Life has continuously existed on the planet for 4.28 billion years. Life we can eat has existed for most of that. I'm not saying there can't be expensive and fatal problems associated with climate change, but "end of civilization" is hyperbole.

I read "collapse of civilisation"

I have a hard time believing it could ever get so hot that no crops will grow and people forget how written language works

This area seems like search, very winner-takes-all. I'm gonna lean my armchair back a couple more degrees and say questions2answer needs federation badly

My point is only that a new name-sitter isn't really an improvement on the previous name-sitter if both are similarly active on Lemmy.

Consider starting with communities that have inactive admins first. Someone looking to "create" a community at an abandoned name might do better to start contributing to it if the existing admin is simply waiting for people to talk to.

People are saying he's going to join Lemmy, I think it's tremendous

Ha! On the other extreme you could have the little rat dog who barked through his screen door every time I went down the hall for my mail. Without fail, that was followed by the owner bellowing from his armchair "shut up! shut up!" I figure the dog thought they were barking at me together as a team.

You could be right that racing dogs are mentally ok with sitting around, that was just a suspicion I had. I figured they're like huskies I've seen, very disappointed when they aren't chosen for the day's sled pull. But maybe when they don't run for a month they forget all about it. I shouldn't have declared it.

What I've really noticed is that like old tall humans they have a hard time getting up and down. I bet their joints hurt. They also can't walk backwards very well, so indoor human environments can be tricky.

I'm sure it depends on the dog, and shoes can help a lot in some terrain. I don't know the exact distances involved, but I've heard of a dog walking the pads off its paws trying to keep up. It was probably something like a 20mi hike in New Mexico based on context. Dog was a pitbull. I've personally hiked with people who brought smaller dogs and watched them struggle after a few miles.

The whole thing makes sense to me in theory when you take anthropology into account. It's thought that we evolved walking in part to go long distances efficiently, which was a speciality of ours before agriculture. Long distance travel hasn't generally been a priority for canines. People don't expect to outwalk their dogs because dogs hardly ever complain and outrun us so easily in sprints.

Good point. I know someone who adopts old broken greyhounds. She walks them as much as she can and does what she can for their broken lanky bodies, but I can't help feeling like just existing is torture for them. They can't get around very well and like the shepherds you referenced, they are used to running a LOT and are motivated by it. Even with the proper facilities they couldn't do that any more.

Aggressive hikers should be aware that dogs can't keep up with bipeds very well at long distances, but they will sure try, and often hurt themselves in the process.

I'm reading that 70% of rabies infections in the US are from bats. Cat hasn't caught one yet, and she's vaccinated. She'd have to bring in a live rabid gopher that manages to bite me, I figure. Thanks for the food for thought, but I'll keep my rodent-hunter on the job for now!

I don't disagree with your decision, as I said everyone must choose their own risks. For me, the gophers are a problem and rabies appears reasonably treatable and rare in the developed world:

"Rabies caused about 17,400 human deaths worldwide in 2015. More than 95% of human deaths from rabies occur in Africa and Asia." (Wikipedia)

Where I live everything endangered has already been eliminated. The birds are doing well with the aid of human feeding, and there are definitely non-threatening places nearby for the gophers to do their thing.

Well said. People who keep big dogs cooped up in apartments should be ashamed.

Everyone has their own level of acceptable risk, I get it. Especially when it comes to germs and diseases. For what it's worth, when my cat brings in gophers I usually know about it within a few seconds (because she's bringing it directly to me and makes a distinctive noise on her way in) so I can get it away from her pretty quickly and minimize where she takes it. I guess she could get still get sick and transmit it to us later, but I need the gophers dead more than I'm worried about it, personally.

Also worth noting if you are trying to keep the cat indoors the occasional escape probably won't be enough to get it seriously into hunting. It'll be pretty bad at it.

If you want a dog partly for home defence consider that a small dog will often do just as much to alert you to the presence of an intruder, and you can then do something about it.

as long as you don't eat it you will probably be fine

Google Play Store and Apple will block it, and 99% of users don't know how to get apps anywhere else

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