Archive for April, 2010

More Stressful Thoughts After years of either completely ignoring stress or reviling it as some sort of diagnostic dumping ground, science is finally acknowledging the role stress plays in health and behavior. As a result, the amount of stress-related information almost seems to double every day. Unfortunately in my effort to reduce some of this [...]

When to Keep Quiet There are a lot times when we interact with animals that it makes sense to keep quiet, but this podcast isn’t about any of those. This podcast is about keeping quiet when we’re just itching to offer advice to owners whose animals are experiencing serious and even what we may consider [...]

The Hands That Rocked the Cradles I’ve long maintained that at least some of us use our relationships with animals to dry-run human-human interactions. And certainly there’s no shortage of data that indicates that many people relate to their pets as members of the family. For most that means they relate to the animal as [...]

The Religion of Science Remember how when you were a little kid your parent or some other adult would end a discussion with finality by saying, “Because I said so.”? As we get older, it’s not uncommon for some people to evoke religion or science the same way.  Those in the former group seek to [...]

Turkeys, Dogs, and Presence For reasons known only to them, a flock of young turkeys has decided to troop through my front yard to reach the woods above the house instead of gaining access to the woods from one of the many places further away. It could be because that the snow in that area [...]