Archive for the ‘beyond the yard’ Category

Just something a little different from the usual here on Curbed.
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Now this isn’t something you see everyday. Gladys the bull terrier (who recently turned 2!) demonstrates a pair of “milk pants” — an apparatus that allows her to feed a frisky duo of baby goats, in this bizarre, but adorable commercial for Fetching Tags.

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With so many pet stories around the web each week it’s hard to keep up. Table Scraps is our weekly roundup of memorable pet news around the internet.

• If senior dogs had their way it would be all hard candies and clam chowder for dinner. (Dog Channel)
• Where exactly does ear number five go on a five-eared cat? (Catster)
• Roses are red, some dogs are too, these kids wrote poems about pets, obviously way better than I do. (Pets Add Life)
• If Sandra Bullock had swerved to miss a dog in Speed would this still have happened? (Gothamist)
• Pet skunks are all the rage in England and oddly enough so are tomato juice baths. (Mail Online)
• The TICA and the CFA inadvertently start a turf war between Persians and Bengals. (Catster)

Image: Alfred Hermida

A few weeks ago Device Magazine posed an interesting question; does the Xbox 360 Kinect game, Kinectimals, send the wrong message to children about interacting with wild animals? The game lets players interact with virtual big cats, but unlike their real world counterparts these little creatures are Disneyifed. The Asiatic Cheetah cubs and Bornean Clouded Leopard kits are more than happy to come running to the front of the screen when they hear your voice, mimic your movements, jump around obstacle courses, and purr loudly when you virtually scratch behind their ears.

While I don’t think most of us have to worry about our children running up to a real African Lion on our day-to-day, I do wonder if the interactions the game teaches send the wrong message about how one should interact with any animal they aren’t familiar with. Watching the promo video for the game, I had visions of kids scampering up to strange dogs on the street and spinning around in circles expecting the pup to do the same only to get knocked over when the dog jumped on them – or worse. Am I being paranoid?

I’m not going to lie, I totally want to play this game, I just don’t know if I would let my kids.