For years now I have been taking in rescues and finding them homes. When Buddy showed up on my doorstep things were no different.   We  took him in. We trained him, and set out to find him a good home.  At the same time I had a litter of pups to rehome.

That was when I met Penny who called me to ask if she could come and view the pups. When I asked her why she was getting a dog, she told me that she and her husband had been trying for a long time to have a baby and God just wasn’t blessing them with one.  They would give their love to a dog instead.

She had come to look at puppies but Buddy needed a home, so I asked her if she would be interested in adopting an older dog, and introduced them. It was love at first sight! Buddy went home with them .  Six months after adopting Buddy, the baby they  had waited so long for was on the way.  Baby Brygette was born nine months later.  Shortly after her birth it was discovered that she had a rare and possibly fatal disease. Buddy stayed by their side, always there when they needed comfort.

On December 29th, 2009 four days after Christmas Buddy lost his battle with cancer. The family was devastated.   “How are we ever going to get through this without our BUD BUD?”  They knew what the love of a good dog could bring them, and they had lost that good dog.

Why not give them one of Buddie’s pups? Two of them were still with me. They were three years old now, and were good gentle dogs.  They  chose Bowser,  the male, something about him reminded them of their Buddy.  Bowser is still here with us in foster care. When Brygette recovers from her bone marrow transplant surgery Bowser will go home with her.

They could have bought a puppy from a breeder or a pet store, but for the second time they have chosen a rescue. That is because they know that when you share your life with a dog who truly needs you, great things happen.

Have you been thinking of getting a dog? A Cat? Take our advice, adopt don’t buy. There are wonderful dogs and cats waiting for you at every shelter in the country. Adopting saves lives!

Until Tomorrow Remember,

BE THE CHANGE

Janette

Bowser waits for Brygette to be released from hospital. The Lamberts want nothing more than to bring their daughter and their dog home and get on with life.

I spent the day with dogs yesterday. There is of course no place I would rather have been, but unfortunately my outing was not fun based. From around 1 p.m until after five, I spoke with pit bull owners from all over Ontario who had gathered at Coronation Park on the shore of Lake Ontario in Toronto. As I said while there was laughing and music and playing with dogs, we had gathered together to support Bill 222. A bill introduced into provincial parliament by MPP Cheri DeNovo in an attempt to get the provincial government to repeal Bill 132 which was made law five years ago. Bill 132 restricted ownership of pit bull or pit bull type dogs in Ontario. Ontario’s definition of pit bull is, anyof the following: 

American Staffordshire Bull Terrier or mix, Staffordshire Bull Terrier or mix, American Pit Bull or mix or dog resembling any of the above mentioned dogs or mixes thereof.

Breed Specific Legislation (BSL) is what the government calls it animal lovers, rescuers, and advocates call it canine profiling. Ontario’s BSL has been responsible for the deaths of many dogs which in itself in inexcusable, but it has also been responsible for the seizure, incarceration and in some cases death of dogs that were clearly non pit breeds.

Joseph Branco learned this first hand when on January 13 of this year his 2 year old boxer/American bulldog mix Brittany was seized from his home after being erroneously identified as a pit bull. Brittany’s life was put in danger and continues to be affected by canine profiling.  Branco tells us his story with the help of friend, animal rescuer, and activist Ciaron Lewis in the following video clip.

BSL leads to Canine profiling and that puts dogs lives in danger.

For more information on K9 profiling and why BSL needs to be stopped go to:  stopk9profiling.com Canadians need to know what sort of threat BSL can prove to ALL breeds of dog! You owe it to yourself to check it out!

Until Tomorrow Remember,

BE THE CHANGE

Janette

:

FOSTERING SAVES LIVES!

Dear friends,

Today we are going to try something that, as far as we know it has never been done before, something that just a few years ago it could have never been attempted without a massive advertising expenditure.

Please read carefully and at the end, PLEASE SHARE.

One of the most challenging aspects of our mission is to find foster homes. A network of foster homes is absolutely essential for the good functioning of any rescue organization.

A foster home is, a temporary home where the animal gets chance to recover from the stress of being in a shelter or abandoned. Additionally, the foster volunteer has the opportunity to work with the animal to introduce him to family living (if its a puppy or a kitten) or to correct some of the behavior problems that may have led to him being abandoned.

Quite simply: Fostering Saves Lives.

So this is what we are going to do here today. Today we are going to use our entire network to build up our network of foster homes.

To do this we are going to need YOUR help. I need you to do three things:

1. Please feel free to use our poster, Foster Saves Lifes as avatar in your Facebook profile. You can just save the picture in this post. Alternatively you can download the small version HERE

2. We need to have the involvement of your trusted veterinarians in this campaign. For this I would like you to download the Hig-Resolution Poster HERE, print it (in colour please) and ask your veterinary clinic to put it in its announcement board. I understand this may be a bit too cumbersome to some, but it is the fastest and most efficient way to have an inmediate distribution of this poster all over the world. It will also help us establish a link with our members’ trusted vets all over the world.

DOWNLOAD HI-RES POSTER HERE

3. Finally, I need you to share this post with your own networks. You can share it on your wall, you can email it, it doesn’t really matter, but I need you to please become personally involved in this campaign. We cannot do this alone we need you. The animals need you. PLEASE SHARE.

This campaign is being launched in our Global, USA, Canada, French, German and Turkish networks simultaneously and the homes will be available to our friends at Soi Dog / Let’s Adopt (Thailand), that are doing such an incredible job in the Far East.

If you would like to have the poster designed in your language to be used in your veterinary clinics, just drop me a quick email on viktor@myletsadopt.com and I’ll make sure it gets translated.

Come on.. let’s get to work.. this is very exciting! Help us build a truly global foster home network.

Fostering Saves Lives!.. Let’s get to work! That’s what we do! Save Lives!

Start fostering today!. Contact me on: viktor@myletsadopt.com

Viktor

Related articles by Zemanta

• Former stray dog’s story earns him a spot in national contest (knoxnews.com)
• The furry side of foster care (mysanantonio.com)
• Foster Home (socialactions.net)
• Pet Tip of the Week: Becoming a Foster (Dog) Parent (gloucestercitynews.net)

With the millions of cats and dogs killed each year across the world, the question is “can you love some more?” Can you open your heart and your home to adopt another cat or dog?

More than sharing their stories and their photos, THEY NEED HOMES.

Will you step up?

Think how the numbers would change if everyone who says they are an animal lover adopted a cat or dog from a rescue or a shelter.

Think of the impact and the lives saved.

Please… think about it, then step up and love some more.

If you compare the number of animals killed in a community shelter to the city’s population of people, it requires only a small percentage of people to empty a shelter of it’s healthy, adoptable animals.

For example: say you live in a city where there are 285,000 people. And say the average family consists of four people. 285,000 divided by 4 = 71,250 families.

Say your local shelter kills 2500 animals in a year. 2500 animals divided by 71,250 families = .035. That number represents the percentage of households needed to save all the shelter animals euthanized in a year in our sample community. — 3.5% of the community’s households.

This sample was generated from the actual numbers for 2009 from an actual Canadian city.

Add another percentage and I bet the area rescues will be empty, too.

When you look at it that way, you can begin to get your head around how needless the killing really is.

Please SHARE this post and let’s find that 3.5%.

As you head into your weekend to hang out with your friends and family, please tell them about these companions still in need of a home. It’s just a matter of luck — whether good or bad — that has created their homelessness.

Buster and Patches took it into their own hands to save their own lives by breaking out of the barn; Bentley was discarded after a divorce; and Stary was left behind when his family moved out. You can read their stories by clicking on their names.

We can change their lives. We can help them start a new life in a new home. Please SHARE their stories.

Buster and Patches

Currently living in the Moose Jaw area
Since settling into their foster home, they have become more confident and independent. It seems they will do okay separated and so we are looking for a home that will adopt either one or both of them. They have been vetted, are current on their vaccinations and are neutered. They are ready to start a new life as Canadians!

.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

Bentley

Currently living in Vancouver
UPDATE: Bentley has been adopted! Bentley is a very loving boy, but he still has some issues of insecurity and occasional outbursts towards other cats and dogs. He loves people. He needs a special home that will help him adjust. The by-product of a divorce, he was tossed out when the Mrs. left. We need to find foster and/or an adoptive home for beautiful Bentley.

.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

Stary (formerly known as Stray Guy)

Currently living in Ottawa
Stary has been neutered and vetted. He is current on his vaccinations, however he has tested positive for Feline immunodeficiency virus (FIV). This is not a death sentence! His immune system is compromised so he has to be treated quickly if a secondary infection occurs. Here is a link to the Cornell University College of Veterinary Medicine’s webpage about FIV that explain FIV. So far, he has shown a love of everything and everybody. I think he is genuinely happy to be off the streets.

.  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .  .

If you are interested in fostering/adopting, please contact me.

I believe that inspiration is a release of positive qualities that already exist inside us. They are triggered by any number of things. One great inspiration for me is music. I can listen to a song for a long time and be moved by the rhythms of it without even hearing the words. Another day, the words come through to me and it’s a whole new song.

When you watch a movie, there is a soundtrack playing in the background throughout its length. So it only makes sense that we should have a soundtrack playing all the time in our everyday lives. Think how often a song intersects with an event and forever that song comes to serve as a reminder of that event or the feelings from that event. Even many years later. Powerful, eh? Yes, music inspires and instills.

This week, the senior dog at my house — Lacey — passed away. She had arthritis so crippling that she stopped walking on her own about three years ago and I became her legs. But don’t feel sorry for her because she did not skip a beat. I slid her onto a large piece of canvas and dragged her wherever she wanted to go: to the bedroom, to her pee pad, to the living room. I built a ramp for her so she could go out into the backyard. She would have expected nothing less from me and I did not even think twice about it. Dragging that 100 pounds of gentleness around as much as I did in a day was probably the most exercise I got some days.

The Eddie Vedder song, The Long Road, came on the stereo just before Lacey passed away. I was laying against her on the floor and could tell her time with me was getting short. Her soul had not left her body yet and I was telling her about everyone that was waiting for her: her brother Charley, her sister-friend Taylor, baby Paketo, lovely Layla… I was encouraging her to let go. I asked her to please keep an eye on us, but told her it was okay for her to let go now.

We all walk the long road. Cannot stay…
There’s no need to say goodbye…

Lacey passed with me beside her while it was playing.

For the history of it… I found Charley and Lacey as young pups, a couple months old. I saw them down by the old wooden bridge on my way to work one morning. Seems someone may have been aiming for the creek with them, but the creek was dry. Often when a dog is “dumped,” they stay where they were dumped waiting for their family to come back and get them. They were still waiting when I came home from work that evening.

I pulled over and started talking to them. They looked nothing alike. Charley was an orange-tan color and, in later years, I called him Charley Tan the Man. Lacey was mostly black with some Australian Shepherd ticking on her hind legs that looked like lace, thus Lacey. They seemed so happy to have someone to talk to — just two roley-poley balls of puppiness. After we talked a bit, I asked them if they would like to come home with me. They tilted their head sideways — as they had done through much of our conversation — then ran over and jumped in the car.

That was more than fifteen years ago. I lost Charley to cancer about a year and a half ago.

I am constantly awed by how moved we are by animals — our own pets, internet videos of birds mothering kittens, squirrels playing with cats, deer playing with dogs, and even mosquito fish and dragonflies frolicking in a spray of water from the hose.

One of my fondest memories is of a dog I named Walter that had been dumped on a corner near me. Long story short, he came to live with the woman next door who has a horse. We had a particularly heavy rain one evening and I felt so bad for Magoo, the horse, because he had no shelter except a tree to go under. I guess Walter was feeling the same sadness because he came out of his doghouse and stood outside the fence but as close to Magoo as he could get and the two endured the storm together.

With regards to animals, I see it as my responsibility to help them where needed. Sometimes I wonder if we have just misunderstood our place in this world all along. Perhaps we are here to serve them — and not vice-versa. But maybe at some point we mutinied to overcome that position and haven’t looked back.

But perhaps we should look back. We are all essentially climbing the same mountain, but from different sides, different angles and different perspectives. However each side, each angle and each perspective allows us opportunity to offer our hand to another in need. It is simply the kind thing to do and it is the right thing… even if there is nothing tangible in it for us.

The Native people of North America believe that it is the animals in your life that will decide if you enter heaven when the time comes. My joy is the thought that I will see so the many friendly faces whom I have known in my lifetime and miss terribly. Hopefully, they will invite me in.

Of Lacey’s passing this week, a friend wrote: she is not gone, she has just gone ahead.

I believe that.

I don’t know that I can inspire you as such, but I will ask you to open your heart to being inspired. And once inspired, follow the feeling, follow your heart. Then you are being true to yourself. And therein lies the good.

Please keep our homeless animals in your thoughts and do something for them everyday — SHARE their stories, ADOPT from a shelter or rescue, FOSTER a pet in need, VOLUNTEER an hour a week to a shelter or rescue, RECYCLE your gently used towels and such, DONATE a bag of food each month or every week, SPONSOR an animal in need, GIVE a monetary donation perhaps on a monthly basis. Step up. Every little bit does help.

Have a great weekend.

Ciao. Holly

ps… just curious. What song inspires you?