6 minute read
PET TALK
The Hobart Observer proudly supports Ten Lives
Ten Lives
12 Selfs Point Road, New Town Open Mon - Sat 10.00 - 4.00 Sun 12.00 - 2.30 6278 2111 tenlives.com.au
FOSTER
Open your heart and your home
How can I help?
Foster caring can be one of the most rewarding and uplifting aspects of volunteering. Our foster care program is an essential part of our work looking after our kitties. You don’t have to foster all the time, fostering even for a short time - a week or two - helps with our vital work.
Fostering is a truly wonderful experience which is extremely rewarding for you and lifesaving for the cats or kittens you care for.
Some of the reasons our kitties need foster care before they can be adopted are: • Shy or timid • Too young • Illness
The Ten Lives Cat Centre provides full support and everything you need to care for a cat or kitten in your home. We provide: • food & bowls • kitty litter & trays • toys, blankets & beds • 24 hour support • medicines and vet care
You provide: • a loving environment • care for our cats and kittens
You can find out more about the Ten Lives foster care program and other ways you can help at tenlives.com.au Every cat has a story. Are you part of it? #FOSTER
TEN LIVES PUTS OUT CALL FOR VOLUNTEERS
TEN Lives Cat centre is preparing for a busy Summer and is calling on new foster carers and volunteers to help support them.
Ten Lives manager Noel Hunt said the centre was expecting a huge kitten season, which began this month.
“Based on our intake numbers over this Winter, we are anticipating a bumper kitten season,” he said.
“The fact we are seeing pregnant cats and kittens now makes us believe we are faced with a real tsunami of cats to come.
“We need 150 new volunteers and around 200 new foster carers to be trained up and ready to go.”
Mr Hunt said the centre was also gearing up to build an intensive care unit for the kittens who come into their care.
“Being able to get cats and kittens out of the shelter quickly and into foster care will really help,” he said.
“If we have too many cats and kittens here when the building starts, the load and stress will be huge.”
As part of the project, Ten Lives needs to upgrade its current
laundry including the purchase of an industrial grade washing machine and is on a fundraising drive to raise $150,000. This investment will make the centre’s operations run more smoothly, as they need to regularly wash and dry thousands of blankets and other cat bedding. Labor Member for Clark Ella Haddad is a proud supporter of the Ten Lives Cat Centre and said funds would go a long way in helping many cats and kittens. “Ten Lives take their role as leaders in responsible cat ownership very seriously, educating the community about keeping cats safe indoors, as well as making sure all cats and kittens adopted from the centre are desexed and vaccinated,” she said. “By supporting Ten Lives Cat Centre with a small donation, your contribution will go a long way to helping the work of the centre in their work rehoming cats and kittens long into the future.” To support the Ten Lives Cat Centre and donate towards their building project, visit https://www. givenow.com.au/tenlives.
Dog school
The Dog Grumbler
I BELIEVE that much of what a dog needs to learn to be happy and successful in life is best taught by other dogs.
We leave pups in the litter until eight weeks of age or so, because they need to learn basics from mum and siblings.
They need to pick up knowledge about themselves, the world and their place in it.
As I have pointed out before, three out of four dogs never live in a human home.
These dogs learn everything they know from other dogs and personal experience and have done so since they were wolves.
They were equipped for this long before we started moulding them to our needs.
Nature set this up and we can learn much from the way dogs learn from each other.
They use sound, scent and body language and touch.
Sound works much for dogs as it does instinctively for humans – they hear over twice our range of frequencies, but rising and falling pitch indicate the same things.
We use baby talk with infants and dogs because it works – it doesn’t convey anything too specific, but a baby, like a dog, understands rising and falling pitch better than words.
We know dogs have noses much better than our own.
Most animals do — but dogs have specialised in the smell of humans.
For the last forty years, I have worked on the assumption that dogs can smell human hormones.
Dogs are body language geeks.
They recognise us more by the way we move than by the way we look.
Then there’s touch.
Dogs don’t have much range here – in terms of communication they can lick, hold, nip or bite.
Your dog won’t lick people it doesn’t know or like.
A mother dog does not teach a pup how to behave by waiting until it does something good and then licking it.
She waits until it does something wrong and expresses disapproval the only way she can — she growls, snaps and smells angry.
She picks up her pup by the scruff of the neck and takes it where it should go.
She works on her pup’s natural control point, the neck.
This is where a dog perceives tactile communication from others.
Pick it up this way and it knows who is boss.
Knead it here to release oxytocin in both parties and it will love you right back.
Dogs play this way.
Pups learn this way.
They play fight.
They hold each other on the ground.
People see this and panic – they separate dogs that are playing and learning.
If a larger or older dog is holding a pup down every time it rises and the pup is not squealing in distress, it’s just a game and the repetition is integral to the pup’s mental development.
This is why I avoid halters and harnesses — I want to teach a dog, not control it; not train it to pull a sled.
To stop a dog fighting, don’t pull it away from its adversary, lift it by the collar — and some loose neck skin if you can get a handful — lift its front paws off the ground and then move it away.
This is much better understood.
This is why chokers work, not because they strangle or cause discomfort, but because they mimic a mum’s grip.
Some people think a leash is to stop a dog running away.
For me it’s a training aid – a means of communication remembered from the litter.
Sure, you can train a dog using only positive reinforcement if you live long enough, but you won’t be doing it any favours.
Your dog wants you to sound and smell upset when it does the wrong thing.
It wants you to respect and use the language it came with.
And the best teacher is another dog — a well behaved, well trained dog will always be a positive influence.
Second best is a patient human who communicates in the dog’s own language.
From left, Labor Member for Clark Ella Haddad and Ten Lives manager Noel Hunt.
SCOTT HUNT The Black & White Dog Book Provides one on one solutions for behaviour problems. All breeds, all ages. No dogs too hard. 0439 444 776
ENFIELD KENNELS & CATTERY
DOG & CAT RESORT
Only 15 minutes from the airport!
