04.18.07
Black Cat ViJay in Residence
Our son Ezra’s cat is living with us for a while, his name is ViJay (Ezra enjoys watching golf.) He is a beautiful, silky black with white markings, is tolerant of Peaches and helps Scooter to get exercise.
Training Foal by Ponying
Ponying means leading beside another horse. As we did with our first colt Gilford (see other posts,) I started ponying Glendale beside his mom at about 2 weeks of age.
As soon as he was taught to lead from the ground (first week of life) and stand tied without fussing much, he was ready to learn. By taking him out with us on short trail rides in the pastures, and soon into the woods and on the streets, he was given lots of exposure to new things which horses have to learn.
Pictured here is Glendale at 2 weeks old starting his first ponied excursion, young Gilford and Abby looking on over the fence. The breastplate on Willow’s Bask is one I made for her of macrame, using instructions from Macrame Horse Tack by Carol Peterson.
My belief is that early experience like this is key to easier training later in life and to a less flighty horse in general. When the foal is by his dam he feels safe; it is a simple matter to coax him to follow beside; it is a great opportunity to start his understanding of voice commands of walk, whoa, trot, etc. which will be essential to a driving horse particularly; and all the while he is learning to lead better and yield to pressure of the halter and lead rope.
Glendale has been exposed to traffic, seen many neighborhood things, gone through a covered bridge a few times, been trailered several times, and jumped logs and forded small streams in the woods. His big brother Gilford was in two parades in town, his first at two months old and again as a yearling. Gil’s first exposure to the Meadowbrook driving cart (which he now pulls) was while being ponied, and at two he was ponied behind the cart.
A 2003 trail ride with black bay Gilford being ponied by hubby astride Abby, our previous Morgan/Percheron mare. (That’s me on Gilford’s mom Willow’s Bask at left.)
Take my word for it, exposure to a lot of environments and situations at a really early age, so long as practiced with safety considerations foremost and beside a calm experienced mother mare, is the easiest way to train a horse!
04.16.07
Diet-Related Hyperactivity in Dogs
Excerpts from Old Dog, New Tricks by David Taylor; Understanding and Retraining Older and Rescued Dogs. This is a truly useful, concise book with pertinent tips and specific advice on a range of dog behavior issues.
Hyperactive dogs, like hyperactive children, will often calm down if given food that is free of artificial colorings, flavor, preservatives and sugars. How to test this? Do an experiment. Cut out canned food, which is usually high in protein, and dry food, which often contains lots of preservatives, and cook for your pet. Give your dog dishes such as boiled chicken, rabbit, lamb or fish mixed with boiled rice or mashed, unpeeled, boiled potatoes in the proportions of one part meat or fish to four parts rice or mash.
If, within a week or two this diet does effect a change for the better in your dog’s behaviour, go onto some form of low- but high-quality protein proprietary canned food that is claimed to be free of additives such as the ones recommended for animals with chronic kidney disease or low-protein organic ones. Alternatively, if you are prepared to continue with the home cooking, use this recipe.
HOMEMADE DOG FOOD
NOTE: All quantities are per 5 lbs. dog weight.
two-thirds cup rice
one-half cup medium-fat meat
6 teaspoons raw liver
1 teaspoon steamed bone meal
1 teaspoon corn oil
one-half teaspoon iodized salt
Boil the rice until tender and drain. Mince the meat and cook in a little water. Mix the two together, and then stir in the remaining ingredients. Feed either warm or cold.
WATER TIP
Some experts believe that it is best not to give chlorinated or fluorine-treated water to hyperactive dogs, but to provide bottled mineral water instead.
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ED.NOTE– Granted many energetic-by-nature dogs are simply needing more exercise than they are able to get; but the possibility of diet-influenced behavior is well worth considering.
English Setter Peaches and Snowballs
Our puppy Peaches LOVES the snow and just being outside anytime, cause she gets to RUN!!! Sharing here a couple of pix of her enjoying herself in winter!
When the snow is softer and the temps are around freezing, she gets these awful snowballs stuck in the feathers on her legs and belly. It also get balled up between her toes and can be very uncomfortable for her. Fortunately we have a mud room to let her thaw out in when she first comes back into the house. I tried a hairdryer to melt them but it didn’t help much and she was quite nervous about it.
Laconia Sled Dog Racing Championship videos
The sled dogs DID get to race this year and we got to see them! For the last two winters the races had to be cancelled due to lack of snow. We watched the open class of 12 starters, on the last day which was their third leg for 75 miles total… each day running a 25-mile sprint. (Compared to the Iditarod 25 miles is considered a sprint…)
Laconia NH Sled Dog Derby Feb, 2007, racing dog teams being hitched up video.
No. 12 starting 3rd day leg of open race, video.
The mushers have told me the dogs are usually part greyhound, perhaps part malamute or something else. (In Gilford years ago there was a team of Irish Setters that raced!) The full-bred huskies are usually only raced further north than New Hampshire, such as in Canada or Alaska, because they get too hot in our warmer climate and they are bred for endurance racing (much longer than 25 miles!) If you followed the Iditarod you know what I’m talking about. (See posts about Iditarod by searching this blog.)
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See other videos of horses, dogs, snowboarding etc., on this blog (search term= video,) or go to YouTube.com and use search term= Horsepaintings (my username.)
04.11.07
Dogs Learning New Tricks
This is a sad but encouraging doggy tale with at least one happy ending…
Excerpted from New Tricks, New York Times Magazine, April 8, 2007. www.nytimes.comby Charles Siebert, a contributing writer who has reported frequently on animals, is at work on Humanzee, a book about humans and chimpanzees.
“Let me know when you’re ready,” Diane Mollaghan called out as I rummaged one recent winter afternoon through the costumes and props she had stored in the back room of a run-down house trailer on the grounds of the Town Lake Animal Center in Austin. Mollaghan, a 34-year-old animal-behavior researcher and graduate student in the University of Texas’s psychology department, was waiting in the trailer’s main room beside a tan-and-brown mutt that had recently been left in the shelter’s night drop-off box with no ID tags or background-information form. Estimated by the shelter’s staff members to be a “Manchester terrier mix,” it looked like a pointy-faced Chihuahua on stilts, a creature of indeterminate origin and yet-to-be-determined disposition. That, literally, was where I was to come in. All afternoon I had been helping Mollaghan conduct various trait-assessment tests on shelter recent arrivals.
[About two MILLION homeless, abandoned dogs are euthanized in this country yearly, half of the four million taken in by animal shelters. That is about 5,000 dogs daily, or one very 16 seconds. (The numbers are even higher for cats.) As many as 25 percent of these dogs are purebreds; often the reasons for their abandonment are frivolous.]
Dog mania being at an all-time peak in this country, it is difficult to say whether such profligacy with our pooches is a logical phenomenon or a wholly paradoxical one. A recent survey of the American Pet Products Manufacturers Association estimates that Americans house some 74 million dogs. And with the often factorylike production of ever more new puppies to satisfy growing consumer demand, the 5 percent of owned dogs that wind up disowned each year could be thought of as the inevitable spillage that attends all forms of mass consumption. Except, of course, for the simple, discomforting fact that the “product” in question is not only a living being but also our proverbial best friend, our most loyal and longtime animal companion.
……………………….
The animal shelter, a place long consigned to being a lost pet’s last, is fast becoming among the most likely places to find a lasting pet. A number of shelters… have broadened their scope [to include efforts to re-socialize abandoned dogs, and] have reported… improvements [in spite of the usual underfunding and sparce resources.]
At the Humane Society in Minneapolis, puppies that graduated from socialization classes were found to be far less likely to be returned after adoption. At the Town of North Hempstead Animal Shelter on Long Island, a volunteer shelter-dog training program initiated in 1999 cut the euthanasia rate by 50 percent in just six months. According to a 2006 survey of shelters in Ohio conducted by Ohio State University”s College of Veterinary Medicine, the outlook for dogs in shelters has greatly improved in the past 10 years, thanks partly to spay/neutering programs and also to a big increase in the number of shelters that have an established partnership with a veterinary practice. There has been a 16 percent decrease statewide in the number of dogs taken in each year and a 39 percent decrease in the number of dogs euthanized.
Dogs still are animals, our endless manipulations and misperceptions of them notwithstanding, and it has now become the added and somehow logical role of animal shelters, in concert with local veterinarians, pet stores and dog breeders, and an ever-growing network of applied animal behaviorists and trainers, to remind us of this simple truth. To help us step back and readdress our best friends again. Mollaghan speaks of her approach as a three-part puzzle: Try to get a handle on the dogs. Try to read a potential adopter”s personality and expectations. And, finally, develop the relationship element itself ” try to get a sense of how people are choosing their dogs, what criteria they’re using.
The first part can be particularly daunting. Any abandoned dog is the living embodiment of a broken bond of some sort, an intriguing if maddeningly inarticulate emissary of some prior human entanglement. The challenge for shelter workers trying to re-home that animal, of course, is to get a firm enough idea of its disposition, which naturally deteriorates with every passing second the dog spends among its equally miserable fellow captives, to feel fairly confident that they’re not dispatching a ticking time bomb into someone’s life.
“The timing of these tests is pretty sensitive,” Mollaghan said as we made our way to the kennel of our next test subject, “because of the stress response of these animals.” The very act of our passing by them, Mollaghan explained, contributes to their decline, setting dogs off into a frenzy of barking and jumping because, invariably, some other visitor stopped once before and spoke to them and took them out on a lead. It’s a syndrome known as “conditioned frustration.”
“They were rewarded once,” Mollaghan went on to say, “so they behave that way whenever anyone passes. Why do people continue to gamble in the face of constant losing? Because they won once.”
…
“They pick up on [other cues] too,” Mollaghan told me. “A lot of them start to vomit or soil themselves the minute they enter the euthanasia room.”
On the way to retrieving our day’s last subject, fate delivered me a far more intimate look at the other two parts of Mollaghan’s puzzle and the larger dramas of modern-day dog adoption than I had ever anticipated getting. It happened at Stray 3, Kennel No. 252. Two names were listed on her data sheet: Cricket and Olive. A twice-abandoned “border terrier mix.” Tiny. Just over 12 pounds. A breathing bundle of gray-and-white carpet lint with long pipe-cleaner-like legs, a slight underbite and the proverbial button eyes. I’d have guessed the first-ever mating of a Maltese and a spider monkey. But whatever unknowable admixture of cockeyed progeny, behavioral flaws and human perversions had led to this creature’s double exile, it made no difference to me. I had lost not only my journalistic objectivity, my so-called reporterly remove, but also all remnants of reason and rationality. I was, in a word, sunk.
Mollaghan was on to me before I’d uttered a word: to the fact that I was both instantly becoming one of her human test subjects and already committing the classic shelter-shopper faux pas. I was going on first impression, mere appearance. I’d fallen for one of the “cutesy” dogs, one whose very presence there among the dime-a-dozen midsize mixes that I should, in good conscience, have been considering, only further bewitched me, the way she calmly and mutely came right up to greet me amid a maelstrom of barking and jumping kennel mates.
Back at Mollaghan’s office, we learned the following about Cricket/Olive: a spayed female, approximately 2 years old, found three days before, roaming the grounds of the Anderson Oaks town-home community. This was, we soon verified, her second stint at Town Lake. There was no information on her original owner, but as for her second, a guy named Forbes, records showed that he adopted her from Town Lake seven weeks earlier. An immediate message had been left on Forbes’s answering machine and an e-mail sent, quoting the usual reclaim fee of $50 and giving him a three-day deadline to reclaim his dog.
“That’s today,” I said.
“Yep,” Mollaghan said, staring up at the office clock, which read 6:40 p.m. “He’s got until closing. Twenty minutes.” And then we learned this: I didn’t have a prayer. Even if Forbes didn’t show, three others before me had dibs on Cricket/Olive. “So much for that,” I said, my sudden scheme of returning to Brooklyn and surprising my wife, Bex, and our own shelter-adopted terrier mix, Roz, evaporating as quickly as it had coalesced.
“Not necessarily,” said Mollaghan, who, I soon learned, was hatching a scheme of her own, one that would pivot around her intimate knowledge of the fickleness of dog adopters and certain nuances in the dog-adoption process itself. No. 2 on the waiting list turned out to be a rescue group. If, Mollaghan explained, she could get the rescue group to defer to me as its ideal adopter, that would legitimately leapfrog me to the slot just behind the first C.I. (customer interest) on the list, a man named Welch. He had happened upon Kennel No. 252 the day Cricket/Olive arrived. Welch’s deadline clock of 36 hours would commence ticking the day after the one expired on Forbes.
Seven p.m. would come and go that evening with no sign of the mercurial Mr. Forbes. Beneath the once daunting list of the three other prior C.I.’s for the dog, Mollaghan now typed the following: “Charles Siebert (visiting journalist from nytimes mag) also has strong interest in Cricket a k a Olive. I will advise him to contact rescue if the other app. falls through.”
…
Kennel No. 227 in Stray 3, one of the kennels for larger dogs, held a light tan, somewhat undernourished-looking pit bull named Lana. She hugged to the back corner of her kennel and, upon being greeted, began to tremble uncontrollably. Mollaghan opened the gate, went in and crouched down, very low, so as to be less threatening. A petite woman with a round-eyed, elfish face, she seemed utterly fearless and under control at all times. She waited a bit longer in silence. Called out again. More trembling.
“If I were to go any closer,” Mollaghan said to me in a hushed voice, “this dog would definitely bite me.”
She stepped gingerly back outside and locked the gate. She pulled out the stat sheet from the plastic pouch on the front of Lana’s kennel, telling me that they get dogs like her all the time. They usually have names like Nitro or Cocaine or Killer, dogs that spend their lives chained in yards, having no contact with other dogs or humans.
It had been, up until then, a fairly positive afternoon as shelter-dog days go. We had tested a young but extremely well-balanced Labrador-cattle dog mix that responded to the taffeta-doll dance and my rain-coated flasher-man get-up with what seemed like a perfectly appropriate mix of curiosity and concern. He was followed by a 7-year-old husky-malamute, a dog that countenanced the entire battery of assessments with such a world-weary calm that he somehow rendered us, the testers, the species under examination. We didn’t rate too well when it came to Lana. She would be put down the following afternoon.
[Sparky was much luckier.] Sparky’s new owners, Elizabeth and Dennis Cole, had previously had a bad experience with an adopted shelter dog orphaned by Hurricane Katrina. Elizabeth Cole came to Town Lake and had a pre-adoption consultation with Mollaghan to discuss what she was looking for in a dog. Sparky, Mollaghan told me, was not the match she would have made, but after their consult, Cole went off by herself among Town Lake’s kennels and immediately fell for Sparky.
“I like recycled men,” Cole told me as we sat sipping coffee in her backyard. “My husband’s first marriage ended in divorce.” After Cole chose Sparky, Mollaghan immediately went to work on the dog, taking him out of his kennel and keeping him beside her in her office each day. She gradually conditioned him to human company and was able to temper his aggression. Now, in the Coles’ backyard, she was instructing their 11-year-old son, Criss, on how to manage an extremely contented-looking, mild-mannered Sparky on the lead. He had been with the Coles now for four months. A real-life canine rags-to-riches story.
“We basically got him for our son,” Elizabeth Cole told me, smiling broadly. “But now I’m totally in love.”
I asked if there were any lingering problems with Sparky, who was now at my feet, gleefully absorbing a back rub. Cole said the only thing was that he refuses to go up stairs. It all only further fueled my fervor for Olive, convincing me that whatever it was that got her twice tossed by her previous owners, it could be overcome.
As things turned out, however, I needn’t have worried. About any of it. The following day, another deadline on Olive came and went. Mollaghan phoned me at my hotel at 1 p.m. sharp to say that the little girl was mine. Three months have passed. Olive and Roz play and nap together all day long, sleep at night intertwined. No sign whatsoever to date of that inner devil. It’s hard for me to imagine now why she was never reclaimed, or why her next suitor never showed. I’ve often thought of picking up the phone to try to find out, but somehow it’s better not knowing. Sometimes, Mollaghan told me, a dog’s behavior just hews to and mirrors the environment that it’s living in, and there is something deeply reaffirming, heartening in that. Just as there is in watching the daily loosening of Olive’s abandonment anxiety: from the early days of her following everywhere at my heels, even when I got up for a drink of water in the middle of the night, to now seeing her dare solo, field-long dashes during our walks in the park, nearly out of sight, just because she feels that she can.
04.09.07
Winter Horse Turnout New Hampshire Log
This is a daily log of the deep winter turnout of my
three horses in central New Hampshire. As mentioned in
previous posts, also see Horse Profile (under Looking
Closer at right), we have a 21 yr.old Arabian mare and
her two half percheron sons, ages 3 1/2 and 1 1/2
years. They are offered run-in stalls 24/7, a shed
roof shelter with peastone gravel footing (12×20
attached to the barn,) and fields and woods to roam in
(approx. 5 acres total.)
They have the choice to shelter or not; we feed them
grass hay and a small amount of grain twice daily
(they are easy keepers.) They are barefoot and we do
not blanket them against the weather.
See all the blog info on peastone gravel for horsekeeping… and be sure to look for other folks’ COMMENTS at the end of these posts.
Beginning on January 29 I recorded our morning
temperatures between 7am and 8am and noted where the
horses chose to be each morning. Their location
options were in their stalls, under the shelter at the
barn, near the barn, middle field, in some trees, and
lower field which is the furthest away and their
favorite (having horse neighbors.) They relish gnawing
on tree bark (they are all part beaver) and were often
found in a stand of “new” trees which was opened to
them for a couple of weeks.
We had our first covering snow early in this Log (3-4
inches on Feb. 3) and got a foot and a half more snow
on Feb. 14-15. Any unusual weather has been noted in
the Log below.
My observations are as follows: the horses stayed
outside about 95% of the time, day and night. Snow
showers did not drive them inside; their thick winter
fur (grown naturally because no blankets were used)
insulated them so well that the snow did not melt off
their backs. Freezing rain did not drive them to
shelter. Really strong winds with cold rain, sleet or
snow sometimes drove them to shelter after prolonged
hours.
On days with temps below 15 degrees F. they sometimes
came back to the barn at feeding time uncalled (we
have trained them to come to a bell for their twice
daily feedings– see other posts.) When more snow
was on the ground (over a foot) they seemed to come
unbidden to the barn (at feeding time) more often than
when less snow was on the ground.
We did shut them into their stalls during a 36-hour
snowstorm (Feb. 14-15,) and for other storms, mostly
for our own convenience so we could plow/shovel in
front of their stall doors more easily before they
trampelled it down. One or two other nights when it
was frigid with blustery winds, we also shut them in,
which made us feel better.
There was one frigid and windy night (March 6, -1
degrees record cold) that we didn’t shut them inside;
the next morning we found them in their stalls, the
mare and yearling in one stall together, and the mare
was shivering and trembly. The wind was blowing into
the stall door. I shut her in the rest of that day and
night, rubbed her down vigorously, put a lightweight
blanket on her for a couple of hours, and gave her
extra hay (hay is much better and safer to warm their
guts than is grain.) She had no ill effects (though I
felt like a bad mom!) The two youngsters were not
shivering, so I assume her age and smaller size were
the differing factors, also that her Arabian hair coat
is not quite as dense as theirs. After that incident
we were a tad more cautious about shutting them in.
A final note: At the end of March we have seen them
reluctant to come up to the barn for their feeding
bell when they started reaching dead (overwintered)
grass in their lower field, and they have actually
left some hay uneaten. Our assumption is they prefer
dead grass to hay and are getting plenty of it to eat
once the snow has melted, so we cut down on their hay
quantity if they go off and leave it.
HORSE WINTER TURNOUT LOG
MORNING TEMPS in F. at 7am-8am (before variable feeding time) and where horses were:
Jan. 29 14 degrees, in lower field; took sunbath mid-morning in middle field
Jan. 30 7 degrees, in lower field
Feb. 1 21 degrees, in lower field; came to barn uncalled
Feb. 2 25 degrees, under barn shelter
Feb.3 25 degrees, lower field all night (gentle overnight snow 4-5 inches, no tracks in snow near barn)
Feb.4 13 degrees, at barn, in sun (see photo)
Feb.5 5 degrees, under barn shelter
Feb.6 8 degrees, in lower field
Feb.7 7 degrees, near barn/in stalls at 7:15am
Feb.8 11 degrees, near barn
Feb.9 14 degrees, in lower field; came to barn uncalled
Feb.10 16 degrees, in lower field
Feb.11 19 degrees, in lower field
Feb.12 18 degrees, in trees (newly-accessible area)
Feb.13 2 degrees, in lower field/new trees
Feb.14 10 degrees, in middle field; out in overnight snow storm (9 inches by 8am,) ran back to barn uncalled; shut into stalls in am.
Feb.15 7 degrees, shut in stalls 36 hrs. total for 18 inches snow falling, shut in overnight (very windy)
Feb.16 10 degrees, shut in stalls, very windy; let out for day, shut mare and yearling in overnight
Feb.17 20 degrees, two shut in stalls, three-year-old hanging near barn; let out in am.
Feb.18 23 degrees, in new trees; came to barn uncalled at 9am.
Feb.19 4 degrees, under barn shelter, wind gusty previous night
Feb.20 12 degrees, in new trees; came to barn uncalled
Feb.21 21 degrees, in new trees
Feb.22 24 degrees, in trees, cloudy; came to barn uncalled
Feb.23 25 degrees, in middle trees
Feb.24 12 degrees, at barn shelter; were fenced in close to barn due to fence problem
Feb.25 20 degrees, in middle field (still fenced in close)
Feb.26 26 degrees, near barn (fenced in close)
Feb.27 25 degrees, in middle trees (fenced in close)
Feb.28 30 degrees, at barn (fences fixed and opened up again, “new” trees access closed off)
Mar.1 22 degrees, in middle trees
Mar.2 29 degrees, out in snowstorm (which started 3 am,) came into stalls at 6:30 am; shut into stalls for day
Mar.3 27 degrees, still shut in stalls for plowing
Mar.4 31 degrees, in middle trees
Mar.5 24 degrees, in middle trees
Mar.6 minus 1 degree (RECORD COLD and WINDY,) in stalls since overnight, mare shivering in stall; shut into stalls for day, high temp. of 5 degrees
Mar.7 -1 degree, still shut in stalls; let runout into paddock only, high temp. of 17 degrees; shut into stalls for night
Mar.8 9 degrees, still shut in; let out in am., windy, shut into stalls for night
Mar.9 4 degrees, still shut in; let out in am. and left out overnight
Mar.10 24 degrees, at barn in sun (see photo)
Mar.11 38 degrees, hanging at barn (starts daylight savings time)
Mar.12 31 degrees, fenced in close to barn (accidentally)
Mar.13 40 degrees, in middle trees (sap is probably running)
Mar.14 43 degrees, in middle trees
Mar.15 50 degrees, lower field and trees; ugh!! RAIN!!
Mar.16 40 plus degrees, VERY WARM!, in middle field; midday snow starts, shut into stalls in pm. for snow
Mar.17 20 degrees, still shut in stalls; one foot snow with sleet on top; left shut in stalls
Mar.18 22 degrees, let out of stalls in am. after plowing; out overnight
Mar.19 21 degrees, in lower field pawing for grass through crusty snow
Mar.20 31 degrees, in lower field pawing for grass through crusty snow
Mar.21 17 degrees, middle/lower field
Mar.22 28 degrees, middle field; warming temps, melting snow, MUD HAS STARTED! yuck!
Mar.23 45 degrees, lower field; pawing through soft melting snow for dead grass; slow to come to barn for feeding bell, so reduced hay quantity
Mar.24 34 degrees, lower/middle field
Mar.25 34 degrees, lower field; pawing through 3 inches new soft snow for dead grass
Mar.26 35 degrees, lower field; eating dead grass; MUD started in earnest
Kitten Plays With Mac Laptop
Even Kittens Can Use Macs (from YouTube)
Thanks to my good friend C! and her daughter for passing this one to me!
Tips to Combat Global Warming
TIPS FROM http://www.stopglobalwarming.org
Replace 3 frequently used lightbulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs. Save 300 lbs. of carbon dioxide and $60 per year.
Run your dishwasher only with a full load. Save 200 lbs. of carbon dioxide and $40 per year.
Keep the tires on your car adequately inflated. Check them monthly. Save 250 lbs. of carbon dioxide and $840 per year.
Move your heater thermostat down two degrees in winter and up two degrees in the summer. Save 2000 lbs. of carbon dioxide and $98 per year.
Instead of turning up the heat in your home, put on a sweater. Save 1,000 lbs. of carbon dioxide and $250 per year.
Keep your water heater thermostat no higher than 120 degrees Fahrenheit. Save 500 lbs. of carbon dioxide and $30 per year.
Take shorter showers. Save 350 lbs. of carbon dioxide and $99 per year.
Install a low-flow showerhead to use less hot water. Save 300 lbs. of carbon dioxide and $150 per year.
Air conditioner check. Save 175 lbs. of carbon dioxide and $150 per year.
Make sure your printer paper is 100% post consumer recycled paper. Save 5 lbs. of carbon dioxide per ream of paper.
Plant a tree native to your region. Save 5,000 lbs. of carbon dioxide per year. Trees suck up carbon dioxide and make clean air for us to breathe.
Keep your water heater insulated and save 1,000 lbs. of carbon dioxide and $40 per year.
Replace old inefficient appliances. Save hundreds of lbs. of carbon dioxide and hundreds of dollars per year.
Weatherize your home. Save 1,000 lbs. of carbon dioxide and $274 per year.
Turn off un-used electronic devices. Save over 1,000 lbs. of carbon dioxide and $256 per year. Yourelectronic devices use a lot of energy. When you’re not using them, turn them off. Also, even when they are “off” and plugged in, your electronic devices still use energy. So, be sure to unplug those devices.
Switch to a tankless water heater. Save 300 lbs. of carbon dioxide and $390 per year.
Switch out your windows to doublepane. Save 10,000 lbs. of carbon dioxide and $436 per year.
Make sure your walls and ceilings are insulated. Save 2,000 lbs. of carbon dioxide and $245 per year.
Weatherize your home. Caulk and weather-strip your doorways and windows.Save 1,000 lbs. of carbon dioxide and $274 per year.
Easter Bunny Life Tips
All I need to know about life, I learned from the Easter Bunny–
Don’t put all your eggs in one basket; Walk softly and carry a big carrot; Everyone needs a friend who is all ears; There’s no such thing as too much candy; All work and no play can make you a basket case; A cute little tail attracts a lot of attention; Everyone is entitled to a bad hare day; Let happy thoughts multiply like rabbits; Some body parts should be floppy; Keep your paws off other’s people’s jellybeans; Good things come in small, sugarcoated packages; The grass is always greener in someone else’s basket; An Easter bonnet can tame even the wildest hare; To show your true colors you have to come out of your shell; The best things in life are still sweet and gooey.
Thanks again to CT!
