~*Shell*~

I'm currently training to be a groomer through cengage education (not to be a professional groomer but because it costs anywhere between $50 to $150 for a professional to groom my dog and i want to do it myself - I'm going to train to be a animal behaviouralist and trainer too) - i wouldn't particulary recommend them because the course to me seems thrown together and so far (i'm on the first book) the assignments I've done have all been multiple choice questions, and the info hasn't been anything i couldn't find in the DOL forums! If you have some time to train, i would recommend tafe, where you can get hands on knowledge - i can't do this because i work full-time, but i've heard that they're the best (feel free to correct me if there's a better place!). I don't think you need professional training to open a grooming salon. All the ones i've been to have had groomers with some form of qualification, or people training in them - I had a year 10 work experience girl bathing my dog the other day (she did a really good job too!) and all the people training so far have been very good without a theoretical education... hope this helps!

I personally have used the dog park to socialise my Sibe, who came to me with no socialisation skills, having not seen any dogs from the time he went to his abusive former owners till when he was picked up after being on the streets for 8 weeks and put in the pound (about 2.5 years later). I've found that the key to socialising (and to teaching off leash behaviour) is to start the dog slowly and make sure that you're always able to be in control of the situation. With Zero I introduced him to the park by having him on the opposite side of the fence where he was able to sniff and be sniffed but not fully interact. During this time I made him sit and stay and he had to keep paying attention to me. For a few weeks we did this until another owner told me to bring Zero in and introduced us to his BC who was bouncy but very obedient. By spinning Zero around and letting Marble sniff him first, we put Zero in the submissive position and made his first interaction with other dogs a positive one. Now Zero is fine in the park, though I still follow him around and make sure that he recieves a correction everytime he stands in a dominant position, and praise when he plays gently with a smaller dog, or puppies. A word of warning though - in the time we've been going to the park i've seen some awful things including a fight betweek a staffy and a great dane which resulted in a toy poodle being killed when it got in the way and caught in the mouth of the staffy. Fortunately Zero stayed well away from this fight but you just never know - there are a lot of unbalanced dogs at the park and some owners who don't bother to watch what their dog is doing... If you have foxtel, there is an episode of The Dog Whisperer with Cesar Milan where he talks about off-leash parks. I suggest trying to track down a copy of the ep - this whole series has helped me more than I can ever tell you!

When we rescued my boy, he came to us with no muscle tone - a year later and he's gained 8kgs of muscle but hasn't lost any fat so at the moment I'm trying to get him to lose some weight and do some (much needed) obedience training then we're going to give him a go at agility and see how he goes! I just wish he wasn't overweight - I would love to start now!

This has happened to me a couple of times when Zero has moved while we've been clipping his nails (he was abused by his previous owners and still doesn't like his paws being handled for long periods of time). If I have styptic powder (or more likely, if i can find where i put it) then I'll use that but if I don't then I just use some cornflour, both of which seem to work for me. If it's a particularly bad bleed then i hear that a combination of styptic powder and a bandage to hold it tight, though i've been told that it can bleed again when you remove the bandage - not sure how good the powder/bandage thing is, Zero's never had a bad bleed.

My dog had a problem like this (he's a 3.5 y/o desexed Siberian Husky) and we took him to the vet to have him checked out. He didn't seem to have any other symptoms except the bleeding. We were told that it was either a common virus that dogs can pick up from other dogs at the dog park (much like gastro) or that he had eaten something that didn't agree with his stomach. 2 days of boiled chicken and rice later (and some antibiotics just in case) and he was back to normal. He's had a couple of instances of it, which makes me think he might be pre-disposed to getting it, but we've learned that we can just give him a couple of days of very soft, bland food and he's fine.... hope this helps!