animalia

Hi! It sounds like Malassezia, the best thing for your OH is to go see a nutrionalist, he most likely has a weakened immune system that's why he has skin issues. You'll find that the skin issues will subside when he changes what he puts in his mouth????

Miracle coat slicker is awesome! http://www.dogessentials.net.au/miracle-coat-slicker-brush When you have your dog lathered up in the bath brush through with this slicker, rinse and lather up again with shampoo and brush your poms coat again, rinse again and lather up with conditioner. When the conditioners on brush with slicker until no coat comes out then brush through with a long toothed comb like a greyhound comb. Then rinse until all conditioners out, you'll know when there's no conditioner left because when you run the hair through your fingers it squeaks, make sure it squeaks all over the body. If your Pom only has a bit of undercoat you could wash twice in shampoo then only brush when the conditioners on. If the undercoat is really stubborn get a Mars undercoat rake, look on their website and they tell you which number rake you'll need for a Pom. Just be careful with a rake because you can slice the skin open????

I choose not to raise their food as a vet who i used to know said not to. He used to do talks/lectures on bloat, he said they take in more air while they are eating from raised food. He also said don't soak dry food with water, mix dry food with some wet food for a lubricant, don't feed them 1hr before or 2hrs after exercise, don't let them guzzle water and give multiple small meals rather than 1 big meal a day. However he said you could do all this and the dog can still bloat, genetics and breed play a big role too. But there are so many theories..

It sounds a bit like Canine Seborrhea http://m.petmd.com/dog/conditions/skin/c_dg_canine_seborrhea I would wash him in a clarifying shampoo to get rid of the oil then something medicated like Malaseb. ????

It sounds like a Staph infection, I would let the mobiler know because it's something that they might be doing. It could be the shampoo they're using, it could have harsh soaps in the ingredients which strips the natural oils from her coat and the normal Staph bacteria flourishes. She might not be rinsing the shampoo out. It could be that she's not using the right Disinfectant in her hydro bath, so there's a large amount of normal dog Staph bacterial in her bath from all the dogs she's bathed, so when she washes a dog it puts a lot of bacteria on the dog, more than the coat can handle and hot spots appear. Dogs that are left half wet also get hot spots, especially double coated breeds as bacteria loves moisture. It could be an allergen around your house setting your dog off. Staphylococcus is a normal bacteria on the dog, it generally needs a weaken immune system or an allergy to flourish. Try an organic apple cider vinegar rinse or tea tree shampoo. What did your vet say? I hope I made sense I quickly typed this out at work!

I might try it on some of my customers that have allergies (I'm a groomer) :)

Do you rinse it out or do you leave it in to dry? :)

Ive used Atlantis and that was good:)

I had worked in kennels for 11 years, i would ony recommend All Breeds in Lyndhurst as Judy Buchanan who is also on this forum works there. If she works there nothing dodgy is going on behind the scenes that clients can't see.

I just saw this article about dog trainers, the link was on the APDT facebook site. http://www.dogstardaily.com/blogs/another-potentially-dangerous-dog-trainer

I can't recommend Carrie enough from ruff renditions, she has just finished a graphite drawing of a friends German Shepherd and it's AMAZING, it's so life like and she captioned all of his characteristics. http://www.ruffrenditions.com.au/

It's fine to have a six week old puppy BUT you must know what your doing. You need to read up on critical periods for dogs so that you understand how important this stage of the pups life is. Some dog trainers I knew would take on pups at 6 weeks so they knew the puppy would have successful critical period, but these were professionals.

Try This salon, she might be able to help you, she is in QLD and she's a master groomer. http://mastergroomers.com.au/about.html

When I exercise my Heeler A LOT I have to try and maintain her weight by giving her two meals a day and the best product I came across to keep her weight on was Eagle pack- working dog (I think in the orange bag). As this is a high end food it doesn't have fillers so she doesn't poo that much considering how much I feed her. When she's not doing as much I feed her once per day and I have her on Eagle Pack- adult so she doesn't stack on the weight.

you might have to hire someone who is less experienced and train them up or call dog grooming schools to see if they have any students that have just finished

She might have been groomed by another groomer at the salon, maybe that's why it was a bit different. You also do have to remember that when you bath her your there and most likely in your home so that's why she wouldn't cry but because she's in a different environment away from you she may have been a bit anxious, which is not bad for a dog to have small doses of stress, or she could of heard your car pull up and got excited. Next time when you take her to the groomers just make clear to them how you liked her groomed so it's done the way you like it.

I have seen this many times before with dogs and it will sort itself out, in all the cases I have seen there has been no need for vet intervention

In my view they (pet shops) are still a contributor to the problem, even if puppy sales in pet shops are less than that of other sources.

You know my Dad was opinionated and loved a good debate, when we used to talk about dogs he used to say to me "where did you learn that, in a book?", "I know better because I have had decades working dogs on a farm and raising them from pups" so on and so on. I at that time had been working with dogs for years and also had under-taken an extensive 3 year full time course based on all types of animals including dogs, but the debates would still happen. Looking back I used to get so frustrated at my Dad because there was no telling him otherwise. It's been 4 long years since he passed, and what I would give to have one of those debates with my dad now.

mumtoshelley- I think your confusing the word "horrible" to describe JRT and Fox terriers, I think you should of used one of these phrases- a lot of moral fibre, a sh!t load of character, huge backbone, enormous spirit, lions worth of courage, a hell of a lot of fortitude and most of all, guts.

I don't have much experience with agility but could you block the area where your dog is cutting through so it doesn't have the option to. It worked for my dog when I was training her to walk across a ladder, she kept walking on the side of the ladder not the actual steps, so I put cans up both sides of the ladder so she had no choice but to walk on the steps, I set her up to win. She learnt pretty quickly that walking across the ladder on the steps got her treats.

hortfurball- when I was talking about the two dogs that killed 3 dogs due to the owners negligence, I wasn't making a point of the severity of what can happen, I'm referring to the mind set of the owner "my dogs are fine" mentality that causes things like this to happen which in that case was a 10/10. It's people like this that have no idea about responsible dog ownership that caused these laws to be put in place, not responsible dog owners. And as I have said in a previous post that things can still go wrong even if the dog owner is responsible but it is way less likely to and that Kels84 SHOULD of had the dog on the lead because its the law.

These two men should be banned from owning animals! Poor victim and poor dog, will now be destroyed most likely.

SOoooo CUTE!

Tigger000 thats what I have been taught too The training phase is when the dog understands the desired behaviour, the cue for the desired behaviour and the consequences there after. So you move on from the teaching phase onto the training phase if your dog understands the cue (verbal cue- rubbish?), desired behaviour(picking up rubbish and placing in bin) and consequences(if correct, treat), you now need to move onto the training stage and perfecting it. So now moving from a continuous scheduled of reinforcement onto an intermittent and then to perfect it going through successive approximation, this is all in the training stage. Once perfected, you move onto the proofing stage by changing the context, distractions and undertaken in different locations. Please feel free to correct me if I am wrong with anything from above, it's been awhile since I have learnt this.