Animals Today December 7, 2019: Passing the PACT Act and choosing the best pet sitter services

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Passing the PACT Act

Lori begins with news of President Trump signing and Passing the PACT Act – the Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act into law, providing long overdue penalties for animal cruelty and torture on the federal level.

The Passage of the Preventing Animal Cruelty and Torture Act was welcomed by Kitty Block, president and CEO of the Humane Society of the United States, who stated, “PACT makes a statement about American values. Animals are deserving of protection at the highest level,” Block said in a statement. “The approval of this measure by the Congress and the president marks a new era in the codification of kindness to animals within federal law.

For decades, a national anti-cruelty law was a dream for animal protectionists. Today, it is a reality.” Co-sponsor Senator Richard Blumenthal said, “I’m grateful to see the PACT Act finally signed into law. The barbaric torture of animals has no place in a civilized society and should be a crime – and thanks to this new law, now it is.”

Choosing the best pet sitter services

Are you thinking about starting a pet sitting, dog walking, dog training, pet grooming or dog daycare business? Or, have you ever had trouble finding and hiring a really great pet sitter?

Peter welcomes Kristen Morrison, owner Six Figure Pet Business Academy, who provides solid advice on choosing the best pet sitter services and how to identify and hire people who will treat your pets as you would.

Fun animal idioms

To conclude, do you know what is meant by the phrase, “the hair of the dog?’ How about “You’re the wee hen that never layed away”? Lori serves up some Fun animal idioms from the British Isles and beyond!

In a past show Lori encouraged listeners to use new, humane versions of certain idioms that were not kind to animals:

“There are many ways to skin a cat.” “Kill two birds with one stone.” Expressions like these can potentially cause humans to be more violent towards animals because speaking about our fellow creatures in this way desensitizes people to the idea of hurting animals. Why not use animal-friendly alternatives, instead? Slowly, we can work to change the English language to make it reflect society’s changing values towards compassion and justice.

Here are some common phrases, along with my suggestions for alternatives:

“Kill two birds with one stone” has been updated to ‘feeding two birds with one scone.” However, there is the fact that scones are junk food for birds. In The Vegan’s Daily Companion, Colleen Patrick-Goudreau suggests using the phrase, “Cut two carrots with one knife.” I think it would make the most sense to use the expression, “Feed two birds from one hand.” There are plenty of variations to come up with, though. “It’s a twofer” often works.

“There are many ways to skin a cat.” Instead of using such a horrid expression, why not settle for something sweeter, such as “There are many ways to eat a kiwi” or “There are many ways to climb a tree?” I found on one website someone even replaced “cat” in this expression with “eggplant!” How about, “there’s more than one way to peel a turnip.”

The phrase, human guinea pig, refers to a human experimental test subject. However, there is really no need to use the word “guinea pig” in this expression at all! After all, we’re trying to move away from using guinea pigs as test subjects. It would make sense to simply use the term “human experimental test subject” instead, or, if you want to sound humorous, you could say, “human science experiment.”

“Sweating like a pig!” This expression doesn’t even make sense, because pigs apparently only have a few sweat glands that they hardly use anyway. This expression comes from iron smelting. Still, since it’s likely to confuse people into thinking that pigs are big on sweating, we should probably stop using this expression and instead opt for “sweating buckets” or “sweating a lot.”

And finally, “go the whole hog.” This could be replaced with “Do the whole task” or even “Go the whole watermelon” (if you’re really hungry!)