Dog Center Blog

Pet Haven was the recipient of Coins for Canines, money raised throughout the Golden Gophers Women’s Basketball season. Coins for Canines was a contest where people submitted photos of their very cute pooches dressed in their Gopher best. Each photo was placed on a large water cooler jug and fans voted for their favorite photo by placing coins (and bills!) into the jugs. The money raised as part of this effort was donated to Pet Haven.

I was honored to represent Pet Haven at the Gopher Women’s Basketball game on February 25th to receive a check for Pet Haven for just under $1400! Before I received the check, Deborah Diamond, Associate Director of Marketing for the Gophers, told me the final amount would probably be a lot more since they were still counting the money. I was called onto the floor during halftime, where I was presented the big check. Jim Marshall, the Gophers announcer, introduced me with the same excitement he does for the players, which was very exciting for me and probably as close as I’ll ever come to feeling like a rock star.

The plan was for the winning dog to be announced at the end of the game. Unfortunately (or fortunately for us!) there were so many coins, that folks were still counting the money at the end of the game! Deborah emailed me the next day that the total raised was an impressive $2,266.82! Nachito, the winning dog, received roughly $600 worth of votes!

Although the Gopher Women lost the basketball game on Thursday, Pet Haven was a clear winner! Thank you to Deborah, the Golden Gophers Women’s Basketball Team, and all the fans who voted. We’ll be able to help a lot of cats and dogs!

Posted by Karen Scott, Vice-President, Pet Haven of Minnesota

Pet Haven was the recipient of Coins for Canines, money raised throughout the Golden Gophers Women’s Basketball season. Coins for Canines was a contest where people submitted photos of their very cute pooches dressed in their Gopher best. Each photo was placed on a large water cooler jug and fans voted for their favorite photo by placing coins (and bills!) into the jugs. The money raised as part of this effort was donated to Pet Haven.

I was honored to represent Pet Haven at the Gopher Women’s Basketball game on February 25th to receive a check for Pet Haven for just under $1400! Before I received the check, Deborah Diamond, Associate Director of Marketing for the Gophers, told me the final amount would probably be a lot more since they were still counting the money. I was called onto the floor during halftime, where I was presented the big check. Jim Marshall, the Gophers announcer, introduced me with the same excitement he does for the players, which was very exciting for me and probably as close as I’ll ever come to feeling like a rock star.

The plan was for the winning dog to be announced at the end of the game. Unfortunately (or fortunately for us!) there were so many coins, that folks were still counting the money at the end of the game! Deborah emailed me the next day that the total raised was an impressive $2,266.82! Nachito, the winning dog, received roughly $600 worth of votes!

Although the Gopher Women lost the basketball game on Thursday, Pet Haven was a clear winner! Thank you to Deborah, the Golden Gophers Women’s Basketball Team, and all the fans who voted. We’ll be able to help a lot of cats and dogs!

Posted by Karen Scott, Vice-President, Pet Haven of Minnesota

As the IH4TH contest for the most touching rescue and adoption essay comes to an end, my mind is on my home team, Burlington County Animal Alliance (BCAA), and Baby Hope. Her story had slipped from first to second place in the competition, the last time I looked. I am asking for your help to push this Pit Bull’s story over the top. With more Pit Bulls at the shelters than ever before, let Baby Hope be an example of the loving breed that they really are and an ambassador of hope for the accelerated rescue of more of her kind. Please visit the Helen Woodward Animal Center website and cast your vote for the best story by this Monday, March 1st at noon. Thanks from me and Sammie and all the folks at the BCAA! Todays’ pencil sketch of Sammie was done in preparation of a portrait that I’m currently working on.

As the IH4TH contest for the most touching rescue and adoption essay comes to an end, my mind is on my home team, Burlington County Animal Alliance (BCAA), and Baby Hope. Her story had slipped from first to second place in the competition, the last time I looked. I am asking for your help to push this Pit Bull’s story over the top. With more Pit Bulls at the shelters than ever before, let Baby Hope be an example of the loving breed that they really are and an ambassador of hope for the accelerated rescue of more of her kind. Please visit the Helen Woodward Animal Center website and cast your vote for the best story by this Monday, March 1st at noon. Thanks from me and Sammie and all the folks at the BCAA! Todays’ pencil sketch of Sammie was done in preparation of a portrait that I’m currently working on.

From the Animal Humane Society website:

Puppy & Kitten Mill Bill public forum
Golden Valley, 2/27/2010 11:00 am-12:00 pm

Senator Don Betzold and Representative Tom Tillberry to discuss Puppy & Kitten Mill Bill at public forum

Are you interested in learning more about the effort to regulate dog and cat breeders in Minnesota to stop inhumane practices in this industry? Join us on Saturday, February 27, 2010, for a public information session on the Dog and Cat Breeder Bill (S.F. 7/H.F. 253), also known as the Puppy and Kitten Mill Bill, with Minnesota Senator Don Betzold and Minnesota Representative Tom Tillberry who authored and introduced the bill in the Minnesota Senate and House of Representatives respectively.

Learn firsthand about the bill and its importance to the welfare of thousands of neglected animals in the State of Minnesota.
Understand how requiring licensing and inspections of breeding facilities in the state will protect animals from breeders engaging in inhumane breeding practices.

Arm yourself with information on how you can be a voice for animals and let others know what they can do.
Join us:

11 a.m. to noon on Saturday, February 27, 2010
Animal Humane Society, Auditorium
845 Meadow Lane North, Golden Valley

Reservations are not required, but seating is limited. For more information, please email animaladvocates@animalhumanesociety.org.

We have been working on getting our twitter account for I-Pets.com up and running, and while it’s a work in progress, we’d like to share with you now!

I-Pets would love to see some of your friendly faces on twitter. You can find us here: http://twitter.com/I_Pets

Peter, my husband, often talks about the Ashaway Black and White Cat. Ashaway would be Ashaway, R.I., where Peter grew up, and where, he says, a huge contingent of black and white cats roamed the streets and yards and barns of the town.

So when Creatures of Habit sent this lovely portrait of this black and white cat, I decided to just look up “black and white cat” and see what I could find.

Turns out that the black and white cat is a known quantity around the world. It’s often called a “Tuxedo Cat,” and in England, it’s known as the Jellicle cat, named for a fictional tribe of black and white cats in T.S. Eliot’s “Book of Practical Cats.”

There’s all sorts of other fascinating information on Wikipedia about these cats; click here to find out more.

Meantime, Reilly is hanging around at the shelter in Middletown, N.Y., waiting to be adopted. We have a black and white cat ourselves, and she is just about the funniest and most amusing cat ever. No telling if she’s an Ashaway Black and White, but whatever her ancestry, I’d recommend one of her ilk to anyone with room for a cat.

Many thanks to Creatures of Habit and his girlfriend, Kristina Sarracco, for the beautiful work and generous donations!

It’s funny how life circles in on itself.

I was hired, years ago, to work as the art director at the Times Herald-Record in Middletown, N.Y. My job was to set the visual look of the paper, including the front page. The paper was – and still is – a tab, so the front page was important. My very first day there, the art that we/I chose to be on the front page was a spray-painted caricature portrait of the then-mayor. I fought for this to get on the front page – and of course, I had absolutely no idea what I was doing. How could I? It was my first day on the job. It later turned out that the spray-paint artists had painted one of the mayor’s thumbs to resemble another piece of his anatomy… oops. No one had noticed this, including myself.

At any rate, our newest ASAP artist, “Creatures of Habit,” is a spray-painter from Middletown, N.Y. I don’t think he’s the one who spray-painted the mayor, but his appearance here, and his donations of these beautiful paintings to the Middletown Humane Society shelter, dredged that memory of mine up.

The beautiful pit bull, Edie, that Creatures has painted, is still available for adoption. So if you’re in the Middletown area, well, think about it!

And check out Creatures’ other work by clicking here.

The film Partitions (running time: 14 min) by Audrey Kali gives an intimate glimpse of the ethical struggles that five small-scale meat farmers face when their animals are slaughtered. In this film, we see farmers interacting with the animals they will eventually transform into food (chickens, pigs and cattle). The farmers in the film confront very difficult questions posed by the filmmaker about why they think their approach to processing of meat is different than that of factory farming. Although the farmers can easily answer that their animals are treated more humanely whilst alive, their discomfort about being asked questions regarding the slaughter process is visually and audibly obvious.

This film provides an accurate portrayal of small-scale, non-intensive animal farming. This is as humane as “humane farming” gets. One of the farmers interviewed says: “We give our pigs and our chickens many weeks of relatively happy life.” The farmer fails to note that the natural lifespan of pigs is 11-15 years and the natural lifespan of chickens is 5-11 years, depending on breed. After watching the film, the viewer can decide whether giving these animals a few weeks of “a relatively happy life” is humane enough to justify taking these animals’ lives for products that no one needs.