sandgrubber

1. that dog does not look like a pit bull . . . or like the dogs that everyone calls pits in the American South. Too rangey. Chest too narrow. Not enough bone. Ears almost floppy. Muzzle too long. 2. "she described Dante as 'an absolute honey' who loved being cuddled and playing with her two kids, Fury-James, 4, and Lahtezia-Lust, 5" is absolutely in pattern for pit bulls. Their owners almost invariably describe them as affectionate toward family members, and ignore their reaction to other dogs. 3. hard not to be judgemental toward someone who would curse their kids with names like Fury and Lust, and their dog with Dante the Infernal. Conclusion: Sick idiot owner ought to be locked up and should not be raising children, much less dogs. This has nothing to do with pit bulls and everything to do with idiot owners who like ferocious dogs.

Your 'proper' way is only rational if you place a low value on your dog's life and/or don't find it awful to have your dog impounded and having to employ lawyers to get your dog out of the pound. Sadly, right does not make might.

In my kennel management days, one of the Australian vets we worked with said cooked rice + small amounts of meat and supplements could be prepared as a substitute for Hills. If you do some vet shopping you should be able to come up with a vet who can provide recipes for an equivalent diet . . . maybe even one that the dog likes.

For once you all in Oz can feel grateful you have BSL. I live in an area where pit bulls are the generic working man's dog. They come in a lot of sizes and shapes and temperaments. Some are nightmares. Some are sweet, hardy waggy dogs. Many are a bit dog aggressive and hit the fence, or the end of their chain, when you walk your dog past. Only a small fraction have registered pedigrees. In the local Craigslist -- the equivalent of Gum Tree -- there has been a sudden appearance of ads for 'pocket pits'. Theoretically these are a Patterdale x APBT cross, but in practice they seem to be pit x some small terrier or terrier mix. I hope Oz is able to avoid some equivalent sickness. Somehow I can't see a 'pocket staffie' catching on.

Great video. Thanks for posting. Now I know why their tongues are so long! I had no idea that they curled backwards to scoop water. Next time I mop up the slop around the water bowl, I'll have an image of how it got there .

Nice try, but if it means your dog gets seized, not worth it. I don't think anyone whose dog has been taken, and who has either had to go through a whole legal process to get the dog back, or who has lost and had their dog pts would agree that 'they' don't have power. If you could get hundreds of thousands of people to march with dogs in hand, as in the classic civil rights demonstrations or Gandhi breaking the Salt Laws, you might succeed. But the anti-BSL community has seldom shown the numbers or the cohesiveness and resolve to be politically effective.

Similar here. When I had a boarding kennel, I encountered quite a few dirty desexed dogs and bitches. And lots of chronic humpers who had been castrated (including a few speyed bitches).. HOWEVER, the stinkiest pee, hands down, came from entire males. Not all of them. But we had a few who really reeked. This is unlikely to be a problem in a home situation, unless the owner is into indoor dog toilets.

+1 As a kid I used to tease my mother's Labrador, who would eat most anything, by tossing her things I thought she wouldn't like. No one told me onions were poisonous to dogs. The dog wanted nothing to do with onions . . . one of the few things she wouldn't even catch, much less gnaw on.

My dogs, who sleep in the bed, do the same rolling thing, sometimes on top of me as well when I'm in the bed. It looks just like the gesture they use when they find something fragrant on a walk. I wonder if they're being affected by human scent. Pheremone driven behavior????

Yes. <div><br></div><div><br><div>p.s. it's the exoskeleton that gets stuffed. In answer to Rural Pug's comments, diatomaceous earth is probably bad for a wide spectrum of arthropods, but because it is heavy and settles rapidly to the ground, it's unlikely to affect flying insects (bee safe) and because it mechanically affects exoskeletons, it's unlikely to have effects down the food chain, ie, on predatory insects, birds or insect eating mammals. </div> </div>

Roundup is the most used agricultural chemical in the world, and one of the most heavily tested. Testing has been done on dogs (beagles). They found that very heavy dosage put directly in the dogs food caused some problems, but there is no evidence that the amounts used to kill weeds will have any effect on dogs or any mammals. This is one of the reasons it is widely sold for home use . . . even idiots are unlikely to poison themselves or their pets with the stuff. The residence time in the environment is said to be about two weeks (less in hot weather). There is some evidence it may persist longer in the soil, and there are some people who feel the stuff is doing a lot of damage to the environment, particularly in soy/maize growing regions. Bottom line is don't worry about it. Or if you are strongly anti-chemical and choose to worry, the risk, which is tiny, will subside in a couple weeks. p.s. you might talk with the guys who applied it. Although glyphosate (the active ingredient in Roundup) is non-toxic to mammals, sometimes they mix it with other chemicals to make sure the plants absorb it well. These may have some toxicity. OOPS! Didn't read right. Twice as strong as roundup could mean lots of things. I would guess it means roundup at a lower dilution. The stuff farmers and landscapers use is both powerful and cheap . . . but the same chemical you'd buy in your local garden shop as Roundup. The alternatives are more expensive and less safe.

I have no idea in Qld. But note that the stuff is heavy, so expensive if you have it shipped. Have you tried your local feed stores? or ask them if they can order it for you. It is used with livestock as well as dogs.

I'd let 'em rip, so long as the exercise isn't resulting in trauma (eg, falling off things, collisions) that may damage bone structure. Has anyone had a case of a high-energy pup given loads of free exercise turning out with problems because they were given freedom? I've never have.

So sad. What a crushing decision to have to make after all you have invested in trying to save them all. Still, good that three survive . . . not to mention the dam. Hoping you can go forward now without a burden on your mind.

A recent study based on a large number of pups followed until 10 yrs of age (sighted somewhere in pinned Studies about Dogs Topic in the General Forum) found walking was not a problem, but stairs were a big problem. Farm raised pups given free exercise had better hips . http://www.scienceda...20326112842.htm " The opportunity to exercise daily in parks up until the age of three months reduced the risk of HD, whereas the daily use of steps during the same period increased the risk. Overall, it would appear that daily exercise out in gently undulating terrain up until the age of three months gives a good prognosis when it comes to preventing HD."

if you have a heap of humidity, it may not work ...Arizona would be perfect! AFAIK it scores/cuts the insect exoskeleton ..allowing the insect to dry out ..but if wet/damp ,the powder doesn't cling or do what it's supposed to, apparently . Diatoms are amazing little things alive,or fossilised, it seems :) If you have air con and high humidity, you probably have dry air inside. So should still be effective for indoor remediation. Outdoor, not so good. Action on the exoskeleton is good. It means this should work on fleas and ticks alike, and there's no danger of developing resistence. I'm confused by warnings about applying directly. Cautions that it may be drying. Does this mean it's ok if the dog tends to have oily coat and skin? Might direct application actually help reduce incidence of hot spots and cut down subinaceous body odor?

The good side is that this variety of stupidity doesn't seem to be contagious. No one really knows how dogs relate to pain. They sure tolerate things that people don't. I wish there were a way to ask the dog. I think many of them shed minor pain like water off a duck's back, but suffer greatly from loneliness and boredom. Think of all the dogs who do things that they know will bring punishment cause they want the attention. Very hard to say whether tats are more or less cruel than, say, extreme grooming where the dog is kept stationary for hours while being died and clipped into some fantastimagoric living sculpture.

Good to know. When I flew dogs to the US they wanted a funnel installed on the outside so that they could put water into the can. I think they wanted it dry for loading.

Yes. Pitbulls are today arguably more ubiquitous than they've ever been; we'lI fight these laws every step if the way until they're dead in the water and our breed will emerge better than ever. You don't protest law buy obeying it. Disobedience puts dogs at risk. Not advisable. There are better ways to combat BSL.

I have flown Labradors from the US East Coast to Europe (Germany, travel requiring change of flights) and from Perth to San Francisco. In the latter case, dogs were over-nighted at a kennel in Sydney (JetPets service). I was a nervous wrech about both. The dogs hardly seemed to notice, though they were very glad to be out of their crates, and on the Europe flight, the dog was very thirsty on arrival. I confess that mine had quite limited crate training before travel, but they are pretty bomb proof. I would be a lot more worried about a brachy breed than about a dog with normal breathing. There is a reason that many airlines have banned flying brachy breeds: many individuals in brachy breeds have very low tolerance of heat stress, and fatalities are bad for business. Yes, if you fly in summer, or have a stopover near the equator at any time of the year, heat stress is a real possibility. (Where I live in the US you can't fly your dog if the weather forecast goes above 85F at any point in the day).

What does 'in control' mean? Say the engineer can't stop a train before it hits a car parked in a railroad crossing. Is the train 'out of control'? Are any dogs doing zoomies fully under control? Should it be illegal to allow your dog to do zoomies in public? Though my guess is a court of law could go either way on this one, should it go to court, I'd hope a judge would not find the dog owners negligent. A much better outcome would be 'use at your own risk' postings at dog parks. Finding the Rotti owner alone negligent -- because the Lab owner can't be found -- would seem a miscarriage of justice. It was, in effect, a conspiracy of two dogs that caused the accident.

Cool! Does Victoria also have shelters for cockroaches, field mice, and rats?

Pretty hard to outlaw stupid or vain. And calling idiots stupid seldom improves their behavior.

Following up on the fleas thread . . . Some people around here swear by diatomaceous earth for preventing fleas on the dogs and lice on the chooks. Has anyone had experience with this? If it works it would be an inexpensive and pretty easy approach . . . just sprinkle the stuff in the dogs bedding and wash it out periodically. I'm a little afraid of silica dust . ..

"Tattooing an animal for the vain sake of joy and entertainment of the owner without any regard for the well-being of the animal… is not something the ASPCA supports," they said in a statement. Whoa! How horrid. He doesn't have the support of the ASPCA Giving a tat to a dog that's under GA seems pretty harmless to me. But what an ugly, boring, trite tat! Looks like something a 1950's teen might carve into a tree. I would not call Mistah Metro an artist