Pet Assistance, Inc.

09/02/2026

Researchers installed railroad crossing signals for wild animals in Banff National Park. Bells rang and lights flashed 30 seconds before each train arrived. Grizzly bears, elk, wolves, and coyotes fled the tracks 62 percent earlier at sites with the warning system than at sites without it, gaining an extra 360 feet of distance between themselves and the incoming train. The animals were not trained. Nobody conditioned them. The system was installed, the bells started ringing, and the animals figured out what the sound meant on their own.

Jonathan Backs, a PhD candidate in engineering and biological sciences at the University of Alberta, built the device. It is a small box bolted to the rail that detects an approaching train through vibration and changes in the magnetic field. When the sensors fire, the box triggers flashing lights and a bell sound at a location farther down the track where wildlife has been documented using the rail corridor. The warning begins 30 seconds before the train reaches the site. Thirty seconds is enough time for a grizzly bear standing on the tracks to register the sound, decide to move, walk or run off the rails, and clear the corridor before a train traveling 40 miles per hour covers the remaining distance.

Backs installed the systems at four sites along the Canadian Pacific Railway inside Banff in 2016 as part of a five-year grizzly bear research initiative funded by a million-dollar grant from Canadian Pacific. His supervisor, ecologist Colleen Cassady St. Clair, had been studying why grizzly bears were dying on the tracks at an alarming rate since the early 2000s. The railway was built in 1883. Bears and trains coexisted for over a century without significant mortality. Something changed around 2000.

What changed was the tracks themselves. The cleared rail bed became the easiest travel route through deep mountain snow. Walking on packed ballast costs a bear a fraction of the energy that wading through four feet of powder costs. Vegetation grows abundantly along the sunny, disturbed margins of the corridor: buffaloberry, other shrubs, and grasses that attract bears in spring and fall. Grain spills from freight trains leave piles of wheat and canola along the rails. The tracks became a trail system with a built-in cafeteria, and the bears that discovered this used the railway the way they would use any other travel corridor, except this one had trains on it.

Over a nine-month controlled experiment, Backs alternated warning and control treatments among the four sites, switching which sites had the bells and which did not every two to four weeks to account for seasonal variation. Trail cameras recorded every animal that appeared on the tracks before and during train arrivals. He logged 25 large-animal flight sequences and 149 small-animal sequences.

Large animals fled the tracks an average of 6.5 seconds earlier when the warning was operating, increasing their escape time from roughly 10.5 seconds to 17 seconds. That difference translated to 360 additional feet of space between the animal and the train. Small animals gained 3.3 seconds. The results were published in Transportation Research Part D in 2020.

The system does not scare the animals. Backs was specific about this. The purpose is not to frighten bears off the tracks permanently because frightening them would just push them into deep snow where travel costs more energy and survival gets harder. The purpose is to alert them that a train is coming right now so they move off the tracks for the 30 seconds it takes the train to pass and then walk back on. The bears are allowed to use the corridor. They are asked to step aside when the corridor is about to kill them.

Image is for illustration purposes only

Source: Backs, Cassady St. Clair, et al. (2020), Transportation Research Part D / University of Alberta / Canadian Pacific Railway / Parks Canada / CBC News / Science / The Narwhal / The Revelator.

09/02/2026

09/01/2026

I think people should be required to get a pet ownership license, and pass an animal behavior/body language exam before being allowed to own a dog.

10 QUICK NOTES FOR THE E-COLLAR CURIOUS

I took a few minutes yesterday to switch out the batteries in the Invisible Fence collars (the three red collars at left, top to bottom) and the Petsafe bark collars (the black collars in the middle, top to bottom). On the far right is a round E-Collar Technologies remote control, with two E-Collar Technologies collars below.

Ten quick points about modern electronic collars:

▪️Invisible fence collars are a kind of hot “buster" collar, and they work very well to contain most dogs using a radio-frequency-sending wire running around a perimeter. Invisible fence systems can contain multiple dogs inside a very large area for an affordable cost. After an initial period of training with a flagged perimeter, and the owner working the dog on a leash, most dogs respect the line and rarely challenge it. Invisible Fence collars are nothing more than an electric fence for dogs, mechanically different from what we use for cows, but operationally about the same. Just as you rarely see an electric fence correcting a cow, so you rarely see an Invisible Fence correct a dog after the first few weeks. My working terriers have been behind an Invisible Fence for over 22 years. To be clear, my dogs are on a perimeter wire. I have no experience with the wireless "base transmitter" models, distrust them, and would not install one.

▪️Bark collars operate only when a dog barks, and only when the dog wearing the collar is barking, as the collar needs both noise and vibration to correct. I have three dogs, and one dog cannot set off the collar of the other dogs. Bark collars save a lot of canine lives, as more dogs are sent to death at the pound for barking than any other reason. These things work like new money. The three collars, above, are small Petsafe Elite bark collars. Do not be stupid and get a collar with citronella spray.

▪️E-collars are not Invisible Fence collars or bark collars or "trash buster" collars (not shown), but something entirely different -- a true dog training aid that is capable of sending small "taps" a great distance with perfect timing. These taps can break through a dog's natural attention deficit disorder, remind a dog of what it knows, and mildly "correct" a dog starting a bad, or unwanted, behavior. E-collars do not train a dog; they are simply a powerful and near-perfect signaling tool which, if used at low-stimulation, can dramatically speed up and help "proof" a recall, a long down-stay, and dozens of other common commands. As always, you have to use the tool to train the dog. But does an e-collar, when coupled with a treat bag, make this training quicker, easier, and more assured? Yes!

▪️A modern e-collar is going to cost you over $180, and should have 100 stimulation levels. Do not get a collar that has 5-10 levels of stimulation, or one that is being sold as a "trash buster" collar at a local pet or hunting store. If you have, in the past, used an e-collar with 5-10 levels of stimulation, be advised that these collars are NOT the same as a modern e-collar. Do not get a collar and transmitter being sold for the remarkably price of $50-$60 on Ebay or Amazon. These are Chinese-made collars based on a 40-year old off-patent design, and they are too course and too inconsistent for real dog training. I would recommend looking at an E-Collar Technologies or Dogtra collar, both of which will cost you about $200, and which are worth it.

▪️Do not expect one collar to do it all. E-collars are a bit like dogs themselves; anyone who is selling you one that can "do it all," is selling you one that can do it all poorly. Spend money to get the right equipment for the job, and learn how to use the equipment.
Collars should be tight with the contact points on the sensors placed on the side, or on top of the dog's neck. Electronic collars only work when the stimulus prongs are consistently in contact with the dog's neck. This means that the collar should be tight, and if the sensors are placed on top or on the side, they are less likely to lose contact than if they are on the bottom.

▪️Different contacts are needed for different coats and dogs. Some very long-coated dogs may need some fur trimming, but long and short contacts are sold that work well on most coats. Some dogs may need a contact point made of a hypoallergenic metal -- these are available.

▪️Modern collars come with vibration, as well as electronic stimulation, and many come with a tone feature as well. It is a common mistake to think vibration is less intrusive to the dog than a low-level stim (it's not), or to think a tone feature is absolutely necessary (you will mostly be working your dog within sound of your voice). In fact, a low-level stim given to a dog that knows what it means is so effective and gentle that a change in direction or activity is all the notice a dog may give that it has received any signal at all.

▪️It's a TAP, not a Zap. While an Invisible Fence collars gives a powerful and very aversive ZAP, and a bark collar will send a much less-strong static correction, a training e-collar set at the correct level is giving no more than a one-finger tap. Though there is a "boost" feature, which can send a stronger corrective signal, actual dog training is done with the collar set so low it merely taps the dog -- it's no more aversive than a single finger lightly touching the dog on the neck or on top of the head.

▪️Any tool can be abused, and too often are. When it comes to dogs, leashes are probably abused more than any other device, as dogs spend a lifetime getting "yanked and cranked" by owners who never embrace a training regime based on good timing and consistency. Can e-collars be abused? Absolutely. In fact, if you insist on not reading directions, not going to YouTube to watch competent professionals instruct on modern e-collar use, do not take a dog training class, do not spend a few hours with someone who has trained a dog with an e-collar, and refuse to read a book or get on an e-collar training list-serv or Facebook group, you are probably going to do more harm than good with your e-collar, at least initially. But, of course, the same can be said about a leash. The good news is that most humans who spend $200 on a modern training collar actually want to train a dog. Step One in that training is to understand that not all collars are the same, and that getting good tools for the right job is essential.

▪️Karen Pryor, the great maven of pure treats-based clicker training, kept her own Border Terrier behind an Invisible Fence. It seems she figured out that they are quite humane. And yet Ms. Pryor looked down her nose on modern e-collars, even though she herself admitted she could not take her own terrier off-lead in the woods for fear of it running away! Indeed, her earlier Border Terrier ran away from her in the woods and was killed by a coyote. All I can say is that she should have used an e-collar, and she should have asked a real dog trainer how to use it.

09/01/2026

What nonprofits do you support?

08/31/2026

❤️We say we want change❤️
But do we want it badly enough to question our own beliefs and listen to ideas that make us uncomfortable?
Animal welfare has no shortage of passion. What we lack is space for honest, solution-driven discourse and the critical thinking necessary to move beyond slogans.
Asking whether an approach is working is not negativity. Questioning a long-held belief is not an attack on the people who believe in it.
Good intentions are not evidence. Popularity does not prove effectiveness.
“We’ve always done it this way” is not a measure of success.
Critical thinking requires us to separate intention from outcome, examine evidence, consider unintended consequences and change course when the results do not support what we are doing.
Spay and neuter are essential. But they cannot be the only answer to a crisis also shaped by housing restrictions, poverty, veterinary access, behavioral challenges, breeding, enforcement, shelter operations, rescue capacity, owner support, adoption retention and unreliable data.
A crisis with this many causes will require more than one solution and more than one type of person at the table.
That includes shelter staff, rescuers, veterinarians, behavior professionals, fosters, adopters, pet owners, policymakers and community members. It may also require listening to people we have traditionally viewed as opponents.
Offering someone a seat is not an endorsement of everything they believe. It means evaluating their ideas on merit rather than immediately dismissing the person who offered them.
So let’s try something different.
What is one actionable change you believe could improve animal welfare?
Tell us:
* What specific problem would it address?
* What evidence or experience supports it?
* Who would need to act?
* What might the unintended consequences be?
* How would we measure whether it worked?
Share what has succeeded in your community. Tell us what continues to fail. Suggest something worth testing even if you know others may disagree.
Bring evidence. Bring lived experience. Ask questions. Challenge ideas respectfully. Be willing to listen, reconsider and admit when something is not working.
No insults. No pile-ons. No dismissing an idea simply because it came from “the other side.”
The animals do not need us to defend every belief we have inherited.
They need us to be curious enough to question it and brave enough to change what isn’t working.
****This was written by Andrea Warren. Follow her on FB. She has common sense and compassion.

08/26/2026

Having owned five horses over the years, I think of how much I initially thought I knew, how much I learned, and how much there is still to know about horses (and dogs). I now quietly observe animals a LOT more and read their body language, rather than give "commands." Animals are great communicators... If only we all learned to read their language.
Deb Johnson is one of my favorites to follow. She recently wrote: "It was the first half of my senior year in veterinary school and we were still in the old teaching hospital, but Dr Schneider was seeing horses and keeping horses over at the new hospital. I was doing my food animal rotation, and it was slow, always slow, and so during the day I would often go over and watch the lameness exams happening behind the new hospital. I enjoyed watching the horses go, and even more so not being subject to Dr Schneider's questions, as he intentionally and easily set out to prove how stupid students were. There is always more that one can learn if they choose to invest their time in sitting and listening and watching, so much watching.
One day, these two cowboys showed up with this tiny buckskin mare for a lameness referral. I was on the bleachers when they came out to trot her, and I watched off by myself as they did her exam, as Schneider grilled the students, and as everyone tried to become as small as possible. The exam was done, and X-rays were taken, and the horse was shown to have navicular disease so severe that the deep digital tendon was almost shredded on both front limbs. I remember thinking to myself that I could not believe that the horse had to be referred to the teaching hospital for navicular disease because back then, every rodeo horse was diagnosed with navicular disease with even the slightest blip of irregularities on the x-rays, oh wait, that is still happening today.
The cowboys had parked down at the old hospital, and I was making my way back to the barn as they were walking the horse to their trailer. I asked them what they were going to do with the horse and they said that they were going to get rid of her or kill her. I looked at them and asked them if I could have her front feet if they killed her. They laughed but I was serious although I did not say any thing else to them about it. I remember running my hand along her back as they laughed and looking at her facial expression that seemed so sad and her eye that was dull and lifeless. Her whole self was expressing her struggle and yet no one seemed to really care or else she never would have gotten to the point where she was 11 years old and too broken to be of use. I had not observed and watched enough horses at that point in my life to even comprehend how they talk to us in ways other than by actions.
I was young and I looked at horses as being tools because that is what we were taught in school. They were something to be used and then turned out or sent to the dog food factory when they were done being useful. I wish we still had dog food companies to send horses to so that they didn’t have to suffer and starve and exist like the unwanted horses of today. Even in my practical nature back then the sadden expression of the small little mare has stayed with me all these years. A memory of what we do to the horses that we use for our enjoyment and our glory and our checkbooks and little of it has anything to do with what the horse and all of what we want from the horse.
There was a post that I read this weekend where someone criticized the riding of a stallion in the run of the million event. I know nothing about the horse and to be honest, I do not enjoy watching reining events because I just do not see any reason for asking a horse to do those things and to put that kind of wear and tear on their bodies just for human enjoyment and money. I am not saying that all reiners are cripples but if we stop lying to ourselves and stop rationalizing what we want, we would admit that what we asked them to do has little purpose and a lot of stress and no reward for them. I realize that all horse sports are just that, sports but some of them absolutely demand a greater breakdown from normal and for what? Human greed and dopamine? At what point do we just admit that we care more about fame and glory and dopamine and money than we actually do about the animal that we are exploiting for it?
The comments were split down the middle with people criticizing the post saying the horse was fine and that the trainer cared about it and would never have continued to ride it had it not been right and the other half agreeing that the horse should have been walked out and not asked to finish. I don’t know what the right answer was but I can tell you that what I saw was a horse with a flared nostrils, a grimace on its face, a weariness that oozed off of it even through the video and that could not stay on its feet while being asked to spin in a circle. Whether it should or should not have been out there I don’t know but I do know that its face made me instantly think back to that little mare whose navicular bones were so trashed and the lesions eating through her deep digital flexor tendons and yet still she was doing what she was asked to do because she was asked to do it.
Horses were created to be used and ridden. I have no issues with that. As I have gotten older and been in this profession for longer and seen so many young horses, even more so now, that are made to compete and do work at younger and younger ages, regardless of the pain that they are expressing, because we humans are too selfish to notice or too ignorant to care, I am left to wonder how we can say we love horses when we destroy them for our pleasure. So many humans on disability because they hurt every single day and they whine and take all the meds and drugs and sit on their ass and complain and yet they will go out and get on their painful horse and make it work so the human can feel good without thinking anything about what they are asking it to do.
Just yesterday I looked at a 6 year old push button perfect rope horse that was so body sore she moved like a robot from the 70s all stiff and short. Touch her back and even with my crippled hands and little pressure she would drop significantly to get away from the pressure. She held her body tight with her head very still and her neck out straight and she would almost visually flinch every time I walked up to touch her. Six years old and broken and no one cares. She will go back to her previous owner who will sell her to someone who will use her because she does everything she is supposed to do and in a few years she will be too sore and too crippled to work and she will end up in a kill pen somewhere with no kill site to go to.
If you want to ride your broken horse, go for it but do not rationalize or explain away the signs that they are using to tell you that what you are asking them to do is breaking them. Child s*x offenders rationalize what they do and call it normal and horse people rationalize their use of the horse with the same kind of words and statements. Just because they let you doesn’t mean that it is not costing them everything! Just because they keep doing it does not mean that it doesn’t hurt. Just because they might enjoy the crowd or the win does not mean that it is not taking everything from them and then some. Just because they will, doesn’t make it right.
If you can not tell the difference between a horse that feels good and one that is being used up then you do not know horses no matter how long you have been using them or riding them or have been around them. Horse speak to us in a lot of ways and we have spent centuries ignoring them because we want what we want and we truly do not care what it costs the animals that we use to get what we want. Do what you want but don’t lie to yourself about what it is costing the horse."
Photo: Little Miss Emma, my 25 year old Mini that I've had for 21 years. She is usually a beautiful, shiny black...but here she is sun-bleached!

07/29/2026

Terrierman! You did it again…. The truth, and nothing but the truth.

PROCESSED FOODS MADE MODERN DOGS… AND YOU

If you ask folks railing against “processed” foods what the process is, they’re likely to just blink and fall silent. They have no idea. In fact, they have probably never even thought about it.

In fact, almost every food we have ever eaten is “processed”.

Tomatoes are ground into sauce, wheat into flour, beef into hamburger.

Water is processed by the addition of chlorine to kill contaminants and fluoride to protect teeth.

Salt is processed by being cut from mined blocks or distilled from ocean water before being ground into sand and having iodine added (to this day *lack* of dietary iodine is the leading preventable cause of intellectual and developmental disabilities, affecting about two billion people worldwide).

Coffee is processed by separating bean from fruit, drying and then roasting the bean, grinding the bean into powder, and then running water over the grounds. Into your coffee may go milk or cream which has been processed through homogenization and pasteurization and which has likely been further processed to increase or lower the fat content, as well as to add vitamin D (to prevent rickets). Sugar may be added — typically processed from sugarcane, sugar beets, or corn.

Any time a food is ground, dried, canned, coated, cut, pressed, frozen, cooked, smoked, steamed, or extruded, it is processed.

Any time a vitamin or preservative (even a natural preservative like Vitamin E or C) is added, it is processed.

Olive oil is a processed food, as is beer, and most fresh fruit (dyed for color, coated to preserve, and gassed to speed ripening).

Meat is deboned, eggs are washed and candled, fish is filleted, and nuts are shelled.

Grains and fruits are fermented, and meats are mixed and ground into sausage.

The entire history of man, from caveman to today, is about processing foods to increase yield, improve storage, decrease costs, improve taste, release nutrients, and eliminate contamination. The “processes” used include fire, water, knives, grinders, radiation, freezing, steaming, drying, smoking, canning, extruding, bottling, and baking. It has included mixing, colorizing, coating, and filtering.

So what does this have to do with dogs? Simply this: Without “the process” used to convert rice, wheat, corn, and oats into high-yield food, we would have neither civilization nor modern dogs.

The animal we call “dog” was literally *created* by the “process” of converting grains to feed through crushing, steaming, and baking.

Dogs — the first domesticated species — came into existence with rice and wheat agriculture for a reason, and their physiology has evolved with grain. It was only when humans discovered the “process” of steaming rice, and grinding, steaming, and baking wheat, oats, and other grains and beans, that they had the extra food to start raising wolves and dogs as a meat source.

Yes, you read that last sentence correctly; 15,000 years ago dogs became associated with the first human settlements growing rice, and these dogs were consumed as *food*.

Eating dogs in parts of Asia is not a *new* thing, but a very *old* thing — older than raising domesticated chickens, pigs, or sheep as food.

While the “process” of grinding, steaming, and baking rice, wheat, oats, corn and other foods has enabled global human population to explode from 10 million to over 8 billion in the last 10,000 years, this same “process” literally *created* the dog, or “domesticated wolf” that we know today.

As Science magazine notes, when researchers compared wolves to dogs they discovered:

“Dogs had four to 30 copies of the gene for amylase, a protein that starts the breakdown of starch in the intestine. Wolves have only two copies, one on each chromosome. As a result, that gene was 28-fold more active in dogs…. More copies means more protein, and test-tube studies indicate that dogs should be fivefold better than wolves at digesting starch, the chief nutrient in agricultural grains such as wheat and rice. The number of copies of this gene also varies in people: Those eating high carbohydrate diets — such as the Japanese and European Americans — have more copies than people with starch-poor diets, such as the Mbuti in Africa.”

So is “processed” dog food fine for dogs?

Is grinding wheat, rice, oats, and corn, and then steaming it and mixing it with left-over bits of meat, fat, bone, and vegetables a “new” thing? It is not. It is not only a very *old* thing, it’s what created the dog — a Darwinian tale told in the animal’s own DNA, as well as your own.

So what’s the problem with processed foods? None.

The problem is not the process, but the calories.

You see, grinding and steaming does not do the same thing to all foods.

Grinding and steaming coffee beans adds no calories, but makes a delightfully stimulating drink.

Grinding and steaming green beans makes them slightly more digestible while removing a few vitamins — a fair trade.

But grinding, steaming, and baking wheat, rice, corn, beans, chickpeas, or rice releases huge amounts of calories for human and canine access. It is “manna from heaven” for both hungry humans and a wide array of other hungry animals, from wolves and dogs to bears, raccoons, fox, rats, and horses (to name just a few). Horses? Yes horses — look up “horse bread”.

“Processed corn” in dog food is simply corn that has been ground and heated with water to break down complex carbohydrates so they can be more easily digested, same as “processed wheat” is ground and heated with water to make bread. Just as bread is further processed by adding vitamins and natural preservatives, so too are vitamins and natural preservatives added to dog food. Just as your meat is heated for hygienic reasons, so too is the meat used in dog food.

While your own weight may balloon due to unfettered access to an uncalibrated and untested diet of beer, ice cream, pretzels, hamburgers, candy, and pizza, dog food is carefully balanced and calibrated so that fats, carbohydrates, proteins, fiber, minerals, and vitamins are presented in a known, fixed, and provably healthy (and FDA-approved) diet that is absent the kind of sugar-salt-and-fat binges that typify human consumption patterns — including yours.

So is your kibble-fed dog eating better than you?

Almost certainly.

Are all those CALORIES good for you or the dog?

Probably not. More on that in a later post.

07/28/2026

Please help find a perfect home for this perfect dog! Ace is a five-year-old German Shepherd, (with a tad of husky mixed in) but encompasses the best of both breeds! Currently he’s at 118 pounds, and I’d say about 15 pounds overweight. Other than that, he's in excellent health, has a beautiful shiny coat, gorgeous teeth,....PLUS Ace is sweet, good with dogs, cats children, and walks beautifully on a leash. I would keep him in a heartbeat if I didn’t already have a 100 pound dog. If I could shrink him down to about 50 pounds, tops, I would take him. His name is Ace and that’s just what he is!
(Ace was raised with love and had to be given up solely because of family medical problems.)
Please send a Private Message if you might know of someone who can give Ace the home he deserves.