neverblog.net

The following is an expired trademark listed on the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office’s electronic database of trademarks (TESS). Now, while I suppose there’s such a thing as a one-stop shop, I’m not sure this is exactly the right combination of trade goods to be offering. If you check a little further, it turns out there is actually still a Mutts and Butts pet shop on Long Island, but they’ve changed their image and logo and seem to just be a pet store now. Check out their site if you like…especially if you’re on Long Island and need pet supplies.

Source: http://tess2.uspto.gov/bin/gate.exe?f=doc&state=krh966.2.2

While I’ve got a couple of tips on this site about caring for beardies, mostly based on my personal experience with them, BeardedDragonCare.net has got pages upon pages of care and feeding instructions and discussion. If you’re interested in reading more about beardies, or you want more details than are on my Caring for Bearded Dragons post, you should check out this site!

Concerned that, in the event of a tragic plane crash hundreds of miles up in the Sierras, or perhaps a misled jungle expedition into the deepest recesses of the Amazon, your dog won’t have a fair chance of survival? Look no further, my friend, than the new pet emergency jacket with food compartments, which premiered at a recent expo in Tokyo. The jackets, which cost between $250 and $425 dollars, means that Fido will neither go hungry nor get wet, should he become an unwilling participant in your emergency situation.

I’m inclined to agree with one blogger who argues that this stuff is a little ridiculous. After all, the same thing can be effected by adding a small packet of dog food into your emergency supplies, presumably in a Ziploc bag to keep it dry. As for the all-weather protection, consider that dogs have a rather long and mostly successful history of running around naked in all sorts of weather, before deeming it necessary to zip up the hoodie on your Schnauzer.

Of course, you could also have my dog, Bonny, who absolutely flips whenever you try to take this sweater off her. It’s not normal, but it’s undeniably cute…

dog, sweater, emergency kit, clothing, survival

Mikey, pictured above, is an Eastern Newt (Latin name Notophthalmus viridescens) whom we found on the doorstep of our house this summer. Since he seemed inclined to the domesticated life, we put him in a 10 gallon tank, and he’s been happily munching on flightless fruit flies ever since. If you happen to find one of these amphibians (and there are hundreds in New England during wet summer nights) and decide to keep it as a pet, I would highly suggest the fruit flies as a staple diet. I spent a couple of weeks trying everything from pinhead crickets to hand-caught pond skimmers, all to no avail. Once I found that Petco has vials of fruit flies, though, at the reasonable price of $5.99, I made the hour-long trip to the nearest one and bought two vials. NOTE: If you buy them online, they’re almost $30. Definitely worth the drive if you have a Petco anywhere near you.

One of the great things about the fruit flies is that they reproduce for several generations in the vials, as long as there is enough medium for them to eat. I have also started experimenting with breeding my own flies, with some materials bought from Ward Scientific (more on breeding flies and how much money it can save you in a later post). I finally had my first generation of home-hatched flies born in one of my cultures, and so far they seem even larger and juicier than the imported generation.

fruit flies, eastern newt, newt care, flightless, petco

If you’ve ever been to a reptile expo, you know why you should be going, but if you haven’t, let me just say that it’s an experience that must be seen to be believed. The reptile show in Portland, Maine is a new one for me, although I’ve been attending the New England Reptile Expo twice a year for a couple of years now.

If you have any interest in cold-blooded creatures, or you have kids between the ages of 3-18, the reptile expo is a great place to go on a weekend. There are usually 50+ vendors, each with a wide variety of homegrown reptiles. The difference between buying a pet at a reptile expo and getting one in a pet store is roughly akin to that of visiting a charity bakesale thrown by the American Culinary Association versus buying pre-made cookies in a supermarket. Even if you’re not buying, you’ll see upwards of 100 different kinds of reptiles and amphibians at any given show, which is worth the price of admission itself.

Photo Credit: http://reptileexpo.com

reptiles, expo, show, new england, portland, reptile expo, amphibian, manchester

ESPN.com is reporting today that Falcons’ QB Michael Vick has been indicted by the Feds on numerous charges involving dogfighting. Among the allegations, the Feds assert that Vick participated in the inhumane killing of several dogs, through methods such as drowning, electrocution, and beating. The reason, of course, was that the dogs were not doing well enough in the fighting pit, and so they ‘deserved’ to die in the eyes of the (allegedly) reprehensibly cruel Vick.

This got me thinking. After all, if Vick feels that dogs that don’t do well in what he considers a ’sport’ should be put down, often brutally, what should we do with Vick himself? After all, dog fighting allegations or not, the guy has around a 50% completion percentage throughout his career, seriously anemic passing yards and TD/INT ratios, not to mention that it’s been about 5 years of ‘This year will be Vick’s year to break out’ on ESPN. It still hasn’t happened, so what to do? Cut Vick’s contract and go with Harrington? I say no. Instead, Vick should be escorted to a local hospital (or back alley), where he can be put down for being a terrible competitor who can’t win an important game to save his life (or could he, with this strategy maybe we’ll find out). Preferably, Vick would be electrocuted, then drowned, but a severe blow to the head would probably suffice. If it’s good enough for his dogs, it should be good enough for Vick.

euthanasia, michael vick, vick, dogfighting, dog fighting, fight, espn, allegations, grand jury, feds

My fiancee was a vet tech at a shelter for a while, and the local Animal Control Officer was hospitalized one day for being attacked by what the ACO said were three pit bulls. When my fiancee got there to get the animals from the owner, they were golden retrievers. Ignorance runs deep, even to the people who are supposed to know these things as part of their jobs… The good news here is that it quickly made digg’s most popular, so it should be seen by quite a few people.

read more | digg story

In a move that has my favorite pet Nazis over at the AKC in a tizzy, California’s Senate is considering a mandatory dog spaying law that would impose a $500 fine on anyone not neutering or spaying their pet by 4 months of age. Calling the proposed legislation, which aims to curtail the almost 500,000 dogs and cats euthanized in California shelters every year for lack of space, an ‘anti-dog’ law, the hoity-toity AKC and its slimy collection of breeders is scrambling to protect itself against the rising tide of support for shelters and the dogs they hold.

Its 5,000 member clubs have organized a national letter-writing campaign, while the 122-year-old organization has formed its first ever political action committee to fight what it calls “anti-dog laws” in California and elsewhere.

“Should this bill become law, I fear it could be a catalyst for other states. As the old saying goes, ‘As California goes, so goes the nation,”’ AKC chairman Ron Menaker said in a letter to members.

Animal shelter workers testified in heartbreaking detail about killing litters of kittens and lovable dogs because there are just too many to place in homes. And minutes before the Assembly voted, several wavering lawmakers got a telephone call from Barker, a longtime advocate of fixing pets.

“I had to do what I could to help make it possible for every dog and cat to have a good home,” Barker said. “We desperately need it passed. The overpopulation is really tragic, and it’s not just in California — it’s all over the country.”

It’s pretty amazing that the AKC can stand up and protest against mandatory spaying, especially in light of their supposed pro-dog standpoint and the fact that there are obviously too many pets out there for the people that want them. Somehow, I suspect that the mongrel dogs that meet their demise within the walls of California’s shelters are not ‘real’ dogs in the eyes of many AKC members, since the concept of ‘dog’ only extends to $1,000-a-head, well-groomed purebreds. What makes this worse is that the law specifically will allow breeders who register to continue to breed their purebred dogs–but of course amateurs who decide to ‘breed’ a couple of animals to make a quick buck selling them in the local paper will now be criminals–so the AKC feels the need to defend these individuals’ ‘right’ to add to the overpopulation problem, at the expense of the lives of hundreds of thousands of animals.

The article does raise a good objection to the proposed law, however: it will be difficult to enforce and costly, probably costing more than it will bring in with fines and penalties. If only there were some way to demand a mandatory shelter walkthrough for anyone considering buying a dog from a breeder…if anyone is heartless enough not to be swayed by that, perhaps the dog they get would be better off in a shelter anyway.

akc, dog breed, mandatory spaying, california pet-fixing bill, spay, neuter, neutering, spaying, dog shelter, animal shelter, euthanasia, overpopulation, pets

I went to move one of the cacti I’m plantsitting for my mom, and lo and behold, there was a crazy-looking spider on it. I started taking pictures, because it had what seemed to be an amazing pattern on its back. After about 10 pictures, I noticed that one of the ’spots’ on the spider’s back had started to move. That’s when it dawned on me that what I was actually looking at was about 20 baby spiders, all clinging to their mother’s back. Here are the two best photos that I got. Unfortunately, I couldn’t get any video because it was too dark in the bowels of the cactus.

spider, baby spider, spider with babies

We were standing out on my back porch this evening with our dogs and we heard a cat calling from the woods behind the house. When it came out of the woods in the semi-dark, it looked kind of like our neighbor’s cat, but as it grew nearer, we realized it was our cat Socrates, dangling a brown-and-white mouse from his jaws, while meowing loudly, something I never realized a cat could do with a mouse in its mouth. He then proceeded up the roof and into the 2nd story window we leave open for the cats, and started playing with the mouse. After I took this shot, he proceeded to throw the mouse at my fiancee’s foot while we were trying to shoot some video of him, and now she won’t stop whining about it.

cat, mouse, socrates, cat eating mouse