Living With Dogs Read Online Free

happy with the dog, and it’s no good abandoning the animal six months later and leaving it to the local pound or RSPCA to solve your wrong choice. Some people give away unwanted dogs, and some just dump them. They may push the dog out of the car on a deserted country road after dark, or simply leave the back gate open on purpose and then make no effort to go and find the dog. However it’s done, dumping is an offence under the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals Act, which says that a person is guilty of cruelty if he or she ‘abandons an animal of a species usually kept in a state of confinement or for a domestic purpose’. The penalty is a $14,000 fine or 12 months’ imprisonment.
    It’s a crime against a dog to buy it as a puppy and then abandon it a few months later because it doesn’t suit you any more. Dogs are almost entirely dependent on humans and, when you dump them, there’s no certainty that their dependency will be met. That’s where the cruelty is involved.
    The RSPCA alone has to put down about 1000 animals a week in Australia, and most of those deaths are caused by people selecting the wrong dog or failing to train their pets. If you make the wrong choice and you haven’t trained the dog, you may grow to dislike it intensely. The trigger for getting rid of it may be that it suddenly bites someone, so the owner has it destroyed or dumps it. Half of all the dogs brought in to the RSPCA will be destroyed because homes cannot be found for them.
Know the breed characteristics
    Often when a dog bites it is displaying the inherent breed characteristics. For example, Corgis will bite because they are cattle dogs, and they nip cows. Bull Terriers were bred to fight other dogs, and it doesn’t take much for them to switch from gregarious buffoons to fighting mode. If a Bull Terrier kills a child it’s a tragedy, but, for me, part of the tragedy is that the dog’s owners failed to see the aggression inherent in the breed and take precautions to prevent it. If I owned a Rottweiler or a Pit Bull Terrier, I could never say it’s so well-bred that it will never attack another dog, or a human. How the dog fits into the wider society is the true test of its behaviour and how well socialised it is, not how it reacts to its owner.
    People often complain about the yapping of terriers, but that is a characteristic of the breed. Terriers are earth dogs bred to flush out foxes and other animals from their dens. They are sharp and alert and you must expect them to dig in the garden and to bark or yap, which is their alerting mechanism.
    Dogs are often selected on the basis of the owners’ views of themselves. The tizzy blonde with dripping jewellery will always have a Poodle. The small, muscular bloke wearing a blue singlet and covered with tattoos always has a Bull Terrier at the end of his arm. The moustachioed police-inspector types are heavily into Dobermanns and Rottweilers. German Shepherds are usually owned by people who want to be dominant. The longer you work in veterinary practice, the more you see that these truisms are supported by reality.
Cross breed or pure breed?
    Roughly half the dogs in Australia are cross breeds, and they can be just as good companions as pure breeds. There is a genetic tendency for a cross breed to have the good points of both breeds, and you get what is called ‘hybrid vigour’, a result of mixing the narrower gene pool of each of the breeds. One result is greater longevity, and another is that you often end up with a healthier animal, because you avoid many of the genetically inherited complaints which are specific to a particular breed. For instance, poodles have breed-specific problems with their eyes, mouths, hearts and knees. If you cross a poodle with another breed, the puppy that results will probably not have these faults to such a degree. The main difference with a pure breed is that you acquire predictable looks, temperament and behaviour; the same predictability does not