Author Topic: Animals In Our Lives  (Read 1009389 times)

Offline Sason

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Re: Animals In Our Lives
« Reply #1000 on: March 08, 2012, 06:52:05 pm »
Chrissi, do you have a piano?

If so, you may consider this to happen with your new dog: 


[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VTOCjBpcbww[/youtube]


 :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:

Düva pööp is a förce of natüre

Offline Fran

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Re: Animals In Our Lives
« Reply #1001 on: March 08, 2012, 07:22:46 pm »
Chrissi, whatever you decide, I know you'll end up with the perfect dog for you and your family.

Enjoy the search.  I bet your kids are very excited about the new addition.  :)

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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Re: Animals In Our Lives
« Reply #1002 on: March 08, 2012, 09:29:15 pm »



Gosh, some animal companions
are getting so smart!
[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=h57yh2AarNw[/youtube]
;D


"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
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Offline Penthesilea

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Re: Animals In Our Lives
« Reply #1003 on: March 09, 2012, 01:45:42 am »
Thank you Sonja, Chuckie, bentgyro and Fran, for your input. :)


Chrissi, whatever you decide, I know you'll end up with the perfect dog for you and your family.

Hope so.


Quote
Enjoy the search.  I bet your kids are very excited about the new addition.  :)

The girls, yes. Oliver doesn't know yet. He'd get too excited, and possibly havingt to wait another half year for a puppy he'd be a pain in the :-X every day about it.

I went back to the forum I frequented before BBM; it's a dog owners' forum. Great to see so many of the old names still there. And guess what? I'll meet up with a woman from the forum tomorrow! :)
There's a dog show not far from me, and German Spitze will be shown. That's a good chance to get an overview, talk to different breeders, get to know Spitze from different bloodlines, etc. The woman who told me about the show will also be there, she's a breeder for Berger de Pyrenees.


Before BBM, I nver would have met up with anyone I know from the internet ( :laugh: :laugh: :laugh:). In all the years I spent in that forum I always excluded the thought categorical. But after travelling many a thousand miles to meet with other Brokies...... ;D

Offline Penthesilea

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Re: Animals In Our Lives
« Reply #1004 on: March 14, 2012, 02:06:47 pm »
I looked at  dog at an animal shelter yesterday. Pretty, pretty thing, she's a Spitz-mix and only 9 months old.






But I'm not sure she's the right dog for us. In fact, I rather think not. :-\

She's so totally, completely freaked out. Such a scared dog, it's horrible to witness. The only thing she tries to do is hide, get away from all humans as fast and as far as possible.
On the good side, she is definitively NOT a fear-biter. She lets everybody do anything to her (when you're able to catch her and put her on a leash, that is). People can handle her, pet her, the vet can handle her, she would never bite or do anything else but try to melt into the ground.

She doesn't even take treats from humans, or eat as long as humans are close, too scared and stressed out for that.
Sadly, none of "her" people, meaning helpers who already succeded in making contact with the dog, people who she knows well and has started to trust them, were at the shelter yesterday. I would have liked to see how much better (or not) the dog is with well-known people.


Poor, poor doggie. Because she's so young and absolutely non-aggressive the shelter people think she can go into a household with children (older children, like mine are) nonetheless. They are of the firm believe that she will come around and become a well-adjusted dog.


And here I am, not able to put this dog out of my mind. She's a dog who needs a chance, who needs people with a lot of patience and some dog-sense.
And I'm sitting here, asking myself if I want to be that person....

Offline Kelda

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Re: Animals In Our Lives
« Reply #1005 on: March 14, 2012, 05:56:24 pm »
She IS a cutie!
http://www.idbrass.com

Please use the following links when shopping online -It will help us raise money without costing you a penny.

http://www.easyfundraising.org.uk/idb

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Offline Fran

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Re: Animals In Our Lives
« Reply #1006 on: March 14, 2012, 08:45:12 pm »
She IS a cutie!

She sure is.

Poor thing.  How is she with other dogs?  Still scared? 

Offline bentgyro

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Re: Animals In Our Lives
« Reply #1007 on: March 15, 2012, 01:47:36 pm »
Do you have a lot of time and patience?
That's what it will take to bring her around.
She does look sweet.

Offline Aloysius J. Gleek

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Re: Animals In Our Lives
« Reply #1008 on: March 16, 2012, 11:39:23 pm »

http://www.buzzfeed.com/katienotopoulos/endangered-african-cat-born-to-housecat-surrogate


Endangered African Cat
Born to Housecat Surrogate

Scientists planted an embroyo of the critically endangered African
Black-footed Cat in a regular domestic cat. This little fluffball, named
Crystal, is the first inter-species embryo transplant of its kind.





[youtube=425,350]http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=cvl6u979rzo[/youtube]
Uploaded by AudubonInstitute on Mar 13, 2012


Audubon Center for Research of Endangered Species in Algiers, Louisiana logs another breakthrough in genetic engineering of endangered cats. Crystal, a rare african black-footed kitten was born on February 6, 2012 to a domestic housecat without any human assistance in the birth itself. Crystal exhibits all the characteristics of a black-footed cat despite being nurtured by a domestic cat mother.






http://www.nola.com/education/index.ssf/2012/03/audubon_center_in_algiers_logs.html


Audubon center in Algiers logs another breakthrough
in genetic engineering of endangered cats


By Mark Waller, The Times-Picayune
Published: Tuesday, March 13, 2012, 8:00 AM



Crystal and her mother


A year after introducing the first pair of rare African black-footed kittens conceived through in vitro fertilization, the scientists at the Audubon Center for Research of Endangered Species in Algiers have announced the arrival of another kitten that, genetically, is their sister, and the first kitten of her type to be carried in the womb of a domestic cat. The same parents contributed to the frozen embryos that produced the two males born last year and this year's female.

A black-footed cat served as the surrogate mother for last year's litter. Researchers next sought to show that vastly more plentiful domestic cats can serve as surrogate mothers in efforts to save the small wild cat from extinction.

"Being able to use domestic cats adds another extra dimension to that, being able to produce more," said Earle Pope, acting director of the center. Only 53 of the cats, which are native to South Africa, live in zoo collections in the United States.
 
Domestic and African black-footed are different species of cat but members of the same group of felines. Their similar sizes and gestation lengths, Pope said, appear to be what made the pregnancy and birth physically possible even though the genetic makeup of the kitten differed from the mother.
 
"They're considered to be of the same lineage," he said. "Somewhere back a couple of million years ago, they're descended from the same ancestor."

The kitten, named Crystal, was born on Feb. 6 to domestic cat Amelie without any human assistance in the birth itself. It exhibits all the characteristics of a black-footed cat despite being nurtured by a domestic cat mother, Pope said.
 
"It's not changed genetically in any way," from other black-footed cats, he said. "It is totally a black-footed cat in behavior."
 
Researchers handle the kitten almost every day as they study it, but she remains decidedly unadapted to human contact.
 
"It just wants you to leave it alone and stay away from it," Pope said. "It gets along beautifully with the domestic cat mother. They don't know, or do not care, that it's a different species."
 
Scientists started gathering the genetic material that eventually created the kitten in 2003, when they collected and froze a sperm sample from a black-footed cat named Ramses that lived at a research center in Nebraska. In 2005, they thawed the sperm and combined them with eggs from Zora, a cat living at Audubon. That produced 11 embryos, which went into deep freeze.
 
The center thawed some of the embryos to produce last year's brothers and thawed more on Dec. 2 to produce Crystal.
 
The embryos can be frozen indefinitely, preserving their genetic information for years if kept at exactly the right temperature, Pope said.
 
The researchers weren't certain the pregnancy with the domestic cat would work, however, because their attempts to implant cloned black-footed cat embryos in domestic cats have failed so far. Cloned embryos are created by combining cellular material to create new eggs, not by using eggs taken in their entirety from black-footed cat females.
 
Solving the problem of using cloned embryos will be one of the next steps in the center's long history of breakthrough genetic work, which includes a previous birth of another type of wild kitten to a domestic cat, the first wildcats born to cloned parents, the cloning of sand cats, caracal cats and African wildcats and even a kitten born with eyes, gums and a tongue that glow green under ultraviolet light. That showed it is possible to introduce a new gene to an animal without hurting it, which has medical ramifications for humans in the development of gene therapy. The center also works on reproduction programs for endangered birds: Mississippi sandhill cranes and whopping cranes.
 
Audubon Senior Scientist Martha Gomez said she has created cloned embryos using egg cells from domestic cats and replacing their nuclei with material from skin cells of African black-footed cats. Using skin cells potentially expands the methods of producing kittens even further because the cells are numerous and can be saved from animals that have died.
 
But none of the pregnancies have lasted, Gomez said. The arrival of Crystal narrows the field of possible causes by proving domestic cats can carry black-footed kittens. Gomez said she now can focus on fixing flaws in the genetic information of the cloned embryos.
 
"It's the embryos," she said, "the quality of the embryos."
 
In addition to working out the glitches in the cloning process, Gomez said the center next will explore using domestic cats as surrogates for a more distantly related type of threatened wild cat, the rusty spotted cat, also from Africa.
 
"This is exciting," she said about the birth of Crystal, "because now we can go forward in research."
 
Mark Waller can be reached at [email protected] or 504.826.3783. Follow him on Twitter at MarkWallerTP or Facebook at Mark Waller Times-Piayune.

"Tu doives entendre je t'aime."
(and you know who I am...)


Cowboy Curtis (Laurence Fishburne)
and Pee-wee in the 1990 episode
"Camping Out"

Offline Penthesilea

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Re: Animals In Our Lives
« Reply #1009 on: March 20, 2012, 05:06:17 pm »
We've got a dog! We've got a dog! :D

The decision is made and we will pick up our new family member next week.

This is Tina, our new baby. The black doggie of course, not the tiny one.




The decision came in a completely different way than I had thought it would.
Like I already said, I visited Lisa last week and was very unsure if she's the right dog for us. Later last week, we visited a breeder of German Spitz. I was totally convinced of the way she keeps her dogs, and I found the woman sympatico and full of dog-sense. Not to mention her dogs, who are all perfectly impinted on humans and carefully brought up.


Anyway, she had one puppy left over from the last litter, but it was already sold and was to be picked up Sunday.
The breeder plans another litter soon (different bitch of course) and is waiting for the bitch to get in heat. Yadda, yadda, long story short: I was 90% sure that I wanted a dog from her and was willing to wait roundabout half a year for a dog.
I put my name on the waiting list.

The other 10% were still thinking about a dog from a shelter, but I was sure it wouldn't be Lisa. As much as I pity her, she is all that I never wanted in a dog.


This evening, the breeder called me: the people who wanted to pick up the puppy on Sunday opted out last minute. She offered the puppy to us and the decision was made in a heartbeat. All stars were aligned.