I do not believe that Sadie is aggressive, I think she is insecure and nervous. Sadie is a rescue and while she has been saved physically there is still the psychological damage that must be rehabilitated. It is also important to remember that dog psychology is not human psychology, so while we may want to give affection to soothe a stressed animal, it will only reinforce that state of mind. The three things that will bring balance to your dogs are: exercise, discipline, affection, in that order. Walking the dogs together will form a bond and drain energy. Pent up energy can cause frustration and result in unwanted behaviour. If you have a treadmill Sadie can be trained to walk on it. It doesn't matter which dog is older or who's been living in the house longer, the pack leader must always be the humans. If you are not the pack leader your pack may trust you but they can't respect you and you will have a hard time rehabilitating unwanted behaviour. Dogs in a pack in the wild listen to the pack leader. He/she leads with calm, assertive energy. Dogs understand energy, they coordinate hunts in the wild and don't bark orders to each other. Followers never question the pack leader, if they do he/she will first give a warning and if that isn't effective then they follow through with a touch, a bite or pinning the other dog down. I believe pinning down is what Mazer is doing with his dog. It is not humiliating or punishing (unless you do it with anger or frustration). Done with a calm, assertive energy you wait until the dog submits. On the ground on their side is a submissive position (like lifting our head high and shoulders back makes us feel more assertive) and shows not only that dog but others around that you are the pack leader. But it can be dangerous around unstable dogs (who may attack weakness) and I would never try it without being shown how to do it and where to hold the dog on the neck. When preparing their food no one should be close to you. Make them sit at a distance, give yourself 4 feet or more of space around you, this tells the dogs that you own the food. Then when you are ready to give it to them make them both sit and wait till they are calm, submissive (ears back, not displaying excitement) then feed the calmer one first. Always reward the dog that is the most calm and submissive. Do this in all things, food, rewards, affection. Never play favorites. When you bring a new dog into your home it should be treated equal to the other pets or this can cause dominant behaviour in the favorite one which can lead to bad behaviour from members of the pack. The order in the house should be all humans #1 and all dogs #2. Pack leaders in the wild don't favor any one dog in the pack, they treat all dogs equal. Remember that rescuing a dog is the first step in rehabilitating an abused/neglected dog. Dogs can suffer psychological abuse just as humans can but must be rehabilitated using dog psychology, not human psychology. Dogs live in the moment while we live with the past (not letting go of a tragic past event), present and future (is our dog going to bite someone). You can't help an animal if you pity them. Like with any goal you must envision what you want, picture yourself walking your dog calmly without them pulling or lunging. If we anticipate the worst (a dog attack) we will pass our nervous, anxious energy to our dog who doesn't understand our stress may be related to something else, they will see our weak energy and feel the need to take control of the situation. Someone must always be the pack leader and if its not the human then a dog will take on the role themselves. Watch for subtle clues between your dogs, your older one might be sending messages that start the chomp from your new dog. Dogs challenge each other with their eyes, pay attention to their breathing, their posture, watch if they stop panting and become very quiet. Snap your fingers or say 'hey' (or whatever noise/word you use to correct unwanted behaviour) and stop the behaviour at level 1 before it reaches a higher intensity. You may think that the unwanted behaviour is the bite/attack but it starts before that and addressing it at the beginning prevents it from escalating to a higher level which will be more difficult to correct. Make sure your intensity matches or is a bit higher than the intensity of their behaviour. If they are jumping up on you a bit yelling 'HEY!' is too strong a correction. If they are jumping uncontrollably on you, your guests and the furniture a soft 'hey' won't be enough to correct your dog.

I hope your dog is better this morning. If not, you would probably want to visit a vet, given that it sounds like she ate a lot of it. Wood ash is very alkali, which could be harsh on her digestive tract if she ate a lot. If she gulped it down in quantity, she may have gotten a larger piece that is stuck in her gut. My old lab had a weak tummy and she LOVED to eat BBQ ash. We didn't allow it, but every so often she'd get into it and nibble a little down. Funny though, it never made her throw up. When she was young we use to get charcoal dog biscuits at a local pet store; for her weak tummy and bad breath and we always figured that was why she would try to get into the charcoal and ash- to sooth her tummy. If your dog is not normally one who eats "stuff" she shouldn't, then she may have some other digestive issues that are driving her to eat things like that. Good luck.

Wow, we need to make consumer decisions easier. From all the research I've done DE cleans the water better than any other option. The only reason not used in all cases is large pool or work required to maintain it. Large pools are dirty and not suggested to keep them like we want for our private pools. The health issues are total crap. It's like saying don't drink the floriated water and let the kids eat all the sugar they want.

We're in contract The difference in NYC (over other places) is that the contract comes SO late. All the negotiating (cut in price to compensate for inspection issues, etc.) is done BEFORE the deal is enforceable. In other areas, those things are done to modify the original contract. But in other states, there is still a little bit of time where the circumstance you describe could happen. Verbal communication saying that "the contract will be signed," and then the signer changes his mind. i've seen many posts here about people who say, "we submitted our bid, and we heard they're accepting, but we don't have the signed contract yet." Often that could happen over the weekend even in another jurisdiction! The agent looks at the offers on Saturday, talks w/ the owners, notifies the buyers of the end result (not price, but yea/nay)--but the sellers aren't in the office to put their signature on the paper. So one of the buyers comes back w/ a lot more money early on Monday morning, and the sellers get told about it when they come in to sign the other contract. Not being idiots, they take the new offer. Sorry and all that, but this is business. And it's not like the disappointed seller has lost that much--it was just the WEEKEND. What, 48 hours at most, and one of them was a Sunday? She didn't pay for an inspection. She didn't pass up lots and lots of other homes because she thought she had this one. There weren't any *real* damages in the legal or financial sense. The process of buying an apartment (and don't say "for an apartment?" christopherh. They are the ONLY HOMES YOU CAN BUY in many neighborhoods of the city; we do not HAVE single family homes in many of our neighborhoods. Or if we do, they are three times the price of an apartment, or more--my apartment in such a neighborhood is supposedly worth $450k; a 3BR is worth $575k, and we're considered "affordable"), esp. in NYC where it is likely to be a co-op instead of a condo, is three months minimum, and usually at least a month between offer and signed contract. So the seller is disappointed, but she is not actually OUT anything. She was not at all damaged, except emotionally. As for damages, if a true contract is breached-- If you sue the seller for "specific performance," you can win. As long as there's not some contingency they can use to squeak out of it (and most contingencies are for the BUYER, not for the seller). You could perhaps use that threat to negotiate letting them out of the contract. You could say, "we will not sue you, if you will pay us the equivalent of OUR deposit, to compensate us for the time we lost trying to buy your house." *maybe* just *maybe* a judge wouldn't find in your favor, but I highly doubt it. If they didn't, you could prove damages in terms of the market going up, your inspection money, and the time you lost. HOWEVER, as you noted, in many instances, if a buyer has to back out bcs of an unpreventable disasters, a seller will refund the deposit out of a sense of karma. and likewise, buyers who see that the seller has had a disaster, will often agree to dissolve the contract out that same sense of karma. They may ask for the reimbursement of true monetary losses.