Kessler official has been promoted to big brother. I’m very excited for this little guy’s future. He’s going to do all the sports too and comes from a line of fabulous agility dogs and his mama has competed at the Rally National Championship.
Kessler got to play Barn Hunt this weekend. Since we’re under a heat advisory it was an evening trial. It was still in the 90s for some of his runs but he pulled off a qualifying score in Master on this super fun course with an elevated tunnel.
I don’t know if it’s the summer heat making people cranky or what, but this week has had a drastic increase in petty and downright rude behavior, particularly directed at your moderator team. So we’re here with a few reminder of how moderation works on this subreddit.
Commenting “why aren’t the mods doing anything”, “the mods must be asleep” or “paging the mods” does not do anything to bring the post to moderator attention. There is no automatic flag on those words. In fact, all that does is drive engagement with the problematic post or comment. Report the offending item if it breaks the rules and be patient while the mod team reviews it.
Additionally, your moderators are human. We have dogs to care for, families to spend time with, and do in fact need to sleep. We are not on Reddit 24/7. So even when something has been reported, it may take several hours for a kid to be able to respond.
In regards the t shirt spam. We are aware. We remove it when we see it. But again, commenting on the posts only gives them engagement and we can’t remove things we don’t see, so please don’t comment on them unless it’s to warn someone who is genuinely falling for it that it’s a scam. We have account age filters in place. We have karma filters in place. It’s impossible to 100% prevent spam without requiring all posts go through mod approval and no one wants that.
Things that are not currently against the rules include:
AI. We understand that people have strong feelings about the use of generative AI. There is not CURRENTLY a rule against its use on this subreddit. That is under consideration and if you would like to give feedback you may do so in the comments of this thread. We have previously attempted to poll the subreddit and got very minimal response. As it stands, many of the comment from people wanting it banned are coming from accounts who have no history of meaningful participation in the subreddit and the mods don’t make rules based purely off our own preferences. Also, the rule against general rudeness does still apply when informing others about the nevgative impacts of AI. So be nice. Not only is it the rule, people are much more likely to be open to hearing from someone politely stating facts versus someone insulting them.
Medical posts. We do have a rule against giving dangerous medical advice and medical posts are frequently locked quickly, particularly once the advice to see if it has been given. Our members are very good about recommending veterinary care be sought when it is necessary. That said, most of the people who post medical related questions are not asking for how to treat their animal, they are looking for reassurance while waiting for that appointment and to hear from other people who have been through something similar. We also get a number of questions about things that do not require veterinary care, like reverse sneezing. If there is a medical post that you were concerned about, you can report it or otherwise bring it to the mods’ attention by sending us a mod message with a link to the post.
We have a generally really wonderful community that you guys have built here. Let’s keep it that way.
Kessler and I got swarmed by hornets and both got stung. Kessler is allergic and despite getting Benadryl and prednisone in him as fast as I could we had to rush to the emergency vet as he was having a severe allergic reaction. We spent 7 hours there and had to go back later in the day and they finally were able to locate and remove the stinger.
It’s getting hot here in Texas so we got out bright and early and stuck to trails next to the water. Kess also wore his swamp cooler coat.
I wanted to give her one a heads up, PETA is snooping around Reddit, trying to contact people to get them to do phone interviews and talk about their dogs having health issues.
This is a reminder that PETA is not an animal welfare organization, they are an extremist group whose goal is to end the ability for people to own any kind of animals as pets. They don’t want anyone to be allowed to own dogs, and they especially want dogs like Bostons, pugs, dachshunds, corgis, Chinese created dogs, etc to go completely extinct.
If they contact you, do not engage.
Here are some before and after photos from Kess’s dental appointment to serve as a reminder that regular dental cleanings done under anesthesia are so important for this breed. Bostons, due to their face shape, are at an increased risk for malocclusion and crowding. Kessler got a gold star on his tooth brushing and home care, his teeth looked super great upon initial look (you can see in the first photo very minimal tartar) but when they probed beneath the gum line and did X-rays he ended up have five teeth that needed to be pulled. Simply looking in the mouth, especially on an awake dog, is not sufficient to identify dental disease.
My little dude and I got to play his favorite game this weekend. He was refusing to do the tunnel most of the weekend but did his last run on Saturday and got another qualifying score in Master B. He did get some Crazy8s points both days too and was hunting really beautifully. He only had one rat for the master run and he was so mad about it.
I was the co-volunteer coordinator for a trial this past weekend and my co-coordinator had a brilliant idea. Since nose work requires so many volunteers (especially UKC which requires two timers for the top three levels) we always have a spreadsheet with all our volunteers and their assigned positions for every level and element. However, this weekend we got cheap lanyards with plastic sleeves, and in each one we put a card with the volunteer’s name on the front and all of their assignments for that day on the back.
This was so helpful because I am terrible with names, so I wasn’t having to ask people to tell me over and over. We could look at who had not yet picked up their lanyard to quickly know if all of our volunteers were present in the morning and if not, who was missing. And our volunteers never had to ask where they were supposed to go next. It meant that everybody was in place and ready to go for the next level so quickly. It was a seemingly small thing, but we got so many positive comments from volunteers about it.