I think it's the same old stuff: reducing BMI, reducing alcohol consumption & the low fat, high veg, low or no animal products diet. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20071875 "Cholelithiasis was found more commonly among non-vegetarian with the vegetarian: non-vegetarian ratio 1:9"

fences don't really deter bears here. They'll just break your fence if it's in their way. Bears in yards are pretty common in some neighbourhoods. I know one woman who finally moved away in frustration because too many times she came home to bears on her front porch and having to wait them out was getting annoying. http://www.vancouversun.com/technology/coquitlam+bear+sighting+capital+with+interactive/10077218/story.html

what's wrong with it?

This is a difficult question because it gets so grey so quickly. When do things become neglect, kwim? We have some charities here whose main focus is providing low cost or free vet care, help with suddenly large vet bills, transportation to vets, even delivering kitty litter and food (for example to seniors who are just not able to lug a big bag home. In Canada we don't have as much of the free shipping with online shopping yet so it's not really an option for many). We also have a group who specializes in providing foster care to people who are temporarily unable to look after their pet - going into hospital, in between homes, women fleeing abusive situations (though a couple shelters now allow pets) etc. There are all these little pockets of help needed to assist people in keeping their animals and overall, I think that's good. Having that otherwise loved & wanted animal enter the shelter or rescue system is something I think most of us would want to avoid. But it does mean that you need people to donate their time & money to subsidize all these services to help others be able to keep their pets - & that's actually not a very easy sell. It's hard to fundraise for this so it ends up kind of being a side expense to other goals that the non profit is also doing. Some of the causes resonate with people but many times, you're subsidizing people's financial foolishness and people are less keen to donate for that. Like when people ask for help, get it but then go and get another pet. Or want you to take the kittens but won't spay the mom, or will spay the mom but want to keep one of the kittens & don't want it fixed cause they might want to breed her later. It's not getting through to them that this is not ok..... (my personal beef is the people who just can't pay for _____ but they've got tons of high end tattoos and a big screen tv and an instagram of Saturday night clubbing. Cause priorities.) Many days you just have to conclude that far too many people suck.

Yesterday I napped twice. Once from 40 min and another time for a bit over 2h! I was apparently very sleep deprived. In between falling asleep and staggering around yawning, I Zumba'd and then dd & I bathed Lilly (& dried her with the hairdryer to blow out the last of the undercoat). I bought some special shampoo and conditioner for her and wow, what a difference. She's a silky soft little spaniel again. My parents are flying as I type. Depending on how they'll feel after landing & how long the whole getting out of the airport thing takes they'll either come get her tonight or tomorrow morning. Today it was Zumba and then dh and I had to run to several stores to buy many feet of carpet runner. The first store didn't have enough for us. Life with wood floor & aging large breed dogs with arthritis and loss of feeling in the rear means that soon your house looks like an airport with tons of runways. My poor dogs keep lying down and not being able to get up. I previously had a bunch of old yoga mats scattered everywhere (SO classy, I tell ya) but they're now thoroughly destroyed so we needed a more sturdy solution.

We bought new in Canada just a few months ago and got prices from service which tells you the lowest possible price. Essentially they tell you what the dealer *really* bought it for (not some fake 'invoice price') & then suggest how much profit most dealers will look for & therefore what your offer should be. It worked perfectly for us & we know we got an awesome price because several dealers couldn't match it & we know exactly why: they got their inventory after the Cdn dollar dropped so they couldn't make enough profit on what we were offering. The guy who ordered & bought the cars of his lot way back in Nov of last year (for delivery in Feb) could make that price & we closed the deal with him. The service we used we had the option of having them do the contacting and arranging the purchase for us or us doing it ourselves. I think the amount of markup varies a lot from brand to brand and actual base price so you need more info that just shaving a set # of hundreds of dollars. BTW, we paid considerably LESS than the 600-700 off the price listed on the website. I think you guys have similar services in the US & I'd recommend it. Something like this http://usnews.rankingsandreviews.com/cars-trucks/best-price-program/

He was democratically elected, and regardless of his policies after, he remains very popular. I dislike religious fundamentalism and the crackdown on freedom of expression but I think it's increasingly untenable for us to support military coups just because we don't like whom the people there chose. It seems the US played that game so many times (esp in Central and South America) and honestly I'd not like to see that repeated. & the idea that we're making alliances with military factions and not the government would be extremely troubling to me.

Yup. There's no winning solution in some areas/social circles. You smile they can continue to pressure, pursue, talk, lean in the woman's space, ask for phone numbers etc. You don't, you can get called names, obscenities, threats.

I don't know that I'd switch right away though ... Maybe see how the meds start working? I hate to mess with too many things at once because then it's hard to assess which intervention is working or causing side effects etc. Dr Karen Becker has a newish book on home cooked diets for dogs. Maybe see if your library has it or Dr Pitcairn's old book has some good recipes too. Some reader recipes submitted to an older issue of Whole Dog Journal are reprinted here http://dogaware.com/articles/wdjhomemade4.html

Canned pumpkin can be used in dogs both to treat constipation and to treat diarrhea. It soothes their tummies either way. I always had a can in the cupboard when my old Newfie x was alive because he had a very sensitive tum.

I don't see a $30 expense as "elite" level of care. Getting to vets also requires transportation (assistance of a friend or the use of a pet friendly taxi). The purposes of mandated s/n & identification programs is to prevent what you're describing - stray cats wandering around a community & reproducing - and ultimately to prevent the millions of animals which need to be killed every year in shelters. This is what's bugging me about these conversations. It's all about 'oh it's so inconvenient for the human' Can we think a moment about the animals, needing vet care, needing policies which help them have good pain free lives. Or if you really don't actually care about the animals that much, maybe spare a thought for the shelter workers who spend their days taking animals to the back to be killed because nobody prevented them being born, nobody put ID on them so they could be reunited with owners, nobody came looking, nobody thought about providing a good standard of care & filling out an application to adopt which would be accepted. I could give you graphic images but I won't. I'll give you non graphic but haunting one. https://www.thedodo.com/fate-of-unwanted-shelter-dogs-photo-1415452152.html Stats are hard to come by because few keep them or share them nationally but estimates are the in the US 3 million cats & dogs are killed every year. Approx 80% are perfectly healthy and fine. 70% of cats entering US shelters are killed. I used killed deliberately, because euthanasia is a procedure to relieve pain and suffering. This is killing of a surplus population. If we're animal lovers - & I think most people on this thread are - we can't stand by and let this continue happening, can we?

:grouphug:

Nope. I have no problems with s/n and will continue to advocate for it.

I totally agree. I have an ex-hunting field English Setter & he's Mr Crazypants. Also, do not get fieldbred border collies unless you have sheep or are planning on competing in agility, treiball, obedience, flyball, and running a 5km several times a week just for fun. Serious, athletic working stock dogs need serious athletic handlers who give them jobs.... How much crazy high strung genes you get in a dog also varies from breeder to breeder. Some lines are a bit more versatile and focused while others are for serious peeps. Mind you, those breeders would rarely sell to a 'pet' home, kwim?

So, I haven't been following France terribly closely in the past 18 -24 months so I may be way off base....but my sense is that their particular flavour of secularism had a not so subtle taint of anti-Islam sentiment. I'm thinking specifically of the attempt (was it successful?) to control what clothing Muslim women wear. & I'm not too sure that Christianity wasn't being given a more special and protected status? My sense - & again - this, I admit, is a bit of an impression based on very cursory checking in on the current affairs - was that secularism was being used against one faith more enthusiastically than others. Comments welcome.

Sadie, not arguing, just asking. Just in case I wasn't clear.

I think a colonial history in Morocco, Algiers and Tunisia is different than a colonial history in central & south Africa. But you raise an interesting point. So is your view then that the secularism that they're implementing is making them a bigger target? And so what is it about that that is making it so? And while France is being repeatedly targetted recently, haven't other countries also had troubles? Offhand I'm thinking of Theo Van Gogh who was Dutch but haven't there been other incidents of fundamentalists attacking western european citizens?

I have been doing battle on Lilly's coat on & off all day. I have to give her breaks because it's tough on her. So far I have pulled enough undercoat to make a second dog & have some left over. Coat King rakes from Germany are winning today, btw.

here http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/616212-advice-for-mistake-made-at-my-job/#entry7083807 I find the profile page sometimes gives better results than the my content one...

I don't see where France is being blamed? Historical events & colonial history are being blamed.

I think it's much too early to say that.

"Situation in Turkey for U.S. Military: Force Protection Condition Delta. For perspective, that was the condition ordered following 9/11."

we're talking about it here http://forums.welltrainedmind.com/topic/618113-turkish-attempted-military-coup-happening-right-now/?p=7105728

we have that here too but then there is still the normal application and references and home check done by the rescue. The store only has them there to give them exposure. The adoption is still handled according to the shelter or rescue policies...

Some shelters in North America have policies against people adopting outdoor cats. Not all do but many do. Were there no other shelters or humane societies or rescues in your area? I always find it odd that people who get refused an adoption run to a store. There are tons of cats everywhere and usually many being given ftgh in the classifieds.