Month: July 2017

July 4th

alittlelioness:

why-animals-do-the-thing:

theexoticvet:

July 4th is almost here, please take the time to ensure you and your pets are prepared. Many pets have noise phobia and fireworks can be torturous to them. We see lots of hit by car cases and lost pets this time of year because pets get afraid and run away, sometimes even breaking through windows and doors because they are so scared.

  • Make sure your pets are microchipped AND that all the information is up to date. This is the best way to reunite you if the worst happens.
  • Keep pets inside during the holiday, even animals that seemed fine before can become scared and will bolt or injure themselves.
  • If you know your pet is scared, go to the vet now. There are lots of solutions ranging from Thundershirts to a really great medication for noise phobia called Sileo. Your vet can help you choose.
  • If having a BBQ or cookout, make sure guests know not to give food to your pets. Our ER’s are full of dogs with pancreatitis and other GI disorders the day after.
  • Clean up! Pets will eat trash, firework wrappers, wooden skewers, etc. Never underestimate what they will and won’t eat and play it safe and don’t leave anything around.

Things you can do to help your pets!

If you’re having a party, set them up in a room by themselves with everything they’d need – crate or bed, food, water, toys. If they’re stressed out by people, shut the door. If they’re okay with crowds, leave it open but make it off limit to humans so they have somewhere to go to get away from people. Put a sign up and let guests know the room rules either way.

If you’ve got lots of people coming over and your pet will be loose in your house, make sure the entry has an airlock and that you’ve got signs up reminding guests to keep one door closed at all times.

It’s totally fine to comfort your pets during the fireworks, it won’t reinforce their fear. If they’re super stressed you can put them in an interior room and leave water running or a radio station on for white noise. Thundershirts or swaddling can also help, but make sure you figure out ahead of time if it’s something your pet tolerates.

Make sure they’ve got ID on! Even if you don’t expect them to get out, put on their tags anyways (if they don’t wear a collar indoors) just in case.

and for your general hoof stock crowd in regard to horses, cows, sheep, etc.

Make sure you have your ear tags well marked. Where I used to live, ear tags and even brands were pretty well recognized enough to where we knew who that livestock belonged to. If you can, take them to an enclosed area in the early evening before fireworks go off! Give them a place of safety.

In regard to horses, you can take a silver paint pen and write your number on their hooves since anything left on a horse is a dangerous thing they can hang themselves up on. If they have white hooves, good ol’ sharpie pen will do it as silver can be harder to see.

If you are dealing with a few animals, make sure you have some clear, distinct photos on hand in case something does happen so your animal is easy to identify and you can prove the animal is yours.

I was very lucky having horses who saw fireworks and then went upon their way, but I know a lot of people do not. Some people may be on such large swaths of land you don’t have to worry much about it, but for those less fully rural areas where you are closer together and land tracts aren’t as large, this may be something to consider. Be safe for the 4th!

glumshoe:

I can’t do justice to one of the weirdest camp stories I know. My friend tells it so well, and I can offer only a pale shadow of his story.

Last summer, he was working with one of the younger units comprised of ten year old boys. They had spent the night camping on another beach and were just readying themselves to depart. “Make sure you have all your things!” called my friend. “Don’t leave anything behind!”

One small boy came up, dragging a massive tangle of decomposing seaweed behind him. “But… what about me boy?” he asked, lip trembling.

“…what is ‘me boy’?”

The child held up the stinking wad of bull kelp. “This is him. This is Me Boy.”

“Me Boy is not coming back with us,” said his counselor. “You’re going to leave Me Boy behind on the beach where he belongs.”

The campers loudly mourned the loss of Me Boy. They insisted on giving him a Viking burial at sea, which just consisted of pushing him solemnly off the back of the rowboat into the water and watching him drift away in the surf.

That was only the beginning. Me Boy would be back.

The campers, in true camp fashion, possessed some kind of cultic hive-mind and a predisposition for bizarre memes. Me Boy would not be forgotten. They started telling each other stories about Me Boy and how he would one day rise again. There were warring factions with contradicting dogmas about Me Boy. Only when the gardener allowed them to take home a zucchini she had harvested did they find their god, born anew.

Me Boy, The Zucchini That Was A God, became the whole unit’s mascot. The kids would bicker over who got to carry him. They built nests and carriers for Me Boy and brought him to different activities, fiercely defending him from those that would do him harm. One child appointed himself the Voice of Me Boy and would translate the zucchini’s divine wishes into human speech.

It got out of hand. Me Boy had become a distraction, a fixation, a violent controversy. Something had to be done.

My friend, their counselor, took it upon himself to kill Me Boy. The children wailed in despair as he chopped their God into refreshing slices. With this sudden turn of fortune, followers of Me Boy turned to theophagy. “We must eat him to preserve his power!” they cried. Boys who would otherwise never have touched a vegetable ate greedily of this sacrament, eager to let Me Boy live on within them.

For a time, it seemed that peace and order had been restored, and the religion had already faded into its silver age. But only for a time.

In the last few days of camp, the religion of Me Boy splintered into several denominations. Every meal yielded new vegetable matter said to be a reincarnation of Me Boy, only for opposing groups to dismiss these as false prophets. Some believed that Me Boy was gone. Others believed his spirit lived on, intangible, omnipresent. Some believed he had found a new vessel inside a carrot, a pear, a slice of cantaloupe… even inside a child. There was chaos, and strife, and heartbreak without the guidance of Me Boy.

naamahdarling:

nonlinear-nonsubjective:

no i dont want to be a billionaire to live a lavish lifestyle i want to be a billionaire to be financially secure and have enough money to give people things and support charities and fund kickstarters and leave hundred dollar tips

My lavish dream lifestyle: 200% tips at IHOP and throwing struggling artists a couple hundred bucks to sketch my latest asshole OC. I buy my cats better food. I get new underwear twice a year, including a new bra. I have my jeans hemmed, and buy name-brand crackers. Nobody I know ever has to worry about a vet bill again. I quietly bankroll surgery and binders and electrolysis for every struggling trans person on Tumblr. The zoo near me builds a 300% larger reptile house and names it the Wigglesworth Von Snakeface Rept-o-Rama, and I hire a Great Dane ninja to shit on Trump’s Hollywood star every day and post the picture to Facebook and Twitter. Snakes manifest in nazis’ houses. They are made of red-hot chains and never stop screaming. My skin is clear. I sit on my front porch and drink tea. Someone hands me a hamburger.

muchmindedabby:

Ok so my dad made this chicken coop that has an automatic door and there’s is a switch to lock it in inside. Now it’s high up so he thought nothing would happen but one of the chickens managed to SIT ON THE SWITCH AND LOCKED THEMSELVES IN… he’s now outside trying to get our chickens out

brightlotusmoon:

the-mamishka:

direhuman:

direhuman:

Executive dysfunction is like all of your abilities are on cooldown and you’re mashing buttons to try to do anything but your brain is just like “i can’t do that yet. that’s still recharging. i can’t do that yet. that spell isn’t ready yet. that’s still recharging.”

#WTF I DIDN’T KNOW THIS WAS A THING#I THOUGHT I WAS JUST A PIECE OF SHIT OMG

And that’s why talking about mental illness is important.

Well, that explains about half of my problems and the central core of my self loathing.

http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/09/symptoms-executive-dysfunction/

Executive dysfunction is our brain screaming NO I DON’T WANNA PLEASE DON’T MAKE ME while also sobbing NO YOU DON’T GET IT I LITERALLY CANNOT and it feels like being stuffed with heavy electric cotton, and when people accuse me of laziness I get unbelievably angry.