Posted on August 04, 2010 by: WayCoolDogs

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Dog care

… is more than just bringing a dog home and feeding or watering it until it dies or you get rid of it. Dog behavior will tell the owner of the dog just how good of a job the care of the dog is, but how will you know? What does your behavior tell you about how good of a job you are doing at caring for your dog?

Overcrowded shelters that are filled to the brim with abandoned dogs or dropped-off unwanted pets offer final testimony to each animal of the quality of dog owners in today’s society. Looking at who we are and how we live are important for the provision of quality of dog care — steps in critical thinking vital for every dog owner.

Critical thinking involves knowing how to think objectively, and has nothing to do with being criticized or criticizing someone else’s thinking. What it means is not accepting everything you are told at face value or not evaluating what you have been told by a friend, a neighbor, or the media. It does not mean because it is on the main page or front page it is the absolute truth and the most important news of the day.

What critical thinking means is that we need to question information or answers we read or are told, as stated by the Norwegian intellectual and author Jostein Gaarder with “The most subversive people are those who ask questions”. When online, every website that does not end with a edu. (educational website) or gov. (through the government) can be taken at face value – including us at Way Cool Dogs. We try to base our information from those two sources or what we have strong feelings about regarding the care and health of dogs without getting emotional about it all — which is difficult at times. However, not everybody should agree with us, having an opinion of their own based on who and what their own life consists of.

Critical thinking for dog care

1. Do I really have time for a dog? This is the number one step in being the best dog owner there is — long before bringing one home. This saves a lot of dogs from entering shelters or being dumped onto the streets, steps which teach our children we are a society of little care or value for the most devoted, loyal, friendliest and intelligent animals on earth. Moral and ethical values are taught to us in childhood which continues into our adulthood — or not.
2. Is the dog you bring home the dog for you? There are just as many types of dogs as there are people searching for them as pets. Before you head out and drag one home, make sure you know who you are and what your lifestyle consists of. Relate this to the type of dog you are most comfortable with. If you don’t know, the worse thing possible is to bring an innocent pet into the home of a person who does not know who they are. In fact, it will eventually become dangerous for the animal — forcing them into a shelter, going from home to home, or being abandoned on the streets.
3. Should I choose my dog from the shelter or bring home a puppy? This is a no-brainer. From six to eight million animals are placed in shelters every year through abandoned animals and owners dropping them off for various reasons. Over 56% of these pets are euthanized because of a serious lack of caring owners who would take home a shelter dog to save their life. This means very little to prospective dog owners unless they are involved with the killing process and see it at work first hand. FACT: Seven dogs and cats are born every day for each person born in the United States. Of those, only one in five puppies and kittens stay in their original home throughout their natural lifetime. The remaining four are abandoned to the streets or end up at a shelter at a cost of two billion dollars a year to the taxpayers.
4. Am I providing adequate care to my dog regarding its daily cares? A dog will demonstrate patterns and behaviors equivalent to the type of daily cares they are received. Bad behavior — bad care. Good behavior — good care. This is why a person should be able to recognize if they are able to take good care of a dog or not. If they do not know this, how could they be able to recognize what their dog is telling them? Daily cares for dogs are similar to those in people, determining what level of care a person is able to do on their own and what is needed by an outside source: eating, drinking, sleeping, toileting, and illness or health. The short version is this. If you go to the sink to get a cool glass of water for yourself, but your dog’s bowl has not been rinsed or filled with clean cool water that day … well, you may want to take a good look at your quality of dog care.

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Grandmother’s Corner

A second grader came home from school and said to her grandmother, “Grandma, guess what? We learned how to make babies today.”

The grandmother, more than a little surprised, tried to keep her cool. “That’s interesting,” she said, “how do you make babies?”

“It’s simple,” replied the girl. “You just change ‘y’ to ‘i’ and add ‘es’.”

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