Raggedcoyote - DOG DAYS

PSA because I have gotten this more and more as service dog awareness has gotten more and more in the past couple years.

I find this mostly to be a problem in like queer disabled spaces. I run into the problem of people, wanting to respect my service dog so much that they don’t really respect me..(?) like they’re visibly like walking on eggshells whenever they’re near me. No one sits next to me or talks to me. I think in an attempt to not “offend me” by distracting my dog when they don’t even know me.

I don’t know if this will go for all handlers, but it goes for everyone I’ve talked to. You will be fine around a service dog handler if you were not purposely trying to distract it. If you’re doing something just cause like fidgeting or somethingand the dog gets distracted that’s on the handler and the dogs training. It’s not your fault, and stop apologizing for it. It gets quite annoying after a while.

TLDR a treat service dog handlers like people and like the dog isn’t there. 

The Blood Knight by Maxim Bazhenov

The cruelty of racist white men.

there is something to be said for going to zoos and aquariums on weekdays to avoid school-aged crowds but going to the aviary on a weekend is fun because going into big greenhouses and watching toddlers who just learned to walk encounter loose tropical animals taller than they are is part of the overall experience for me.

to me a three year old is just as much an entertaining and strange beast as an egret. and here they can interact directly. incredible.

Skull study from last year

A cottage kitchen can look unexpectedly dramatic treated to rich, contrasting colours. Here, green and crimson make an effective foil for the buttery glaze of brown and cream slipware.

Country Kitchens, 1991

stretches my legs out so far with all toes spread out wide

My Service Dog is suspected to be in early Heart Failure (AID REQUEST)

please reblog!

At a routine vet visit to check the progress of a course of antibiotics she was taking for a cold that's been taking all our city dogs by storm, my vet recognized that my 2 year old Labrador service dog, McCoy, had a jugular vein distention. Because this is not supposed to happen in healthy dogs, let alone in young healthy dogs, we chose to run a ProBNP blood test on her, which is used to measure heart health and check for potential damage or heart disease. The "normal" range is <900pmol/L, "suspected" damage is 900-1800pmol/L, and "abnormal" is >1800pmol/L. My dog came back with a result of 1300pmol/L.

We are currently being referred to the CVCA in Louisville, Kentucky, to have an echo performed on her heart to hopefully get a definitive answer on what is going on. However, this is all getting incredibly expensive, and I am a physically disabled student who was not expecting or prepared to suddenly be potentially losing my best friend and partner in everything that I do. I'm asking for any help with funding so we can keep on top of not only these sudden vet expenses, but any of the following expenses that may come due to her results as well as continuing to manage her day-to-day. We were doing just fine before this all happened, but the echocardiogram alone is expected to be a minimum of $400. I'm terrified and I don't know what to do. She's my everything. Any help that can be given, even if its just sharing, is appreciated.

my cashtag is $ikeohh

my ko-fi is tuptastic

i don't know what to do.

We're in another cold snap so here's a puppy enrichment activity that specifically targets impulse control and marking (gundog def: watching an object fall and marking where it fell in your mind).

Lots of dogs can benefit from eye-tracking skills, where they watch an object move and estimate a trajectory. Lots of dogs learn this from regular fetch with a ball but it's a skill you can foster even if you don't play fetch. Obviously this is most beneficial for working retrievers but any dog that enjoys using their eyes can learn the game.

For this game I'm using large kibbles, a patterned rug, and about 15ft of space. I set Rory up by my side, toss a kibble in an archive, let it bounce and come to a stop on the floor, and then release Rory to get the kibble. Some key points:

Work on impulse control separately, if your dog can't wait for the kibble to fall without rushing for it, work on that first. You can use a platform as an easier step towards steadiness if you need to.

Use something big enough to bounce or roll so the dog can practice eye-tracking it. If you use something small, it might get lost in their field of view.

Try to do this on a rug or floor with obstacles so your dog has to watch where it falls. One kibble on a bare floor is easy to pick out even if they're not paying attention, and the point of the game is to pay attention.

Don't ask for eye contact during this game, you want to release before they take their eyes off the kibble.

It's a simple game to work puppy brains and also run back and forth across the floor a few times.

All That Remains. Wild Dogs pulling the guts out of a freshly killed waterbuck. [<— Previous]

Cape Wild Dog | Paul Wild

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