Uggie (L) and his understudy Dash at the Golden Globes
With the Oscars this Sunday, we thought it only fitting to talk about the importance of man’s best friend in the movies.
From Petey in the Our Gang/Little Rascals films to Uggie in this year’s The Artist, our furry friends have often stolen the show.
DFW.com has a list of their top fifty movie dogs. Who would be your number one?
Looking for a cool project to do for your kitty?
Check out pinterest.com. They have examples of all sorts of projects from cat condos to scratching pads to sky-high cat castles.
From ABC news:
Dogs in San Diego have a new way to pass the time while their owners are away, watching the tube.
While the CEO of DOGTV extolled the benefits to both pet owners and dogs, Dr. Katherine Houpt, professor of animal behavior at Cornell University, stated that the best treatment for dogs who suffer from separation anxiety or loneliness is “to play soft music and create a dark environment so the dog feels secure when you are not at home.”
Whether or not DOGTV will be a success is still up for debate. But, when your pets start begging for the remote, watch out!
Read the full story at abcnews.com.
Heather Lewis’ latest article for the Impromed E-Newsletter is about the new standards for cat housing in the animal sheltering world and how these new ideas can be applied to the veterinary world.
Cats are easily stressed in new environments, particularly ones like the vet’s office. Housing cats in caging that provides them with defensible space, a 3-foot separation between their food and their litter and placing caging in a quieter area of your hospital can help to reduce the illnesses that cats can develop when stressed.
Heather’s full article can be found at Impromed E-Newsletter.
To read more about the new animal sheltering guidelines visit the Association of Shelter Veterinarians at animalsheltering.org
This is the house, the doghouse, that Frank Lloyd Wright designed on commission from 12-year-old Jim Berger in 1952.
Wright had designed the Berger family home for Jim’s father and Jim wanted a house for his dog Eddie that would “go with” the main house.
Lo and behold Wright replied and designed this four-square-foot home for Eddie meant to be built with mahogany and cedar scrap lumber.
Jim didn’t get to build the home. He enlisted in the military, but his father and brother completed Eddie’s home.
Read the full story and see the floor plan at Architects + Artisans.
Keeping a cat’s cage properly ventilated is important to their health and overall wellbeing.
But simply exchanging the air in the room where cages sit does not provide fresh, uncontaminated air to the cages themselves.
The key is exchanging air through cat cages instead of around them.
Vicki Pollard of Animal Arts, has written an article for Shorline’s blog about the importance of proper cat cage ventilation and how it can be achieved.
Read Vicki’s full article at Shorline Community.
Bower birds, who are native to Australia, are pretty incredible creatures. The males of the species don’t attract mates with pretty plumage or melodic tunes, but with their skills in architecture and interior design.
First they build themselves a little bungalow, sometimes complete with support ‘beams’, and then they go on to decorate the space in the manner they believe will best attract them a mate.
They clear patches of ground, cover others with leaves or shiny beetle wings, or berries or flowers. Bower birds who live close to urban areas will even use items that they can steal from their human neighbors, like clothes pins. The exact placement of these items is important as you can see in the short video clip below featuring David Attenborough exploring the home of a bower bird.
