How To Maintain Your Love Affair ... With Your Dog Part One - Training

As luck would have it, adoption fair was right around corner from our home, this gave us a great opportunity for a home visit at end of event. I ran home, scrubbed and cleaned and did everything I could to make sure our home was ‘puppy worthy’. As soon as she arrived with her foster mom, puppy made sure to let us know she was in right place…but more about that later.

How Picky Can Your Cat Really Be?

Most of pet owners know that their much loved four-legged members of family come with a lot of personality and unique, sometimes almost human-like behavior. For instance, my cat would act as a peacemaker when she smells human fight. If I become angry and start raising my voice during conversation with someone, she would just jump on my legs and slightly scratch me in an attempt to cool me off. I am sure that people can tell us plenty of such examples of interesting pet behavior. But do they realize that their pets can be very picky when it comes to choosing a new friend?

They do it using such criteria as smell, size, gender, age and even appearance. In fact, they can even discriminate other animals according to color of fur among other things, as I soon discovered about my new cat.

When I first brought home my jet black panther-looking cat Regina, I was so excited to have her in my house until I realized that she might feel lonely and need someone to play with her. So, I started to look around for a good match for her. I opened up flier and found advertisement for “Very cute cat to good home” and responded to it. Naively assuming that all cats that are cute and mellow will get along just fine, I brought him home. Almost immediately upon bringing him home Regina jumped into air with him screaming and hissing. I was surprised to find ugly side of my otherwise calm and sweet cat’s nature and immediately knew this would not work out. Later there were more cats: a white one, gray one, even multicolored cats, different ages and genders – although U.N. or Jesse Jackson would have been proud; it was always same story. Either they would fight or Regina would simply reject cat outright. I began to think that my unassuming cat was “racist” or maybe just a loner.