White Mountain College for Pets - Blog
The Animal Mind in Human Terms
Posted by Mike on June 11, 2011 under 1. Info Collection, 3. Class Status | 
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Currently raining in Plymouth with a forecast of 100% rain for the rest of the day. Soooooo Agility is postponed until next Saturday.
Mike
Posted by Mike on October 9, 2010 under 1. Info Collection | Be the First to Comment
Metacam Manufacturer Warns Against Repeated Use in Cats: “
Metacam (meloxicam) is a non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drug (NSAID). NSAIDs most frequently are used to treat pain and inflammation associated with surgery or arthritis. NSAIDs also may be used to treat many other forms of acute and chronic pain.
Metacam is one of many different NSAIDs used in veterinary medicine. Other commonly used NSAIDs include Rimadyl (carprofen), aspirin, Deramaxx, and Previcox.
All NSAIDs work in essentially the same way. And all NSAIDs have the potential to cause the same side effects. The most common side effect of NSAIDs is upset stomach. However, NSAIDs also have been linked to potentially fatal problems including kidney failure, liver failure, and severe gastrointestinal problems (perforating ulcers).
Cats are especially sensitive to and intolerant of NSAIDs. I therefore was hopeful but simultaneously skeptical several years ago when I heard reports that some practitioners were prescribing Metacam to cats for long-term use. I had hoped that it would be safe for the cats involved, but I had a nagging fear that it wouldn’t be.
It turns out that long-term use of Metacam is not safe in cats. In fact, Boehringer Ingelheim Vetmedica, Inc. (the producer of Metacam in the USA) recently sent me a letter stating that Metacam should not be used more than once in a cat.
The company will be adding a new warning to its Metacam product inserts. Here it is:
Warning: Repeated use of meloxicam in cats has been associated with acute renal failure and death. Do not administer additional doses of injectable or oral meloxicam to cats.
If your cat currently takes Metacam, I recommend that you contact your veterinarian about this matter immediately.
“
(Via Vet Blog: Information and Advice from Dr. Eric Barchas, DVM.)
Posted by Mike on June 12, 2010 under 1. Info Collection, 3. Class Status | Be the First to Comment
A few questions have been posed regarding our arranged activity schedule.
Walks, hikes and other outings are just arranged by us. That’s the end of our involvement. We set the the time and place - provide a map of the area if possible, but that’s it! We don’t offer any training during these outings and sometime a rep. from College for Pets may not even be there.
Outings are held rain or shine, although if it’s a particularly exciting location, we might schedule a second outing, should the weather not cooperate.
Check the current schedule on the activities page of the website.
Posted by Mike on March 4, 2010 under 1. Info Collection | Be the First to Comment
Social Cognition in Dogs, or How did Fido get so smart? « The Thoughtful Animal: “The Thoughtful Animal
exploring thought and cognition in the non-human animal (and sometimes the human animal, too!)
AboutRecognitionMy Posts on LAist
Posted by: Jason | February 25, 2010
Social Cognition in Dogs, or How did Fido get so smart?
Figure 1: Dogs are pretty intelligent.
Domesticated dogs seem to have an uncanny ability to understand human communicative gestures. If you point to something the dog zeroes in on the object or location you’re pointing to (whether it’s a toy, or food, or to get his in-need-of-a-bath butt off your damn bed and back onto his damn bed). Put another way, if your attention is on something, or if your attention is directed to somewhere, dogs seem to be able to turn their attention onto that thing or location as well.
Figure 2: My friend (and Presentation blogger) Les Posen and his dog Shrek, who is attending to the same newspaper as his owner.
Amazingly, dogs seem to be better at this than primates (including our nearest cousins, the chimpanzee”
Posted by Mike on under 1. Info Collection | Be the First to Comment
Origin of Small Dogs Pinned Down | LiveScience: ”
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Origin of Small Dogs Pinned Down
By Andrea Thompson, LiveScience Senior Writer
posted: 01 March 2010 09:24 am ET
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The ancestor of all those Chihuahuas, spaniels and tiny terriers likely came from the Middle East, a new study finds.
All domestic dog breeds that exist in the world today in their myriad forms are the result of the domestication of the gray wolf. And gradually, as humans selected for traits they wanted in their dogs — herding ability, particular temperaments and size — dogs diversified.
Sponsored Links Pure Breed Dogs at Bing™Sort Dogs by Size, Temperament, and More. Try Visual Search Today! www.Bing.com/VisualSearch Small Animal TherapyAdvanced Laser therapy for Pain management, wounds & rehabilitation www.Compani”
Posted by Mike on February 11, 2010 under 1. Info Collection | Be the First to Comment
Giant Hamster: pictures of Caplin Rous the pet capybara at home in Texas: “In pictures: Caplin Rous the pet capybara at home in Texas.”
Posted by Mike on February 3, 2010 under 1. Info Collection | Be the First to Comment
Baby gorilla pictured ‘relaxing’ in human-like pose: “It’s a hard life for some but not for this baby gorilla pictured relaxing in a
human-like pose resting in the sun.”
Posted by Mike on February 1, 2010 under 1. Info Collection | Be the First to Comment
Cats manipulate their owners with a cry embedded in a purr [Not Exactly Rocket Science]:While dogs can often be taught new tricks, cat-owners will be all too aware that it can be very difficult to persuade them to do something they don’t want to do. Eddie Izzard summed it up best in his legendary Pavlov’s cat sketch, where felines are quite capable of outfoxing (outcatting?) eminent Welsh-Russian psychologists. Real cats may be less devious, but only just - new research suggests that they are very skilled at getting their human owners to do their bidding.
When they want food, domestic cats will often purr in a strangely plaintive way that their owners find difficult to ignore. By analysing the structure of these calls, Karen McComb from the University of Sussex has found out why. On the surface, the ’solicitation purrs’ are based on the same low-pitched sounds that contented moggies make, but embedded within them is a high-pitched signal that sounds like a cry or a meow. It’s this hidden signal that makes the purr of a hungry cat so irresistible to humans.
McComb has a long history of research into animal communication and she has studied the calls of African elephants, red deer, lions and macaques. But it was her own cat, Pepo (pictured above), who provided the inspiration for this study.
‘He consistently woke me up in the mornings with very insistent purring,’ she said.”I wondered why this purring sounded so annoying and was so difficult to ignore.’ Talking with other cat owners, I found that some of them also had cats who showed strikingly similar behaviour.’ As I was an academic who actually worked on vocal communication [in mammals], I had the right background, tools and collaborators to tackle this question directly.’
Read the rest of this post… | Read the comments on this post…“
(Via ScienceBlogs: Life Science.)
Posted by Mike on under 1. Info Collection | Be the First to Comment
Now that you have determined the object you would like your dog to locate, we can begin to teach the dog to discriminate the scent of your specific object. For this tutorial, we will use a small stick that has been “primed” with a couple drops of vanilla scent. Remember that you don’t have to use a stick, but can use any object you desire. I recommend “priming” the object with a specific scent, if it doesn’t have one naturally. Over time we will decrease the amount of “priming” scent that we apply, but that will be addressed in a later tutorial.
Begin with the stick in your hand and the dog nearby. Hold out the stick and soon as the dog’s nose touches the stick ( which should happen rather quickly, to investigate the new object ), mark the moment with a “good!” or a clicker click ( if the dog is clicker trained ), and offer a small piece of food reward. Retract the stick and move a few feet away. Repeat the exercise in this manner five more times.
By this point, your dog is likely associating that touching the stick earns both praise and treat. Work on this a few times each day, then watch for part three of this tutorial.
Questions during the process? Please don’t hesitate to comment or send a message!
At the end of this tutorial series, we will be accepting video of your dog’s progress to be posted in our video section and possibly included in one of our online lessons.
