pets

You are currently browsing articles tagged pets.

Donate to Animal Shelters Daily for Free

22 March 2013 in Animals, Journal | Comment

There are a couple of great sites I visit daily. I’ve had them on my bookmark bar for years and if you’re a fan of helping animals without homes, you should too.

Best part is, it’s not costing you anything and you don’t need to sign up to do it. Sponsors pay the donations, as long as you keep visiting and clicking to show your support. And if you feel like donating your own money, there are ways to do that too!

The Animal Rescue Site – This site seems to allow you to click more than once daily — not sure if it counts every click after the first one, but it can’t hurt. There are other causes you can click on too, from Autism to Hunger to Diabetes to Cancer, and they have gifts to purchase if you feel like donating a bit extra to the cause. They have sponsored advertisements, so I would suggest clicking on those to take a look at who’s making your donation.
FreeKibble — Your daily donation of kibble whether you’re right or wrong answering one dog-related quiz question. Fun site started by a kid when she was 10 or 11 years old. She now has children’s books that can be purchased with the proceeds going toward shelter dogs as well.
FreeKibbleKat — Same site, but for cats.

It is so easy to help homeless animals these days. You don’t even need to watch a ten minute-long Sarah McLachlan commercial.

Happy Friday, everybody.

What are some sites you use to donate to causes? Leave them in the comments.

Pumpkin for Dog Tummy Rumbling

9 March 2013 in Animals, Behaviour | Comment

We’ve been walking Junior and Casey together for a week or so now that he got his second shots. Junior’s loud tummy growling problem began just after we saw the vet so when we walked the dogs to the pet food store, we mentioned it to the girl working. She mentioned feeding him a bit of pumpkin with his dinner as it’s supposed to settle an upset puppy stomach. I had read that a few times as well, so we decided to try it.

The stuff we got was a can of organic pumpkin pulp marketed especially for dogs. I’m sure any canned pumpkin would do, preferably organic to cut down on any ingredients that might not sit well in an upset stomach. It seems to have worked exceptionally well. We no longer hear his tummy growling from the other room every morning, and he doesn’t roll around in bed all night, whining uncomfortably while charging the static on his little bed in our dry house.

Sleep + no tummy problems + a walk once or twice daily is working out to be the magical equation for a happy puppy. I’ll submit it to Einstein’s ghost for review.

And next, to deal with the little bump on his back that I hope he gets no more of. Ohh, boxer problems.

What natural remedies have you used for your pet’s health before? Did they work?

Dog Tummy Rumbling

2 March 2013 in Animals, Journal | 1 comment

This morning is a tired one. Junior was trying to climb up the side of the bed, which was strange and somewhat irritating, until Miklos discovered what might have been the problem. The puppy’s tummy was growling like mad, loud enough we could hear it from across a room. We think it scared him a little.

I suffer the same affliction sometimes when I’m not even hungry, though it’s easier for me to climb into our tall bed.

Ignoring the scarier answers found on Google (I know), it seems he might have an upset stomach. He ate his food, however, and has had some water to drink, so while the noises continue I’m not overly worried. A dog eating and drinking generally signifies that he’s healthy, not that I’m a veterinarian. He’s taking a nap and the snoring drowns out his tummy.

It was REALLY loud. At first we were worried, but he seems good now. We’re keeping a close eye on him in the meantime, as if there’s any other way to be with a 10 week old puppy. Maybe we should feed him a little snack before bed to tide him over through the night. The weird things you learn with every new animal!

Does your dog get a growly stomach? Have you come up with a solution?

Look Who I Found in the Cat Bed…

16 February 2013 in Animals, Journal | Comment

While I was cleaning today, somebody snuck into the DIY cat bed I wrote about a while ago.

We kind of love this guy.

Now if only he’d stop crying and growling all night when we crate him. He slept uncrated last night on a pillow beside Casey. I’m OK with it, he didn’t run around or anything all night, and he was quiet. I don’t want him to affiliate the crate only with us leaving him, however, because I’m pretty sure he’ll always hate it.

Last night was probably a giant crate-training faux-pas, and we’re not quite sure what to do. Possibly putting a smaller crate/bed in the living room where we spend a lot of time with him/where he likes to sleep, so that he’ll learn to use a crate as his den. Not sure if that will just alienate him from the one in our room, however. Sigh. At least these pictures are adorable. Casey loves wrestling with him too, so there’s that.

We tried to let him cry it out but it got so loud and sounded like we were trying to stab him or something. Hopefully our walls are adequately soundproofed so all the neighbours down the road didn’t hear it.

Does anybody have any puppy crate training tips they’d like to share? I’d be so thankful!

New Puppy Pictures!

15 February 2013 in Animals, Journal | Comment

I promised them, and I almost never break a promise made on my blog. Here they are: Cute pictures of our new puppy, Junior.

Junior & Casey

Bored of this photoshoot… I’m out!

So, a bit about our new German boxer puppy:

We got him at 8 weeks old
He came from a litter of 7
He’s got 4 paws
He has 1 natural tail (not docked) and 2 natural ears [and we like him that way! In Germany, they don't dock 'em anymore... I won't start a debate, because really it's the internet]
He is 100x easier than Casey was to deal with, in the 24 hours we’ve had him
We’ve known him since he was born, 2 months ago

The strangest thing that happened when we brought him home was that Jane (our 12 year old fluff of a cat) came to greet him. Jane has been turning a strange new leaf lately where she started letting me hold her after three years (we’re now at four), and she kissed our maniac lab Casey yesterday on the nose.