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With Thanksgiving just around the corner, soon families will be gathering together to give thanks and feast on holiday treats. Delicious aromas will fill the air and our pets will be glued to our sides in hopes of scoring some scraps.  During this happy time of family, food and giving, people tend to become overly generous, which means that dogs and cats will get a lot of table food scraps from family members or guests. Sometimes, however, too many treats can lead to injury or illness for our pets.  North Shore Animal League America has these great tips to help keep your pets safe this Thanksgiving holiday.

Hope. In the beginning 21 year-old Kelsey Westbrook was your average, hardworking student and part-time waitress at Joe’s Crab Shack, overlooking the Ohio River. She was a true animal friend, animal lover and dog parent. Little did she know that her life would change on an average day, on an average shift, in a not-so-average way. We read about Kelsey’s heartwarming story on an animal lover’s blog and have reposted it here to share with you!

During one of her shifts at the restaurant, Kelsey and her fellow employees heard a loud “splash!” Running out to the river and under the 80 foot bridge nearby they saw a helpless and stunned dog swimming anxiously in the cold water. Everyone started to wave the dog in and encouraged the frightened pooch to swim toward them. The Louisville Fire Department dive team was practicing nearby and rescued the dog. When they finally retrieved the dog out of the river, she started licking everyone and seemed relieved. Miraculously, the dog appeared to be unhurt. Kelsey took the dog home that day, and later, to a veterinarian who estimated that the pit bull was less than a year old. Kelsey planned to find the dog a good home, but changed her mind. “After a day, I thought, ‘Nope, she’s mine. I have to keep her,” says Kelsey.

Love. Perhaps it was destiny, fate or just a lucky day, but what brought this pair together was not average. According to many sources, USA Today, NY Times, BNET, The Star, and HSUS millions of dogs [and cats] are improperly and inhumanly killed around the world. According to the National Council on Pet Population Study and Policy, roughly 9.6 million animals are killed annually in the United States. Many of these fates occur at the shelters due to space issues, however many animals do not make it to the shelter and are not “humanely” killed.

This would have been Sunny’s fate, except she was in the right place at the right time, and so was Kelsey. Sunny was brought to her forever home and quickly bonded with her new canine sister and family.

But then, the day after Sunny’s harrowing rescue, Kelsey’s landlords notified her she had two days to remove Sunny from the apartment. Areté Real Estate, the company that owns Kelsey’s apartment complex, insisted pit bulls are a “vicious breed” and not allowed on the premises. Pitbulls get so much negative attention and even though this dog was saved and gratefully kissed everyone that was involved with her rescue, she was still considered a “vicious breed.” Even with all of the heat from her landlord, Kelsey vowed to be Sunny’s forever home and promised to do whatever it took to ensure Sunny’s safety and well-being, even if that meant finding a new place to live. But once again fate would smile on Sunny and Kelsey: while she was trying to negotiate with her old landlord, a new management company took over her building, and Sunny was welcome to stay.

Next Week, Part II: Karma.

Reposted with permission – HarleysMission.blogspot.com

Finding a rental house, condo or apartment that will accept pets can be a bit of a challenge. Over the years I’ve learned a lot about finding dog and cat-friendly accommodations from “cozy” studio apartments, to lovely guest houses, luxury doorman buildings, and everything in between. It did take time and patience, but in the end I was always successfully in finding a safe and welcoming home for my entire family, including all my four-pawed kids. Read on for my tips for finding your ideal pet-friendly rental, and you’ll be happily unpacking in your new home in no time!

Where can you find pet-friendly rental listings?

1. Local animal shelters, humane societies & rescues
Some maintain printed or online listings of pet-friendly landlords, buildings, or even offer the old fashioned pushpin bulletin boards with vacancies posted.

2. Local businesses
Other places you can look for listings in person (aside from the usual real estate offices, churches, and community centers) are your local vets offices, pet boarding facilities, and pet supply stores.

3. Rental listing websites
There are also many rental listing websites that allow you to search for listings that allow dogs, cats, or both. Many are free for renters, like peoplewithpets.com, mynewplace.com, rent.com, and homewithpets.com. One site, forrent.com, includes checkboxes for  “small dogs allowed” or “large dogs allowed” but the search results will also show close matches so check the listings carefully.

4. Craigslist
For metropolitan markets and spreading into many rural communities too, the most well-known (and free) is Craigslist.org. If you can’t find a good free local website with a pet-ok search feature built in, one trick is you can use any rental listing site that allows searching by keyword. Try putting “pet” and “pets”, then “dog” or “dogs” or “cat” in the search box, you will bring up listings that say “dogs ok” or “small pet allowed.”

How to be a more attractive renter:

So, you see a listing that piques your interest, and you’re ready to email or call. If listings say “pets considered” or “pets welcome” (or even just do not say “no pets”), those of us with multiple pets, larger dogs and certain breeds of dogs may need to be very convincing that we are as good or better a tenant as a pet-less applicant. I’ve found it helps to have a bit of conversation first, establishing a rapport with the landlord/manager, and then ask them about their pet policy. Know your own skills: are you better “in person”, on the phone, or writing letters and pet resumes? If you can, when communicating with the landlord or management company about your pets and their pet policy, use your strongest skill first. That first impression can make the difference in getting their attention, and the property you desire.

If the landlord has any pet restrictions, it can help to mention that you would be willing to carry renters insurance. Renter’s insurance typically costs about $20/month for $500,000 in coverage.

Other reassurances that you can offer a landlord that may hesitate at first are: if your dog has passed his Canine Good Citizen test, if your previous landlords have provided a letter of reference for your pets’ good behavior, an invitation from you to them interview your friendly well-behaved pets, bringing cute pet photos with you when you first meet them, and/or offering an additional pet deposit to cover any possible damages.

Now get ready to sign on the dotted line for the pet friendly rental of your dreams!

This week features a two stories, first an amazing story of Starfish, a severely abused dog who was rescued and given a second chance at life, second a man in Portland who has started a homeless pets food bank

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

This week features a story of an adopted animal Bailey making new friends at Sunrise Living, a senior living community in Lombard Ill. Also, new laws are being proposed in snowy Colorado to cut down on puppy mills.

A task force is changing the rules for dog breeders in Colorado in an effort to crack down on so-called puppy mills without changing the law. Continue reading…

The Sunrise Senior Living community in Lombard has adopted Bailey, a 25-pound homeless beagle, as its resident therapy dog. The community opened in late September, and has 30 residents who now are Bailey’s new favorite companions. Bailey was found through an organization named A Cry For Help, which shelters battered or lost animals. Although most of his history is unclear, Bailey is known to be from Tennessee and approximately 3 years old.

You’re thinking about adopting a new pet and are wondering, how much time does a pet need? The answer depends on the type of pet, including but not limited to the breed, age, amount of previous training, other pets & people in your home, and your current activity level and lifestyle. In this article, we’ll help you consider these options, and list different types of pets’ needs. Matching the time a pet will take to the amount of time you want to spend on your pet is a very important part in finding your new best friend!

A good first step is really thinking about your daily routine. How much free time do you have each day that you are willing to devote to the care, training, and attention of your new pet over the next few months, and then for the lifetime of that pet? For social pets like birds, rabbits, dogs, and cats, time spent just “hanging out” with you while you’re watching a movie or reading a book, counts too!

With any human-social pet, babies and youngsters need a LOT more time. Plan on at 1-2 hours extra each day, until the pet is a trained, socialized adult. For example, puppies & kittens generally do best if only left alone (in a safe enclosure) for 1 hour for every 1 month of their age. If they are left alone for longer, socialization and behavior problems can develop as the pet matures.

Will they have a friend? Having a bonded, same-species companion can keep social pets company, reducing their dependence on your time and giving them a much happier life.

Dogs and puppies vary the most in their time requirements, ranging from an adult, already-trained, mellow breed, to a high-energy puppy that would love a jogging companion and another high-energy dog friend.

To help you decide on a pet that will be right for you, we’ve put together a basic “Average Daily Time Needed” guide below. With any pet, if possible, you’ll also want to ask experts (such as their current caregivers) about that particular pet’s needs.

Average Daily Time Needed
1/4 to 1/2 hour: Reptiles, Amphibians, Fish
1/2 to 1 hour: Ferret, Gerbil, Guinea Pig, Hamster, Mouse, Rat, Birds
1-2 hours: Chinchilla, Rabbits, pair of adult Cats
2-3 hours: pair of Kittens (or Kitten & Cat), pair of adult Dogs, single adult Cat
3-4 hours: single adult Dog, or Puppy with trained adult Dog
4-5 hours: single Puppy, or untrained/high-energy adult Dog

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 features a story of 24 animals being saved, a new book on pet adoption, and a tail of 23 trips from Iraq to the US in the name of pet adoption.

How far will people go to rescue cats and dogs? One person, Terri Crisp, has made 23 trips to Iraq to help bring home soldiers’ pets. Continue reading…

Stillwater Middle School counselor April Thompson and her Boston terrier Lily have been featured in the book “Lost Souls: FOUND! Inspiring Stories of Adopted Boston Terriers.” Lily is one of 50 dogs featured in the book, the first in the breed-specific “Lost Souls: FOUND” series about adopted dogs.

Two dozen dogs that were seized from a Ballantine breeder last year are on a cross-country bus trip to new homes.

Now you can promote the ADOPT message in the hippest way possible! The adoption-supporting OBEY Clothing company has chosen Adopt-A-Pet.com for their latest OBEY AWARENESS Campaign. Shepard Fairey and his OBEY Clothing team share a commitment to helping homeless animals, “Millions of animals urgently need us to take the lead and speak out on their behalf,” Said Fairey. All profits generated from the sale of OBEY AWARENESS Adopt-a-Pet.com products go directly to support the cause.
http://shop.obeyclothing.com/c-126-adopt-a-pet.aspx

For more hip Shepard Fairey adoption-supporting gear, like signed prints, stickers and shirts go to: http://muttslikeme.adoptapet.com/get_image/index.html

And stay tuned for more rad ADOPT merchandise by Obey Clothing!