Raining Days!

Argh! it's raining day again...

A step towards curbing puppy mills

Condition of puppies in a puppy mill at Pasir Ris

Animal activists have met with the Agri-Food & Veterinary Authority (AVA) to discuss puppy mills in Singapore.

In a written statement from the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA), the meetings took place "to appeal for a strong stance against the unethical and unacceptable practices of puppy mills in Singapore."

Key points discusses included setting higher industry standards and best practices, the urgent need to implement a robust licensing system and increase rigorous enforcement for the industry.

This is to happen while sending a strong positive message to the public about what constitutes good practices in the pet trade.

Currently those working at pet shops have to undergo formalised training on pet care in the retail trade.

A spokesperson from AVA said that this would eventually extend to the dog breeding farms, according to space allocation for the intakes of the courses. A date was not provided.

In a written statement, AVA stated it has been monitoring the situation on the farms and is involved in assessing the welfare of the dogs.

AVA looks beyond basic grooming to the overall condition of the dogs, the infrastructure and facilities provided for the dogs.

The animal welfare groups involved are:

• Animal Concerns Research & Education Society (ACRES)
• Action for Singapore Dogs (ASD)
• Cat Welfare Society (CWS)
• House Rabbit Society of Singapore (HRSS)
• Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals (SPCA)

Source: http://news.asiaone.com/News/AsiaOne%2BNews/Singapore/Story/A1Story20100729-229445.html

Happy National Day 2010!

Happy National Day 2010! Happy 45th Birthday to SINGAPORE!


This year's National Day's song...

Song For Singapore

We had our advanced National Day special dinner a few days ago...
Our special ND dinner...
(Rice + Fish + Raw Dehydration Summer Brush Tail + Egg + Green Peas + Carrots)


Yummy!

His master's mimic: Dogs 'copy their owner's hand and mouth movements'

It has often been observed that dogs resemble their owners.

But it seems our four-legged friends go a step further and even copy humans too.

They automatically imitate hand movements with their paws and mouth movements with their muzzles, research has revealed.


Face off: Kelsey Grammar with Eddie, his canine co-star on TV comedy Frasier. Pet dogs copy the actions of their owners, scientists have discovered

Humans are known to engage in ‘automatic imitation’, when another person’s body moving in a particular way elicits the same physical reaction in an observer.

And now canines have been shown to do the same.

Dogs’ imitative abilities are shaped by the way their owners interact with them as they grow up, the researchers suggest.



In the study, ten dogs were trained to open a sliding door using their heads and also with their paws for a food reward.

Five of them – three border collies, an Australian shepherd and a mongrel – were asked to open the door in the same way as their owner (head or hand/paw).

The remaining five dogs – four border collies and a mongrel – were required to use their paw after seeing human head use and their head their owner used a hand.

They took significantly longer to respond correctly to the task than those simply imitating.

Researcher Dr Friederike Range, a cognitive biologist at the University of Vienna, said: ‘The dogs brought with them to the experiment a tendency automatically to imitate hand use and/or paw use; to imitate these actions even when it was costly to do so, when imitation interfered with the efficient performance of an ongoing task.’

His colleagues told the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B: ‘The results provide the first evidence of automatic imitation and of automatic counter-imitation in dogs.

‘Dogs are special animals, both in terms of their evolutionary history of domestication and the range and intensity of their developmental training by humans.

‘Both of these factors may enhance the extent to which dogs attend to human activity.

‘But the experiment suggests it is the latter training in the course of development which plays the more powerful and specific role in shaping their imitative behaviour.’

Two years ago, researchers found dogs yawn when they see a human doing so, suggesting they are capable of empathising with people.

Another study found they develop a bark similar to the sound of an owner’s regional accent. So canines in Liverpool communicate in a high pitch, for example.

Source: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencete...h-reveals.html

She talks to dogs

SHE claims that a dog told her about what her friend's maid was up to. And it seems her friend believed her.

Ms Lynda Goh, 39, is a public relations practitioner by day and an "animal whisperer" by night.

She claims to be able to communicate with animals. One example she gave was the dog of this friend, who had "suddenly become aggressive" and kept growling at visitors.

Protecter

Through her "communication" with the dog, Ms Goh claimed to have found out that the family's maid had been bringing strangers into the house and that the dog was trying to protect the owner and the house.

She added: "We checked with the neighbours and they confirmed that they saw the maid letting strangers in."

The maid was sacked, but Ms Goh did not give us any further details or a way to contact her friend, so her claims could not be verified.

She is an animal lover with a soft spot for old, rescued dogs. Besides helping friends by "communicating" with their pets, she has started Zeus Communications, an animal welfare organisation made up of volunteers.

She told The New Paper on Sunday that communicating with animals is not about body language.

"It's more like telepathy, bringing pet owners back to nature where we use our hearts and minds to communicate... It is based on instincts, feelings and emotions."

Ms Goh claimed to have picked up this ability last year when she attended workshops by animal communicator Rosina Arquati in Hong Kong.

She said she has wanted to care for animals since she was seven. She would save her pocket money to take strays to veterinarians to be neutered.

She heard about Ms Arquati from friends in the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals in Kuala Lumpur and signed up for the courses.

According to Ms Goh, animal communication is a "much bigger thing" in Hong Kong than in Singapore.

Ms Arquati, a 59-year-old Englishwoman, is the owner of Animal Talk Limited, and has worked in this line for 17 years. She holds workshops in Singapore too (in collaboration with Zeus Communications) as well as in Malaysia and the UK.

Ms Goh said: "For me, it's more for my volunteer work where I work with abandoned pets, lost pets, stray animals, or counsel pet owners if they are planning to give up their pets due to 'bad' behaviour...

"It's not always 'bad' behaviour but owners sometimes don't make that extra effort to understand."

She said she has also helped some who have contacted her through Zeus Communications. Although her training involved communicating with "all kinds of animals", she said most of her work is with dogs and cats.

Ms Goh was also part of the Wish-Upon- A-Bone campaign, an initiative by Wishbone Pet Foods which makes cat and dog food.

The inaugural campaign, which started in May and closed on July 6, aimed to grant wishes that owners had for their pets.

Ms Tan Yu Jia, 21, who owns a jack russell terrier named Jojo, had made a wish to get help for her dog.

Her father had found Jojo abandoned a year ago.

Source: http://www.asiaone.com/News/The%2BNew%2BPaper/Story/A1Story20100726-228951.html

AVA warns 'dog-abusers'

The plight of the dog 'Butters' had come to light earlier this month when a video of Ms Kanchan Devi beating a small brown dog was uploaded on video-sharing website YouTube. -- PHOTO: YOUTUBE

TWO dog owners have been let off with a stern warning by the Agri-Food and Veterinary Authority (AVA), following allegations that they abused their dog.

After a nine-day investigation, AVA found the dog to be 'healthy and in good condition', and that the owners had 'no ill-intention to hurt their pet dog whilst attempting to discipline it'.

The AVA differentiated this case from one of animal cruelty because it there was no deliberate intent to inflict harm and severe pain on an animal and also because the owners voluntarily submitted themselves to investigations. Furthermore, the dog was seen 'relating positively' to its owners.

A man, who is believed to have filmed and uploaded the video, called the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animal(SPCA) to admit his involvement in the video on July 14. Alerted by enraged Netizens, the society had put up an appeal for information three days before.

The plight of the dog 'Butters' had come to light earlier this month when a video of Ms Kanchan Devi beating a small brown dog was uploaded on video-sharing website YouTube. The dog, believed to be a poodle-terrier, was beaten repeatedly with what looked like a broom.

If convicted of animal cruelty, an offender can be fined up to $10,000 and/or be imprisoned for up to 12 months.

Source: http://www.straitstimes.com/BreakingNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_556536.html

PS from ADS: is it too light for a punishment???

Classic Instrumental Musics calm us down...

Our jie jies(Betty and Sharon) was once a clarinetist in their secondary school's life..(One of them is a 3rd stand clarinetist in Sch's Military band and the other is 1st stand clarinetist in Sch's concert band)

Till today, our jie jies still enjoy the music [Classic Instrumental] a lot..(Despite they listen to a lot of K-pop these days)

Once in a while, our jie jie will play classic music on their PC and let us listen to it which jie jies believes will calm our minds and soul...
Today, our jie jie(Sharon) play the musics on her PC again... our regular music pieces are


Of course, we listened to some other music pieces as well...




One of the regular music we listened to is one of big jie jie(Sharon)'s favorite Korea Drama's OST... this korea drama is call Beethoven Virus(One of the many K-drama which jie jie watched) It's also a drama related to Classic Music...


We always listen to it and suddenly becomes really quiet...

Dog psychic?

Source: http://www.razor.tv/site/servlet/segment/main/search/?searchQuery=Animals+speak+to+her+&fromPageForCloud=searchPage&hiddenvalue=initial

What's for dinner???

This is what we have for tonight....


In the big bowl: Rice+Green Peas+Carrots+Fish+Addiction Dehydrated summer brush tail+eggshell powder+Plaque off powder

Yummy!

Amber and Dawn, A day at Petopia on 6/7/10

On 6 July 10, our jie jies (Betty & Sharon) bring us to their work place, Petopia...
along with Chocolate's relative.. Kiki and Snoop the Shih Tzu and Pico the Poodle...

Upon arriving there, we were been put into the playroom with all the other doggie guest(Boarding/Day Care Dogs) there..but we were quarantine in another space with a barrigate inbetween to seperate us with the Doggie Guest...Cause jie jies want to avoid/prevent unnecessary incident such as us fighting with all the other doggie guest in case we injured them..



Dinner time, while jie jies were busy feeding the doggie guest there we had our home cook dinner as usual(Jie jie packed for us and bring along there to heat it up)
then after walking the doggie guest, we were walked too...

It was yet another good experience gained..

The 2 photos below was taken from Petopia Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=224976&id=203959548827