http://www.icawc.org International Companion Animal Welfare Conference Fri, 16 Oct 2009 13:24:12 +0000 http://backend.userland.com/rss092 en Let's start with the basic facts! Dogs go on heat 2 x a year, cats  in the spring and autumn, for three weeks. Gestation is 63 days. There are 3 stages of labour: Nesting – do not disturb until young are born Birth Placenta (afterbirth) Breeders can be either professional and planned or accidental but both ... http://www.icawc.org/2009/10/john-bowers-to-breed-or-not-to-breed/ Education is important as young people can make a difference. Firstly, what do you want out of your education programme? Children will pass on your message to family and friends so make sure it is one that will help make positive changes in animal welfare. Promote your key messages to children. They ... http://www.icawc.org/2009/10/day-3-hollie-sevenoaks-education/ Dr. Jeff Young is a US-based believer in early age neutering. In 1974, Leo Leiberman neutered dogs and cats at between 8-10 weeks with no advers side effects and has continued to do so. Between 30 – 60% of people who rehome  do not honour the neuter contracts and rehomed pets can ... http://www.icawc.org/2009/10/day-3-jeff-young-early-age-neutering/ 'Can you save everything? Sadly no but we try' was the opening phrase of David's brilliant presentation. Organisations have to make life and death decisions every day; you will always remember your first dog dying so decisions are harder as emotions are hard to contain when making these decisions. The emotional pull ... http://www.icawc.org/2009/10/day-3-david-bowles-rspca-controlling-dog-populations/ We need to understand animals to get emotional and physical balance right. EMRA = Emotion, Mood, Reinforcement and  Assessment Its from www.coepra.org - Dennis just talked about Mood. Mood state assessment  goes from mania to despair; if you have a depressed pet you tend to overreact and over compensate. Wood Green uses this ... http://www.icawc.org/2009/10/day-3-dennis-baker-wood-green-animal-shelters/ Dr. Abdul Rahman’s topic for the day is one that will be of interest and relevant to any animal welfare organization working in a developing country with a street dog issue: dog population control. 75% of the world’s dogs are strays and they are the ones that cause people problems; they ... http://www.icawc.org/2009/10/icawc-2009-day-two-dog-population-control/ Dogs Trust Head of Communications Charlotte Speedy took to the stage this morning to talk about the value of PR pester power! She gave a few examples: Deborah Meaden of Dragon’s Den (whom we worked with on the YooDoo Dog after she supported YooDoo Doll maker Sarah Lu) had a feature in ... http://www.icawc.org/2009/10/icawc-2009-day-two-the-value-of-pr-pester-power/ As you can see, ICAWC is about more than just dogs; it takes in issues relating to all companion animals (and brings together quite a few people!) [caption id="attachment_468" align="alignleft" width="368" caption="Dogs Trust Chairman Philip Daubeny greets a different kind of four-legged friend"][/caption] [caption id="attachment_469" align="alignleft" width="368" caption="A group visit to the ... http://www.icawc.org/2009/10/icawc-2009-images-from-icawc/ It's still only 11:20am in Hungary, but it's been all go over here already! This morning, Clarissa introduced the conference and  explained the very first conference was held in Hungary and the worry was no one ould turn up but over 100 people did. Thirteen years later we are back still ... http://www.icawc.org/2009/10/icawc-2009-day-two-so-far/ Let's start with a recap of yesterday! The first day at ICAWC was busy with registrations and the workshops. I hosted the ‘Building a better website’ workshop and had the ambitious aim of creating a website by the end of the two hour session. Well that was the plan! There were twelve people ... http://www.icawc.org/2009/10/icawc-2009-day-one/