Author: Brock Lorber

Your dog wears a coat of insulation, helping him stay cool in the summer and warm in the winter. His coat holds essential oils close to his skin, and protects it from scrapes and scratches. Its hollow hairs help him stay afloat so he can concentrate on swimming rather than treading. 

Author: Connie Limon

Few dog breeds have such a well-documented and exciting history as the Shih Tzu. The Shih Tzu’s entire history is steeped in legends, myths and mystery. However, we have fossil records that tell us the brachycephalic (short-skulled, short-nosed, flat-faced) dog breeds, which include the Shih Tzu, Pug, and Pekingese originated in Central Asia. In addition, we also have written history and legends to help us sort of piece together the last 3,000 plus years of the Shih Tzu’s history. There are meticulously maintained Shih Tzu breeding records and pedigrees for more than 50 years as well.

Author: Stephanie Bayliss

What is a ‘clicker’? A clicker is simply a small plastic box, containing a metal plate which, when pressed, makes a ‘click’ sound.

What is clicker training? Clicker Training is a method of ‘positive reinforcement training’ – that is, rewarding the behaviours that we like instead of punishing behaviours that we don’t like. When the dog does what we want him to do, we ‘click’ and give him a treat.

To ensure that the dogsites forums are used appropriatly all members of the dogsites website need to be sure they have read and understand the forum rules.

The dogsites website is a family friendly 'G' rated website and therfore requests all users of the forums to keep that in mind when making any posts on our forums.

In order to keep the forums running well and to prevent problems, please follow these simple rules for the forums here. If you have any questions or problems, please feel free to contact one of the dogsites.com.au Admins.

General Rules:

• While debating and discussion is fine, we will not tolerate rudeness, insulting posts, personal attacks or purposeless inflammatory posts. Our decision is final in these matters.
• Please refrain from posting meaningless threads, one word (or short) non-sense posts, or the such.
• Multiple or repeated posting in order to increase your post count is not allowed.
• Advertising, spamming and trolling is not allowed, the only exception is a text link within a members signature to an external (non-competitor) website.
• The websites forum email and Private message system is not to be used to spam other members.
• Please refrain from bumping your posts in the event an answer is not immediately provided.  Please wait a reasonable amount of time before bumping posts. Generally we would suggest no sooner than 48 hours.
• With our family friendly site we dot not alllow any posts that are sexual in nature or violate our community standards. The dogsites.com.au Admins shall be the sole arbitrator of what does and what does not violate community standards.
• Discussion of illegal activities such as software and music piracy and other intellectual property violations are not allowed.
• Each member is allowed one login account. Registering with multiple accounts is not allowed.
• While we are quite happy to have constructive comparative conversations about competitor's products or services, we will not tolerate blatant adverts or the sort of 'ooh look, yet another bulletin board' threads. Also, we would appreciate it if you refrain from blatant bashing of other boards.
• We reserve the right to remove offensive posts without notice.
• If you are going to post non-English on these forums, please also post an English Translation of your post.
• While these rules cover most common situations, they cannot anticipate everything. Consequently we reserve the right to take any actions we deem appropriate to ensure these forums are not disrupted or abused in any way.
• You cannot post any affiliate or referral links, or post anything asking for a referral. Such posts will be subject to removal.
• We also reserve the right to ban anyone who wilfully violates the forum rules, as access to our support forums are a privilege and not a right.

Bad mouthing or flaming others:

Please be warned that any flaming of other users of the forums or bad mouthing them will not be tolerated and posts of such will be deleted when identified. If you see any posts like this on the forums please notify us immediately.

The same applies for posts about breeders and their practices. Please bear in mind that one persons experience may not be the same for everyone else and I would prefer that if anyone has an issue with a breeder to take the issue up with them rather than post inflammatory remarks on our forums.

Dogsites is unable to verify statements made and often these issues are caused by other reasons that has no bearing on the credibility of a breeder, either way there is no way we can check this so therefore no posts of such are to be made on our forums.

If however there is repeated issues about a particular breeder such as puppy milling or if there is sufficient evidence of bad or irresponsible practices then please also provide that evidence. we may then allow a form of warning post to be added, we will review and edit any such posts as we feel necessary.

Advertising Services and Solicitation

We do not allow people to post threads or to send private messages or emails to users here that advertise or solicit any products, services, funds or donations.

We welcome and are are happy for our members to have a text link within their signature that advertises their products or services (non competitor to dogsites.com.au) however this is limited to one link in a signature.  We reserve the right to delete posts or signatures of users we feel are abusing this allowable content.

Links in Sigs

Links in signatures must follow these guidelines:

• Linking to a commercial product/service is fine, provided it is not a product or service that competes directly with dogsites.com.au. members may if they wish check with an Admin first if they wish.
• Promotional text for a commercial product or service is ok, provided there are no price(s) of product(s) or service(s) listed.
• A link and promotional text for a site that is not commercial and does not contain product(s) and/or service(s) is allowed, provided the site does not contravene our 'G' rating family friendly website standards
• Duplicate links to the same URL in a signature are not allowed.

Avatars

• Animated avatars are allowed, however they must be suitable for a family friendly 'G' rated website.
• Avatars that may be confused with a dogsites.com.au Admin avatar is not allowed.

Signature Size Limits

All signatures should not exceed the following size limits

• For text signatures: 4 lines normal size, 8 lines small size and up to 90 chars per line. Font sizes above 2 are not allowed. (Blank lines count as lines.)
• Do not use images with large text to bypass the previous item
• For images in signatures: 1 image up to 400 pixels wide, 125 pixels tall and 30k in size
• Animated images in a signature are not allowed

Anyone not adhering to the above will have their accounts deleted without warning.

Any threads/posts of these types will be deleted.

Your help is appreciated in making the forums constructive for discussion and welcome to all.

If you would like to submit an article to dogsites we would love to hear from you. All members that wish to become a dogsites author will become Dogsites Contributors that will allow you to submit as many articles as you wish. You will be given all credit and if wanted a link back to your site which helps with your page ranking to your website.

There are Author Terms and Conditions and these must be agreed to before you submit any article to dogsites.com.au.

We offer two options for submitting an article.

1. You become an Author on our site and this will give you access to submit new articles directly on our site. It however does not allow further edits beyond the initial submission but we can manage those edits beyond that point for you. All articles you submit will be listed in your Profile as the author. All articles submitted need to be reviewed by us before they are published which can take up to 72 hours (but usually within 24). If you wish to be an author on dogsites.com.au please fill out the following form.

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2. If you don't have the time to add your document directly or are not sure how to then you may simply send us the article as a file and we will review it and publish it for you. If this is better for you please complete the following form.

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