RubyBlue

6 sleeps now :D Make sure you enjoy those sleeps. You will need the energy. Dyson's extremely good but I am still so exhausted - so's Milly lol.

Dyson's settling in well. He is already up to mischief - he recently deplanted one of my plastic pots and had a good chew/game with it. He also tried to lay in a puddle of water so I introduced him to the shell and he had a great time splashing around in there. The water only came up to his ankles but he managed to get wet all over - Labrador through and through.

I found it made no difference...

Dyson is here!!!!

Yes different types would have different concentrations of either the glycoside or the enzyme that cleaves it (plenty of plants contain the cyanogenic glycoside but not the enzyme so are relatively harmless) as this is under genetic control. Hundreds of plants have been screened for prunasin, lotaustralin and dhurrin (which have slightly different structured sugar moieties but are effectively the same thing) and although a species tends to fall in a range there are differences with in individuals, some of which may contain no CN. As for whether it will be more or less toxic for her next time I dont know - the long term effects on consumers is not something we look into. I am inclined to think that once she has returned to full health her body will be able to detoxify them to the same extent as before. We detoxify HCN using sulfur and long term effects of a non-lethal dose (konzo) tend to only occur in 3rd world countries where people don't have access to a varied diet. Rats are able to identify the food which made them sick and avoid it so she may make that connection too and not touch them again. Personally if it was my dog, I would not risk letting her near them ever again. Particularly as she is crunching the kernels - if she just ate the fruit and left the kernels intact (like supermintys dog) then there should be no problems. Ill add this whilst I am on the topic too. Some people I know tested several packets of veggie chips made from cassava and/or tapioca. Some brands were ok but others were well beyond the WHO limit for CN. They worked out that if a small child ate a large packet they would likely receive a lethal dose.

simple - no cats or dogs for sale in pet shops!

I think you mean "amygdalin" this is the glycoside attached to the CN. Enzymes "Beta-glycosidase" cleave the glycoside and the remainder hydrolyses to produce toxic HCN. Your body can detoxify this to an extent but once you have exceeded a certain dose you will start to get effects. Poor Bella must have eaten a lot or chewed the kernels very well! Continuing low level doses can cause permanent paralysis - if you're interested look up konzo. Arsenic is a heavy metal and Im pretty sure it is not in kernels or seeds. ETA Having read through the rest of the thread I should add that plant HCN is rarely released spontaneously. It is harmful to all cells including plant cells hence it is stored in a harmless form bonded to a suger moiety. Only when in the presence of the enzyme does it get released and become harmful. Usually the glycoside is stored in the vacuole and the enzyme outside the cell - breaking the cells (through chewing) brings the two together and disaster strikes the offending chewer.

What about two adult rescues? Perhaps two greyhounds....

RANGER AND POLICE HAVE BEEN NOTIFIED. Just incase the offender sees this as a good thing...

Awww sleeping baby labs - doesn't get any cuter congratulations

Tara have you got Abbey yet? Dying for some pictures here - need my cuteness fix

Bad luck. 6 weeks isn't long to wait - with Christmas coming up it'll pass very quickly.

Isnt pet mince minced chicken frames?

My old lab did this towards the end of his life. He had always eaten grass (and fertilizer flavoured dirt when he could get away with it) but we figured the sudden 'any dirt will do' fetish may have been nutritional as he was on a protein restriction diet. We started giving him some multi-vitamins. Not sure if it really helped or not - at this stage of his life it was really a palliative care type thing. Maybe a trip to the vets is in order just to see if she is lacking in something.

I know how you feel. I did mine 5 days ago and needed to do it again today :s Unfortunately I ran out of fuel before I could do the front garden and I really can't be bothered going to the garage now. *Starts to think of good lawn substitutes .....*

My bird rules the roost she has always sent all the other dogs and cats packing. The dogs have also been fine with chooks and guinea pigs (though the occasional gp or chook has gone for a ride during a zoomie - thank god for the for the labs soft mouth). Still I would never ever trust them unsupervised - at the end of the day anything can happen and the smaller animal has no chance (despite their delusions of grandeur). I would make sure that puppy and chooks have no chance of getting within reach of each other unless and until puppy consistently shows no interest in them. If you want to step it up from there then you need to make sure your chooks are safe so puppy needs to be either tethered or muzzled. The behaviour is rewarding for puppy so the only chance you will have for stopping it is to take away the reward. So long as he can get to the chooks he controls his reward - not you. You need to find a reward that trumps the chooks and reward puppy for looking at you calmly and not the chooks. You may need to start at a distance where the chooks are already not a big deal (next to their pen is probably too much to expect to start with). It can be done - hopefully many years down the track you will watch dog laying in the backyard and chooks going about their business around him and think back to a time when this was unimaginable. Good luck!

:rofl: Ive gone to pick up the stick before - only to realise......

*faints from cute overload* What a lovely little pup RB Can't wait to meet him :D He brought me the bunny too....so maybe a future retrieving champ in the making??? Admittedly he did run away with the bunny first. :p If he likes bunnies that much maybe he'll have to go field trialling with the Spaniels. We'll put floppy ears on him and dose him up with red cordial I think we will all need some just so that our eyes are fast enough to see what the reddish whitish blurs zooming around in the grass are...

*faints from cute overload* What a lovely little pup RB Can't wait to meet him :D He brought me the bunny too....so maybe a future retrieving champ in the making??? Admittedly he did run away with the bunny first. :p

Just been to see Dyson 1 week to go......

Jackson used to do this too. ari.g - roo tails don't work for my dogs, they break them up into individual vertebrae then try to swallow from there.... MG - I would split the two of them up too and try really big bones that can't possibly be broken up or swallowed whole. How often do they get them?...maybe they are too high value hence the need to scoff in case the other one gets it. I have my landlords dog with me this week and gave both a bone. She went a bit nuts over it and had a grumble when anyone got close, where as Milly who gets them a few times a week kept wandering back to me to see if I had anything better on offer.

Thats what immediately popped into my mind too....hes already got the face mask lol

What are your ideas?

I put this in a thread on the puppy page but didn't many responses and was wondering if anyone who regularly reads the health section may have some ideas. I am getting a puppy soon and have heard about the Nobivac DHP vaccine which over-rides the maternal antibodies so the course can finish at 10 weeks. This sounds like a great idea to me as he'd be 12 weeks over the Christmas weekend and two weeks extra socialisation couldn't possibly be a bad thing. However I am having a really had time finding a vet in Melbourne which uses this. Does anyone on here know about anywhere that uses this vaccine? http://www.msd-animal-health.co.nz/products/nobivac__dhp/020_product_details.aspx

Oooh so exciting. Its getting close for me too. Hes 8 weeks on the 30th. Going to try and pick him up then so I can start cramming in thoes puppy school sessions before the years ended. Ive got him booked in 3 different groups so he'll get a total of 8 sessions. Yeh mines 8 weeks Wednesday but can't get down to Sydney till Saturday. I haven't booked any puppy school, didn't do that with my last lab. I have her booked into the vet on the monday after I pick her up. Are puppy classes usually just socalisation? If that's the case my aunt has a lab, a yellow which she might think is her mum which would be funny. My aunts lab thought my last girl which was black was her momma cause her momma was black. Yep mostly socialisation and advice from the vets (feed the brand of food they stock, desex them at 6 months, deflea, worm and vaccinate etc). Im going for the socialisation with other puppies as Dyson hasn't got littermates. He'll get plenty with adult dogs and older puppies but given the time of year its hard for me to find other puppies his age.