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by Rahgwood - advice.com
Miniature Yorkshire Terriers are some of the cutest little doggies on the planet: they are incredibly small, fitting in a purse or hand bag; they scurry around on little short legs; they have little sharp pointed ears, a big head, and huge eyes. They are also extremely loyal and loving.
Watching a Yorkie roll around and play, his paws flaying in the air as he pretends to attack your hand, is one of the great pleasures of life. It is adorable when you see his tiny three pound frame running headlong at a Great Dane. A Miniature Yorkshire Terrier is most definitely like an anime animal come to life, however, there are some things one should be wary of with their Yorkie.
First of all, the extreme loyalty of a Miniature Yorkshire Terrier can sometimes be a little overwhelming, for example, when you run into the corner store tied up and he is yapping at you the whole time. Afterwards, he will then be angry and you will have your Yorkie nipping at your ankles and jumping up on you. These are very needy dogs.
Secondly, Miniature Yorkshire Terriers are very anti-social dogs, except for their mama or papa of course. They tend not to get along with children and are generally very shy around other people. They are mostly fine with other dogs though, which is good.
Third, the Yorkie's stomach is not that big, so his food needs to be packed full of nutrients. It is important to buy your Yorkie high protein small bites with meat or fish as the first ingredient.
Fourth, Miniature Yorkshire Terriers are prone to having very bad teeth. This can result in very smelly breath, and a fear of allowing them to lick you. It is imperative that you start brushing their teeth, or at least giving them dental chews as soon as possible. Brushing your Yorkie's teeth, however, can be a nightmare for both you and the dog.
Which brings us to our next point, a Yorkie's hair. Miniature Yorkshire Terriers are hypoallergenic dogs, which means they grow hair instead of fur. This is a good thing for people with allergies to dog fur, but, on the other hand, it creates some problems. A Yorkie's hair does not stop growing, and if not properly groomed, it begins to dread. Generally, it is simpler to keep your Yorkie with short hair, but cutting it can be horrific. Your Yorkie will hide under the bed in shame the second he gets away.
In the end, if you are considering getting a Miniature Yorkshire Terrier remember that these are very needy, vain, but adorable puppies. You should feel very lucky if you have acquired one.
by Kirsten Taylor - PawNation.com
Dogs and cats may be the world's most popular pets, but in Argentina, pet frogs may be gaining in popularity. Officials in the central Argentinean town of San Luis are urging residents to adopt frogs to help keep mosquitoes in check, reports National Geographic.
Argentina has recently been struck by an outbreak of dengue fever, a potentially deadly disease spread by mosquitoes. So far this year, Argentina has reported 20,000 cases of dengue fever, including five deaths. That's where the frogs come in. The slippery amphibians won't play fetch or bark at intruders, but they will eat bugs – lots of them. One hungry frog can reportedly swallow 15,000 insects in a single season, including plenty of disease-carrying mosquitoes.
San Luis city councilor Daniel Sosa is now handing out frogs for free. He hopes residents will make a home for them in their gardens instead of fighting mosquitoes with harsh chemical pesticides. Not just any old frog will do, however. Argentinean biologist Ana Brigada cautions that if people leap at the idea of frog adoption, they should choose species native to their locales.
Australia learned that lesson the hard way. In the 1930s, Australians shipped in cane toads, which originally hail from South and Central America. The hope was that the transplanted toads would control an infestation of pesky beetles in the sugarcane fields. The toads had a different idea. They quickly spread across the continent, feasting on everything from mice to lizards to native frogs. The warty critters also produce a toxin that can poison wildlife and household pets that try to eat them. More than 200 million cane toads are now hopping around Down Under.
So whether you're in Argentina or elsewhere, take note. If you're thinking of adopting a free-range frog, please pick a species from your neck of the woods. Mosquitoes, beware.
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FoxNews.com
If you've ever wondered who's in control, you or your cat, a new study points to the obvious. It's your cat.
Household cats exercise this control with a certain type of urgent-sounding, high-pitched meow, according to the findings.
This meow is actually a purr mixed with a high-pitched cry. While people usually think of cat purring as a sign of happiness, some cats make this purr-cry sound when they want to be fed.
The study showed that humans find these mixed calls annoying and difficult to ignore.
"The embedding of a cry within a call that we normally associate with contentment is quite a subtle means of eliciting a response," said Karen McComb of the University of Sussex in southern England. "Solicitation purring is probably more acceptable to humans than overt meowing, which is likely to get cats ejected from the bedroom."
They know us
Previous research has shown similarities between cat cries and human infant cries.
McComb suggests that the purr-cry may subtly take advantage of humans' sensitivity to cries they associate with nurturing offspring. Also, including the cry within the purr could make the sound "less harmonic and thus more difficult to habituate to," she said.
McComb got the idea for the study from her experience with her own cat, who would consistently wake her up in the mornings with a very insistent purr.
After speaking with other cat owners, she learned that some of their cats also made the same type of call.
As a scientist who studies vocal communication in mammals, she decided to investigate the manipulative meow.
Tough to test
Setting up the experiments wasn't easy. While the felines used purr-cries around their familiar owners, they were not eager to make the same cries in front of strangers.
So McComb and her team trained cat owners to record their pets' cries — capturing the sounds made by cats when they were seeking food and when they were not.
In all, the team collected recordings from 10 different cats.
The researchers then played the cries back for 50 human participants, not all of whom owned cats.
They found that humans, even if they had never had a cat themselves, judged the purrs recorded while cats were actively seeking food — the purrs with an embedded, high-pitched cry — as more urgent and less pleasant than those made in other contexts.
When the team re-synthesised the recorded purrs to remove the embedded cry, leaving all else unchanged, the human subjects' urgency ratings for those calls decreased significantly.
McComb said she thinks this cry occurs at a low level in cats' normal purring, "but we think that cats learn to dramatically exaggerate it when it proves effective in generating a response from humans."
In fact, not all cats use this form of purring at all, she said, noting that it seems to most often develop in cats that have a one-on-one relationship with their owners rather than those living in large households, where their purrs might be overlooked.
By MALCOLM RITTER – google.com
NEW YORK (AP) — A cat's purr normally says, "I'm happy." But a new study suggests some purrs send cat owners a much different message: "Feed me!"
Researchers found that purrs of hungry cats included a higher-pitched sound, somewhat like a cry or meow. They played recordings of these purrs from 10 cats to 50 human volunteers. Even people who'd never owned a cat found them to be more urgent and less pleasant than contented purrs from the same animals.
These food-seeking purrs may exploit the way humans naturally respond to a baby's cry, the researchers suggest. Not all cats use this strategy, but some apparently learn to turn it on when they see it's effective in getting a human to feed them, Karen McComb of the University of Sussex in England said in a statement.
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By CHRISTINE EVANS - Palm Beach Post Staff Writer
Is health care going to the dogs? (Or cats?)
Nope, it's not. By way of example we offer up the case of one S.W., a 14-year-old feline from Century Village who was adopted by his loving owner when he was just a few weeks old and an abused castaway living outside an abandoned building in North Carolina.
Pet care costs in Palm Beach County
Here's a sampling of vet-care costs; prices can vary depending on an animal's age and needs, and financially strapped pet owners should keep an eye out for occasional reduced-fee clinics.
• Hip surgery for a large dog: $4,000-$6,000
• Tumor removal, cat: $1,500-$2,500
• Post-surgical rehabilitation: $300
• Full blood-work screening for dogs and cats: $150-$225
• Annual canine vaccines, heartworm exam and fecal exam for parasites: $176
• Annual feline vaccines and fecal exam: $116
• Annual wellness exam for dogs and cats: $45-$70
A few years ago, S.W.'s "mom" - we will honor patient confidentiality here and not divulge full names at the family's request - noticed he was beginning to pull out his hair and eat it. "He had bald spots all over."
Off he went to a vet in North Carolina, where the family still lived at the time. S.W. was told to change his diet and take medication for his "nerves," which didn't help much. His mom held back on getting tests done until she finished moving to Florida - but by then the economy had crashed.
Fortunately, S.W. seemed to be improving, "but he needed his vaccines," his 75-year-old owner recalled, "so I got out the Yellow Pages."
She found herself a terrific vet, but she also found out that S.W. was not recovering sufficiently: He began to vomit incessantly, until "his little chin was all swollen." She tried hairball medicine, antibiotics, X-rays, "and that's when the vet saw little slivers of bone in his intestine."
He needed more tests.
And there's the rub. "What he really needs," his owner said, "is something I don't have. Money."
The tests would cost several hundred dollars, at least. She is on a budget. She is devoted.
She is not alone.
Nationwide, and certainly in pet-centric Palm Beach County - home to horses and hounds and the occasional hog - pet lovers worry about how they will pay the tab for everything from routine vaccinations to the mind-boggling array of diagnostic tests and sophisticated treatments now available not only to humans but also to "patients" who hail from the kingdom Animalia.
"I used to hand people a $300 bill and say I'm really sorry about this," said vet Xavier Garcia, who owns the El Cid Animal Clinic in West Palm Beach. "Now, it's more like $1,500. People want the best for their pets, but guess what? The best comes with a price."
"We're looking at this and going, wow," said Mark Kumpf, past president of the National Animal Control Association and director of a county animal shelter near Dayton, Ohio, where "surrenders" are up 20 percent. "It's very scary."
Even beloved family pets are being given up, Kumpf said, and sometimes their owners don't want to admit why.
"The person at the counter might say, 'This is a stray, I found it.' But then you notice the animal is immaculately groomed and the children are crying, and you know they're too embarrassed to say, 'This is our family dog, we love him, but we can't care for him.'"
Vets for their part often try to find solutions by presenting owners with less expensive treatments - "going coach instead of first class," as Garcia put it . They might recommend pet insurance or credit programs to customers who qualify, or even offer reduced-fee clinics.
Down in Boca Raton, veterinarian Marcia Martin of the Calusa Veterinary Center did just that when she hosted a Pets in Need clinic that offered full exams and vaccines.
"We really wanted to find hardworking people who under normal circumstances would pay for their pets' care but now just can't," she said.
She found them all right.
One woman who called to inquire about the $25 clinic said she was squatting in a condo with two dogs and no air-conditioning; another said she was a stroke victim who had not yet qualified for disability and was losing her home to foreclosure.
"These are real stories," Martin said. "Real people."
Real pets.
In a country where 77 million dogs and 93 million cats shack up with humans, the trickle down effect of a crisis economy is unavoidable.
"I'm seeing more people forgoing annual exams and vaccinations, which means I'm seeing a lot more ill pets," veterinarian Celia Oberto of West Palm Beach said. "Instead of catching something early, I'm catching it late."
Canine parvovirus, highly contagious and potentially deadly, is on the rise, she added, because more people are skipping the relatively inexpensive vaccines. This summer, Florida and Mississippi struggled to control outbreaks.
While some vets worry about going out of business if they forgive too many debts or cut too many deals, some animal lovers fret - or seethe - that they're getting hit up with unfair charges.
A veteran stable owner and barn manager in Palm Beach County said she has found that "what used to be a $100 call is suddenly $300 or $400. The vets come out and they find all these things to do to the animal.
"The final bill is absurd, and they want to be paid immediately. They call and call and call until they get it.
"It didn't used to be that way."
Well, true.
In this world, very little is the way it used to be, and yet, occasionally, miraculously, against all odds, a happy ending pops up out of nowhere and a member of the kingdom Animalia wins a reprieve.
This just might be the case with S.W., the vomiting cat.
His adoring mother had just beseeched family members to help pay for an expensive ultrasound should S.W. need one when something unexpected happened.
The little guy started to get better.
"It's too early to say for sure," his mom said. "But I think he's going to be fine. Isn't that wonderful?"
It is indeed. And cheaper, too.
By: Rebecca Frank - life123.com
Most people are scared of bats, but some desire to have them as pets. It is essential to learn about these creatures before you begin to care for one.
The Bottom Line: Bats Belong Outdoors!
The most important thing to know about having a bat for a household pet is that you can’t. Like most endangered animals, it’s illegal to take a bat from the wild in the United States.
Bats that are kept as pets often don’t survive for more than a year, even though they can live for up to twenty-five years in their natural habitat. Pet bats can’t care for their young or reproduce and often suffer from loneliness and malnutrition. Bats are prone to rabies, which makes them a possible danger to your health. Because of these complications, even licensed rehabilitators are required to have a special permit from the United States Department of Agriculture.
Although you won’t be able to keep a bat as your personal pet, it’s still possible to care for one in your own backyard. Bat houses (similar to bird houses) can be bought online or easily constructed at home to attract bats to the area. Having bats around is actually beneficial, too. A single bat can eat up to 1,000 insects every hour, making one a perfect addition to your garden.
Myths and Misunderstandings
Bats may not be “cuddly playmates,” but they are easily one of the most misunderstood creatures on the planet. There are countless myths about bats that have been reinforced by scary stories and horror movies, but very few of them are fact. For example, many people believe that bats are vicious and prey on humans. In reality, only three species of bats drink blood and none of them ever intentionally bites humans for food. Instead, these bats feed on small mammals, reptiles and, sometimes, other bats.
Another common bat myth is that they’re blind, but they can actually see better than humans can in the dark. Bats are also sometimes called “rodents,” when they are more closely related to primates.
Protecting Bats
Several bat species are endangered and many more are declining in population. This is due mostly to intentional killing, disturbance of their habitat and use of pesticide on insects. Many wildlife protection organizations encourage bat-lovers to stop using pesticides and to buy or make bat houses. In providing them with a safe and well-maintained environment, you can help keep these fascinating animals from extinction.
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By Kevin Heathfield
Finally, after much nagging and pulling on your sleeve, you have finally decided to have it their way and give the kids a canine playmate. Aside from providing them with an exciting new playmate, having a dog around can also teach them to grow up into responsible and nature-loving adults. The cause is good, but to achieve this, you have to be careful about the dog breed that you will ultimately take home to your tots. You need to know the best dog breeds young children will love and like to grow up with.
Following are some of the timeless family favorites:
• The Shih-Tzu. The Shih-Tzu is a very outgoing and enthusiastic breed. It has a lithe and sprightly personality that fits children perfectly. Aside from that, they can't help but be smart, too. Best of all, they are low-maintenance because once they have been trained or used to the rules of the house; you can pretty much leave them alone.
• The Pug. The Pug is probably one of the most congenial breeds. Pugs are also warm and rather demonstrative. They can irksome when the weather is or humid, though. Unlike other toy breeds, pugs are also able to maintain their calm. They are also low-maintenance and require little brushing or exercise.
• The Cavalier King Charles Spaniel. This breed is one of the best playmates that your child can ever get from the pet shop. Aside from being sprightly, the breed is also affectionate. They don't have trouble adjusting to the lifestyle of their owners, and can therefore be trained with ease. The disadvantages include high maintenance, which requires regular brushing of its coat, and special attention to the heart, which are known to be the common cause of illness.
• The Border Terrier. This breed is small but packed with so much vigor, which makes them a great companion for the whole family, especially the playful kids. It has a short coat, which means maintenance is on the low end. They are typically dependable as watchdogs, but they may exhibit some of the annoying characteristics of terriers, like digging.
• The Beagle. Beagles are by nature a cheerful breed. They also love being around people and interacting with them, making them the perfect canine companion for the entire family. Training beagles could be a challenge though. They are primarily scent hounds-a characteristic that may become destructive during training. So be prepared to restrain a beagle the moment it picks up a familiar scent because it will likely shut down and pursue the scent to the end.
• The Staffordshire Bull Terrier. This breed is characterized by a good, muscular build, which gives it the energy that it is most famous for. While they can be very active, Staffordshire bull terriers can be patient and loving around children, and has been known to be a loyal canine companion for the family. They are a smart and brave breed, and as such, can be rather confrontational or aggressive around other dogs.
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Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Kevin_Heathfield
By Doug M Stewart
An average horse may cost only $3000 to buy, but over its working live can easily cost $100,000 to take care of. I'm often amazed at people who feel that cannot spend a couple of thousand dollars more for the horse they really want, considering that the purchase price is perhaps 5% or less of the cost of owning a horse.
The typical costs of owning a horse are:
- Professional Stabling. Depending on where you live, a professional stable will charge between $250 and $1000 per month to stable a horse. This is $3000 to $12000 per year. Over 20 years, a grand total sixty thousand to a quarter million.
- Self-Stabling. Of course, if you have enough land, you can build a stall and keep the horse yourself. Although this is cheaper than professional stabling (as you do the work rather than pay someone else), you will need not only the stall but also storage facilities for hay, bedding, saddle, tack and miscellaneous items. You will also need to purchase bedding and hay, which will run you $100 or more per month.
- You will also need to purchase minerals and salt, as well as paying for water and electricity (allow another $40 per month). Finally, the work which would have been done by the professional stable (e.g. mucking out stables) will likely take you a half-hour per day just for the basic activities.
- Vet Costs. Your horses should be inoculated once per year, de-wormed 3 times per year, and have a dental checkup annually. These basic items will cost $200 to $300 per year. Should the horse become ill, medical costs can range from $200 to $8000 (e.g. for a case of colic requiring corrective surgery).
- Farrier. Horse hooves need to be trimmed every 2 months (cost $30 each time) and if shoes are required these cost about $30 additional. Shoes are usually required if you ride your horse out on a regular basis, so allow $360 per year farrier costs.
- Insurance. Third party accident insurance is a legal requirement in some countries.
- In addition to the legal requirements, you may wish to insure against other items (e.g. death, theft, incapacitating illness). Basic insurance costs about $40 per month.
- Equipment. To ride your horse you will need saddle, rugs, tack, and your own riding clothes. These will run you about $2000 to purchase a basis set, plus one must allow for repair or replacement costs if one rides frequently.
- Miscellaneous. Horse sprays, fly sheets, cleaning solutions and so on can be expected to run a minimum of $200-$300 per year.
In total, one is looking at a minimum cost of $2000 (if self-stabling) or $4000 (professional stable) just for keeping the horse. If your horse becomes seriously ill, these costs can double. In addition to the actual costs of keeping the horse, there are costs for using it (e.g. training for you, training for the horse, show or competition costs).
Consequently, when buying a horse, one needs to think not only of the purchase price, but more importantly of the costs of keeping and caring for it over a period of years. If these costs are too high, it may be worthwhile looking at alternatives (e.g. sharing a horse between two or more owners).
Doug Stewart is the author of WOWHORSES, a website on Horse Care topics.
Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Doug_M_Stewart
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