Cats and Coupons

Sites just for pet owners are becoming quite popular. I recently learned about another community just for pet lovers called Animal Attraction. It’s free to sign up for membership. Once you’ve joined you can create a profile for you and your pets. There’s a search enging to help members find new friends with common interests. Members can communicate with each other using chat rooms, message boards and instant messaging.  On the site you can share photos and stories, as well as look for and offer advice. Every day that a member logs in Animal Attraction makes a small donation to an animal charity. If someone joins as a new member on your recommendation Animal Attraction will donate $1. The site is a terrific way to meet others with the same interests while helping animals.

If you’ve ever watched or been to a dog show you know there’s a group called working dogs. (Point of interest, there’s no working cat category at a cat show.) The dogs in the AKC working group include the Akita, Alaskan Malamute, Anatolian Shepherd Dog, Boxer, Bernese Mountain Dog, Black Russian Terrier, Bullmastiff, Doberman Pinscher, Dogue de Bordeaux, German Pinscher, Giant Schnauzer, Great Dane, Great Pyrenees, Greater Swiss Mountain Dog, Komondor, Kuvasz, Mastiff, Neopolitan Mastiff, Newfoundland, Portugese Water Dog, Rottweiler, Saint Bernard, Samoyed, Siberian Husky, Standard Schnauzer and Tibetan Mastiff. Could you imagine if people were like working class dogs? They’d never have to do another job search again, because everyone would know what they can do right from the start. What I find interesting about dog shows is that dogs within one class do different “work” and yet they’re all judged against each other. We have a Siberian Husky, so he’d be in the working group if he were a show dog. Do you have a dog? What group would he be in if he were a show dog?

Every year my family takes a camping vacation in upstate New York. We go up for the Nascar race in Watkins Glen. For more then twelve years we’ve been going there and I just found out today that the country’s largest farm animal rescue is located right in Watkins Glen. The rescue is called Farm Sanctuary. The 175 acre farm offers tours, a sleepover retreat and a bed and breakfast. besides rescuing animals, Farm Sanctuary promotes education, advocacy and leadership. What a terrific organization. I can’t believe it’s been right under our noses all this time!

As I’ve mentioned previously, the homeless pet situation is a big problem. I was having a discussion recently with TJ, my twelve year old, and mentioned to him that the nearby shelter had just expanded so it could hold all of the animals it was receiving. The number of shelter animals is on the rise. Before you go get yourself an expensive purebred, consider checking the nearby shelters. The animals there are in desperate need of a home and you’re one of the many mortgage lenders out there. Think of the upside too. Shelter animals are grateful, because they’re happy to have been chosen and they know what it’s like to be homeless or to live in a cage. You’ll spend less money adopting an animal from a shelter rather than buying from a breeder. You might not have to housetrain a shelter animal if they’re older. And guess what, Even purebreds end up in shelters and need homes too, so you might find exactly what you’re looking for. If you’re looking for an animal, think shelter. And spread the word.

Don’t you love going to a good zoo? If you’ve never been to one I encourage you to take a day and do so. It doesn’t matter if you have children or not, you’ll have a blast. It’s amazing to see animals that you otherwise might not see live. The National Zoo in Washington DC is one of the well known zoos here in the US. They’ve put many live animal cams up, which means that no matter where you are you can get a glimpse of some of the National Zoo animals. Currently the cams they have up and running include an Amazon River Fish Cam, an Asian Small-clawed Otter Cam, a Black-footed Ferret Cam, Cheetah Cams, a Clouded Leopard Cam, a Fishing Cat Cam, a Flamingo Cam, a Gharial Cam, a Golden Lion Tamarin Cam, a Gorilla Cam, a Kiwi Cam, a Lion Cam, Micronesian Kingfisher Cam, a MicroTheatre Cam, a Naked Mole-Rat Cam, an Octopus Cam, an Orangutan Cam, Panda Cams, a Sloth Bear Cam and a Tiger Cam. Go check them out, they’re really neat. Happy viewing!

I am a great believer in adopting animals. There are so many unwanted animals out there that need homes and would make terrific pets. Adopting has numerous advantages over buying from a breeder. Petfinder is a website that offers a searchable database of animals that need homes and shelters, rescues and adoption groups within the United States, Canada and Mexico. The database is updated daily. If you’re looking for a pet, Petfinder should be the first place you look. Petfinder is free to use. I’ve added their search widget to one of my sidebars.

I was explaining to my son today that it’s important to keep your hair clean and to not touch your face as part of an acne prevention routine. He’s got hair from my side of the family, which tends to be oily. Somehow we got onto the topic of our cats and we both wondered if dogs and cats ever get pimples. I’ve seen a lot of things in the pet store, but never acne treatment. So, does anyone know if cats and dogs can get pimples?

Sort of. There’s a new reality show that premiered tonight called Greatest American Dog. The show will feature a dozen dog and owner teams living together and competing against each other for a prize of $250,000. Each week one team will be eliminated by the judges, who are Wendy Diamond, Allan Reznik and Victoria Stilwell. The host of the show is Jarod Miller. Greatest American Dog will be airing on Thursdays at 8pm on CBS.

The big news in our area this week is the 12-20 bottlenose dolphins in the Shrewsbury River about 20 minutes or so north of me. At least two are thought to be less than one year old. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has placed a 50-yard exclusion zone around them, which means that boaters and swimmers can’t feed them, swim with them, bother them or directly interact with them in any way.  Breaking the rule would be a violation of the federal Marine Mammal Protection Act. State police and Coast Guard boats are on the water enforcing the boundaries. The dolphins have been there several days now. After observation, it was determined that these are probably coastal dolphins and that they’re most likely in no hurry to leave because of the abundance of good food. Apparently there is a lot of menhaden and other small fish which are dolphin favorites. With Independence Day a week away there is a concern that the increased boat traffic will endanger the dolphins. There has been discussion of a coordinated plan to escort the dolphins back out to see before the holiday.

If you’re a regular reader you may have noticed that I’ve added a banner that will appear at the top of every page. The banner is for The Animal Rescue Site.

The Animal Rescue site provides people surfing the web with a free way to help provide food for shelter animals. One click of a button on the website helps provide food and care for the animals. Wondering how that happens? The funding comes from the site sponsors. And, all of the sponsor advertising fees from the website helps the animals as well.  The funding goes to partner programs including the The Fund for Animals, Petfinder Foundation, North Shore Animal League, and other worthy animal rescue programs supported by GreaterGood.org.

I’ve placed the banner up there in the hopes that anyone visiting this site will take a moment and click to help the animals. It’s unbelievable how many animals there are in shelters. You can help these animals in many ways and clicking a button is probably the easiest one of all. People are encouraged to click once a day, every day. If you love animals and want to help them, get clicking!

Petal, a 52 year old African elephant, died last week in her stall at the Philadelphia Zoo last week. She was the oldest living African elephant in a United States zoo. The typical lifespan for an African elephant in captivity is early to mid 40 years. Most of her life was spent in the Philadelphia Zoo, where I myself saw her on a trip with one of my younger brothers some years ago. Petal was scheduled to be moved to a new home at the Pittsburgh Zoo International Conservation Center later this summer, along with two other two elephants that shared space with her in the exhibit. The two elephants,  Kallie and Bette, are 24 and 25 and have spent almost their entire life with Petal. They will still make the move to Pittsburgh, which was determined was necessary to give the elephants appropriate living and roaming space.

Literally. I thought this article from nj.com was very cool and I wanted to Share Some Good Stuff.

If you’re like me, you’ve probably heard of the MilkBone company. They make doggie treats. What I didn’t know is what a very charitable, generous company they are. In 1997 MilkBone started a program called Canine Heroes, which is a nationwide program that provides assistance dogs to people with physical disabilities and provides dogs trained to detect bombs and drugs to law enforcement agencies. In celebration of MilkBones 100th anniversary, this month the company has donated another million dollars to the Canine Heroes program. Canine Heroes is an expensive program to run, so that money will be put to good use.

Canine Assistants are dogs are placed with people with disabilities and/or other special needs. The program has for types of dogs - service, companion, hearing and seizure response. People that receive an assistance dog also receive free pet food and veterinary care for life. It is estimated that the cost to train one dog is over $12,000 and the training can take more than a year. The article included brief interviews with two New Jersey families who have been fortunate enough to receive Canine Assistants.

MilkBone’s Police Dog program helps place police dogs into communities with little or no cost to the community receiving the dog. In eleven years the Police dog program has sponsored more than 450 police dogs across the country, for a nationwide benefit that’s worth more then $2 million. MilkBone also donated $5,000 to a local NJ Sheriff’s department Canine Assistance program, as well as partnering with Petsmart in donating a Dalmation to the department.

This article touched me on a number of different levels. I liked it enough that I spent some time on the Milkbone Heroes site reading about the programs. The article is a fabulous story about a program that touches many lives. The program is quite interesting, and needed. This is a great human interest story but it also hit home for me on a personal level, as I have a son with special needs. I really enjoyed watching the video on the Canine Assistants site. To watch it just click the words Our Inspiration.  What you see is truly inspiring and heart warming. It’s good stuff.

Several weeks ago I helped my Mom take her dogs to the nearby Petsmart because they offered shots for pets. When we got there we found a store employee helping manage the line, a woman assisting the vet, and the vet himself. After finishing we were talking with the woman that had assisted. We asked where the vet practiced, and she said he no longer had a practice and that he just traveled to different places for the shot clinics. That made me wonder if instead of being a DVM (doctor of veterinary medicine) if he might be a KVM (kinda veterinary man). Why would someone go to the trouble to get all of that education only to travel from store to store giving shots? Surely he isn’t making all that much, since the shots were pretty cheap. Anyone?

I read today on CNN about the largest ever beef recall in the United States. 143 million pounds of frozen beef have been ordered to be recalled by the US Department of Agriculture. The frozen beef all came from the Westland Hallmark Meat Company slaughterhouse in Southern California that mistreated the cattle. Video was taken undercover showing the abuse of downed (sick and crippled) cattle. By law, downed cattle are not to be allowed into the food supply because they have a higher risk of being contaminated by E. coli, salmonella and mad cow disease because they have weak immune systems and are unable to get out of their own waste. When cattle can no longer move around on their own the vet is supposed to be called to inspect them. As these cows were not properly inspected, they were declared not fit for human consumption. Fedeeral authorities have suspended operations at the slaughterhouse while the investigation goes on. The article includes some of the undercover video footage, which I watched part of and found so very disturbing and cruel that I had to stop it. This is the list of products in the recall of beef products from the Westland Hallmark Meat Company.