General Chat

Brian
Some kind person could have taken her in and thought they could keep her.

Please ask Canine Partners to knock on all doors where she went missing.

Brian keep thinking of Opal ..fingers crossed she is found safe x

Just had an update: sadly no news, good or bad, sounds as if all organisations that might be able to help have been alerted, including a drone S&R team.
Trouble is, in 48 hours, she could have travelled miles in any direction so the search area is expanding all the time.
Hoping that she hasn't been enticed away and abducted.

It's not Brian's charge, Rollo. I am sure Opal's trainers and the Canine Partners people have tried every avenue to locate her and hope she is found soon, safe and well.

Liz

So Opal remains missing, cold and hungry.
Dreadful.

Have you tried asking Waitrose and other shops if they could have a look at their cctv for you? Given that you are a charity they may well be happy to help. If you can establish a few sightings that would give you a pointer as to where to look next.

A honey colored Labrador will show up easily on cctv.
.If somebody picked her up in a car/van you might see that too.

Brilliant news about your last puppy, Brian XX

Sharron,
Hoping she is found, we would anticipate that she'll have her recall assessed under controlled conditions by a Canine Partners trainer and be given extra training if required.
Only if her behavior cannot be corrected will she be withdrawn.

On a different tack, our last puppy will be meeting his new Partner again today to start a fortnight's one-2-one training and should be going home with him/her Friday week.

The loss has been tweeted and re-tweeted all day.

When the puppy is found, will she continue to be trained as a companion dog or does this episode uncover a flaw in her?

No news yet.
Just to make it clear, Opal is not our charge, thankfully, but one of the 130 or so puppies doing their year or so initial socialisation and learning basic behaviour and commands with "puppy parents" (puppy walker) volunteers.

Apart from the obvious danger and distress to the dog, the puppy parents must be frantic to have lost an animal with which they have been entrusted.

We are on our fifth puppy, having enlisted a few years ago when we lost our own dogs to old age.

This is cruel making the thread in to debate about money these pets are very precious as all animals are lets hope Opal is found safe & very soon .Barbara

? what are you talking about

GPS is free as in free as air.

You can buy a GPS capable device and use it with no sub. service fee etc etc. A popular example is GPS for rambling in wild places in conjunction with OS maps. These devices are rugged, do not need a phone sub and the batteries last for ages. Even better the signal does not suddenly vanish as it does with mobile phones. I use this
https://satmap.com/gps-devices/active-20-solo.html
though I paid a good bit less than the price they quote here

The dog trackers are just another GPS customisation. A dog training company could decide only to use the GPS tracker device with dogs being trained when the risk is greatest and leave it to the eventual end user as to whether to have a tracker or not.

Here is an example with big dscounts for bulk buy:
https://getfindster.com/

As I said given the serious amount of time and money involved in training up the dogs a one off payment doesn't look bad especially if the device was retained when the dog moved on.

It is really grim looking for lost animals. I am hopeful that Brian will find Opal but surely (in bulk) £ 70 is worth it to avoid such distress?

Oh!. In your first post you say the collars are £130.
*scrolls back*
Yup!
I see, I called them collars/devices!

The devices I refer to aren't GPS trackers - they're trackers.
The collar devices can be moved from one collar to another, hence I didn't put £130 x 3 (the minimum number of collars you would need for a dig if the devices were 'fixed' to the collar) They're also cheaper than 'fixed' collars, but still very pricey. They will also require servicing occasionally.

I'm sure, if the final recipient of the dog wants one, they can buy it.
Likewise, if they want a non-standard collar - they can choose! :-D

there is no monthly charge for GPS it is free ; some insurers give a discount when worn

the idea behind the tracker is to have something in place before a problem occurs not afterwards just like insurance

recovery of the tracker cost from the end user should be possible most of the time ; the dog tracker also improves the dog users's security

in any case the uptake of these gadgets for dogs is growing

they are also available for cats with break off collars ; these are often hated by cats and have their own safety issues so uptake is far lower than for dogs

Of course!
Spend £1495 on around 130 (minimum) GPS collars/devices - you never know which dog may walk off, until it does, so they'd all need one - all because one dog has gone missing.
Bit of an overkill.
Then there's the monthly service charge on each GPS device.

the gps fits in the collar it is not dependent on the size of the dog
£ 115 one off up front no sub. needed does not seem so bad considering the huge cost of training the dogs in the first place
trying to find lost animals is really hard on the nerves and the lost creature
I am hopeful you will find Opal Uttoxeter is not a huge place and people friendly.

I hope Opal is found safe and sound. <3

I don't know who Opal's puppy-walkers are but we've been asked to spread the word to try to locate her.

She is one of about 130 puppies which are with puppy walker volunteers at any one time for about a year before going on to be trained as assistance dogs for disabled persons, mainly wheelchair users.

Works on the same principle as Guide Dogs but we are only a fraction of their size, currently getting about 80 trained dogs out per year.

I don't think Canine Partners could afford GPS tracking collars for all their pups particularly as they would need a selection of sizes to fit from 7 weeks to 16 months. It might be possible for any pups that are showing signs of a poor recall, though.

It is now possible to fit small gps trackers into dog collars at reasonable cost. Have you considered that ?

Hoping you find Opal soon.

Hope she's found soon, Brian