Fear Free Happy Homes
Reading Time: 2 minutes Increasingly people are keeping cats indoors only. More than 65 percent of the feline population never goes outside, according to the American Pet Products Association. But that still leaves millions of cats who go outdoors, and cats being cats, some will climb trees in search of the highest vantage point in the neighborhood, to escape […]
Reading Time: 4 minutes Do you jump at unexpected loud noises? It’s adaptive for humans and other animals to startle at sudden loud sounds. We might run the other way or hide if we didn’t understand what a certain sound was. The same thing happens with many of our pets when they hear fireworks go off. It’s not that […]
Reading Time: 3 minutes It’s a reality that not everyone wants to hear: Not all dog parks and dog beaches are for all dogs or for that matter for all people. Here’s what I mean. I recently visited a dog beach, and one particular Mastiff was taking advantage of his size, acting like the beach bully. He bulldozed other […]
Reading Time: 3 minutes This month we’ve watched lava flows from Hawaii’s Mt. Kilauea destroy homes and cars. Last month, two tornadoes hit Fort Lauderdale, Florida, in the same day. Even if volcanoes don’t erupt down the street from your house and you don’t live in Tornado Alley, natural disasters and emergencies occur somewhere every day. And part of […]
Reading Time: 2 minutes Who doesn’t love spending time at a swank resort? Feral cats are no exception. They like to hang out at resorts such as El Dorado Royale in Mexico’s Riviera Maya region on the Caribbean coast. After all, the pickings are good, whether from restaurant trash or soft-hearted tourists. With so many humans around and few […]
Reading Time: 2 minutes It turns out there’s nothing new about the human-animal bond. Fear Free Happy Homes and the entire Fear Free initiative are, after all, at their core a celebration of the bond we all have with our pets, and it goes back for millennia. That bond with dogs dates to approximately 14,000 years ago. We know […]
Reading Time: 3 minutes A surprising number of pet house rabbits live with fear every day because their families, though they may love their rabbits, just don’t understand their needs. Rabbits are sensitive creatures as well as prey animals, and they easily can suffer without their families knowing it or understanding why. Living with fear day to day is […]
Reading Time: 4 minutes What we feed our cats is a topic worthy of discussion. But just as important, we need to talk about how we feed our cats. Most cat caretakers feed their cats from bowls. And most of those leave dry food out 24/7. The theory is that cats don’t naturally scarf down meals all at once […]
Reading Time: 3 minutes Has your pet come face to face with a coyote recently? Even if you were right there, it probably struck fear not only into your pet’s heart but into yours as well. As urbanization sprawls into canyons, woodlands, and other areas that until recently have been home to animals only, confrontations between wildlife, humans, dogs, […]
Reading Time: 3 minutes How do I know my pet loves me? I get asked this question a lot! I suppose first I need to address whether or not pets can love. They certainly do have emotional capacity, as Temple Grandin, Ph.D., pointed out in her book, “Animals in Translation.” Others have demonstrated the same regarding the similar brain […]