DogsAndTheMob

Have you looked at the Dogzonline Labrador Retriever breeders page? https://www.dogzonline.com.au/breeds/puppies/labrador-retriever.asp?state=NSW There are several breeders in NSW with current and future litters. I clicked on the links to a few of their websites, and I am impressed by some of the breeding programs, particularly with respect to improving hip structure. Remember, efforts to improve bloodlines - by importing breeding stock, for example - are expensive. I’d be prepared to pay extra for a puppy from a breeder who provided evidence of good hip and elbow scores in dogs from previous litters (as at least one Breeder does), because this might save on vet bills (and grief) later.

Incidentally, I trained for and competed in herding with my last border collie; he attained his Herding Started A and Herding Started B titles with no disqualifications and was two points off high-in-trial in his first Herding Started B competition. I lost him to snake-bite when I was training him for the higher levels of competition. Based on my experience and observations, if you can get close enough during Herding training to apply aversives, then either you’re a very, VERY fast runner or your dog does not have much natural balance. (For people who are not Herding competitors, balance refers to the sheepdog’s instinct to place himself on the opposite side off the stock from the handler. This instinct, combined with the instinct to stop the movement of the stock, determines the talented sheepdog’s position - usually well away from the handler.) Also, I’ve never heard farmers refer to nipping sheep as a good thing; a strong sheepdog uses eye to stop the sheep. l’ve also never seen a farmer use pool noodles in training. Australian farmers usually start their youngsters on a large mob, steadied by an older dog. Faced with a large, slow moving mob, sheepdog pups are less likely to become over excited. I don’t think every talented sheepdog is well-suited to three sheep competition. My current border collie is talented; when he was thee months old, I took him out while my older border collie and I brought in the goats. I lost my grip on him and he raced out to place himself at the head of the mob, stopping them in their tracks. When Herding instructors saw him working, they were impressed by his ability. But he lacks a natural bubble - the instinct to stay wide from livestock. Although he would be a good dog for working with a large mob, he is not calm enough for three-sheep work. A harsh trainer might be able to suppress his instincts enough to force him into a calmer style of work, but that’s not the sort of trainer I want to be.

I don’t know how he/she uses the longline, but I use the longline as a control, not as an aversive, by attaching it to a harness and applying gentle pressure as the dog moves away from me. I can control the dog’s pace to teach the command “steady”, and I intermittently call the dog back to me (and food rewards), without applying pressure on the long-line. Off-lead recalls from free-running are practised in a smaller area (up to a two acre paddock). i am now at the stage with my 14 month old Brittany where I can let her run free in larger acreages and call her off a rabbit warren or away from the trail of a rabbit. I would not attempt to call her back from chasing a rabbit in full flight, at least at this stage in her training. (Note: I try to avoid this by leashing her if there are rabbits out, but on rare occasions a rabbit has startled from under-foot.) I can also keep her within the zone of greatest control by using the command “steady”, when I don’t want her to free run. Here is an excellent article written by a professional gundog trainer and hunter. He doesn’t talk about the quadrants - his approach is more experienced-based than theoretical, I think, but his training methods are not aversive. Instead, they are positive and focused on developing a hunter-and-dog team. https://www.tapatalk.com/groups/thebrittanyforum/recall-t3699.html

I’m not a vet or a doctor, but I actually wouldn’t be as pessimistic as some posters. The fact that she has had the tumour for 18 months without significant symptoms suggests that it is not a horribly aggressive cancer. Doctors sometimes opt to simply manage slow-growing tumours in their human patients, because they can live with the cancer for the rest of their natural life span. My husky had a tumour removed from the back of her palate when she was about nine years old. She lived for another three years without symptoms - a happy, lively dog. Her final decline may have been due to the cancer but I’m not sure because the initial collapse was misdiagnosed by the vet, who told me she had pulled a muscle in her leg. (I was adamant that that wasn’t the case, but the vet wouldn’t listen.) When she became comatose five days later, we opted for euthanasia. A lot of the health issues you describe are those I have seen in my older dogs. In my experience, old dogs tend to look thin in the hindquarters because they lose muscle tone in old age. It’s called sarcopenia and it’s caused partially by reduced activity and partially by an natural die-off in the nerves sending messages to the muscle fibres. Obviously, 17 is a very old dog, but small dogs do occasionally live into their twenties . If she’s alert and happy, then your vet should be able to help you to make her comfortable and pain-free, and give her a good quality of life. Once that’s not possible, it will be time for euthanasia. Good luck, and all my best wishes.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/bbcthree/item/9cd86293-ad16-4319-af2b-e1662ec73112 ‘Real life rescue dogs sorted into the four Hogwarts houses, with an important Potter-worthy message to boot.”

I hven’t owned a cattle dog, but I have owned German shepherds and border collies, and I’ve had friends with cattle dogs. Like you, I live on an acreage, and somebody is usually at home with the dogs. Cattle dogs can have strong herding and territorial drives, and these are at their peak in adolescence, so you should plan ahead to manage these. i like to leave my youngsters in a closed run with a food-filled kong on the few occasions when there is nobody at home. This keeps them away from the boundary fences, where they might bark at nearby livestock or kangaroos, and reduces the risk of encounters with snakes. When we’re inside, we have the dogs inside with us - for company and their social development, and to keep them safe from snakes. My youngster, a brittany, goes into a crate at bedtime or when we can’t supervise her. (Although she’s now reaching the age where that’s not necessary.) The devil finds work for idle paws, so training is essential for a puppy’s mental stimulation and an owner’s peace of mind. My youngster has short (5 to 10 minute) training sessions several times daily, which started when I brought her home at 8 weeks old. These aren’t limited to the routine heel-sit-stay exercises; we also work on retrieving, nose work and anything else I can think of to provide mental stimulation.

Fascinating. The red dogs stand out against the green grass to the human eye, but possibly not to a dog’s eyes, or in a prey animal’s vision.

He’s an adolescent, which means he has poor impulse control. You need to set him up for success, and avoid situations where he can “practise” unwanted behaviours. i have a dog about the same age. She has a lovely temperament and I’ve spent a lot of time training her (and competed successfully in obedience trials with her). But she’s still a youngster, so I plan ahead to avoid giving her opportunities for over-enthusiastic greetings with other dogs and people. I’m seeing consistent improvements in her steadiness and maturity; if you work with your dog, you should see similar improvements.

I have a photo of my mother playing with a white dingo at a zoo, teaching it to retrieve.

I guess that means that any dog that carries the a^y allele, in association with any other allele, will be ginger. In the absence of Inbreeding or selective breeding for colour, a lot of dogs would be a^y/a^? I imagine there might be a trade-off between strength, speed and stamina, with size and weight affecting all of these. I would really like to see that study. How much interbreeding between wolves, coyotes and dogs occurs in the wild? Do wild dogs bark? My parents had two pure-bred dingos when I was a child, and they didn’t bark. I have heard that there are no purebred dingos in NSW, but it would be interesting to know what percentage of dingo genes are circulating in the wild dog population.

I think too many people love having someone/something to hate.

I have seen wild dogs on three occasions - one wild dog was on my own acreage, making its way around a partially completed sheep-mesh fence. The other two sightings were also in the Hunter Valley. All three dogs looked very much like typical dingos in size, colour, coat, ears and tail. This surprises me, because I would expect wild dogs in this area to be largely descended from domestic dogs. In particular, why were they all ginger coloured? Looking at news reports and photos on the internet, not all wild dogs are ginger, but that colour does seem much more common than it is in domestic dogs. Why? Wolves and coyotes are commonly grey. Is there a selective advantage to the ginger colour in the Australian environment? Any ideas? For those people who are interested, this website maps reports of wild dog sightings and damage. One of the dingos I saw was very close to a reported sighting of 10 wild dogs.

I agree with the previous posters. Don’t take your dog to a dog park. Doing so gives him a chance to ‘rehearse’ anti-social behaviours before you’ve had time to instil the behaviours you want. It’s also dangerous; he could be badly injured in an instant if a large dog took exception to his behaviour, or started a fight even without provocation. I’m not sure whether anybody has warned you about the dangers of heat and exercise for brachycephalic breeds. Here is a link. It advises caution in temperatures above 80 degrees Fahrenheit (26 degrees Celsius). Talk to the chief instructor of the dog training club about his behaviour and your concerns. You may be wiser to spend a month or two training him at home before taking him into a class with other dogs. Also, In February it may still be too hot for you to train him safely outside. I have seen dogs improve rapidly after learning the Look At That game. Practice the clicker first by teaching him some tricks before you introduce the Look At That game.

Foxes can do a lot of damage very quietly. My parents’ chook shed had a wire-meshed window, and the hens roosted on the sill of this window, over 4 foot above the ground. One night a hen jumped onto the outside of the sill, ran along it, grabbed the hens through the mesh, and killed them. The fox must have acted with quiet efficiency to kill each hen without alarming the next one (and also without waking our German shepherds). I think a dog would have created much more chaos, which would have alerted the hens and given them a chance to escape. Despite that, I do think foxes are beautiful animals and it always feels like a special experience when I see one.

That’s awful, not only because of the consequences for the puppy, but also because of the mother dog’s experience of being separated from her puppy and then transported in a cargo hold - possibly when she had engorged mammary glands. I believe that large aeroplanes have pressurised cargo holds, but she still would have been miserable.

It sounded like a scam to me. Edited to add: on re-reading, I see that the OP says she’s collecting the dog from a relative, so maybe not.

I have heard a rumour that the group stays may be dropped in the next rule revision, which seems to be the trend internationally. In a way it’s a shame. Taught well, the group stays are a useful part of a dog’s education, but a few people ruin it for everybody.

I used to wonder why people had difficulty training for the group stays in obedience. My dogs loved the stays; the stays were an opportunity for them to relax and watch the world go by. Then I had a dog who was anxious in the stays... and another one... and another one. i’ve finally realised what has changed. I grew up in a dog training household, which meant my dogs learnt the stays alongside older, more experienced, more confident members of the pack. The older dogs were relaxed, so they learnt to relax. Now, I train by myself, or occasionally in mixed classes of inexperienced, restless dogs that my dog doesn’t know. This ramps up my dog’s anxiety. Now that I know what the problem is, I can fix it. I just need to be patient. Maturity will help, too. My current dog is still very young. I believe that some overseas training groups hold stay classes, where dogs work at their level of confidence, alongside other dogs at the same level. I would to see our local clubs do this. The best heeling dog in the Novice competition class may not have the confidence for relaxed distance stays, but the sluggish heeler in first class may have the confidence for out of sight stays, and the maturity to imbue other dogs with the same confidence. I’d also like to appeal to would-be triallers. If your dog is breaking its stays, don’t put it into the group stays at an obedience trial, in the hope that you might “fluke a pass”. This is unfair to your dog, because you can’t offer the reassurance that your dog needs. It’s also unfair to the other dogs in the class, who are likely to pick up on your dog’s anxiety and become anxious as well.

If you love dog cat agility, then this is definitely worth watching.

Researchers in Scotland have saved a dog’s broken leg using a new technique to grow bone in the laboratory . Watch the video of the happily playing dog. Delightful!

Make sure she doesn’t have grass seeds between the toes. Some dogs have deep indentations between their toes, covered by the webbing, where grass seeds can work in. The discomfort will often make a dog lick her toes, creating something like a hotspot. Barley grass, in particular, can be nasty. I’ve known it to work in between the toes and right up to the dog’s pastern, causing an abscess there.

In my experience, couch is killed by frost, drought and heat, whereas kikuyu browns off more quickly but recovers more easily. Both are a nuisance in garden beds. Years ago, I had buffalo turf laid and was very happy with it; it seemed to be more drought resistant, although that may have been because it was laid on a good bed of soil, whereas the preexisting couch/kikuyu mix was growing directly on the clay subsoil. My dogs hated the buffalo, and avoided walking on it, preferring to play on the paved areas, and walking along the concrete fence footings to reach their toilet area at the back of the lawn. No canine foot traffic meant less damage to the turf. (In retrospect, I wonder if the lawn would have been a kinder playground for their joints, although neither dog was much affected by arthritis in old age.) Edited to add: I’ve just realised that this is an old thread, which has been revived by the previous poster.

That’s a good point. I’ve edited my post to make this clearer. I’ve also heard that the tattoo sometimes fades.

This webpage tells how the ear tattoo, if present, can be used to re-unite lost GSDs with their owners, but it might be possible to use this process to identify the dog. Many years ago, a friend of mine made contact with her rescue GSD’s breeder via the ear tattoo.

The proposed NSW legislation applies to all breeders - there is no threshold number of dogs. So much is wrong with the proposal that it’s hard to know where to start; I’ll highlight some animal welfare issues because the welfare of the dogs matters most. Under the proposed legislation, it would be permissible to keep a medium-sized dog - e.g. a border collie - in a 2m x 1.2m cage, without visual contact with dogs or people, for over twenty-three and a half hours per day. The lack of visual contact is almost mandated by the requirement for solid barriers between cages. Conversely, it would not be permissible for a breeder to crate a pup in the bedroom while they sleep, and it would not be permissible for a staff-member to allow a dog to explore her office while she works. The standards for supervision of a bitch and new puppies - 6-hourly monitoring until feeding and maternal acceptance are established - are totally inadequate. An entire litter could die within six hours, so responsible breeders monitor puppies almost round-the-clock for the first few days. The requirement for documented procedures to “capture” dogs is mind-boggling. What sort of socialisation standards does that imply? Only five minutes of direct handling per day is required, and handling is described elsewhere as “manipulation of the ears, feet, muzzle etc”. There is no mention of patting, stroking, caressing, praising or rewarding the dog. The enrichment suggestions are bizarre. Playing is mentioned as a one-word option, in the same sentence as indirect social interaction during cage cleaning. Thermal stimulation - placing a puppy or kitten on a cooled towel - gets a thirty-word description. Radio, TV and “novelty inanimate objects” are other enrichment suggestions. The illustrations for inanimate objects in the socialisation and enrichment chart shows a vacuum cleaner and mop. No toys!