I had knee surgery earlier this year. It was, and in many ways still is, a miserable experience. I am still frequently in pain. What really needs to happen is I have to change my lifestyle and lose a bunch of weight.
Like an entire other person’s worth.
But I need to shut up and take my cue from someone much stronger than I am:
Four year-old Lucy climbed a mountain without the use of her hind legs. Not bad for a disabled dog, eh?
You can find me at the salad bar.
Future Bed Bug Hunter?
Now the parasites have been found in the Empire State Building, which has lead to more coverage of the problem — even though the bugs there have allegedly been exterminated.
Part of the coverage has been on what is apparently the most effective way to find the pests: specially trained dogs! As you might imagine, an insect that prefers human blood for a meal once every 5 to 10 days has a distinct scent. Dogs can be trained to locate this scent and signal to their handlers. This provides exterminators and inspectors with a way to target the much more accurately than just carpeting an area with chemicals.
Another example of how valuable man’s best friend is to us.
I’m dealing with yet another emergency, but I am also trying to keep my publishing schedule, so here is what would normally be a weekend “links post.”
Over at Scienceblogs, I’ve become a faithful reader of The Thoughtful Animal. Well, over the past few weeks Jason has been knocking them out of the park.
Dr. V is on vacation this week, and she has arranged for some guest posters. If today’s post on kids and dogs is any indication, it’s going to be a great week.
Last week Angela at fun4fido posted a great article about what dominance really is. This article covers a lot of what Dr. Suzanne Hetts discussed at the Best Friend Forever Conference I attended 2 weeks ago.
Very busy week, so I’m going to do a weekend update on a weekday…..
First, some serious science geekery. From Dancing Dog Blog we have a bionic cat! No. Really!
Next, a post from Thoughtful Animal on the social skills of dogs. This is a great read, with yet more research comparing dogs to primates.
Last, a cute story from Daryn Kagan:
Training stuff on Thursday, I promise!
Rescue dogs are near and dear to my heart. It was a rescue that made me a trainer, and I still share my home with her and two other rescue dogs. I apprenticed for more than 4 years with a dog training school that is part of a shelter and spent many weekends working adoption events for the rescue that two of my dogs came from.
Jeff Howard from adopt-a-pet.com contacted me last week and asked if I would provide a link and some information about their adoption website. I took a look and love the site.
Here’s some information about them:
Adopt-a-Pet.com is the world’s largest non-profit pet adoption website. We are like an ad agency for shelters and shelter pets. Sadly there are 4 million healthy adoptable companion animals killed in shelters each year due to overcrowding. We do our best to relieve that problem and put pets from shelters in the homes of pet seekers all over the country.
Our website makes it easy for anyone with an internet connection to find descriptions and pictures of adoptable animals by location, breed, gender, age, size, and color. Over 9,000 shelters posts pets on our website displaying over 130,000 pets available for adoption at any given time. We also help volunteers connect with shelters, and currently host over 14,000 people listed in our volunteer database for shelters.
On our website, people can use something we call “Search Saver.” This feature will notify users by e-mail when a particular pet of their specifications in available for adoption. (I love this feature!- Eric) For example, I can tell “Search Saver” where I live, and what type of breed I am looking for. When that animal is available, I am notified the next time a pet matching my search is added on Adopt-a-Pet.com.
As of this summer we have now made it easy for our visitors to find pets and then recommend them to friends and family via Facebook, Twitter, and other social applications. We are calling the idea “Social Petworking.” Here is how it works; once you have searched and found a pet in need, on the pet details page simply hover over the button labeled “SHARE,” there you can send the pet details page to any of your friends. For more information visit this page.
In addition to dogs and cats, we now feature all kinds of pets for adoption, including rabbits, farm animals, ferrets, hamsters and other small animals, horses, reptiles, amphibians, birds, and even fish. This was a major initiative that took many months to research and program into the site, and it is being well-received within the shelter community.
By teaming up with the renowned street-artist Shepard Fairey, who designed the iconic Obama “Hope” image, we have available a number of stylish ways to promote pet adoption. Shepard was able to translate his work with Obama to an image that can be used to represent pet adoption support. Merchandise can be found at www.muttslikeme.com
We have begun blogging and created a Twitter Page along with a Facebook Page. Our blog is located at blog.adoptapet.com, there you can join our Facebook Group, or follow us on Twitter.
Summer is pretty much upon us — I’m writing this at 1:00AM during a thunderstorm. It became severe enough that Caffeine was very upset and needed her Thundershirt. Caffeine has thunderstorm phobia, which I wrote about this week in a guest post over at Pawcurious.
I’m also a regular blogger at The Daily Comics Review. I post there on Tuesdays. Take at look at this week’s post and leave me a comment!
I came across a very entertaining article this week about a man’s efforts to get his dogs to stop barking. It’s an entertaining take on the lengths people will go to to avoid doing the obvious. (I’m pretty sure it was on Twitter? If you are the person who shared this, let me know in the comments.)
I also saw this heartwarming story about a blind dog that has found help from another dog this week. Bring a hankey.
Dancing Dog Blog has a new review of “Am I Boring My Dog?” which I reviewed here a while back. Mary goes a bit more in depth than I did.
This week Go Pet Friendly posted the first in a series of interviews they have planned for people the travel with their dogs. Great interview and a great idea for a series. Also, Go Pet Friendly’s main web site has gone through a makeover and has some cool new features for travelers. Take a look!
Last, here’s a few laughs for you:
Summer is just about here! I’m bracing myself for a busy month while my wife is away, taking of care of family in Germany.
Friday, June 25th is “Take Your Dog to Work Day.” I am terrible at keeping track of occasions like this, but Company of Animals, who have been so generous with their Nina Ottosson toys, sent me a press release about it, so I can share it with you. If you can, celebrate! Unfortunately, I can’t bring a pet to the day-job, but I get to bring Buddha all over the place for dog training, so that pretty much makes up for it.
As summer approaches, it’s time to start thinking about travel, and many of us travel by car. Edie Jarolim has some great car travel tips over on the Will My Dog Hate Me? Blog.
How much would you spend on your dog’s healthcare? The NY Times “Well” blog posted some information about a survey that was done in April. I’m pretty sure I saw this somewhere before, but it’s worth discussing again. I’ve already passed every dollar amount mentioned with Caffeine and Gage. Not sure about Buddha — I would need to look at the costs of his dental surgeries, and that would make me sad.
How much would you spend? Let me know in the comments.
This weekend is more a blog round-up than a news update. Let’s go!
This week Edie Jarolim at Will My Dog Hate Me and I “shared” a post about 6 Dog Training Myths If you are not already a regular reader of her blog, you need to start. She also covered breed specific legislation this week, and using dog crates last week. Edie has a consistent knack for coming up with very thought-provoking topics.
Speaking of thought-provoking, Patricia McConnell has been sharing her story of losing a dog, getting a new puppy, deciding to return the puppy, and the mean-spirited reaction of some to her returning the puppy with her readers for the past few weeks. Mixed into the past couple of months was a great discussion of the “concept formerly known as dominance” and more recently how she does puppy tests. I love her blog and hope that some day I can even approach her ability to communicate with both people and dogs.
Go Pet Friendly has been tearing up the countryside (so e-mail your insurance claims to them) and finished the week with, you got it, a thought-provoking question: what makes a city pet-friendly? This week also brought a very interesting way to (ad)dress a cute dog who doesn’t want to be touched.
Turn off your computer and go outside now.
Next week is National Dog Bite Prevent Week. During the week, Doggone Safe and other organizations will be calling attention to dog bites. Half of children are bitten before they reach 12 and the majority of these dog bites are by the family dog or other dog familiar to the child.
The folks over at Doggone Safe have some great information about how to prevents dog bites, especially to children. Take a look.
If you had $500,000 what kind of dog park would you build? Beneful wants to know!
There’s more information here.
And last, a call for help:
The Facebook page is here. The Paypal link was having issues when I checked, but please check back!
More animal cruelty laws, or the will to enforce them?
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So, you don’t have to play for the NFL, at least not in Oklahoma. Oklahoma law allow for a sentence of up to five years for each animal in a cruelty case, so he could have faced 960, 350, or 25 years, depending on which set of charges you want to use. But he was sentenced to 90 days. Really? How about long enough for his TIVO to run out of space?
But wait! There’s more! 5 years ago the same man was forbidden from ever owning dogs again in Kansas! While asking for a national database of animal cruelty convictions is probably beyond the pale at this point, did the Oklahoma judge know this? Did he take it into consideration?
As Brent points out, do we really need more animal cruelty laws? Maybe what we need is people willing to enforce what we have, including putting some teeth in them by actually, you know, punishing people that are cruel to animals?
Just a thought.