Overview
What does animal welfare involve?
Animal welfare refers to how well an animal is coping with the conditions they are living in. Why is it a human responsibility to ensure a dog’s or cat’s physical and mental needs are met? Why is your knowledge of your pet’s breed important for the care you provide to it? In other words, what are the responsible choices you must make when caring for your cat or dog?
These are big and important questions! To help you answer them, you’ll start by investigating what is involved in animal welfare.
Of course, cats and dogs have been bred with specialized traits that adapt to specific or different environments or meet a certain purpose. Thus, you’ll need to understand the advantages and disadvantages of caring for a specific breed of cat or dog.
And finally, a number of basic skills are essential for any pet owner to properly care for the pet and monitor vital signs and prevent disease, including regular observation and knowledge of normal and abnormal signs of health. To help you understand the basic skills of caring for your pet, this module asks you to consider the following questions:
- What are the indicators of health for a cat or dog?
- How does an understanding of your pet’s natural behaviours improve your effectiveness as a cat or dog caretaker?
Clearly there’s lots to cover in this ’busy’ module, so let’s get started!
Module Objectives
By successfully completing this module, you will be able to:
- Identify and explain the advantages and disadvantages of owning a specific animal breed.
- Identify criteria to be considered when selecting an animal, including the type of animal, breed and gender.
You will be using a module activities booklet to complete the practice activities for submission. Unless indicated otherwise by your teacher, use the rubric that follows the activity.
Instructions
- Download the Module 2 Booklet and save it to the AGR 2020 course folder on your computer (i.e. the course folder you created when you started the course).
- When you get to a place in the online module where you are supposed to complete an activity:
- Open the module booklet,
- Scroll to the relevant activity,
- Complete the task,
- SAVE your work.
At the end of the module, you will upload your completed module booklet (HINT: see the Activities video if you need a refresher on how to use the upload tool).
Estimated Time Required
It is estimated it will take you approximately 3-4 hours to complete this module.