GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS
Thank you for taking the time to fill out this database form and help us in our research.
We know that this may be hard for you to do, but please rest assured that any details
you enter will help us further our research into the causes of health problems and death
in German Shepherd Dogs.
Information on any dog may only be submitted to this project with
permission of the owner of the dog;
if you were not the actual dog owner, please seek
their permission BEFORE taking this survey - thank you.
Much of the form is self-explanatory; however a few points are worth noting:
Most of the fields are mandatory. Should you leave any field blank and submit the
form, you'll get an "error report" advising what has been omitted or incorrectly
filled out and will be re-presented with the form. None of the information already
entered will be lost, so you won't have to enter anything twice!
Your e-mail address must be valid and active. It is used for two purposes:
A confirmation e-mail will be sent to you upon successful
submission of the form.
It will contain instructions on how to confirm your database entry; for most users this
will simply be a link you must click on. This is to help us
ensure the integrity of the data we collect. This e-mail will be from submissions
at this domain and have the subject title, "Your Heaven's Gate Database
Entry:" followed by the entry (guest) number.
A link entitled "(Send e-mail)" will appear alongside your name on
the results page. This is to enable others contact you by way of a mailform
if they wish to do so. Should someone make contact with you via this
form, the e-mail you'll receive will have the subject line
"Contact from Heaven's Gate".
PLEASE SEE THIS IMPORTANT NOTE
concerning automatic e-mails.
At no point is your e-mail address ever disclosed publicly; only site administrators will
be able to access it. This is to help protect your online privacy from "spambots" -
programs that scour the Internet looking for e-mail addresses to which they can send spam, or
junk e-mail. No spambot will be able to harvest your e-mail address as a result of
filling out this form.
For the health problems there are a number of selection lists, each giving
exactly the same options so you can supply details of any health problems your dog had
during its life. You may not duplicate entries; duplicates (such as selecting
"Allergies" more than once) will be detected, and you'll get the form back
indicating that you've made an error in the health problems section. This is done
because these are considered for analysis, and duplicates would skew the results
and thus render them less useful.
A similar mechanism is in place for the causes of death. It is possible that death
resulted for more than one reason.
Please use the single-line text area beneath the health problems and causes of
death to augment your information. This is merely freeform text that cannot be
analysed, so please don't use it to say something that has already been covered
by the selection lists!
A larger text area is provided at the bottom of the form for you to enter any
other details that you feel may be useful, or if you wish to express how much
your beloved dog will be missed. Below are instructions on how to link to
pictures and format your text by way of HTML - the language of Web pages.
Don't worry - it's much simpler than you may think!
A huge thank you and tons of hugs to Angus Cook for volunteering his time and efforts to
get Heaven's Gate working once again. This could not have been accomplished without
his help. We are most grateful for your help, Angus! :)
