Archive for August, 2008»
Each year, GoodDogz.org hosts our Spooky Pooch costume contest and then everyone marches in the Vienna Halloween Parade. The parade draws over 30,000 spectators each year and the dressed dogs is always a crowd pleaser! The event will be held in Vienna, VA around 7PM on 10/29/08. We’ll have spooktacular goodie bags and prizes for our winners. Please come out, have a great time and support homeless dogs! Sign-up today!
Animal Advocacy Radio
I just saw this post about a new animal advocacy radio station – Animal Voices. I haven’t listened to it yet, but it looks like it could be a winner. What a cool way to get the word out about animal welfare!
This just in…Best Friends Animal Society has helped to save 1000+ puppy mill dogs from a mill in Parkersburg, WV. They desperately need help. Kudos to Best Friends for helping to give these dogs a second chance at a happy life. Here’s the article in full.
Talking Pets? Oh My!
This was so weird and fun that I had to share. Enjoy!
You may have already heard of this, but I just ran across PetMD.com. I’d love to get the opinion of others on this site. The interface and graphics are nice, but unfortunately the look and feel greatly exceed the functionality. For example, there were only four vets in my zip code and the neighboring zip code didn’t even exist. I looked up diarrhea (as my Jack Russell does indeed have diarrhea) and all I got was a laundry list of diseases that my dog could have – ranging the gambit of stomach flu to conditions I’ve never even heard of. I guess if you’re going to mimic a dynamic service like WebMD.com, you might want to beef up your resources first.
A new service was also launched recently called Webvet.com. Again, the site is slick and contains a lot of information. I had a hard time navigating the many, many links, so I punted and searched for diarrhea. I received a lot of results, but in that same “laundry list of conditions” fashion, it was hard to narrow down what’s wrong with my dog. Webvet.com seemed to have more information than PetMD.com and with a little tweaking to their symptom checker – it could be a great resource.
With that said, all pet owners need to remember – if your pet is sick or hurt, take him/her to your vet. Tools like this are certainly helpful, but it’s better to be safe than sorry.
My husband and I were having brunch yesterday and reading the Washington Post. We were both disturbed and disappointed to read that during a suspected drug bust, Prince George’s county sheriffs shot and killed PG county mayor Cheye Calvo’s two Labrador retrievers, Payton and Chase, one while it was running to a back room to get away. A sheriff’s spokesperson stated that “deputies on the scene felt threatened by the pets.”
I have a lot of respect for police and what they do. I certainly wouldn’t want to do that kind of work and I appreciate the risks involved. However, I find it very sad that officers would have felt a need to shoot and kill two dogs that meant them absolutely no harm.
In the article, it is mentioned that Calvo’s mother-in-law was home when the suspicious package was delivered (by an undercover police officer). She chose to not open the door and asked that the package be left on the porch. If she had opened the door, would the police have shot her too?
When I was in high school, we lived in a quiet suburban neighborhood in FL and much to our alarm, their was a house where drugs were being sold down the street. Police raided the house and the first thing they did was shoot and kill the rottweiler that lived in the house. The suspects weren’t even home.
Maybe someone can explain to me – why was it necessary to shoot and kill two Labrador retrievers? I can understand that if the dogs were attacking the officer there being a need to use force to subdue the dogs. But, one was running away. Is it just me, or does this seem terribly wrong?