hi everyone! this is outlook here! the email ensemble is a blog which is open to anyone who runs an email blog! we all enjoy being together, heres a little bit about ourselves underneath :>
@fake-microsoft-outlook this is me! i run this blog and 5 others so please be patient haha. she/they, pansexual, is okay with being called anything (but not okay with being meowed at. sorry guys ive had unpleasent experiences from this so its a no) :D i will sign off all my posts on here with -outlook or you will see me using the emoticon :> have fun!!
I did this. I wouldnt call it making it shitty, but some people have scoffed and said I “Redneck’ified” the neighborhood. I moved to a suburb in 2009, it’s not HOA thankfully but older people acted like it was. I got cops called on me for my lawn being too tall the week I moved in, like 8 inches and such and they continued to do this often for my grass and my dogs being “too stinky and an eye sore to their view”
I have asthma and can’t use a push mower. I don’t own a riding mower. I can’t mow my lawn timely. I’m also not gonna pay a company to mow here 2x a week. I have a relative mow the front portion of my yard a few times a summer and we call it good. I then rewilded the property so the native plants manage themselves, my backyard is a meadow now. I have lots of trees.
People stopped fussing about the lawn eventually and these old huffy folks eventually moved away. I got chickens, turkeys, quail, rabbits in the meantime. My place is a hobby farm. I planted crops and gardens. My yard isn’t immaculate but it’s okay. I have corn and watermelons growing in my front lawn.
From then on, a neighbor turned a spare acreage across the street into pasture and got a pair of donkeys. A herd of feral guineas roams the whole neighborhood. I’m the poultry lady here. A guy talked to me about turning his property for pigs recently. Someone on another street turned extra lots they bought into a meadow for their herd of goats right in the middle of the suburb. On the other side of the neighborhood someone has horses in a nice big field. At the road entrance to the neighborhood, the first house you see is another hobby farm of a couple dogs, a 4 wheeler, some really happy kids and chickens. And their house is really beautiful too.
All of this because I stopped mowing my lawn regularly when I moved in.
It’s truly a thing of beauty and the homes are getting more affordable! Because someone in a local fb group complained a few months ago about it “I can’t sell a house here for the highest I want to because of all these places here! This used to be a decent neighborhood!”
You don’t have to make things downright shitty. You just have to stop mowing your lawn regularly.
Until designer diets started killing dogs of dilated cardiomyopathy because they were formulated by well-meaning pet lovers instead of veterinary nutritionists. I sat with a dog while he gasped out his last breaths, his heart destroyed beyond repair by a grain-free diet his loving, good-intentioned owners fed him as the result of campaigns against vet-backed brands. I’m not going to forget that.
Yeah cheap brands like Gravy Train are junk, but there’s a reason we recommend Hills, Purina, and Royal Canin. And no, it’s not because they give us kickbacks. It’s because they’re formulated by people with actual credentials.
If kibble isn’t your thing, there are tools for formulating fresh diets for your pet. balance.it is a really great resource!
If the advertising for a pet food reminds me strongly of the shit I used to prop up my eating disorder, I am not touching it with a 10-foot pole. It’s manipulating owners with the same horrible underhanded scare tactics and misinterpreted facts and bad science. It’s preying on OWNERS’ insecurity about food and nutrition to drive business to their brand.
So yeah, I’m going to look at my options within some select name brands, not at the advertising that shows me a bobcat and a bunch of meat when I am feeding this fucking thing, whatever it is:
I’m going to look at what a freaky little beast like him needs, and at safety records over multiple creacher lifetimes.
And I will listen to my vet and my veterinary nutritionist because vets with a degree are far more likely to have accurate and thorough nutritional training than a pet store associate who has no veterinary training but has been trained to sell you on boutique foods. They may believe it themselves, fervently, but they aren’t vets.
To a vet, your pet is a client and the goal is their care, which encompasses nutrition but doesn’t end there. To a vet, your concern for your pet’s nutrition is responsible and welcome, and met with reasonable facts.
To a pet store, your concern over your pet’s nutrition is the lever they use to tip you over into outright fear for their safety, and their goal is to use that fear to turn you into a repeat customer for an expensive product.
Do not fall for it. Do research, don’t just believe what people tell you.
The above image is a historical artifact. Colima dog. It dates back to circa 100 BCE-300 CE. (x)
And, around two thousand years later it was originally shaped with care, painted with love, and adored… someone draws it. Draws it using a new technological device that allows modern people to shape things with care, paint with love, and even move them -on a screen, glowing.
And the said person decides to share it with the world. The whole world adores it.
I love the connection between past and today. We were humans back then, and we are still the same.
