Beatle & Mari

Poisonous Plants in Winter

By the time winter comes, many plants lose their leaves and flowers, but there are still evergreen or winter flowering plants that can cause problems for your pet.

Mistletoe and Holly are seasonal favourites, which are often brought into people’s homes or gardens over the festive period. They can pose hazards to your pets, especially if the berries are eaten – so remember to keep them out of paws’ reach!

Some plants, such as amaryllis, can grow indoors as well as outdoors at this time of year, so don’t forget to check our list if you’re thinking of bringing a new plant into your house.

Plants to avoid:

The Pink Poodle

love when dogs come back to you with seeds stuck to them. lmao get used as dispersal idiot. that’s just what you get for snuffling the grasses

Work work work work work work!!!

oh my GOD you can’t just ask someone why they’re barking

I've thought about writing this post for a long time and hesitated each time because I worry about the reaction. But here goes.

Something I've noticed a lot that isn't talked about is that a common issue in training or coexisting with dogs I've witnessed seems to be how to deal with frustration.

I work at a dog daycare and almost every time I see someone struggles with their dog, pulling, barking, jumping, etc. there's frustration that, at times, turns into the use of adversive methods. You're frustrated, you don't have a solution, your dog isn't collaborating (for their own valid reasons), it's overwhelming.

I'm not here to cause a debate or to argue. I'm here to for tips, tricks or advice for people struggling to regulate their frustration. I think regulation is useful in many aspects of people's lives, so why not.

❤ How do you deal with frustration or how do you suggest someone could?

I often use the DBT skill opposite action. Basically, I identify what the frustration is motivating me to do, and I intentionally choose to do the opposite of that.

When frustrated am I tempted to pop a collar or yank on a leash? Then I force myself to give a dog more slack or move in the direction they want to go (assuming you're not hauling them away from a dog fight).

Do I want to withold rewards? I'll intentionally look for opportunities to give treats for minor/easy behavior that I like.

If I want to end a walk early, I'll add another block to our route.

Also, at least for me, my frustration is often triggered by feeling embarassed or flustered in public. Therefore I take steps like wearing headphones and intentionally only looking at my dogs instead of other people to avoid that trigger. Or I'll choose to schedule more difficult training sessions that might lead to embarassment (such as training Biscuit's recall early on) at times or locations where there aren't many people around.

My other trigger for frustration is feeling like I am failing to train my dogs. This happens if your criteria for a behavior is too high. I may eventually choose to switch to the errorless learning method for this reason.

I like to talk out loud to my dog about what is actually going on to defuse how I feel. So if Topaz is screaming about something I might start to get annoyed but then I say out loud, “I know it’s so hard for you when it’s bedtime!” Or if Marceline is barking at the neighbours I say out loud, “You hate it when the neighbours are out there!” Or if Luca is pulling really hard on the leash I say out loud, “I get it, you just really need to sniff that one spot!” It helps me to remember what’s causing them to behave in the ways that are irritating and ground it back in normal dog behaviour and therefore it reminds me to let my dogs be dogs.

I love being in purebred dog circles because it gives you a specific flavor of brainrot that leads to calling something an abomination and it's literally this

1. A dog is full of joy

I'm not even anti dog show as a concept I think they're neat and contemplated showing basil as a puppy if we had handler meetups nearby, I just think the organizing bodies need some serious reform and recalibration of their priorities

I just don't know how logistically you can "purely" preserve a breed that was created to serve a few villages of people and upscale the population to meet the demands of a global market without some flow of new genetic material. it's just not productive to artificially isolate populations to such a degree and that's how you get breeds where 95% of dogs are all carriers of terminal diseases. MANY purebred dog populations are inbred to the degree that many breedings are the equivalent of sibling-sibling matings (25% COI, the threshold of the red line on this graph 👇)

Folded his back paws… dainty

@kuttithevangu hope its okay i did an experimental painting of your dog to get back into art Not sure how succesful i was at capturing anzu's likeness but he was fun to paint at least!

I hope you like it :)

That’s absolutely fine! He’s great for practicing value and reflection due to his miraculous shininess! Thank you!

This is my son, orange bell pepper.

oh my god wait oh my god oh my god

this is my lock screen. i think its ALSO from a bell pepper???

PAY WHAT YOU CAN COMMISSIONS OPEN

After a lovely emergency vet visit for juice that turned out to be an upset tummy, current power bills and other life things, I am broke.

So I am offering pay what you can commissions! Just dm me or contact me in any way you prefer, and I will draw you a Thing.

This thing can be:

This will be done in my medium of choice, most likely pen drawing on paper. Here's some examples:

Tiny zine about tiny bastard

— Melissa Holbrook Pierson, The Secret History of Kindness (2015)

I would reblog this addition to my post directly, but I suspect I've been blocked by this person as Tumblr just won't let me reblog it at all. So it is almost pointless because this person won't see this, but at least others might.

This quote has totally gotten away from its intended audience. That's on me for not turning off reblogs, but I did feel that this was a useful quote to give a glimpse into a different way of thinking about things, so I let it go.

But then you get responses like the one above and it's clear that it just gets carried too far. The replies and reblogs and tags are just full of projection – which I get, we're talking about trauma-adjacent things here, but still.

This quote is not about abuse. This quote is from a book about dog training and it is specifically talking about the reinforcement humans derive in the form of relief from applying punishment in the moment. It is not about patterns of abuse or coercive control. It is about the moment when you realise that you are operating in a punishment mindset, despite what idea you may have of yourself or others. That is the piece of polished obsidian. You suddenly have clarity about something that you just let pass you by before.

This quote does not contain the entirety of the nuances of punishment, abuse or coercion. It is a short passage that is trying to explain the behavioural function of the application of punishment. We are not talking about intentional sustained and prolonged abuse toward another living thing (though of course that can develop when use of punishment goes completely unchecked).

We live in a punishment based society. It is extremely common for most people to defer to a punishment response before a reinforcement response. For the majority of people, it takes conscious effort not to default to a punishment based response when something is irritating us. Dog is barking? Yell at it. Kid having a tantrum? Pick them up and drag them away. Adult is clicking a pen loudly? Snap at them. This is the default human behaviour our society allows and in many regards expects (whatever disrupts the notion of "civilised society" is allowed and expected to be punished).

To view the use of punishment as something only "sadistic fucks" or "villains" are capable of is not only incorrect, but it will probably lead to problems down the road identifying behaviour that is not acceptable from people who are otherwise "good".

do you know how many cookies she’s gotten in the last 24 hours???

It’s a completely superficial injury. Some scrapes. And she walks up to everyone on the farm and looks at them like this and literally shows them her paw and they give her everything. they hand it over.

the miniature pony that she is expressively forbidden from bothering stepped on her paw for the record. because she was bothering her.

simply imagine a curly coat perfectly designed to smell like everything it ever comes into contact with ever forever and ever so you constantly go “why why why why why why why”