Little Gifts

As we always knew, the rights of people and needs of dogs don't matter to any level of govt, but bleeding money does. If it's not making the council money they don't like it and only then will they think about not doing it. Councils do not give a flying eff about their constituents. If they did the money would be spent on education and enforcement just like Steve has said. BSL has never been about safety.

If you look for the type of pram/buggy that is designed to take your kids and pull behind your bike you shouldn't have problems pushing it because it is designed to carry weight and be made mobile from a dead start. I never used my dogs to pull our doggy pram but I must admit I have always used whoever is on the lead to pull me up hills! I'm not stoopid....

Stussy can't cope with much eye contact. She goes into submissive mode if I try to look at her too much. Tempeh though likes to have conversations with her peeps and will maintain eye contact for ages while voicing her opinions. In fact she does things so you will look at her and she will look back to make sure she has your full attention. She openly watches us a lot too, to see what we are planning or doing while Stussy will steal sneaky glances to keep up to speed.

The decision I made was based on the safety of my old girl when no-one could be home with her. She was still quite active, eating well and very involved with her pack but became an accident waiting to happen and with her dementia and reduced mobility I could not bear to think of her getting stuck somewhere and being stuck like that for hours, waiting till someone found her. She was almost 17 and was having monthly vet check ups given she wasn't the type of dog to show she was suffering. So my only advice is to be honest about the reality of your situation. If you or someone else is generally home with your girl at all times so she can be assisted or rushed to the vet should something happen then continue until you know she is no longer enjoying her day or the risk for her wellbeing becomes too great. It is such a freaking hard decision to make. I had to do it almost three years ago and still internally debate whether I made the decision slightly too soon.

We had a thread about dog prams not long ago for this very issue. I had a pram for an ancient sbt myself who just hated missing out when everyone else was going for a walk but her slowness really messed up the exercise for our other two dogs. So we got her a pram and she started out the walk and when she got tired I'd put her in the pram and we could all continue on. I saw an old lab in a three wheeler type thingy last year. It was the kind of thing you pull behind a bicycle that you might have your kids in. I posted a pic in the other thread but can't lay my hands on the pic now. So there are options regardless of the size of your elderly dog.

Thank you Corrie! And I feel the same about the puppy ones and booster. I've never understood why a dog 'couldn't' develop immunities as it got older.

We have a snooty husky/shep cross (called Wolf, which gets some interesting reactions if ever shouted out in public), a naughty sbt and a quirky shar pei. The only comments we get out in public are about how different they all are. Someone once asked if we couldn't decide what type of dog to get so just got one of each! No-one ever gets frightened of our sbt because she loves people and constantly sports a big smile and a licky tongue at the sight of a potential new friend. Everyone wants to pat the husky/shep though which I always think is strange because she is our guard dog and quite aloof. Maybe people are attracted to her coat? Only pei people want to cuddle our pei girl but she is very fussy on who she will let touch her these days.

I have very little knowledge about vaccinations and do annually when the reminder comes. What do others do? What vacs do you get and how frequently and why? I know when my Stafford girl got quite old the vet said to stop bothering with annual vaccinations so she had none for the last two years. She said she would have enough residual in her system to protect her. I did worry that she would have reduced immunity from her other health issues and if she came into contact with something like parvo that she would not be able to fight it but it never became an issue. I've never really understood how dogs vaccs work compared to say human vaccs that we only have to get once in our life.

Yep that's the book DDD. I can see it from here still on my bookshelf, half finished! I'll have to check out the other one you recommend too.

Based on Bright Star's last post I'm very glad that so many people behind the scenes have recognised the exceptional circumstances surrounding this boy and are making informed decisions based on what is in his best interests now and in the future. It is the best outcome that could be hoped for with any dog in need. I'm still happy this beautiful boy is remaining in Australia and may be the start of something exciting relating to his breed.

I am a great supporter of desexing because it is one way of reducing the cycle of unwanted and abandoned dogs but I'm a great supporter of the continued breeding of quality pure bred dogs. I also respect that desexing is not the preferred option for quite a number of DOLers for a range of reasons, including age and breed - there have been some robust threads on this very topic. What an amazing opportunity this is to have a rare breed of dog here in Australia, in the hands of what seems to be an experienced and responsible new owner. How it got there is a bit of a miracle. If this dog had not ended up in the pound (remember the original owner had been trying to rehome it on Gumtree) I think the comments on here regarding desexing would be quite different. Given the circumstances of this boy being the only one of his kind here in Australia, him being quite young, a large breed AND a working dog, I think it would be appropriate to let him go to his new owner and for his new owner to determine what he would like to do regarding desexing, based on what might be in the best interest of the dog at this point in time and this breed's future here in Australia. It should then be up to this owner to either abide by the agreement or contact the pound/recue group and seek some kind of exemption based on the rare circumstances because this is an unusual, one of a kind situation. For all we know there might be a breeder agreement that he is not to be bred or he may not be a good example of his breed. Maybe the new owner wasn't initially aware of this pound release condition. Maybe the new owner is not even interested in breeding him. Plus he doesn't even have a bitch to breed with in this country. None of this behind the scenes stuff is even our business. We are not the rescue group, pound police and no agreement has even been broken. The poor dog is not even in the new owner's possession yet. I'm just going to focus on the small miracle that is him finding a new and what seems like perfect home.

I got a Panasonic Lumix (10x optical zoom) after I was on holidays in Morocco and saw the pics another traveller was getting compared to what I was getting on my Kodak. The colours and landscape shots were just amazing! I am going to upgrade at some point and get a more recent model of the same camera with a better zoom. I go to a lot of music festivals and concerts and it is a very lightweight camera that gets good distance pics. In the hands of a good photographer the pics would be even better!

Jonah's doing a road trip! I'll be expecting photos!

What fantastic news! I hope it ends up being a perfect match! I must say, I'm not usually a big dog person but that breed is gorgeous to look at and from the FB pics they seem very people orientated for a working dog.

All I was thinking is that the people doing the right thing will just continue to be over monitored and penalised. No-one has any idea exactly how many litters puppy farm and BYB dogs are having now because they don't interact with the current monitoring systems or get regular vet care for their dogs, so they will continue to be back door operations, hiding litters or lying on whatever paperwork they do. No-one probably even knows how many breeding bitches are even on each farm or with each BYB, so again, there will be hiding of litters. Some of these breeding dogs have no paper trail and have never seen a vet. How will that change? The breeders who do the right thing and register their dogs and advertise their litters will be the ones most impacted. After two years of planning it just feels like they are still missing the mark.

Ages ago I started reading an old book about dogs who seem to know unexplained things about their owners, like when their owners are going to arrive home, even if they have an unpredictable schedule. I experienced this house/dog sitting a couple of years back too. The owners went overseas for a week and had to run some errands and drive several hours before making it back home from the airport so their dog could not have known what day or time they would arrive. Yet the afternoon they arrived back in Australia he set himself up in a spot in the yard with a clear view of the entry gate and stayed put until their car pulled into the drive a couple of hours later. All the other dogs had dinner and settled into warm beds for the night except him. He wouldn't be budged or distracted. Anyway, yesterday something very similar happened with our odd girl Tempeh. I wasn't expecting to be home till last night some time but the people I'd been house/dog sitting for came home quite early in the morning instead. So yesterday morning here at my house, Tempeh woke my sister early and was super hyper (ie a pain in the arse). She wouldn't stay still long enough to eat her breakfast (unheard of). My poor sister tried to get her out of the house for half an hour and Tempeh refused to leave, getting both of them worked up. My sister got angry with her because she was by then very late for work so she left Tempeh inside the house. Tempeh has never refused to leave the house before, never been left alone inside the house for any period of time and my sister never gets angry with any of the dogs, but that's how difficult she was being. I got home about an hour after this had all happened and thought it was strange I could hear the other two dogs barking out the back but not Temp. I opened the front door and there she was, as calm as calm can be welcoming me home. I really think she knew. My trip home was about an hour. I hadn't even text my sister to say I was coming home earlier so it's not like my sister had spoken to me on the phone or been running round the house tidying up before I got back. And when my sister got home Temp was very happy to see her, like the morning's events were just a misunderstanding. She even grabbed my sister's hand and brought her to see me. She even spent the night snuggled down in the lounge room with us rather than putting herself to bed after dinner. Has anyone else had an experience like this with their dogs? How do they know?

I remembered another from quite a while back. Bundy (RIP) was not feeling well so I had him in at work with me because I had no doggy sitter that day and had a big meeting at work. My pod mates were all dog lovers so it was no problem. When I went in to the meeting he was fast asleep on his blanket and his leash was attached to my chair. I was giving my presentation to a lot of big bosses and noticed people looking at the glass corridor wall. Below the frosting we could see Bundy walking up the long hallway, looking for me, dragging my chair behind him!

Stussy is my Queen of Embarrassment. I still never got over having a new boyfriend staying over for the first time and Stussy dragged the most disgusting old underwear out of the dirty clothes basket and left it in the hallway where it couldn't be missed. I'd mowed the lawn on a hot summer's day in it. She once found and chewed on a used tampon. NOT MINE!!! She waits until I've done a mega vaccuum and possibly shampooed the carpet to scratch her arse on it. She has a very practical swivel technique she likes to use. And she loves people! She likes them even better if they rub her inner thighs and flings herself open legged at strangers and nudges their hands to her pleasure zone. Embarrassing for everyone involved.

I was expecting some dirty puppy pictures!

Of course it works ladies! There is nothing specific that causes her to scratch but at around the two week mark she just starts randomly scratching and nibbling on herself and it just escalates until she is making her skin red in spots. She mainly does this at night. She will wake up and have a bit of a nibble then settle back to sleep. I've also developed a technique to soak her feet as she didn't like submerging them. Erny she has exhibited fear aggression in the past and has a particular fear of what will happen when she is restrained/confined. She hates anything new or different. She was a rescue pup and one of her siblings had serious separation anxiety so we have worked hard to avoid her going down the same sad path. We do some things with her very differently to any other dog I've owned or fostered. She is still developing and learning new things about herself so we regularly have to get new advice from our behaviourist on how to manage these changes. We did try leashing and tethering her the second time and it was a disaster. I can't have her developing a fear of what I am going to do with the leash when I come to her with it. The process we are using at present is very quick and controlled and we are hoping that as it becomes more normal she will get less fearful. She is not scared of the bowl or contents but of what might happen. She stands there unrestrained and doesn't try to run off until we tell her it's finished, so she is able to control her flight response under our guidance. She gets several high value treats afterwards but she wont take anything from me until we are both sitting quietly, a non-touching distance apart. It actually doesn't feel like she associates the treats with the bath because of that and I'd prefer to be able to swap that out with some positive grooming post bath as she now loves to be touched generally and I'll know she has calmed down if she lets me touch her again. The first two times I was able to get her to play in the sun with me while she dried off but this last time she wasn't falling for it! Edited to add - I don't really chase her around the house. She knows I am preparing her bath and hangs around right until it is cool enough to use, then runs to my room. I go in, sit on the bed, talk to her, she puts on her cloak of invisibility, I pick her up and carry her to the spot and the statue gets her wash. The whole thing is all over in about 5 minutes tops.

Tempeh has slotted right in to her fortnightly CTR (Calendula Tea Rinse). She sees the bowl, I chase her around the house, I catch and relocate her to the washing zone, she freezes up like a statue while I do the rinse (she thinks this technique makes her invisible). Once I release her she runs away and refuses to speak to me for the rest of the day!

I'm just wondering if someone else got in her ear about what happened and frightened her into shutting her wallet? It would cost her far more to engage a solicitor on the off chance you pursued this than it would to just cover the vet bills. I think you should worry about yourself and your dogs and let her stress out about money and the what ifs.

The other owner had ample opportunity to move his dog. My pup entered the big dogs space, but the owner also had a slack lead for the dog to lunge. I'm not defending myself here, I know I stuffed up. Just got me thinking of legalities, two owners not on the ball and if an incident happens, i'd say 50/50 responsibility. It's clearly given you a fright and you've learned from it. I wonder whether the other owner has even given it a second thought though? I hope so as we can always learn from our experiences and do things better/differently. Quite a few years back I did obedience training with my boy at an outdoor venue. There was a DA dog there with an elderly man who had no control over it. He came to classes every week over three different courses and nothing ever changed. The dog was always kept well to the side, always with the choker collar hoiked tight around its neck and the man's arm sockets being wrenched out by its constant lunging. My boy was a very calm soul and he was often used in exercises with that dog, working out his triggers, how close other dogs could get, etc. At the time I felt sorry for the man as he seemed to love the dog. I used to think maybe he didn't put in enough practise between classes. Now I feel sad for the dog - wrong owner, crappy life spent on a chain.

The thyroid gland is responsible for the good function of just about every organ in the body. Consequently, symptoms of thyroidism can manifest in so many varied ways. Skin issue symptoms can be caused by thyroidism - in fact, it is quite a common symptom. At early onset and when the dog is younger, weight loss or inability to gain body weight can also represent as a symptom. As can nervous/vigilant type behaviour. So rather than looking at the reasons why your dog feels the cold, investigate why she is "practically bald over half her body" and why she "has no body fat". Erny I will get her checked now but her body weight and hair pattern are not unusual for the type of dog she is - hence me not considering it a problem before. She lost the outer leg hair up to thigh area when she moulted late last year (her first moult) and given we have had a long hot summer (had fans on here still yesterday!) I was not surprised to still see no fine, velvet growing back. Her belly is bald and her rear end, underneath of her tail and inner back thighs are also bald. She was a square chunk as a puppy (still not fat) and elongated as she grew. We used to joke she had supermodel legs. She looked exactly the same as she developed as her two siblings in body and coat. She seems no different to me to other Tang style pei with horse coats and in fact, I've seen even finer coats and finer bodies. I don't consider her underweight and she does not seem to have trouble maintaining her adult weight. She does get itchy skin from nothing we can clearly identify (keeping on top of it with fortnightly calendula tea rinses!) but certainly nothing chronic or even ongoing. No joint issues. She vomits if she gets over hungry (less frequent as she has aged and it has been monitored by a vet). But she is a nervous/vigilant dog so that worries me. We have had some behaviouralist advice on that as there has been an increase in her 'concerns' and we've had to change how we are managing it again. Sorry for derailing thread - I'd hate to think I was ignoring a health issue is all.

Where was the person with the dog who was already sitting down supposed to go if the smaller dog veered closer? Granted, perhaps they sat in a walkway but if they were against a wall, hemmed in or surrounded by other seats I'm thinking they would have some difficult getting away from another dog intent on coming closer. I think both parties got a wake up call and need to rethink arrival and circulation strategies. Short leashes for both, clear exit strategy for the DA one, just in case, and obviously more attention on all the dogs in the vicinity rather than human socialisation in the case of the smaller dog's owner. Stay vigilant.