Pop Art Pet Unleashed

Archive for the ‘Fun Stuff’ Category

A large part of the country is currently dealing with crazy, crippling winter weather again this week. Here in Denver we haven’t had the pile up they’re getting on the east coast, but we have had a new layer of the white stuff at least every few days for what seems like forever. But this week we noticed something unexpected…

First we saw the first robin of spring, then we noticed several of his friends. They were all hopping around in the snow, presumably looking for a snack, making a mess. But it was about 22 degrees so apparently they didn’t get the groundhog’s memo about the several more weeks of winter to come.

Then the next day, quite early the next day in fact, we hear a sub-machine gun being fired just outside the window! Fortunately it turned out to be just a woodpecker, hammering away on the gutters. Somehow however, it doesn’t feel fortunate to have no break whatsoever between shoveling snow and trying to ward off woodpeckers, which is a battle we often fight but seldom win.

So we thought a reminder might be in order that birds are beautiful creatures who offer the world beautiful song. And especially in the case of these exotic beauties we’ve had the fortune to work with, they often provide a much needed splash of color in the world!

If you have feathered friends of your own, please keep in mind that we can create a custom bird portrait for you too! And if anybody has any tips for humanely keeping woodpeckers away, please share!

Everybody knows Ben Stein’s a pretty smart guy, but did you know he actually knows the secret to happiness? Of course the answer was obvious… it’s dogs!

He’s a genius!

Celebrate National Dress Up Your Pet Day this thursday, January 14th!

PetStyle.com has suggestions for selecting your pet’s attire according to their personality and of course the weather. We suggest go beyond the bandanna and be creative, be elaborate, have fun with it!

We have been very resistant to the whole “social media” movement all along, but its a new year, a new decade, so we’ve adopted a new attitude about it… If you can’t beat ‘em, join ‘em! ;)

So here we are on facebook

And of course, twitter.

And no, we have no idea what we’re doing, so please help us out! Become a Fan on Facebook or a Follower on Twitter and we’ll hook you up with a discount code for 15% off a custom pet portrait from Pop Art Pet!

According to The Daily Camera online, based here in Colorado, 80% of pet parents now report buy holiday gifts for their dogs and/or cats.:

It’s that time of year when the furry, four-legged friends get extra treats and jingle bells on their collars, and dogs even get a pass if they lift their legs indoors (because, hey, somebody put a tree in the living room).

Eight in 10 pet owners say they give their pets holiday and birthday gifts, according to a survey from the American Animal Hospital Association. Another 21 percent sometimes dress their pets, according to the association.

Marc Bekoff, a research scholar at the Institute for Human-Animal Connection at the University of Denver, said pets love the extra attention around the holidays, as their guardians tend to spend more time around the home.

“They don’t know it’s the holiday season, but they know something special is going on,” Bekoff said. “It’s a great time for bonding with your family .. it’s acknowledging that these animals have emotions and feelings. You want to treat them well, and by treating them well, you feel good.”
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So join the crowd, spend time with your furry family members this holiday season!

We found this on BoingBoing.net, one of our favorites, and thought it was amusing and very enterprising!:

Atheists who’ll take in your pets after the Rapture

Will sends us “a site of avowed atheists who will, for a nominal fee, look after your pet when you have taken in the rapture.”

We are a group of dedicated animal lovers, and atheists. Each Eternal Earth-Bound Pet representative is a confirmed atheist, and as such will still be here on Earth after you’ve received your reward. Our network of animal activists are committed to step in when you step up to Jesus.

We are currently active in 20 states and growing. Our representatives have been screened to ensure that they are atheists, animal lovers, are moral / ethical with no criminal background, have the ability and desire to rescue your pet and the means to retrieve them and ensure their care for your pet’s natural life.

Eternal Earth-Bound Pets, USA

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Without adding any potentially non-pc commentary, we have to admit.. this is a brilliant idea, and no matter which side of the issue you’re on it makes total sense!

We saw this story on Yahoo! News and thought.. “now tell us something we don’t know.” :) But the scientific evidence is very interesting:

The canine IQ test results are in: Even the average dog has the mental abilities of a 2-year-old child.

The finding is based on a language development test, revealing average dogs can learn 165 words (similar to a 2-year-old child), including signals and gestures, and dogs in the top 20 percent in intelligence can learn 250 words.

And the smartest?
Border collies, poodles, and German shepherds, in that order, says Stanley Coren, a canine expert and professor emeritus at the University of British Columbia. Those breeds have been created recently compared with other dog breeds and may be smarter in part because we’ve trained and bred them to be so, Coren said. The dogs at the top of the pack are on par with a 2.5-year-old.

Better at math and socializing
While dogs ranked with the 2-year-olds in language, they would trump a 3- or 4-year-old in basic arithmetic, Coren found. In terms of social smarts, our drooling furballs fare even better.

“The social life of dogs is much more complex, much more like human teenagers at that stage, interested in who is moving up in the pack and who is sleeping with who and that sort of thing,” Coren told LiveScience.

Coren, who has written more than a half-dozen books on dogs and dog behavior, will present an overview of various studies on dog smarts at the American Psychological Association’s annual meeting in Toronto.

“We all want insight into how our furry companions think, and we want to understand the silly, quirky and apparently irrational behaviors [that] Lassie or Rover demonstrate,” Coren said. “Their stunning flashes of brilliance and creativity are reminders that they may not be Einsteins but are sure closer to humans than we thought.”

Math test
To get inside the noggin of man’s best friend, scientists are modifying tests for dogs that were originally developed to measure skills in children.

Here’s one: In an arithmetic test, dogs watch as one treat and then another treat are lowered down behind a screen. When the screen gets lifted, the dogs, if they get arithmetic (1+1=2), will expect to see two treats. (For toddlers, other objects would be used.)

But say the scientist swipes one of the treats, or adds another so the end result is one, or three treats, respectively. “Now we’re giving him the wrong equation which is 1+1=1, or 1+1=3,” Coren said. Sure enough, studies show the dogs get it. “The dog acts surprised and stares at it for a longer period of time, just like a human kid would,” he said.

These studies suggest dogs have a basic understanding of arithmetic, and they can count to four or five.

Basic emotions
Other studies Coren notes have found that dogs show spatial problem-solving skills. For instance, they can locate valued items, such as treats, find better routes in the environment, such as the fastest way to a favorite chair, and figure out how to operate latches and simple machines.

Like human toddlers, dogs also show some basic emotions, such as happiness, anger and disgust. But more complex emotions, such as guilt, are not in a dog’s toolbox. (What humans once thought was guilt was found to be doggy fear, Coren noted.)

And while dogs know whether they’re being treated fairly, they don’t grasp the concept of equity. Coren recalls a study in which dogs get a treat for “giving a paw.”

When one dog gets a treat and the other doesn’t, the unrewarded dog stops performing the trick and avoids making eye contact with the trainer. But if one dog, say, gets rewarded with a juicy steak while the other snags a measly piece of bread, on average the dogs don’t care about the inequality of the treats.

Top dogs
To find out which dogs had the top school smarts, Coren collected data from more than 200 dog obedience judges from the United States and Canada.

He found the top dogs, in order of their doggy IQ are:
Border collies Poodles German shepherds Golden retrievers Dobermans Shetland sheepdogs Labrador retrievers

At the bottom of the intelligence barrel, Coren would include many of the hounds, such as the bassett hound and the Afghan hound, along with the bulldog, beagle and basenji (a hunting dog).

“It’s important to note that these breeds which don’t do as well tend to be considerably older breeds,” he said. “They were developed when the task of a hound was to find something by smell or sight.” These dogs might fare better on tests of so-called instinctive intelligence, which measure how well dogs do what they are bred to do.

“The dogs that are the brightest dogs in terms of school learning ability tend to be the dogs that are much more recently developed,” Coren said. He added that there’s a “high probability that we’ve been breeding dogs so they’re more responsive to human beings and human signals.” So the most recently bred dogs would be more human-friendly and rank higher on school smarts.

Many of these smarty-pants are also the most popular pets. “We like dogs that understand us,” Coren said.

We also love the beagle, which made it to the top 10 list of most popular dog breeds in 2008 by the American Kennel Club. That’s because they are so sweet and socialable, Coren said. “Sometimes people love the dumb blonde,” Coren said.

And sometimes the dim-wits make better pets. While a smart dog will figure out everything you want it to know, your super pet will also learn everything it can get away with, Coren warns.

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Sorry Beagles, I guess we do know exactly what you’re thinking!

A week or so ago we did a long overdue remodel of our blog. Before, for years, it looked like this..

Now, After, it matches the rest of site really well. And of course our beautiful Kylie is still here, with us as always (at the top, asking “What’s new?”).

If you’re not really familiar with the rest of the site, take a look around particularly at our custom pet portrait Example Galleries.

If you are familiar with our site and our Andy Warhol style animal artwork, you should check out our Custom Pet Portrait section to see what else we can do with your pet’s photos.

..like a chart topping Album Cover,

..or a dramatic Filmstrip.

We’re not just your pet Pop Art source; we encourage you to use your imagination – and ours! Just contact us with your custom order or ideas.

We just read a brief article on tips to save money on pet supplies and pet services. Like buying pet food in bulk is typically more cost effective, and keeping up with vaccinations and heartworm preventative not only keeps your pet healthy but helps you avoid potentially costly treatments down the line.

But the fun part of the money saving suggestions was to make your pet some toys at home that will be just as entertaining for them as the expensive ones at the pet store. For example you can make a simple food or treat dispensing toy of your own by filling an empty (clean) soda bottle with food or treats. It may take them an hour of nosing it around before they get all the goodies out. If your dog is a chewer, just be sure you don’t leave them unattended with it. Or if you have some old fabric in a craft bin somewhere you can tear it into strips, tie a knot in one end, braid the strips, then tie a knot at the other end and you’ve got a homemade tug toy.

For cats, just turn over a wine cork or the plastic lid from a carton of milk, or never underestimate a good old fashioned ball of yarn.

It’s not the money spent that makes it fun for them, it’s your interaction and their imagination. And remember, walks are free!

We received the following announcement via email from Mars Veterinary and are excited about it because we spoke directly to Dr. Neale Fretwell, PhD personally back when little Kylie had her DNA test done. We had lots of questions about the results and he was very kind to explain them in great detail.

Besides, this sounds very interesting:

Tune in on Wednesday, July 22^nd to see Mars Veterinary’s Chief Geneticist Dr. Neale Fretwell, PhD and the mixed-breed DNA test Wisdom Panel^TM MX in The History Channel’s hit show MonsterQuest. The 60 minute episode, titled “The Real Cujo,” focuses on feral dog packs in the United States and what breeds or traces of breeds are seen in some of these packs of dogs.

Dogs are known as man’s best friend. Originally descended from wolves, domesticated dogs were brought to the United States 12,000 years ago. Today, more and more dogs are being turned loose on the streets and returning to their wild roots.

In this episode, MonsterQuest launches a search to follow these feral packs, using Dr. Fretwell’s genetic expertise to trace their breed history using Wisdom Panel, and wolf expert Peggy Callahan to unlock the dog’s behavioral traits. Wisdom Panel was developed by Mars Veterinary and is the leading genetic test that allows pet owners, veterinarians and care providers to gain insight into the genetic make-up of their individual mixed-breed dog.

MonsterQuest airs on July 22^nd at 9:00 p.m. EST. Click on the following link to find your local listing http://www.history.com/search.do?action=scheduleSearch&searchText=MonsterQuest

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PS: From July 22 – Aug 4 you can have the Wisdom Panel MX (aka, Doggie DNA test) done on your mixed breed dog for only $99. But its only available online (Promotion Code HISTORY99) visit WisdomPanel.com for more information.