In this episode Beth and Brian discuss 2 recently published articles from their website www.happytailzpets.com.

They start off with article 1, Be the Cool Parent for These Tech Gadgets for Your Pets, and highlight 3 special products that can be used with your pets.

The discussion for article 2, Study Finds That Cats Actually Do Bond with Humans, brings light to the fact that cats can have empathy and bond with people. There’s a study conducted out of Oregon State University Human Animal Interaction Lab that states domesticated cats could be placed on the same attachment style continuum as infants and dogs.

And as a reminder, join us on Tuesday, October 15th at 9am pacific and Noon eastern for our live online Pet Nutrition Workshop. Change the course for you pets lives with proper nutrition

Beth: Today’s episode is brought to you by the Happy Tailz Pets LIVE online workshop to be held Tuesday, October 15 9am Pacific/ 12noon Eastern, with a recorded version for those of you who can’t make it live.

Hello Happy Tailz Pack Members and welcome to Episode 6 of the Happy Tailz Pets Podcast. I’m Beth.

Brian: and I’m Brian.

Beth: Glad you could be here today.

Brian: Yes. Thank you again for everyone for joining us on our podcast and for following us on our website, HappyTailzPets.com.

Beth: That’s HAPPYTAILZPETS.COM

Brian: We thought today, that we would discuss some topics that were covered in our two most recent articles on HappyTailzPets.com. The first is titled, “Be the ‘Cool’ Parent with these Tech Gadgets for Pets.”

Beth: Do you think you sounded like the cool parent when you just announced that?

Brian: I like to think so. The second article is titled, “Study Finds that Cats Actually Do Bond with Humans.”

Beth: That’s what the study says, but we’ll get into our personal experience. We hope that’s true.

Brian: So let’s dive into our first article, which has to do with new tech gadgets for pets, namely dogs, however there are a lot of cool technological products that are designed for cats as well. This article focuses on some really cool gadgets that are available for your dog and if you are interested in purchasing a few of them, we have links for those as well.

Beth: Just for those of you who don’t know, we do run affiliate links through our website. That means that if you do choose to click on the link through our website, we get paid a small percentage if there’s a purchase, but we haven’t really been putting this out into the world, but we do want you to know that for every purchase that is made, we make a donation to a charitable pet organization. We think that giving back is very important, within our community, and there are a lot of ways that we can give back. You know, volunteering our time, giving our money. For us, we choose to do both, but as our website, Happy Tailz Pets, is concerned, we do give back a portion of every sale that is generated through our website to a pet organization in need.

Brian: That’s right, and it’s part of our mission, from day 1, with this particular article, two of the four products that are listed happen to be partners of ours, but the other two are not, so you’ll find that most all of our content is more topical in nature and not necessarily about promoting any of our affiliate partners.

Beth: But sometimes, our affiliate partners are really great, and that happens to be the case in this instance.

Brian: That’s right. That’s right. So the first company that’s mentioned in the article is a cool company called, “Whistle,” and “Whistle” has a few different products that offer ways to track your dog’s health and activity, and this is right on our wheelhouse, being that Happy Tailz Pets is all about your dog’s happiness and health, and helping them to live longer lives.

The second product that we highlight is called, “FITBARK.” FITBARK acts kind of like a pedometer for your pet, so it will monitor their activity levels, quality of sleep, what distance they’ve traveled, calories burnt, and their overall health. So, those are two great products that will help you to track your dog’s health and activity level.

Beth: And for those of you humans who know what a struggle it is to stay lean and fit and keep the extra pounds off, being able to track your steps is pretty remarkable. Now we have the opportunity to do it for our pets too, so it makes counting calories, backed up against our degree of fitness for our pets, even that much more significant and analyzable, so we can essentially figure out how much we need to walk based on how much our pets eat to get a desired weight maintenance or weight loss. So a pretty cool product.

Brian: Absolutely. And being tech people ourselves, being in the internet industry and having a number of tech products ourselves, we’re really excited to see these new innovations with technological products that are designed for our dogs.

One other key attribute I think is really interesting with FITBARK is that the devices are also waterproof, so if you have a dog, similar to ours, that love the water, the product is waterproof as well, which is really cool. The third product we highlight is called, “iFetch.” The basis of the “iFetch” is that it’s an automatic ball-throwing machine, so if you guys have dogs that love to fetch, like we do, you know how after a while, it starts to wear on your arms, especially if the dog can’t get enough fetching, so the “iFetch” is an automatic ball throwing machine that enables the dog to drop the ball in the top hole and then the ball shoots out and prompts your dog to chase after it. 

Beth: And it takes almost no time for the dog to figure out the steps. It’s a very quick learn. We talked about how difficult it can be to train our dogs. No issues here. The dog just picks up on it very, very fast for learning how to put the ball in the hole, which gives him a reward of being able to chase it down, and it just keeps going.

Brian: There’s two types of “iFetch’s”. There’s one called the “Too”, which is for large, outdoor areas, and then there’s a model called the “Frenzy”, which is designed for smaller areas, so if you happen to have an apartment or a townhome, you can also take advantage of an “iFetch” product.

Beth: I don’t think their downstairs neighbors would be real happy about that, though. Repetitive running back and forth for hours while you’re at work.

Brian: Then the final product we highlight in the Pet Tech article is a company called, “Pet Chatz.” It’s a greet and treat videophone, which enables you to have a conversation with your pet while you’re away.

Beth: That sounds pretty cool.

Brian: The machine’s mobile application is described in the article allows you to call, pick up calls, dispense snacks, and say hello to your pet anywhere via two-way audio and video.

Beth: So if you call in in the middle of the day and your pet has not torn up your trash, you go, “Good boy,” and you drop a little treat in. Positive reinforcement! You didn’t tear up the trash. You didn’t eat one of Mommy’s slippers, or you didn’t do all the other things that makes you a good boy today, and then you get your snack. I like that idea.

Brian: So, please check that article out, and there will be more articles to follow as we help to promote more and more tech products that come out aimed at dogs and cats, and possibly more exotic pets too. That remains to be seen.

Beth: I would like to see a product for exotic birds, where your bird could ring a bell when they wanted to get your attention for those times whenever your bird was in their cage or they were on top of their cage and they didn’t have access to you, they would just like ring a little bell and maybe it would like buzz your iPhone. That sounds like an app development situation. Yeah. And I think that would be, that would be a good one for all of the bird lovers out there. We’re bird lovers, so you can kind of relate to that.

Brian: The second article that we posted recently since we since we last podcasted was titled, “Study finds that Cats Actually do Bond with Humans.” So contrary to most popular belief, cats are not the standoff-ish, independent, aloof creatures that they’d been portrayed to be. 

Beth: You’re going to have to convince me of that though, at least with one of ours. 

Brian: Well, there was a study conducted out of Oregon State University’s Human Animal Interaction Lab. That’s a mouthful.

Beth: That sounds like a fun place to work though. 

Brian: It was published in a publication called “Current Biology,” and they deduce that domesticated cats could be placed on the same attachment style continuum as infants and dogs. Speaking from personal experience, we have two cats, as we’ve mentioned, two rescue cats. One is an outside cat. She prefers to be outside.

Beth: She started as an inside cat and decided to transition herself to outside living.

Brian: So she primarily spends most of her time outside and comes in in the evening, late evening sometimes, to eat and sleep inside. Our other cat, our other rescue cat, is an inside cat. And while the outside cat kind of picks and chooses when she wants to interact with us and, and the dogs, the inside cat, without question, is interested in interacting with the family. 

Beth: She loves us so much and we love her right back. 

Brian: She finds us each evening. If we’re in our family room, if we’re in front of the television watching a show, Nova the cat will be there. And really, it’s obvious that she enjoys our interaction.
And so, I’m a believer that the cats do appreciate the interaction with humans.

Beth: And they’ve both been with us since they were little. Now Nova, the one that’s inside all the time, she has a little bit of a weight issue and we think it’s because Isis, the one that’s outside all the time, roams miles during the day around our, we have a, we live in a development where the lots are relatively large, their acreage, and she can stay in our yard and just roam and roam and roam and roam. Every once in a while, she’ll go up to the neighbor’s and that sort of thing, but that’s a good ways away, so she has been able to stay fit and lean and just really stay in great shape, transitioning to being an outside cat. 

Whereas the inside cat, she’s just like a big snuggle bug. She’s just kind of real fluffy and I wish that, there’s two schools of thought about having your cats outside. Some people are really very much against it. In the area where we live, it’s not a safety concern for her, for the one that goes outside, and so we allow her to continue to do that. Even though it kind of bothers me sometimes knowing that she’s outside because there’s a large amount of land for her to roam on, I feel a little bit better about it. But what it does do that’s really positive is it keeps her weight down, it keeps her healthy. She looks really healthy and beautiful and fantastic and she’s had some health issues in the past. I’ve mentioned her, her health issues, on prior episodes, but she still maintains her health because I think she gets so much activity, and that’s one of the things that, with an inside cat, you really have to work aggressively to make sure they get their exercise.

And while it’s wonderful that Nova, our inside cat, is like all loving and cuddly and snuggly all the time, she could legitimately just lay there and snuggle for 24 hours a day, and that is not necessarily good for her either. But she’s an absolute emotional delight. Like if there was a therapy cat, that would be Nova; she is essentially a therapy cat. She is so bonded, but she’s not bonded to just one of us. She’s bonded to all of us. She is like all-comers. Come on, I got snuggles for everybody. Whereas Isis, depending on what day it is, maybe she loves you, maybe she doesn’t. It’s definitely on her terms. But that’s what the articles about it. It’s a pretty cool look into the way they think the cats process their emotions toward humans.

Brian: That’s right. So check it out. It digs into the study in a real scientific way. It concludes that throughout the entirety of the cat’s life, so from kitten through senior years, that cats are capable, deeply seeded emotional connection with their owners, so what a wonderful conclusion to have. 

Beth: That is wonderful. I love cats and I wasn’t born a cat lover. I was born a dog person. I came out of the womb loving dogs and it wasn’t until I was a legitimate adult, well into adulthood, that I got my first cat, we got our first cat. Both of us got our first cats together and it’s been an interesting journey, especially whenever you have them all together in the same household, and you have a number of each of them, five dogs and two cats for us. You could really see the difference, and we think a little bit that whenever cats are raised with dogs, and we have no scientific proof of this. This is just something that we kind of kicked around and believe. When cats are raised with dogs, they do show a more empathetic and less sociopathic temperament because they model dog behavior and that’s cool.

Now, I know that a lot of people probably don’t agree with that, but that’s just something that we’ve been kicking around, theoretically.

Brian: Just some observations. So, those were a couple of our latest posts and again, we greatly appreciate all of the support, as it pertains to our new website, HappyTailzPets.com, and our podcast as well. We really look forward to interacting with you guys, our pack. Let us know how things are going with your animals. You know, what animals you have, how things are going with them, what you’re feeding them, what you do for activities to keep them happy and healthy. 

Beth: Ah, you just segued right into my workshop, didn’t you? I liked that. That was good. Unplanned, but very much appreciated. I want to remind you all that on Tuesday, October 15th, that’s this coming Tuesday, one week from today at 9am Pacific and 12noon Eastern, we’ll be going live online with the Pet Nutrition Workshop.

I’m very excited about it. We have a lot of information to share about how we have changed the course of our pets’ lives by how and what we feed. We’ll be doing a live cooking demonstration, life prepping, and a live feeding of all of our pack. So we hope to see you there. I think we have at last look we had 20 spots left. You can find the link if you go to our website, HappyTailzPets.com. It’s a blue box, so it’ll pop right up in front of you on the home page and you can register there. So until we see you again on either our workshop or our podcast, we wish you wet noses and waggly tails. See ya.

Brian: See ya.