Golden Mountain Dog Solutions

This is not an invisible fence.

It periodically happens that a dog can no longer remain in its present home and we are called upon to be involved in the re-homing process. Some of these dogs have issues and require rehabilitation before they can be placed, others do not, but no matter what, the adoption of any dog through Golden Mountain Dog Solutions requires the signing of an Adoption Agreement. This Agreement is non-negotiable, each item in it exists for sound reasons, and the adoption process ends immediately for any candidate that refuses to sign it as written.

Item 11 in our Adoption Agreement states:

“The Dog is not to be confined within an area contained by an “Invisible Fence” or any similar product designed to automatically administer electric shocks or other corrective signals, nor shall it be subjected to the effects of systems or equipment designed to control barking or otherwise modify its behaviour through electric shocks, exposure to sound waves, or to  radiation of any frequency.”

This policy isn’t unique to Golden Mountain Dog Solutions. There are other animal rescue organizations that include some version of this stipulation in their own adoption contracts.

Randy has addressed this subject in detail in this article posted 18 June 2010 to his personal website, so other than the preamble you’ve just read having been taken pretty much word for word from that post, we’ll leave you to get the rest straight from the source.

Pepper, in the astoundingly brief and yet still magical process of recharging his Border Collie batteries.

The following article was first published on Randy’s personal blog - Large Fierce Mammal - on 5 June 2010.

I once had a Border Collie named Pepper that every Sunday I took to participate in flyball at a school soccer field located about a 35 minute drive from where we lived at the time. The drive involved travelling most of the way on a major highway, then a turn off at a particular exit that had very specific significance for Pepper - the exit ramp led to a stop sign from which a right turn would take us past our veterinarian’s office while a left turn led to the flyball field.

Pepper loved to travel but routinely was snoozing by the time we reached the highway. Nevertheless, he was always on his feet and watching about a minute before we arrived at the critical exit. Turning onto the exit ramp started his tail wagging slowly and this continued as we arrived at the fateful stop sign. If I turned right, the tail wagging stopped and Pepper would once again curl up on the back seat, feigning disinterest, but turning left, now that was a different matter! The tail wagged the dog, and I never failed to arrived at the flyball field without the right side of my head sporting a world class cow lick. Read the rest of this entry »

An article posted this week by CBC titled “NS veterinarians ban tail docking” announced that the NSVMA has forbidden its members from performing any surgical procedures intended solely to alter an animal’s appearance. Among the procedures affected are tail docking and ear cropping.

This is a step that is long overdue. These surgeries are predominantly driven by purely human conceptions of what an animal needs to look like; either to project a desired image, or to be in “proper” conformance with “breed standards”. This begs the question of just how surgically altering the appearance of a living organism, so that it no longer looks, or  is able to function, the way Nature intended, is in any way an improvement for the animal. Read the rest of this entry »

A few days ago, one of our friends sent us a link to a website that introduced a new product to the dog toy market - the “Doggie Lover Doll“, touted as the world’s first sex doll for dogs. This is the kind of bizarre internet phenomenon that tends to disappear  in the blink of an eye, so in case the link stops working we’re including the contents of the press release below:

The world’s first sex doll for dogs will be launched at the 8th Pet South America (July 22nd to 24th, 2009), at the Transamerica Expo Center, in São Paulo.

You may know or have probably heard about these dolls for men that are very popular in Sex Shops around the world. There are inflatable ones, full-body, silicone, as well as other models. So now the first doll for dogs has been launched in Brazil. That’s right, a doll for dogs to practice safe sex. The majority of non-neutered dogs spend a good chunk of time looking for something to hump. They try pillows, furry creatures, people’s legs and even other animals. Read the rest of this entry »

Grand Opening? Yes, we know that the GMDS Dog Blog got its start on Blogspot back in 2008, but the time has come to move what has become a popular haunt over to our own GMDS web host.

As of today, the old Blogspot blog page will be maintained as archive only, and the entire archive has also been moved here where all new posts will be made.

If you are a follower of the GMDS Dog Blog and/or have the blog bookmarked, please realign your navigation systems to point here.

Onward and upward with tails held high,
Diana and Randy

Author’s Note: The following article combines two that I originally wrote and published on my personal blog, Large Fierce Mammal in September 2008. This will be your Sunday programming while Diana and I lead the Pack for a day in the woods.

A Tiny Tale …

Diana holds Tiny, the canine cannon ball, during the little gaffer’s “Welcome to Canada” party.

Back in 2000, I was in Florida on business and ended up rescuing a little ragamuffin toy poodle puppy named Tiny. Because I was traveling on business, I flew there and back in uniform. This was before we transitioned to the black field uniforms. At the time, we used a navy blue tactical uniform for field operations with “Whynacht Security & Survival” shoulder flashes and mine also had a bright yellow “Dog Handler” patch on the right sleeve. Read the rest of this entry »

I was responsible for naming the family dog, a mostly black Border Collie, after "Bullet the Wonder Dog", trusty companion of Roy Rogers in the adventure series that aired from 1961 to 1964 and that I never missed.

When I was growing up in the small fishing town of Lunenburg, Nova Scotia in the 1960’s and 1970’s it was the norm, after feeding them a meal of table scraps, for people to turn their often unspayed and unneutered dogs loose “for a run” in the evening with the expectation that they would go on a toot and return before the family retired for the night. While this practice makes me cringe on a range of levels too broad to mention here, and I decidedly do not recommend its adoption by anyone, anywhere, for any reason, at any time, EVER, it actually worked amazingly well, and had a few valuable side effects on my formative years that I will carry with me for the rest of my life. Most particularly, as a kid on the go in the streets of Lunenburg it was not uncommon to encounter dogs running loose, singly and in groups. Sometimes you knew one or more of the dogs you met, sometimes you didn’t. Parents of the town understood this as a reality of life, and instructed their children in the basic rules of conduct that would increase the likelihood their offspring would return home with all fingers and facial features intact. Most kids therefore understood what kinds of human behaviour would increase or decrease the chances of a person being chased or bitten, and those who didn’t soon learned the old fashioned way. I was fascinated by the obvious compulsion dogs had to seek each other out and gather in packs, and unlike the children of Lunenburg, how infrequently, when left to themselves, this resulted in any kind of conflict. Read the rest of this entry »

Diana and I regularly encounter questions about our work, our attitudes about dog training methods and specific dog trainers, about the latest books on dog related subjects, if we do group sessions and teach obedience classes, et cetera. While we’ll ultimately post articles dealing with all of these points, this article will address the common connection people make between our methods and those of well known dog behaviourist Cesar Millan.

I’ll start with an anecdote. Most people reading this will have heard of the television series MacGyverthat ran for seven seasons from 1985 to 1992 and starred Richard Dean Anderson in the title role. In case you’ve forgotten or are too young to know, Angus MacGyver was an incredibly creative and resourceful fictional secret agent who preferred non-violent means of conflict resolution and, while he refused to use or carry a gun, was never without his trusty Swiss Army Knife. Read the rest of this entry »

Dog behaviourist Cesar Millan sums up his training goals as rehabilitating dogs and training people; in that order. It is often said that the only thing two dog trainers will completely agree on is that a third trainer is doing something wrong, but whether or not you personally embrace the Dog Whisperer’s philosophy or methods, it’s hard to argue with his priorities.

In our work, clients tend to fall into a few basic categories: there’s a new puppy in the house and its owners want to start out right; a new baby is on the way and the boisterous behaviour of the one year old boxer is suddenly worrisome in the face of a new reality, a dog has a “bad habit” or two that its owners would rather it didn’t have such as pulling on the leash, ignoring the recall, jumping on people, counter surfing, etc.; and last but not least, the “problem dog“. In this latter case, the people the dog is living with are convinced that they have tried everything and are now at their wit’s end. Read the rest of this entry »

Enjoy the Christmas open house at the Shelter for Helpless Animals In Distress (SHAID), 950 Mullock Road, from 1-4 PM on Sunday, 30 November 2008! Call the Shelter at 902-543-4849 for directions or details.

Here is a reminder to anyone who isn’t on the direct mailing list that the annual SHAID open house is on and needs your support. Dogs and cats to meet, a craft and bake sale, it doesn’t get any better than this. And while you’re there why not make a donation. Any size is fine. The shelter always needs non-clumping cat litter, tinned dog and cat food, dry food with no dye, small blankets, and Javex for cleaning. Please NO treats because they have plenty. It’s the basic necessities of every day life that get short on supply.

To follow up, and for your consideration, here is an article Randy originally wrote and published nearly a year ago that comes out of how we feel about animal shelters, those who are called upon to operate them, and the animals that come into their care … Read the rest of this entry »