Cat on the Bus

A cat has become such a well-known user of a Devon (England) bus service, that its drivers know where to let him off.

Casper, the former shelter cat,  has been queuing with other passengers to get the number three service from his home in Plymouth for months, according to the bus company "First".

Casper's owner Susan Finden, who has had him since 2002, said he had always been a free spirit.

Mrs Finden said she named her pet after Casper the Friendly Ghost, as he has a habit of wandering off. I don't know what the attraction is but he loves big vehicles like lorries and buses she said.

Drivers report that Casper quietly pads on board and curls up on a seat for the ride.

A spokesman the bus company said that drivers had been bussing Casper around for months, but Mrs Finden said she had only just found out about his use of public transport. She said: "He'd always go off and have a wander.Once I had to walk a mile-and-a-half with a cat basket to bring him back from a car park.He does love people, and I don't know what the attraction is but he loves big vehicles like lorries and buses."

A notice has been put up by  the bus company in the bus drivers' break room asking them to look after the Casper if they spot him coming on board.

Shop With Confidence at VetShopOnline.com

As most of our customers know, while we proudly serve customers in the USA and throughout the world, our head office and main distribution facility is in Australia (that's one of the reasons our prices are so cheap!).  Well, we're pleased to days that Australia has just been named as one of the safest countries in which to do business, according to global rating agency Dun & Bradstreet's Global Risk Indicator.

Australia, along with Canada, Norway and Switzerland, achieved the highest ratings on the indicator, and had one of the most stable risk profiles. Just another reason why you can shop for your pet meds and other animal health products with confidence at VetShopOnline.com :)

Pets That Look Like Their Owners

Proving something a lot of us had suspected for a long time, scientists from Bath Spa University (UK) have proven that people are drawn to pets with similar looks.

In the study, participants were shown pictures of dog owners and asked to guess whether that person owned a labrador, poodle or staffordshire bull terrier. The participants got the answer right almost twice as often as would be expected by chance. 

 

In a paper presented at this year's annual conference of the  British Psychological Society's, attendees where told that while participant's answers weren't perfect, they were correct up to 60 percent of the time.


Dr Lance Workman who presented the paper,  said there might be a simple logic behind it."If you are of a robust build, you probably get a robust-built dog because you'd want to get lots of exercise," he said. "If you are slight, you might be more likely to have a poodle because you think it needs less exercise."

But he warned it was quite superficial and didn't translate to personality. The researchers had first set out to see if dogs and their masters had similar personalities, but questionnaires filled in by owners of labradors, poodles and bull terriers found little difference in their traits and habits.

How Many Dogs and Cats in the USA?

So exactly how many dogs are there in the USA? How many cats are there in the US? No one knows for sure just how many dogs and cats call the United States home, but recent estimates published in Science Daily, suggest that there are more than 71 million pet dogs and 81 million pet cats in the United States!


The number of dogs and cats represents a significant increase in recent times, with previous estimates suggesting that in 2001, there were  61 million dogs and 70 million cats. That's an increase of 16% in the number of dogs and cats in US households in just a few years.

Children Understand Pets from an Early Age

So do dogs and very small kids really have a special affinity? If you ask my wife, she would say they do. I myself wasn't so sure - as dog lovers, maybe it's just us seeing what we want to see. I wanted scientific proof. It looks like now we have it!

New research from Brigham Young University shows that children as young as  6 months old do understand dogs. The research shows that 6 month olds can match the sounds of an angry snarl and a friendly yap to photos of dogs displaying threatening and welcoming body language, even if they have little or no previous exposure to dogs! 

 

The study, by Ross Flom and BYU students, Dan Hyde and Heather Whipple Stephenson was recently reported in the Journal of Developmental Psychology.

The  experiment comprised first showing the babies two different pictures of the same dog, one in an aggressive posture and the other in a friendly stance. Then the researchers played sound clips of a friendly and an aggressive dog bark.

The research showed that while the recordings played, the 6-month-old children spent most of their time staring at the picture with the matching body language. Children older than 6 months, usually made the connection instantly.

I guess as the the Mythbusters would say, this one is well and truely proven!