sandgrubber

Those of you who blame the vet, is the vet who suggests benedryl for an after-hours bee sting reaction also negligent? My mom had an old arthritic dog and couldn't afford the recommended treatments. The vet told her aspirin was ok, but might cause stomach ulcers. The dog didn't live long enough for ulcers to become a problem, and the aspirin provided relief. Was that negligent? How about the vet that suggests pumpkin for diarrhea? Or dilute vinegar for yeast infections of the ear? I am grateful that some vets are willing to put themselves out on a limb by deviating from the industry-endorsed pharmacopia. I wasn't there, and don't know what the vet said about how to measure the dosage (the simplest and most common way would be something like 'half a tablet of baby aspirin', cause lots of people aren't clever with dosage calculations) and whether anything was said about avoiding overdose. I think we should be slow to condemn until we have all the facts.

I want to see photos taken two weeks or a month later. Does that stuff wash out? Do the dogs spend months getting their coats back to normal after an hour of glory? Personally, I don't get it. I don't think it's especially cruel, but it seems more like a stunt than an art or craft. And the dogs look silly. There's a lot I don't get.

This has been appearing in Craigslist's pets section (Gumtree equivalent). At least half the dog ads in our local Craigslist are for pits or pit X's. The other problem with a breed that attracts irresponsible owners is that those same irresponsible owners are likely to become irresponsible breeders. PITS PITBULLS PIT PUPS PITBULL PUPS (EVERYWHERE) Pitbull breeds and mixes are OVERBRED !!!! The shelters are FULL of PITBULLS, PITBULL PUPPIES, PIT MIXES Thousands are killed every single day because there are so many of them and not enough homes....... Why in the world would you continue to breed these poor dogs when there is such a horrendous OVERPOPULATION.. For EVERY Pit you breed.........one dies due to a lack of a home... If you need money.....GET A JOB and PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE STOP BREEDING THEM !!! Location: EVERYWHERE it's NOT ok to contact this poster with services or other commercial interests

As an example, here are my two girls, a 9 yr old bitch and her 3 yr old daughter. They groom eachother regularly and have never had a squabble. The old girl has lived with several of her girl pups. She gets milk when her pups have pups and by five weeks, is more interested in nursing the pups than their mother is. I worry more about separation grief than fighting with the bitches I've raised together. I've run on girl pups together with no problem, and placed siblings together, with no problems. I don't deny that there are sometimes problems, but in nature, canine packs are usually made up of parents and their pups, and it is not uncommon for sibling bitches to be in the same pack as their mothers. Sibling rivalry is probably present in some packs . . . but so, too, is cooperation between siblings. I would guess that the problems are worse with some breeds than others, but that there is quite a bit of difference between breeds. I agree with Steve, breeders can do a lot to avoid such problems by selecting for 'civil' temperament and observing temperament before they place pups in a home.

Sounds like gun lobby propaganda to me. The Second Amendment to the US Constitution reads: "A well regulated militia, being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed."The intent was more to protect the state than to protect people from it.Part of the support came from the slave states, where guns were useful in preventing slave revolts.

I happened across a database that may be useful for people trying to decide what breed.It's from a company that does DNA based breed identification.This one pays a lot more attention to temperament and needs for things like good fencing, exercise, early training, grooming, etc. than most I've looked at and is pretty comprehensive on medical problems. For the breeds I know and have looked at it was pretty much spot on. http://www.dog-dna.com/breeds.php

A very interesting read Mita, thanks for posting that. :) +1 :thumbsup:

The cause of dog attacks, ultimately, is a combination of dog temperament and dog management, plus other factors such as health, child management, and bad luck. There is a large hereditary component to temperament. It is hardly breeder bashing to say that breeders are, to an extent, responsible for turning out pups with antisocial temperament and placing them with people who are likely to manage them poorly. I used Labbies as an example to AVOID breed bashing. They are my chosen breed. They also happen to be a good example of the fact that pedigree breeders are not held to the temperament of their breed standard...despite your assertion that "it has never been a free for all for registered breeders". Nobody is saying that breeders are the whole problem. But breeders are in a position to do their bit to reverse the dog attack problem through being more mindful of temperament and more careful about where they place pups.I would love to see the authorities make an attempt to work out the origins of problem dogs. And if some breeders, registered or otherwise, seem to be behind a string of problem attack dogs, then those breeders need to be held to account.

Kudos to the reporter, or headline writer. The fact that these were ROAMING dogs is much more important than the breed. If you want to high drive dogs who may be DA and/or HA, I think you're an idiot, but that's your own business. You can't outlaw idiocy. However, if you let your menacing dog roam, or don't invest heavily in preventing the dogs from getting out, you are a serious public nuisance and you deserve to be treated as a criminal. I think the owner deserves a felony on his record, and his dogs should be confisgated until he (or she) can prove that containment is adequate. If the owner's dogs are ever found roaming again, I think the owner should face a LONG jail term. Castration (of owner and/or dogs) might also be appropriate, but that's based on my personal warped sense of humor/justice. Don't think the law will ever take that line...well, maybe for the dogs.

In my experience, temperament/behavior is not only genetic, it can be hard to breed out. I, unfortunately, started with a foundation Labrador bitch who wasn't fond of water and had zero retrieve drive. Her sire was the same. I've tried to counteract that by choosing studs with retrieving qualifications. Three generations later, I have dogs who like, but don't love, water, and still no retrieve drive. Actually, it's more complicated. I kept a pup from my first litter with foundation bitch. Sire had his RRD plus a bench Ch. I was living by the beach at the time, and the pup got an early intro to water, and surf. She ended out very aggressive in approach to water. She would plow into a breaking wave, get rolled, and come back for more. So maybe the potential is there, but requires early training to bring it out.

What I'd like to know is whether bull breeds are getting better or worse over time, and if they are getting worse or not improving, whether the bad element is concentrated in some lines. I am no expert on bull breed history, but it does seem to me that the average temperament has probably gotten more social since the days when dogfighting and bull and bear baiting were popular sports. If the bad name is coming from, say 10% of the individuals, and the temperament problems are concentrated in certain lines, the solution is to regulate the problem lines, not the entire breed(s). The Staffy is neck and neck with the Labrador for numbers of pedigree registrations in Australia. I can't believe SBTs would be that popular if most of them were inherently problematic.

Well I must be fortunate because my dogs are mother and daughter and there has never been any aggression between them. In fact they seem to adore each other. This may be a Lab thing...or at least common in Labs. I've kept a lot of mother daughter pairs together. The bigger worry is how they will grieve when separated, not whether they will fight. Here are my present two, Jarrah, aged 9, and Bonza, her 3 yr old daughter ...oops file too big ....damn iPad. Anyway, they groom eachother regularly, and preferentially sleep touching one another. They also play together, though the old girl doesn't last very long.

Link leads me to a video error. Please check.

I came across an interesting discussion of temperament on a GSD breeder's website. They define temperament as 100% genetic (as opposed to behaviour, which can be shaped), and go on to catalog describe various unsound temperaments, including sharp, shy, sharp-shy, submissive, temperamental, hyperactive, overaggressive, dominant, and independent. For details see: http://www.videxgsd.com/understanding_dogs.htm I like the idea that undesirable temperaments are genetic and can be bred away from, if not out. The notion that there are different temperament faults, and each needs to be considered specifically also rings true. But does it work in practice? Are people like me who advocate more breeding for temperament as opposed to cosmetics, full of hot air? Could breeding for temperament be done more systematically?

I can see them as beautiful. But lions and tigers are beautiful, too. If I wanted a muscle dog, I would avoid a breed with white skin (sunburn and deafness issues) and a very narrow genetic base. Temperament aside, the dogo has the hallmarks of a health disaster.

I am of very strong belief that breeders be it registered breeders or BYB's need to be scrutinised and held accountable for their reproductions. I am really tired of the fact the breeding of dogs is a complete free for all, breed what you want when you want, personally, I would like to see it as an offence to breed dogs without a licence with the introduction of a BSL....."breeder specific legislation" It is not, and has never been a "free for all" for registered breeders. Registered/show breeders face amazingly few restrictions with relation to temperament. I would have no problem registering a Labrador that is gun shy, hates water, and is dog aggressive. Such a dog could even be titled, provided that the DA can be curbed in the ring. However a cosmetic fault, such as light eye colour (which. btw, gives the dog better night vision) seriously affects results of competition in the ring.

Does the fault also lie with the owner who pts's the dog because they cannot modify the dog's behaviour sufficiently to make it an animal they can live with?Temperament defects occur in all breeds. But it is much more common for some breeds to be euth'd for behavioral reasons than others. I think we need to blame breeders as much as owners...and support subsidized Spey/neuter programs.

No problem with Labbies. They're more reluctant when it's blazing hot than when it's raining. What I want is a way to get them to wipe their feet before they come back in the house. I am so tired of muddy footprints.

Santos, you make it sound like it's black and white. It isn't. The two most vicious dogs in my immediate neighborhood, Dixie and Emily, are both Labradors. Emily's partner in the yard, LuLu, a pit bull type, has a bad habit of jumping the fence, but she doesn't growl at people or dogs, much less attack; without Emily, I suspect she would be a friendly, stable dog. Dixie's family also has a second dog, a rough coat daschund named Boomer. Remember that study in 2008 that found daschunds to be the most aggressive breed; well Boomer is a fat, cuddly sook who sticks close to his Mum. There ARE breed tendencies in pedigree dogs, no question that these are genetic. You'd have a hard time training normal Labbies as schutzhunds. But if you really wanted to do so, and you could find a few dogs like Dixie and Emily, you could probably develop a line of Labbies that would match the GSD's and Rotties in schutz training (actually, forget Dixie, she's unstable). Likewise, if you really wanted, you could develop lines of pit bull that were sweet and docile with soft mouths. The problem, as others have noted, is that there's a small population of dick heads who LIKE dog fights, and like snarling, biting dogs, the tougher the better. Such drongos, as a rule, don't believe in desexing, and brag about it when their monster sires a litter on the bitch down the street. There's a larger group of people that is less extreme, but tolerates dog aggression and for some reason likes to have a mean dog in the yard. Unfortunately for bull breeds, they are favored by such idiots. I'm a Labrador person, not a bull breed person, so I'm b.s.'ing here. But I imagine it would be pretty hard for a bull breed person to find a niche in the dog world if they specialized in breeding for sweet tempered dogs. The altruists in the bull breed community seems to be heavily involved in rescue, and few of them have any interest in breeding out the traits that get bull breeds in trouble. The cultural side is important. I've met several aggressive Labs, every one of them was desexed. A Lab breeder I know euth'd an imported, titled dog because he bit and harmed a puppy.

Unfortunately, I think the Finnish KC is unique in keeping stats on cause and age of death and making them public. I wish other KC's did this. There is no way to know how representative (or not) the Finnish data are. One interesting thing in the Finnish data. If you click on the highlighted entry for cause of death you get a tabulation of all test and show results for the dogs listed. Several of the dogs who were pts due to behaviour had bad hip scores (C/C or worse). So pain-related biting, or going for euth because the dog was not suitable for breeding, may be part of the picture.

I think the way to avoid bull bashing is for bull breed people to stop denying there is a problem. The cause of death statistics below for the AmStaff are from the Finnish Kennel Club's database. Nearly 10% euth'd for behavioural reasons, and an additional 10% dying of accidents at a young age, and about 6% dying of neurological problems is not a good look! These are not cross-bred mongrels. They're registered pedigree dogs (including a couple Ch's). You can check their pedigrees, and show results, out on the website. (See http://jalostus.kenn...Lang=en....play around with the various options). The Am Staff is considerably worse than the Staffy or Bull Terrier in these stats, but these breeds, too, show high mortality from accidents and being pts for bad behaviour. I agree with the concept of deed not breed, but I do believe a fair amount of behaviour is genetic. ALL breeders of ALL breeds need to breed away from lines that are fraught with behavioural problems. Denial of the relatively high frequency of those lines in bull breeds is simply perpetuating the problem, and holding the entire bull breed group responsible for the outcomes of breeders who don't select for temperament, or who do select for temperament that makes their dogs a menace.

I can't imagine the Swedes making it difficult for a hobby breeder who chooses to raise litters in the spare bedroom, and I don't think they regulate matters such as how many times a bitch can be bred. They do have some pretty strict regulations on 'professional breeders' (it looks like the rules for dogs are similar to those for livestock), and some rules you don't see in the US, UK or Oz, eg:" It shall be prohibited to own or breed dogs which: 1. are exceptionally aggressive; 2. are irritable and bite; 3. are difficult to restrain once they have started an attack; and 4. are inclined to direct their aggression at people or other dogs. Ordinance (see www.government.se/content/1/c6/09/03/10/f07ee736.pdf‎). I may be missing something, but I think Sweden's laws generally do help animal welfare without meddling deeply in hobby breeder's rights. Ok, there's docking of tails and ears, but that affects appearance only, not the essential parts of dog breeding.

Unfortunately, there are plenty of horses left in that stable. It's not unusual, around where inlive, to see a couple pitties chained in a yard and straining their chains to lunge at passers-by. Often there's a sign posted saying BAD DOG. (Could be other breeds too...but there are an awful lot of pit-types). I hope the owners of such dogs are getting a message. p.s. On my dog walks, I regularly run into an 85 yr old who lives next door to a pair of such dogs. He says they attacked him once, and he told the owner: " if I ever see dem runnin loose agin. I'm goin to git my shotgun". On the question of second degree murder vs manslaughter. I think manslaughter is pretty much kept for crimes of passion or stupidity. If you know your dogs can kill and you have been apprehended for dog attacks before, and you continue to willfully neglect to restrain them, then some judges will interpret it as second degree murder. Likewise, is increasingly common for drunk drivers who cause fatal accidents to be charged with murder.

There is nothing wrong with Bull breeds, what's wrong is the idiots who breed some of them for the wrong reasons. The Pitbull was a dog fighter not a protection dog, but some idiots along the way decided that they should be harmful to people so they bred duds that showed aggression in the wrong areas the way I see it evolve......so man made many Bull breeds into what they were never supposed to be, so what needs to be done IMHO is cull off these crap Bull breeds, get out the breed book and start breeding some proper ones who comply with the breed standards Pitbull's shouldn't be biting people, if they do......something isn't right in the bloodlines.......a friend of mine has 2 Pits both bullet proof with people and other dogs, but I have also seen some shockers too, maulings waiting to happen. I'm going to regret this.... I can see a one notion mind at work. Yes, genes are important.... but they are not alone in the mix which determines if an individual dog has a high risk or a low risk of aggression. What is required is attention to all the factors. MOREOVER breed does not precisely or fully predict the genes that affect behaviour. Yes, all breeds have tendencies, but all breeds also have exceptions to the norm, and many breeds have different norms depending on whether the lines are working or pet or show. You can find mean Labradors; and laid back JRT's. In many breeds there are crappy breeders who have allowed temperament to go to hell, eg, by breeding unstable or highly reactive dogs. Dogs from working lines, including guarding, herding, vermin control, and hunting (to name a few), may not be suited to the average suburban family, and at least some of the offspring are likely to become problematic without adequate investment in containment, training, and stimulation/exercise. Lines that have been bred more for pet/show purposes may be easier to keep and less prone to going nutso (often translates to' mean' if the dog's 'job' would require high drive and use of teeth) when they no longer have a 'job'. The fact that every breed includes individuals who exhibit different behaviours makes it important that breeders explicitly breed for temperament, and make it clear to puppy buyers what temperament they have bred for, and what sort of management their puppy is likely to require. It pisses me off that so many breeders simply say "wonderful temperament". Wonderful temperament for what? We need to describe temperament, not in terms of good and bad, but in descriptive terms, such as drive, biddability, etc. End of lecture. It sure is easy to get worked up about this topic.

so that argues calories restriction/being kept lean is positively associated with longevity, rather than a 'high quality' diet per se? I think that fits with what I am thinking - that not over-feeding is maybe the most important bit of diet thse days. Effects of diet restriction on life span and age-related changes in dogs Richard D. Kealy, PhD; Dennis F. Lawler, DVM; Joan M. Ballam, MS; Sandra L. Mantz; Darryl N. Biery, DVM, DACVR; Elizabeth H. Greeley, PhD; George Lust, PhD; Mariangela Segre, DSc; Gail K. Smith, DVM, PhD, DACVS; Howard D. Stowe, DVM, PhD An amazing study that followed 50+ Labs in controlled conditions over 12 years or so...the diet restricted group fared a lot better than the control groupl. p.s. I notice that the link above has gone 404. Try this one https://www.avma.org/News/Journals/Collections/Pages/AVMA-Collections-Obesity-in-dogs-summary.aspx