Topic: The dog on Brokeback Mountain

[Troy]

Poodles are the second most intelligent dog (Stanley Coren, The Intelligence of Dogs, best research ever done).  Coren also has a book on their personality. Poodles are in the highest prone to bark category, all sizes of them, so make the best watchdogs (at least for intruders that cant see the dog).

[mélisande]

I havent heard of those dogs, but I've seen a lot of Australian sheppherd dogs, incredibly gentle, not at all like Australian cattle dogs. Cattle dogs have to nip at dangerously kicking cattle heels, a sheppard dog couldnt do that.  Golden retrievers are another incredibly gentle dog. I have a 10 year old labrador retriever too, just like golden retrievers in personality. His age is really showing, really limping badly today. It must be so sad losing your dog, but fifteen years isnt bad, your golden retriever had a long life. A lot of dogs die of cancer at 7 nowadays.

They chose an Australian shepherd number 1= BIS (best in show) in this years Crufts http://www.the-kennel-club.org.uk/index.asp?newpage=crufts

Sorry to hear about your lab, have you tried Glucosamine + MSM, they say it'll help, a bit anyway.
Schäfers (German shepherds) are also those always nipping heels (tendency for that like cattledogs/heelers?), at least horses heels (horsepeople here use to have schäfers). ('heeler' -> 'nipping heels'?)

Lapponian herder is quite rare breed, not so known, but maybe that's why it's free from hip and other problems which are quite common with other popular breeds.

[mélisande]

Poodles are the second most intelligent dog (Stanley Coren, The Intelligence of Dogs, best research ever done). 

Is it true (I'm not so familiar with them, although our "boy" used to run away to meet a certain poodle-girl )