01/20/14

Cindy is an old dog that can run really fast

Elderly jack russell terrier.

Imagine you’ve recently taken a 12 year 8 month old dog into your home. She’s lazy, mostly moving from bed to bed to sleep. She comes when she’s called, goes out when she’s asked, and gets heaps excited about food. Happy and sociable with people and dogs. A joy to live with.

I hope, in doing so, you can forgive my negligence as a guest arrived. As Cindy nipped through the open door, I naturally assumed that this sociable dog would just say hi to the guest, and follow them inside. However, Cindy started sniffing a plant in the front yard. I called her, and she ignored me, and as I took a step towards her, she dashed away, stopping at the letterbox to continue sniffing. Naively, I assumed that there was just a nice smell around. As I headed towards her again, she gave me a look that could best be described as “Hahaha”, and started running, fast, away from me – and towards a busy road.

There was no chance I was going to chase her, as I am very aware that I am not as fast as a dog (they have four legs, I have two, come’n) and I did not want her to get closer to the busy road. Immediately, I thought that I could use Bandit, a dog friend she had made in foster care. If I wasn’t good enough to come back to, maybe Bandit would be.

So, hurriedly, I ran inside, threw a lead on Bandit, and took him out. Bandit was perplexed why there was a walk happening, at night, with such little fan-fare, but nonetheless was happy with the arrangement.

As I came out of the house, Cindy was nowhere to be seen. My heart was racing and I was terrified of where she had got to. Immediately, my thoughts were thinking about how she didn’t have my tag on, but she did have her surrendering owner’s tag on still, and how bad would that look if she was to get called? What if she got hit by a car? What vets are open at this time of night? Do I call the council now? Why is the husband away tonight?

Bandit and I headed towards where I last saw Cindy. Briskly walking, I hear a bush rustle and Cindy emerged. Phew! She hadn’t got to the busy road! Cindy then kept running towards the busy road – seemingly Bandit and I disturbed her bush-investigation, and now the running thing was back on. So my Bandit trick failed.

There’s no way I could catch Cindy with Bandit in toe, so back I go home, putting Bandit inside.

As I came back out, I hurriedly called a friend from Adelaide All Breed Dog Rescue Inc., “Hi. Can you come help me catch Cindy? She got out.” The friend was on her way. Phew!

So now finding Cindy again. I took a wide berth, on the other side of the road from when I last saw her, with the only intention of cutting her off from heading closer to the main road. Once my friend got there, my plan was that I could then get them to get food in my house, or open up the carport door and we could herd Cindy into the secure area. Regardless, I had decided I couldn’t do much more than keep an eye on Cindy for the time being.

My plan mostly worked. She decided to run away from me, back towards my house, and away from the busy road. Excellent. She would stop and snuffle in bushes, and I would stand like a lurker in the half-light in other people’s front yards, watching.

If Cindy looked at heading towards the busy road, I’d shuffle into the path to try to prevent her. This mostly worked. But then there was this one moment, she came towards me (and the busy road), and as I puffed myself up to block her path, she ran faster and within a metre of me. I’m pretty sure I heard her say, “Hahaha, you can’t catch me!”.

Back to square one, I once again did a big loop to block her off.

My heart was in my throat as I realised she was in the yard of the house on the corner of my street and the busy road. Every car that whizzed by I held my breath.

I could hear her in the bushes, so knew where she was, and I just hoped that when she came out I could once again drive her back up the street. It was tense.

And the little white dog came out of the bush, and looked at me. Through my head, a word that rhymed with ‘duck’ was repeating over and over. She was going to do it again – she was going to run past, in a joy run, straight onto the busy road. Duck duck duck.

But she looked at me for a moment too long, and she wagged her stumpy tail, and seemed to say, “Okay, I’m done now.”

Hardly believing my luck, I used my best gravelly voice to firmly say, “Cindy! Stay!” as I reached out my hand…

I’ll stop for a moment as I realise I forgot to tell you something about Cindy. All the stuff about her being a joy to own? That’s true, except that if she doesn’t get her own way, she bites. Cindy bites.

So here I was in the dark, reaching my hand towards a white-shape of a dog that I know bites.

And I was saying to myself, “If she bites, don’t let go“.

I can still remember that as my hand wrapped around the collar, and I felt my fingers touch my palm. I instantly thought, “I got her!” and then, immediately after, “If she bites, don’t let go!”.

I took the lead I was carrying around my neck (carrying in anticipation of such a moment), and clipped it onto her collar.

And I think that’s when I started breathing again. I became very conscious of the adrenaline pulsing through my body, now that I didn’t need it anymore.

That’s when my phone buzzed in my pocket, and I saw the headlights up the road of where my friend had pulled up in front of my house. Imperfect timing.

Cindy happily walked on lead back home, wagging her stump and panting heavily from her joy run.

Oh, did I mention: Cindy’s available for adoption!

If you are interested in a dog that bites and runs away, Cindy’s the dog for you!

Cindy was surrendered to us because he owner experienced unfortunate circumstances and became homeless. Cindy and the past owner lived in a car together for a few weeks, but it just wasn’t working for everyone involved, so the difficult decision was made to surrender her into care.

I was concerned about Cindy’s health initially, as she was very quiet. We had full blood works done, and a full body x-ray, and she’s in perfect health! Her teeth are in great condition, and it’s like Cindy was waiting for the vet to tell her she was A-OK too, because she became a bit of rat bag after that. As the story above shows.

Cindy loves going for walks, and barks angrily at you when you haven’t got her lead on or opened the door quite according to her schedule. “Hurry up, human!” Or maybe it’s resentment towards being leashed in itself, given her joy in running fast, away from you.

As mentioned, Cindy made a friend in Bandit while she has been in care. Bandit and Cindy are available for adoption either individually or to the same home. They’re very different to each other, but instantly took a strong liking to one another. They have an understanding.

In case you didn’t guess, Cindy is all terrier! She’s okay with other dogs, but she’s not one for pocket pets, or birds, or cats.

Cindy’s ideal home would be an older person or couple who just want to go for a short walk once or twice a day, and want a well behaved companion the rest of the time. Cindy is a nice cuddler, and will hop on your lap for pats – but very much when she wants them. She is independent, and doesn’t mind being left alone, especially if being left alone comes with some type of food.

Cindy is now with a foster carer (with instructions: never, ever let her off lead and never leave gates or doors open) and doing well, but we would love to see her in her forever home.

For more details about Cindy and her adoption, see her PetRescue profile.

01/17/14

Pets as Gifts – Evidence not Anecdotes

Pets aren’t gifts. We all know that.

If a pet is given as a gift, the recipient might not be prepared for the financial commitment. The pet might be unsuitable to their lifestyle, or the recipieint may be uncommitted. And this means the pet is more likely to be relinquished.

But are you willing to be wrong about that?

This pretty shar pei has found her home through Adelaide All Breed Dog Rescue Inc.

“Studies of dog and cat relinquishment to shelters, however, show that the relinquishment of dogs and cats received as gifts is lower than from other sources,” says Weiss et al. in their 2013 paper. While this blog post will concentrate on this article, it’s important to note that this study builds on the research of others. For example (as summarised by Weiss et al.),

This article looked at 2600 dogs and 2300 cats, and found “Relinquished dogs infrequently came from pet shops, as gifts and from veterinarians. The study found the odds of dog relinquishment were higher when acquiring an animal from a shelter, friend, as a stray, and from a pet shop compared to receiving an animal as a gift”. Cats had similar trends.
This article “identified 71 reasons for pet relinquishment” and unwanted gift made up only 0.3% of dog surrenders and 0.4% of cat surrenders.
And this one found that being received as a gift was a protective factor, with dogs and cats received as gifts being “at [a] significantly decreased risk of being relinquished”.

Simply, there is no evidence that pets being given as gifts leads to relinquishment. It is an unfounded myth.

This study even says, “the myth that dogs and cats should not be given as gifts still persists“.

How was this study conducted?

A large telephone survey of 1006 adults was conducted, with 222 people saying they received a dog or cat as a pet in the last 10 years.

If an individual identified them self as a pet-gift-receipient, they were asked further questions. Were they involved in selecting the pet? How attached are they to their pet? Do they still own the pet?

And what did they find?

Some of the gifted-pets were rehomed – 21 out of the 215 pets. That is, 9.7%.

It didn’t seem to matter if the gift was a surprise or not – it wasn’t associated with people rehoming their pet, or being more or less attached to it.

“These results suggest that there is no increased risk of relinquishment for dogs and cats received as a gift.”

On a side note, this study is different, because it looked at owner retention, instead of shelter relinquishment data. This means that the statistic of 9.7% rehomed is probably higher than shelter surrender intake (as many pets would be rehomed privately instead of through shelter facilities).

How does this relate to shelters?

Weiss et al. express their concern about shelters who prohibit adoptions when they know that the animal is going to be given as a gift. Weiss et al. says, not allowing pets to go as gifts may “impede the overarching goal of increasing adoptions of pets from our nations’ shelter system”.

Significantly, they say (emphasis my own):

“These findings may help animal welfare organisations open options for those interested in obtaining dogs and cats for their family and friends. It is important to note that animals obtained from a shelter are more at risk than those obtained as gifts. Allowing adoptions of dogs and cats to those obtaining the pet as a gift may decrease the risk of return or relinquishment for that dog or cat. Furthermore, it would allow for more animals from shelters to find homes.”

The next thing

Briefly, the article suggests that the next area for study is research and planning, and how that relates to pet retention. Current evidence suggests that ‘spur of the moment’ type acquisitions made with little or no research or planning are not associated with higher rates of relinquishment.

So have you ever received a pet as a gift? And did you keep that pet for its life?

Reference:

Weiss, E, Dolan, ED, Garrison, L, Hong, J & Slater, M (2013). Should dogs and cats be given as gifts? Animals, 3 (4) DOI: 10.3390/ani3040995

01/15/14

The Week in Tweets – 15th January 2014

This is our (almost) weekly segment where we review the content posted on our Twitter over the course of the week. It’s a long post! So make sure you grab a coffee and prepare yourself for some serious reading.

But first, here’s a video of Clover swimming in a friend’s dam. She loves swimming and is pretty good at it, too!

On with the tweets!

Tweet of the Week

I saw this and it gave me so many ideas on ‘things to do’ with my puppies. As many of my blog readers know, I do a lot of work with my puppies before they go (see Puppies 2012 series) and so new activities for young puppies is always on my radar. So have a look at Avidog’s adventure box (Oh, what fun!).

Breeds and Breeding

Rock Bottom from Time 4 Dogs.

The two principles for a new dog fancy from Retrieverman.

Stop brachycephalism, now!

Structure in action: An interview with Pat Hastings from K9Pro.

The Missing Part of a Cairn Terrier from TerrierMan.

A video of a bitch with Eclampsia (seizuring from lack of calcium, often due to lactation).

Dog Training

A review of an Obedience Seminar with Kamal Fernandez.

Science: Friend or Foe? from Denise Fenzi.

A few from Hound and the Found: ‘Tinkering with the robot‘, ‘10 dynamite tips for your new search puppy‘, and ‘How scent and airflow works‘.

The Dominance Controversy from Dr Sophia Yin.

“Do I need to see a dog behaviourist?” from K9Pro.

K9DIY: Make a hard core, square-braid tug from Team Unruly (put here because a good tug is a good training tool).

Monday pets: why do dogs push their food bowls around?

Canine behavior and acoustics in shelters and kennels from Patricia McConnell.

7 Common Training Errors; Cautionary Tales from Eileen and Dogs.

Shelters, Rescue and Lost Pets

The RSPCA SA says, “Pets can be for Christmas“. Amazing! I didn’t think the RSPCA SA would ever come close to a tweet of the week – and this week they almost got it!

How one Facebook message change my life forever (yes, this belongs in this category).

Plea to help hounds in need of a home from Adelaide Now.

This is another one close to tweet of the week: Sheltering pets from domestic violence.

Beloved pet fast tracked to kill room at Hillsborough Co Pound from YesBiscuit!.

Rutherford RSPCA kills family’s dog.

Video: family dog back in the fold – after going missing for three years.

1000 pets prevented from entering the South LA Shelter in only 4 months.

Four dogs sheltered to death who had owners who wanted them back from SavingPets.

Ten reasons why your next sport dog should be a rescue from Team Unruly.

Adopt Bandit! – an adoption video for our current foster dog.

Fun (mostly-) Dog Things

The adventures of dog and her ele-friend.

Something awesome happens when animals use a trampoline.

Back to school: canine style.

Other Dog Stuff

Heroic boys save 13 dogs in fire at Asryn Kennels, Two Wells, as five others perish – this was almost Tweet of the Week, too, as it happened locally within the South Australian dog community.

Pro tips for navigating life with dogs and kids.

Police shootings of dogs.

Things I Dislike.

Ask me how I feel about “flexi” leashes.

Make your pet sitting business stand out.

How well do humans understand the expression on a dog’s face?

Other Animal Stuff

Horse Whispering Demystified.

Dancing seal is first non-human mammal to keep a beat.

Sex, lies, and sperm competition: the fiendish world of insect sex.

Rat Park Drug Experiment.

Instagram

Myrtle.

Bandit’s cuddle face.

Visited this tiny cemetery on Bethesda Rd, Lewiston.

‘Family photo’ – Bandit, Cindy and I.

This is the best picture I could get of Penny.

Cooper!

Cindy sleeping and Cindy laying.

01/13/14

Clever Marketing Ideas for Shelters

Often, we hear about ‘the overpopulation problem‘ – the myth that there are too many animals in the shelter system to find homes for. Of those that argue that an overpopulation problem exists, they often point to shelter-euthanasia rates. The argument goes that if there was no overpopulation problem, then there would be no pets killed in shelters.

I call bullshit.

There are plenty of pounds in Australia that impound animals, hold them for the mandatory holding period, and then kill them with not a scrap of community engagement. They didn’t try to find the owner. They didn’t try to find a new owner. For whatever reason, there are many facilities in Australia that just do what they have to do (legally), and not what they should do (morally).

So what should impounding facilities be doing?

I argue that impounding facilities need to do each of these marketing and promotional steps for every animal in care, in order to get animals out alive.

“That’s absolutely my dog!” said no one ever. This is a genuine impound photo from an Australian pound – not very useful.

On Impound

Take a good photo and use it

When an animal comes into the facility, they should take a clear and appealing photo. The animal should not be obstructed by cages, people, or other animals.

Once a good photo is obtained, it needs to be distributed everywhere – Facebook, Gumtree, council offices, the local paper. While we would love for our good photo to find the original owner, it also, potentially, will find the pet a new owner once that holding period is over.

Correctly record details on the animal

Make sure that the impounded animal is recorded in a way that can maximise reclaim. In short: Record details correctly!

Try to minimise the emphasis on breed. Breed cannot be identified by looks alone, and owners may believe their pet is a different breed than the pound, making reclaims less likely. Bad!

So instead, details about the pet needs to be accurately recorded: colour and coat type, any obvious medical issues, its sex (please get it right!), and make a note of any tattoos.

Minimise disease risk

Administer relevant vaccinations immediately, upon intake, to minimise the chance of disease risk across the shelter. (And, obviously, protect that individual pet from contracting a disease, too.)

For more details, read the KC Dog Blog on “The First 60 Minutes“.

During Holding Period (i.e. Find the past owner!)

Check for identification

Obviously, facilities need to check the animal for details on the collar (e.g. stitched into the fabric) or the tag.

Animals need to be scanned for a microchip – but this needs to be done thoroughly and properly. This involves:

The scanner needs to be fully charged,
The scanner needs to be waved, slowly, all over the animal, but remain close to the animal at all times,
If no chip is found, a second fully charged scanner should be used, by a second person.

Basically, facilities should assume that every animal is microchipped, and work hard to find that chip.

Some animals have tattoos on their ears or groin, so these can also be used for identification.

Use all available information on past owners to full capacity

If you find any skerrick of information regarding the animal and the past owners, find out more! If the number on the microchip is no longer active, use their names to look them up on Facebook or the electoral roll. If you can find the phone number on their tag, Google it, and see if you can find a name associated. If there’s a number or word in the ear of a dog, find out what it pertains to. Do everything possible to make contact with the owners. Get that pet back home!

Know who’s lost

Shelters and pounds should use staff or volunteers to maintain a catalogue of lost pets. These individuals would check lost pet notices, online and in print, and record the details on a centralised system. If this resource was to be kept up to date, then it could mean that impounded animals could quickly be reunited with their people.

Be accessible for reclaims

Many people work 9am to 5pm, and find it difficult to access the shelter to reclaim their pet. Having opening times of 8am-8pm would allow working people to access the facility and reclaim their pets, or simply just come to the shelter to make sure their pet has not been impounded over the course of the day.

During Adoption Period (i.e. Find new owners!)

So now the animal has been in the shelter for the mandatory holding period – what now?

This is the kind of photo that gets pets adopted. Taken by Kimberley Gifford Photography, this photo of ‘Benjamin’ led my now-husband and I to adopt. (And we didn’t even want a cat at the time.)

Photos and advertising

Facilities need to seek the services of a professional photographer to take awesome photos of pets for adoption. The photos should be well lit, with an appealing background, with the pet looking happy. Once you have an awesome photo or two, share the bejesus out of it. Put it on your website, on Facebook, on PetRescue, on Gumtree, share with the press, whatever! Get it out there!

Use deals and events to lure in adopters

It’s no secret that people like a bargain, so facilities can offer financial incentives to potential adopters: Your pets are cheap, especially considering all the vet work that has been done. If you buy a cat, you get a bag of cat food free. If you adopt a kitten, get the mother free. Adult cats are free. Whatever needs to be done to get an adopter in, needs to be done!

The other option is to run big events. Invite the media to mega adoption days, where you hope ‘100 pets in new homes before the end of the day’, or whatever it may be. Make a spectacle.

Also, make sure at least some of your adoptions can occur off of the shelter. Many people find a shelter environment depressing, and so may not be inclined to visit the shelter to find their new pets. Using pleasant, external environments is likely to encourage adopters to take pets home.

Be accessible

This flows from off site adoption days – facilities need to make sure their adoption events are off site and are in different geographic locations, so people from many areas can get their hands on a rescue pet.

Just like I advocate shelters being open 8am-8pm for reclaims, adoptions can also happen in these extended hours too. This means that the average-worker can adopt a pet without having to take the day off work.

Having an online site, listing pets available for adoption, also means that people can access potential-new-pets in the comfort of their home – online shopping, for pets!

Make the pets you have better

Clearly, not every pet that enters a pound or shelter is going to be ‘the perfect pet’ on intake. Facilities need to run programs that make them more adoptable. Does that cat have a skin problem? Put her on medication and fix her up. Is that bunny a bit scared of people? Get him onto a regular handling program. Does that dog jump up? Engage in some behavioural modification.

Sometimes, some pets need a lot of work to improve their adoptability, and these pets may be better suited to entering foster care or a different rescue…

Use rescue groups

Rescue groups are valuable to shelters and pounds. They can help relieve the pressure of bigger facilities by taking in pets and rehoming them. As they are often smaller, they can often more intensely treat medical and behavioural issues. As they normally hold pets in foster homes, for animals requiring long term treatment (for example, mange), then a foster home may be more humane than a shelter environment.

In short, rescues and pounds need to use rescue groups to their advantage.

Use compatible animals to maximise kennel space

Many pounds claim that they need to kill pets for space. An alternative to this is doubling up compatible pets in the same run.

But, but, but…

People keep saying to me that pounds can’t afford to do this. I argue that if they stopped killing animals, they probably would gather community support. It’s not a secret that people don’t like volunteering at places that kill pets. If you stop killing pets, you’ll attract volunteers, who will be able to take sexy pictures of animals, will be able to put them online for you, and will be able to staff your front counter during your opening hours. The possibilities are endless.

Further, successful shelters don’t shame the public. They don’t call people irresponsible for surrendering pets. They don’t criticise people when their pets get lost. They don’t black mail the public, telling them that if they don’t adopt, pets will die. All these things get the public off side – and the public is a very important friend.

Also, the public is more likely to donate to pounds that don’t criticse them, and don’t kill the pets in care. So fundraising will be easier.

In summary, shelters kill pets because they don’t bother finding their owner or don’t bother finding a new owner. And if they just stopped killing pets and blaming the ‘irresponsible’ public, perhaps the public would like them more and volunteer and donate, and then there will be less dead pets.

Pound’s nonchalance to getting pets out alive is the real bullshit here.

Further reading:

10 Ways to Get Pit Bulls Adopted from ThatMutt.com

The First 60 Minutes from the KC Dog Blog

What a Good Pound Does from Dog Rescue Association of Victoria Inc.

The Seven Deadly Sins of ‘Overpopulation’ from SavingPets

01/10/14

Pet Blogger Challenge 2014

A whole year has gone by since the last Pet Blogger Challenge (kindly hosted by GoPetFriendly.com and Will My Dog Hate Me). I enjoy having a formalised way to summarise our experiences over the last year, and hopefully you find it enjoyable to read, too.

Amazingly, this is actually our third Pet Blogger Challenge. We participated last year, in 2013, and the year before, when we were very new to blogging, in 2012.

Most of all, I love connecting with a new lot of bloggers each year – finding new blogs to follow and getting all enthused about blogging.

Without further ado: The questions!

1. How long have you been blogging? Please tell us why you started blogging, and, for anyone stopping by for the first time, give us a quick description of what your blog is about.

It seems crazy to say that this blog has been going for 4 years now. It certainly doesn’t feel like that long – I still enjoy the blogging experience, and I feel proud of this blog’s content.

I started blogging simply because I think a lot about dogs, and wanted to structure and share these thoughts with the wider community. I also have a big interest in dog science, and wanted to share some evidence based conclusions on this blog, too. I find the dog world is a bit bogged down with myths and anecdotal evidence, and that just doesn’t wash with me.

As for a quick description of Some Thoughts About Dogs: We love dog science, but we feel compelled to write about dog politics more often than not, and sometimes we can’t help but share more personal stories and thoughts.

2. Name one thing about your blog, or one blogging goal that you accomplished during 2013, that made you most proud.

One of my blogging goals last year was to recommit to the dog-research focus we originally strived for. However, looking back over the year, I only posted about four dog-research posts (and one of them was a guest post), which is a bit sad. One of the downsides of research blogging is that I often read research articles, and they end up not being very interesting, so do not make it to the blog.

That being said, many of the political posts I make, including submissions to government, are very research based, and involve a lot of references – so arguably, the evidence-based approach still runs true.

However, for 2013, what I would be most proud of is my post ‘How to save a swimmer puppy‘ and its success in Google rankings and its hits. When I had a swimmer puppy back in 2010, many websites online suggested euthanasia of swimmer puppies, which I knew wasn’t the only option. So, I am proud of my swimmer puppy post because I’m hoping that its view rate means that a number of puppies have been saved from alternative fates.

3. When you look at the post you wrote for last year’s Pet Blogger Challenge, or just think back over the past year, what about blogging has changed the most for you?

My employment status has changed in the last 12 months, and is likely to change my blogging. I am now working more, and working in a non-dog job, which is likely to change the availability I have to blog, and the content that comes to me. That being said, I have recently launched my own dog training business (Dog Consultancy) and so I am likely to be blogging on dog training matters a little bit more.

4. What lessons have you learned this year – from other blogs, or through your own experience – that could help us all with our own sites? If you could ask the pet blogging community for help with one challenge you’re having with your blog, what would it be?

This is a difficult question, but for other bloggers, I’d mostly encourage other blogs to follow many blogs in order to see plenty of content, which will hopefully inspire you for your own blog. I know that after having a read a few blog posts I am normally a little jazzed up to get going on my own blog.

I would like more traffic on my blog, but I also know I’ve been a bit lazy in blogging and in promotion this year – so while lack of traffic might be a ‘challenge’, it’s a self-inflicted challenge that I can’t complain too much about before I make a better effort!

5. What have you found to be the best ways to bring more traffic to your blog, other than by writing great content?

Commenting on other blogs! The pet blogging community has a very good reciprocal commenting thing going on, where (generally) if you comment on a blog, they’ll comment back.

Also, according to Google Analytics, some of my puppy posts seem to be a little bit popular, and it seems they get shared on forums a lot… So make posts like that?

6. How much time to do you spend publicizing your blog, and do you think you should spend more or less in the coming year?

Like, no time of late! So I can only spend more time from here.

7. How do you gauge whether or not what you’re writing is appealing to your audience? How do you know when it’s time to let go of a feature or theme that you’ve been writing about for a while?

With difficulty. My blog gets about 100-200 hits a day, but then I get very few comments or interactions on my blog, and everyone knows that’s the stuff that bloggers live off.

I almost don’t really care at the moment. I just want to produce content I’m proud of and that hopefully holds relevance over time. I’m not very interested in my audience right now. Maybe I’ve just become disheartened as I’ve tried to create an audience, and failed.

I stop blogging on a feature or theme when I’ve finished! Otherwise I feel like it’s an incomplete book.

8. When you’re visiting other blogs, what inspires you to comment on a post rather than just reading and moving on?

I often comment when I disagree with something, or if it’s content that makes me think, or if it describes something in a way that is more powerful than I’ve read before.

9. Do you do product reviews and/or giveaways?

If so, what do you find works best, and what doesn’t work at all?

If not, is this something you’d like to do more of? What hurdle is getting in your way?

Yes, I’ve reviewed a few products and a few books. I find products really hard to review, as I’m a rather simple kind of dog owner, and so many products are just things that wouldn’t interest me. That being said, I have dogs that are hard on toys, so I enjoy showing how pathetic some toys are out there (and encourage others to save their money!).

I haven’t done any give aways, but I am open to it. Indeed, I’m open to doing a lot more reviews, I just need to be approached. Come at me!

10. When writer’s block strikes and you’re feeling dog-tired, how do you recharge?

I don’t really get writer’s block – so far I’ve had plenty to say! But I do get lazy. Unfortunately, I just do what I want, and whenever I cease to feel lazy is when I blog. That being said, if I read something online that is dumb, I normally have to write a counter-post.

So, if you are asking, “How to you blog when you are unmotivated?” The answer is, “Get annoyed about something online and write a rebuttal. Or else just remain unmotivated.”

11. Have you ever taken a break from your blog? How did that go?

Have you ever thought about quitting your blog altogether? What makes you stay?

I’ve never taken a formal break from blogging. Sometimes I just haven’t posted for a while. This has never been a decision I’ve made, it ‘just happened’.

I don’t think about quitting this blog at all. I’d probably be pretty unhappy if I didn’t have somewhere to share my opinion when the moment strikes. I stay because I like my blog, and I like sharing my opinion, and I feel it somewhat motivates me to keep engaged with research material. All good things.

The only ‘bad thing’ about blogging is sometimes I feel slightly guilty about not blogging. But it’s very temporary.

12. What goals do you have for your blog in 2014?

Again I’ll say that I’d like to go back to the original focus of research blogging.

I’d like to commit to three posts a week: One The Week in Tweets, one research, and one ‘something else’.

But instead I’m just going to keep doing whatever I feel like at the time. I feel guilty about enough in my life – the blog’s not going to be one of them!

Until next time – thanks for stopping by.

Blogging on all things dogs, particularly dog science and dog politics.

Monthly Archives: January 2014

Cindy is an old dog that can run really fast

Pets as Gifts – Evidence not Anecdotes

The Week in Tweets – 15th January 2014

Clever Marketing Ideas for Shelters

Pet Blogger Challenge 2014