Great followup on adoption of 2 of the former Michael Vick dogs

Below is a link from the Best Friends Animal Society website about Cherry and Handsome Dan - 2 dogs rescued from the Michael Vick property and now adopted into their forever homes.

It seems that the people who adopted these 2 dogs discovered that they only live 1 1/2 hours from each other and arranged a get together for the dogs.

Cherry and H.Dan were so happy to see each other....it was a very sweet reunion. There is even a video included.

They are planning many more get-togethers in the future which is so cool.

http://news.bestfriends.org/index.cfm?page=news&mode=entry&entry=327A0EC7-E92E-ACC0-C60C1980388D5BA8

Feral Freedom program for feral cats

Over the holiday weekend, I started hearing about a new program based in Jacksonville, FL to help out the feral cat population there. From just the preliminary info I have read so far, it looks like they are giving vaccinations and microchipping in addition to spay/neuter which is great.

The ferals in our program are not microchipped, but do get an FCRVP shot in addition to the spay/neuter surgery.

It is great to hear that communities are starting to address this problem. My experience in this area in southeast Iowa is that volunteers can only do so much. I think our town feels like they don't have to address the situation since the volunteers are doing such a good job. But after several years, people are burned out and discouraged.

One thing I wonder about the program in Florida is if it encourages people to abandon their unfixed cats, since they know the city will pick them up and fix them.

A step closer to closing down puppy mills

Best Friends Animal Society in Utah has been doing some great work with their campaign to close down puppy mills. I don't know the numbers on how many have been closed down throughout the country this past year, but they state on their website that there is one closed almost every week.

And eBay Foundation has pledged $330,000 in seed money to set up a puppy care center at Best Friends. Puppies and their mothers will be able to go to Best Friends puppy care center to get healthy and socialize so that they can be adopted into good homes.

When I keep my attention on all the positive things that are happening in animal welfare, it is really heartening. It feels like there is a momentum that has been created and will keep growing.

Our volunteer spay/neuter group here in Fairfield is growing too. It's like we had to struggle all these years to lay the ground work and now bigger organizations and groups are catching on and providing some support.

I wonder if we will ever be able to figure out how to get people to fix their animals BEFORE they breed. We get so many calls from people who just don't get it. They wait until they are overwhelmed with animals and then call for financial help. It gets very frustrating.