Be the Change for Pets

You've probably noticed my little Petfinder widget in the right-hand sidebar. Well, as you can see, Sunday marks the start of Adopt-a-Less-Adoptable-Pet Week. The event was created by Petfinder.com in order to help encourage the adoption of "less desirable" pets. What kinds of pets fall into that category? Seniors, those with special needs, certain breeds and colors of animals. In fact, Petfinder surveyed their adoption groups to reveal which animals are the hardest to place and here are their results.

I myself have a "less desirable" pet - a big, black dog. I have always been drawn to black dogs of all breeds (maybe because my first dog, Ziggy, was a black Cocker Spaniel) so Garfunkel caught my eye immediately when Robert and I looked at his litter. When I asked the 'litter monitor' if he was a popular guy (after all, how could he not be?!), I was told that he was not. In fact, he was the least popular - a runt of his litter and shy to boot. Well, you know me - I love all things underdog!!! :o) So that just sealed the deal. We love Garfunkel to bits, of course, shy, black, big and all. But for every person who compliments us on his coat or his physique, there is a person who thinks he is intimidating, scary, mean or vicious. For some, the fact that he is a rescue dog just compounds the prejudice; people have visions of all rescue dogs being abused animals with deep-seated emotional problems. Luckily, there are lots of great rescue dog ambassadors out there (who have fewer idiosyncrasies than Funk!) to show them just how wrong they are. Just because a dog isn't perfect doesn't mean they're not perfect for you.

I read about Adopt-a-Less-Desirable-Pet Week at Pawcurious. Dr. V went to the BlogPaws event in Denver last week and BlogPaws, via Be the Change for Pets, is encouraging all bloggers to highlight a "less desirable" pet in their area. I'll be doing just that in a separate post; for now, I just wanted to share with you a few interesting videos I've discovered while researching BlogPaws and Be the Change for Pets over the past couple days. (I'm well aware that most of you won't be interested in this and that's totally fine. I won't take it personally. :o) But I was touched by these videos and felt it important to pass them along.)

First up is a video of the keynote speaker at the BlogPaws conference. His name is Mike Arms and he is the President and CEO of the Helen Woodward Animal Center in San Diego. His speech is about 35 minutes long and I enjoyed the entire thing; he's just so passionate about what he does and has all sorts of ideas to help eliminate shelters and shelter killings. There is a particularly moving story about that at the 26-minute mark (the person reading the letter is Dr. V, in case you care). You can read the same story here (Dr. V doesn't get through the entire thing) but I must warn you - it's VERY difficult to get through. I blubbered through it and the rest of the video. It makes its point, though, that's for sure.

(The video starts @ 10:35; the keynote speaker begins @ 13:50)

While you are still teary, you can watch this tribute to the Search and Rescue dogs of 09/11. (Why did the dogs not get masks like the humans?! Poor things. And why do bagpipes make everything seem so much sadder? Yeesh. Actually, the conference video also has a little story 09/11 - about a guide dog that helped a man on the 86th floor of the WTC. You can find it @ 34:23.)

To cheer yourself up a bit, here's a video of before and after shots of various shelter dogs. Volunteer Seth Casteel professionally photographs shelter dogs to give them a better chance of finding a forever home. SO SWEET!

Of course, after I spent so much time watching such heart-tugging videos, Robert came home from work to find me a big pile of goo on the office floor. I don't know why I do this to myself! I am a Sucker (note the capital S).