3DogMayhem

<lurking cloak disengaged> My lab Shelby is on prednisone for an auto immune disorder. When we first started, 3 pills a day (15 mg) she drank forever and had an accident in the house at least every other day. Fortunately between our two jobs, most of the time someone was home to let her out. Her nose got dry and crusty and her coat got really dull and lifeless. Make sure you supplement with some omega 3-6-9 oils and Vitamin E. She also lost a lot of muscle mass and weight quickly and became extremely whiny and even more vocal/whiny than before. That was last summer and our vet has had us wean her down for half a pill per day. Her coat and nose is back to normal and her thirst level has decreased. Of course, being a lab, it's all about the water bowl anyways However, she is just as vocal as before but I think she just started enjoy being the mouthy one in the family. Hope this helps! Deanna <lurking cloak engaged>

Welcome to these boards. I've often enjoyed your tales of hiking with Mountain Maddie on the lab board. There's a tonne of info here and lots of discussions going on. I look forward to seeing Indy some more!

The Kirkland brand is a pretty good food for the price. At least the first two ingredients are meat and a meat meal, as opposed to Purina Dog Chow, where the first two are grain and corn. Rather funny, if the vet can't tell what kind of protein is the Kirkland, seeing how it actually says chicken...what does she think of Purina only listing the word poultry. Seems pretty obvious to me what's in the Kirkland brand Keep in mind I am only looking at the Purina Dog Chow product for ingredients. If you feel your dogs are doing well on it, are happy and healthy, don't worry about what the vet said.

My first BC Kerri Got her in 1993 from a farm, her and her littermates grew up with bulls on the other side of the barn Both parents were used as working dogs. I knew nothing about BC's and only found her from a farmers scribbled note at the local store. She picked me out by sitting on my foot and watching me. She was a wild puppy, gave me a few grey hairs but always was with me. Made me laugh at the things I let her get into, like the nearly 8 foot rubber tree with the 2 foot pot that was obviously a perfect spot to bury her chewy. I never did anything more with her other than basic obedience, she was just a good dog after her crazy puppy years. I didn't know about agility and other sports weren't that big in our city. We walked, went to the park, went swimming, played a lot. She was very trusting and would do anything I asked of her, at least once. In her older years, I started her in agility for fun but every time I got her to do a jump, she'd run back to her bed on the deck and give me the look that said "let the young pups do this." Made a few mistakes along the way, the worst being encouraging resource guarding. I didn't know at the time, it was just cute to watch this puppy growl and protect her toy or chewy. I would play "monster" with her and she would growl more and more until I left her alone. I paid for that years later when I had to start teaching her that chewies were "mine" and had to put heavy work gloves on because she would bite me when I took them away. in the end though, I could walk up to her, pet her, take her bone away and she would do nothing. I also encouraged her rivalry with the cat next door, not realizing that again, in a few years, it would be almost fatal for the cat. She hated cats until the day she passed away. Between her, my second BC Chloe, my labX and Emmett the BCX, I don't think I could ever own another dog other than BC or lab. Except a boston terror. For some reason those little brats appeal to me

I remember reading the post that she had joined your family long ago. She had a wonderful couple of years being spoiled rotten! I'm sorry for your loss, she will always be watching over your family.

Hmmm...well I have to put my most handsomest boy in there cuz I think he's the most handsomest there is!! 'Allo pretty ladies, won't you come kiss me??

FYI, several of the shelters in Southern Alberta are listed with petfinder and often have BCs come in. If you don't mind the drive it's worthwhile also to check out. I think a lot of the farms and ranches still don't bother spaying/neutering so they just drop off the litter at the shelter, that's how I got my Chloe. They will often have them listed as mixes but I'm sure they are more purebred than not. The Brooks animal shelter and the Medicine Hat one always seem to have BCs there.

I have a Canon S2 IS as well and while I was really excited about it when I first got it I have to admit that I wish I saved up for a digital SLR. I purchased it mainly because it fell into my price range and I wanted to take action pics of my dogs. I have never been able to take decent indoor pictures of the dogs, no matter what setting I'm playing with, I've deleted more pics than I have kept. The red eye function doesn't work very well, my ancient powershot A20 takes better pics indoors for the dogs than the S2. I'm really disappointed in the focusing functions, indoor and outdoors. Even with prefocusing and using a tripod I get fuzzy pics. I have gone on a few canon forums and a lot of people do have issues with the focusing part. Quite frankly I'm ready to punt the thing out the front window. My next P&S purchase will be a Pentax optio w20 because I am going on vacation and I want to take a camera into the water, on the beach, etc and not worry about it. Save up for an SLR, you'll be much much happier in the end.