Hello!

I thought I’d take the first post of this blog as an opportunity to introduce the blog, my hopes for it, and the various post types you’re likely to encounter here.

The idea for this site was born a few months ago when I started to hear more and more stories of small, no-kill shelters who had been shut down and persecuted by government authorities.  Right around the same time, I heard about dogs shot by cops and even a turtle which was killed by the government because it was in the wrong area of the country.  Of course, there was also the infamous Bambi story.  I was already aware of things like the killing of wild horses on government owned land.  I was hearing all these stories, but there was no one out there talking about them, and the people who were being victimized didn’t have a real place to tell their story.

For a long time, we’ve been led to associate animal abuse with “hoarders” and private citizens.  While issues like puppy mills, animal abandonment and dog fighting are all problems in society today, the fact that the government makes it difficult for citizens to take care of vulnerable animals while running the majority of its “shelters” with the same philosophy as it did pounds in the ’50s, and passing legislation to increase animal homelessness is even worse.

It’s time for a change in the government’s approach to animal issues.  Society’s attitudes toward pets have advanced dramatically in the past few decades, but government – as always – is lagging far, far behind and making itself more destructive than helpful.

We’re here to discuss these types of animal issues, to draw attention to these abuses and to put all of this information in a broader context.

Every so often, we’ll also give you a “practical tip,” which will provide practical advice from vets, trainers and other animal experts about how to be a better animal owner.  Hopefully this will help address personal problems to make both animals and humans happier, and in so doing we can keep more animals out of the “system.”