Eleven-year-old Max is not just a dog. He’s like another member of Donna Gardner’s family.
“You have to know Max. He’s a very smart dog and he just does things that I don’t think a normal dog does all the time,” said Gardner.

The chocolate Lab proved that a couple of weeks ago. Gardner ran an errand and took Max with her. When she came home a short time later, she went inside the house, forgetting Max was still in the car.

“I came in and started cleaning and about an hour later I heard a horn blow,” said Gardner.

She went outside, but didn’t see anybody. “So I came back in the house and I started cleaning again and the horn blew again.”

This time, she saw Max sitting in her driver’s seat.

“I rushed over and got him out real fast and he was panting like crazy. I brought him in the house and he just dropped to the floor,” Gardner said.

Gardner gave him water and cooled him down. Her daughter called the vet who said Max was a little weak, a little slow but otherwise OK.

“Number 1… Max saved his own life by honking the horn to get himself out of a very, very overheated car. Number 2, the Gardners are such good pet owners that they looked at him first. They managed to get his temperature down a little bit before they got here,” said Nancy Soares with the Macungie Animal Hospital.

“I don’t know whatever made me forget he was with me,” added Gardner.

Meanwhile, Gardner says she will never make that mistake again and hopes this serves as a lesson to other pet parents.

Source: WWLP

But not all is grim. Hundreds of shelters have opened dog and cat food pantries designed to help the financially disabled and their pets weather the economic downturn together.

Donations include bags of cat and dog food destined to help keep the less fortunate pets from going hungry during this holiday season. People who obviously love and want to keep their pets are able to bring them to shelters, where they will at least have food.

The financial emergencies that have brought them to the shelters are temporary: a job loss, foreclosure, serious injury, house fire, or some other financial setback that has left them unable to provide for their pets while they are struggling to get back on their feet.

Shelters are setting aside an area for pet food banks meant for dog and cat owners who can demonstrate financial need. Donations are solicited from more affluent animal lovers to fill up the shelves.

The goal is that when an emergency strikes an individual or a family with animals, there will be the resources to help tide over the less fortunate with appropriate pet foods.

For example, when people were bombarded by tornadoes this last spring, there was a tremendous need for emergency rations for pets owned by people who lost their homes and/or their livelihoods as a result. Many donors, some of them corporate, rose to the occasion, and money and donated pet food designated for the tornado victims poured in.

Across the nation, from Massachusetts to Texas to California , pet food pantries are finding that there is a tremendous need for the emergency rations they provide.

When Animal Care Services in Sacramento , CA opened its pet food bank, more than 500 low-income pet owners showed up for help during the first four months. The shelter relies on donations to provide the needed kibble.

Occasionally, corporations like Halo, the pet food company that counts actress and animal lover Ellen DeGeneres among its owners, help out with large donations that supplement those contributed by local animal lovers.

That’s what happened in Sacramento, where Halo, Purely for Pets, donated enough Spot’s Stew to provide 5,000 meals for animals in two shelters: the local SPCA and Animal Care Services.

Another example of organizations helping pets is the website Freekibble.com, which runs a promotion where individuals can go to answer pet-related trivia questions and, in the process, earn “kibble” that is donated to pet food pantries across that nation.

Individuals are a crucial part of the effort to keep food pantries alive and well stocked. Even those who cannot afford to help by donating food can still offer support, simply by showing up with donations in hand.

“Twenty minutes after she put it on, she lost it,” the New York Post quoted Ward Landrigan, the former head of Sotheby’s jewelry division who sold the 55.95-carat pearl to Burton for 37,000 dollars in 1969.

After Burton bought the bauble for Taylor, Landrigan traveled from New York to Las Vegas, where he was picked up in a white Rolls Royce at the airport to deliver the precious cargo to the glamorous couple at a Caesars Palace suite “the size of three tennis courts.”

“They asked what I wanted to drink,” recalled Landrigan, who’d sold Burton the 33.19-carat Krupp diamond a year earlier.

“I asked what they were having, and they said salty dogs, which is vodka and clam juice,” he stated.

Landrigan presented the pearl and was chatting with Burton while Taylor left to try it on. She “came back running, showing her cleavage and saying, ‘Ward! I’ve lost the pearl!’

“The room had pink shag carpeting, and I was crawling past a settee when I saw one of [Taylor's] two Lhasa Apsos, and I heard the crunch. I said, ‘Liz, I know where the pearl is,’ ” Landrigan revealed.

The pampered pooch apparently wanted the treasure for a quick snack.

Landrigan, who owns the fine jewelry company, Verdura, says Liz grabbed the dog and put her hand into its mouth.

“She got the dog to spit it out. I was afraid it cracked because pearls do,” he told us, adding that it suffered only a couple of scratches.

Taylor then had Cartier make a diamond-and-ruby necklace for the pearl.

The full piece was auctioned this past week at Christie’s and sold to an anonymous buyer.

For example, 40 billboards in Los Angeles this month encourage people to fight puppy mills by boycotting pet stores and websites that sell puppies. More than 50,000 people have signed a pledge on the ASPCA’s website vowing to uphold the boycott, and the ASPCA has an online database of targeted stores at nopetstorepuppies.com encouraging consumers to shop elsewhere. Consumers can also report a store to the ASPCA, and the organization will verify the source of its puppies, Menkin said.

“We are not just saying `Don’t buy a puppy,’ but `Don’t buy anything in a pet store that sells puppies,” said Cori Menkin, senior director of the ASPCA’s anti-puppy mills campaign. “If pet stores are not able to turn a profit, they will stop selling puppies.”

The Humane Society of the United States, Best Friends Animal Society and many other groups are promoting similar initiatives.

As malls and chains drop the commercial sale of puppies, one change for consumers is an increase in convenient locations for shelter adoptions.

In October, Jack’s Pets announced they would no longer sell puppies at their 27 stores in Ohio, Kentucky and Indiana. They are working with shelters to offer in-store adoptions instead. Major chains like PetSmart Inc. and Petco Animal Supplies Inc. stopped selling dogs and cats several years ago, partnering with local shelters and rescues on weekend adoption events. Best Friends has helped several traditional pet stores convert to shelter sales.

Macerich Co., a regional shopping mall company, recently announced a ban on traditional pet stores at its 70 malls. Instead, at the company’s mall in Lakewood, Calif., shoppers will find a store called Adopt & Shop, which gets its animals from the Southeast Area Animal Control Authority shelter. On Nov. 25, the store celebrated its 500th adoption, said Aimee Gilbreath, executive director of Found Animals, the organization that runs and subsidizes Adopt & Shop.

Some pet store owners say they’re being unfairly maligned.

Jens Larsen, who owns Perfect Pets in Littleton, Colo., is on the ASPCA list and says it’s not right. He has been in business for 18 years, sold 1,600 puppies last year and has an A-plus rating with the Better Business Bureau. He gets 80 percent of his dogs from commercial breeders in Nebraska, 10 percent from breeders in Kansas and Oklahoma and 10 percent from two Colorado breeders, he said.

Some animal activists are “radical and fanatical and want to put me out of business,” he said. “I obey the law. So do my breeders and the kennels I deal with,” Larsen said.

Larsen says that when you are selling 100 puppies a month, there will occasionally be a case of kennel cough or a parasite, and every once in a while, something more serious. But he believes if his dogs were continually getting sick, word would spread and he’d be out of business.

About 2 million puppies are sold online and in U.S. pet stores every year, said Menkin.

The ASPCA and other animal welfare groups have popularized a negative image of commercial dog breeders in recent years, claiming that poor breeding practices and substandard conditions leave some animals with chronic physical ailments, genetic defects or fear of humans.

Whether it’s the impact of bad publicity or the recession cutting into purebred dog sales, the number of commercial dog breeders licensed by the U.S. Department of Agriculture is declining, from 3,486 in 2009, to 2,904 in 2010 and 2,205 in 2011, according to USDA spokesman Dave Sacks said.

Licenses in Missouri, with three times more breeders than any other state, dropped from 1,221 in 2009 to 745 this year, Sacks said. Iowa, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, Ohio and Indiana have between 100 and 300 licensed breeders. Sixteen states have none. Sacks says the USDA protects animals by making unannounced inspections of breeding facilities and by regulating food, care and housing for the animals.

Serina Brant believes her golden retriever, Ali, was a puppy mill dog. When Brant bought the 4-month-old pup 10 years ago from Perfect Pets for $400, Ali’s papers had numbers instead of names listed for parents. Her first trip to the vet cost $800 to treat giardia, fleas and eye infections, said Brant, of Littleton, Colo.

Two years later, the dog started limping. X-rays showed hip dysplasia. Surgery, at $12,000 for both hips, was an option but came without guarantees, so Brant chose to medicate the dog instead. Then Ali got arthritis.

For the last six years, Ali has to stop every 50 feet to rest. Because of the medication, “we don’t think she’s in pain,” said Brant. But over the years, the medicine has totaled $8,600.

“I am not going to put a dog down just because she’s defective. We have the money to provide for her so we will,” she said.

But next time she gets a dog, Brant says, she’ll adopt one from a shelter.

Dogs with PTSD may display a variety of different symptoms.  Some dogs will become hyper-vigilant, while others will become aggressive. Dogs may also become timid and reluctant to leave the side of the handler, or refuse to go into buildings where they once felt comfortable. Whatever the symptoms, the end result is the same: dogs stop performing the tasks they were trained to do.

Treating canine PTSD can be even more difficult than treating its human counterpart. Dogs can’t tell a counselor about the traumatic event they experienced, and unlike veterans suffering from PTSD, they can’t enlist the help of service dogs of their own. Treatment for some dogs can be as simple as giving them a break from patrol duty and providing some doggie R&R in the form of extra playtime.

The same medications used to treat humans with the disorder are being used in some dogs. Other dogs respond well to a training technique know as “desensitization counterconditioning.” In this kind of training, a dog will be rewarded if he remains calm when exposed to a sight or sound he has become sensitive to. The dog will be progressively moved closer to the source of the sound, and continue to be given treats, as long as he stays calm.

Like humans, not all dogs with PTSD respond to the available treatments. Military dogs that do not recover quickly are transferred to non-combat duties or retired from service.

While veterinarians and animal behaviorists have been treating dogs with these symptoms for years, they have only begun diagnosing dogs with canine PTSD recently. With more veterinarians starting to use this diagnosis, the number of military dogs diagnosed with canine PTSD is likely to continue to grow, and hopefully, treatment will become more available.

Chili making her rounds at Baylor

When she was a puppy, someone threw her over a fence onto concrete, breaking her back and cracking her pelvis. In many cases she would have been euthanized, but Chili’s vet called Jim and Bettye Baker, who run Oak Hill Animal Rescue. The organization specializes in rescuing animals that are scheduled to be euthanized. The Bakers estimate that since they started in 2006, they’ve found homes for at least 500 dogs that would otherwise have been put down.

Chili dragged herself around on her front legs until the Bakers found Eddie’s Wheels, which makes specialized wheelchairs for pets. Now, she has her own chair, and “She just flies in the thing,” according to Jim Baker.

Best of all, Chili is now a part of Baylor Hospital’s Animal-Assisted Therapy Program. She specializes in visiting patients who, like her, have mobility issues.

The Bakers also bring Arlo along.

Arlo has a degenerative spine disease, so common to Dachshunds because of their long backs, so he too gets around in a wheelchair.

In addition to their mobility challenges, both dogs have what Bettye Baker calls “plumbing problems.” Chili has to wear a diaper, and the Bakers have to help Arlo urinate. Despite all that, Chili and Arlo bring smiles to faces every time they visit Baylor, and inspire patients struggling with their own problems.

As Jim Baker says, “They’ve been a blessing to a lot of people.”

~Courtesy of Dog Blog – Dog Stuff

~Written by Dog Mom

Breeanna Brown, the placement coordinator for Young-Williams Animal Center, has a trip to New England planned for the weekend, but she won’t be traveling alone.

Along for the ride are 24 dogs and 16 puppies which will be dropped off at shelters in Connecticut and Massachusetts.

Although Young-Williams is overcrowded, Brown said many shelters in the Northeast need dogs.

“In our Northeast states, they are a few years ahead of us on spay and neuter programs,” Brown said. “They don’t have unwanted litters, so they are low on (adoptable dogs).”

The dogs who had been at the shelter the longest were chosen to participate in the journey.

No cats were allowed on the trip because there’s not a safe way to transport cats long distances without making them excessively stressed or sick, she said.

Brown hopes the trip is a reminder of the importance of animal adoption and the necessity of spaying and neutering pets. She said the simple surgery can lead to healthier pets who live longer lives.

The dogs were all loaded into crates and put in the “rover,” the large transport vehicle for the spay and neuter program at Young-Williams. They each got a toy for the ride, and Brown said they would get regular bathroom, food and water breaks.

Monica Brown, the shelter director for Young-Williams, will accompany Breeanna Brown on the journey.

“We’re confident they’re all happy, healthy animals,” Monica Brown said. “Once the wheels start running, they’ll all lay down and go to sleep like kids.”

If the experience goes well, Northeast Animal Shelter in Salem, Mass., has agreed to take 40 to 50 animals a month from Young-Williams.

The trip will be equally beneficial for Young-Williams because it will free up lots of space to take in new dogs from around the Knoxville area.

Rileigh Austerman has been volunteering at Young-Williams since June and said she’s gotten to know the dogs over the past months.

“I just hope they all get there safely and get adopted,” Austerman said while walking the dogs before they were crated. “All of them have been here for a while, and this is their second chance.”

The Knoxville branch of Erie Insurance sponsored the trip and is paying for all fuel costs associated with getting the dogs to New England.

~Courtesy of http://m.knoxnews.com

Of all the pit bulls in Michael Vick’s Bad Newz Kennels, Lucas was the baddest of them all — Mike Tyson, Hulk Hogan and a little Ray Lewis rolled into one, the grand champion, the most vicious of the vicious Vick dogs.

When his dog-fighting operation was busted, Vick was sent to prison and so, in a sense, was Lucas. The court shipped him and 21 of his fighting mates from Virginia to this sprawling, 3,800-acre animal sanctuary outside Kanab, with the stipulation that Lucas spend the rest of his days here. It was your basic life sentence.

That was in January 2008.

Nearly four years later, or 28 by his reckoning, Lucas is running the place.

Open the door to the executive offices, and there he is, a smile on his face, a lick on his lips, and eager anticipation of either a pet or a treat written all over his eyes.

Only the fading scars on his neck and face suggest that he was once the toughest, scariest and most-abused dog in Virginia.

On the day I made Lucas’s acquaintance, Judah Battista, the director of animal care at Best Friends, dropped by to talk about how life has gone for Lucas and the rest of the Vick dogs who were relocated to Utah.

While their rate of rehabilitation has varied, he reports that, to a dog, their progress has been consistent and resoundingly successful.

Six of the 21 fighters — Oliver, Mel, Cherry, Halle, Shadow and Handsome Dan — have been adopted and left Best Friends entirely. A seventh, Little Red, is in a foster home about to be adopted.

The rest are alive, well and thriving in Dogtown Heights, the Best Friends suburb that is home to about 400 dogs. (In all, some 1,700 animals, ranging from house cats to horses, are housed in the entire Best Friends Sanctuary at any given time).

That includes Lucas, who has become such a hit they bring him to the administration offices at least two days a week to keep the humans company.

To Judah, Lucas is Exhibit A in the argument that all dogs are good dogs if they’re treated well.

He grimaces when he thinks about what could have happened to Lucas and the rest of Vick’s pit bulls purely due to reputation.

Many people in authority wanted to euthanize all 49 dogs that were found in various states of neglect and abuse in the Bad Newz Kennels when it was first discovered that in addition to being a star quarterback in the National Football League, Michael Vick was also an illegal-dog-fighting promoter.

The conventional wisdom was that the dogs would never be able to recover. Putting them down was the most compassionate thing to do.

This wasn’t just non-dog people saying this. This was the opinion of many who belong to the Humane Society and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA).

But others, like the people at Best Friends, thought otherwise. And in the end, after considerable debate and cajoling, they mostly prevailed. Only a handful of the Vick dogs in the most critical condition were euthanized.

The rest were farmed out. Almost half of them came to Best Friends.

It brings a smile to Battista’s face to talk about how that’s turned out.

“Historically, dogs were punished or killed for the crimes of their owners,” he says. “There was a prevailing assumption that all dogs in these circumstances were innately vicious, rather than that the people who owned them and were responsible for them were innately vicious. It was very fear-based decision-making.

“But we knew that meanness wasn’t the summary of their nature,” he continues. “Using stereotypes doesn’t help anyone. They can all be rehabilitated. It just takes time and affection and attention.

“What we needed to prove was that man could be dog’s best friend as much as dogs could be man’s best friend.”

After that speech, Judah gave Lucas a treat.

And Lucas? He jumped in Judah’s lap and gobbled it down.

~Courtesy of Deseret News

However.. the Hawaiian humane society says it’s not giving up.

More than a dozen owners brought the dogs they adopted to play and see one another again since being rescued in February.

Many owners say they’ve seen a huge difference in their dogs compared to when they were first brought home.

“Little bit cowering very fragile the muscles weren’t developed for climbing stairs didn’t know how to walk on a leash so he’s come a long way,” says Andrea Choo, dog owner.
hoo’s dog died last year and so she decided to adopt Jordy.

She says since rescuing him, there have been some challenges because of his tough beginnings.

“He makes me laugh he just continues to want attention constantly but he definitely makes me laugh it’s fun to have a puppy again,” says Choo.

And Jordy wasn’t the only one who had a tough time adapting, Annie’s owner also experienced some challenges.

“She just didn’t know how to do normal things we had to actually teach her matter of fact the first time we put her on a leash she almost kind of crawled and I had kind of lift her and walk her a little bit at a time,” says Veronica Lum, dog owner.

About 230 dogs were rescued from Bradley International’s property in Waimanalo last February.

153 counts of animal cruelty charges were filed against Bradley.

The dogs were given up by the company.

But, with Bradley dissolving, the Hawaiian Humane Society says the case has become more challenging.

“We’re looking at different avenues but I will tell you with confidence that we’re not giving up and we won’t give up. If nothing else folks these dogs will never ever go back to that life and that’s what you have to remember. It doesn’t look good as far as restitution is concerned you know it cost the organization half a million dollars and it looks like we’re not going to get a penny and that’s very very disappointing ” says Keoni Vaughn, Hawaiian Humane Society.

The criminal case is set for trial in a Kaneohe courtroom December 12th.

~Courtesy of khon2.com