mita

This issue of the pets not allowed in evac centres in Cairns, came up when 2 Qld politicians were talking on Local ABC Radio, about all disaster issues. Lib, Tim Nichols & Labour, Cameron Dick. Cameron Dick just dismissed the issue of pets. But Tim Nichols surprised me. He said he was the the 'feeder' & 'cleaner-upper' for a little band of pets, so he thought the pet issue was something we have to think about. In a big place like Cairns, maybe they could've designated just one evacuation centre for people with pets. Put all pet owners in one place. Places like showgrounds, maybe. I noticed in the smaller towns, like Ingham & Innisfail, they had no problems with pets being included in evac centres. Nice to see the TV footage of pets with their families. It seemed people were responsible. Cats in carriers & dogs on leads or on laps. Disasters can be picky....like only sections of Brisbane were hit by the floods. And mostly people from low lying suburbs were evacuated to centres in Cairns. So if pets could be put into the temporary care of volunteer foster-carers in nearby safe areas, that might help, too. RSPCA Qld has started an Emergency Foster Carer data-base. People can sign in to say they'd be willing to provide safe, dry temporary shelter. Form to fill in, is here: http://www.facebook.com/notes/rspca-qld-in...150173854240620 There's also another data base for people who want to sign in to be called on to help with wildlife.

Both the Qld cyclone & flooding (more following the cyclone) are leaving animals in trouble. These crises are throughout the state & will occur again. RSPCA Qld is setting up two data bases were volunteers can register to be called on to help. First, Emergency Foster Carers to provide safe, dry temporary homes for 2-3 weeks until other housing arrangements made. Second, Wildlife Heroes which can cover a whole range of possible tasks, right down to just transport an animal to a carer or vet. Any participation in difficult rescues, is only at the person's discretion. Application forms are here online: http://www.facebook.com/notes/rspca-qld-in...150173854240620

Just read about the program in the Weekend Australian. They give the time as 4.30 pm....BUT channel 7's being changing time slots because of intensive cyclone coverage. Like, we were watching for Dr Harry's segment on Qld floods & animals in the Better Homes & Gardens show last night. 7.30 pm in the printed guides. But it came on at 9.30pm. So I'm not surprised Extraordinary Dogs has another listing of 5.00pm. The WA review says: The most absorbing stories involve assistance dogs, such as the Pups in Prison program run by Assistance Dogs Australia. In a Tasmanian prison, carefully selected inmates are assigned puppies, spending 18 months training the dogs to be a service animal for people with disabilities. Not only does the program provide ADA with trainers with time enough to dedicate themselves to the task, the responsibility & affection of a dog seems to benefit the trainers as well. Also fascinating is an English story about dogs helping people manage their type 1 diabetes.

No science, but just a bit of survey fun. A US company that deals in strategic naming, did a survey of pet owners (1,059) before the US election. To see if what people named their pets had any link with their voting preference. That is, if they intended voting for Hillary Clinton, John McCain or Barack Obama. And they reckoned they found links. (By the way, 1/3 had chosen human names). http://www.namedevelopment.com/articles/pe...date-study.html

I'd have loved to hear you standing at the back door calling Woof Woof & Bow Wow in for dinner. :D

I don't know if this has happened for other people... but when you have pets with human names, you get them all mixed up with the children's names (& with each others). We used to have 6 pets, all with human names. Calling out names, on the run (like everyday!), I'd often have to go thro' the long list of all family names. Until the 'called' one's face would light up. Meant I'd got the right one.

We had friends who had a Boxer called Chuck & a Siamese cat called Ling.

There's the names you give them....& the variations they finish up with. Our Annie gets called AbbaFace. She was born in Sweden. Timothy the cat got called Timmyboots. He had white feet. Then there's the 'no name' you give a stray animal you don't want to keep. We found a young cat who kept living in our front garden, so frightened he stayed up in a tree. We used to feed him so he wouldn't starve. But we weren't going to keep him. No giving him a name! When we called him down for dinner, we'd say, 'C'mon, little bird!' Funny, eh! Not really, he stayed, became a big, fat family pet whose name was Little Bird. Visiting tradesmen used to say, 'Lady, that cat's not little & he's not a bird!'

Dr Harry visited with AWL Qld & met with dogs that had lucky escapes & made it thro' the floods. This segment will in the Better Homes & Gardens program on Channel 7 on Friday night (Feb 4) at 7.30 pm.

I worked with a man whose cat he called Cardinal Wolsey, because he was the original fat cat. Known as 'Woolly'. His little girl made a vet appointment & gave Woollly's full name. So when the man was in the waiting room, the vet popped his head out the door & said, 'Cardinal Wolsey, next!' He said all the people looked at him in wonder... Gee! A cardinal at the vet's. So he said, 'Bless you, my children!' & sailed into the exam room with the real Cardinal, in his crate.

Quite true. Which is why I would argue that humanising dogs doesn't necessarily diminish the relationship in the slightest and probably enhances it more than anything. I expect I am being confusing by insisting on calling something what it is even when it's not important that it be called that for the purposes of the discussion. There is a huge difference between a scientist and a casual observer, but that's not to say the scientific definition shouldn't hold for the casual observer as well, whether they know it or not. What do you think? Agree, corvus. I specially agree with your comment about trying to talk about something....from 2 perspectives at once. From someone mindful of the boundaries of science & from what people generally experience in everyday life. Especially when it involves people & behaviour. We can talk about studies that might shed some light....but when it comes to what happens in everyday life, there's more variables there, than we can know of (much less control!). Gawd, add dogs & their behaviour to the mix, and it gets more complex. :D And you're right....boy, do terms matter. The language of science avoids words like 'love', like the plague. It has to keep to terms that most would agree that they can observe & measure. But 'love' has deep meaning for people in everyday life....& the enthusiastic behaviour of dogs leads people to suppose dogs 'love', too. A way of sorting this thro', came from a scientist I respect. He said just because something can't be measured by experimental science, it doesn't mean that it doesn't exist & isn't awfully important in making life rich. He mentioned 'love' in his list. So I think we can just say....Look, this is as far as science presently can take that issue. But we don't live our lives according to exact science....& This is what meaning it has for us. I thought your first reply to me covered both...neatly, in the two paragraphs. Like first, how inexact our knowledge is about dogs' mental states ...but, second, we've developed a 'meaning' between us & dogs where we've been quite free with the words we use. Like 'love'.

What's a non-human name? I could call my baby, Furps. Hey presto! With one stroke on the Birth Registration form, Furps has become a human name. There you go....anyone now wanting a human name...can have Furps. Don't rush all at once, tho'. :D 'What's in a name?' asked Shakespeare. 'A rose by any other name would smell the same.'

Well, I just said in my first post, I'm puzzled why that accreditation system wasn't formulated to apply to all. As it now stands, it's a bit like the Heart Foundation tick that's applied for, on certain foods. Just means that an application was made for these. So I've also said, it still means that people buying puppies have to follow their own noses to find what they believe is the most genuine breeder.

Why would you ask me that? That's the question you ask of the accrediting body.

I'm spanning 2 arguments. Experimental science has quite rightly been cautious about making pronouncements about identification & attribution of mental states in animals. But the same is true for what is coming out of neuroscience re humans. Researchers invariably caution about making a leap from specific findings to actual behaviours of human beings. Which leaves us, a great deal in the action research of everyday life, using behavioral observations as cues. Bonding can be observed & benefits like stress lowering & blood pressure lowering can even be measured. We do that with infants & very young children, given they do not yet have language labels to describe their mental states. Most importantly, because humans are social animals (& need to be so, to survive), 'guesses' about mental states are placed in the context of relating (or bonding). Not surprising we do the same thing with dogs, who've adapted to living with humans, for mutual benefits. The language we label external signs of hypothesized mental states, is fluid & can't be subject to strict scientific definition. For example, a baby showing 'enthusiasm' when mother enters the room....we're likely to attribute that, with our value of bonding, to 'love'. We may do the same for dogs....who show 'enthusiasm' when their owner appears or when taken out to do a 'job' they clearly enjoy. There's a huge difference between the observer as a scientist taking notes....& the individual in everyday life. One's working in a value-free context..., the other is in a context where values provide fuel for behaviour (& where the pesky evolutionary psychologists have all sorts of theories, note theories).

If it consists only of someone appraising themselves... that's self-report. The external body deciding to accredit or not, needs to have evidence that what's self-reported is reasonable.

We have a funny problem in our block of houses. There's Molly a dog, Molly a cat, & Molly a woman. And on some holidays, Molly a child, comes to stay next door.

Accreditation can be given....& taken away. The grounds on which it can be revoked need to be written into any accreditation program. Then, whomsoever monitors the system can, quite legally, strip an individual of that privilege. 'Struck off' the accredited members register. i would like to report this breeder, how do i do this? Processes around questioning/losing accreditation, need to be written into any such system, equally with the processes for gaining accreditation.

Accreditation can be given....& taken away. The grounds on which it can be revoked need to be written into any accreditation program. Then, whomsoever monitors the system can, quite legally, strip an individual of that privilege. 'Struck off' the accredited members register.

He has, technically, but that doesn't diminish his relationship with the dog in the slightest in my view. Humanising is an integral part of the human-dog bond IMO. Yes, it can go too far, but let's not confuse "humanising" that has a detrimental effect on dogs and "humanising" that doesn't have a detrimental effect. As others have said, it's when dogs are attributed with reasoning powers beyond that which they are capable that humanising becomes a serious issue and something that we should work hard to avoid. My dog is not being "disobedient". He is not giving me the finger, he does not necessarily know the command, he probably doesn't know what he did wrong, he does not need a cupcake every day, he isn't trying to spite me, he is not angry with me because I left him alone all day, he is most likely not acting in third-order intentionality, he is unlikely to make a connection between two events that occurred more than 10 seconds apart, he doesn't lie and he's not trying to trick me or even train me. He just does what tends to work for him. The principles of expecting 'reasoning powers beyond that which they are capable' refers as much to adults dealing with young children, as it does to dogs. The point is that Darwin (& later, others) saw humans equally a part of the evolutionary world as dogs. Both reliant on social grouping for survival. And both developing characteristics by which they could meet each others needs in a combined social group. With humans using their language, metaphorically, to express their bonding. So it's understandable for a human to call a dog a 'friend'. Humans do the same thing to each other....when they use expressions like 'Honey' or 'Sugar' as 'bonding' terms. They're not humanising honey or sugar by doing so. All of this does not say that humans & dogs are the same. There's an irrefutable standard by which dogs & humans remain different. They're 2 different species. Can't produce fertile offspring!

Dog breeding, by registered breeders, was basically a hobby & a passionate interest. Aimed to develop purebreeds according to a standard. Selling puppies as pets was seen to be secondary. But these days there's scrutiny about puppies being sold. From the point of view of consumer confidence & animal welfare. Calling the work of registered breeders an 'industry' seems to miss the point of it being a passionate interest in breed development. But, if puppies are sold are pets, that aspect takes it to the edges of the commercial world. Where it's more like a professional practice than just a hobby. So the sale of puppies is like a 'cottage industry'. So these days it's hard to escape some measures of regulation. Most of the professions have self-regulation based on accreditation. What the group believe is needed to do the job reasonably & which is open to on-going monitoring. If you work in one of the professions, you just take this for granted. I can understand why there's moves to develop a system of accreditation for dog breeding. There's already an excellent set of ethical guidelines for practice set out by Dogs Qld. Accreditation is just formalising that into a transparent system, and stressing things like mentoring for getting those guidelines into practice. Accreditation doesn't produced canonised saints. It just provides a framework for what is required & a way of monitoring what happens on the ground. All this seems to be understandable growing pains between breeding as a hobby... & breeding as profession which supplies something to the public. Of course, good breeders were good breeders, long before talk of accreditation. Just as good teachers were good teachers, long before they required registration based on accreditation. But that's no argument against the need for general accreditation standards. I've got no problem with the label 'companion animals' for pet dogs. It underlines how pet dogs live side by side with people in their everyday life. Which has implications for how puppies are bred & raised in their early weeks.

Have a talk to CLEAR Dog training. They have an in-home training with problem behaviour solutions. If you look thro' their Clients' Comments on the website, one says she was referred to them by Cam Day. http://www.cleardogtraining.com/

ABC Radio's been talking by phone to people in Cairns as they make their preparations. Two families so far have said they're going to stay at family or friends' houses that they think may be safer. Both talked about how they're taking their pets with them. One has 2 dogs & she said the bathroom will be mighty crowded at her rellie's place as there'll be a pile of adults & 4 dogs huddled in there at the worst. The other said they're taking their dog & pet snake with them. One earlier in the day worried me. It was an older lady who seemed to have a unit close to the waterfront. She said she was staying.

I hope that pretty much covers Scrappy's account. That'd be great to hear updates about the animals' progress. Thanks for finding a way we could help.

I have no problem with the fact that something extra is needed, from a consumer point of view. Given that the canine associations are essentially registeries, with ethical guidelines that are a matter of faith, not policing. Good to have an accreditation system that formalises key quality aspects. like mentoring & some monitoring of actual sites. And I like the fact that the system remains in the hands of registered breeders themselves, not an outside agency. This is how I'm used to professional organisations operating. But I also know that still a lot of the professional development takes place outside the formal system. Like, friends talking on the phone...or just chatting/visiting off their own bat. Of course, any such system doesn't mean there'll be those not so good, who'll slip thro'. It just makes it a bit harder to do. And it doesn't take away the need for 'consumers' to use their own judgment, too. Just the same way that while all doctors are registered, it's still necessary for patients to be discriminating. And use your own nose to find the most genuine. I'd only wonder why the whole shaboozle of accreditation isn't included with basic registration as a breeder anyway. And why it's presently, the extra mile for those who are willing. Maybe they didn't want to drag anyone kicking & screaming into a system they're not keen on.