Little Gifts

I didn't realise either that the surgery was not needed! Great news though! Must go find this other thread about your poor hand!

That is such an amazing outcome for Rocky! I'm not usually a negative nelly but my gut didn't give me a good feeling about his future originally so I take my hat off to both of you for putting in so much effort to turn this boy's existence into a happy future. You are both good eggs!

Besides no shar pei I couldn't see SBT's either (but I have a lergy and am not feeling human so could've missed it). I did see the cat! Tricky! I also disagree with a lot of them but I guess seeing what they determined as intelligent might put it in to context.

Very cute but I don't think many foxes are this smoochy! I didn't know they wagged their tails like dogs either! https://www.facebook.com/STOPCRUSH.ORG/videos/1051873441504879/

The snuggle safes have instructions on them - you heat them in the microwave and they stay hot alllllllll night. You just might find you enjoy cuddling one in the bed at night too! They come with little fleece covers but they can be used with or without them. They are made of a hard plastic so are good if they get piddled on it can all be washed. My cold frog dog used to sleep in a soft crate. It had a bed and blankets in the bottom and I also draped blankets over it to create a warm den type of experience. First I tried one of those beds that heat up but my naughty SBT ate the bed and broke the power lead where it connected to the bed(not turned on at the time). That's when I got the snuggle safes. They last forever. You can put the snuggle safe in just one corner of the bedding so if the dog gets too hot it can move away, or you could put two in depending on how big an area you have to warm. I've not had any problems with my girl getting too hot and in fact she now sleeps on the bed with me and our other dog as she still wasn't warm enough in the crate. They are very hard though - not gooey like hot water bottles. But they are definitely still warm come morning so beat the old water bottle in that area. I've never left water overnight inside with any crated dogs but you can get water bowls that hang on the mesh rather than sit on the floor area.

Don't get me started about my silly sbt girl! She has a lovely thick coat of fur and ever since she was a pup loves to have a coat to wear even though I doubt she needs one (she paws at me while I put coats on the other dog). On top of that she will actually get inside the bed with me, under all the bedding. I have no idea how she breathes or why she doesn't overheat but she has already started to do it this year and we haven't even gotten cold enough to put her coat on. And yes, she is a spooner whether she is on top of the covers or under them. I am never fur or heat free when I sleep.

We've spent a couple of years perfecting the art of keeping our pei girl warm. She seems to lack any natural ability to do so herself once the temperature drops. She is a horse coat and seems warm enough to touch but can shake the whole bed with her shivers. She also wont settle when she is too cold.So even though temps up here are not exactly freezing she is already wearing a coat at night and it does help her stay asleep the whole night. As it cools further she will switch to her double layer coats, then it will be a blanket over that and on those really cold nights her side of the bed will also be filled with snuggle safes.

I saw you went. Was it good?

I was in Kmart today and they had pug enviro bags for only $2 I may have bought quite a few as my new grocery shopping bags......

LG are you referring to Margot Bernard from Margo's Animal Sanctuary? This lady was living in the Logan Council area and had an interim licence for her many critters. She had a barnyard full of assorted animals. In 2014 Margo was finally pushed by council to downsize and last I heard she had 5 dogs. Around the end of 2014 Margo and her barnyard seems to have disappeared. xx LP xx Yes LP, that would be her. I confess I haven't read our local community paper for quite a while (it has other purposes!) so can't believe she was still going in 2014 and still being chased by council! And given her ongoing rescue status I still don't know a soul who has adopted an animal from her or worked with her in a rescue capacity in that whole time which just seems weird to me. Do you know her or know of her? What do you think about her rescue efforts? Legit or hoarder? She still has a website (did a google) but links to adoptions and pet rescue don't work and some of the other links are just plain odd - you can still donate and play her music though! I found this newspaper article from late last year and it astounds me that it is the same old story - another 11th hour eviction and all these animals need somewhere to go! Perhaps that is the only way she does rehome any? And perhaps she hasn't found anywhere new to start up again? I can't imagine she leaves the properties in pristine condition. http://www.couriermail.com.au/questnews/logan/eight-rescue-dogs-still-up-for-adoption-from-margos-animal-santurary-in-park-ridge/story-fni9r0nh-1227015403687 And Mita, I cannot even bear the thought of companion animals living in ceilings. So horribly wrong.

It's weird - I had two vomiters yesterday as did two other people I know! Must be something in the air! One of mine gives no vomit alerts - she coughs and there it is, right where she was lying or standing. I used to have another that would go through the most extreme, body contorting heaves and still not bring anything up. I can't even type about the re-eating of said vomit! Tempeh brings up bile some mornings if she is too hungry. She's always been like that and has seen the vet about it. We usually give her a late night snack and that fixes things. If she throws up she normally waits until I've washed all the dog beds and put new ones out to purge over. But recently I was out at an event and didn't get to bed till around sunrise. I got in and pulled the doona cover (pretending to be a sheet) over me and it was damp and smelt strange. One of mine has some pee incontinence so I wondered if she'd got a bit leaky. I was too tired to worry about it so just walked it into the laundry, grabbed a towel in case it had soaked into the mattress I needed to lie on and got back in to bed and pulled something else over me. When I awoke later in the day I realised what was on that doona cover I had pulled it over my body!

When I first moved to this area back in 1988 there was a lady who was always in the local paper about being victimised by the local council and always in desperate need of public assistance. She saved every single dog she could and she had them all living together in one big fenced yard. Hundreds of them. She was always being evicted from a property and in desperate need of a new one for having too many dogs because she refused to play by any real rules. The local shopping centres had food donation bins and they were always full. I don't know how else she covered the costs. I never knew of anyone who adopted from her, there were never any volunteers pictured or mentioned in the news stories and I knew the biggest vet in this town (who also donated a lot of services) and she wasn't a client of theirs. The stories were always about her saving the dogs, not rehabilitating and rehoming them. From the photos it looked sanitary but barren and now I realise that it was not a good place for a dog to be and she was probably a hoarder using the guise of being a persecuted rescuer. I think her first name was Margot. She dropped off the radar quite a while back and I always wondered what happened to all those dogs. I can't believe puppy farmers try and use the same excuse. The main difference is that most hoarders don't recognise themselves as hoarders and selling the animals and making a profit from them seems to not even be on their list of priorities. Having them and having lots of them to fill an emotional void seems to be the key. So it still comes back to that problem of authorities knowing this is happening and not removing any animals at risk as soon as possible. Yes they might get more but isn't there a responsibility to the ones already known to be at risk of harm? Removing and continuing to remove may be the best outcome that can be gained legally and otherwise.

I had a rescue that originally had epilepsy and had been heavily medicated from 6 months old. It took three years of work but eventually he was off all meds and no longer fitting. But we were left with significant separation anxiety and fears relating to storms, the garbage man, rustling plastic bags and a long list of other things. He came to live with me because I had his mother and had fostered her when she whelped, raised the pups and helped with his original adoption. If I didn't take him he would've been pts. His mum was only 1 year older than him. Not once did his behaviours ever change the behaviour of his mother. In his heightened sense of anxiety she was irrelevant to him. She pretty much left him to whatever damage he was doing and never barked or cried or did anything to indicate he was losing the plot. She may as well have not existed to him when he was freaking out so obviously her presence did not reduce his separation issues. She was not scared of anything and nothing he did changed that. We managed him fairly well but not perfectly. Both dogs were dropped to my parents while I went to work. I worked local to home so if a storm was brewing I'd go home and bring him back to work with me. But there were unexpected events and he would tear things apart to get to a human and what he perceived as safety. One of these events led to him injuring himself and needing to be pts at 11.5 years of age. It can be a life long effort. So my advice is to ensure your next dog is bomb proof and you are unlikely to be able to determine that with a pound dog. There is also no return policy or support provided with a pound dog. You are asking for things to fail by going down that path.

So is court ordered treatment for the hoarding a more suitable sentence? Perhaps court ordered animal care courses too.

I think I get frustrated because it was probably clear to officers attending these properties that these people should not be owning any pets. Who needs to have alias names and refuse to say who owns an animal if they are doing nothing wrong? And if you have animals seized from a property or people associated with a property then wouldn't they be on your red flag list if future complaints came in? Having worked in statutory child protection I know the difference between removing a victim from harm and being able to make a case that results in a conviction. One does not necessarily equate to the other (for a variety of reasons) and sometimes just making sure the innocent victim is the best outcome. This is one of those times when I wish dogs didn't have to suffer while humans got their act together. As for the desexing issue, I think there is a case for neglect if dogs who are related to each other are left to breed, if dogs of different sizes are left to breed (risk to a small bitch if she is carrying large pups), if an aggressive male is left to mate unattended with a bitch in season, if multiple males are left to mate unattended with a bitch in season, if no vet assistance has been obtained for a bitch or pups if needed and if the bitch does not have a suitable environment or nourishment to successfully whelp and raise puppies. I guess they would have to be able to prove this but these would be some basic issues that place a bitch and pups unnessecarily at risk of death or injury, especially if you have a lot of dogs in a small yard like they did.

Any updates on how things are going this time around?

In the ACT dogs over six months have to be desexed unless the owner has a permit to breed. Yes but I disagree that not desexing a dog is neglecting it. I think the law was brought in to stop backyard breeders and to do something about unwanted dogs arriving at the pound and leaving in green bags. I guess it is neglect if the dog has unplanned litters. I just wish they would enforce the laws already in place. If it is illegal something should be happening. Otherwise there is no point to the law. Imagine living next door to either of these properties, particularly if you could see over the fence. It's all a bunch of bureaucratic bullshit really. There were noise complaints made and automatically that should trigger attention to the number of dogs being kept there (against the law) and the condition the dogs were being kept in (also against the law). Then of course is the issue of keeping so many fertile animals together (another breach of the laws in ACT). What the hell RSPCA and local council? These dogs were starving. That doesn't happen in a week. They had open wounds with no evidence of vet treatment. They were living in their own faeces. How many things need to be wrong and how many laws need to be broken before something is done to protect the animals at risk??? I hope all three abusers are crippled by fines and public opinion and are never able to even pat a dog again, let alone ever own one.

I got a pink girly one and was frustrated because it doesn't cope with my shove everything in technique. Not long after Aldi had those fishing bum bags and I bought a couple of those. Pockets fit all your goodies - keys, phones, tissues, lip balm, treats, poo bags, and were a fraction of the price. OK so they are not as pretty....

Oh Sars that is very sad. I had an old sbt boy and the vet initially thought he had this but further tests revealed another issue with his spine. I remember finding an online community of people with dogs who had it and they were very helpful and supportive. So whatever treatment you pursue I wish you and your boy well.

I contacted Pet Circle and a rep from BH contacted me. The rep said it was just leftovers from another run of kibble that hadn't been picked up during the cleaning process and it was all fine and wouldn't hurt my dogs. He declined a photo of it. He was fairly 'whatever' about my concerns and no refund offer was made and I didn't ask for one. Our pei can't eat beef and of course I was worried there was more of the same in the bag and that it could've contained beef so I made the decision to discard it all. I was disappointed at the time but just let it go. I figured it was just one crappy bag out of all the hundreds of others I've purchased and been happy with.

We are BH users and due to location ours costs us about $85 on auto delivery with Pet Circle. Our older dog (husky/shep) started losing weight on the chicken and rice version and the vet recommended we move to a seniors type of kibble. After that bag finished though we were buying the fish and rice version and her weight has been fine on it (and the lamb and rice we are now getting). We also have a pei and her skin has generally been great (some contact allergy issues here and there) so what we feed her is important. All ours get kibble morning and night with some other stuff added. I did get one BH chicken and rice once with a contaminant in it. Was not happy. The company did not replace it. Apparently it was some other stuff off the production machinery that got missed during cleaning and it was all green and a bunch of the kibble had stuck to it and was turning green too. I threw that whole bag out and considered switching back to Canidae but stayed with BH because it works for our dogs.

I just read through all of your thread in OT and realised Rupert is an OES! For some reason I got him confused with some breed I'm unfamiliar with that looks like an OES as a pup but grows up to look like a different breed. How I got myself so confused I do not know! I had an OES as a teenager - it was my dream dog and I loved my girl Phobie to bits! She was so chill we used to get her to ride bikes and wear clothes. It will be great to watch Rupert grow up!

Both so terribly cute! I love Smoke's special ear action! Just when you think he is growing up you see him beside dad and he is still so tiny!

They look gorgeous together!

He looks so OES at this age. Very cute and I love the name but want to call him 'Rupret' after Steve Martin's character in Dirty Rotten Scoundrels!