Re-posting this snippet of a .behavior post here, as it's possibly of
interest

   I'm the same way - on the rare occasions I've had someone else take care
of my dogs, I've had the person ONLY let them out into the fenced yard. The
only exception has been leaving Bren & Morag at Bob's house for a day (I
dropped them off in the morning, came back that evening).

  Good lord. Did they at least get their money back??

Speaking of scary stories..here's my current "favorite" petsitter/walker
story:

 There's a woman started coming to the main park within the last couple of
months with a female Dane who is rather on the aggressive/bitchy side.
Several times, she's had one other dog with her - a sucession of different
dogs - which she doesn't always have under what I would call reasonable
control. (For example, a Lab who was running around the park playing with
other dogs, paying little or no attention to her, and took her 5 minutes or
more to catch the dog when it was time to leave.)
  Seems that she pet-sits for dogs in her own home, and sometimes brings the
client dogs to the park. Which she hasn't brought any who were *major*
problems, but they're not dogs I, personally, would have taken out with me
and let off leash were I responsible.

 But I digress from the actual story... at any rate, a couple of weeks ago a
friend and I encountered the Dane owner while walking laps, and she
proceeded to tell us proudly that the Dane "might be pregnant".
  To our polite enquiry about who the sire was, she replied that she'd been
dogsitting for an intact Cavalier King Charles Spaniel, and had allowed the
dogs to mate. (I'm not clear on whether she encouraged it or it was an oops,
but I got the impression it was deliberate.)

 It gets better.
 THEN she proceeds to tell us how the CKCS's owner was surprised that her
dog had been able to follow through, "because he's got a bad heart". Which
apparently the Dane owner knew beforehand...

 While I stood there with my mouth literally dropped open, the Dane's owner
went on at great length about how she just KNOWS the puppies are going to be
so cute and fluffy, and people are SURE to want them, because who wouldn't
want such a cool "hybrid, and she's SURE she can get $500 or so apiece for
them, and how she can really use the money she's going to make.....

Aside from the mind-boggle of anyone being happy their bitch had been bred
by a male with a known inheritable heart defect, I find myself completely
unable to visualize what the (at this point, still hypothetical) puppies
would look like... other than suspecting they wouldn't turn out "cute and
fluffy">

news:4lmgnaF2kurgU1@individual.net...

First things first:

Hit her for me. Really really hard.

I'm picturing the opposite of cute and fluffy actually. I see a fat round
body attached to skinny long legs, a thick neck with a teeny tiny head
that's mostly bug-eyes. Oh, and only slight curling of the fur. Not fluffy,
more of a Jeri Curl thing, but without the volume. Oh, and the snarling
while dropping dead of a heart attack isn't going to be cute either.

Tara

Good lord, take one Dane with temperament problems, breed it to a CKCS with
health problems, and what you get is 'cute puppies everyone would want'?
I'm with Tara on this one.  Will help post bail if it comes to that.

At this point, about the only thing I am thankful for is that she didn't
have a female CKCS that was bred by a male Dane.

That's an interesting question.  What color is the Dane?  Dane puppies fall
quite strictly under the 'most definitely not cute and fluffy' category -
all legs, and different body parts grow at different rate, so can be quite
odd looking at times.

Suja

On Wed, 30 Aug 2006 18:52:49 -0400, "Suja" <spana...@scs.gmu.edu>,
clicked their heels and said:

I really like GD's, but agree - as young puppies, they just aren't the
most attractive things around.  I knew a dog that was (according to
owner or dam) GD/FCR mix.  Was a very gangly FCR looking dog for the
most part.  And NOT a nice dog.

--
Janet Boss
www.bestfriendsdogobedience.com

"Sionnach" <rhyfe...@msn.com> wrote in
news:4lmgnaF2kurgU1@individual.net:

Danes are homozygous for short coat LL, so although the pups will inherit
the long coat allele l from the sire, they will all be short-coated Ll.
They'll probably have softer and slightly longer coat than the Dane dam,
but still short and not "fluffy".

If the Dane is black or blue, she will get a full litter of black pups. If
she is fawn, she will get a full litter of different shades of red/fawn. If
the Cav is piebald, pups might have some white on chest and paws. If the
Dane is harl, things might get more interesting colorwise.

Size: closer to Dane, but not as big. Ears: lop. Muzzle: perhaps slightly
shortened. Oh, she will get a litter of pit bull lookalikes!

Liisa

My prediction is that they will be kind of generic looking dogs - smooth
coat, floppy ears, somewhere in middle of GD and Cav sized (60 pounders?).
I suspect they will be biggish pups since they'll be developing inside a
roomy GD womb. I also think that their "awwwww" time will be short - the
period that they are small, cute, marketable and people gush over them.
Smooth coated pups of biggish-large breeds are pretty cute until about 8
weeks but after that they get long and stringy.  Well I think pups are cute
even when they are lanky and goofy looking but they've definitely lost the
"awwwww how adorable!" factor.

Chris and her smoothies,
Pablo and Lucy

In article <Xns98304EC1F59E7lsarakoncchu...@195.197.54.116>,
lsara...@cc.hut.fi says....

That reminds me of a pup that was in a puppy agility class I took a
while back.  At first glance, he looked like a 3 month old Rottie.  At
second glance, one realized there was something not-quite-Rottie-but-
really-close.  Turns out he was a 5 month Spaniel-mixed-with-something-
else-smallish (don't remember, but it sure wasn't Rottie).  He never got
any bigger, although he did grow some feathering on his ears which
reduced the Rottie factor.
--
Debbie the Dogged  das at spamcop dot net
http://web.newsguy.com/debbiethedogged/
  "Poodles are space aliens who think they've disguised
   themselves as dogs."  - Paghat the Ratgirl

 Don't tempt me!

 Especially since we've now had an incident of the Dane approaching my dogs
menacingly (head down, ears back, stalking motion), then going after Morag
from behind - e.g. when Mw turned to walk away - after they'd circled
warily. If she IS pregnant, it doesn't seem to be improving her disposition.

 Ya think? :-P

BTW... does anyone here remember a poster a few years back who had a
Cav/Cocker cross which DID have the heart defect? I seem to recall that the
dog died of it....