fact or fiction
Is it fact or merely fiction? Fact or Fiction explores the myths and beliefs we hold about our pets, like why dogs wag their tails and cats purr.
Cubby - My first Best Friend. Content Warning.
This is the story about a girl [Jessie, illustrator of The Hound Who Saw, coming out near Easter 2026] who meets her furever first best friend. This is the story about Cubby. He was a burnise mountain dog, border collie mix. He was rescued at three years old, when his first furever family, fell apart. Mom and Dad of that family got divorced, and Dad took Cubby with him. From what we were told, where the man lived, he wasn't allowed to have the dog inside, so, he left him outside all the time. At one point the man stopped feeding him, and he became rather thin. We think when we got him, he was almost 35 pounds soaking wet [he was a little over a hundred pounds when he passed]. He was just shy of ten years old when he crossed the rainbow bridge. This goes out to all the first amazing pets anyone could ever have...
By The Hound Who Saw15 days ago in Petlife
14 Animals That Are Often Confused for One Another
Have you ever confidently pointed at an animal in the wild only to realize you were completely wrong about what you were looking at? The natural world presents us with countless creatures that seem almost identical at first glance, yet belong to entirely different families, habitats, and evolutionary paths. With over eight million species sharing our planet, nature has developed some remarkable similarities that can fool even experienced observers.
By The Big Bad 17 days ago in Petlife
Your Dog Is Not Truck Cargo
In much of the country, dogs standing loose in the back of a pickup have been treated as part of the scenery for decades. People point at it, smile, say the dog “loves it” and keep driving. The scene looks normal because the community has rehearsed it for years. From a forensic and trauma standpoint, it is anything but normal. It is a low-speed, high-frequency mechanism of serious injury and death that we keep pretending is harmless.
By Dr. Mozelle Martin | Ink Profiler28 days ago in Petlife
Evaluating a Rodent Control Contract: What Questions to Ask Before Hiring a Professional
Rodents are a real danger to health, safety and property. From hearing the scratching sounds in your walls, seeing gnaw marks on food boxes, or having pet food or birdseed plundered, they can cause you a headache. You feel stressed by thinking about what will go into the stomach of the rodent tonight,
By Jamal Mooreabout a month ago in Petlife
Why Dogs Target Certain Cars
Dogs have a way of noticing things humans have conditioned themselves to overlook. People hear an engine and register transportation. A dog hears the same engine and registers information. Not a brand, not a make or model, but a sensory fingerprint that gets filed in the oldest part of the nervous system. The part that never stops scanning, never clocks out, and never cares that humans prefer to interpret the world through language instead of instinct. When a dog barks at one specific car or truck yet ignores the rest of the traffic, the dog isn’t malfunctioning. The dog is retrieving a stored pattern and responding to it with the same precision it uses when assessing footsteps, body weight shifts, or the emotional temperature of a room.
By Dr. Mozelle Martin | Ink Profilerabout a month ago in Petlife
My Senior Dog Who Came Back
Zeus will be 12 years old in two weeks, a large American Pitbull Staffordshire Terrier ("pit mix") with the kind of gentle loyalty that caused me to underestimate his pain for far too long. For 9 months, he was quietly falling apart. The changes crept in so slowly that each one looked like simple aging, and the pattern only started to make sense when viewed in hindsight.
By Dr. Mozelle Martin | Ink Profilerabout a month ago in Petlife
5 Animals with Seriously Strange Superpowers
Nature is full of surprises, and some of the animal kingdom's inhabitants possess abilities so bizarre they sound like they were ripped straight from a superhero movie or a villain's backstory. They’re walking proof that you don't need fancy tech or magic to be totally impressive; sometimes, you just need a horrifying bone-claw defense or an unstoppable desire to roll dung. Get ready, because we're diving into the real-life oddballs who make fictional powers look tame.
By Areeba Umairabout a month ago in Petlife
The Animals Who Watch Us Sleep:
Most people think it’s cute when their dog wanders into the bedroom at night and silently stares at them. Most people laugh when a cat sits inches from their face and watches them breathe. It feels quirky, maybe a little weird, and usually harmless.
By Dr. Mozelle Martin | Ink Profiler2 months ago in Petlife
The Quiet Pause
The air was still, not a breath of wind stirring the trees outside. Inside, the world felt heavy, each thought pressing down like a stone, each heartbeat too loud in the quiet of the room. The clock on the wall ticked steadily, but it felt like time itself had slowed—each second stretching long and thin, carrying with it the weight of an unspoken tension. Anna sat by the window, her fingers lightly tracing the edges of the glass as if the cool surface could offer some kind of relief. Her chest felt tight, and she could feel the anxious pulse of her heart, quick and uneven. She hadn’t expected the day to feel like this—not today, not when everything had seemed so ordinary this morning. It had started with a simple to-do list, a few tasks, a cup of tea. But somehow, the list had spiraled into a cloud of dread. The air had thickened with the pressure of unspoken expectations—both from the outside world and the relentless voices in her mind. The anxiety had come out of nowhere, like a storm on a clear day. And now, sitting in the stillness, she didn’t know how to escape it. For a long time, she had tried to fight it. Tried to push the feeling away with distractions, with things that were supposed to calm her: deep breathing, meditation, a warm bath. But nothing seemed to work. The tension only deepened, the worry twisting into new shapes, new fears. The weight of it all felt suffocating. But then, something shifted. She shifted. Instead of struggling to push away the feelings, she let herself pause. Just a small pause, a breath. She leaned back in her chair, the quiet of the room surrounding her, and closed her eyes for a moment. Not to escape, but to truly notice the world around her. She heard the soft hum of the refrigerator, the gentle tapping of a neighbor’s footsteps down the hall. She felt the weight of her body pressing into the chair, the coolness of the window against her fingertips. In the distance, a bird chirped—so small, so unbothered by the worries of the world. And for a brief second, it was as if the bird’s song filled the room with a quiet kind of peace. Anna exhaled, slowly, deeply. In that moment, she didn’t need to fix anything. There was no need to push the anxiety away or to make it disappear. It was simply there, present like the afternoon light streaming through the window. But it didn’t have to define her. She didn’t have to be consumed by it. The pause, the space between the breaths, became a sanctuary. And for the first time in what felt like hours, she wasn’t fighting. She wasn’t running from the anxiety or the tightness in her chest. Instead, she was simply being with it. It didn’t feel good, but it didn’t feel as overwhelming either. There was a certain quietness in accepting the feeling, a stillness in allowing herself the room to simply exist. To not have all the answers, to not know how or when it would pass. But to trust that it would—just as everything else in life ebbed and flowed. The clock ticked again. The world outside continued on. But inside, in that brief, quiet moment, she felt her pulse slow, her thoughts soften. The anxiety hadn’t vanished, but it no longer felt like a storm she had to outrun. She opened her eyes and looked out the window. The trees were swaying gently in the breeze, their branches like hands reaching out, moving with the rhythm of the world. And for a moment, Anna felt connected to it all—the stillness, the movement, the uncertainty, and the peace. She was part of it, just as the bird was, just as the trees were. And that was enough. In the silence, she found a new kind of comfort—a quiet, knowing pause where she could breathe, just be, and let the world turn without feeling the need to control it. And for now, that was enough.
By john dawar2 months ago in Petlife
The Proof of Loyalty:
MRI scans have a way of humbling assumptions. For years, people argued whether dogs love us or simply tolerate us for food, shelter, and convenience. But when neuroscientists began placing trained dogs inside MRI machines, they didn’t find appetite—they found affection.
By Dr. Mozelle Martin | Ink Profiler2 months ago in Petlife
