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BREXIT: What Does it Mean for Animal Welfare?

On the 18th December, 2018 the government announced that the £2 billion no deal Brexit contingency fund would now be released and that 3,500 troops will be made available in preparation for UK’s departure from the EU in March 2019 (BBC News, 2018).

I’ll be honest, I feel way out of my depth with Brexit. I resent ever being given the option to vote in the Brexit referendum because I‘m woefully ill-informed to do so. I’m not an economist, I’m not a legal expert in international trade and I’m not an historian. Most importantly, I’m not a politician and I’m not being paid shedloads of taxpayers cash to do their job and run the bloody country!

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My Dog’s Got Diamonds on the Soles of His Paws

“I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes…” Remember that Paul Simon song?

Well, if you have dogs you might have something a little less desirable than diamonds on your shoes – and so might your dogs – according to a new study published in the Journal of Veterinary Parasitology by Panova and Khrustalev (2018).

Image by Hans [CC0 1.0]

Read on to find out what…

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Seminar – Pet Dog Training Instructors 7th National Conference, April

I am the speaker at the PDTI conference on Saturday 7th April, 2018.

Here’s an outine of what I will be talking about, along with a short video trailer –

Part 1: The cognitive dog: the core emotional systems
Part 2: The troubled dog: dysfunctional emotional systems
Part 3: The rehabilitating dog: restoring emotional systems
Part 4: The gut-brain dog: diet, the microbiome and emotions

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Seminar – Dog&Bone March 2018

Robert Falconer Taylor will be presenting the following seminars:

  1. Thursday 15th March 2018 – The Science of Canine Emotionality and it’s practical application for owners and canine professionals (including EMRA: Emotion, Mood and Reinforcement Assessment)

  2. Friday 16th March 2018 – The roles of pain and nutrition in (mis)behaviour, the missing links in canine emotionality

For details and introductory video –

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Getting Old(er): How Long is a Lifespan?

Dogs are amazing for many reasons. One reason is their range in size within one species – from less than 1 kg right up to nearly 100kg – a one-hundred-fold increase.

Another reason is their lifespan. Smaller dogs – on average – live more than twice as long as giant breeds despite near-identical physiology, diet and environmental conditions.

For cats, lifespan is on a much more linear trajectory. Members of the Felidae family range from 15 to 30 years old. Larger cats like lions live longer than smaller cats like your own moggie domestic cat.

Why do big dogs die young? And how do small dogs – and cats – manage to avoid this early death trap?

Image by free-photos [CC0 1.0]
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Pets Say NO to Smoking! PART 2

In Part 1 of this article, we took a look at exactly what cigarette smoke is and why it is so dangerous.

In this part, Part 2, we take a look at a random selection of a few of the thousands of studies published on the effects of smoking in humans, and especially children in SECTION B. There is less known about the negative effects of second-hand smoke on pets, but in SECTION C, we summarise the results of most of the studies that have been done in dogs and cats.

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