sandgrubber

I can't see anything funny. Were we watching the same video clip? It's awful that a pair of dogs are allowed to roam after they have attacked and been declared dangerous.

The first link seems to be wrong. It just gives me an error message.

btw, it's cheaper per dog when you do more than one. I'm shipping 3 adult Labbies and a 6 mo old pup from Perth to SFO. Jetpets quoted me something a bit under $7k. Not cheap . . . but not that bad either (shipping a Lab from Perth to Sydney will run over $800). So if you can join up with someone else travelling with a dog, you may be able to cut the price down a bit.

I'm planning a return to the US (I'm from the USA, migrant to Oz, returning to the USA). I'll be moving four dogs from Perth to San Fran. The US side poses few problems. They care that you're not bringing rabies into the country and the burocracy is smart enough to realize that there's no rabies in Oz. The various transport arrangements may pose minor problems for documenting rabies vaccination, AQIS registered vets, etc. Basic red tape where it's easier to pay out than fight. I find JetPets wants to give a rabies vac at $110. A local AQIS cert vet will do the rabies vac for$70. Technically, if you put the dog in confinement when you hit the US, you can have it vaccinated on arrival and keep it in confinement for 30 days. Rabies vac is cheap in the US. Bottom line ... take care of the Oz side of thing. Don't worry too much about the US.

I agree. But I expect most species are odd if you really know the species .

Yup. It's a cruel old world out there for dogs that happen to end out having been born to unfortunate circumstances . . . or bought by bad owners. And there are all sorts of dilemmas faced by those trying to make a bad situation better. Personally -- I think mandatory desexing is good where responsible breeders have a way out. But I don't think we need bandwagons. Just people taking effective action on their love for dogs. Rescue what you can. Bottom line . . . if there are more pups born than good owners looking for pups . . . some pups will end out in not-so-good homes.

I don't think anyone should rush to attack/defend in this case. But all should shed a tear. Seems like a relatively defenseless dog died, a kid that loved the dog had to watch. WHO CARES if it was 30 minutes or an hour and a half. I'm sure it was eternity for the poor kid. I don't think blame is going to get us far. Likely that the council has put an impossible job on the ranger and the ranger is not doing the hard parts . . . and will probably quit soon to take on a job with higher pay and less difficult responsibilities. We have a system that doesn't work in many Australian councils. If we don't fix the system, we're chasing our tails.

sexist. Why give the mother full responsibilty. Presumably the unfortunate eunich kid has a father. I'm an old lady, sick of a world that looks for one person to blame for complex system failures where many people shirked responsibility. What we need is more people taking responsibility . . . to make sure that when the first line of defense f*#&'s up, someone else is there to carry the bag. . . not a lot of people pointing fingers at someone else.

I run a boarding kennel. I will never allow DIY vaccinations. Whatever the requirements are, safety demands that the person administering vaccinations has official validation, reinforced by some sorts of police powers. At present, that means I want to see a vet's signature on the vaccination card. I couldn't care less if the vet nurse does the jab. It must be overseen and signed off on by a vet.

I work with one vet who loves sentinel and one vet who hates it. Apparently, the negative is that monthly treatment for worms may contribute to the evolution of intestinal parasites with resistence to vermicides. I have found cheaper ways to deal with various parasites . . . but I have several dogs, so costs mount up. Convenience makes Sentinel a good deal.

physics would say immersion in hot water is a good approach . .. the hot water has huge amount of heat/energy to exchange. The exchange will happen from the surface touched by the water and work inward, so generally heat the flesh more than the bone. The only snag if if what your dog really likes is warm marrow. In this case, a microwave may do the job more efficiently. I find that a 10 or 20 seconds in a microwave will often make the marrow soft and drippy without great effect on the bone itself. Great idea, Staranais . I have done this in the past to speed up thawing process when I've forgotten to remove food from the freezer (this was back when he would eat the meat raw). Never thought to do the same to warm up a bone. Cheers for that .

A few things to consider from the physics perspective: - your dog and most raw food are > 80% water and the physical properties of water (exceptional high capacity to absorb and store heat) mean its influence will dominate the heat balance. Giving a few hundred grams of warm, raw food will have less effect on the dog (via the temperature effect) than drinking a cup of hot coffee does for you. Who knows, it may have the nice warming feeling that we get from hot food. Hard to say what sensations dogs feel. - heating to, say 40 or 45 C, is unlikely to make bones splintery unless the way the heating is done means that the bony bits get hotter than the meat. Beyond me to work this out from first principles. If in doubt, try a test. Heat it and then smash a bit with a hammer. If you get long sharp shards, it's not safe. (In my family, we consider the knobby ends of chicken bones not-splintery, and allow our dogs to chomp them off the longer shanks when we eat cooked chook. Never had a problem. The problem is splinters, not cooking. The splinteryness and sharpness of bone fragments is VERY complicated. When in doubt, experiment.)

We've all got our wish lists . .. many of them hinge on the Council doing a better job of enforcing laws written at the State level. My point is that dogs are usually LOW on the Council's list of priorities (although dog pooh sometimes gets a mention). Improved enforcement of existing laws is going to mean a lot of effort on councils' parts, and put their staff into lots of conflict situations. If people want councils to start enforcing dog laws, they are going to have to start making a lot of noise in local newspapers, show up at council meetings, and generally become active at the local level. Winging about council not enforcing laws on a pedigree dog site won't make a scrap of difference.

About 20% of the dogs who come to my boarding kennel are Labbies. I have never had a Lab in kennels who is recovering from cruciate surgery. I've had lots of other breeds in with 'cruciate under repair' notes. No denying that cruciate problems are possible. Labs are very very common, and you can find every disease known to dog found in Labs. But I don't think cruciate is one of the breed's weak spots. Despite the fact that a lot of labs pack on extra kilos. I have had diabetic Labs . . . in my experience, that's a bigger worry, given chronic obesity, than cruciate damage. Recovery time from surgery is also affected by weight.

Hard yards for breeders. Most pups are healthy. Most puppy buyers are great. But sometimes you end up with a pup that develops health problems and an owner that seems to want to inflate the costs. I'd say, try to figure out what the real costs are. Document as well as possible. Cover the real costs of treating a hereditary condition. Go no further. Get things in writing because this is a good way to get unrealistic demands rescinded . . . and because if it ever comes to a court contest, written evidence may be important. Be fair yourself, but take pains to document what you consider fair, and why.

Labs are usually good eaters, and it's much harder to get weigh off than it is to put it on (sadly, I can empathise). Better to start out underfeeding, and add, than to start out overfeeding, and end out having to diet. If you have access to a good scale, I'd suggest monitoring weight, and adjusting the food to end out with a healthy, stable weight.

Thanks everybody. I've heard some bad stories about shipping a bitch in pup. It stands confirmed, without a really strong case for doing a mating on this season, better to wait. There are lots of great dogs in the US. I have no doubt I can find a great stud dog. Australia hasn't established much of a reputation either way, and for Labbies, importing a dog is still viewed as an good way to improve the breed. No point to staying with the 'devil that I know.' Guess I'll have to do the hard yards researching the devils that I don't know.

What's the worry? Why not live with it?

'Germs' tend to increase in numbers rapidly when food is warm. But a healthy dog is able to deal with 'nasties' in its food very effectively. You can feed Salmonella-infected food that would make people very sick to a healthy adult dog and see no ill effects. As for the physiology of digestion . . . the closer to body temperature the better . .. less metabolic requirement. But really, this factor is nothing unless the dog in question is very fat or very skinny.

As I understand it, the heartworm parasite's lifecycle is pretty easy to disrupt. Doesn't need a lot of meds. To do your thing for the dog community, it's good to medicate your dogs, even if heartworm isn't currently a problem in your area. Heartworm is carried by mozzies, so if you live in an area with a lot of mozzies you have a potential heartworm problem. The drug companies want you to use lots. My vet tells me that every other month is often enough. And if it gets cold enough to wipe out the mozzies, you don't have to worry about those months.

I've been told 4 mo by vets I respect. Also been told that the monthly treatments can be given bi-monthly. You'll find lots of chatter saying that the annual vaccination may be dangerous. But it's also expensive. Daily is cheap, but a pain. Personally, I go with monthly, skip winter when we have no mozzies, and don't worry if it ends up every two months rather than every month. My mob think Heart Guard is a treat, so there's no problem administering it. Heart worm is a horrid parasite, but its lifecycle is pretty easy to disrupt. If I understand correctly, for it to go to the heart, your dog has to be infected by both a male and a female worm, they have to mate, and their larvae need to migrate to the organs. Available toxins seem to be effective in keeping this from happening.

With my guys, whatever is in front of them is their favorite food. They are unqualified gutsers.

Not from there . .. so I know nothing. But Markets in general are a wonderful place for socialising a dog. Take your older puppy -- given it's already pretty cool with people and leads, to a market several times, and you'll end out with a bomb-proof dog.

I keep hearing responses to dog management problems that say: "If only the laws that are already on the books were enforced." 99 of 100 times this means, if only the local council did its job correctly. My experience with councils in Australia hasn't been impressive. They seem to pay too little, have high staff turnover, and the people they recruit often aren't the sharpest tool (I taught at Uni for many years, and our marginal students often looked at council employment . . . the really good students NEVER did). And sadly, the old ranger, who many of us got to know and appreciate for his/her skill in navigating the bureaucracy for the good of dogs, is often retiring out of frustration or exhaustion. If the council's attention is heavily focussed on questions with multi-million dollar price tags, like land release, and by-in-large the power players are low-scorers in their knowledge about dogs, I think it's unrealistic to expect councils to get serious about enforcement of dog registration laws etc. If we want real solutions to dog management problems, I think they have to come from within the K9 community. Interested to know if others have common experience or any sense of how, generally, councils can be brought to take responsibility for dog management problems.