This is actually really good advice, and it’s how I clambered onto the running wagon in the first place. Run to the end of the street, walk the next, run the next. And pretty soon, probably much sooner than you think, you’ll feel fine at the end of the street and keep running until you get to the end of the next one.…

Labs do indeed have a tendency to get rather rotund, especially as they get older, which is why owners need to be extremely vigilant about their training and about making sure they are adequately exercised. It’s pretty easy to work out what a dog should be eating and then if you’re firm right from the beginning about…

Yep, I flipped the heck out after my husband left 2/3 of a Terry’s Chocolate Orange on our end table overnight and our dog (who we’d had for all of a week at that point) tore open the packaging and ate it ALL. I didn’t even notice until we’d gotten back from our morning walk, during which she had admittedly been…

My parents remodeled their back garden three times in an effort to make it dog-proof; they have a penchant for greyhounds and lurcher-type dogs (understandable) and even though our lawn was pretty hardy there was no real way to stop their first rescue churning up the whole thing whenever he went outside. Cleaning his…

Like 1llamarampage said below, backpackers may not have money but they’re likely to have other things that can be pretty valuable, cameras and passports being two of them.

Oh boy, reminds me of the undergrad class I took where only me and one other grad student had heard of AIM and the Wounded Knee incident. I’m not even an American citizen.

I find his use of that word absolutely fascinating. There’s just so much going on there in terms of post-colonial racial thinking...I could write a these about this guy, except I doubt I’d be able to resist the urge to bash his face in with my shoe.

Exactly. I’m really not someone who takes make-up or beauty that seriously, but after reading this article I’d really rather hand out with Donna and her flower crown than this writer.

To be fair, the ASA was responding to complaints made by members of the public. So it’s fairer to say “A certain number of crotchety British people a bunch of prudie mcprudes.”

I would love to do foster work, but I would have a LOT of problems letting the pet go at the end of it. They warned us about that on day one- apparently something like 40% of fosters end up failing because the family just ends up keeping the dog. And one of the main reasons I’m volunteering right now is because my…

Kind of depends on your location, I think. I’ve just checked the listings for my state for breed-specific rescues and there are a fair few, but they are scattered across a few states. The bigger rescue shelters here will typically do a combination of traditional shelter and foster systems- at ours, volunteers can sign…

I like both Ulta and Sephora, but I feel like it’s significant that I’ve never set foot in an Ulta and I’ve never bought anything online from Sephora. Neither of them are really easily accessible from where I live, so I’ve been to Sephora exactly once when we were going to the movies. It was great when I walked in…

I tend to think of those breeds as working dogs, and you’re right, their breeding should be absolutely allowed to continue in a purposeful and controlled manner (although with a lot of these jobs you’re looking for a type rather than a breed- sled dogs and detection dogs don’t need to be purebreds, they just need…

I’d actually be a big fan of a more intensive screening process for adopters. I’d like a system where you could specify what your abilities and preferences were in terms of activity, training, grooming, room, whether you had other pets or young kids, etc. and then you’d get a list of dogs at the shelter who fitted…

I’m not shaming people who don’t adopt pit-bulls. Like I said to someone else, there are plenty of reasons that people might not want to adopt a Pit bull or any other kind of specific breed/type. But I’m okay with shaming people who choose their dogs for purely cosmetic reasons, because I don’t think they’re in it for…

Oh yeah, there are legitimate reasons for individuals not to get a pit bull- I wouldn’t adopt one, as they’re a banned breed in my home country and it would break my heart to have to give up a dog because I couldn’t get it through customs. I also wouldn’t get a Shepard or Shepard-type, because I can’t give them the…

See, how can you resist a face like that?

OMG EARS! Big-eared dogs floor me.

This was the afternoon we brought her back from the shelter. She did a circuit of the house, jumped up on the sofa and zzzzzzzzz. SUCH a good dog.

One time when someone asked what breed my dog was I actually guffawed and shrugged in their face. I didn’t intend to be an asshole, but she pretty much personified “A bit o’ this, a bit o’ that.”