Tag Archives: pets

Keeping Your Dog Motivated

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Keeping the attention of a dog while training is not always an easy task. Dogs can be very easily distracted, and it is important to not allow the dog training sessions to be sabotaged by boredom. Making dog training fun for the dog and the human alike is essential to creating a happy, well-adjusted and well-trained dog.

You should provide random positive stimuli during the day in order to keep the attention of the dog. Doing things the dog enjoys, like walking in the park, riding in the car, and playing with other dogs, are good ways to keep the dog’s attention, but you must reward him for small successes.

For instance, in order to reward the dog for coming to you when you call him, ask the dog to come to you, without giving any clues about a walk, a car ride, or other treats.

After your dog has come to you and obediently sat down, attach the leash and start the reward. This can be either the before-mentioned walk in the park, ride in the car, or anything else the dog enjoys doing.

Giving some kind of reward, whether a treat, a special outing, or just a scratch behind the ears, every time the dog does something you want, is a good method to keep your dog motivated while you are dog training.

If the dog knows something great is going to happen every time he obeys your command, he will be more motivated to please you every time.

Distraction training.

When training any dog, it is important to not let distractions disrupt the training. The dog must be taught to ignore distractions, such as other people, other dogs, other animals and loud noises, and focus on what is being taught These kinds of distractions can even be used as rewards when training the dog to come when called.

For instance, if your dog enjoys playing with other dogs, whether in the local park or with the neighbour’s dogs, let him play freely with those other dogs. Then go into the park or garden and call your dog.

When he comes to you, give him lots of praise, treats and other rewards, then immediately let the dog to return to playing with his friends. Repeat this several times and praise the dog each time he comes over to you.

The dog will quickly learn that coming to you means good things (treats and praise) and not bad ones (being removed from the park).

This so-called distraction training is one of the most difficult things for your dog to learn, because dogs are naturally social animals, and leaving the pack is one of the most difficult things you can ask your dog to do. Most dogs will be understandably reluctant to leave their canine companions, but it is vital to persist in dog training.

Training the dog to come to you when you call can require some creativity on your part at first. For instance, waving a favourite toy, or a lure, is a good way to get your dog’s attention and put the focus back on you. If your dog has been clicker trained, a quick click can be a good motivator too, when training your dog.

Once the dog begins to get the hang of coming when called, you can begin to reduce and eliminate the visual cues and focus on getting the dog to obey your voice alone. It is vital that the dog responds to voice commands alone, since you will not always have the availability of a toy or other lure.

Does your dog require training? If you require more details on dog training, then visit our web site entitled Successful Dog Training

Cobras

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The species of snake called the spitting cobra is very unusual as it not only has a poisonous bite but it also spits venom into the eyes of its prey and aggressors. Contact of this venom with your eyes is very painful and can even blind you temporarily, therefore, if you get cobra venom in your eyes, irrigate them with water at once in order to prevent permanent tissue damage.

The King Cobra (Ophiophagus hannah) is also unusual in this large family of snakes (elapidae) because it feeds almost exclusively on other snakes with mice and small birds also making up part of its diet.

The King Cobra sets another record in terms of size: it can get to nearly twenty feet long, which makes it the largest venomous snake in the world. The most recent discovery of a new cobra species was made in 2003, when a specimen was identified at a London Zoo as part of an illegal shipment of exotic pets.

Going by DNA reports, this new species of snake is similar to the red spitting cobra but differs in genes. It apparently originates from an area between Sudan and Egypt and it has been named the ‘Nubian Spitting Cobra’.

Though highly dangerous when it is threatened cobras will not attack if you leave them alone, although the spit is very accurate for about two meters. Compared to the strike of a rattlesnake, the cobra is fairly slow in its attack and furthermore, many bites prove to be blank, that is without venom.

Statistics of a study conducted on Malaysian cobra snake victims indicate that only 55% of the bites involved poison release and the same statistics indicate a mortality rate of only 10% for people bitten, since the poisons injected into the blood of the prey destroy the nerves (neurotoxins), which induces respiratory failure approximately half an hour after being bitten, so you have 30 minutes to seek help.

The colouration is variable from light green-grey to black, while juveniles are yellow and black banded. This snake can find a habitat all over south-eastern Asia.

Interested in the Cobras? To learn more about snakes visit Caring for Snakes our new web site.

Dogs’ Heart Worm, Fleas And Other Parasites

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You have to get rid of heart worm, fleas and other parasites in dogs whenever they raise their ugly heads by using the relevant treatment on them. Loads of products have come onto the market to defend dogs from heart worms, fleas and other parasites such as hook worms, whip worms, round worms, lice, ticks etc.

Out of the heart worms, fleas and other parasites, fleas can produce a hyper-sensitive over-reaction in the infected dog. Animals infested with fleas scratch their bodies very vigorously. Frequently the scratching becomes so severe that the skin becomes super-sensitive and dermatitis occurs in the affected areas of skin.

The result of a serious flea infestation is often that your dog can not lie down for long or sleep comfortably because of the continuous flea bites. So, your dog looks as if has some severe skin issues. If the your dog is not properly attended to for these flea bites, there could be a secondary bacterial attack in these sites and there may even be a bad smell emanating from the affected area of the animal’s skin.

You ought to inspect your pet closely in order prevent a serious infestation. It is essential to avoid such a serious outbreak as they are extremely distressing to your dog. Similarly, the skin of the animal needs to be inspected regularly for the presence of ticks and lice. In order to do this effectively, you must look at the dog’s skin by separating the dog’s hairs. The easiest way to achieve this is by slowly back-combing or ruffling the pet’s hair.

Usually, if your pet is anaemic, and he is not infested with fleas, you need to check for hookworm. Symptoms of hookworm are anaemia, loose stools and a pot belly. The dog’s owner may recognize these symptoms themselves, however, to be honest, the dog needs to undergo a routine health examination at the vet’s involving faecal and hematological examinations.

There are many products available commercially, some of which are helpful for solving all these conditions by a single dose. Drugs like ivermectin are highly efficacious and are available in injection, oral and solution forms. The latter should be applied directly on the dog’s skin. These drugs can induce the prevention of the above conditions too.

Therefore, the best strategy to follow is to keep a keen eye on your dog. This could easily be carried out at bath time or / and when you are grooming him. You can use an anti-flea and anti-tick shampoo, which will keep these pests under control, if used regularly. Couple this with a regular grooming with a lice comb and a flea collar should keep your pet lice, tick and flea free.

If you are experiencingproblems dog flea treatment on your dog, please follow the previous link or if you want to read more about dogs, please go here: Man’s Best Friend – the Dog

Radio And Inventory Control By The Use Of RFID

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RFID is the recognized acronym for Radio Frequency IDentification. The basis of RFID technology is that every RFID chip or tag is capable of sending a radio signal on a frequency wholly unique to itself.

Therefore, every RFID tag must have its own identifying frequency and the RFID tag readers have be sensitive enough to be able to distinguish between frequencies that are only a very minute bit different from its neighbouring tags. The disparity can be infinitesimal.

Therefore, the technology has to be precise and selective, but not fragile, because the equipment has to be used on the shop floor and by people who are often in a hurry and in weather that may be inclement.

In order for RFID to work, you need a tag, which is an upmarket kind of bar code and a radio receiver, often called a (tag) reader. However, whereas a bar code can only hold a small amount of information and the bar code reader has to be pointed at it, an RFID tag can store much more information and can be read from a hundred yards or more – even out of line of sight.

Passive tags will only divulge their details when asked to by a reader, whereas an active tag is constantly broadcasting its contents. Clearly, active RFID tags are more expensive than passive tags, because they have to have a long life battery.

These tags can be utilized to track items from the moment they leave the manufacturer of the goods they describe to the in-bay of the vendor. The tags can then be up-dated or replaced and stored in the warehouse. Once there, RFID readers can keep management informed about what goods are where and if the sell-by-date is impending.

This has ramifications for the levels of stock that a business needs to hold, the amount of goods sold cheap because the sell-by-date is too near and for theft, all of which should boost company profits more than funding the cost of the tags, the readers, the printers and the programmes.

At the click of a mouse, managers will be able to read how much inventory they have in real time and if this is all linked to the checkout cash registers, which are the most and least profitable items. This makes reordering easy . Easy to the point of automation. For instance, when stocks of the top ten percent of the best selling items falls below 1,000 order 10,000 more. Automatically, no questions asked.

RFID has many other uses as well. The ideas outlined above can be applied to farm animals, a call centre’s computers, a fleet of commercial vehicles, an inventory of domestic items, your pets, your car and even your garden furniture. Some individuals who work over a boundary are even having them placed under their skin so that they do not have to wait at customs.

And do not forget that criminals on early discharge are also tagged. It is the same technology.

Owen Jones, the author of this piece writes on several topics, but is now involved with the RFID asset management. If you would like to know more, please go to our website at Active RFID Management.

Poisonous Florida Snakes

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Florida snakes, together with the many turtles, lizards, alligators and other reptiles are part of a complex wildlife structure that plays a marvelous role in Florida’s ecosystem maintenance. Florida snakes species are numerous: there are actually forty-four species living in incredibly varied habitats, from salt marshes to fresh water marshes and dry uplands or coastal mangrove swamps to residential areas.

Only six Florida snakes are venomous and they happily coexist with their non-poisonous cousins. They even go into towns and cities too. The best way to stay out of harm’s way with snakes is to learn their morphology and therefore be able to identify the various Florida snakes. The wisest approach to adopt in relation to all snakes is avoidance.

The Coral snakes and pit vipers are by far the most dangerous of the Florida snakes. They are identifiable by quite a range of mutual characteristics. Pit vipers which include the Rattlesnake, the Cottonmouth and the Copperhead all have in common: vertical eye pupils, a v-shaped head and facial pit sensors: one between the eyes and nostrils and the others along each side of the head.

The poison of these Florida snakes is haemotoxic, which means that their venom attacks the red blood cells, destroying the wall of the blood vessel and causing uncontrolled hemorrhage. Coral snakes on the other hand use neurotoxic venom, with the toxins in the venom acting on the body nerves and inducing paralysis.

Most of the snake bites reported every year in the United States are caused by Florida snakes or by rattlesnakes to be more precise. Because their venom spreads very quickly throughout the body, the victim will die within less than thirty minutes without immediate anti-venom.

A major exception in this class of Florida snakes is the copperhead, because its venom very rarely, if ever, requires an antidote. Their toxin is the least powerful and therefore they are regarded as the least dangerous of all the poisonous Florida snakes.

It is precisely because of the danger that they present that poisonous snakes get the most attention, although the most widespread of Florida snakes is the Black Racer, which is a non-poisonous species that depends on its sharp fangs to capture its prey.

Although the usual tendency of home owners is to remove snakes from their properties, specialists stress the fact that, without them, rodents would breed out of control giving us even more cause for alarm.

So, unless you have special causes for being worried, like snakes breeding in great numbers in your garden or outhouses for instance, there is no valid reason to interfere with the lives of these usually retiring, useful animals.

Are you interested in the Florida snakes? To learn more about snakes visit Caring for Snakes our new web site.