Our Animal Life

09/01/2026

🐇🐇 Don’t Forget to Say “Rabbit Rabbit” This Morning!

September 1st is here — and according to an old folk tradition, saying “Rabbit Rabbit” as the very first words you speak on the first day of the month is supposed to bring good luck for the month ahead.

The exact origins are a little mysterious, but versions of the superstition have been passed down for generations in Britain and America.

So when you wake up this morning, before you say anything else…

Rabbit Rabbit! 🐇🐇

Do you follow this old tradition?

08/29/2026

French Bulldog little girl. Message me for information.

08/27/2026

Happy National Dog Day!
Dolly Parton never needed to officially own a dog for one to become part of her family.

For years, that dog was Billy the Kid, a French Bulldog owned by her longtime manager, Danny Nozell. Billy became known as Dolly’s “god dog,” and their relationship grew into something much bigger than an occasional celebrity photo.

Dolly regularly included Billy in her life and work. He became the brand ambassador for Doggy Parton, the pet apparel line she launched in 2022, and she even turned him into the hero of a series of children’s books. In one widely shared video, Dolly serenaded Billy with “Happy Birthday” for his fifth birthday while he sat patiently through the attention.

Her affection for animals went back much further.

During the 1980s, Dolly had a small dog named Popeye, whom she later credited with helping her through a difficult period in her life. Her compassion also extended beyond her own pets. She established the Eagle Mountain Sanctuary, supported animal-welfare campaigns, and used proceeds connected with Doggy Parton to help Willa B. Farms Animal Rescue.

Billy, however, held a particularly visible place in her later years.

He appeared beside her in promotions, inspired three children’s books, and became part of the playful world Dolly created around her love of music and animals. She may not have been his legal owner, but the affection between them was obvious.

Following Dolly Parton’s death at age 80, stories about Billy carry a little more weight. Her career will rightly be remembered for the songs, movies, philanthropy, and millions of people she reached. But smaller relationships can reveal just as much about a person.

Dolly spent decades making people smile.

And somewhere along the way, she made sure one little French Bulldog knew he was adored too.

08/13/2026

Black bears enter their dens in November with gunshot wounds, arrow punctures, and infected bite marks from fights with other bears. Five months later they walk out healed. The wounds close. The infections clear. The scars barely form. They do this without eating, without drinking, at a body temperature reduced by 13 degrees Fahrenheit, and in a metabolic state so suppressed that in any other mammal the same conditions would make healing nearly impossible.

Researchers at the Universities of Minnesota and Wyoming discovered the extent of it by accident. While checking on GPS-collared bears in their winter dens as part of a long-term population study, the teams noticed that bears they had documented with significant injuries in the fall were emerging in spring with those injuries resolved.

Gunshot wounds from hunters who had hit but not killed a bear during the fall season. Arrow wounds from bowhunters. Bite wounds from territorial fights with other bears that had been visibly infected and inflamed when the bear entered the den. By the time the researchers opened the den in February or March, the wounds were closed, clean, and showing almost no scar tissue.

David Garshelis, the University of Minnesota bear researcher who had been studying these animals for decades, described his own surprise directly: it seems so remarkable to us that their wounds would heal so well and so completely when they are hibernating and their metabolism is slowed down.

Paul Iaizzo and colleagues designed an experiment to test whether the healing was real or whether the bears had simply recovered during the last warm weeks before denning. They anesthetized hibernating bears inside their dens during early winter, made small full-thickness cuts through the skin, and returned two to three months later to examine the sites.

The wounds had healed completely. New skin had grown over the cuts. New hair follicles had formed at the wound margins. The scar tissue was minimal enough that the researchers described the healing as reduced scar formation, a clinical phrase meaning the bears healed cleaner than a human with full access to food, warmth, and medical care would heal from the same wound.

The paper, published in Integrative Zoology in 2012, laid out why this should not be possible. Even mildly hypothermic body temperatures re**rd healing processes in mammals. A hospital patient whose core temperature drops a few degrees heals slower and develops more infections.

A bear's core temperature during hibernation drops to between 86 and 95 degrees Fahrenheit. Its heart rate falls to roughly eight beats per minute. It does not eat for five to six months. It does not drink. It does not urinate. It does not defecate. It is malnourished, dehydrated, hypothermic, and immobile, every condition that in a human patient would produce the worst possible healing outcome. The bears heal better under those conditions than most mammals heal under the best conditions.

The mechanisms are not fully understood but the pieces are coming together. Bears recycle their own urea, a metabolic waste product that any other mammal would excrete, breaking it back down into nitrogen and using it to synthesize new proteins for tissue repair without consuming food.

Their white blood cell counts increase during hibernation rather than decrease, mounting an immune response that fights infection while the rest of the body operates at minimum power. Their blood carries antimicrobial compounds that appear to prevent wound infection in the absence of any external treatment. They lose almost no muscle mass despite lying motionless for months, and almost no bone density despite bearing no weight on their skeleton for half the year.

Garshelis put it the way it needed to be said: they sit in the den for six months and do not lose any appreciable muscle or bone mass, so this healing is another adaptation. The bear's body does not shut down during hibernation. It redirects. Everything that is not essential stops. Everything that keeps the animal alive and whole when it walks out in April keeps running.

Source: Iaizzo et al. (2012), Integrative Zoology / University of Minnesota / University of Wyoming / BBC Nature / PhysOrg.

07/31/2026

The Silent Casualties of the First World War: The Horses History Almost Forgot

By the time the guns finally fell silent in 1918, millions of men had been lost. But lying beside them, often unnamed and forgotten, were the horses that carried an entire war on their backs.

There are photographs from the First World War that stay with you forever.

Not because of the trenches.

Not because of the ruined villages.

But because of the horses.

They lie motionless beside shattered roads, still wearing their harnesses, as endless columns of soldiers continue marching past. There are no ceremonies. No names carved into stone. No letters sent home. Their work simply ended where they fell.

It is one of history's quietest tragedies.

An Army That Could Not Move Without Horses

When many people imagine World War I, they picture machine guns, tanks, and barbed wire. Yet behind every advance and every retreat stood an army powered by horses.

Nearly every major nation depended on them.

They hauled artillery pieces weighing several tons through knee-deep mud. They pulled ambulances carrying the wounded. They delivered food, water, ammunition, and medical supplies to front-line troops where trucks could not travel.

Without horses, entire armies would have stopped moving.

Sent Into Hell

Unlike soldiers, horses never understood why they were there.

One day they grazed peacefully in fields or worked on family farms.

The next, they found themselves surrounded by exploding shells, collapsing earth, screaming men, poison gas, and relentless gunfire.

Many panicked.

Others refused to leave wounded companions.

Some continued pulling their wagons even after suffering terrible injuries because that was all they had ever been trained to do.

There was no choice.

Only obedience.

Death Came in Countless Ways

The battlefield spared almost nothing.

Thousands were killed instantly by artillery.

Others collapsed from exhaustion after pulling impossible loads through endless mud.

Many starved when supply lines broke down.

Disease spread rapidly through overcrowded camps.

Poison gas burned their lungs just as it did the soldiers beside them.

Winter brought freezing temperatures, while summer turned battlefields into suffocating swamps filled with flies and disease.

Many horses simply worked until their bodies could work no longer.

More Than Eight Million Lost

Historians estimate that over eight million horses died during the First World War.

The number is almost impossible to comprehend.

Each one had once belonged somewhere.

A farmer who trusted it.

A child who brushed its coat.

A stable where it waited every evening.

Most never returned.

For countless families, the horse that had helped plough their fields simply vanished into the machinery of war.

Forgotten Heroes

Soldiers often wrote about their horses with extraordinary affection.

Diaries describe men risking sniper fire to rescue trapped animals.

Some shared their precious water rations with exhausted horses before drinking themselves.

Others spoke of crying openly when longtime companions died beside them.

In a world filled with death, these animals became a rare source of comfort and companionship.

They asked for nothing.

Yet they gave everything.

The Images That Still Haunt Us

Some wartime photographs show roads stretching endlessly into the distance.

Columns of wagons disappear into the mist.

Along both sides lie fallen horses, one after another, still harnessed as if waiting for the next command that would never come.

The soldiers continue walking.

There is no time to stop.

War leaves little room for mourning.

Yet those silent images remind us that suffering extended far beyond humanity itself.

Remembering the Ones Without a Voice

History rightly remembers the millions of soldiers who sacrificed their lives during the Great War.

But remembrance should also include the animals who had no say in the conflict.

The horses never chose a side.

They never understood politics or borders.

They simply followed the reins placed in their hands, carrying impossible burdens until they could carry no more.

Their courage was never celebrated with medals.

Their graves were rarely marked.

Yet their sacrifice helped shape the outcome of a war that changed the world forever.

Perhaps the greatest tribute we can offer today is simply this:

To remember them.

Because among the countless victims of the First World War were millions of loyal horses whose final journey ended not in peaceful fields, but on shattered roads beneath dark skies—silent witnesses to humanity's darkest chapter.

07/22/2026

When a rescued dog presses its head against your chest, it isn't thanking you for saving its life. Dogs cannot comprehend sacrifice—but what they experience is just as profound.

From a cognitive standpoint, gratitude is a complex "secondary emotion" that requires a theory of mind. To feel true human-style gratitude, an animal must understand that another individual has their own thoughts and motivations, and that they deliberately chose to make an effort specifically for the animal's benefit. A dog's brain simply does not compute the narrative of, "I was in a bad situation, you altered your life to rescue me, therefore I am indebted to you."

Instead, dogs possess a rich emotional capacity for primary states like fear, stress, relief, joy, and deep affection.

When a dog is removed from a chaotic, loud, and unpredictable environment and placed into a space with a steady source of food and physical comfort, they undergo a massive neurochemical shift. Their cortisol levels plummet, and their oxytocin—the mammalian bonding hormone—spikes. The relentless face licking, the full-body tail wags, and the need to follow a person from room to room are driven by an intense feeling of relief and the rapid formation of a secure attachment. The dog recognizes that they feel safe, and they quickly identify the specific human who is the source of that safety.

While a dog is not contemplating a moral debt, their behavioral response functions identically to gratitude in building the human-canine bond. They are communicating, in the only language they have, that they feel secure and are highly motivated to stay close to the person who made that security possible.

07/03/2026

07/02/2026

🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸🇺🇸

04/12/2026

Silkie Chicks hatched today!

04/11/2026

Miss Luna wishes everyone a great spring weekend!