And all these dogs are super fear-aggressive towards strangers as well. The vast, *vast*, majority of dogs a year old or less that we have come in for my shelter’s spay/neuter services are either borderline-traumatized fearful and shut down or they are trying to bite me for the crime of existing within 10 feet of them.

It is not ‘normal’ for a 4 month old shih-tzu puppy to be growling at me from 5 feet away.

It is not ‘normal’ for a 7 month old aussie to lunge for my face when I offered him some food.

It is not ‘normal’ for the 9 month old lab mix to be completely uncontrollable by the owners, up to and including grabbing their arms with his mouth when they tried to put him on the scale and literally knocking them over and dragging them away.

It is not ‘normal’ for the 6 month old golden to be cowering and urinating in fear.

This is a major issue that every level of veterinary and animal care professional is going to be dealing with for the next 15+ years. I sincerely believe that in a few more years, the rate of behavioural euthanasias is going to skyrocket and we’ll be seeing massive increases in incidences of dog bites.

Do you know how *FUCKING* irritated this makes me? I work as a dog trainer(and walker, but primarily as a trainer now) and at the start of the pandemic me and my coworkers literally BEGGED people to continue their dog’s routine as normal - if he gets crated during the day when you went to work, crate him for a few hours a day even if you’re home. If he went on pack walks, continue having him go on pack walks. I literally begged people to do training with me at the start of the pandemic - not just because I was out of work but because I - we all - knew that this would happen. I even offered deferred payment or extreme price cuts to training because it was more about preventing the mental breakdowns I knew these dogs would have than the money for me.

No one took me up on it. I had a client base of 75+ dogs at the start of the pandemic and work was completely silent until at least september of that year.

You know when everyone started calling and asking for help with their dog, who is suddenly going off the rails, barking, biting, peeing, destroying things? In June when everyone really stared going back to work and their dog’s behavior started bothering  them. When the dog’s anxiety could no longer be masked or written off as ‘oh i’m just home more often so that’s why Buddy is always with me.’

And to be clear - all of this was preventable. Even in the middle of a pandemic there are ways to socialize animals that are no-contact. Literally just taking your dog to a park and having them sit and watch people walking around is an excellent way to socialize a dog without having to be near people. Leaving your house for an hour and not taking your dog is another. These are simple things and yet as tehy *always do* people thought they knew better then every single animal professional who literally begged them not to just sit at home with their dog for a year and a half and now the animals are paying the price.

And to be clear, I don’t actually care if you think your dog doesn’t have anxiety over this. They do. I can guarantee you they do. Oh they’re just a little more hyper? They’re just chewing some things? They just seem *Really really happy* when you come home now? Follows you around from room to room? Congratulations your dog is showing symptoms of anxiety and you need to address them now before your dog bites someone.

I really really wish that people stopped having such an aversion to calling aggression an anxiety response. Aggression is an anxiety response. No stops. 100% of aggression is anxiety and no I don’t care if you think some dogs are predisposed to aggression they are not. They are predisposed to *anxiety* but people will ignore the hyperactive german shepherd who never settles down or the pitbull who does zoomies 24/7 and jumps on people and needs to be on your ass or she’ll die because that’s cute, right up until that behavior turns to uncontrolled biting and then suddenly it came out of nowhere and it must just be ‘the breed’.

I literally had to stop being a dog trainer for a few months because the expectations people have for both their dogs and us post pandemic are fucking unreasonable. No, I cannot fix your dog in two sessions when it took you 18 months(or probably longer tbh) to fuck him up. No, I will not help you if your only goal is to ‘stop the biting’ and not address your dog’s very real emotional distress that is causing that. No, I can not help you if you want me to do all the work or do not expect this process to take all the time and energy you could have and should have spent during the pandemic just because now you ‘don’t have the time’.

Fucking listen to the professionals - and not the fucking crackpots you cannot turn on two episodes of Caesar Milan(may your dog piss on your remote if you do) and call yourself a dog whisperer. You can watch however many youtube dog trainers you want but unless you have a real, live, professional meet you and see you dog(at *least* through fucking zoom jesus christ) you are going to be addressing the wrong things and *addressing them wrong* because you don’t have anyone to teach you, and watch *you* and tell you what *you* are doing wrong. 

But honestly there is no solution now. Or, there is, but pet owners don’t wan to hear it. They just want a magic easy fix, ‘just put my dog on meds’ or ‘i cant do this, he needs a home better for him’. And pet care professionals are so overwhelmed now and honestly compassion fatigued out that the good ones are leaving the profession or just simply do not have the time and energy for as many *severe* cases of anxiety and aggression that have popped up.

many/most paywalls can be foiled by putting the url into Archive.is as well. this has the secondary benefit of creating an archived snapshot of that particular article on that day, which is invaluable to historians and researchers

This Chrome extension works nicely to just automatically bypass them as well.

https://github.com/iamadamdev/bypass-paywalls-chrome

Okay but true

Also remember that they have an entire ceremony surrounding the death of family members where those who are dying get to unload all their secrets to their family/ friends?

I think this is important because:

1) it is EXPECTED in Cardassian culture to have secrets, to have thoughts, opinions or information that belongs only to you.

2) you are not expected to take that information to the grave. This is probably why assassination is so big. If a person becomes terminally ill then they have a chance to spill their guts free from social consequence.

3) it’s a fascinating concept, I imagine there’s some deeper cultural significance to revealing all your secrets on your death bed. Like it lightens your soul so you can rest peacefully. Might also play a part in how Cardassians don’t allow outsiders to see their dead, like “they are free of the cruelty of life. Nobody and nothing should torment them anymore” something like that?

More evidence that all Cardassians lie and obfuscate:

they flirt by arguing. This is probably because openly displaying affection to a person you aren’t married too could be seen as crass or publicly indecent. So if you argue you can express heavy emotions without saying the quiet part loud. You can say “I think your opinion is utter trite” and what you actually mean is: “I love spending time with you, you make me feel warm and fuzzy inside” again this is lying in every day conversation.

In conclusion, no not all Cardassians lie through every breath, but many do.

I have a strong inclination to believe this is a class thing. The higher on the class ladder you are the more cultural incentive you have to be snake tongued.

For example Garak and Dukat have families from very high Cardassian society. As such the two of them are compulsive liars, not just in truthfulness but to themselves (I’m looking at you Dukat) and as a means of manipulating people around them. Lying to get your way is probably just a basic survival skill for Cardassians from prominent families. Garak being the secret son of the Obsidion Order head just so happened to have that aspect of his culture magnified intensely.

Comparatively if you look at Damar who is more verbally forthright, I get the strong inclination to believe he was born middle class and fought his way to the top. Consider also, he was a man of the people and retained his Legat title even as head of central command and a rebel leader. The fact that he never takes the Gul title tells me that he has humble origins. This all probably explains why Damar is more likely to say exactly what he means.

Mila who is a house keeper is also not a very strong liar, but then again she holds heavy secrets very well. She’s not a liar so much as a steel trap for knowledge.

Cardassian society are not “liars” so much as they are people who speak a different syntax to other cultures. “Darmok and Jilad and Tanagura” style language that communicates more between the lines than through the actual words themselves.

The written script for Kardasi is also extremely visually complex which indicates to me that again, there is more said in what is NOT said.

Thanks for coming to my Ted talk on Cardassian culture, I’m going to go take a shame nap…

yes!!!!!!!!

So after a whole day of relentless all of the above, I finally got frustrated and just made a soup that was heavy on the turmeric, black pepper, hot peppers, garlic, and cumin.

Within 10 minutes the body aches subsided enough to where I can at least move around and lay/sit/stand comfortably.

Still have the fever, still have the fucking golf ball under my left arm, left arm still hurts, and I’m still wiped out and vaguely lightheaded, but at least I’m not a giant walking body ache.

My dog lets me do it because he thinks theyre delicious and eats them after

To add: If you have a snake that gets a stuck eye cap (which I’ve had happen even with humidity and temps at proper levels for a shed) and that snake lets you hold its head still and carefully loosen the stuck eye cap with vaseline and your fingers or a q-tip, that snake trusts you 100%, especially when it’s a 10ft boat that absolutely does not have to allow you to handle its face at all and can enforce that.