First and foremost, thanks to everyone who asked about how I and the animals were doing. We’re doing very well having suffered no more than a small tree down, the worst of which I’ve already cleaned up, and a power outage of about 12 hours. What lingers is the awareness of what a huge difference a relatively small shift in the storm’s track made. Not that far to the west, the flooding and destruction in Vermont is heart-breaking. Ironically last week I was kidding one of my clients who lives in a hard-hit area about all the flocks of
Read more →Because I consider this site first and foremost an educational one, there’s a lot of text on it. And because of this, I’ve wanted to add a search engine to it for quite a while. Clients and others who visit the site also have assured me that this would be a welcomed addition. After some research, Google’s search engine fulfilled my needs the best. The only drawback is that it comes with ads, something I’ve tried to avoid for multiple reasons since I started the site. Aside from noting that their presence in no way signals my endorsement of
Read more →There’s no podcast this week, but I wanted to share an animal-related mystery that I investigated at my son, Dan’s, townhouse when I went there with Frica and Ollie to celebrate Christmas. It’s not that this mystery is anything spectacular. It probably isn’t or wouldn’t be even if we managed to solve it. In the meantime, it’s a good example of the kinds of things animals do to which we would probably assign all kinds of higher brain function were a human to do them. But when a dog or cat does them, well, then it’s a mystery The
Read more →I got an email from my friend Pam telling me she had about 15,000 worms doing their magic at her house. I knew Pam was a multi-talented person—singer, drummer, great raconteur, and co-owner with her husband of the Sea Solar Store in Dover, New Hampshire. But I had no idea that worms were eating her garbage too. Pam also sent me a picture of the Can-O-Worms, a round version of my worm hotel, and told me it was one of several systems now available. I had no idea. Up until I got the hotel years ago, all the systems
Read more →One nice thing about not being a commercial success is that I can change my mind about things as I gain more knowledge and experience. I can say “Whoa, was I wrong about that! This makes ever so much more sense!” without losing sponsors or watching the value of my empire plummet. Nor do I have to worry about offending my groupies because a) I don’t have any and b) those independent thinkers who do follow my work know I often put a different spin on bond and behavior topics. For better or worse—depending on your view—that spin may
Read more →Last night I woke up to what sounded like a howl-off between a coyote sitting in my front yard and one in the distance. Either that or the one in the yard was howling for the sheer joy of listening to his/her echo from across the valley below the house.This morning when I looked into the front yard from the office, I saw the most gorgeous doe who bounded away before I got anything but this fleeting picture of her. To say that both made my day is putting it mildly.
Read more →Thanks to the folks at Veterinary Technician Schools Online for naming my blog one of the top fifty blogs written by veterinarians. For those of you who are interested in a career in veterinary technology, this website explains online vet tech school options, degrees, programs, and salary, job, and career information. I think I’ll take the dogs out in the rain and then fix myself a cup of tea to celebrate.
Read more →Another audio book comes to an end and I can’t help reminiscing about events that occurred during its recording. And once I start doing that, my thoughts automatically wander to what other audio projects might lay ahead…
Read more →I finally got around to updating the references regarding the effects of spay and neuter and you can find these here. For those who don’t have access to some of these publications, you may be able to find at least abstracts of the articles by doing a search for the author’s name plus key words from the article’s title in Google Scholar or one of the other more academic search engines. Your local librarian or a college librarian also should be able to get copies for you.
Read more →Have you ever taken your pet to the veterinary clinic for some problem and gotten the feeling that your veterinarian just wasn’t listening to you? Or you got the impression that the vet had already made up his or her mind regarding the cause and proper treatment of the problem before getting what you considered a complete history or thoroughly examining your animal? At that time, you might have thought that the veterinarian simply didn’t care about your animal or you. But more often than not, these people really do care. It’s the way they’ve been trained that creates
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