#quite-quirksome

[ask-a-vetblr]

My 9 yo dog recently got 3 teeth extracted. I was hoping to control her tartar and plaque by brushing, and I feel like I waited too long and that this could have been avoided. Are there any risks associated with having general anesthesia regularly for dental cleanings? I was under the assumption that it is better to try to control tartar and plaque by brushing daily and that frequent dental cleanings should be avoided unless signs of periodontal disease start to emerge. I understand there are stipulations to this based on whether the dog has heart disease, but what would be the "general" recommendation?

gettingvetted here.

The recommendation from board certified veterinary dentists is that all animals need a dental cleaning with radiographs under anesthesia once a year, and that the teeth need to be brushed daily. If the owner cannot or will not commit to brushing, there is "no point" in doing cleanings at all, similar to if you got your teeth cleaned twice a year and then didn't brush your teeth between cleanings.

However, on a more realistic, general practice point of view, it very much depends on the animal. Daily brushing is definitely the gold standard. Not one of my clients brushes their pets' teeth daily. I will often recommend picking 2-3 products for daily use off of the VOHC product list if the owner won't brush. They usually won't get things from the VOHC list either. Because why would you listen to the professional that you're paying for an opinion. But that is what I recommend. Some animals, like small or brachycephalic dogs, or cats with resorptive tooth lesions or stomatitis, may need cleanings every 6 months and may lose many or all of their teeth even with aggressive care. The average dog or cat would probably need a cleaning a handful of times (3-4x) in their life but due to a lack of at-home care and more frequent cleanings, they will probably need to have a handful of teeth extracted at each cleaning or at least accumulate heavy tarter. Sometimes large dogs can get away with one or two cleanings in their lifetime but they will probably get some fairly heavy tarter between cleanings. This also doesn't account for dentals required for specific pathology, like broken teeth or jaws, checking the mouth, throat, nose, or sinuses for cancer, etc.

General anesthesia is not harmful for an otherwise healthy pet, and the effects of anesthesia are not cumulative. Also, part of the point of a dental cleaning with anesthesia is to perform radiographs which allows the vet to diagnose pathology below the gumline where it is invisible to the owner, as well as performing an ultrasonic scaling under the gums where regular tooth brushes cannot reach. Hence the gold standard recommendation of yearly dentals.

Hope this helps!

[ahedderick]

Horse/honse

So, a question from @quite-quirksome about Hero got me thinking about Hero's conformation (body structure) and coloring.

He is, I say kindly, a great example of buying for temperament, not beauty. Number 1: that is a blocky head. If you looked at a show quality Tennessee Walker, it would have a finer, more tapered muzzle. Number 2: a lot of people hate bald (white) faces. Snips, star, blazes etc are considered attractive; bald not-so-much. Excessive white on the face is also linked to deafness (like white cats) and blue eyes. Which brings me to:

Number 3: pink skin, like Hero has underneath the white fur, is prone to sunburn and skin cancer, just like humans. His skin under the gray fur is a dark gray.

See that? It was smaller when we bought him. Three vets looked at it and said not to worry about it unless it grew. When it grew, a vet removed it and biopsied it. Yep, it was cancer. The spot of the excision healed up beautifully, and it has not recurred. However, he gets a careful skin check from time to time! He has plenty of shade to stand in during sunny months, and he does use that.

Number 4: his legs are stocky and thick compared to the breed standard. The next photo, from a TN walker sale site, shows the typical graceful leg. And head. (OMG - that horse is for SALE! Wouldn't he make a marvelous pal for Hero?? Oh, jeez.)

Despite all that, however, Hero is the perfect horse! Because what we wanted was a safe, gentle fellow for fun riding, not a show horse. He excelled at safe and gentle when K was but a 65-pound, 12-yr-old beginner rider. He is 21, now, and showing his age a bit. Still has plenty of pep, though, and should be rideable for a lightweight rider for years to come.

[cephalopodvictorious]

@quite-quirksome ok lemme tell you about shoe theory

This is something my mom taught me when I was young. I did tv stuff when I was a kid (nothing major) and while other moms often took that shit Real Personal, my mom said this

Consider shoes. Consider a sparkly amazing pair of flats with glitter and ruffles. They’re miraculously comfortable, and one of your favorites. But you can’t wear them out in the snow. And you wouldn’t wear your cozy snow boots to the beach.

Sometimes the shoe is ALMOST perfect, but there’s a pair that matches your outfit better

There’s nothing wrong with these shoes, they’re just not a good fit in every situation.

And it sucks, but it doesn’t make you not The Shit, it just makes you not the best fit to this situation 💖

[tiuhtaviuhta]

Are there any good resources to learn weaving? I hope to learn how to weave upholstery! Do you think this can be accomplished on a rigid huddle loom? This seems like the first loom I'd want to buy

Hi!

My first recommendation to get started with weaving would be to look for a course, craft space, or someone local who is willing to teach you. Quite a bit goes into looms and weaving before you even get to making-fabric parts of it and it's easy to get bogged down by all the new terms that you're likely to encounter in written instructions. Weaving equipment can also be pricey, so hands on course is the best way to figure out if you want to commit to buying all that.

Second best option would be to sign up for an online course, so that you'll have someone to answer your questions in real time! If anyone seeing this knows of a good online course, please share! I operate in Finland so my knowledge of what's available internationally is limited.

Third best is lots of YouTube videos - Kelly Casanova is a good one and has videos with rigid heddle looms. Ideally, you'd find someone who has same setup as you and has videos from beginning (planning a warp) to end (finishing fabric) of process, because terms, techniques and diagrams can vary regionally (or even from teacher to teacher)

Rigid heddle loom is suitable for upholstery fabric (though all my weaving is done with a countermarch - it's just what's most common here) You'll also want to study materials and weave types to make sure your fabric will withstand heavy use! When you're choosing a loom, pay attention to the number of shafts. Four will be enough for most common weave types but if you think you'll eventually want to make very complex fabrics, it might be a good idea to get six or eight.

I wish you good luck getting started and many happy weaving moments 😊

[shiroxix]

quite-quirksome replied to your post: it’s so cold here. It’s not fair! It was 75...

I tried listening to Critical Role, but it’s so boring that I drifted off and just woke up from an hour nap :( What kind of podcasts do you like listening to?

LOL I WAS LITERALLY JUST TALKING TO SOMEONE ABOUT HOW I WAS HESITANT TO LISTEN TO CRITICAL ROLE!!! I’ve only listened to Adventure Zone, Cool Games Inc, and MBMBAM (hello Mcelroys, did you know you’re like 60% of the content I consume?). I have ADD so audio format is really hard for me. I mostly want to listen to it because the character designs are super rad, but I don’t know if I can handle 100+ episodes at 4 hours each like... no thanks?

However, I’m super curious about it and everyone’s suggested it to be 100 times. I tried back in the day when I was deciding, but just couldn’t get into it. Too many characters to keep up with all at once.

[queen-of-the-multiverse]

Aw this is fun! @quite-quirksome @helico-ptera-umbrarum @kateydidit @just-a-glowy-octopus

I love how many of us on this thread are holding tea ☕️😂

Starting a new thread. Thanks for the tag @phoebe-danvers ☺️

Holiday Picrew 🎄

Tagging: @fictitious-little-stitious @moonlight-prose @rae-gar-targaryen @middimidoris @mortwig @drew-garfi and anyone else who may be interested ♥️

[ruushes]

🌹💌

🌹- what would be your ideal date? 

a warm evening, a slow-paced open-air restaurant next to a body of water, sharing a bunch of small courses and talking for hours, then wandering around exploring a park or a market or a neighborhood we’d never been to before ✨

💘 - what personality traits are attractive to you? 

i tend to stick to a routine and stay at home a lot, so i’ve rly enjoyed dating people who are a little more outgoing! it’s nice to be able to strike a healthy balance of comfy hanging out vs going out and trying new things. and i love people who are passionate, emotional, open-hearted and kind 💕💕

[polar-solstice]

quite-quirksome reblogged your photoset and added: “@quite-quirksome progress shots! On top is the queen anne’s lace dye...”

Woah this is awesome! Do you spin as well? The...

I do spin! Well, a little. The yarn in the beet juice is yarn I spun. Its a little rough in places but I’m excited to use it. I’m mordanting with alum, though in later spring and earlier summer I’m looking to get my hands on some rhubarb leaves to try oxalic acid mordanting. But like. Also I’d want to do it outdoors, as my kitchen’s ventilation is for shit.

[ask-a-vetblr]

Thank you so much for the detailed dentistry response. I am hoping to clarify my understanding as to why there is "no point" to annual dental cleanings if you don't brush daily. Does this mean that dental cleanings alone cannot prevent periodontal disease without daily brushing? There is only 1 toothpaste on the VOHC product list. Is there a benefit to brushing even without toothpaste, or is toothpaste necessary for the benefit? Feeling even more guilty that I only brushed intermittently, but we still have time to turn it around for my other 3yo dog.

GV here.

That is correct. Periodontal disease accumulates between cleanings. A professional cleaning, +/- extractions, eliminates the tarter that causes periodontal disease and removes teeth that have severe enough disease that they are causing bone problems. But tarter begins to accumulate 24 hours after that cleaning.

It would be like you going to the dentist for a cleaning and to have crowns put on but then not brushing your teeth again for years at a time.

There are two types of dental cleaning action - mechanical, and chemical. The mechanical aspect is brought by dental treats, food, or brushing. The chemical aspect is brought by water additives, toothpastes, etc. The best prevention of periodontal disease comes from daily use of both types on all surfaces of the teeth.

Nobody is saying that this is easy to achieve. There are plenty of people out there, some of us included, that struggle to brush our own teeth daily. But that is the gold standard for periodontal disease prevention in both humans and animals.

[ahedderick]

Oral History

@quite-quirksome got me thinking about oral history. Some years ago a man who lives nearby and was, at the time, in his late seventies, called me and asked if I would help him with an oral history project. This was more than a little bizarre to me, because, while I've known him all my life (he was a friend of my parents) we weren't exactly close. And he has two or three children? Why did I get elected to the position of transcriptionist? However. I gathered up my son's laptop and went over to his house. We sat for several hour-long sessions while he told the story of how he built his house, Stonestack. I can type rather fast, although not well. I had a lot of editing to do after our sessions.

He had an amazingly sharp recall of every detail of the construction of this house, and was able to tell the story very coherently. At times, however, he'd think of a side story, and go off on a tangent. Those stories were, to my mind, even more interesting. So, for your edification:

Roger at the swimming hole

  Growing up on this farm I didn’t have many playmates. Early on in life I always had the interest in building huts. The first was on the back side of Slippery Ridge, a lean-to type structure. My cousin Larry and I dug out some dirt to create a level spot, which was a challenge because the ridge has a 25% grade! But, when you’re ten years old, so what? One day Larry and I had our great friend of a horse Old Roger, a 1600 pound Belgian sorrel, at the hut. Roger stepped on a 4 inch pole we had cut for the lean-to. He went down, rolling downhill and mashing saplings as he went, until he rolled against a larger tree that stopped him. We were in a panic like you never saw, “He must have a broken leg, he acts like he is in pain!” I ran as fast as I could back to the farmhouse to get my older brother Bill and old George M. They grabbed ropes and raced to the lean-to. By then, Roger had gotten up. He was favoring his back leg, but it was okay. We got some none-too-favorable comments from Bill, “Why did you boys have Roger in such a place?!” We walked Roger back to the barn unharmed, with great relief.

Swimming hole

   Just below the lean-to is a mountain stream with pools. We created a swimming hole with the addition of some old corrugated tin. The mountain water never seemed to warm up even on the hottest days of summer. It was a great place to hang out under the giant native pines with the blanket of pine needles on the ground next to the swimming hole. There is a birch tree nearby with my initials carved in it in 1953. One day I looked down from my lean-to and some girls were swimming in my swimming hole. “Look, a little boy is up there!” I left the hut and would come back from time to time after that to find the water all cloudy from those older girls using it. The birch tree still stands to this day, the only mark left on this farm of my ten-yr-old self. [note: photo of tree above, the initials are faint, but readable: F G]

   Other huts were built, but they were near the farm buildings. Roger, my pal, died at Fort Hill stadium. He and Pattise were pulling a covered wagon in the celebration of Cumberland’s early history called “the Pageant.” The culprit was moldy hay. This was my first experience of real grief, losing something I really loved.

[Note: Old newspaper photo of Roger and Patisse hitched to a parade float.]

After we did the oral history, he took me and my son on a hike to see the site of the old swimming hole and the tree he carved his initials on. As you can imagine, the creek in the photo was beautifully clear and cool.

His house, his son's house, and the barn are all "in" this picture, but hidden by trees or the curve of the hill. It's a three-generation farm, but likely won't have a fourth.

[cephalopodvictorious]

@quite-quirksome​

so not inherently and 100% of the time when people bring it up, but generally speaking, people know about it from right-wing talking heads, mra’s, alpha bros, and incels. it depends a lot on what they say next

the argument runs that it’s unnatural, so men cheat because that’s natural and correct, and women cheat because you’re a shitty weak man, so she’s punishing you, so you have to control her to make sure you know whose kids are in her, obvi! that’s what makes you a better man! cheating and controlling women! that’s a man’s natural state!

when again, there are ways to study humans-as-animals, but this is one of those topics that is so nuanced that any broad studies are ultimately meaningless

if they were using it to advocate for broader legal definitions of families to include more family styles I’d be right there with them, but I’ve yet to see it. it’s always coming from people who heard it on a podcast explaining why men seek “high value females” and other horrifying, reductive, gender existentialist bullshit that make me want to hurl

enough time has passed that I'm calmer and I've had time to order my thoughts better, and also it's slightly less likely that if this breaks containment that the person I'm vaguing about would guess it's about them, but -

someone said to me recently that it goes against "human nature" to be monogamous and I lost my shit a little

this is not a defense of monogamy. it works for some, it doesn't work for others, it has its positives and its drawbacks, that's a whole other post. no, what made me see red was the utter confidence they held when they said "human nature"

it's one thing to say "human nature" when referring to general tendencies in a population (like the desire to step on a crunchy leaf or say "cow" when you're driving and there's a cow) because that's a low-stakes observation about general patterns that humans tend to display. it's another beast entirely when people use flimsy popscience to insist that there is a natural human state that is "normal"

yes, we are animals. we want food and shelter and comfort. we are social creatures, and we prefer to exist in social units. this is true.

but humans are so much more complex than that. we create cultures, and cultural norms. we create subcultures and societies. what is "normal" for one group may not be for others. you cannot call one of these "natural" and another "unnatural", that's just raicsm, and we see it all the time as a justification for racism and bigotry.

any study of humans is inherently biased because we are also humans. you can try to account for your inherent biases, you can make yourself aware of them, but you cannot fully remove them. this is also ignoring social pressure and manufactured circumstances and personal experience and and and and-

no study of human behavior will be complex enough to account for all the factors of why humans do what they do

and even in the animal kingdom we see individuals who break from patterns. this isn't unnatural, they're literally animals doing natural things, they're just atypical and uncommon

all of this to say, stop parroting right-wing popscience

[may12324]

Annalise you did the lord's work by pointing out what a terf is, but now is the time to shut down this person's hate my eyeballs are bleeding

ahhhhh I’m so sorry, their asks are such eyesores.

I’ll have a post in a sec with other peoples asks (most of them not so horrible,) but they’ll be tagged as ‘trans hate’ just cause that’s what this whole discussion is about 

[ehlihr]

Song rec: all star but replace every noun with the word "dog" and it's called dog star, you have to sing it yourself but I sing this every day to my dog and it always makes her wag her tail

couldn’t listen all the way through | not my thing | it’s okay | kinda catchy | ok i really like this | downloading immediately | already in my library

This is honestly? A bop

[6oys]

This is a high quality vore discussion catered by the 6oys

ye

[wifihunters]

quite-quirksome replied to your photo “working on this guy again and keeping @rinkakuleo awake with my...”

You were working on this like a month ago! What happened!?

unfortunately, managerial battle royale at work!! im still in the running and putting in double shifts/open to closes to try and get the position (*•̀ᴗ•́*)و ̑̑

[shiroxix]

quite-quirksome reblogged your post:quite-quirksome replied to your post: ...

If you really want to start listening to it, I wouldn’t start from the beginning. The crew just started a new campaign...

That’s what I’ve heard. I’m going to start on this one and if I like it enough I’ll listen to the rest. We’ll see if I can even power through the first episode. Again, it has nothing to do with the story or anything, but that’s just WAY too many people to have on an audio format show. The absolute max should be four, tbh.