Author: Abbie

This week news that West Hollywood will ban pet sales, of all animals that are not from shelters. The City Council voted unanimously Tuesday to ban stores from selling cats and dogs in a move aimed at curbing puppy mills and kitty factories. Pet shops will be permitted, however, to offer animals from shelters. City officials acknowledged the new ordinance would have little bite — no pet stores in the city currently sell animals — but they’re hoping it will have a lot of bark and other municipalities will follow suit.

The following Happy Beginnings tale comes to us from Linda Latelle, founder of Magnificent Mutts Rescue in Illinois: “What if someone you loved and trusted tried to kill you just because you got sick?  That’s what happened to Jessie, a sweet and trusting 3 year old husky mix. Jessie lived outdoors, on a farm in rural Kentucky, and was plagued by allergies and dermal fungal and bacterial infections to the point of misery from itching, irritation, and hair loss.  Jessie’s owners had no interest in paying to have her infections treated, so they decided to “put her out of her misery” by shooting her.

Jessie before

In January 2010, Jessie was following her would-be executioner and his .22 rifle out the woods when a concerned neighbor approached.  The neighbor was horrified to learn of the plan, and more so to hear that this was the second attempt to destroy Jessie- the first time, she was shot 3 times, but survived and made her way back to the farm!  The neighbor talked the farmer into surrendering Jessie to her on the spot.

Jessie was taken to a local vet, where she was started on antifungal and antibiotic medications, the matted parts of her remaining raggedy coat were shaved off.  Unfortunately, the kind and compassionate neighbor who saved Jessie’s life could not keep her, and sought help for Jessie through her local animal shelter.

A sick dog at a rural shelter has virtually no chance of being adopted, so a plea to save Jessie went out to the animal rescue network.  Magnificent Mutts spoke up for Jessie, and she was transported to Mutts’ vet in Elmhurst, Illinois.  Thanks to generous donations from Mutts supporters, Jessie received further treatment there, including removal of the .22 caliber bullets and care for the resulting abscesses.  Jessie was then spayed, dewormed, and vaccinated.  From there, Jessie went to her foster home, where she enjoyed plentiful food, a warm bed, and loving care.

It was expected that Jessie would spend a long time recuperating in foster care, but things moved more quickly for her.  Less than 6 weeks after Jessie’s life was saved she met Chris and Jenny, who were deeply moved by her tragic story and intent on giving it a Happily Ever After ending.

Chris and Jenny had looked at a number of dogs together before Chris met Jessie on his own, and he immediately felt a connection to her.  Chris knew it would be tough to persuade Jenny to even meet poor bedraggled Jessie, but he appealed to Jenny’s kind nature:  (Jessie’s) “ kind of messed up right now but I was a bit of a mess when you met me and you took a chance on me so can we take a chance on her?”  Jenny couldn’t resist his plea, and Chris took her to meet Jessie.  Jessie won Jenny’s heart as well, and she went home that day with her new family.  Jenny writes, “We just knew we’d find a dog that was meant to be ours when we saw it, and we both knew it when we saw” Jessie.

Jessie after

Jenny keeps Magnificent Mutts informed of Jessie’s progress.  She writes that Jessie “is the perfect fit for our family and we are so happy to have found her… she seems happy to have found us, she’s adapted to our house like she’s always lived there.”  And Jessie’s coat is growing back beautifully- her new vet expects her coat to re-grow all over within 6 weeks, and eventually regain its original lush golden glory.  Jenny promises to send pictures of Jessie as she recovers, because “it’s fun to see the before and after pics”.

Stories like Jessie’s are testimony to the kindness of strangers and to the trust and gratitude of the dogs they help.  Millions of dogs pass through the shelter and rescue system each year, but not enough of them live to enjoy a Happily Ever After the way Jessie will.  Jessie’s new Forever Family, Magnificent Mutts Rescue, and Jessie’s old neighbor are all proud to have been a part of this Happy Tail story.

You can see Magnificent Mutts’ adoptable pets here.

This week features a story about one elementary school who raised funds that generated 3,000 units of food for a local no-kill shelter. Educators said that the schools involvement not only helps the sanctuary but also inspires the students to gain a better understanding of community service and working for a cause. “For us, it’s incredibly important. When we get donations of this size, we don’t have to buy dog food for a while. Then we can use our cash donations to help save more dogs,” said Marilyn Stewart of Alpha Canine Sanctuary. The school’s annual dog food donation drive started five years ago with one teacher to mark their 100th day of education. Now the entire school is involved plus local business also helped.

Here at Adopt-a-Pet.com we love hearing stories about successful rescues and the animal that benefit from a second chance. There are thousands of folks everyday who work tirelessly to help our four legged friends. One of those people is Kyla Duffy from Boulder, Colorado. She has been fostering animals for several years, and decided to put together a number of thought provoking and entertaining stories about adoption into a series of books entitled, Lost Souls: Found! Each book focuses on a different breed, from Boston Terriers, Dachshunds, Golden Retrievers, Labrador Retrievers, to Pit Bulls, and highlights their stories from homeless to adopted. Stories are submitted by rescuers from all around the world. Proceeds from the book have raised about $4,000 dollars for animals so far.

Here are some remarks about the book, “I began reading the Lost Souls: Found! series after my friend submitted a story about her puppy mill Golden Retriever for the Golden Retriever book. Inside each book I’ve found wonderful, heartwarming stories with happy endings, but what has impressed me most is the vision and dedication the publishers have for these books and for dog rescue… They took their passion for helping our canine companions to another level. Not only are the Lost Souls: Found! books a great read, but the Happy Tails Books project is a great cause to stand behind. Buy them all, read them all, and pass them along to your friends…. Oh, and don’t forget the box of tissues!” –Jo Ann Farley

Learn More at Happy Tails Books

This week a story about the Humane Society’s Dog Tags Program in which soldiers recovering at Walter Reed Army Medical Center bond with homeless dogs teaching better behavior, and making them more adoptable. Also, a story about an abandoned dog, who was injured and now 3 months later can walk again.

If you haven’t heard, we are promoting the use of Twitter and Adopt-a-Pet.com! The idea behind TwitterACritter is simple: if you find a pet on Adopt-a-Pet.com that you really want to see adopted, just click “Tweet Me” on that pet details page to share that pet with all your followers. It’s a simple action that can have a huge impact. Lots of celebrities have been catching on!  Kevin Nealon, Alyssa Milano, Denise Richards, Kristin Chenoweth, and many other celebrities have taken up the cause and tweeted links to their favorite shelter pets listed on Adopt-a-Pet.com. In each case, immediately after the celebrity’s tweet, hundreds of their followers tweeted homeless pets as well… and their followers tweet, and so on and so on. The celebrities create an avalanche of compassion!

To learn more about TwitterACritter and how you can help by Tweeting a homeless pet go to http://www.TwitterACritter.com. You can follow the campaign on Twitter at http://www.Twitter.com/TweetACritter

I don’t know about you, but if I hear anything else about Balloon Boy, I’m going to scream (Whew. I resisted the easy “I’m going to pop” pun). All the same, the smart part of my brain sees another side to this. Sure, I find the story annoying and the parents’ actions questionable at best, but at the same time I’m oddly intrigued and even (dare I say?) inspired. I mean, after all, Richard and Mayumi Heene allegedly orchestrated something that had an entire nation riveted, watching at the edge of our seats to see where the story would take us. They had us in the palm of their hands. Even after the incident was exposed as a hoax, they still had us all talking about it.

We in the animal welfare community could stand to take a lesson here. If Balloon Boy & Associates can garner this sort of wall-to-wall news coverage for a made-up story, shouldn’t we be able to drum up even a fraction of that? After all, our entire cause is life-and-death. What could be more dramatic? Unfortunately, because the issues of overpopulation, puppy mills, and shelter animals being put to death have been around for a long, long time, the media and the public seem to have become inured to them, and the coverage has become more and more humdrum. So what do we do? What can we learn from Balloon Boy?

1. People out there DO care… but they want to be entertained.

The world is full of people ready to drop everything they’re doing and park themselves in front of the television to see just what happens when a boy-filled balloon plummets back down to earth. Why? Because they care, sure. But more than that, it’s entertaining. It’s sensational. It’s human drama unfolding before their very eyes.

Think about the animals in your shelter or rescue group. So many of them have dramatic stories, but those stories go untold. Sure, maybe you write about each animal on your web site or on Adopt-a-Pet.com, but why not get them out to people who aren’t looking for a pet to adopt? There’s the dog whose owner died tragically, the one who was found shaved and painted, the one who became best friends with a hamster in his foster home, the cat who leads the blind dog around. Tell their stories in the most emotional, entertaining way you possibly can. We don’t always know the story behind each of the pets in our care, but let’s tell the stories of the ones we do know. Write a press release and get it out to local media (and national, too, if the story is compelling enough). Use Twitter and tweet out a link to the pet’s story on your site or use Adopt-a-Pet.com’s TwitterACritter feature to tweet links to your pets’ stories on Adopt-a-Pet.com.

2. Tell an unusual story.

The same old story can only be told so many times. The Balloon Boy story was nothing if not unusual. A boy accidentally taking off in a balloon his mad-scientist father made? Not a chance that story isn’t going to be picked up by the news… all of the news. Nobody had ever seen anything like it.

We have a little more of a challenge than Balloon Boy’s father had. After all, he was free to be as creative as he wanted to be because he was writing fiction. We are tethered by the bonds of reality, but we do still see unusual stories, don’t we? Open your eyes to the world in which you operate and develop radar for the strange, the beautiful, the coincidental, the inspiring stories that develop there. Understand that your world is more than just the pets currently in your care… extend your radar to include what happens to those pets after you adopt them out. Tell those stories to the media and social networks, and make sure to include a pro- pet-adoption spin and a promotion for your shelter in every story.

3. Tell the story in real time to allow the public to be a part of it.

This one is key. Balloon Boy is a compelling story no matter how you slice it, but imagine if we’d only found out about the story after the fact? The story would have been, “Worried family breathes sigh of relief after discovering their son wasn’t in soaring balloon as suspected.” A bit of a yawner compared to the way the story actually unveiled itself moment-by-moment.

The best way to tell a pet’s story (or any story) is to give it a beginning, middle, and an end, and to tell it as it happens. Give your readers, viewers, followers, and friends a chance to change the course of the story, to determine how it ends. Tell the beginning of the story first, and present the call to action. The middle of the story is where we have our chance to invite the public to follow the journey and to interact with it. Make sure to give compelling updates. Finally, report on the end of the story, whether it’s heartbreakingly sad or incredibly uplifting.

4. Crave fame… for your animals

Richard and Mayumi Heene have something that all master self-promoters share: a burning desire for fame. Most of us in the animal welfare community don’t have that quality. That’s ok… few people in the world do, and those of us who don’t tend to look at them as narcissistic. Time to rethink things, folks. We need to crave fame, not for ourselves, but for the animals in our care, for our shelters, and for the issue of homeless pets in general. Leap on every PR opportunity! Create new ones! Let’s be the biggest, loudest stage-mothers we can be, all for the good of the pets in our shelters.

You’re probably thinking of other lessons we can learn from the Balloon Boy incident, so let’s hear them! I want to hear your comments. May your pet-adoption PR efforts soar effortlessly through the universe like a giant… well, you know.

This week we bring news of 400 animals being rescued in Hawaii, plus a woman working a unique angle of animal adoption: military dog adoption.

It may be the biggest rescue mission in Oahu history. More than 400 animals were rescued from Waianae. There were more than 100 dogs, 100 cats, and 200 ducks and birds.

Benny, a retired military working dog, is a happy-go-lucky German shepherd who will do anything his master commands. If it weren’t for Debbie Kandoll, he might not have ever had a chance to display his obedience.

Click the links to read more about this week’s Good News!

This week we bring you news of a new organization to help connect pet adopters and rescuers via the sky, also a heart-warming story of a little pug who keeps on truckin after loosing ability to use her hind legs.

Pilots N Paws, an online forum that connects animal rescue groups and volunteer pilots, is launching the Pilots N Paws 5000, the largest pet airlift ever. From September 12 to 20, Pilots N Paws volunteers will attempt something that’s never been done — transport 5,000 homeless animals in a single week.

Molly was born with energy to burn and initially appeared healthy in every way. But at three months of age, the unthinkable happened – her back legs simply stopped working. Throughout the years, Mandy and Molly visited school children and the elderly in Santa Barbara.

Click the links to read more about this week’s Good News!

This week we bring you two stories, first a couple of pilots who transported 18 puppies to enable them to be adopted. Second, a PA kennel is shutdown and 200 dogs are moved out of bad conditions.

Two Pilots in Florida literally save the lives of 18 puppies – Tod Peavy, a Gainesville pilot, flew the pups from Athens to Lynchburg, Va., where another pilot, Steve Hall, flew them to Bridgeport, Conn., for a huge adoption event this weekend. The dogs were initially rescued from the “kill lists.”

Pennsylvania breeding kennel is shutdown, 200 dogs are rescued and moved to a better place.