“If having a soul means being able to feel love and loyalty and gratitude, then animals are better off than a lot of humans.”
– James Herriot (Veterinarian) Author: All Creatures Great and Small

Welcome Barnyard animal lovers! Whether you are a family farmer, just keep a few hens in your back yard, here you’ll find information about the fascinating history of barnyard animals; their care, emotional lives and the bittersweet, increasingly controversial relationship that we’ve forged with our “beasts of burden” through the past ten thousand years of domestication.

“Did you know that chickens are capable of certain types of deductive reasoning (transitive inference), and understanding the concept of quantity, can do basic arithmetic? They are cognitively, emotionally and socially as complex as many mammals: intelligent, feeling, empathetic beings.” – RA Conroy

Like Ms. Conroy, we here at The Pet CARE Pro consider ourselves forever students. Hence this gazette. We’re here to learn too, right along with you.

First, we need to set aside centuries of old dogma about animals.

The exponential changes over the decades in the fields of veterinary medicine, behavioral sciences, training techniques and nutrition can sometimes seem confusing, contradictory and by sheer volume, overwhelming to anyone, including the experts.

Yet at the same time, along with advances in research, technology and sharing via the internet, have come monumental leaps in knowledge, particularly in the revolutionary discoveries in cognitive ethology, Theory of Mind and sentience in animals.

It’s a breathtaking, exciting time. We are standing at the crossroads of major sociological, evolutionary change, a paradigm shift of the highest order: one of the mind.

So, let’s meander our ten little piggies around the next bend and explore what’s new on the horizon…

The Pet CARE Pro recommends:

  • Animals Make Us Human: Creating the Best Life for Animals by Temple Gradin
  • The Emotional Lives of Animals by Marc Bekoff
  • The Soul of All Living Creatures by Vint Virga, DVM

Until next time:

Dare to live with CARE
(Compassion, Awareness, Respect, Education)
to be the change…one corner at a time.