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Location: Gippsland, Victoria Stonehaven Park Stonehaven Park is a dog breeder that functions on a large scale to provide dogs that can bring a massive amount of love and joy to your family. This dog breeder specializes in a lot of dog breeds, but their facility and staff are large enough to handle the workload and care for each animal. A miniature Chocolate Poodle puppy playing on the grass in the garden. Poodles are among the most popular breed and the most needed in Stonehaven Park since many of their hybrid dog breeds require a Standard Poodle parent. Although these dogs are in high demand, you can rest assured these dogs are cared for with the material items and human interaction they need. Stonehaven Park has a nursery with the best conditions, including heating and central air conditioning, insulated rooms, and fans for any heat spikes. Additionally, the puppies from Stonehaven Park are checked on often to ensure they are in the best possible health. Your puppy will have known a great deal of happiness before being adopted into your home and will have a microchip in case they get lost and a host of vaccines to ensure they stay protected. Contact Details:. Your dog is special! Chances are that you chose her because you like Poodles and you expected her to have certain traits that would fit your lifestyle: Vigilant watchdog with a ready bark Hypoallergenic coat sheds very little Easily motivated and trainable Highly intelligent, playful, and energetic An excellent companion, family, or working dog Adaptable to a wide variety of living conditions However, no dog is perfect! You may have also noticed these characteristics: May have a tendency to bark excessively Standoffish toward strangers Needs to be exercised and groomed regularly Needs frequent attention from her family Is it all worth it? Of course! She is a joyful and clever companion that loves being the center of attention. All she needs is a lap and loving pet parent! Toy Poodles were bred down in size from Standard Poodles, to be companion dogs. They are commonly used for therapy work, obedience, and agility. They thrive on close human companionship and are considered to rank among the most intelligent canine breeds. Although Poodles need grooming every weeks, they tend not to shed making them an excellent choice for people with allergies. Toy Poodles have an average life span of years. That is why we have summarized the health concerns we will be discussing with you over the life of your Poodle. By knowing about health concerns specific to Toy Poodles, we can tailor a preventive health plan to watch for and hopefully prevent some predictable risks. That does not mean your dog will have these problems; it just means that she is more at risk than other dogs. We will describe the most common issues seen inToy Poodlesto give you an idea of what may come up in her future. This guide contains general health information important to all canines as well as the most important genetic predispositions for Toy Poodles. At the end of the booklet, we have also included a description of what you can do at home to keep your Poodle looking and feeling her best. And unfortunately, your Toy Poodle is more likely than other dogs to have problems with her teeth. It starts with tartar build-up on the teeth and progresses to infection of the gums and roots of the teeth. Infections Toy Poodles are susceptible to bacterial and viral infections—the same ones that all dogs can get—such as parvo, rabies, and distemper. Many of these infections are preventable through vaccination, which we will recommend based on the diseases we see in our area, herage, and other factors. Obesity Obesity can be a significant health problem in Toy Poodles. It is a serious disease that may causeor worsen joint problems, metabolic and digestive disorders, back pain and heart disease. Instead, give her a hug, brush her fur or teeth, play a game with her, or perhaps take her for a walk. Roundworm egg as seen under the microscope. Everything from fleas and ticks to ear mites can infest herskin and ears. Hookworms, roundworms, heartworms, and whipworms can get into hersystem in a number of ways: drinking unclean water, walking on contaminated soil, or being bitten by an infected mosquito. Some of these parasites can be transmitted to you or a family member and are a serious concern for everyone. Spay or Neuter One of the best things you can do for your Poodle is to have her spayed neutered for males. In females, this means we surgically remove the ovariesand usually the uterus, and in males, it means we surgically remove the testicles. Spaying or neutering decreases the likelihood of certain types of cancers and eliminates the possibility of your pet becoming pregnant or fathering unwanted puppies. Performing this surgery also gives us a chance, while your pet is under anesthesia, to identify and address some of the diseases your dog is likely to develop. For example, if your pet needs hip X-rays or a puppy tooth extracted, this would be a good time. This is convenient for you and easy for your friend. Routine blood testing prior to surgery also helps us to identify and take precautions for common problems that increase anesthetic or surgical risk. Genetic Predispositions for Toy Poodles Illustration of degenerative valves in the heart. Over time, some dogs will develop heart failure. Heart Disease Heart failure is a leading cause of death among Toy Poodles in their golden years. Most heart disease in dogs is caused by weakening of a valve. A heart valve slowly becomes deformed so that it no longer closes tightly. Blood then leaks back around this valve and strains the heart. Pets with heart valve disease sometimes called mitral valve disease have a heart murmur. The same tests will need to be repeated at least every year to monitor the condition. If heart valve disease is diagnosed early, we may be able to prescribe medications that could prolong his life for many years. Veterinary dental care and fatty acid supplementation can help prevent heart disease and weight control can help diminish symptoms. Poodles are susceptible to a condition called Patent Ductus Arteriosis, in which a small vessel that carries blood between two parts of the heart does not close shortly after birth as it should. This results in too much blood being carried to the lungs, fluid build-up, and strain on the heart. Outward signs may be mild or you may see coughing, fatigue during exercise, weight loss, shortness of breath, or weakness in the hind limbs. We listen for a specific type of heart murmur to diagnose this problem during his examinations. If your pal has this condition, we may recommend surgery to close the problematic vessel. Toy Poodles are especially prone to a life-threatening heart condition known as dilated cardiomyopathy, or DCM, in which the heart becomes so large, thin, and weak that it can no longer effectively pump blood to the body. As this problem advances, he may act weak or tired, faint or collapse, breathe in a labored way, or cough. The adrenal glands are situated along the vena cava the large vein in the abdominal cavity near each kidney. These small glands release many important hormones in the body. This is a common problem in dogs, and your Poodle is more likely than other dogs to be affected. The condition usually develops slowly, and the early signs are easily missed. Symptoms include drinking and urinating more than normal, increased appetite and reduced activity level. Later, a potbelly, thin skin, and hair loss are characteristic. Treatment usually includes oral medications, and requires close coordination with us to ensure correct dosing. Diabetes Diabetes mellitus is a fairly common disease in dogs. Any breed can be affected, but Poodles have an above average incidence. Dogs with diabetes are unable to regulate the metabolism of sugars and require daily insulin injections. It is a serious condition and one that is important to diagnose and treat as early as possible. Symptoms include increased eating, drinking, and urination, along with weight loss. If he shows signs, we will conduct lab tests to determine if he has this condition and discuss treatment options with you. Treatment requires a serious commitment of time and resources. Well regulated diabetic dogs today have the same life expectancy as other canines. Bone and Joint Problems A number of different musculoskeletal problems have been reported in Toy Poodles. While it may seem overwhelming, each condition can be diagnosed and treated to prevent undue pain and suffering. Both hips and elbows are at risk for dysplasia, an inherited disease that causes the joints to develop improperly and results in arthritis. You may notice that he begins to show lameness in his legs or has difficulty getting up from lying down. We can treat the arthritis—the sooner the better—to minimize discomfort and pain. Surgery is sometimes a good option in severe and life-limiting cases. Keep in mind that overweight dogs may develop arthritis years earlier than those of normal weight, causing undue pain and suffering! Normal Knee Illustration of patellar luxation. Notice how the knee cap has moved out of the groove it normally resides in. You might notice that he runs along and suddenly picks up a back leg and skips or hops for a few strides. If the problem is mild and involves only one leg, your friend may not require much treatment beyond arthritis medication. When symptoms are severe, surgery may be needed to realign the kneecap to keep it from popping out of place. The exact cause of this condition is still not completely understood, but it is thought to be a problem with blood supply to the hip, which causes the femoral head the top of the thigh bone to become brittle and easily fracture. Usually occurring between six and nine months of age, it causes pain and lameness in one or both rear legs, and often requires surgery. Intervertebral disc disease. Note how the cushion of the disc materal has extruded and puts pressure on the spinal nerves. The disease is caused when the jelly-like cushion between one or more vertebrae slips or ruptures, causing the disc to press on the spinal cord. If your dog is suddenly unable or unwilling to jump up, go up stairs, is reluctant to move around, has a hunched back, cries out, or refuses to eat or go potty, he is likely in severe pain. He may even drag his back feet or be suddenly paralyzed and unable to get up or use his back legs. Call us or an emergency clinic immediately! For less severe cases, rest and medication may resolve the problem. As with so many other diseases, weight control helps to prevent this problem. Bleeding Disorders There are several types of inherited bleeding disorders which occur in dogs. They range in severity from very mild to very severe. Many times a pet seems normal until a serious injury occurs or surgery is performed, and then severe bleeding can result. Toy Poodles are particularly prone to some relatively rare diseases of the blood. If the immune system destroys red blood cells, your dog quickly becomes anemic, weak, and lethargic. His gums will look whitish or yellow instead of the normal bright pink color. Sometimes an emergency transfusion of red blood cells or platelets is needed. Epilepsy There are three types of seizures in dogs: reactive, secondary, and primary. Secondary seizures are the result of a brain tumor, stroke, or trauma. If no other cause can be found, the disease is called primary, or idiopathic epilepsy. This problem is often an inherited condition, with Toy Poodles commonly afflicted. If your friend is prone to seizures, they will usually begin between six months and three years of age. An initial diagnostic workup may help find the cause. Lifelong medication is usually necessary to help keep seizures under control, with periodic blood testing required to monitor side effects and effectiveness. Note the length of the seizure, and call us or an emergency hospital. Unfortunately, Toy Poodles can inherit or develop a number of different eye conditions, some of which may cause blindness if not treated right away, and most of which can be extremely painful! We will evaluate his eyes at every examination to look for any signs of concern. Glaucoma, an eye condition that affects Toy Poodles and people too, is an extremely painful disease that rapidly leads to blindness if left untreated. Symptoms include squinting, watery eyes, bluing of the cornea the clear front part of the eye , and redness in the whites of the eyes. Pain is rarely noticed by pet owners though it is frequently there and can be severe. People who have certain types of glaucoma often report it feels like being stabbed in the eye with an ice pick! Glaucoma is a medical emergency. Cataract Cataracts are a common cause of blindness in older Poodles. Many dogs adjust well to losing their vision and get along just fine. Surgery to remove cataracts and restore sight may also be an option. Distichiasis is a condition caused by extra hairs that grow inside of the eyelid and rub on the surface of the eye. This is one of the most commonly inherited diseases in dogs, and your Poodle is more likely than other dogs to develop this painful condition. If untreated, these abnormal hairs can cause corneal ulcers and chronic eye pain. Several treatment options are available, and the prognosis is good once the hairs have been permanently removed. Kidney Disorder Fanconi syndrome is a disorder of the kidneys that allows vital blood nutrients to escape into the urine. Because these nutrients are so important, affected Poodles can experience excessive urination and thirst, weight loss and weakness from abnormal electrolyte levels. Symptoms usually appear between two and six years of age. The severity and course of the disease varies from dog to dog, with some remaining stable for years and others falling into fatal kidney failure. Skin Conditions Poodles are prone to a variety of skin problems, including one called sebaceous adenitis. The earlier the skin is checked out, the better his results. Skin Cancer Squamous Cell Carcinoma is a common form of skin cancer that in some Poodles tends to occur in the toenail bed, the base of the nail where the toenail itself forms and grows. If a toe or nail starts to look lumpy or swollen, or if the nail keeps breaking off, leaving a pink lump protruding from the broken end, call right away. If we determine cancer is the cause, amputation of his toe is needed to prevent the cancer from spreading. Taking Care of Your Toy Poodle at Home Much of what you can do to keep your dog happy and healthy is common sense, just like it is for people. Be sure to adhere to the schedule of examinations and vaccinations that we recommend for her. Another very important step in caring for your pet is signing up for pet health insurance. There will certainly be medical tests and procedures she will need throughout her life and pet health insurance will help you cover those costs. Routine Care, Diet, and Exercise Build her routine care into your schedule to help your Poodle live longer, stay healthier, and be happier during her lifetime. We cannot overemphasize the importance of a proper diet and exercise routine. Supervise your pet as you would a toddler. Keep doors closed, pick up after yourself, and block off rooms as necessary. Daily brushing and regular grooming is needed every weeks to keep her coat beautiful. Clean her ears weekly, even as a puppy. She is well suited to apartment life as long as she is given daily walks and short play sessions. She is highly intelligent and can be taught to perform a variety of tricks to keep her mentally stimulated. Feed a high-quality diet appropriate for her age. What to Watch For Any abnormal symptom could be a sign of serious disease, or it could just be a minor or temporary problem. The important thing is to be able to tell when to seek veterinary help, and how urgently. Many diseases cause dogs to have a characteristic combination of symptoms, which together can be a clear signal that your Toy Poodle needs help. For the most up-to-date information on DNA and other screening tests available for your pal, visit www. Your Poodle counts on you to take good care of her, and we look forward to working with you to ensure that she lives a long and healthy life. Please contact us when you have questions or concerns. References: Ackerman L. Second edition. AAHA Press; .Veterinary medical guide to dog and cat breeds. Jackson, Wyoming. Teton New Media; .Gough A, Thomas A. Breed Predispositions to Disease in Dogs and Cats. Wiley-Blackwell; .Canine Inherited Disorders Database [Internet]. University of Prince Edward Island. Extremely willing to please. There is certainly Russian, together with some French influence, attributed to the modern day Poodle. The Poodle was greatly revered as a water retrieving dog, combining many traits to be successful in this activity. One of the most significant aspects of the evolution of the Poodle is that it was established in three size varieties, Standard, Miniature and Toy. Average Life Span When considering a dog, please realise that you are taking it on for its lifetime. The average life span will vary across the size varieties. The Standard 10 to 12 years and the Miniature and Toy 12 to 15 years. Temperament Poodles of all varieties are extremely intelligent, very trainable, highly adaptable and versatile. They require both physical and intellectual activities. The Poodle also enjoys human company and interaction. General Breed Description The Poodle is a very energetic, intelligent, sociable and an extremely proud dog. Each variety should have the same physical traits and temperament, just in different sized bodies. They make exceptional pets due to their highly trainable nature and excel as performance dogs, therapy dogs and of course companion dogs. It is a breed that cannot be considered an outside dog or left alone for long periods of time. The Poodle comes in many beautiful solid colours, including black, white, brown, silver, cream, blue and apricot. Coat and Care requirements The nature of the Poodle coat makes it a high maintenance breed. The non-shedding, curly, thick coat has many advantages, but for the comfort and hygiene of the dog and health of the skin, it needs to be brushed regularly to remove dead hair from the coat and keep free of tangles. It is recommended that he be bathed and clipped every weeks. The non-shedding nature has great appeal to allergy sufferers. As well as being able to style the Poodle into many different clips and trims. All breeds of dogs enjoy daily exercise to relieve boredom and increase stimulation and the Poodle is no exception. More exercise is required for the Standard Poodle than the smaller varieties. Size Toy Poodle: Height at shoulder should be under 28cms 11ins. Miniature Poodle: Height at shoulder 28cms 11ins to 38cms 15ins. Standard Poodle: Height at shoulder above 38cms 15ins. Health All breeds have individual health issues. When speaking to breeders in is recommended you enquire about breed health and what health testing the breeder does. The Poodle is generally a healthy breed, however health conditions do occur occasionally it is recommended you enquire about general breed health. Sebaceous Adenitis, an auto immune condition can also be tested for. Buying a puppy from a knowledgeable breeder who completes health testing will increase your chances of getting a healthy puppy, irrespective of breed. Suitability As there is a choice of 3 sizes, chances are, if the Poodle is for you, one of the varieties will meet your needs. The Toy and Miniature Poodle are ideal for those who may live in apartments or with limited space. They are often more favoured by retired people but fit in well with families. The Standard Poodle is an athletic dog and will require more exercise. All three varieties generally adapt well to most living situations. As with any breed of dog, training is highly recommended. All varieties of Poodle excel in obedience and performance competition. The intelligent nature of the breed does require them to be challenged to alleviate boredom. In Conclusion Now you know a little more about this breed. If you have decided this is the dog for you and wish to investigate further, please contact the Breed Club or Dogs Victoria. They will be able to give you information about available puppies and also suggest dog events where you can see the breed and speak to breeders. In this way you will gain a better perspective of the breed and its needs. With any breed of dog, it is important to research and determine suitability for your lifestyle before committing to a puppy which will be a part of your family for many years to come. Whilst many breeds are recommended for families, it is imperative that when children are with dogs they are supervised at all times. Basic obedience training is a vital part of dog ownership. Dogs Victoria is about the responsible ownership of all dogs and in particular the preservation of pure breeds. This helps to ensure the puppies adjust well to their new homes. We use the Empowered Breeders Program, this ensures our puppies are given the utmost care and best start to becoming well socialised happy healthy puppies. Vet checks prior to mating , and after Whelping. From birth: The puppies are in a dedicated nursery puppy room from birth to 3… Read more Included with our puppies Included with the purchase of a puppy is: - 4kg of Royal Canin food - Royal Canin Mousse - Ziwi can food - Dehydrated treats - Worming - Shampoo - Grooming tools brush - Jumpers - Toys - Blankets - Puppy Pads - Water bottles for travelling - Personalised and varied gifts depending on what is available at the time. Degenerative Myelopathy DM Genetic Test This is a disease affecting the spinal cord of older dogs, initially causing wobbliness and eventually hindlimb paralysis. It can affect a wide range of breeds. There is now a DNA test that can indicated if a breeding dog is carrying this disease. GM2 Genetic Test GM2 gangliosidosis is a lysosomal storage disorder that causes neurological problems. There are a few different types of this disease affecting different breeds. There is a DNA test available to identify if a breeding dog is carrying this condition. MPS Genetic Test Mucopolysaccharidosis is a genetic lysosomal storage disease that can cause various problems including stunted growth and bone deformities. There are a few different variants of this disease that have been identified in different breeds. For many breeds there are DNA tests available to identify if a breeding dog is carrying the condition. There are a variety of sub-types of PRA, which can occur in various breeds. There are various DNA tests available to identify whether a breeding dog is carrying this condition. Our first poodle was our beautiful Bella. What a joy she turned out to be, she truly changed our world. Bella had us all smitten, even tricked us into allowing her to sleep in our bed was only supposed to be for 1 night! Needless to say all our plans for crate… Read more Why we got involved in breeding We were smitten with the poodle breed and their exceptional personality traits, their intelligence, their ease of training, fun and active.We pride ourselves and standby our breeding practices so that we can give families healthy puppies that are socialised and have positive traits. Some of our puppies have gone on to… Read more.

At the age of four, he cooks a live kitten in an oven. Hearing the poor animal meow as it dies is heartbreaking. Said individual's probably the most twisted of the pilots, and deliberately causes massive death and property damage during his battle to give his father opportunities to rebuild. Kon is aghast at the state of the Tachikawas' cats and rushes to groom six months of unbrushed hair off of all of them, clean their bowls, and feed them. The Tachikawas never actually wanted the cats, but in their grandfather's will, he insists that the cats be taken care of. As a result, the Tachikawas don't actually know how to care for them or even their names, showing that the sorry state the cats are in at the beginning of the story is more out of ignorance than malicious neglect. Shows up in more than one Doraemon film. Right in the first movie, Doraemon: Nobita's Dinosaur , the Dinosaur Hunters are poachers working for a futuristic billionaire, who hunts and kills stray dinosaurs for sport with a lingering scene in their boss' mansion hideout - filled with taxidermized dinosaurs and gigantic skeletons. They even have an arena to watch dinosaurs maul each other to death, for no reason other than to drive in how evil they are. Elfen Lied : Tomoo, the orphanage bully who teased Lucy for her horns went as far as to take the puppy she had been taking care of and beat it to death. Shocking considering they're supposed to be seven years old. It doesn't end well for the kids. Jagi, a preteen boy and one of the aforementioned Ryuuken's kids, attempts to kill the puppy in response by stomping it, but the puppy is saved by Jagi's step-brother, Kenshiro, who takes Jagi's stomp in order to protect it before bringing it back to Yuria. Jagi grew up to be a psychotic murderer, while Kenshiro grew up to be The Hero who ended Jagi's life. Shou Tucker from Fullmetal Alchemist experiments on animals to create his chimera. That is fine as many alchemists and scientists do experiments on animals.However, part of why he's so atrocious is because his experiments involved combining humans with animals. When he made his second talking chimera, he used his young daughter and their pet dog. Both were Mercy Killed by Scar a few hours later. His first talking chimera used his wife. However, things really come to a head when she walks in on her grandmother drowning puppies in their bathtub as a sacrifice to protect the family by pacifying Oyashiro. Shortly after, her mom apparently kills the grandmother because she's becoming a menace and destroying their peaceful life in the city. This is later subverted when it's revealed Natsumi is an Unreliable Narrator who murdered her grandmother and parents. Natsumi's grandmother did drown puppies but it's a morally dubious case of superstition rather than outright villainy. JoJo's Bizarre Adventure uses this trope very frequently. Hirohiko Araki is a dog lover himself and uses a villain harming an animal as easy shorthand to show that they're past the Moral Event Horizon. In Part 1 , Dio literally kicks a dog Danny, Jonathan's pet Great Dane as soon as he arrives at the hero's home, and later burns it alive. After that point, animals, and especially dogs, usually suffer cruel fates to the current villain of the series. A century later, DIO demonstrates his Time Stop to the audience by brutally dismembering a cat and putting the pieces in people's food while planning how to kill Joseph. A notable exception, and a prime example of Contrasting Sequel Antagonist , is the villain Kars in Part 2. He goes out of his way to protect living things that aren't human, as in one scene where he cuts off the arms of a driver to prevent them from running over a dog. This trait goes out the window when Kars gains The Power of Creation as part of ascending to the Ultimate Life Form, which he first tests by making a double of a squirrel that messily devours the original. Lots of examples from Part 3 : Rubber Soul, having caught Jotaro in a cable car, takes his time using his Stand Yellow Temperance to crush and devour a pet dog in front of its owners including a child! Mannish Boy uses his Stand, Death 13 , to kill a dog in Polnareff's dream. Later, the dog is found dead in the same way, first hinting at the Stand's ability to kill people in their dreams. Even other animals can use this to show their villainy. Case in point: Pet Shop, a bird villain , has its Establishing Character Moment when it pulls a pair of dogs under a gate, decapitates them, and starts to eat them. Although he'd already crossed the Moral Event Horizon at that point by killing Avdol, Vanilla Ice further demonstrates his vileness by brutally kicking Iggy to death. One of the first things we see the Starter Villain Anjuro "Angelo" Katagiri do is bite off a pug dog's face. All because the owner wasn't cleaning up after it. Subverted with Tonio Trussardi. Josuke, sneaking into his kitchen after he suspects something is up with him, sees him feeding one of his meals to a small dog, then grinning like a loon when the dog's intestines explode out and screaming at Josuke when he catches him. Only it turns out the dog's perfectly fine; Tonio's Stand Pearl Jam has the power to cure any ailment, albeit in a visceral manner , and the dog was just suffering from a bad case of diarrhea. He only got mad at Josuke for entering the kitchen without washing his hands. Yoshikage Kira, the eventual Big Bad , made his 'debut' in the past by brutally murdering Reimi Sugimoto and her dog Arnold, the latter by slashing his throat and hanging him on the clothes dryer. Formaggio from Part 5 is introduced trying to pet an angry cat. Eventually, he gets annoyed and stuffs it into a glass bottle by using his Stand, Little Feet, which can shrink things. In Part 6 , Lang Rangler throws live rats at Jolyne while fighting her. When they go splat against her cloud suit's helmet, her vision is obscured by the blood. King Hamdo, the psychotic ruler of Hellywood from Now and Then, Here and There , is introduced in the middle of an emotional outburst when a cat interrupts him. Guess what happens to the cat. Go on, guess. Boa Hancock of One Piece has a habit of literally Kicking The Dog or a cat or a baby seal whenever she comes across them. She starts as a villain that Luffy opposes, but then becomes infatuated with him after showing his kindness; she still kicks little critters around, though, as she's still a big-name pirate. He isn't exactly a villain but is by far Ash's most antagonistic rival. Eventually, he does see his errors by the end , with the Chimchar he abused defeating him in the Sinnoh League as a fully evolved Infernape. Charmander's original trainer Damian was an abusive boy who told him that he'd come back for him, even when he had no intention of doing so. He didn't even care that Charmander would have died due to his Undying Loyalty causing him to stay on the rock even in a storm. In the Black and White series, we have Pignite's former trainer Shamus. He abuses his Pokemon and is pointed out as being bad. In Psycho-Pass 2, the season finale reveals that Tougane was groomed as a child by his mother to be criminally asymptomatic, and one of the first things we see him do in his childhood is murder a puppy. In Revolutionary Girl Utena , Nanami ended up drowning her brother Touga's kitten because he was giving it more attention than her. Though not evil per se, she's definitely an antagonist of the Alpha Bitch variety for much of the show and clearly has a number of mental issues mostly involving her brother that don't really get addressed until late in the story. Her track record with animals in the present of the show is implied to be Laser-Guided Karma for this incident, as well as a curse put on her by Anthy , a well-known animal lover and frequent victim of Nanami's abuse. In the first episode of Sailor Moon , a group of nasty kids were shown viciously beating Luna the Cat and forcibly putting a band-aid on her head. Fortunately for Luna, she is rescued by Usagi , who removes the band-aid that covered Luna's "crescent spot" on her head. This reveals Luna as a magical cat. Satou Kashi no Dangan wa Uchinukenai : The troubled though not outright antagonistic Mokuzu ends up killing all her school's rabbits, beheading one of them, and stuffing its head in her school bag. Mokuzu's dad beat their dog, to the point where he killed him. This serves as foreshadowing to Mokuzu's own death. Spy X Family : Keith Kepler, leader of the nationalistic university student terrorists , plans to release dogs with bombs strapped to them during the middle of a peace summit, and set off the explosives to kill the visiting foreign minister, and other dignitatries, with the hope of restarting the war so that his country can reign supreme. To show how the deep end he is, Keith's even shown kicking a dog inside on his gang's safehouse just for the hell of it. In Tokyo Ghoul , Juuzou Suzuya is ostracised by his fellows in the CCG partly because mutilated corpses of small animals, mostly cats, turned up on the CCG Academy grounds while he was a student there. Suzuya had a horrifically abusive upbringing that left him almost unable to have empathy for other living things, and he is certainly violent and creepy. But he was framed. The real culprits were one of the staff, a psychopathic torturer, and another unstable student who was suffering psychotic breaks and disassociation. Suzuya displayed a lack of reaction when found with the bodies which made him ideal to blame instead, and it wasn't investigated very closely out of fear the organisation's reputation would suffer. In a flashback of Your Lie in April , Kousei's abusive mom abandoned their pet cat after it scratched him on the hand. Kousei was being harshly trained to be a pianist to abusive degrees and his mother didn't want anything to happen to his hands. In the first stage, an antisocial boy named Tom Nero tortures a dog for his own amusement. In the second stage, now an adult, he savagely beats his own coach horse out of frustration until he puts out its eye. In the third stage, he graduates to robbery and the seduction and murder of a servant girl. The fourth stage displays his "reward" for his crimes: execution and, to add insult to injury, dissection. Comic Books AD : Judge Dredd : When Judge Death recounts how he began his long career of evil in his Origins Episode , the first obvious clue that he was an Enfant Terrible are his early sadistic tendencies of torturing the family dog and shooting at birds. Zombo : Played for laughs in a throwaway gag, when one of President of the Earth Donald Trump's assistants mentions that his boss once shredded a puppy. In Afterlife with Archie , when she was ten, Cheryl's puppy choked on her leash. It's later implied their relationship is at least somewhat forced by Jason. Evil Jimmy Olsen kills Superman, who has been turned into a dog, by crushing him underneath a fire hydrant. The Joker is simply annoyed because he doesn't know how to make something as pointless as beating a dumb animal funny. Jimmy Olsen is then beaten to death by two giant robots who appear out of nowhere. At least one take on Mister Freeze's origins had him, as a child , trying to "preserve" his pets by locking them in the freezer though it could be argued that he wasn't trying to be cruel so much as very, very out of touch with reality. The Penguin is often shown eating fish whole sometimes they're still alive as he eats them , as a nod to his namesake. He also wears fur coats, since he's a Rich Bitch. In the comic Joker's Asylum , a young Penguin goes insane and kills his birds just because one bit him. Also, in the film Batman Returns , he holds his sword-umbrella to Catwoman's pet cat, and he killed his parents' cat as a baby. The villain of the Ace the Bathound story "Hounded" in Batman: Urban Legends runs a pet cemetery and animal shelter which is actually a training camp for supervillain pets, and also performs unnecessary experiments on the animals For the Evulz. When he's being given a humanitarian award , he has a speech saying that when you see how people treat animals, you know how they'd like to treat other people. The amorality of one villain was shown when he chastises his Dumb Muscle over a mistake, picking up the goon's kitten as he goes on. By the time he leaves the room, the cat's neck was broken as punishment for the goon's failure. Calexit : Jamil's first on-screen customer was a soldier that recounts how his sister's ex spitefully poisoned their hummingbird feeder and had to watch the birds die. Calico : The villains that Calico targets are people who have hurt animals in some way. Issue 1 has him kill a rich family who shot a lioness on a hunting trip, and Issue 2 has him decapitate a man who clubbed baby seals. The Darkness : Appolonia Franchetti snaps her pet cat's neck in front of Jackie just to prove a point about how she will never let anything get in her way. The worst thing is that she did it right after saying she raised him since he was a kitten and he was very precious to her and she will miss him when he is gone. Spectacularly subverted by Marvel Comics' Doctor Doom , who lost a match against Squirrel Girl and her battalion of squirrels because Doom refuses to be cruel to small, cute critters. In Sin City : Family Values, a mafia hitman recounts how he "lit up" a diner with twin Uzis, killing everybody inside, then stopped just to shoot a stray dog before making his getaway. This proved to be his fatal mistake, as the collateral damage from this event shooting a prostitute in a phone booth next to the dog brought the wrath of Old Town onto his entire organization. Superman : In The Leper from Krypton , Lex Luthor puts an indeterminate number of rabbits and cats through a terrible death to test his newly created virus, and later to fool world governments into paying for a fake cure. And he is smiling gleefully every time. The Super-Revenge of Lex Luthor : Lex permanently damages a rabbit's brain to test his skills at psychological manipulation. Ultimate X-Men : It's revealed in issue 99 that Sabretooth abused animals as a child, always a bad sign of things to come. Surtr in Valhalla is one of the most evil and cruel Jotunns, and has abused Fenrir, making him turn from a lovable Big Friendly Dog who just hates to be chained to an evil, rampaging beast. Wonder Woman : As part of cementing that the Stalker with a Crush Diana nabbed while he was following his victim is a dangerous threat to the woman he "loves" he'd previously killed the woman's pets for getting engaged to another man even though she'd never been in a relationship with him and had a restraining order against him. Comic Strips Dick Tracy : Not only was Miss Egghead an aficionado of Beastly Bloodsports — running a stable of gamecocks — but she also strangled a young girl's pet rooster in front of her. Footrot Flats : Unlike his father and brother, who restrict their bullying to those who can theoretically fight back, Fat Bastard 'Hunk' Murphy likes to indulge in such petty acts of cruelty as pulling the wings off butterflies. Fairy Tales The King Of The Golden River : When explaining why Schwartz and Hans, "the Black Brothers", are two nasty pieces of work, the narrator talks about them killing innocent animals before everything else abusing and underpaying servants, hoarding corn and then selling it for twice its value.Besides what they did to those once-little critters that subsequently led to them becoming so monstrously sadistic , the author commented that said Precursors probably enjoyed taking electric prods to whatever animal equated to puppies in their home. In the Recursive Fanfiction one-shot Finding You Genocide , the Titan Camazotz and his minions massacre numerous wild animals and drop their remains from the sky on Monster X like a visceral rain for no other reason than to intimidate Monster X. Eventually the Darkrai turned on him and attacked him so ferociously that he was forced to release it, but it continued to haunt him and inflict terrifying nightmares on him every new moon. Four years later, the Darkrai was still stalking its old Trainer and forcing him to endure its nightmares, causing him to be reduced to a shadow of his former self. The Bolt Chronicles : The puppy mill owner in "The Seven" abandons his dogs and leaves them to starve. Mittens's adoptive family especially Jack, the head of the household in "The Survivor" is nightmarishly abusive to animals. His daughter Claire is depicted as neglectful losing interest in the pets she acquires rather than outright abusive. A Boy, a Girl and a Dog: The Leithian Script : Back when the world was young, the first Dark Lord Morgoth used to catch eagles and hawks and cut their wings off to figure out how to make his own flying creatures or machines. He gets his comeuppance when the Daycare woman gives him a special egg that hatches into a shiny Treecko, which kills him. As a kid, she'd pull the legs off of bugs and laugh at animal deaths. His History Revealed: A Dr. Robotnik Biography : It was an unintentional death, but a sign of Harold Robotnik's cruelty and Sanity Slippage is how he tried to power his engine using his son's puppy. It didn't work as expected and the puppy all-but exploded. The Pokemon fic " Meanwhile " written before Pokemon Journeys aired reveals that Pikachu was subjected to emotional abuse by his trainer before Ash; his first trainer was emotionally distant at first, then showed kindness when he learnt what was needed for the then-Pichu to evolve into Pikachu, and afterwards kept Pikachu trapped in his Poke Ball and made it clear he only ever saw Pikachu as a tool to win battles rather than a person. Pikachu observes to Meowth that this is the reason why he doesn't want to evolve into Raichu, as thinking about the sensation of evolving makes him remember the trainer who was so dismissive towards him before, and he never wants to feel that way again. The Rigel Black Chronicles : When she finds the first threatening message left by the mysterious assailant petrifying students, Harry is horrified to find the caretaker's cat and its six new kittens, dead and nailed to the wall to underscore how deadly serious the attacker is. Turning Point : According to Hector, the same healer who accused Lisa of witchcraft also liked to poison cats. Later on in the same chapter, Olive uses the Pudding-inator on the pigeons Polly Graph's, specifically that attack Odd Todd and turns them all to pudding out of sheer instinct, which proves to be the final nail in the coffin that makes her join the Todd Squad. In With Pearl and Ruby Glowing , Bill Cipher rips the teeth out of a deer and, since he's human here, doesn't magically put them back, instead letting it free to starve. Less gratuitously, Ratigan kills Toby when breaking into Basil's home, and Madame Medusa live-feeds Brutus and Nero arguably cruel to them as well as the prey, as prey fighting back have been known to injure pet carnivores severely. Deconstructed, however, with Sea Hawk; as a severely abused child, he kills animals to regain a feeling of power over his life, but everyone dismisses him as an Enfant Terrible. Films — Animation Cruella DeVil from Dalmatians is so driven to have a dalmatian fur coat to compliment her fur coat obsession that she orders her goons to break into a house and steal some and then kill them all in the quickest way possible "Any way you like — poison them, drown them, bash them in the head! In the Bambi movies, the enemy and antagonist is Man. They murder animals often enough that animals have to watch out for them whenever going out in the meadow, and hide whenever they're in the forest. Subverted in that Man isn't actually presented as evil, though animals consider them horrifying gods who can kill them easily with their weird long arms. Wanting to present Man as a neutral character is why Walt Disney never showed their faces. El Primero from Ferdinand is a famous bullfighter who is an entitled, arrogant and pompous character who only spares Ferdinand in the climax at the insistence of the crowd. Judge Frollo in The Hunchback of Notre Dame likens the Romani population of Paris to vermin, and even crushes an ant colony with a tile to make a point about wanting to destroy them. He even has no qualms in hurting Esmeralda's pet goat Djali, as he got one of his soldiers to capture the goat and have him detained along with Esmeralda and the rest of the Romani people to be executed. Surprisingly enough, he is NEVER shown to mistreat his horse Snowball, even ordering his soldiers not to hurt it when Phoebus attempts to escape on its back. Conrad Cuppman in the Hugo movies. He wants to make Hugo a movie star against his will and pretty much destroys Hugo's home when capturing him. Leafie from Leafie, a Hen into the Wild was kept in a small cage all her life surrounded by other hens, only destined to produce eggs. She escapes at the beginning into the wild. Her owner is presented as an antagonist who later tried to clip her adopted duck son's wings. Ursula the sea witch from Disney's The Little Mermaid has no regard for the well-being of others. She devours one of four terrified brine shrimp whole and alive like a cashew; she squeezes an anemone until it bleeds to use its blood as lipstick; at least two of the ingredients for her mermaid-to-human potion are live creatures in bottles, staring horrified at their impending doom. In her Vanessa disguise, Ursula kicks a growling Max the sheepdog and tries to strangle Scuttle. However, she does care for her pet moray eels Flotsam and Jetsam ; even becoming extremely distressed when they're accidentally killed by the trident which led to her Roaring Rampage of Revenge , but this is likely Moral Myopia at work. In Open Season , Shaw tries to murder animals he has no business killing, including Boog, a circus bear. He also goes out of his way to kill Elliot. He also falsely believes animals are trying to take over the world. Nicodemus: We were captured, put in cages, and sent to a place called Nimh. There were many animals there, in cages. They were put through the most unspeakable tortures.In the Shaun the Sheep feature film , Trumper imprisons most of the animals that he finds in what is essentially a prison, where they get little food and are treated like vermin. This is all to make him feel like a hero when he's actually pathetic. Plenty of examples can be found in Spirit: Stallion of the Cimarron , often rubbing shoulders with Humans Are Bastards. The stable master uses many bondage techniques in his effort to shoe and brand the titular stallion. Each failure dials up the cruelty a notch. The railroad men hitch more than one hundred horses to yokes to pull a huge locomotive to the top of a grade in winter, motivating them with crops and whips. The locomotive is too bulky to power itself up the slope, and even the horses struggle with the icy footing. J Sweetly Applecheeks maintains a facade of caring for animals in Tom and Jerry: The Movie , but he actually captures pampered pets and ransoms them back to their wealthy owners. His dingy basement is filled with cramped cages where he terrorizes the animals with a horsewhip. She's not particularly nice to Gromit either, trying to trap him in her house so he has to watch Wallace being blown up. Film — Live-Action American Psycho : After Patrick Bateman murders a homeless man in a dark alley, he immediately stomps his dog to death. A dog is stabbed in Andy Warhol's Bad. The killer in Angst narrates to the audience about how he tortured animals in his youth. Hilariously inverted in Austin Powers , as Dr. Evil outright kills several people on the account of upsetting his cat, Mr. Bigglesworth got upset because Dr. Evil got upset, which was because the assassins he hired failed to kill Austin Powers. Bravo the British channel had three idents that contained this trope. They consisted of one where we see rabbits on a farm roaming around, and then a grenade falls down and explodes them , one where a cat is locked up in a cage , and one ident where a goldfish is seen, then the camera zooms out to reveal that it's in a blender, leading to where the goldfish is blended off-screen. Brimstone : The first unambiguously cruel act the Reverend carries out on-screen is the wholesale slaughter of Elizabeth's livestock. A rather disturbing example is in a Deleted Scene in The Cat in the Hat : The main antagonist Larry Quinn, before going to negotiate with a television store owner, decides to hide Nevins in a TV set by tying him up with the TV's plug, forcing him to chew on it, and then forcefully throws him into the set. To make matters more unsettling, Nevins yelps after being thrown into the TV. Not even the fact that all of this is shown off-screen helps matters. In Circus of Horrors , Dr. This eventually comes back to bite him when he gets badly clawed. Downfall : Eva Braun admits that she kicks Hitler's beloved German Shepherd Blondi under the table just to get a reaction out of Hitler. In Eden Lake , teenage psychopath Brett and his gang are showing abusing a rabbit and a fox. In Equilibrium , as if we needed any more indication that the government of Libria was dictatorial and evil, it turns out that they have a policy of killing dogs and puppies for being "inducive of emotion". This is what finally drives John Preston, who has gone off the government-mandated drug Prozium, to turn fully against the regime. In the climax of Eyes of a Stranger , the first sign we have that something is wrong in Tracy's apartment is a dramatic Reveal Shot of her dog, strangled by the Serial Killer already inside with her. Being blind and deaf, Tracy remains unaware and continues her normal routine. The infamous "bunny boiler" scene from Fatal Attraction , which had Alex Forrest, a truly unhinged Yandere , killing and cooking the pet rabbit of Dan's daughter in the family's pressure cooker. This trope ended up leading to a sequence being dropped from The Fly .In between the scene that reveals Veronica is pregnant with Seth's child and her resultant Nightmare Sequence , there was originally a whole reel known informally as the "monkey-cat" sequence in which Seth, his Slow Transformation continuing apace, decides to use all three of his telepods to genetically splice together the surviving baboon and a cat. The resultant single creature violently attacks him, whereupon he beats it to death with a lead pipe. Because there is virtually no dialogue or obvious exposition via his computer to explain what his purpose in doing this is — instead it's revealed later as an attempt at finding the cure for his condition, one he tries to put through in the climax — the first test screening audience made the wrong assumptions about Seth and believed he was just being needlessly cruel to helpless beings. As a result, they no longer cared about his plight, which meant the rest of the film was a wash. Even though this meant losing an elaborate follow-up sequence that paid off the growth developing on his abdomen an insect leg emerging from it , the whole reel was cut so Seth could remain sympathetic. Godzilla vs. As vicious as Skullcrawlers are, what Apex are doing with them — breeding them in captivity and then throwing them at Mechagodzilla to be brutally killed by the Mecha in test runs — is something that Monarch would never even consider doing. It's also implied that they intend to at least make the attempt to cage, enslave, or kill any and all Kaiju that they can get their hands on. The Good Son : Henry shoots and kills a dog with a nail crossbow. Gothika : Discussed Trope when Dr. Miranda Grey explains her theory about the killer's accomplice's origins with the sheriff, which as a budding serial killer probably included torturing animals from a young age onwards. Then subverted when the sheriff reveals in a Wham Line that he never did enjoy it. Similar to Miss Gulch above, Mrs. Deagle of Gremlins jumps away from any possible sympathy from her very first scene and never looks back by swearing she will snatch Billy Peltzer's pet dog whenever Billy least expects it and she will toss it into her dryer in retaliation for it accidentally breaking a porcelain snowman of hers Billy even offers to pay it back right then and there but she insists she won't accept anything less than the dog's life as payback. Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. He also gladly kills them himself once they outlive their use. Some of his more dangerous experiments are also kept under lock and key until his explicit command. Many of them aren't even violent, they're just bred by him to be used as The Brute even when they don't want to be. Halloween : Michael Myers kills both dogs he comes across. He's also implied to have eaten one. In The House That Jack Built , a scene from the titular Serial Killer 's childhood is shown, where he remorselessly cuts the legs of a duckling with pair of pliers, just to establish that he was always a thoroughly horrible person. Ice Cream Man : While he is more genuinely insane than truly malicious, Gregory kills his neighbor's dog and puts it through a wood chipper. One of the first indicators of Christopher's evil in Island of Death is when he rapes a goat and then slashes the poor beast's throat , leaving it to bleed to death. John Wick : What motivates John for most of the movie is the fact that Iosef Tarasov and his gang killed his new dog Daisy, which was the last gift of his dead wife, as they were beating him to shit and stealing his car. And the reason they killed the dog was that Iosef was annoyed that she was barking at them. In Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom , the Big Bad Elijah Mills wants to sell the dinosaurs to the highest bidders, many of whom are callous, uncaring criminals, just to satisfy his own hunger for monetary riches. In The Killing Kind , Terry's first act of psychopathy after returning home is to strangle his mother's cat Penny to prevent it from meowing and giving him away while he is spying on Lori through her bedroom window. Little Shop of Horrors : As part of his musical number, Dr. Orin Scrivello, D. Long Weekend : In addition to their unwarranted killing of the dugong albeit due to mistaking it for something more dangerous like a shark , Peter and Marcia run over a kangaroo without a second thought, while Peter fires willy-nilly shots at ducklings and other creatures. In Man in the Attic , Slade literally kicks Harley's dog, which has been lovingly following him around ever since he joined the household, to drive it away from while he burns his bloodstained Ulster. From this point on, the dog goes from being slavishly devoted to him to being afraid of him. Mars Attacks! In particular, they seem to absolutely despise birds. They kill two birds during the film and also kill the president's dog. They also abduct a woman and her pet dog and swap their heads around for giggles. Finally, one of the classic Mars Attacks! The Night of a Thousand Cats : Hugo treats his feline henchmen like total crap, violently grabbing one and tossing him over the fence and attempting to drown another in his swimming pool. Horrifyingly, none of this appears to be simulated. Norbit : After being repeatedly disrespected and cheated on by his wife Rasputia, the final straw for Norbit is when she intentionally runs over the neighbor's dog for simply looking at her. Even though the dog is hospitalized and crippled, she just laments the fact that she didn't succeed in killing it. Platoon : While patrolling the village, Bunny shoots an innocent pig for no good reason. Ring of Fear : After rejoining the circus, O'Malley constantly torments the tiger that he blames along with Clyde Beatty for his downfall and humiliation; doing such things as shooting it with a slingshot. His cruelty to the big cat will come back to bite him in the end: quite literally. He jabs short twigs into its body to hinder its wings and make it "fly like a butterfly". When the out-of-control bird crashes into a tree and breaks its neck, his only comment is a callous "It was only a bird". Shoot to Kill : After taking a jeweler's wife and maid hostage to make him rob his own store, the killer brutally kills the family dog to show that he means business. Director Guy Ritchie included this scene after having a conversation with a Brazilian man who said that in his country, the worst kind of criminals are animal abusers namely, dogs. Additionally, Avi the Jewish gangster is willing to have a dog cut open to get a diamond out of its stomach, which horrifies his Psycho for Hire Bullet Tooth Tony. Ironically, in real life, Brick Top's actor Alan Ford is an animal rights activist. Spawn : Jason Wynn uses his pet scorpions' terrarium as an ashtray. He doesn't actually extinguish his cigar on any of the scorpions, but the implication is obvious. Starkweather : The first act of sociopathy the young Charles Starkweather commits—at the Dark man's urging—is to stomp a toad to death. Strays : Doug is a lazy, narcissistic Manchild who smokes all day, cheats on his girlfriend, only keeps poor Reggie out of spite, spends every day trying to get rid of him, and finally tries to kill him in the climax. The farmer in The Tale of the Bunny Picnic berates and insults the dog, refuses to feed him until he brings him a sack full of bunnies, and can't even be bothered to give him a name. He's the only truly villainous character in the special, and the only one who doesn't get a happy ending. Tales of Terror : In "The Black Cat", Montressor is not content with abusing his wife Annabelle, but also torments her pet cat, and would undoubtedly kill it if it ever stayed still long enough for him to get his hands on it. As might be guessed from the title, the cat provides him with his karmic comeuppance. Him graphically killing his victim's mother and young daughter both in a lengthy, drawn-out manner - the former suffocated by saran wrap while the latter gets force-fed a bottle of liquid detergent already established him as a sadist, but the film went the extra mile by having Wong grab the family's Pomeranian, shoving it into a washing machine, and leave with the spin cycle at maximum. Terminator 2: Judgment Day : In the extended cut, the T stabs John Connor's dog Max to death in cold blood after his barking clued John and the T in that the T was trying to trick them. Lang subjecting tigers to inhumane experiments and that he releases the poor creatures so they can attack the rubber manufacturers establishes him as a cruel individual. Lang's accomplice Henry and his assistant are introduced tormenting a tiger, invoking Frank's ire. The titular characters of Tragedy Girls dissolve a human corpse in industrial lye, and casually admit that they had to practice making it to get the formula right, and had to go through a lot of stray cats and dogs before they finally got it. To make matters worse, one of the girls goes home to her oblivious father.Troop Beverly Hills : During the girl scout troop Jamboree, Velda's Red Feathers troop cheats by misdirecting Phyllis's troop into a snake-infested swamp. After Annie drops some advice about which snakes are perfectly okay with water, they are scared out and in a stroke of luck, a skunk scares them again, causing them to take a shortcut and finish first, ahead of Velda's troop, allowing her rival troop to qualify for the final. In anger over the plan backfiring, Velda picks the poor skunk up by its tail and vows it's going to pay for helping her hated rivals win—that night we see she killed the skunk and made it into a hat. In The Uncanny , Valentine cements his position as a villain when he drowns Scat's three kittens fortunately off-screen. The Wizard of Oz : Miss Gulch the Wicked Witch's Kansas counterpart is already a pretty bitter and vile harpy every second she's on-screen, but she cements herself as irredeemably evil by barging into the Gales' home with a court order so she can take Dorothy's beloved dog Toto to the pound to be killed and if it was up to her, she would do it by boiling the poor little thing in her oven. Turns out some random dog bit her earlier in the day and she couldn't care about finding out which dog it was — she already hates Toto, so she just went to the sheriff which she has some control over and told him that Toto did it so she could get rid of him. Literature Agnes Grey : A recurring theme in the novel. The first family Agnes acts as governess to just seem like run-of-the-mill Upper-Class Twits whose children are Spoiled Brats.Years later, she realizes the local rector at a small town she's living in is not a good man because he kicks her neighbor's cat and her dog , while she realizes the pastor Mr. Weston is a truly good man because he pets those same animals instead of kicking them. In the American Girl series, Felicity falls in love with a horse that she names "Penny". Penny's owner is a mean old man named Jiggy Nye, who mistreats her. He's also a leather tanner , and not well respected in Williamsburg because of his cruelty to both man and beast. Animal Farm : One of the reasons the animals rebelled was because Mr. Jones had been treating them worse and worse as he got older. The final straw came on a day when he straight-up forgot to give them food. In the Arcia Chronicles , whether a person of Royal Blood gets along with the cats living in the Imperial Palace of Munt is a surefire indicator of whether he will be The Good King or a bad one. Justified in that the "cats" are actually cat-shaped guardian spirits of the palace and being accepted by them is an ancient rite of passage for future kings that the humans have long forgotten. Charles and Alexander Tagere get along with the "cats" right away, Philip Tagere has more trouble with them, while both Pierres Lumen can't stand them mutually , which perfectly mirrors the scale of how virtuous they are presented by the narration. Brother teaches her self-defense which he advises her to use only as a last resort. Sister catches Tuffy throwing stones at a baby bird, an event that is captured in italicized text in the book. Sister calls Tuffy out on it, and the subsequent fight ends with Sister punching Tuffy in the nose. Glanton immediately tests it out by shooting nearby livestock and a cat, then proceeds to haggle over the price like nothing happened. It's ultimately Zig-Zagged , since soon after this Glanton adopts a dog that he seemingly cares for more than other people, but it's implied that only because it was something he could control that belonged to him rather than out of any sort of compassion. The Big Bad Judge Holden buys two puppies from a young boy simply so he could throw them off the bridge into the river below. One of his Psycho for Hire associates shoots them as they're drowning, and it's unclear whether this was a Mercy Kill or done out of malice. The Chronicles of Ancient Darkness : In the prehistoric world, it's an everyday activity to hunt for food, but the prey is respected through proper homages to set their souls to rest and by using what's not eaten in toolmaking. There are also reserves in hunting predators. The main villains, the Soul Eaters, violate these rites by hunting down predators, killing them for certain body parts to be used in their spells, and leaving the rest to rot. In addition to that, the Crippled Wanderer begins the first book's plot by trapping a demon in a bear's body, and by the time of the last book, Eostra has corrupted a pack of dogs as her bloodthirsty minions. Thiazzi in particular takes pleasure in torturing predators that are caught and unable to fight back. The Dark : An ethereal concentration of darkness rouses people to acts of acts of murderous sadism - targets of which include animals. In Discworld : Snuff Sir Sam Vimes, Commander of the Ankh-Morpork Watch, regales an inexperienced but eager village constable, Feeney, with how a man had once cut off his dog's back legs when it wouldn't heel. Lord Vetinari ordered the man's house searched by the Watch, and he was executed a week later for what they found in his cellar. Vimes: And bloody Vetinari got away with it again, because he was right: where there are little crimes, large crimes are not far behind. In Ender's Game , Ender's sadistic older brother Peter mutilates squirrels in the woods near the family home. This is something of a subversion though since even though Peter is clearly a sadist and Ender is more compassionate, by the end of the book Ender unwittingly commits genocide, while Peter selfishly brings about world peace. Tolkien 's The Fall of Gondolin , it is mentioned that Morgoth, the first Dark Lord, used to hunt, chain and torture eagles; and he then cut their wings off to figure out how to build flying gear for himself. Thorondor, the Lord of Eagles really hates him because of it. Go to Sleep A Jeff the Killer Rewrite : According to the senior student's warnings, it is rumored that Randy kills animals just for the fun of it. Per Word of God here , that is one of the few rumors about Randy that is actually true. Graceling Realm : King Leck of Monsea, a sadistic murderer who enjoys torturing people, started on animals first. He's even shown doing this in the prequel , Fire. Tierney once witnessed Kiersten "drown a butterfly while playing with its wings". Tommy is described as the "boy who tortures majestic birds for fun? Timmi and Rebecca yell at the men to stop, but they just laugh until Grampy cuts them off in his boat. Later, Grampy tells the girls a story about the men chasing a deer in their car until it had a heart attack and died. In The Haunting of Drearcliff Grange School , supervillain-in-training Miss Steps demonstrates her sadism by pinning the protagonist between 'slabs' of telekinetic force, then boasting about how she's used this technique to squeeze live rabbits to death. Ward's father in Hurog , along with being violently abusive to his children and the castle slave, mistreats his warhorse to the point where it becomes dangerous and vicious. Eventually the horse gets revenge by bucking him off and killing him on a hunting trip. It was this deed, or more accurately the fact that he did it without it occurring to him until afterwards that it might be inappropriate or disturbing, that first caused him to realize that he wasn't like normal people. In the modern day, one of his self-imposed rules is that he will not interact with animals in any fashion unless absolutely necessary, to the point that he'll cross the street to avoid getting near someone's dog. Doctor Moreau in H. This was no casual, as Wells himself an animal rights activist wrote the book as a protest against the practice of vivisection that was still practiced though near to being outlawed in Britain at the time. Young sociopath Patrick Hockstetter in IT cemented his evil cred by murdering his own baby brother as a small child, and making a game of torturing animals by locking them in an abandoned fridge to slowly starve to death. His gruesome fate at IT's hands is terrifying , but not the least bit tragic. In real life, author Dennis Lehane is a well-known dog lover. In The Manchurian Candidate , Mrs. Iselin makes a passing remark in her narration about how she once nailed the paws of her cocker spaniel to the floor because he wouldn't obey a "heel" command. This was just one of multiple pieces of Troubling Unchildlike Behavior she displayed and an early sign of her Control Freak nature, and her older brother is specifically noted as having seen this and been disturbed by it. Misery : While she was in college, Annie poisoned a cat so she could use put its corpse on the stairs for her roommate to trip over. In A Night in the Lonesome October , the character who attempts to poison Snuff the dog and the character who attempts to drown Greymalk the cat in a well are both later revealed to be on the villainous side. The main villain hunts Needle the bat with a crossbow and tries to get Snuff done in by vivisectionists. The vivisectionists themselves are depicted as gleefully cruel people. The Hundred and One Dalmatians : Not only does Cruella De Vil love furs and plan to turn a large number of puppies into coats, she also mistreats her own cat and drowns all the kittens said cat has given birth to. This ends up biting her in the ass when said cat sides with the much kinder heroes and helps them to financially ruin Cruella as payback. In Perfect the Pig, a piglet wishes he had wings, and when his wish is granted he flies away from his farm, and the girl that finds him adopts him as her pet, plays with him, allows him to fly in open spaces, and feeds him well. The man who stole Perfect, uses him as a sideshow attraction to earn money, chains him down and locks him in a small room, and feeds him garbage. At the end when Perfect is reunited with the girl, they have a happy ending with Perfect flying above her. The titular Nova from S. Bryant's The Nova Chronicles , although a protagonist, cannot abide by insects or creatures on her ship or even in her way, often going out of her way just to trod on any animal she sees. She does admit to taking pleasure whenever she feels a skull breaking apart beneath her thick-soled combat boots be it human or critter. Mack, the human running the circus-mall in The One and Only Ivan , isn't without sympathetic aspects and cares to some extent about the janitor and the janitor's daughter who've stuck with him so long. He just also absolutely doesn't care about the welfare of the animals he keeps. He bought Ivan, a baby gorilla, from poachers and raised him in his house like a child until he got too big and strong to be managed, then put Ivan alone in a small glass-walled enclosure in the mall for twenty-seven years. The poachers who killed Ivan's family are only discussed in the past tense and are simply monstrous. Instead of getting the older, injured elephant Stella medical care Mack bought a new baby elephant to try and attract more revenue, and threatened her with a "claw-stick" to get her to perform. In Mack's final scene in the book, he's lost the fight to keep his circus animals and any attraction they had to customers, and drunkenly doesn't comprehend that he'd ever done anything bad. The main characters from The Plague Dogs were experimented on at the beginning of the book, with one of them being repeatedly drowned and then resuscitated. The Animated Adaptation made it especially hard to watch Ratburger has Burt who makes rats into burgers and cockroaches into "ketchup" and Sheila who killed the protagonist's hamster. In Red Dragon , the Tooth Fairy killer's pattern involves killing a family's pet before killing the rest of the family. It's also mentioned that Hannibal Lecter had a record of childhood cruelty to animals. In Reflections of Eterna by the same author, one of the first things we see Richard Oakdell do is try to kill a rat with the local equivalent of the Bible for no reason other than it annoyed him. Word of God is that this either served as his Start of Darkness or was an early indication of his moral flaws that blossom in later books. George R. Martin 's short story Sandkings introduces its protagonist by showing what he does to look after his pets when he goes on a trip. The carrion hawk already feeds itself, so absolutely nothing; the shambler an undescribed alien animal is pushed outside to find food on its own; and for the piranhas, he chucks a giant hunk of meat in the tank and figures that if it runs out they can eat each other. He gets back later than planned to discover his piranhas all starved and the shambler ate the hawk, so irritated but not remorseful he goes to find new exotic pets to replace them. His competence as a pet owner doesn't improve from there and is responsible for almost everything that goes wrong. Secrets Not Meant to be Kept has Martha Plunkett and her staff at Treehouse, a preschool that is actually a toddler sex ring. Having previously assigned the kids rabbits to care for, to get them to go along with their molestation, Plunkett eventually kills the rabbits in front of the kids to terrorize them into keeping silent about the molestation. She notes that Mr Rucastle keeps a starved mastiff on his property which is only let out at night to savage potential intruders, that he is particularly proud of his son's skill for squashing cockroaches, and that the son has a penchant for trapping and torturing small birds and mammals. Holmes takes this as evidence of the Rucastles' malicious nature, noting that streaks of cruelty are commonly passed from parent to child. The titular young beagle in Shiloh routinely flees his abusive owner Judd Travers, and seeks out neighbor Marty Preston, because Marty doesn't batter, cage, and starve the dog. The Space Trilogy : In Perelandra , the Un-Man , when not tempting the Venusian Eve or irritating Ransom, will mangle as many critters as it can find and leave them to suffer and die. It is so expert at this that Ransom's attempt to put a frog thus abused out of its misery backfires. And Invoked by the Belbury faction in That Hideous Strength , which has its outer-circle minions vivisect animals to harden their hearts in preparation for visiting similar abuses on humans in the future. Throughout Stray , the stray cat Pufftail tells his grandson Kitchener why he doesn't trust humans and why he prefers to be alone. He's had many bad experiences with humans in the past: Pufftail's second owners only took him in because Pufftail, then called "Fluffie", and his brother Bootsie had belonged to the wife's elderly mother. Their owners had an Awful Wedded Life and often yelled at each other and their daughter a lot. Neither liked cats much, especially the husband. They would often forget to feed the cats all day and routinely neglected the brothers. After Bootsie killed their pet budgie, they began hitting and kicking their cats. When Fluffie and Bootsie's owners went on vacation, they left their adult daughter to take care of their cats. The daughter and her boyfriend forgot to come over for over a day. The daughter wasn't so bad, but her boyfriend was. While drunk, he and a friend decided to get rid of Fluffie and Bootsie. They stuffed the cats into bags and threw them out of a moving vehicle. Bootsie didn't survive the incident. Cruel scientists test cigarettes and cosmetic protects on various animals. The one "nice" scientist quits because he hates his job; he would have been fine testing for a just cause but doesn't understand testing lipstick on cats. Survivor Dogs : The Fierce Dogs have a morning exercise ritual where they take turns chasing and pinning down a scared rabbit, before killing it. Lucky finds this behavior to be torture and compares them to sharpclaws. The Fierce Dogs killed a fox kit named "Cub Fire". When his family found out they decided to get revenge, but mistook the Wild Pack for killing their cub. According to Arrow, the men at the "Dog-Garden" where the Dobermann's come from rigorously trained the dogs. They'd strike the dogs even pups if they didn't perform correctly. Lucky was a happy Leashed Dog pup until he was adopted by an abusive, alcoholic owner. Lucky ran away from that home and has been turned off from humans ever since. Just the thought of wearing a collar upsets him. Tortall Universe : In Mastiff, Beka Cooper finds the best scent hound in the city in the hands of a cruel trainer, and she is underfed and constantly whipped to make her obey faster. She confronts the trainer about it and becomes the dog's caretaker herself. Also has an inverted example, as Beka is somewhat dismayed to find out that crime lord Pearl Skinner is a dog lover since it will make it harder to bring her down. Touching Spirit Bear : Discussed. During a conversation between Cole and Garvey, Garvey asks Cole what he'd do if he saw an animal at a nearby stream. Cole says he'd kill it. Les Voyageurs Sans Souci : The heroes and good-aligned people treat animals respectfully and would never think to harm them. Bad people and jerkasses hunt and hurt birds for fun, causing their queen to hate humans, and are responsible for the mess which must be fixed by the protagonists: Golden Eagle is captured by one poacher and sold to one cruel ringmaster, who proceeds to cage her for display, and the queen of the birds decides to punish humans in retaliation for her best friend's disappearance. In Firestar's Quest, Petal and her kits have to be rescued from him, and in SkyClan's Destiny, the perpetually nervous Shrewtooth reveals that he is so jumpy because he used to be owned by the same man. SkyClan attacks the man to try to teach him not to mistreat any more of his pets. In the novelization of Return of the Jedi , Moff Jerjerrod of the greatest Imperial battle-station ever mostly-built, gets a few pages of characterization near the end.Live-Action TV Better Call Saul : Gus Fring tells a comatose Hector a story about how, growing up poor, he snared a coati that was eating the fruit from a tree he cultivated, and despite it having a broken leg that would have made killing it more merciful, kept it alive just so that it would suffer more as revenge for taking his stuff , which is exactly the same thing he's doing to Hector right now. For the record, this is a coati. He swaggers into Kim and Jimmy's apartment, gun on display, and affecting his trademark terrifyingly cheery demeanour. As if all this doesn't tell us how evil he is, he taps on the side of their goldfish's tank — and then after Jimmy pleads with him "You shouldn't do that, it upsets the fish" he defiantly does it again. Blackadder : Played for Black Comedy , naturally. The eponymous Witch Hunter in "Witchsmeller Pursuivant" is shown to be a horrible human being before he even appears, as the villagers admit he made them burn an old lady and her cat. Later, when Edmund mentions the old lady to him, he proudly adds, "Oh yes. And her pussycat. In "Private Plane," it transpires that General Melchett shot George's pet rabbit after allowing a dog to savage him, at George's 6th birthday party. This despite that in a previous episode, Melchett was ready to send Edmund to the firing squad for having killed Melchett's pet pigeon. Blood Drive : Rib Bone is a thoroughly bad person, but he kills someone because they left their dog in a truck with the windows shut and promptly, dotingly, adopts her. Of course, his victim was a redneck cannibal, so.In Breaking Bad , while at his uncle Hector's house in the country, Tuco starts randomly shooting cows with a machine gun to pass the time. His hostages Walter and Jesse are horrified. Referenced in Brooklyn Nine-Nine , where one piece of evidence that the first Oolong Slayer suspect is a psycho is his past arrest for torturing an animal. Jake is disappointed that it was just a squirrel, but Holt points out that it still counts. When they find the real Slayer, Jake is ecstatic that he abused dogs. Buffy the Vampire Slayer : Angelus once nailed a puppy to a girl's door before committing some unspecified atrocity. Buffy even makes a point of telling him that she doesn't have any pets so he better skip that part in his campaign to terrorize her. He also kills Willow's fish. What's even worse is that he drags her body to the kitchen, turns on the oven, and makes it leak gas into the house which not only frames the murder as a suicide but leaves the poor bird to succumb and perish from the fumes. The cockatoo's death doesn't go unnoticed by Columbo either and serves as one of the clues debunking the suicide set-up. We don't see it too much in Criminal Minds — the killers tend to focus on human victims — but they frequently quote the "homicidal triad," three behaviors that can be an indicator of psychopathy: bedwetting, setting fires, and cruelty to animals. Of characters who actually do harm animals in-series, we have: a teen boy who feared he would become a psychopath and admitted to killing a bird when he was younger "Sex, Birth, Death" , a young boy who killed his brother and admitted off-screen to Prentiss that he'd formerly killed the family puppy "A Shade of Gray" , Ashley Seavers's serial killer father who drowned a puppy she brought home as a child "What Happens At Home" , another teen boy who practiced his technique on dogs before moving on to women "The Apprenticeship" , and a man who treated his victims as birds and killed birds in front of them as part of the torture "Nelson's Sparrow". One Victim of the Week on CSI is an awarded humanitarian activist that had been torn to pieces by dogs. As the investigation went on, the cast finds out that she was instead a hard-core Asshole Victim : the head of an underground dog fighting ring that used her reputation as a defender of animals to remain a Villain with Good Publicity and Beneath Suspicion. Her killer is the dogs' handler and had to see them die painfully or be mistreated to breed their ferocity by her , who reached his Rage Breaking Point when the FBI who he was an informant to decided to do nothing about the ring, insisting that their hands were tied because of her reputation and connections even after he gave them a virtual truckful of evidence. Daredevil : Benjamin "Dex" Poindexter regularly killed birds and other small animals in his teenage years. Dexter : It's implied that Dexter killed animals as a child, which was what made his father guess he was growing up into a Serial Killer. In an episode of Dinosaurs Charlene, wanting attention takes in some young humans, which in the show's reality are basically wild animals, and trains them to do some tricks. This attracts the attention of a talent agent, which takes Charlene and her humans on tour, and to keep them in line he tells Charlene that she shouldn't feed them until after a performance, which she reluctantly agrees to since it means being famous. Robby calls her out saying that this is animal cruelty, and even Baby Sinclair, who is incredibly selfish, gives them some of his food when he sees them begging. When one of the humans refuses to do a dangerous stunt, the agent tells her to use an electric prod to force her to perform, but Charlene refuses, and after disbanding her act, sets the humans free where they go to their mother. Doctor Who : In "The Witchfinders" , Becka Savage, a local landowner who has killed three dozen of her village's residents in a Witch Hunt , had all of the horses on her estate shot out of paranoia that they were in league with Satan. Game of Thrones : After King Robert Baratheon pardons Arya and Joffrey's fight - which the latter had started, and was bitten by Arya's direwolf, Nyeria in retaliation - Cersei still demands compensation. She orders Sansa's direwolf, Lady who wasn't the one who bit Joffrey, nor was she even in the woods at the time , to be killed by Ilyn Payne, to Sansa and Arya's protests. Ned volunteers for the task instead, as Lady "deserves better than a butcher", but killing her immensely hurt him inside. When Cersei becomes the Queen after her son Tommen's suicide, one of the first things she does is have his cat, Ser Pounce, executed. Gregor Clegane's response to Ser Loras Tyrell beating him in a joust? Grabbing his sword and beheading his own horse before proceeding to attack Ser Loras himself, all in front of the king and the audience. And that's not even one of the worst things he's done. Ramsay casually mentions to Jon that he purposely starved his hounds for an entire week in hopes of feeding him to them after his army wipes Jon's out. This bites him in the ass hard when his army is defeated and he's imprisoned by Sansa, who locks him in a cell with those very hounds. Ramsay immediately finds out just how loyal to their master starved dogs truly are. In one episode of the live-action Gokusen series, one of Kumiko's students gets in trouble for beating the piss out of two students from a prestigious school. As it later turns out, Kumiko's student did so to stop them from throwing rocks at a puppy. Kumiko makes a point to visit one of the "victims" to remind him that animal cruelty is a crime. Himmelsdalen : The cruel sociopath Raymond nearly drowns Luck, a dog whom Helena is attached to, as a means of tormenting her. Hitler: The Rise of Evil : After a stray dog adopted by Hitler in the trenches humiliates him in front of his fellow servicemen by pissing on his leg, he responds by dragging it off and beating the poor thing to death. However, doing so actually saves Hitler when a shell explodes in the shelter where they just were. In Real Life Hitler was actually a massive animal lover and owned two dogs. Legion : In " Chapter 26 ", Amahl Farouk is presented in a more negative light when he allows the children to torment his caged pet monkey for fun. After hearing it screech in protest, the compassionate Charles Xavier expresses pity at the monkey's mistreatment "Poor creature". Farouk then dismisses his guest's concerns about the animal's welfare "Let [the kids] enjoy their games". In the Leverage episode " The San Lorenzo Job ", the team faces a corrupt president of a small, fictional, European island nation backed by a powerful force in the criminal underworld. As the politician is known to be corrupt already, and the normal smear tactics of money scandals or sex scandals wouldn't be enough to damage his reputation further, the heroes invoke this trope and claim he is running a dog-fighting ring in his presidential palace. The crime lord is even impressed by the tactic and recognizes its potential effectiveness. A first season Millennium focuses on an isolated farm worker who furtively maims and kills horses. Frank looks into the crimes in the hopes of stopping a Serial Killer before he starts. The horse killer moves on to killing people when someone startles him in the act, then moves on to deliberate murder of humans. His story comes full circle when a team of horses trample him during his confrontation with Frank. Mary's" on a mouse organ — a bunch of [unseen] mice he whacks with a mallet so that they squeak out the tune. Jae-hoon kills a rabbit, his father's dog, and his father's pet fish. The creepiest part? He's a child when he does this! Ba-reum snaps a bird's neck and kills two cats when his original personality takes over. A victim's dog finds their owner dead, so the murderer kills the dog too. Primeval : Caroline Steel, the woman who picks up and starts dating Connor to spy on him for Oliver Leek, is horrifically vicious towards Rex. When the little prehistoric lizard knocks over a salad she made while Connor and Abby are out of the house, Caroline shoves him in the freezer box and leaves him there in retribution bear in mind, Rex is cold-blooded. This act almost kills Rex before Connor and Abby come home. She changes her way and notably goes out of her way to atone towards Rex after she repents. In episode five of Reacher , Reacher befriends a dog whose owner has been abusive to it, and when he finds the dog severely hurt because of the owner, he punches the asshole out, wraps him up in his own dog chain, and then drops the dog off at a no-kill shelter to be taken care of. In Victor Creel's flashbacks in Season 4 of Stranger Things , mutilated animals are an early sign that there's evil afoot. The culprit is Creel's son Henry , who has telekinetic powers that he subsequently uses to murder his mother and sister. And that's just him getting warmed up.Strangers From Hell : Deuk-jong has killed at least thirteen cats around the neighbourhood. Discussed on Tiger King , where at a certain point one of the interviewees notes that everyone can bond against perpetrators of animal cruelty. Another tells an anecdote about the series' central subject, Joe Exotic, where he accepted an old horse from a woman who wanted it to live out its final days in a pasture, only to shoot it in the head the moment she was gone and feed the remains to the tigers, which is commented as being "unbelievably cruel. He later says that Wilfred, Jr. The White Queen : George of Clarence, the most deceitful member of the House of York, poisons his own pet dog just so he can blame Queen Elizabeth for its death and paint her as a murderer who wants to get rid of him, his wife and their unborn son. Yellowjackets : Averted in the flashbacks to the time when the team is stranded in the wilderness. Plenty of animals get killed, but it's out of necessity for food or self-defense and their deaths are not crueler than necessary. Played straight in other examples. Misty is shown calmly watching a rat drown before the plane even took off as an early indicator of her low empathy and willingness to resort to violence. In the present, Shauna bludgeons a rabbit to death after noticing chewed-up plants in her garden. Thanks to a Gory Discretion Shot , viewers are spared the sight. Unfortunately, not the sound. Biscuit, the Abara-Turner family dog, goes missing and his head turns up on Taissa's altar on the Season 1 finale. Music "My Uncle's Navy" by Neko Case is an autobiographical song about Case's abusive uncle, who, among other things, forced her to watch as he decapitated harmless garter snakes. Eminem : The title character of Eminem's "Stepdad" stomped young Slim's chihuahua to death for peeing on the carpet. This leads Slim to plot to "put him down like they did to my dog". Suiting his Serial Killer theming, Slim Shady's Villain Songs often portray him as an animal abuser, such as in "I'm Back", which has him stuffing the corpses of kittens in the mailbox of his school bullies, or in "Marshall Mathers", where he takes decapitated dogs for walks, or the frequent references to him blowing up a hamster in the microwave. And there's also "FACK", but the less said about that, the better. Religion The Bible : From the Book of Proverbs : "The righteous care for the needs of their animals, but the kindest acts of the wicked are cruel. Jesus points this out to the Pharisees for their condemning Him for healing people on the Sabbath, challenging them by saying, "Don't you let your animals loose on the Sabbath so that they can be watered? She is known for turning animals into fur coats and has even threatened to turn Jess the cat of Postman Pat and the Queen 's corgis into clothing. Eventually she helped with sabotaging the Queen's party by dealing with the corgis who happen to be very rough to her. In The Little Foxes , Alexandra complains about Leo beating the horses when they were out riding together. This cruelty is portrayed as representative of the Hubbard family since their having "killed animals they couldn't use" was very offensive to Birdie's late mother. Westeros: An American Musical : Joffrey , when forcibly escorted away from Oberyn's welcoming committee because he's throwing a tantrum, threatens to retaliate for the forced departure by killing eight kittens. Video Games 2Dark : Dr. Krach, who is the one who killed Mr. Smith's wife and kidnapped and brainwashed his children, nails Smith's cat before kidnapping Jessie's daughter. Batman: Arkham City : At some point after the events of the previous game , the Penguin had Harley's pet hyenas killed, stuffed, and turned into exhibits in his Arkham City stronghold. Corpse Party has Yuuya Kizami who was already Ax-Crazy to begin with, but a flashback in Chapter 4 in "Blood Covered" reveals he nearly killed his friend Kensuke Kurosake's pet hamster just to watch it die. He's stopped by his older sister who gives him shit for it. In Dead by Daylight , Kenneth Chase had a childhood fascination with birds. When he caught one with anaesthesia, he killed it in his hands and became addicted to the rush. He gradually moved up to killing squirrels, raccoons, and dogs.He ran away from home and joined the circus, adopting a new name "Jeffrey Hawk" and a friendly clown persona, but he remained an unrepentant Serial Killer. In Dead to Rights , the prison warden Sickle , on top of forcing a prisoner to swallow a lit cigarette and openly salivating over the prospect of executing protagonist Jack Slate, is an animal abuser who threatens to kill Slate's dog Shadow once his owner is dead. The moment he finds out, Slate challenges him to a fistfight, defeats him, and then threatens to " neuter [him] on the spot " if he ever does it again. In Dishonored 2 using the Heart on Kirin Jindosh reveals, among other things, that he vivisected a cat as a child because he "wanted to see how the parts worked". In The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim , many bandits capture animals such as wolves so they can bet on them in pit fights. Others brutally murder the usually peaceful mammoths for meat. If you're playing as a Khajiit , you'll likely hear the taunt "You remind me of my cousin's cat. Killed that too! In Far Cry 4 it's not uncommon to find caged tigers or other predatory animals in Royal Army camps and to see soldiers poking at them. One very satisfying way to clear out the camps is to release the tigers and let them kill all the soldiers. Jacket's mass-murdering sprees in Hotline Miami are shown to not spare guard dogs. However, this is justified , as the dogs wouldn't have spared him either. It's suggested by some of his late-game hallucinations that he even feels remorse for killing the dogs. Hungry Lamu : Lamu kills the banana, later revealed to be a dog named Mochi, by culling it with a rock. Kirby and the Forgotten Land has Fecto Forgo. Despite clearly promising the Beast Pack help them get to a "land of dreams" if they bring Elfilin back to them, it's clear that Fecto only care about returning to their true form, and they aren't afraid to put the Beast Pack at harms risk. It ranges from brainwashing King Dedede and Leongar and progressively driving them insane with their influence, to assimilating many Beast Pack soldiers to achieve their chimera form, to outright Demonic Possession and Mind Rape in the post-game. The titular character of Mad Father killed animals as a child, eventually graduating to people. As it turns out, his daughter Aya inherited this trait, and a big part of why he wants to turn Aya into a doll is to prevent her from turning out like him. In Metal Gear Solid , if the player chooses to have Snake shoot the rats scurrying around the facility, he'll get a chewing-out from Colonel Campbell. Do it too much and Naomi will recite the old saw about animal abuse being "one of the signs of a psychopath". Moshi Monsters : The main antagonists are a group of baddies called C. They are very cruel to Moshlings the little pets on-sight and kidnap them, enslave them, turn them into evil creatures called Glumps, steal their sandwiches, and hit them. Done constantly in Mother 3. Most of the enemies you encounter in-game are "chimeras", wild animals who have experimented with to either fuse them together or partially roboticize them. Then there's a segment in which you actually play as a monkey who is facing Electric Torture at the hands of his master. In Octopath Traveler II , Harvey and Petrichor are eventually revealed to be behind the current state of Ochette's final boss, who is whichever animal companion she didn't choose to care for at the start of her story. It's been tortured and experimented on for the past ten years, and Harvey in particular really got into it. Fittingly, they're two of the worst villains in the game, aiding the world-destroying cult out of either extreme jealousy or.In Persona 5 , one of your Mementos targets, who you find out by working at a convenience store, has hurt and killed many cats. Morgana, who's in the form of a cat , is especially insistent that you steal his heart. There's also Ghetsis, the secret leader of Team Plasma. Frustration is a move that grows more powerful the more the Pokemon dislikes its trainer. Do the math. The whole point of the original Sonic the Hedgehog games is to save little forest animals who have been stuffed inside robots by Dr. Eggman, the usual Big Bad. In Tyranny , the psychopathic Verse mentions practicing her knife work on the animals at her family's farm before joining the Scarlet Chorus for further opportunities to maim, torture, and brutalize people under the banner of Kyros. Whiplash : The whole plot of the game is freeing animals from the cruel people of Genron, who perform heinous experiments on animals. Wolfenstein II: The New Colossus shows that in BJ's childhood, his father Rip forced him to shoot his beloved pet dog as punishment for befriending an African-American girl and if you intentionally miss the shot during the segment, Rip kills the dog himself. Years later, the true depths of Rip's wickedness come to light when BJ learns that he sold out his mother, a Jewish Pole, to the Nazis. In Yakuza , at one point, the player is shown a group of thugs who are laughing while throwing rocks at a stray puppy. The series being what it is, One-Man Army Kiryu happens to be nearby while this is going on. Cue thrashing. The same thing would happen again in the "Another Haruka" substory in Yakuza 5 which even he lampshades as looking all too familiar and having the same result: mooks being beat down on the street. In Yandere Simulator , Ayano would willingly kill her pet if she found out her Senpai was allergic to them. As established in the video "Yandere-chan's Childhood", she killed a cat just to try to experience an emotion for the first time. It didn't work. Visual Novels In Spirit Hunter: NG , Kubitarou is quickly established as a nasty spirit due to its modus operandi being the murder and decapitation of people's pets. Super Danganronpa Another 2 : The killer of Chapter 3, Kanade Otonokoji, admits to butchering their own dog as a child out of murderous jealousy that her twin sister, Hibiki, preferred to play with it over her. This is just the first of a long, long list of crimes that cement them as one of the most despicable characters in the entire Danganronpa franchise, canon or otherwise. She decides to poison his water with weed killer to get rid of him. McBusters : When the fast food monsters start causing trouble after Walter Peck shuts off the McBusters' deep-frier in the first video, one part has a man's dog sniff a bush full of burger monsters and the burgers start slaughtering the dog off-screen as the owner watches in horror while getting covered in his pet's blood. Murder Drones : In " Heartbeat ", Doll spots a robotic cockroach crawling onto a picture of her parents' killer. She immediately makes the cockroach violently blow up, and she licks its visceral remains off her face with a Slasher Smile. On The Edge : The first chapter starring Jiro Kurebayashi has him apply for work at a pet store, which he finds out is a puppy mill. He and his coworker tried to talk to the owner about it, but he was an authoritarian asshole who beat up anyone who crossed him. Things escalated when the chihuahua under Jiro's care died and the owner told him to burn or throw it on the river, which lead him to beat the bastard to a pulp. He then threatens to beat up the boy's pony. These can include human food, plants and material items, and even dead animals. Yes, very gross — but common. At UrgentVet, we regularly hear from concerned pet owners whose dog or cat has decided to dine on something—or someone—that is past expiration. Why are dogs and cats attracted to dead animals? While humans find the smell of death and decay downright repulsive and nauseating, our pets are attracted to and delighted by this putrid perfume. The impressive canine and feline sense of smell can detect odor and decay from a great distance, making anticipating or interrupting the impending funky feast a challenge for owners. Theories why dogs and cats are drawn to death include an instinctual desire to claim the spoils as their territory, or to camouflage their own scent and improve hunting success—although these are most often performed by rolling on or near the odor source. Can eating a dead animal make my pet sick? Dead animals and birds can pose many risks to pets. Many pets show no ill effects—other than temporarily losing our friendship and respect because of their gross food choices—but others may require hospitalized treatment. Common health hazards include: Secondary poisoning — If the dead animal has consumed a poison e. In addition, animals themselves can be poisonous or venomous — examples include: Bufo toads, certain insects, and even some fish. Toxins — Birds and small mammal carcasses may carry clostridium botulinum i. Bacterial infection — Some wild animals can be hosts for leptospirosis , salmonella, and other harmful bacteria. Parasites — Wildlife commonly carry intestinal parasites, including roundworms and coccidia, as well as external parasites, such as fleas. Consuming a host animal can lead to parasitic infection in or on your pet. Gastrointestinal distress — Mild irritation such as gastritis or constipation is the most benign—but still unpleasant—outcome. If signs persist longer than 24 to 48 hours, contact your veterinarian. While owners often worry about rabies, the likelihood of this virus transmission is extremely rare, unless your pet was bitten during a fight with the deceased animal. What should I do after my pet eats a dead animal? If your pet has eaten any portion of a deceased animal, contact your regular veterinarian. Do not attempt to induce vomiting without their approval. Provide the veterinary team with as much information as possible, so they can accurately assess the situation, and determine any potential risks. Important details include: When the event occurred. L Leptospirosis Leptospirosis is a bacterial disease that infects both humans and a wide range of animals. It occurs worldwide but is more common in temperate and tropical areas of the world. Some people infected with leptospirosis will have no symptoms at all, and some people will become severely ill. Some wild and domestic animals, such as cattle, pigs, dogs, raccoons, and rodents, carry the bacteria and pass them in their urine. People become ill following direct contact with urine or tissues from infected animals, or exposure to contaminated soil, food, or water. Canine Leptospirosis Listeriosis Listeriosis is a rare but serious disease caused by Listeria monocytogenes. It is usually acquired by eating or drinking foods contaminated with the bacteria. Unpasteurized cheese or other dairy products, hot dogs, and cold cuts are the foods most likely to transmit listeriosis. Infection in cattle and goats can cause them to abort. When this occurs, the placental remains are heavily contaminated and contact with these remains can spread the infection to people. Listeriosis is especially hazardous to pregnant women, newborns, the elderly, and people with weakened immune systems. Listeriosis Lyme Disease Lyme disease, a bacterial disease, caused by Borrelia burgdorferi, is transmitted by the bites of infected ticks. Ticks become infected by feeding on infected rodents. It is the most common tick-borne disease in the United States, but is relatively rare in Washington when compared to other areas of the country. The classic symptom of Lyme disease is usually an expanding target-shaped or "bull's-eye" rash which starts at the site of the tick bite. Fever, headache, muscle aches and joint pain may also occur. If left untreated, later symptoms can include recurring joint pain, heart disease, and nervous system disorders. Animals such as dogs and horses can also develop Lyme disease. Ticks Lymphocytic Choriomeningitis The primary host of lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus is the common house mouse. Pet rodents can become infected after being in contact with wild house mice infesting pet stores or homes. People can develop lymphocytic choriomeningitis following exposure to rodent urine, droppings, saliva, or nesting material. Symptoms of illness may be similar to the flu, or may cause meningitis inflammation of the lining of the brain and spinal cord. Direct skin-to-skin contact is the most common way MRSA is spread. People and pets can carry MRSA on their skin or in their nose and not show signs of illness. Transmission involving animals is rare compared with person-to-person. P Petting Zoos and Animal Exhibits Certain venues encourage or permit the public to be in contact with animals. These settings include county or state fairs, petting zoos, animal swap meets, pet stores, zoologic institutions, circuses, carnivals, educational farms, livestock-birthing exhibits, educational exhibits at schools and child-care facilities, and wildlife photo opportunities. Although human-animal contact has many benefits, infectious disease outbreaks and injuries have been associated with these settings. Following established rules and guidelines, such as hand washing after contact with animals, will help reduce infectious disease outbreaks associated with animals in public settings. Animal Venue Operator Requirements Plague Plague is a serious infection of humans caused by bacteria the bacteria, Yersinia pestis. The bacteria are present in wild rodents and their fleas. People are infected through the bite of an infected flea, through a cut or break in the skin while handling infected animals, or through respiratory droplets from and infected person or animal. Although wildlife in Washington occasionally test positive for plague, human plague infections are extremely rare in our state. The last case occurred in Yakima County in , and involved an animal trapper. Plague Psittacosis Parrot fever Psittacosis is a bacterial disease caused by Chlamydophila psittaci. People usually become infected after inhaling contaminated dust from feathers or bird droppings. Direct contact with infected birds and bites can also spread the disease. Psittacine birds such as cockatiels, parrots, and parakeets are common carriers of the bacteria, but many other types of birds can be infected. Some infected birds show no signs of disease but can shed the bacteria when stressed from illness, moving to a new home, nutritional deficiencies, or overcrowding. The same respiratory disease in birds is called avian chlamydiosis, ornithosis, or parrot fever. Q Q Fever Q fever is a bacterial disease caused by Coxiella burnetii and primarily affects cattle, sheep, and goats, although other livestock and pets can carry the bacteria. Most animals have no symptoms, but infection may cause abortion in sheep and goats. The bacteria can be shed in the birth products, urine, feces, and milk of infected animals. The disease in people ranges from no symptoms to severe or chronic illness. People can be infected through direct contact with or by inhaling barnyard dust contaminated with dried placental material, birth fluids, or urine and feces from infected animals, or ingesting unpasteurized dairy products made from infected animals. R Rabies Rabies is a severe viral disease that affects the central nervous system. All warm-blooded mammals, including people, can get rabies. Rabies is almost always fatal if treatment is not begun soon after exposure to the virus. Most people in our state are exposed to rabies by being bitten by a bat. Bats are the only known natural reservoir for rabies in Washington State. Elsewhere in the United States, rabies reservoirs include skunks, foxes, and raccoons. While human rabies is rare in the United States, it is a significant disease worldwide, causing 55, deaths a year - most of those coming from bites of infected dogs. In the United States, human rabies is controlled by vaccinating dogs and cats and by giving a series of shots to people after they've been exposed to a potentially rabid animal. Rabies Raccoon Roundworm Baylisascaris is an intestinal roundworm found in raccoons. People, and other animals, become infected when they accidentally ingest Baylisascaris eggs from soil, water, or objects that have been contaminated with raccoon feces. Once ingested, these eggs hatch into larvae in the intestine and travel throughout the body, affecting the organs and muscles. Children or developmentally disabled people are at a higher risk for infection when they spend time outdoors, because they are more likely to put contaminated fingers, soil, or objects into their mouths. People who work with raccoons or spend time in raccoon habitats are also at increased risk. Symptoms include abrupt fever, vomiting, headache, muscle, back, and joint pain, and then a rash on the hands and feet and swollen joints. Other animals such as mice, gerbils, squirrels, cats, and dogs can get infected and may or may not get sick with rat bite fever, but they can spread the bacteria. Rat bite fever is rare in the United States, but it's not a notifiable disease, so exact numbers of cases are unknown. People who handle rats as part of their work or live in homes infested with wild rats are at higher risk of getting this disease. People who have pet rats may also be at risk for infection. Many animals can get ringworm, including dogs, cats, cattle, sheep, goats, pigs, rodents, rabbits, and birds. People are infected by direct contact with an infected animal or person - most infections are spread person-to-person. Ringworm on a person's head usually shows as a bald patch of scaly skin and elsewhere on the body it can cause a red, ring-shaped rash that may be itchy. Spores of the ringworm fungus can survive for a long time on carpet, furniture, or other surfaces, and cause infections. Ringworm Dermatophytosis Infection , CDC Roundworm Toxocariasis Toxocariasis, or roundworm infection, is caused by a parasite that is commonly found in the intestines of dogs and cats. Roundworm eggs, which can survive for long periods of time in the environment, are present in infected dog and cat feces. People can get roundworm infections through direct contact with contaminated feces or through ingesting roundworm eggs. Children are more likely to become infected since they play in areas where the ground may be fecally contaminated by dogs and cats. Although most people with roundworm infection have no symptoms, sometimes the roundworm larvae can move through the body and damage body tissue, such as the eye. Toxocariasis, CDC Rules and Guidelines Regulations and guidelines to help prevent diseases from being transferred from animals to people. Rabies vaccination requirement for pet owners, animal vendor or venue operator responsibilities, disease reporting requirements and more. S Salmonellosis Salmonellosis is a bacterial infection. The bacteria are shed in the feces of infected people and animals. Most infections happen when a person eats or drinks food contaminated with Salmonella bacteria. Contact with animals or objects that animals touch have also led to salmonellosis. Animals that often carry Salmonella include livestock and poultry chicks, ducklings , reptiles turtles, snakes, lizards , amphibians frogs, salamanders, toads , rodents, and even fish in aquariums. Salmonella can cause serious disease, especially in young children, the elderly, and people with weakened immune systems.

Sprout had a significant temperature drop at least 1 degree at pm, this means the first stage of labour was beginning. We quickly arranged with my vet clinic to bring her in and do surgery before most of the staff went home for the day. I work with a fantastic and experienced clinic that has reproductive specialists on staff and am lucky to be good friends with one of the Techs who is also a breeder. Week 1 The first week of life is the most fragile. Puppies are blind, deaf, and unable to regulate their body temperature. At days of age tails are docked and dewclaws are removed surgically by my veterinarian. Puppies are weighed 2x a day to ensure they are thriving. If a puppy loses weight or shows other signs of problems, they will be supplemented with a milk replacement formula via a baby bottle or tube fed if they are too weak to nurse. We also handle puppies a lot as a form of early neurological stimulation. Nails are trimmed for the first time. Week 2 Puppies are born with no pigmentation and Tricolours are almost black and white at birth. Pigment begins to show in spots on their noses and mouths and fills in over the next month or so. Tris, particularly RHTs start to show more tan on their cheeks. Weights are being checked and recorded 2x a day still. Eyes and ears start to develop around days old and will crack open when they are ready. Nails are trimmed again. Because nothing is ever easy when raising a litter. Westley aspirated some milk when he was nursing. Over a couple days he dropped weight and was feeling weak and listless when picked up. He was rushed to the vet where he was checked out and I was calmed down - one tends to get over zealous and overly emotional after losing far too many puppies. Thankfully he bounced back and is doing well. One of my favourite stages of puppyhood. Once they can see and hear they start to move around more and start to explore their surroundings and interact with each other and me! There is a lot of stumbling, falling over, splatting, and of course my favourite - barking for the first time and scaring themselves. The first time food is introduced I feed each puppy individually with a spoon until they seem to understand how to lick and not suck. Nails are trimmed again and they are given a dewormer for the first time. Week 4 New Digs! Puppies are moved out of their whelping box into a larger pen with room for exploration and play, and well… poop. Puppies can now regulate their own body temperature, and mom is cleaning up after them less. Things start to get messy now. We try to loosely follow the rules of seven for socialising puppies. By 7 weeks of age, they should have eaten or drank out of a variety of dishes ceramic, metal, plate, bucket etc , should have walked on a variety of surfaces carpet, hardwood, lino, grass uh. .You get the idea. The pups are let out to explore my house at their own pace. Mom is still nursing occasionally and sleeping with the pups at night. In this case their dad Wicket and aunt Leia. Their Great Gpa Heath goes not like puppies so he will not be allowed near them unless he is on a leash. Regardless, both Wicket and Leia love the babies and are helping mom teach them how to play and interact with other dogs. Puppies got to go outside in the snow a couple of times in week 5. They did discover that snow is fun to eat! They like to find places to sleep like under the couch, behind the bookcase etc. I go through amazing amounts of paper towels, cleaner, and rolls of newsprint for their pen. Their name morphs from puppies to poopies at this age. They're introduced to the puppy bathing station aka, the kitchen sink as inevitably someone steps in or sleeps in something they shouldn't. Week 7 Temperament tests: While we have a pretty good idea what the personalities of the puppies are at this point, we will often do a more formal temperament test. The one we use is based on the testing developed by W Volhard. It measures basics such as how social a puppy is, how they react to new situations, to dominance etc. The testing is very basic and only gives a general idea of the pups' disposition and how it might benefit from certain things as they grow. It helps us determine what type of home to look for for that particular puppy. A confident and smart puppy should likely go to an experienced home who will know how to direct the pup and provide proper training and guidance. A puppy that is leery of new situations will need a home that is willing to do proper socialisation and training to boost their confidence. A reputable breeder is matching the puppy to your lifestyle, not placing based on sex or colour at birth or a couple weeks of age. Every breed has a standard that calls for specific structure that ensures the breed is capable of easily performing the task s they were bred for. In the case of the PWC, we are looking for a long, low silhouette, with sufficient shoulder and rear angulation to be able to move efficiently for hours on end. We want them to LOOK like a corgi and not a basset hound, so head style is important as well as the other things that make structural soundness. A dog with lots of angulation in their front and a straight rear is going to be unbalanced and mean they could be prone to increased risk of injuries. In essence this is why a dog from a show breeder is often more sound than one from a BYB or pet breeder. We care about these things! When a pup is about 8 weeks old, their growth patterns take them close to what you will see as an adult dog. We also find our lines are more obvious at this point a few weeks later at 10 weeks. Knowing how now adult dogs have grown from their puppy photos allows us to compare and look for virtues or faults we may specifically want to avoid. Week 9 First Vet visit: At about weeks we take our litters to our vet for an overall health assessment. Their hearts, lungs, patellas, eyes, ears etc. First vaccinations are administered and microchips are inserted. Microchips will be registered both in my name and their new owners with the microchip company and with the Canadian Kennel Club once the registration process is underway. Week 11 Decision time: Very patient puppy people have been waiting for weeks and weeks for me to make some decisions. It was a lovely litter which meant splitting hairs between which pups would stay as show potential and those that would go to companion homes. I was extremely fortunate to have two families who both have dogs from previous litters, both have children of my heart dog - Jo. I chose Westley now called Odin and Inigo now named Vaughan to go to these families. The babies have all shed their puppy names, and will be properly registered with their formal names soon. We choose to register each litter with a letter of the alphabet to help track siblings over the years. The tally so far:. You have a job…the anxiety kicks in…leaving him home alone…OMG!!! Well, yes, this is a common question. And, you would be correct about the sadness that you will incur when leaving that little furbaby at home. Crate training Most people will react to crate training in a very negative way. It does seem mean or inhumane or whatever. I will walk you through this harrowing experience and assist you out of your scary thoughts of abandonment and fear. Yes, they have been domesticated, but there are obvious behaviors that have not bred out of any dog. One of them is their instinct to live in dens for protection and survival. With that being said, crates provide exactly that function, a place to rest without being in fear. They will need wake you up in the middle of the night and whimper. They will need to pee in the middle of the night. So, getting them to sleep in their crate in your room, where they can see you, will be a god send. For example, Hambone would wimper. I would wake up and take him outside. Once he was finished, on the leash, I brought him right back in, placed him in his crate, and he went back to sleep. Sounds obvious, right? Yes, but most people will allow them to play and sniff around. Guess what? Your days start to begin at that early morning pee, which now cuts into your sleep time. It is inevitable that they will wake you up, but you must have good sleep to have the energy for your puppy. At first, this is kind of novel, but after 2 weeks of this, it gets kind of old. I simply told him about crate training, and it actually worked. Three years later, he still brings it up to me how it all worked out. Remember, puppies do not have muscle control over their bladders until about 4 months or longer. This is a really long time of chasing pee and poop around your home and rugs, so believe me, crate training will make your life manageable and easier. Since the crate will be established as their home, they will also never go in their home. Therefore, they will start to learn how to hold it and go outside. Imagine bringing your bed and pillow everywhere. Believe it our not, crate training is a great way to avoid anxiety in new places. Number 5: Time outs are essential The last but not the least, time outs for discipline is essential. Not all Corgis are perfect, really! So, if you find your furbaby barking too much and no methods work, the crate is a great time out option. They will get it. In a few moments, they will be resting their cute mugs on their blanket and get the hint. Of course, there are many other reasons, but these are my top reasons for crate training. Remember, its instinctual for them to love and own their dens, so it is something that they will love. I will be going over the steps in the next post, so stay tuned. Check out the Three Corgis swag in the shop. On YouTube www. Follow us on Twitter until the account gets suspended. Yes, everyone loves a Corgis fluffy butt, big ears and short legs but they are not the right breed for everyone. Getting to know the Pembroke Welsh Corgi is an important to make sure that this dog fits your lifestyle. Even though they vary personality wise, here are some common characteristics of the breed that you should be aware of when considering this breed. They are very smart - almost too smart Corgis need a job!!! Because they were once used to herd livestock, they are independent thinkers that require a lot of mental stimulation. When bored they may become destructive. Plan of spending time every day enriching their lives with playtime, games and training both mental and physical. A variety of toys, chews and interactive toys can help. A monthly subscription box like Bark Box can add a variety of new toys, chews and treats. Our suggested products for Corgis page lists some interactive toys as well. They are a herding breed Corgis were originally bred to herd livestock and some of these herding instincts are still present in the breed today. They may try to herd small children, other animals or even their adult owners and may nip at your heels or grab ahold of your pants leg. As a breed, these are very active, high-energy dogs that need exercise daily. They love to go so if you are an active person this may fit your lifestyle. Some bloodlines have less energy and that is one reason that we temperament test our puppies. People often ask if they make a good family pet. The answer depends upon how much training you do with your Corgi. They like many other breeds need training to know what behavior is acceptable and how to deal with children. These dogs are not natural baby sitters that will allow children to tug at their hair, crawl all over them or roughly pet them. Like with herding livestock, the faster a child or other animal runs when playing with them the rougher they will play however when properly trained they can make great family pets. Some love to bark Corgis love their owners and will let them know when there is something new or out of place by barking. They will also bark if they become bored, want to play or are looking for attention. It is important for them to always have appropriate toys and chews to curb boredom. A good training program can help stop barking behaviors too. They shed a lot Corgis shed like any double-coated breed. Daily brushing, feeding a high-quality dog food, and adding fish oil to their diet will help with shedding but be aware that it will still happen. Expect a major coat molting in the fall and spring. They will want to be with you everywhere you go just in case you need their help. They are very loyal to their owners and will defend the ones they love. They are hot natured Corgis are very hot natured due to their double coat. Because they are hot natured, most Corgis are not cuddly lap dogs. Most prefer to lay beside you or by your feet not in your lap for long periods of time. Dressing them up in doggy clothing only makes the situation worse and they may overheat. They are sassy and bossy little dogs that will stand up to big dogs. If not trained, they can become growlers and be snappy. It is very important to continue desensitizing, socialization and training with puppies once you take them home from a breeder. Once again training is the key. Genetic and OFA testing is still important but environmental factors such as feeding a high quality dog food, not allowing these dogs to jump from tall heights, weight control and appropriate exercise all play an important role in preventing hip and back issues. So what can owners do to prevent these problems? Daily exercise helps strengthen and tone their muscles. Monitoring weight can prevent dogs from becoming overweight. Corgis are very food motivated so care should be taken to monitor their weight. Not allowing them to jump off of beds, couches and other furniture which will apply pressure to their backs. Choosing puppies from parents who do not have a history of back and hip issues and have undergone genetic testing. Choose a breeder that makes sure that babies are raised on a surface that provides traction thus preventing slipping, feeds a high quality puppy food and provides age appropriate exercise for puppies. They love to chew Corgis love to chew and will need lots of quality chews. Corgis need something to chew on while teething and even as adults. These dogs will often find objects such as shoes or furniture to chew on when their owners fail to provide appropriate chew items. Subscription boxes like Bark Box can help by providing new toys and chews. They are very food oriented Corgis love food and will guard it therefore resource guarding is something that you will need to work on. Some can be picky eaters but most are always looking for a snack. You will need to work with your veterinarian to ensure that your dog is fit and not overweight. Feeding a high quality food is important to prevent digestive issues and lessen the chance of hip and back issues. They will require training You must train your puppy to create a great dog. They are very smart and easy to train. We recommend training either through traditional puppy and obedience classes or through an online puppy school. They have big personalities Yes, they can be stubborn, have an attitude and completely ignore you at times but these little dogs have big personalities and can be extremely funny. They will make you laugh and their smiling faces will lift your spirits. Corgis can be incredible dogs who will become an important part of your family. Warning — they are addictive! Our Corgis.

Merle cream with grayish markings. With tan points. She is a year old and full of love. We are looking for a great family to take our playful, energetic baby into a new forever home. My husband is in the military and I work full time while going to school as well. We hate that we do not have the time she full deserves. She is also not spayed and up to date on all vaccines will be able to provide paperwork. Serious inquiries only please and as we stated we are finding her a forever home with a loving family. Will be ready August 12th for their forever homes. Im located in Columbus Georgia. For more information contact me by message or call x-xxx-xxx-xxxx. View Detail French bull dog puppies We are Lorton , an established and reputable breeder. We specialise in breeding quality puppies. Both parents are here to meet too. Both healthy. Never had any health problems including generations going back. Both have amazing temperaments that you will see. Puppies are vet checked, 1st vaccination and microchipped. We make sure they are raised in our home, right in our living room were we do every think together. Mum is trentdale fleur De lis and dad is dreaming the dream. All carry the blue gene. All puppies are vet checked, wormed, KC registered. The mother Heidi, self whelped, is our solid family pet and her boyfriend is a solid blue gene carrier, both KC registered and health checked. They have been brought up in a loving household, house trained and love playing in the garden and are obviously well socialized. View Detail french bulldog puppies for adoption french bulldog puppies for adoption Adorable and very cuddly french bulldog puppies are available. Text or call at xxx xxx-xxxx Gorgeous male french English bulldogs puppies for free adoption, please do email me for more information. His shots, vaccines all up to date, and he is neutered. Have AKC family tree, and all paperwork.My puppies are not kc registered but thet are health checked.His colour is solid blue which means, there are no any of brindle sign in his coat. He has beautiful head and short standard body. He has all vaccination and rabies vaccine, he is microchipped and he had been dewormed. He has his pedigree too. He loves the children and he is a adorable, playful puppy. He is a lovely pup full of life. He has grown around children and all dogs. Your new forever friend awaits you.My puppies have been brought up in the family home , and are very used to contact with adults and small children, they are all very friendly and loving. Wormed at 2 weeks old and onwards. Had their first vaccinations 5 in 1, and second vaccination booster. All puppies have been chipped. All puppy's carry the blue, brindle and Pied gene. Prices vary and can be negotiable. She is fully vaccinated,ready to go out,wormed,flea treated,health checked up to date and microchiped. Our little girl is a very happy,friendly puppy,who is very well socialised with adult dogs,children,she loves to spend a lot of time in the garden,and have fun in the grass. She finds everything interesting,can play for hours with everything. Welcoming a new puppy into your home is an exciting time filled with joy, cuddles, and a few inevitable challenges. One of the most common questions new puppy owners ask is, "When can puppies go outside? Table of Contents Easiest Dog to Take Care of: Top 10 Breeds for a Happy Home Do you ever dream about having a furry best friend who loves to play fetch, gives the warmest cuddles, and greets you with the happiest tail wags every time you come home? A friend who is not just any dog, but the easiest dog to take care of? We know, it sounds like a dream come true, right? But we also understand that bringing a new puppy home is a big step. It's like adding a new member to your family, a little brother or sister.All French Bulldog Insights French Bulldog Breed Info If you're seeking an adorable companion with a charmingly squashed face, an easygoing personality, and a distinct penchant for lounging on the couch, the French Bulldog could just be your perfect match. With their signature bat ears and expressive eyes, French Bulldogs, or "Frenchies" as they are lovingly known, have captured the hearts of many dog lovers around the globe, consistently ranking among the most popular breeds. Renowned for their easy maintenance and the ability to thrive in apartment living, French Bulldogs are a city dweller's delight. Their small size, typically weighing under 28 pounds, makes them perfectly suited to compact urban spaces. However, their charming personalities and heartwarming companionship are universally loved, irrespective of city or countryside living. This breed's laid-back nature does not mean they're devoid of fun and play. On the contrary, French Bulldogs can be quite playful and are known for their often comical and entertaining antics, which only further endears them to their owners. Their affectionate demeanor, combined with a remarkably low barking tendency, makes them a joy to have around the house. French Bulldogs are sturdy, compact, and stocky, with a powerful muscular build that contradicts their small size. They have a smooth coat that comes in a variety of colors, from fawn and brindle to white and grey. Their facial expressions are human-like, and they're known to "talk" using a complex system of yawns, yips, and gargles. However, owning a French Bulldog does come with responsibilities. Their brachycephalic short-nosed nature makes them prone to certain health issues and less tolerant of extreme temperatures. Despite their muscular appearance, they are not the best swimmers, and care should be taken around bodies of water.

Purebred Golden Retriever Puppies Buying a puppy is a big decision. We made that decision easy. Not knowing where your puppy has come from could lead to genetic health and socialization issues, and ultimately disappointment. There are even tons of puppy scams on the internet, some of which even try to imitate us! We believe dogs are not like family — they ARE family! Unlike other puppy adoption agencies in Ohio, we allow and actually encourage you to meet our Golden Retriever puppies for sale before you agree to take one home. Remember, too, that when it comes to getting a puppy, ultimately, you get what you pay for. You get a Golden Retriever you love, vetted for good health, from a breeder you trust. He has a very fun loving spirit and has made our family complete. Marcus and his family are very gracious and great to work with. We would highly recommend them for anyone looking for a Golden! She will be turning 9 months in a few weeks. I had a wonderful experience getting her through your company! So glad I got her. All Rights Reserved. Find the closest pet friendly hotels nearby. See reviews, photos, directions, phone numbers and more for Findlay Craigslist Pets locations in. There are 8 pet friendly hotels in Kaliningrad, RU. Foster — Peace For Paws Ohio. With MHVillage, its easy to stay up to date with the latest mobile home listings in the Findlay area. Here's What You Need To Remember: A non-nuclear-capable Bs, serial number , that initially flew a mock cruise-missile attack on Kaliningrad on March 14, , according to Steffan. Find it via the AmericanTowns Findlay classifieds search or use one of the other free services we have collected to make your search easier, such as Craigslist Findlay, eBay for Findlay, Petfinder. See reviews and photos from other guests with pets. We have collected the best sources for Findlay deals, Findlay classifieds, garage sales, pet adoptions and more. Ohio Craigslist Classifieds Use the Craigslist Findlay link for the local search classifeds, tag sales and much more! Apartment Rentals. Fortified to do MORE! Costs less! Also you can search our Ohio Classifieds page for all state deals. Property for Rent in Findlay. Items for Sale in Findlay. Apartments for Rent in Findlay, OH. Finds for you and your four-legged friends! Accommodation that'll set tails wagging. Pets in Findlay - Local Findlay Pets for sale or adoption and wanted ads for pets in your area. Dogs for Sale in Findlay, OH. Apartment rent in Findlay has increased by 5. Spring Time Food plots! They will be vetted with their first set of puppy shots and will also come with a large puppy pack. A wave of panic buying spread across the Kaliningrad region after a rail blockade imposed by neighboring Lithuania on Saturday threatened to isolate Russia's strategic Baltic exclave. Find and book deals on the best pet-friendly hotels in Kaliningrad, Russia! Explore guest reviews and book the perfect pet-friendly hotel for your trip. Companion pets that need help to recover from sickness, injury, mistreatment and abuse, those that need a break from the stress of the shelter environment or young animals that require nurturing, all benefit greatly from foster care. We specialize in breeding Mini Goldendoodles as well as a few other breeds. We also have partnered up with several other high quality breeders that raise mini goldendoodle pups that meet our strict genetic criteria and testing. So we usually have a good selection of very high quality puppies. View Our Available Puppies! Not all mini Goldendoodles are equal, there are a few different versions to choose from each having a little different genetic background based on the pups parents. We will explain all the differences in Mini Goldendoodle puppies and how they are bred below. We raise all versions of the mini goldendoodle breed. F1 Mini Goldendoodle Pups. A F1 puppy is also known as a First Generation puppy. The puppies mother is a Golden Retriever and the pups dad is a Mini Poodle. This version of mini goldendoodle usually has soft wavy or curly puppy fur. They will shed until they lose their puppy fur, after shedding they will shed a lot less, but will shed. This version is partially hypoallergenic and usually requires low maintenance. F1 mini goldendoodles usually need to be groomed every 6 months along with daily brushing to keep their curly hair from matting and getting tangled. The dogs usually grow up having great temperaments similar to golden retrievers. They usually get about inches high at the shoulder and range in weight from pounds. F1b Mini Goldendoodle Pups. An F1b is known as a second-generation mini goldendoodle with the pups mother being already an F1 Goldendoodle and the pups dad being a mini poodle also. So the difference between F1 and F1b is that the mom is not a golden retriever but an actual F1 Goldendoodle. They also have very soft curly hair but with almost no shedding. This F1b version is semi-hypoallergenic and a better choice for anyone who has pet allergies. The F1b also should be brushed on a daily basis but will need to be groomed more frequently then a F1. A 6 to 8 week grooming schedule is recommended to keep their coat in perfect condition. F1b Mini goldendoodles get around 18 to 20 inches tall at the shoulders and range between pounds in weight. F1bb Mini Goldendoodle Pups. An F1bb goldendoodle is also known as a third-generation mini goldendoodle. This mini goldendoodle version has a coat more similar to a poodle than of a golden retriever. This is because the pup is more of a poodle than a retriever. Making it the very best version for anyone with pet allergies. A 6 to 8 week grooming schedule is required to help prevent knots or matting. This version is super intelligent and loving, and usually seems to have more energy than the other versions of Mini goldendoodles. This version is usually smaller in size, weighing around pounds and only getting inches tall at the shoulders. The smaller size makes them a great size for smaller homes and apartments. So if you live near Findlay Ohio and are looking for a healthy and beautiful Mini Goldendoodle puppy then checkout our available pups now by Clicking Here. Below are some Mini Goldendoodle Pups that have been adopted!

We may earn money or products from the companies mentioned in this post. That sweet ball of fluff who will be your walking buddy, later snuggling up on the couch together. After all, your pup will probably be with you for a dozen years or more. So he has to be a great fit. It should never be a hasty decision. But it should also be FUN! That brings us to the question: how to choose the perfect puppy? Read on! You picture fun romps in the field, playing frisbee, and showing little Max off to all of your friends. But before getting a puppy, there are so many practical things to review in deciding whether to even get a puppy. My first dog as an adult was a shih tzu named Cuddles. My husband and I had discussed getting a dog for a while. We both worked and knew that the pup would take up a lot of time. Not to mention the expenses associated with a dog. But I saw the little gold and white week-old ball of fluff and was smitten. Luckily, I had a family member who could take her out to potty and exercise her during the day. In choosing your new pup, the following considerations are important. Are You Active or a Couch Potato? Can You Afford a Puppy? A puppy is more than the initial purchase. That can be a drop in the bucket compared with the lifetime costs of owning a dog. There are bills for: food and treats; chews; vets; crates ; beds; collars, harnesses, and leashes; training classes; dog walkers; dog daycare; pet insurance; enzymatic cleaners ; grooming—and more. These can really add up. You may decide not to get pet health insurance and not need pet walkers or doggie daycare, but expenses can really add up over the years. Do You Have Children? Children and pets can be a great match. You want to make sure that you choose the right canine. A toy breed may not be the right choice for a toddler. A tiny dog may inadvertently be injured by such a young child. We raised puppies for years before we had kids so we had a good idea of expectations for our puppy. If you have very young kids a rambunctious Lab may not be the right choice. Do You Have Other Pets? You need to take into consideration any other pets you have. If you have a senior dog, for example, a young puppy may not be a great choice. Are you gone too many hours to take care of a puppy? A friend of mine who works hour days decided not to get a puppy. The pup would have been alone too long. A puppy needs attention and potty breaks. Of course we need to work. You may be able to have someone come in and exercise, feed, and potty the pup. And give him attention during the day. As I discussed, you may need help with the new puppy. If you have reliable relatives or friends who can regularly help out, it can make getting a puppy much more realistic. Or you can hire pet sitters or walkers to help out. If you live in small quarters, a large, rambunctious breed may not be best. As young puppies, goldens can be wild, even inside. Of course, with a sufficient amount of mental stimulation and physical exercise, you can make it work. After Dalmations came out, everyone wanted one. Dalmations are high-drive, independent dogs. I was called to work with a family who got a Dalmation puppy that was wrecking their house. The minute walk the pup was getting was just a warm-up for the dog. We set up an exercise and training program for the puppy and the family was able to keep him. Do your research. The American Kennel Club lists purebred dogs and their needs and health profiles. Before choosing a certain breed, consider the following. Large or Small? You should have an idea what size dog you want. Conversely, if you want a frisbee or jogging partner, a chihuahua would be a bad choice. Why Do You Want a Dog? This may seem like a silly question. Most people want a dog for companionship. But you may have additional things in mind. You may want a jogging partner. Or a dog to do therapy work with. Or to show in obedience. Grooming Needs Would you love spending time every day brushing and combing a dog? Exercise Needs As you know, some breeds need a lot of exercise. We also do obedience training and she plays with puzzle toys. Lifespan Of course we want our pups to live forever. But some breeds generally live longer than others. Generally, larger—especially giant breeds—have shorter lives than their smaller counterparts. Friendliness or Independence Of course within any breed and litter you can have a wide array of personalities. But there are certain breed characteristics that can help guide your choice of which breed you want. I have dogs at both ends of the spectrum. My golden retriever Riley loves everyone and would do great in any setting. But my Lhasa apso Ralphie—true to breed—is more discriminating when making friends. So Riley would be great with well-behaved children and would love to be hugged by them. Health Problems Any dog can have unforeseeable health problems. But some breeds are likely to have more health problems than others. For example, bulldogs, pekingese, and pugs are among the breeds that are more likely to have breathing problems and overheat. Breed Types Of course there are many breeds and mixes to choose from. If you get your dog from a breeder, consider what lines your puppy comes from. If from working lines, the dog will likely be more intense than if from show lines. All of the below classes of dogs can make great companions in the right setting. Herding dogs were bred to herd, of course. Popular examples are border collies, Australian shepherds, and Shetland sheepdogs. Generally, they require more exercise than some breeds like toy breeds. And they may become destructive if left to their own devices. Also, some bark excessively and may not be good in an apartment setting. Sporting dogs were bred to hunt. They have a lot of energy and need regular, invigorating exercise. Popular examples are golden retrievers, labrador retrievers, and cocker spaniels. Just like other working-type dogs, hounds have almost limitless energy. So attention to you may be an issue. Also, some bay when excited. Popular examples are beagles, dachshunds, and greyhounds. Dogs from the working group are alert, intelligent, strong, and bred to work with people to perform various tasks. Some were bred to guard property, to pull sleds, or to perform water rescue. Some popular examples are Doberman pinschers, huskies, and rottweilers. They require not only exercise and precise training so that their natural instincts are kept in check. Terriers are feisty and energetic and vary greatly in size. They were bred to hunt and kill vermin, So a squirrel they see on their walk will be very alluring to them—and, without training, they may almost pull you off your feet trying to get to it. Some popular examples are Parson Russell terriers, Staffordshire terriers, or West Highland whirte terriers. Pit bulls which is a generic name for many types of terriers are also in this group. Toy breeds were generally bred as amiable companions. They may make great lap dogs and have big personalities despite their small stature. Shih tzus, Maltese, Yorkshire terriers, and chihuahuas are some very popular examples. Nonsporting group dogs are a catch-all group with various sizes and personalities. Some popular examples are bulldogs, French bulldogs, bichon frise. There are so many options. You may want a certain breed. So a breeder or rescue of that breed should meet your needs. Just make sure that the breeder is a good one. Good breeders do so to improve their breed. Bad ones care only about making money. They do any necessary health certifications. They put a lot of time into their litters socializing them to new experiences and people. Good breeders are invested in their litters and will help you choose the right puppy for you. They stand behind their dogs for life and will readily answer your questions and take the dog back if you need to give him up. You can get referrals to such breeders through breed clubs, dog clubs, and resources such as the American Kennel Club. A reputable, good breeder also will have questions for you regarding your family, work, home, activity level, and reason why you want a dog or their breed. The pups will also have been checked by a veterinarian and been given the appropriate vaccinations for their age. There are also breed rescues that rehome dogs of their chosen breed. However, they rarely have puppies. Shelters and rescue groups can also be great places to get a puppy. Many use foster homes, where a puppy or litter of puppies are located. Foster parents get to know the puppies and can help determine whether any particular puppy is a good fit for you. Many rescue groups try to place a puppy in the best home possible. When I adopted my Aussie mix puppy Mille, the rescue group would adopt her out only to people who had experience with herding breeds. Many shelters are first come-first served. In order to place as many dogs as possible, they will adopt out a puppy to the first person who wants him—barring any obvious reason not to. How to Choose a Puppy from a Litter There are many tests that can be given to determine whether a puppy is a good fit. This assumes you have a litter to choose from. There is a range of temperaments and personalities in each litter, No puppy may perfectly meet every test below. But look at the big picture. So, in addition to your own observations, you can bring a friend along to have another opinion about the litter. Or you could hire a trainer to help you choose. Overall, as a companion, a middle-of-the-road dog usually works out best. Also, a reputable breeder or good rescue group or shelter who knows the puppy can help guide you in making your decision. See the Mother and Littermates If you can, watch the puppy and his littermates and mother interact. The puppy you choose should be able to take a proper correction and back off then re-engage. The breeder should have the mother available. Check Out the Puppy The puppy should look healthy and alert, not lethargic. Inspect his coat and skin. He should be well-fed with a little fat around his rib cage. The pup should run and walk normally, without a limp. A puppy should engage with people and be curious, not slink away or cower. A scared puppy will probably be more difficult to socialize and train. Will he follow you if you walk away? Clap your hands and make a kiss sound. Will he come towards you or run for the hills? Hold Puppy on His Back Hold him on his back for about 30 seconds. Ideally, he should briefly struggle and relax. When I had two sheltie puppies to choose from and one fought constantly when held and the other struggled briefly, then settled, I chose the latter. I had already gotten another dog from this great breeder. I wanted a dog who was a companion but who I also wanted to show in competitive obedience. My choice turned out to be the right one. Duffy was a great dog to live with and became a nationally-ranked obedience dog. He also did agility for fun and was a therapy dog who visited a hospital on a weekly basis. Hold the puppy and touch and gently open his mouth. Look in and gently rub his ears. .Gently touch each paw, even putting slight pressure on them. The puppy should be comfortable with these activities. He may slightly struggle. But a puppy who really fights against such touching, even to the point of mouthing or growling may turn out to be difficult to groom, handle, and pet. Pet the dog calmly from head to toe. He should enjoy it and relax. Pick the Puppies Up If you hold each puppy around the middle, ideally he would be relaxed and not struggle. Also, cradle the puppy up against you. Ideally, he should relax and like the attention. He may startle at first but should rebound and even go and check out what made the noise. Social Dominance Fall to the ground at least a few feet away from the puppy. He should want to come over and see what happened. Even if you like the look of a certain puppy, he may not be the right puppy for you. Consider the above factors as well as the following when choosing a puppy. The dogs live in rabbit-type hutches or dark barns. They receive no proper socialization, vet care, or human contact. There are also small back-yard breeders which, essentially, are puppy mills on a smaller scale. The mothers are bred at each heat and have horrible lives. Dogs sold in pet shops and through the internet usually come from them. Of course, do your own research because no one will admit they are a puppy mill. But two puppies may bond too much with each other. And to train, socialize, and exercise each puppy requires a lot of time, energy, and money. The dogs in shows have been highly trained and specially selected for their jobs. Then pick a great breeder, rescue, or shelter. Final Thoughts Getting a new puppy is such an exciting time! Do you have a puppy? How did you decide to choose him? Please let us know in the comment section below. Helps ease anxiety in their new home. We love using Bully Sticks to help divert these unwanted behaviors. For a list of all the supplies we get for our new service dog puppies check out our New Puppy Checklist on the PuppyInTraining. I had wanted a female red lab, none were available. A trainer near me was getting a second dog from a renowned breeder in Ireland and she asked if he had a puppy for diabetic service dog work. Both her pup and my pup flew over from Ireland together. A pup with a desire to work, a willingness to please, and a calm demeaner. I received a cute ball of fluff, a male yellow lab pup with red ears and red highlights. A good breeder is able to match you with a dog that will meet your needs, give them all the information you can. I never met the breeder, but my pup arrived at 10 weeks old already already on his way to being well socialized, exposed to sounds, not nervous, liked the vacuum, fireworks are not a problem, loves the motorcycle sounds, handled all sorts of traffic noise at 3 months. We started his public training at 3 months old and he handled it like a champ. I had to buy a motorcycle with a sidecar as he always wanted to go out when the bikes were started up, so at 9 months he was in the sidecar with Rex Specs goggles. Did I mention he loves to travel and meet me people, when his tail wags which is all the time his whole body wags. Tweet on Twitter Buying your first dog can be a life changing decision. Choosing the right dog will help to ensure that your life changes in a good way. There are some wise precautions you might like to consider before viewing any litter of Labrador puppies. Or choosing which one to bring home with you. Buying a Puppy from a Friend It is often tempting to buy a puppy in an opportunistic moment of enthusiasm. Perhaps because you happen to hear of a friend who has a litter that will be ready to go to their new homes soon. Or a neighbour who has a gorgeous litter of puppies that you fall in love with when you pop over to admire. But the puppy that lives just around the corner, and the puppy that is going to bring you years of pleasure, may be two very different things. It is a really good idea to put your sensible hat on at times like these, and to approach the whole business of selecting your puppy in business-like way. The first decision to make is to choose what type of Labrador you wish to end up with. Which characteristics are most important to you, and will help him to fit into your family best. Choosing a Working or Show dog? Those bred for work, and those bred for the show ring. The working bred dog is generally very responsive and easy to train. But he may also fall short of what you expect in appearance. If you are hoping to get involved in gundog fieldwork, or agility at some point it is important to purchase a field or working bred labrador. Of course choosing a dog is so much more than just weighing up the pros and cons. There are now a number of hereditary diseases in labradors that can be tested for. Routine testing under these schemes is gradually growing in popularity for a number of conditions. These include hip dysplasia, elbow displasia, and a number of inherited eye diseases. However, there are still many puppies available for sale in the UK whose parents have not been tested, or that have been tested and fall below the necessary standard for breeding. Amazingly, in the UK, the Kennel Club will still register puppies from parents that have poor hip scores. Hopefully this will change in the future. You will need to read up on these to make sure you understand what you are looking for. Finding the right dog breeder Knowing where to look for a breeder is not easy. Labrador breeders come in all shapes and forms. At their best breeders are dedicated experts on their breed, who produce a few litters each year of top quality puppies for their own kennels show or field and sell any surplus to quality pet homes. At their worst, breeders are simply puppy farmers who churn out litter after litter with no thought to the health and welfare of either the puppies or their mother. Telling the difference is not always straightforward. In some cases these may be excellent puppies, in other cases they will not. The key to a good litter is a quality female dog with excellent health clearances, put to a compatible quality dog with equally excellent health clearances, and given quality care throughout pregnancy and beyond. The female dog must have a purpose beyond producing puppies, whether that is as show dog, working dog or highly treasured family pet. On the whole, this is more likely to be achieved by an experienced breeder. The Kennel Club in the UK run an accredited breeders scheme, and members agree to meet certain minimum standards. However, there are many excellent breeders who are not members of this scheme so do not dismiss a breeder on these grounds alone. The scheme is not perfect yet, and its standards are not necessarily enforced, as the KC prefers a voluntary approach. If you are inexperienced it is very important that you get some help in finding a breeder. Choosing one from a newspaper advert or from the internet when you know nothing of the source can be a risky decision. If you want to buy a pup from top working parents, then you may find the pups are all spoken for very quickly, long before they are eight weeks old. It can be disheartening to phone advert after advert only to find all the pups are gone. It pays to plan ahead. If you do some research, locate a really nice female dog, and book one of her pups before they are born, you may find the whole process a lot smoother. You may also be able to enjoy visiting and photographing the puppies whilst they are growing. Check the ancestry of the dog If you are buying a Labrador for gundog work, or agility, make sure the parents of the litter you want to view are from working stock, look for a few FTCH and FTW field trial champion and field trial winner in the pedigree. If you are hoping for success in the show ring, you should be looking for CH and SH CH title SH CH is show champion, CH is a show champion with a working certificate which is not a demanding or difficult test of working abilities. Viewing the puppies Some puppies will be raised in the home with the family. This can be ideal, as the pup will have been accustomed to people and the hustle and bustle of family life from the very beginning. Be aware though that not everyone who has a litter of puppies knows what they are doing. Look at how the pups are handled and how clean their quarters are. The pups should smell nice, and look bright and healthy. The litter may have been whelped and raised in kennels. This is also perfectly acceptable provide the breeder has accounted for this. An experienced breeder will have made sure that the pups have had plenty of human contact regardless of where they are living. Again look at the surroundings. A responsible breeder will run a clean and tidy kennels. Always see a puppy with its mother. If possible see the father too. The parents should be friendly and relaxed. The mother may not look her best seven or eight weeks after giving birth, but she should look healthy. Again, if you doubt your ability to make a judgement on a puppy or his parents, take an experienced person with you. Dog or female dog? Until fairly recently male dogs were more popular than female dogs. Fashions come and go, and at the moment, female dogs seem to be in favour. You will hear various claims as to the differences in temperament between them, but most of these contradict each other and it really is a matter of personal taste. The main disadvantage of a female dog is that she will come into season twice a year each year from the age of months until the end of her life. This can be inconvenient. Having your female dog spayed will prevent her coming into season, but the procedure is a major and expensive operation, and recent research has shown a few problems associated with spaying that you will want to consider before making your choice. Because female dogs are currently fashionable, you will probably pay more for a female dog, but as the price of a puppy is such a tiny fraction of what you will spend on her over her lifetime this is probably the least relevant factor. The appearance of a male dog may be more pleasing to some. Males tend to develop a squarer, more chunky head which some owners prefer. The average male will also grow a little taller and weigh a little more than a female. These differences are however fairly minor ones. If you are not sure whether you want a dog or female dog, keep an open mind. At least you will have a wider choice of puppies. Which puppy? If you have booked a puppy in advance from a reputable breeder, there may be little or no choice as to which puppy you have. It is not unusual to find that all puppies due in popular kennels have been booked before birth. If you are keen to buy a dog with plenty of red ink on the pedigree, you may need to do some research and book the pup as soon as the female dog has been mated. If you do get the chance to choose your puppy out of several in a litter, how should you go about it? Puppy Health Having made sure that the parents of the puppy you are viewing have good health clearances is a good start. You still need to make sure your puppy is healthy. A thorough check up by your own vet soon after you get him home will help put your mind at rest. But how can you be sure the puppy you are viewing is not sickly even before you bring him home? Some puppies may be more lethargic than others when you visit, but this may be a reflection of how hard they have been playing before you arrived, rather than how healthy they are. A good breeder will not try and sell an unhealthy puppy and if relevant, will point out any minor defects to you. Puppies are sometimes born with slightly misaligned jaws for example, which may not matter to someone who has no intention of breeding from the puppy or working him, but such a defect should not be concealed from the buyer. Umbilical hernias are not uncommon and can be troublesome. When you go to view a litter of pups it is really important to take someone with experience with you. This is especially important if the breeder is unknown to you and does not come recommended by anyone. Arrange to visit your vet within a day or two of bringing the pup home, and try not to form an attachment until he has been given a clean bill of health. If you have any doubts about the health of the puppy or the litter in general, ask for time to think. This dog will be with you for the next 12 years or more. You will become deeply attached to him or her and serious health problems can be cripplingly expensive to fix. Not to mention very distressing for you both. This needs to be the right decision for you and your family. Whilst health problems in puppies can be devastating the majority of puppies are robust and healthy and providing you take the precautions outlined above, you are unlikely to have any problems. More information on puppies Check out our Labrador Puppies section for more help and advice on choosing your new friend. Published in April , the Happy Puppy Handbook covers every aspect of life with a small puppy. It will help you prepare your home for the new arrival, and get your puppy off to a great start with potty training, socialization and early obedience. This article was first published on 21st November , and was updated to include new information in March .Readers Also Liked. I am new to this forum so should introduce myself. As you can imagine its left an uneasy quietness to the house so we are looking for her successor In our home its my wife, myself and our 8 yr old daughter and 6 yr old son. He says he breeds only for good disposition only as any good breeder should and our quick meeting with parents it looked to be accurate. The dad was in a large outdoor kennel and looked to be very friendly. She did a quick snarl when we first got near which I have to give a pass as i'm sure she's just being protective, right? After the breeder told her its OK she calmed right down. Anyways, there are 4 females that we get first pick of when we go back. Of course training and exercise play a huge role in this so that we'll have covered. Does it still hold true that when you are looking at the liter to see which ones come to you and let you hold them on their back and settle after a short period to determine good nature rather than overly squirmy? Such a big decision i just wanted to make sure we do this right. We were so spoiled with our last pup its hard to compare! Selecting Your Labrador Retriever Puppy Selecting your puppy Try to restrain your emotions when you are selecting our pup. Remember that the breeder has been with the pup from day 1 to selection day at 5 weeks. At Pawlinglabs, we will ask you to forward a list of the characteristics that your are hoping for, prior to selection. When you come to select, we will ask you to observe the litter before entering and handling the pups. Labrador pups are very cute and cuddly, but when it comes time to select the right one for you there is plenty to consider. Carefully observe Labrador Retriever puppies before buying them, ensuring that the pup you select looks healthy and is to breed standard. There are some basic points to note about Labrador Retriever standards. The coat of a Labrador is their most distinctive feature. Labs have two coats, the water resistant undercoat which is unseen, and the top coat which is dense, straight and short. There is might be a slight wave in their coat, however the coat should feel rough to the touch. Labrador puppies come in three different coat colors: yellow light cream to red fox , chocolate liver and black. There must not be any other colours in the coat. Labs have a broad skull and a well defined stop. Their head is quite large but the features on the head, such as the ears, look proportioned. The ears of a Labrador should be set far back from the face. The inside skin of the ears should be a pale pink and soft without any scabs or discoloration. There shouldn't be any odour coming from them. The eyes of a Lab pup are round, either deep brown or hazel with black rims. The eyes should be friendly and express intelligence. The Labrador Retriever has a wide black and well developed nose with distinguished nostrils. The nose should be clean and without discharge. Be aware that a wet nose is not an indication that the Lab is healthy, nor does a dry nose indicate he is unwell. The teeth should be set square to the jaws with the top teeth slightly overlapping the bottom. Labrador puppies have fewer teeth than adults and they will lose their baby teeth as their adult teeth grow in. Labs have a well developed and strong chest. It has good depth and width. Their barreled ribs are well sprung and their back is level. Their loins are wide and strong. The skin of a Lab should be without scabs or bumps. It is normal for Labrador puppies to have extra skin at the back of their neck; this is how their mother picks them up. The skin color of a lab is usually pale pink but it can also be brown or even spotted. The tail of a Labrador is thick at the base and tapers towards the tip. The tail is a moderate length and has no feathering. It is as smooth like the rest of the coat with a rounded appearance. The tails is even with the back or slightly upwards. It should never be carried over the back or hang down. Labrador have long and sloping shoulders that connect to the strong front legs. The hind legs are developed well and have a turned stifle. Both the front and hind legs should be straight. The feet of Labrador pups are compact and perfectly round. Their toes are arched and pads well developed. Feet should be straight, not turned inwards or outwards. The gait of a Labrador should be carefree. Labs take long strides and walk straight. Observe your puppies as he walk. Make sure it is not favoring any leg or paw. This can be a sign of a current or future health issue. Pawling Chocolate and Black Labradors. That is why it is especially important that you spend some time upfront preparing for this journey. But if you are serious about hunting and want an exceptional retriever to become your hunting partner for the next years, I recommend you put a little more effort into it. If you are not sure where to start, this post will show you how to find and pick a hunting puppy from a litter. Finding the perfect pup Finding the perfect hunting dog puppy starts way before you find yourself staring into the eyes of a precious little retriever puppy. In fact, I would recommend you stay away from puppies until you have located an acceptable litter. When we purchase puppies for clients, we start our search on the computer. We buy all our puppies based on the litter, on the genetic and proven performance of the mom and dad. If you find a great litter, you have already stacked the odds so much in your favor that any puppy from that litter is probably going to serve you well. What should I look for in a gundog puppy? Start by researching litters. You want to find a litter that is worth your time, money and energy. You want to stack the odds in your favor, and you do that by finding a great litter of puppies. Remember, you should not focus on one individual puppy at this point. Instead, dig deep into possible litters that would meet your criteria for a great hunting dog. You will need to determine your own list of criteria, but here are a few things we look for when purchasing a puppy. Focus on proven performance The first thing we look for is a pedigree that shows proven performance. This can be seen by titles on the pedigree. Here is a listing of retriever titles that would signify the parents have titled in Hunt Tests or Field Trials and proven their ability as a working dog. Some of the titles you do not want to see on a pedigree, if you are looking for a hunting dog are CCH or other show dog titles. Show dogs are breed for looks, not for hunting or competition ability. These dogs generally are not going to be great hunting dogs. Also, it is true that a dog does not have to compete in tests to be a great hunting dog. I would want some confirmation to back up any claims. Mom and dad are most important Often you will see a pedigree where the mom or dad do not have any performance titles, but the grandparents or great grandparents do. As you go back further, those numbers dwindle quickly. So, if possible, you want mom and dad to be proven. Want to learn more about how to read a pedigree? Watch for our future post. If looks are important to you, you will need to decide what is more important, how the dog looks or how the dog hunts or competes. You may be able to find a puppy that looks just like you want and that puppy may also turn out to be an incredible hunter, but realize that looks and hunting ability do not always go together. For instance, if you like the large, blocky looks of a British bred lab, but want to hunt upland birds, these two things may not be compatible. The dog may simply not have the endurance needed to do hours of hunting necessary for upland hunting. You should consider your wants and needs before committing to a litter of puppies. Where to look for the litters If you are looking for a hunting retriever puppy, you will want to focus your research. You are not looking for a litter of Labradors that happened by accident. Instead focus your search to sites like retrievertraining. These will not be cheap puppies. But if you spend the money on the front end, by purchasing a great pup from a litter of proven parents, you will rarely find yourself with a dog that will not hunt. Again, you should be trying to stack the odds in your favor. Find a reputable breeder Once you find some litters that have proven parents, then turn your research to the breeder. Not all breeders are equal. Trust me! Some do a wonderful job with the puppies, have clean, hygiene spaces for the dogs and socialize the pups from day one. It may not seem important. I mean, the puppies are only with the breeder for weeks, so what difference does it make? In our experience, a lot. Clean puppy beds and areas help teach your puppy to be clean. And socialization is key! Learn more about socialization in this post. What does the breeder do to socialize the pups? Pups start learning about the world on day one. They need to be exposed to noises and new situations daily. This can go a long way toward teaching the pup to handle new situations, something particularly important in hunting dogs. Take some time to learn about the breeders. Ask them why they breed, what are their goals for their puppies and what they do to prepare the puppies for their new homes. We talk about this more in How to find a good Labrador puppy. Has there been any genetic issues that could be passed down to the puppies? Ask lots of questions. Find out as much as you can about the parents. What tests have been done to ensure the parents are healthy? Have their hips, eyes and elbows been checked? Most reputable breeders offer a 24 — month health guarantee on the puppy. This is important to protect you in case there is a genetic condition that becomes clear during that time. How do you pick a puppy from a hunting litter? Once you have found a litter that meets all your criteria and seems to be a good match for your needs, then and only then do you put a deposit down on a puppy. As you can tell, picking the right litter is the most important part of this entire process. Once you have done that, you have stacked the odds in your favor of getting a great pup. Even if you have last pick, you are still miles ahead of people that buy a puppy on a whim or put no research into it. Never go look at a litter of puppies that do not meet your criteria discussed above. Puppies are too cute, and it is hard to resist not bringing one home. So never put yourself in that position. Picking the perfect puppy for you Once you have the litter locked in and your deposit sent, you simply must wait until the pups are old enough to come home. At around weeks, you will go to the breeder and view the puppies to make your pick, if you have that option. Some breeders will send you videos of the litter each week so you can see the puppies grow and learn. This is a nice service that helps keep you connected to the litter and your puppy. What should I look for when picking a puppy from a litter? If you have a pick from one or more puppies, here are some things you can do to help you decide which puppy will be the best one for you. Take some time to observe the puppies in the litter. Watch for how active or sleepy the pups are. This may not mean much. Keep in mind that you do not know if the puppy that is sleeping was very active a few minutes ago. Is one easily spooked or seem shy? Is one bold and curious? Do any of them seem to prefer people to the other pups or vice versa? We personally look for a puppy that likes people and is bold and curious. We generally do not want pups that are easily spooked or are only interested in playing with the other puppies. But that is just our preference. We also look at size. We prefer a middle of the road size, not the largest and not the smallest. We also want a pup that will give us good eye contact. If the breeder you chose is doing a good job, your pups will already be started on the path to being well-socialized. This is important and the next few weeks with you will be even more important. Learn more in this post. Ask your breeder for help picking If you are having problems deciding, consider asking the breeder to help you pick. Most breeders have a good sense of the puppies and which ones will make a good hunting or competition dogs. Final thoughts on How to pick a hunting dog from a litter While it might seem daunting to pick a puppy from a litter, if you have done research and found a litter with a proven mom and dad, there is little to fear. By the time you go pick your puppy, you have already made all the hard decisions and stacked the odds in your favor. So, just relax. Watch the puppies and pick one that you feel good about. Learn what to do next in Raising a Lab puppy to be a duck or gun dog. You can email me ottertailkennels gmail. I would be happy to discuss your goals for your retriever and tell you about the programs I offer. Until next time happy retrieving. How to pick a hunting puppy from a litter? No doubt, selection of the right pup to meet one's particular expectations is extremely important. Making a correct choice can improve the odds of producing an excellent retriever with the least amount of frustration and perhaps even avoid disappointment. The first and most important point to consider is that one must approach puppy acquisition as a genetic selection process rather than trying to utilize methods to select a promising prospect from a particular litter. Focus not so much on picking a pup, rather pick litters. The way to pick potentially successful liters is to pick a breeder who has proven brood stock and a credible reputation for producing healthy pups genetically predisposed to perform in a manner you desire. Carefully consider your expectations for your future gundog. What are the desirable traits? What will the dog's primary functions include? What breeds interest you and why? Once you decide on a breed and the desired traits are defined based upon your intended uses, then seek a reputable breeder who has experience producing pups which exemplify the traits that best suit your purposes. Genes determine the reaction of the dog to its environment, as well as, confirmation and soundness. Genes are the building blocks of heredity and are passed from parents to offspring in a predictable manner. The topic of genetics can quickly progress into a lengthy discussion unsuitable for this article but one can count on knowing this-like begets like. Total outcrosses, matings of unrelated genetics, may produce the occasionally exceptional offspring, but this is an unpredictable undertaking. The only way to gain predictability of traits is to seek an experienced breeder with proven bloodlines which produce successful progeny. This will usually involve some form of line breeding. The mating of similar genetic relationships line breeding is conducted to intensify qualities within the line and to improve upon the predictable traits within litters. Line breeding is successfully practiced in all forms of livestock. Line breeding itself produces nothing, good or bad, it merely intensifies what is genetically there in the bloodline. Most professional breeders use some form of line breeding as soon as they find a successful combination. In other words, outcrosses, random matings, despite the parents' apparent abilities and or titles, will not assure that the traits of the parents will be passed to the offspring. Only line breeding can offer this possibility. Consider, too, there is often as much difference between litter mates in ability, temperament, and tractability as one might find between separate litters within a breed. The chance factor remains, but the odds improve if the buyer: 1. Buys from established, reputable breeders who know their business. Buys pups from breeders who specialize in producing the type retriever they desire. Buys pups produced by excellent gundog parents who have produced proven progeny from previous matings. Select litters with strong mother lines. Dams should be trained hunting dogs and she should possess the qualities you desire in your dog, not just in the sire. Dams project more influence on the litter than the sire. Good bitches are seldom mated to poor dogs, yet the opposite frequently occurs. A poor bitch is unlikely to produce good pups despite the virtues of the sire. Look closely for desirable traits and strength in the trailing bottom line of the pedigree That is the dam, granddam, great granddam, etc. Excellent mothers are important. Don't pick litters based solely on the number of titles in the pedigree. These are impressive achievements to be sure, but they are not indicators of natural tractability, temperament, and gamefinding ability. Nor do titles indicate whether the traits may be passed successfully to the offspring. Evaluate parents of pups based upon gundog standards important to your needs and their demonstrated ability to produce good pups. Seek out sires, dams and grandparents that project strong genetic traits that can be passed through to their offspring. Research has indicated grandsires and granddams prove to have more genetic influence upon the litter than the sire and dam. Genetics can influence natural gifts, such as: calm temperament. Normally Lab puppies travel well, find more on this here. For many people it can be stressful not knowing how to pick or why you should pick any specific puppy. We will try to clear things up here so that you have a few criteria to select with. For the most part, the genetics of the purebred Lab puppies in the litter are set once the parents mate. When we choose to keep parents to breed we are choosing the best specimens and mating them with the hope that we are going to be creating even better puppies through the combination of their genes. Improving on weak areas with each litter is what professional breeding is all about. Now that you understand the genetic potential is set, you will work within your litter to try to narrow down the puppy who goes home with you. Keep in mind, that all of the puppies in the litter are of high quality. So, standing over the puppy box containing the puppies have a look without saying anything or doing anything. The puppies will either have different colored collars or different colored ribbons on them to identify them. Each different color corresponds to a unique microchip number implanted in that puppy. What are you looking for? Well, observe which puppies are the most active and the least active. Observe which puppy is bossy and more of a leader, and, which is more of a follower. Are there any outgoing puppies? Are there any shy ones? Please understand that puppies and all dogs for that matter will feed off of the energy of the animals and the humans around them. So, if you bring your children and they are full of energy, talking loudly, excited, etc… then the puppies will pick up on that and imitate their behavior to an extent. We love to see the kids! The vet bills, training, the poop cleaning, nail clipping, taking out to go pee at 6 am, trips to the vet, and so on are yours. All yours! So unless you feel your children have better skills to choose the puppy than you, try to leave them out of it. You want to use the criteria here to select the lab puppy that fits your family the closest. Ok, there are a couple of things I need to say first. On your pick up day and depending on how many puppies are in the litter, your puppies may be sleeping. The good news to this issue is that there will not be a bad puppy in the litter. As professional Labrador Retriever Breeders our primary goal is to create better Labrador Retriever puppies with each litter we produce. Depending on what the issue was with the puppy we would care for them or home them with a person who fully understood any issue present and was willing to care for them. Getting back to selecting your puppy. As you watch over the litter try to narrow it down to two puppies you are interested in and watch them. Look for any excitement, playfulness, shyness, active or lying around, or differences in color, size, or other physical attributes such as tail size, ear size, forehead and snout size, etc…. This means that these dogs are super smart, even tempered, loving and willing to please all because of the Labrador Retriever breed and the selections we make in our breeding program. Training is key to having a well behaved Purebred Lab Retriever puppy. On the day you pick up your puppy it will be normal for the puppies to be on the shy side. Though they have been socialized by 5 or 6 of us they get use to us. So the new sights, smells, sounds etc… that you bring will all be a brand new thing for them. At 8 weeks old they are unsure if these new stimuli are safe and they may be cautious coming to you. Again, all normal. On the other hand, a puppy who comes right up to you with no apprehension may be the one you want. Especially if you are a hunter and you need your dog to work to retrieve game. You should also know that if a puppy runs from its pack to see you it is not choosing you! It could be the more dominant or most curious puppy and it would approach anyone coming to see the litter not just you. Can we pick your lab puppy? Sure we can! The latest research we have read on the topic indicates that how a puppy behaves at 8 weeks old when with its litter has no bearing on the puppy it becomes after you train it properly. This means that for most people the training and socialization you provide is much more important than which puppy you choose. We always suggest picking the most easily trainable puppy and we will be happy to do this for you. For the best explanation on setting yourself up properly to lead your puppy to becoming a well behaved dog, please sign up for the www. A generous discount is available for our clients to help you understand how to use positive reinforcement to train your puppy. So we are happy to offer advice and can absolutely choose your puppy in the event you cannot make it, but doing so on your own would be the best scenario. Another method we frown on is the breeder evaluating a puppy with a tool to grade their personality and then comparing that to a marking tool that you complete to grade yourself. Remember when I said puppies respond differently to different people? Well they have basic emotions similar to that of a two year old. If you are not in the room, and I am evaluating the puppy remember my experience with puppies and your lack of , then how can a score sheet be used to match the two of you together effectively? You need to see the puppy behave with you. So you have it narrowed down to two puppies, compare similar personality traits and physical features as I mentioned earlier. Toss in the fact that they have medium energy and poof! Please understand what you see the puppies doing on pick up day are not how they are going to act for the rest of their lives. Puppies are not born with any knowledge of these things and rather need to be trained to understand your boundaries. For this reason we have focused on breeding smarter puppies generation after generation. At least you have some guidelines to use when you arrive. For example, the largest puppy is not necessarily going to be the biggest one when full grown. At 8 weeks old the biggest puppy has been the one who is the pushiest at the food bowl and eats the most at feedings. This is why 8 weeks is the best time for your Lab puppy to go to bond with their human family. As some puppies get larger in size they can push the other smaller puppies around so size then becomes another factor in the development of your puppy. Take your puppy home at 8 weeks old and you have provided them time with their litter to learn puppy to puppy manners weeks 4 to 8 and you have eliminated the possibility of them being bullied by the larger pups after week 8. The larger pups also will not learn to become overly dominant because there are not smaller ones around them to boss around. What about people who want the runt? The first group feel that because the runt is smaller they will listen better when truly listening is a skill learned through training. And the second group feel that a smaller puppy is sick and weak and will not thrive. Again this is not the case as smaller puppies simply do not have as strong of a food drive than their siblings. The larger issue surrounding the runt is this. Professional Lab Retriever Breeders breed for consistency. It is this consistency in our breeding program that ensures the first picked puppy is of the same high quality as the last picked. So before you arrive to choose your Purebred Lab Puppy, have a couple behavioral qualities in mind and a couple physical qualities. Observe quietly and try not to bring too many people with you so that the puppies only pick up your energy and not the energy of the group. This is the best way to truly observe how the puppy will react to you alone. Narrow it down to a couple and compare them together measuring them against your list of traits. If you make a choice to not train you have to be ready to deal with whatever your Lab decided to become. And one final note. Some people have heard to wipe a blanket where the puppy sleeps or on the mother because the scent will calm the puppy in your home. Think of it this way, if your puppy smells the mother or one of its littermates what does it do next? So a blanket with this scent on it will cue your puppy to look for someone who is likely not coming back. Imagine the frustration of a puppy newly separated from its litter being able to smell them but not find them. We suggest you do not do this to your puppy. Our suggestion to help settle the puppy only if you need to is to put a t shirt into the crate with the scent of the person who they bonded the most to. This is their new pack. Get them accustom to their new pack and the quicker they forget their old pack the easier it will be for them. Love them, set clear guidelines, and enjoy them for years to come. Chocolate Lab with pumpkin.

When you bring a new puppy home, it's important to keep feeding it the same food that it has been eating at its previous home. The AKC advocates for the responsible ownership of dogs and promotes purebred dog events, such as the Westminster Dog Show. Go to source Talk to the person or organization that you are adopting your puppy from to see what food they are feeding it. They should willingly provide that info and they may even send you home with some if you can't find any to buy. If you can't find the right food in your local pet supply store, consider ordering it online. However, you would need to order it ahead of time so that you have it on hand when the puppy comes home. If you want to feed your puppy a different food from what it has been eating, you will need to switch its food over the course of several days. Feed that mix for several days. Finally, you can give the puppy all new food. If you are content to give your puppy the food it was originally eating, it's fine to do that. Every puppy will have different nutritional needs. Because of this, it's a good idea to discuss proper nutrition with your vet. They can suggest great foods to give your puppy and how much it should be eating. Go to source The right portion size depends on the size of your puppy and its metabolism. Ask your vet to teach you how to body score your puppy. This will allow you to do a quick visual check to see whether your puppy is losing or gaining weight. Tip: If your vet suggests a specific food but doesn't tell you how much to give your puppy, follow the instructions on the packaging. Doing 3 or 4 feedings per day allows your puppy to get enough nutrients without overwhelming its digestive system with a huge amount of food at once. This is especially important when your puppy is under 6 months old, as they have delicate systems. Go to source Don't just leave the food out all day. Take the food away after the puppy eats for about 10 or 15 minutes. Lab puppies should always have access to fresh water so that they can stay adequately hydrated. Put out a dish of water and dump it out, clean the dish, and refill it daily. Some puppies are really messy with their water dishes. To prevent a mess, try putting the water dish on a tray, so that spilled water won't go right onto the floor. We may earn money or products from the companies mentioned in this post. Well-bred Labradors are relatively low maintenance, fit and healthy dogs. But your Labradors continuing health and well-being does depend entirely on you. A nutritious diet, regular exercise, grooming, preventive measures and regular visits to the vet are the real key to maintaining a high level of wellness and good health. All these actions are your responsibility and solely under your control. Daily routines will be diet control, exercise and physical inspections. Weekly routines will be grooming, ears, eyes, teeth and nail care. Quarterly routines could be shared between visits to the vet, a canine dentist and bathing. And the annual routine will be vaccinations. Just remember that prevention is always better than cure, so doing your best to prevent any illness and catching problems at the earliest possible stage is the goal to aim for. The following are all areas where you only need a little knowledge to effectively take care of your Labrador well. And if you cannot dedicate this time and effort, then in the nicest possible way, you might be better suited to a pet with less demanding care requirements such as goldfish. Making Safe Your Home and Garden Labradors are a lively and inquisitive breed, especially during their first three years so you need to keep dangerous household items out of their reach. Conceal electrical wiring…we all know of their infamous love for chewing. Sharp teeth and electricity do not mix! A Labrador can easily choke on wrappings or trash that may be swallowed along with edible scraps. Labs are smart and opening cupboards and drawers soon becomes easy for them. Be mindful of the toxicity of certain plants — Over plants have been identified as toxic to dogs , so be sure to research any plant before bringing it into your home. Fence of any ponds or pools in your yard. These are just a few points to consider around your home and garden, there are many more. Just try to put yourself in your Labradors shoes and take a good look at his environment as he would see it. Try to see how he could get into trouble and take measures to prevent it. Click here for a more detailed guide on puppy-proofing your home and garden. Brushing also helps to shake loose dirt out of and spread the natural oils throughout their coat for that desirable, healthy glossy look we know and love. Related article: The Best vacuums for removing pet hair from your home. Frequent baths will strip their oils, leaving them prone to wet and cold in winter, causing dry skin and making their coat look dull and not shiny. Keeping Nails Trim Most Labradors will need a nail trim every 2 to 3 months, although some may never need it. Regularly walking your dog on hard ground, especially sidewalks and roads, will have a natural filing effect and keep your dogs claws in order. This can make them sore and bleed. Ear Care What with a Labradors slightly drooping ears and their love of water, the inside of their ears can sometimes retain too much moisture, causing bacteria to build up and infections to form. I shall be writing an article on this very soon. Just some of the problems a Labrador may have with its teeth are gum disease, loose teeth, cracked or broken teeth, root abscesses and a build up of tartar. These can be very uncomfortable for your dog and can lead to further problems if neglected. Therefore, you need to inspect their teeth regularly, take measures to clean their teeth and even visit a professional canine dentist every 6 months or annually for a thorough check up and any necessary treatments. Treat their teeth like you would your own. Dealing with Parasites Controlling fleas, ticks and other parasites is essential for keeping your Labrador healthy. Immediate problems include extreme irritation and skin sores, but extreme infestations can lead to more dangerous problems including Lyme disease and tape worms. If you stick to a regular grooming schedule as you should! Simply brush your hand against the lie of your Labradors fur and watch for any small moving dots and check for any clearly visible ticks. There are many safe and effective over-the-counter flea control products , many of which contain formulations to prevent ticks at the same time. Finally, depending on where you live in the world, you may need to put your Labrador on medication for heartworm. Where mosquitoes are a problem, they can pass on heartworm and this can be fatal. Even the medicine for heartworm makes your dog very ill so prevention is definitely better than cure! Diseases such as distemper, rabies, hepatitis and parvoviros to name just a few. Your puppy will have had his first shots at five or six weeks before you got to take him home, and he will need a few further shots over a period of up to 18 weeks. A rabies shot usually follows at 6 months of age or so. After this, your adult Labrador will need just a single booster each year to stay protected. For many facts on vaccinations and the schedule you should follow when vaccinating your puppy, please click here. Dogs need a balance of vitamins, minerals, fats and proteins different to that of a human and feeding them on human leftovers can lead to malnutrition, as can a diet based on cheap filler packed dog food. You should perform a little research to find and use a recognized healthy brand of dog food that will cater to your Labradors needs. To help with this, please see our articles that list 4 of the best foods for Labrador puppies opens in new window or the best dog foods for adult Labradors opens in new window …yours really will thrive on these handpicked, quality foods! Additionally, the best thing you can do is set up a feeding schedule for your dog, twice per day being the recommended, and be mindful of any extra treats. Your Lab should always be well fed but not over-fed. I shall discuss this more in a later article. An Important Note On Drastic Changes In Eating And Drinking Habits If your dog is off their food, drinks way too much or way too little for a period of time more than 36 hours, you should call your vet as this is almost surely a sign of an underlying problem. They are voracious eaters and will eat just because they can, not because they need it. Excess weight can lead to all sorts of issues including arthritis and heart problems. To prevent this, control their diet and give them plenty of exercise for them to burn off those calories. They really do need very little exercise of just a few short minutes a couple of times per day. Too much exercise for a puppy can cause skeletal formation issues and plays a large part in joint problems. Take it easy until your puppy is at least a year old. Bedding and Shelter A Labrador should always have a soft surface to lay upon. To prevent this you should get your Lab a large sized dog bed or line a crate to offer a soft and comfortable place to rest. If your Lab spends any amount of time outside, you must provide shelter to offer an escape from the sun in summer, and preferably the shelter should have a raised floor so the wet and cold is kept away in winter. If your Lab puppy gets used to sleeping in a bed of yours or your children, it will be a hard habit to break and will more than likely end in separation anxiety and night-time whining. You want your Labrador to be comfortable alone for periods of time and should start forming this habit ASAP. Training The importance of training your Labrador cannot be overstated. A dog is a dog and not a human. You need to teach your dog how to behave and what your instructions are asking them to do. Before a puppy can become a trusted, well-behaved dog they have a lot of learning to do…and you a lot of teaching! To learn from the written word, I am part way through building the ultimate resource in the form of this site. Routines for feeding, exercise, grooming and visits to the vet are all easily managed with a little knowledge and by planning a schedule in advance and sticking to it. Spending quality time with your Lab is also key, especially regular grooming sessions. You should also attempt to learn your dogs normal living habits, how much he eats, drinks and sleeps. Anything To Add? As always, if you have any questions, would like to offer feedback, suggestions or further advice on the subject, please do so in the comments section below. It is not intended to be nor can it be considered actionable professional advice. It must not be used as an alternative for seeking professional advice from a veterinarian or other certified professional. Please consult a professional before taking any course of action with any medical, health or behavioral related issue. Helps ease anxiety in their new home. We love using Bully Sticks to help divert these unwanted behaviors. For a list of all the supplies we get for our new service dog puppies check out our New Puppy Checklist on the PuppyInTraining. Helpful tips for caring for your puppy About the Labrador Retriever The Labrador Retriever originated in Canada in the 19th century and is now a world-wide beloved dog breed. These dogs are medium-sized dogs, females have a height of .Their average weight as an adult is pounds for females and pounds for males. They have a life expectancy of years. When it comes to their temperament, Labrador retrievers are very loyal, friendly and affectionate companion dogs. They are known for being very social towards strangers and other dogs. Labrador retrievers also come in three colours : black, brown or yellow. These dogs are very active as they need plenty of walks, play time and affection. They are great with children and make a great companion dog. If you're thinking of adopting a Labrador retriever puppy, keep reading as we go through how to care for them! Learn more about the Labrador Retriever in our breed sheet. When to collect your Labrador puppy You can adopt and collect your Labrador puppy once they are 8 weeks old. This way, you make sure that they have had enough time to socialize with their family, mother and siblings. It also makes sure that they have developed good bite moderation before being adopted to their new family. Other advantages are that they have had time to drink their mother's milk and properly wean off. They will also feel more independent and will transition better to their new home after being 8 weeks old. We also encourage you to check out your local animal shelter before buying from a breeder. Where your puppy should sleep the first night When it comes to sleeping at night, your puppy will have some difficulties. This may be due to the new environment and new people. They may feel unprotected and disoriented. For this reason, it's normal to hear them cry as they may be calling their mother for guidance and company. Now that you've adopted this puppy, this is your job as their human companion. When they call out, try to be there for them as they are scared and lonely. Be understanding as your puppy learns to adapt to their new home. As a puppy is very dependent and on their first night they will feel scared and disoriented, it's best they sleep near you on their first night. Remember that puppies tend to sleep with their siblings and their mother. Being alone in a new place for the first time will be difficult for them. The best option for your new puppy is to sleep in their own bed inside your room, near you. So that if they feel scared or lost and cry, you can let them know that you are there with them. Once they feel more oriented and safe in their new home, you can move their bed to another location where they can sleep. Learn more in our article where we elaborate on how to prepare for your puppy's first night in their new home. What to feed your Labrador retriever puppy When feeding your Labrador retriever puppy, you will need to provide them with a rich and balanced diet. Keep in mind that puppies begin weaning when they are around weeks old. This means that they will slowly transition from their mother's milk to a solid food canine diet. A natural canine diet mainly consists in essential fatty acids and meat-based protein. The protein should have two or three types of protein from meat. For example: whole chicken, lamb, beef and fish. For fat sources, you can opt for chicken fat. Good fat sources can solute some of the most important vitamins a dog needs. When it comes to carbs, it should be kept in a low amount as dogs thrive on meat. If you are cooking for your dog, then we recommend to include low amounts of whole carbs, such as sweet potatoes. Lastly, you can offer some fruits and vegetables that provide good vitamins and minerals to help your dog's over-all health. Training your Labrador retriever puppy Labrador Retrievers are very active and intelligent dogs. Other than daily exercise, they will need basic dog training. Yes, even as a puppy! You can begin training your dog with paper training. Learn more about that in our article about paper training for puppies. You can then begin to teach them basic commands, such as to sit, stay, or even to play fetch. Remember to always train them for short amounts of time each day, not exceeding 15min, and always through positive reinforcement. This way, training will be enjoyable for them and will help you create a greater bond with them. To learn more, read our article about when to start training your puppy. Exercising your Labrador retriever puppy Your Labrador retriever puppy will needs plenty of exercise. Due to their small size as a puppy, this will mostly be at home. They will begin by playing with their siblings and walking or running around the house. Then, after their first round of vaccinations, usually around the age of 7 weeks old, puppies will begin to go outside. This is a very important part of their puppyhood as they will learn to go out on walks with their caregivers and will begin their socialization period. During this period, they will meet and interact with new people and other dogs. They will also explore new places. It's very important that during this period they have good interactions and don't get traumatized. When a puppy is well socialized from a young age, they will have a balanced temperament as adult dogs. Learn more in our article about socializing puppies. Hygiene care Next, we're going to talk about maintaining our puppy's hygiene. As Labrador puppies haven't grown their full coat, they won't need to be brushed regularly just yet. A bath is only necessary when they get very dirty on their outdoor walks. Dental hygiene is also important when it comes to caring for a puppy. You can opt for a dog tooth paste or a dental canine treat. Talk to your veterinarian to see which would be best for you puppy, and learn more in our article about dental hygiene for dogs. Other than that, we must make sure that their everyday environment is also clean and that we refresh their water bowl everyday. This way, our puppy will have great personal hygiene and we can help them prevent certain health issues from a young age. Health care Lastly, we're going to talk about your Labrador retriever's health. The Labrador Retriever is a relatively healthy and long-living dog, especially if they stay in shape. However, the lack of genetic diversity resulting from breeding programs makes them prone to certain hereditary diseases and conditions , which are usually manifested as the dog grows old. For instance, Labradors tend to suffer from hip dysplasia. When your Lab is a puppy, you must ensure they get the necessary vaccines, and you must follow their vaccination schedule during the rest of their lives. This will prevent them from suffering very serious diseases that tend to affect dogs. If you want your dog to stay as healthy as possible, go to the vet for check-ups every 6 months. You can prevent the development of common diseases by watching your Lab for symptoms and caring for them as best as you can. Labrador Retrievers are prone to obesity - they love treats, and if they don't get enough exercise they will soon become overweight, with the related muscular and joint problems. Helpful tips for caring for your puppy We hope that this article has given you great insight when it comes to caring for a Labrador Retriever puppy. Here are some other helpful articles for caregivers that are adopting puppies:. They help you find the information you need right now. You might also want to check out our sections on Labrador Puppy Training. Do let us know what you would like to see added to the site. We are always happy to have your comments and suggestions. When To Collect Your Puppy We highly recommend that puppies are not removed from their breeder until they are 8 weeks old. There are lots of good reasons for this. It helps puppies develop good bite moderation skills before they are adopted into a family, ensures that they are ready to adapt quickly to their new life. And it helps to reduce the sad numbers of puppies bred for a quick profit. Puppies sold under seven weeks old often have health problems and need special care, and extra veterinary attention. Check out the following articles for further information: When can puppies leave their mother Your first puppy Your first puppy is a huge adventure. You have so much fun ahead. Labradors are generally very friendly dogs, but they can also be very distractible. So do start daily training games, using plenty of food. You can get regular training tips from Pippa by email, using the box below. However, a healthy six-month-old labrador will grow significantly in size. Some of them can weigh up to 50 pounds. For a more balanced diet at six months, you can shift from feeding your puppy three smaller meals per day to two meals a day. To counteract this, you can drop the amount of food and gradually increase it. Setting Your Lab Puppy Up for Successful Potty Training Training an animal to control their bladders until you get outside is no different than potty-training for toddlers. In other words, crate training speeds up the potty-training process for your pet. Effective crate training depends on two things: Praising and rewarding your puppy for relieving itself outside. They come to understand this as a desirable behavior. Preventing your puppy from going to the toilet within the home. So, why is using a crate to train your puppy to go outside so effective? Initially, this should be every hour or so. As labs grow older, you can reduce the frequency as they learn to hold and release independently. Step 2: House Training a Lab Puppy Housetraining or potty-training small labs can be, well, frustrating. As a pet owner, there are simple ways to train your puppy to understand ideal behavior quickly. Instead, they simply forget that they should control it. This helps avoid any issues early on. Keep small labrador puppies off the carpet. How to Feed Your Dog for Optimal Growth Feeding your labrador puppy a balanced diet could be an entire guide all on its own. It can feel overwhelming because you do have many options when it comes to feeding your dog. For example, if you work from home, it would be easy to feed your dog homemade dog food. Similarly, you might work a and yet want to reap the health-related benefits of a raw diet. Make sure to speak to your vet first. You do have choices for what to feed your puppy and you can mix and match these. Popular feeding options for any animal include kibble, wet food, raw food, and home-cooked food. Remember, a puppy is still growing, and they need a complete profile of nutrients and minerals to support their development. There are many commercial brands of dry food or kibble to choose from and you can adjust what you buy based on the ingredients. Do your research and find a brand you trust, with as much bioavailable nutritional content as is helpful. These can harm your puppy. In order to maintain good health and prevent simple ailments, your puppy can also benefit from taking a supplement. Some families choose to mix scraps or raw food with kibble to provide moisture and decrease the amount of food versus the calories consumed. Any veterinarian will tell you that a hard and fast rule is not necessarily the type of food but the amount. Obesity is a condition that can lead to many health issues for this breed. Over-exertion, especially for a puppy, is possible. This includes activities like playing fetch or tug and release. However, breeds that worked as a hunting companion for humans love to be active. Again, this goes back to the strengths of the breed. Keeping up with your puppy could be a task-and-a-half, so in the first months of life, you should be keeping them in your backyard or playing with them at home. As they become house trained and get all their vaccinations, you can turn walks into light jogs or runs if you want. In the long-term, exercise will help keep dogs healthy and disease-free. However, early dog training can eliminate common problems with puppy temperament and help make sure that your fur friend is always as friendly and happy as possible through the years. Puppy socialization simply means making your puppy open to and familiar with new experiences. You want to provide stimulation and encounters with experiences that they will probably face as adults. The window of opportunity to make sure your puppy is always a happy and friendly pooch closes around 14 weeks. Pre-Vaccination Lab Puppy Socialization Any veterinarian will tell you that a puppy is all done with their vaccinations after 12 weeks of age. The main point is to keep your puppy away from other dogs who may not yet be vaccinated or the excrement and markings of other animals that could carry data diseases. You can head to an off-leash dog park to allow them to explore and meet other fur friends. You can also take them beyond your backyard to the countryside to enable them to swim or set up obstacle courses and play with them. Another thing that people forget about is spaying or neutering their dogs. Spaying or neutering your dog could help with behavioral issues and can also reduce the onset of certain health conditions. At the same time, spaying or neutering a puppy too early may also lead to health issues. For many people, this is a worthwhile and even enjoyable trade-off. A happy, sociable dog is always the result of consistent training. Training your dog is a significant aspect of their early years. The different stages include: Get it — Using positive reinforcement, trainers will help your dog carry out actions without commands. Teach it — This stage harnesses the progress you made in the previous stages. Your dog now knows the word and the action that goes with it. Proof it — Proofing is where many people get stuck. Your dog will learn to listen and obey commands at this stage even when they are engaged in other things. Maintain it — Consistently using the techniques you learned to keep your dog following the same desirable behavior. All breeds of dogs respond best when you train them. Every labrador retriever relies on their human taking control and showing them how to respond in any situation. You can be sure that if you follow these tips that you will be taking proper care of your new puppy and will be able to make sure that your puppy will live a long and healthy life. Share on.

German Shepherd Pitbull Mix Video Temperament They have a calm nature and somewhat affectionate nature that can be enhanced with proper training. The German Pit is loyal to its family, enjoying spending time with them. Though they may not need your attention always, contented enough to spent some time on their own, leaving them alone for prolonged periods might make them destructive. Since they take on the genes of the German Shepherd and Pitbull, the Pit-German Shepherd mix may inherit their guarding instincts to a certain extent, being protective towards its family and exhibiting wariness towards strangers. It could even be territorial with other dogs and get into a chasing mode on encountering smaller pets. While allowing them to interact with children ensure there is proper parental supervision and the dog has been well socialized. Care Exercise It has a high exercise need, requiring two brisk walks a day, along with sufficient playtime. Keeping its excessive energy levels in mind it is not recommended to keep it in an apartment or enclosed space as it might get restless. Remember to leash it while taking it out. Grooming Though it does not need excessive grooming, brushing your Shepherd Pit with a brush having hard bristles on a weekly basis would be sufficient enough. It might resent grooming in the beginning, so you need to handle it gently and use positive reinforcements if needed, to help it get accustomed. Bathe it when it gets dirty and also check its ears and eyes once a week to keep any infections at bay. Brushing its teeth and trimming its nails are also essential. Health Problems Though healthy, the German Pit might inherit some of the conditions suffered by its parents like bloating, hip and elbow dysplasia, allergies, hypothyroidism and heart problems. Training Training the German Shepherd mixed with Pitbull since its puppy days is mandatory, though an experienced master is preferred over a novice trainer. Socialization: Having the genes of German Shepherd and Pitbull, it might exhibit aggression and biting instinct, for which early socialization is a must. Teach it to differentiate between a threat and a pleasant situation so that your pet understands that a crying baby or playful kids playing in the yard is not bad. Feeding Feeding it cups good quality dry dog food in combination with a nutritious homemade diet would be sufficient. Conclusion 1. What does a German Shepherd Pitbull Mix look like? It is impossible to tell with certainty what the dog will look like when it is a mixed breed. What we do know is that this breed is more likely to have the face of the Pitbull, with a broad head and a short muzzle. As for coloring, this breed comes in a variety of colors: black, white, brown, tan, gray and fawn. Given that both the Pitbull and German Shepherd have strong physiques, it is not surprising that this mixed breed does too. Fully grown, these dogs are large , as mentioned in the first paragraph their average weight between lbs 29 — 38 kgs , so it is important that you have her under control. You can do this by properly training and socializing her. What characteristics can I expect? As with all crossbreeds, it is not easy to say precisely what temperament this dog will have, as it will always be a different combination. In my experience, however, they tend to have the following traits: High energy All dogs need regular exercise to stay fit, and this large breed usually needs a whole lot. I recommend at least a one-hour walk a day, providing you have an outdoor space where she can release excess energy for the rest of the day. By giving her the exercise she needs, you will avoid undesired behaviors such as slipper-chewing, hole-digging or nuisance barking. As long as she gets her exercise needs met, she will be happy to settle down and relax with you. Loyal and loving Pitbull German Shepherd mixes are very affectionate dogs when raised right. While they are good at entertaining themselves, they still love to be around you and make a good family dog. This dog can have a very protective nature. This is due to its German Shepherd relatives , who were bred to herd and guard livestock. To prevent this from the outset, you should socialize her with people as much as possible from an early age. Intelligence Both the Pitbull and the German Shepherd are incredibly intelligent breeds. It is no surprise, then, that this mix is no exception. These dogs learn quickly and respond incredibly well to training and commands. Just as you exercise her body, it is important to keep her mind stimulated, too. You should start training at the earliest possible stage. It is important to keep a close eye on this type of behavior because, if it gets out of control, it can turn into aggression. What are the common health problems? Providing that she has a healthy lifestyle, as we mentioned above this breed can live for up to 12 years. Every dog breed is susceptible to certain health difficulties, however, and it is good to be aware of these so that you can treat your dog accordingly. In the meantime, it is worth knowing that this breed can suffer from the following diseases: Skin irritation The Pitbull German Shepherd mix can be prone to skin irritation, which they inherit from the Pitbull side of its family. They tend to have more sensitive skin, which can react strongly to insect bites as well as to fleas and ticks. To prevent this reaction, make sure you use a high-quality tick and flea treatment. Diet also plays an important part in maintaining the health of the skin. Hip Dysplasia Hip dysplasia is a condition that can begin in dogs as they grow and results in an unstable or loose hip joint. While weight management is essential for any dog breed, it is highly important that this breed maintains a healthy weight to avoid stressing the hip joint. How much will I need to groom her? This mix has a coat that can range from short to medium in length. I recommend starting your grooming regime when she is a puppy so that she can get used to the routine. I do not advise over-bathing these dogs no more than once a month due to their tendency to skin irritation. It may also be worth buying a shampoo specifically designed for dogs with sensitive skin. German Pits are usually floppy-eared, which means they get less air circulation and are therefore more prone to earwax build-up and ear infections. I advise that you get her ears checked at least monthly, either at the vet or with a reputable groomer. So is the German Pit the right fit for me? After all the information you have read, it is now important to put this question to yourself. As you can see, these dogs have the potential to be lovely, loyal dogs that are ideal for a family. Yet they require a lot of attention, walking and training, so they need a dedicated, and preferably experienced, dog owner. Conclusion Here are the main points to consider before committing to owning one of these dogs: Are you an experienced dog owner? Are you dedicated to walking your dog at least an hour a day? Do you have a spacious house with a yard, or can you walk her twice daily? Are you able to provide a rigorous and dedicated training routine? If not, it might be time to reconsider getting a different breed of dog. Do you own a German Shepherd Pitbull Mix? Leave a comment below and tell me all about it! About Alexandra Animalso I was raised to be a dog person. My first Shepherd grew up as I did and wanted to be where I was at all times. I got my second dog as a 16th birthday present, and her loyalty for me was just as strong as my first. I hope that my contribution to Animalso will help others find dogs who give them that same unconditional love. I have worked with various large breeds all my life. The German Shepherd is my favorite. I recently brought home a mixed breed. .Our Puppy is high energy at 8 weeks old. Highly intelligent and very affectionate. I have a large family with lots of boys and 1 girl. So our family is definitely the right fit! In my opinion every family member should have an caring active role in raising the family dog. You can expect moderate shedding from this crossbreed. Be prepared to use a vacuum cleaner often. Most German Sheppits will come in a variety of colors like tan, black, white, fawn, and gray. Some have beautiful multi-colored coats like the GSD, while others inherit the brindle coats of their Pittie parents. Because of its moderate shedding, the German Pit is not the ideal dog for people who suffer from allergies to dander. Is a Shepherd-Pitbull mix dangerous? As we mentioned before, this breed is often negatively associated with being aggressive. A Shepherd Pit Bull mix is a loyal, intelligent, protective, and bold dog that likes spending time with his family. This canine has a calm and loving personality toward its owner, but it can be an attention-grabber, too. She loves nothing more than to run, play Frisbee, and roll around all day. Just make sure that your German Pitbull mix puppy is introduced correctly to small kids. Proper socialization and training are crucial because these dogs tend to chase down smaller animals. They may also have a dominant personality and may try to be the alpha to other dogs. Being raised with other pets will help this crossbreed co-exist with them. With early training and socialization, this naturally friendly and affectionate dog is an excellent choice for a family pet and the perfect companion for children. How much activity does this crossbreed need? A Pitbull German Shepherd hybrid has a strong and robust physique and he requires plenty of physical activity. You can take your dog on a one-hour jog or run in the morning and a minute walk in the evening to keep him in the excellent physical condition and as release excess energy. Without a proper exercise regimen, he may exhibit unruly and destructive behaviors like excessive barking, hole-digging, or chewing on slippers. Remember to keep it slow with a German Pit puppy because his legs are shorter. After that age, you can increase your speed as long as he can keep up. He can also have some playtime, like romping in the dog park. Or maybe play some fetch and let him catch a frisbee so his brain gets a workout, too. These crossbreeds require a high level of physical and mental activity to be in their best form. How to train Pitbull German Shepherd mix puppies The unfortunate truth is that this hybrid is not easy to train and is not suited for first-time dog owners. You need to be a firm and confident alpha , or he will try to control you. Be patient and try not to give in. Socializing him at an early age helps him interact better with other animals and encourages a better sense of adaptability in the dog. Socialization also fixes anxious and timid behavior and will help your pet get along with your family members. This breed may be intelligent, but he has a certain level of stubbornness when it comes to training. This hybrid tends to bark quite frequently, too, so you may want to include a routine that will help you control excessive barking. Try including crate training and leash training in your sessions. Starting it young is the best way to train a German Sheppit. The best age to start would be at seven weeks old. An adult dog can still receive training, although it will be more difficult. These are the most common health concerns to watch out for in your German Sheppit:. Parent Breeds The parent breeds of the German shepherd pitbull mix include the German shepherd and the American pitbull terrier. As these breeds are both large dogs, the resulting mix is a large dog with unique physical and personality traits from both parent breeds. German Shepherd The German shepherd was originally selectively bred from shepherd dogs in 19th century Germany, where it was used as a herding dog. The breed was developed to be intelligent, strong, agile, and protective of flocks, all qualities that made it successful in its line of work. Horand von Grafath was recognized as the first German shepherd dog in .Today, the breed is still regarded as one of the best working dogs in the world because of its loyalty and eagerness to please. The German shepherd is used in police work, detection, service work, and search and rescue. German shepherd pitbull mixes often inherit the protective, hardworking temperament, strength, and wolf-like features of the German shepherd. The dogs were bred from terriers and bulldogs and used in blood sports like bullbaiting and dogfighting. American pitbull terriers were later selectively bred in the United States to have the muscular builds, sizes, and affectionate temperaments seen today. With proper socialization, American pitbull terriers make loyal, well-behaved companions. Lifespan A German shepherd pitbull mix has an average life expectancy of 10 to 12 years if the dog follows a nutritious diet and exercises daily. Regular vet checkups help reduce the risk of health complications in German shepherd pitbull mixes. This mixed breed comes in shades of tan, white, gray, or black. Height and Weight German shepherd pitbull mixes are considered large dogs, with a height at the withers of 18—26 inches, and a weight of 30—90 pounds. Males are typically larger than females. Most German sheppits are lean, muscular, and slightly taller than their pitbull parents. Colors German shepherd pitbull mixes are typically tan, white, or black with bicolor markings. The coat color depends on the genes they inherit from their parents: German shepherd colors: Most common color combination is black and tan. Other colors include solid black, gray, red, and white. American pitbull terrier colors: Common colors are brown, black, and tan with various markings. Rare colors include solid white and brindle. German sheppits shed minimally to moderately throughout the year, depending on coat type. Double-coated dogs blow their coats twice a year. Personality and Temperament Photo by spcaofnorthernnevada German shepherd pitbull mixes are smart, affectionate, and protective dogs that form strong bonds with their owners. They get along well with kids, and their intelligence and athletic stature make them well-suited to agility classes and fieldwork. Socializing and training this mixed breed from a young age will help it grow into an outgoing, obedient, and even-tempered adult. These dogs can be trained with positive reinforcement from an early age to not bark excessively. Left alone, German sheppits often experience anxiety and engage in destructive behavior, like barking and scratching, to cope. While smart and not fussy over food, these dogs need plenty of exercise, training, and mental stimulation to stay happy. Food Needs A German sheppit adult should be fed 2 to 3. Grooming Needs The German shepherd pitbull mix should be brushed weekly, or a few times per week if it has inherited a double coat, to distribute natural oils and keep its fur tangle-free. Bathe the dog once every few months and ensure its nails are well-trimmed. Exercise Needs An adult German shepherd pitbull mix requires at least 60 minutes of exercise per day, split into two separate walks, to remain physically fit. A two-month-old puppy needs 10 minutes of exercise per day, while a four-month-old puppy requires 20 minutes. German sheppits do best in homes with large, secure backyards where they can run freely. Certain states, cities, and territories have laws in place that restrict or ban pitbulls and pitbull mixes. Check local laws before exercising this mixed breed in new areas. Mental Needs German shepherd pitbull mixes need 60 minutes of mental stimulation per day to prevent aggression, boredom, and anxiety. Suitable mentally-stimulating activities include obedience training, scent work, herding, puzzle toys, agility classes, and interactive games like fetch. Depending on the severity, the condition can be managed with medication and surgery. Bloat : When the stomach fills with gas, food, or fluid, and then twists, causing severe abdominal pain. Bloat is often fatal if not treated immediately. Hip dysplasia : Abnormal formation of the hip joint that causes pain and mobility issues. Treatable with surgery and lifestyle changes. Degenerative myelopathy : Degeneration of the spinal cord that causes leg weakness, incontinence, and eventually paralysis. The condition is managed and treated with lifestyle changes, anti-inflammatory medication, and in some cases surgery. Symptoms include lethargy, weight gain, exercise intolerance, and coat changes. Hypothyroidism is treatable with medication. Cataracts : Cloudiness of the eye lens that causes vision issues. The German sheppit is particularly prone to food and skin allergies. Take these dogs to regular vet checkups to reduce their risks of health complications. Use positive reinforcement and be firm and consistent when training this mixed breed. Never use punishment-based training methods because these can cause anxiety in dogs and exacerbate their aggressive behaviors. These dogs need plenty of training and socialization throughout their lives to keep their dog aggression in check. German shepherd pitbull mixes are often available for adoption from rescue shelters. This price includes expenses such as food, treats, vet checkups, toys, and training. First-year costs are higher than subsequent years because of the costs of first-year puppy vaccinations and neutering or spaying, and initial supplies like bedding. The German shepherd pitbull mix is an affectionate and loyal dog that loves pleasing its owners. The mixed breed is playful, energetic, and well-suited to people that lead active lifestyles. German shepherd pitbull mixes are suitable for people that are active, have a large backyard, and can dedicate lots of time to socializing and training the dog. The best owners for these dogs are people that use positive reinforcement measures and stick to set boundaries. First-time dog owners should also avoid these dogs because the breed is difficult to manage without proper socialization and training. Check out these other hybrid dog breeds: German Shepherd Mixes. Your vet can help you develop a care routine that will keep your dog healthy. German Shepherd Pit Bulls are prone to weight gain. They also have high energy levels. About three hours a day of activity is recommended. Agility training, hiking, walking, running, or playing around a yard will keep them happy. Check their ears for debris and pests daily and clean them as recommended by your vet. They should not be clicking against the floor. Your groomer can help with this. One of the toughest jobs when caring for a German Shepherd Pit Bull is maintaining their oral health. You should brush their teeth daily, as many breeds are prone to dental issues. Vets or groomers are good at performing this messy task. You should consult your veterinarian or professional pet nutritionist for advice on what to feed your German Shepherd Pit Bull and the correct portion sizes. Their dietary needs will change as they grow from puppyhood to adulthood and into their senior years. Stay on top of these nutritional requirements. Their German Shepherd parents grow very rapidly between the ages of four and seven months, making them susceptible to bone disorders. They do well on a high-quality, low-calorie diet that keeps them from growing too fast. Overfeeding your German Shepherd Pit Bull and letting them pack on the pounds can cause joint problems, as well as other health conditions. Limit treats, keep them active, and serve them regular meals rather than leaving food available at all times. The main colors of German Shepherd Pit Bulls coats are brown, black, white, grey, tan, and fawn. Almost never solid, their coats are generally a mixture of two or more colors. They usually have short thick coats, and this mixed breed is not recommended for people with allergies. They tend to shed quite a bit and you may need to pick up a RoboVac. These pups will require at least three good brushes per week. Brushing will also help to spread the oils throughout the coat. German Shepherd Pit Bulls may be able to handle some extreme weather conditions for short periods of time. These dogs must live indoors with their families. However their size could put them at a disadvantage around smaller children. They could easily accidentally knock over a toddler. No matter how friendly, no dog should ever be left unsupervised with a small child. German Shepherd Pit Bulls can get along well other dogs, especially if raised with them. Socialization early on is a must for this mixed breed. For a better understanding of this breed read more about their parent breeds, the German Shepherd and American Pit Bull Terrier. However, you may want to try German Shepherd Dog or American Pit Bull Terrier breed specific rescues, as they often care for mixes, as well. Here are some rescues you can try:. Adopting a German Shepherd Pitbull mix from an adoption center is the best thing you can do. It can be life changing — not only for the dog but to you as well. He requires a low-to-medium maintenance level due to its short coat and a moderate amount of shedding. Brushing his coat can be done weekly, or three times a week if you are the type of person who is greatly bothered by scattered dog hair. Make sure to clean his ears often since this area is common to accumulate dirt, moisture, and bacteria. Nail trimming should be accomplished every few weeks to keep his paws clean and healthy. Pitbull mixed with German Shepherd Health Problems Provided that he is given the proper care and is living a healthy lifestyle, this crossbreed can live up to 12 years. Every breed is susceptible to specific health issues, and so it is essential that as a dog owner, you are aware of these things so that you know how to take care well of your dog accordingly. It is worth remembering that the Pitbull crossed with German Shepherd may suffer from the following diseases. Hip Dysplasia: The German Shepherd breed is genetically susceptible to this condition, and the possibility of passing it to its offspring is highly possible. The disease is characterized by malformation of the hip joints which may cause lameness and ongoing pain. Atopic Dermatitis: It is an inflammatory skin condition which may be triggered by exposure to certain environmental factors such as grass sprayed with pesticides and mold spores. To avoid this condition from affecting your pup, make sure to keep your house clean. Also, keep an eye for increased use of pesticides at dog parks. Skin Irritation: The Pitbull German Shepherd is prone to skin irritation, which it inherits from the Pitbull side of the family. They have a more sensitive skin, which can react strongly to insect bites, such as fleas and ticks. Generally, feeding him cups of good quality dry food daily in combination with nutritious homemade diet would be sufficient. A well-balanced diet covering all the essential nutrients, including an appropriate protein and calorie intake, is vital in an active breed like the German Sheppit. On average, the German Shepherd Pitbull needs calories for males, while calories for females. Its core ingredients include ground brown and white rice, lamb meal and chicken meal. It has all-natural ingredients infused with additional minerals and vitamins. Its main components include chicken, real beef and salmon meat products. Blue Buffalo Wilderness: If your Pitbull German Shepherd has food allergies, this dog food is the right choice for you. It is a grain-free turkey and potato recipe dog food supplemented with antioxidant-rich kibble. This dog food is formulated to minimize food sensitivities while maximizing the nutritional value dogs receive. Wellness Simple Limited Ingredient: This dog food is formulated for dogs with sensitive stomachs. If your pooch is still a munchkin, you should go through best puppy food brands. Senior, gray-coated dogs require different diets. Your pooch takes genes from two parents. This means you could also take into account buying the best dry dog food for small dogs or best large breed dry dog food. Pitbull Crossed with German Shepherd Exercise Requirements The Pitbull German Shepherd mix is an active and high-energy dog, so it might get destructive if he gets bored. This breed love to move around and therefore enjoys doing exercise activities. It is recommended to exercise him at least 90 minutes daily. Their exercise requirement is not just a guideline, but it is crucial that they are met. Without enough exercise, this breed may fall into a pattern of aggressive and destructive behaviors, such as excessive barking, unwanted chewing, and digging. Mental stimulation exercises should also be part of your routine to keep them from getting bored and further improve its social interactions. You can provide your pet with interactive dog toys. While it is true that they come from parent breeds with remarkable high intelligence, you should be warned that training them can be a bit overwhelming. Patience, attention, more time and positive reinforcement are the key components that owners should abide by in training this crossbreed. This is for your dog to learn the proper etiquette at a young age and avoid developing unwanted behaviors when it grows up. Remember to keep the pace of the training slow as your pup is still young and its body might still be fragile. After a year or two, however, you can increase the pace. Moreover, take note that an experienced trainer is better than a novice trainer. You need to be strong and authoritative. Otherwise, this dog will try to dominate you. Gentle yet firm treatment is the way to go with the German Sheppit puppy. Use Positive ReinforcementEven if this mixed breed has a tendency to become stubborn, avoid taking extreme measures. Using negative punishment-based training will not do any help, he might just end up not respecting you as a leader. Make it a regular routine to reward him whenever he does something right. Implement simple rules that they can follow and in return, give them praises and treats for obeying the rules. Training your German Sheppit consistently in a positive method will provide you with pet companions that are obedient and good-natured. Puppy socialization has been proven to reduce developing aggressive behaviors, anxiety, and fearfulness later on in their adulthood. You just have to introduce and desensitize your dog to different people and environments. You can try doing the following: Puppy classes Playing at dog-friendly parks Make him attend doggy daycares The above activities ensure that your dog interacts with a range of fellow dogs and people as well on different environments, which may include on and off leash interactions. Include Mental Exercises on Their TrainingThe Pitbull mixed with German Shepherd is an intelligent dog, and they need stimulating mental activities to avoid developing aggressive and other unwanted behaviors. Mental stimulation activities can be in the form of games or puzzles. German Shepherd Pitbull and Families With consistent proper training, exercise and correct socialization, the German Shepherd Pitbulls are incredibly loyal, friendly and affectionate towards family members, making them an excellent choice as a family pet. This crossbreed can even be the perfect breed for children, especially that its parent breed Pitbull was previously known as a nanny dog. Young kids, especially those under 8 years old, may play rough with dogs and they may tire them out or provoke them unknowingly causing the dogs to react in aggressive behaviors. Children should be taught to love and respect all members of the family including your four-legged family companions. This dog loves to spend time with you and other family members. So give love lots of affection to your German Shepherd crossed with Pitbull and expect an unconditional love in return. Temperament: It depends. A German Pit dog can be gentle, loving and protective of its family. It will like to be top dog and may challenge authority but with proper training it will learn who the master is. It gets bored easily. They cannot be left alone for long periods of time, or they can become noisy and naughty. Feelings and signals: Dogs communicate in many ways from playing to barking. Never approach a dog with its tail way down! How should you train a German Shepherd Pitbull Mix? With patience! There are several types of training required: obedience, discipline, agility and socialization. Each is important to help this type of puppy learn to socialize and behave. This looks like a dangerous dog so it is important to train it to challenge perceptions and show people the best of this breed instead. How do you begin puppy training? It will take time, patience, with positive reinforcement, using praise and small treats as a reward for success. So, if you are not going to use a professional dog trainer — Here are some tips to begin: 1 Develop your basic command words: Find the keywords you think you will use most like Sit, Stop, and Fetch etc. It will become its nest and it will feel safe and sleep there. Any mix from purebred dogs, could have congenital health problems. A German Shepherd and an American Pitbull Terrier cross breed could develop: Hip Dysplasia Hip dysplasia is a mal-formation of the hip joint, where the ball at the top of the leg does not fit properly into the socket and the ligaments attaching it are weak. This allows excess movement of the fitting which can eventually lead to stiffness and pain for the dog. This active dog could have hip problems, causing pain when moving. Early warning signs are — stiffness when getting up or walking, reluctance to get up when prompted and its usual walking style can change. It can occur early or later in life. The only way to check is to trace the health history of the birth parents. There is no cure but a Vet will help with medication to manage the pain. Skin problems Atopic dermatitis They can develop allergies causing skin conditions and itching — from grass, mold, pollen etc. Bloat Gastric Dilatation-volvulus Affects many deep-chested, larger dog breeds that like to eat large volumes quickly, drink too much water after eating or even eat too close to exercising. Early signs are: restlessness after eating, a bloated stomach and an inability to reject excess air or food through ineffective retching. In each case it is important to seek medical help! Exercise: This will be a very active dog, with lots of energy and need lots of exercise. They like to play chase and fetch. A puppy needs hours of exercise every day and more when older otherwise it will get bored. It will love running around and adventures but not adapt to small spaces. Therefore not suited to apartment living. Remember: Puppies should not be exercised too much on hard ground as their paws are still delicate so a mix of hard and softer ground is recommended until they are at least 2 years of age. Leash training is strongly recommended for discipline, safety and control in the early years. Feeding: Feed as an active large-sized dog with a recommended type of specially-formulated dry food. A Vet will advise the food type, exact amount, how often and if they need extra mineral and vitamins. Puppies should have their daily amount split into 3 daily feeds. Be careful not to over-feed them as weight gain can put pressure on their hips. Grooming: This dog has a short to medium length coat of hair that does shed but not too much so it only needs to be brushed times a week. A good brush is recommended. Bathing: This dog has short hair like the Pitbull so bathing is only recommended when needed, but not too often as their coats contain natural oil; which can be stripped with over-bathing. Certain shampoos have the double effect of cleaning the coat and protecting it against fleas and insect bites. Chewing helps, so use doggie chew toys, bare bones, soft tooth brushes and toothpaste. Nails grow quickly and need to be trimmed regularly, say once a month, and checked for infection. Their floppy ears need to be regularly checked for dirt build-up or infection. Anything unusual should be checked by a Vet. What is life like for a GSPM? Otherwise, with their high energy levels they may show their boredom through destroying or chewing things and barking. They can make a great family dog. Remember just how active this dog is before choosing one. How much does it cost? Always best to adopt rather than buy if you can. They are still prized working dogs on ranches or farms, but can fit well into active families with older kids. German Shepherd Pitbull mix puppies need lots of socialization, training and exercise. They require regular grooming despite their short coat, and can suffer from separation anxiety if left alone. However, when you give them everything they need, this mix can be an amazing companion for experience dog owners and working dog trainers too. A member of the herding group, the German Shepherd was developed with the hopes of creating the perfect herding and service dog. Because of the cold and wet European climate, the German Shepherd had to be very hardy to handle long days in often brutal conditions. At that time, it became popular with military, police, and service work. Early Bulldogs and Terriers were crossed to create an athletic, bold dog primarily used for hunting. This is a practice where the dog would grasp a bull, bear, or other large animal around the head. Today, Pitbulls are still very agile dogs that make excellent contestants in agility, weight pulling, and tracking tests. This mix will be tall with a medium build and a coat that will range in length from short to long, depending on their parents. They will have a relatively long muzzle, dark eyes, a long tail and pointed ears. The German Shepherd Pitbull mix is probably going to be a large dog. You can expect a German Shepherd-Pitbull hybrid to grow up to 17—24 inches tall at the shoulder. If a hybrid puppy takes after its German Shepherd parent, then they may mature to between 80 and 90 pounds. When they more closely resemble their Pitbull parent, then they may reach anywhere from 30 to 60 pounds. Additionally, hybrids may look more like one parent than the other, or they may appear to be a lovely mix of both parents. Both breeds are commonly associated with territorial aggression and biting, both of humans and other dogs. Of course, with mixed breeds, you cannot say with much certainty how much the offspring of two purebred dogs will take after their parents. This goes for looks, health, and temperament. German Shepherd Pitbull mix puppies are no different. The Pitbull was first bred to fearlessly attack large animals and later to work, hunt and protect. This means that they are strong and agile enough to chase after such animals as cattle and hogs. Also, if needed, they can grasp and hold a moving animal with their powerful jaws. They can also be territorial. Furthermore, fewer Pitbulls in the study had attempted to bite their owner or a strange human than those who had attempted to or had attacked a strange dog in the past. Socialization As we mentioned earlier, proper training and socialization with other dogs and humans from an early age can help to prevent a puppy with German Shepherd lineage from developing aggressive behavior later in life. This is especially important if your dog has hypothyroidism in its genes. Additionally, both Pitbulls and German Shepherds are working breeds that are high energy. German Shepherd and Pitbull Health Your puppy has the potential to inherit the following conditions from one or both of their parents: Allergies — Allergic reactions to pollen, mold, and dust cause itchy skin on the feet, belly, folds of skin, and ears. Hip dysplasia Patellar luxation — When the knee cap pops out of place while the dog is in motion. Neuronal Ceroid Lipofuscinosis — Progressive nerve damage that results in weakness of the legs and sometimes blindness. Progressive Retinal Atrophy PRA — An inherited disorder in which deterioration of the retina leads to eventual blindness. Bladder stones —Pitbulls can inherit Hyperuricosuria. The urine is too acidic, which causes precipitation of solid masses called bladder stones or kidney stones depending on where they form. Lifespan The average life expectancy of a German Shepherd is about 11 years. Similarly, the Pitbull typically lives between 11 and 13 years. This means that you can expect a German Shepherd Pitbull mix to live to be approximately 11 or 12 years of age. A Shepherd Pitt may mature to be a large dog with lots of energy. In addition to the energy outlet, exercise is also important for this hybrid due to the high probability of it developing hip dysplasia. As a family dog, this hybrid may not be ideal for homes with young children or other dogs. Make sure that you meet both parents. They should be relaxed and confident around strangers, if not overly friendly. Make sure the breeder also shows you evidence of clear health test certificates.

References 1. Clinical and pathological effects Panosteitis is an inflammatory disease that generally affects the long bones of young, large breed dogs, especially GSDs. Primarily it affects fatty bone marrow and has subsequent effects on the surrounding bone Shell .It can occur in any bone that contains a significant volume of marrow but, as marrow is largely found in the diaphysis shafts of the long bones, these are the most commonly affected sites. Long bones are the bones of the limbs. They are essentially supporting columns that have to carry the weight of the animal. These epiphyses have an outer layer of compact bone and spongy bone in their centre. Between the epiphyses and the diaphysis in young animals are the growth, or epiphyseal, plates which are the zones in which bone lengthening occurs. The diaphysis the shaft of the bone has, in cross section, an outer thin fibrous layer of tissue called the periosteum and, inside this, a wide layer of compact bone which provides the strength. In the centre of the shaft is the bone marrow cavity that contains the soft, blood cell producing, haemopoietic bone marrow and yellow fatty bone marrow. Bone is a dynamic, living tissue that can slowly respond to the forces exerted on it by remodelling, strengthening and repairing itself. To do this it has cells called osteoblasts which produce bone and osteoclasts which dissolve it. In animals affected with panosteitis, the fat cells of the yellow marrow degenerate, inflammation occurs and this tissue is replaced with fibrous tissue, which in turn is calcified and turned into spongy bone tissue, as osteoblasts, osteoclasts and fibroblasts fibrous tissue-producing cells are activated Shell , Brooks .Ultimately, as the disease process subsides, this new bone is removed as part of the normal bone remodelling processes and the fatty marrow regenerates. The causes of panosteitis are unknown Shell , Brooks .Various possible causes have been proposed as listed below. The theory is that high protein levels lead to oedema fluid collection and retention within the tissues of the medullary cavity. As the bone is rigid this extra volume of fluid causes compression of blood vessels and to inadequate blood supply to the tissues of the bone, leading to inflammation ischaemia Schawalder et al a, b, Shell .Because some breeds of dogs including GSDs and Bassett hounds are predisposed to the disease, the implication is that there may be a genetic cause to the condition Brooks .Stress is often thought to play a role Shell .Generally affecting juvenile dogs, the disease is usually self-limiting and spontaneously regresses once sexual maturity is reached between months of age, but some individuals may be still affected in middle-age Bohning et al , Berry .Males are affected more frequently than females Trostel et al , Shell .Affected dogs may be lethargic, show a loss of appetite and have a raised temperature. These signs often last from a few days to a few weeks, disappear and then reoccur i. Handling the limb may elicit a pain response. Reoccurrences of the signs may coincide with periods of stress Shell .Until spontaneous regression of the condition occurs, pain-relieving medicating is often needed and reduction of stress and activity levels are also recommended Shell .Return to top 2. Intensity of welfare impact During bouts of panosteitis, affected GSDs exhibit signs of significant limb pain. They react to having the affected bones touched. Affected dogs also often feel ill due to fever. Return to top 3. Duration of welfare impact The disease usually starts at between five and 18 months of age and is often recurrent. It regresses in most individuals once they reach sexual maturity at between months, but some GSDs are affected until they are seven years of age Bohning et al , Berry .Individual bouts may last for weeks to months at a time Shell .Return to top 4. Number of animals affected The GSD is the breed most commonly affected with panosteitis. Return to top 5. Diagnosis Panosteitis may be suspected in a juvenile GSD showing lameness. However other orthopaedic conditions also commonly occur in young GSDs so confirmation of the diagnosis needs to be made using radiography x-rays Shell , Berry .The radiographic appearance of the tissues of the bone changes during the course of the condition and such radiographic changes lag behind the clinical signs by about days so it is possible for an affected dog to have initial lameness without being able to detect corresponding radiographic changes Shell .This can make diagnosis difficult. Blood tests may show an eosinophilia higher than normal concentrations of a particular white blood cell type Shell .Return to top 6. There is no genetic test for the disease. Return to top 7. How do you know if an animal is a carrier or likely to become affected? It is not known if unaffected carriers of the gene s exist - animals that do not have the disease themselves but are able to pass on the gene s that cause the disease to their offspring - and, as far as we know, there is no information about the heritability of panosteitis in GSDs. Return to top 8. Methods and prospects for elimination of the problem As far as we are aware, there are no breeding schemes aimed at reducing the incidence of panosteitis. With the current state of knowledge it is difficult to give good advice. Generally it seems sensible not to breed from individuals that have been affected by the disease or which have more than a very few affected relatives including siblings and siblings of parents Bell .Prospective dog owners may wish to avoid acquiring dogs of breeds in which there is a high prevalence of the disease in order to help avoid perpetuating the problem unless they are able to ascertain that the disease does not occur or is very rare in the particular lineage of the dog they are interested in acquiring. Return to top 9. If you notice your puppy is limping, it could be because of a: Bone break or fracture Muscle strain, pull or tear A slipped disc A torn or damaged ligament A cut or laceration on a paw or base of the leg Any of the above injuries or body damage could be caused by rough play, falling or landing awkwardly, poor genetic, or just general day to day activity. Higher energy puppies or puppies that engage in a lot of physical activity could be more at risk. With something particularly painful like a broken bone or deep laceration, the limping could have an immediate onset. You have to remember with puppies that they are still developing physically and growing. Particularly in large dogs, if they grow too quickly, they may develop injuries more frequently. A side effect of arthritis can be lameness in a leg — which can cause limping. Arthritis in dogs can occur over time with natural wear and tear, as a result of injuries, or as a result of a disease like hip dysplasia for example. This is why you should always check the official OFA hip and elbow certification of your puppy and their parents before you buy — and get a guarantee on the health of the pup against latent defects developing. With hip and elbow dysplasia, a malformation in the joint leads to deterioration of the cartilage according to assisianimalhealth. There are also other infectious diseases, and cruciate ligament disease, neuromuscular disease, and cancers which can cause limping. The best person to let you know which legs on your GSD are affected by a cause of limping is your vet. As in with humans, a dog might have a chronic disease like arthritis for example. The joints may deteriorate and the dog might develop a limp, but the leg may simply become lame with little or no pain. More German Shepherd Limping Resources 1. Amazon and the Amazon logo are trademarks of Amazon. Additionally, TheDailyShep. Information provided is for informational purposes only — it is not a substitute for professional or qualified advice. By consuming this information, you accept that TheDailyShep. You should always consult your own veterinarian, animal expert, or health care professional and follow their advice before making decisions on all matters. Enjoy your reading, and thank you for being here ','. It occurs when your dog cannot walk normally due to pain or weakness. Your dog may walk slowly or awkwardly, and he will generally favor one leg over the other. There are two types of limping that your German Shepherd may experience. Some forms occur gradually over time, whereas sudden lameness happens instantly, usually after an injury. Some cases are minor and can be managed at home, while others will necessitate the assistance of a medical professional. Too much of a good thing such as fetch, frisbee, intense running, or rough play with other dogs can leave your German Shepherd sore and hobbling with a muscle strain. Most dogs, though, will recover quickly after a few days of rest. Wounds on the footpads. Look out for your GSD incessantly licking his paw. Burns caused by hot sidewalks or frostbite can also cause your dog to limp. In extreme weather, hot or cold, get your GSD some booties or paw protectors. A thorn or stone stuck in the pads. Again carefully check the pads for a thorn or small stone that may have lodged between the paw pads. Remember to keep the fur around the pads and toes trim to enable you to examine the paws easier, especially as some dogs find this area quite sensitive. Toenail injuries. Examine your German Shepherd for ingrowing or overgrown toenails , as these can cause discomfort and pain if they dig into the skin. My GSD once had a dewclaw injury that required surgical removal, so make sure you also keep these trim. An insect sting or animal bite. Stings and bites can cause limping. Your GSD may raise his paw if stung by a wasp or bee. Bites from other animals can result in injury and infection. Fracture or dislocation. If the limping began suddenly, a fractured leg or a dislocated bone should be suspected. A shattered bone will prevent your dog from bearing any weight. A sprain occurs when a ligament or tendon is strained or torn. Something as simple as leaping off the couch and landing awkwardly can cause it. Your German Shepherd will be reluctant to put any weight on his leg or paw. Hip and elbow dysplasia. Dysplasia is a common hereditary condition in German Shepherds that causes hip and elbow joints to become loose and shift out of position. Sadly, .This persistent, painful condition is more common in older and larger canines. As a result of cartilage deterioration, it causes joint inflammation. Lameness, stiffness, or trouble getting up are all symptoms. Cruciate ligament injury or disease. This occurs when one or both of the cruciate ligaments that hold the knee together are damaged. Limping is the most common symptom of a cruciate injury, and it can be caused by turning awkwardly, jumping, or twisting. It can happen all of a sudden or gradually. Luxating patella dislocated knee. It is common in smaller breeds, but German Shepherds are one of the larger breeds prone to developing luxating patellas. Your dog may be in pain and reluctant to bear weight on the affected limb. An infection of the leg or paw can cause your dog to hobble. He may lick and chew the site and may need a course of antibiotics. Also, to prevent further inflammation, your GSD may be advised to wear the dreaded cone of shame Elizabethan collar. Lyme disease. This bacterial infection spread by ticks can result in intermittent lameness. Degenerative Myelopathy. This genetic condition affects the spinal cord, leading to eventual paralysis of the back end in older dogs. Weakness, lameness in the rear legs, and incontinence are all symptoms. Panosteitis Wandering Lameness or Growing Pains. Panosteitis is a condition affecting the long bones of the legs due to severe inflammation. It can affect growing large breed pups, aged months, including the GSD. It caused a shifting lameness from one bone to another and can occur over several weeks or months. Hypertrophic Osteodystrophy HOD. Hypertrophic Osteodystrophy is a bone disease occurring in quick-growing large dogs, usually between the 3 and 5 months stage. The German Shepherd is one of the breeds prone. Signs will be a slight limp and pain in the affected bone. Osteochondritis Dissecans OCD. OCD is a disease of the cartilage whereby inflammation causes it to separate from the bone. The shoulder is the most usually affected area; however, the elbow, hip, and knee can also be impacted. It occurs when large puppies develop too quickly. Symptoms include limping, lameness, and pain. German Shepherds are predisposed to OCD; however, the offending gene has not been identified. Hind limb weakness, paralysis, or urinary incontinence are symptoms of this spinal disease. It is caused by intervertebral disk degeneration and protrusion, which compresses the spinal cord. Dog breeds having a short, stout appearance are most commonly affected. Lumbosacral Foraminal Stenosis. A degenerative condition of the lower spine resembling sciatica or a slipped disc in humans. The subsequent narrowing can cause nerve compression resulting in lameness. It occurs in medium-large breeds of middle to old age. Unfortunately, German Shepherds and working dogs are susceptible to Lumbosacral Stenosis. Immune-Mediated Polyarthritis. This is an immune system condition that results in inflamed, swollen, and painful joints. Your German Shepherd will be reluctant to walk or will limp on one or more legs due to the pain. Diabetic neuropathy. If diabetes is uncontrolled, excessive glucose can cause gradual weakness or paralysis due to nerve damage. However, this condition is rare in canines. Congenital limb deformities. Abnormally developed limbs can cause your dog to limp. These are pretty rare, and a study of congenital deformities of the limbs highlighted that little is known about the causes. Osteosarcoma bone cancer. Bone tumors can grow quickly, causing limping and pain, especially in the legs. Large and giant breeds are more prone to it. Limping can range from mild to severe. However, she is doing really well with exercise modification techniques along with anti-inflammatory and pain relief medication. My vet recommended these, they get good reviews online, and they seem to be working for her. She sleeps on the Big Barker , which is the only dog bed clinically proven to reduce pain and joint stiffness. You can check out my comprehensive review here. For more severe cases such as broken bones, orthopedic surgery may be required. How to Treat a Limping German Shepherd at Home Knowing how to treat your limping German Shepherd at home by giving first aid is fundamental to help minimize any further injury or pain. Firstly, pinpoint the affected leg, evaluate its seriousness and whether your dog needs medical assistance. So, how do you treat a limping GSD at home? To treat a limping German Shepherd at home, gently examine your dog, starting at the paw. Check the pads and between the toes, and slowly work your way up, looking for cuts or foreign bodies. Gently maneuver the joints for stiffness, but do not examine if your GSD is in severe pain. Remove any foreign bodies between the toes. Clean the wound with anti-bacterial soap. Finally, apply antibiotic ointment. For cut or torn pads and broken nails. If you cannot stop the bleeding in minutes, take your pet to the vet. Apply a bandage and change daily. For burned paw pads. If the pad becomes discolored or if the tissue underneath becomes exposed, contact your veterinarian. Apply antibiotic ointment to the burned pad, bandage, and change the dressing daily. For abscesses. Apply warm compresses to the affected area or soak in a warm Epsom salts bath. If the abscess bursts, take your doggo to the vet to get the wound cleaned and some antibiotics. For swelling due to a sprain or bruising. Apply ice packs to the affected area for 15 minutes twice a day. Place your GSD in the bath, and swirl the water around his leg, or spray with a gentle hose for 15 minutes twice daily. Flowing water reduces swelling, improves circulation, and helps with healing. Confine lame dogs and restrict their activity. Your German Shepherd will have a far better chance of recovery if you provide first aid when appropriate and seek prompt veterinary care if needed. Are you looking to buy something for your dog? Make sure to check out my favorite dog gear below. This is because German Shepherds are intentionally bred to have a steeper angulation to the hind legs. The AKC breed standards for the breed, require German Shepherds to have as close to a degree bend as possible in their hind legs. Unfortunately, this steep angle in the back leg makes German Shepherds more susceptible to back pain and hind leg problems. After years of wear and tear, this makes them prone to serious leg problems as they age. For instance, studies have shown that German Shepherds are five times more likely to develop dysplasia as compared to Labradors, Rottweilers, and Golden Retrievers. A brief overview of these medical conditions: Degenerative Myelopathy Degenerative myelopathy DM is a neurological disease that makes German Shepherds slowly lose control of their hind legs. In the end, the dog may lose control of the urinary and bowel functions, and paralysis is a serious possibility. DM typically occurs in older dogs of about eight years or older, although it may also occur at a younger age. Unfortunately, there is no cure for DM. However, there are ways to reduce the suffering of your GSD because the condition progresses gradually. Therefore, treatment options for DM are geared towards ensuring a better quality of life rather than curing it. Most dogs with degenerative myelopathy will lose the function of their hind legs within six months to two years of diagnosis. Although there is no cure, regular exercise has been shown to improve the quality of life for dogs with DM. As a result, the ball of the hip joint causes pain as it glides roughly against the socket. Signs of hip dysplasia include a wobbly gait, lameness, limping, a decreased range of motion, and pain while walking. The most common causes of hip dysplasia include genetics, leg trauma, and environmental factors. In extreme cases of hip dysplasia, the dog may lose the function of their back legs and require a wheelchair. Arthritis may also occur due to the pressure exerted on the hip joint by hip dysplasia. Since GSDs are prone to hind leg weakness, they are at an increased risk for severe arthritis. Dogs with bad hips and arthritic joints may change their gait and walk lower to the ground, causing German Shepherd legs to appear even more bent. Signs of arthritis in German Shepherds include lethargy, loss of muscle mass in the hind limbs, reluctance to run, jump, or go up a flight of stairs, and stiffness in the hind legs. Prevention of osteoarthritis through proper dieting, exercising, and joint supplements helps to reduce the onset of osteoarthritis. Once osteoarthritis begins, the treatment is geared towards pain reduction, reducing inflammation, and improving the quality of life. Since osteoarthritis is difficult to detect in symptoms until the affected joints are badly affected, it is crucial to keep up with regular wellness visits with your vet. The best way to prevent these diseases is through genetic testing and following good breeding standards. This is possible by checking with your breeder for the hip score regarding hip dysplasia and proper parent matching to avoid degenerative myelopathy. Diet It works wonders for humans, and it will work for your best friend too. Since this breed is already a large-sized breed and the effects of breeding may be unpredictable, maintaining an optimal weight and observing a healthy, balanced diet is a wise precautionary measure. Some of the important dietary options to provide include ample proteins, vitamin D, vitamin K and magnesium, vitamin C, and vitamin E. You should also ensure that the dog food you buy for your German Shepherd is well-suited, with enough calcium and phosphorus for healthy bone development. Your vet may also prescribe bone and joint supplements such as glucosamine, chondroitin, green-lipped mussels, and collagen if they are required. An obese or overweight will experience increased mobility challenges. Second, regular exercise, especially walking and swimming, is important. Lastly, consult your vet on supplements or medications that may slow down the progression of DM. In any case, for these medical conditions , keep an eye out for changes in movement and contact your vet if there are any concerns. Some common symptoms that your German Shepherd may show include a wobbly walk, slipping on the floor, sitting crooked, hips giving way, swelling, lesser muscle mass in the back legs, and having a shorter stride on the hind legs. Remember that most dogs will not express pain or discomfort at first, so it is up to you to spot the symptoms if they do appear — This is especially important for degenerative conditions because when it comes to treatment, the earlier, the better! Regular exercise Regular exercising does two important things for your German Shepherd. One, it strengthens the hind and front leg muscles, and two, it helps you spot changes in the performance of the hind legs. This is the sit-to-stand routine. In this routine, you start with your dog sitting in front of you. Then, you move back a bit and call the dog to you. When he follows, give a treat to keep his interest and, once again, sit him down. Repeat as many times as needed. Taking your dog on daily walks up and down a hill especially or having swimming sessions will also strengthen the leg muscles and help in managing the weight. Hydrotherapy is especially beneficial for dogs dealing with mobility issues. Canine massage relieves fatigue and tension in the hind leg muscles and helps to spot any unrelated pain that may be a sign of something to watch out for. How to massage your dog: Compress the muscle against the bone with your flat hand using both your palms and fingers. Glide your hand along his spine, following the lay of the fur. Apply semi-circular strokes on the muscular areas of the back legs. Using a support harness Sometimes, it is crucial to moderate the pressure that your shepherd applies to the back legs when he moves about. This is where the support harness comes in. A harness helps to remove some of the stress that the dog may be feeling when taking walks, for instance, until the muscles of the back legs are strong enough to take it. The use of the harness reduces the pressure placed on the bad back legs and makes it easier for your dog to walk. Keep them at a healthy weight and ensure they get plenty of exercise. Even if your GSD is battling a degenerative illness affecting his mobility, you can explore treatment and supportive methods that will enable a good quality of life. German shepherds are known as a very resilient and strong breed. Your dog will match and appreciate any effort you put into ensuring his good quality of life. Related Articles:. Many different factors could be causing your German Shepherd to limp, and knowing is half the battle. See below for a list of the most common reasons why your German Shepherd could be limping. Below is a list of things that cause lameness, which is a persistent limp caused by a non-trivial injury. Trauma to Leg Any sort of leg trauma could be causing your German Shepherd to limp. This includes things like broken bones, torn ligaments, dislocations, and other injuries. Just like in humans, these limit the leg function and are quite painful, so it is pretty obvious why they would make your German Shepherd limp a bit. You can only really be certain this is the case after a trip to the vet, but if you saw your dog get hurt, you might have a pretty idea that this is the case. Either way, it should be followed up by advice and treatment from a qualified vet. Hip or Elbow Dysplasia Hip and elbow dysplasia are extremely common conditions in dogs. This causes pain and lameness, resulting in a limp. Being a genetic condition, this can start from a relatively young age and is often an explanation for lameness in younger dogs. Unfortunately, there is often no cure for this. Sometimes, surgery or lifelong medication can be helpful, though. Arthritis Older dogs, just like older humans, can often experience arthritis. Arthritis is an inflammation of the joints from years of stress. It usually affects the shoulders, knees, and hips. If your older dog is limping, you should probably consider this to be the most likely cause of that lameness. There are medications and nutritional supplements that can help with arthritis symptoms. Consult your vet to see your best course of action to make your dog a bit more comfortable with this condition. Congenital Abnormalities Sometimes, a limp or lameness can be the result of a congenital abnormality. These can often be skeletal or muscular abnormalities, which would explain limping. Hip and elbow dysplasia are often considered congenital abnormalities and are the most common type. Bone Cancer Unfortunately, as with all living things, cancer is a possibility with dogs as well. Although rarer than the other things above it on this list, bone cancer is a possibility when it comes to why your German Shepherd is experiencing lameness in one or more of its legs. Common Causes of Limping in Dogs Although there are some serious diseases and conditions that might be the reason your dog is experiencing lameness, you may also be able to attribute it to some fairly trivial, common things. Read on for a short list of common things that might be causing your German Shepherd to keep weight off of one of its feet. Wounds On The Footpads One of the most common reasons that a dog may be limping is that it has some kind of wound in its footpad. This can be the result of many things. Pulled Muscle Oftentimes, very active dogs can over-exert themselves and pull a muscle. This could cause the dog to develop a temporary limp as the area where the muscle was pulled becomes tender and painful to use. If your German Shepherd was bitten by a spider or stung by a wasp or hornet on its footpad, ankle, or anywhere near its paws, it may try to avoid walking on that as it would cause pain. Broken or Damaged Claw A broken or damaged claw could be quite painful to walk on for a dog, especially such a large one. Wait 15 minutes When you notice your dog is limping, the first thing you should do is wait and watch. A lot of limps are extremely trivial injuries like a paw that got stepped on or legs that may have been banged into something. Injuries like this will usually wear off for a bit. Wait and watch your dog for about 15 minutes. Do not coax it into walking or try to bring it for a walk, as too much movement could injure it further if it were to be something serious. Simply see if your dog gets up and walks around. Once it does, see if the limp persists for more than 15 minutes. Many minor limps will simply resolve themselves with time. These include bug bites and stings, paw pad wounds, damaged or cracked claws, and similar injuries that you can see physically. With many of these minor injuries, you can treat them yourself at home. Perhaps call your vet for tips on how and when to treat these injuries, but no major action is needed. When in doubt, bring your dog to the vet, or at least give them a call. This is the best and most accurate way to diagnose your dog, as your vet has the know-how and access to tools that can pin down exactly what is bothering your German Shepherd and causing its lameness. Check For Swelling If your dog is trying to avoid putting weight on one of its legs, it might be smart to check for swelling in that leg. That is a sign that you should go to the vet. This will be very helpful information for your vet should you decide to bring your dog in. There are a number of at-home remedies that can solve some of the less serious issues that are causing your German Shepherd to limp. Rest For many causes of limping, such as pulled muscles and open wounds, rest is the most important thing. If your dog is limping, try to scale back playtime and exercise to allow it time to heal. You should only really be going on walks to allow your dog to use the bathroom and allow your Shepherd to spend the rest of its time resting up its injured leg or paw. Make sure to use clean tools and wash your hands before and after to protect your dog from infection and cover any would well. Keep your yard clean of bees, spiders, other biting insects, thorny bushes, loose sticks, and other injury-causing materials. Keep your dog active and healthy to avoid injury that might come from weak bones or muscles. This can lead to joints and bones experiencing damage that causes swelling. In order to avoid or treat this kind of damage, you should make sure your dog is having its weight managed. Try to stick to a healthier diet with fewer carbs, red meat, and more lean proteins and vegetables. Make sure your German Shepherd is getting plenty of exercise between walking and playing daily. This is an athletic, active breed and should be treated as such! Your vet will be able to diagnose and treat any limp your dog is experiencing far better than you can. It may seem like a short, simple answer, but it is the best available in most cases. Cheaper than replacing everything they might break. And definitely cheaper than a lawsuit against you, if they decide to bite someone. And the best part is it also has a day money-back guarantee! You can also check out a full review here to learn exactly what the course has to offer! A: No. A limp is a sign that something is wrong. It may become normal as the dog ages if it develops arthritis or a similar condition. However, a limp is always a sign of some wound or condition. A: In many cases, a dog can get used to the cause of the limp and still run around if it feels it needs to during playtime or on a walk. Recap So, there are many reasons that your German Shepherd could be limping. Treat it at home if you can, but at least give your vet a call and get some advice. Related Posts:.