Weasels

I am sure many experienced trainers could train the majority of dogs without tools like prong collars, but what an experienced trainer can do is not necessarily what the dog's owner is capable of doing. It's not always just about what the dog needs but what the owner is capable of doing and within what time frame they need to see results. Yet another reason I would make a terrible professional dog trainer. I doubt people would be pay to be cuffed upside the head and be told "spend more time with and learning about your dog, dammit"

There are a million and one training options between aversive collars and soppy ineffectual training The majority of dogs don't need them and it doesn't make their owners any poorer or weaker trainers.

Oh thank god you said that, it's not just me! :laugh: I think you're on the right track, get the cue solid on lower value items like the balls, then use marker training and your other frisbee to reward the out once you think you're ready :) I don't think it's a lost cause at all! Giving back the frisbee is just part of the awesome game, no need for it to reduce the value :D

Behaviour modification for something like this can't be diagnosed over the internet, you need someone to look at whether the dog is fearful, bored, aggressive etc. so Persephone's suggestion sounds like the right solution if you are willing to put in the time and money. Why would a property with working dogs want a reactive APBT? If you mean sheep dogs, they aren't (broadly speaking) naturally friends with bull breeds IME.

Bergamasco?

I want to say Phalene? actually i think they need to be mostly white, nevermind!

The sauciest of all dogs *eyebrow wiggle* Sorry that was terrible

There is some compelling oral history and unofficial written accounts that some farmers experimented with dingo in their kelpie lines, but I don't believe it was back close to the breed foundations. I'm sure there were far more breeders who hated dingoes with a fiery passion and didn't want any part of them near their sheep. Sometimes when I watch Weez trotting along the beach he reminds me of a dingo :) But that could well just be his lazy *ahem* efficient gait

Sorry to hear ML Sounds like Xin was much loved and had a great life :) Thinking of you

Yes, the females have a single oestrus per year

Male dingoes in some climates have seasonal reproduction, but that's not found in temperate areas. I've never heard that the male season affecting the female season, more likely both are affected by the time of year, or resources available (ie. whether they are starving or not). Dogs are root-rats, they'll quite happily mate with a dingo bitch and yes many many many pups have been born from these matings and roam our land! edit - pretty sure there was a study where they took dingoes from the NT (where the males should be seasonal) and kept them down south somewhere, and they became fertile all year round, then kept some in central Aus in captivity and they remained seasonal. So it's a climate thing.

Tricksy! XD Sorry Wobbly!

Yes :) I deliberately chose a pic with a straight tail so it wasn't quite so obvious Sorry Samisam beaten by a whisker!

Under the "other names" on the Wiki link, there is a few names for that mohawked cutie :)

Yay, watching dogs 101 on animal planet finally paid off :laugh: Ok, give me a minute.....

Peruvian Inca Orchid?

I hope so, because this would make more sense :) I would be very interested to see the results AtB! I hope it's helpful too :)

It depends on who's asking, and why they're asking. To an evolutionary biologist, a few thousand years is nothing. Because dingoes haven't been in Aus long enough to evolve in conjunction with the native marsupials it makes no sense to consider them native. When looking at questions of how the Australian native fauna arose and evolved, the dingo isn't part of that picture. But to an ecologist, dingoes have been here long enough to integrate into almost all of our ecosystems, and interact with other fauna in a significant way (by being our largest terrestrial predator). Many ecologists view dingoes as a substitute for our lost thylacine, in that it fulfils a similar ecological role, so talking about them as a native/naturalised part of our fauna does make sense. And having worked as both in the last few years, I have no opinion :laugh:

It depends on who's asking, and why they're asking. To an evolutionary biologist, a few thousand years is nothing. Because dingoes haven't been in Aus long enough to evolve in conjunction with the native marsupials it makes no sense to consider them native. When looking at questions of how the Australian native fauna arose and evolved, the dingo isn't part of that picture. But to an ecologist, dingoes have been here long enough to integrate into almost all of our ecosystems, and interact with other fauna in a significant way (by being our largest terrestrial predator). Many ecologists view dingoes as a substitute for our lost thylacine, in that it fulfils a similar ecological role, so talking about them as a native/naturalised part of our fauna does make sense.

Whenever someone asks me if dingoes are native I run from the room yelling "I'm not getting involved!!"

Sorry but a lot about this screams scam to me. Firstly, hair is one of the worst ways to collect DNA. I won't accept it in my lab unless there's really no other option. Genetic tests for food intolerance are scarce in humans, I only know of lactose and there may be a couple of others. I really doubt that more tests have been developed for dog intolerances than humans. Intolerance is complicated and probably involves epigenetic components which wouldn't show up on a dna test. And DNA markers aren't affected by environment during an organisms life in a way that can be tested (excepting a very few progressive diseases). Mass-spectrometry can test for some metal poisonings and drugs but it's still a crude tool from what I understand. Chemistry is out of my field so they might have more success with this type of analysis - but the genetic testing claims ring huge alarm bells. All up, If they tried to sell me something based on these tests I'd be very skeptical

It's not clear to me what you're trying to learn from her DNA? It won't tell you anything about her nutrition, and there are better ways to test for allergies. Do you have any more info?

I think Oord is talking about the dingoes on Fraser Island specifically

It was clear the people had greater issues that needed to be adressed, but I don't think that almost any aspect of how it was done on the show was the best way to help them. Flying them across the world, putting it on TV, throwing them into high pressure situations with dogs they had practically no chance of controlling in a completely foreign discipline. I'm sure it set up a story arc to watch them struggle so badly but they were absolutely set up to fail at the start - colour me cynical, but just so there'd be tears I reckon. And as someone pointed out to me the other day - the footage of the girl at the end she was doing standard reward-based training with her dogs, so someone probably went in there on the sly to teach her how to train her own dogs and they just didn't bother showing it. Because it wasn't good tv.

(*disclaimer* - I haven't read the paper since it first came out, I just looked at the trees to jog my memory :p) I would think that if the position of huskies and malamutes was largely affetced by backcrossing, they would would be in their own clade between dogs and wolves. The tree showing that they clustered with the other 'ancient and spitz' dogs made me think that they were genuine members of that group. But of course phylogenies can do some darn strange things if you don't watch them closely! ;) Would be interesting if they could distinguish between back-crossing and deriving from a common ancestor of those Asiatic wolves :)