Is the end near for Class B Dealers? RT @change Pets Still Being Sold to Research http://bit.ly/cmlLrb #

The ceremony is two weeks away, sign the petition against awarding Michael Vick the Ed Block Courage Award http://bit.ly/b130aO #

Dogs Perform Civic Duty as Courtroom Companions http://bit.ly/dtckcg #

RT @colsonwhitehead: Last Nite on #LOST “It’s a lighthouse.” “How is it we’ve never seen it before?” “They make it up as they go along,… #

Prince Charles says wool is “green,”but what about sheep’s impact on the environment & the cruelty of the biz? http://bit.ly/9kZrTN #

Happy Spay Day! If you know any animals who still need to be spayed and neutered, today is the day to get ‘er done! http://bit.ly/aV5aMK #

I know CCF is a front group, I get advocacy, & I’m not anti-HSUS, so if the HSUS defensiveness looks bad to me, how does it look to others? #

HSUS shouldn’t spend so much energy denying CCF. It’s started to have a “thou dost protest too much” feel and I know how sketchy CCF is. #

Sooo…it’s okay to keep factory farming if we take away the ability to feel pain? RT @change Pain-free Farm Animals? http://bit.ly/cNjsZS #

Read the rest of this entry »

I’m experimenting with some tools to link my blog and my Twitter account, so this weekly link roundup might go through a few makeovers until I settle on one that I like.

Why am I doing this? Mostly because when I find random interesting links (okay, not totally random … they’re usually animal-related), they tend to go through Twitter even if they don’t make it to the blog.

I also tweet my favorite Change.org stories, so this roundup will put them all in one place if you’re not already following the Animals blog on Change.org (which you should be!).

Now, for this past week’s Twitter Roundup…

Dickens’ Dog Collar In NYC Dog Art Auction http://bit.ly/b7zRL8 #

Is it really about the dogs? Westminster Show-n-Tell http://bit.ly/9GTOfT #

@sujathahampton ’s debut novel out today! As It Was Written http://bit.ly/bfphZG #

The Newest Addition to Your Reading List: Go buy this book:Sujatha Hampton’s debut novel, As It Was Written, is … http://bit.ly/c5WQkM #

Round one of Ideas for Change ends tomorrow, so cast your vote! RT @change What Would You Change for Animals? http://bit.ly/cMKPeD #

Fur is not okay…but neither are death threats: Olympic Skater and Anti-Fur Advocates on Thin Ice http://bit.ly/9RA9RH #

Read the rest of this entry »

Go buy this book:

Sujatha Hampton’s debut novel, As It Was Written, is in stores today. Here’s the blurb:
The epic journey of an Indian-American family which unfolds when men and women, Hindus and Catholics, histories and curses, collide.

In McLean, Virginia, Dr. Raman Nair lives a life of abounding satisfaction with his tiny wife, Jaya, and his harem of enormous and beautiful daughters. He has been away from his native Kerala, India for so long that he has happily forgotten the ancient Brahmin curse that follows his family like a black cloud, killing one girl for love in every generation. But his wife hasn’t forgotten, nor has his baby sister, Gita. Suddenly his daughters are up to no good and Dr. Raman Nair doesn’t know which way to turn.

This book is fantastic. Trust me, it’s well worth reading. Go buy it, then let me know what you think.

Martin Matheny, one of my fellow bloggers over at Change.org, posted about a new gizmo from Mattel that will tweet for your dog. “Puppy Tweets” attaches to your dog’s collar and when she is within range of your computer, it will generate and upload one of 500 pre-programmed Twitter messages.

Here’s why this waste of $29.99 misses the point, whether you’re tweeting for your dog, your writing career, or any other reason:

1) Pre-programmed messages are great … if you want to have a really lame account. Twitter is about interesting soundbytes: sharing bits of who you are, what you’re interested in, and how you see the world. Not only do Mattel’s messages not fit any of those criteria, but 500 options are likely to get old really fast (especially when they’re sure to be scintillating quotes like “OMG, I love squirrels!”)

2) Dogs don’t care about Twitter. They don’t care about sharing their thoughts online. They don’t want to talk about the squirrel, they want you to take them outside so they can chase it. The moral of the story: Don’t forget the real world. As you get caught up in social media, don’t sacrifice your relationship with your dog, or your writing, or the world outside of your office.

3) What’s the point? It can be connecting with friends or fans, or building a character’s online presence, or being an activist, but it has to be more than sharing your own thoughts for your own amusement. No one likes a narcissist, human or canine. The people who do a decent job tweeting as their dog are sharing information and insight into a dog’s world, versus attempting to actually give their dog a voice on Twitter. And, again, what makes all of this interesting is your unique perspective, not the canned response from some gadget.

4) Social networking is about being social and building a network. One-sided, pre-programmed messages don’t do the trick. You (or your dog) need to be available to respond and react to what’s happening in the Twitterverse.

If you can’t dedicate a few seconds to post a tweet, as your dog or yourself, it’s not worth being on Twitter. So be interesting, be unique, be interactive, and save the $29.99. Or, better yet, donate the money to your local animal shelter to help the dogs still looking for a home where they can set up a Twitter account.

Anyone who does animal rescue needs to see the documentary Mine, about people trying to reunite with their pets in the wake of Hurricane Katrina. Even if you don’t have animals, it’s a powerful statement on perseverance, how humans treat each other, and the meaning of home. For rescuers, it’s a powerful magnifying glass about the ways people are affected by animal rescue.

Before I saw the film, I wrote about the premise for the documentary over on the Change.org blog. I thought it could tell an important story about the connection between people and their pets, particularly in crisis situations, and the complications of custody battles. It did. But it also told the story of how people are treated when it comes to animal rescue. And it’s not always pretty.

People in rescue don’t have a ton of resources and usually don’t have much information on the animals we’re rescuing. We get in, we help the animal, we get out. Then we move on to trying to find the animal a good home so we can help more because the pool of animals in need is bottomless. As a group, we’re doing the best we can with what we have.

On the whole, we are a very judgmental group. Even those of us who try to keep an open mind tend to read between the lines of an animal’s situation and assume we know the type of people who caused it. We’ve seen enough abuse and abandonment to have good reason to be cynical. Our fellow humans rarely get the benefit of the doubt.

Mine highlights a group of people who suffered from these judgments. Hurricane Katrina was a unique situation in many ways, but the way people were treated was not. Read the rest of this entry »

Last week, a hunter in California was shot by his Labrador retriever.

The man set down his gun to retrieve some duck decoys a few yards away. That’s when the dog stepped on the shotgun, disengaged the safety, and fired at her companion a la Dick Cheney.

One headline on this story read: Hunting dog triggers shotgun, hits master. I wonder how they think “master” is defined… 

Photo credit: Termin8er