January 4, 2025 – We all adore our pets and want them to live long. These are photos of “Old Girl” who comes to our feed station each day for years. She has an amazing physique for her age and has given birth within the last couple of years. Old Girl lives on our 7-acre property in rural Sarasota, FL. and has a healthy routine of being close to the food supply (corn and sweet feed) each day. Her home has a variety of native habitats including scrub plants on ancient white sand dunes and palms and aged oak trees on moister soils with open patches of Bahia grass that Rob mows in the summertime. Old Girl lives in a Paradise of Health with grounding to the Earth, nourishing rain storms, nutritious food and dense native vegetation that hide her from any predators … as well as tree shade cooling on hot Florida days. We try to keep our outside wilderness clean, occasionally treating fire ant mounds and we also discontinued using Roundup (glyphosate) over two decades ago (what’s a few more weeds anyway?).
What is interesting about wild animals is that they usually do not show their actual age. We recognize Old Girl because of the white fur on her face and she is larger than most of the other does.
Long time ago, it was disturbing for me to hear about one doctor’s observation he shared with me about the longevity of our pets. He theorized that the main reason our pets seem to age faster and die earlier is because they live with humans! Our pets also eat processed food which is an ongoing concern about our own food choices. Tap water is not the optimum health choice for our pets but we do have customers who order Watt-Ahh for their pets too. Our pets are exposed to toxins in our homes from cleansers, textiles and carpets, and pesticides. Lastly, our pets can become like couch potatoes and would benefit by more exercise.
I try to walk Tough-E (our black cat) on a small harness and leash every day after lunch. She reminds us to hurry to finish lunch by making cat sounds so she can go outside. I started early when she was a kitten for her to get use to the harness and leash. I wanted to give her a grounding opportunity and also if she got away from our home, she would know how to come back to us. She uses her sniffer to smell many plants on our stop-and-go walks. Yes, cats have their own mind where they want to go and the leash is for us to follow. Tough-E has taught me to see more animals since she is a relentless hunter (most chameleons that lounge around our place are missing the tips of their tails). Surprisingly, our moments together into the Paradise of Health to spy on the wild creatures seem to be doing both of us good.
For the entire 2025 Series on Be the Ahh! Pets, go to this link.
Sharing AHA! Discoveries
Do you have a “AHA!” Discovery to share for a longer and healthier life (and also for your pets) or a cleaner environment? Or, do you have a discovery story to share on a different topic?