juliepoudrier

Seriously? J.

The dumba sheep looks very much like a modern day Karakul. J.

Sorry to drag this back up, but I was thinking about something the other day. There is a way to find out what stud dogs are used the most in the UK. Do we have something similar here in the U.S.? It occurred to me that focusing on litters registered places the spotlight on the owner of the bitch, but there's a male in there somewhere too, and wouldn't it also make sense to look at who's studding dogs out repeatedly? In other words, a single male dog could sire way more than 30 puppies a year, but the owner isn't held accountable for all those breedings/puppies, and yet they do contribute to the numbers registered. It's high volume from another perspective. Does that make sense? But aside from the ethical question (what constitutes too much?) it would be nice to be able to track what dogs are being used over and over just from a "popular sire" genetics standpoint. J.

^^This is wonderful advice. I hope you and your husband can follow it. J.

Awesome! Best Christmas present for Maid/Daily. J.

I'm sorry. They bring so much joy to our lives and always break our hears in the end. But I know you wouldn't want to avoid that heartbreak if it meant not knowing that love and joy. Godspeed Cody and Gracie. J.

I tend to agree that a week without food, no matter how the dog is acting, would be concerning to me. J.

I have one dog that has done that periodically since she was young (she's 14 now). She would literally try to gobble up dust bunny, bits of cloth, carpet, whatever. The first time something like this happened she had been working in tall grass that had seedheads. I assumed that she had some sort of weird allergic reaction. Benadryl seemed to work, so now whenever I see her frantically snatching at stuff, I give her benadryl and put her in a crate (to prevent her continuing to snatch up stuff) while waiting for the meds to take effect. This has occurred only periodically over the years and I never had her diagnosed with anything specific, but thought that it might be due to some sort of throat irritation. J.

Smalahundur, I heard that same comment on the news last night. I was only half paying attention, but the comment was about IVF having been around quite a while for humans, but the same technology didn't work for dogs. I'll have to delve deeper to see what the real story is. The only reason that claim makes sense to me is that no one has done it until now, so either it wasn't tried until recently or scientists have been trying to come up with a method that works, which would imply that the methods used for humans don't work. J.

^^My first thought too, Jovi. Something that got in but shouldn't be there. Please let us know what the vet says. J.

Goats behave more like cattle, but are less likely to hurt a dog (generally speaking--I have seen my dogs nailed by horned goats and it wasn't nice, but sheep can hurt them too). J.

^^Exactly. There will still be breeders who do what they can so as not to appear on the list. (It wouldn't surprise me to see a cattledog registry at some point, especially for the folks Anna is talking about.) But hopefully there will be buyers who will pay attention to the fact that there *is* such a list and make choices based on that information. Eileen, Will this just be a list, or will numbers (i.e., numbers registered) be attached? J.

I doubt I'll ever invest in a camera to see what my dog is doing out of sight. I prefer to trust that I've put the right training on and the dog will make the right choices whether I'm in sight or not. J.

In Patricia McConnell's example (stockwork) there are outside factors that also affect the dog being able to take responsibility to "do its job." When I'm at work, I take responsibility for my job, but that doesn't mean I don't need reminding sometimes. And if the stock are leaning on the dog, or the terrain is difficult and the stock don't want to go that way, the dog may struggle a little and need a reminder. That reminder doesn't mean that in general the dog doesn't take (or isn't capable of taking) responsibility. And there's also the point of the dog being right and the human being wrong. We, the shepherds, aren't always right. The dogs can read and respond to things more quickly than we can, and sometimes they don't do what we want/expect because they know something we don't. I bet most of us who have trialed have stories of dogs refusing our commands and thereby saving our butts at a critical moment (or taking our commands and letting happen what they knew would happen, thereby showing us the error of our ways ). That's another example of a dog taking responsibility by being disobedient. So it's really a lot more fluid partnership than just I teach the dog this, it knows it, and now it should always do it exactly like that. That just doesn't work in real life when there are other sentient beings involved in the activity. And the thing with the dog working out of sight is that you have to put the foundation there and then *hope* the dog does the right thing out of sight, but the fact is all you see is the end result (the stock arrive at your feet). What the dog really did is completely unknown (it could have grabbed stock it didn't need to grab, could have circled them several times before bringing them in the direction they needed to go, etc.). We send our dogs out of sight knowing that we have put the foundation there and hoping/expecting that they make the right choices when we aren't within sight/hearing to advise them, but in the end we can't control what they do, so we do have to expect them to take responsibility and do the right thing. J.

I'll be interested to see the list. I'm guessing there will be some surprises and some not surprises.... Of course there are already breeders who will register some of their dogs under family members' names so they don't appear to be breeding as much as they are. J.

That's the tough love stuff or whatever they call it. I had someone interested in a Twist puppy once and she told me she was going to practice that and I knew right then she wasn't getting one of my puppies.... J.

I wanted to say that I especially like the first photo. I sure wish I lived close to you and could help with her. J.

I'm a little confused on what you're disagreeing with in regard to Kristi's post, but I think the most fundamental difference between stock work and dog sports is that those doing stock work have the advantage of working with innate desires, essentially needing to shape them rather than having to first introduce the idea of the job and then proof it, if that makes sense. A dog that is first introduced to stock knows in its bones what it needs/wants to do and we then train to suit our needs. How we go about that training may or may not be very much like how one would train for a sport. I certainly agree that training approaches/philosophies can be similar across disciplines, but I think it is a real difference when you're training for something the dog pretty much automatically knows how to do compared to something that is rather artificial (in the sense that the dog doesn't look at sports equipment and know that it wants to do something with it) but is still based in natural behaviors (running, jumping). And I have to say that the students I've had who come from other disciplines, especially agility, are the ones who have the most difficult time switching gears, so to speak, when it comes to training stockdogs. I have one student who swore she wasn't teaching her young dog anything that would be problematic when working stock--until she realized that some of the foundation work she had done was indeed counterproductive to her goals with stock work. She would have agreed with you that the differences in training are minimal (at least perhaps from a philosophical viewpoint), but it took actually trying to work her dog on stock beyond the most basic circling for her to see what problems she'd created. And, it's actually Kristi who I held up as an example to her that you can do both with the same dog but that the order of training might change to accommodate the needs of one discipline vs the other. J.

She looks great! I sure wish you had better/easier access to sheep! J.

Boy died back in 2010, but I think it was 1/4 tsp of each, certainly no more than that. Let me see if I can find that out. Need to know for Twist anyway...

Hi Ailsa, I should have been more clear. Kat's appetite was not back after four days. And she was still pretty immobile. I'm sure the bad back leg just exacerbated the mobility issues. But the nausea and hand feeding (only way I could get her to eat anything) went on for much longer than four days. At her recheck by the vet a week after the initial episode, the vet was talking about euthanasia because she was still in such poor shape. I ended up going with a very expensive anti-nausea med that is used for chemotherapy patients and it helped marginally. For Kat, who was about to turn 14 at the time, giving her more time is what ultimately allowed her to turn the corner. I was living in a 23 foot camper at the time, with 7 dogs, I think, so managing her was a tricky thing. But she did go on to live a good 18 months beyond that. I lost her this past summer to something completely unrelated. As for the gabapentin, it really seemed to help with her discomfort, but the diarrhea that occurred within an hour of giving the meds made me choose to quit giving it, which was a shame, because it did seem to provide better pain control than all the other meds I was using. Anyway, that was my way of saying that if you added the metacam and the diarrhea started then I think you're right to take her back off the metacam. I did use turmeric and cinnamon on the advice of my holistic vet at the time for another oldster I had with severe spondylosis. I don't know that it helped a great deal, but it certainly didn't hurt and I didn't have to worry about drug interactions by adding yet another med. Right now I have a 14 year old who also has arthritis problems and possibly spinal stenosis caused by spondylosis spurs that the vet thinks may be pressing on her spinal nerves inside the vertebral column. I am trying to keep her comfortable without a ton of meds, so she's mostly on tramadol and some nutraceuticals, but I add in metacam (you can get a generic 100 mL bottle that does offer some cost savings) if she's had a particularly active day and I know she will be more painful that night. I just bought some turmeric to start adding to her food. I hope Skye can get past the vestibular episode quickly. You might want to consider some sort of mobility harness to help her walk. I have used the Ruffwear webmaster for several of my oldsters (one who was dysplastic and so had problems in later life when she was no longer well muscled from working), including Kat. I found that with Kat, I could help her get up with the handle on the back and then I could thread a leash through that handle to provide extra support to her when walking without actually having to stoop over. I gave away the medium harness that Jill wore up till her death, but I still have Kat's small harness (in the last year of their lives both she and Jill--and Willow in her turn--wore the harnesses pretty much 24/7 unless I took them off to dry after being soaked in the rain) and I'd be happy to send it to you if you want such a harness and a small would fit her (their website has measuring instructions). I got the harness for Jill on the advice of my rehab vet. Ruffwear actually makes harness that provide even more rearend support, but my rehab vet though the webmaster was sufficient. They aren't cheap, but they have been lifesavers for me when dealing with mobility issues in my oldsters and I've certainly gotten good use out of them! Kat did have one or two additional vestibular episodes, but they were not nearly as bad as the first one. J.

Ailsa, Don't be surprised if the vestibular thing takes longer than four days. My old girl took longer than that, probably closer to 10 days. Even my vet was talking things I didn't want to hear because her improvement was so slow (she also had mobility issue resulting from a spinal embolism a few years earlier). The combination of a very weak hind leg and the vestibular made the going tough at times, but she did pull through with only a residual head tilt. Also, I would look at the pain meds. At one point I tried gabapentin for Kat, and it cost nearly immediate diarrhea. My other old girl was able to take it without problems. I know she was on gabapentin before the diarrhea without issues, but it's possible one of the newer meds you added was just the proverbial final straw.... J.

D'Elle, I have a friend who leaves her dogs with me on occasion. She feeds a raw premix and mixes that with kibble for both meals her dogs get each day. I've never noticed any bad GI consequences for her dogs when they're staying with me. The premix is kind of messy, but that's something I can live with. J.

I have a dog like this. Fearless. Can move anything. But a little difficult to manage on very light trial sheep, where her eye interferes with the flow. But as a farm dog, she is unbeatable. (And she can and has won open trials, but she requires more proactive management when trialing.) If I had to choose between her and another with less eye who also lacked her fearlessness in the face of nasty minded stock and the ability to move anything, I'd choose her every time. That said, she is also rather sensitive to human emotion. So it's okay for a steer or bitchy ewe to take her on, she'll stand up to that just fine. Don't yell at her, though. J.

How wonderful (for both of you)! J.