There's all kinds of tasty stuff around the web:
First up, my college friend is fundraising to get a service dog for his son. Please consider throwing in a few bucks if you can, or at least sharing the link. Thanks!
Next is some advice for reducing the stress levels of newly adopted dogs:
What normally happens in a dog’s day is that they meet a series of stress-inducing triggers. If you’ve socialised them and introduced them to these triggers when they are young, they will most probably learn that these things are nothing to be afraid of. If you don’t, you’ve got an uphill battle to show them that a strange man in a hat is nothing to be afraid of. When we adopt an adult dog, we have no idea what they have been socialised with and what is a trigger.- from "Trigger Stacking: how we set our dogs up to fail"
Then we have the CEO of GPSPCA encouraging us to put our judgments aside:
Now, instead of having 57 dogs in our possession at Great Plains SPCA and breeders who are mad, hostile, unwilling to heed to our advice and likely to just “do it again,” we have compliant partners with a better understanding about how to properly take care of their pets. We also have folks who won’t be afraid to call “those crazy animal people” if ever they find themselves in a position where they need help again. And.. that cute little wire-haired terrier who was matted three weeks ago, they’d had her shaved and treated for fleas. They did what they committed they would do.
Had we let our emotions or the judgment that we wanted to cast upon these people drive our interactions with them, the outcome in this case would have been much different. Because we could focus on building a relationship with them and educating them, the outcome for the animals was the best it could be. And that, my friends, is the goal.- from "A Note From Our Top Dog: When We Judge"
Finally, I can't stop watching this video of Kate McKinnon talking about her cat, Nino:
