Tag Archives: dogs

LET’S MAKE EVERY SINGLE DAY PUPPY MILL AWARENESS DAY

Before I get into the title subject of this blog post, I am sharing a link to a review I wrote of Ann Keniston’s newest poetry collection Somatic. It was published in the beautiful journal Under a Warm Green Linden: Review of SOMATIC by Ann KenistonThese poems are sometimes historical and public and sometimes about her private grief for her mother and father. The poet works with the forms ode and elegy in a way that questions how the forms function.

Puppy Mill Awareness Day (was September 19, 2020)

When my daughter was young she became aware of puppy mills and was horrified by the plight of especially the breeder dogs, the mamas. After that, every argument paper she wrote for school was an argument against puppy mills in one way or another. She came at it from a different direction each time. I wish I had thought to save the papers and put them together into a binder. The thing is: she was right. Puppy mills are horrid places, especially for those mother dogs because they never get to leave until they have been “used up” and thrown away.

While Puppy Mill Awareness Day was technically two days ago, I wanted to post this today to suggest that every single day should be puppy mill awareness day.

Tell your friends: if they are set on a certain breed dog, have them search for rescues that focus on those breeds.

The only dogs I’ve ever owned have been mutts literally found on the street–or in the case of my childhood dog, in the lake. Three of my granddogs are rescues. Two are mixed breed and both cute as a bug’s ear. One of them is a “purebred” Jack Russell whose original owner was going to march him off to the county kill shelter when he was sixteen years old. Both purebred dogs and mixed breeds need rescuing.

These are my “granddogs.”

Riley

Riley is the baby. She’ll be a year old at the beginning of next month. She lives with my daughter and her fiance and her sister, kitty Izzie.

Gary

Gary is the senior. He’s 18 1/2 now and acts like a puppy. He lives with my son and DIL and his brother, doggie Theo, and brother, kitty Meesker, as well as sister, kitty Lily.

Theo

Theo is an adorable and fur-challenged piece of work who lives with Gary, Meesker, Lily, and his mom and dad.

Here is some important and fascinating information copied from the Puppy Mill Awareness Day website HERE.

What is a Puppy Mill?

1. The term, Puppy Mill is a slang term. It defines a place where dogs are bred for profit. Little or no thought is given to the health, temperment, or quality of the breeding dogs or offspring. A commercial breeding facility would be such a place.

Commercial breeding facilities are USDA regulated and the dogs are defined as livestock. Being the fact that they are livestock, they do not have to be cared for as we care for our personal pets. They live in small cages, or hutches much like a rabbit hutch and never stand on solid ground. Many dogs live their entire lives like this with little human contact. When the dogs no longer “produce” they are usually destroyed.

2. When did this practice start?

Soon after WWII, when the midwest crops failed, the USDA presented the idea of breeding pure bred puppies as a cash crop. The number of puppy mills have been growing ever since.

3. How are these puppies sold?

Many commercial breeding facilities sell their puppies through a “Broker” or Class B dealer. Breeders will sell litters to brokers, such as the Hunte Corporation.
The broker will then ship orders to pet stores. It is their job to make sure the puppies are in that adorable 6-8 week old stage so the pet store can make the most money selling them. Other methods are internet sales, classified sales, farm markets or simply a sign out front.

4. If my puppy has AKC papers, it means its healthy right?

NO. It means that the breeder registered the litter with the AKC. AKC is a registry body. A registration certificate identifies the dog as the offspring of a known sire and dam, born on a known date. It in no way indicates the quality or state of health of the dog. Just because your puppy has AKC papers does not mean that your puppies parents are healthy or kept in a humane manner.

5. When it is time to look for a family dog, where should we look?

PMAD always promotes adoption. Our country shelters kill 6-8 MILLION dogs and cats each year, not because they are sick, or aggressive, simply because there are not enough homes. Many are housebroken, trained and excellent with children. They end up in the shelter because of family problems, such as divorce, loss of job, relocation, death in family, allergies, etc.

We suggest adopting from your local animal shelter, your local animal rescue, Or petfinder.org when adding a furry companion to your home. By adopting, your teaching your children that life is important. You are teaching compassion.

New subjects:

Daughter and her fiance have rescheduled their wedding, hoping to get it far enough out from the pandemic. Now it is scheduled for 2022!!! That’s a long time to wait, but the upside is that I have plenty of time to find a dress and shoe combo that will work for all my ailments, complaints, and preferences LOL!

Have you read the latest Louise Penny Armand Gamache mystery, All the Devils Are Here? Wow, I loved it. I’ve read each book, all in order (thank you,  WJ), and the one before this, A Better Man, was a stinker IMO.  But now she is back on track! I hope her next book will be a quarantine Gamache.

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Filed under #amrevising, #AmWriting, #writerslife, Cats and Other Animals, Nonfiction, Writing

Let’s Hope This is the Last Pet Post for Some Time

This is a weird post to write after I’ve been telling you about the pets that have been part of my life.

By the way, I’m going to interrupt myself. In my twenties and into my thirties, we had two dogs. The first one my mother-in-law found downtown Kalamazoo. That first night, the pup had to sleep in her car in the garage because of the old dog my in-laws owned. It was early December, but my MIL made the car quite comfortable and warm enough for the pup out there. By day two, my MIL had given her to us. The gardener named her Muffin. Actually that was sort of a compromise. He wanted to name her Muffy or Scruffy or something undistinguished like that. I wanted a more complex and respectable name, but had to settle on the over-used name Muffin.

A couple of years later, I was waiting on a customer in our luggage store downtown when I saw another scruffy mutt run down the sidewalk. I grabbed a dog biscuit that I happened to keep in the drawer under the cash register and followed the dog down the street. When he hid under a car in a parking lot, I had to crawl under there in my newish khaki skirt (grrrr). I pulled him out and took him back to the store. The rest is history. I named him Oliver because he gulped down the only thing we had in the fridge, which I think was milk (not good for a dog’s tummy, I know).  “Please, sir, I want some MORE!” (Oliver Twist from the musical Oliver)

These dogs were groomed together, so they began to look a little bit alike.  They were both very well-loved. I found over 25 stray dogs over that period of my life, but located other homes for the rest of them.

When our kids were babies, these dogs were the most efficient vacuum cleaners, especially under the high chair and the kitchen table.

OK, I’m going back to what I wanted to tell you to begin with. I quit my volunteer job at the animal shelter! I’ve been there five or six years and love what I do there. There was a political situation, and I left to show solidarity with the most amazing HUMAN HERO FOR CATS. So that is that. It’s too Covidy out and about for me now, so I will have to wait to find a new shelter. That doesn’t mean I can’t help out as I see little ways to do so. It’s pretty devastating for me personally, but even more so for the cats at the shelter. I worry about them although they will certainly be better off than on the street or in abusive situations. I’m sad.

 

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Filed under Cats and Other Animals, Memoir, Nonfiction

Cute Faces for Healing

After that exhausting (or exciting, as Kate put it) end to the year, I got sick and have been sick for a week now. So I am posting a couple of cute pix to make your day. I know just looking at them makes me feel better.

This is my grandcat Isabella Rose, or Izzie, I have been babysitting for a week. My daughter’s photo is in the background. She cuddles her first kitty, Macavity. He was our first family cat, one she BEGGED for :). He passed away in 2015. Longtime readers might remember when he was sick and passed away a month after my father died.

I am not watching the new puppy, Riley. The care of a puppy on top of seven cats (mine plus Izzie) would be too much for me, so she is with a pet sitter who is studying to be a dog trainer. Maybe she’ll be potty trained when my daughter and her fiance get home!

 

Just to prove that I actually brought my pillows to the couch and tried to rest, I am posting a photo of Perry comforting me. Every time I coughed he got a little rattled. If you look carefully just beyond me you can see Pear Blossom curled up next to me. See her whiskers?

May your holidays be all that you could hope for. Much love to all!

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Filed under #writerlife, #writerslife, Cats and Other Animals, Nonfiction

Cute Enough?

Here is a photo of the cutest puppy you have ever seen.

Why, yes, she is my new granddogter!!! This one belongs to daughter and her boyfriend. That makes six furry grandchildren (and no furless ones). Three dogs and three cats.  This one is a little  too young for me to watch. She cries all night long, and I am bloody exhausted. (I admit to coopting swear words from another culture–what of it?!) Mom has gone home (we did have fun), but it’s such a busy time of the year and work just goes on and on ET CETERA.

You can tell how tired I am from the upper case.

This sweetie’s name is Riley, named after Lincoln Riley, the amazing and young (born in ’83) Oklahoma head football coach.  BOOMER SOONER.

Hope you have a good week. Mine is going to be very jam-packed. I hope yours is just the right amount of excitement and activity.

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Filed under Cats and Other Animals