Reworming

When you get to the top of the river you're going to want to find a shallow stretch of riverbed with relatively calm water and sediment pieces that are gravel sized, not cobble, sand or mud. This is critical; test it with your nose if you're not sure! when you have this, you're going to want to flip on your side and slap the gravel as hard as you can with your tail to dislodge it; you're gonna want to alternate between digging the spot out and doing some more slapping until you've got a nice little cone shaped depression for the eggs.

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No-kill shelters were a mistake

Dogs and cats are so horribly over populated and there’s so many fucking feral cats that just get fixed and released its insane

Like humans are responsible for this mess and instead of dealing with it people cry about their own personal feelings before considering how many dogs and cats are out there already.

Like yes it’s sad. I wish it didn’t have to be like that. But it’s our responsibility to clean up the mess

Local small animal species going extinct

Seeing free roaming and feral cats and dogs get hit and killed by cars

Keeping the locked up in shelters indefinitely

Letting animal hoarders keep them in horrible inhumane conditions because to some of you a sick and starved animal is better then a dead animal

Hi Tumblr, I'm just a lurker here and I don't really post. But today I want to. I want to inform the Tumblr community of the COVID-19 situation in Nepal. The health system of the country has collapsed (no cap, fr). Yesterday was difficult for Nepal, most of the hospitals faced an acute shortage of oxygen, worsening the crisis. This morning, I read a heartbreaking tweet by a doctor who said most of the patients' oxygen tank could only last for two hours. The next few weeks are gonna be tough for the country and us, the citizens.

There are fewer than 600 ventilators for the entire country (32 million people). The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation predicts that Nepal will need well over 10,000 ventilators by 24 May. Nepal's infection rate and the cases per million are the highest in the world (Yes, faster than India). The Indian variant B.1.617 COVID-19, which has taken its toll in Nepal, has far higher death rates than any other variants. And only 1% of the total population is vaccinated.

Kathmandu, the capital and the country's most populous city, is the hardest-hit region of Nepal. All of Kathmandu's hospital beds have been fully occupied for the last 4 weeks. The only way a patient can get a bed is after the occupant dies. Even worse, people are dying in home isolation without getting a chance to get proper health services.

Nepali students worldwide have collectively come under the banner of Student Coalition for Nepal to collect funds for organizations working tirelessly to ensure a timely supply of medical necessities in Nepal.

And they need YOUR help. WE need your help. What can you do?DONATE. Every penny, each cent, and each dollar counts.

Here are some news articles about the situation in the international media:

1. The Guardian

2. CNN

3. The Washington Post

4. The Washington Post, again

5. The New York Times

6. The New York Times, again

Almost everyone here knows someone who died of covid. I lost my two relatives and an uncle a week ago. All of my friends have someone in their family circle who's currently fighting covid.

I know many lives will be lost in the coming weeks. But, we have to try our best. We have to give what we got. And we can't do this without your help.

Getting the word out at this time of crisis matters.

Tristan started learning to "go find" with carrot chunks hidden around the house.

Then he started volunteering to bring the Supper Dishes at mealtimes, and we encouraged this with "go find the Supper Dish, bring the Supper Dish," and "okay, we have this one, where's the other one? Go find the other Supper Dish, bring the Supper Dish."

This was expanded to "go find the Good Candy" and "the other Good Candy" for some extremely stinky cow hooves that I sealed into ziplock bags when they were done chewing. Tristan handled the generalization of "go find" really well.

But I was honestly not expecting that when he stole one of my gloves, and I was walking around holding one and jokingly asked, "Tristan, where is the other one?" that he would bring it to me. That would have been a bit much to ask, I was just talking to him because, well, we talk to the pups fairly often. But he DID bring me my other glove. I was astounded. And it rained good candies on the excellent good boy, let me tell you.

Now it's another one of Tristan's games. I show him one half of a pair of gloves or socks; "Tristan, where is the other one? Go find the other one!" He's very good at finding it. And when he brings it, he wags his whole body so much that the cloth sways in his mouth.

Obviously this would be a nightmare for many people, but it’s obviously meant to hurt trans people.

There’s an email template to send with comments supporting the need for gender neutral toilets here.

I’ve said a bunch of times here how much I struggle with emails, but the template is very simple to use and has clear instructions. The only steps are copy/pasting the email text, adding minor customisation (e.g. your name), copy/pasting the email address, and adding a subject line.

because what are the real risks for the breed as a whole? you’re going to get some wonky individuals for a bit, sure. that’s what conformation shows and critiques are for. and you’ll be keeping track of the bloodline anyway because… we do that. have been. for a minute.

like obvs there’s the ~purity aspect~ which is bullshit in regards to the vast majority of breeds, and there’s the cultural and meddling aspect which imo is actually legitimate.

In horses, goats, cattle, and even purebred cats careful crossing is allowed… because it’s literally necessary to keep populations viable for hundreds of years.

Ask anyone involved in endangered wildlife conservation. I’ve taken a class in it and if I had gone to my professor with the effective population size, average coefficient of inbreeding, rates of genetic disease, etc of MOST modern breeds (not just rare breeds! Collies and German shepherds are incredibly inbred)… she would wish me luck.

People managing actual endangered populations would be thrilled to have the resources we have.

Extremely careful outbreeding programmes for breeds that are already prone to a specific genetic disease, like the one with Dalmatians to reduce uric acid levels, do take place and are helpful. But just breeding in other dogs when the breed already has a sustainable number of healthy individuals isn’t just unnecessary, it’s creating dogs for whom their health and wellbeing comes down to a dice roll.

Here’s a fun graphic for you, showing COI values in different breeds:

And here’s a link to the source, where you can get a better look at the data: https://www.instituteofcaninebiology.org/blog/inbreeding-of-purebred-dogs-determined-from-dna

Which is based on this article: Dreger DL, M Rimbault, BW Davis, A Bhatnagar, HG Parker, & EA Ostrander. 2016. Whole genome sequence, SNP chips and pedigree structure: building demographic profiles in domestic dog breeds to optimize genetic trait mapping. http://dmm.biologists.org/lookup/doi/10.1242/dmm.027037

Notice how collies are number 5? And GSDs, while lower, are still well above 25% (= full sibling mating)? Not too difficult to explain that, once you distinguish between population size and effective population size. It doesn’t matter that there’s a whole lot collies in the world or that there’s different lines in GSDs, if every single dog in the breed population is more closely related to every other dog than the offspring of two full siblings. You can’t create any more diversity there, except by outcrossing. So do you have any hard data to back your statement about inbreeding not being a problem in these breeds?

And I’m not really sure what exactly you were suggesting by “you still won’t be sure that the puppies will end up healthy because there’s just too much that could happen”. Assuming, of course, that you test all your purebred stock for the genetic diseases they are at risk for and that you test all your crossbred stock for the genetic diseases that their foundation breeds are at risk for. What’s going to happen? Where’s all this ‘suffering’ coming from in your scenario? Again, do you have some data to back your statement? And I mean it, too. I genuinely want to see the research, if you have it. 

Unethical breeders behaving unethically and operating puppy mills doesn’t mean that irresponsible crossing will improve the situation.

And, yes, purebred stock by responsible breeders is tested for their breed specific genetic problems? And breeding, for example, a poodle (usually tested for hip dysplasia and other joint problems specific to that breed) and a cavalier king Charles spaniel (usually tested for congenital heart problems) means that you may end up with unexpected health problems - responsible breeders don’t make health decisions based on the individual genetic tests of the parents only, you need to take into account the profiles of as many relatives as possible. So if you’re trying to find, for example, heart screening data for that poodle’s line, it won’t be there. So your puppies can be born with heart defects, because they’re ridiculously common in those spaniels and you don’t have the right information for the other line.

Anyway, responsible breeders won’t let you purchase a dog knowing you’re going to breed mixes with it, so 99% of the time you’re starting from bad stock anyway. Which again, isn’t gonna help.

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