hellhound (affectionate)

I can't deal with this. They play so cutely

Bitless now allowed as well!

saddest thing that can happen is a cat so delicately and cozy putting their small apple head on your leg like a pillow to sleep while fully unaware that in like five minutes you're going to get up to go eat because they don't know human language or how time works

Me, having been immobile for three hours: hmm I should get up and pee

The world’s tiniest angel: time for snomgol my mommi :)

Please do not dislike this skull.

@ominous-signs ?

Official sweet sign

Horse shaffron and neck lame, Germany, third quarter of the 16th century

from The Royal Military Museum of Brussels

A very tired unicorn has a cozy midday depression nap

Threw some color on her

I have started reading ‘The Dogs that Made Australia’ by Guy Hull and so far I’m kind of… annoyed? At least with his chapter on dingoes. Where he does a lot of storytelling and is almost dismissive of the unique cooperation and intersections of the lives of dingoes and the indigenous people that cared for them. A lot of what he talks about is directly contradictory to things I have read about and been taught by people that still live very closely with dingoes. One section in particular he implies quite heavily that the people that brought dingoes/their ancestors gave the dogs to people in Australia and then… left? Taking all of their dog knowledge with them? And then the indigenous people of Australia just? Gave up trying to work or deal with the dingoes and let them go feral? Like… cmon Guy. If you’re going to story-tell about that, is it not also just as likely that they stayed, that they taught and lived and worked with new friends and families and introduced dingoes to the landscape in a gentler manner?

He seems to have a very modern understanding of the way dogs cooperate with people. That a dog must always be a tool. And seems to imply that the immediate precursor to the dingo is a dog that was well domesticated and worked well with people, but was also at the same time still practically wild. Wild enough that it was feral and unmanageable unless the person was a born and bred dog handler. It doesn’t make sense.

In my mind, why wouldn’t a highly social species (dingo) that was already wandering the road of domestication, not want to hang around with an equally social species (humans)? Why would you not want to, when you live and work so closely to one another? Why would you not, when that was how you got to the continent in the first place.

The way that the chapter immediately after this (The British and The Dingo Get Acquainted), which is full of primary sources (because the British loved to write about this strange new land), completely contradicts the first chapter is almost comical. At one point he basically makes fun of the reader for ‘believing’ something that he tells us is fact (unsourced of course) in the first chapter. Where’s the continuity? Why didn’t he just go and interview traditional owners? Why make up a story using only the scientific facts, when there are people to this day that still live and work closely with dingoes? Why lie about the behaviour of dingoes in the first place? Why treat them as unmanageable past the age of puppyhood when I can literally go online and find a number of people who own and work very pleasantly with adult dingoes?

Some parts of this book are so well sourced and then others he just shrugs, hand waves, and says “we don’t know but I think [XYZ]”

Yeah this kind of doesn't surprise me give the "old white man" perception of dingoes as "wild dogs" and pests to be eradicated. Guy Hull is especially frustrating with this. When I was studying a course in university called "Wild Dog Ecology" I could tell this was a course designed by farmers who refused to acknowledge that dingoes were their own separate native species and who insisted on the pretty much debunked myth that dingoes are so hybridised with dogs that they're basically all just "wild dogs".

There was so little respect for dingoes as a species and hardly any of the course covered indigenous sources of how dingoes were important parts of their societies.

I think there are a lot of ... old men ... who have been raised with the idea of dingoes as "wild dogs" and there's a lot of cognitive dissonance in regards to their history and their value to the land as apex predators. Perspectives are shifting and some farmers and land owners are shifting to regenerative agriculture and working with predators rather than against them.

But there are still way too many that refuse to embrace the scientific discoveries about dingoes and treat them as pests and attempt to eradicate them.

So many paths to follow and no wizard gps...

there's a recent dog trend online that goes "i trined my *insert dog breed of choice here* like a ~working dog~" and they're....training like a golden retriever in competitive obedience or bite sports or whatever. like way to tell the whole world that you have one definition of "working dog" (cough cough it's a sport).

golden retrievers were bred for a job. labradors were bred for a job. the world of dog "jobs" is not defined by malinois and gsd.

the energy here is unparalleled

Oh right I can post here!! Here's a recent animation commission I did for friend @joysweeper !! Animation commissions are currently closed, but may open again in the future.

I truly enjoy how much Animorphs is like “here are our young heroes, each with a distinctive trope to fill in the group!” And then it makes you watch how the pressure of each person’s role grinds them to dust. And also they have homework.

#IM SORRY THEY DO HOME FUCKING WORK IN ANIMORPHS??????

Yeah they're students. If they don't keep their grades up or if they miss too many classes (or miss classes at suspicious times) then they risk drawing the attention of the faculty and/or their parents, some of whom are the enemy and some of whom can just make future espionage a whole lot harder. There are multiple missions where they're like "okay, this is incredibly time sensitive but it'll take a full day or longer so it has to wait for the weekend and we'll have to all lie to our parents about sleeping over at each others' houses. It's gonna have to be done at the last minute because we've gotta go to class. Also, remember to get that English paper finished, we can NOT afford to have you grounded right now."

They also get disembowelled and/or eaten a lot

#animorphs#its actually devastating i bever got into these#they wouldve been a million times more up my alley wtf was i reading harry potter for

It's not too late. You can still read them.

These have been out of print for an age, and the authors have given their blessings to share the PDFs. Here's everything, including companion/side books and the non-canon Alternamorphs books, in reading order:

I think I see them all to buy on Apple iBooks Store but at 5 buck per book this is expensive fast.