Pet Monologues

Man charged with ransoming mother’s cat.

NORTH KINGSTOWN, R.I. (AP)—A man has been charged with extorting more than $20,000 from his elderly mother by repeatedly threatening to kidnap her beloved cat and demanding ransom, police said. Read the rest of this entry »

Dog behavior training: aggression, biting, guarding problems.

Handling an Aggressive Dog

Aggression is probably the most common reason an otherwise healthy dog is euthanized (put to sleep). Read the rest of this entry »

Here is a thoughtful and compassionate article by Sarah Hartwell with regard to cats. Dogs, birds, elephants, horses, many animals for that matter, experience these feelings. Knowlege of the grieving process puts us in better touch with feelings, a good thing.

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When a cat dies, owners often notice behavioral changes in their remaining cats. Some of these are due to adapting to a changed hierarchy, but other behavioral changes are due to a sense of loss. Many cats grieve the loss of a close human companion and others show signs of loss when a canine companion ides or goes missing.

It is impossible to say exactly what emotions cats feel, but when a close companion goes missing they are certainly be aware of the absence. It is unlikely that they mourn in the human sense of the word, but there will be some behavioral changes as they adjust to the gap in their lives.

What is grief?

Grief is the result of abrupt or unexpected severing of attachment. Cats are aware that a familiar person or companion cat is absent and may search for that person or cat. The death or absence may change an established hierarchy as well as being the absence of a familiar companion. While this is not the ritualised grief of humans, the sudden absence of something familiar is distressing to many cats. Mother cats whose kittens were taken away and destroyed often looked for their kittens for many days, all the while pacing and crying out. As well as the physical pain of engorged mammary glands, the cats displayed mental pain. Read the rest of this entry »

When kids go back to school, pets can get lonely.

With children all over the area heading back to school, what happens to pets once their playmates are gone for the day? Read the rest of this entry »

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Interpreting dog barks and noise.

Body language is generally a silent method of communication (with the exception of the play bow), but dogs use their voices, too. Read the rest of this entry »

Ringling Brothers will stand trial for elephant abuse.

WASHINGTON—Today, Judge Emmet Sullivan of the federal district court in Washington D.C. issued a major ruling rejecting the last-ditch attempt of Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus to avoid trial over charges that the circus abuses its Asian elephants in violation of the federal Endangered Species Act. Read the rest of this entry »

The first article I read on this topic was dated March 2005 from Fairfax County Virginia, so this is not exactly a new idea. Two years later we have the following article revisiting this issue…

Dangerous dogs in Virginia get online registry.

RICHMOND, Virginia: Bear is a golden retriever-shepherd that attacked a bicyclist. Dee Dee, a pit bull mix, killed a cat. Cody, a Labrador mix, bit the neighbor.

Their mug shots, misdeeds and home addresses went online last week at Virginia’s Dangerous Dog Registry, a new Web site modeled after the state’s sex offender registry. It lets residents locate dogs in their county that have attacked a person or animal, and that a judge decided could cause injury again.

Created after dogs killed a toddler and an 82-year-old woman in separate incidents over the last two years, Virginia’s registry is part of a growing effort by states to deal with canines deemed dangerous. Thirty-one states now make owners legally liable if their dogs maim or kill, and in 2006 Ohio became the first state to ban some breeds outright.

In the last two years, nearly 100 municipalities have taken similar steps - banning pit bulls, Rottweilers, English bull terriers and American staffordshire terriers, or passing regulations that require owners to use muzzles or short leashes in public, according to the American Kennel Club. Read the rest of this entry »

An endangered animal story by Sabina, age 10.

It was a happy sunshine day on the northern coast of Florida, when Sara Hawksbill was told to come out to play with her friends. It is like tropical weather, with its humid climate and fresh smell. When she returned, her mother scolded her because she just finished cleaning the house and now she had more work. She told Sara to go take a bath while she cleaned Sara’s muddy mess.

Sara thought that her mother was just saying this, but with the look on her mother’s face she went anyway. Once Sara got there, she saw her friend, the fisherman, having trouble-catching fish. So she went to him and told him, “I will get some fish for you.” Then she went down in the water and grabbed some fish with her hooked beak. The fisherman was overseeing her with interest because under the water her body really looked like a hawk. She had a patterned shell and beautiful body that had two claws at the front flaps. When she returned and gave the fish to the fisherman, she realized that she had to take a bath. After her bath she came home and saw that mama did not return yet. So she went to get dinner ready for mama, papa, and herself.

Mama still didn’t return. Even though when papa returned home from work, Sara asked him, “Did you see mama while you came this way home?” Read the rest of this entry »

by Odessa (?)

Hi my Friend,

Oreo, I’m so sad to have to tell you this: Barney, one of our pet apple snails, died this Christmas eve. We were all very sad. Mom even cried. Barney and Mom were very close you know.

After Mom removed Barney from her home aquarium and put her to rest, Mom dried her eyes, pulled up a chair and started to tell us all about Barney’s life.

It was not a sad story Mom told us, Oreo, and it wasn’t not only about Barney’s life. This story of Barney’s life could be the story of millions of other pet apple snail lives all rolled into one story. I decided that I wanted to shareher story with you Oreo as I know you will be as interested init as I and my mates were.

Barney’s life was not at all like our lives. Barney was an amphibious snail. Where as you and I will live all our life on dry land, amphibious snails like Barney live their lives in water but they must come up to the surface of their aquariums, streams or ponds to breathe. They also lay their eggs just above the water’s surface. The rest of the time they spend under water. Read the rest of this entry »