- Do you subscribe to Dharma Dog Training’s Newsletter? You should.
- A Unique Campaign from The Humane Society of the United States
- Rabid bats in Omaha- Stay safe, prepared with these tips
- Springtime Activities in Omaha
- Mill Dog Monthly from Bailing Out Benji
- World Spay Day, Legislative Alert in Nebraska
- Attend the Nebraska Rescue Council’s monthly meeting this Saturday
- Five Hard-to-Ignore Reasons to Adopt!
- Paws in Pink to Benefit Breast Cancer Foundation
- VCA, Inc. Acquires MidWest Vet Specialists from Kansas State University
News From the “Are you kidding me?” Department
Let’s conduct a study. Here’s how we’ll do it:
1. Enter a classroom filled with, I don’t know, 5 year olds.
2. Tell them we like animals. We’ll ask them if they do. “YEAH!” they’ll say. Now we have their attention.
3. Next, we’ll ask them what kinds of animals make good pets. “Kitties! Puppies! Bunnies! Hamsters!” Some kid will say “Snake!” and the rest of the class will say, “Ewwwww!”
4. Now, we’ll ask what kind of animals don’t make good pets. Expected responses include but are not limited to (we anticipate some crazy answers like “Dragons” and “Mantis Shrimps”) possums, dinosaurs, polar bears, and probably- probably raccoons.
Why conduct this survey? To illustrate that even the choices for safe and unsafe pets are clear to even kindergarteners.
A woman in Texas is being charged with child abandonment after she reportedly left her baby in her home -alone- with their pet raccoon. We’ll spare you the gory details (unless you really want to read them, in which you can do so by clicking here), but the kid didn’t come out of it well.
It is amazing to us that a person could be so ignorant as to leave a child alone. It is mind-boggling that a person could be so incredibly inept as a parent, too. A baby and a pet raccoon? Alone?
I occurs to us that recommending that one getting a gerbil or hamster or fish is a common practice and done because these animals are safe. We don’t need to tell you that elephants and mountain lions and raccoons don’t make a lot of sense, but maybe we do? Apparently, if someone had shared this bit of information with the Texas “mom,” she would have been able to avert these charges and her kid would be unharmed as you read this. Please don’t keep a wild animal as a pet.
Animal services gives this advice and we’ll spread the message in case anyone is still wondering whether harboring a wild animal is a viable option for pet ownership: “Animal services warns, you can not take the wild animal, nature out of it. Once it reaches maturity sometimes they will turn and can harm a person.”
Image Credit: KETX News
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