reblog and put in the tags the cutest thing your pet(s) do
Tag: pets
Reblog and in the tags add your pets names and the nicknames you call them instead
My pets in order that I got them.
The first cat is Pikachu which I got when I was in 4th or 5th grade. She’s around 8 or 9 years old. I’ve had her since she was a kitten. She’s kind of grumpy, but still mostly friendly.
Weeza is roughly two years younger than Pikachu. I’ve had her since she was a baby as well. She is a princess, and stubborn, but she loves to get pets.
Pal is my leopard gecko. I don’t have much to say about him, other than he’s a good boy. He’s 2. I love his little bumps.
Merlina, or Lina, is from the shelter than I volunteered at for a while. She was in their club for pets that had been with them for a while. Her name at the shelter was Marvine, or something in that vein, but we changed it. We just call her Lina. She’s probably around 2. She is extremely soft and sweet and is Baby.
Taiga is the most recent addition, we haven’t even had him for a year. He is also a rescue, like Lina. He’s probably around two as well. He is also Baby. He is extremely timid and when we first got him he would run away a lot, but through training he’s a lot better now.
I love all of them very much
I try to be as kind as possible in my training. I strive to give my animals as much positive reinforcement and choice as possible in their lives, and strive to train least invasive and minimally aversive.
But there is a certain point where you need to consider your own and your dog’s quality of life when assessing your tools and your methods. And the fact that the dogs you handle as a FF trainer might be a better fit for your methods than a balanced trainer’s clients, or that the dog you’re really struggling with might have a better QOL with a different approach.
A dog who gets long sniffy hikes on a prong is better off than a “force free” dog confined to a yard because its owner doesn’t enjoy walking it. An ecollar trained dog who gets to go everywhere with its human and gets lots of off leash time is better off than one forever clipped to its owner’s belt by a headcollar or in a purse because she doesn’t trust it and can’t control it.
Yes, we should do things as kindly as we can, and strive to improve our abilities and methods as best we can. But we shouldn’t lose the forest for the trees. Quality of life will always come before training theory, and different dogs/owners are in different places.
I use training tools…… barely ever. My reward to correction ratio is probably 99-1
But my dogs and my partners’ dogs could not enjoy all the things they get to enjoy, and we, as disabled people, would not be able to handle the large energetic ones nearly as easily, if we didn’t ever use training tools or corrections.
As a sidenote, as somebody who worked for a force-fee trainer and saw her clients daily. Harnesses that tighten, martingales, and headcollars used as a bandaid, as she often prescribed her clients physically unable to handle large energetic dogs while training them….. they can cause as serious issues as the more “scary” looking training tools if used improperly. Nylon =/= not aversive
We use the tools we need to in order to maintain high quality of life for both the handler and the dog as individuals. I often see disabled and elderly people left out of conversations about prong collars
(won’t get into having large high prey drive dogs who dig into or jump over fences to attack livestock. None of my 4 now, but been there, and working on it now. Even my old FF boss admitted the ecollar was the best solution, bc treats were waaaay way lower value than the chase)
So much this. I’ve managed to reduce albus from needing a prong every walk to now mostly the flat collar but I wouldn’t of gotten there without it. We can do off leash sometimes because of the e collar. Right now I’m walking him safely with a fractured rib because he respects the prong. We do every walk and training session with more than enough treats but having the tools as a backup ? So so so valuable to me as a smaller human with chronic pain owning a reactive muscular animal
Just a reminder that it is not your vet’s job to report if your pet got into recreational drugs. We aren’t snitches, we have no obligation to report drug use. We do, however, want to save your pet so please be honest with us about what your pet got into. It could literally be life and death for them.
i initially read this as a cat picking up a cocaine habit on the street and not being a narc about it before i realised you meant pets accidentally ingesting their owners drugs
props to every child who gets their dream animal and actually treats it that way. props to all the kids who take great care of their pets and don’t forget about them after they aren’t new and interesting, the kids who work hard to train and enrich their pets’ lives, the kids who love their pets through their whole life
hey doc! can cats fall into the same ‘my stomach hurts, so I won’t eat, so I’m hungry, so my stomach hurts even more, so I won’t eat’ trap that people can fall into? I had to bring a cat to the vet on wednesday night for just … so much barf, and the vet found nothing wrong, gave him fluids and an antiemetic, and sent us on our way. it’s SATURDAY and I had to take him to the vet again because he just refuses to eat??? and they found literally nothing wrong??? it’s like he’s on a hunger strike.
vet-and-wild here.
That’s a really hard question to answer because animals can’t exactly tell us why they don’t want to eat. Physiologically, it’s reasonable to think that this could happen, but we’ll never be able to know for sure. Stress, pain, illness, and nausea can all cause an animal to go off feed.
Ferox here.
Sometimes cats do seem to ‘blame’ food for making them sick. It’s not uncommon for them to completely go off a food that was force fed to them while ill, or what they were fed in hospital, plausibly from the negative association with hiw they felt at the time. Sometimes they want to eat but just wont unless given something completeky different.
I offered Morgan some a/d during her last presumed pancreatitis flare, and she gave me the most hilariously disgusted look I have ever seen a cat make.
Ooh it’s behavior nerd time! Taste aversion is one of the most widespread and strongest phenomena in learning theory. In most situations, what happens immediately following an action is what is considered the consequence. This is why we say you need to mark or reward a behavior within 1 second for the connection to be made.
Taste aversion is unique because feeling ill can be paired with something eaten hours ago. This is presumed to be an evolutionary survival instinct. If a food makes you feel sick, avoid it so you don’t get sick again (or die). When I was 5 I got a stomach bug after I had eaten fresh raspberries earlier in the day. I avoided eating fresh raspberries for a good 10+ years after that. It is an incredibly potent learning concept. It’s also the reason I never force feed animals or feed them in the hospital the food I would want them to eat when they get home.
I wish that dogs would have a food aversion to things that gave them foreign bodies…
This is hands down the best tik tok ever made.
mAM dOES yOUR hUSBAND HAVE NIPPLES
A universal experience.
[Transcription: all speech in the video is auto-tuned]
Story time: I’m a vet tech and one time I was [???] this lady for an appointment with her little dog who was covered in bugs
I searched this dog high and low for bugs, couldn’t find a single one
I said ma’am can you please point out these bugs to me
She said oh my gosh can’t you see them they’re right on his belly
She showed me her dog’s nipples and proceeded to try to rip them off
I said ma’am no stop
Those are his nipples
She said
There’s no way, he’s a boy
I said ma’am that doesn’t mean he doesn’t have nipples
Those are definitely his nipples, notice how they’re so symmetrical
She said no way, he’s a boy I said
Ma’am doesn’t your husband have nipples
I add vet tech storytime….lady brings in a kitten, terribly concerned he’s got a cold or asthma or something…he’s always making this alarming sound in his chest but he’s so active and affectionate and loves to snuggle. Neither her or her husband have ever had a cat before, so she just wants to make sure they get everything right and take good care of their newest family member.
I pet the kitten as I give this lady pamphlets and a personalized Cat Owner 101 lesson.
The kitten is leaving a great time, nearly comatose with happy in my lapm
She goes “That’s it!! That’s the sound!! What’s wrong with him?! If there’s anything we can do, we’ll do it! He’s my son’s best friend, we love him!”
I stare at her helplessly, fighting every impulse because this woman is so genuine in her love and concern for this, the first cat her family has ever experienced.
“Ma’am,” I say, so, SO gently.
“Ma’am, he’s purring. It means you’re making him happy.”
the video was sO FUNNY and then the last reply melted my entire heart
My personal favorite is having to explain to people that no, you’re not kissing your ferret’s belly button, you’re kissing his penis…
Science is always changing
There’s been a lot of uproar and concern about pet food diets, especially grain free and DCM in dogs after the FDA study citing a link between the two.
The truth is, science is messy. We’re always learning new things. Which is great, that’s how we get from the 4 humors and bleeding people to what we call medicine today.
As of June 2020, a literature review was published investigating the link between DCM and grain free diets. The ultimate conclusion? More research is necessary, but it may ultimately be genetically linked.
And that’s frustrating. We want to know more to serve our patients as best as possible. We want definitive answers. But a lot of time, there isn’t one easy answer, and easy fix. Will I recommend grain free diets now after this study? Probably still no. Retrospective studies have their own issues, and the best study on this link would be a long term, prospective study on these diets.
As scientists, we need to keep learning more, and not hold on too tightly to any previous ideas in the case they’re disproven in the past. And as vets, we need to be advocates for our patients, using the most scientifically proven medical recommendations.
I wish science and medicine were more black and white, but more often than not it’s complicated shades of grey.
And even if it is genetically linked…. so what? Not all dogs get renal failure from eating raisins or grapes. Heck, before we knew that could be an issue I used grapes as a training treat for my first dog! He never had kidney issues, but that doesn’t mean I’m going to ever say it’s okay for a dog to have raisins or grapes, because it’s not! A genetic component just makes it more important for dogs to be fed diets that are scientifically tested and have lifetime feeding trials performed.
As someone who works at one of the major pet retailiers, I agree a complete study is needed but in the meantime I wish the veterinarians would stop recommending the crappiest diets we sell.
There has been speculation that the large amount of peas in some of the grain-free diets can deplete taurine levels and cause heart problems. That does not mean you have to feed your dog the junk from the huge conglomerates, full of corn, soy, unnamed protein sources (!) and ingredients from who knows where.
There are limited-ingredient diets that don’t have peas in them, there are companies that have been supplementing their diets with taurine for years, I understand that vets want to recommend what they sell, I get it, but it is not necessarily the best thing for your dog.
That being said, not all dogs need grain-free diets. The best advice I ever read was you should have several diets from different manufacturers that you feed in rotation, as long as your dog doesn’t have particular food sensitivities (and even then it may be possible). Personaly, I switch out my dog’s diet every three bags.
Dogs deserve a little variety, too!
And as a veterinarian I wish retailers would stop contradicting our advice and telling owners to buy expensive boutique diets that are formulated by people with 0 training. We recommend the diets that have a veterinary nutritionist on staff and have done feeding trials to prove that their diets are actually complete and balanced. As opposed to a random small town manufacturer that has no nutrition training but charges $80 a bag because exotic meat is the first ingredient. It’s not about “because we sell it” it’s about recommending diets formulated by actual nutrition experts. If a veterinary nutritionist isn’t formulating boutique diets, who is? What are their qualifications? Personally, I like to know actual experts are formulating the food my pet eats instead of some unknown person who thinks corn is scary.
You’re free to feed your pets how you see fit, but I’m over the hurr durr vets don’t know anything about nutrition bs. Maybe if the majority of the profession recommends something it’s not because we are corrupt or uneducated but maybe because it’s actually a good recommendation??
ifesbob 