Twiglet

The Blob, the 80's version. I was around 5, snuck into a room where people were watching it. The guy being dragged into the sink made me terrified of using the toilet and I developed a turbo-pissing technique to minimise time spent on the bog.

Kind of hard when it's a once-per-year event. Desensitisation is an effective training strategy, but takes time and effort. You might have some success with loud fireworks recordings, but nothing can really replicate the pure noise, light, reverberation and smell of the real deal.

Medicating pets for a day or two is not the end of the world and helps them not having to experience the utter helpless panic.

I have a real beef with the anti-medication crowd, they completely ignore how life altering it can be for those that need them, just because they don't suffer themselves so don't see the need for anyone to have them.

It's it better not to need them? Of course. Should you try alternatives first? Absolutely. Is it a failure if it turns out the medication is the only thing that actually helps? Abso-fucking-lutely not.

If it only affected the user, sure, but the reality of it is that the smoke contaminates everything around it.

I was in my 20's when I realised it's not normal to mop your walls every year, also made the connection that moving out reduced my migraines. I did not realise just how much I stank everywhere I went thanks to my mum's smoking, and coming back off holiday from smoke free relatives I felt my throat and eyes burn as I was settling back in at home.

My neighbours a few doors down sometimes smoke in the garden when the weather is nice, so I have to shut all my windows and retreat indoors if I want to keep breathing freely.

It's a lot better than it used to be, but it still restricts my comfort and quality of life if someone nearby decides they have the individual right to smoke.

I literally don’t want to move from where I am as the estate was built with passageways between the streets, with large breaks of green space between blocks of housing and mature trees to boot.

The little green spaces around my estate have been slowly disappearing, having claustrophobic little houses crammed onto them, it's depressing. I honestly don't like kids, but the neighbourhood kids used to be able to just faff around on the green spaces here close to home. Now those spaces sport a handful of bungalows and the kids have nowhere to pass the time. Seriously, people keep lamenting that their kids aren't going outside to play or loitering where they are a nuisance, but there's no fucking space for them any more. Where do you want them to go? The road?

Being a kid nowadays must really suck.

Dog breeding needs to be better regulated across the board. There are too many breeds that shouldn't exist simply because they are in pain from birth. Deformed, disabled, with genetic faults that leave them to horrendous and painful deaths way beyond their years, yet people are fine with intentionally breeding them because 'lol, so cute!'.

Before these guys, there was Staffies being heralded as demon dogs. Before that, Rottweilers, Dobermans, Alsatians... So I'm not jumping on the hate train, simply because I don't know enough.

Just like torture breeding shouldn't exist neither should irresponsible (backyard) breeding, - when you just go for looks over temperament and health this is the kinda shit you end up with.

To me it looks like several pics of a handful of dogs chopped together, there are too many dogs that are identical to one another. The terrier on the right looking at the pic looks like he's standing next to himself and also lying under the orange chair. The dog with the hair clip is in the front, sofa on the left and (possibly?) at the back next to the terrier. I could be wrong, sure, but it's just looks off and a few dogs are waaay too similar to just be the same breed. I'd need to see a bigger photo with less jpegs to be able to tell, could just be the chronchiness and odd photo editing that's sending this straight to uncanny valley territory for me.