Several people wrote in to tell me about their birds & other pets after reading Birds and Other Pets. Here is a sampling:

From Kristen - “I was reading that article on birds and other animals. I live in a multipet household, for a long time I had to compete for Loki´s affection with a lop eared rabbit. The issue of other animals interacting with birds is a very serious one, but oddly enough sometimes people just don´t think of the risks.

One day when I was at university, something happened. My parents thought it was "adorable" and took a picture rather than separating Loki and our dog. Thankfully nothing happened, and my parents assured me they would never let it happen again.”
Kristen




Although this is a very cute picture of Loki the Eclectus trying to get the rawhide bone from the dog Loki was lucky to survive the incident.

Another reader’s response: “I have a Sun Conure who has terrified my Pomeranian. The first thing he did was bite her nose drawing blood. When I take him out of the cage she is under the bed immediately. I was worried it would be the other way around. I still don’t trust the fact that she may get her courage back and get even. I never leave them alone unleashed.”

One of my dogs is a Pomeranian cross & I know I certainly wouldn’t trust her with any of my birds. She definitely carries a grudge and would be waiting for an opportunity to get back at any bird who dared bite her.

From Lisa: "Here's how we get our 4 cats to coexist with our 3 birds. We have a largish cage (maybe 2´ by 2´ by 3.5´ high) in the computer room behind me.

It´s up on top of a 3-drawer file cabinet so the cats can´t get up to it. They really don´t show an interest in it anyway.

When we take the birds out, they only come out into this computer room, and the cats are all shooed out and the door closed first. So the birds are never loose when the cats are nearby, and they´re only let loose when the door is closed and the environment safe."

Lisa also told me: “a story I remember very strongly is one my friend told me about his dog. He and his dog and another friend were visiting a parrot owner. The parrot owner waved to his parrot (who was up on a bookcase) and told it to fly down. The parrot did so, and the dog, which had always been a quiet, well behaved, peaceful dog, promptly jumped up, broke the parrot´s neck, and then lay down quietly at my friend´s feet. They were all shocked. But the dog wasn´t mean or viscous or anything - he was just doing what came naturally to his doggy senses...”

I also have a friend who lost her bird to a dog that she trusted completely. No one was home at the time and she has no idea how the bird got out of his cage, but when she returned home the bird had lost the battle and was gone.

No matter how well your pets behave when you are with them, you simply cannot trust them to behave the same way when you are not in the room. Please be careful.


I found some wonderful parrot t-shirts at Choice Shirts