Yonjuro

If you are looking for a treat ball the bob-a-lot is excellent, there is an opening in the main food compartment with an adjustable opening and same with the dispensing part so you can make it easy or hard for your treats to come out. My Husky hammers it and it shows no sign of breaking. I also really like the Tuffy Toys animal range they are super tough - no damage from harsh play by my Husky yet.

I use one of those sports drink bottles to squirt it right on the skin of my double coated husky.

I made a brew with Steve's tea today, when I opened the pouch I was immediately surprised that the aroma was much stronger and fresher than the Hilde Hemmes stuff that I bought from the health food shop! It tasted fresher as well. I have only applied to some of my own abrasions and yet to try out on my dog, but based on what I can tell it is a far superior tea than the Hemmes one. It's only around a dollar more expensive for Steve's but that is bugger all as 50g will last a very long time and it's organic which is a bonus... mind you I bought 150g so I can give to a couple of people that I know that have dogs with itchy or flakey skin. I gave the shampoo samples to my mum to try first, as she needs to bathe her mini schnauzer more often than I would my husky. THere will be enough for a couple of goes, so I will get half back from her to try with my puppy and will report back with the results from both of us.

Frozen chicken necks take longer to consume, the puppy chews them and the cold soothes the gums. I've been doing this with my puppy for the last 7 weeks with his brekky, he goes nuts for them and is quite disappointed if I run out and has thawed mince instead :laugh:

All my treats are about the size of a dried pea...if that gives you any idea. If it is large enough to break it up, then I will break it up :D You can always give multiple small treats for a job well done...This is sometimes called "silver service" & may be for something like a brilliant recall or something even less if your puppy is just learning a new behavior. This is exactly what I have been instructed.

I used boiled chicken for my boy at puppy school that ended last weekend. Yeah it does shred, but he wouldn't take any of the other treats people had and it was okay. However, I wish I had heard that tip that Tassie just said about the chicken sandwich loaf cut thick and diced! Brilliant idea. I will do that for the next sessions I undertake. Thanks Tassie!!!

ditto, my stuff arrived yesterday - another happy customer!

I use tiny pieces of boiled chicken, Ronin loves it and wont touch the sausage or other treats the various trainers have in their pouches

... it is not as hard to find a good dog that will suit you and your family as it may seem. You have done the right thing coming here and asking these questions and I think the $100 you will probably lose has been more than made up in what you will have learnt since posting your initial question. Have a look in the Breeds 101 section of the forum and there will be first hand experience from Lab and GT owners and breeders. If you wish have a look at other breeds that you may not have considered. This should give you enough info to make an informed decision. Then have a look in the breeders section at the front of this site. THere may not be a puppy immediately available and you may need to go on a waiting list. There is a breeders only section of the forum where you will see announcements of litters and when they are due. A few hours reading will be a great investment for your family. I waited around 8 months for my puppy - it was a hard wait but well worth it. Good on you for asking questions and you are already ahead of many that just cough up the money, take the puppy in complete trust only to end up with a heartbreaking and very expensive disaster.

I would be willing to bet that the breeder's vet did not say sending on at 4 weeks is okay. Dealing with bite inhibition of an 8 week old raised carefully from an excellent breeder is still quite a handful. Can't imagine what it will be like with a 4 week old from a breeder with very little care or experience

LOL, I feel your pain... Ronin has just discovered this as well! So nice and comfy up on the bed for him but we don't want it - erm well, she-who-must-be obeyed, certainly doesn't want him up there. :D We have conceded the couch though... as if we ever had a say in it :laugh:

Excellent news - sounds like the worst is behind you.

I wonder if a thundershirt would help?

Ronin is around 14weeks old and this morning he snapped a bird out of the sky!!! It was in the backyard. He mangled it pretty bad as he ran around the backyard in glee with his prize. I managed to get it off him before it could get consumed. I know huskies have a high prey drive but I didn't think to see it at such a young age. I am sad for the bird but am amazed at his strength and agility. The bird was some type of Wattlebird.

Excellent news!

... hmmm, what a shame. at least you tried and should be congratulated for your efforts.

here is a long but quite interesting article Divided we fall http://caveat.typepad.com/blog/2014/02/divided-we-fall.html We had purebred dogs in my childhood but so did most people. As an adult, I adopted mixed breed dogs from the shelter and now I have purebred dogs again. Some dogs were great, some could be a drag - quite literally - but I loved them all as much for their quirks as anything else. I should mention that I was raised to reject any kind of snobbery, and it stuck. Today, due to social media and other enhanced forms of mass communication there is a lot of misinformation that is either being deliberately spread or is just a result of a high-speed crazy game of pass the word. The rescues slam the breeders, the shelters and pounds slam the innovators and the social workers, the kennel club breeders huddle together and talk to each other. The puppy farmers make a killing while the USDA and Ag Canada do nothing to stop them, likely because the pet industry is b-i-g business and they don't want to piss off Hunte, or whomever. I presume that's why it's legal to raise dogs in outdoor chicken coops in Iowa, for example, regardless of weather, or to have 200 dogs in a barn in Grey-Bruce county. The breed snobs play My Dog's Better Than Your Dog in their heads while the noose tightens and the money runs out because due to decades of propaganda, nobody wants what they are selling these days. The irony is something they never grasp: dogs are the least snobbish beings on this planet. The raw feeders sneer at the kibble feeders, the cooked people scoff at the raw people and so on and so forth and everybody forgets that dogs will eat garbage (and worse) quite happily. I'm a fan of good nutrition and have read a fair amount about it, so I get it, but it's becoming pretty nuts out there. Foodies. Yikes. Everybody looks down on somebody. The purpose-bred owners sneer at the pet fanciers who backstab each other relentelessly and of course nobody likes the flat-faced dog people but me. The doodle-dogs are almost universally despised except for the people who believe all the hype about 'hybrid vigour' and 'hypoallergenicity' and 'non-shedding'. The 'pit people' keep acting as if they are under siege, even though everybody is telling them that war is over if they want it so they can come out now and play with the rest of us. The crackpots who promote discrimination based on the shape of a pet are such a tiny number (let's face it, most of us can name them all quite easily) that they really don't warrant any attention, but the 'BSL fighters' keep advertising them. It's like a symbiotic relationship of some kind, a bizarro yin-yang setup that I just can't fathom. The people who own Heinz 57s want to play in the kennel club sporting rings with the purebred people but those folk think the barbarians are at the gates so they resist, becoming more exclusionary and isolated from the mainstream. If they were smart - I mean really smart - they'd invite everybody to play in the sandbox because that is the only way to win them over. What's wrong with different types of owners getting to know each other? What's wrong with people wanting to get out and have fun with their dogs? What's wrong with mixed breed owners actually getting to know purebred breeders and owners, and vice versa? Knowledge is power, isn't it? And as long as everybody is running on propaganda and hatred - you can just call it bullpucky if you like - the people with the nasty agenda are gaining ground faster than you can say mandatory neutering, breed ban or warrantless entry. Or, for that matter, class warfare. Why can't we all just stop buying what they are selling? Everybody is exploiting dogs (for good and bad). Everybody is in the same business, you know. Rescues, shelters, pounds, dog fancy and working breeders sell dogs - they don't 'adopt' them out. Purebred breeders actually invented private rescue, decades ago. People who import pariahs sell dogs and so, of course, do puppy farmers. I don't see anything wrong with being paid for work and breeding or rescuing dogs is most definitely expensive work. That's not the point. The point is, everybody is doing the same thing so why not break down walls instead of reinforcing them at the behest of those who do not have your interests at heart? Politicians use dog owners as whipping boys when their failings are obvious to even the most dim-witted constituents. Dishonest people use dogs to beg for money on social media sites and elsewhere. I wondered for awhile if the big animal liberation groups might be running their own puppy farms to assist with revenue generation. It's easy enough to do, according to them. That way, they'd have an endless series of poster pups and undercover filming opportunities readily available. I think it was just a flight of fancy on my part, though, likely after an especially hard year. Wasn't it? You know who doesn't sell dogs? Kijiji, Craigslist, Petfinder or your local newspaper or magazine. They are just tools to get the word out. It seems so obvious, doesn't it? Did you know that CKC members are strongly discouraged from advertising anywhere except in the Annual or on the CKC website? No? Well, it's true. Did you know that selling an unregistered, unmarked dog as purebred violates federal law? That's true, too. And while CEOs at shelter headquarters cry poor while receiving tens of millions of public and private dollars, they push a scheme with pet limits, restrictions on hobby breeders (and more) using a fifteen-year old poster of puppy farm inmates which shocks people who aren't hardened to that type of 'visual aid'. It works very well. They always forget to mention that hoarding is a psychiatric disorder and breeding or keeping dogs under squalid conditions is probably one, too, so a bylaw will have little effect. Meanwhile a private charity, which is unaccountable, is enforcing the law for monetary gain, but nobody seems to care about that because it's all about the puppies, isn't it? Isn't it? I like to imagine how nice it could be if everybody got together and shared ideas on ways to improve the health and longevity of dogs, on strategies to help each other to keep dogs out of the pounds and shelters in the first place instead of swapping slogans and looking for scapegoats and being so nasty most of the time. Too much emotion, too little reason makes for a bad mixture. Imagine the reaction among the bad guys of all stripes if everybody who truly cares about dogs started working together, or at least stopped being so damned judgemental about people they've never met and know nothing about. Let's defeat sleazy politicians, groups who don't want us to share our lives with dogs, and cruel people who only see the dollar value of these marvellous friends of ours. Maybe people should start behaving more like their charges, who have an uncanny ability to see both the forest and the trees. They do have better senses than we have (and, I'd argue, more sense) and don't give a damn about trappings; that's not what they judge at all. They judge intent. Intent is everything to them, as it should be to us. But you have to be able to look past all bloody distractions, and there are a lot of them these days. Disinformation. Misinformation. Us and Them. That also works every time. There are enough homes for dogs. There is room for everybody who has a heart to participate in dogdom. Your dog may be better than mine, although I doubt it, but if he is, it won't be because he's a member of a rare family or is FCI rather than CKC or isn't a Peke, Pug or Bulldog. It will most likely be just because he is yours.

That really sounds positive. Wishing you all the very best.

I went for Petplan's standard plan $49 per month for a Siberian Husky. Budget plan was $45 Does anyone know if they pay anything towards the puppy's 3 vaccination? and If your breeder is registered with them you can get 6 weeks free cover, if not and they fit their registered breeder requirements, they can fill out a form and you can get the free cover, this needs to be done by the breeder and is pretty simple. This must be done prior to you picking up the pup. Failing this you can get 4 weeks free cover if you go through your Vet. I am not sure if they need to be registered with PetPlan - best to check.

...as I said in my previous post, I know nothing about it and my suggestion was simply an example of how to broach the subject... having said that have now looked it up and it does seem that surgery is required in most instances. Some info says it is not painful and more cosmetic others say it can lead to more serious conditions. What a shame as it does make the situation more challenging.

Good luck with it. I think some people can come across as know-it-alls at the park and talk down to people, but I don't think you are doing or intend doing that, as you seem to care about this situation. I really know nothing about Cherry eye, but let's say that it is definitely a vet only treatment then you could say something like..." yeah my friend's dog had it and they tried saline baths (or insert some home remedy) and it didn't really clear it up, ended up having to go the vet for some drops and it was gone in a few days"

Probably a silly question but Is green tripe considered muscle meat or organ? Is there an animal that is preferred , beef, lamb?

I suppose you could say, hey a friend's dog had cherry eye and found xyz really good... have you tried it?

So exciting getting a new puppy. Have a look at Kuranda dog beds, they are expensive but should outlast most any beds. I bought one recently for my Husky, and my boy can really chew, he just cant get at any bits to destroy. Worth the investment in my opinion and buy for an adult of your breed. For outside I have a cheaper version to the Kuranda that I have had from my last dog and just replaced the hessian cover. I just have that under by outside table and my boy loves it there. Its probably worth investing in a crate. I got mine from Vebo with a ready cut vet bed. I am very happy with the quality and price. Both Vebo and Kuranda are sponsors here.

Hi Steve. I'd be very interested. I have to be reasonably cautious about what I use/feed as he has proven to be very sensitive to protein. What I initially thought were gum ulcers have been diagnosed (via Melbourne Zoo Dental specialist) to be the gum's reaction to protein. I did try that stuff that a number of us bought in ….. what was the name of it? Ummm, something to do with seaweed or something or other. I didn't see any great difference from its use and I admit that I wasn't comfortable with it working on the basis of altering the acidity of the dog's natural saliva. Especially not for Mandela, who is so super sensitive to so much, and especially back then when I really was having so much trouble with his digestive system. I've used a scaler, but I don't seem to get very far. It doesn't 'crack' off and I can spend an absolute age, with the teeth not looking all that much better/whiter. My boy is really very good - he's well used to being poked and probed by me :D . I admit that I should be paying his teeth more attention more frequently, but it does seem to be a constant thing that doesn't achieve much, in my instance. He won't chew on bones anymore, or if he does, it is very rarely and not for long. I'm only thinking that the reason for this is that perhaps his gums are tender due to the sensitivity reaction to protein. was it wakame?