Mana

There is also a veterinary disinfectant called F10 - you can't buy it off the shelf but your vet should be able to order some in for you - mine was willing to but I haven't yet gone through with it so can't give you a price - karlie would know if you want to pm her. I think F10's quite expensive but it can be diluted and so goes quite a long way. It is also safe to spray onto furniture and clothes etc - or at least my clothes didn't show any ill effects. Smells ok too - not a horrible caustic smell. I think it and bleach are the only things that can be relied on to kill parvo - not normal disinfectants - though you sound like you know that already. I'd be burning everything you can - especially bedding, soaking what you can in bleach or F10, and spraying F10 over everything else. Sending good luck vibes. It's a horrible disease.

Thanks ellz for mentioning this - I hadn't checked when I bought mine. Just to save people a separate trip to the health food shop - Mountain Maid 100% Natural Apple Cider Vinegar is free from artificial colours, flavours or preservatives. And Aus made and owned. I bought this bottle in Coles, I think I've bought it from Woolies too - and from memory it was the cheapest brand on the shelf.

Revolution (with InspectorRex's cautions - it has selamectin - is that the same ingredient you were talking about?) also treats all stages of flea development, Heartworm, ear mites, and sarcoptic mites (this is a form of mange isn't it?). I've given my pups their first dose of this, on the recommendation of the vet nurse at my vet (who I'm afraid I'm growing more sceptical of)... Is there anything to consider when dosing pups? These guys have had a rough trot thus far but seem to be in good shape now. Also - my vet told me that tapeworm drugs are effective for hydatids - I thought there wasn't an preventative for hydatids - so worth keeping in mind. ETA - our old heartworm bloke gets only Heartguard, on vet's instructions. Why is this the only one you can treat dogs that have light positive heartworm results with?

How do you work out which to go with then? I've got Billinghurst's books and Lonsdale's, Billinghurst doesn't write in a way that I find particularly confidence-inspiring, yet it comes across as common sensical and the guts of what he's saying seems logical to me. Lonsdale comes across as having more "scientific" foundations, but then it all gets a bit "conspiracy theory" at the end... I look at the websites that get referred to here, and each one will have passionate testimonials about deadly dog diet - whether it be BARF / cooked home made / commercial - take your pick - there's equally strident advocates of all diets... I'm moving onto BARF because it strikes me as being logical and I've taken on board, to some degree, the ideas relating to veterinary funding and corporate profit that I think compromise, to some degree, the information and research done by the processed dog food companies. When I'm told by dog food reps in pet barn, or vet nurses at my (holistic!) vets', that I'm risking my dogs lives by feeding them raw, it annoys me, but it also scares me. The dogs who I'm feeding raw now look great, and are recovering really well from their various complaints. I have a gut feeling I'm doing the right thing, but I don't have any means of comparing their condition now to how they'd be if they were eating supercoat everyday, as our previous dog did. She had bad skin and died at 6 yrs from osteosarcoma - she was on supercoat and a pharmacuetical oil thing specifically for her skin but I have no way of knowing if I could have helped her then by feeding her a different diet...

Yep, and it's not a much nicer scenario than the infestation itself. If a dog has a heartworm infestation, and you hit it with one of the standard treatments, you create a mass of dead adult worms in the dog's heart. These can clog the heart and I think also can create big problems when they reach the lungs - I think (I'd have to check) either through infection or blockage of the little air-exchange passages (scillia? is that the word?). So if a dog has heartworm and you treat him / her, you need to kill the worms gradually enough so that they can be absorbed / expelled by the body. And no exercise at all, cause if the heart starts pumping hard, and there are masses of dead worms able to be shunted into the circulatory system... nasty.

I don't know whether this is widely considered an issue, but my vet doesn't like the annual injections simply because it's a fair whack of toxic stuff to give the dog at one time. And as has been said already - in Sydney you need to do heartworm prevention. Our foster lab was picked up as a stray in Fairfield (I think) and had early stage heartworm. Luckily it was a light enough infestation such that putting him on Heartguard could kill them off gradually without clogging his heart with dead worms. Along with hydatids I think it's probably the most important worm to keep in mind. ETA: this is why it's important (image from here)

Funny, I usually seem to get "back end" duties too. Whether it's squeezing, examining, washing or anything really... And when I was honorary sharer of a dog in a house I was living in I got the back end too. Not that there was anything wrong with the back end but it would have been nice to claim ownership of her frontquarters occasionally...

del. oops computer did weird double posting thing.

I was wondering about this before when Tramissa mentioned it - how on earth do you give a dog an enema with a home enema kit? Mine will barely stay still long enough to have their anal glands squeezed (yuuuuuuurrrrrkkk) without slooshing water up their bums...?

I would have thought that too many bones would make him constipated rather than runny? Did he throw up bits of bone?

I think sometimes it comes down to individual pups too - Gracie and Ruby are littermates, 16 wks, both had parvo and are fully recovered, but Gracie goes super slop if she has anything processed / commercial - even the Advance Large Breed Puppy or Hills Prescription Diet Canine i/d - whereas Ruby can digest most things. It's lead to a rather quicker switch to BARF feeding than I had planned!

I had forgotten that I had read this thread. ;) I have just come in from picking up olivey green yogurt poos, cleaned it off the pups' feet, and have been worrying about why Gracie had diarreah again... I've reread this thread and remembered I cut in half the last greenie that was in the cupboard and sent them to bed with it... I have the attention span of a gnat, I swear.

Yep I'm seriously interested too. Do we bring dogs? I have 4 that I'm semi-responsible for at the moment...

Yup - in the meat section at our Woolies they have a section of sort of "gummy-insides-sort-of-meat" section and have human-grade kidneys, livers, tripe (eeeuuuuggghhh) etc - it's right next to the prepacked turkey necks if Woolies goes by a standard floorplan! Unfortunately after the liver-treats-fiasco I'm having a little trouble facing the offal section, but we'll work our way back there! Keep in mind though, if you're defrosting all your dog meat into one container, the offal seems to go suss earlier than the wings & necks etc. And going by the smell of the meat I've bought frozen from PetBarn over the last few weeks, I don't think that stuff is of any sort of quality... the mince I bought there lasted in the fridge for waaaaay too long also. Congratulations on your new freezer LP! It's a great feeling innit? Unfortunately the light that is the most important one on my freezer, (according to the instruction book dating from who knows when which says "many women have discovered the joys of freezer living") has just gone out... so I may be in the market for whitegoods again soon! (oh, and I know everyone's desperate to hear this, but, I had the most innocuous, dry and unsmelly load of poo to pick up tonight from all canine household-members!)

Whoohooo... now you're talking! If you send it to me I could sharpen the image in photoshop and increase the colour saturation before we posted it... But back to the digestion issue - I am in the process of switching over to BARF, once I'm confident I know what I'm doing... I am feeding two pups, a 5 yo rescue lab who's teeth are ground down to the pulp, and a healthy, well toothed 3 yo lab. The pups and the 5 yo are passing fairly sizeable chunks of bone in their droppings, whereas the healthy toothed 3 yo just has the crumbly bone droppings. Does this mean the other three aren't up to the bones they're getting? I noticed the lamb shanks they had today (which were from petbarn and frozen but smelled AWFUL) broke into quite large splinters which worried me a bit - and the pups tend to swallow their chicken necks almost whole. Should I just leave it to their judgment as to what size goes down the hatch? Our (almost) toothless lab is inclined to gulp down whatever's left after he's mashed at it with his molars for a while... even if it's still 15 cm long! ETA - KitKat - I'm a slow writer & you posted before me! That makes sense, thanks.

If it's any consolation, I'm sure BARF farts are not as bad as "I-just-polished-off-a-bulk-bag-of-liver-treats-aren't-I-a-clever-dog-but-now-I-feel-really-sick" farts. Believe you me. I look forward to an update on Holly's intestinal progress (or not!).

Ummmm... the carrots came out the other end in exactly the same form they went in the front end... So presumably the dogs didn't get any benefit from them other than a bit of a scour on the way through? LittlePixie - not that I'm asking you to trawl through dog poo... but I think you said Holly chomped her carrot whole too... did she digest it? Would seasoned BARFers suggest carrots etc are never much use unless processed - (I think Lonsdale and Billinghurst say that don't they?) - or once my pups have more grown up intestines they might be able to break down veges a bit more?

That was very successful! We've always given them whizzed up veges, but I never thought they'd chomp through a carrot - our previous dog once licked all the yogurt off the bits of cucumber when we gave her some left over tzatziki! I couldn't resist putting one photo up here - I'll save the others for the photos forum when I've resized them all. They go well with my photos of the pups attacking chicky frames!

Really? I'm going to go upstairs right now and offer carrot sticks all round as a midmorning treat. Everyone keeps saying how much the dogs love them but I can't quite picture them chomping on a carrot... Will report back...

Hey LilPix - I made the plunge a few weeks ago on a freezer (have yet to fully go raw... kibble is my crutch for now) (no, not crotch, but crutch) - But was able to get a huge chest freezer that is super duper (I think it is 400 and something litres?) on ebay and cause I checked who was selling them locally I was able to cram it in the back of my tiny Laser - it was hanging out but for a short distance was fine. There were at least 8 going off for auction just in the week I was looking, and some looked very new - mine is older but in very good nick. I had to pay $205 which was more than I wanted to (someone else was bidding against me), but it being a couple of streets away certainly made it worthwhile as I didn't have to pay to move it. Sorry for the semi-hijack but my freezer purchase has been a big event for me!

Many thanks Caslero - and sorry PF - I was too lazy to check back who it was - I just went off someone else's thankyou! M.

PoodleFan - the yahoo group is limited to breeders, isn't it? If so, do you (or anyone else) know of a good one open to dog-owners?

Ah - Thankyou Troy! Interesting. Not at all feasible for rescue orgs, but I can imagine it would be very useful for breeders if it had no long term side effects. M.

... And it gets rid of the risk of testicular cancer if you whip em out. Also, if they are subsequently removed entirely when the dog is adult, they leave a pretty funny looking sac! Our foster lab has just had the chop at 5 and a half years old, and he's got this wrinkly thing like a squashed tennis ball between his thighs! (The stitches don't really help on the aesthetics front though!). And no - they don't take away his penis! he needs that for his piddling-work even if there's no pup-making-work for him to do! ETA - I also saw an add for a contraceptive implant in the latest issue of Dog's Life. Does this work in males as well as females? Not that I'd ever want to used this instead, but would it have the same behavioural effects as desexing?

I had a poke around - & came up with these - you have to trawl through a bit but I'm pretty sure this is what I was reading before. There are some other threads about puppy diets etc too - where I noticed people advised to hold off eggs till the pups were a bit older... I just discovered you can search for individual posts rather than whole threads - that's how I found these - they came up with "shell"... Hope I've done the links right.... Eggs Barf diet including a few shell refs Big Barf thread with some eggy comments