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| I'll take the driver's seat: Coco loves a road trip. |
I began a discussion with the first year vet students about the way humans bond with animals, and I mentioned Tom Chatfield's argument that time spent twiddling with smartphones, tablets, computers and other technologies is replacing time we might have spent with pets.
That lead to an informal exercise involving students logging how much time they spent with their companion animals vs technology (many used technology while spending time with their animals - eg, had their cat sit on their laptop while they struggled to use it). The results were a little scary. Some of us spend ten or twelve hours on a computer [ie on a weekend], leaving little time to walk the dog. So could technology represent something of a companion animal welfare issue? And if so, how do we reclaim the time to spend with animals?
As a start, SAT is putting together a series of posts on dates with your dog. If you do anything fun with your dog I'm very keen to hear about it.
In the meantime I wanted to introduce Coco, a beautiful rescue dog adopted as a senior at the age of twelve. She loves road trips (even the super-long ones), hanging out with big dogs, and chicken. Coco, or Cokes as she is known to those in her inner circle, wins hearts wherever she travels.
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| Coco strolls along the beach as the clouds roll in. |
