't leave the birds alone (at the time there was a nest in our yard so lots of birds coming and going). We would come home, take his leash off, and go inside to get his kong while he had a drink and then i would give him the kong before he had a chance to notice the birds in the yard. By the time he was done with his kong, he was used to them being there and the reaction to them wasn't as enthusiastic. If he started fixating on them after his kong, i would bring him inside. A few weeks and he got over it - he's not prone to OCD though so I'm not sure if it'll work with Angel. Good luck with it though!

Thanks! Zero's a bit of a strange case because he used to be very very fearful of anything, but the more confident he got, the worse his dog aggression got. The fear took about a year to over come so that was when the worst of the dog aggression started and once he'd had that kind of reaction to other dogs a few times, the distance he would react at got bigger and bigger to the point where he just had to see something that looked like a dog and he would go off. He wasn't involved in any dog fights that weren't with a dog on the loose (i was very careful about taking him out) - it happened twice, with 2 separate dogs, both border collies, and both times i had to break up the fight. He didn't do any damage to the border collies out on the street other than the mouth full of hair he got both times (when he went for the neck and got their neck hair instead) so we were very lucky. He on the other hand ended up with puncture wounds both times and that just made it worse. I've seen both of those BCs since and neither of them seem to have a DA problem - I think at the time they came up wanting to play and copped the full force of Zero's DA. He would seek out fights and if i walked on the opposite side of the road with him, he would try and pull me across the street to get to the other dog, even if it wasn't even looking at him. I was able to stop him when i first got him but once he had gained some muscle, he could pull me out onto the road, and i pretty much stopped walking him or taking him anywhere after that. That's when I called k9 Force, about 18 months after I got him and 8 weeks after that, we were able to start group obedience training because he was that much better.

Zero loves his fresh sadines! They're about $3 a kilo at my local fish shop so very cheap. I also freeze whitebait into some ice and give it to him on a hot day - he goes absolutely nuts for them!

Dogtown is a fantastic show - some of the people on it are just amazing!

The way I taught Zero to heel was to teach Zero to touch my closed fist with the command "touch" and then changed it to an open hand, and then to 2 fingers. To teach Zero the position, i then used those two fingers and held them where i wanted his nose while i was walking with him in heel and he would touch his nose to it. I would then tell him heel, click and treat. If i put the two fingers next to me while walking, he will keep his nose touching my fingers in heel. It also makes up the silent "heel" command if i'm doing work with him without verbal commands. I hope that makes some sense. It's target training and then using it to teach a different command. It's also how i taught Zero his paw tricks (he shakes with both paws, will high 5 and waves with both paws), except i used paw targetting.

I would've loved one that said "f*** off, we're working" when I was training with Zero! So many people would bring their dogs close to him because he's a "snow dog" and I just wanted to scream at them. i needed one that said - "seen snow dogs? remember the agressive husky? that's nothing compared to my dog! Seriously. Back the f*** off!" Good luck Ruthless!

I don't see it as being the same - I do not have hold of my fence, I am holding the leash. I'm not around the whole time Zero is in the backyard and being contained with a fence, I am always there while he is on leash. I think a lot of people use the leash in the wrong way and use it to try and make a dog do what they want it to do, I prefer to teach a dog what I want it to do while it's on a leash so I never have to physically control or pull that dog. I think that's what leadership is - you teach them what you want and they change their behaviour to mimic what you want. It's not about obeying the leash and therefore obeying me, it's about knowing where I am in relation to where the dog is at all times. If I stop, the dog should know that before they hit the point where I am being pulled, if I change direction, the dog should change direction to follow me. It's all about awareness and never being at the point where the dog forgets about me and just starts doing whatever it wants. Occasionally I let Zero choose the route we're going to take on a walk - do I think that this makes him the leader? No. If I was to say "no, I want to go this way", he should follow me even if he doesn't want to go the way I want to go - that's what makes me the leader. Zero also has words I use to tell him what I am about to do - I wouldn't call them suggestions like you do, but they're not commands either. I'll tell him that we're going left up ahead, warn him that he's about to hit the end of the leash and tell him I'm about to slow down if we're going to walk past a person with children or dogs.

Youtube has a lot of them - just do a search. Some of the videos on there of dogs doing tricks have even been put together by DOL members.

It's been interesting reading a few comments during this excessive heat about owners saying their dogs aren't coping due to their coat, yet they are the ones who sprout their 'fully insulated' theory. With arctic breeds like the sibe, mal, sammy, lappy etc, they actually can't regulate their body temperature without the coat because they're so well furred and their body is built to be like that. Taking it off is not a good option, but neither is leaving them out in the sun on a hot day without a huge amount of cool water that they can dig themselves into. With a dog like the OP's I personally would strip the coat with something like a coat king and if the dog still appears to be suffering, clip it. Hope you find a workable solution!

If you look at the opening credits of Cesar's show, it shows his dogs running in front of him. I think being the boss is more about a dog knowing where you are and respecting the constraints of the leash rather than having to walk behind you.

I was searching for this last year - google it and see what comes up. There used to be a couple of copies on ebay, but i haven't checked lately!

My dog sleeps outside - even if we have the door open and he has free run, he will always decide he wants to sleep outside. He can't seem to settle in doors, but if i put his crate outside, he can settle in that. He has a bed outside - under the veranda where he has his own space. As it is, he spends most of his time outside through his own choice. He does come in when we're watching tv or something like that but if he starts to get tired and decides he wants to sleep, he goes outside (and will whine at the door if i don't let him out). I think it's a big generalisation that all dogs should sleep inside - we've given him the choice, and it's what he decides to do. I think it's more comfortable for him because if he needs to go to the toilet halfway through the night he can without having to wake someone up, he also prefers it because we leave quite early in the morning and he prefers to sleep in. When i get my new puppy, once it's crate trained and reliably toilet trained, he/she will have the choice as well. I'm not going to make a dog sleep outside if they don't want to, but at the same time, i'm not going to make Zero sleep inside if he doesn't want to.

Beef stock, handful of kibble (or any other kind of treat - organs, meat, mince), vegemite, peanut butter, yoghurt and then freeze. Keeps zero occupied for hours! I haven't fed Zero cat food in a long time - but if there's something the cat won't eat, usually Zero gets to it before i have a chance to wash the cat's bowl.

I've got a few - a collage of my niece and Zero playing in the backyard (my niece decided it would be a great idea to strip off and get into Zero's water bucket, Zero tried to take a drink from it while she was in there so she got out, dragged it away from him and then got back in - very cute series of pics), some of Zero in centennial park and a couple of my birds/cat. This one sits on my desk at work This one is on my fridge And this one is in a frame in out living room

That's it! You can just get it from the supermarket. Woolworths does a generic brand of it that's fine. I use it on Zero's ears all the time.

Thanks Steve! Couldn't have done it without you!

Lanolin! Best stuff ever because it will allow the skin to have a bit of give and keep it moisturised so that the skin won't dry out too much and split (and it'll provide a barrier between the air and the sore). And because it's a natural oil, you don't have to worry about your dog licking it and getting sick!