Abby

Let’s all just take a long look at the following two images. The top one is how a healthy dog should look. 

Brachycephalic breeds such as in the second image include dogs such as the French Bulldog, English Bulldog, Pug, Pekingese, Shihtzu, Boxers, and more. You may have heard smack about them previously or not at all, or you may be fully on the brachycephalic bandwagon still. I just want to refresh everyone’s memories a bit on why these are such horrible breeds and why they should not be continue to be bred. I have seen, every day for almost 3 weeks straight, dozens of deformed brachycephalic dogs being AI’d, being monitored during pregnancy, and having puppies delivered by C-section. I am sick of seeing this, and so this post is born.

Brachycephalic dogs commonly (and by commonly I mean almost every single brachycephalic dog) suffer from a syndrome called Brachycephalic Airway Syndrome. This syndrome involves the following, to varying degrees:

1. Narrow nostrils and overgrown bones within the nasal cavities (or, in other words, normal sized bones in a horribly shortened face) which obstructs airflow.

2. A trachea (i.e. windpipe) that is too small.

3. Everted laryngeal saccules (stage 1 of laryngeal collapse*) which can obstruct airflow.

4. A soft palate that is too long and obstructs airflow within the larynx.

These deformities translate into the cute, snorting, snoring, wheezing, overheating dogs that we all dote on. However, as if that’s not enough, these dogs can also have a multitude of other problems such as enlarged tonsils, vomiting and acid reflux, *full collapse of the larynx, jaw malformations resulting in dental malformations, skin disease, eye disease, heat intolerance, and inter-vertebral disc disease. They often require corrective surgery at a young age, and even then are not going to be completely healthy.

In other words, they’ve got it real bad. And people are still breeding them even when they are showing clear signs of anatomical and heritable abnormalities.

i love my cat

carmen papalia:

From the series on replacing his cane, this is one where he replaced his cane with a megaphone and would stand at intersections repeating “I can’t see” until somebody would stop and help him cross the street

Another cane replacement, this time replacing it with a high school marching band who would change the music depending on if there was something in the way or not.

A museum intervention where he got people at the MET to go through the museum with their eyes closed and experiencing touching things he’d gotten permission to touch (the floor in this image) and just exploring a visual art museum blind.

The Blind Field Shuffle, in which he has dozens of people form a conga line behind him with their eyes closed and leads them on a blind tour of the city - literally the blind leading the blind.

Wish I could find a better photo, but this is a museum gallery he curated where the works are almost at floor height, making them accessible to children, little people, and people in wheelchairs, but requiring abled people to bend down or sit on the floor in order to see them properly.