Recently The Furry Tales took to SUP (stand up paddling) instead of the usual weekday morning activity. It was a lot of fun and we will definitely be doing it again soon. You can read about it in the latest issue of Pets Magazine’s ‘Outward Bound’ column where you will be seeing a little bit more of TFT!
The Furry Tales and some friends were interviewed recently for an article in TODAY newspaper on social media for dogs. Here’s what we had to say. Yes, we are more than happy to talk to our dogs, have them take the place of kids (while we are still waiting for our biological children) and meet new friends just to talk about our fur babies non-stop!
For the Christmas issue of Pets Magazine, The Furry Tales contributed an article on Do-It-Yourself toys for your pooch and kitty. They are earth-friendly, easy to make and fun for the fur kids!
TFT’s dream is to one day travel together with all five of our dogs. So far, only Muddy has had the privilege to travel to Switzerland. Tanya, Muddy’s mama, wrote an article for Pets Magazine about how you can do that.
The scorching weather lately has us all huffing and puffing, craving ice cold treats and sending some of us to colder regions for vacation. If we’re hot in sunny Singapore, imagine how our furry babies must feel. So we’ve experimented with a few fruity pupsicles for our pooches to cool off with. Let us know if you have other cold treats recipes to share!
You’ll also find the in this month’s issue of Pets Magazine Singapore! Thank you Pets Magazine for featuring TFT again!
Blueberry and banana yoghurt pupsicles
The Furry Tales are privileged to be featured in the latest issue of Pets Magazine for Doga!
Sisi showing us how to cuddle Lucy in Butterfly stretch
Lord of the Dance (Variation) – Vicky using Olive as a balance prop to get deeper into the pose
Gate Pose stretches both big and small dogs, and also the humans! (The apparel from OMgoing make us look gooood.)
ead-to-Knee Forward Bend is great to release our hamstrings, and also for Kafka to benefit from Vivien’s calm energy.
The awesome yoga clothes were sponsored by OMgoing, an online store which sells fun and durable yoga and gym wear from overseas brands. They have kindly offered all our readers a 5% discount off their apparel until the end of May (quote: TFT5). Time to go shopping!
Due to space constraints in the magazine, not all the poses have an accompanying picture. Over the next few days/weeks, we will be posting up more pictures for each pose, so stay tuned! We hope you will give doga a shot with your pooch and let us know how it goes.
These days, when Olive sees the yoga mat being unrolled, she jumps onto it straight away and sits there waiting to see if she will get massaged or stretched! In this short clip, she decides that Boat Pose isn’t challenging enough and provides more resistance for Vicky to strengthen her core.
“A widespread belief is that dogs love petting…But it’s sometimes not true for dogs that have been abused or are hand shy, or with normally chill animals going through certain provoking situations.”
We came across the following article from May 2014 and thought it’s worth reposting, since one of our dogs, Olive, is reactive and wary of strangers, so it would not be good for her if a stranger approached her with eye contact and outstretched arm.
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It’s not just for your own protection, dummy.
By John Metcalfe, May 19, 2014
Walking in San Francisco a while ago, I saw tied to a tree the cutest pit-bull puppy, fur as soft as Porsche-quality chamois and warm eyes that could melt a hole through a glacier.
So I reached down to pet this dog. And then reached back fast, as its jaws closed millimeters from my fingertips. Rotten little beast, I thought.
Looking back, I still think a dumb animal was responsible for this unpleasantness – and it was me. Why would anybody assume that a stranger’s dog, tethered without its master, would welcome random petting? Canines are complex animals, guided by senses and instincts most people don’t understand. Stroking an unfamiliar pup can set off all kinds of dicey responses like fear and aggression, and we’re not just talking about in the dog.
This bummer is hard for some people to accept. Just ask Bill Mayeroff, a professional dog walker and author of the necessary life guide, “How to Approach a Stranger’s Dog and Not Get Your Face Eaten.” Mayeroff doesn’t let people pet his dogs if they don’t ask permission or if his gut feeling is they’ll do it wrong. For this sin he’s been screamed at on several occasions.
He was walking his own mixed terrier in a park a couple years back, for instance, when a little girl suddenly made a beeline for him while flailing her arms and yelling, “Puppy puppy puppy!” So he told her to stop and not come any closer, and that’s when the mother got involved.
“She starts yelling at me, ‘Why can’t my daughter pet your puppy?’ I said, ‘Because your daughter doesn’t know how to approach my dog,'” says Mayeroff, who’s 29 and lives in Chicago. “She says, ‘But I told her she could pet your dog.’ And I said, ‘OK, now you have to tell her you were wrong and she can’t pet my dog.’ She was still yelling at me as I walked away.”
Mayeroff doesn’t take pleasure in crushing the joy of innocent children. He’s just being logical. In certain circumstances dogs will snap at strangers, and that puts every creature involved in a bad place. “If a person does something that might set my dog off and he bites, that’s a big problem for me,” he says. “I could get sued, or have my dog taken away, or have it put down.”
Why do people feel entitled to touch the hounds of others? In my case, I grew up with a procession of mutts (including one inveterate biter) and thought my dogdar was excellent. But the vibe I registered from the San Francisco puppy was not, I’m gonna take you down, jack. It was, pet me pet me oh god why aren’t you petting me. And thus I was reminded that every dog is different, and unfamiliar dogs can always surprise you.
A widespread belief is that dogs love petting. And many do enjoy being manhandled like a panting Koosh ball. With their belly rolls and kicking hind legs, it’s almost as if evolution had designed them for this very purpose. But it’s sometimes not true for dogs that have been abused or are hand shy, or with normally chill animals going through certain provoking situations.
“There’s something called barrier frustration, or when a dog is on a leash and can’t do what it wants to do naturally,” says Molly Kenefick, who owns Doggy Lama Pet Care in Oakland. “It can’t get away from you, and it’s more likely to be reactive,” aka aggressive.
Then there is a normal canine behavior called resource guarding. Say you have a parent walking a dog while pushing a stroller. “The dog might be guarding the baby,” Kenefick says. Or maybe the dog has a stuffed squirrel in its mouth, its favorite plaything in the world: “It might be reactive because it’s guarding its toy.” This phenomenon stretches to any object the animal sees as a resource, including ones that might not be obvious in a public setting (say, a pile of stepped-on corn chips on the sidewalk).
Dogs indicate whether they’d be up for a little petting through their body language. Many folks don’t know how to read it. That thing about dogs wagging their tails when happy, for example? Total myth. “We seem to be distracted by ‘cute,’ ‘fluffy,’ ‘small,’ and are not actually looking at the situation in front of us,” says Kenefick. For those wanting to learn dogspeak, look for when the creature curls its lips, holds its body rigid, shrinks away, or puts its tail between its legs. These are all signs it’s stressed and might lash out if you invade its personal space with groping hands.
So what is the proper way to pet a stranger’s dog? First, see if it’s wearing a yellow ribbon. That’s a sign it’s a member of the Yellow Dog Project, an effort to publicly identify pooches that need their own space. (Either that or it has a buddy fighting in the war.) Then ask the owner for permission. Go for under the chin rather than above the head, as the latter could be interpreted as an act of aggression. Avoid touching areas the dog might be sensitive about, like feet and ears.
But if you’re going to pet without asking anyway, at least have the courtesy not to be on your phone at the same time.
“The way people live their lives now, all the multitasking, it drives me crazy,” says Kenefick. “People just aren’t paying attention. They’re looking at the screen and see fluff out of the corner of their eye, and then all of a sudden they’re on top of you.”
The Furry Tales 
