Oklahoma Puppy Mill Dogs Get Second Chance
You may remember a horrible puppy mill situation in Oklahoma. The good news is that many of the rescued dogs are now getting their first chance at happiness.
The Dumb Friends League recently received 98 dogs from the Humane Society of Grove and Grand Lake, Inc., in Delaware County, Oklahoma . These dogs – primarily miniature poodles and some spaniel mixes – were taken from a puppy mill last Friday near the Arkansas state line.
It is truly saddening how these little dogs were treated. Not only were they confined in small filthy cages all of their lives, but the owner actually left them for over a week with no food and some didn’t have access to water. Sadly nine of the dogs were already dead by the time rescue came. Now thanks to the efforts of The Dumb Friends League, they are receiving TLC, socialization and medical care. Soon they will be up for adoption into loving families!
Please visit their site and consider making a donation, or maybe some room in your homes, for these deserving little dogs.
Music For Pets and People
Musician Jamie Glaser has released a CD called Music for Pets and People. His guitar work has been heard on TV shows such as Seinfeld, Married With Children and movies like Pretty Woman and JFK. He has also recorded with Jean Luc Ponty, Manhattan Transfer,Lenny White and Chick Corea, Bryan Adams, Iggy Pop, and Poison on TV. Right now Jamie composes music for Animal Planet, Espn, History Channel and Discovery as well as providing the music for network sports shows.
However, the greatest thing about his work is that he is helping animals with donations from his CD sales. Donations from the sale of Jamie’s CD go to Best Friends Animal Society, Forchinate Chins (a chinchilla rescue) and Chintuition, (a chinchilla rescue) and Primates Inc (a fund for animals who are adopted from the horrible animal testing industry).
I was lucky enough to get a copy of his Music For Pets and People, along with Animal Songs. I really enjoyed the Music for Pets and People, I had it on in the background while working, and our bird was chirping happily to the music.
If you want to get a copy for yourself (and maybe for the animal lover in your life), please visit Jamie’s website where you can also hear sample songs. When you purchase the CD through his website, you also get the bonus Animal Songs CD, which is a collection of fun and funky songs that kids would love!
Thanks Jamie for supporting animals with your music! Keep up the great work!
Alex and Me Giveaway
I have a copy of the book, Alex and Me, to give to one lucky reader!
On September 6, 2007, an African Grey parrot named Alex died prematurely at age thirty-one. His last words to his owner, Irene Pepperberg, were “You be good. I love you.”
What would normally be a quiet, very private event was, in Alex’s case, headline news. Over the thirty years they had worked together, Alex and Irene had become famous—two pioneers who opened an unprecedented window into the hidden yet vast world of animal minds. Alex’s brain was the size of a shelled walnut, and when Irene and Alex first met, birds were not believed to possess any potential for language, consciousness, or anything remotely comparable to human intelligence. Yet, over the years, Alex proved many things. He could add. He could sound out words. He understood concepts like bigger, smaller, more, fewer, and none. He was capable of thought and intention. Together, Alex and Irene uncovered a startling reality: We live in a world populated by thinking, conscious creatures.The fame that resulted was extraordinary. Yet there was a side to their relationship that never made the papers. They were emotionally connected to one another. They shared a deep bond far beyond science. Alex missed Irene when she was away. He was jealous when she paid attention to other parrots, or even people. He liked to show her who was boss. He loved to dance. He sometimes became bored by the repetition of his tests, and played jokes on her. Sometimes they sniped at each other. Yet nearly every day, they each said, “I love you.”
Alex and Irene stayed together through thick and thin—despite sneers from experts, extraordinary financial sacrifices, and a nomadic existence from one university to another. The story of their thirty-year adventure is equally a landmark of scientific achievement and of an unforgettable human-animal bond.
Would you like a chance to win?
- Leave a comment on this post before 9:00pm (MST) on November 7th, 2008.
- You may leave a comment each day until the giveaway ends.
- Let us know why you would like to win the book!
- The winner will be chosen at random and contacted by email. They will then have 3 days to respond, otherwise a new winner will be chosen.
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Please come back and leave a comment for each of the extra entries that you participate in. Thanks and good luck
*this giveaway is now closed*
Keep your pets safe at Halloween
We love Halloween around our home, in fact, you could even say it is our favorite holiday. However, there are some things about Halloween that aren’t so great for pets. Some pets get very scared by all the noise of trick-or-treaters, and of course chocolate isn’t good for them either. The ASPCA has a great post about how to keep your pet safe this Halloween (and other times of the year too)!
No Chocolate: Even if your pet has a sweet tooth, ingesting chocolate—especially baker’s and dark chocolate—can be dangerous for dogs and cats, possibly causing vomiting, diarrhea, hyperactivity and even seizures.
No Sweets for the Sweet: Candies containing the artificial sweetener xylitol can be poisonous to dogs. Even small amounts can cause a sudden drop in blood sugar, which leads to depression, lack of coordination and seizures.
Dangerous Décor: Keep wires and cords from electric lights and other decorations out of reach. If chewed, your pet could experience damage to his mouth from shards of glass or plastic, or receive a possibly life-threatening electrical shock.
Don’t Play with Fire: Keep your pets away from jack-o-lanterns with lit candles inside—knocking the pumpkin over can easily cause a fire. And curious kittens can get burned or singed by candle flames.
Costume Caution: Please don’t put your pet in a costume unless you know that he or she loves it. Costumes can cause skin irritations, obstruct a pet’s vision or impede his breathing.
Please be sure to keep your pet safe this Halloween! I would also add, be sure that you know exactly where your dog, cat, or other pet, is during the holiday. It would be far too easy for them to run out of the house during all the opening and closing of doors for trick-or-treaters. Halloween is a particularly dangerous time because there are some people out there that want to cause harm to animals for various reasons. Please keep them safe so you can all have a happy Halloween!
Puppy Love
There is a new web series from L Studio called Puppy Love! Not only does the series feature a slew of cute pups, it also features Famke Janssen, Ally Sheedy, Kristen Johnston, Sarah Paulson and more. The series was created by Amy Harris, writer of Sex and the City, so if you’re a fan, chances are you’ll like this as well! You can watch the “Puppy Love, Unleashed” promo video below! Looks like it could be a cute series.
Holiday Gift Guide, Pets Included!
If you are like us, we consider our pets to be part of the family. And that means that they get gifts on Christmas morning, just like the humans!
On our other site, Wish List Worthy, we are hosting a “Holiday Gift Guide” and we have some spots open. We would love to see some pet related products in the guide, so if you have a company that makes or sells great goods for animals, come check it out and grab a spot! Thanks!
Dogs helping dogs!
I got this great follow up to a video that we posted for Kim. If you remember, the winner was going to get $1000 for their animal charity! Well, they won!
When Park&Co President Park Howell announced we were hosting our first ever employees Film Festival competition, where our self-produced videos would be uploaded to You Tube for the world to see – AND the only strategy to win was to get the highest number of clicks – I knew instantly how to do it. Not just because I run the Film, Video and TV Department and have a lot of good friends in the biz who would surely help, but I’m also an animal nut. And what subject above any other gets forwarded by emails? Yep. Cute animal videos. I knew my good friends Sabrina, Courtney and Heidi – aka the Account Executive Team extraordinaire - would also be thinking along the same lines, so who better to team up with than them. We called ourselves the Bad Ass Babes. After Park’s meeting, we sat in Courtney’s office for about 30 minutes and had the whole plan laid out… A :30 parody of a Gap commercial, using dogs to lip sync to the words of Depeche Mode’s “I Just Can’t Get Enough”.
We started planning the shoot and called our friends; the Valley’s best DPs, Editors and Grips, and then we thought “how are we going to pay these guys?” and that’s when the masterstroke struck. We’d use the $1000 prize money and donate it to an animal charity. Our video would be forwarded to the world with the subject line “Dogs Helping Dogs”
The day of our shoot arrived and the dogs were bathed, brushed and made ready for the camera. We came into the Park&Co offices armed with peanut butter, carrots, cookies and yummy snacks with a good ‘crunch’. We built a very simple set and our good friend Howie Meyer, also a dog lover, started shooting. After a fun morning and several jars of Skippy later, it was in the can…. The tape was duped and the master sent to David Yasuda in CA who had agreed to do the edit.
We couldn’t wait to see how the piece had cut together, when David’s email came in with the QuickTime file attached, the girls got together, we played the video and knew we had a winner!
The race was on! The official opening to the Film Festival. All the videos were played and awards were given out for amongst others, Best Cinematography, Best Actor/Actress and Best Direction. I was struck by Kara Lebovitz’s fabulous piece called “The Method of Rhythm” and had a distinct feeling she would be our hottest competition…. We were then set free to our offices to upload the videos onto You Tube and to start spreading the word. Sabrina constructed a great email to accompany the link and out it went. “Dogs Helping Dogs” in the subject line, and our pledge of $1000 to charity if our video got the most clicks in our company competition… We posted it to every person in our work and personal address books, Sabrina posted it to her Facebook, Courtney and Heidi followed suit and we watched the numbers climb. We knew the boys in Interactive had plenty of clout in the social media forum, so we identified blogs and websites dedicated to animals, and within 2 weeks our video was being viewed in countries as far and wide as South Africa, The Netherlands and Australia, with links on the following:
1. AZ Central - MCDMOM Blog (AZ)
2. Animal Blog UK
3. Dogster.com
4. Odd Todd Blog (NYC)
5. Paul Linford Blog (UK)
6. Superhond (Netherlands)
7. (Still) Living in Oz Blog
8. SOS Animals Launge (Animal Rescue blog)
9. Facebook.com
10. Myspace.com
11. 4 The Love of Animals blog
12. Yahoo! Buzz, which posted it on animal lovers My Yahoo! sitesWe also had numerous dog-related Yahoo! groups working with us. Sending out daily reminders to their members to click the video. Rhodesian Ridgebacks are featured heavily in the piece and breed groups around the world started to take ownership of the piece and joined forces with us to ensure the dog’s video would win… Our team of 4 had grown tenfold and our viewings surged ahead, and after a 4-week posting, we ended up with 8350 clicks, with our nearest competition over 7000 clicks behind us!
We had won! Our $1000 will be donated to The Arizona Animal Welfare League/SPCA the state’s oldest and largest no-kill shelter which provides temporary homes for nearly 2,000 dogs and cats every year and offers medical and behavioral treatment for those in need.
Thank you to all our friends, family and the animal lovers who helped us with this great cause. And thank you Park, for the idea of the Film Festival which facilitated this donation. We are sincerely grateful.
Congrats to you! And I am happy to know that the animals are going to benefit from your creative video!
