December 2011

It's almost 2012 and many of us are scrambling to make resolutions we can only hope to keep. Whether it is losing five pounds or getting organized, change can be downright hard. So, instead of fretting about your own personal resolutions, how about making a few to benefit your pet?

Here at the ASPCA, we think it’s only appropriate to focus on the four-legged members of the family. So how about a resolution to brush your cat every week or a promise to extend your pooch’s playtime?

Whatever you choose, resolutions aimed at making your companions happier and healthier can add years to their lives—and are much easier to stick to! So go ahead, enjoy your triple mocha latte with whipped cream and check out a few of our most popular New Year’s resolutions for pets!

Check-Up Time
This year, give your veterinarian the chance to notice any developing illnesses and the opportunity to take care of them right away. If it's been a year or more since your pet has seen a vet, make that appointment today!

Battle the Bulge
Pets depend on us to regulate their nutrition and activity levels. It's important to follow strict feeding guidelines, since overweight pets face increased health risks. This year, vow to lay off those table scraps and consider switching to a well-balanced, high-quality pet food.

Poison-Proof Your Home
With various dangers lurking in corners and cabinets, the home can be a minefield of poisons for our pets. Don't leave it up to Fido or Fluffy to keep themselves safe. Resolve to make your home a safe place for your pets.

For our full list of ways to keep your furry pals happy and healthy in 2012, please visit Popular New Year’s Resolutions for Your Pet.

Well, folks, the competition is fierce! The ASPCA Home for the Holidays Photo Contest received hundreds of fantastic pics from across the country—pups napping by an open fire, beloved kitties cuddling up to Santa, and numerous portraits confirming the special bond between a pet and their rescuer. Now, it’s your chance to vote for your favorite.

Visit our Home for the Holidays Photo Contest to cast your vote each day and help decide which photos will rise to the top. Five winners will receive a special ASPCA Holiday Gift Pack and be featured on our website!

Remember, voting ends on January 8 at midnight EDT, and we’ll announce the five winning contestants on January 9, 2012. Good luck to all our contestants!

Don’t forget to share this page with your friends and family on Facebook and Twitter—their votes count, too!

Given the festive time of year, I thought I would focus my year-end blog posts on happy endings. Some of the most touching stories arose from tragedy.

The ASPCA’s largest rescue effort this year was helping the animals left homeless following the tornadoes that devastated Joplin, Missouri. Several of our responders told me stories that I’ll never forget.

One of those involved a male setter mix dog who was quivering with fear in his kennel at the emergency shelter that had been set up for animals rescued following the tornadoes. One of the ASPCA’s responders built trust with the dog by patiently hand feeding him, until finally the dog allowed us to put a leash on him to take him for a walk.

Walking this terrified dog was challenging, as he pulled with all his might in the same direction. No matter which way the handler tried to direct him, the dog insisted on going in a single southward direction.

A few hours after the walk, a man was walking through the shelter trying to find his missing dog. When the man and the setter mix saw each other, the formerly-timid dog leapt up with excitement and started barking, howling and wagging his tail furiously. As I’m sure you’ve guessed, this man and this dog had belonged to each other before the tornadoes. The man pointed out where their home had been and, sure enough, that dog had been pulling his handler earlier in the day in the direction of where their home had been.

After the man and his beloved dog were reunited, we were hoping for similar joyous reunions. ASPCA responders talked frequently to an 18-year-old woman and her brother who visited the Joplin emergency shelter desperately trying to find the woman’s cat. Like countless others, this woman had lost almost everything she owned, but she clung to a dirty photo of her 16-year-old cat.

The cat the woman was desperately seeking was missing an ear and looked every one of his 16 years. Each time the woman visited the shelter and could not find her cat, she assumed the worst and broke down in tears. As the woman was leaving after one such heart-wrenching search, she saw a rescuer carrying a cat in a crate. She held up the picture of her beloved cat, and the rescuer said that he thought he had the cat. The woman looked in the crate, saw her cat, and collapsed on the ground while hugging the crate and crying along with her brother.

As news reports focus on must-have holiday gifts, I can’t help but think about the people who lost all their material possessions, yet felt so blessed to have found their beloved companions. Happy holidays, everyone!

Stuck for a holiday present? Bored with the latest gadgets and gift certificates? Why not give the gift that keeps on giving—to animals!? An ASPCA gift membership is a great way to say you care, not only for the recipient but also for the millions of pets who’ll benefit from your generosity. Our online form makes it easy—just log on and help us build a humane community one membership at a time.

In return for your gift of $25 or more, the recipient will receive a membership card, an ASPCA calendar, a free subscription to ASPCA Action, and an ASPCA wristband. ASPCA gift memberships of $50 or more include a limited edition Harley.

So hurry and get clickin’, and have a happy, humane holiday from the ASPCA!

Aurora on the day of her rescue.

For the first time in her life, this sweet hound is spending the holidays surrounded by love. To see her now, it’s hard to believe that she was once the victim of hoarding.

Scared, sick and hungry, Aurora was one of 84 dogs found living in filthy conditions on a property in rural Tennessee. But thanks to the support of our members, ASPCA responders were able to rescue the animals, bringing them to safety.

"It was clear that the dogs were in dire need of help, and our mission was to get them triaged by a veterinary team and into a safe environment," says Kyle Held, the ASPCA’s Midwest Director of Field Investigations and Response.

With your help, our team nursed Aurora back to health, we helped her conquer her fears and we found her a loving forever family. We're so grateful for your support—without it, dogs like Aurora wouldn't be home for the holidays.

Please take a moment and learn how you can help save dogs like Aurora.

It’s time to deck the halls…and hit the roads! For many of us, it’s just not the holidays without our pets and there’s no question we’re bringing them to all the family celebrations—even if those festivities are 1,000 miles from home.

According to the 2011-2012 National Pet Owners Survey (conducted by the American Pet Products Association), the number of pet parents who bring Fido on the road is steadily increasing. And the holidays are no exception!

But traveling with your furry pals requires a bit of preparation. If you’re flying the Fido-friendly skies this holiday season, check out our advice for air travel with pets. And if you’re hitting the road, it can’t hurt to review the ASPCA’s top ten car travel tips.

Start planning, safe travels—and happy holidays!

The holidays are a popular time to bring home a new pet—and for animals in shelters, getting a real home is the best gift ever. But listen up, potential pet parents: Bringing home a new furry friend is also a serious commitment.

To help would-be adopters, the ASPCA Adoption Center has prepared a special video explaining the do’s and don’ts of holiday pet adoption.

Just remember, surprises are wonderful, but never give a pet as a gift. See if your shelter has a gift-certificate instead!

To learn more about adopting a new pet and to find a shelter near you, please visit the ASPCA Virtual Adoption Center.

Can we all agree that confining dogs in small cages for 20 to 23 hours a day, almost every day, is cruel?

True, this confinement doesn’t meet legal definitions of cruelty, but, legal or not, most of us who love dogs know that this is wrong. Yet this is the way of life for the thousands of greyhounds who are forced to race in this country’s greyhound industry.

Greyhound racing only occurs in seven states, with the majority of greyhound tracks located in Florida. This week, GREY2 USA, with funding from the ASPCA, released a report detailing the horrific conditions racing greyhounds are subject to in Florida. You can access a copy of the report here [PDF].

Racing greyhounds are in their cages nearly all the time. They are fed “4-D” meat, which means meat that comes from dying, diseased, disabled and dead livestock deemed unfit for human consumption. Their owners feed them this raw meat simply because it is the cheapest available, and they don’t even bother to cook it to destroy the bacteria.

Florida does not require its greyhound racing facilities to report injuries to the public, but we have documentation of dogs with broken legs, backs and skulls; dogs who have died of seizures after racing; dogs who have died of heart attacks; and a dog who was electrocuted. Racing dogs have repeatedly tested positive for drugs such as cocaine.

While the dogs suffer every day as part of this industry, few people even seem to notice. Attendance at greyhound races has dramatically declined through the years, and tracks actually lose money on the dogs. But since Florida law won’t permit dog track owners to continue gambling operations at those tracks unless those tracks hold dog races, the races continue.

Two bills (HB 641 and SB 382) are pending in Florida that would remove the requirement that dog tracks offer live greyhound racing in order to also offer card games or slots. If you live in Florida, please contact your legislators to ask them to support this legislation.

The ASPCA helps animals in a lot of different ways—from rescuing them from cruelty to spaying or neutering them or advocating on their behalves. What it all boils down to is that we are in the business of trying to save as many lives as we can. To that end, we sponsor the ASPCA $100K Challenge where the contestants compete to save animals and the winners receive money to continue their successful programs.

This year’s $100K Challenge launched in April. Animal shelters that wanted to compete had to qualify by getting online votes, with the top 50 vote-getters qualifying to participate. Contestants then worked to save at least 300 more animals during the months of August, September and October than they did over the same period last year.

How did they do? Amazingly well. The $100K contestants saved 52,484 dogs and cats in just three months—8,977 more lives than last year.

Think about that staggering number. If you think about how much your dog or cat means to you and how much value he or she adds to your life, imagine the significance of being able to save tens of thousands of animals like yours in just three months.

Rising to the Challenge
This week we announced the winners of the $100K Challenge. Frankly, every competitor saved lives and was a winner, but we awarded prizes to the groups that had the biggest increases in lives saved.

Austin Pets Alive! in Austin, Texas won the Grand Prize, and the ASPCA was proud to award them $100,000 to continue their stellar lifesaving work.

As you can imagine, this has not been the easiest year for shelters. Many people are having economic difficulties. Our contestants proved that despite the tough economy, people love animals and are willing to step up to save lives.

But Austin had challenges that other communities did not, so the fact that they won is even more impressive. During the three-month contest, Austin was gripped with historically bad weather—record-breaking heat, drought conditions and wildfires.

Austin Pets Alive! rose above the challenges Mother Nature hurled at the community. When the air conditioning went down in the building housing homeless dogs on a particularly sweltering night, volunteers took all of the 50 dogs in that building into their own homes so that not one would have to suffer.

Austin Pets Alive!’s no-kill mission was put to the test by prolonged natural disasters, and they responded by saving 1,673 cats and dogs in just three months’ time—an increase of 850 cats and dogs from the same time period in 2010. We look forward to APA! saving even more animals next year through our grant.

Other communities that won awards all used hard work and creativity to save more lives. Congratulations to our second prize winner and southeast regional prize winner, the Humane Society of South Mississippi (Gulfport, Miss.), which won a total of $45,000; our Community Engagement Award winner, Humane Society for Greater Savannah (Savannah, Ga.), which won $25,000; and our other regional award winners: Greater Androscoggin Humane Society (Lewiston, Maine), City of Independence Animal Services (independence, Mo.), and Ramona Humane Society (San Jacinto, Calif.), each of which won $20,000.

I can’t wait to see how many animals will be saved in the ASPCA’s 2012 $100K Challenge! Stay tuned!