Supes says the good thing to do, not the popular one eheh 🐦

by Adam Rice

Veterinary Etiquette: Tip #1

If you are contacting the clinic be sure to include your last name, your pets name, and your phone number so that we can easily look up your account.

“This is Karen about Oreo” is not useful.

“This is Karen Smith about Oreo, please give me a callback at 123-456-7890” is much better.

If you’ve never been to the clinic before and are a prospective new client make this clear so the receptionist isn’t trying to find your file.

Lolita has officially passed away, condolences to her true trainers and the people who truly knew her

Trua is HUGE now, the biggest boy!!

“ Perfect Harmony “ // © Mike Coots

Original Audio

PSA for fellow dog owners: Keep your dog on a leash when out in public, and teach your kids to keep them leashed too. Also, if you're dog is bigger than your kids, don't let them take them for walks unsupervised.

I just got thrown to the ground by an overly friendly St. Bernard dog that was about twice the size of the kids walking it. Not a leash or adult in sight.

My disabled ass now has a bleeding, subluxated knee, a subluxated hip, and my hands are shredded from the asphalt. The kids were frantic and in tears as the eldest tried to haul their dog off me, all the while telling me he was really friendly and didn't mean any harm.

Despite the excruciating amounts of pain I was in, I very gently told them that regardless of intent, harm had been caused, and they needed to keep their dog on a leash and teach it to sit and stay and not to charge at people and knock them to the ground. I'm now going to be unable to move without assistance for the next few days, all because a dog wasn't on a leash nor properly supervised.

Leash your dogs. Thank you.

Oh wait, I just remembered one 'kickback'

We sometimes get free measuring cups.

And a pizza party once during vet school

A southern resident spy hops in the Salish Sea

Coyotes are one of nature’s greatest success stories. Imagine spending millions of dollars trying to eradicate a species by any means necessary and they still show up in Quiznos.

🔵 Polka dot shark 🔵

[ Patreon / galaxy themes / insta / S6 / RB shop / appstore ]

A few months ago my mom got our dog a really nice like $60 dog bed that Ellie just absolutely refuses to sleep in because she’d rather be in bed with my mom or on the couch. So my mom gave Josh and I the bed to see if Vincent would like it and it’s an immediate hit, he jumped in as soon as I put it down and won’t move

I’ve never seen this cat knead before and now he can’t stop!

seeby

Bat-eared fox kits with their mother, Winter (currently at San Diego Zoo).

A harbor seal and her pup (Phoca vitulina) in Estero Bluffs State Park, California, USA

by marlin harms

A bunch of folk are commenting on the post about a sanctuary feeding a bear Twizzlers with something along the lines of “well if the sanctuary is preferred by PETA it’s immediately sus.” There’s a lot more to that relationship worth knowing about.

What a lot of people aren’t in a position to be aware of is that while PETA’s public facing advocacy is really inflammatory and offensive, it’s almost a smokescreen for how much they’re investing in widespread and effective lobbying and litigation. They’re heavily involved in very serious work to advance more restrictive animal-based legislation across federal and state governments, and are taken very seriously because they have very, very good lawyers who know animal regulation and oversight and everything related inside and out. Litigators associated with them are pretty much cornerstones of every animal law school I know of in the US.

The reason this matters is that when PETA sues over animal care - like under the Endangered Species Act - as part of the relief granted by the court if they win, they generally get to say where the animals go. And the animal welfare matters, but those animals also represent millions of dollars in fundraising and advocacy narratives for both PETA and the receiving sanctuary. The lawsuits that took animals from Tim Stark and Jeff Lowe from Tiger King and put them at the iffy Colorado sanctuary? PETA. The lawsuit against Dade City’s Wild Things that put their tigers (and some of Joe Exotic’s) at the same place? PETA. They’re using those court ruling to change the law via bench precedent one case at a time, all towards making it easier to remove animals from (even good) zoos or shut them down.

Similarly, having lobbying powerhouses in places allows them to use the narratives of those animals and the beautiful photos from the sanctuaries to convince legislators to pass new / more restrictive laws, and to listen to PETA even more (because look what good we did the last time we collaborated on a bill!) . The Big Cat Public Safety Act was a big thing PETA lobbied for in collaboration with Carole Baskin and the Big Cat Sanctuary Alliance (which has two current/previous influential PETA lawyers on the advisory board). If you’ve got a representative voting on bills that restrict animal use or care, they’ve probably got a pretty favorable view of PETA, because they’re being approached by really professional powerhouse litigators who are totally removed from all that vile stuff the PR side spews.

And you know what PETA is doing with that lobbying? Pushing for more ways to be able to confiscate animals or go after captive animal facilities in court. They’ve been talking for years about adding a provision to the Animal Welfare Act that would allow them to sue facilities for any potentially harmful violation, just like they’re doing with the Endangered Species Act. The zoological industry and probably many other related animal industries could not survive the financial cost of all the lawsuits that would open the door for, regardless of merit. I first heard a PETA litigator raise the topic years ago at a meeting - a bill introducing that amendment is currently active in Congress. (They’re also exploring avenues for using consumer fraud laws to allow “true” sanctuaries to sue other sanctuaries whose practices they don’t agree with philosophically and say are scamming the public.)

To sum up: in animal industry world, PETA isn’t this offensive obnoxious entity you can eye-roll and ignore. They’re a seriously scary, heavily funded, incredibly influential lobbying group with some of the most intimidating lawyers I’ve ever met. They invest money in things they know they can win, and by the time they’ve started a visible campaign, their target is so underwater - whether there’s a real issue or no - it’s rare to come back from it. So when I say “this sanctuary is PETA’s favorite for placing animals”, what that means is “this facility has been chosen to be a philosophical partner for PETA’s legal and legislative goals and is receiving animals worth millions of dollars in fundraising revenue in return.”

You may notice I frequently comment on the assumptions people make about animal facilities based on their branding. Frequently, people assume accredited facilities are inherently better for animals than unaccredited facilities, or assume sanctuaries are inherently more moral / better at caring for their animals than zoos.

I want to show you an example of why I am always, always skeptical of these assumptions.

If you’re in the California area, you might have heard about Hank the Tank - who is actually a Henrietta, btw - the 500 pound nuisance bear from Lake Tahoe who broke into 21 homes in search of food. She was recently captured by wildlife officials and moved to a sanctuary in Colorado. The Wild Animal Sanctuary has three main facilities, two in Colorado and one in TX. To give you some context, it’s the biggest carnivore sanctuary in the country - they advertise somewhere between 300-500 animals, mostly large carnivores, between their properties. It’s where most of the Tiger King cats went. It’s PETA’s preferred placement for confiscated exotic animals. So, obviously, it’s got to be great, right? Except… take a look at what they posted about Henrietta’s arrival.

Here’s their post about Henrietta’s arrival at the Refuge, the large facility in Colorado that isn’t open to the public. Let’s take a closer look at that food trough…

What do we see here? An entire rotisserie chicken that is either blackened or highly seasoned, and a whole ham. Maybe a second chicken underneath the pile, I can’t quite tell. The sanctuary gets the majority of their bear food donated from groceries stores once it’s past the sell-by date, so we know those are older meats and they’re full of a ton of salt. Then, for fruit and veg, there’s a cantaloupe, mango, corn, avocado, grapes, and apples. Maybe a pepper or two, it’s hard to tell. That’s a lot of sugar and not a lot of fiber or roughage.

But… on top of it and to the right… are those Twizzlers?

Yes.

The sanctuary confirmed on Facebook that they fed this recently rescued obese bear what looks like almost an entire pack of Twizzlers.

I don’t know of any world in which it’s appropriate to feed candy to a bear. Maybe a piece or two as a really high value reinforcer for hard behaviors (that isn’t relevant here, it’s openly against this sanctuary’s ethos to do any husbandry or medical training). An entire pack of Twizzlers is just appalling. But it’s not uncommon for this facility! I have a book written about their operations and animal care (that I bought at their gift shop this spring) which openly discusses how the bears get fed bread, doughnuts, marshmallows, and all sorts of incredibly unhealthy food that comes in with the grocery donations.

But hey, this is apparently fine for the bears, according to the sanctuary’s founder. He was quoted in that same book as saying “Bears are the only animal I know of that can eat insane amounts of sugar and it never hurts them. It does not hurt their organs. They do not get clogged arteries. They do not have high blood pressure. In the wild they eat all these sweet berries in the fall, and they convert sugar to fat… so the more sugar they get the better… we would all love to have a system like that!”

Now while it’s true that bears have physiological adaptations that modulate their insulin production and sensitivity in ways that appear to prevent them from from developing diabetes, that does’t mean it’s healthy for them to regularly eat processed carbohydrates, sugar, and general junk food. And remember - Henrietta gained her fame because of how incredibly overweight she already is, and because she was seeking out human food, According to the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, a healthy weight for a normal adult black bear is between 100-300 pounds. So, obviously, the best thing to do is… continue to feed her candy.

Then, later on in the book, it details how they have to bribe a camel to sit tight for a regular medical examination (since they don’t train for medical behaviors) by letting him drink a can of Mountain Dew each time.

If a zoo was known publicly to be feeding their animals Mountain Dew or a couple Twizzlers - even just once, on a rare occasion - they’d be eviscerated in the media and by public opinion. But feeding out inappropriate junk food appears to be a pretty common practice at this place, and it just goes unscrutinized because everyone assumes sanctuaries are inherently better for animals.

So, long story short, never make assumptions about the quality of a facility based on it’s branding or accreditation. (TWAS is accredited by the Global Federation of Animal Sanctuaries). If you have concerns about the ethics or practices of a facility, always try to put your preconceptions aside, go and see for yourself, and think critically about what you see and what you’re told.