All the Creatures

I am just doing some blog maintenance today, so if you see or don’t see a few things from time to time, that is just me moving things around a bit. I am also removing the ability of visitors to post comments on posts older than 6 months. While doing that I might remove a post or 2 if they contain nothing but broken links. I have found that by disallowing the commenting ability on the older posts it cuts down on the spam comments dramatically. Instead of me filtering comments with links to phentermine, smokeless cig and gambling website links I can have more time to blog.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Always give your pet a hug, kind word or praise. After all they are around because you wanted them to be there.

- Jan S. at All the Creatures

Now that 2010 is under way, you probably have heard of the new laws that affect animals. Most are new zoning laws that limit the number of dogs or cats you can have in your home. Most of those laws were enacted because of the few pet hoarders that were in those locals. Oregon now has a law on the books that limits the number to 50 dogs. I wonder what they had in mind when they came up with that number? My thoughts are that a legitimate dog or cat breeder is not running their operation like a puppy mill but not many people have even seen a well run dog breeding kennel with their show dogs, trainers and handlers. Some kennels even have their own vet, operating room and test lab. Those operations are a far cry from the backyard breeder and puppy mill outfits so why should there even be laws on the books that hinder the good dog breeders? The puppy mills will still be around, only unlicensed and unregulated as usual. The backyard breeder just plain won’t care because they always claim they are not “in the business” to make money, even though they are. The laws seem to only affect the law abiding breeders.

As you might have noticed, that long AdBrite ad is now gone from the left side panel. After 3 months of hosting their odd assortment of video gamer, cars and life insurance rates ads, I gave up on them. I think I earned a big $1.50 from them. I think I only saw one ad for pet items in the entire lot. They were just simply not what you are interested in when you come to this blog. Google ads are in its place.

I have removed the horse poster page since it was not getting many visitors and wondering what I could add to enhance my reader’s experience here on the blog. Maybe a question and answer page or an oddball animal trivia section. I would love you input on that.

I am also going back over the older posts on this blog and closing the ability to post comments to them. I am taking that lesson from many of the more successful bloggers that only allow comments on blog posts 30 days and newer. It stops a lot of spam comments which I am still getting. For some odd reason the blog post about feline acne attracts most of them.

Twitter has been a blast. I do more reading than posting on there - I love to learn. Come on over and join me, I am @allthecreatures. There are lots of other pet and animal loving people there.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Always give your pet a hug, kind word or praise. After all they are around because you wanted them to be there.

- Jan S. at All the Creatures

I hope your New Year celebration was a safe and happy one. I have been busy yet again with the blog. I have decided to cut out the middle man and sell advertising on this blog directly to my readers and visitors. You can find out more about that on my Advertising page. I already have a sale so please visit the advertiser.

The choice to cut out the middle man was not one to make more money but a disappointing lack of animal related advertisers on the advertising platforms that were touted as popular. I had tried EntreCard, and after the company had some changes that were not blogger friendly I decided to drop them. I looked into other advertising widgets and found them to be very low paying for questionable content. AdBrite looked promising but they too lack animal and ecology related advertisers. I have rejected hundreds of questionable and foreign language ads from them.

Other news is that I am starting to get the hang of Twitter and you should come on over and visit me on there. Let me know what you would like to see more of on the blog this year. I love to dig around the internet to get a more of a behind the headlines type of story so I just need to know what you like me to investigate.

This promises to be an exciting year so let’s see where it takes us.

----------------------------------------------------------------------------

Always give your pet a hug, kind word or praise. After all they are around because you wanted them to be there.

- Jan S. at All the Creatures