Animals Reign: Pet News You Can Use » Animal Communication

Introducing New Cats to Each Other

Vicki — Sat, 13 Feb 2010 04:19:37 +0000

I'm not sure I'm ready for this yet.

I get asked a lot how to introduce a new cat into the family, and it’s a challenge I haven’t done great with myself. So, when I saw Michele Hollow’s blog ‘Top 10 Tips for Getting Cats to Get Along’ I thought it worth sharing. Her approach is sound. Be sure not to ignore the last point, you must be patient, because it can take weeks or even months for a successful introduction.

Here is a link to her blog, Pet News and Views, http://petnewsandviews.com/2010/02/top-10-tips-for-getting-cats-to-get-along/

One additional aid would be to have an animal communicator explain to both cats the upcoming introductions.

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Dog Talk Project

Vicki — Fri, 01 Jan 2010 22:07:54 +0000

: Want to know what I think about it?

A fun new project is underway for dog owners. When I saw the announcement, my reaction was, “I wish I’d thought of that!” With the originator’s permission, I’m posting her notice in full below. The more dog owners and pet care professionals who join in the project, the more useful the information will be, so feel free to spread the word.

Introducing The Dog Talk Project

AutumnGold Consulting and Dog Training Center announces the public launch of a new dog-related website called The Dog Talk Project ( http://www.dogtalkproject.com). The Dog Talk Project, developed and owned by AutumnGold Consulting, is a web-based system of pet owner surveys designed to study the relationships between people and their dogs. The site was launched for public access on January 1st, 2010. We are starting with a set of beta-tester data that we expect will rapidly expand as new users provide us with information about their dogs and their dog-related activities, practices, and beliefs. Data will be regularly collected and analyzed to provide answers to general and specific research questions regarding owner-dog relationships, pet-owner attitudes, and owners’ understanding of dog health, behavior, nutrition, and care.

If the Dog Talk Project sounds like an activity that you might enjoy and if you are interested in telling us more about you and your dog(s), just visit the Dog Talk Project website, register (its free!) and begin taking surveys! We have plenty of fun and interesting results posted from our beta-tester group, and will add to these pages rapidly over the next several weeks and months.

Please feel welcome to send this information to other lists and to forward to friend and clients who may enjoy participating. The more data we collect, the more we can learn and understand about our unique relationships with our canine best friends!

Questions? Feel welcome to contact me at admin@dogtalkproject.com or lcase@autumngoldconsulting.com .

Linda Case
The Dog Talk Project – A Program of AutumnGold Consulting
www.dogtalkproject.com
www.autumngoldconsulting.com

Technorati Tags: dog data, relationship between people and their dogs

Top 10 dog and cat names for 2009

Vicki — Wed, 23 Dec 2009 01:57:20 +0000

Pre-holiday tension getting to you? How about something to lighten the mood, like the list of most popular and quirkiest pet names for 2009? Www.Petfinder.com, the rescue website that boasts more than 13 million adoptions since 1995, has released it’s annual lists. See if your dog’s or cat’s name is on one of them.

Hi, our names are Lucy and Buddy

Help, my pet is missing!

Vicki — Tue, 27 Oct 2009 18:53:07 +0000

Back in August — oh, so long ago, already — I wrote a post about what to do if you find a pet running loose. Today I’m going to focus on the other end of the problem, what to do if your cat or dog escapes.

Losing a pet is one of the worst experiences a pet parent can have. Grief mixes with fear and frustration in an agonizing stew of uncertainty. I know, because it happened to me one Christmas day when my dog got bored and climbed a tree to scale the fence. He found a sympathetic homeless man and took up residence for the next six months. I got lucky when eventually the man tired of the responsibility and called to return Copper.

Most people aren’t so lucky. I get frequent calls as an animal communicator to help find lost animals. It is hard not to take on the owners’ angst and the animal’s confusion, and is often emotionally draining work. That is one avenue to find your lost pet, but I want to suggest several other strategies.

The first step is preventive. Be sure your pet is microchipped. Then even if Fluffy escapes just after a bath, before the collar and tags go back on, she can be identified.

Once your pet is lost, scout your area in a few-mile radius for signs. Most pets don’t wander far from home even over several days, although some do and others are picked up by well-meaning passers-by and taken home to an entirely different community.

Post your own LOST (CAT) (DOG) signs with a photo if you have one, your phone number, and the date of posting.

At the same time, call all the shelters within a 50 mile radius. Do it daily. Some have a hotline for lost pets, others will require you go in person to look through the kennels. Do this at least every three days, because that is often the stray hold period, after which the animal can be adopted out or euthanized. Usually the latter doesn’t happen that quickly unless the shelter is overly full.

Call local vets to find out if your pet has been brought in injured.

Go online if you can and post your pet with organizations that broadcast lost and found pets. Here are a few free ones to start. I am not endorsing any of these, but list them as possibilities:

www.Petfinder.com
MissingPet.net
Pets911.com
LostPetsos.org
CraigsList.com

Searching on foot can feel like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack for the average pet owner. However, skilled trackers are available in most parts of the country. I worked with Debbie Hall in Mansefield, MA on several lost animals. She did the ground tracking in collaboration with my animal communication.

In the Seattle area we have pet detective Kat Albrecht, founder of Missing Pet Partnership. Her website, www.MissingPetPartnership.orgoffers a national directory of pet detectives who use scent tracking dogs that can follow a scent for up to three or four weeks in optimal conditions. If you’re interested in training your own dog to become a pet detective, you might pick up Ms. Albrecth’s training manual, Dog Detectives: Train Your Dog to Find Lost Pets.

And be sure to ask neighbors and friends to keep an eye out for your pet and report any sitings.

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These two can teach us a thing or two about friendship!

Vicki — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 19:28:58 +0000

I’m not big on forwarding cutesy photos and videos, but this one simply melted my heart. Take 3 minutes and make your day a little happier watching this interspecies friendship unfold. Link thanks to Kim Komando.

http://videos.komando.com/2009/09/29/the-orangutan-the-hound-dog/

Technorati Tags: interspecies friendship, hound dog and orangutan love, animal play and sharing

What do I do with a stray dog?

Vicki — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 01:47:58 +0000

At least twice a month I get calls from friends and clients to ask my advice on what to do with the stray dog they found wandering in their neighborhood. An article in this month’s Dog Fancy inspired me to share my own experience reuniting strays with their owners.

Ahead of all the following suggestions is the obvious but sometimes overlooked need to be careful approaching a strange dog. Don’t count on a wag to mean the dog is friendly, but watch all the body language. If you have to chase the dog, it’s safer to call animal control and give them the location you last saw the dog.

If the dog comes to you in a friendly posture and you can get a leash on it, here are some steps to find its owner.

If you don’t have a spare leash handy, you can make a temporary leash out of a belt, a piece of rope or anything similar.
Once leashed, walk the dog around the neighborhood. Most dogs have not strayed far from home. Either the dog will show you where he lives, or knocking on doors could produce a neighbor who recognizes him. This method often brings quick success.
If that doesn’t work, take the dog home and snap some digital photos to make into a poster. If you don’t have a digital camera, make a poster anyway, using clip art of the outline or silhouette of a dog. Date the poster; put your phone number on it; and add a general description of the dog, including overall color and approximate size. Withhold some marking or other piece of identifying information so that the caller can prove to you they are the owner. Post the flyers all around the neighborhood within a 5-10 block radius.
If you find the owner through your poster, please go back and remove them from wherever you’ve tacked them up.
While waiting for a response to the posters, check the internet websites that help reconnect lost pets with their owners. Here are some of them: www.pets911.com, www.FidoFinder.com; www.found-pets.org; www.lostandpound.com; www.missingpetpartnership.com.
Call local shelters and rescue organizations to find out if the owners have reported their dog lost.
Don’t be afraid to take the dog to an animal control agency. That is the local place owners will call looking for their dog. Ask if the shelter will allow you to reclaim the dog after the stray hold period if you choose to, so that you can ensure it won’t be euthanized if the owner doesn’t come forward.
If all else fails, contact an animal communicator for help learning where the dog came from.
Give yourself a pat on the back for making one family’s day, and possibly saving a dog’s life!

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Help, My Cat is Peeing Outside the Litter Box!

Vicki — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 08:08:58 +0000

In the past two days two people have contacted me about problems with their cats urinating outside the box. This is a difficult and frustrating problem that often results in cats ending up back at the animal shelter. I realized a series on cat elimination problems might help some cats and their owners stay together. Today I’m going to talk about cats who get into the litter box but then pee over the edge onto the floor. Many of these remedies will address other kinds of house soiling, too, but future articles will add tips for particular kinds of soiling, so stay tuned.

I’ve run into this problem of urinating over the edge of the box a number of times in my pet sitting and animal communication business and have seen a variety of causes and solutions. Sometimes the problem is physical and sometimes behavioral.

Is it a medical problem?

It might be related to urinary tract infections (UTIs). A cat with a UTI may stand right next to you and urinate on the floor to tell you something is wrong. Or he might pee over the edge of the box to make his statement. If he is doing it in the box intermitently, the cause could still be physical. Occasionally a cat doesn’t get completely over a UTI but improves a little, then relapses, resulting in intermittent soiling. Be sure any bacterial infection has been completely eradicated. Also be sure the vet has ruled out crystals or bladder stones.

Or a behavioral problem?

Did you change anything before this started? Did someone new join the household? Did you change the location of the box or the type of litter, add liners or stop using liners? Did it start after a move to a new home? If the problem is related to a change, it is probably behavioral.

In either case, urinating over the edge of the box might be easier to accommodate than to solve.

Cleanliness is next to…litter box perfection?

First, be sure to clean all traces of previous urine deposits. Cats will often re-mark the same place they’ve left their scent before. White vinegar is a very effective neutralizer for the smell of urine, and some of the commercial products containing enzymes can be helpful. Anti-Icky-Poo is my personal favorite of the commercial products, but it is considerably pricier than white vinegar.

Are you scooping regularly and keeping the box really clean,with an unscented cleaning product? Cats in the wild have a natural instinct to scent-mark with glands in the pads of their feet, so to keep their feet clean they might stand toward the edge of the box to find clean litter. If you don’t already clean the box daily, give kitty a break and try that. For weekly cleaning of the box, never use Lysol, bleach, detergent, scented soap, or ammonia. Plain water with at most a tablespoon of vinegar, then rinsed with plain water is better for cleaning litter boxes.

The box

One cat I did animal communication with about this problem wanted two boxes, one for pooping and one for peeing. That promptly solved his urinary acting-out.

Surrounding the litter box with puppy potty pads is another possible solution. If you have disposable baby diapers
on hand, they can be used too, but be sure they are unscented. Many cats don’t like perfumed scents, including scented litter. If your cat only urinates off the back side, you might try the potty pads only on that side, so that she doesn’t have to walk on the pads while getting in and out of the box. As you know, cats aren’t fond of change, so the more you can do to minimize the appearance of change, the better.

If she won’t tolerate the unscented potty pads either, then you might try surrounding the back and sides of her litter box with bath towels to absorb the urine and make cleanup easier. You can lay an old shower curtain under the box and towels to be sure none of the urine gets absorbed into the floor. Or instead of plastic and potty pads, simply set the litter box on a large rubber-backed throw rug that can be run through the wash (with a little white vinegar).

Sometimes a bigger box will help, but if a bigger box hasn’t solved the problem, try a box with a cover on it. For some cats a cover works; however, some will just turn and pee out the door.

You can put the litter box inside a bigger box, like one of the under-the-bed storage boxes. Look for a box with a flat bottom and low sides. You can even put some litter in the outside box to make it easier to clean up any urine that spills over.

Some people have remedied this problem with a taller litter box. A large, deep tote box can serve the purpose inexpensively. You can cut a doorway in the side or front for the cat to enter.

Other remedies

Although results with pheromone diffusers are mixed, and they can be expensive, it might be worth a try. Most good pet stores sell them. Or try a calming herbal or flower essence remedy like Rescue Remedy.

After ruling out medical causes, you might have an animal communicator talk with your cat to ask why she’s doing it. In my experience, about half the time house soiling can be solved by talking with the cat.

If all else fails, you might ask your vet about anti-anxiety drugs for kitty.

Do You Have Other ideas?

If you’ve found other solutions that work or know of a good resource for help, please add a comment below. You might just save a cat from ending up in a shelter.

Technorati Tags: why cat pees outside the litter box, remedies for house soiling, using animal communication to solve inappropriate urination