Penny – a Very Adoptable Dog!
I saw Penny’s picture posted on Facebook a few weeks ago. She was running out of time, set to be put down at the Alvin Animal Shelter in Texas. Penny had a sad history. As a puppy, she was picked up by BARC in Houston, Texas. BARC is notorious for being an extremely high kill “shelter,” where animals are placed in small cages and sit or lie in their own waste, and where over 1200 healthy, adoptable animals are killed every month. As you can imagine, BARC doesn’t make much of an effort to screen adopters. Penny was adopted by a family with a young son who wanted a dog. When the boy lost interest (yea, can you imagine?), a neighbor took Penny. Then Penny developed flea dermititis and started losing hair and scabbing all over, so the neighbor...
Read MoreRIP Humane Officer Jerry McCarthy
In 2011, I met Detective/Humane Officer Jerry McCarthy when he responded to my family’s complaints about animal abuse occurring at a house next to one of my father’s rental properties. He was truly compassionate and worked for several weeks to secure the safety of four adult dogs and two puppies who were tied up outside by the neck, neglected, and starving. I’ve kept pictures of one of the dogs in particular because my father adopted her and named her Ruby Red. Without Officer McCarthy’s efforts, this girl surely would have died (in the “starving” photos, she was still nursing puppies!). I kept in touch with Officer McCarthy after the rescue. He had his hands full working on cases involving everything from starved,...
Read MoreBeautiful Batik from Indonesia!
Through the magic of Twitter, I was very fortunate to meet a lovely friend from Indonesia. She’s very private and wouldn’t want me to use her name, but I can say that she is one of the kindest people that I’ve ever encountered. We met because we both use Twitter for animal rescue and welfare. She’s very devoted and manages to spread the word about animal abuse and mistreatment without the benefit of a computer. She only recently got a decent smart phone but she never let that stop her. On top of being an animal welfare advocate, she’s a loving mom and wife, and a business woman. I couldn’t admire her any more than I already do. She recently sent me the most beautiful gift from Indonesia. Here’s a picture of the box –...
Read MoreA new postcard!!
I love, love, love getting post cards in the mail. I don’t keep many things, but I do keep every single post card that I’ve ever received. Unfortunately, I don’t get too many any more! I guess that makes it even more special when I do get them. This new one is from Adam at The Happiness Plunge. I frequently feel pangs of jealousy that Adam is seeing the world and I’m not, but then I think about the fact that he’s doing so much good along the way. It also makes me happy that my friend is happy. This postcard is from Bagan, Myanmar and it’s extra special because he send it from Kerala, India. So I’ve got a picture of Myanmar with stamps from India. Check out Adam’s gorgeous picture of Bagan here. Take a look at...
Read MoreYou Don’t Have To Kill The Poinsettia
Dear Mom: Every year it’s the same with you and the poinsettias. Why do they have to die? Why? Growing up, I thought that poinsettias just died naturally after Christmas. Of course, I thought that the same was true of all of the plants on the porch in the summer, that something just happened at the end of September and the plants all died naturally. I realized, oh, sometime in college, that no, the plants don’t just die at the end of summer. No, you can actually keep watering them and bring them into the house and voila! They live! The same holds true for the summer vegetable garden. Tomato plants do produce tomatoes after August 1st, but for some reason, come August, you insist on terrorizing the vegetable plants and ripping them out of the garden,...
Read MoreTexas Puppy Mill Law Upheld
Every once in a while, Texas surprises me in a pleasant way. In 2011, the legislature passed, and Rick Perry signed, the Dog and Cat Breeders Act. The law requires state licensing and inspections of pet breeders who keep 11 or more breeding females or sell 20 or more puppies or kittens a year. It also establishes minimum standards for the humane handling, care, housing and transportation of dogs and cats by commercial breeders. The “Responsible Pet Owners Alliance” challenged the law, arguing that it violated the constitutional rights of breeders. The Federal Court disagreed and upheld the law. Article by the Texas Tribune here. Amusingly-titled article in the Dallas Morning News blog here. (Obviously, it’s all about those liberals in...
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