Are College Pets At All a Good Idea?

It isn't really clear why, but stray dogs and cats are very common around college campuses. Students may not show up at college with a pet from home. But once they do arrive, when they see all these cats and dogs going round, they like to adopt them. These animals become college pets - pets for the time that the students are in college. Often, those college students get so attached to those college pets that they take them home.

Often, college pets don't become house pets after those students graduate. The students just take them to the nearest shelter and let them go. Most often, it isn't even a sound idea to adopt a pet when you're at college. When you become friends with an animal, you become responsible for it.

Students have to try very hard to be able to afford college often. They get loans, the work on the side - they have to scrape everything together to go to college. They don't usually have any idea how much it's going to cost when they adopt a pet.

Let's say that a student adopts a dog, and it swallows something that it's not supposed to swallow. At the vet’s, it can easily cost $1000 to have the object removed. When you add up everything that you have to spend on dog food and add the vet bills and everything else, those costs can easily go up to $5000 a year. Where's a student supposed to go for that kind of money?

Not to mention, most colleges don't allow pets in the dorm. When students adopt college pets, they do the on-the-sly. The few schools that do allow college pets have strict rules on the subject. Because pets can induce allergies in people. They won't put  a dorm member with a pet in a room where the other dorm members might be allergic.

If you are any student who is considering taking a pet in at college, you  should think about a few things first. For instance, pets need care. As anyone who takes a pet in, you need to be able provide care. The busy student really may not be able to do this. If a pet is an absolute necessity, a cat is always better than a dog because they need less care. They can be left alone for long period of time every day.

Any student who thinks about adopting a pet at college should carefully total up everything that a year of care might cost. If it's a young puppy, it's going to need even more care and attention and money.

Thinking About Bringing Home a New Puppy

Spring is the season most animals we call household pets come together to mate. When all is said and done, we have millions more little household pets to find homes for. The parents could be household pets themselves, or they could be straightened out on the streets. Most of them end up in animal shelters everywhere. It can get really hard for the animal shelters to know what to do with all these animals. Things would get even harder if families everywhere weren't willing to adopt a pet on a regular basis. While it's a wonderful thing for them to do, they do need to prepare themselves. Bringing home a new puppy isn't a small matter.

Whatever kind of pet you are bringing home, you need to first read up and prepare for the kind of care your pet will need. It isn't just your pet’s needs that you need to think about. You also need to think about your needs and the needs of the family. Not every pet is suitable for every kind of family or lifestyle.

For instance, if you are single and if you have to go out to work 12 hours a day, bringing home a new puppy or dog would make little sense. Puppies and the dogs they grow up into, are very sociable animals. They need lots of time with you. And most certainly, there'll become mentally ill if you leave them alone like that. If there isn't someone who's going to be home most of the time, consider getting a cat – a far more independent animal.

And even if you're bringing home a new puppy, the kind of house you're in will have a lot to say about the kind of dog you get. If you live in an apartment without a yard, a small dog would be happiest in such spaces. Small dogs don't need much exercise and as much room to move about in. Larger dogs will be miserable in a small apartment without a yard or even a big apartment without a yard.

Once you get a pet, it's for a very, very long time. You have to be sure that you have the financial resources for it. If you get a pet and you discover a couple months down the line that the $2000 a year it costs in upkeep is more than you can spend, you'll be in big trouble.

What happens when people adopt pets without having thought things through? Well, those animals end up in the shelters. There are millions and millions of them that end up in shelters every year like this. Halfway through, they realize that something's not working out the way they thought. If you could adopt a pet like this. Those pants will be killed. So if you're bringing home a new puppy, you really must consider bringing home a pet that's already been abandoned.

Think Before You Buy a Dog. You Can't Think Later

Some people just don't get what it is like to have a dog as a best friend in their home. They get all hung up on how owning a dog is like taking care of a small child. You have take care of his toilet time, bathe him, brush his teeth, groom him, teach him things, take him out to play, take care of his medical needs and so on and so forth. Of course, they completely miss the point just the way a childless person misses the point when he says that taking care of a child is just too much trouble. But they do have a point in how when you buy a dog, you don't want to set yourself up for any more work than you have to do. Come to think of it, most parents do wish parenting wasn't just this demanding.

For some reason this whole "looks don't last forever, it's what's inside that counts" thing just won't leave us be. It isn't just women, cars or homes or anything else. It's dogs, too. You can't buy a dog because he's cute-looking. Because you know, he is going to outgrow it.

Deciding to not buy a dog for how totally cute he  looks as a puppy can be very difficult. Because hanging out in a public place with a totally cute 10-week old puppy is going to get you more women than you ever dreamed of. If you want to buy a dog, buy a dog because you really want the love and friendship of an animal companion. Not for this. Because before long, the cute puppy is going to grow into a big high-maintenance dog that sleeps all day and barks all night.

Somehow, we've been hearing about not being able to teach an old dog new tricks forever. Once we buy dog in puppy form, we could still hear that 10 times a day and we wouldn't really understand what it meant because that saying has just become scenery. With forgotten to pay attention to it. That's the truth.

You cannot skip training your dog. And if you are buying a grown dog or rescuing him from certain death at the shelter, while that's a wonderful thing, you do have to realize that it takes a lot to live with a dog that's not trained and that is this mistrustful of people. You have to spend about 10 times as much time and money on training him. It's just the way it is.

And finally, perhaps the number one mistake we make is to buy a dog first and then to think about how much time we have. It's a criminal thing to buy a dog and then to lock him up or tie him up all day without human company. Make sure you have the time.

Planning On Setting up a Bird Feeding Station In Your Garden?

If you really appreciate how beautiful birds are and would like to look at them up close, you do normally need to learn the kind of techniques that the birdwatchers use - making themselves unobtrusive as they get close to birds that they watch. If you don't have that kind of patience, there's a great of alternatives for you - turn your garden into a bird feeding paradise. You will see them come, flutter about your garden, and you'll be right there in your home watching everything.

You mustn't think that the birdfeeders you put out are a primary source of food for your little winged friends. Birds need a variety of food groups that they can only come by out in nature. What you provide in your garden can be a much-needed source of fun food. So basically, to successfully create a bird feeding area in your garden, you need to put out foods that they wouldn't normally find out in the open in your area.

Here are a few tips on how you would set your bird feeding carton out.

Try to make it easy on the little birds. Don't just put one large bird feeding station out there. When the big birds congregate there, the little birds won't know how to get in. Try to disperse all activity by setting out half-dozen theaters all over your garden. You have lots of bird activity all over there, and there'll be plenty of room for everybody.

If you happen to notice, birds can be very messy feeders. Not only do they completely ruin a feeder after a while of pecking away there, they'll leave the entire area scattered with seeds and crumbs. That's not typically the way to keep a beautiful bird feeding garden. So be sure to vacuum these crumbs up every day.

You probably need to take your feeders out and clean them under hot water at least once a week. If you find that there's a dead bird there sometimes, use disinfectant and thoroughly wash everything.

If you're planning on installing a birdfeeder, you need to make sure that it's safe for the birds. There should be no hiding places for cats or anything anywhere around. You really need to try to think like a bird. If any bird flying past you garden feels that the birdfeeder you've set up is close to a hiding place that a cat might use, it'll not even bother.

If you're trying to cater to the widest possible audience, choose black oil sunflower. They are a favorite.

A Cute Little Backyard Wildlife Habitat

When people hear of wildlife, a lot of nature lovers would really like to create a backyard wildlife habitat. But often, they give up the idea because they feel they don't have the right kind home for it.

That's really unnecessary though. You can put one together even if all you have is a balcony on the fourth floor. It'll still get beautiful birds and insects coming in - all you need is to provide them with the food and surroundings that tell them that yours is a happy and friendly place to be in.

You can even put off trying to create a habitat. The very first thing that little birds, insects and animals need is food and water. It's the highlight of their day. It is food and water that they traverse, route and roam the world for. Hand it to them on a platter, and there is no keeping them away.

Of course, you could consider sending out additional birdseed or something. But that's not the kind of thing you have that would really qualify as a backyard wildlife habitat. What you need is to provide visiting wildlife guests with natural food sources - flowers that have nectar, plants that bear berries and nuts and seeds and so on. Of course, once you set these kinds of plants up, feeders and other things can happen as supplementary food sources.

While you can probably go down to the nursery to get exotic foreign plants, that's not the way to get backyard wildlife make a backyard wildlife habitat. Wildlife in the area is only going to be looking for local, native plants. That's what you need to look for.

Of course, setting up water for your visitors is much easier and it can be pretty beautiful, too. Decide to get a bird bath, and you will find that before long, word gets around. If you live in the city, there really aren't that many places for birds to go where they can get a little dip. You can set out all kinds of things - a puddling area that butterflies can dip themselves in, an installed artificial pond, a rain garden - there are so many choices. You just need to keep it clean and fresh.

You've seen how professional aquarium designers will always design little rocks and castles in their aquarium that the fish can hide out in, haven't you? That's the way animals are. They are just always fearful of being attacked. If you don't have a place to hide, they feel bad. If you have a garden, you can really have a ball here - thick shrubs, a pile of brush, a dead tree or two - all of these can be great.

Not to mention, these areas of shelter give visiting wildlife a place to raise a family.

Attracting Birds Is Easy - Just Build the Right Kind of Wildlife Habitat for Them

If you're a bird lover but you don't really do bird-watching expeditions, you can still come by a great deal of fun in your own backyard. You just need to learn the principles of attracting birds.

Of course, we are talking about attracting birds of the winged fluttering variety here - not a certain other kind. Now if you live in the city, the birdbath should be your number one priority. Birds don't really find water bodies as often as they would like to in an urban environment. Provide for a large and clean birdbath the whole year round, and you'll be the most popular hangout spot in the entire area.

For the winter, all you need do is to take the trouble to buy a beautiful heated birdbath. And when you send it out in the kindergarten, make sure that it's well away from any kind of shrubbery. Birds don't take well to taking a dip in a place where they might be surprised by a hiding cat or dog.

When you design your garden, you need to do it with your interest in birds in mind. The birds in your area are the local kind. And so, your entire garden will have to be an oasis of local and native plants. When you do this, your visiting birds will have something or the other to do all year round. That's the beauty of going local. Wildlife in the area is completely adapted to using local flora for their purposes all year round.

Birds don't just eat birdseed you know. They eat insects and worms. Some people will just forget all about this even as they set about building a garden for attracting birds. They'll go about their business growing their garden just the same as always - they will use insecticides and pesticides.

Not only is that going to get rid of all the insects that would attract your birds come mealtime, it's going to poison your visiting birds as well. You need to go with an organic approach if you're interested in attracting birds.

Lawns are unnatural. There are no large open green grass lawns in nature. Not to mention, lawns are of no interest of birds. There's just nothing there for them. Instead, build a beautiful wildlife habitat with a brush pile, dead trees, shrubbery and all the other stuff that birds like to be able to play in, nest and and hunt in.

You'll need to study your local forests to try to determine what kind of natural space you should design for your visiting birds.