Welcome to Positive News For You’s Pet page By Sharon Black

Welcome to Positive News For You Pet page…

Several years ago, I began a Facebook page titled “How to take care of your pet.”

I wanted to teach or show people the best practices to take care of their pets.

Here are a few tips for this pet page and helping animals.

1. Be positive. I began with posts on care, but they were all on the negative side.

“Don’t do this or don’t do that.”

For example, people will put up a carport to shade their vehicle but not their dog.

Show the positive side of caring for an animal either through posts from other pet owners or your own.

2. Don’t preach. Nothing turns people off when someone makes you feel bad for the way you take care of your pet.

When seeing all the Humane Society of the United States commercials about abused animals, something occurred to me. They are showing the result of abuse and neglect, and that is what it takes to get a person to write that check. Sad dogs and sad music gets to the pocketbook, like those sad commercials of starving children.

I wrote a message to both the Humane Society of the United States and the ASPCA American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

If you would show how to take care of a pet, like showing how to really set up a good dog pen with water and food, shelter, and point out the best practices, maybe there wouldn’t be so many neglected animals.

Unspayed animals and graph

3. Do point out observations or facts. Tell and show how many kittens are produced from one female cat in ten years. We all need to be reminded. I explained why it was important to have pets spayed and neutered. In a town of 1,500 people, and if your dog has puppies twice each year, every person would need to take in one puppy for as long as the dog produces. All because one person refuses to spay or neuter their pets.

Do ask why someone has a carport over their car and not shelter over their pet.

4. Pets don’t come with an instruction book. There is help online and YouTube videos that are informative.

I began to post funny videos showing happy and healthy pets. I shared posts that showed animals in caring homes and a part of the family.

I think people really responded to it better.

Showing how to take care of a pet in a funny post or satirical is better than a scolding post.

Sharon Black

Sharon Black has been writing for many years including newspapers, short stories, and as a publisher. She was born in Nebraska and has lived in Kansas most of her life. In her hometown of Smith Center, Kansas,  Willa Cather’s hometown is to the north and Bob Dole’s hometown is to the south. Sharon is a press release writer for the National Parks Arts Foundation and writes for b U n e k e  magazine. The biggest project she has accomplished is the co-writer of the TV movie Home on the Range. The movie is about the song, which is the state song of Kansas and the lawsuit surrounding it in the 1930s and finding the rightful author of the song. Sharon is distantly related to the Mississippi writer Eudora Welty.