This week a story about a new program started in Arlington Virgina called Pets2Vets. The purpose is to pair veterans with homeless pets by arranging adoptions of shelter animals. It has made two or three matches a week since its start in October. Veterans at Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the D.C. Veterans Affairs Medical Center are adopting pets from the Washington Animal Rescue League, where staff help make the right match. It’s a win-win situation for the shelter and the vets, Dr. Weitzman said: “We provide them a healing environment, to continue their recovery, but they also help our animals, many of which are recovering from traumas themselves.” Another story includes news from a group of High School students who held a bake sale for homeless animals, read the full story here.

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This week a story about two Pittsburgh native girls who raised $1,200 by hosting game nights, ice cream socials and selling raffle tickets and baked goods around their township to help out local animals. All proceeds benefited a non-profit shelter, Animal Friends. Also, a story from the Daily Wag about one adoption advocate who was able to work diligently to save the life of a dog called Georgie.

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This is Part II of our Hero story about Kelsey & Sunny. You can read Part I here. Karma. This story happened earlier this summer, without much explanation or leads on who the criminal was that threw Sunny off the bridge. When Sunny was rescued she showed physical signs that indicated that she recently had puppies. Many backyard breeders force a female dog to mate, sell the puppies and then dispose of the mother, never facing justice. However this time would be different. Months later, the criminal who threw Sunny off the bridge, was caught when he was throwing two kittens down a sewer while admitting he was the same person who had thrown a dog off the bridge! (Read the full story here). When he was found guilty on 99 charges of animal cruelty (and is currently in custody in Louisville, KY) we couldn’t help but wonder, could he have been Sunny’s former owner, with Karma bringing him to justice?

This is a story of a true animal hero. Heroes are people like Kelsey and other folks that do the right thing and work to protect animals above all odds, even when it’s difficult. After Sunny’s rescue, Kelsey dedicated herself to teaching the community about animal cruelty and responsible pet ownership, including hosting a fundraising event at the restaurant, which she called: “Sunny Day: Shedding Light on Animal Cruelty.” There’s a lot of work that needs to be done on behalf of animals, but for now, this is one story closer that brings everyone hope that there is good in the world. Thanks Kelsey and Sunny!

Reposted with permission – HarleysMission.blogspot.com

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Hope. In the beginning 21 year-old Kelsey Westbrook was your average, hardworking student and part-time waitress at Joe’s Crab Shack, overlooking the Ohio River. She was a true animal friend, animal lover and dog parent. Little did she know that her life would change on an average day, on an average shift, in a not-so-average way. We read about Kelsey’s heartwarming story on an animal lover’s blog and have reposted it here to share with you!

During one of her shifts at the restaurant, Kelsey and her fellow employees heard a loud “splash!” Running out to the river and under the 80 foot bridge nearby they saw a helpless and stunned dog swimming anxiously in the cold water. Everyone started to wave the dog in and encouraged the frightened pooch to swim toward them. The Louisville Fire Department dive team was practicing nearby and rescued the dog. When they finally retrieved the dog out of the river, she started licking everyone and seemed relieved. Miraculously, the dog appeared to be unhurt. Kelsey took the dog home that day, and later, to a veterinarian who estimated that the pit bull was less than a year old. Kelsey planned to find the dog a good home, but changed her mind. “After a day, I thought, ‘Nope, she’s mine. I have to keep her,” says Kelsey.

Love. Perhaps it was destiny, fate or just a lucky day, but what brought this pair together was not average. According to many sources, USA Today, NY Times, BNET, The Star, and HSUS millions of dogs [and cats] are improperly and inhumanly killed around the world. According to the National Council on Pet Population Study and Policy, roughly 9.6 million animals are killed annually in the United States. Many of these fates occur at the shelters due to space issues, however many animals do not make it to the shelter and are not “humanely” killed.

This would have been Sunny’s fate, except she was in the right place at the right time, and so was Kelsey. Sunny was brought to her forever home and quickly bonded with her new canine sister and family.

But then, the day after Sunny’s harrowing rescue, Kelsey’s landlords notified her she had two days to remove Sunny from the apartment. Areté Real Estate, the company that owns Kelsey’s apartment complex, insisted pit bulls are a “vicious breed” and not allowed on the premises. Pitbulls get so much negative attention and even though this dog was saved and gratefully kissed everyone that was involved with her rescue, she was still considered a “vicious breed.” Even with all of the heat from her landlord, Kelsey vowed to be Sunny’s forever home and promised to do whatever it took to ensure Sunny’s safety and well-being, even if that meant finding a new place to live. But once again fate would smile on Sunny and Kelsey: while she was trying to negotiate with her old landlord, a new management company took over her building, and Sunny was welcome to stay.

Next Week, Part II: Karma.

Reposted with permission – HarleysMission.blogspot.com

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This week features a story of an adopted animal Bailey making new friends at Sunrise Living, a senior living community in Lombard Ill. Also, new laws are being proposed in snowy Colorado to cut down on puppy mills.

A task force is changing the rules for dog breeders in Colorado in an effort to crack down on so-called puppy mills without changing the law. Continue reading…

The Sunrise Senior Living community in Lombard has adopted Bailey, a 25-pound homeless beagle, as its resident therapy dog. The community opened in late September, and has 30 residents who now are Bailey’s new favorite companions. Bailey was found through an organization named A Cry For Help, which shelters battered or lost animals. Although most of his history is unclear, Bailey is known to be from Tennessee and approximately 3 years old.

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I don’t know about you, but if I hear anything else about Balloon Boy, I’m going to scream (Whew. I resisted the easy “I’m going to pop” pun). All the same, the smart part of my brain sees another side to this. Sure, I find the story annoying and the parents’ actions questionable at best, but at the same time I’m oddly intrigued and even (dare I say?) inspired. I mean, after all, Richard and Mayumi Heene allegedly orchestrated something that had an entire nation riveted, watching at the edge of our seats to see where the story would take us. They had us in the palm of their hands. Even after the incident was exposed as a hoax, they still had us all talking about it.

We in the animal welfare community could stand to take a lesson here. If Balloon Boy & Associates can garner this sort of wall-to-wall news coverage for a made-up story, shouldn’t we be able to drum up even a fraction of that? After all, our entire cause is life-and-death. What could be more dramatic? Unfortunately, because the issues of overpopulation, puppy mills, and shelter animals being put to death have been around for a long, long time, the media and the public seem to have become inured to them, and the coverage has become more and more humdrum. So what do we do? What can we learn from Balloon Boy?

1. People out there DO care… but they want to be entertained.

The world is full of people ready to drop everything they’re doing and park themselves in front of the television to see just what happens when a boy-filled balloon plummets back down to earth. Why? Because they care, sure. But more than that, it’s entertaining. It’s sensational. It’s human drama unfolding before their very eyes.

Think about the animals in your shelter or rescue group. So many of them have dramatic stories, but those stories go untold. Sure, maybe you write about each animal on your web site or on Adopt-a-Pet.com, but why not get them out to people who aren’t looking for a pet to adopt? There’s the dog whose owner died tragically, the one who was found shaved and painted, the one who became best friends with a hamster in his foster home, the cat who leads the blind dog around. Tell their stories in the most emotional, entertaining way you possibly can. We don’t always know the story behind each of the pets in our care, but let’s tell the stories of the ones we do know. Write a press release and get it out to local media (and national, too, if the story is compelling enough). Use Twitter and tweet out a link to the pet’s story on your site or use Adopt-a-Pet.com’s TwitterACritter feature to tweet links to your pets’ stories on Adopt-a-Pet.com.

2. Tell an unusual story.

The same old story can only be told so many times. The Balloon Boy story was nothing if not unusual. A boy accidentally taking off in a balloon his mad-scientist father made? Not a chance that story isn’t going to be picked up by the news… all of the news. Nobody had ever seen anything like it.

We have a little more of a challenge than Balloon Boy’s father had. After all, he was free to be as creative as he wanted to be because he was writing fiction. We are tethered by the bonds of reality, but we do still see unusual stories, don’t we? Open your eyes to the world in which you operate and develop radar for the strange, the beautiful, the coincidental, the inspiring stories that develop there. Understand that your world is more than just the pets currently in your care… extend your radar to include what happens to those pets after you adopt them out. Tell those stories to the media and social networks, and make sure to include a pro- pet-adoption spin and a promotion for your shelter in every story.

3. Tell the story in real time to allow the public to be a part of it.

This one is key. Balloon Boy is a compelling story no matter how you slice it, but imagine if we’d only found out about the story after the fact? The story would have been, “Worried family breathes sigh of relief after discovering their son wasn’t in soaring balloon as suspected.” A bit of a yawner compared to the way the story actually unveiled itself moment-by-moment.

The best way to tell a pet’s story (or any story) is to give it a beginning, middle, and an end, and to tell it as it happens. Give your readers, viewers, followers, and friends a chance to change the course of the story, to determine how it ends. Tell the beginning of the story first, and present the call to action. The middle of the story is where we have our chance to invite the public to follow the journey and to interact with it. Make sure to give compelling updates. Finally, report on the end of the story, whether it’s heartbreakingly sad or incredibly uplifting.

4. Crave fame… for your animals

Richard and Mayumi Heene have something that all master self-promoters share: a burning desire for fame. Most of us in the animal welfare community don’t have that quality. That’s ok… few people in the world do, and those of us who don’t tend to look at them as narcissistic. Time to rethink things, folks. We need to crave fame, not for ourselves, but for the animals in our care, for our shelters, and for the issue of homeless pets in general. Leap on every PR opportunity! Create new ones! Let’s be the biggest, loudest stage-mothers we can be, all for the good of the pets in our shelters.

You’re probably thinking of other lessons we can learn from the Balloon Boy incident, so let’s hear them! I want to hear your comments. May your pet-adoption PR efforts soar effortlessly through the universe like a giant… well, you know.

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This week features a story of 24 animals being saved, a new book on pet adoption, and a tail of 23 trips from Iraq to the US in the name of pet adoption.

How far will people go to rescue cats and dogs? One person, Terri Crisp, has made 23 trips to Iraq to help bring home soldiers’ pets. Continue reading…

Stillwater Middle School counselor April Thompson and her Boston terrier Lily have been featured in the book “Lost Souls: FOUND! Inspiring Stories of Adopted Boston Terriers.” Lily is one of 50 dogs featured in the book, the first in the breed-specific “Lost Souls: FOUND” series about adopted dogs.

Two dozen dogs that were seized from a Ballantine breeder last year are on a cross-country bus trip to new homes.

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This week features a couple who has lost weight by volunteering at an animal shelter, and Girl Scout Troop 9644 who donates they’re creativity to make online pictures of dogs more inviting.

We’ve just had mug shots of dogs taken in front of concrete blocks before,” Noble said. “The girls’ backdrops are more colorful and make more of a portrait for our dogs.” “I felt so bad when I saw the dogs looking so sad in the cages,” said Alexys Perez, 11, a student at South Park Middle School. “It feels good to help them have a better chance to survive.”

Fred Schwartz and his wife, Joan, said they never imagined they would have lost weight after nine months of volunteering to play with animals at Wayside Waifs. Fred said he lost 20 pounds; Joan lost about 15.

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This week we found an animal shelter with a reality TV show that uses parolees for helping hands. Also, an 8-year-old third grader writes a book about pet adoption.

On 17 acres in the rugged terrain of Canyon Country, Tia Torres provides a place to live or work for six parolees, 225 pit bulls, 204 volunteers, two French bulldogs, 19 cats, a husband and four kids. But the rescue’s been a money pit requiring creative financing. So now she’s turning to reality TV — with Animal Planet’s “Pit Bulls and Parolees.”

“He never gives up,” Deni Bayer, 37, said of her son, a rising third-grader who spent much of the summer working on the book. “For him to sit still this long, any of his teachers will tell you, is a big deal.” The book’s initial print run is 150 copies; the book sells for $10. Joshua said he will divide the proceeds from book sales among Whipkey’s group, the Charles County Humane Society and the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals.

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This week we bring news of 400 animals being rescued in Hawaii, plus a woman working a unique angle of animal adoption: military dog adoption.

It may be the biggest rescue mission in Oahu history. More than 400 animals were rescued from Waianae. There were more than 100 dogs, 100 cats, and 200 ducks and birds.

Benny, a retired military working dog, is a happy-go-lucky German shepherd who will do anything his master commands. If it weren’t for Debbie Kandoll, he might not have ever had a chance to display his obedience.

Click the links to read more about this week’s Good News!

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