Thanks for joining us in the second instalment of ‘The Week in Tweets’.  Plenty of happenings this week in the blogging community. I hope you enjoy these links.

Give Away

Ruthless Leather is giving away a stunning, hand made leather dog collar to a rescue dog in Australia!  Follow the link for instructions for nominating a rescue dog.

Dog Rescue and Welfare

YesBiscuit! put out an Action Alert regarding making it mandatory for shelters to check for microchips and contact owners.  It’s appalling that, currently, there is not an obligation for shelters to work to reunite pets to their owners.

Love and a Six Foot Leash wrote a lovely summary post with lots of great links about fostering, with the intent to inspire fostering.  Such a great list of resources that I had to share.

A detailed and well researched article about the advantages and disadvantages of neutering.  A nicely balanced article considering the pro-neuter society and climate, it’s very interesting to read the lesser-stated cons of desexing.

Lindsay Stordahl has written a great post talking about people giving up a dog, and how it’s not always as bad as we make it out to be!  A great post that encourages us to be more understanding of those who don’t think that dogs are for life, and why that’s okay.

A thoughtful and powerful post on For the Pit Bulls.  We hear stories frequently about pets who are not dying from gas chamber (normally as people queue to adopt these ‘miracle’ pets) – and how lethal injection should be implemented as a more humane solution.  Um, perhaps we should just not kill pets?  A great post challenging gas chambers AND any other form of killing.

The No Dog About It blog looked at welfare issues surrounding surrogate dog mothers in dog cloning - most notably, many surrogate mothers will go onto to become dog meat.

Found a cool blog and rescue group, Turtle Gardens Animal Rescue blog, located in Topley, British Columbia, Canada.

Adoption (yay!) should be a sexy option for people looking for a new dog!  Peggy Frezon talks about her experiences, and how she has become an adoptive pet-parent, and we should make others consider adoption (yay!) too.

Dog Science

ScienceDaily came out with another great reader on dog science, with “Dogs read our intent“, considering science behind dogs ‘reading our minds’.

What is an Albino Dobermann?

It’s a bit out there (like lots of his stuff), but Lee Charles Kelley made a post about how oxytocin in women may have had a role in the domestication of dogs.  Some of the sciencey bits are interesting, at least.

Today I Found Out posted about how both cats and dogs see in colour.  It’s a pretty cool article, talking about lots of aspects of dog sight.

Dog Training

A fantastic post and video from Fanny Gott on using life rewards in dog trianing.  In this case, Epic was working for the reward of a whiff of a bitch in season!  Awesome and fascinating, check out the video.  Another nail in the coffin for those who insist that in heat bitches are too distracting to be at dog sports.

I recently discovered the Springforth dog blog and I couldn’t help myself but tweet a bunch of content!  They’ve got great articles on there.  The ones that I tweeted this week are “What makes a great training treat?“, “The Power of Peanut Butter“, “Creative Puppy Socialization“, and “Myth Busting: Dogs that aren’t food orientated“. Phew!

A light hearted post by Dog Zombie about classical conditioning, nicely describing its benefits.

An inspiring post by Susan Garrett asking us to compare our experiences with those of dogs in dog training.  It’s a motivating post, and if you’ve hit a plateau in your training, have a read.

Dogs and Kids

Doggone Safe posted for National Train Your Dog Month some free seminars. Great seminars!  They also made a post titled, “My dog growled at my child – now what?”

The Dogs and Storks blog came up with a thought provoking post asking parents, “Are you guilty of passive supervision?”

Dog Health

Though a limited tool at the moment in terms of breed, PetSci have created a pet BMI calculator.  An interesting idea, that seemed to be in its infancy at the moment.

Reactive Champion made a post titled “Why people are resistant to behavioural meds… And why they shouldn’t be.”  A worthwhile read for anyone with a dog with behavioural problems, considering behavioural medication.

Dr Dobia’s blog had an article on natural puppy care naturally, with interesting information for both breeders and puppy buyers.

Other Bits

I tweeted a couple of posts from Alfie’s Blog on how to help your dog love the camera, and how not to take dog photos.

It’s Blog the Change time again! Back Alley Soapbox wrote an excellent post urging change writers to write in an appealing an professional way during the challenge.