sandgrubber

Diagnosis might be a bit different depending on whether the people growled at were familiars, with whom an ordinary pup would have bonded, or strangers, and on how the pup reacted to adult dogs or other pups. Assuming pain or correctable physical problem can be ruled out. Could be an early and extreme guarding behavior, in which case the pup should only be placed with an owner who wants and is capable of managing such temperament. If the aggression continued through to, say 4 months, and was shown toward all animals and people, I, personally, would pts without feeling a need for behavioralist evaluation. Admittedly, the behavioralists whose work I have seen may not be the best, but my sense is most behavioralists have a bias toward thinking problems can be fixed/managed. I've seen people go through months and months of training and end up with little improvement. Given a choice between the heartbreak of having to pts a pup and the heartbreak of doing extra training and fencing, and still having to constantly guard against aggression; and possibly, eventually, mop up after the dog harmed or killed another animal or mauled a person, I'd choose to pts.

Borrowed from OffTopic

If the pup is healthy and the aggression is not rooted in pain, I'd be worried about genetics of temperament. Is the pup only aggressive to strangers, or to everyone? Puppies can be aggressive from a very young age, but in almost all breeds this has been largely bred out. The exception is the Fila where one segment of the breed community deliberately selects for aggressive pups: See http://www.mindspring.com/~anableps/Image%20Pages%20folder/Ojeriza.html : "On the contrary to other puppies, a Fila Puppy is not inclined to relaxed playing with anyone. He attaches himself quickly to those with whom he lives but is, however, from his earliest youth suspicious of persons he does not know. Suspicion may make him irritated and annoyed and to some extent even make him growl with a certain amount of aggression, but yet without sufficient self-confidence to attack. In the course of his development the aversion against strangers will become more and more apparent. Already as a puppy the Fila will clearly show his displeasure if a stranger would try to touch him. At about the age of one year the Fila would attack any person unknown to him who would try to touch him." (Written by a Fila breeder who is Hon. Secretary of one of the two major Fila breed clubs in Brazil).

I wasn't there and didn't see it, so my opinion of whether it was a bite or not is irrelevant. But in my book, it's quite possible for a playing dog to break skin, especially if they are jumping when they make contact and the person has thin skin. My dogs break my skin on a pretty regular basis . . . accidentally. . . especially when young.

I just found my original reply to this . .. it's in the health and grooming forum. It's confusing to have the same post in two different forums!

While it's true that the outer coat may provide some shading, you're got to be a mean bastard to your dog outside on a hot day without access to shade. Once shaded by a tree or overhead roof, there is no further gain to shading (you take your sun hat off when you go inside, no?). The provision of cover is far more effective than guard hairs because it cools (technically prevents the warming) the surroundings as well as the dog's back. Shade cuts down the heat gain from absorption of solar radiation. That's all. The dog's coat's main effect on energy budget is to trap dead air and interfere with convective energy flow (as with a doona or jumper). It also interferes with conduction, ie., reduces the extent to which a dog can cool itself down by digging a hole and lying to the cooler dirt that's down a couple inches. The only way a coat has a cooling effect is if the dog is wet, in which case, provided it isn't near 100% relative humidity, evaporative cooling will help a whole lot (hence the love of clamshell pools). A longer coat holds more water. Sweating vs. panting is relevant only in that it makes long nosed (not brachycephalic) dogs better able to withstand heat than we are. They have a significant internal evaporative cooler which is poorly developed in humans. We have a surface cooling system, but it doesn't help much to reduce core temperature.

This topic comes up every year. I did my annual reply, but somehow it disappeared. I don't have the patience to reconstruct previous post but its essence is: THE PHYSICS BEHIND THE 'ANTI-SHAVING ARGUMENT IS BULLDUST!!! Heat energy flows from DOWN gradient, from warmer to colder. Your dog is usually around 39C. If the ambient temperature is less than 39 C, you dog's coat is helping it to retain body heat. It is NOT cooling the dog. No air conditioning. More like throwing on a doona on a hot night. There may be good arguments against shaving your dog's coat, but keeping to core temperature down is not one of them.

I still see value to input from people with assistance dog experience. Both the dog and your child will live on for a decade or decades. They will change. Needs will change over time. It's hard to see the long haul from the present without input from people who have done that road before. Whatever decision is made, make sure it is tempered by construction of scenarios for 10 years in the future.

This comes up every year. And every year they get the physics wrong. They say: " The undercoat provides insulation in the winter and cools the dog in the summer. If your dog has a well groomed coat, with no dead undercoat, the coat keeps the dog warm in the winter by providing insulation and keeping the dog's skin dry. In the summer, it provides a sort of air conditioning system to the dog, keeping him cool. " The undercoat does not and cannot keep a dog cool in summer, unless the outside temperature is higher than the dog's internal temperature (~39 C). It does not provide air conditioning. Would you sleep under a heavy doona when it's 30+ outside? The coat prevents heat exchange with the surrounding air. Heat moves from warmer to cooler regions. So long as the dog's temperature is higher than that of the surrounding air, the coat keeps body heat in and prevents cooling.

I would recommend ditching the 15 lb restriction. Little boys don't stay little, and a large, full-on boy is likely to be too much for a small dog. You're right. Big dogs do sleep on beds . . . all the time. The #1 requirement, it would seem to me, is stable, non-reactive, affectionate temperament. This is more common in larger dogs. I'm no expert on the hypoallergenic qualities, but the little I've read has indicated that the situation is more complicated than commonly assumed. Shedding does not necessarily trigger allergies: it may be skin conditions. Many supposedly hypoallergenic dogs are allergens to some people. Some testing may be in order before deciding what individual dog, of what breed, is appropriate.

Most of the puppies I've owned have liked to chew on hands and feet, as well as almost everything else they can get in their mouths. You could call it biting, but it's not biting out of aggression, it's more play, or teething, or just something puppies do. I haven't had enormous success with the usual suggestions, such as pressing down on their pallet with your thumb when they bite, which is supposed to make the game less rewarding. I find mouthy-ness tends to decline from 6 mo onward and my adult dogs don't do it at all.

Don't just use it on the dogs!My father was a doctor and generally skeptical of homeopathic medicine. The one exception he made was for Calendula cirate (sp?), a homeopathic ointment. At one point, my mother had a stove explode on her and she got 3rd degree burns up and down her arms. She regarded Calendula as a miracle healing agent for the burns . . . exposed them to air and kept applying Calendula.

I'm neither Steve nor Erny. But I've had a lot of dogs, most of them bred by me. I've never had any allergy problems and I feed normal commercial food. When I lived in Oz I fed a lot of chicken carcasses, no doubt from chickens raised in disgusting chicken factories. I use pretty normal schedules of vaccination etc., don't use flea meds if there are no fleas . . . but I'd guess my guys get pretty average exposure to chemicals. The fact that you have brothers, one fine and one affected, strongly suggests that there's a genetic problem involved. One pup won in the genetic lottery. The other drew a bad hand. It won't help you in ameliorating the problem, but I would suggest discussing the problem with your breeder. Something in the genetic is going on. At minimum, the mating should not be repeated. Preferably, the breeder should try to figure out if the problem has arisen in other pups from that bitch (or dog), and if it has, the bitch (or dog) should be removed from the breeding population.

1. I accept the argument that preservation of genetic diversity is important, hence that having a large number of dogs produce a relatively small number of pups is preferable to having a small number of 'excellent' examples dominate the next generation. 2. It is my experience that some breeders use limited register as a means to try and preserve a monopoly (ok, not a monopoly, but a restricted supply) on pups of their breed. 3. I find that 'improving the breed' in many instances means selecting for the type that is winning in the ring in this decade, often to the exclusion of earlier types with less extreme characteristics. Putting these together, I applaud QLD in questioning widespread use of limited register.

Same here, mine run off too if I even think of putting anything on them. Spot ons can cause problems if you have multiple dogs and they lick one another.

I met a lot of oodles when running a boarding kennel in WA. I wouldn't say they are any better or any worse than any other dog in terms of health or behavior. Sure, some are obnoxious. But their owners tend to be affluent and not experienced dog people; many were bought from pet shops. So the odds were good that they would be spoiled and poorly trained.

when I was little, lots of people objected to calling children 'kids'. 'Fur babies' isn't part of my vocabulary, but I couldn't care less if others use the term. I call mine 'baby', 'puppy', 'girl' and 'kids' all the time, regardless of their ages. What's the difference?

I use Ivermectin sold for livestock...same stuff as the active ingredient in Heartguard. You get it out of the bottle with a syringe. I just shoot up an egg (cracked, inject the yolk). The volume used is tiny and dogs don't know the difference. Dosage information is all over the internet...the practice is widespread in the US. I use pyrantel pamoate liquid for regular worming. The volume is pretty small, and the dogs don't notice it when mixed in with their food.

A useful tool, but not a panacea. They're going to have to figure out some way to mark dogs who have been done for it to work with strays, lest they repeatedly do the same dogs; and they're going to have to be sure to get all the boys. One good escape artist can impregnate a lot of bitches.

can't think of much my crew are frightened of, other than the electric fence (gee, wonder how that happened). They startle when something large is out of place. After a wind storm, the garbage can in the middle of the road may set them off . . . but they figure this out in a few seconds. My first Lab was generally unflappable, but for reasons unknown, frantically afraid of starfish. She would circle them, barking, with an occasional nip in toward the center, not getting close enough to bite, as some dogs will with prey they regard as very dangerous (eg, puppies with a blue tongue lizard).

So a shelter sells one particularly cute pup for $1000. The $200 crossbreed is still out there . . . and there will always be purebred dogs out there at less than full prices for people willing and able to do a breeders' contract, or take a retired dog or a dog that didn't make the grade as a s service dog or competitive sports dog. Sure, if you want a trendy breed that doesn't free whelp, like a Frenchie or a Boston, you're going to have a hard time finding discounted prices. And if your environment is not what breeders like to see, you may not find someone willing to let you have one of their 'specials'. The bottom line with dogs is that they are capable of very rapid reproduction (look how fast wolf populations rebound where they are reintroduced), and so long as people don't take to eating dog meat, there will be surplus production.

I actually feel very similarly to you. I am not really trying to argue a point and I see nothing wrong in asking difficult questions, I actually think it is necessary sometimes. Personally, as I said before, I don't really agree with the whole zoo concept and I actually felt pretty strongly (in a negative way) about this story when I first read about it. However, after thinking about it I could not really find any logical reason to fault the zoo for their actions. I guess I am kind of asking questions to see if anybody has reasonable arguments to either legitimize or refute my own opinion. Nobody has to feel or think the same way I do but by getting to read lots of other people's opinions I actually feel like my understanding is being enhanced, both of the logical and the emotional issue. I am not trying to convince anybody that this is the way all zoos should do things or that this is the best idea since sliced bread, I am just trying to understand the reasoning behind why this is not ok but other things are. Some people seem to be getting a little miffed because they cannot really explain their feelings. I don't think there is anything wrong with not being able to explain feelings, that is, after-all the nature of feelings, no need to get all irritated. I guess some people perhaps don't really want to think about difficult questions of ethics, and that is fine, too. I guess I kind of feel like I do things that other people might find questionable on ethical grounds and so do other people and I am trying to find some answers. Why are certain things ok, but others aren't, when there is only a marginal difference in circumstance. Where and how do people draw a line? Why is t not ok to question this? Not sure if I am doing a good job explaining this at all, I guess it's late and we've probably all had a long day. Nobody is forced to participate in this discussion and everybody is free to leave any time they like of course. I'm reminded of the Vulcan vs everyone else debates on Star Trek (I usually side with the Vulcan).

Disappointed. I thought it was going to be about a speed dating event where singles with dogs met other singles with dogs. Now that would be a good idea! Might be messy to stage, though. As far as a rescue strategy . . . great if it works . . .

Would that as much thought went into dog breeding programs as zoo breeding programs. Yes, I find this disturbing. But I can hardly turn on the flipping TV without finding something disturbing, say nothing of the news. People have some strange and terrifying appetites.

Japanese Chin?