SMART | work
Back to school for pooches and kitties too
members of our community? Bringing a new puppy or kitten home is one of the most
S
exciting experiences for a family. So exciting that often us humans try to speed up the process and bring these furry family members home when they are too young to be separated from their moms and litter mates. Yes, momma dogs and cats will start weaning their little ones off nursing around 4-6 weeks of age but for your new pet’s proper social and emotional development, they should not be separated from her or their littermates until at least 8-9 weeks of age. If a breeder or adoption program wants to send them home sooner, seek out a more responsible source for your new pet. Young animals love to play, play, play, and they need to do
this with their littermates and mom to learn proper social skills and develop bite inhibition. Tis is a fancy term that essentially means having a gentle mouth. Te vital lessons your puppy or kitten learns with their mom and litter last a lifetime, do not cut this learning phase short. Once you bring home your new fur baby, the real work of
socialization starts. Make sure you expose your new puppy or kitten to as many different people, safe places, strange objects and new animals (who you know are vaccinated and friendly) as possible. But do make effort to keep these experiences as positive and happy as possible. Bring lots of treats and toys, rewarding your pet for their brave and friendly behaviour with either a snack or play session. If your new pet seems excessively nervous and does not recover quickly from fear, take a step back in socializa- tion and start with quieter experiences. Te key to proper socialization is positive experiences and always ending on a happy note! (If your pet is not fully vaccinated yet, do not take them
to parks or out on the street. If you’re unsure when it’s ok to start socializing your pet in strange places, consult your veterinarian.) Strongly consider taking your new puppy to school! Good
puppy classes will help you with obedience but it will also provide opportunities to socialize your pup and work on more subtle skills such as patience, being polite, impulse control and how to be handled. Puppy classes should also be fun! Puppies and kittens treat everything like a game, life for
them is fun! So their training should be fun too. Training session with young animals should always be short, fun filled, focussed on positivity and rewards, and ending on their success. Tis is what baby brains remember and will want to repeat when the next training session starts.
Take your puppy to school and help them learn some good habits. Tere may be classes for puppies but kitten classes are sadly
not often an option. However don’t skip training your feline friend! Not only can kittens and cats learn neat commands like sit and come, but they also love to learn tricks. Check out a cat training book, and use it to bond with your kitty! Kittens also benefit from lessons and consistency with body handling skills, touch their paws, look in their ears, hold their tail gently, trim their nails, peek in their mouths. Follow up with tasty rewards and your kitten will remember these lessons when they go to the veterinarian. Your vet will thank you! Whoever said you can’t teach an old dog tricks made a big
mistake! Have an adult dog and want to teach them some- thing new? It’s not too late!
Tere are plenty of classes and sport options for adult
dogs. Advanced obedience, agility and tricks classes are just some fun opportunities to bond with your dog while also teaching them a new skill. More specific dog sports include flyball, scent detection and barn hunt sports. Tese can be great options for tiring out your dog physically but they also help to satisfy your dog mentally. Find the class or sport both you and your dog enjoy and build on those skills. Your bond with your dog will strengthen and your dog’s confidence and social skills will grow. Your pooch will thank you for it! Jessica Tompson, Paws For Tought Boutique For Pets, 1051 Main St, Winnipeg, ph#204-421-7297
How to make money – buy low, sell high Dollar Cost Averaging
T
he classic question of every investor is how do I time the market to make sure I buy low and sell high? Check out the S
& P index from the last 65 years. Close to the end of the 20th century, the issue was not so critical as ups and downs were more modest. But the market looks crazy in the 21st century. So what investing fundamental can I tell you about, to ensure you are buying in 1994, 2003 and 2009 while you sold off equities in 2000, 2003 and 2013? And just to mess with your thinking, this chart says selling off in 2013 was a good idea but the strange bull market continues into 2017! The fact is that most inves-
about catching the market. When the market goes down, your same monthly dollars buy more shares. When the market recovers, as it always does, you end up owning more units of your investment. Let me show you. If you had $1200 to invest, which invest- ment from the chart would you buy? With investment A, your in-
Financial
tors sold off in 2001-2002 as the market fall got scary with no sign of bottom, as it did again in 2009, and only bought back into the market in 2005 to 2007, and in 2012, as most of the losses were regained. In other words they sold low and bought high! I am going to tell you how to beat the market. My favourite pundit on market timing is
Isaac Newton: “I can calculate the motion of the heavenly bodies, but not the madness of people” he said, after losing a fortune in the South Sea Bubble of 1720. If Isaac Newton could not time stock markets what hope do you have? Tat is the Bad News. But the good news is you do not need to buy low and sell high, you just need to keep buying! Investing fundamental number three,
after balance and diversification, is consist- ency, also called dollar-cost-averaging. Save the same 10% every month and do not worry
6 Smart Biz
Literacy Fred Petrie
vestment grows from $1200 to $2400. (Doubling in 12 years imputes a 6% annual return, according to Einstein). Invest- ment B would have grown to $1800 and Investment C would have recovered to the original $1200 investment, a rate of re- turn of zero. But what if you invest $100 each period instead of the $1200
at the beginning? Now which investment would give you the best return? Believe it or not, investment C would be
the winner giving you a portfolio value of $1741.27 while steady investment A, and more volatile B, would both end up at about $1595. When investing regularly, dollar cost averaging works in your favour throughout the normal up and down cycles of the stock market. Don’t believe me eh? Let’s break it down.
With dollar cost averaging you systematically invest a fixed amount of money every period to buy investments that have a fluctuating price. Look at investment C as a fund with a starting price of $10 per unit. When prices drop as the market swings downward, rather than get concerned because the value of their portfolio drops, you and Stephen Harper
Month Amount invested price per unit Units bought Cumulative units Cumulative value 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
10 11 12
$ 100.00 $ 100.00 $ 100.00 $ 100.00 $ 100.00 $ 100.00 $ 100.00 $ 100.00 $ 100.00 $ 100.00 $ 100.00 $ 100.00
$ 10.00 $ 9.00 $ 8.00 $ 7.00 $ 6.00 $ 5.00 $ 4.00 $ 6.00 $ 7.00 $ 8.00 $ 9.00
$ 10.00
systematically take advantage of “the buying opportunity” by buying more units of the same investment. You will finally be buying low! In this example, as the price drops in the first 7 months, more units are being bought each month for the same $100 invested. At the end of twelve periods, with the
market recovering in price to the original $10 per unit, your $1200 invested is now worth $1741.27. In fact when the market crashed in 2008, if you had kept buying equities through 2008 & 2009 your portfolio would be worth far more by 2010 than it was at the start of 2008 even though the “index” had only recovered to its pre-crash level. I do admit that watching this investment failing to match your contributions over the first eight months would need a strong stomach when it does not show a positive return till the ninth month.
www.smartbizwpg.com
10.00 11.11 12.50 14.29 16.67 20.00 25.00 16.67 14.29 12.50 11.11 10.00
10.00 21.11 33.61 47.90 64.56 84.56
109.56 126.23 140.52 153.02 164.13 174.13
$ 100.00 $ 190.00 $ 268.89 $ 335.28 $ 387.38 $ 422.82 $ 438.25 $ 757.38 $ 983.61 $ 1,224.13 $ 1,477.14 $ 1,741.27
Tat is why I suggest choosing wisely.
Consider balance in your asset allocation, and diversify your portfolio, then keep buying consistently. Do not even look at the crazy ups and downs. Maybe once a year, consider tweaking your balance and your diversification, based on buying independent advice about macro trends. Outside of that, DON’T TOUCH IT. Dollar- cost-averaging will look after the market timing issue. Fredrick Petrie, B. Comm. (Hons.), author
of “THE END OF WORK: financial planning for people with better things to do”, provides financial education at
www.navigatingfi-
nance.com, reach him at navigator@navi-
gatingfinance.com or call (204) 298-2900. You can get started at
http://www.amazon. ca/END-WORK-Financial-Planning-Peo- ple-ebook/dp/B00XCY0AJ2/
October 2017
eptember is back to school season for human kids but what about our furry family members? What can we do to help teach them how to be happy and safe
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