Cats, Dogs, & Other Pets

[Pumpkin Escobar]

Heidi and Sausage representing. Heidi's a German Shepard we got from the pound. Sausage was left by my old roommate. I never thought I would like a little dog but she is awesome.



Heidi



My ex torturing Sausage



I would advise anyone who doesn't have a dog to get one. They are great companions, give unconditional love and help reduce stress.

[toss]

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i dont know if im allowed to post in this fancy forum, but anyway, i used to have an ocelot. he was awesome. he was really tame because we got him when he was a little kitten and smuggled him into the country (que la mames, la migra). we had him for about five years, but then he never came back. im guessing a wolf or some coyotes got him [img]/images/graemlins/frown.gif[/img]

i took this picture off the internet, but its pretty close to what he looked like:



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Woah, I want this cat!

[xxThe_Lebowskixx]

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These pure breed dogs are alot cuter, it makes me feel bad to say this but all of my mutts were uglyyyyyyyyyyyy.

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Pure bred is really just another word for inbred. Inbreeding is bad for hillbillies, European Royalty and dogs.

There are ways to avoid the dangers of inbreeding which I believe are being used in Germany. But in the U.S there is no regulation. We are breeding dogs that are destined to live short, sick lives. And a lot of dog owners don't seem to be bothered by this as long as their dogs are "cute." Hybrids, mongrels are almost always genetically superior and healthier than pure breds.

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So you are saying that dog breders take two puppies from the same parent and bred them in the USA? This is effed up.

[Patrick del Poker Grande]

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These pure breed dogs are alot cuter, it makes me feel bad to say this but all of my mutts were uglyyyyyyyyyyyy.

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Pure bred is really just another word for inbred. Inbreeding is bad for hillbillies, European Royalty and dogs.

There are ways to avoid the dangers of inbreeding which I believe are being used in Germany. But in the U.S there is no regulation. We are breeding dogs that are destined to live short, sick lives. And a lot of dog owners don't seem to be bothered by this as long as their dogs are "cute." Hybrids, mongrels are almost always genetically superior and healthier than pure breds.

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This is why you need to do your fair bit of research and make sure you're getting your dog from a reputable breeder, not some store or puppy mill or backyard breeder. Good breeders are not inbreeding their dogs.

[wh1t3bread]

My girlfriend talked me into letting her get a small dog (i.e. TOLD me she was getting a small dog [img]/images/graemlins/grin.gif[/img]). I never wanted to get a small dog, but I (smartly) didn't put up a big fuss. She would up getting a Miniature Dachsund that we named Meike. Other than me looking completely ridiculous walking her around she is an awesome dog.



Meike and Mattie (the Beagle puppy getting into trouble that belongs to Girlfriend's Sister).

[adios]

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These pure breed dogs are alot cuter, it makes me feel bad to say this but all of my mutts were uglyyyyyyyyyyyy.

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Pure bred is really just another word for inbred. Inbreeding is bad for hillbillies, European Royalty and dogs.

There are ways to avoid the dangers of inbreeding which I believe are being used in Germany. But in the U.S there is no regulation. We are breeding dogs that are destined to live short, sick lives. And a lot of dog owners don't seem to be bothered by this as long as their dogs are "cute." Hybrids, mongrels are almost always genetically superior and healthier than pure breds.

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So wrong about dogs. Your implication is that inbreeding is something that necessarily causes problems. Actually that's not the case at all. Inbreeding is also too vague of a term because there's a degree of relatedness involved. Undesirable characterics are more prone to be carried on recessive genes and certainly inbreeding between littermates (a very closely related inbreeding) have greater potential to bring out the characterics carried on recessive genes. Responsible breeders don't breed litter mates. A certain amount of inbreeding is actually desirable to fix certain characteristics within the line. Line breeding is what this is called where the degree of inbreeding is not that closely related. For example my male bloodhound's sire and dam had the same grandmother. In a certain sense though you have a point in that irresponsible, unknowledgable breeders can bring about problems with dogs by doing inbreeding that is too close, not carefully planned, etc. The wonderful thing about owning dogs in the U.S. is that the U.S. has a very good system of health certification for dogs. Anyone who's buying a pure bred dog should absolutely know the health certification testing that has been done for the sire and dam as well as the ancestory further back. Results are posted for all to see at the appropriate web sites so you don't rely on what the breeder says. I have a bloodhound bitch that I'll be breeding at some point if she passes all of her health certification tests. Can't finalize on elbows and hips until they're two. Heart eyes etc. you can do when they're younger than two. From doing some cursory research regarding health certification for dogs in other countries it became clear that the U.S. has the most transparent system that I've found in the world and has many, many more vets that are highly qualified to do health certification testing that require heart specialists and such.

[JaredL]

Bumping this thread as I got a 6 or so month old puppy last week. She's a shepherd mix, and should be pretty small. She weighs 35 pounds now. I'm not sure how much she'll grow but both the vet and the shelter people said she wouldn't get much bigger.

As I too often do, this post got too long. Cliff's notes: Dog is good but has some whining and barking issues with the crate at night. Otherwise she seems ok with it. She also whines and can bark when my wife leaves the apartment or even the room. Caving in is bad but it's hard not to because I live in an apartment building.

She's a good dog overall and doesn't seem to suffer from any bad dog problems - she's just curious and playful around other dogs, she had a couple accidents but otherwise is completely housebroken. Around people she's mostly just scared at first.

I'm having similar problems as Daryn early in the thread. With the crate it's pretty weird because most of the time she's great with it. We've been coaxing her in there with treats and leaving her in there during the day for longer periods. We've gotten to where we can leave her in there with no problem for 15 minutes or so and nothing.

At night she seems to know what's coming. She often will whine and try digging in the plastic for maybe 5 seconds and then crash. Last night, however, she started barking. She let out a couple of good barks. I know I'm not supposed to, but since it was a little after 11 and I don't want to get evicted I let her out. She was a little playful and then crashed pretty quickly. When this happened I put her just in front of the crate and she walked in herself. I left the door open so she could come out, which she did after just a few seconds. I let her crash for a little more and then put her in and closed the door with no problem.

Right now the crate is in the living room and we are in the bedroom. We prefer this because our cat still hasn't adjusted to the dog (things are getting better, so he may be ok with her in the crate) and we prefer to let the cat relax in that side of the apartment. Would it help a lot with the barking and general angst if we moved the crate at night? We usually put her in there while we're still awake in the living room but when she wakes up we aren't there.

Also she is quite attached to my wife. When she leaves the apartment the dog starts whining and may bark a time or two, after which she usually calms down. Even when she goes to the kitchen the dog will try to follow her (we have the two front rooms separated from the rest of the apartment so she can't). This might be related to me caving in last night but the dog started barking like crazy this morning when my wife was in the kitchen making breakfast. Again, it was early enough that I'm not sure what we should do because I feel like we can't really just let her bark.

Any advice on any of this would be appreciated.

[Dominic]

my otherwise perfect black lab Sammy has started chewing on things like shoes and hats. He never did this before. I'm wondering why he's doing it now...he's already destroyed my Angels baseball cap from the World Series and a pair of shoes.

Why now??

[tolbiny]

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These pure breed dogs are alot cuter, it makes me feel bad to say this but all of my mutts were uglyyyyyyyyyyyy.

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Pure bred is really just another word for inbred. Inbreeding is bad for hillbillies, European Royalty and dogs.

There are ways to avoid the dangers of inbreeding which I believe are being used in Germany. But in the U.S there is no regulation. We are breeding dogs that are destined to live short, sick lives. And a lot of dog owners don't seem to be bothered by this as long as their dogs are "cute." Hybrids, mongrels are almost always genetically superior and healthier than pure breds.

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So you are saying that dog breders take two puppies from the same parent and bred them in the USA? This is effed up.

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Most likely not brother/sister but close cousins end up getting bred and while the first or second generation it isn't obviously problematic once you get into multiple generations you can really start to see serious problems.

[daryn]

wow.. things are SOOOOOOOOOO much easier for me now than they were when i first started posting in this thread. whew!