A New Leash on Life; NFL player dedicates himself to helping animals

This is just such a wonderful story I had to share it. It's so nice to see a professional athlete doing something so good and so selfless and not seeking any acknowledgment for it.

Someone I know, after reading this, commented that it would be wonderful if each NFL team had a player or a group of players who would get together and do something similar in their towns ... what a positive impact that would have in the lives of animals and their communities, not to mention great PR for the football teams, who could definitely use it. Hint, hint :)

Help!

A great YouTube video with an even better message.



If you can't keep your pet from reproducing, please have them spayed or neutered. A disturbingly high number of "oops" litters and "free" pets end up abused, homeless or euthanized. Don't bring a life into this world that you aren't prepared to be responsible for, for life.

Snow!

I took this video with my palm PDA and it was late in the day with very little light so please forgive the low picture quality, but I thought that Indy's fans might enjoy seeing him and his best dog pal Hercules frolicking in the snow.

Profound Thought for the Day

"The small percentage of dogs that bite people is monumental proof that it is the most benign, forgiving creature on earth."

-William H. Koehler

Merry Christmas!

Indy had quite a Christmas and is resting soundly now. On Christmas eve he opened presents from his Secret Santa, he received three plush squeaky toys, one that looks like an orange doll, one that looks like a blue elephant, it's ears crinkle too, and one that looks like a shaggy puppy. He's busy learning their names. I try to give most of his toys names so that I can tell him to go fetch something, he's very smart, I would say 95% of the time he gets it right, the other five percent of the time I think he's jut feeling lazy and goes for the nearest item or the item he'd rather play with. He also received a red plaid collar cover and some beef tendon chews, which he absolutely loves.

Indy has been completely overindulged this Christmas, he's tasted yogurt covered pretzels, maple bacon, maple ham, sweet bread, pineapple and a few other naughty things.

We went for a run this afternoon and met up with his buddy Hercules, they hadn't seen each other in a few weeks, you'd think it had been years the way they carried on. In their initial exuberance to greet one another, they took Hercules' owner right off his feet, luckily the snow made for a soft landing. They must have wrestled and played keep away for a solid hour before the humans had frozen toes and fingers and decided enough was enough. The boys were in no way ready to end their play time. Between the two of them, they really are the friendliest, happiest dogs I've ever met. They both simply exude the joy of being alive and being a dog.

They met up with a third dog who was relatively friendly, Indy took a lack of outright hostility as an act of friendship and tried to follow the new dog home, gleefully ignoring his recall command and running circles around me, obviously not ready for play time to end. Tomorrow, back to boot camp for Indy, doggy training 101.

For now, we're all stuffed silly on ham and I'm the last one awake in a very quiet house full of critters sleeping off full bellies, it is unusually peaceful.

However you celebrate this time of year, I hope it was a good one for you and your family. Here's looking forward to a new year!

The beach

On Sunday Indy and I visited Grand Mere State Park on Lake Michigan. It was rainy off and on, but thankfully, by the time we reached the beach it had cleared up.

Grand Mere is a pretty state park, very undeveloped ... a little too undeveloped if you ask me. There were no signs directing people to the beach, or anywhere really, just tons of well worn trails that wandered off in every direction ... through miles of very high sand dunes. Needless to say, Indy and I wandered off in the wrong direction ... after aimlessly climbing and descending multiple sand dunes I fully expected to see water by the time I reached the summit of the monster size darn near vertical climb sand dune, only to be met by a view of another dune, and another one after that. Clearly, I had gone the wrong direction, so we started back tracking, a tiny bit lost, but eventually made it back to the car, hot, sweaty and swearing, I realized my keys had fallen out of my pocket, so, back we went, to climb those damn dunes all over again. I found my keys but I officially HATE sand dunes :) I griped at Indy for not being a tracking dog and for pulling on his leash the whole darn time (the trails weren't wide enough for heeling). Eventually we saw someone else on the trail and followed him to the beach, which was lovely. Indy did what can only be described as frolicking, those of you have have labs, know what I'm talking about. We played fetch, well, I said "fetch" he thought I said, "keep away", typical. In his usual joyous fashion, he bounded right up to a big female Shepard type dog, got in her face, taunted her with his toy, trying to induce play time ... the big doofus doesn't have a clue how to approach protective dogs. She growled and pitched a fit, luckily nothing more .. one of these days Indy is going to get himself into trouble because he doesn't understand why anyone wouldn't love him. Then our friend Ivy, the 11 pound Shi' Tzu bullier of big dogs arrived to put Indy in his place.

In order to be respectable dogs they had to play keep away with an old fish skeleton they found on the beach, yum. Indy dug a big hole in the beach as Ivy supervised and chased the flying sand. Poor Ivy must have required some serious bath time when she got home that night. Luckily Indy is a wash & wear dog, a nice hot shower and he's ready to go. Then I just have to clean the mud off and sand off every surface in the bathroom.

We left the beach happy and exhausted. Indy slept the whole way home, one happy and content lab.

Burma

Today I am participating in the global "Free Burma" blogging movement. In keeping with the subject of this blog, we have at left a black lab wearing red in support of today's "Free Burma" movement (not my photo, it was post on Flickr for the use of bloggers today).

If you're anything like me, you've heard short blurbs about the problems in Myanmar on the radio and you think, "oh that's sad", but you don't really know what's going on, and honestly, don't dwell on it for more than a few seconds. Let's take some time out today to learn about the problems facing Burma, why the monks are protesting, how the government is retaliating and what the international community is doing about it.

ko htike's blog (warning, disturbing, graphic pictures)

BBC's Country Profile: Burma

BBC: Monks trying to Escape Rangoon

BBC: Sanctions' limited effect in Burma

BBC: UN Envoy holds key Burmese talks

AP: Myanmar Junta steps up propaganda

An example of the Burmese government's propaganda

Burma Digest (blog)

Raw Story shows smuggled CNN video of the violence in Burma

A letter from inside Burma after the Internet has been blocked

Allergies

Well, Indy got to go see the vet yesterday. He was tickled pink, going to vet is like going to Disneyland for him, all the smells, sights, new people and animals ... did I mention smells? He always reverts to his hyperactive puppy from hell behavior when we go to the vet, bouncing all over the place, whole body wagging, typical lab "smile" from ear to ear, tongue hanging out, happy as can be. Though labs in this state can be downright aggravating with their over exuberance, they absolutely exude the joy of life, and everyone present smiles despite themselves.

Indy has been an itchy, sneezy dog since we got him a year ago, he had a noticeable worse spell in the spring where you could hear him clearing his throat and he sneezed and scratched and nibbled even more than usual, but I really didn't want to put him on drugs unless it was necessary, so we went into wait and see mode, and things seemed to improve. I've been supplementing his diet with fish body oil capsules and a little vitamin E, his coat became even softer and shinier, but it still seemed like he scratched more than a normal dog and with the arrival of fall, his severe itchiness has returned. He was nibbling so hard he had marks and little pustules on his skin, easily visible on his belly and inner hind legs. He was scratching his ears all the time and they were starting to look a bit pink. The diagnoses is mild atopy or atopic dermatitis. We're trying out Hydroxyzine Hcl 50mg twice per day. It's a prescription antihistamine and should be more than enough to give him relief from mild allergies. There was a noticeable difference within an hour or two of the first pill, I only saw him scratch once all night and no nibbles or rolling around on his back. The vet said that he would probably get drowsy on this medicine, I don't mind saying, that sounded rather appealing at the time :) It didn't happen though, he was wide awake and his wild and crazy self. By this morning, 12 hours later, it was clear that he was ready for his second dose as the aggressive scratching had returned. That's to be expected, it's not a cure, it just offers some relief from the symptoms. I really don't care for the idea of keeping my pets on medication long term, so hopefully (fingers crossed) this drug will only be needed to get him through allergy season.

Sleepy Kitty

Ok, this has nothing to do with dogs, but Indy and I are kitty lovers too and this was just a great video, had to share ...

Achieving a low kill shelter

I'm going to take this opportunity to plug Nathan Winograd's blog because I feel very strongly that he's on the right track when it comes to animal welfare and reducing the number of animals killed in shelters each day.

The average person doesn't have any idea how shelters are really being run or what's wrong with the system. Winograd's works are a good introduction to that world and what really can be done about it. We do not have to kill nearly as many animals as we do each year, there is a humane solution and it is not limited to just spay and neuter programs.

You may also want to check out his book, Redemption.

Before you journey into this world, I should warn you, there is a polarizing battle going on between animal rights and animal welfare organizations, and what most people don't know, is that there is a significant difference between the two.

To keep this short and sweet, but certainly not without my own bias, animal rights refers to organizations such as PETA, The Animal Liberation Front and the Humane Society of the United States (which has absolutely nothing to do with your local humane society shelter). These organizations raise a great deal of money and spend almost all of it on advertising, programs to promote veganism (even for our carnivorous pets) and to influence law makers. The HSUS does not operate a single shelter, anywhere, yet they raise millions every year and have one hell of a PR department. PETA, raises millions per year and is under investigation by the FBI for fraud and terrorist related activities, they own one shelter, where the kill rate is over 90%. Remember all that money PETA raised to help the animal victims of Katrina and Michael Vick's pit bulls? Yeah, if you read the fine print, that doesn't actually go to rescue and rehab efforts, it gets reinvested into public education programs, like when PETA does presentations in public schools to promote veganism and discourage pet ownership, or like when they handed out "buckets of blood" to children as they left KFC restaurants, or the development of video games that promote their ideals. The ALF is a known terrorist organization with very close ties to PETA, that proudly proclaims they support violence against humans as an acceptable method of coercion in the "liberation" of all animals. Incidentally, these organizations have members who have released people's pets from their crates or fenced in enclosures and/or killed well loved and cared for pets in the name of "liberation". The leaders of these organizations have publicly declared that they seek the extinction of the domestic animal .. no more pet ownership period. No working dogs, no police dogs, no service dogs, no search and rescue dogs. They would like to achieve this through mandatory spay/neuter laws, and breed specific regulation (outlawing just about every breed of cat and dog you can imagine) that in the course of a few generations would eliminate pets. By the way, they also want to eliminate livestock and have all humans subsist on a vegan diet. You can also forget about insulin for diabetics and most medical research and technology. These organizations support legislation that would make you the guardian of your pet rather than the owner, which at first glance sounds sweet, but what it really means is that you give up your rights to that animal, your right to decide what is best for your pet, what to feed them, what kind of veterinary care to get, whether they are spayed or neutered, whether you compete in dog shows or sports, whether you dog wears a sweater and boots or not. Guardianship means that you and your vet may not be the ones who decide when it's time to humanely euthanize a suffering pet. It means that someone could sue you on behalf of your pet for perceived abuse. Before you nod your head, thinking that's a good thing, remember all of the nut cases out there. Recently a man was turned in to animal control for taking his healthy, happy, energetic, hunting dog running with him (off leash, the dog was running of his own free will), the accuser stated that dogs should not run, and to let them do so is tantamount to abuse (Every vet, breeder and animal trainer on the planet just cringed in unison). Animal control dealt with the crackpot appropriately, but keep in mind that if animal guardianship comes about, those kind of claims will have to be taken seriously under the law.

Animal welfare refers to anyone interested in preventing animal abuse, promoting responsible ownership and running no/low-kill shelters and rescues. These are the moderates, the people who truly love animals, who keep pets of their own, who save lives. These are the people who spent their own money and risked their own lives entering New Orleans to rescue cats and dogs before it was too late. These are the people who are deserving of your donations, volunteer efforts, moral and political support.

Now, if you don't believe me, want citations, want to read the same information in a coherent format :) or just want to learn more, I'm going to provide you with a very short list of links, just to get you started. A quick Google search would probably give you enough reading material to keep you busy for the next ten years ...

http://www.petakillsanimals.com/

http://www.dogpolitics.com/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l9ijLulwUTY

http://www.naiaonline.org/body/animal_welfare.htm

http://www.fatpet.com/elvessa/rights.html

http://www.nokillnow.com/PETAIngridNewkirkResign.htm

http://www.undueinfluence.com/peta.htm

http://www.stlzoo.org/pressroom/zoointhenews/petacommentary.htm

http://www.consumerfreedom.com/news_detail.cfm/headline/1706

http://animalscam.com/references/peta_fbi1.cfm