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I received a series of these photos in an e-mail from a friend and absolutely had to share my favorites.
Cat In Tree - Satire
Bear and Human Sharing Fishing Duties
GermanShepherd With Money
Child Using Cat For Zombie Practice
CatStalkingEagle
The Importance of Pets
“Tara, honey, what exactly are you doing?”
My husband stood in the doorway of the door that leads from our house into our garage, watching me paw through a box of “garage sale” items.
“I’m looking for a bowl for Houdini so we can feed him,” I replied as if the answer should have been obvious.
“MEOW YOWL!” Houdini chimed in, rubbing up my husband’s ankles.
Houdini is not actually our cat. He appeared in our backyard one day and demanded attention. Since he has a collar, seems healthy, and is absolutely the friendliest thing on four legs, I am not sure whether he is a stray or just a mooch. We named him Houdini because of his ability to appear and disappear in our backyard without our ever seeing him come or go. Prior to this particular day, we had been feeding him a combination of tuna fish and cat treats (My husband wanted to know how it was possible that I could remember to bring home cat treats but not cat food when both items reside in the same warehouse and when the entrance to said warehouse is exactly two feet from my cubicle) on the days that he came around.
On this day, I had finally remembered to bring home cat food and was hunting for a bowl that we could use to hold his food.
“What about this one?” My husband picked up a bowl from a nearby box.
I gave him a withering look. “We can’t use that…it is decorated with dogs.”
“Alright, how about this one?…no wait, don’t tell me. It’s pink and Houdini is a boy and therefore can’t eat out of a pink bowl.”
“YOWL!” Claimed Houdini, apparently feeling a need to contribute the conversation.
“Houdini,” said my husband “I gave up attempting to apply logic to my wife’s behavior several years ago.”
A few minutes later, I emerged from the garage with a generic pet bowl (Tupperware was also out of the question because some cats are allergic to plastic - it gives them feline acne) and found my husband and Houdini in the backyard. My husband was sitting in a lounge chair reading, and Houdini was happily crunching away on cat food - that my husband had simply poured onto one of our non-decorated, white (and therefore gender-neutral color wise), paper plates.
Special thank you to Lindsay Stordhal, today’s guest blogger. Lindsay is the author of the dog blog That Mutt. Her blog is meant to be all about dogs, from training, behavior, adoption, fostering, breed information, stories and whatever else comes to mind. She loves any outdoor activity in which she can involve her dog, and also enjoys reading and playing board games. Lindsay loves in North Dakota with her beloved mutt, Ace.
Tips for taking your dog biking
I used to run with my mutt Ace every morning before work. But there would always be days when I was tired or did not have a lot of time for a long run. That’s why I taught Ace to run next to my bike. He loves it, and now we bike almost every day.
Taking your dog biking is something most dogs will love, and I highly recommend it for the right dogs. Breeds like boxers and border collies and labs will make ideal biking partners.
Here are some tips for biking with your dog:
1. Walk the dog next to the bike.
Some dogs will naturally run right alongside the bike. Others will want to attack the bike or they might be scared of the bike. If you don’t know how your dog will act, it’s best to start out by walking with your dog on one side and wheel the bike on the other side. This will help the dog see that the bike is no big deal.
2. Don’t rush it.
Once your dog is comfortable walking while you wheel the bike, go ahead and get on the bike, but keep the pace slow. Some dogs will get too excited as you pick up the pace. Increase the speed slowly and only when your dog is under control.
3. Carry a toy or treats.
I used to wrap Ace’s rubber slingshot ball toy around the handlebars of my bike. This kept his attention on me. You could try something like this or carry food in your pockets.
4. Buy a bike leash.
A hands free bike leash comes in handy because that means you can have both hands on the bike. You won’t have to hold the leash or tie it to your handlebars. Tying the leash to your bike can be dangerous because it can easily get caught in the tires or the dog can lunge and pull the bike out of control while attempting to chase a squirrel or another dog. You’ll have to experiment and decide for yourself if a dog bike attachment is right for you and your dog. They can be helpful, but they are not always necessary.
5. Start out in quiet areas. лучшие фото порно гaллереи
If you can avoid traffic and distractions like other dogs, then do it. Quiet roads or parks are best.
6. Use a training collar. картинки для блога с надписями
I prefer a head collar such as a Gentle Leader when first biking with a dog. Even with a choke collar or pinch collar, the dog still has the ability to pull if she wants to. It’s not good for the dog’s neck if the choke collar is always tight.
7. Don’t let the dog set the pace.
Don’t speed up just because the dog wants to go fast. Instead, teach the dog that you are always going to start out slowly. If the dog sprints right away – like, the second you have one foot on the pedals - it is easy to crash. Don’t speed up until you are comfortable.
8. Teach turn commands.
It’s helpful to warn the dog you will be turning. Either teach your dog what “turn” means or just encourage your dog to focus and pay attention to avoid collisions.
9. Avoid other dogs or distractions.
When you are first learning about how your dog will act while biking, just avoid potential hazards like loose dogs or dogs on Flexi leashes. Just go the other way as needed.
10. Stop if you have to.
There’s nothing wrong with stopping and walking to either get the dog under control or to make it past other dogs, rollerbladers or anything else that might be too distracting. It’s better than wiping out!
Do you bike with your dog?
Circuses, magicians, and even some comedians use animals in their acts. I recently learned about one performer who is using his act to help pets in need. Gregory Popvich, star and creator of the Popovich Comedy Pet Theater, rescued from shelters each and every one of his furry performers (15 cats and 10 dogs).
Child of Russian circus performers who used pets in their act, Gregory grew up with a love of animals. On his website he writes that it was visiting animal shelters that cemented in his mind the idea of creating an animal-centered act. He believed he could give animals in need a second chance at life, while simultaneously enriching the lives of others through his show.
Gregory is currently performing in Las Vegas, NV at the Planet Hollywood Casino Resort.
I can rattle off the reasons to exercise with the best of them. I know all about how exercising (and a healthy diet) helps prevent diabetes, keeps your bones and muscles in shape, helps with depression, and a whole host of other benefits. And two months ago when my husband and I signed up to start working with a personal trainer, I thought we were doing it for all of those reasons (and yes I admit, being a woman I signed up so that I could ensure I look good for Petlane’s convention in August). Yesterday however, I found out I was totally wrong on all counts.
In fact, I have discovered that I exercise simply so that I can carry my dog Jade when we go on walks. Jade HATES going for a walk. Seriously. It does not matter if we are on pavement, dirt, grass, gravel, or sand, on-leash or off-leash, I have the only dog known to man-kind who plants all four feet firmly on the ground and refuses to move. Eventually, after about a 20 minute warm up where he has to smell every blade of grass and piece of gravel in site, he does walk although extremely reluctantly and with frequent stops as if to remind me that this was a terrible idea to begin with and it has not gotten any better as we have progressed.
What Jade LOVES is to go for what my husband and I have termed “a smell.” A smell is a distinct variation on a walk. “Smells” usually take place on leash and around our neighborhood (or around my parent’s neighborhood when we’re housesitting). While I usually walk 3-4 miles when I’m out for a “walk,” I’m lucky to go 1/2 mile on a “smell.” On “smells,” Jade is allowed to stop whenever he wants, and he usually stops about every two feet, to smell. And by smell, I don’t mean “sniff, lift leg, pee, walk on.” I mean “SMELL.” This dog can spend (and I am not exaggerating) five solid minutes investigating a single leaf.
I have, fortunately, managed to find ONE path in our local state park that Jade will tolerate. And I take him walking there a couple of times a week. I use the term “walk” loosely. I usually take both Jade and Shana (my parent’s 3 year old Coton) and Shana spends most of the walk running ahead of me, and then running back to see why I’ve stopped walking, and then running even farther back to see why Jade has stopped moving. I’m pretty accustomed at this point to stopping every 20 yards or so to see if Jade has stopped for a bribe (Jade - want a treat?) or has stopped to investigate an interesting smelling piece of fluff. And while we don’t make terribly good time (without Jade I can do the trail in 45 minutes - with him it’s more like 90), at least he does walk the whole way.
Yesterday, we had reached the 1/2 point when Jade came hobbling up to me, holding up his paw. I searched and searched and searched. I pulled out a few pricklies and a foxtail. I put him down. Limp. I picked him up. I pulled out a couple of more pricklies. Jade demanded to be put down. Limp. Sit down. Paw held up. It was pretty clear that there was nothing I could do until I got home - I needed a second person to hold him while I investigated his paw (Jade had made it quite clear that no more investigating was going to take place). So I picked him up. All 19lbs. of him (seriously, I don’t know what I would have done if he had been a 120lb. Rottweiler). And if any of you think 19lbs. is light, try carrying around a few 5lb. flour bags the next time you go to the grocery store.
So there I am, striding along with 19lbs. of weight clamped in my arms. And I must say that I actually felt rather pleased with myself. 6 months ago I could barely go 100 yards while carrying Jade, now here I was making good time and even carrying him uphills. This, I said to myself, makes all that weight lifting and aerobics totally worth it. I couldn’t wait to tell my personal trainer how much stronger I had become.
When I got back to my parents, Jade (who remember had been limping and holding up his paw not 10 minutes before), literally ran from the car into the house and began “tap dancing” at my father’s feet (that’s his way of begging). I looked at my dad. I looked at my dog.
“You wouldn’t by any chance believe he was limping not 10 minutes ago and that I carried him for a good mile and am really proud of myself and of how strong I am getting?” I asked.
“Sure I would,” replied my dad. “As long as you believe that I used to walk 10 miles to school uphill both ways in the snow.”
I want you to imagine that you spend most of your waking hours in a cage. In this cage you have enough room to stand up, jump without hitting your head, stretch your arms out, and walk around in a small circle. Some days you come out of the cage for a stretch of time, some days you don’t. Some days you see other people. Some days you don’t except when food is brought. Now imagine you’re a six year old child.
Birds are thought to have roughly the intelligence of a six year old child. Without proper care and stimulation, birds are prone to engage in a variety of annoying and self-harming behaviors, including screeching and feather plucking. These behaviors, which can usually be solved or, better yet prevented, land far too many birds in shelters. To keep your bird happy and mentally stimulated, it is critical to provide him or her with a variety of safe toys that allow your bird to pluck, chew, shred, and forage.
This incredible video, featuring Dr. Irene Pepperberg and her African Grey Parrot Alex, give some insight into just how intelligent these animals really are:
So the next time you call someone a “bird brain,” realize that you are actually complimenting them on their extremely high level of intelligence.
Why is it that the more disgusting something is, the more dogs want to eat it? When Jade was a puppy, he was on antibiotics three different times in one year from eating goose poop. My mom’s dog Shana thinks horse poop is a rare delicacy (and as such should be eaten in great quantities whenever it’s encountered), and I know of countless other dogs who eat poop with regularity. Besides being fairly disgusting (do you really want to be kissed by a dog who has just consumed a quantity of poop?), eating poop can potentially be hazardous to your pet’s health (hence Jade and the antibiotics).
Every Monday night, Petlane hosts a team training call, open to all Pet Advisors and theirs guests. Last night we had a guest speaker, professional trainer Gail Green. At the end of the call, we opened up the phone lines for questions and a customer asked what he could do to stop his dogs from eating poop - in this case their own and each others.
The obvious solution, Gail answered, is to keep the yard as clean as possible. However, if your dogs have a dog door, it’s not always possible to clean up before, well, the dogs do it for you. The second best thing is to make the poop as unpalatable as possible. Adding canned pumpkin to your dog’s food is a simple way to do this. Adding meat tenderizer to the dog’s food is another common method for making the poop unpalatable. The theory is that once the dogs stop thinking the poop tastes good (although why they would think that it does in the first place remains a mystery) they will stop trying to eat it and you can stop adding pumpkin or meat tenderizer to the food.
Have you had a positive experience with stopping your dog from eating poop? I would love to hear your suggestions!
You know those scenes in cartoons where a person is trying to shove an animal through a doorway or into an oven or vat of boiling oil and the animals is resisting with by putting all four paws (and occasionally an ear or tail) around the door or vat’s rim? I re-enact those scenes every time I try to coax my dog Jade (19lb Cavalier King Charles Spaniel) into his Sherpa bag. Getting Jade into the bag (where he can comfortably stand up, turn around, and gets fed every treat under the sun because I feel guilty that he’s stuffed into a bag while I’m walking free) is such a production that when a TSA agent told me I had to take Jade out and then put the bag through the x-ray machine (as opposed to keeping him in the bag and having a wand run over it) I offered (only 1/2 joking) to put the bag through the machine with the dog still in it. We almost missed our flight because it took me so long to get Jade back into his Sherpa after going through security.
Now there is an alternative to putting pets in the cargo hold or squashing them under the seat. PetAirways, the country’s first pet-only airline, took to the skies earlier this month. For as little as $199 a flight, pets are assigned their own flight attendant (who checks on pets every 15 minutes), they travel in the main cabin so they have access to fresh cool air and regulated temperature, they are given regular potty breaks, and carriers are provided free of charge. You can even track your pet’s flight progress.
In addition to being a pet-friendly airlines, Pet Airways website offers great travel information. So the next time you plan on taking a pet-friendly vacation, ensure that your pet flies the pet-friendly skies.
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration last month announced the approval of Palladia (toceranib phosphate), the first drug developed specifically for the treatment of cancer in dogs.
Palladia is approved to treat canine cutaneous (skin-based) mast cell tumors, a type of cancer responsible for about 1 out of 5 cases of canine skin tumors. The drug is approved to treat the tumors with or without regional lymph node involvement.
All cancer drugs now used in veterinary medicine originally were developed for use in humans and are not approved for use in animals. Cancer treatments used in animals are used in an “extra-label” manner as allowed by the Animal Medicinal Drug Use Clarification Act of 1994.
“This cancer drug approval for dogs is an important step forward for veterinary medicine,” said Bernadette Dunham, D.V.M., Ph.D., director of FDA’s Center for Veterinary Medicine. “Prior to this approval, veterinarians had to rely on human oncology drugs, without knowledge of how safe or effective they would be for dogs. Today’s approval offers dog owners, in consultation with their veterinarian, an option for treatment of their dog’s cancer.”
While canine mast cell tumors often appear small and insignificant, they can be a very serious form of cancer in dogs. Some mast cell tumors are easily removed without the development of any further problems, while others can lead to life threatening disease.
Palladia is a tyrosine kinase inhibitor and works in two ways: by killing tumor cells and by cutting off the blood supply to the tumor. In a clinical trial, Palladia showed a statistically significant difference in tumor shrinkage when compared with an inactive substance (placebo).
The most common side effects associated with Palladia are diarrhea, decrease or loss of appetite, lameness, weight loss, and blood in the stool.
Palladia is manufactured by Pfizer Animal Health Inc., New York City.
Animal Attraction, a social media networking site like Dogster.com, Catster.com, and Facebook, is a place where animal lovers can connect with fellow animal lovers, join forums, and find pet parenting advice. It is 100% free to join the site, although people do have to register in order to join.
And right now, new Animal Attraction members have an incredible opportunity to make a difference in the lives of pets. Animal Attraction sent an e-mail out to current members saying: “Our good friends at Petside.com are contributing $1 to The Petfinder.com Foundation for each of the next 10,000 FREE registrations on our site. In addition, the three (3) AnimalAttraction.com members who refer the most new members to our site by September 30, 2009 will get to select their favorite shelter or rescue group (the group must have official 501(c)(3) non-profit status) to receive the following donations:
This is a great opportunity to meet some new friends, and help some homeless pets in need.
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