Tempus Fugit

It might be informative to refer to a previous thread from last month about a husky shot by "hunters".

I bought a Champion restraint system a couple of years ago. It came with two restraint straps that I attached to the child seat anchor points. It seems strong but is very fiddly to attach as you need to clip each strap to both D rings on the harness (the plastic buckles on the harness are non load-bearing). Also I found once that the dog had managed to wriggle out of the harness.

There is an interesting crash test video here by what appears to be the German equivalent of our auto orgs (NRMA, RACV etc.). Unfortunately it is in German.

Those poor men, how terrifying for them.

Why do people find it so hard to contain their dogs?? No doubt there'll be a call for tougher laws now, when all we really need is our current ones enforced better :/

Why do people find it so hard to drive on the road without having accidents?

While I agree the dogs should not have been on the street, the issue I have with joggers is their arrogance in putting themselves in greater danger by continuing to run past a dog despite it being common knowledge that running stimulates a dog's prey instinct.

Sure people have a right to jog along a public road, just as they have a right to swim at a public beach or drive along a public road. But is it wise to continue to swim if a shark is sighted, or drive through a flooded causeway?

How hard is it for a runner to stop and walk past a loose dog?

I don't see why such a big deal is being made of the dog being a husky. It could just as easily have been a cattle dog, border collie etc. Maybe all of us, including dog, need to start wearing high visibility clothing before venturing into Australian bush.

Has anybody got any experience with Rogue Royalty? They claim to have strong collars.

Get real folks. Lots of hunters allow pig etc dogs off lead and out of sight in rural areas. That is why there is a market for GPS tracking collars. IMO shooting the husky was a thrill killing disguised as altruism.

I'm not sure I fully understand what the government should be doing. Laws and regulations regarding animal welfare are already done by governments. However it is quite common for governments to subsidise charities to perform certain functions, e.g. job placements, looking after orphans in childrens' homes etc. where the government believes the charity can do the task better and cheaper. In some cases the charities don't do the tasks society expects of them, which is one reason why there all the child abuse cases coming to light. Why would animal welfare be different?

Animal welfare regulation and enforcement should be the responsibility of government, not charities. But this will not be achieved by attacking the RSPCA or arguing over the culpability of the various levels within that organisation, it will be achieved by pressuring government into taking on the role rather than fobbing it off to charities. It is far better to present reasoned, rational arguments to this effect to the relevant bodies than go berserk about the RSPCA on a forum.

Being in the military, the dogs probably get to eat better than the local peasantry.

Reading this thread brings to mind an issue which has intrigued me for some time.

Normally on DOL and similar forums, any suggestion of piercing the ears of a dog or cat brings forth howls of condemnation eg the 'gothic kittens' affair.

However if you do some research on the web, you will find that some animal welfare agencies operating in eastern Europe commonly pierce the ears of stray (urban feral) dogs with ear tags to signify the animals have been de sexed and vaccinated.

In Australia, the Queensland government mandates the ear piercing of Fraser Island's dingoes with ear tags to identify them.

So are we being hypocritical in not condemning these agencies for animal cruelty or is ear piercing of dogs really ok?

Incidentally, I believe freeze branding of hunting hounds is practised in the US.

Silly me.

I thought lifetime registration was brought in as a rational economic measure because the administrative burden and cost of collecting annual fees plus chasing up non-payers exceeded revenue from the fees. It is tough enough for councils to get people to pay their parking fines.

Still, I suppose farmers will remain exempt for their 'working' dogs, so people will still be able to buy cheap puppies at the farm gate or through shop window ads in country towns.

The weird thing is that in NSW, council registration is not the same as the NSW microchip registration database, which is separate to other states' microchip registration databases. Although I bought my dog in Victoria, he is on the NSW microchip database for life because he was born in that state (when I checked he was still 'owned' by his breeder) yet I haven't registered him with any council in NSW (since I don't live in NSW).

But usually in the country so I leave it running with the aircon on... No dog complaints yet! But reasonably low-risk areas for car thieves. I have in the past taken a spare key and left it running but locked with the dogs in it. I don't even like having mine in the car while I fill it without the aircon going.

According to the NSW Road Users Handbook(p134) when parked:

If you are more than three metres away from your vehicle you must:

• Remove the key out of the ignition.

• Lock all doors and windows if there is no one in the vehicle.

I don't know if this story is for real or not.

Can we clarify what this forum is about and what it is not about, given that this forum's heading is:

Shame the moderator(s) haven't moved this thread to the General forum by now.

An issue is that if LPDs are actually doing the job they are supposed to do, they will be out in the paddocks guarding sheep, where fences are easily damaged, allowing stock and dogs to escape.

Perhaps instead of pursuing LPD owners through courts, because people don't know how to behave around an LPD, state governments could educate people about how to behave around LPDs such as this comic strip issued by the French government

You can find a link to the parent website here .

It is in french but you can get the gist of the material if you have a web browser with a facility to translate french into english.

Sounds like two women more intent on gossiping rather than watching their dogs' body language.

Interesting how these dog attack threads seem to go from maudlin expressions of grief to cat fights.

It appears some DOLers seem to have a romantic notion that dogs should have the characteristics of stuffed teddy bears, rather than being predatory carnivores. The incident is simply another example of the ease with which behaviour e.g. body language can cause a dog to go into a prey killing mode.

The dog that killed Ayen Chol was reported as having played with the people across the street from the Chol house just before the attack.

Then there are the neighbourhood barbies, with Blue, the family pet, who has never shown any aggression, and a bunch of kids playing. As kids are wont to do in play, they begin to yell and scream, suddenly Sally fromdown the road is being rushed to hospital to get a bite stitched while Blue is off to the vet for a green needle.

Out in the country there is Shep, the faithful working sheepdog, the kids' best friend. One night he gets out of his pen or slips his chain and comes across the neighbours wussy flock of merinos, unsuited to defending themselves. Result: multiple dead and dying sheep. If shep is lucky he might even get to join the feral pack in the nearby national park, using his innate prey hunting skills to survive.

If after thousands of years of domestication we still have humans attacking other humans, then we can hardly expect a domestic animal, inherently a predatory carnivore, to behave better.

The pity about 'dangerous dog' declarations is that probably at least half the dogs in the country would, at some point in their lives, do something that would violate the 'dangerous dog' criteria. Similar with temperament testing. Push the right buttons and you would probably elicit a 'dangerous'response such as prey hunting or defensive aggression from most dogs. If they are so successful, why don't we have temperament testing for humans, e.g. to reduce school bullying, and 'dangerous person' declarations for those found guilty of assaults and similar crimes?

For those who have seen the movie, "Life of Pi" orread the book, I think the romantics are those who would rather believe Pi's first version of events rather than the more plausible second. They should go and read William Golding's "Lord of the Flies", especially where the choir boys slip into cannibalism.

By the way, if Bullbreedlover's post of last Friday is correct, in respect of the dogs' owner's fence being vandalised, then I sympathise with her. I too have had panels in my backyard fence (where the dogs are) kicked in. Of course if I had millions of dollars swindled from NSW taxpayers like that dickhead now before ICAC, who brought in the stupid NSW dangerous dog laws when he was local government minister, then I might have been able to afford a thick masonry fence, complete with a topping of broken glass or razor wire.

Sigh.

More nanny state bureaucracy.

Probably because, according to the newspaper article, there was an incease in attacks in 2011, the D&C Board has not met one onf their Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) and risks losing funding or, shock horror, being abolished altogether by a government looking for savings - at the very least a black mark on the Chairman's Performance Review. So someone has found out about the Russian siberian fox experiments and wants to extrapolate them to dogs.

I'm suprised the Board didn't recommend the uni project to produce genetic hybrids between dogs and sheep to produce a woosy dog-sheep

Are you referring to this item?

I only caught part of it on the news but I'm assuming by the statement on behalf of which ever states Govenment, that some one has effectively taken a council to court and won over a restricted breed declaration.

I certainly got the impression that which ever state it was, is now going to look at further tightening the legislation.

I think some of the posters on this thread need to take their blinkers off. Foxes are not a problem only in Australia.

Foxes (and other feral canids) and in fact other feral carnivores have been a problem worldwide ever since humankind went from being hunter-gatherers to subsistence farmers, which included the domestication and husbandry of livestock. Why do you think foxes were (until recently) hunted in the UK?

For example feral sheep, goats etc as a species survive in spite of foxes, wolves, lynxes etc. It is the domesticated animals that cannot survive.

As for the killing frenzies that feral predators exhibit towards helpless domestic animals, well humans are also quite capable of exhibiting killing frenzies eg massacres undertaken by armies in the middle ages or more recently members of the Lord's Resistance Army in Africa. In addition there are the acts of wanton cruelty towards animals such as the recent case of the alpacas that had their heads bashed in. Pleasure gained from killing is probably a survival mechanism from the era of the lifeforms that eventually became humans and other animals.

Look at sporting hunters. They don't hunt out of a sense of duty but because they get pleasure out of killing an animal.

Jules♥Cavs, on 30 November 2012 - 08:47 PM, said:

Ewwwww . Im from German heritage, and Ive never heard of such vulgarity going on ..

What an odd thing to say.

My great-grandfather was from Rostock and I have heard of this sort of thing in Germany. Which proves nothing either way, of course, because what sort of family discusses this during conversations of heritage?

"Ah, yes... I remember living in the old land, back when it was still legal to live in a de facto relationship with a poodle.."

I've heard there are similar issues in Denmark and Norway.

A classic case outlining the dangers of sex with animals was the guy who died from a ruptured colon after having himself shagged by a nag. I understand his friends, after dumping him to die at a hospital made a documentary film about incident.

Having said that, I am concerned that some DOLers accessing this topic may be children. There are web forums out there run by groups both for and against where those with strong views can debate the subject. At the minimum, it might be better to move this thread to the restricted access "Cruelty & Abuse" sub-forum.

There is a company in the UK that manufactures a device called a Ventlock, which allows the tailgate of a car to be left partially open, in addition to windows, while keeping the car locked.

Never come across these before. Would they actually work in practice?E.g. would the average dog owner know what 'No Dogs' meant?

Petition web site here

Few people in the city actually kept their dogs at home, it was not uncommon if a bitch was in season to see the apalling sight of up to 20 and more males in an imense pack fighting to drive off the other males. My parent would usher us all inside and mum would hop into the car and drive into the pack until she had the bitch beside the drivers door and if she could, haul her into the car and whisk her away. It could be a dangerous exercise, invariably they had been dumped some in apalling condition. Mum would take them to the vet the worst caseones put down. some mum kept and turned out great pets. Anyone who owned (an undesexed) bitch had to have dog proof fences to keep the hoards OUT.

I recalla similar thing in Melbourne when I was a kid. One morning my mother and I were terrorised by a pack of dogs surrounding our house. Apparently the previous owner had a bitch and all the neighbourhood dogs knew exactly when she was due to come into season.

Most dogs are merely trying to establish dominance over their opponent. When that opponent gives in and strikes classical submission positions, cowering or rolling over onto its back, most dominant dogs are satisfied and the fight stops.

I have experienced this myself. Unfortunately a lot of attacks on small dogs are where the large dog(s) is off-lead whereas the small dog is on-lead and therefore unable or unwilling to adopt a submissive position. Even with 'green' pit-bulls in a schooling role if the bait dog gives in the fight often stops. To prolong the fight the 'trainer' wiggles the bait dog - similar to what happens when a distraught owner tries to rescue his small dog from the jaws of the big one.

It is not unusual for big canids to kill smaller ones. Coyotes kill foxes and wolves kill both coyotes and foxes. (Where wolves were reintroduced into US national parks the coyote population dropped significantly). Just as small fish are eaten by bigger fish and these in turn are eaten by even larger fish.