Mike the Dog 🐕

Well, at least moderation agrees that the screenshots depicted abuse. I wonder if they could tell because of how the guy's arm was straining.

For more reading: patriciamcconnell.com/theoth… whole-dog-journal.com/behavi… pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/article… (Effects of environmental enrichment)

Because of all this, we should be curious, and not dismissive, about what causes our dogs to display zooming behaviour. Remember that they were momentarily checking out, and so zoomies never constitute consent.

I want to point out that when a dog returns to you after zoomies, it's because of social attachment and routine, it's not any kind of endorsement.

Arousal is unvalenced, so zoomies don't tell us whether an experience was positive. Dogs with poor enrichment zoomie more easily because they lack arousal regulation practice. If a dog zooms in many contexts, zooming in a specific context actually tells us nothing.

Zoomies are arousal discharge, not joy signals. When emotional arousal is too much for a dog, they "leave the conversation" and are no longer checking in or responding socially. This can happen after stress (e.g. baths) and overstimulation (e.g. play).

🧵 I wanted to spend more time diving into canine communication and behaviour. Let's apply ethological principles to zoomies (sometimes called Frenetic Random Activity Periods, or FRAPs).

It strikes me that my strategy all these years was to never follow the people with bad tweets. "They're likely false-flag accounts," I thought, "they'll sort themselves out over time." A couple years later, we suddenly had paraphiles and my voice was heard nowhere.

High school was so awkward. I'm glad people are more accepting nowadays... (as an example of the retweets I see on my timeline)

I looked through some of my follows on Twitter. Like, why was I even following some of them? Just to keep an eye on them? A lot of the bad behaviour of pre-2020 community leaders/elders makes sense after the fact, with new perspectives. We're not out of the woods yet.

This link is a good read. I'm intrigued by the definition of plant "cognition" vs "consciousness". Plants can detect things that happen around them, but they are not conscious.

We want to be champions of the voiceless, after all we've been through ourselves. But slow down. Feel how voiceless these animals are, first and foremost. We have a duty to them, as zoophiles. We *can* shape our messaging to exclude the people who would exploit them. We *must*.

Some zoos think we're asking them to police their followers. Sometimes you should, especially if they're engaging with your posts and grabbing more attention, but otherwise it's not a good use of time. But you do have to keep these people in mind as you craft your messaging.

This is always happening. Out in the open, even. I recently got a report of a similar network where CSEM was advertised. Do you (dear reader) understand your own role in this? Sure, you don't follow these people, you haven't seen them reposting these links. But they follow you.

I'm trying to respond to some of these tweets I see, but it's just weird-ass uninformed opinions from people who might even be minors or something. I have no idea how to engage with that. But then they never realise there's a problem with the things they're saying.