Ask your owners to join us for the 3rd Annual Paws 4 A Cure Canine Cancer Walk.
The walk is being held on Sunday, May 16th at the beautiful Lake Quannapowitt in Wakefield, MA.
Paws 4 A Cure is a non profit organization dedicated to assisting pet owners financially for cancer treatment in dogs throughout the United States. With your help, Paws 4 A Cure can reach so many in need to help give them a fighting chance!
Please visit: www.paws4acure.org for more information and to register for the walk. If you are unable to walk, please consider a tax deductible donation. Thank you.
We all have the opportunity to make small but significant changes to someone’s life. The furry ones, the rescuers, the enthusiasts, the advocates…..everyone. In a society where domesticated animals are still “property,” there is much work to do.
Let us not forget the kind, compassionate and loving individuals that work tirelessly to scrimp, save, scavenge and solicit help for the furry ones. The rescue community has been greatly affected by their tragic losses.
My point in all of this: Be kind to one another. Help each other. Reach out, talk about your frustrations and always ask your rescue peers and friends for help. We can only help the wee, furry ones, once we’ve helped ourselves. Let’s really stay connected in the rescue community and work hard to recognize future risks or suicidal rescuers. This economy will continue to be a challenge and we must continue to be stronger!!
In our numbers, we have strength. In our common goal, we have faith. In our hearts, we have suffered to love and will continue to do so. The paws that we save are worth every bit. They need us!
Have you heard of Relay For Life? It’s the largest cancer-fighting movement in the world. There will be more than 5,000 Relays nationwide, more than 230 right here in New England.
Teams camp out overnight and team members take turns walking the track. As darkness falls, hundreds of luminarias bearing the names of loved ones who have faced a cancer diagnosis light the way. Every Relay takes on the personality of its community but there’s one thing you will find at every Relay, whether it’s in California, Cananda or England. That is the Survivors’ Lap, when all cancer survivors present are asked to take the first lap together. As you can imagine, it’s a very poignant moment.
I think you would enjoy the experience – I don’t know anyone who hasn’t – so I am urging you to join my team. We’d be working together for a great cause. Did I mention that Relay is fun? Relay sparks all kinds of emotions, it’s true, but the entertainment, music, games, and contagious passion people have for Relay make it a very satisfying experience.
As a Relay participant, you commit to raising a minimum of $100, which is really easy, especially if you register on the Relay’s Web site and make use of the emailing tools.
The money we raise will help ensure that the American Cancer Society continues to meet the growing demand for its services - free rides to and from cancer treatments, temporary lodging near treatment centers, help finding clinical trials and affordable insurance, summer camps for children and teens with cancer, and so much more.
You may not realize it, but the American Cancer Society is a major player in the health care reform debate. A recent survey shows that people are forgoing cancer treatments in order to pay their mortgage and grocery bills. The American Cancer Society is working hard to make sure no one ever has to make such choices.
Whether it is through a friend, family member, the neighbor down the street, or our own personal experience, we have all been touched by cancer in some way. Please join my team.
Email me with any questions you might have. I look forward to hearing from you.
To all the dogs I’ve loved before
Who travelled in and out my door
I’m glad they came along
I dedicate this song
To all the dogs I’ve loved before
To all the pups I once caressed
And may I say I’ve had a mess
They’ve taught me how to grow
I owe a lot I know
To all the dogs I’ve loved before
The winds of change are always blowing
And every time they try to stay
The winds of change continue blowing
And they just carry them away
To all the families who shared my life
Who now cherish their precious doggies life,
I’m glad they came along
I dedicate this song
To all their dogs I’ve loved before
To all the dogs who cared for me
Who filled my nights with sympathy
They live within my heart
I’ll always be a part
Of all the dogs I’ve loved before
The winds of change are always blowing
And every time they try to stay
The winds of change continue blowing
And they just carry them away
To all the dogs we’ve loved before
Who travelled in and out our doors
We’re glad they came along
We dedicate this song
To all the dogs we’ve loved before
To all the dogss we’ve loved before
Who travelled in and out our doors
We’re glad they came along
We dedicate this song
To all the dogs we’ve loved before
A story from the frontline: how a dog can improve therapeutic intervention
Guest blogger Amy Johnson is a counselor, lecturer, founder, and program director of the non-profit organization, Teacher’s Pet: Dogs and Kids Learning Together. Her blogs can be found on the American Counseling Association web site.
“Sandy Urkovich is a counselor in Sanibel Island, Florida and a recent graduate of an online animal assisted therapy certificate program. With her clients, Sandy uses her own dogs who have helped not only ameliorate relationships, but often provide a temporary deflection of feelings of pain, or offer a shoulder to cry on. Here is what Sandy has to say about her dog Duke: “Duke came into my life when he was two years old…after being ‘forgotten’ once the children of his human family were born in his former home in Chicago. I flew him to Florida in 2002 and he has been a very relevant part of our family ever since.
Initially quite shy and traumatized by the flight, he did not have an appetite for a few days so I had to hand feed him to sustain him. It took nearly a month for him to warm up to his brothers, Murphy and Riley. His phobic behaviors included a fear of tile floors and swimming in the pool, which made me wonder what happened to him. It turned out he had fallen down a flight of stairs when he was a puppy and was thrown into a swimming pool. Duke loved to sleep in our bed, curling up between my husband and I and our other Chocolate lab, Riley.
I immediately began taking Duke to my very small, closet sized office with me. He greeted people instantly at the door since the small space didn’t provide him room to go anywhere else. His size was intimidating for some, but after being lovingly kissed by this gentle giant, they would soon relax. Duke was apprehensive around big men and often stood back, until one day a new client came to the office, visibly troubled. He was tall and muscular and could have easily taken Hulk Hogan in a wrestling match! The man sat down and Duke cautiously walked over to my side and sat next to me.
As the man began explaining his situation, he suddenly burst into tears, put his head down and put his hands over his face, and sobbed. The room was quiet, except for his muffled sobs. Duke watched the man intently and very slowly walked over to him…with deep concentration. Duke then put his nose under one arm and started nudging the man to pick up his head. It took just a few moments for my client to figure out what was going on, but when he raised his head and Duke’s tongue reached out and kissed his wet, tear stained face, the man smiled. He put his arms around Duke’s neck and moved to sit next to Duke on the floor where they sat in silence for the next five minutes.
As I watched this scene unfold, I was near tears myself. This dog who had built in fears of large men was sitting next to a pained individual who was leaning on Duke for support. After about fifteen minutes, the man got up and sat on the sofa, but left his hand on Duke’s head. Duke did not move. Jokingly the man said he owed Duke a couple pounds of dog biscuits for letting him hold onto him. I replied that Duke gave him what we humans wish we could give – that high level of unconditional love and understanding.
Sometimes, long moments of silence can seem awkward for therapists or clients, but to allow a client the time to just cuddle with a dog…where there is no pressure or feelings of obligation to speak….it can allow the client the time needed to process or just sit for a moment and experience his emotions. He can just “be.” At this moment, he is not sitting alone, potentially uncomfortable with the therapist waiting to determine when to speak or who will be the first to speak. The bond that is formed here between the dog and the client just cannot be done at the same level between therapist and client, but it can open the client up to the therapist for the healing process to begin.
After that incident, I knew that Duke was a therapy dog, without degrees, he earned the role of my assistant. He has never missed a day coming to the office. Small children lay on him; adults let him lie on their feet. Everyone that comes in will say hi to Duke before addressing me. Duke has shown everyone who enters my office the love that so many times one may never experience in life. He understands when someone doesn’t want him near, but eventually will work his way into their hearts. Duke allows children to walk him along with me and our new therapy dog, Troy. Troy is learning the ropes and he copies whatever Duke does. He greets people at the door, and escorts them to the session room. He then lies down and waits for us to be finished and will walk the client back to the front reception room. I could not imagine my practice without them.”
By Eric Moskowitz, Globe Staff | December 26, 2009
The greyhounds will bolt from the gate for the last time in Massachusetts today, marking the end of 75 years of live dog racing in the state.
Voters last year elected by a wide margin, 56 percent to 44 percent, to ban the sport effective Jan. 1, 2010. Wonderland held its last race in September. Raynham Park stages its final race tonight. Both will continue to offer simulcasting – enabling patrons to wager on televised dog and horse races conducted elsewhere – at least through July 31, as a result of recently enacted legislation.
The end of racing here is part of a national trend, driven by a mix of animal-rights concerns, waning attendance at dog tracks, and new statutes enacted by legislatures and voters.
“I just thank Massachusetts voters for giving greyhounds a second chance,’’ said Christine A. Dorchak, president of GREY2K USA, a national advocacy organization based in Somerville that grew out of a 2000 effort to ban racing in Massachusetts, which lost by a razor-thin margin. “We have finally reached this wonderful day.’’
The last race at Raynham, previously known as Raynham-Taunton Greyhound Park, also marks the end of live dog racing in New England, for now at least.
Live racing has ceased in recent years in Maine, New Hampshire, Connecticut, and for now Rhode Island – where its future at Lincoln’s financially strapped Twin River is in limbo – and after today will exist at just 23 tracks in seven states, 13 of them in Florida, according to GREY2K. There were 49 tracks in 15 states when GREY2K began in 2001.
Attention now turns to greyhound adoption and to the financial future of the state’s two dog tracks, whose owners hope to stay in business as slot parlors – a possibility that will be debated on Beacon Hill in the coming months, along with the prospect of full resort-casinos.
In the debate over racing, proponents of the ban deemed the sport cruel, calling attention to the cages where the dogs were kept and the 800 injuries suffered by racing greyhounds in the preceding six years. Racing supporters countered that the dogs were well protected and fed, said only a small percentage of dogs were injured, and called the ballot measure a move to put dogs over people, warning of up to 1,000 layoffs.
George Carney, Raynham’s owner, told the Globe earlier this month that he was laying off about one-third of his 600 part-time and full-time employees with the end of live racing but could sustain the full workforce if slot machines were allowed. At the same time, he and others are also mourning the end of an era.
“The more you think about it, the worse the news gets,’’ he said. “So many people have benefited from the track – it’s a hard pill to swallow but you have to take it and move on.’’
Many of the dogs, maintained by a network of kennels, will move on to race in other states, but several hundred will be looking for new homes. Raynham is working with GREY2K and the Massachusetts Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals-Angell Animal Medical Center to aid their adoption.
“People who voted to end dog racing should step forward now and take a dog home,’’ Dorchak said. “This is the happy ending we all worked for, and these dogs make wonderful pets.’’
Once again we are begging for help. We are overloaded and have waaaay too much on our plates right now. I know all of us in rescue are in the same boat:(
STAR is in deep financial trouble. We have too many dogs. Medical costs are horrible.
Paypal to sdcreasap@roadrunner.com or use ChipIn’s on STAR Petfinder page to help financially. You can also make checks out to STAR, a 501c3 non profit, and mail to STAR c/o Julia Sharp, 164 East Main Street, Morehead, KY 40351 This is also the mailing address for supply donations.
We desperately need Frontline SPRAY. We have yet another litter of lice puppies:( Frontline Spray works great on lice. Dogs have been full of fleas lately. We can also use Capstar.
We need collars, dewormers, leashes, vaccines, HW prevention, money, gas cards, food, blankets, dog beds…..the list is endless for Santa
HINGHAM — An English mastiff dog that bit two customers at a Hingham art gallery, including the wife of a Boston Red Sox [team stats] pitcher, has been ordered euthanized.
The Hingham Board of Selectman on Tuesday night unanimously voted to accept the recommendation of the town’s animal control officer and order the 8-year-old female dog named Gabriella put down.
Before the vote, the board heard testimony from the victims, including 37-year-old Stacey Wakefield, the wife of Red Sox pitcher Tim Wakefield [stats]. Wakefield was bitten inside the Hingham Square Gallery in June 2008. The other woman was bitten last June.
The dog and another mastiff are owned by gallery owners Robert and Megan Ullman, who were called “irresponsible” by town officials.
The Ullmans say their dog is not vicious and they will appeal in court.
They can be eccentric, slow afoot, even grouchy. But dogs live out their final days, says The Washington Post’s Gene Weingarten, with a humility and grace we all could learn from.
Friday, October 17, 2008
They can be eccentric, slow afoot, even grouchy. But dogs live out their final days, says The Washington Post’s Gene Weingarten, with a humility and grace we all could learn from.
Not long before his death, Harry and I headed out for a walk that proved eventful. He was nearly 13, old for a big dog. Walks were no longer the slap-happy Iditarods of his youth, frenzies of purposeless pulling in which we would cast madly off in all directions, fighting for command. Nor were they the exuberant archaeological expeditions of his middle years, when every other tree or hydrant or blade of grass held tantalizing secrets about his neighbors. In his old age, Harry had transformed his walk into a simple process of elimination—a dutiful, utilitarian, head-down trudge. When finished, he would shuffle home to his ratty old bed, which graced our living room because Harry could no longer ascend the stairs. On these walks, Harry seemed oblivious to his surroundings, absorbed in the arduous responsibility of placing foot before foot before foot before foot. But this time, on the edge of a small urban park, he stopped to watch something. A man was throwing a Frisbee to his dog. The dog, about Harry’s size, was tracking the flight expertly, as Harry had once done, anticipating hooks and slices by watching the pitch and roll and yaw of the disc, as Harry had done, then catching it with a joyful, punctuating leap, as Harry had once done, too.
Harry sat. For 10 minutes, he watched the fling and catch, fling and catch, his face contented, his eyes alight, his tail a-twitch. Our walk
home was almost … jaunty.
Some years ago, The Washington Post invited readers to come up with a midlife list of goals for an underachiever. The first-runner-up prize went to: “Win the admiration of my dog.”
It’s no big deal to love a dog; they make it so easy for you. They find you brilliant, even if you are a witling. You fascinate them, even if you are as dull as a butter knife. They are fond of you, even if you are a genocidal maniac. Hitler loved his dogs, and they loved him.
Puppies are incomparably cute and incomparably entertaining, and, best of all, they smell exactly like puppies. At middle age, a dog has settled into the knuckleheaded matrix of behavior we find so appealing—his unquestioning loyalty, his irrepressible willingness to please, his infectious happiness. But it is not until a dog gets old that his most important virtues ripen and coalesce. Old dogs can be cloudy-eyed and grouchy, gray of muzzle, graceless of gait, odd of habit, hard of hearing, pimply, wheezy, lazy, and lumpy. But to anyone who has ever known an old dog, these flaws are of little consequence. Old dogs are vulnerable. They show exorbitant gratitude and limitless trust. They are without artifice. They are funny in new and unexpected ways. But, above all, they seem at peace.
Kafka wrote that the meaning of life is that it ends. He meant that our lives are shaped and shaded by the existential terror of knowing that all is finite. This anxiety informs poetry, literature, the monuments we build, the wars we wage—all of it. Kafka was talking, of course, about people. Among animals, only humans are said to be self-aware enough to comprehend the passage of time and the grim truth of mortality. How, then, to explain old Harry at the edge of that park, gray and lame, just days from the end, experiencing what can only be called wistfulness and nostalgia? I have lived with eight dogs, watched six of them grow old and infirm with grace and dignity, and die with what seemed to be acceptance. I have seen old dogs grieve at the loss of their friends. I have come to believe that as they age, dogs comprehend the passage of time, and, if not the inevitability of death, certainly the relentlessness of the onset of their frailties. They understand that what’s gone is gone.
What dogs do not have is an abstract sense of fear, or a feeling of injustice or entitlement. They do not see themselves, as we do, as tragic heroes, battling ceaselessly against the merciless onslaught of time. Unlike us, old dogs lack the audacity to mythologize their lives. You’ve got to love them for that.
The product of a Kansas puppy mill, Harry was sold to us as a yellow Labrador retriever. I suppose it was technically true, but only in the sense that Tic Tacs are technically “food.” Harry’s lineage was suspect. He wasn’t the square-headed, elegant type of Labrador you can envision in the wilds of Canada hunting for ducks. He was the shape of a baked potato, with the color and luster of an interoffice envelope. You could envision him in the wilds of suburban Toledo, hunting for nuggets of dried food in a carpet.
His full name was Harry S Truman, and once he’d reached middle age, he had indeed developed the unassuming soul of a haberdasher. We sometimes called him Tru, which fit his loyalty but was in other ways a misnomer: Harry was a bit of an eccentric, a few bubbles off plumb. Though he had never experienced an electrical shock, whenever he encountered a wire on the floor—say, a power cord leading from a laptop to a wall socket—Harry would stop and refuse to proceed. To him, this barrier was as impassable as the Himalayas. He’d stand there, waiting for someone to move it. Also, he was afraid of wind.
While Harry lacked the wiliness and cunning of some dogs, I did watch one day as he figured out a basic principle of physics. He was playing with a water bottle in our backyard—it was one of those 5-gallon cylindrical plastic jugs from the top of a water cooler. At one point, it rolled down a hill, which surprised and delighted him. He retrieved it, brought it back up and tried to make it go down again. It wouldn’t. I watched him nudge it around until he discovered that for the bottle to roll, its long axis had to be perpendicular to the slope of the hill. You could see the understanding dawn on his face; it was Archimedes in his bath, Helen Keller at the water spigot.
That was probably the intellectual achievement of Harry’s life, tarnished only slightly by the fact that he spent the next two hours insipidly entranced, rolling the bottle down and hauling it back up. He did not come inside until it grew too dark for him to see.
I believe I know exactly when Harry became an old dog. He was about 9 years old. It happened at 10:15 on the evening of June 21, 2001, the day my family moved from the suburbs to the city. The move took longer than we’d anticipated. Inexcusably, Harry had been left alone in the vacated house—eerie, echoing, empty of furniture and of all belongings except Harry and his bed—for eight hours. When I arrived to pick him up, he was beyond frantic.
He met me at the door and embraced me around the waist in a way that is not immediately reconcilable with the musculature and skeleton of a dog’s front legs. I could not extricate myself from his grasp. We walked out of that house like a slow-dancing couple, and Harry did not let go until I opened the car door.
He wasn’t barking at me in reprimand, as he once might have done. He hadn’t fouled the house in spite. That night, Harry was simply scared and vulnerable, impossibly sweet and needy and grateful. He had lost something of himself, but he had gained something more touching and more valuable. He had entered old age.
In the year after our move, Harry began to age visibly, and he did it the way most dogs do. First his muzzle began to whiten, and then the white slowly crept backward to swallow his entire head. As he became more sedentary, he thickened a bit, too.
On walks, he would no longer bother to scout and circle for a place to relieve himself. He would simply do it in mid-plod, like a horse, leaving the difficult logistics of drive-by cleanup to me. Sometimes, while crossing a busy street, with cars whizzing by, he would plop down to scratch his ear. Sometimes, he would forget where he was and why he was there. To the amusement of passersby, I would have to hunker down beside him and say, “Harry, we’re on a walk, and we’re going home now. Home is this way, okay?” On these dutiful walks, Harry ignored almost everything he passed. The most notable exception was an old, barrel-chested female pit bull named Honey, whom he loved. This was surprising, both because other dogs had long ago ceased to interest Harry at all, and because even back when they did, Harry’s tastes were for the guys.
Still, when we met Honey on walks, Harry perked up. Honey was younger by five years and heartier by a mile, but she liked Harry and slowed her gait when he was around. They waddled together for blocks, eyes forward, hardly interacting but content in each other’s company. I will forever be grateful to Honey for sweetening Harry’s last days.
Some people who seem unmoved by the deaths of tens of thousands through war or natural disaster will nonetheless grieve inconsolably over the loss of the family dog. People who find this behavior distasteful are often the ones without pets. It is hard to understand, in the abstract, the degree to which a companion animal, particularly after a long life, becomes a part of you. I believe I’ve figured out what this is all about. It is not as noble as I’d like it to be, but it is not anything of which to be ashamed, either.
In our dogs, we see ourselves. Dogs exhibit almost all of our emotions; if you think a dog cannot register envy or pity or pride or melancholia, you have never lived with one for any length of time. What dogs lack is our ability to dissimulate. They wear their emotions nakedly, and so, in watching them, we see ourselves as we would be if we were stripped of posture and pretense. Their innocence is enormously appealing. When we watch a dog progress from puppyhood to old age, we are watching our own lives in microcosm. Our dogs become old, frail, crotchety, and vulnerable, just as Grandma did, just as we surely will, come the day. When we grieve for them, we grieve for ourselves.
