Approximately every week, I make a post detailing the links I shared on my Twitter.  I also use the Tweet of the Week to highlight my favourite link.  This is the post where you get a cup of tea before you start and prepare yourself to waste an hour.

Tweet of the Week

Sorry for, two weeks in a row, picking a non-doggy link to share with you. But this is really cool!  You’ll be hooked from the first line: “In 1964, a geologist in the Nevada wilderness discovered the oldest living thing on earth, after he killed it.” The story of how a 5,000 year old tree was cut down, and then a description of other awesome old trees. A fascinating article that makes you feel young!  From the Collectors Weekly: Read My Rings: The Oldest Living Tree Tells All.

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Each week, I summarise postings from my Twitter account, and pick the best as the ‘Tweet of the Week’.  Some colossal reading for those with a couple of hours on their hands.

Tweet of the Week

For something different, it’s not a doggy tweet of the week this week.  Instead, it’s about a little bird called the fairy wren who has developed an incredible mechanism to avoid raising cuckoos.  Fairy wrens sing a particular song to their eggs, and when their eggs hatch, their babies in turn sing this song.  This reassures the parents that they are raising the right chicks.  However, if a cuckoo was to lay its egg in the nest, they generally don’t spend enough time to learn the song.  This means that, when a cuckoo hatches, it neglects to sign the ‘special song’, and the fairy wrens will abandon their nest, thereby not raising the introducer offspring. Pretty cool!  Read more here: Fairy wrens teach secret passwords to their unborn chicks to tell them apart from cuckoo imposters.

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Welcome to our only weekly (ish) segment: The Week in Tweets! This is where I summarise my weekly tweets (from my Twitter account) and choose my favourite as the Tweet of the Week.

Tweet of the Week

There were a lot of rescue posts this week that caught my attention and could become the ‘tweet of the week’, but Lindsay from ThatMutt won out with her post “Community support for no kill“. To me, this is a perfect example of no-kill, open-admission sheltering at work.  In an emergency situation, Animal Allies Humane Society took in 63 cats.  They made room, not by killing, but by waiving adoption fees and going to the media and community for help.  A brilliant good news story that makes me believe in the possibilities of no-kill.

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This is Some Thoughts About Dogs’ weekly segment where we share all the links shared on my Twitter for the past week. Sit down with a cuppa and enjoy.

Tweet of the Week

Could dogs and puppies be languishing in shelters because of rescue scrutiny?  Though we all know that rescues need to screen buyers and have the absolute right, and obligation, to find the most suitable home for their animals, a long running concern of mine is that rescue groups could be too fussy.  The relatively new blog, Team Unruly, shared an article titled Not Good Enough, looking at this very issue. This blog is written by a number of talented doggy people, but Michelle is the author of this post. She talks about the rigid requirements that rescue hold, that may prevent pets from finding homes.

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