Petfinder Blog

With all the news about the recent Tennessee puppy mill bust, I remembered the first time I'd ever heard about puppy mills; it was from my friend Andrew Weinstein, a colleague and a dedicated animal welfare activist who used to work as a corporate communications executive at AOL. I asked him to write a post about how he came to care so much about puppy mills. This is his story:

I had actually heard very little about puppy mills until about 10 years ago. My former wife and I had adopted a Rhodesian Ridgeback from a local rescue league here in DC, so we had a good relationship with the woman who ran the local chapter. One afternoon, I got a call from her asking if we might have any interest in adopting a second dog from them.

The dog we were presented with (pictured here) had a tragic story.

Last night, I left work early-ish and drove to meet one of the kittens I was considering for adoption: Chloe, a bobtailed Manx tabby at Homeward Trails Animal Rescue in Arlington, VA.

I got lost seven times trying to negotiate the spaghetti labyrinth of Beltway and feeder highways in Maryland, but finally got to the lovely home of Chloe's foster mom.

Talk about dedication: this woman has three adopted dogs (who were fosters before their new lives as family members), and she's fostering four kittens, including Chloe. 

I told the foster mother I was impressed with her menagerie, and asked her if she often fostered animals. "I've fostered over 100 animals so far," she smiled.

Barely six months ago, the Humane Society of the United States released an undercover video of "downer" cows, those who are unable to stand or walk, being abused by slaughterhouse workers.

And last week, the HSUS released yet another undercover video of horrific abuse. (A warning: the video is tremendously upsetting and sickening.)

I watched the whole video. I forced myself to watch it because being ignorant of something doesn't let me off the hook, doesn't put my mind at ease. What I saw made me cry, and made me sick to my stomach. It also made me take action immediately (again), joining with the HSUS to call my representatives in Congress, to demand not just punishment of the workers involved, and the slaughterhouse that permitted such cruelty to happen.

This past weekend, I got closer to adopting living, breathing creatures, bringing them into my fairly sedate and austere life.

I had searched Petfinder for weeks and had found two kittens I thought would be fun to share my life and apartment with: Hope (right) and Jesse (below). They were both being fostered by Homeward Trails Animal Rescue, Inc. in Arlington, VA, where I now live.

Why them? I don't exactly know except that I had had a cat named Sooty when I was growing up and she was a tabby like Hope and Jesse.

And there was something about the faces of the two kittens, angular and small, with big ears and almond-shaped eyes. It seems totally insane to "pick" an animal based on their color and the shape of their eyes, but that's what I did. (I knew I would meet them in person before anything was final, so doing a pre-sort was not only practical but also efficient.)

With summer here, I begin to hear the call of the wild. I used to love hiking with my dogs (that's my Lab-Shepherd mix, Annie, pictured) -- but when I first began traveling with them, I was surprised to learn how many national parks, wilderness areas, and campgrounds were dog unfriendly. It didn't seem democratic ... or American to keep dogs out of the wilderness!

I did some research about camping with dogs and here's what I found:

Not all national parks welcome dogs. The National Park Service has a great interactive map where you can search for parks by state and check out their pet policies. (When you find a park, click "Plan Your Visit," then "Things to Know Before You Come.")

A terrible, totally unexpected thing happened to me last year. My 17-year marriage broke up and I couldn't put it back together again despite trying everything short of brute force.

I had to leave the home that I'd hoped to have as my forever home, a five-acre sanctuary for various aging pets. When I finally I drove away, I had to leave behind my three shelter dogs, my closest, dearest companions (that's Buster, my 13-year-old Great Dane/Border Collie mix, in the photo). I went north to find an apartment, a job, a new life ...

Today, the Marines made public the punishment to be meted out to two Marines in Iraq who had become YouTube stars for casually and cruelly hurling a weeks-old puppy over a cliff while joking and filming their "prank."

The idiot who did the throwing was taken out of Iraq and will be dismissed from the Marines. The cineast who filmed the 17-second atrocity will face some sort of secret Marine wrist-slapping. Whoop-de-doo. The thrower is probably overjoyed at escaping the war zone early. Killing young animals might now become the ticket to coming home faster -- and never having to be redeployed.