jacqui835

Zoe has just met him and he seems to love her and her dog so that should work well, so long as she doesn't mind making the trek to come get him as unfortunately she does live a little further away. I wouldn't say he needs careful or particular handling so much, just more someone who can be the pack leader hehe. Thank you so much for the offer though

I don't mind if you want to keep him on the lead bc yeah I have no idea how he will respond with someone else. He just needs an hours worth of exercise. He will likely play very well with your girl if she's large too, just he has a tendency to ignore the small guys. No-one knows him here but you would be welcome to come meet him tonight with me there, in fact that's probably a good idea. You could bring your dog too.

Well I have just found out that this weekend my partner and I have to travel interstate. I wish I could take my dog and I will miss him terribly. He will be staying with my housemate, but I need someone to walk my dog on Saturday (housemate is willing to walk him around the block etc but my dog needs at least a good hour of exercise a day). I have only seen a couple of dog walkers that I thought were any good, and naturally they're full so I'm wondering if anyone here either knows a good one or who has experience with large dominant breeds of dog and wants the joy of walking mine (he's a male entire doberman). He is not DA or HA and will ignore little dogs even if they try and attack him (which in my area they often do...) He will try to jump up on people who try to pat him if they make silly noises but not children - he makes a distinction. He could be walked with other dogs, but since it's his first time, I would be willing to pay extra to have him walked alone. He walks well on a lead and has perfect recall with me, but I'm not sure how he will be with someone else, so I leave that to your discretion. I live in the Eastern suburbs of Sydney. ETA - he often goes to Centennial Park, and he is well-liked there and has lots of playmates so if there's someone else here who goes there with their dog that could work well too.

Not to be a party-pooper :D , but I think in some states it's illegal to ride a bike with a dog on a lead...I think this has been discussed on the forum before..... I know it is against the law in WA, but I don't know in SA..... Ahh thanks. Yea history may make it more likely to get in trouble (I have a brother with history too). Hmm May need to do some research just in case...I dont mind breaking that particular law, especially if the fine is small but might just check it up anyway. We will likely just stick to going at night though when not many people around. I am not sure if it's illegal or not, but I live in Sydney Eastern Suburbs, and have actually crossed the road in front of police on my bike with my dog and they waited for us when it wasn't even a pedestrian crossing - this was on the way to Centennial park. I know it's not allowed in the park, but we have managed to train the dog to run along off lead next to the bike track in the off-lead sections. This is also good because I think he gets sore paws from running on the road, but he's fine on the grass. My dog loves it too and it's about the only way I can tire him out!

Interesting, so that would suggest it's a sexual thing, which makes sense. Makes me feel really lucky that my dog doesn't feel the need to mark his own house or backyard so we have no smell at home. He has been taught to not mark whilst on lead, but once he's at the park, he is keen to mark every tree and other object that stands out but as that's his only negative behaviour that desexing might influence I have so far left him entire. If he started marking our house or backyard and we could smell it at home though, I might very possibly reconsider!

My dog is an entire adult male and I have noticed that the smell of his urine has changed dramatically since he was a puppy. I remember when we were first got him that if he had an accident in the carpet we couldn't even actually smell it. Now however I often notice how pungent the smell of his urine is, particularly in the mornings when he pees for like 30 secs straight after holding it in all night (he's a big boy), and I found myself feeling grateful and thinking how convenient it was that his urine didn't smell during the toilet training phase. All of our male dogs have been entire, and it just made me wonder, does desexing your dog make its urine stay smelling like a puppys' - like is it a sexual thing, or does it smell the same regardless - ie it's just an adult dog thing? I was also curious, does female urine smell different - like to a human... And just because he's a beautiful boy, here is a photo of him sleeping with his lamby in his mouth.

:rolleyes: :D Agree 100% We've never had a problem finding decent accommodation that's pet friendly. A lot of B&B's are pet friendly too if more upmarket is something you're after. I think anyone caught breaking the rules should be kicked out on their arse regardless of the hour. I'm so lost. So the place did accept dogs but they hid their dogs anyway and you dobbed them in and then they decided not to allow dogs anymore? Why would you dob them in? Either they leave and the owners never know because no damage was done, or, the owners notice the damage and adjust their policies accordingly - I can't see how dobbing them in could possibly help in anyway. And no, I'm not someone who would condone this, but I also don't condone dobbing people in for the sake of it when it's unlikely to achieve anything for anyone.

I don't really understand this. The places were already not pet friendly - nothing changed, these people just snuck their dogs in because they couldn't have them legitimately. The only thing that might have changed is that if there were any perceivable signs left, the motel owners may have upped their checks and vigilance. Not sure how this would affect the places that do allow pets? I've read the post several times now and I still don't get it.

Yes ! We call it the tail of destruction and have lost quite a few coffee dregs to the cause. I have never noticed the different reason wag, although we get propeller tail if it's extra fast. I always love when he meets new dogs and crouches down and tail goes mad. My dobe does a pretty good job of table clearing too. In fact, it's unfortunately gotten to the point where the first thing people do when we come over is yell, secure the table and grab the tail. My sister calls him the dog with a bit too much love, because the tail just destroys all in its path. He doesn't wag his tail all time, but when he sees friends (even if they've only been gone for 5 mins) he wags it with incredible enthusiasm and it's surprisingly powerful.

Well my doberman has been on the NILIF program since I picked him up from the breeders - I brought some chicken with me and he learned to sit before we even put him in the car. But I still allow him on my bed. I do it by invitation only though. He has tried to get on the bed by himself a few times, but I reprimanded that and now he just waits on his bed on the floor until I invite him up. He doesn't typically actually sleep with me, his bed is right next to mine on the floor. But in the morning, if I wake up early enough that there's time to stay in bed, I invite him up for snuggle time and we love it. I have to wash my doona cover at least once a week but fortunately he's not a big barker, and we have never tolerated him barking just because another dog somewhere is. If you want them to share your bed on occasion, I think that's fine, I certainly don't have any issues with my boy. But I think the key is for it to be by invitation only and to wait until they're doing the sort of behaviour you like (resting on the floor quietly or whatever) when you invite them up so you both reward and encourage that sort of behaviour.

Sorry I completely disagree with this. The fact that your dog may have had APBT in him and the fact that he became "aggressive" towards your daughter are in no way related. And believe me, if he had truely wanted to do damage he most certainly would have. Most dogs need more than "affection, love, regular walks, played with every day, given all the love in the world". They need rules, structure, disapline and (for some) a LOT of training and mental stimulation. The fact that your dog lashed out may have had very little to do with bad breeding or true aggression and more to do with a combination of the dogs personality, poor pack structure and/or lack of respect for you/your child as the dogs "pack leader". Without seeking the advice of a professional you would not know this. And taking an "aggressive" dog to the pound is extremely irresponsible IMO. What were they to do with him? Two options there, rehome or PTS - and no-one rehomes an aggressive dog. He should have either been seen be an experienced behaviourist to determine the problem, or humanely euthanased by a vet. Do you know I would have agreed completely with your post a couple of months ago, but I do not any longer. The truth is, some breeds are more difficult to handle than others. I am a doberman owner and I think he is the perfect dog for me and my dog training club now show him off as an example of what can be done with a doberman. I love my dog more than I can express, but some people (non-dog owners or small dog owners) often judge me for how firm I am with him and they don't understand how I can always be consistent and discipline him. My sister owns 2 papillons, they have run of the house and basically do as they please. And yet, they never challenge her. If she or my mother were to go out and buy a doberman, we would have a very dangerous dog on our hands. But, so long as they stick to cats and papillons, there are relatively few problems. The other night when bondi vet was on, I, like many of the people here was outraged by the woman who insisted on having the puppy tested for pitbull heritage - the results she felt would determine its suitability as a family pet. But, my sister was with me at the time, and I feel she made a very valid point. Her dogs are quite nice, well-cared for and healthy. But, she asked me to imagine what would happen if someone like her ended up with a pittbull. She is not someone who could handle a more dominant or temperamental breed. No-one on these forums would try and argue that all breeds are the same and some breeds are easier for some people to handle. Nature imo tells you what you have to work with, nuture determines what you will make of the raw materials. Wrong nature/breed specifications matched with the wrong person for those traits = disaster. But in the proper hands, any breed or dog can be the perfect pet. I would probably say that with dogs being so amenable to humans, nuture is slightly more important, but nature is certainly not insignificant.

Well it's the truth... Not all breeders choose to breed close relatives now, though some do, but all breeds were created by breeding individuals from the same litters or back to their parents - the evidence of which can be seen when you examine the genetic diversity between two supposedly non-related members of the same breed. They have next to none. This is fine if the individuals only have good characteristics to pass on to begin with, but of course, that just wasn't the case and even today it's still impossible to test for every negative gene. And additionally, the purpose for which they were intentionally bred does not necessarily bode well for the dog. Anyone who looks at a pug or bull dog or daschund or other breed with extreme characteristics and tries to claim otherwise is kidding themselves. But Martin didn't just talk about the detrimental effects, he also explained the roles and justifications for this kind of breeding. I like pure breds simply because I like having a better idea of what to expect and hence being able to match myself up with a more suitable breed that has a better chance of fitting in with my lifestyle. I thought it was an excellent program. Demonstrated what dogs were capable of when selectively bred for specific traits but didn't hide from the negative side of it either. Didn't seem to lie, exagerate or only show half the story. Seemed very balanced to me and thoroughly enjoyable to boot . EDIT: If mixed breed dogs have diseases and inherit genetic issues, they don't have them because they're mixed breeds or from their wolf descendents, they have them because we have selectively bred them in a such a way that we have reduced their natural genetic diversity and resistance to disease etc as we bred for other characteristics, and they happened to inherit the same susceptibilities from both of their parents. Dingoes and wolves typically live a lot longer in captivity (up to 20 years with constant food and worming facilities etc) than most of our domestic purebred dogs do, especially for a large dog - there are of course exceptions but these are notably exceptions. So today, health testing should be carried out on all dogs - mixed or pure - they're all so closely related anyway.

http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/ar...pets/?page=full Who among us is invulnerable to the puppy in the pet store window? Not everyone is a dog person, of course; some people are cat people or horse people or parakeet people or albino ferret people. But human beings are a distinctly pet-loving bunch. In no other species do adults regularly and knowingly rear the young of other species and support them into old age; in our species it is commonplace. In almost every human culture, people own pets. In the United States, there are more households with pets than with children. On the face of it, this doesn’t make sense: Pets take up resources that we would otherwise spend on ourselves or our own progeny. Some pets, it’s true, do work for their owners, or are eventually eaten by them, but many simply live with us, eating the food we give them, interrupting our sleep, dictating our schedules, occasionally soiling the carpet, and giving nothing in return but companionship and often desultory affection. What explains this yen to have animals in our lives? An anthropologist named Pat Shipman believes she’s found the answer: Animals make us human. She means this not in a metaphorical way — that animals teach us about loyalty or nurturing or the fragility of life or anything like that — but that the unique ability to observe and control the behavior of other animals is what allowed one particular set of Pleistocene era primates to evolve into modern man. The hunting of animals and the processing of their corpses drove the creation of tools, and the need to record and relate information about animals was so important that it gave rise to the creation of language and art. Our bond with nonhuman animals has shaped us at the level of our genes, giving us the ability to drink milk into adulthood and even, Shipman argues, promoting the set of finely honed relational antennae that allowed us to create the complex societies most of us live in today. Our love of pets is an artifact of that evolutionary interdependence. “Our connection with animals had a very great deal to do with our development,” Shipman says. “Beginning with the adaptive advantage of focusing on and collecting information about what other animals are doing, from there to developing such a reliance on that kind of information that there became a serious need to document and transmit that information through the medium of language, and through the whole thing the premium on our ability to read the intentions, needs, wants, and concerns of other beings.” Shipman’s arguments for the importance of “the animal connection,” laid out in an article in the current issue of Current Anthropology and in a book due out next year, draw on evidence from archeological digs and the fossil record, but they are also freely speculative. Some of her colleagues suggest that the story she tells may be just that, a story. Others, however, describe it as a promising new framework for looking at human evolution, one that highlights the extent to which the human story has been a collection of interspecies collaborations — between humans and dogs and horses, goats and cats and cows, and even microbes. Shipman, a professor of biological anthropology at Pennsylvania State University, draws together the scattered strands of a growing field of research on the long and complex relationship between human and nonhuman animals, a topic that hasn’t traditionally warranted much scholarly discussion but is now enjoying a surge of interest. The field of so-called human-animal studies is broad enough to include doctors researching why visits by dogs seem to make people in hospitals healthier, art historians looking at medieval depictions of wildlife, and anthropologists like Shipman exploring the evolution and variation of animal domestication. What they all share is an interest in understanding why we are so vulnerable to the charms of other animals — and so good at exploiting them for our own gain. The traits that traditionally have been seen to separate human beings from the rest of the animal kingdom are activities like making tools, or the use of language, or creating art and symbolic rituals. Today, however, there is some debate over how distinctively human these qualities actually are. Chimpanzees, dolphins, and crows create and use tools, and some apes can acquire the language skills of a human toddler. A few anthropologists are now proposing that we add the human-animal connection to that list of traits. A 2007 collection of essays, “Where the Wild Things Are Now,” looked at how domesticating animals had shaped human beings as much as the domesticated animals themselves. Barbara King, an anthropologist at the College of William & Mary, published a book earlier this year, “Being With Animals,” that explores the many ramifications of our specieswide obsession with animals, from prehistoric cave art to modern children’s books and sports mascots. King’s primary interest is in the many ways in which myths and religious parables and literature rely on animal imagery and center on encounters between humans and animals. “[W]e think and we feel through being with animals,” King writes. Shipman’s argument is more specific: She is trying to explain much of the story of human evolution through the animal connection. The story, as she sees it, starts with the human invention of the first chipped stone tools millions of years ago. Shipman, who specializes in studying those tools, argues that they were an advance made for the express purpose of dismembering the animals they had killed. The problem early humans faced was that even once they had become proficient enough hunters to consistently bring down big game, they had the challenge of quickly getting the meat off the corpse. With small teeth and a relatively weak jaw, human beings couldn’t just rip off huge chunks, it took time to tear off what they needed, and it rarely took long for bigger, meaner predators to smell a corpse and chase off the humans who had brought it down. Early chopping tools sped up the butchering process, making hunting more efficient and encouraging more of it. But this also placed early humans in an odd spot on the food chain: large predators who were nonetheless wary of the truly big predators. This gave them a strong incentive to study and master the behavioral patterns of everything above and below them on the food chain. That added up to a lot of information, however, about a lot of different animals, all with their various distinctive behaviors and traits. To organize that growing store of knowledge, and to preserve it and pass it along to others, Shipman argues, those early humans created complex languages and intricate cave paintings. Art in particular was animal-centered. It’s significant, Shipman points out, that the vast majority of the images on the walls of caves like Lascaux, Chauvet, and Hohle Fels are animals. There were plenty of other things that no doubt occupied the minds of prehistoric men: the weather, the physical landscape, plants, other people. And yet animals dominate. The centrality of animals in that early artwork has long intrigued anthropologists. Some have suggested that the animals were icons in early religions, or visions from mystical trances. Shipman, however, argues that the paintings serve a more straightforward function: conveying data between members of a species that was growing increasingly adept at hunting and controlling other animals. Lascaux, in this reading, was basically primitive Powerpoint. The paintings, Shipman points out, are packed with very specific information about animal appearance and behavior. “It’s all about animals,” Shipman says. “There are very few depictions of humans and they’re generally not very realistic. The depictions of animals are amazing, you can tell this is a depiction of a prehistoric horse in its summer coat, or that this is a rhino in sexual posture.” This storehouse of knowledge eventually allowed humans to domesticate animals. Evidence from early human settlements suggests that wolves were domesticated into dogs more than 20,000 years before people first domesticated plants. These new companion animals — not only dogs but eventually horses, camels, cows, goats, sheep, pigs, and others — in essence allowed human beings to appropriate a whole new set of abilities: to be better hunters, to kill off household pests, to haul goods, pull plows, create fertilizer, and protect homes against intruders. Not to mention the food and raw materials their bodies yielded up. Of course, the domesticated animals benefited, too: Human dependence on them ensured their survival and spread, even as some of their wild cousins were hunted to extinction. The great value that was gained from these “living tools,” as Shipman calls them, also meant that people with a particular interest in animal behavior, and who were especially acute about observing, predicting, and controlling it, were more likely to thrive in early human societies and to have more offspring. To the extent that there was a genetic component to these skills, Shipman argues, it spread. Just as humans selected for certain traits in domestic animals, those same animals were unconsciously shaping their domesticators right back. “Domestication was reciprocal,” Shipman writes in her Current Anthropology article. And our weakness for pets, she suggests, may be a vestige of that bilateral domestication. Shipman readily admits that what she’s proposing is a hypothesis, and she hopes other scholars will help to flesh it out. So far, the reception has been mixed. Other researchers exploring the origins of language and art are reluctant to ascribe it to something as limited as the predators and prey early humans faced — the need to convey information about other human beings, for example, could have been just as important in spurring the development of language, if not more. Anthropologists like Manuel Dominguez-Rodrigo of Spain’s Complutense University of Madrid disagree with Shipman that early tool use arose to deal with dead animals; it’s more likely, he argues, that the first stone tools were used to process plants. And it may be, too, that we find puppies cute not because of some innate desire to domesticate wild animals, but simply because puppies share some of the features — big eyes, clumsy movements, stubby limbs — that human babies have. Still, for scholars of human-animal studies, the ambition and scope of Shipman’s argument are good in and of themselves, throwing into relief the ways that our own development has made us one of the world’s great symbiotic species, thriving through a set of partnerships with other animals. Shipman’s argument “is radical to the degree that it really puts front and center the animal-human bond in a way that it hasn’t been before,” says King. “It’s not just background noise — yeah we hunted them, yeah we lived with them, yeah we ate them — it truly shapes the human evolutionary trajectory. That seems to me a really good thing to be doing.”

Guys, I get that that last thing you want or think Australia needs is another person trying to make money from breeding dogs, but, I wouldn't be surprised if the OP never posts here again. Don't get me wrong, I think the only way to justify bringing new dogs into the world is if you can prove (through health/temperament tests etc) that you are improving the breed, but I didn't feel that way before I found these forums. Instead of making insulting assumptions about people, it would probably help if you gave them more of a chance to explain themselves, and then kindly informed them of the greater knowledge you happen to have on the particular issue. That way you're in with a chance - either the person has a better idea of what they're getting themselves into, or, they give up on that dream. I came here to learn, but thought I knew more then than what I do now - but it's a gradual process... Of course there are people out there who just don't care at all, and once you can be sure of that go ahead applying derogatory labels but I think that should be done with caution, because after that, they leave. Not trying to attack anyone here, just thinking that maybe these forums could have done more to try and educate this guy (since plenty of people here would have experience with breeding rare, health sensitive breeds etc) and I think unfortunately in this case, this guy has left knowing nothing more than what he did when he first arrived on a dog forum, asking questions...

Wow, I have never really be interested in huskies before but that is one very handsome creature...

And well, as they say... someone has to graduate bottom of every class! yep. It's not even the poor performers though. One of my friends from school has just graduated as a vet from Sydney Uni, virtually top of her class. She believes in BSL, lockjaws and doesn't believe there's a difference between DA and HA. She also doesn't seem to know anything about what dogs should eat, and recommended Hills Science diet for mine :s

I love it how the father is all, oh the police should have been guarding the entrance to our house or whatever, implying that he was unable or unwilling to control his child verbally. So he sends his son elsewhere whilst the police raid his house, and then brings him back during the raid and allows the child to run into the house alone (while dad is back in the car) whilst it's obvious (because there were so many police vehicles etc) that the police are still in there? And now they want to blame the dog. I don't know, doesn't really make sense to me. Dog seems well trained to me, one that wasn't just attempting to do its job and actually was aggressive would have done more than one bite on the leg... It's true that a dog shouldn't really attack children, but a child running towards a police dog when it's working, seems like quite a different sort of situation to me.

Thing is though, humans don't respond well to all love and treats and no boundaries either. When we feel vulnerable, we like to feel like the people looking after us are competent. My dog picks up my frustration very quickly, and stops listening to me. I kind of like it about him actually, because he helps me to be more aware of myself and what I'm feeling. I know when I'm on top of the game when he's doing everything I want when I want it.

These were taken a while ago, when he was still growing. He's still a super happy dog who follows me everywhere I go lol Here is one of him as a tiny baby Need to get some more recent ones, I'm hopeless at taking photos so need to get them off others.

Oh god for ages I told myself I wasn't going to watch it, then I thought that perhaps everyone was exaggerating and maybe the puppies were sick or something. I watched her throw two before I closed it and I am feeling so upset right now. The puppy was crying and I understand that some people cull their puppies and maybe drowning is a better way to go (I wouldn't know of course) but what sort of creature could take pleasure in that? And what about the person filming it? I remember when that was that story on the news about someone mutilating a cat, and they were talking about all the studies that showed that people who took pleasure in hurting animals were often dangerous to anyone and anything they encountered and typically can not contribute to society.

The thing is I think people do know their dogs, they just don't seem to care. My dog has a scar above his eye and 2 on his lip now from the Am Staff that attacked him the other week. When it happened the guy wasn't surprised at all, and was just like, oh he's fine so long as he has his ball in his mouth. Incidentally, he actually dropped the ball on my dogs' head so he could attack him. Fortunately he has now been banned from having his dog off-lead I think, at least from the park anyway, and I have not seen him since. All I can think though is thank god my dog is so big, the Am Staff had attacked 5 other dogs and all of them had much more severe injuries I think because they were so much smaller. Only one tried to fight back, a red cattle dog, and he was the worst injured of all because it was much harder to separate them. But yeah, complete moron is the only explanation that I think fits. I don't understand what the good outcome is when you know that you have a dog who wants to kill other dogs and you still decide to take it to an off-lead park. Either they kill another dog probably getting injured in the process, or they get killed or seriously injured by another dog trying to defend themselves - doesn't make any sense to me. Hardest part about an attack though I think is how long it takes the human to get over it. In my case, I now avoid letting my dog interact with unknown staffies or am stafs, just because I feel like should another turn on him, he just doesn't seem to stand a chance even though he's a big powerful dog. It's sad, since there are so many staffies around, but I've just seen one too many attacks now and I can't seem to get over it :s He still has two friends though, one staffy and one am staff that he plays well with, and the owners have made an effort with the training and socialisation.

Down at my local park we have a few dominant aggressive labs. Charge and pin dogs at the neck sorta thing, starting fights if the other dog doesn't instantly submit. In fact the most aggressive dogs at our park are labs, but like someone at the park remarked the other day, that's probably just because there are a lot of labradors. There are plenty of over-excited labs and goldens, but the labs seem to be a bit more hyper and often fat lol. Worst thing is, every now and then, someone will show up with a healthy looking lab, and people will start talking about how it's too skinny...

Wow thanks for sharing, loved watching that The dog seemed so into it, even doing the glances over the shoulder and looking up into his eyes lol

Well right now, I have my male entire doberman living alongside two papillons. If you're the leader and accepted by all, I see no reasons why you would have any problems. The papillon male is the eldest by quite a bit, and he does growl when the dobe (the youngest) approaches him when he has a toy, food or a cosy sleeping spot. We don't correct that, but anything more than that (he has tried to charge the doberman a few times) we immediately chastise both, get in the middle of them and demand their undivided attention. My dobe has never stared at a small dog though like it was a prey animal, or started a fight with any dog. I have seen other large dogs look at the papillons like they want to hunt and kill them, and if my dog had ever looked at them this way, I don't think I would ever have been able to trust him around them.

I have yet to see a pet shop selling puppies in a way that I approve of, and in fact the majority of the time I don't even want to get too close to the cages because they smell so bad and the puppies have often had to sleep in their own waste. That said, reading Goofy's posts, I thought of a bit of a dream I had a while back about my ideal profession lol. I do not really want to breed animals, but that said, I love matching up the right pets with the right owners - I find the experience extremely rewarding. I have helped many friends to pick the breeds or even species for them, as not everyone spends hours of each day reading about the different breeds and what's involved like I do. I am in management consulting as well, so finding out about people and making them aware of products and services that can help them is just what does it for me. Thing is, I just don't think the way animals are kept in pet shops (except for the mice and fish) is conducive to optimum development, what with the whole sleeping where they defecate etc. So instead, if I had a pet shop, I would focus first on finding breeders that I trusted (and I've learned first hand that just because they're registered and show doesn't mean they're any good) and then on providing a sort of, breed selection service as well as selecting the right puppy for the right people. Like identifying balanced puppies for the people who want an easier time of it, the more dominant ones for those who want to go a bit further with the training etc. And we could have photo and video directories of all the litters we had access to at any time - so no more impulse buying the one that just happens to be there on the day. I don't know what sort of a market there would be for it, but, I think that having a service that dealt with all breeds instead of just one or two could be very beneficial to the beginner and even advanced dog owners. And then the breeders could focus more on their goals with the breed and produce more puppies that they could be assured would go to good homes. The puppy farmers would die because there just wouldn't be a market for them anymore. It's going to be a more intensive and probably expensive process, but in my area, everyone could afford it and I do think it would reduce the numbers of dogs abandoned, or perhaps even worse, basically just left in the backyards to rot. The number of like, ex beauty queen type mums I see with kelpies (the silver blue ones are popular right now) who bought them off the top breeders in the country but just look like they're constantly struggling with their dogs drives me crazy. Anyway, just a thought, probably not one anyone else is going to think is any good lol.